By Charles Dickens
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED TO THE HON. Mr. AND Mrs. RICHARD WATSON, OF ROCKINGHAM, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
CONTENTS
I. I Am Born II. I Observe III. I Have a Change IV. I Fall into Disgrace V. I Am Sent Away VI. I Enlarge My Circle of Acquaintance VII. My ‘First Half’ at Salem House VIII. My Holidays. Especially One Happy Afternoon IX. I Have a Memorable Birthday X. I Become Neglected, and Am Provided For XI. I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don’t Like It XII. Liking Life on My Own Account No Better, I Form a Great Resolution XIII. The Sequel of My Resolution XIV. My Aunt Makes up Her Mind About Me XV. I Make Another Beginning XVI. I Am a New Boy in More Senses Than One XVII. Somebody Turns Up XVIII. A Retrospect XIX. I Look About Me and Make a Discovery XX. Steerforth’s Home XXI. Little Em’ly XXII. Some Old Scenes, and Some New People XXIII. I Corroborate Mr. Dick, and Choose a Profession XXIV. My First Dissipation XXV. Good and Bad Angels XXVI. I Fall into Captivity XXVII. Tommy Traddles XXVIII. Mr. Micawber’s Gauntlet XXIX. I Visit Steerforth at His Home, Again XXX. A Loss XXXI. A Greater Loss XXXII. The Beginning of a Long Journey XXXIII. Blissful XXXIV. My Aunt Astonishes Me XXXV. Depression XXXVI. Enthusiasm XXXVII. A Little Cold Water XXXVIII. A Dissolution of Partnership XXXIX. Wickfield and Heep XL. The Wanderer XLI. Dora’s Aunts XLII. Mischief XLIII. Another Retrospect XLIV. Our Housekeeping XLV. Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt’s Predictions XLVI. Intelligence XLVII. Martha XLVIII. Domestic XLIX. I Am Involved in Mystery L. Mr. Peggotty’s Dream Comes True LI. The Beginning of a Longer Journey LII. I Assist at an Explosion LIII. Another Retrospect LIV. Mr. Micawber’s Transactions LV. Tempest LVI. The New Wound, and the Old LVII. The Emigrants LVIII. Absence LIX. Return LX. Agnes LXI. I Am Shown Two Interesting Penitents LXII. A Light Shines on My Way LXIII. A Visitor LXIV. A Last Retrospect
PREFACE TO 1850 EDITION
I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided between pleasure and regret—pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions—that I am in danger of wearying the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, and private emotions.
Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose, I have endeavoured to say in it.
It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I have believed it in the writing.
Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward. I cannot close this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful glance towards the time when I shall again put forth my two green leaves once a month, and with a faithful remembrance of the genial sun and showers that have fallen on these leaves of David Copperfield, and made me happy.
London, October, 1850.
PREFACE TO THE CHARLES DICKENS EDITION
I REMARKED in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest in it was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided between pleasure and regret—pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions—that I was in danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private emotions.
Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.
It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years’ imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing.
So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now only take the reader into one confidence more. Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is
1869
THE PERSONAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE OF DAVID COPPERFIELD THE YOUNGER
CHAPTER 1. I AM BORN
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith and preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; all I know is, that there was but one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney connected with the bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on any higher bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead loss—for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s own sherry was in the market then—and ten years afterwards, the caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was present myself, and I remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused, at a part of myself being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short—as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact which will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go ‘meandering’ about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, ‘Let us have no meandering.’
Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.
I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house were—almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes—bolted and locked against it.
An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal magnate of our family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage, ‘handsome is, that handsome does’—for he was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs’ window. These evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo—or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.
My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was ‘a wax doll’. She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double my mother’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came into the world.
This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may be excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can make no claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters stood; or to have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what follows.
My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her, when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she saw a strange lady coming up the garden.
My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to nobody else.
When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a moment.
She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.
My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly, began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to come and open the door. My mother went.
‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the emphasis referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, and her condition.
‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.
‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I dare say?’
My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a disagreeable consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had been an overpowering pleasure.
‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her head, and begged her to walk in.
They went into the parlour my mother had come from, the fire in the best room on the other side of the passage not being lighted—not having been lighted, indeed, since my father’s funeral; and when they were both seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying to restrain herself, began to cry. ‘Oh tut, tut, tut!’ said Miss Betsey, in a hurry. ‘Don’t do that! Come, come!’
My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried until she had had her cry out.
‘Take off your cap, child,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and let me see you.’
My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this odd request, if she had any disposition to do so. Therefore she did as she was told, and did it with such nervous hands that her hair (which was luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.
‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a very Baby!’
My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for her years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor thing, and said, sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a childish widow, and would be but a childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and that with no ungentle hand; but, looking at her, in her timid hope, she found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands folded on one knee, and her feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.
‘In the name of Heaven,’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, ‘why Rookery?’
‘Do you mean the house, ma’am?’ asked my mother.
‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Cookery would have been more to the purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of you.’
‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’ returned my mother. ‘When he bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks about it.’
The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall old elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms bent to one another, like giants who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of such repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind, some weatherbeaten ragged old rooks’-nests, burdening their higher branches, swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.
‘Where are the birds?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘The—?’ My mother had been thinking of something else.
‘The rooks—what has become of them?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘There have not been any since we have lived here,’ said my mother. ‘We thought—Mr. Copperfield thought—it was quite a large rookery; but the nests were very old ones, and the birds have deserted them a long while.’
‘David Copperfield all over!’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘David Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, because he sees the nests!’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned my mother, ‘is dead, and if you dare to speak unkindly of him to me—’
My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily have settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far better training for such an encounter than she was that evening. But it passed with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again very meekly, and fainted.
When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her, whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window. The twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as they saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid of the fire.
‘Well?’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she had only been taking a casual look at the prospect; ‘and when do you expect—’
‘I am all in a tremble,’ faltered my mother. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter. I shall die, I am sure!’
‘No, no, no,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Have some tea.’
‘Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?’ cried my mother in a helpless manner.
‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy. What do you call your girl?’
‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my mother innocently.
‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs, but applying it to my mother instead of me, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean your servant-girl.’
‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.
‘Peggotty!’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. ‘Do you mean to say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church, and got herself named Peggotty?’ ‘It’s her surname,’ said my mother, faintly. ‘Mr. Copperfield called her by it, because her Christian name was the same as mine.’
‘Here! Peggotty!’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour door. ‘Tea. Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t dawdle.’
Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she had been a recognized authority in the house ever since it had been a house, and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming along the passage with a candle at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut the door again, and sat down as before: with her feet on the fender, the skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one knee.
‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl. Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl—’
‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.
‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’ returned Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t contradict. From the moment of this girl’s birth, child, I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes in life with THIS Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with HER affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and well guarded from reposing any foolish confidences where they are not deserved. I must make that MY care.’
There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of these sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected, at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or to know what to say.
‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when she had been silent for a little while, and these motions of her head had gradually ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’
‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield was only too good to me.’
‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.
‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough world again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my mother.
‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally matched, child—if any two people can be equally matched—and so I asked the question. You were an orphan, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’
‘And a governess?’
‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal of notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last proposed to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married,’ said my mother simply.
‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon the fire. ‘Do you know anything?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.
‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.
‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could wish. But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me—’
(‘Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis. —‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death’—my mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. —‘I kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it with Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my mother in another burst of distress, and breaking down again.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’ —‘And I am sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr. Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like each other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,’ resumed my mother in another burst, and breaking down again.
‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know that will not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You mustn’t do it!’
This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating ‘Ha!’ as she sat with her feet upon the fender.
‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,’ said she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some difficulty, ‘was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to me.’
‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.
‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.
The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a glance how ill she was,—as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there had been light enough,—conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my mother, as a special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.
Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’ cotton. Peggotty knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her, she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a magazine of jewellers’ cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her presence.
The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for some hours, laid himself out to be polite and social. He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.
Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on one side, and making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the jewellers’ cotton, as he softly touched his left ear:
‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
‘What!’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like a cork.
Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness—as he told my mother afterwards—that it was a mercy he didn’t lose his presence of mind. But he repeated sweetly:
‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
‘Nonsense!’ replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one blow.
Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her feebly, as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called upstairs again. After some quarter of an hour’s absence, he returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to him.
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are—we are progressing slowly, ma’am.’
‘Ba—a—ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous interjection. And corked herself as before.
Really—really—as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost shocked; speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was almost shocked. But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for nearly two hours, as she sat looking at the fire, until he was again called out. After another absence, he again returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are—we are progressing slowly, ma’am.’
‘Ya—a—ah!’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that Mr. Chillip absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to break his spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to go and sit upon the stairs, in the dark and a strong draught, until he was again sent for.
Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very dragon at his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a credible witness, reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlour-door an hour after this, he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could make his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest. That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This was in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past twelve o’clock, soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as I was.
The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at liberty, and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:
‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’
‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt’s manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to mollify her.
‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’ cried my aunt, impatiently. ‘Can’t he speak?’
‘Be calm, my dear ma’am,’ said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.
‘There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma’am. Be calm.’
It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn’t shake him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own head at him, but in a way that made him quail.
‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, ‘I am happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma’am, and well over.’
During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.
‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied on one of them.
‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’ returned Mr. Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be, under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’
‘And SHE. How is SHE?’ said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my aunt like an amiable bird.
‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’
‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had known. It’s a boy.’
My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.
No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he, without whom I had never been.
CHAPTER 2. I OBSERVE
The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples.
I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and I going unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of Peggotty’s forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.
I might have a misgiving that I am ‘meandering’ in stopping to say this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics.
Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the first objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a confusion of things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I remember? Let me see.
There comes out of the cloud, our house—not new to me, but quite familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty’s kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner, without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing and ferocious manner. There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow, and seems to take particular notice of me as I look at him through the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce. Of the geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after me with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at night: as a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.
Here is a long passage—what an enormous perspective I make of it!—leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door. A dark store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at night; for I don’t know what may be among those tubs and jars and old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light, letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we sit of an evening, my mother and I and Peggotty—for Peggotty is quite our companion, when her work is done and we are alone—and the best parlour where we sit on a Sunday; grandly, but not so comfortably. There is something of a doleful air about that room to me, for Peggotty has told me—I don’t know when, but apparently ages ago—about my father’s funeral, and the company having their black cloaks put on. One Sunday night my mother reads to Peggotty and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the dead. And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window, with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon.
There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s room, to look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again?’
Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and IS seen many times during the morning’s service, by Peggotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames. But though Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does, and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the clergyman. But I can’t always look at him—I know him without that white thing on, and I am afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and perhaps stopping the service to inquire—and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful thing to gape, but I must do something. I look at my mother, but she pretends not to see me. I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces at me. I look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through the porch, and there I see a stray sheep—I don’t mean a sinner, but mutton—half making up his mind to come into the church. I feel that if I looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say something out loud; and what would become of me then! I look up at the monumental tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must have been, when affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he was in vain; and if so, how he likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit; and think what a good place it would be to play in, and what a castle it would make, with another boy coming up the stairs to attack it, and having the velvet cushion with the tassels thrown down on his head. In time my eyes gradually shut up; and, from seeming to hear the clergyman singing a drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with a crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive, by Peggotty.
And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are—a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlour. When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.
That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and a sense that we were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted ourselves in most things to her direction, were among the first opinions—if they may be so called—that I ever derived from what I saw.
Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large. I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at her as she sat at work; at the little bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread—how old it looked, being so wrinkled in all directions!—at the little house with a thatched roof, where the yard-measure lived; at her work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral (with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass thimble on her finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so sleepy, that I knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was gone.
‘Peggotty,’ says I, suddenly, ‘were you ever married?’
‘Lord, Master Davy,’ replied Peggotty. ‘What’s put marriage in your head?’
She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me. And then she stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn out to its thread’s length.
‘But WERE you ever married, Peggotty?’ says I. ‘You are a very handsome woman, an’t you?’
I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly; but of another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect example. There was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my mother had painted a nosegay. The ground-work of that stool, and Peggotty’s complexion appeared to me to be one and the same thing. The stool was smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no difference.
‘Me handsome, Davy!’ said Peggotty. ‘Lawk, no, my dear! But what put marriage in your head?’
‘I don’t know!—You mustn’t marry more than one person at a time, may you, Peggotty?’
‘Certainly not,’ says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.
‘But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry another person, mayn’t you, Peggotty?’
‘YOU MAY,’ says Peggotty, ‘if you choose, my dear. That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘But what is your opinion, Peggotty?’ said I.
I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so curiously at me.
‘My opinion is,’ said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a little indecision and going on with her work, ‘that I never was married myself, Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s all I know about the subject.’
‘You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?’ said I, after sitting quiet for a minute.
I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was quite mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a stocking of her own), and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within them, and gave it a good squeeze. I know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump, whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, some of the buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting to the opposite side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.
‘Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,’ said Peggotty, who was not quite right in the name yet, ‘for I an’t heard half enough.’
I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why she was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned to those monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left their eggs in the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet. I did, at least; but I had my doubts of Peggotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into various parts of her face and arms, all the time.
We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators, when the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was my mother, looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked home with us from church last Sunday.
As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow than a monarch—or something like that; for my later understanding comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked him, over her shoulder.
He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn’t like him or his deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother’s in touching me—which it did. I put it away, as well as I could.
‘Oh, Davy!’ remonstrated my mother.
‘Dear boy!’ said the gentleman. ‘I cannot wonder at his devotion!’
I never saw such a beautiful colour on my mother’s face before. She gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her shawl, turned to thank the gentleman for taking so much trouble as to bring her home. She put out her hand to him as she spoke, and, as he met it with his own, she glanced, I thought, at me.
‘Let us say “good night”, my fine boy,’ said the gentleman, when he had bent his head—I saw him!—over my mother’s little glove.
‘Good night!’ said I.
‘Come! Let us be the best friends in the world!’ said the gentleman, laughing. ‘Shake hands!’
My right hand was in my mother’s left, so I gave him the other.
‘Why, that’s the Wrong hand, Davy!’ laughed the gentleman.
My mother drew my right hand forward, but I was resolved, for my former reason, not to give it him, and I did not. I gave him the other, and he shook it heartily, and said I was a brave fellow, and went away.
At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and give us a last look with his ill-omened black eyes, before the door was shut.
Peggotty, who had not said a word or moved a finger, secured the fastenings instantly, and we all went into the parlour. My mother, contrary to her usual habit, instead of coming to the elbow-chair by the fire, remained at the other end of the room, and sat singing to herself. —‘Hope you have had a pleasant evening, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, standing as stiff as a barrel in the centre of the room, with a candlestick in her hand.
‘Much obliged to you, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, in a cheerful voice, ‘I have had a VERY pleasant evening.’
‘A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,’ suggested Peggotty.
‘A very agreeable change, indeed,’ returned my mother.
Peggotty continuing to stand motionless in the middle of the room, and my mother resuming her singing, I fell asleep, though I was not so sound asleep but that I could hear voices, without hearing what they said. When I half awoke from this uncomfortable doze, I found Peggotty and my mother both in tears, and both talking.
‘Not such a one as this, Mr. Copperfield wouldn’t have liked,’ said Peggotty. ‘That I say, and that I swear!’
‘Good Heavens!’ cried my mother, ‘you’ll drive me mad! Was ever any poor girl so ill-used by her servants as I am! Why do I do myself the injustice of calling myself a girl? Have I never been married, Peggotty?’
‘God knows you have, ma’am,’ returned Peggotty. ‘Then, how can you dare,’ said my mother—‘you know I don’t mean how can you dare, Peggotty, but how can you have the heart—to make me so uncomfortable and say such bitter things to me, when you are well aware that I haven’t, out of this place, a single friend to turn to?’
‘The more’s the reason,’ returned Peggotty, ‘for saying that it won’t do. No! That it won’t do. No! No price could make it do. No!’—I thought Peggotty would have thrown the candlestick away, she was so emphatic with it.
‘How can you be so aggravating,’ said my mother, shedding more tears than before, ‘as to talk in such an unjust manner! How can you go on as if it was all settled and arranged, Peggotty, when I tell you over and over again, you cruel thing, that beyond the commonest civilities nothing has passed! You talk of admiration. What am I to do? If people are so silly as to indulge the sentiment, is it my fault? What am I to do, I ask you? Would you wish me to shave my head and black my face, or disfigure myself with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort? I dare say you would, Peggotty. I dare say you’d quite enjoy it.’
Peggotty seemed to take this aspersion very much to heart, I thought.
‘And my dear boy,’ cried my mother, coming to the elbow-chair in which I was, and caressing me, ‘my own little Davy! Is it to be hinted to me that I am wanting in affection for my precious treasure, the dearest little fellow that ever was!’
‘Nobody never went and hinted no such a thing,’ said Peggotty.
‘You did, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You know you did. What else was it possible to infer from what you said, you unkind creature, when you know as well as I do, that on his account only last quarter I wouldn’t buy myself a new parasol, though that old green one is frayed the whole way up, and the fringe is perfectly mangy? You know it is, Peggotty. You can’t deny it.’ Then, turning affectionately to me, with her cheek against mine, ‘Am I a naughty mama to you, Davy? Am I a nasty, cruel, selfish, bad mama? Say I am, my child; say “yes”, dear boy, and Peggotty will love you; and Peggotty’s love is a great deal better than mine, Davy. I don’t love you at all, do I?’
At this, we all fell a-crying together. I think I was the loudest of the party, but I am sure we were all sincere about it. I was quite heart-broken myself, and am afraid that in the first transports of wounded tenderness I called Peggotty a ‘Beast’. That honest creature was in deep affliction, I remember, and must have become quite buttonless on the occasion; for a little volley of those explosives went off, when, after having made it up with my mother, she kneeled down by the elbow-chair, and made it up with me.
We went to bed greatly dejected. My sobs kept waking me, for a long time; and when one very strong sob quite hoisted me up in bed, I found my mother sitting on the coverlet, and leaning over me. I fell asleep in her arms, after that, and slept soundly.
Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the gentleman again, or whether there was any greater lapse of time before he reappeared, I cannot recall. I don’t profess to be clear about dates. But there he was, in church, and he walked home with us afterwards. He came in, too, to look at a famous geranium we had, in the parlour-window. It did not appear to me that he took much notice of it, but before he went he asked my mother to give him a bit of the blossom. She begged him to choose it for himself, but he refused to do that—I could not understand why—so she plucked it for him, and gave it into his hand. He said he would never, never part with it any more; and I thought he must be quite a fool not to know that it would fall to pieces in a day or two.
Peggotty began to be less with us, of an evening, than she had always been. My mother deferred to her very much—more than usual, it occurred to me—and we were all three excellent friends; still we were different from what we used to be, and were not so comfortable among ourselves. Sometimes I fancied that Peggotty perhaps objected to my mother’s wearing all the pretty dresses she had in her drawers, or to her going so often to visit at that neighbour’s; but I couldn’t, to my satisfaction, make out how it was.
Gradually, I became used to seeing the gentleman with the black whiskers. I liked him no better than at first, and had the same uneasy jealousy of him; but if I had any reason for it beyond a child’s instinctive dislike, and a general idea that Peggotty and I could make much of my mother without any help, it certainly was not THE reason that I might have found if I had been older. No such thing came into my mind, or near it. I could observe, in little pieces, as it were; but as to making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond me.
One autumn morning I was with my mother in the front garden, when Mr. Murdstone—I knew him by that name now—came by, on horseback. He reined up his horse to salute my mother, and said he was going to Lowestoft to see some friends who were there with a yacht, and merrily proposed to take me on the saddle before him if I would like the ride.
The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse seemed to like the idea of the ride so much himself, as he stood snorting and pawing at the garden-gate, that I had a great desire to go. So I was sent upstairs to Peggotty to be made spruce; and in the meantime Mr. Murdstone dismounted, and, with his horse’s bridle drawn over his arm, walked slowly up and down on the outer side of the sweetbriar fence, while my mother walked slowly up and down on the inner to keep him company. I recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them from my little window; I recollect how closely they seemed to be examining the sweetbriar between them, as they strolled along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic temper, Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong way, excessively hard.
Mr. Murdstone and I were soon off, and trotting along on the green turf by the side of the road. He held me quite easily with one arm, and I don’t think I was restless usually; but I could not make up my mind to sit in front of him without turning my head sometimes, and looking up in his face. He had that kind of shallow black eye—I want a better word to express an eye that has no depth in it to be looked into—which, when it is abstracted, seems from some peculiarity of light to be disfigured, for a moment at a time, by a cast. Several times when I glanced at him, I observed that appearance with a sort of awe, and wondered what he was thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers were blacker and thicker, looked at so near, than even I had given them credit for being. A squareness about the lower part of his face, and the dotted indication of the strong black beard he shaved close every day, reminded me of the wax-work that had travelled into our neighbourhood some half-a-year before. This, his regular eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and brown, of his complexion—confound his complexion, and his memory!—made me think him, in spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man. I have no doubt that my poor dear mother thought him so too.
We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking cigars in a room by themselves. Each of them was lying on at least four chairs, and had a large rough jacket on. In a corner was a heap of coats and boat-cloaks, and a flag, all bundled up together.
They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of manner, when we came in, and said, ‘Halloa, Murdstone! We thought you were dead!’
‘Not yet,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘And who’s this shaver?’ said one of the gentlemen, taking hold of me.
‘That’s Davy,’ returned Mr. Murdstone.
‘Davy who?’ said the gentleman. ‘Jones?’
‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s encumbrance?’ cried the gentleman. ‘The pretty little widow?’
‘Quinion,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘take care, if you please. Somebody’s sharp.’
‘Who is?’ asked the gentleman, laughing. I looked up, quickly; being curious to know.
‘Only Brooks of Sheffield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for, at first, I really thought it was I.
There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also. After some laughing, the gentleman whom he had called Quinion, said:
‘And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in reference to the projected business?’
‘Why, I don’t know that Brooks understands much about it at present,’ replied Mr. Murdstone; ‘but he is not generally favourable, I believe.’
There was more laughter at this, and Mr. Quinion said he would ring the bell for some sherry in which to drink to Brooks. This he did; and when the wine came, he made me have a little, with a biscuit, and, before I drank it, stand up and say, ‘Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield!’ The toast was received with great applause, and such hearty laughter that it made me laugh too; at which they laughed the more. In short, we quite enjoyed ourselves.
We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the grass, and looked at things through a telescope—I could make out nothing myself when it was put to my eye, but I pretended I could—and then we came back to the hotel to an early dinner. All the time we were out, the two gentlemen smoked incessantly—which, I thought, if I might judge from the smell of their rough coats, they must have been doing, ever since the coats had first come home from the tailor’s. I must not forget that we went on board the yacht, where they all three descended into the cabin, and were busy with some papers. I saw them quite hard at work, when I looked down through the open skylight. They left me, during this time, with a very nice man with a very large head of red hair and a very small shiny hat upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat on, with ‘Skylark’ in capital letters across the chest. I thought it was his name; and that as he lived on board ship and hadn’t a street door to put his name on, he put it there instead; but when I called him Mr. Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.
I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier than the two gentlemen. They were very gay and careless. They joked freely with one another, but seldom with him. It appeared to me that he was more clever and cold than they were, and that they regarded him with something of my own feeling. I remarked that, once or twice when Mr. Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr. Murdstone sideways, as if to make sure of his not being displeased; and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the other gentleman) was in high spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave him a secret caution with his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was sitting stern and silent. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke—and that, by the by, was his own.
We went home early in the evening. It was a very fine evening, and my mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbriar, while I was sent in to get my tea. When he was gone, my mother asked me all about the day I had had, and what they had said and done. I mentioned what they had said about her, and she laughed, and told me they were impudent fellows who talked nonsense—but I knew it pleased her. I knew it quite as well as I know it now. I took the opportunity of asking if she was at all acquainted with Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she supposed he must be a manufacturer in the knife and fork way.
Can I say of her face—altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is—that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?
I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this talk, and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully by the side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her hands, and laughing, said:
‘What was it they said, Davy? Tell me again. I can’t believe it.’
‘“Bewitching—”’ I began.
My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.
‘It was never bewitching,’ she said, laughing. ‘It never could have been bewitching, Davy. Now I know it wasn’t!’
‘Yes, it was. “Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield”,’ I repeated stoutly. ‘And, “pretty.”’
‘No, no, it was never pretty. Not pretty,’ interposed my mother, laying her fingers on my lips again.
‘Yes it was. “Pretty little widow.”’
‘What foolish, impudent creatures!’ cried my mother, laughing and covering her face. ‘What ridiculous men! An’t they? Davy dear—’
‘Well, Ma.’
‘Don’t tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them. I am dreadfully angry with them myself; but I would rather Peggotty didn’t know.’
I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and over again, and I soon fell fast asleep.
It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next day when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition I am about to mention; but it was probably about two months afterwards.
We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out as before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax, and the box with St. Paul’s on the lid, and the crocodile book, when Peggotty, after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth as if she were going to speak, without doing it—which I thought was merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed—said coaxingly:
‘Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? Wouldn’t that be a treat?’
‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?’ I inquired, provisionally.
‘Oh, what an agreeable man he is!’ cried Peggotty, holding up her hands. ‘Then there’s the sea; and the boats and ships; and the fishermen; and the beach; and Am to play with—’
Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.
I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?
‘Why then I’ll as good as bet a guinea,’ said Peggotty, intent upon my face, ‘that she’ll let us go. I’ll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever she comes home. There now!’
‘But what’s she to do while we’re away?’ said I, putting my small elbows on the table to argue the point. ‘She can’t live by herself.’
If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth darning.
‘I say! Peggotty! She can’t live by herself, you know.’
‘Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. ‘Don’t you know? She’s going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs. Grayper’s going to have a lot of company.’
Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the utmost impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper’s (for it was that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get leave to carry out this great idea. Without being nearly so much surprised as I had expected, my mother entered into it readily; and it was all arranged that night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be paid for.
The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that it came soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half afraid that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other great convulsion of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition. We were to go in a carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up over-night, and sleep in my hat and boots.
It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what I did leave for ever.
I am glad to recollect that when the carrier’s cart was at the gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry. I am glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat against mine.
I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.
As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so moved. I was looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what business it was of his. Peggotty, who was also looking back on the other side, seemed anything but satisfied; as the face she brought back in the cart denoted.
I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like the boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home again by the buttons she would shed.
CHAPTER 3. I HAVE A CHANGE
The carrier’s horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say ‘drove’, but it struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling.
Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the same conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of which never relaxed; and I could not have believed unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much.
We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles; which would account for it.
As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that, for her part, she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth Bloater.
When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe.
‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty, ‘growed out of knowledge!’
He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me. But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy’s face and curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you couldn’t so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.
Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm, and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders’ yards, shipwrights’ yards, ship-breakers’ yards, caulkers’ yards, riggers’ lofts, smiths’ forges, and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance; when Ham said,
‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!’
I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could I make out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the way of a habitation that was visible to me.
‘That’s not it?’ said I. ‘That ship-looking thing?’
‘That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ returned Ham.
If it had been Aladdin’s palace, roc’s egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.
It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child who was trundling a hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by a bible; and the tray, if it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects; such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole interior of Peggotty’s brother’s house again, at one view. Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over the little mantelshelf, was a picture of the ‘Sarah Jane’ lugger, built at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work of art, combining composition with carpentry, which I considered to be one of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not divine then; and some lockers and boxes and conveniences of that sort, which served for seats and eked out the chairs.
All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the threshold—child-like, according to my theory—and then Peggotty opened a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most desirable bedroom ever seen—in the stern of the vessel; with a little window, where the rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass, just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching, that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards found that a heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little wooden outhouse where the pots and kettles were kept.
We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had seen curtseying at the door when I was on Ham’s back, about a quarter of a mile off. Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so) with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn’t let me kiss her when I offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As he called Peggotty ‘Lass’, and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, that he was her brother; and so he turned out—being presently introduced to me as Mr. Peggotty, the master of the house.
‘Glad to see you, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You’ll find us rough, sir, but you’ll find us ready.’
I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a delightful place.
‘How’s your Ma, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Did you leave her pretty jolly?’
I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could wish, and that she desired her compliments—which was a polite fiction on my part.
‘I’m much obleeged to her, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Well, sir, if you can make out here, fur a fortnut, ‘long wi’ her,’ nodding at his sister, ‘and Ham, and little Em’ly, we shall be proud of your company.’
Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking that ‘cold would never get his muck off’. He soon returned, greatly improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn’t help thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish,—that it went into the hot water very black, and came out very red.
After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious retreat that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em’ly had overcome her shyness, and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and least of the lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just fitted into the chimney corner. Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron, was knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needlework was as much at home with St. Paul’s and the bit of wax-candle, as if they had never known any other roof. Ham, who had been giving me my first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he turned. Mr. Peggotty was smoking his pipe. I felt it was a time for conversation and confidence.
‘Mr. Peggotty!’ says I.
‘Sir,’ says he.
‘Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of ark?’
Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:
‘No, sir. I never giv him no name.’
‘Who gave him that name, then?’ said I, putting question number two of the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.
‘Why, sir, his father giv it him,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘I thought you were his father!’
‘My brother Joe was his father,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after a respectful pause.
‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham’s father, and began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody else there. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it out with Mr. Peggotty.
‘Little Em’ly,’ I said, glancing at her. ‘She is your daughter, isn’t she, Mr. Peggotty?’
‘No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.’
I couldn’t help it. ‘—Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after another respectful silence.
‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:
‘Haven’t you ANY children, Mr. Peggotty?’
‘No, master,’ he answered with a short laugh. ‘I’m a bacheldore.’
‘A bachelor!’ I said, astonished. ‘Why, who’s that, Mr. Peggotty?’ pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.
‘That’s Missis Gummidge,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?’
But at this point Peggotty—I mean my own peculiar Peggotty—made such impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was time to go to bed. Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin, she informed me that Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom my host had at different times adopted in their childhood, when they were left destitute: and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel—those were her similes. The only subject, she informed me, on which he ever showed a violent temper or swore an oath, was this generosity of his; and if it were ever referred to, by any one of them, he struck the table a heavy blow with his right hand (had split it on one such occasion), and swore a dreadful oath that he would be ‘Gormed’ if he didn’t cut and run for good, if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.
I was very sensible of my entertainer’s goodness, and listened to the women’s going to bed in another little crib like mine at the opposite end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two hammocks for themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in a very luxurious state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy. As slumber gradually stole upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything did happen.
Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Almost as soon as it shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed, and out with little Em’ly, picking up stones upon the beach.
‘You’re quite a sailor, I suppose?’ I said to Em’ly. I don’t know that I supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of gallantry to say something; and a shining sail close to us made such a pretty little image of itself, at the moment, in her bright eye, that it came into my head to say this.
‘No,’ replied Em’ly, shaking her head, ‘I’m afraid of the sea.’
‘Afraid!’ I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking very big at the mighty ocean. ‘I an’t!’
‘Ah! but it’s cruel,’ said Em’ly. ‘I have seen it very cruel to some of our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house, all to pieces.’
‘I hope it wasn’t the boat that—’
‘That father was drownded in?’ said Em’ly. ‘No. Not that one, I never see that boat.’
‘Nor him?’ I asked her.
Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘Not to remember!’
Here was a coincidence! I immediately went into an explanation how I had never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had always lived by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so then, and always meant to live so; and how my father’s grave was in the churchyard near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of which I had walked and heard the birds sing many a pleasant morning. But there were some differences between Em’ly’s orphanhood and mine, it appeared. She had lost her mother before her father; and where her father’s grave was no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea.
‘Besides,’ said Em’ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles, ‘your father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady; and my father was a fisherman and my mother was a fisherman’s daughter, and my uncle Dan is a fisherman.’
‘Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?’ said I.
‘Uncle Dan—yonder,’ answered Em’ly, nodding at the boat-house.
‘Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think?’
‘Good?’ said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, I’d give him a sky-blue coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.’
I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures. I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture him quite at his ease in the raiment proposed for him by his grateful little niece, and that I was particularly doubtful of the policy of the cocked hat; but I kept these sentiments to myself.
Little Em’ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her enumeration of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision. We went on again, picking up shells and pebbles.
‘You would like to be a lady?’ I said.
Emily looked at me, and laughed and nodded ‘yes’.
‘I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks together, then. Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We wouldn’t mind then, when there comes stormy weather.---Not for our own sakes, I mean. We would for the poor fishermen’s, to be sure, and we’d help ‘em with money when they come to any hurt.’ This seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and therefore not at all improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in the contemplation of it, and little Em’ly was emboldened to say, shyly,
‘Don’t you think you are afraid of the sea, now?’
It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels, with an awful recollection of her drowned relations. However, I said ‘No,’ and I added, ‘You don’t seem to be either, though you say you are,’—for she was walking much too near the brink of a sort of old jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled upon, and I was afraid of her falling over.
‘I’m not afraid in this way,’ said little Em’ly. ‘But I wake when it blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham and believe I hear ‘em crying out for help. That’s why I should like so much to be a lady. But I’m not afraid in this way. Not a bit. Look here!’
She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some height, without the least defence. The incident is so impressed on my remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form here, I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and little Em’ly springing forward to her destruction (as it appeared to me), with a look that I have never forgotten, directed far out to sea.
The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered; fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day? There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it, and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since—I do not say it lasted long, but it has been—when I have asked myself the question, would it have been better for little Em’ly to have had the waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when I have answered Yes, it would have been.
This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it stand.
We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into the water—I hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the reverse—and then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty’s dwelling. We stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.
‘Like two young mavishes,’ Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.
Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized, and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.
We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I told Em’ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she did, and I have no doubt she did.
As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger. We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little locker side by side, ‘Lor! wasn’t it beautiful!’ Mr. Peggotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing else. They had something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.
I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself so agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances of her residence with Mr. Peggotty. Mrs. Gummidge’s was rather a fretful disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes than was comfortable for other parties in so small an establishment. I was very sorry for her; but there were moments when it would have been more agreeable, I thought, if Mrs. Gummidge had had a convenient apartment of her own to retire to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived.
Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third evening of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge’s looking up at the Dutch clock, between eight and nine, and saying he was there, and that, what was more, she had known in the morning he would go there.
Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. ‘I am a lone lorn creetur’,’ were Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, ‘and everythink goes contrary with me.’
‘Oh, it’ll soon leave off,’ said Peggotty—I again mean our Peggotty—‘and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than to us.’
‘I feel it more,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs. Gummidge’s peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the warmest and snuggest in the place, as her chair was certainly the easiest, but it didn’t suit her that day at all. She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called ‘the creeps’. At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again that she was ‘a lone lorn creetur’ and everythink went contrary with her’.
‘It is certainly very cold,’ said Peggotty. ‘Everybody must feel it so.’
‘I feel it more than other people,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately after me, to whom the preference was given as a visitor of distinction. The fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a little burnt. We all acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment; but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, and made that former declaration with great bitterness.
Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o’clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em’ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes since tea.
‘Well, Mates,’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, ‘and how are you?’
We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except Mrs. Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knitting.
‘What’s amiss?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. ‘Cheer up, old Mawther!’ (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.)
Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took out an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead of putting it in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and still kept it out, ready for use.
‘What’s amiss, dame?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘Nothing,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘You’ve come from The Willing Mind, Dan’l?’
‘Why yes, I’ve took a short spell at The Willing Mind tonight,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘I’m sorry I should drive you there,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
‘Drive! I don’t want no driving,’ returned Mr. Peggotty with an honest laugh. ‘I only go too ready.’
‘Very ready,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes. ‘Yes, yes, very ready. I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re so ready.’
‘Along o’ you! It an’t along o’ you!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Don’t ye believe a bit on it.’
‘Yes, yes, it is,’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I know what I am. I know that I am a lone lorn creetur’, and not only that everythink goes contrary with me, but that I go contrary with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun’.’
I really couldn’t help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up.
‘I an’t what I could wish myself to be,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrary. I wish I didn’t feel ‘em, but I do. I wish I could be hardened to ‘em, but I an’t. I make the house uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your sister so all day, and Master Davy.’
Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, ‘No, you haven’t, Mrs. Gummidge,’ in great mental distress.
‘It’s far from right that I should do it,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘It an’t a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am a lone lorn creetur’, and had much better not make myself contrary here. If thinks must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary myself, let me go contrary in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into the house, and die and be a riddance!’
Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, said in a whisper:
‘She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’
I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham, ‘Poor thing! She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’ And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the tenderest commiseration.
So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of going out and coming in, and altered Ham’s engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row. I don’t know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em’ly leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us the ships, like their own shadows.
At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving little Em’ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her. (I redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let.) We were greatly overcome at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my heart, I had one made that day.
Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed to point that way with a ready finger; and I felt, all the more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend.
This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we drew, the more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more excited I was to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing in those transports, tried to check them (though very kindly), and looked confused and out of sorts.
Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the carrier’s horse pleased—and did. How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!
The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange servant.
‘Why, Peggotty!’ I said, ruefully, ‘isn’t she come home?’
‘Yes, yes, Master Davy,’ said Peggotty. ‘She’s come home. Wait a bit, Master Davy, and I’ll—I’ll tell you something.’
Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of herself, but I felt too blank and strange to tell her so. When she had got down, she took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the kitchen; and shut the door.
‘Peggotty!’ said I, quite frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!’ she answered, assuming an air of sprightliness.
‘Something’s the matter, I’m sure. Where’s mama?’
‘Where’s mama, Master Davy?’ repeated Peggotty.
‘Yes. Why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and what have we come in here for? Oh, Peggotty!’ My eyes were full, and I felt as if I were going to tumble down.
‘Bless the precious boy!’ cried Peggotty, taking hold of me. ‘What is it? Speak, my pet!’
‘Not dead, too! Oh, she’s not dead, Peggotty?’
Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and then sat down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn.
I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in anxious inquiry.
‘You see, dear, I should have told you before now,’ said Peggotty, ‘but I hadn’t an opportunity. I ought to have made it, perhaps, but I couldn’t azackly’—that was always the substitute for exactly, in Peggotty’s militia of words—‘bring my mind to it.’
‘Go on, Peggotty,’ said I, more frightened than before.
‘Master Davy,’ said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way. ‘What do you think? You have got a Pa!’
I trembled, and turned white. Something—I don’t know what, or how—connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.
‘A new one,’ said Peggotty.
‘A new one?’ I repeated.
Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was very hard, and, putting out her hand, said:
‘Come and see him.’
‘I don’t want to see him.’
—‘And your mama,’ said Peggotty.
I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour, where she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the other, Mr. Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly I thought.
‘Now, Clara my dear,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘Recollect! control yourself, always control yourself! Davy boy, how do you do?’
I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him, I knew quite well that he was looking at us both; and I turned to the window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their heads in the cold.
As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs. My old dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled downstairs to find anything that was like itself, so altered it all seemed; and roamed into the yard. I very soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel was filled up with a great dog—deep mouthed and black-haired like Him—and he was very angry at the sight of me, and sprang out to get at me.
CHAPTER 4. I FALL INTO DISGRACE
If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day—who sleeps there now, I wonder!—to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I carried to it. I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way while I climbed the stairs; and, looking as blank and strange upon the room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my small hands crossed, and thought.
I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but, except that I was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I never thought why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em’ly, and had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep.
I was awoke by somebody saying ‘Here he is!’ and uncovering my hot head. My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it was one of them who had done it.
‘Davy,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
I thought it was very strange that she should ask me, and answered, ‘Nothing.’ I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my trembling lip, which answered her with greater truth. ‘Davy,’ said my mother. ‘Davy, my child!’
I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected me so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in the bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have raised me up.
‘This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!’ said my mother. ‘I have no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your conscience, I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is dear to me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?’
Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in a sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner, ‘Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute, may you never be truly sorry!’
‘It’s enough to distract me,’ cried my mother. ‘In my honeymoon, too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!’ cried my mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, ‘what a troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to be as agreeable as possible!’
I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor Peggotty’s, and slipped to my feet at the bed-side. It was Mr. Murdstone’s hand, and he kept it on my arm as he said:
‘What’s this? Clara, my love, have you forgotten?—Firmness, my dear!’
‘I am very sorry, Edward,’ said my mother. ‘I meant to be very good, but I am so uncomfortable.’
‘Indeed!’ he answered. ‘That’s a bad hearing, so soon, Clara.’
‘I say it’s very hard I should be made so now,’ returned my mother, pouting; ‘and it is—very hard—isn’t it?’
He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew as well, when I saw my mother’s head lean down upon his shoulder, and her arm touch his neck—I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.
‘Go you below, my love,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘David and I will come down, together. My friend,’ turning a darkening face on Peggotty, when he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with a nod and a smile; ‘do you know your mistress’s name?’
‘She has been my mistress a long time, sir,’ answered Peggotty, ‘I ought to know it.’ ‘That’s true,’ he answered. ‘But I thought I heard you, as I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not hers. She has taken mine, you know. Will you remember that?’
Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was expected to go, and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were left alone, he shut the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding me standing before him, looked steadily into my eyes. I felt my own attracted, no less steadily, to his. As I recall our being opposed thus, face to face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and high.
‘David,’ he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, ‘if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I beat him.’
I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now.
‘I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, “I’ll conquer that fellow”; and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do it. What is that upon your face?’
‘Dirt,’ I said.
He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him so.
‘You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,’ he said, with a grave smile that belonged to him, ‘and you understood me very well, I see. Wash that face, sir, and come down with me.’
He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. I had little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would have knocked me down without the least compunction, if I had hesitated.
‘Clara, my dear,’ he said, when I had done his bidding, and he walked me into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm; ‘you will not be made uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve our youthful humours.’
God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate him. I thought my mother was sorry to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and that, presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with her eyes more sorrowfully still—missing, perhaps, some freedom in my childish tread—but the word was not spoken, and the time for it was gone.
We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my mother—I am afraid I liked him none the better for that—and she was very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that evening. I am not certain whether I found out then, or afterwards, that, without being actively concerned in any business, he had some share in, or some annual charge upon the profits of, a wine-merchant’s house in London, with which his family had been connected from his great-grandfather’s time, and in which his sister had a similar interest; but I may mention it in this place, whether or no.
After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house, a coach drove up to the garden-gate and he went out to receive the visitor. My mother followed him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlour door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to do, whispered me to love my new father and be obedient to him. She did this hurriedly and secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and, putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew hers through his arm.
It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.
She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said:
‘Is that your boy, sister-in-law?’
My mother acknowledged me.
‘Generally speaking,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I don’t like boys. How d’ye do, boy?’
Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:
‘Wants manner!’
Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable array.
As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. She began to ‘help’ my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him.
Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn’t be done.
On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:
‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty and thoughtless’—my mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character—‘to have any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you’ll be so good as give me your keys, my dear, I’ll attend to all this sort of thing in future.’
From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had.
My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have been consulted.
‘Clara!’ said Mr. Murdstone sternly. ‘Clara! I wonder at you.’
‘Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!’ cried my mother, ‘and it’s very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn’t like it yourself.’
Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour, that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this. Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm, and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other firmness upon earth.
‘It’s very hard,’ said my mother, ‘that in my own house—’
‘My own house?’ repeated Mr. Murdstone. ‘Clara!’
‘OUR own house, I mean,’ faltered my mother, evidently frightened—‘I hope you must know what I mean, Edward—it’s very hard that in YOUR own house I may not have a word to say about domestic matters. I am sure I managed very well before we were married. There’s evidence,’ said my mother, sobbing; ‘ask Peggotty if I didn’t do very well when I wasn’t interfered with!’
‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end of this. I go tomorrow.’
‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘be silent! How dare you to insinuate that you don’t know my character better than your words imply?’
‘I am sure,’ my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage, and with many tears, ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I should be very miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I don’t ask much. I am not unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased, once, with my being a little inexperienced and girlish, Edward—I am sure you said so—but you seem to hate me for it now, you are so severe.’
‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, again, ‘let there be an end of this. I go tomorrow.’
‘Jane Murdstone,’ thundered Mr. Murdstone. ‘Will you be silent? How dare you?’
Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held it before her eyes.
‘Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you surprise me! You astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which it stood in need. But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets with a base return—’
‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’ cried my mother, ‘don’t accuse me of being ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was before. I have many faults, but not that. Oh, don’t, my dear!’
‘When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,’ he went on, after waiting until my mother was silent, ‘with a base return, that feeling of mine is chilled and altered.’
‘Don’t, my love, say that!’ implored my mother very piteously. ‘Oh, don’t, Edward! I can’t bear to hear it. Whatever I am, I am affectionate. I know I am affectionate. I wouldn’t say it, if I wasn’t sure that I am. Ask Peggotty. I am sure she’ll tell you I’m affectionate.’
‘There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone in reply, ‘that can have the least weight with me. You lose breath.’
‘Pray let us be friends,’ said my mother, ‘I couldn’t live under coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have a great many defects, I know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving—’ My mother was too much overcome to go on.
‘Jane Murdstone,’ said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, ‘any harsh words between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so unusual an occurrence has taken place tonight. I was betrayed into it by another. Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let us both try to forget it. And as this,’ he added, after these magnanimous words, ‘is not a fit scene for the boy—David, go to bed!’
I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my eyes. I was so sorry for my mother’s distress; but I groped my way out, and groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even having the heart to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle from her. When her coming up to look for me, an hour or so afterwards, awoke me, she said that my mother had gone to bed poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were sitting alone.
Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused outside the parlour door, on hearing my mother’s voice. She was very earnestly and humbly entreating Miss Murdstone’s pardon, which that lady granted, and a perfect reconciliation took place. I never knew my mother afterwards to give an opinion on any matter, without first appealing to Miss Murdstone, or without having first ascertained by some sure means, what Miss Murdstone’s opinion was; and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out of temper (she was infirm that way), move her hand towards her bag as if she were going to take out the keys and offer to resign them to my mother, without seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright.
The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says ‘miserable sinners’, as if she were calling all the congregation names. Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in Heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her prayer-book, and makes my side ache.
Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking at my mother and at me, and whispering. Again, as the three go on arm-in-arm, and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those looks, and wonder if my mother’s step be really not so light as I have seen it, and if the gaiety of her beauty be really almost worried away. Again, I wonder whether any of the neighbours call to mind, as I do, how we used to walk home together, she and I; and I wonder stupidly about that, all the dreary dismal day.
There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-school. Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother had of course agreed with them. Nothing, however, was concluded on the subject yet. In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home. Shall I ever forget those lessons! They were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard—perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me—and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I believe my poor mother was herself.
Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again.
I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books, and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head, all sliding away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder where they do go, by the by?
I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:
‘Oh, Davy, Davy!’
‘Now, Clara,’ says Mr. Murdstone, ‘be firm with the boy. Don’t say, “Oh, Davy, Davy!” That’s childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know it.’
‘He does NOT know it,’ Miss Murdstone interposes awfully.
‘I am really afraid he does not,’ says my mother.
‘Then, you see, Clara,’ returns Miss Murdstone, ‘you should just give him the book back, and make him know it.’
‘Yes, certainly,’ says my mother; ‘that is what I intend to do, my dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t be stupid.’
I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before, and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be worked out when my other tasks are done.
There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these miserable lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her) tries to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along, says in a deep warning voice:
‘Clara!’
My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with it, and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.
Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the shape of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, ‘If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment’—at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed. I pore over these cheeses without any result or enlightenment until dinner-time, when, having made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt of the slate into the pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help me out with the cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of the evening.
It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her brother’s attention to me by saying, ‘Clara, my dear, there’s nothing like work—give your boy an exercise’; which caused me to be clapped down to some new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers (though there WAS a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and held that they contaminated one another.
The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circumstance.
It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time,—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite characters in them—as I did—and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones—which I did too. I have been Tom Jones (a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels—I forget what, now—that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees—the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive.
This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.
The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was when I came to that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming again.
One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane—a lithe and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.
‘I tell you, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘I have been often flogged myself.’
‘To be sure; of course,’ said Miss Murdstone.
‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, meekly. ‘But—but do you think it did Edward good?’
‘Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?’ asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.
‘That’s the point,’ said his sister.
To this my mother returned, ‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ and said no more.
I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.
‘Now, David,’ he said—and I saw that cast again as he said it—‘you must be far more careful today than usual.’ He gave the cane another poise, and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it, laid it down beside him, with an impressive look, and took up his book.
This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness there was no checking.
We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in with an idea of distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well prepared; but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the time. And when we came at last to the five thousand cheeses (canes he made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying.
‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.
‘I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,’ said my mother.
I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking up the cane:
‘Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness, the worry and torment that David has occasioned her today. That would be stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and improved, but we can hardly expect so much from her. David, you and I will go upstairs, boy.’
As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss Murdstone said, ‘Clara! are you a perfect fool?’ and interfered. I saw my mother stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.
He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely—I am certain he had a delight in that formal parade of executing justice—and when we got there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm.
‘Mr. Murdstone! Sir!’ I cried to him. ‘Don’t! Pray don’t beat me! I have tried to learn, sir, but I can’t learn while you and Miss Murdstone are by. I can’t indeed!’
‘Can’t you, indeed, David?’ he said. ‘We’ll try that.’
He had my head as in a vice, but I twined round him somehow, and stopped him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was only a moment that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant afterwards, and in the same instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through. It sets my teeth on edge to think of it.
He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above all the noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out—I heard my mother crying out—and Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor.
How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness seemed to reign through the whole house! How well I remember, when my smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I began to feel!
I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound. I crawled up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so swollen, red, and ugly that it almost frightened me. My stripes were sore and stiff, and made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I felt. It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious criminal, I dare say.
It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been lying, for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns crying, dozing, and looking listlessly out), when the key was turned, and Miss Murdstone came in with some bread and meat, and milk. These she put down upon the table without a word, glaring at me the while with exemplary firmness, and then retired, locking the door after her.
Long after it was dark I sat there, wondering whether anybody else would come. When this appeared improbable for that night, I undressed, and went to bed; and, there, I began to wonder fearfully what would be done to me. Whether it was a criminal act that I had committed? Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to prison? Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged?
I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance. Miss Murdstone reappeared before I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in the garden for half an hour and no longer; and retired, leaving the door open, that I might avail myself of that permission.
I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which lasted five days. If I could have seen my mother alone, I should have gone down on my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but I saw no one, Miss Murdstone excepted, during the whole time—except at evening prayers in the parlour; to which I was escorted by Miss Murdstone after everybody else was placed; where I was stationed, a young outlaw, all alone by myself near the door; and whence I was solemnly conducted by my jailer, before any one arose from the devotional posture. I only observed that my mother was as far off from me as she could be, and kept her face another way so that I never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone’s hand was bound up in a large linen wrapper.
The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any one. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance. The way in which I listened to all the incidents of the house that made themselves audible to me; the ringing of bells, the opening and shutting of doors, the murmuring of voices, the footsteps on the stairs; to any laughing, whistling, or singing, outside, which seemed more dismal than anything else to me in my solitude and disgrace—the uncertain pace of the hours, especially at night, when I would wake thinking it was morning, and find that the family were not yet gone to bed, and that all the length of night had yet to come—the depressed dreams and nightmares I had—the return of day, noon, afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the churchyard, and I watched them from a distance within the room, being ashamed to show myself at the window lest they should know I was a prisoner—the strange sensation of never hearing myself speak—the fleeting intervals of something like cheerfulness, which came with eating and drinking, and went away with it—the setting in of rain one evening, with a fresh smell, and its coming down faster and faster between me and the church, until it and gathering night seemed to quench me in gloom, and fear, and remorse—all this appears to have gone round and round for years instead of days, it is so vividly and strongly stamped on my remembrance. On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own name spoken in a whisper. I started up in bed, and putting out my arms in the dark, said:
‘Is that you, Peggotty?’
There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name again, in a tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I should have gone into a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it must have come through the keyhole.
I groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips to the keyhole, whispered: ‘Is that you, Peggotty dear?’
‘Yes, my own precious Davy,’ she replied. ‘Be as soft as a mouse, or the Cat’ll hear us.’
I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sensible of the urgency of the case; her room being close by.
‘How’s mama, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with me?’
I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole, as I was doing on mine, before she answered. ‘No. Not very.’
‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you know?’
‘School. Near London,’ was Peggotty’s answer. I was obliged to get her to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my throat, in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away from the keyhole and put my ear there; and though her words tickled me a good deal, I didn’t hear them.
‘When, Peggotty?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of my drawers?’ which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention it.
‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Box.’
‘Shan’t I see mama?’
‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Morning.’
Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and delivered these words through it with as much feeling and earnestness as a keyhole has ever been the medium of communicating, I will venture to assert: shooting in each broken little sentence in a convulsive little burst of its own.
‘Davy, dear. If I ain’t been azackly as intimate with you. Lately, as I used to be. It ain’t because I don’t love you. Just as well and more, my pretty poppet. It’s because I thought it better for you. And for someone else besides. Davy, my darling, are you listening? Can you hear?’
‘Ye-ye-ye-yes, Peggotty!’ I sobbed.
‘My own!’ said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. ‘What I want to say, is. That you must never forget me. For I’ll never forget you. And I’ll take as much care of your mama, Davy. As ever I took of you. And I won’t leave her. The day may come when she’ll be glad to lay her poor head. On her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s arm again. And I’ll write to you, my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. And I’ll—I’ll—’ Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole, as she couldn’t kiss me.
‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’ said I. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they might suppose, and that I sent ‘em all my love—especially to little Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?’
The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the greatest affection—I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had been her honest face—and parted. From that night there grew up in my breast a feeling for Peggotty which I cannot very well define. She did not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something I have never felt for any other human being. It was a sort of comical affection, too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been to me.
In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was going to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she supposed. She also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to come downstairs into the parlour, and have my breakfast. There, I found my mother, very pale and with red eyes: into whose arms I ran, and begged her pardon from my suffering soul.
‘Oh, Davy!’ she said. ‘That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to be better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.’
They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more sorry for that than for my going away. I felt it sorely. I tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-and-butter, and trickled into my tea. I saw my mother look at me sometimes, and then glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone, and than look down, or look away.
‘Master Copperfield’s box there!’ said Miss Murdstone, when wheels were heard at the gate.
I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr. Murdstone appeared. My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at the door. The box was taken out to his cart, and lifted in.
‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note.
‘Ready, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother. ‘Good-bye, Davy. You are going for your own good. Good-bye, my child. You will come home in the holidays, and be a better boy.’
‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ replied my mother, who was holding me. ‘I forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!’
‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to say on the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a bad end; and then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked off with it.
CHAPTER 5. I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME
We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short. Looking out to ascertain for what, I saw, to My amazement, Peggotty burst from a hedge and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me to her stays until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful, though I never thought of that till afterwards when I found it very tender. Not a single word did Peggotty speak. Releasing one of her arms, she put it down in her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, but not one word did she say. After another and a final squeeze with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief is, and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown. I picked up one, of several that were rolling about, and treasured it as a keepsake for a long time.
The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming back. I shook my head, and said I thought not. ‘Then come up,’ said the carrier to the lazy horse; who came up accordingly.
Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to think it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither Roderick Random, nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy, had ever cried, that I could remember, in trying situations. The carrier, seeing me in this resolution, proposed that my pocket-handkerchief should be spread upon the horse’s back to dry. I thanked him, and assented; and particularly small it looked, under those circumstances.
I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather purse, with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s hand, ‘For Davy. With my love.’ I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good as to reach me my pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I had better do without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and stopped myself.
For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.
‘All the way where?’ inquired the carrier.
‘There,’ I said.
‘Where’s there?’ inquired the carrier.
‘Near London,’ I said.
‘Why that horse,’ said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out, ‘would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.’
‘Are you only going to Yarmouth then?’ I asked.
‘That’s about it,’ said the carrier. ‘And there I shall take you to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take you to—wherever it is.’
As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say—he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational—I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant’s.
‘Did SHE make ‘em, now?’ said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee.
‘Peggotty, do you mean, sir?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Her.’
‘Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.’
‘Do she though?’ said Mr. Barkis. He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but he didn’t whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears, as if he saw something new there; and sat so, for a considerable time. By and by, he said:
‘No sweethearts, I b’lieve?’
‘Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?’ For I thought he wanted something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that description of refreshment.
‘Hearts,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Sweet hearts; no person walks with her!’
‘With Peggotty?’
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Her.’
‘Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.’
‘Didn’t she, though!’ said Mr. Barkis.
Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn’t whistle, but sat looking at the horse’s ears.
‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, ‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?’
I replied that such was the fact.
‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might be writin’ to her?’
‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.
‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’; would you?’
‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all the message?’
‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’
‘But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it then, and could give your own message so much better.’
As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head, and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with profound gravity, ‘Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,’ I readily undertook its transmission. While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a sheet of paper and an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which ran thus: ‘My dear Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to mama. Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he particularly wants you to know—BARKIS IS WILLING.’
When I had taken this commission on myself prospectively, Mr. Barkis relapsed into perfect silence; and I, feeling quite worn out by all that had happened lately, lay down on a sack in the cart and fell asleep. I slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth; which was so entirely new and strange to me in the inn-yard to which we drove, that I at once abandoned a latent hope I had had of meeting with some of Mr. Peggotty’s family there, perhaps even with little Em’ly herself.
The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, but without any horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing was more unlikely than its ever going to London. I was thinking this, and wondering what would ultimately become of my box, which Mr. Barkis had put down on the yard-pavement by the pole (he having driven up the yard to turn his cart), and also what would ultimately become of me, when a lady looked out of a bow-window where some fowls and joints of meat were hanging up, and said:
‘Is that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.
‘What name?’ inquired the lady.
‘Copperfield, ma’am,’ I said.
‘That won’t do,’ returned the lady. ‘Nobody’s dinner is paid for here, in that name.’
‘Is it Murdstone, ma’am?’ I said.
‘If you’re Master Murdstone,’ said the lady, ‘why do you go and give another name, first?’
I explained to the lady how it was, who than rang a bell, and called out, ‘William! show the coffee-room!’ upon which a waiter came running out of a kitchen on the opposite side of the yard to show it, and seemed a good deal surprised when he was only to show it to me.
It was a large long room with some large maps in it. I doubt if I could have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign countries, and I cast away in the middle of them. I felt it was taking a liberty to sit down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner of the chair nearest the door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on purpose for me, and put a set of castors on it, I think I must have turned red all over with modesty.
He brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers off in such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him some offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at the table, and saying, very affably, ‘Now, six-foot! come on!’
I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it extremely difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like dexterity, or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he was standing opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the most dreadful manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me into the second chop, he said:
‘There’s half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it now?’
I thanked him and said, ‘Yes.’ Upon which he poured it out of a jug into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and made it look beautiful.
‘My eye!’ he said. ‘It seems a good deal, don’t it?’
‘It does seem a good deal,’ I answered with a smile. For it was quite delightful to me, to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed, pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up the glass to the light with the other hand, he looked quite friendly.
‘There was a gentleman here, yesterday,’ he said—‘a stout gentleman, by the name of Topsawyer—perhaps you know him?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think—’
‘In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, grey coat, speckled choker,’ said the waiter.
‘No,’ I said bashfully, ‘I haven’t the pleasure—’
‘He came in here,’ said the waiter, looking at the light through the tumbler, ‘ordered a glass of this ale—WOULD order it—I told him not—drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It oughtn’t to be drawn; that’s the fact.’
I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and said I thought I had better have some water.
‘Why you see,’ said the waiter, still looking at the light through the tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, ‘our people don’t like things being ordered and left. It offends ‘em. But I’ll drink it, if you like. I’m used to it, and use is everything. I don’t think it’ll hurt me, if I throw my head back, and take it off quick. Shall I?’
I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him. On the contrary, I thought he seemed the fresher for it.
‘What have we got here?’ he said, putting a fork into my dish. ‘Not chops?’
‘Chops,’ I said.
‘Lord bless my soul!’ he exclaimed, ‘I didn’t know they were chops. Why, a chop’s the very thing to take off the bad effects of that beer! Ain’t it lucky?’
So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the other, and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme satisfaction. He afterwards took another chop, and another potato; and after that, another chop and another potato. When we had done, he brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
‘How’s the pie?’ he said, rousing himself.
‘It’s a pudding,’ I made answer.
‘Pudding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, bless me, so it is! What!’ looking at it nearer. ‘You don’t mean to say it’s a batter-pudding!’
‘Yes, it is indeed.’
‘Why, a batter-pudding,’ he said, taking up a table-spoon, ‘is my favourite pudding! Ain’t that lucky? Come on, little ‘un, and let’s see who’ll get most.’
The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to come in and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was left far behind at the first mouthful, and had no chance with him. I never saw anyone enjoy a pudding so much, I think; and he laughed, when it was all gone, as if his enjoyment of it lasted still.
Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that I asked for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggotty. He not only brought it immediately, but was good enough to look over me while I wrote the letter. When I had finished it, he asked me where I was going to school.
I said, ‘Near London,’ which was all I knew.
‘Oh! my eye!’ he said, looking very low-spirited, ‘I am sorry for that.’
‘Why?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that’s the school where they broke the boy’s ribs—two ribs—a little boy he was. I should say he was—let me see—how old are you, about?’
I told him between eight and nine.
‘That’s just his age,’ he said. ‘He was eight years and six months old when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight months old when they broke his second, and did for him.’
I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this was an uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done. His answer was not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two dismal words, ‘With whopping.’
The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable diversion, which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the mingled pride and diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of my pocket), if there were anything to pay.
‘There’s a sheet of letter-paper,’ he returned. ‘Did you ever buy a sheet of letter-paper?’
I could not remember that I ever had.
‘It’s dear,’ he said, ‘on account of the duty. Threepence. That’s the way we’re taxed in this country. There’s nothing else, except the waiter. Never mind the ink. I lose by that.’
‘What should you—what should I—how much ought I to—what would it be right to pay the waiter, if you please?’ I stammered, blushing.
‘If I hadn’t a family, and that family hadn’t the cowpock,’ said the waiter, ‘I wouldn’t take a sixpence. If I didn’t support a aged pairint, and a lovely sister,’—here the waiter was greatly agitated—‘I wouldn’t take a farthing. If I had a good place, and was treated well here, I should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of it. But I live on broken wittles—and I sleep on the coals’—here the waiter burst into tears.
I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness of heart. Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, which he received with much humility and veneration, and spun up with his thumb, directly afterwards, to try the goodness of.
It was a little disconcerting to me, to find, when I was being helped up behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all the dinner without any assistance. I discovered this, from overhearing the lady in the bow-window say to the guard, ‘Take care of that child, George, or he’ll burst!’ and from observing that the women-servants who were about the place came out to look and giggle at me as a young phenomenon. My unfortunate friend the waiter, who had quite recovered his spirits, did not appear to be disturbed by this, but joined in the general admiration without being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose this half awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that with the simple confidence of a child, and the natural reliance of a child upon superior years (qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole, even then.
I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving it, the subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the coach drawing heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as to the greater expediency of my travelling by waggon. The story of my supposed appetite getting wind among the outside passengers, they were merry upon it likewise; and asked me whether I was going to be paid for, at school, as two brothers or three, and whether I was contracted for, or went upon the regular terms; with other pleasant questions. But the worst of it was, that I knew I should be ashamed to eat anything, when an opportunity offered, and that, after a rather light dinner, I should remain hungry all night—for I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel, in my hurry. My apprehensions were realized. When we stopped for supper I couldn’t muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it very much, but sat by the fire and said I didn’t want anything. This did not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentleman with a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly all the way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said I was like a boa-constrictor who took enough at one meal to last him a long time; after which, he actually brought a rash out upon himself with boiled beef.
We had started from Yarmouth at three o’clock in the afternoon, and we were due in London about eight next morning. It was Mid-summer weather, and the evening was very pleasant. When we passed through a village, I pictured to myself what the insides of the houses were like, and what the inhabitants were about; and when boys came running after us, and got up behind and swung there for a little way, I wondered whether their fathers were alive, and whether they were happy at home. I had plenty to think of, therefore, besides my mind running continually on the kind of place I was going to—which was an awful speculation. Sometimes, I remember, I resigned myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; and to endeavouring, in a confused blind way, to recall how I had felt, and what sort of boy I used to be, before I bit Mr. Murdstone: which I couldn’t satisfy myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten him in such a remote antiquity.
The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly; and being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and another) to prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by their falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. They squeezed me so hard sometimes, that I could not help crying out, ‘Oh! If you please!’—which they didn’t like at all, because it woke them. Opposite me was an elderly lady in a great fur cloak, who looked in the dark more like a haystack than a lady, she was wrapped up to such a degree. This lady had a basket with her, and she hadn’t known what to do with it, for a long time, until she found that on account of my legs being short, it could go underneath me. It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me perfectly miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass that was in the basket rattle against something else (as it was sure to do), she gave me the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, ‘Come, don’t YOU fidget. YOUR bones are young enough, I’m sure!’
At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to sleep easier. The difficulties under which they had laboured all night, and which had found utterance in the most terrific gasps and snorts, are not to be conceived. As the sun got higher, their sleep became lighter, and so they gradually one by one awoke. I recollect being very much surprised by the feint everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at all, and by the uncommon indignation with which everyone repelled the charge. I labour under the same kind of astonishment to this day, having invariably observed that of all human weaknesses, the one to which our common nature is the least disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is the weakness of having gone to sleep in a coach.
What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the distance, and how I believed all the adventures of all my favourite heroes to be constantly enacting and re-enacting there, and how I vaguely made it out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and wickedness than all the cities of the earth, I need not stop here to relate. We approached it by degrees, and got, in due time, to the inn in the Whitechapel district, for which we were bound. I forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the Blue Boar; but I know it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted up on the back of the coach.
The guard’s eye lighted on me as he was getting down, and he said at the booking-office door:
‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left till called for?’
Nobody answered.
‘Try Copperfield, if you please, sir,’ said I, looking helplessly down.
‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but owning to the name of Copperfield, to be left till called for?’ said the guard. ‘Come! IS there anybody?’
No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously around; but the inquiry made no impression on any of the bystanders, if I except a man in gaiters, with one eye, who suggested that they had better put a brass collar round my neck, and tie me up in the stable.
A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady, who was like a haystack: not daring to stir, until her basket was removed. The coach was clear of passengers by that time, the luggage was very soon cleared out, the horses had been taken out before the luggage, and now the coach itself was wheeled and backed off by some hostlers, out of the way. Still, nobody appeared, to claim the dusty youngster from Blunderstone, Suffolk.
More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at him and see that he was solitary, I went into the booking-office, and, by invitation of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and sat down on the scale at which they weighed the luggage. Here, as I sat looking at the parcels, packages, and books, and inhaling the smell of stables (ever since associated with that morning), a procession of most tremendous considerations began to march through my mind. Supposing nobody should ever fetch me, how long would they consent to keep me there? Would they keep me long enough to spend seven shillings? Should I sleep at night in one of those wooden bins, with the other luggage, and wash myself at the pump in the yard in the morning; or should I be turned out every night, and expected to come again to be left till called for, when the office opened next day? Supposing there was no mistake in the case, and Mr. Murdstone had devised this plan to get rid of me, what should I do? If they allowed me to remain there until my seven shillings were spent, I couldn’t hope to remain there when I began to starve. That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk of funeral expenses. If I started off at once, and tried to walk back home, how could I ever find my way, how could I ever hope to walk so far, how could I make sure of anyone but Peggotty, even if I got back? If I found out the nearest proper authorities, and offered myself to go for a soldier, or a sailor, I was such a little fellow that it was most likely they wouldn’t take me in. These thoughts, and a hundred other such thoughts, turned me burning hot, and made me giddy with apprehension and dismay. I was in the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered to the clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over to him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for.
As I went out of the office, hand in hand with this new acquaintance, I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr. Murdstone’s; but there the likeness ended, for his whiskers were shaved off, and his hair, instead of being glossy, was rusty and dry. He was dressed in a suit of black clothes which were rather rusty and dry too, and rather short in the sleeves and legs; and he had a white neck-kerchief on, that was not over-clean. I did not, and do not, suppose that this neck-kerchief was all the linen he wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.
‘You’re the new boy?’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
I supposed I was. I didn’t know.
‘I’m one of the masters at Salem House,’ he said.
I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. I was so ashamed to allude to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a master at Salem House, that we had gone some little distance from the yard before I had the hardihood to mention it. We turned back, on my humbly insinuating that it might be useful to me hereafter; and he told the clerk that the carrier had instructions to call for it at noon.
‘If you please, sir,’ I said, when we had accomplished about the same distance as before, ‘is it far?’
‘It’s down by Blackheath,’ he said.
‘Is that far, sir?’ I diffidently asked.
‘It’s a good step,’ he said. ‘We shall go by the stage-coach. It’s about six miles.’
I was so faint and tired, that the idea of holding out for six miles more, was too much for me. I took heart to tell him that I had had nothing all night, and that if he would allow me to buy something to eat, I should be very much obliged to him. He appeared surprised at this—I see him stop and look at me now—and after considering for a few moments, said he wanted to call on an old person who lived not far off, and that the best way would be for me to buy some bread, or whatever I liked best that was wholesome, and make my breakfast at her house, where we could get some milk.
Accordingly we looked in at a baker’s window, and after I had made a series of proposals to buy everything that was bilious in the shop, and he had rejected them one by one, we decided in favour of a nice little loaf of brown bread, which cost me threepence. Then, at a grocer’s shop, we bought an egg and a slice of streaky bacon; which still left what I thought a good deal of change, out of the second of the bright shillings, and made me consider London a very cheap place. These provisions laid in, we went on through a great noise and uproar that confused my weary head beyond description, and over a bridge which, no doubt, was London Bridge (indeed I think he told me so, but I was half asleep), until we came to the poor person’s house, which was a part of some alms-houses, as I knew by their look, and by an inscription on a stone over the gate which said they were established for twenty-five poor women.
The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of one of a number of little black doors that were all alike, and had each a little diamond-paned window on one side, and another little diamond—paned window above; and we went into the little house of one of these poor old women, who was blowing a fire to make a little saucepan boil. On seeing the master enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, and said something that I thought sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but on seeing me come in too, she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused sort of half curtsey.
‘Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast for him, if you please?’ said the Master at Salem House.
‘Can I?’ said the old woman. ‘Yes can I, sure!’
‘How’s Mrs. Fibbitson today?’ said the Master, looking at another old woman in a large chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of clothes that I feel grateful to this hour for not having sat upon her by mistake.
‘Ah, she’s poorly,’ said the first old woman. ‘It’s one of her bad days. If the fire was to go out, through any accident, I verily believe she’d go out too, and never come to life again.’
As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Although it was a warm day, she seemed to think of nothing but the fire. I fancied she was jealous even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to know that she took its impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at me once, when those culinary operations were going on, and no one else was looking. The sun streamed in at the little window, but she sat with her own back and the back of the large chair towards it, screening the fire as if she were sedulously keeping IT warm, instead of it keeping her warm, and watching it in a most distrustful manner. The completion of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the fire, gave her such extreme joy that she laughed aloud—and a very unmelodious laugh she had, I must say.
I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of bacon, with a basin of milk besides, and made a most delicious meal. While I was yet in the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house said to the Master:
‘Have you got your flute with you?’
‘Yes,’ he returned.
‘Have a blow at it,’ said the old woman, coaxingly. ‘Do!’
The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his coat, and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed together, and began immediately to play. My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial. I don’t know what the tunes were—if there were such things in the performance at all, which I doubt—but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite; and lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the recollection rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock’s feathers displayed over the mantelpiece—I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the coach are heard instead, and I am on my journey. The coach jolts, I wake with a start, and the flute has come back again, and the Master at Salem House is sitting with his legs crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman of the house looks on delighted. She fades in her turn, and he fades, and all fades, and there is no flute, no Master, no Salem House, no David Copperfield, no anything but heavy sleep.
I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this dismal flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone nearer and nearer to him in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of his chair and gave him an affectionate squeeze round the neck, which stopped his playing for a moment. I was in the middle state between sleeping and waking, either then or immediately afterwards; for, as he resumed—it was a real fact that he had stopped playing—I saw and heard the same old woman ask Mrs. Fibbitson if it wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs. Fibbitson replied, ‘Ay, ay! yes!’ and nodded at the fire: to which, I am persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole performance.
When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Master at Salem House unscrewed his flute into the three pieces, put them up as before, and took me away. We found the coach very near at hand, and got upon the roof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we stopped on the road to take up somebody else, they put me inside where there were no passengers, and where I slept profoundly, until I found the coach going at a footpace up a steep hill among green leaves. Presently, it stopped, and had come to its destination.
A short walk brought us—I mean the Master and me—to Salem House, which was enclosed with a high brick wall, and looked very dull. Over a door in this wall was a board with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and through a grating in this door we were surveyed when we rang the bell by a surly face, which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all round his head.
‘The new boy,’ said the Master.
The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over—it didn’t take long, for there was not much of me—and locked the gate behind us, and took out the key. We were going up to the house, among some dark heavy trees, when he called after my conductor. ‘Hallo!’
We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little lodge, where he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand.
‘Here! The cobbler’s been,’ he said, ‘since you’ve been out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can’t mend ‘em any more. He says there ain’t a bit of the original boot left, and he wonders you expect it.’
With these words he threw the boots towards Mr. Mell, who went back a few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very disconsolately, I was afraid), as we went on together. I observed then, for the first time, that the boots he had on were a good deal the worse for wear, and that his stocking was just breaking out in one place, like a bud.
Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare and unfurnished appearance. All about it was so very quiet, that I said to Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out; but he seemed surprised at my not knowing that it was holiday-time. That all the boys were at their several homes. That Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the sea-side with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was sent in holiday-time as a punishment for my misdoing, all of which he explained to me as we went along.
I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. A long room with three long rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling all round with pegs for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the dirty floor. Some silkworms’ houses, made of the same materials, are scattered over the desks. Two miserable little white mice, left behind by their owner, are running up and down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and wire, looking in all the corners with their red eyes for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than himself, makes a mournful rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, two inches high, or dropping from it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and rotten books. There could not well be more ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year.
Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots upstairs, I went softly to the upper end of the room, observing all this as I crept along. Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard placard, beautifully written, which was lying on the desk, and bore these words: ‘TAKE CARE OF HIM. HE BITES.’
I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least a great dog underneath. But, though I looked all round with anxious eyes, I could see nothing of him. I was still engaged in peering about, when Mr. Mell came back, and asked me what I did up there?
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ says I, ‘if you please, I’m looking for the dog.’
‘Dog?’ he says. ‘What dog?’
‘Isn’t it a dog, sir?’
‘Isn’t what a dog?’
‘That’s to be taken care of, sir; that bites.’
‘No, Copperfield,’ says he, gravely, ‘that’s not a dog. That’s a boy. My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your back. I am sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do it.’ With that he took me down, and tied the placard, which was neatly constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack; and wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consolation of carrying it.
What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. Whether it was possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that somebody was reading it. It was no relief to turn round and find nobody; for wherever my back was, there I imagined somebody always to be. That cruel man with the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority; and if he ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared out from his lodge door in a stupendous voice, ‘Hallo, you sir! You Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, or I’ll report you!’ The playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came backwards and forwards to the house, of a morning when I was ordered to walk there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit, I recollect that I positively began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of wild boy who did bite.
There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had a custom of carving their names. It was completely covered with such inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the vacation and their coming back, I could not read a boy’s name, without inquiring in what tone and with what emphasis HE would read, ‘Take care of him. He bites.’ There was one boy—a certain J. Steerforth—who cut his name very deep and very often, who, I conceived, would read it in a rather strong voice, and afterwards pull my hair. There was another boy, one Tommy Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of it, and pretend to be dreadfully frightened of me. There was a third, George Demple, who I fancied would sing it. I have looked, a little shrinking creature, at that door, until the owners of all the names—there were five-and-forty of them in the school then, Mr. Mell said—seemed to send me to Coventry by general acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, ‘Take care of him. He bites!’
It was the same with the places at the desks and forms. It was the same with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped at, on my way to, and when I was in, my own bed. I remember dreaming night after night, of being with my mother as she used to be, or of going to a party at Mr. Peggotty’s, or of travelling outside the stage-coach, or of dining again with my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all these circumstances making people scream and stare, by the unhappy disclosure that I had nothing on but my little night-shirt, and that placard.
In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction! I had long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I did them, there being no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and got through them without disgrace. Before, and after them, I walked about—supervised, as I have mentioned, by the man with the wooden leg. How vividly I call to mind the damp about the house, the green cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky water-butt, and the discoloured trunks of some of the grim trees, which seemed to have dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to have blown less in the sun! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end of a long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, and smelling of fat. Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue teacup, and I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven or eight in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the schoolroom, worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-paper, making out the bills (as I found) for last half-year. When he had put up his things for the night he took out his flute, and blew at it, until I almost thought he would gradually blow his whole being into the large hole at the top, and ooze away at the keys.
I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting with my head upon my hand, listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and conning tomorrow’s lessons. I picture myself with my books shut up, still listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and listening through it to what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I picture myself going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and sitting on my bed-side crying for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I picture myself coming downstairs in the morning, and looking through a long ghastly gash of a staircase window at the school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J. Steerforth and the rest to work: which is only second, in my foreboding apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg shall unlock the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot think I was a very dangerous character in any of these aspects, but in all of them I carried the same warning on my back.
Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he had these peculiarities: and at first they frightened me, though I soon got used to them.
CHAPTER 6. I ENLARGE MY CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE
I HAD led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which I inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and the boys. I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom before long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got on how we could, for some days, during which we were always in the way of two or three young women, who had rarely shown themselves before, and were so continually in the midst of dust that I sneezed almost as much as if Salem House had been a great snuff-box.
One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would be home that evening. In the evening, after tea, I heard that he was come. Before bedtime, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg to appear before him.
Mr. Creakle’s part of the house was a good deal more comfortable than ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked pleasant after the dusty playground, which was such a desert in miniature, that I thought no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could have felt at home in it. It seemed to me a bold thing even to take notice that the passage looked comfortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle’s presence: which so abashed me, when I was ushered into it, that I hardly saw Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the parlour), or anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an arm-chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him.
‘So!’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘This is the young gentleman whose teeth are to be filed! Turn him round.’
The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit the placard; and having afforded time for a full survey of it, turned me about again, with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr. Creakle’s side. Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small, and deep in his head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin wet-looking hair that was just turning grey, brushed across each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circumstance about him which impressed me most, was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a whisper. The exertion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in that feeble way, made his angry face so much more angry, and his thick veins so much thicker, when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on looking back, at this peculiarity striking me as his chief one. ‘Now,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘What’s the report of this boy?’
‘There’s nothing against him yet,’ returned the man with the wooden leg. ‘There has been no opportunity.’
I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. and Miss Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were, both, thin and quiet) were not disappointed.
‘Come here, sir!’ said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.
‘Come here!’ said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the gesture.
‘I have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, taking me by the ear; ‘and a worthy man he is, and a man of a strong character. He knows me, and I know him. Do YOU know me? Hey?’ said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness.
‘Not yet, sir,’ I said, flinching with the pain.
‘Not yet? Hey?’ repeated Mr. Creakle. ‘But you will soon. Hey?’
‘You will soon. Hey?’ repeated the man with the wooden leg. I afterwards found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s interpreter to the boys.
I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. I felt, all this while, as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so hard.
‘I’ll tell you what I am,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at last, with a screw at parting that brought the water into my eyes. ‘I’m a Tartar.’
‘A Tartar,’ said the man with the wooden leg.
‘When I say I’ll do a thing, I do it,’ said Mr. Creakle; ‘and when I say I will have a thing done, I will have it done.’
‘—Will have a thing done, I will have it done,’ repeated the man with the wooden leg.
‘I am a determined character,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘That’s what I am. I do my duty. That’s what I do. My flesh and blood’—he looked at Mrs. Creakle as he said this—‘when it rises against me, is not my flesh and blood. I discard it. Has that fellow’—to the man with the wooden leg—‘been here again?’
‘No,’ was the answer.
‘No,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘He knows better. He knows me. Let him keep away. I say let him keep away,’ said Mr. Creakle, striking his hand upon the table, and looking at Mrs. Creakle, ‘for he knows me. Now you have begun to know me too, my young friend, and you may go. Take him away.’
I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss Creakle were both wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncomfortable for them as I did for myself. But I had a petition on my mind which concerned me so nearly, that I couldn’t help saying, though I wondered at my own courage:
‘If you please, sir—’
Mr. Creakle whispered, ‘Hah! What’s this?’ and bent his eyes upon me, as if he would have burnt me up with them.
‘If you please, sir,’ I faltered, ‘if I might be allowed (I am very sorry indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writing off, before the boys come back—’
Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only did it to frighten me, I don’t know, but he made a burst out of his chair, before which I precipitately retreated, without waiting for the escort of the man with the wooden leg, and never once stopped until I reached my own bedroom, where, finding I was not pursued, I went to bed, as it was time, and lay quaking, for a couple of hours.
Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp was the first master, and superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. Mell took his meals with the boys, but Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. Creakle’s table. He was a limp, delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, with a good deal of nose, and a way of carrying his head on one side, as if it were a little too heavy for him. His hair was very smooth and wavy; but I was informed by the very first boy who came back that it was a wig (a second-hand one HE said), and that Mr. Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon to get it curled.
It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this piece of intelligence. He was the first boy who returned. He introduced himself by informing me that I should find his name on the right-hand corner of the gate, over the top-bolt; upon that I said, ‘Traddles?’ to which he replied, ‘The same,’ and then he asked me for a full account of myself and family.
It was a happy circumstance for me that Traddles came back first. He enjoyed my placard so much, that he saved me from the embarrassment of either disclosure or concealment, by presenting me to every other boy who came back, great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this form of introduction, ‘Look here! Here’s a game!’ Happily, too, the greater part of the boys came back low-spirited, and were not so boisterous at my expense as I had expected. Some of them certainly did dance about me like wild Indians, and the greater part could not resist the temptation of pretending that I was a dog, and patting and soothing me, lest I should bite, and saying, ‘Lie down, sir!’ and calling me Towzer. This was naturally confusing, among so many strangers, and cost me some tears, but on the whole it was much better than I had anticipated.
I was not considered as being formally received into the school, however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, who was reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before a magistrate. He inquired, under a shed in the playground, into the particulars of my punishment, and was pleased to express his opinion that it was ‘a jolly shame’; for which I became bound to him ever afterwards.
‘What money have you got, Copperfield?’ he said, walking aside with me when he had disposed of my affair in these terms. I told him seven shillings.
‘You had better give it to me to take care of,’ he said. ‘At least, you can if you like. You needn’t if you don’t like.’
I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and opening Peggotty’s purse, turned it upside down into his hand.
‘Do you want to spend anything now?’ he asked me.
‘No thank you,’ I replied.
‘You can, if you like, you know,’ said Steerforth. ‘Say the word.’
‘No, thank you, sir,’ I repeated.
‘Perhaps you’d like to spend a couple of shillings or so, in a bottle of currant wine by and by, up in the bedroom?’ said Steerforth. ‘You belong to my bedroom, I find.’
It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes, I should like that.
‘Very good,’ said Steerforth. ‘You’ll be glad to spend another shilling or so, in almond cakes, I dare say?’
I said, Yes, I should like that, too.
‘And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruit, eh?’ said Steerforth. ‘I say, young Copperfield, you’re going it!’
I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind, too.
‘Well!’ said Steerforth. ‘We must make it stretch as far as we can; that’s all. I’ll do the best in my power for you. I can go out when I like, and I’ll smuggle the prog in.’ With these words he put the money in his pocket, and kindly told me not to make myself uneasy; he would take care it should be all right. He was as good as his word, if that were all right which I had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong—for I feared it was a waste of my mother’s two half-crowns—though I had preserved the piece of paper they were wrapped in: which was a precious saving. When we went upstairs to bed, he produced the whole seven shillings’ worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying:
‘There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you’ve got.’
I couldn’t think of doing the honours of the feast, at my time of life, while he was by; my hand shook at the very thought of it. I begged him to do me the favour of presiding; and my request being seconded by the other boys who were in that room, he acceded to it, and sat upon my pillow, handing round the viands—with perfect fairness, I must say—and dispensing the currant wine in a little glass without a foot, which was his own property. As to me, I sat on his left hand, and the rest were grouped about us, on the nearest beds and on the floor.
How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or their talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to say; the moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the window, painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of us in shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match into a phosphorus-box, when he wanted to look for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare over us that was gone directly! A certain mysterious feeling, consequent on the darkness, the secrecy of the revel, and the whisper in which everything was said, steals over me again, and I listen to all they tell me with a vague feeling of solemnity and awe, which makes me glad that they are all so near, and frightens me (though I feign to laugh) when Traddles pretends to see a ghost in the corner.
I heard all kinds of things about the school and all belonging to it. I heard that Mr. Creakle had not preferred his claim to being a Tartar without reason; that he was the sternest and most severe of masters; that he laid about him, right and left, every day of his life, charging in among the boys like a trooper, and slashing away, unmercifully. That he knew nothing himself, but the art of slashing, being more ignorant (J. Steerforth said) than the lowest boy in the school; that he had been, a good many years ago, a small hop-dealer in the Borough, and had taken to the schooling business after being bankrupt in hops, and making away with Mrs. Creakle’s money. With a good deal more of that sort, which I wondered how they knew.
I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name was Tungay, was an obstinate barbarian who had formerly assisted in the hop business, but had come into the scholastic line with Mr. Creakle, in consequence, as was supposed among the boys, of his having broken his leg in Mr. Creakle’s service, and having done a deal of dishonest work for him, and knowing his secrets. I heard that with the single exception of Mr. Creakle, Tungay considered the whole establishment, masters and boys, as his natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life was to be sour and malicious. I heard that Mr. Creakle had a son, who had not been Tungay’s friend, and who, assisting in the school, had once held some remonstrance with his father on an occasion when its discipline was very cruelly exercised, and was supposed, besides, to have protested against his father’s usage of his mother. I heard that Mr. Creakle had turned him out of doors, in consequence; and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle had been in a sad way, ever since.
But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there being one boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay a hand, and that boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself confirmed this when it was stated, and said that he should like to begin to see him do it. On being asked by a mild boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin to see him do it, he dipped a match into his phosphorus-box on purpose to shed a glare over his reply, and said he would commence by knocking him down with a blow on the forehead from the seven-and-sixpenny ink-bottle that was always on the mantelpiece. We sat in the dark for some time, breathless.
I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both supposed to be wretchedly paid; and that when there was hot and cold meat for dinner at Mr. Creakle’s table, Mr. Sharp was always expected to say he preferred cold; which was again corroborated by J. Steerforth, the only parlour-boarder. I heard that Mr. Sharp’s wig didn’t fit him; and that he needn’t be so ‘bounceable’—somebody else said ‘bumptious’—about it, because his own red hair was very plainly to be seen behind.
I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant’s son, came as a set-off against the coal-bill, and was called, on that account, ‘Exchange or Barter’—a name selected from the arithmetic book as expressing this arrangement. I heard that the table beer was a robbery of parents, and the pudding an imposition. I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the school in general as being in love with Steerforth; and I am sure, as I sat in the dark, thinking of his nice voice, and his fine face, and his easy manner, and his curling hair, I thought it very likely. I heard that Mr. Mell was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn’t a sixpence to bless himself with; and that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his mother, was as poor as job. I thought of my breakfast then, and what had sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but I was, I am glad to remember, as mute as a mouse about it.
The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, outlasted the banquet some time. The greater part of the guests had gone to bed as soon as the eating and drinking were over; and we, who had remained whispering and listening half-undressed, at last betook ourselves to bed, too.
‘Good night, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth. ‘I’ll take care of you.’ ‘You’re very kind,’ I gratefully returned. ‘I am very much obliged to you.’
‘You haven’t got a sister, have you?’ said Steerforth, yawning.
‘No,’ I answered.
‘That’s a pity,’ said Steerforth. ‘If you had had one, I should think she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl. I should have liked to know her. Good night, young Copperfield.’
‘Good night, sir,’ I replied.
I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself, I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. He was a person of great power in my eyes; that was, of course, the reason of my mind running on him. No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night.
CHAPTER 7. MY ‘FIRST HALF’ AT SALEM HOUSE
School began in earnest next day. A profound impression was made upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly becoming hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after breakfast, and stood in the doorway looking round upon us like a giant in a story-book surveying his captives.
Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle’s elbow. He had no occasion, I thought, to cry out ‘Silence!’ so ferociously, for the boys were all struck speechless and motionless.
Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, to this effect.
‘Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you’re about, in this new half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up to the punishment. I won’t flinch. It will be of no use your rubbing yourselves; you won’t rub the marks out that I shall give you. Now get to work, every boy!’
When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had stumped out again, Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and told me that if I were famous for biting, he was famous for biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and asked me what I thought of THAT, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey? Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, hey? Did it bite, hey? Did it bite? At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe; so I was very soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth said), and was very soon in tears also.
Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction, which only I received. On the contrary, a large majority of the boys (especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar instances of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the schoolroom. Half the establishment was writhing and crying, before the day’s work began; and how much of it had writhed and cried before the day’s work was over, I am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.
I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am confident that he couldn’t resist a chubby boy, especially; that there was a fascination in such a subject, which made him restless in his mind, until he had scored and marked him for the day. I was chubby myself, and ought to know. I am sure when I think of the fellow now, my blood rises against him with the disinterested indignation I should feel if I could have known all about him without having ever been in his power; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an incapable brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held, than to be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief—in either of which capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less mischief.
Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject we were to him! What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!
Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye—humbly watching his eye, as he rules a ciphering-book for another victim whose hands have just been flattened by that identical ruler, and who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pocket-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don’t watch his eye in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else’s. A lane of small boys beyond me, with the same interest in his eye, watch it too. I think he knows it, though he pretends he don’t. He makes dreadful mouths as he rules the ciphering-book; and now he throws his eye sideways down our lane, and we all droop over our books and tremble. A moment afterwards we are again eyeing him. An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise, approaches at his command. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a determination to do better tomorrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it,—miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.
Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer afternoon. A buzz and hum go up around me, as if the boys were so many bluebottles. A cloggy sensation of the lukewarm fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much lead. I would give the world to go to sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at him like a young owl; when sleep overpowers me for a minute, he still looms through my slumber, ruling those ciphering-books, until he softly comes behind me and wakes me to plainer perception of him, with a red ridge across my back.
Here I am in the playground, with my eye still fascinated by him, though I can’t see him. The window at a little distance from which I know he is having his dinner, stands for him, and I eye that instead. If he shows his face near it, mine assumes an imploring and submissive expression. If he looks out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted) stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes contemplative. One day, Traddles (the most unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that window accidentally, with a ball. I shudder at this moment with the tremendous sensation of seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded on to Mr. Creakle’s sacred head.
Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys. He was always being caned—I think he was caned every day that half-year, except one holiday Monday when he was only ruler’d on both hands—and was always going to write to his uncle about it, and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little while, he would cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last for ever. But I believe he only did it because they were easy, and didn’t want any features.
He was very honourable, Traddles was, and held it as a solemn duty in the boys to stand by one another. He suffered for this on several occasions; and particularly once, when Steerforth laughed in church, and the Beadle thought it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him now, going away in custody, despised by the congregation. He never said who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was imprisoned so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard-full of skeletons swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But he had his reward. Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, I could have gone through a good deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles, and nothing like so old) to have won such a recompense.
To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm-in-arm with Miss Creakle, was one of the great sights of my life. I didn’t think Miss Creakle equal to little Em’ly in point of beauty, and I didn’t love her (I didn’t dare); but I thought her a young lady of extraordinary attractions, and in point of gentility not to be surpassed. When Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud to know him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him with all her heart. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both notable personages in my eyes; but Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars.
Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a very useful friend; since nobody dared to annoy one whom he honoured with his countenance. He couldn’t—or at all events he didn’t—defend me from Mr. Creakle, who was very severe with me; but whenever I had been treated worse than usual, he always told me that I wanted a little of his pluck, and that he wouldn’t have stood it himself; which I felt he intended for encouragement, and considered to be very kind of him. There was one advantage, and only one that I know of, in Mr. Creakle’s severity. He found my placard in his way when he came up or down behind the form on which I sat, and wanted to make a cut at me in passing; for this reason it was soon taken off, and I saw it no more.
An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy between Steerforth and me, in a manner that inspired me with great pride and satisfaction, though it sometimes led to inconvenience. It happened on one occasion, when he was doing me the honour of talking to me in the playground, that I hazarded the observation that something or somebody—I forget what now—was like something or somebody in Peregrine Pickle. He said nothing at the time; but when I was going to bed at night, asked me if I had got that book?
I told him no, and explained how it was that I had read it, and all those other books of which I have made mention.
‘And do you recollect them?’ Steerforth said.
‘Oh yes,’ I replied; I had a good memory, and I believed I recollected them very well.
‘Then I tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, ‘you shall tell ‘em to me. I can’t get to sleep very early at night, and I generally wake rather early in the morning. We’ll go over ‘em one after another. We’ll make some regular Arabian Nights of it.’
I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we commenced carrying it into execution that very evening. What ravages I committed on my favourite authors in the course of my interpretation of them, I am not in a condition to say, and should be very unwilling to know; but I had a profound faith in them, and I had, to the best of my belief, a simple, earnest manner of narrating what I did narrate; and these qualities went a long way.
The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at night, or out of spirits and indisposed to resume the story; and then it was rather hard work, and it must be done; for to disappoint or to displease Steerforth was of course out of the question. In the morning, too, when I felt weary, and should have enjoyed another hour’s repose very much, it was a tiresome thing to be roused, like the Sultana Scheherazade, and forced into a long story before the getting-up bell rang; but Steerforth was resolute; and as he explained to me, in return, my sums and exercises, and anything in my tasks that was too hard for me, I was no loser by the transaction. Let me do myself justice, however. I was moved by no interested or selfish motive, nor was I moved by fear of him. I admired and loved him, and his approval was return enough. It was so precious to me that I look back on these trifles, now, with an aching heart.
Steerforth was considerate, too; and showed his consideration, in one particular instance, in an unflinching manner that was a little tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and the rest. Peggotty’s promised letter—what a comfortable letter it was!—arrived before ‘the half’ was many weeks old; and with it a cake in a perfect nest of oranges, and two bottles of cowslip wine. This treasure, as in duty bound, I laid at the feet of Steerforth, and begged him to dispense.
‘Now, I’ll tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said he: ‘the wine shall be kept to wet your whistle when you are story-telling.’
I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, not to think of it. But he said he had observed I was sometimes hoarse—a little roopy was his exact expression—and it should be, every drop, devoted to the purpose he had mentioned. Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and drawn off by himself in a phial, and administered to me through a piece of quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be in want of a restorative. Sometimes, to make it a more sovereign specific, he was so kind as to squeeze orange juice into it, or to stir it up with ginger, or dissolve a peppermint drop in it; and although I cannot assert that the flavour was improved by these experiments, or that it was exactly the compound one would have chosen for a stomachic, the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, I drank it gratefully and was very sensible of his attention.
We seem, to me, to have been months over Peregrine, and months more over the other stories. The institution never flagged for want of a story, I am certain; and the wine lasted out almost as well as the matter. Poor Traddles—I never think of that boy but with a strange disposition to laugh, and with tears in my eyes—was a sort of chorus, in general; and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic parts, and to be overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarming character in the narrative. This rather put me out, very often. It was a great jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met the captain of the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited such an ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who was prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly conduct in the bedroom. Whatever I had within me that was romantic and dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in the dark; and in that respect the pursuit may not have been very profitable to me. But the being cherished as a kind of plaything in my room, and the consciousness that this accomplishment of mine was bruited about among the boys, and attracted a good deal of notice to me though I was the youngest there, stimulated me to exertion. In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely to be much learnt. I believe our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set as any schoolboys in existence; they were too much troubled and knocked about to learn; they could no more do that to advantage, than any one can do anything to advantage in a life of constant misfortune, torment, and worry. But my little vanity, and Steerforth’s help, urged me on somehow; and without saving me from much, if anything, in the way of punishment, made me, for the time I was there, an exception to the general body, insomuch that I did steadily pick up some crumbs of knowledge.
In this I was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who had a liking for me that I am grateful to remember. It always gave me pain to observe that Steerforth treated him with systematic disparagement, and seldom lost an occasion of wounding his feelings, or inducing others to do so. This troubled me the more for a long time, because I had soon told Steerforth, from whom I could no more keep such a secret, than I could keep a cake or any other tangible possession, about the two old women Mr. Mell had taken me to see; and I was always afraid that Steerforth would let it out, and twit him with it.
We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when I ate my breakfast that first morning, and went to sleep under the shadow of the peacock’s feathers to the sound of the flute, what consequences would come of the introduction into those alms-houses of my insignificant person. But the visit had its unforeseen consequences; and of a serious sort, too, in their way.
One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from indisposition, which naturally diffused a lively joy through the school, there was a good deal of noise in the course of the morning’s work. The great relief and satisfaction experienced by the boys made them difficult to manage; and though the dreaded Tungay brought his wooden leg in twice or thrice, and took notes of the principal offenders’ names, no great impression was made by it, as they were pretty sure of getting into trouble tomorrow, do what they would, and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves today.
It was, properly, a half-holiday; being Saturday. But as the noise in the playground would have disturbed Mr. Creakle, and the weather was not favourable for going out walking, we were ordered into school in the afternoon, and set some lighter tasks than usual, which were made for the occasion. It was the day of the week on which Mr. Sharp went out to get his wig curled; so Mr. Mell, who always did the drudgery, whatever it was, kept school by himself. If I could associate the idea of a bull or a bear with anyone so mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of him, in connexion with that afternoon when the uproar was at its height, as of one of those animals, baited by a thousand dogs. I recall him bending his aching head, supported on his bony hand, over the book on his desk, and wretchedly endeavouring to get on with his tiresome work, amidst an uproar that might have made the Speaker of the House of Commons giddy. Boys started in and out of their places, playing at puss in the corner with other boys; there were laughing boys, singing boys, talking boys, dancing boys, howling boys; boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled about him, grinning, making faces, mimicking him behind his back and before his eyes; mimicking his poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother, everything belonging to him that they should have had consideration for.
‘Silence!’ cried Mr. Mell, suddenly rising up, and striking his desk with the book. ‘What does this mean! It’s impossible to bear it. It’s maddening. How can you do it to me, boys?’
It was my book that he struck his desk with; and as I stood beside him, following his eye as it glanced round the room, I saw the boys all stop, some suddenly surprised, some half afraid, and some sorry perhaps.
Steerforth’s place was at the bottom of the school, at the opposite end of the long room. He was lounging with his back against the wall, and his hands in his pockets, and looked at Mr. Mell with his mouth shut up as if he were whistling, when Mr. Mell looked at him.
‘Silence, Mr. Steerforth!’ said Mr. Mell.
‘Silence yourself,’ said Steerforth, turning red. ‘Whom are you talking to?’
‘Sit down,’ said Mr. Mell.
‘Sit down yourself,’ said Steerforth, ‘and mind your business.’
There was a titter, and some applause; but Mr. Mell was so white, that silence immediately succeeded; and one boy, who had darted out behind him to imitate his mother again, changed his mind, and pretended to want a pen mended.
‘If you think, Steerforth,’ said Mr. Mell, ‘that I am not acquainted with the power you can establish over any mind here’—he laid his hand, without considering what he did (as I supposed), upon my head—‘or that I have not observed you, within a few minutes, urging your juniors on to every sort of outrage against me, you are mistaken.’
‘I don’t give myself the trouble of thinking at all about you,’ said Steerforth, coolly; ‘so I’m not mistaken, as it happens.’
‘And when you make use of your position of favouritism here, sir,’ pursued Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling very much, ‘to insult a gentleman—’
‘A what?—where is he?’ said Steerforth.
Here somebody cried out, ‘Shame, J. Steerforth! Too bad!’ It was Traddles; whom Mr. Mell instantly discomfited by bidding him hold his tongue. —‘To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, and who never gave you the least offence, and the many reasons for not insulting whom you are old enough and wise enough to understand,’ said Mr. Mell, with his lips trembling more and more, ‘you commit a mean and base action. You can sit down or stand up as you please, sir. Copperfield, go on.’
‘Young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, coming forward up the room, ‘stop a bit. I tell you what, Mr. Mell, once for all. When you take the liberty of calling me mean or base, or anything of that sort, you are an impudent beggar. You are always a beggar, you know; but when you do that, you are an impudent beggar.’
I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. Mell, or Mr. Mell was going to strike him, or there was any such intention on either side. I saw a rigidity come upon the whole school as if they had been turned into stone, and found Mr. Creakle in the midst of us, with Tungay at his side, and Mrs. and Miss Creakle looking in at the door as if they were frightened. Mr. Mell, with his elbows on his desk and his face in his hands, sat, for some moments, quite still.
‘Mr. Mell,’ said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the arm; and his whisper was so audible now, that Tungay felt it unnecessary to repeat his words; ‘you have not forgotten yourself, I hope?’
‘No, sir, no,’ returned the Master, showing his face, and shaking his head, and rubbing his hands in great agitation. ‘No, sir. No. I have remembered myself, I—no, Mr. Creakle, I have not forgotten myself, I—I have remembered myself, sir. I—I—could wish you had remembered me a little sooner, Mr. Creakle. It—it—would have been more kind, sir, more just, sir. It would have saved me something, sir.’
Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his hand on Tungay’s shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close by, and sat upon the desk. After still looking hard at Mr. Mell from his throne, as he shook his head, and rubbed his hands, and remained in the same state of agitation, Mr. Creakle turned to Steerforth, and said:
‘Now, sir, as he don’t condescend to tell me, what is this?’
Steerforth evaded the question for a little while; looking in scorn and anger on his opponent, and remaining silent. I could not help thinking even in that interval, I remember, what a noble fellow he was in appearance, and how homely and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed to him.
‘What did he mean by talking about favourites, then?’ said Steerforth at length.
‘Favourites?’ repeated Mr. Creakle, with the veins in his forehead swelling quickly. ‘Who talked about favourites?’
‘He did,’ said Steerforth.
‘And pray, what did you mean by that, sir?’ demanded Mr. Creakle, turning angrily on his assistant.
‘I meant, Mr. Creakle,’ he returned in a low voice, ‘as I said; that no pupil had a right to avail himself of his position of favouritism to degrade me.’
‘To degrade YOU?’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘My stars! But give me leave to ask you, Mr. What’s-your-name’; and here Mr. Creakle folded his arms, cane and all, upon his chest, and made such a knot of his brows that his little eyes were hardly visible below them; ‘whether, when you talk about favourites, you showed proper respect to me? To me, sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, darting his head at him suddenly, and drawing it back again, ‘the principal of this establishment, and your employer.’
‘It was not judicious, sir, I am willing to admit,’ said Mr. Mell. ‘I should not have done so, if I had been cool.’
Here Steerforth struck in.
‘Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was base, and then I called him a beggar. If I had been cool, perhaps I shouldn’t have called him a beggar. But I did, and I am ready to take the consequences of it.’
Without considering, perhaps, whether there were any consequences to be taken, I felt quite in a glow at this gallant speech. It made an impression on the boys too, for there was a low stir among them, though no one spoke a word.
‘I am surprised, Steerforth—although your candour does you honour,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘does you honour, certainly—I am surprised, Steerforth, I must say, that you should attach such an epithet to any person employed and paid in Salem House, sir.’
Steerforth gave a short laugh.
‘That’s not an answer, sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘to my remark. I expect more than that from you, Steerforth.’
If Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before the handsome boy, it would be quite impossible to say how homely Mr. Creakle looked. ‘Let him deny it,’ said Steerforth.
‘Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?’ cried Mr. Creakle. ‘Why, where does he go a-begging?’
‘If he is not a beggar himself, his near relation’s one,’ said Steerforth. ‘It’s all the same.’
He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell’s hand gently patted me upon the shoulder. I looked up with a flush upon my face and remorse in my heart, but Mr. Mell’s eyes were fixed on Steerforth. He continued to pat me kindly on the shoulder, but he looked at him.
‘Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself,’ said Steerforth, ‘and to say what I mean,—what I have to say is, that his mother lives on charity in an alms-house.’
Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me kindly on the shoulder, and said to himself, in a whisper, if I heard right: ‘Yes, I thought so.’
Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe frown and laboured politeness:
‘Now, you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. Mell. Have the goodness, if you please, to set him right before the assembled school.’
‘He is right, sir, without correction,’ returned Mr. Mell, in the midst of a dead silence; ‘what he has said is true.’
‘Be so good then as declare publicly, will you,’ said Mr. Creakle, putting his head on one side, and rolling his eyes round the school, ‘whether it ever came to my knowledge until this moment?’
‘I believe not directly,’ he returned.
‘Why, you know not,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘Don’t you, man?’
‘I apprehend you never supposed my worldly circumstances to be very good,’ replied the assistant. ‘You know what my position is, and always has been, here.’
‘I apprehend, if you come to that,’ said Mr. Creakle, with his veins swelling again bigger than ever, ‘that you’ve been in a wrong position altogether, and mistook this for a charity school. Mr. Mell, we’ll part, if you please. The sooner the better.’
‘There is no time,’ answered Mr. Mell, rising, ‘like the present.’
‘Sir, to you!’ said Mr. Creakle.
‘I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you,’ said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the shoulders. ‘James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you may come to be ashamed of what you have done today. At present I would prefer to see you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to anyone in whom I feel an interest.’
Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; and then taking his flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving the key in it for his successor, he went out of the school, with his property under his arm. Mr. Creakle then made a speech, through Tungay, in which he thanked Steerforth for asserting (though perhaps too warmly) the independence and respectability of Salem House; and which he wound up by shaking hands with Steerforth, while we gave three cheers—I did not quite know what for, but I supposed for Steerforth, and so joined in them ardently, though I felt miserable. Mr. Creakle then caned Tommy Traddles for being discovered in tears, instead of cheers, on account of Mr. Mell’s departure; and went back to his sofa, or his bed, or wherever he had come from.
We were left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I recollect, on one another. For myself, I felt so much self-reproach and contrition for my part in what had happened, that nothing would have enabled me to keep back my tears but the fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I saw, might think it unfriendly—or, I should rather say, considering our relative ages, and the feeling with which I regarded him, undutiful—if I showed the emotion which distressed me. He was very angry with Traddles, and said he was glad he had caught it.
Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with his head upon the desk, and was relieving himself as usual with a burst of skeletons, said he didn’t care. Mr. Mell was ill-used.
‘Who has ill-used him, you girl?’ said Steerforth.
‘Why, you have,’ returned Traddles.
‘What have I done?’ said Steerforth.
‘What have you done?’ retorted Traddles. ‘Hurt his feelings, and lost him his situation.’
‘His feelings?’ repeated Steerforth disdainfully. ‘His feelings will soon get the better of it, I’ll be bound. His feelings are not like yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation—which was a precious one, wasn’t it?—do you suppose I am not going to write home, and take care that he gets some money? Polly?’
We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose mother was a widow, and rich, and would do almost anything, it was said, that he asked her. We were all extremely glad to see Traddles so put down, and exalted Steerforth to the skies: especially when he told us, as he condescended to do, that what he had done had been done expressly for us, and for our cause; and that he had conferred a great boon upon us by unselfishly doing it. But I must say that when I was going on with a story in the dark that night, Mr. Mell’s old flute seemed more than once to sound mournfully in my ears; and that when at last Steerforth was tired, and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so sorrowfully somewhere, that I was quite wretched.
I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in an easy amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me to know everything by heart), took some of his classes until a new master was found. The new master came from a grammar school; and before he entered on his duties, dined in the parlour one day, to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. Without exactly understanding what learned distinction was meant by this, I respected him greatly for it, and had no doubt whatever of his superior knowledge: though he never took the pains with me—not that I was anybody—that Mr. Mell had taken.
There was only one other event in this half-year, out of the daily school-life, that made an impression upon me which still survives. It survives for many reasons.
One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state of dire confusion, and Mr. Creakle was laying about him dreadfully, Tungay came in, and called out in his usual strong way: ‘Visitors for Copperfield!’
A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. Creakle, as, who the visitors were, and what room they were to be shown into; and then I, who had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement being made, and felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back stairs and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to the dining-room. These orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my young spirits as I had never known before; and when I got to the parlour door, and the thought came into my head that it might be my mother—I had only thought of Mr. or Miss Murdstone until then—I drew back my hand from the lock, and stopped to have a sob before I went in.
At first I saw nobody; but feeling a pressure against the door, I looked round it, and there, to my amazement, were Mr. Peggotty and Ham, ducking at me with their hats, and squeezing one another against the wall. I could not help laughing; but it was much more in the pleasure of seeing them, than at the appearance they made. We shook hands in a very cordial way; and I laughed and laughed, until I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes.
Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remember, during the visit) showed great concern when he saw me do this, and nudged Ham to say something.
‘Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ said Ham, in his simpering way. ‘Why, how you have growed!’
‘Am I grown?’ I said, drying my eyes. I was not crying at anything in particular that I know of; but somehow it made me cry, to see old friends.
‘Growed, Mas’r Davy bor’? Ain’t he growed!’ said Ham.
‘Ain’t he growed!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, and then we all three laughed until I was in danger of crying again.
‘Do you know how mama is, Mr. Peggotty?’ I said. ‘And how my dear, dear, old Peggotty is?’
‘Oncommon,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘And little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?’
‘On—common,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two prodigious lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, out of his pockets, and piled them up in Ham’s arms.
‘You see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘knowing as you was partial to a little relish with your wittles when you was along with us, we took the liberty. The old Mawther biled ‘em, she did. Mrs. Gummidge biled ‘em. Yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, slowly, who I thought appeared to stick to the subject on account of having no other subject ready, ‘Mrs. Gummidge, I do assure you, she biled ‘em.’
I expressed my thanks; and Mr. Peggotty, after looking at Ham, who stood smiling sheepishly over the shellfish, without making any attempt to help him, said:
‘We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our favour, in one of our Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen’. My sister she wrote to me the name of this here place, and wrote to me as if ever I chanced to come to Gravesen’, I was to come over and inquire for Mas’r Davy and give her dooty, humbly wishing him well and reporting of the fam’ly as they was oncommon toe-be-sure. Little Em’ly, you see, she’ll write to my sister when I go back, as I see you and as you was similarly oncommon, and so we make it quite a merry-go-rounder.’
I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what Mr. Peggotty meant by this figure, expressive of a complete circle of intelligence. I then thanked him heartily; and said, with a consciousness of reddening, that I supposed little Em’ly was altered too, since we used to pick up shells and pebbles on the beach?
‘She’s getting to be a woman, that’s wot she’s getting to be,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Ask HIM.’ He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent over the bag of shrimps.
‘Her pretty face!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his own shining like a light.
‘Her learning!’ said Ham.
‘Her writing!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Why it’s as black as jet! And so large it is, you might see it anywheres.’
It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm Mr. Peggotty became inspired when he thought of his little favourite. He stands before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a joyful love and pride, for which I can find no description. His honest eyes fire up, and sparkle, as if their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clench themselves, in his earnestness; and he emphasizes what he says with a right arm that shows, in my pigmy view, like a sledge-hammer.
Ham was quite as earnest as he. I dare say they would have said much more about her, if they had not been abashed by the unexpected coming in of Steerforth, who, seeing me in a corner speaking with two strangers, stopped in a song he was singing, and said: ‘I didn’t know you were here, young Copperfield!’ (for it was not the usual visiting room) and crossed by us on his way out.
I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend as Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to have such a friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was going away. But I said, modestly—Good Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time afterwards—!
‘Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth boatmen—very kind, good people—who are relations of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend to see me.’
‘Aye, aye?’ said Steerforth, returning. ‘I am glad to see them. How are you both?’
There was an ease in his manner—a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering—which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand. I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open their hearts to him in a moment.
‘You must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. Peggotty,’ I said, ‘when that letter is sent, that Mr. Steerforth is very kind to me, and that I don’t know what I should ever do here without him.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘You mustn’t tell them anything of the sort.’
‘And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or Suffolk, Mr. Peggotty,’ I said, ‘while I am there, you may depend upon it I shall bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let me, to see your house. You never saw such a good house, Steerforth. It’s made out of a boat!’
‘Made out of a boat, is it?’ said Steerforth. ‘It’s the right sort of a house for such a thorough-built boatman.’
‘So ‘tis, sir, so ‘tis, sir,’ said Ham, grinning. ‘You’re right, young gen’l’m’n! Mas’r Davy bor’, gen’l’m’n’s right. A thorough-built boatman! Hor, hor! That’s what he is, too!’
Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his modesty forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.
‘Well, sir,’ he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking in the ends of his neckerchief at his breast: ‘I thankee, sir, I thankee! I do my endeavours in my line of life, sir.’
‘The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,’ said Steerforth. He had got his name already.
‘I’ll pound it, it’s wot you do yourself, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘and wot you do well—right well! I thankee, sir. I’m obleeged to you, sir, for your welcoming manner of me. I’m rough, sir, but I’m ready—least ways, I hope I’m ready, you unnerstand. My house ain’t much for to see, sir, but it’s hearty at your service if ever you should come along with Mas’r Davy to see it. I’m a reg’lar Dodman, I am,’ said Mr. Peggotty, by which he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow or other come back again; ‘but I wish you both well, and I wish you happy!’
Ham echoed this sentiment, and we parted with them in the heartiest manner. I was almost tempted that evening to tell Steerforth about pretty little Em’ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name, and too much afraid of his laughing at me. I remember that I thought a good deal, and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr. Peggotty having said that she was getting on to be a woman; but I decided that was nonsense.
We transported the shellfish, or the ‘relish’ as Mr. Peggotty had modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, and made a great supper that evening. But Traddles couldn’t get happily out of it. He was too unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was taken ill in the night—quite prostrate he was—in consequence of Crab; and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse’s constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing to confess.
The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog’s-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink, surrounding all.
I well remember though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come towards us, and to grow and grow. How from counting months, we came to weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid that I should not be sent for and when I learnt from Steerforth that I had been sent for, and was certainly to go home, had dim forebodings that I might break my leg first. How the breaking-up day changed its place fast, at last, from the week after next to next week, this week, the day after tomorrow, tomorrow, today, tonight—when I was inside the Yarmouth mail, and going home.
I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an incoherent dream of all these things. But when I awoke at intervals, the ground outside the window was not the playground of Salem House, and the sound in my ears was not the sound of Mr. Creakle giving it to Traddles, but the sound of the coachman touching up the horses.
CHAPTER 8. MY HOLIDAYS. ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON
When we arrived before day at the inn where the mail stopped, which was not the inn where my friend the waiter lived, I was shown up to a nice little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door. Very cold I was, I know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before a large fire downstairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin’s bed, pull the Dolphin’s blankets round my head, and go to sleep.
Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine o’clock. I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my night’s rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for sixpence, or something of that sort.
As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier seated, the lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.
‘You look very well, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, thinking he would like to know it.
Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his cuff as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made no other acknowledgement of the compliment.
‘I gave your message, Mr. Barkis,’ I said: ‘I wrote to Peggotty.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis.
Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.
‘Wasn’t it right, Mr. Barkis?’ I asked, after a little hesitation.
‘Why, no,’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Not the message?’
‘The message was right enough, perhaps,’ said Mr. Barkis; ‘but it come to an end there.’
Not understanding what he meant, I repeated inquisitively: ‘Came to an end, Mr. Barkis?’
‘Nothing come of it,’ he explained, looking at me sideways. ‘No answer.’
‘There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, opening my eyes. For this was a new light to me.
‘When a man says he’s willin’,’ said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance slowly on me again, ‘it’s as much as to say, that man’s a-waitin’ for a answer.’
‘Well, Mr. Barkis?’
‘Well,’ said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse’s ears; ‘that man’s been a-waitin’ for a answer ever since.’
‘Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?’
‘No—no,’ growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it. ‘I ain’t got no call to go and tell her so. I never said six words to her myself, I ain’t a-goin’ to tell her so.’
‘Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, doubtfully. ‘You might tell her, if you would,’ said Mr. Barkis, with another slow look at me, ‘that Barkis was a-waitin’ for a answer. Says you—what name is it?’
‘Her name?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.
‘Peggotty.’
‘Chrisen name? Or nat’ral name?’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Oh, it’s not her Christian name. Her Christian name is Clara.’
‘Is it though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance, and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.
‘Well!’ he resumed at length. ‘Says you, “Peggotty! Barkis is waitin’ for a answer.” Says she, perhaps, “Answer to what?” Says you, “To what I told you.” “What is that?” says she. “Barkis is willin’,” says you.’
This extremely artful suggestion Mr. Barkis accompanied with a nudge of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side. After that, he slouched over his horse in his usual manner; and made no other reference to the subject except, half an hour afterwards, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart, ‘Clara Peggotty’—apparently as a private memorandum.
Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home, and to find that every object I looked at, reminded me of the happy old home, which was like a dream I could never dream again! The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road, that I am not sure I was glad to be there—not sure but that I would rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth’s company. But there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks’-nests drifted away upon the wind.
The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate, and left me. I walked along the path towards the house, glancing at the windows, and fearing at every step to see Mr. Murdstone or Miss Murdstone lowering out of one of them. No face appeared, however; and being come to the house, and knowing how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, I went in with a quiet, timid step.
God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother’s voice in the old parlour, when I set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.
I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand to my lips.
I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.
‘He is your brother,’ said my mother, fondling me. ‘Davy, my pretty boy! My poor child!’ Then she kissed me more and more, and clasped me round the neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both for a quarter of an hour.
It seemed that I had not been expected so soon, the carrier being much before his usual time. It seemed, too, that Mr. and Miss Murdstone had gone out upon a visit in the neighbourhood, and would not return before night. I had never hoped for this. I had never thought it possible that we three could be together undisturbed, once more; and I felt, for the time, as if the old days were come back.
We dined together by the fireside. Peggotty was in attendance to wait upon us, but my mother wouldn’t let her do it, and made her dine with us. I had my own old plate, with a brown view of a man-of-war in full sail upon it, which Peggotty had hoarded somewhere all the time I had been away, and would not have had broken, she said, for a hundred pounds. I had my own old mug with David on it, and my own old little knife and fork that wouldn’t cut.
While we were at table, I thought it a favourable occasion to tell Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, who, before I had finished what I had to tell her, began to laugh, and throw her apron over her face.
‘Peggotty,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron tight over her face when my mother tried to pull it away, and sat as if her head were in a bag.
‘What are you doing, you stupid creature?’ said my mother, laughing.
‘Oh, drat the man!’ cried Peggotty. ‘He wants to marry me.’
‘It would be a very good match for you; wouldn’t it?’ said my mother.
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Peggotty. ‘Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t have him if he was made of gold. Nor I wouldn’t have anybody.’
‘Then, why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?’ said my mother.
‘Tell him so,’ retorted Peggotty, looking out of her apron. ‘He has never said a word to me about it. He knows better. If he was to make so bold as say a word to me, I should slap his face.’
Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face, I think; but she only covered it again, for a few moments at a time, when she was taken with a violent fit of laughter; and after two or three of those attacks, went on with her dinner.
I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when Peggotty looked at her, became more serious and thoughtful. I had seen at first that she was changed. Her face was very pretty still, but it looked careworn, and too delicate; and her hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me to be almost transparent. But the change to which I now refer was superadded to this: it was in her manner, which became anxious and fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, and laying it affectionately on the hand of her old servant,
‘Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?’
‘Me, ma’am?’ returned Peggotty, staring. ‘Lord bless you, no!’
‘Not just yet?’ said my mother, tenderly.
‘Never!’ cried Peggotty.
My mother took her hand, and said:
‘Don’t leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will not be for long, perhaps. What should I ever do without you!’
‘Me leave you, my precious!’ cried Peggotty. ‘Not for all the world and his wife. Why, what’s put that in your silly little head?’—For Peggotty had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child.
But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went running on in her own fashion.
‘Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should like to catch her at it! No, no, no,’ said Peggotty, shaking her head, and folding her arms; ‘not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some Cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they sha’n’t be pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.’
‘And, Peggotty,’ says I, ‘I shall be glad to see you, and I’ll make you as welcome as a queen.’
‘Bless your dear heart!’ cried Peggotty. ‘I know you will!’ And she kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowledgement of my hospitality. After that, she covered her head up with her apron again and had another laugh about Mr. Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little cradle, and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner table; after that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle, all just the same as ever.
We sat round the fire, and talked delightfully. I told them what a hard master Mr. Creakle was, and they pitied me very much. I told them what a fine fellow Steerforth was, and what a patron of mine, and Peggotty said she would walk a score of miles to see him. I took the little baby in my arms when it was awake, and nursed it lovingly. When it was asleep again, I crept close to my mother’s side according to my old custom, broken now a long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and my little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful hair drooping over me—like an angel’s wing as I used to think, I recollect—and was very happy indeed.
While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when the fire got low; and that there was nothing real in all that I remembered, save my mother, Peggotty, and I.
Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could see, and then sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, and her needle in her right, ready to take another stitch whenever there was a blaze. I cannot conceive whose stockings they can have been that Peggotty was always darning, or where such an unfailing supply of stockings in want of darning can have come from. From my earliest infancy she seems to have been always employed in that class of needlework, and never by any chance in any other.
‘I wonder,’ said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized with a fit of wondering on some most unexpected topic, ‘what’s become of Davy’s great-aunt?’ ‘Lor, Peggotty!’ observed my mother, rousing herself from a reverie, ‘what nonsense you talk!’
‘Well, but I really do wonder, ma’am,’ said Peggotty.
‘What can have put such a person in your head?’ inquired my mother. ‘Is there nobody else in the world to come there?’
‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Peggotty, ‘unless it’s on account of being stupid, but my head never can pick and choose its people. They come and they go, and they don’t come and they don’t go, just as they like. I wonder what’s become of her?’
‘How absurd you are, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘One would suppose you wanted a second visit from her.’
‘Lord forbid!’ cried Peggotty.
‘Well then, don’t talk about such uncomfortable things, there’s a good soul,’ said my mother. ‘Miss Betsey is shut up in her cottage by the sea, no doubt, and will remain there. At all events, she is not likely ever to trouble us again.’
‘No!’ mused Peggotty. ‘No, that ain’t likely at all.---I wonder, if she was to die, whether she’d leave Davy anything?’
‘Good gracious me, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘what a nonsensical woman you are! when you know that she took offence at the poor dear boy’s ever being born at all.’
‘I suppose she wouldn’t be inclined to forgive him now,’ hinted Peggotty.
‘Why should she be inclined to forgive him now?’ said my mother, rather sharply.
‘Now that he’s got a brother, I mean,’ said Peggotty.
My mother immediately began to cry, and wondered how Peggotty dared to say such a thing.
‘As if this poor little innocent in its cradle had ever done any harm to you or anybody else, you jealous thing!’ said she. ‘You had much better go and marry Mr. Barkis, the carrier. Why don’t you?’
‘I should make Miss Murdstone happy, if I was to,’ said Peggotty.
‘What a bad disposition you have, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You are as jealous of Miss Murdstone as it is possible for a ridiculous creature to be. You want to keep the keys yourself, and give out all the things, I suppose? I shouldn’t be surprised if you did. When you know that she only does it out of kindness and the best intentions! You know she does, Peggotty—you know it well.’
Peggotty muttered something to the effect of ‘Bother the best intentions!’ and something else to the effect that there was a little too much of the best intentions going on.
‘I know what you mean, you cross thing,’ said my mother. ‘I understand you, Peggotty, perfectly. You know I do, and I wonder you don’t colour up like fire. But one point at a time. Miss Murdstone is the point now, Peggotty, and you sha’n’t escape from it. Haven’t you heard her say, over and over again, that she thinks I am too thoughtless and too—a—a—’
‘Pretty,’ suggested Peggotty.
‘Well,’ returned my mother, half laughing, ‘and if she is so silly as to say so, can I be blamed for it?’
‘No one says you can,’ said Peggotty.
‘No, I should hope not, indeed!’ returned my mother. ‘Haven’t you heard her say, over and over again, that on this account she wished to spare me a great deal of trouble, which she thinks I am not suited for, and which I really don’t know myself that I AM suited for; and isn’t she up early and late, and going to and fro continually—and doesn’t she do all sorts of things, and grope into all sorts of places, coal-holes and pantries and I don’t know where, that can’t be very agreeable—and do you mean to insinuate that there is not a sort of devotion in that?’
‘I don’t insinuate at all,’ said Peggotty.
‘You do, Peggotty,’ returned my mother. ‘You never do anything else, except your work. You are always insinuating. You revel in it. And when you talk of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions—’
‘I never talked of ‘em,’ said Peggotty.
‘No, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘but you insinuated. That’s what I told you just now. That’s the worst of you. You WILL insinuate. I said, at the moment, that I understood you, and you see I did. When you talk of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions, and pretend to slight them (for I don’t believe you really do, in your heart, Peggotty), you must be as well convinced as I am how good they are, and how they actuate him in everything. If he seems to have been at all stern with a certain person, Peggotty—you understand, and so I am sure does Davy, that I am not alluding to anybody present—it is solely because he is satisfied that it is for a certain person’s benefit. He naturally loves a certain person, on my account; and acts solely for a certain person’s good. He is better able to judge of it than I am; for I very well know that I am a weak, light, girlish creature, and that he is a firm, grave, serious man. And he takes,’ said my mother, with the tears which were engendered in her affectionate nature, stealing down her face, ‘he takes great pains with me; and I ought to be very thankful to him, and very submissive to him even in my thoughts; and when I am not, Peggotty, I worry and condemn myself, and feel doubtful of my own heart, and don’t know what to do.’
Peggotty sat with her chin on the foot of the stocking, looking silently at the fire.
‘There, Peggotty,’ said my mother, changing her tone, ‘don’t let us fall out with one another, for I couldn’t bear it. You are my true friend, I know, if I have any in the world. When I call you a ridiculous creature, or a vexatious thing, or anything of that sort, Peggotty, I only mean that you are my true friend, and always have been, ever since the night when Mr. Copperfield first brought me home here, and you came out to the gate to meet me.’
Peggotty was not slow to respond, and ratify the treaty of friendship by giving me one of her best hugs. I think I had some glimpses of the real character of this conversation at the time; but I am sure, now, that the good creature originated it, and took her part in it, merely that my mother might comfort herself with the little contradictory summary in which she had indulged. The design was efficacious; for I remember that my mother seemed more at ease during the rest of the evening, and that Peggotty observed her less.
When we had had our tea, and the ashes were thrown up, and the candles snuffed, I read Peggotty a chapter out of the Crocodile Book, in remembrance of old times—she took it out of her pocket: I don’t know whether she had kept it there ever since—and then we talked about Salem House, which brought me round again to Steerforth, who was my great subject. We were very happy; and that evening, as the last of its race, and destined evermore to close that volume of my life, will never pass out of my memory.
It was almost ten o’clock before we heard the sound of wheels. We all got up then; and my mother said hurriedly that, as it was so late, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone approved of early hours for young people, perhaps I had better go to bed. I kissed her, and went upstairs with my candle directly, before they came in. It appeared to my childish fancy, as I ascended to the bedroom where I had been imprisoned, that they brought a cold blast of air into the house which blew away the old familiar feeling like a feather.
I felt uncomfortable about going down to breakfast in the morning, as I had never set eyes on Mr. Murdstone since the day when I committed my memorable offence. However, as it must be done, I went down, after two or three false starts half-way, and as many runs back on tiptoe to my own room, and presented myself in the parlour.
He was standing before the fire with his back to it, while Miss Murdstone made the tea. He looked at me steadily as I entered, but made no sign of recognition whatever. I went up to him, after a moment of confusion, and said: ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I am very sorry for what I did, and I hope you will forgive me.’
‘I am glad to hear you are sorry, David,’ he replied.
The hand he gave me was the hand I had bitten. I could not restrain my eye from resting for an instant on a red spot upon it; but it was not so red as I turned, when I met that sinister expression in his face.
‘How do you do, ma’am?’ I said to Miss Murdstone.
‘Ah, dear me!’ sighed Miss Murdstone, giving me the tea-caddy scoop instead of her fingers. ‘How long are the holidays?’
‘A month, ma’am.’
‘Counting from when?’
‘From today, ma’am.’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Then here’s one day off.’
She kept a calendar of the holidays in this way, and every morning checked a day off in exactly the same manner. She did it gloomily until she came to ten, but when she got into two figures she became more hopeful, and, as the time advanced, even jocular.
It was on this very first day that I had the misfortune to throw her, though she was not subject to such weakness in general, into a state of violent consternation. I came into the room where she and my mother were sitting; and the baby (who was only a few weeks old) being on my mother’s lap, I took it very carefully in my arms. Suddenly Miss Murdstone gave such a scream that I all but dropped it.
‘My dear Jane!’ cried my mother.
‘Good heavens, Clara, do you see?’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone.
‘See what, my dear Jane?’ said my mother; ‘where?’
‘He’s got it!’ cried Miss Murdstone. ‘The boy has got the baby!’
She was limp with horror; but stiffened herself to make a dart at me, and take it out of my arms. Then, she turned faint; and was so very ill that they were obliged to give her cherry brandy. I was solemnly interdicted by her, on her recovery, from touching my brother any more on any pretence whatever; and my poor mother, who, I could see, wished otherwise, meekly confirmed the interdict, by saying: ‘No doubt you are right, my dear Jane.’
On another occasion, when we three were together, this same dear baby—it was truly dear to me, for our mother’s sake—was the innocent occasion of Miss Murdstone’s going into a passion. My mother, who had been looking at its eyes as it lay upon her lap, said:
‘Davy! come here!’ and looked at mine.
I saw Miss Murdstone lay her beads down.
‘I declare,’ said my mother, gently, ‘they are exactly alike. I suppose they are mine. I think they are the colour of mine. But they are wonderfully alike.’
‘What are you talking about, Clara?’ said Miss Murdstone.
‘My dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, a little abashed by the harsh tone of this inquiry, ‘I find that the baby’s eyes and Davy’s are exactly alike.’
‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, rising angrily, ‘you are a positive fool sometimes.’
‘My dear Jane,’ remonstrated my mother.
‘A positive fool,’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Who else could compare my brother’s baby with your boy? They are not at all alike. They are exactly unlike. They are utterly dissimilar in all respects. I hope they will ever remain so. I will not sit here, and hear such comparisons made.’ With that she stalked out, and made the door bang after her.
In short, I was not a favourite with Miss Murdstone. In short, I was not a favourite there with anybody, not even with myself; for those who did like me could not show it, and those who did not, showed it so plainly that I had a sensitive consciousness of always appearing constrained, boorish, and dull.
I felt that I made them as uncomfortable as they made me. If I came into the room where they were, and they were talking together and my mother seemed cheerful, an anxious cloud would steal over her face from the moment of my entrance. If Mr. Murdstone were in his best humour, I checked him. If Miss Murdstone were in her worst, I intensified it. I had perception enough to know that my mother was the victim always; that she was afraid to speak to me or to be kind to me, lest she should give them some offence by her manner of doing so, and receive a lecture afterwards; that she was not only ceaselessly afraid of her own offending, but of my offending, and uneasily watched their looks if I only moved. Therefore I resolved to keep myself as much out of their way as I could; and many a wintry hour did I hear the church clock strike, when I was sitting in my cheerless bedroom, wrapped in my little great-coat, poring over a book.
In the evening, sometimes, I went and sat with Peggotty in the kitchen. There I was comfortable, and not afraid of being myself. But neither of these resources was approved of in the parlour. The tormenting humour which was dominant there stopped them both. I was still held to be necessary to my poor mother’s training, and, as one of her trials, could not be suffered to absent myself.
‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, one day after dinner when I was going to leave the room as usual; ‘I am sorry to observe that you are of a sullen disposition.’
‘As sulky as a bear!’ said Miss Murdstone.
I stood still, and hung my head.
‘Now, David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘a sullen obdurate disposition is, of all tempers, the worst.’
‘And the boy’s is, of all such dispositions that ever I have seen,’ remarked his sister, ‘the most confirmed and stubborn. I think, my dear Clara, even you must observe it?’
‘I beg your pardon, my dear Jane,’ said my mother, ‘but are you quite sure—I am certain you’ll excuse me, my dear Jane—that you understand Davy?’
‘I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,’ returned Miss Murdstone, ‘if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don’t profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense.’
‘No doubt, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother, ‘your understanding is very vigorous—’
‘Oh dear, no! Pray don’t say that, Clara,’ interposed Miss Murdstone, angrily.
‘But I am sure it is,’ resumed my mother; ‘and everybody knows it is. I profit so much by it myself, in many ways—at least I ought to—that no one can be more convinced of it than myself; and therefore I speak with great diffidence, my dear Jane, I assure you.’
‘We’ll say I don’t understand the boy, Clara,’ returned Miss Murdstone, arranging the little fetters on her wrists. ‘We’ll agree, if you please, that I don’t understand him at all. He is much too deep for me. But perhaps my brother’s penetration may enable him to have some insight into his character. And I believe my brother was speaking on the subject when we—not very decently—interrupted him.’
‘I think, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, in a low grave voice, ‘that there may be better and more dispassionate judges of such a question than you.’
‘Edward,’ replied my mother, timidly, ‘you are a far better judge of all questions than I pretend to be. Both you and Jane are. I only said—’
‘You only said something weak and inconsiderate,’ he replied. ‘Try not to do it again, my dear Clara, and keep a watch upon yourself.’
My mother’s lips moved, as if she answered ‘Yes, my dear Edward,’ but she said nothing aloud.
‘I was sorry, David, I remarked,’ said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head and his eyes stiffly towards me, ‘to observe that you are of a sullen disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop itself beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. You must endeavour, sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I faltered. ‘I have never meant to be sullen since I came back.’
‘Don’t take refuge in a lie, sir!’ he returned so fiercely, that I saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose between us. ‘You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your own room. You have kept your own room when you ought to have been here. You know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there. Further, that I require you to bring obedience here. You know me, David. I will have it done.’
Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.
‘I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing towards myself,’ he continued, ‘and towards Jane Murdstone, and towards your mother. I will not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a child. Sit down.’
He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.
‘One thing more,’ he said. ‘I observe that you have an attachment to low and common company. You are not to associate with servants. The kitchen will not improve you, in the many respects in which you need improvement. Of the woman who abets you, I say nothing—since you, Clara,’ addressing my mother in a lower voice, ‘from old associations and long-established fancies, have a weakness respecting her which is not yet overcome.’
‘A most unaccountable delusion it is!’ cried Miss Murdstone.
‘I only say,’ he resumed, addressing me, ‘that I disapprove of your preferring such company as Mistress Peggotty, and that it is to be abandoned. Now, David, you understand me, and you know what will be the consequence if you fail to obey me to the letter.’
I knew well—better perhaps than he thought, as far as my poor mother was concerned—and I obeyed him to the letter. I retreated to my own room no more; I took refuge with Peggotty no more; but sat wearily in the parlour day after day, looking forward to night, and bedtime.
What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same attitude hours upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg lest Miss Murdstone should complain (as she did on the least pretence) of my restlessness, and afraid to move an eye lest she should light on some look of dislike or scrutiny that would find new cause for complaint in mine! What intolerable dulness to sit listening to the ticking of the clock; and watching Miss Murdstone’s little shiny steel beads as she strung them; and wondering whether she would ever be married, and if so, to what sort of unhappy man; and counting the divisions in the moulding of the chimney-piece; and wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among the curls and corkscrews in the paper on the wall!
What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter weather, carrying that parlour, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone in it, everywhere: a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and blunted them!
What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I!
What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as ‘Rule Britannia’, or ‘Away with Melancholy’; when they wouldn’t stand still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother’s needle through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps with; what answers I never got, to little observations that I rarely made; what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and yet was in everybody’s way; what a heavy relief it was to hear Miss Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, and order me to bed!
Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss Murdstone said: ‘Here’s the last day off!’ and gave me the closing cup of tea of the vacation.
I was not sorry to go. I had lapsed into a stupid state; but I was recovering a little and looking forward to Steerforth, albeit Mr. Creakle loomed behind him. Again Mr. Barkis appeared at the gate, and again Miss Murdstone in her warning voice, said: ‘Clara!’ when my mother bent over me, to bid me farewell.
I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not sorry to go away, for the gulf between us was there, and the parting was there, every day. And it is not so much the embrace she gave me, that lives in my mind, though it was as fervent as could be, as what followed the embrace.
I was in the carrier’s cart when I heard her calling to me. I looked out, and she stood at the garden-gate alone, holding her baby up in her arms for me to see. It was cold still weather; and not a hair of her head, nor a fold of her dress, was stirred, as she looked intently at me, holding up her child.
So I lost her. So I saw her afterwards, in my sleep at school—a silent presence near my bed—looking at me with the same intent face—holding up her baby in her arms.
CHAPTER 9. I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY
I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of my birthday came round in March. Except that Steerforth was more to be admired than ever, I remember nothing. He was going away at the end of the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging than before; but beyond this I remember nothing. The great remembrance by which that time is marked in my mind, seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections, and to exist alone.
It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that birthday. I can only understand that the fact was so, because I know it must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that there was no interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the other’s heels.
How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor. It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the playground, when Mr. Sharp entered and said:
‘David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.’
I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order. Some of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in the distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with great alacrity.
‘Don’t hurry, David,’ said Mr. Sharp. ‘There’s time enough, my boy, don’t hurry.’
I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke, if I had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards. I hurried away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle, sitting at his breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him, and Mrs. Creakle with an opened letter in her hand. But no hamper.
‘David Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and sitting down beside me. ‘I want to speak to you very particularly. I have something to tell you, my child.’
Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without looking at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of buttered toast.
‘You are too young to know how the world changes every day,’ said Mrs. Creakle, ‘and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times of our lives.’
I looked at her earnestly.
‘When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,’ said Mrs. Creakle, after a pause, ‘were they all well?’ After another pause, ‘Was your mama well?’
I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her earnestly, making no attempt to answer.
‘Because,’ said she, ‘I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your mama is very ill.’
A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face, and it was steady again.
‘She is very dangerously ill,’ she added.
I knew all now.
‘She is dead.’
There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.
She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me alone sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke and cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that there was no ease for.
And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of our house shut up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had been pining away for some time, and who, they believed, would die too. I thought of my father’s grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of my mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well. I stood upon a chair when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes were, and how sorrowful my face. I considered, after some hours were gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be, what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think of when I drew near home—for I was going home to the funeral. I am sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the rest of the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.
If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I remember that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in the playground that afternoon while the boys were in school. When I saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as they went up to their classes, I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked slower. When school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt it rather good in myself not to be proud to any of them, and to take exactly the same notice of them all, as before.
I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used by country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the road. We had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me his pillow. I don’t know what good he thought it would do me, for I had one of my own: but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, except a sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons; and that he gave me at parting, as a soother of my sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.
I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon. I little thought then that I left it, never to return. We travelled very slowly all night, and did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o’clock in the morning. I looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there; and instead of him a fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat, came puffing up to the coach window, and said:
‘Master Copperfield?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,’ he said, opening the door, ‘and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.’
I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c. It was a close and stifling little shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We went into a little back-parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work on a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table, and little bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor. There was a good fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black crape—I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.
The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on with their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At the same time there came from a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a regular sound of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, without any variation.
‘Well,’ said my conductor to one of the three young women. ‘How do you get on, Minnie?’
‘We shall be ready by the trying-on time,’ she replied gaily, without looking up. ‘Don’t you be afraid, father.’
Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted. He was so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could say:
‘That’s right.’
‘Father!’ said Minnie, playfully. ‘What a porpoise you do grow!’
‘Well, I don’t know how it is, my dear,’ he replied, considering about it. ‘I am rather so.’
‘You are such a comfortable man, you see,’ said Minnie. ‘You take things so easy.’
‘No use taking ‘em otherwise, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer.
‘No, indeed,’ returned his daughter. ‘We are all pretty gay here, thank Heaven! Ain’t we, father?’
‘I hope so, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘As I have got my breath now, I think I’ll measure this young scholar. Would you walk into the shop, Master Copperfield?’
I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after showing me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too good mourning for anything short of parents, he took my various dimensions, and put them down in a book. While he was recording them he called my attention to his stock in trade, and to certain fashions which he said had ‘just come up’, and to certain other fashions which he said had ‘just gone out’.
‘And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of money,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that point of view.’
I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly have been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me back into the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.
He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a door: ‘Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!’ which, after some time, during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and listening to the stitching in the room and the tune that was being hammered across the yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be for me.
‘I have been acquainted with you,’ said Mr. Omer, after watching me for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on the breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, ‘I have been acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.’
‘Have you, sir?’
‘All your life,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I may say before it. I knew your father before you. He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays in five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.’
‘RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat,’ across the yard.
‘He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a fraction,’ said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. ‘It was either his request or her direction, I forget which.’
‘Do you know how my little brother is, sir?’ I inquired.
Mr. Omer shook his head.
‘RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat.’
‘He is in his mother’s arms,’ said he.
‘Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?’
‘Don’t mind it more than you can help,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes. The baby’s dead.’
My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left the scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another table, in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily cleared, lest I should spot the mourning that was lying there with my tears. She was a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a soft, kind touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished her work and being in good time, and was so different from me!
Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came across the yard into the room. He had a hammer in his hand, and his mouth was full of little nails, which he was obliged to take out before he could speak.
‘Well, Joram!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘How do you get on?’
‘All right,’ said Joram. ‘Done, sir.’
Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one another.
‘What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I was at the club, then? Were you?’ said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.
‘Yes,’ said Joram. ‘As you said we could make a little trip of it, and go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me—and you.’
‘Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,’ said Mr. Omer, laughing till he coughed.
‘—As you was so good as to say that,’ resumed the young man, ‘why I turned to with a will, you see. Will you give me your opinion of it?’
‘I will,’ said Mr. Omer, rising. ‘My dear’; and he stopped and turned to me: ‘would you like to see your—’
‘No, father,’ Minnie interposed.
‘I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘But perhaps you’re right.’
I can’t say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother’s coffin that they went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never seen one that I know of.—but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was going on; and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what he had been doing.
The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not heard, brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went into the shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers. Minnie stayed behind to fold up what they had made, and pack it in two baskets. This she did upon her knees, humming a lively little tune the while. Joram, who I had no doubt was her lover, came in and stole a kiss from her while she was busy (he didn’t appear to mind me, at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he went out again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket, and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.
All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my head leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different things. The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and the baskets being put in first, I was put in next, and those three followed. I remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half pianoforte-van, painted of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black horse with a long tail. There was plenty of room for us all.
I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon them for their hardness of heart.
So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and enjoyed themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but kept my fast unbroken. So, when we reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind, as quickly as possible, that I might not be in their company before those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes once bright. And oh, how little need I had had to think what would move me to tears when I came back—seeing the window of my mother’s room, and next it that which, in the better time, was mine!
I was in Peggotty’s arms before I got to the door, and she took me into the house. Her grief burst out when she first saw me; but she controlled it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if the dead could be disturbed. She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time. She sat up at night still, and watched. As long as her poor dear pretty was above the ground, she said, she would never desert her.
Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk, which was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold finger-nails, and asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for my mourning.
I said: ‘Yes.’
‘And your shirts,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘have you brought ‘em home?’
‘Yes, ma’am. I have brought home all my clothes.’
This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me. I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her turn for business; and she showed it now in reducing everything to pen and ink, and being moved by nothing. All the rest of that day, and from morning to night afterwards, she sat at that desk, scratching composedly with a hard pen, speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to everybody; never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening a tone of her voice, or appearing with an atom of her dress astray.
Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and counting his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke to her, and never to me. He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the clocks, in the whole motionless house.
In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty, except that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close to the room where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she came to me every night, and sat by my bed’s head while I went to sleep. A day or two before the burial—I think it was a day or two before, but I am conscious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with nothing to mark its progress—she took me into the room. I only recollect that underneath some white covering on the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all around it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that was in the house; and that when she would have turned the cover gently back, I cried: ‘Oh no! oh no!’ and held her hand.
If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. The very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the decanters, the patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the odour of Miss Murdstone’s dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is in the room, and comes to speak to me.
‘And how is Master David?’ he says, kindly.
I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in his.
‘Dear me!’ says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining in his eye. ‘Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out of our knowledge, ma’am?’ This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no reply.
‘There is a great improvement here, ma’am?’ says Mr. Chillip.
Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend: Mr. Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and opens his mouth no more.
I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not because I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to the same grave were made ready in the same room.
There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip, and I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are in the garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the elms, and through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have so often heard the birds sing on a summer morning.
We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from every other day, and the light not of the same colour—of a sadder colour. Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from home with what is resting in the mould; and while we stand bareheaded, I hear the voice of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and plain, saying: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!’ Then I hear sobs; and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day say: ‘Well done.’
There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces that I knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces that first saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do not mind them—I mind nothing but my grief—and yet I see and know them all; and even in the background, far away, see Minnie looking on, and her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is near me.
It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on; and Mr. Chillip talks to me; and when we get home, puts some water to my lips; and when I ask his leave to go up to my room, dismisses me with the gentleness of a woman.
All this, I say, is yesterday’s event. Events of later date have floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this stands like a high rock in the ocean.
I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath stillness of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have forgotten that) was suited to us both. She sat down by my side upon my little bed; and holding my hand, and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes smoothing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little brother, told me, in her way, all that she had to tell concerning what had happened.
‘She was never well,’ said Peggotty, ‘for a long time. She was uncertain in her mind, and not happy. When her baby was born, I thought at first she would get better, but she was more delicate, and sunk a little every day. She used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she cried; but afterwards she used to sing to it—so soft, that I once thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the air, that was rising away.
‘I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of late; and that a hard word was like a blow to her. But she was always the same to me. She never changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn’t my sweet girl.’
Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.
‘The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, “I never shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the truth, I know.”
‘She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me—she was afraid of saying it to anybody else—till one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she said to him: “My dear, I think I am dying.”
‘“It’s off my mind now, Peggotty,” she told me, when I laid her in her bed that night. “He will believe it more and more, poor fellow, every day for a few days to come; and then it will be past. I am very tired. If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don’t leave me. God bless both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy!”
‘I never left her afterwards,’ said Peggotty. ‘She often talked to them two downstairs—for she loved them; she couldn’t bear not to love anyone who was about her—but when they went away from her bed-side, she always turned to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never fell asleep in any other way.
‘On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: “If my baby should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms, and bury us together.” (It was done; for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond her.) “Let my dearest boy go with us to our resting-place,” she said, “and tell him that his mother, when she lay here, blessed him not once, but a thousand times.”’
Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my hand.
‘It was pretty far in the night,’ said Peggotty, ‘when she asked me for some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the dear!—so beautiful!
‘Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy man in hers. “Peggotty, my dear,” she said then, “put me nearer to you,” for she was very weak. “Lay your good arm underneath my neck,” she said, “and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it to be near.” I put it as she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when my first parting words to you were true—when she was glad to lay her poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty’s arm—and she died like a child that had gone to sleep!’
Thus ended Peggotty’s narration. From the moment of my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.
The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.
CHAPTER 10. I BECOME NEGLECTED, AND AM PROVIDED FOR
The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of the solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was to give Peggotty a month’s warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me why; and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity.
As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a month’s warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither she nor I could pick up any information on the subject.
There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me, was quite abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in the parlour, that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off from Peggotty’s society, that, provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone’s, I was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone’s devoting herself to it; but I soon began to think that such fears were groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect.
I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was still giddy with the shock of my mother’s death, and in a kind of stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted away, left the wall blank again.
‘Peggotty,’ I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, ‘Mr. Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not even see me now, if he can help it.’
‘Perhaps it’s his sorrow,’ said Peggotty, stroking my hair.
‘I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it’s not that; oh, no, it’s not that.’
‘How do you know it’s not that?’ said Peggotty, after a silence.
‘Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.’
‘What would he be?’ said Peggotty.
‘Angry,’ I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown. ‘If he was only sorry, he wouldn’t look at me as he does. I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.’
Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as silent as she.
‘Davy,’ she said at length.
‘Yes, Peggotty?’ ‘I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of—all the ways there are, and all the ways there ain’t, in short—to get a suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there’s no such a thing, my love.’
‘And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,’ says I, wistfully. ‘Do you mean to go and seek your fortune?’
‘I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,’ replied Peggotty, ‘and live there.’
‘You might have gone farther off,’ I said, brightening a little, ‘and been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty, there. You won’t be quite at the other end of the world, will you?’
‘Contrary ways, please God!’ cried Peggotty, with great animation. ‘As long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to see you. One day, every week of my life!’
I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:
‘I’m a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother’s, first, for another fortnight’s visit—just till I have had time to look about me, and get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that perhaps, as they don’t want you here at present, you might be let to go along with me.’
If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em’ly, telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells and pebbles on the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone’s giving her consent; but even that was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening grope in the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and Peggotty, with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the spot.
‘The boy will be idle there,’ said Miss Murdstone, looking into a pickle-jar, ‘and idleness is the root of all evil. But, to be sure, he would be idle here—or anywhere, in my opinion.’
Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed it for my sake, and remained silent.
‘Humph!’ said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles; ‘it is of more importance than anything else—it is of paramount importance—that my brother should not be disturbed or made uncomfortable. I suppose I had better say yes.’
I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it should induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could I help thinking this a prudent course, since she looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its contents. However, the permission was given, and was never retracted; for when the month was out, Peggotty and I were ready to depart.
Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty’s boxes. I had never known him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he came into the house. And he gave me a look as he shouldered the largest box and went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be said to find its way into Mr. Barkis’s visage.
Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her home so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her life—for my mother and myself—had been formed. She had been walking in the churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the cart, and sat in it with her handkerchief at her eyes.
So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and attitude like a great stuffed figure. But when she began to look about her, and to speak to me, he nodded his head and grinned several times. I have not the least notion at whom, or what he meant by it.
‘It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!’ I said, as an act of politeness.
‘It ain’t bad,’ said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his speech, and rarely committed himself.
‘Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,’ I remarked, for his satisfaction.
‘Is she, though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her, and said:
‘ARE you pretty comfortable?’
Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative.
‘But really and truly, you know. Are you?’ growled Mr. Barkis, sliding nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. ‘Are you? Really and truly pretty comfortable? Are you? Eh?’
At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded together in the left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly bear it.
Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a little more room at once, and got away by degrees. But I could not help observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without the inconvenience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled over it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating, ‘Are you pretty comfortable though?’ bore down upon us as before, until the breath was nearly edged out of my body. By and by he made another descent upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At length, I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board, pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well.
He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our account, and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer. Even when Peggotty was in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of those approaches, and almost choked her. But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he had more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth pavement, we were all too much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have any leisure for anything else.
Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. They received me and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr. Barkis, who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a shame-faced leer upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a vacant appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty’s trunks, and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly made a sign to me with his forefinger to come under an archway.
‘I say,’ growled Mr. Barkis, ‘it was all right.’
I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very profound: ‘Oh!’
‘It didn’t come to a end there,’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding confidentially. ‘It was all right.’
Again I answered, ‘Oh!’
‘You know who was willin’,’ said my friend. ‘It was Barkis, and Barkis only.’
I nodded assent.
‘It’s all right,’ said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; ‘I’m a friend of your’n. You made it all right, first. It’s all right.’
In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for Peggotty’s calling me away. As we were going along, she asked me what he had said; and I told her he had said it was all right.
‘Like his impudence,’ said Peggotty, ‘but I don’t mind that! Davy dear, what should you think if I was to think of being married?’
‘Why—I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you do now?’ I returned, after a little consideration.
Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as well as of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged to stop and embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her unalterable love.
‘Tell me what should you say, darling?’ she asked again, when this was over, and we were walking on.
‘If you were thinking of being married—to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?’
‘Yes,’ said Peggotty.
‘I should think it would be a very good thing. For then you know, Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.’
‘The sense of the dear!’ cried Peggotty. ‘What I have been thinking of, this month back! Yes, my precious; and I think I should be more independent altogether, you see; let alone my working with a better heart in my own house, than I could in anybody else’s now. I don’t know what I might be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And I shall be always near my pretty’s resting-place,’ said Peggotty, musing, ‘and be able to see it when I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid not far off from my darling girl!’
We neither of us said anything for a little while.
‘But I wouldn’t so much as give it another thought,’ said Peggotty, cheerily ‘if my Davy was anyways against it—not if I had been asked in church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out the ring in my pocket.’
‘Look at me, Peggotty,’ I replied; ‘and see if I am not really glad, and don’t truly wish it!’ As indeed I did, with all my heart.
‘Well, my life,’ said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, ‘I have thought of it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right way; but I’ll think of it again, and speak to my brother about it, and in the meantime we’ll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good plain creature,’ said Peggotty, ‘and if I tried to do my duty by him, I think it would be my fault if I wasn’t—if I wasn’t pretty comfortable,’ said Peggotty, laughing heartily. This quotation from Mr. Barkis was so appropriate, and tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and again, and were quite in a pleasant humour when we came within view of Mr. Peggotty’s cottage.
It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk a little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as if she had stood there ever since. All within was the same, down to the seaweed in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same state of conglomeration in the same old corner.
But there was no little Em’ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty where she was.
‘She’s at school, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat consequent on the porterage of Peggotty’s box from his forehead; ‘she’ll be home,’ looking at the Dutch clock, ‘in from twenty minutes to half-an-hour’s time. We all on us feel the loss of her, bless ye!’
Mrs. Gummidge moaned.
‘Cheer up, Mawther!’ cried Mr. Peggotty.
‘I feel it more than anybody else,’ said Mrs. Gummidge; ‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’, and she used to be a’most the only thing that didn’t go contrary with me.’
Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she was so engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand: ‘The old ‘un!’ From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had taken place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits.
Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as delightful a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the same way. I felt rather disappointed with it. Perhaps it was because little Em’ly was not at home. I knew the way by which she would come, and presently found myself strolling along the path to meet her.
A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it to be Em’ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she was grown. But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken.
Little Em’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage before I caught her.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said little Em’ly.
‘Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’ said I.
‘And didn’t YOU know who it was?’ said Em’ly. I was going to kiss her, but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn’t a baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.
She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I wondered at very much. The tea table was ready, and our little locker was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit by me, she went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge: and on Mr. Peggotty’s inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide it, and could do nothing but laugh.
‘A little puss, it is!’ said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his great hand.
‘So sh’ is! so sh’ is!’ cried Ham. ‘Mas’r Davy bor’, so sh’ is!’ and he sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled admiration and delight, that made his face a burning red.
Little Em’ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured, and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that she captivated me more than ever.
She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire after tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to the loss I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she looked at me so kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful to her.
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over his hand like water, ‘here’s another orphan, you see, sir. And here,’ said Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the chest, ‘is another of ‘em, though he don’t look much like it.’
‘If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, shaking my head, ‘I don’t think I should FEEL much like it.’
‘Well said, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ cried Ham, in an ecstasy. ‘Hoorah! Well said! Nor more you wouldn’t! Hor! Hor!’—Here he returned Mr. Peggotty’s back-hander, and little Em’ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. ‘And how’s your friend, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty to me.
‘Steerforth?’ said I.
‘That’s the name!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. ‘I knowed it was something in our way.’
‘You said it was Rudderford,’ observed Ham, laughing.
‘Well!’ retorted Mr. Peggotty. ‘And ye steer with a rudder, don’t ye? It ain’t fur off. How is he, sir?’
‘He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.’
‘There’s a friend!’ said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. ‘There’s a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord love my heart alive, if it ain’t a treat to look at him!’
‘He is very handsome, is he not?’ said I, my heart warming with this praise.
‘Handsome!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘He stands up to you like—like a—why I don’t know what he don’t stand up to you like. He’s so bold!’
‘Yes! That’s just his character,’ said I. ‘He’s as brave as a lion, and you can’t think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.’
‘And I do suppose, now,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through the smoke of his pipe, ‘that in the way of book-larning he’d take the wind out of a’most anything.’
‘Yes,’ said I, delighted; ‘he knows everything. He is astonishingly clever.’
‘There’s a friend!’ murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his head.
‘Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,’ said I. ‘He knows a task if he only looks at it. He is the best cricketer you ever saw. He will give you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.’
Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘Of course he will.’
‘He is such a speaker,’ I pursued, ‘that he can win anybody over; and I don’t know what you’d say if you were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.’
Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘I have no doubt of it.’
‘Then, he’s such a generous, fine, noble fellow,’ said I, quite carried away by my favourite theme, ‘that it’s hardly possible to give him as much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and lower in the school than himself.’
I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little Em’ly’s face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels, and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked at her.
‘Em’ly is like me,’ said Peggotty, ‘and would like to see him.’
Em’ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head, and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept away till it was nearly bedtime.
I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em’ly, and so dropping lovingly asleep.
The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except—it was a great exception—that little Em’ly and I seldom wandered on the beach now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of childish whims as Em’ly was, she was more of a little woman than I had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me, in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air.
On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double set of pigs’ trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes, a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.
Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty, who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one.
At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day’s holiday together, and that little Em’ly and I were to accompany them. I had but a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of a whole day with Em’ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance, driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections.
Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr. Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.
When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck, and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose.
‘No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and everythink that reminds me of creetur’s that ain’t lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.’
‘Come, old gal!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘Take and heave it.’
‘No, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head. ‘If I felt less, I could do more. You don’t feel like me, Dan’l; thinks don’t go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it yourself.’
But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we all were by this time (Em’ly and I on two little chairs, side by side), that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on.
Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em’ly and me alone in the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em’ly’s waist, and propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little Em’ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate; informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her affections.
How merry little Em’ly made herself about it! With what a demure assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little woman said I was ‘a silly boy’; and then laughed so charmingly that I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the pleasure of looking at her.
Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along, Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,—by the by, I should hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:
‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?’
‘Clara Peggotty,’ I answered.
‘What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt here?’
‘Clara Peggotty, again?’ I suggested.
‘Clara Peggotty BARKIS!’ he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter that shook the chaise.
In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she was very glad it was over.
We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went out for a stroll with little Em’ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite; for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large quantity without any emotion.
I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis’s mind to an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my hearing, on that very occasion, that I was ‘a young Roeshus’—by which I think he meant prodigy.
When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em’ly and I made a cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey. Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such guileless hearts at Peggotty’s marriage as little Em’ly’s and mine. I am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely procession.
Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof but that which sheltered little Em’ly’s head.
Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away. Little Em’ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful day.
It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary house, the protector of Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons until morning.
With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too. After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty’s house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now.
I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little Em’ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty’s, in a little room in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed’s head) which was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me in exactly the same state.
‘Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over my head,’ said Peggotty, ‘you shall find it as if I expected you here directly minute. I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China, you might think of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.’
I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart, and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was going home in the morning, and I went home in the morning, with herself and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on, taking Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the house, in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking any more.
And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition,—apart from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless thoughts,—which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.
What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that ever was kept!—to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly, steadily, overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone’s means were straitened at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him—and succeeded.
I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness; whether I should have lain down in my lonely room, and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have helped me out.
When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in a mortar under his mild directions.
For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was ‘a little near’, and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.
All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read them over and over I don’t know how many times more.
I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times.
I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless, meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman cried:
‘What! Brooks!’
‘No, sir, David Copperfield,’ I said.
‘Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’ said the gentleman. ‘You are Brooks of Sheffield. That’s your name.’
At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before—it is no matter—I need not recall when.
‘And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?’ said Mr. Quinion.
He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr. Murdstone.
‘He is at home at present,’ said the latter. ‘He is not being educated anywhere. I don’t know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.’
That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.
‘Humph!’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. ‘Fine weather!’
Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:
‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?’
‘Aye! He is sharp enough,’ said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. ‘You had better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.’
On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my way home. Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr. Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion talking to him. They were both looking after me, and I felt that they were speaking of me.
Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room, when Mr. Murdstone called me back. He then gravely repaired to another table, where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them all.
‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘to the young this is a world for action; not for moping and droning in.’ —‘As you do,’ added his sister.
‘Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to bend it and break it.’
‘For stubbornness won’t do here,’ said his sister ‘What it wants is, to be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!’
He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on:
‘I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it now. You have received some considerable education already. Education is costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it, I am of opinion that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school. What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin it, the better.’
I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way: but it occurs to me now, whether or no.
‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned sometimes,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘The counting-house, sir?’ I repeated. ‘Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the wine trade,’ he replied.
I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:
‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned, or the business, or the cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.’
‘I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,’ I said, remembering what I vaguely knew of his and his sister’s resources. ‘But I don’t know when.’
‘It does not matter when,’ he returned. ‘Mr. Quinion manages that business.’
I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window.
‘Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys, and that he sees no reason why it shouldn’t, on the same terms, give employment to you.’
‘He having,’ Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning round, ‘no other prospect, Murdstone.’
Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed, without noticing what he had said:
‘Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for your eating and drinking, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing—’
‘—Which will be kept down to my estimate,’ said his sister.
‘Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,’ said Mr. Murdstone; ‘as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on your own account.’
‘In short, you are provided for,’ observed his sister; ‘and will please to do your duty.’
Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to go upon the morrow.
Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a black crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff corduroy trousers—which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off. Behold me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said), in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. Quinion to the London coach at Yarmouth! See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance; how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects; how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky is empty!
CHAPTER 11. I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON’T LIKE IT
I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age. A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But none was made; and I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.
Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse was at the waterside. It was down in Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun with rats. Its panelled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago, in my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before me, just as they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time, with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion’s.
Murdstone and Grinby’s trade was among a good many kinds of people, but an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain packet ships. I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there were some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies. I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.
There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool in the counting-house, and look at me through a window above the desk. Hither, on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a paper cap. He informed me that his father was a bargeman, and walked, in a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord Mayor’s Show. He also informed me that our principal associate would be another boy whom he introduced by the—to me—extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. I discovered, however, that this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his complexion, which was pale or mealy. Mealy’s father was a waterman, who had the additional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as such at one of the large theatres; where some young relation of Mealy’s—I think his little sister—did Imps in the Pantomimes.
No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship; compared these henceforth everyday associates with those of my happier childhood—not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom. The deep remembrance of the sense I had, of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little, never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. As often as Mick Walker went away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with the water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.
The counting-house clock was at half past twelve, and there was general preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. Quinion tapped at the counting-house window, and beckoned to me to go in. I went in, and found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass hung outside his coat,—for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very seldom looked through it, and couldn’t see anything when he did.
‘This,’ said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, ‘is he.’
‘This,’ said the stranger, with a certain condescending roll in his voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel, which impressed me very much, ‘is Master Copperfield. I hope I see you well, sir?’
I said I was very well, and hoped he was. I was sufficiently ill at ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature to complain much at that time of my life, so I said I was very well, and hoped he was.
‘I am,’ said the stranger, ‘thank Heaven, quite well. I have received a letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he mentions that he would desire me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my house, which is at present unoccupied—and is, in short, to be let as a—in short,’ said the stranger, with a smile and in a burst of confidence, ‘as a bedroom—the young beginner whom I have now the pleasure to—’ and the stranger waved his hand, and settled his chin in his shirt-collar.
‘This is Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion to me.
‘Ahem!’ said the stranger, ‘that is my name.’
‘Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion, ‘is known to Mr. Murdstone. He takes orders for us on commission, when he can get any. He has been written to by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive you as a lodger.’
‘My address,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘is Windsor Terrace, City Road. I—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in another burst of confidence—‘I live there.’
I made him a bow.
‘Under the impression,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that your peregrinations in this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City Road,—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another burst of confidence, ‘that you might lose yourself—I shall be happy to call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.’
I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to offer to take that trouble.
‘At what hour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘shall I—’
‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Quinion.
‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘I beg to wish you good day, Mr. Quinion. I will intrude no longer.’
So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm: very upright, and humming a tune when he was clear of the counting-house.
Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could in the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six at first and seven afterwards. He paid me a week down (from his own pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night: it being too heavy for my strength, small as it was. I paid sixpence more for my dinner, which was a meat pie and a turn at a neighbouring pump; and passed the hour which was allowed for that meal, in walking about the streets.
At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reappeared. I washed my hands and face, to do the greater honour to his gentility, and we walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call it, together; Mr. Micawber impressing the name of streets, and the shapes of corner houses upon me, as we went along, that I might find my way back, easily, in the morning.
Arrived at this house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed was shabby like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it could), he presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor was altogether unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours), with a baby at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may remark here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time. One of them was always taking refreshment.
There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four, and Miss Micawber, aged about three. These, and a dark-complexioned young woman, with a habit of snorting, who was servant to the family, and informed me, before half an hour had expired, that she was ‘a Orfling’, and came from St. Luke’s workhouse, in the neighbourhood, completed the establishment. My room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close chamber; stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.
‘I never thought,’ said Mrs. Micawber, when she came up, twin and all, to show me the apartment, and sat down to take breath, ‘before I was married, when I lived with papa and mama, that I should ever find it necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all considerations of private feeling must give way.’
I said: ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,’ said Mrs. Micawber; ‘and whether it is possible to bring him through them, I don’t know. When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which I now employ it, but experientia does it,—as papa used to say.’
I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had been an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it. I only know that I believe to this hour that he WAS in the Marines once upon a time, without knowing why. He was a sort of town traveller for a number of miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, I am afraid.
‘If Mr. Micawber’s creditors will not give him time,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it to an issue the better. Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither can anything on account be obtained at present (not to mention law expenses) from Mr. Micawber.’
I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was so full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the very twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but this was the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly all the time I knew her.
Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself, and so, I have no doubt, she had. The centre of the street door was perfectly covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved ‘Mrs. Micawber’s Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies’: but I never found that any young lady had ever been to school there; or that any young lady ever came, or proposed to come; or that the least preparation was ever made to receive any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw, or heard of, were creditors. THEY used to come at all hours, and some of them were quite ferocious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker, used to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o’clock in the morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber—‘Come! You ain’t out yet, you know. Pay us, will you? Don’t hide, you know; that’s mean. I wouldn’t be mean if I was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, d’ye hear? Come!’ Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would mount in his wrath to the words ‘swindlers’ and ‘robbers’; and these being ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of crossing the street, and roaring up at the windows of the second floor, where he knew Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr. Micawber would be transported with grief and mortification, even to the length (as I was once made aware by a scream from his wife) of making motions at himself with a razor; but within half-an-hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with extraordinary pains, and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of gentility than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I have known her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king’s taxes at three o’clock, and to eat lamb chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for with two tea-spoons that had gone to the pawnbroker’s) at four. On one occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home through some chance as early as six o’clock, I saw her lying (of course with a twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face; but I never knew her more cheerful than she was, that very same night, over a veal cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories about her papa and mama, and the company they used to keep.
In this house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time. My own exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I provided myself. I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I came back at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support myself on that money all the week. From Monday morning until Saturday night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!
I was so young and childish, and so little qualified—how could I be otherwise?—to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby’s, of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the pastrycooks’ doors, and spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. I remember two pudding shops, between which I was divided, according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin’s Church—at the back of the church,—which is now removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear, twopennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the Strand—somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since. It was a stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it, stuck in whole at wide distances apart. It came up hot at about my time every day, and many a day did I dine off it. When I dined regularly and handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate of red beef from a cook’s shop; or a plate of bread and cheese and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite our place of business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else that I have forgotten. Once, I remember carrying my own bread (which I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper, like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef-house near Drury Lane, and ordering a ‘small plate’ of that delicacy to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don’t know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny for himself, and I wish he hadn’t taken it.
We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread and butter. When I had none, I used to look at a venison shop in Fleet Street; or I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden Market, and stared at the pineapples. I was fond of wandering about the Adelphi, because it was a mysterious place, with those dark arches. I see myself emerging one evening from some of these arches, on a little public-house close to the river, with an open space before it, where some coal-heavers were dancing; to look at whom I sat down upon a bench. I wonder what they thought of me!
I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to moisten what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord: ‘What is your best—your very best—ale a glass?’ For it was a special occasion. I don’t know what. It may have been my birthday.
‘Twopence-halfpenny,’ says the landlord, ‘is the price of the Genuine Stunning ale.’
‘Then,’ says I, producing the money, ‘just draw me a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.’
The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to foot, with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer, looked round the screen and said something to his wife. She came out from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me. Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition. They asked me a good many questions; as, what my name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed, and how I came there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented, I am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me with the ale, though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord’s wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.
I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.
Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby’s too. Besides that Mr. Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different footing from the rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there, or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly beyond my power to tell. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work. I knew from the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the other boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manner were different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They and the men generally spoke of me as ‘the little gent’, or ‘the young Suffolker.’ A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers, and another named Tipp, who was the carman, and wore a red jacket, used to address me sometimes as ‘David’: but I think it was mostly when we were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain them, over our work, with some results of the old readings; which were fast perishing out of my remembrance. Mealy Potatoes uprose once, and rebelled against my being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him in no time.
My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and abandoned, as such, altogether. I am solemnly convinced that I never for one hour was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy; but I bore it; and even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her and partly for shame, never in any letter (though many passed between us) revealed the truth.
Mr. Micawber’s difficulties were an addition to the distressed state of my mind. In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber’s calculations of ways and means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber’s debts. On a Saturday night, which was my grand treat,—partly because it was a great thing to walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the shops and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went home early,—Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or coffee I had bought over-night, in a little shaving-pot, and sat late at my breakfast. It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations, and sing about Jack’s delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of it. I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, ‘in case anything turned up’, which was his favourite expression. And Mrs. Micawber was just the same.
A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people, notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years. But I never allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat and drink with them out of their stock (knowing that they got on badly with the butcher and baker, and had often not too much for themselves), until Mrs. Micawber took me into her entire confidence. This she did one evening as follows:
‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I make no stranger of you, and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are coming to a crisis.’
It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked at Mrs. Micawber’s red eyes with the utmost sympathy.
‘With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese—which is not adapted to the wants of a young family’—said Mrs. Micawber, ‘there is really not a scrap of anything in the larder. I was accustomed to speak of the larder when I lived with papa and mama, and I use the word almost unconsciously. What I mean to express is, that there is nothing to eat in the house.’
‘Dear me!’ I said, in great concern.
I had two or three shillings of my week’s money in my pocket—from which I presume that it must have been on a Wednesday night when we held this conversation—and I hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion begged Mrs. Micawber to accept of them as a loan. But that lady, kissing me, and making me put them back in my pocket, replied that she couldn’t think of it.
‘No, my dear Master Copperfield,’ said she, ‘far be it from my thoughts! But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can render me another kind of service, if you will; and a service I will thankfully accept of.’
I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it.
‘I have parted with the plate myself,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Six tea, two salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times borrowed money on, in secret, with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me, with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. Mr. Micawber’s feelings would never allow him to dispose of them; and Clickett’—this was the girl from the workhouse—‘being of a vulgar mind, would take painful liberties if so much confidence was reposed in her. Master Copperfield, if I might ask you—’
I understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to any extent. I began to dispose of the more portable articles of property that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition almost every morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby’s.
Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, which he called the library; and those went first. I carried them, one after another, to a bookstall in the City Road—one part of which, near our house, was almost all bookstalls and bird shops then—and sold them for whatever they would bring. The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a little house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I went there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over-night (I am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him. Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to call again; but his wife had always got some—had taken his, I dare say, while he was drunk—and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went down together. At the pawnbroker’s shop, too, I began to be very well known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these meals which I well remember.
At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and he was arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King’s Bench Prison in the Borough. He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God of day had now gone down upon him—and I really thought his heart was broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a lively game at skittles, before noon.
On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him, and have dinner with him. I was to ask my way to such a place, and just short of that place I should see such another place, and just short of that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on until I saw a turnkey. All this I did; and when at last I did see a turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick Random was in a debtors’ prison, there was a man there with nothing on him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my beating heart.
Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.
We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals; until another debtor, who shared the room with Mr. Micawber, came in from the bakehouse with the loin of mutton which was our joint-stock repast. Then I was sent up to ‘Captain Hopkins’ in the room overhead, with Mr. Micawber’s compliments, and I was his young friend, and would Captain Hopkins lend me a knife and fork.
Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr. Micawber. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought it was better to borrow Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork, than Captain Hopkins’s comb. The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large whiskers, and an old, old brown great-coat with no other coat below it. I saw his bed rolled up in a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots he had, on a shelf; and I divined (God knows how) that though the two girls with the shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins’s children, the dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins. My timid station on his threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most; but I came down again with all this in my knowledge, as surely as the knife and fork were in my hand.
There was something gipsy-like and agreeable in the dinner, after all. I took back Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork early in the afternoon, and went home to comfort Mrs. Micawber with an account of my visit. She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot afterwards to console us while we talked it over.
I don’t know how the household furniture came to be sold for the family benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not. Sold it was, however, and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few chairs, and the kitchen table. With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the two parlours of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and day. I have no idea for how long, though it seems to me for a long time. At last Mrs. Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr. Micawber had now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were sent over to the King’s Bench, except mine, for which a little room was hired outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too used to one another, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighbourhood. Mine was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant prospect of a timberyard; and when I took possession of it, with the reflection that Mr. Micawber’s troubles had come to a crisis at last, I thought it quite a paradise.
All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby’s in the same common way, and with the same common companions, and with the same sense of unmerited degradation as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt, made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling about the streets at meal-times. I led the same secretly unhappy life; but I led it in the same lonely, self-reliant manner. The only changes I am conscious of are, firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and secondly, that I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber’s cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison than they had lived for a long while out of it. I used to breakfast with them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten the details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the morning, admitting of my going in; but I know that I was often up at six o’clock, and that my favourite lounging-place in the interval was old London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses, watching the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no more than that I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used to go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr. Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of her papa and mama. Whether Mr. Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable to say. I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby’s.
Mr. Micawber’s affairs, although past their crisis, were very much involved by reason of a certain ‘Deed’, of which I used to hear a great deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition with his creditors, though I was so far from being clear about it then, that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniacal parchments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained to a great extent in Germany. At last this document appeared to be got out of the way, somehow; at all events it ceased to be the rock-ahead it had been; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that ‘her family’ had decided that Mr. Micawber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors Act, which would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.
‘And then,’ said Mr. Micawber, who was present, ‘I have no doubt I shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if—in short, if anything turns up.’
By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call to mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to the House of Commons, praying for an alteration in the law of imprisonment for debt. I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life, and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously develop, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually forming all this while.
There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a gentleman, was a great authority. Mr. Micawber had stated his idea of this petition to the club, and the club had strongly approved of the same. Wherefore Mr. Micawber (who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any profit to him) set to work at the petition, invented it, engrossed it on an immense sheet of paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a time for all the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come up to his room and sign it.
When I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them all come in, one after another, though I knew the greater part of them already, and they me, that I got an hour’s leave of absence from Murdstone and Grinby’s, and established myself in a corner for that purpose. As many of the principal members of the club as could be got into the small room without filling it, supported Mr. Micawber in front of the petition, while my old friend Captain Hopkins (who had washed himself, to do honour to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close to it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The door was then thrown open, and the general population began to come in, in a long file: several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins said: ‘Have you read it?’—‘No.’---‘Would you like to hear it read?’ If he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it. The Captain would have read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people would have heard him, one by one. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to such phrases as ‘The people’s representatives in Parliament assembled,’ ‘Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honourable house,’ ‘His gracious Majesty’s unfortunate subjects,’ as if the words were something real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile, listening with a little of an author’s vanity, and contemplating (not severely) the spikes on the opposite wall.
As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which may, for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish feet, I wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd that used to come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Captain Hopkins’s voice! When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground, I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange experiences and sordid things!
CHAPTER 12. LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER, I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION
In due time, Mr. Micawber’s petition was ripe for hearing; and that gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great joy. His creditors were not implacable; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore him no malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human nature.
Mr. Micawber returned to the King’s Bench when his case was over, as some fees were to be settled, and some formalities observed, before he could be actually released. The club received him with transport, and held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour; while Mrs. Micawber and I had a lamb’s fry in private, surrounded by the sleeping family.
‘On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘in a little more flip,’ for we had been having some already, ‘the memory of my papa and mama.’
‘Are they dead, ma’am?’ I inquired, after drinking the toast in a wine-glass.
‘My mama departed this life,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘before Mr. Micawber’s difficulties commenced, or at least before they became pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr. Micawber several times, and then expired, regretted by a numerous circle.’
Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the twin who happened to be in hand.
As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:
‘May I ask, ma’am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that Mr. Micawber is out of his difficulties, and at liberty? Have you settled yet?’
‘My family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words with an air, though I never could discover who came under the denomination, ‘my family are of opinion that Mr. Micawber should quit London, and exert his talents in the country. Mr. Micawber is a man of great talent, Master Copperfield.’
I said I was sure of that.
‘Of great talent,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber. ‘My family are of opinion, that, with a little interest, something might be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House. The influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think it indispensable that he should be upon the spot.’
‘That he may be ready?’ I suggested.
‘Exactly,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘That he may be ready—in case of anything turning up.’
‘And do you go too, ma’am?’
The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with the flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she replied:
‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect that he would overcome them. The pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited from mama, have been disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of coral, which was the wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. No!’ cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than before, ‘I never will do it! It’s of no use asking me!’
I felt quite uncomfortable—as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had asked her to do anything of the sort!—and sat looking at her in alarm.
‘Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,’ she went on, looking at the wall; ‘but I never will desert Mr. Micawber!’
Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, I was so frightened that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr. Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table, and leading the chorus of
Gee up, Dobbin, Gee ho, Dobbin, Gee up, Dobbin, Gee up, and gee ho—o—o!
—with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been partaking.
‘Emma, my angel!’ cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; ‘what is the matter?’
‘I never will desert you, Micawber!’ she exclaimed.
‘My life!’ said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms. ‘I am perfectly aware of it.’
‘He is the parent of my children! He is the father of my twins! He is the husband of my affections,’ cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling; ‘and I ne—ver—will—desert Mr. Micawber!’
Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion (as to me, I was dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a passionate manner, imploring her to look up, and to be calm. But the more he asked Mrs. Micawber to look up, the more she fixed her eyes on nothing; and the more he asked her to compose herself, the more she wouldn’t. Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome, that he mingled his tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to do him the favour of taking a chair on the staircase, while he got her into bed. I would have taken my leave for the night, but he would not hear of my doing that until the strangers’ bell should ring. So I sat at the staircase window, until he came out with another chair and joined me.
‘How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?’ I said.
‘Very low,’ said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; ‘reaction. Ah, this has been a dreadful day! We stand alone now—everything is gone from us!’
Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed tears. I was greatly touched, and disappointed too, for I had expected that we should be quite gay on this happy and long-looked-for occasion. But Mr. and Mrs. Micawber were so used to their old difficulties, I think, that they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were released from them. All their elasticity was departed, and I never saw them half so wretched as on this night; insomuch that when the bell rang, and Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he was so profoundly miserable.
But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we had been, so unexpectedly to me, involved, I plainly discerned that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and their family were going away from London, and that a parting between us was near at hand. It was in my walk home that night, and in the sleepless hours which followed when I lay in bed, that the thought first occurred to me—though I don’t know how it came into my head—which afterwards shaped itself into a settled resolution.
I had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and had been so intimate with them in their distresses, and was so utterly friendless without them, that the prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for a lodging, and going once more among unknown people, was like being that moment turned adrift into my present life, with such a knowledge of it ready made as experience had given me. All the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept alive within my breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that the life was unendurable.
That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my own act, I knew quite well. I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never from Mr. Murdstone: but two or three parcels of made or mended clothes had come up for me, consigned to Mr. Quinion, and in each there was a scrap of paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D. C. was applying himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties—not the least hint of my ever being anything else than the common drudge into which I was fast settling down.
The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the first agitation of what it had conceived, that Mrs. Micawber had not spoken of their going away without warrant. They took a lodging in the house where I lived, for a week; at the expiration of which time they were to start for Plymouth. Mr. Micawber himself came down to the counting-house, in the afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion that he must relinquish me on the day of his departure, and to give me a high character, which I am sure I deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling in Tipp the carman, who was a married man, and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him—by our mutual consent, as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing, though my resolution was now taken.
I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the remaining term of our residence under the same roof; and I think we became fonder of one another as the time went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. I had bought a spotted wooden horse over-night as a parting gift to little Wilkins Micawber—that was the boy—and a doll for little Emma. I had also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded.
We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about our approaching separation.
‘I shall never, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘revert to the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of you. Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and obliging description. You have never been a lodger. You have been a friend.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘Copperfield,’ for so he had been accustomed to call me, of late, ‘has a heart to feel for the distresses of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to plan, and a hand to—in short, a general ability to dispose of such available property as could be made away with.’
I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very sorry we were going to lose one another.
‘My dear young friend,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and—and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that—in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the’—here Mr. Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned—‘the miserable wretch you behold.’
‘My dear Micawber!’ urged his wife.
‘I say,’ returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, ‘the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!’
‘My poor papa’s maxim,’ Mrs. Micawber observed.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your papa was very well in his way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall—in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.’ Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: ‘Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.’ After which, he was grave for a minute or so.
‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!’
To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe.
I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at the coach office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back.
‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘God bless you! I never can forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.’
‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘farewell! Every happiness and prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should feel that I had not occupied another man’s place in existence altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your prospects.’
I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was. I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute. The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to St. Luke’s workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and Grinby’s.
But with no intention of passing many more weary days there. No. I had resolved to run away.---To go, by some means or other, down into the country, to the only relation I had in the world, and tell my story to my aunt, Miss Betsey. I have already observed that I don’t know how this desperate idea came into my brain. But, once there, it remained there; and hardened into a purpose than which I have never entertained a more determined purpose in my life. I am far from sure that I believed there was anything hopeful in it, but my mind was thoroughly made up that it must be carried into execution.
Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when the thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone over that old story of my poor mother’s about my birth, which it had been one of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell, and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether my mother’s fancy, and might have had no foundation whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very possible that it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually engendered my determination.
As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long letter to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered; pretending that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place I named at random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the same. In the course of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum until I could repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell her afterwards what I had wanted it for.
Peggotty’s answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate devotion. She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have had a world of trouble to get it out of Mr. Barkis’s box), and told me that Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. One of our men, however, informing me on my asking him about these places, that they were all close together, I deemed this enough for my object, and resolved to set out at the end of that week.
Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby’s, I considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and, as I had been paid a week’s wages in advance when I first came there, not to present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to receive my stipend. For this express reason, I had borrowed the half-guinea, that I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses. Accordingly, when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him, when it came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had gone to move my box to Tipp’s; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy Potatoes, ran away.
My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed on the casks: ‘Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach Office, Dover.’ This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I should have got it out of the house; and as I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the booking-office.
There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who, addressing me as ‘Sixpenn’orth of bad ha’pence,’ hoped ‘I should know him agin to swear to’—in allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not like a job.
‘Wot job?’ said the long-legged young man.
‘To move a box,’ I answered.
‘Wot box?’ said the long-legged young man.
I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.
‘Done with you for a tanner!’ said the long-legged young man, and directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as much as I could do to keep pace with the donkey.
There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart. Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest any of my landlord’s family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King’s Bench prison. The words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the place appointed.
Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my mouth into his hand.
‘Wot!’ said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a frightful grin. ‘This is a pollis case, is it? You’re a-going to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!’
‘You give me my money back, if you please,’ said I, very much frightened; ‘and leave me alone.’
‘Come to the pollis!’ said the young man. ‘You shall prove it yourn to the pollis.’
‘Give me my box and money, will you,’ I cried, bursting into tears.
The young man still replied: ‘Come to the pollis!’ and was dragging me against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.
I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.
CHAPTER 13. THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION
For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a doorstep, quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made, and with hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea.
It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat resting. But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling sensation in my throat, I rose up and went on. In the midst of my distress, I had no notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there had been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.
But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday night!) troubled me none the less because I went on. I began to picture to myself, as a scrap of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in a day or two, under some hedge; and I trudged on miserably, though as fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop, where it was written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s wardrobes were bought, and that the best price was given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The master of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.
My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while. I went up the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my arm, and came back to the shop door.
‘If you please, sir,’ I said, ‘I am to sell this for a fair price.’
Mr. Dolloby—Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least—took the waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head, against the door-post, went into the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two candles with his fingers, spread the waistcoat on the counter, and looked at it there, held it up against the light, and looked at it there, and ultimately said:
‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?’
‘Oh! you know best, sir,’ I returned modestly.
‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. ‘Put a price on this here little weskit.’
‘Would eighteenpence be?’—I hinted, after some hesitation.
Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. ‘I should rob my family,’ he said, ‘if I was to offer ninepence for it.’
This was a disagreeable way of putting the business; because it imposed upon me, a perfect stranger, the unpleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby to rob his family on my account. My circumstances being so very pressing, however, I said I would take ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr. Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished him good night, and walked out of the shop the richer by that sum, and the poorer by a waistcoat. But when I buttoned my jacket, that was not much. Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and that I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that trim. But my mind did not run so much on this as might be supposed. Beyond a general impression of the distance before me, and of the young man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I had no very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with my ninepence in my pocket.
A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I was going to carry into execution. This was, to lie behind the wall at the back of my old school, in a corner where there used to be a haystack. I imagined it would be a kind of company to have the boys, and the bedroom where I used to tell the stories, so near me: although the boys would know nothing of my being there, and the bedroom would yield me no shelter.
I had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well jaded when I came climbing out, at last, upon the level of Blackheath. It cost me some trouble to find out Salem House; but I found it, and I found a haystack in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked round the wall, and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent within. Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down, without a roof above my head!
Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night—and I dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room; and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon my lips, looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above me. When I remembered where I was at that untimely hour, a feeling stole upon me that made me get up, afraid of I don’t know what, and walk about. But the fainter glimmering of the stars, and the pale light in the sky where the day was coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very heavy, I lay down again and slept—though with a knowledge in my sleep that it was cold—until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me. If I could have hoped that Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came out alone; but I knew he must have left long since. Traddles still remained, perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not sufficient confidence in his discretion or good luck, however strong my reliance was on his good nature, to wish to trust him with my situation. So I crept away from the wall as Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the long dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road when I was one of them, and when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me the wayfarer I was now, upon it.
What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at Yarmouth! In due time I heard the church-bells ringing, as I plodded on; and I met people who were going to church; and I passed a church or two where the congregation were inside, and the sound of singing came out into the sunshine, while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree, with his hand to his forehead, glowering at me going by. But the peace and rest of the old Sunday morning were on everything, except me. That was the difference. I felt quite wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair. But for the quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her youth and beauty, weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her, I hardly think I should have had the courage to go on until next day. But it always went before me, and I followed.
I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight road, though not very easily, for I was new to that kind of toil. I see myself, as evening closes in, coming over the bridge at Rochester, footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought for supper. One or two little houses, with the notice, ‘Lodgings for Travellers’, hanging out, had tempted me; but I was afraid of spending the few pence I had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,—which, in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah’s arks,—crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry’s footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until morning.
Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed by the beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in on every side when I went down towards the long narrow street. Feeling that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve any strength for getting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket off, that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm, began a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.
It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on the look-out for customers at their shop doors. But as most of them had, hanging up among their stock, an officer’s coat or two, epaulettes and all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.
This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops, and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference to the regular dealers. At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a dirty lane, ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles, against the palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to have overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns, and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the world.
Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it, and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum. His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork, was in the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous whine. ‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!’
I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in his throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man, still holding me by the hair, repeated:
‘Oh, what do you want? Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo!’—which he screwed out of himself, with an energy that made his eyes start in his head.
‘I wanted to know,’ I said, trembling, ‘if you would buy a jacket.’
‘Oh, let’s see the jacket!’ cried the old man. ‘Oh, my heart on fire, show the jacket to us! Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the jacket out!’
With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a great bird, out of my hair; and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all ornamental to his inflamed eyes.
‘Oh, how much for the jacket?’ cried the old man, after examining it. ‘Oh—goroo!—how much for the jacket?’
‘Half-a-crown,’ I answered, recovering myself.
‘Oh, my lungs and liver,’ cried the old man, ‘no! Oh, my eyes, no! Oh, my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo!’
Every time he uttered this ejaculation, his eyes seemed to be in danger of starting out; and every sentence he spoke, he delivered in a sort of tune, always exactly the same, and more like a gust of wind, which begins low, mounts up high, and falls again, than any other comparison I can find for it.
‘Well,’ said I, glad to have closed the bargain, ‘I’ll take eighteenpence.’
‘Oh, my liver!’ cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. ‘Get out of the shop! Oh, my lungs, get out of the shop! Oh, my eyes and limbs—goroo!—don’t ask for money; make it an exchange.’ I never was so frightened in my life, before or since; but I told him humbly that I wanted money, and that nothing else was of any use to me, but that I would wait for it, as he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry him. So I went outside, and sat down in the shade in a corner. And I sat there so many hours, that the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight became shade again, and still I sat there waiting for the money.
There never was such another drunken madman in that line of business, I hope. That he was well known in the neighbourhood, and enjoyed the reputation of having sold himself to the devil, I soon understood from the visits he received from the boys, who continually came skirmishing about the shop, shouting that legend, and calling to him to bring out his gold. ‘You ain’t poor, you know, Charley, as you pretend. Bring out your gold. Bring out some of the gold you sold yourself to the devil for. Come! It’s in the lining of the mattress, Charley. Rip it open and let’s have some!’ This, and many offers to lend him a knife for the purpose, exasperated him to such a degree, that the whole day was a succession of rushes on his part, and flights on the part of the boys. Sometimes in his rage he would take me for one of them, and come at me, mouthing as if he were going to tear me in pieces; then, remembering me, just in time, would dive into the shop, and lie upon his bed, as I thought from the sound of his voice, yelling in a frantic way, to his own windy tune, the ‘Death of Nelson’; with an Oh! before every line, and innumerable Goroos interspersed. As if this were not bad enough for me, the boys, connecting me with the establishment, on account of the patience and perseverance with which I sat outside, half-dressed, pelted me, and used me very ill all day.
He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an exchange; at one time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. But I resisted all these overtures, and sat there in desperation; each time asking him, with tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket. At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time; and was full two hours getting by easy stages to a shilling.
‘Oh, my eyes and limbs!’ he then cried, peeping hideously out of the shop, after a long pause, ‘will you go for twopence more?’
‘I can’t,’ I said; ‘I shall be starved.’
‘Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?’
‘I would go for nothing, if I could,’ I said, ‘but I want the money badly.’
‘Oh, go-roo!’ (it is really impossible to express how he twisted this ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round the door-post at me, showing nothing but his crafty old head); ‘will you go for fourpence?’
I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and taking the money out of his claw, not without trembling, went away more hungry and thirsty than I had ever been, a little before sunset. But at an expense of threepence I soon refreshed myself completely; and, being in better spirits then, limped seven miles upon my road.
My bed at night was under another haystack, where I rested comfortably, after having washed my blistered feet in a stream, and dressed them as well as I was able, with some cool leaves. When I took the road again next morning, I found that it lay through a succession of hop-grounds and orchards. It was sufficiently late in the year for the orchards to be ruddy with ripe apples; and in a few places the hop-pickers were already at work. I thought it all extremely beautiful, and made up my mind to sleep among the hops that night: imagining some cheerful companionship in the long perspectives of poles, with the graceful leaves twining round them.
The trampers were worse than ever that day, and inspired me with a dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind. Some of them were most ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by; and stopped, perhaps, and called after me to come back and speak to them, and when I took to my heels, stoned me. I recollect one young fellow—a tinker, I suppose, from his wallet and brazier—who had a woman with him, and who faced about and stared at me thus; and then roared to me in such a tremendous voice to come back, that I halted and looked round.
‘Come here, when you’re called,’ said the tinker, ‘or I’ll rip your young body open.’
I thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, trying to propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that the woman had a black eye.
‘Where are you going?’ said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my shirt with his blackened hand.
‘I am going to Dover,’ I said.
‘Where do you come from?’ asked the tinker, giving his hand another turn in my shirt, to hold me more securely.
‘I come from London,’ I said.
‘What lay are you upon?’ asked the tinker. ‘Are you a prig?’
‘N-no,’ I said.
‘Ain’t you, by G—? If you make a brag of your honesty to me,’ said the tinker, ‘I’ll knock your brains out.’
With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then looked at me from head to foot.
‘Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?’ said the tinker. ‘If you have, out with it, afore I take it away!’
I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman’s look, and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form ‘No!’ with her lips.
‘I am very poor,’ I said, attempting to smile, ‘and have got no money.’
‘Why, what do you mean?’ said the tinker, looking so sternly at me, that I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.
‘Sir!’ I stammered.
‘What do you mean,’ said the tinker, ‘by wearing my brother’s silk handkerchief! Give it over here!’ And he had mine off my neck in a moment, and tossed it to the woman.
The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a joke, and tossed it back to me, nodded once, as slightly as before, and made the word ‘Go!’ with her lips. Before I could obey, however, the tinker seized the handkerchief out of my hand with a roughness that threw me away like a feather, and putting it loosely round his own neck, turned upon the woman with an oath, and knocked her down. I never shall forget seeing her fall backward on the hard road, and lie there with her bonnet tumbled off, and her hair all whitened in the dust; nor, when I looked back from a distance, seeing her sitting on the pathway, which was a bank by the roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner of her shawl, while he went on ahead.
This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any of these people coming, I turned back until I could find a hiding-place, where I remained until they had gone out of sight; which happened so often, that I was very seriously delayed. But under this difficulty, as under all the other difficulties of my journey, I seemed to be sustained and led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth, before I came into the world. It always kept me company. It was there, among the hops, when I lay down to sleep; it was with me on my waking in the morning; it went before me all day. I have associated it, ever since, with the sunny street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light; and with the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately, grey Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. When I came, at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary aspect of the scene with hope; and not until I reached that first great aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the town itself, on the sixth day of my flight, did it desert me. But then, strange to say, when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream, and to leave me helpless and dispirited.
I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received various answers. One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide; a third, that she was locked up in Maidstone jail for child-stealing; a fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and make direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next, were equally jocose and equally disrespectful; and the shopkeepers, not liking my appearance, generally replied, without hearing what I had to say, that they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and worn out; and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in London.
The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place, deliberating upon wandering towards those other places which had been mentioned, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a horsecloth. Something good-natured in the man’s face, as I handed it up, encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived; though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my lips.
‘Trotwood,’ said he. ‘Let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘rather.’
‘Pretty stiff in the back?’ said he, making himself upright.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should think it very likely.’
‘Carries a bag?’ said he—‘bag with a good deal of room in it—is gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?’
My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this description.
‘Why then, I tell you what,’ said he. ‘If you go up there,’ pointing with his whip towards the heights, ‘and keep right on till you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you’ll hear of her. My opinion is she won’t stand anything, so here’s a penny for you.’
I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. Dispatching this refreshment by the way, I went in the direction my friend had indicated, and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses he had mentioned. At length I saw some before me; and approaching them, went into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop, at home), and inquired if they could have the goodness to tell me where Miss Trotwood lived. I addressed myself to a man behind the counter, who was weighing some rice for a young woman; but the latter, taking the inquiry to herself, turned round quickly.
‘My mistress?’ she said. ‘What do you want with her, boy?’
‘I want,’ I replied, ‘to speak to her, if you please.’
‘To beg of her, you mean,’ retorted the damsel.
‘No,’ I said, ‘indeed.’ But suddenly remembering that in truth I came for no other purpose, I held my peace in confusion, and felt my face burn.
My aunt’s handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said, put her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop; telling me that I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I needed no second permission; though I was by this time in such a state of consternation and agitation, that my legs shook under me. I followed the young woman, and we soon came to a very neat little cottage with cheerful bow-windows: in front of it, a small square gravelled court or garden full of flowers, carefully tended, and smelling deliciously.
‘This is Miss Trotwood’s,’ said the young woman. ‘Now you know; and that’s all I have got to say.’ With which words she hurried into the house, as if to shake off the responsibility of my appearance; and left me standing at the garden-gate, looking disconsolately over the top of it towards the parlour window, where a muslin curtain partly undrawn in the middle, a large round green screen or fan fastened on to the windowsill, a small table, and a great chair, suggested to me that my aunt might be at that moment seated in awful state.
My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent, that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and the Kentish soil on which I had slept—and torn besides—might have frightened the birds from my aunt’s garden, as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable aunt.
The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer, after a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head, who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away.
I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came out of the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap, and a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a toll-man’s apron, and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house exactly as my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden at Blunderstone Rookery.
‘Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop in the air with her knife. ‘Go along! No boys here!’
I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner of her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there. Then, without a scrap of courage, but with a great deal of desperation, I went softly in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.
‘If you please, ma’am,’ I began.
She started and looked up.
‘If you please, aunt.’
‘EH?’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never heard approached.
‘If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.
‘I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk—where you came, on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’ Here my self-support gave way all at once; and with a movement of my hands, intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had suffered something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose had been pent up within me all the week.
My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry; when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me into the parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had administered these restoratives, as I was still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa, with a shawl under my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I should sully the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green fan or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her face, ejaculated at intervals, ‘Mercy on us!’ letting those exclamations off like minute guns.
After a time she rang the bell. ‘Janet,’ said my aunt, when her servant came in. ‘Go upstairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish to speak to him.’
Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa (I was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt), but went on her errand. My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked up and down the room, until the gentleman who had squinted at me from the upper window came in laughing.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘don’t be a fool, because nobody can be more discreet than you can, when you choose. We all know that. So don’t be a fool, whatever you are.’
The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought, as if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘you have heard me mention David Copperfield? Now don’t pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better.’
‘David Copperfield?’ said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to remember much about it. ‘David Copperfield? Oh yes, to be sure. David, certainly.’
‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘this is his boy—his son. He would be as like his father as it’s possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too.’
‘His son?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son? Indeed!’
‘Yes,’ pursued my aunt, ‘and he has done a pretty piece of business. He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run away.’ My aunt shook her head firmly, confident in the character and behaviour of the girl who never was born.
‘Oh! you think she wouldn’t have run away?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Bless and save the man,’ exclaimed my aunt, sharply, ‘how he talks! Don’t I know she wouldn’t? She would have lived with her god-mother, and we should have been devoted to one another. Where, in the name of wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?’
‘Nowhere,’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Well then,’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, ‘how can you pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?’
‘What shall you do with him?’ said Mr. Dick, feebly, scratching his head. ‘Oh! do with him?’
‘Yes,’ said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up. ‘Come! I want some very sound advice.’
‘Why, if I was you,’ said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly at me, ‘I should—’ The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a sudden idea, and he added, briskly, ‘I should wash him!’
‘Janet,’ said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I did not then understand, ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. Heat the bath!’
Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it was in progress, and completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the room.
My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else. She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands.
Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously bowed—not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle’s boys’ heads after a beating—and his grey eyes prominent and large, with a strange kind of watery brightness in them that made me, in combination with his vacant manner, his submission to my aunt, and his childish delight when she praised him, suspect him of being a little mad; though, if he were mad, how he came to be there puzzled me extremely. He was dressed like any other ordinary gentleman, in a loose grey morning coat and waistcoat, and white trousers; and had his watch in his fob, and his money in his pockets: which he rattled as if he were very proud of it.
Janet was a pretty blooming girl, of about nineteen or twenty, and a perfect picture of neatness. Though I made no further observation of her at the moment, I may mention here what I did not discover until afterwards, namely, that she was one of a series of protegees whom my aunt had taken into her service expressly to educate in a renouncement of mankind, and who had generally completed their abjuration by marrying the baker.
The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt. As I laid down my pen, a moment since, to think of it, the air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers; and I saw the old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt’s inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old china, the punchbowl full of dried rose-leaves, the tall press guarding all sorts of bottles and pots, and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything.
Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my aunt, to my great alarm, became in one moment rigid with indignation, and had hardly voice to cry out, ‘Janet! Donkeys!’
Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the house were in flames, darted out on a little piece of green in front, and warned off two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had presumed to set hoof upon it; while my aunt, rushing out of the house, seized the bridle of a third animal laden with a bestriding child, turned him, led him forth from those sacred precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky urchin in attendance who had dared to profane that hallowed ground.
To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were of the more ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ and go out to the assault.
The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible of acute pains in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and was now so tired and low that I could hardly keep myself awake for five minutes together. When I had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a pair of trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, and tied me up in two or three great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, I don’t know, but I felt a very hot one. Feeling also very faint and drowsy, I soon lay down on the sofa again and fell asleep.
It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my head more comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words, ‘Pretty fellow,’ or ‘Poor fellow,’ seemed to be in my ears, too; but certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to lead me to believe that they had been uttered by my aunt, who sat in the bow-window gazing at the sea from behind the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of swivel, and turned any way.
We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I sitting at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with considerable difficulty. But as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no complaint of being inconvenienced. All this time I was deeply anxious to know what she was going to do with me; but she took her dinner in profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me sitting opposite, and said, ‘Mercy upon us!’ which did not by any means relieve my anxiety.
The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us, and looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story, which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought would have gone to sleep but for that, and who, whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was checked by a frown from my aunt.
‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go and be married again,’ said my aunt, when I had finished, ‘I can’t conceive.’
‘Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’ Mr. Dick suggested.
‘Fell in love!’ repeated my aunt. ‘What do you mean? What business had she to do it?’
‘Perhaps,’ Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, ‘she did it for pleasure.’
‘Pleasure, indeed!’ replied my aunt. ‘A mighty pleasure for the poor Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain to ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself, I should like to know! She had had one husband. She had seen David Copperfield out of the world, who was always running after wax dolls from his cradle. She had got a baby—oh, there were a pair of babies when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night!—and what more did she want?’
Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no getting over this.
‘She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,’ said my aunt. ‘Where was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood? Not forthcoming. Don’t tell me!’
Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.
‘That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,’ said my aunt, ‘Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do, was to say to me, like a robin redbreast—as he is—“It’s a boy.” A boy! Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of ‘em!’
The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly; and me, too, if I am to tell the truth.
‘And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently in the light of this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, ‘she marries a second time—goes and marries a Murderer—or a man with a name like it—and stands in THIS child’s light! And the natural consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can be.’
Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.
‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,’ said my aunt, ‘that Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married next, as the child relates. I only hope,’ said my aunt, shaking her head, ‘that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the newspapers, and will beat her well with one.’
I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both, choking me, I broke down as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on her—I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in my hands upon the table.
‘Well, well!’ said my aunt, ‘the child is right to stand by those who have stood by him—Janet! Donkeys!’
I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkeys, we should have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her hand on my shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her and beseech her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all softer ideas for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her country, and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.
After tea, we sat at the window—on the look-out, as I imagined, from my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for more invaders—until dusk, when Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down the blinds.
‘Now, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger up as before, ‘I am going to ask you another question. Look at this child.’
‘David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.
‘Exactly so,’ returned my aunt. ‘What would you do with him, now?’
‘Do with David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Ay,’ replied my aunt, ‘with David’s son.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Yes. Do with—I should put him to bed.’
‘Janet!’ cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had remarked before. ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we’ll take him up to it.’
Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly, but in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there; and janet’s replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took precautions, on that account, to have me in safe keeping.
The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to look upon me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed—and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets!—inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.
CHAPTER 14. MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME
On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly over the breakfast table, with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight. I felt sure that I had been the subject of her reflections, and was more than ever anxious to know her intentions towards me. Yet I dared not express my anxiety, lest it should give her offence.
My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue, were attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast. I never could look at her for a few moments together but I found her looking at me—in an odd thoughtful manner, as if I were an immense way off, instead of being on the other side of the small round table. When she had finished her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair, knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure, with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by embarrassment. Not having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted to hide my confusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing under my aunt’s close scrutiny.
‘Hallo!’ said my aunt, after a long time.
I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.
‘I have written to him,’ said my aunt.
‘To—?’
‘To your father-in-law,’ said my aunt. ‘I have sent him a letter that I’ll trouble him to attend to, or he and I will fall out, I can tell him!’
‘Does he know where I am, aunt?’ I inquired, alarmed.
‘I have told him,’ said my aunt, with a nod.
‘Shall I—be—given up to him?’ I faltered.
‘I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We shall see.’
‘Oh! I can’t think what I shall do,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I have to go back to Mr. Murdstone!’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said my aunt, shaking her head. ‘I can’t say, I am sure. We shall see.’
My spirits sank under these words, and I became very downcast and heavy of heart. My aunt, without appearing to take much heed of me, put on a coarse apron with a bib, which she took out of the press; washed up the teacups with her own hands; and, when everything was washed and set in the tray again, and the cloth folded and put on the top of the whole, rang for Janet to remove it. She next swept up the crumbs with a little broom (putting on a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear to be one microscopic speck left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged the room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair’s breadth already. When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took off the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the particular corner of the press from which they had been taken, brought out her work-box to her own table in the open window, and sat down, with the green fan between her and the light, to work.
‘I wish you’d go upstairs,’ said my aunt, as she threaded her needle, ‘and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I’ll be glad to know how he gets on with his Memorial.’
I rose with all alacrity, to acquit myself of this commission.
‘I suppose,’ said my aunt, eyeing me as narrowly as she had eyed the needle in threading it, ‘you think Mr. Dick a short name, eh?’
‘I thought it was rather a short name, yesterday,’ I confessed.
‘You are not to suppose that he hasn’t got a longer name, if he chose to use it,’ said my aunt, with a loftier air. ‘Babley—Mr. Richard Babley—that’s the gentleman’s true name.’
I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give him the full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say:
‘But don’t you call him by it, whatever you do. He can’t bear his name. That’s a peculiarity of his. Though I don’t know that it’s much of a peculiarity, either; for he has been ill-used enough, by some that bear it, to have a mortal antipathy for it, Heaven knows. Mr. Dick is his name here, and everywhere else, now—if he ever went anywhere else, which he don’t. So take care, child, you don’t call him anything BUT Mr. Dick.’
I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message; thinking, as I went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at his Memorial long, at the same rate as I had seen him working at it, through the open door, when I came down, he was probably getting on very well indeed. I found him still driving at it with a long pen, and his head almost laid upon the paper. He was so intent upon it, that I had ample leisure to observe the large paper kite in a corner, the confusion of bundles of manuscript, the number of pens, and, above all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed to have in, in half-gallon jars by the dozen), before he observed my being present.
‘Ha! Phoebus!’ said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. ‘How does the world go? I’ll tell you what,’ he added, in a lower tone, ‘I shouldn’t wish it to be mentioned, but it’s a—’ here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close to my ear—‘it’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!’ said Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a round box on the table, and laughing heartily.
Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my message.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Dick, in answer, ‘my compliments to her, and I—I believe I have made a start. I think I have made a start,’ said Mr. Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and casting anything but a confident look at his manuscript. ‘You have been to school?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I answered; ‘for a short time.’
‘Do you recollect the date,’ said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, ‘when King Charles the First had his head cut off?’ I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine.
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me. ‘So the books say; but I don’t see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?’
I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information on this point.
‘It’s very strange,’ said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his papers, and with his hand among his hair again, ‘that I never can get that quite right. I never can make that perfectly clear. But no matter, no matter!’ he said cheerfully, and rousing himself, ‘there’s time enough! My compliments to Miss Trotwood, I am getting on very well indeed.’
I was going away, when he directed my attention to the kite.
‘What do you think of that for a kite?’ he said.
I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been as much as seven feet high.
‘I made it. We’ll go and fly it, you and I,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Do you see this?’
He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First’s head again, in one or two places.
‘There’s plenty of string,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner of diffusing ‘em. I don’t know where they may come down. It’s according to circumstances, and the wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of that.’
His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something so reverend in it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure but that he was having a good-humoured jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and we parted the best friends possible.
‘Well, child,’ said my aunt, when I went downstairs. ‘And what of Mr. Dick, this morning?’
I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was getting on very well indeed.
‘What do you think of him?’ said my aunt.
I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question, by replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman; but my aunt was not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and said, folding her hands upon it:
‘Come! Your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me what she thought of anyone, directly. Be as like your sister as you can, and speak out!’
‘Is he—is Mr. Dick—I ask because I don’t know, aunt—is he at all out of his mind, then?’ I stammered; for I felt I was on dangerous ground.
‘Not a morsel,’ said my aunt.
‘Oh, indeed!’ I observed faintly.
‘If there is anything in the world,’ said my aunt, with great decision and force of manner, ‘that Mr. Dick is not, it’s that.’
I had nothing better to offer, than another timid, ‘Oh, indeed!’
‘He has been CALLED mad,’ said my aunt. ‘I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards—in fact, ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.’
‘So long as that?’ I said.
‘And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,’ pursued my aunt. ‘Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine—it doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter into that. If it hadn’t been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. That’s all.’
I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.
‘A proud fool!’ said my aunt. ‘Because his brother was a little eccentric—though he is not half so eccentric as a good many people—he didn’t like to have him visible about his house, and sent him away to some private asylum-place: though he had been left to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.’
Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite convinced also.
‘So I stepped in,’ said my aunt, ‘and made him an offer. I said, “Your brother’s sane—a great deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it is to be hoped. Let him have his little income, and come and live with me. I am not afraid of him, I am not proud, I am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill-treat him as some people (besides the asylum-folks) have done.” After a good deal of squabbling,’ said my aunt, ‘I got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the most friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!—But nobody knows what that man’s mind is, except myself.’
My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her head, as if she smoothed defiance of the whole world out of the one, and shook it out of the other.
‘He had a favourite sister,’ said my aunt, ‘a good creature, and very kind to him. But she did what they all do—took a husband. And HE did what they all do—made her wretched. It had such an effect upon the mind of Mr. Dick (that’s not madness, I hope!) that, combined with his fear of his brother, and his sense of his unkindness, it threw him into a fever. That was before he came to me, but the recollection of it is oppressive to him even now. Did he say anything to you about King Charles the First, child?’
‘Yes, aunt.’
‘Ah!’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. ‘That’s his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that’s the figure, or the simile, or whatever it’s called, which he chooses to use. And why shouldn’t he, if he thinks proper!’
I said: ‘Certainly, aunt.’
‘It’s not a business-like way of speaking,’ said my aunt, ‘nor a worldly way. I am aware of that; and that’s the reason why I insist upon it, that there shan’t be a word about it in his Memorial.’
‘Is it a Memorial about his own history that he is writing, aunt?’
‘Yes, child,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose again. ‘He is memorializing the Lord Chancellor, or the Lord Somebody or other—one of those people, at all events, who are paid to be memorialized—about his affairs. I suppose it will go in, one of these days. He hasn’t been able to draw it up yet, without introducing that mode of expressing himself; but it don’t signify; it keeps him employed.’
In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick had been for upwards of ten years endeavouring to keep King Charles the First out of the Memorial; but he had been constantly getting into it, and was there now.
‘I say again,’ said my aunt, ‘nobody knows what that man’s mind is except myself; and he’s the most amenable and friendly creature in existence. If he likes to fly a kite sometimes, what of that! Franklin used to fly a kite. He was a Quaker, or something of that sort, if I am not mistaken. And a Quaker flying a kite is a much more ridiculous object than anybody else.’
If I could have supposed that my aunt had recounted these particulars for my especial behoof, and as a piece of confidence in me, I should have felt very much distinguished, and should have augured favourably from such a mark of her good opinion. But I could hardly help observing that she had launched into them, chiefly because the question was raised in her own mind, and with very little reference to me, though she had addressed herself to me in the absence of anybody else.
At the same time, I must say that the generosity of her championship of poor harmless Mr. Dick, not only inspired my young breast with some selfish hope for myself, but warmed it unselfishly towards her. I believe that I began to know that there was something about my aunt, notwithstanding her many eccentricities and odd humours, to be honoured and trusted in. Though she was just as sharp that day as on the day before, and was in and out about the donkeys just as often, and was thrown into a tremendous state of indignation, when a young man, going by, ogled Janet at a window (which was one of the gravest misdemeanours that could be committed against my aunt’s dignity), she seemed to me to command more of my respect, if not less of my fear.
The anxiety I underwent, in the interval which necessarily elapsed before a reply could be received to her letter to Mr. Murdstone, was extreme; but I made an endeavour to suppress it, and to be as agreeable as I could in a quiet way, both to my aunt and Mr. Dick. The latter and I would have gone out to fly the great kite; but that I had still no other clothes than the anything but ornamental garments with which I had been decorated on the first day, and which confined me to the house, except for an hour after dark, when my aunt, for my health’s sake, paraded me up and down on the cliff outside, before going to bed. At length the reply from Mr. Murdstone came, and my aunt informed me, to my infinite terror, that he was coming to speak to her herself on the next day. On the next day, still bundled up in my curious habiliments, I sat counting the time, flushed and heated by the conflict of sinking hopes and rising fears within me; and waiting to be startled by the sight of the gloomy face, whose non-arrival startled me every minute.
My aunt was a little more imperious and stern than usual, but I observed no other token of her preparing herself to receive the visitor so much dreaded by me. She sat at work in the window, and I sat by, with my thoughts running astray on all possible and impossible results of Mr. Murdstone’s visit, until pretty late in the afternoon. Our dinner had been indefinitely postponed; but it was growing so late, that my aunt had ordered it to be got ready, when she gave a sudden alarm of donkeys, and to my consternation and amazement, I beheld Miss Murdstone, on a side-saddle, ride deliberately over the sacred piece of green, and stop in front of the house, looking about her.
‘Go along with you!’ cried my aunt, shaking her head and her fist at the window. ‘You have no business there. How dare you trespass? Go along! Oh! you bold-faced thing!’
My aunt was so exasperated by the coolness with which Miss Murdstone looked about her, that I really believe she was motionless, and unable for the moment to dart out according to custom. I seized the opportunity to inform her who it was; and that the gentleman now coming near the offender (for the way up was very steep, and he had dropped behind), was Mr. Murdstone himself.
‘I don’t care who it is!’ cried my aunt, still shaking her head and gesticulating anything but welcome from the bow-window. ‘I won’t be trespassed upon. I won’t allow it. Go away! Janet, turn him round. Lead him off!’ and I saw, from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried battle-piece, in which the donkey stood resisting everybody, with all his four legs planted different ways, while Janet tried to pull him round by the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone struck at Janet with a parasol, and several boys, who had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt, suddenly descrying among them the young malefactor who was the donkey’s guardian, and who was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding the ground, into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and executed on the spot, held him at bay there. This part of the business, however, did not last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of feints and dodges, of which my aunt had no conception, soon went whooping away, leaving some deep impressions of his nailed boots in the flower-beds, and taking his donkey in triumph with him.
Miss Murdstone, during the latter portion of the contest, had dismounted, and was now waiting with her brother at the bottom of the steps, until my aunt should be at leisure to receive them. My aunt, a little ruffled by the combat, marched past them into the house, with great dignity, and took no notice of their presence, until they were announced by Janet.
‘Shall I go away, aunt?’ I asked, trembling.
‘No, sir,’ said my aunt. ‘Certainly not!’ With which she pushed me into a corner near her, and fenced Me in with a chair, as if it were a prison or a bar of justice. This position I continued to occupy during the whole interview, and from it I now saw Mr. and Miss Murdstone enter the room.
‘Oh!’ said my aunt, ‘I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting. But I don’t allow anybody to ride over that turf. I make no exceptions. I don’t allow anybody to do it.’
‘Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,’ said Miss Murdstone.
‘Is it!’ said my aunt.
Mr. Murdstone seemed afraid of a renewal of hostilities, and interposing began:
‘Miss Trotwood!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ observed my aunt with a keen look. ‘You are the Mr. Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew, David Copperfield, of Blunderstone Rookery!—Though why Rookery, I don’t know!’
‘I am,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘You’ll excuse my saying, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘that I think it would have been a much better and happier thing if you had left that poor child alone.’
‘I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has remarked,’ observed Miss Murdstone, bridling, ‘that I consider our lamented Clara to have been, in all essential respects, a mere child.’
‘It is a comfort to you and me, ma’am,’ said my aunt, ‘who are getting on in life, and are not likely to be made unhappy by our personal attractions, that nobody can say the same of us.’
‘No doubt!’ returned Miss Murdstone, though, I thought, not with a very ready or gracious assent. ‘And it certainly might have been, as you say, a better and happier thing for my brother if he had never entered into such a marriage. I have always been of that opinion.’
‘I have no doubt you have,’ said my aunt. ‘Janet,’ ringing the bell, ‘my compliments to Mr. Dick, and beg him to come down.’
Until he came, my aunt sat perfectly upright and stiff, frowning at the wall. When he came, my aunt performed the ceremony of introduction.
‘Mr. Dick. An old and intimate friend. On whose judgement,’ said my aunt, with emphasis, as an admonition to Mr. Dick, who was biting his forefinger and looking rather foolish, ‘I rely.’
Mr. Dick took his finger out of his mouth, on this hint, and stood among the group, with a grave and attentive expression of face.
My aunt inclined her head to Mr. Murdstone, who went on:
‘Miss Trotwood: on the receipt of your letter, I considered it an act of greater justice to myself, and perhaps of more respect to you—’
‘Thank you,’ said my aunt, still eyeing him keenly. ‘You needn’t mind me.’
‘To answer it in person, however inconvenient the journey,’ pursued Mr. Murdstone, ‘rather than by letter. This unhappy boy who has run away from his friends and his occupation—’
‘And whose appearance,’ interposed his sister, directing general attention to me in my indefinable costume, ‘is perfectly scandalous and disgraceful.’
‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘have the goodness not to interrupt me. This unhappy boy, Miss Trotwood, has been the occasion of much domestic trouble and uneasiness; both during the lifetime of my late dear wife, and since. He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition. Both my sister and myself have endeavoured to correct his vices, but ineffectually. And I have felt—we both have felt, I may say; my sister being fully in my confidence—that it is right you should receive this grave and dispassionate assurance from our lips.’
‘It can hardly be necessary for me to confirm anything stated by my brother,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘but I beg to observe, that, of all the boys in the world, I believe this is the worst boy.’
‘Strong!’ said my aunt, shortly.
‘But not at all too strong for the facts,’ returned Miss Murdstone.
‘Ha!’ said my aunt. ‘Well, sir?’
‘I have my own opinions,’ resumed Mr. Murdstone, whose face darkened more and more, the more he and my aunt observed each other, which they did very narrowly, ‘as to the best mode of bringing him up; they are founded, in part, on my knowledge of him, and in part on my knowledge of my own means and resources. I am responsible for them to myself, I act upon them, and I say no more about them. It is enough that I place this boy under the eye of a friend of my own, in a respectable business; that it does not please him; that he runs away from it; makes himself a common vagabond about the country; and comes here, in rags, to appeal to you, Miss Trotwood. I wish to set before you, honourably, the exact consequences—so far as they are within my knowledge—of your abetting him in this appeal.’
‘But about the respectable business first,’ said my aunt. ‘If he had been your own boy, you would have put him to it, just the same, I suppose?’
‘If he had been my brother’s own boy,’ returned Miss Murdstone, striking in, ‘his character, I trust, would have been altogether different.’
‘Or if the poor child, his mother, had been alive, he would still have gone into the respectable business, would he?’ said my aunt.
‘I believe,’ said Mr. Murdstone, with an inclination of his head, ‘that Clara would have disputed nothing which myself and my sister Jane Murdstone were agreed was for the best.’
Miss Murdstone confirmed this with an audible murmur.
‘Humph!’ said my aunt. ‘Unfortunate baby!’
Mr. Dick, who had been rattling his money all this time, was rattling it so loudly now, that my aunt felt it necessary to check him with a look, before saying:
‘The poor child’s annuity died with her?’
‘Died with her,’ replied Mr. Murdstone.
‘And there was no settlement of the little property—the house and garden—the what’s-its-name Rookery without any rooks in it—upon her boy?’
‘It had been left to her, unconditionally, by her first husband,’ Mr. Murdstone began, when my aunt caught him up with the greatest irascibility and impatience.
‘Good Lord, man, there’s no occasion to say that. Left to her unconditionally! I think I see David Copperfield looking forward to any condition of any sort or kind, though it stared him point-blank in the face! Of course it was left to her unconditionally. But when she married again—when she took that most disastrous step of marrying you, in short,’ said my aunt, ‘to be plain—did no one put in a word for the boy at that time?’
‘My late wife loved her second husband, ma’am,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘and trusted implicitly in him.’
‘Your late wife, sir, was a most unworldly, most unhappy, most unfortunate baby,’ returned my aunt, shaking her head at him. ‘That’s what she was. And now, what have you got to say next?’
‘Merely this, Miss Trotwood,’ he returned. ‘I am here to take David back—to take him back unconditionally, to dispose of him as I think proper, and to deal with him as I think right. I am not here to make any promise, or give any pledge to anybody. You may possibly have some idea, Miss Trotwood, of abetting him in his running away, and in his complaints to you. Your manner, which I must say does not seem intended to propitiate, induces me to think it possible. Now I must caution you that if you abet him once, you abet him for good and all; if you step in between him and me, now, you must step in, Miss Trotwood, for ever. I cannot trifle, or be trifled with. I am here, for the first and last time, to take him away. Is he ready to go? If he is not—and you tell me he is not; on any pretence; it is indifferent to me what—my doors are shut against him henceforth, and yours, I take it for granted, are open to him.’
To this address, my aunt had listened with the closest attention, sitting perfectly upright, with her hands folded on one knee, and looking grimly on the speaker. When he had finished, she turned her eyes so as to command Miss Murdstone, without otherwise disturbing her attitude, and said:
‘Well, ma’am, have YOU got anything to remark?’
‘Indeed, Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘all that I could say has been so well said by my brother, and all that I know to be the fact has been so plainly stated by him, that I have nothing to add except my thanks for your politeness. For your very great politeness, I am sure,’ said Miss Murdstone; with an irony which no more affected my aunt, than it discomposed the cannon I had slept by at Chatham.
‘And what does the boy say?’ said my aunt. ‘Are you ready to go, David?’
I answered no, and entreated her not to let me go. I said that neither Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever liked me, or had ever been kind to me. That they had made my mama, who always loved me dearly, unhappy about me, and that I knew it well, and that Peggotty knew it. I said that I had been more miserable than I thought anybody could believe, who only knew how young I was. And I begged and prayed my aunt—I forget in what terms now, but I remember that they affected me very much then—to befriend and protect me, for my father’s sake.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘what shall I do with this child?’
Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, ‘Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly.’
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt triumphantly, ‘give me your hand, for your common sense is invaluable.’ Having shaken it with great cordiality, she pulled me towards her and said to Mr. Murdstone:
‘You can go when you like; I’ll take my chance with the boy. If he’s all you say he is, at least I can do as much for him then, as you have done. But I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘Miss Trotwood,’ rejoined Mr. Murdstone, shrugging his shoulders, as he rose, ‘if you were a gentleman—’
‘Bah! Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt. ‘Don’t talk to me!’
‘How exquisitely polite!’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone, rising. ‘Overpowering, really!’
‘Do you think I don’t know,’ said my aunt, turning a deaf ear to the sister, and continuing to address the brother, and to shake her head at him with infinite expression, ‘what kind of life you must have led that poor, unhappy, misdirected baby? Do you think I don’t know what a woeful day it was for the soft little creature when you first came in her way—smirking and making great eyes at her, I’ll be bound, as if you couldn’t say boh! to a goose!’
‘I never heard anything so elegant!’ said Miss Murdstone.
‘Do you think I can’t understand you as well as if I had seen you,’ pursued my aunt, ‘now that I DO see and hear you—which, I tell you candidly, is anything but a pleasure to me? Oh yes, bless us! who so smooth and silky as Mr. Murdstone at first! The poor, benighted innocent had never seen such a man. He was made of sweetness. He worshipped her. He doted on her boy—tenderly doted on him! He was to be another father to him, and they were all to live together in a garden of roses, weren’t they? Ugh! Get along with you, do!’ said my aunt.
‘I never heard anything like this person in my life!’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone.
‘And when you had made sure of the poor little fool,’ said my aunt—‘God forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU won’t go in a hurry—because you had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you must begin to train her, must you? begin to break her, like a poor caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing YOUR notes?’
‘This is either insanity or intoxication,’ said Miss Murdstone, in a perfect agony at not being able to turn the current of my aunt’s address towards herself; ‘and my suspicion is that it’s intoxication.’
Miss Betsey, without taking the least notice of the interruption, continued to address herself to Mr. Murdstone as if there had been no such thing.
‘Mr. Murdstone,’ she said, shaking her finger at him, ‘you were a tyrant to the simple baby, and you broke her heart. She was a loving baby—I know that; I knew it, years before you ever saw her—and through the best part of her weakness you gave her the wounds she died of. There is the truth for your comfort, however you like it. And you and your instruments may make the most of it.’
‘Allow me to inquire, Miss Trotwood,’ interposed Miss Murdstone, ‘whom you are pleased to call, in a choice of words in which I am not experienced, my brother’s instruments?’
‘It was clear enough, as I have told you, years before YOU ever saw her—and why, in the mysterious dispensations of Providence, you ever did see her, is more than humanity can comprehend—it was clear enough that the poor soft little thing would marry somebody, at some time or other; but I did hope it wouldn’t have been as bad as it has turned out. That was the time, Mr. Murdstone, when she gave birth to her boy here,’ said my aunt; ‘to the poor child you sometimes tormented her through afterwards, which is a disagreeable remembrance and makes the sight of him odious now. Aye, aye! you needn’t wince!’ said my aunt. ‘I know it’s true without that.’
He had stood by the door, all this while, observant of her with a smile upon his face, though his black eyebrows were heavily contracted. I remarked now, that, though the smile was on his face still, his colour had gone in a moment, and he seemed to breathe as if he had been running.
‘Good day, sir,’ said my aunt, ‘and good-bye! Good day to you, too, ma’am,’ said my aunt, turning suddenly upon his sister. ‘Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I’ll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!’
It would require a painter, and no common painter too, to depict my aunt’s face as she delivered herself of this very unexpected sentiment, and Miss Murdstone’s face as she heard it. But the manner of the speech, no less than the matter, was so fiery, that Miss Murdstone, without a word in answer, discreetly put her arm through her brother’s, and walked haughtily out of the cottage; my aunt remaining in the window looking after them; prepared, I have no doubt, in case of the donkey’s reappearance, to carry her threat into instant execution.
No attempt at defiance being made, however, her face gradually relaxed, and became so pleasant, that I was emboldened to kiss and thank her; which I did with great heartiness, and with both my arms clasped round her neck. I then shook hands with Mr. Dick, who shook hands with me a great many times, and hailed this happy close of the proceedings with repeated bursts of laughter.
‘You’ll consider yourself guardian, jointly with me, of this child, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt.
‘I shall be delighted,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘to be the guardian of David’s son.’
‘Very good,’ returned my aunt, ‘that’s settled. I have been thinking, do you know, Mr. Dick, that I might call him Trotwood?’
‘Certainly, certainly. Call him Trotwood, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son’s Trotwood.’
‘Trotwood Copperfield, you mean,’ returned my aunt.
‘Yes, to be sure. Yes. Trotwood Copperfield,’ said Mr. Dick, a little abashed.
My aunt took so kindly to the notion, that some ready-made clothes, which were purchased for me that afternoon, were marked ‘Trotwood Copperfield’, in her own handwriting, and in indelible marking-ink, before I put them on; and it was settled that all the other clothes which were ordered to be made for me (a complete outfit was bespoke that afternoon) should be marked in the same way.
Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me. Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt, for many days, like one in a dream. I never thought that I had a curious couple of guardians, in my aunt and Mr. Dick. I never thought of anything about myself, distinctly. The two things clearest in my mind were, that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life—which seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby’s. No one has ever raised that curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.
CHAPTER 15. I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING
Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, when his day’s work was done, went out together to fly the great kite. Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr. Dick supposed would come of the Memorial, if it were completed; where he thought it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more than anybody else, I believe. Nor was it at all necessary that he should trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were certain under the sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would be finished. It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so that I pitied him with all my heart.
While I advanced in friendship and intimacy with Mr. Dick, I did not go backward in the favour of his staunch friend, my aunt. She took so kindly to me, that, in the course of a few weeks, she shortened my adopted name of Trotwood into Trot; and even encouraged me to hope, that if I went on as I had begun, I might take equal rank in her affections with my sister Betsey Trotwood.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt one evening, when the backgammon-board was placed as usual for herself and Mr. Dick, ‘we must not forget your education.’
This was my only subject of anxiety, and I felt quite delighted by her referring to it.
‘Should you like to go to school at Canterbury?’ said my aunt.
I replied that I should like it very much, as it was so near her.
‘Good,’ said my aunt. ‘Should you like to go tomorrow?’
Being already no stranger to the general rapidity of my aunt’s evolutions, I was not surprised by the suddenness of the proposal, and said: ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ said my aunt again. ‘Janet, hire the grey pony and chaise tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and pack up Master Trotwood’s clothes tonight.’
I was greatly elated by these orders; but my heart smote me for my selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to make another kite for those occasions, of proportions greatly surpassing the present one. In the morning he was downhearted again, and would have sustained himself by giving me all the money he had in his possession, gold and silver too, if my aunt had not interposed, and limited the gift to five shillings, which, at his earnest petition, were afterwards increased to ten. We parted at the garden-gate in a most affectionate manner, and Mr. Dick did not go into the house until my aunt had driven me out of sight of it.
My aunt, who was perfectly indifferent to public opinion, drove the grey pony through Dover in a masterly manner; sitting high and stiff like a state coachman, keeping a steady eye upon him wherever he went, and making a point of not letting him have his own way in any respect. When we came into the country road, she permitted him to relax a little, however; and looking at me down in a valley of cushion by her side, asked me whether I was happy?
‘Very happy indeed, thank you, aunt,’ I said.
She was much gratified; and both her hands being occupied, patted me on the head with her whip.
‘Is it a large school, aunt?’ I asked.
‘Why, I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We are going to Mr. Wickfield’s first.’
‘Does he keep a school?’ I asked.
‘No, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He keeps an office.’
I asked for no more information about Mr. Wickfield, as she offered none, and we conversed on other subjects until we came to Canterbury, where, as it was market-day, my aunt had a great opportunity of insinuating the grey pony among carts, baskets, vegetables, and huckster’s goods. The hair-breadth turns and twists we made, drew down upon us a variety of speeches from the people standing about, which were not always complimentary; but my aunt drove on with perfect indifference, and I dare say would have taken her own way with as much coolness through an enemy’s country.
At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out over the road; a house with long low lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so that I fancied the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon the hills.
When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person—a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older—whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise.
‘Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?’ said my aunt.
‘Mr. Wickfield’s at home, ma’am,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘if you’ll please to walk in there’—pointing with his long hand to the room he meant.
We got out; and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low parlour looking towards the street, from the window of which I caught a glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony’s nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who was looking at me.
I believe I was turning about in search of Uriah’s picture, when, a door at the farther end of the room opening, a gentleman entered, at sight of whom I turned to the first-mentioned portrait again, to make quite sure that it had not come out of its frame. But it was stationary; and as the gentleman advanced into the light, I saw that he was some years older than when he had had his picture painted.
‘Miss Betsey Trotwood,’ said the gentleman, ‘pray walk in. I was engaged for a moment, but you’ll excuse my being busy. You know my motive. I have but one in life.’
Miss Betsey thanked him, and we went into his room, which was furnished as an office, with books, papers, tin boxes, and so forth. It looked into a garden, and had an iron safe let into the wall; so immediately over the mantelshelf, that I wondered, as I sat down, how the sweeps got round it when they swept the chimney.
‘Well, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon found that it was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward of the estates of a rich gentleman of the county; ‘what wind blows you here? Not an ill wind, I hope?’
‘No,’ replied my aunt. ‘I have not come for any law.’
‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘You had better come for anything else.’ His hair was quite white now, though his eyebrows were still black. He had a very agreeable face, and, I thought, was handsome. There was a certain richness in his complexion, which I had been long accustomed, under Peggotty’s tuition, to connect with port wine; and I fancied it was in his voice too, and referred his growing corpulency to the same cause. He was very cleanly dressed, in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine frilled shirt and cambric neckcloth looked unusually soft and white, reminding my strolling fancy (I call to mind) of the plumage on the breast of a swan.
‘This is my nephew,’ said my aunt.
‘Wasn’t aware you had one, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘My grand-nephew, that is to say,’ observed my aunt.
‘Wasn’t aware you had a grand-nephew, I give you my word,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘I have adopted him,’ said my aunt, with a wave of her hand, importing that his knowledge and his ignorance were all one to her, ‘and I have brought him here, to put to a school where he may be thoroughly well taught, and well treated. Now tell me where that school is, and what it is, and all about it.’
‘Before I can advise you properly,’ said Mr. Wickfield—‘the old question, you know. What’s your motive in this?’
‘Deuce take the man!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘Always fishing for motives, when they’re on the surface! Why, to make the child happy and useful.’
‘It must be a mixed motive, I think,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his head and smiling incredulously.
‘A mixed fiddlestick,’ returned my aunt. ‘You claim to have one plain motive in all you do yourself. You don’t suppose, I hope, that you are the only plain dealer in the world?’
‘Ay, but I have only one motive in life, Miss Trotwood,’ he rejoined, smiling. ‘Other people have dozens, scores, hundreds. I have only one. There’s the difference. However, that’s beside the question. The best school? Whatever the motive, you want the best?’
My aunt nodded assent.
‘At the best we have,’ said Mr. Wickfield, considering, ‘your nephew couldn’t board just now.’
‘But he could board somewhere else, I suppose?’ suggested my aunt.
Mr. Wickfield thought I could. After a little discussion, he proposed to take my aunt to the school, that she might see it and judge for herself; also, to take her, with the same object, to two or three houses where he thought I could be boarded. My aunt embracing the proposal, we were all three going out together, when he stopped and said:
‘Our little friend here might have some motive, perhaps, for objecting to the arrangements. I think we had better leave him behind?’
My aunt seemed disposed to contest the point; but to facilitate matters I said I would gladly remain behind, if they pleased; and returned into Mr. Wickfield’s office, where I sat down again, in the chair I had first occupied, to await their return.
It so happened that this chair was opposite a narrow passage, which ended in the little circular room where I had seen Uriah Heep’s pale face looking out of the window. Uriah, having taken the pony to a neighbouring stable, was at work at a desk in this room, which had a brass frame on the top to hang paper upon, and on which the writing he was making a copy of was then hanging. Though his face was towards me, I thought, for some time, the writing being between us, that he could not see me; but looking that way more attentively, it made me uncomfortable to observe that, every now and then, his sleepless eyes would come below the writing, like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare say a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended to go, as cleverly as ever. I made several attempts to get out of their way—such as standing on a chair to look at a map on the other side of the room, and poring over the columns of a Kentish newspaper—but they always attracted me back again; and whenever I looked towards those two red suns, I was sure to find them, either just rising or just setting.
At length, much to my relief, my aunt and Mr. Wickfield came back, after a pretty long absence. They were not so successful as I could have wished; for though the advantages of the school were undeniable, my aunt had not approved of any of the boarding-houses proposed for me.
‘It’s very unfortunate,’ said my aunt. ‘I don’t know what to do, Trot.’
‘It does happen unfortunately,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘But I’ll tell you what you can do, Miss Trotwood.’
‘What’s that?’ inquired my aunt.
‘Leave your nephew here, for the present. He’s a quiet fellow. He won’t disturb me at all. It’s a capital house for study. As quiet as a monastery, and almost as roomy. Leave him here.’
My aunt evidently liked the offer, though she was delicate of accepting it. So did I. ‘Come, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘This is the way out of the difficulty. It’s only a temporary arrangement, you know. If it don’t act well, or don’t quite accord with our mutual convenience, he can easily go to the right-about. There will be time to find some better place for him in the meanwhile. You had better determine to leave him here for the present!’
‘I am very much obliged to you,’ said my aunt; ‘and so is he, I see; but—’
‘Come! I know what you mean,’ cried Mr. Wickfield. ‘You shall not be oppressed by the receipt of favours, Miss Trotwood. You may pay for him, if you like. We won’t be hard about terms, but you shall pay if you will.’
‘On that understanding,’ said my aunt, ‘though it doesn’t lessen the real obligation, I shall be very glad to leave him.’
‘Then come and see my little housekeeper,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase; with a balustrade so broad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily; and into a shady old drawing-room, lighted by some three or four of the quaint windows I had looked up at from the street: which had old oak seats in them, that seemed to have come of the same trees as the shining oak floor, and the great beams in the ceiling. It was a prettily furnished room, with a piano and some lively furniture in red and green, and some flowers. It seemed to be all old nooks and corners; and in every nook and corner there was some queer little table, or cupboard, or bookcase, or seat, or something or other, that made me think there was not such another good corner in the room; until I looked at the next one, and found it equal to it, if not better. On everything there was the same air of retirement and cleanliness that marked the house outside.
Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall, and a girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On her face, I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of the lady whose picture had looked at me downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original remained a child. Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquillity about it, and about her—a quiet, good, calm spirit—that I never have forgotten; that I shall never forget. This was his little housekeeper, his daughter Agnes, Mr. Wickfield said. When I heard how he said it, and saw how he held her hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was.
She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with keys in it; and she looked as staid and as discreet a housekeeper as the old house could have. She listened to her father as he told her about me, with a pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed to my aunt that we should go upstairs and see my room. We all went together, she before us: and a glorious old room it was, with more oak beams, and diamond panes; and the broad balustrade going all the way up to it.
I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a stained glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards.
My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me; and we went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified. As she would not hear of staying to dinner, lest she should by any chance fail to arrive at home with the grey pony before dark; and as I apprehend Mr. Wickfield knew her too well to argue any point with her; some lunch was provided for her there, and Agnes went back to her governess, and Mr. Wickfield to his office. So we were left to take leave of one another without any restraint.
She told me that everything would be arranged for me by Mr. Wickfield, and that I should want for nothing, and gave me the kindest words and the best advice.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt in conclusion, ‘be a credit to yourself, to me, and Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you!’
I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again and again, and send my love to Mr. Dick.
‘Never,’ said my aunt, ‘be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.’
I promised, as well as I could, that I would not abuse her kindness or forget her admonition.
‘The pony’s at the door,’ said my aunt, ‘and I am off! Stay here.’ With these words she embraced me hastily, and went out of the room, shutting the door after her. At first I was startled by so abrupt a departure, and almost feared I had displeased her; but when I looked into the street, and saw how dejectedly she got into the chaise, and drove away without looking up, I understood her better and did not do her that injustice.
By five o’clock, which was Mr. Wickfield’s dinner-hour, I had mustered up my spirits again, and was ready for my knife and fork. The cloth was only laid for us two; but Agnes was waiting in the drawing-room before dinner, went down with her father, and sat opposite to him at table. I doubted whether he could have dined without her.
We did not stay there, after dinner, but came upstairs into the drawing-room again: in one snug corner of which, Agnes set glasses for her father, and a decanter of port wine. I thought he would have missed its usual flavour, if it had been put there for him by any other hands.
There he sat, taking his wine, and taking a good deal of it, for two hours; while Agnes played on the piano, worked, and talked to him and me. He was, for the most part, gay and cheerful with us; but sometimes his eyes rested on her, and he fell into a brooding state, and was silent. She always observed this quickly, I thought, and always roused him with a question or caress. Then he came out of his meditation, and drank more wine.
Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time passed away after it, as after dinner, until she went to bed; when her father took her in his arms and kissed her, and, she being gone, ordered candles in his office. Then I went to bed too.
But in the course of the evening I had rambled down to the door, and a little way along the street, that I might have another peep at the old houses, and the grey Cathedral; and might think of my coming through that old city on my journey, and of my passing the very house I lived in, without knowing it. As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, AND TO RUB HIS OFF.
It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory. Leaning out of the window, and seeing one of the faces on the beam-ends looking at me sideways, I fancied it was Uriah Heep got up there somehow, and shut him out in a hurry.
CHAPTER 16. I AM A NEW BOY IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE
Next morning, after breakfast, I entered on school life again. I went, accompanied by Mr. Wickfield, to the scene of my future studies—a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the Cathedral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing on the grass-plot—and was introduced to my new master, Doctor Strong.
Doctor Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff and heavy as the great stone urns that flanked them, and were set up, on the top of the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round the court, like sublimated skittles, for Time to play at. He was in his library (I mean Doctor Strong was), with his clothes not particularly well brushed, and his hair not particularly well combed; his knee-smalls unbraced; his long black gaiters unbuttoned; and his shoes yawning like two caverns on the hearth-rug. Turning upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me of a long-forgotten blind old horse who once used to crop the grass, and tumble over the graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he was glad to see me: and then he gave me his hand; which I didn’t know what to do with, as it did nothing for itself.
But, sitting at work, not far from Doctor Strong, was a very pretty young lady—whom he called Annie, and who was his daughter, I supposed—who got me out of my difficulty by kneeling down to put Doctor Strong’s shoes on, and button his gaiters, which she did with great cheerfulness and quickness. When she had finished, and we were going out to the schoolroom, I was much surprised to hear Mr. Wickfield, in bidding her good morning, address her as ‘Mrs. Strong’; and I was wondering could she be Doctor Strong’s son’s wife, or could she be Mrs. Doctor Strong, when Doctor Strong himself unconsciously enlightened me.
‘By the by, Wickfield,’ he said, stopping in a passage with his hand on my shoulder; ‘you have not found any suitable provision for my wife’s cousin yet?’
‘No,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘No. Not yet.’
‘I could wish it done as soon as it can be done, Wickfield,’ said Doctor Strong, ‘for Jack Maldon is needy, and idle; and of those two bad things, worse things sometimes come. What does Doctor Watts say,’ he added, looking at me, and moving his head to the time of his quotation, ‘“Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do.”’
‘Egad, Doctor,’ returned Mr. Wickfield, ‘if Doctor Watts knew mankind, he might have written, with as much truth, “Satan finds some mischief still, for busy hands to do.” The busy people achieve their full share of mischief in the world, you may rely upon it. What have the people been about, who have been the busiest in getting money, and in getting power, this century or two? No mischief?’
‘Jack Maldon will never be very busy in getting either, I expect,’ said Doctor Strong, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘and you bring me back to the question, with an apology for digressing. No, I have not been able to dispose of Mr. Jack Maldon yet. I believe,’ he said this with some hesitation, ‘I penetrate your motive, and it makes the thing more difficult.’
‘My motive,’ returned Doctor Strong, ‘is to make some suitable provision for a cousin, and an old playfellow, of Annie’s.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘at home or abroad.’
‘Aye!’ replied the Doctor, apparently wondering why he emphasized those words so much. ‘At home or abroad.’
‘Your own expression, you know,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Or abroad.’
‘Surely,’ the Doctor answered. ‘Surely. One or other.’
‘One or other? Have you no choice?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
‘No?’ with astonishment.
‘Not the least.’
‘No motive,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘for meaning abroad, and not at home?’
‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
‘I am bound to believe you, and of course I do believe you,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘It might have simplified my office very much, if I had known it before. But I confess I entertained another impression.’
Doctor Strong regarded him with a puzzled and doubting look, which almost immediately subsided into a smile that gave me great encouragement; for it was full of amiability and sweetness, and there was a simplicity in it, and indeed in his whole manner, when the studious, pondering frost upon it was got through, very attractive and hopeful to a young scholar like me. Repeating ‘no’, and ‘not the least’, and other short assurances to the same purport, Doctor Strong jogged on before us, at a queer, uneven pace; and we followed: Mr. Wickfield, looking grave, I observed, and shaking his head to himself, without knowing that I saw him.
The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall. There were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf outside the windows; the broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were made of painted tin) have ever since, by association, been symbolical to me of silence and retirement. About five-and-twenty boys were studiously engaged at their books when we went in, but they rose to give the Doctor good morning, and remained standing when they saw Mr. Wickfield and me.
‘A new boy, young gentlemen,’ said the Doctor; ‘Trotwood Copperfield.’
One Adams, who was the head-boy, then stepped out of his place and welcomed me. He looked like a young clergyman, in his white cravat, but he was very affable and good-humoured; and he showed me my place, and presented me to the masters, in a gentlemanly way that would have put me at my ease, if anything could.
It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among such boys, or among any companions of my own age, except Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes, that I felt as strange as ever I have done in my life. I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age, appearance, and condition as one of them, that I half believed it was an imposture to come there as an ordinary little schoolboy. I had become, in the Murdstone and Grinby time, however short or long it may have been, so unused to the sports and games of boys, that I knew I was awkward and inexperienced in the commonest things belonging to them. Whatever I had learnt, had so slipped away from me in the sordid cares of my life from day to night, that now, when I was examined about what I knew, I knew nothing, and was put into the lowest form of the school. But, troubled as I was, by my want of boyish skill, and of book-learning too, I was made infinitely more uncomfortable by the consideration, that, in what I did know, I was much farther removed from my companions than in what I did not. My mind ran upon what they would think, if they knew of my familiar acquaintance with the King’s Bench Prison? Was there anything about me which would reveal my proceedings in connexion with the Micawber family—all those pawnings, and sellings, and suppers—in spite of myself? Suppose some of the boys had seen me coming through Canterbury, wayworn and ragged, and should find me out? What would they say, who made so light of money, if they could know how I had scraped my halfpence together, for the purchase of my daily saveloy and beer, or my slices of pudding? How would it affect them, who were so innocent of London life, and London streets, to discover how knowing I was (and was ashamed to be) in some of the meanest phases of both? All this ran in my head so much, on that first day at Doctor Strong’s, that I felt distrustful of my slightest look and gesture; shrunk within myself whensoever I was approached by one of my new schoolfellows; and hurried off the minute school was over, afraid of committing myself in my response to any friendly notice or advance.
But there was such an influence in Mr. Wickfield’s old house, that when I knocked at it, with my new school-books under my arm, I began to feel my uneasiness softening away. As I went up to my airy old room, the grave shadow of the staircase seemed to fall upon my doubts and fears, and to make the past more indistinct. I sat there, sturdily conning my books, until dinner-time (we were out of school for good at three); and went down, hopeful of becoming a passable sort of boy yet.
Agnes was in the drawing-room, waiting for her father, who was detained by someone in his office. She met me with her pleasant smile, and asked me how I liked the school. I told her I should like it very much, I hoped; but I was a little strange to it at first.
‘You have never been to school,’ I said, ‘have you?’ ‘Oh yes! Every day.’
‘Ah, but you mean here, at your own home?’
‘Papa couldn’t spare me to go anywhere else,’ she answered, smiling and shaking her head. ‘His housekeeper must be in his house, you know.’
‘He is very fond of you, I am sure,’ I said.
She nodded ‘Yes,’ and went to the door to listen for his coming up, that she might meet him on the stairs. But, as he was not there, she came back again.
‘Mama has been dead ever since I was born,’ she said, in her quiet way. ‘I only know her picture, downstairs. I saw you looking at it yesterday. Did you think whose it was?’
I told her yes, because it was so like herself.
‘Papa says so, too,’ said Agnes, pleased. ‘Hark! That’s papa now!’
Her bright calm face lighted up with pleasure as she went to meet him, and as they came in, hand in hand. He greeted me cordially; and told me I should certainly be happy under Doctor Strong, who was one of the gentlest of men.
‘There may be some, perhaps—I don’t know that there are—who abuse his kindness,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Never be one of those, Trotwood, in anything. He is the least suspicious of mankind; and whether that’s a merit, or whether it’s a blemish, it deserves consideration in all dealings with the Doctor, great or small.’
He spoke, I thought, as if he were weary, or dissatisfied with something; but I did not pursue the question in my mind, for dinner was just then announced, and we went down and took the same seats as before.
We had scarcely done so, when Uriah Heep put in his red head and his lank hand at the door, and said:
‘Here’s Mr. Maldon begs the favour of a word, sir.’
‘I am but this moment quit of Mr. Maldon,’ said his master.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Uriah; ‘but Mr. Maldon has come back, and he begs the favour of a word.’
As he held the door open with his hand, Uriah looked at me, and looked at Agnes, and looked at the dishes, and looked at the plates, and looked at every object in the room, I thought,—yet seemed to look at nothing; he made such an appearance all the while of keeping his red eyes dutifully on his master. ‘I beg your pardon. It’s only to say, on reflection,’ observed a voice behind Uriah, as Uriah’s head was pushed away, and the speaker’s substituted—‘pray excuse me for this intrusion—that as it seems I have no choice in the matter, the sooner I go abroad the better. My cousin Annie did say, when we talked of it, that she liked to have her friends within reach rather than to have them banished, and the old Doctor—’
‘Doctor Strong, was that?’ Mr. Wickfield interposed, gravely.
‘Doctor Strong, of course,’ returned the other; ‘I call him the old Doctor; it’s all the same, you know.’
‘I don’t know,’ returned Mr. Wickfield.
‘Well, Doctor Strong,’ said the other—‘Doctor Strong was of the same mind, I believed. But as it appears from the course you take with me he has changed his mind, why there’s no more to be said, except that the sooner I am off, the better. Therefore, I thought I’d come back and say, that the sooner I am off the better. When a plunge is to be made into the water, it’s of no use lingering on the bank.’
‘There shall be as little lingering as possible, in your case, Mr. Maldon, you may depend upon it,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘Thank’ee,’ said the other. ‘Much obliged. I don’t want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gracious thing to do; otherwise, I dare say, my cousin Annie could easily arrange it in her own way. I suppose Annie would only have to say to the old Doctor—’
‘Meaning that Mrs. Strong would only have to say to her husband—do I follow you?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘Quite so,’ returned the other, ‘—would only have to say, that she wanted such and such a thing to be so and so; and it would be so and so, as a matter of course.’
‘And why as a matter of course, Mr. Maldon?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, sedately eating his dinner.
‘Why, because Annie’s a charming young girl, and the old Doctor—Doctor Strong, I mean—is not quite a charming young boy,’ said Mr. Jack Maldon, laughing. ‘No offence to anybody, Mr. Wickfield. I only mean that I suppose some compensation is fair and reasonable in that sort of marriage.’
‘Compensation to the lady, sir?’ asked Mr. Wickfield gravely.
‘To the lady, sir,’ Mr. Jack Maldon answered, laughing. But appearing to remark that Mr. Wickfield went on with his dinner in the same sedate, immovable manner, and that there was no hope of making him relax a muscle of his face, he added: ‘However, I have said what I came to say, and, with another apology for this intrusion, I may take myself off. Of course I shall observe your directions, in considering the matter as one to be arranged between you and me solely, and not to be referred to, up at the Doctor’s.’
‘Have you dined?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, with a motion of his hand towards the table.
‘Thank’ee. I am going to dine,’ said Mr. Maldon, ‘with my cousin Annie. Good-bye!’
Mr. Wickfield, without rising, looked after him thoughtfully as he went out. He was rather a shallow sort of young gentleman, I thought, with a handsome face, a rapid utterance, and a confident, bold air. And this was the first I ever saw of Mr. Jack Maldon; whom I had not expected to see so soon, when I heard the Doctor speak of him that morning.
When we had dined, we went upstairs again, where everything went on exactly as on the previous day. Agnes set the glasses and decanters in the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield sat down to drink, and drank a good deal. Agnes played the piano to him, sat by him, and worked and talked, and played some games at dominoes with me. In good time she made tea; and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them. I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon my breast. I love little Em’ly, and I don’t love Agnes—no, not at all in that way—but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the coloured window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and on everything around.
The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, and she having left us, I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, preparatory to going away myself. But he checked me and said: ‘Should you like to stay with us, Trotwood, or to go elsewhere?’
‘To stay,’ I answered, quickly.
‘You are sure?’
‘If you please. If I may!’
‘Why, it’s but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I am afraid,’ he said.
‘Not more dull for me than Agnes, sir. Not dull at all!’
‘Than Agnes,’ he repeated, walking slowly to the great chimney-piece, and leaning against it. ‘Than Agnes!’
He had drank wine that evening (or I fancied it), until his eyes were bloodshot. Not that I could see them now, for they were cast down, and shaded by his hand; but I had noticed them a little while before.
‘Now I wonder,’ he muttered, ‘whether my Agnes tires of me. When should I ever tire of her! But that’s different, that’s quite different.’
He was musing, not speaking to me; so I remained quiet.
‘A dull old house,’ he said, ‘and a monotonous life; but I must have her near me. I must keep her near me. If the thought that I may die and leave my darling, or that my darling may die and leave me, comes like a spectre, to distress my happiest hours, and is only to be drowned in—’
He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place where he had sat, and mechanically going through the action of pouring wine from the empty decanter, set it down and paced back again.
‘If it is miserable to bear, when she is here,’ he said, ‘what would it be, and she away? No, no, no. I cannot try that.’
He leaned against the chimney-piece, brooding so long that I could not decide whether to run the risk of disturbing him by going, or to remain quietly where I was, until he should come out of his reverie. At length he aroused himself, and looked about the room until his eyes encountered mine.
‘Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?’ he said in his usual manner, and as if he were answering something I had just said. ‘I am glad of it. You are company to us both. It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me, wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us.’
‘I am sure it is for me, sir,’ I said. ‘I am so glad to be here.’
‘That’s a fine fellow!’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘As long as you are glad to be here, you shall stay here.’ He shook hands with me upon it, and clapped me on the back; and told me that when I had anything to do at night after Agnes had left us, or when I wished to read for my own pleasure, I was free to come down to his room, if he were there and if I desired it for company’s sake, and to sit with him. I thanked him for his consideration; and, as he went down soon afterwards, and I was not tired, went down too, with a book in my hand, to avail myself, for half-an-hour, of his permission.
But, seeing a light in the little round office, and immediately feeling myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of fascination for me, I went in there instead. I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.
‘You are working late tonight, Uriah,’ says I.
‘Yes, Master Copperfield,’ says Uriah.
As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a smile about him, and that he could only widen his mouth and make two hard creases down his cheeks, one on each side, to stand for one.
‘I am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
‘What work, then?’ I asked.
‘I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘I am going through Tidd’s Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master Copperfield!’
My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable way of expanding and contracting themselves—that they seemed to twinkle instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
‘I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?’ I said, after looking at him for some time.
‘Me, Master Copperfield?’ said Uriah. ‘Oh, no! I’m a very umble person.’
It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief.
‘I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,’ said Uriah Heep, modestly; ‘let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was umble. He was a sexton.’
‘What is he now?’ I asked.
‘He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah Heep. ‘But we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield!’
I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield long?
‘I have been with him, going on four year, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah; shutting up his book, after carefully marking the place where he had left off. ‘Since a year after my father’s death. How much have I to be thankful for, in that! How much have I to be thankful for, in Mr. Wickfield’s kind intention to give me my articles, which would otherwise not lay within the umble means of mother and self!’
‘Then, when your articled time is over, you’ll be a regular lawyer, I suppose?’ said I.
‘With the blessing of Providence, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah.
‘Perhaps you’ll be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business, one of these days,’ I said, to make myself agreeable; ‘and it will be Wickfield and Heep, or Heep late Wickfield.’
‘Oh no, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, shaking his head, ‘I am much too umble for that!’
He certainly did look uncommonly like the carved face on the beam outside my window, as he sat, in his humility, eyeing me sideways, with his mouth widened, and the creases in his cheeks.
‘Mr. Wickfield is a most excellent man, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘If you have known him long, you know it, I am sure, much better than I can inform you.’
I replied that I was certain he was; but that I had not known him long myself, though he was a friend of my aunt’s.
‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘Your aunt is a sweet lady, Master Copperfield!’
He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly; and which diverted my attention from the compliment he had paid my relation, to the snaky twistings of his throat and body.
‘A sweet lady, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah Heep. ‘She has a great admiration for Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, I believe?’
I said, ‘Yes,’ boldly; not that I knew anything about it, Heaven forgive me!
‘I hope you have, too, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘But I am sure you must have.’
‘Everybody must have,’ I returned.
‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘for that remark! It is so true! Umble as I am, I know it is so true! Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield!’ He writhed himself quite off his stool in the excitement of his feelings, and, being off, began to make arrangements for going home.
‘Mother will be expecting me,’ he said, referring to a pale, inexpressive-faced watch in his pocket, ‘and getting uneasy; for though we are very umble, Master Copperfield, we are much attached to one another. If you would come and see us, any afternoon, and take a cup of tea at our lowly dwelling, mother would be as proud of your company as I should be.’
I said I should be glad to come.
‘Thank you, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, putting his book away upon the shelf—‘I suppose you stop here, some time, Master Copperfield?’
I said I was going to be brought up there, I believed, as long as I remained at school.
‘Oh, indeed!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘I should think YOU would come into the business at last, Master Copperfield!’
I protested that I had no views of that sort, and that no such scheme was entertained in my behalf by anybody; but Uriah insisted on blandly replying to all my assurances, ‘Oh, yes, Master Copperfield, I should think you would, indeed!’ and, ‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield, I should think you would, certainly!’ over and over again. Being, at last, ready to leave the office for the night, he asked me if it would suit my convenience to have the light put out; and on my answering ‘Yes,’ instantly extinguished it. After shaking hands with me—his hand felt like a fish, in the dark—he opened the door into the street a very little, and crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into the house: which cost me some trouble and a fall over his stool. This was the proximate cause, I suppose, of my dreaming about him, for what appeared to me to be half the night; and dreaming, among other things, that he had launched Mr. Peggotty’s house on a piratical expedition, with a black flag at the masthead, bearing the inscription ‘Tidd’s Practice’, under which diabolical ensign he was carrying me and little Em’ly to the Spanish Main, to be drowned.
I got a little the better of my uneasiness when I went to school next day, and a good deal the better next day, and so shook it off by degrees, that in less than a fortnight I was quite at home, and happy, among my new companions. I was awkward enough in their games, and backward enough in their studies; but custom would improve me in the first respect, I hoped, and hard work in the second. Accordingly, I went to work very hard, both in play and in earnest, and gained great commendation. And, in a very little while, the Murdstone and Grinby life became so strange to me that I hardly believed in it, while my present life grew so familiar, that I seemed to have been leading it a long time.
Doctor Strong’s was an excellent school; as different from Mr. Creakle’s as good is from evil. It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence, we soon became warmly attached to it—I am sure I did for one, and I never knew, in all my time, of any other boy being otherwise—and learnt with a good will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of hours, and plenty of liberty; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner, to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong’s boys.
Some of the higher scholars boarded in the Doctor’s house, and through them I learned, at second hand, some particulars of the Doctor’s history—as, how he had not yet been married twelve months to the beautiful young lady I had seen in the study, whom he had married for love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a world of poor relations (so our fellows said) ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and home. Also, how the Doctor’s cogitating manner was attributable to his being always engaged in looking out for Greek roots; which, in my innocence and ignorance, I supposed to be a botanical furor on the Doctor’s part, especially as he always looked at the ground when he walked about, until I understood that they were roots of words, with a view to a new Dictionary which he had in contemplation. Adams, our head-boy, who had a turn for mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the time this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor’s plan, and at the Doctor’s rate of going. He considered that it might be done in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting from the Doctor’s last, or sixty-second, birthday.
But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he walked up and down that part of the courtyard which was at the side of the house, with the stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their heads cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing they were in worldly affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get near enough to his creaking shoes to attract his attention to one sentence of a tale of distress, that vagabond was made for the next two days. It was so notorious in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut these marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows, and turn them out of the courtyard, before they could make the Doctor aware of their presence; which was sometimes happily effected within a few yards of him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as he jogged to and fro. Outside his own domain, and unprotected, he was a very sheep for the shearers. He would have taken his gaiters off his legs, to give away. In fact, there was a story current among us (I have no idea, and never had, on what authority, but I have believed it for so many years that I feel quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters on a beggar-woman, who occasioned some scandal in the neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant from door to door, wrapped in those garments, which were universally recognized, being as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral. The legend added that the only person who did not identify them was the Doctor himself, who, when they were shortly afterwards displayed at the door of a little second-hand shop of no very good repute, where such things were taken in exchange for gin, was more than once observed to handle them approvingly, as if admiring some curious novelty in the pattern, and considering them an improvement on his own.
It was very pleasant to see the Doctor with his pretty young wife. He had a fatherly, benignant way of showing his fondness for her, which seemed in itself to express a good man. I often saw them walking in the garden where the peaches were, and I sometimes had a nearer observation of them in the study or the parlour. She appeared to me to take great care of the Doctor, and to like him very much, though I never thought her vitally interested in the Dictionary: some cumbrous fragments of which work the Doctor always carried in his pockets, and in the lining of his hat, and generally seemed to be expounding to her as they walked about.
I saw a good deal of Mrs. Strong, both because she had taken a liking for me on the morning of my introduction to the Doctor, and was always afterwards kind to me, and interested in me; and because she was very fond of Agnes, and was often backwards and forwards at our house. There was a curious constraint between her and Mr. Wickfield, I thought (of whom she seemed to be afraid), that never wore off. When she came there of an evening, she always shrunk from accepting his escort home, and ran away with me instead. And sometimes, as we were running gaily across the Cathedral yard together, expecting to meet nobody, we would meet Mr. Jack Maldon, who was always surprised to see us.
Mrs. Strong’s mama was a lady I took great delight in. Her name was Mrs. Markleham; but our boys used to call her the Old Soldier, on account of her generalship, and the skill with which she marshalled great forces of relations against the Doctor. She was a little, sharp-eyed woman, who used to wear, when she was dressed, one unchangeable cap, ornamented with some artificial flowers, and two artificial butterflies supposed to be hovering above the flowers. There was a superstition among us that this cap had come from France, and could only originate in the workmanship of that ingenious nation: but all I certainly know about it, is, that it always made its appearance of an evening, wheresoever Mrs. Markleham made HER appearance; that it was carried about to friendly meetings in a Hindoo basket; that the butterflies had the gift of trembling constantly; and that they improved the shining hours at Doctor Strong’s expense, like busy bees.
I observed the Old Soldier—not to adopt the name disrespectfully—to pretty good advantage, on a night which is made memorable to me by something else I shall relate. It was the night of a little party at the Doctor’s, which was given on the occasion of Mr. Jack Maldon’s departure for India, whither he was going as a cadet, or something of that kind: Mr. Wickfield having at length arranged the business. It happened to be the Doctor’s birthday, too. We had had a holiday, had made presents to him in the morning, had made a speech to him through the head-boy, and had cheered him until we were hoarse, and until he had shed tears. And now, in the evening, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I, went to have tea with him in his private capacity.
Mr. Jack Maldon was there, before us. Mrs. Strong, dressed in white, with cherry-coloured ribbons, was playing the piano, when we went in; and he was leaning over her to turn the leaves. The clear red and white of her complexion was not so blooming and flower-like as usual, I thought, when she turned round; but she looked very pretty, Wonderfully pretty.
‘I have forgotten, Doctor,’ said Mrs. Strong’s mama, when we were seated, ‘to pay you the compliments of the day—though they are, as you may suppose, very far from being mere compliments in my case. Allow me to wish you many happy returns.’
‘I thank you, ma’am,’ replied the Doctor.
‘Many, many, many, happy returns,’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Not only for your own sake, but for Annie’s, and John Maldon’s, and many other people’s. It seems but yesterday to me, John, when you were a little creature, a head shorter than Master Copperfield, making baby love to Annie behind the gooseberry bushes in the back-garden.’
‘My dear mama,’ said Mrs. Strong, ‘never mind that now.’
‘Annie, don’t be absurd,’ returned her mother. ‘If you are to blush to hear of such things now you are an old married woman, when are you not to blush to hear of them?’
‘Old?’ exclaimed Mr. Jack Maldon. ‘Annie? Come!’
‘Yes, John,’ returned the Soldier. ‘Virtually, an old married woman. Although not old by years—for when did you ever hear me say, or who has ever heard me say, that a girl of twenty was old by years!—your cousin is the wife of the Doctor, and, as such, what I have described her. It is well for you, John, that your cousin is the wife of the Doctor. You have found in him an influential and kind friend, who will be kinder yet, I venture to predict, if you deserve it. I have no false pride. I never hesitate to admit, frankly, that there are some members of our family who want a friend. You were one yourself, before your cousin’s influence raised up one for you.’
The Doctor, in the goodness of his heart, waved his hand as if to make light of it, and save Mr. Jack Maldon from any further reminder. But Mrs. Markleham changed her chair for one next the Doctor’s, and putting her fan on his coat-sleeve, said:
‘No, really, my dear Doctor, you must excuse me if I appear to dwell on this rather, because I feel so very strongly. I call it quite my monomania, it is such a subject of mine. You are a blessing to us. You really are a Boon, you know.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said the Doctor.
‘No, no, I beg your pardon,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘With nobody present, but our dear and confidential friend Mr. Wickfield, I cannot consent to be put down. I shall begin to assert the privileges of a mother-in-law, if you go on like that, and scold you. I am perfectly honest and outspoken. What I am saying, is what I said when you first overpowered me with surprise—you remember how surprised I was?—by proposing for Annie. Not that there was anything so very much out of the way, in the mere fact of the proposal—it would be ridiculous to say that!—but because, you having known her poor father, and having known her from a baby six months old, I hadn’t thought of you in such a light at all, or indeed as a marrying man in any way,—simply that, you know.’
‘Aye, aye,’ returned the Doctor, good-humouredly. ‘Never mind.’
‘But I DO mind,’ said the Old Soldier, laying her fan upon his lips. ‘I mind very much. I recall these things that I may be contradicted if I am wrong. Well! Then I spoke to Annie, and I told her what had happened. I said, “My dear, here’s Doctor Strong has positively been and made you the subject of a handsome declaration and an offer.” Did I press it in the least? No. I said, “Now, Annie, tell me the truth this moment; is your heart free?” “Mama,” she said crying, “I am extremely young”—which was perfectly true—“and I hardly know if I have a heart at all.” “Then, my dear,” I said, “you may rely upon it, it’s free. At all events, my love,” said I, “Doctor Strong is in an agitated state of mind, and must be answered. He cannot be kept in his present state of suspense.” “Mama,” said Annie, still crying, “would he be unhappy without me? If he would, I honour and respect him so much, that I think I will have him.” So it was settled. And then, and not till then, I said to Annie, “Annie, Doctor Strong will not only be your husband, but he will represent your late father: he will represent the head of our family, he will represent the wisdom and station, and I may say the means, of our family; and will be, in short, a Boon to it.” I used the word at the time, and I have used it again, today. If I have any merit it is consistency.’
The daughter had sat quite silent and still during this speech, with her eyes fixed on the ground; her cousin standing near her, and looking on the ground too. She now said very softly, in a trembling voice:
‘Mama, I hope you have finished?’ ‘No, my dear Annie,’ returned the Old Soldier, ‘I have not quite finished. Since you ask me, my love, I reply that I have not. I complain that you really are a little unnatural towards your own family; and, as it is of no use complaining to you. I mean to complain to your husband. Now, my dear Doctor, do look at that silly wife of yours.’
As the Doctor turned his kind face, with its smile of simplicity and gentleness, towards her, she drooped her head more. I noticed that Mr. Wickfield looked at her steadily.
‘When I happened to say to that naughty thing, the other day,’ pursued her mother, shaking her head and her fan at her, playfully, ‘that there was a family circumstance she might mention to you—indeed, I think, was bound to mention—she said, that to mention it was to ask a favour; and that, as you were too generous, and as for her to ask was always to have, she wouldn’t.’
‘Annie, my dear,’ said the Doctor. ‘That was wrong. It robbed me of a pleasure.’
‘Almost the very words I said to her!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘Now really, another time, when I know what she would tell you but for this reason, and won’t, I have a great mind, my dear Doctor, to tell you myself.’
‘I shall be glad if you will,’ returned the Doctor.
‘Shall I?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Well, then, I will!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘That’s a bargain.’ And having, I suppose, carried her point, she tapped the Doctor’s hand several times with her fan (which she kissed first), and returned triumphantly to her former station.
Some more company coming in, among whom were the two masters and Adams, the talk became general; and it naturally turned on Mr. Jack Maldon, and his voyage, and the country he was going to, and his various plans and prospects. He was to leave that night, after supper, in a post-chaise, for Gravesend; where the ship, in which he was to make the voyage, lay; and was to be gone—unless he came home on leave, or for his health—I don’t know how many years. I recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day. For my own part, I looked on Mr. Jack Maldon as a modern Sindbad, and pictured him the bosom friend of all the Rajahs in the East, sitting under canopies, smoking curly golden pipes—a mile long, if they could be straightened out.
Mrs. Strong was a very pretty singer: as I knew, who often heard her singing by herself. But, whether she was afraid of singing before people, or was out of voice that evening, it was certain that she couldn’t sing at all. She tried a duet, once, with her cousin Maldon, but could not so much as begin; and afterwards, when she tried to sing by herself, although she began sweetly, her voice died away on a sudden, and left her quite distressed, with her head hanging down over the keys. The good Doctor said she was nervous, and, to relieve her, proposed a round game at cards; of which he knew as much as of the art of playing the trombone. But I remarked that the Old Soldier took him into custody directly, for her partner; and instructed him, as the first preliminary of initiation, to give her all the silver he had in his pocket.
We had a merry game, not made the less merry by the Doctor’s mistakes, of which he committed an innumerable quantity, in spite of the watchfulness of the butterflies, and to their great aggravation. Mrs. Strong had declined to play, on the ground of not feeling very well; and her cousin Maldon had excused himself because he had some packing to do. When he had done it, however, he returned, and they sat together, talking, on the sofa. From time to time she came and looked over the Doctor’s hand, and told him what to play. She was very pale, as she bent over him, and I thought her finger trembled as she pointed out the cards; but the Doctor was quite happy in her attention, and took no notice of this, if it were so.
At supper, we were hardly so gay. Everyone appeared to feel that a parting of that sort was an awkward thing, and that the nearer it approached, the more awkward it was. Mr. Jack Maldon tried to be very talkative, but was not at his ease, and made matters worse. And they were not improved, as it appeared to me, by the Old Soldier: who continually recalled passages of Mr. Jack Maldon’s youth.
The Doctor, however, who felt, I am sure, that he was making everybody happy, was well pleased, and had no suspicion but that we were all at the utmost height of enjoyment.
‘Annie, my dear,’ said he, looking at his watch, and filling his glass, ‘it is past your cousin Jack’s time, and we must not detain him, since time and tide—both concerned in this case—wait for no man. Mr. Jack Maldon, you have a long voyage, and a strange country, before you; but many men have had both, and many men will have both, to the end of time. The winds you are going to tempt, have wafted thousands upon thousands to fortune, and brought thousands upon thousands happily back.’
‘It’s an affecting thing,’ said Mrs. Markleham—‘however it’s viewed, it’s affecting, to see a fine young man one has known from an infant, going away to the other end of the world, leaving all he knows behind, and not knowing what’s before him. A young man really well deserves constant support and patronage,’ looking at the Doctor, ‘who makes such sacrifices.’
‘Time will go fast with you, Mr. Jack Maldon,’ pursued the Doctor, ‘and fast with all of us. Some of us can hardly expect, perhaps, in the natural course of things, to greet you on your return. The next best thing is to hope to do it, and that’s my case. I shall not weary you with good advice. You have long had a good model before you, in your cousin Annie. Imitate her virtues as nearly as you can.’
Mrs. Markleham fanned herself, and shook her head.
‘Farewell, Mr. Jack,’ said the Doctor, standing up; on which we all stood up. ‘A prosperous voyage out, a thriving career abroad, and a happy return home!’
We all drank the toast, and all shook hands with Mr. Jack Maldon; after which he hastily took leave of the ladies who were there, and hurried to the door, where he was received, as he got into the chaise, with a tremendous broadside of cheers discharged by our boys, who had assembled on the lawn for the purpose. Running in among them to swell the ranks, I was very near the chaise when it rolled away; and I had a lively impression made upon me, in the midst of the noise and dust, of having seen Mr. Jack Maldon rattle past with an agitated face, and something cherry-coloured in his hand.
After another broadside for the Doctor, and another for the Doctor’s wife, the boys dispersed, and I went back into the house, where I found the guests all standing in a group about the Doctor, discussing how Mr. Jack Maldon had gone away, and how he had borne it, and how he had felt it, and all the rest of it. In the midst of these remarks, Mrs. Markleham cried: ‘Where’s Annie?’
No Annie was there; and when they called to her, no Annie replied. But all pressing out of the room, in a crowd, to see what was the matter, we found her lying on the hall floor. There was great alarm at first, until it was found that she was in a swoon, and that the swoon was yielding to the usual means of recovery; when the Doctor, who had lifted her head upon his knee, put her curls aside with his hand, and said, looking around:
‘Poor Annie! She’s so faithful and tender-hearted! It’s the parting from her old playfellow and friend—her favourite cousin—that has done this. Ah! It’s a pity! I am very sorry!’
When she opened her eyes, and saw where she was, and that we were all standing about her, she arose with assistance: turning her head, as she did so, to lay it on the Doctor’s shoulder—or to hide it, I don’t know which. We went into the drawing-room, to leave her with the Doctor and her mother; but she said, it seemed, that she was better than she had been since morning, and that she would rather be brought among us; so they brought her in, looking very white and weak, I thought, and sat her on a sofa.
‘Annie, my dear,’ said her mother, doing something to her dress. ‘See here! You have lost a bow. Will anybody be so good as find a ribbon; a cherry-coloured ribbon?’
It was the one she had worn at her bosom. We all looked for it; I myself looked everywhere, I am certain—but nobody could find it.
‘Do you recollect where you had it last, Annie?’ said her mother.
I wondered how I could have thought she looked white, or anything but burning red, when she answered that she had had it safe, a little while ago, she thought, but it was not worth looking for.
Nevertheless, it was looked for again, and still not found. She entreated that there might be no more searching; but it was still sought for, in a desultory way, until she was quite well, and the company took their departure.
We walked very slowly home, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I—Agnes and I admiring the moonlight, and Mr. Wickfield scarcely raising his eyes from the ground. When we, at last, reached our own door, Agnes discovered that she had left her little reticule behind. Delighted to be of any service to her, I ran back to fetch it.
I went into the supper-room where it had been left, which was deserted and dark. But a door of communication between that and the Doctor’s study, where there was a light, being open, I passed on there, to say what I wanted, and to get a candle.
The Doctor was sitting in his easy-chair by the fireside, and his young wife was on a stool at his feet. The Doctor, with a complacent smile, was reading aloud some manuscript explanation or statement of a theory out of that interminable Dictionary, and she was looking up at him. But with such a face as I never saw. It was so beautiful in its form, it was so ashy pale, it was so fixed in its abstraction, it was so full of a wild, sleep-walking, dreamy horror of I don’t know what. The eyes were wide open, and her brown hair fell in two rich clusters on her shoulders, and on her white dress, disordered by the want of the lost ribbon. Distinctly as I recollect her look, I cannot say of what it was expressive, I cannot even say of what it is expressive to me now, rising again before my older judgement. Penitence, humiliation, shame, pride, love, and trustfulness—I see them all; and in them all, I see that horror of I don’t know what.
My entrance, and my saying what I wanted, roused her. It disturbed the Doctor too, for when I went back to replace the candle I had taken from the table, he was patting her head, in his fatherly way, and saying he was a merciless drone to let her tempt him into reading on; and he would have her go to bed.
But she asked him, in a rapid, urgent manner, to let her stay—to let her feel assured (I heard her murmur some broken words to this effect) that she was in his confidence that night. And, as she turned again towards him, after glancing at me as I left the room and went out at the door, I saw her cross her hands upon his knee, and look up at him with the same face, something quieted, as he resumed his reading.
It made a great impression on me, and I remembered it a long time afterwards; as I shall have occasion to narrate when the time comes.
CHAPTER 17. SOMEBODY TURNS UP
It has not occurred to me to mention Peggotty since I ran away; but, of course, I wrote her a letter almost as soon as I was housed at Dover, and another, and a longer letter, containing all particulars fully related, when my aunt took me formally under her protection. On my being settled at Doctor Strong’s I wrote to her again, detailing my happy condition and prospects. I never could have derived anything like the pleasure from spending the money Mr. Dick had given me, that I felt in sending a gold half-guinea to Peggotty, per post, enclosed in this last letter, to discharge the sum I had borrowed of her: in which epistle, not before, I mentioned about the young man with the donkey-cart.
To these communications Peggotty replied as promptly, if not as concisely, as a merchant’s clerk. Her utmost powers of expression (which were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the attempt to write what she felt on the subject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots, were inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have desired more?
I made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take quite kindly to my aunt yet. The notice was too short after so long a prepossession the other way. We never knew a person, she wrote; but to think that Miss Betsey should seem to be so different from what she had been thought to be, was a Moral!—that was her word. She was evidently still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but timidly; and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and entertained the probability of my running away again soon: if I might judge from the repeated hints she threw out, that the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always to be had of her for the asking.
She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much, namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old home, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house was shut up, to be let or sold. God knows I had no part in it while they remained there, but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined how the winds of winter would howl round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and all connected with my father and mother were faded away.
There was no other news in Peggotty’s letters. Mr. Barkis was an excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all had our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don’t know what they were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs. Gummidge was but poorly, and little Em’ly wouldn’t send her love, but said that Peggotty might send it, if she liked.
All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only reserving to myself the mention of little Em’ly, to whom I instinctively felt that she would not very tenderly incline. While I was yet new at Doctor Strong’s, she made several excursions over to Canterbury to see me, and always at unseasonable hours: with the view, I suppose, of taking me by surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing a good character, and hearing on all hands that I rose fast in the school, she soon discontinued these visits. I saw her on a Saturday, every third or fourth week, when I went over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick every alternate Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to stay until next morning.
On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial; in relation to which document he had a notion that time was beginning to press now, and that it really must be got out of hand.
Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits the more agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open a credit for him at a cake shop, which was hampered with the stipulation that he should not be served with more than one shilling’s-worth in the course of any one day. This, and the reference of all his little bills at the county inn where he slept, to my aunt, before they were paid, induced me to suspect that he was only allowed to rattle his money, and not to spend it. I found on further investigation that this was so, or at least there was an agreement between him and my aunt that he should account to her for all his disbursements. As he had no idea of deceiving her, and always desired to please her, he was thus made chary of launching into expense. On this point, as well as on all other possible points, Mr. Dick was convinced that my aunt was the wisest and most wonderful of women; as he repeatedly told me with infinite secrecy, and always in a whisper.
‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, after imparting this confidence to me, one Wednesday; ‘who’s the man that hides near our house and frightens her?’
‘Frightens my aunt, sir?’
Mr. Dick nodded. ‘I thought nothing would have frightened her,’ he said, ‘for she’s—’ here he whispered softly, ‘don’t mention it—the wisest and most wonderful of women.’ Having said which, he drew back, to observe the effect which this description of her made upon me.
‘The first time he came,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘was—let me see—sixteen hundred and forty-nine was the date of King Charles’s execution. I think you said sixteen hundred and forty-nine?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I don’t know how it can be,’ said Mr. Dick, sorely puzzled and shaking his head. ‘I don’t think I am as old as that.’
‘Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?’ I asked.
‘Why, really’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I don’t see how it can have been in that year, Trotwood. Did you get that date out of history?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I suppose history never lies, does it?’ said Mr. Dick, with a gleam of hope.
‘Oh dear, no, sir!’ I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and young, and I thought so.
‘I can’t make it out,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. ‘There’s something wrong, somewhere. However, it was very soon after the mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles’s head into my head, that the man first came. I was walking out with Miss Trotwood after tea, just at dark, and there he was, close to our house.’
‘Walking about?’ I inquired.
‘Walking about?’ repeated Mr. Dick. ‘Let me see, I must recollect a bit. N-no, no; he was not walking about.’
I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he WAS doing.
‘Well, he wasn’t there at all,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘until he came up behind her, and whispered. Then she turned round and fainted, and I stood still and looked at him, and he walked away; but that he should have been hiding ever since (in the ground or somewhere), is the most extraordinary thing!’
‘HAS he been hiding ever since?’ I asked.
‘To be sure he has,’ retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his head gravely. ‘Never came out, till last night! We were walking last night, and he came up behind her again, and I knew him again.’
‘And did he frighten my aunt again?’
‘All of a shiver,’ said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that affection and making his teeth chatter. ‘Held by the palings. Cried. But, Trotwood, come here,’ getting me close to him, that he might whisper very softly; ‘why did she give him money, boy, in the moonlight?’
‘He was a beggar, perhaps.’
Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, ‘No beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’ went on to say, that from his window he had afterwards, and late at night, seen my aunt give this person money outside the garden rails in the moonlight, who then slunk away—into the ground again, as he thought probable—and was seen no more: while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly back into the house, and had, even that morning, been quite different from her usual self; which preyed on Mr. Dick’s mind.
I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that the unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and one of the line of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so much difficulty; but after some reflection I began to entertain the question whether an attempt, or threat of an attempt, might have been twice made to take poor Mr. Dick himself from under my aunt’s protection, and whether my aunt, the strength of whose kind feeling towards him I knew from herself, might have been induced to pay a price for his peace and quiet. As I was already much attached to Mr. Dick, and very solicitous for his welfare, my fears favoured this supposition; and for a long time his Wednesday hardly ever came round, without my entertaining a misgiving that he would not be on the coach-box as usual. There he always appeared, however, grey-headed, laughing, and happy; and he never had anything more to tell of the man who could frighten my aunt.
These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick’s life; they were far from being the least happy of mine. He soon became known to every boy in the school; and though he never took an active part in any game but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in all our sports as anyone among us. How often have I seen him, intent upon a match at marbles or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and hardly breathing at the critical times! How often, at hare and hounds, have I seen him mounted on a little knoll, cheering the whole field on to action, and waving his hat above his grey head, oblivious of King Charles the Martyr’s head, and all belonging to it! How many a summer hour have I known to be but blissful minutes to him in the cricket-field! How many winter days have I seen him, standing blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys going down the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves in rapture!
He was an universal favourite, and his ingenuity in little things was transcendent. He could cut oranges into such devices as none of us had an idea of. He could make a boat out of anything, from a skewer upwards. He could turn cramp-bones into chessmen; fashion Roman chariots from old court cards; make spoked wheels out of cotton reels, and bird-cages of old wire. But he was greatest of all, perhaps, in the articles of string and straw; with which we were all persuaded he could do anything that could be done by hands.
Mr. Dick’s renown was not long confined to us. After a few Wednesdays, Doctor Strong himself made some inquiries of me about him, and I told him all my aunt had told me; which interested the Doctor so much that he requested, on the occasion of his next visit, to be presented to him. This ceremony I performed; and the Doctor begging Mr. Dick, whensoever he should not find me at the coach office, to come on there, and rest himself until our morning’s work was over, it soon passed into a custom for Mr. Dick to come on as a matter of course, and, if we were a little late, as often happened on a Wednesday, to walk about the courtyard, waiting for me. Here he made the acquaintance of the Doctor’s beautiful young wife (paler than formerly, all this time; more rarely seen by me or anyone, I think; and not so gay, but not less beautiful), and so became more and more familiar by degrees, until, at last, he would come into the school and wait. He always sat in a particular corner, on a particular stool, which was called ‘Dick’, after him; here he would sit, with his grey head bent forward, attentively listening to whatever might be going on, with a profound veneration for the learning he had never been able to acquire.
This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the Doctor, whom he thought the most subtle and accomplished philosopher of any age. It was long before Mr. Dick ever spoke to him otherwise than bareheaded; and even when he and the Doctor had struck up quite a friendship, and would walk together by the hour, on that side of the courtyard which was known among us as The Doctor’s Walk, Mr. Dick would pull off his hat at intervals to show his respect for wisdom and knowledge. How it ever came about that the Doctor began to read out scraps of the famous Dictionary, in these walks, I never knew; perhaps he felt it all the same, at first, as reading to himself. However, it passed into a custom too; and Mr. Dick, listening with a face shining with pride and pleasure, in his heart of hearts believed the Dictionary to be the most delightful book in the world.
As I think of them going up and down before those schoolroom windows—the Doctor reading with his complacent smile, an occasional flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of his head; and Mr. Dick listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits calmly wandering God knows where, upon the wings of hard words—I think of it as one of the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen. I feel as if they might go walking to and fro for ever, and the world might somehow be the better for it—as if a thousand things it makes a noise about, were not one half so good for it, or me.
Agnes was one of Mr. Dick’s friends, very soon; and in often coming to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah. The friendship between himself and me increased continually, and it was maintained on this odd footing: that, while Mr. Dick came professedly to look after me as my guardian, he always consulted me in any little matter of doubt that arose, and invariably guided himself by my advice; not only having a high respect for my native sagacity, but considering that I inherited a good deal from my aunt.
One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with Mr. Dick from the hotel to the coach office before going back to school (for we had an hour’s school before breakfast), I met Uriah in the street, who reminded me of the promise I had made to take tea with himself and his mother: adding, with a writhe, ‘But I didn’t expect you to keep it, Master Copperfield, we’re so very umble.’
I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether I liked Uriah or detested him; and I was very doubtful about it still, as I stood looking him in the face in the street. But I felt it quite an affront to be supposed proud, and said I only wanted to be asked.
‘Oh, if that’s all, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘and it really isn’t our umbleness that prevents you, will you come this evening? But if it is our umbleness, I hope you won’t mind owning to it, Master Copperfield; for we are well aware of our condition.’
I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he approved, as I had no doubt he would, I would come with pleasure. So, at six o’clock that evening, which was one of the early office evenings, I announced myself as ready, to Uriah.
‘Mother will be proud, indeed,’ he said, as we walked away together. ‘Or she would be proud, if it wasn’t sinful, Master Copperfield.’
‘Yet you didn’t mind supposing I was proud this morning,’ I returned.
‘Oh dear, no, Master Copperfield!’ returned Uriah. ‘Oh, believe me, no! Such a thought never came into my head! I shouldn’t have deemed it at all proud if you had thought US too umble for you. Because we are so very umble.’
‘Have you been studying much law lately?’ I asked, to change the subject.
‘Oh, Master Copperfield,’ he said, with an air of self-denial, ‘my reading is hardly to be called study. I have passed an hour or two in the evening, sometimes, with Mr. Tidd.’
‘Rather hard, I suppose?’ said I. ‘He is hard to me sometimes,’ returned Uriah. ‘But I don’t know what he might be to a gifted person.’
After beating a little tune on his chin as he walked on, with the two forefingers of his skeleton right hand, he added:
‘There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield—Latin words and terms—in Mr. Tidd, that are trying to a reader of my umble attainments.’
‘Would you like to be taught Latin?’ I said briskly. ‘I will teach it you with pleasure, as I learn it.’
‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ he answered, shaking his head. ‘I am sure it’s very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much too umble to accept it.’
‘What nonsense, Uriah!’
‘Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I am greatly obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am far too umble. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain’t for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he is to get on in life, he must get on umbly, Master Copperfield!’
I never saw his mouth so wide, or the creases in his cheeks so deep, as when he delivered himself of these sentiments: shaking his head all the time, and writhing modestly.
‘I think you are wrong, Uriah,’ I said. ‘I dare say there are several things that I could teach you, if you would like to learn them.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt that, Master Copperfield,’ he answered; ‘not in the least. But not being umble yourself, you don’t judge well, perhaps, for them that are. I won’t provoke my betters with knowledge, thank you. I’m much too umble. Here is my umble dwelling, Master Copperfield!’
We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was the dead image of Uriah, only short. She received me with the utmost humility, and apologized to me for giving her son a kiss, observing that, lowly as they were, they had their natural affections, which they hoped would give no offence to anyone. It was a perfectly decent room, half parlour and half kitchen, but not at all a snug room. The tea-things were set upon the table, and the kettle was boiling on the hob. There was a chest of drawers with an escritoire top, for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was Uriah’s blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of Uriah’s books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and there were the usual articles of furniture. I don’t remember that any individual object had a bare, pinched, spare look; but I do remember that the whole place had.
It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep’s humility, that she still wore weeds. Notwithstanding the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr. Heep’s decease, she still wore weeds. I think there was some compromise in the cap; but otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days of her mourning.
‘This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,’ said Mrs. Heep, making the tea, ‘when Master Copperfield pays us a visit.’
‘I said you’d think so, mother,’ said Uriah.
‘If I could have wished father to remain among us for any reason,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘it would have been, that he might have known his company this afternoon.’
I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sensible, too, of being entertained as an honoured guest, and I thought Mrs. Heep an agreeable woman.
‘My Uriah,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘has looked forward to this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall ever be,’ said Mrs. Heep.
‘I am sure you have no occasion to be so, ma’am,’ I said, ‘unless you like.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ retorted Mrs. Heep. ‘We know our station and are thankful in it.’
I found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and that Uriah gradually got opposite to me, and that they respectfully plied me with the choicest of the eatables on the table. There was nothing particularly choice there, to be sure; but I took the will for the deed, and felt that they were very attentive. Presently they began to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs. Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine—but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers.
They were very fond of one another: that was certain. I take it, that had its effect upon me, as a touch of nature; but the skill with which the one followed up whatever the other said, was a touch of art which I was still less proof against. When there was nothing more to be got out of me about myself (for on the Murdstone and Grinby life, and on my journey, I was dumb), they began about Mr. Wickfield and Agnes. Uriah threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs. Heep caught it and threw it back to Uriah, Uriah kept it up a little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep, and so they went on tossing it about until I had no idea who had got it, and was quite bewildered. The ball itself was always changing too. Now it was Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excellence of Mr. Wickfield, now my admiration of Agnes; now the extent of Mr. Wickfield’s business and resources, now our domestic life after dinner; now, the wine that Mr. Wickfield took, the reason why he took it, and the pity that it was he took so much; now one thing, now another, then everything at once; and all the time, without appearing to speak very often, or to do anything but sometimes encourage them a little, for fear they should be overcome by their humility and the honour of my company, I found myself perpetually letting out something or other that I had no business to let out and seeing the effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah’s dinted nostrils.
I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and to wish myself well out of the visit, when a figure coming down the street passed the door—it stood open to air the room, which was warm, the weather being close for the time of year—came back again, looked in, and walked in, exclaiming loudly, ‘Copperfield! Is it possible?’
It was Mr. Micawber! It was Mr. Micawber, with his eye-glass, and his walking-stick, and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and the condescending roll in his voice, all complete!
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, putting out his hand, ‘this is indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind with a sense of the instability and uncertainty of all human—in short, it is a most extraordinary meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting upon the probability of something turning up (of which I am at present rather sanguine), I find a young but valued friend turn up, who is connected with the most eventful period of my life; I may say, with the turning-point of my existence. Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do you do?’
I cannot say—I really cannot say—that I was glad to see Mr. Micawber there; but I was glad to see him too, and shook hands with him, heartily, inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was.
‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Micawber, waving his hand as of old, and settling his chin in his shirt-collar. ‘She is tolerably convalescent. The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature’s founts—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, ‘they are weaned—and Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my travelling companion. She will be rejoiced, Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one who has proved himself in all respects a worthy minister at the sacred altar of friendship.’
I said I should be delighted to see her.
‘You are very good,’ said Mr. Micawber.
Mr. Micawber then smiled, settled his chin again, and looked about him.
‘I have discovered my friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber genteelly, and without addressing himself particularly to anyone, ‘not in solitude, but partaking of a social meal in company with a widow lady, and one who is apparently her offspring—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another of his bursts of confidence, ‘her son. I shall esteem it an honour to be presented.’
I could do no less, under these circumstances, than make Mr. Micawber known to Uriah Heep and his mother; which I accordingly did. As they abased themselves before him, Mr. Micawber took a seat, and waved his hand in his most courtly manner.
‘Any friend of my friend Copperfield’s,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘has a personal claim upon myself.’
‘We are too umble, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘my son and me, to be the friends of Master Copperfield. He has been so good as take his tea with us, and we are thankful to him for his company, also to you, sir, for your notice.’
‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, ‘you are very obliging: and what are you doing, Copperfield? Still in the wine trade?’
I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; and replied, with my hat in my hand, and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was a pupil at Doctor Strong’s.
‘A pupil?’ said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows. ‘I am extremely happy to hear it. Although a mind like my friend Copperfield’s’—to Uriah and Mrs. Heep—‘does not require that cultivation which, without his knowledge of men and things, it would require, still it is a rich soil teeming with latent vegetation—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, smiling, in another burst of confidence, ‘it is an intellect capable of getting up the classics to any extent.’
Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in this estimation of me.
‘Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?’ I said, to get Mr. Micawber away.
‘If you will do her that favour, Copperfield,’ replied Mr. Micawber, rising. ‘I have no scruple in saying, in the presence of our friends here, that I am a man who has, for some years, contended against the pressure of pecuniary difficulties.’ I knew he was certain to say something of this kind; he always would be so boastful about his difficulties. ‘Sometimes I have risen superior to my difficulties. Sometimes my difficulties have—in short, have floored me. There have been times when I have administered a succession of facers to them; there have been times when they have been too many for me, and I have given in, and said to Mrs. Micawber, in the words of Cato, “Plato, thou reasonest well. It’s all up now. I can show fight no more.” But at no time of my life,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘have I enjoyed a higher degree of satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties, chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two and four months, by that word) into the bosom of my friend Copperfield.’
Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute by saying, ‘Mr. Heep! Good evening. Mrs. Heep! Your servant,’ and then walking out with me in his most fashionable manner, making a good deal of noise on the pavement with his shoes, and humming a tune as we went.
It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a little room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room, and strongly flavoured with tobacco-smoke. I think it was over the kitchen, because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the chinks in the floor, and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was near the bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling of glasses. Here, recumbent on a small sofa, underneath a picture of a race-horse, with her head close to the fire, and her feet pushing the mustard off the dumb-waiter at the other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber, to whom Mr. Micawber entered first, saying, ‘My dear, allow me to introduce to you a pupil of Doctor Strong’s.’
I noticed, by the by, that although Mr. Micawber was just as much confused as ever about my age and standing, he always remembered, as a genteel thing, that I was a pupil of Doctor Strong’s.
Mrs. Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see me. I was very glad to see her too, and, after an affectionate greeting on both sides, sat down on the small sofa near her.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if you will mention to Copperfield what our present position is, which I have no doubt he will like to know, I will go and look at the paper the while, and see whether anything turns up among the advertisements.’
‘I thought you were at Plymouth, ma’am,’ I said to Mrs. Micawber, as he went out.
‘My dear Master Copperfield,’ she replied, ‘we went to Plymouth.’
‘To be on the spot,’ I hinted.
‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To be on the spot. But, the truth is, talent is not wanted in the Custom House. The local influence of my family was quite unavailing to obtain any employment in that department, for a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. They would rather NOT have a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. He would only show the deficiency of the others. Apart from which,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I will not disguise from you, my dear Master Copperfield, that when that branch of my family which is settled in Plymouth, became aware that Mr. Micawber was accompanied by myself, and by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the twins, they did not receive him with that ardour which he might have expected, being so newly released from captivity. In fact,’ said Mrs. Micawber, lowering her voice,—‘this is between ourselves—our reception was cool.’
‘Dear me!’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘It is truly painful to contemplate mankind in such an aspect, Master Copperfield, but our reception was, decidedly, cool. There is no doubt about it. In fact, that branch of my family which is settled in Plymouth became quite personal to Mr. Micawber, before we had been there a week.’
I said, and thought, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
‘Still, so it was,’ continued Mrs. Micawber. ‘Under such circumstances, what could a man of Mr. Micawber’s spirit do? But one obvious course was left. To borrow, of that branch of my family, the money to return to London, and to return at any sacrifice.’
‘Then you all came back again, ma’am?’ I said.
‘We all came back again,’ replied Mrs. Micawber. ‘Since then, I have consulted other branches of my family on the course which it is most expedient for Mr. Micawber to take—for I maintain that he must take some course, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, argumentatively. ‘It is clear that a family of six, not including a domestic, cannot live upon air.’
‘Certainly, ma’am,’ said I.
‘The opinion of those other branches of my family,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘is, that Mr. Micawber should immediately turn his attention to coals.’
‘To what, ma’am?’
‘To coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To the coal trade. Mr. Micawber was induced to think, on inquiry, that there might be an opening for a man of his talent in the Medway Coal Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very properly said, the first step to be taken clearly was, to come and see the Medway. Which we came and saw. I say “we”, Master Copperfield; for I never will,’ said Mrs. Micawber with emotion, ‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber.’
I murmured my admiration and approbation.
‘We came,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, ‘and saw the Medway. My opinion of the coal trade on that river is, that it may require talent, but that it certainly requires capital. Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not. We saw, I think, the greater part of the Medway; and that is my individual conclusion. Being so near here, Mr. Micawber was of opinion that it would be rash not to come on, and see the Cathedral. Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing, and our never having seen it; and secondly, on account of the great probability of something turning up in a cathedral town. We have been here,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘three days. Nothing has, as yet, turned up; and it may not surprise you, my dear Master Copperfield, so much as it would a stranger, to know that we are at present waiting for a remittance from London, to discharge our pecuniary obligations at this hotel. Until the arrival of that remittance,’ said Mrs. Micawber with much feeling, ‘I am cut off from my home (I allude to lodgings in Pentonville), from my boy and girl, and from my twins.’
I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in this anxious extremity, and said as much to Mr. Micawber, who now returned: adding that I only wished I had money enough, to lend them the amount they needed. Mr. Micawber’s answer expressed the disturbance of his mind. He said, shaking hands with me, ‘Copperfield, you are a true friend; but when the worst comes to the worst, no man is without a friend who is possessed of shaving materials.’ At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her arms round Mr. Micawber’s neck and entreated him to be calm. He wept; but so far recovered, almost immediately, as to ring the bell for the waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and a plate of shrimps for breakfast in the morning.
When I took my leave of them, they both pressed me so much to come and dine before they went away, that I could not refuse. But, as I knew I could not come next day, when I should have a good deal to prepare in the evening, Mr. Micawber arranged that he would call at Doctor Strong’s in the course of the morning (having a presentiment that the remittance would arrive by that post), and propose the day after, if it would suit me better. Accordingly I was called out of school next forenoon, and found Mr. Micawber in the parlour; who had called to say that the dinner would take place as proposed. When I asked him if the remittance had come, he pressed my hand and departed.
As I was looking out of window that same evening, it surprised me, and made me rather uneasy, to see Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep walk past, arm in arm: Uriah humbly sensible of the honour that was done him, and Mr. Micawber taking a bland delight in extending his patronage to Uriah. But I was still more surprised, when I went to the little hotel next day at the appointed dinner-hour, which was four o’clock, to find, from what Mr. Micawber said, that he had gone home with Uriah, and had drunk brandy-and-water at Mrs. Heep’s.
‘And I’ll tell you what, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your friend Heep is a young fellow who might be attorney-general. If I had known that young man, at the period when my difficulties came to a crisis, all I can say is, that I believe my creditors would have been a great deal better managed than they were.’
I hardly understood how this could have been, seeing that Mr. Micawber had paid them nothing at all as it was; but I did not like to ask. Neither did I like to say, that I hoped he had not been too communicative to Uriah; or to inquire if they had talked much about me. I was afraid of hurting Mr. Micawber’s feelings, or, at all events, Mrs. Micawber’s, she being very sensitive; but I was uncomfortable about it, too, and often thought about it afterwards.
We had a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish of fish; the kidney-end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat; a partridge, and a pudding. There was wine, and there was strong ale; and after dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands.
Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial. I never saw him such good company. He made his face shine with the punch, so that it looked as if it had been varnished all over. He got cheerfully sentimental about the town, and proposed success to it; observing that Mrs. Micawber and himself had been made extremely snug and comfortable there and that he never should forget the agreeable hours they had passed in Canterbury. He proposed me afterwards; and he, and Mrs. Micawber, and I, took a review of our past acquaintance, in the course of which we sold the property all over again. Then I proposed Mrs. Micawber: or, at least, said, modestly, ‘If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Micawber, I shall now have the pleasure of drinking your health, ma’am.’ On which Mr. Micawber delivered an eulogium on Mrs. Micawber’s character, and said she had ever been his guide, philosopher, and friend, and that he would recommend me, when I came to a marrying time of life, to marry such another woman, if such another woman could be found.
As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly and convivial. Mrs. Micawber’s spirits becoming elevated, too, we sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’. When we came to ‘Here’s a hand, my trusty frere’, we all joined hands round the table; and when we declared we would ‘take a right gude Willie Waught’, and hadn’t the least idea what it meant, we were really affected.
In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty farewell of himself and his amiable wife. Consequently, I was not prepared, at seven o’clock next morning, to receive the following communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour after I had left him:—
‘My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,
‘The die is cast—all is over. Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that there is no hope of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humiliating to endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate, I have discharged the pecuniary liability contracted at this establishment, by giving a note of hand, made payable fourteen days after date, at my residence, Pentonville, London. When it becomes due, it will not be taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree must fall.
‘Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence—though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical.
‘This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever receive
‘From
‘The
‘Beggared Outcast,
I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking it on my way to Doctor Strong’s, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber’s conversation, eating walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they did not see me, I thought it best, all things considered, not to see them. So, with a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a by-street that was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole, relieved that they were gone; though I still liked them very much, nevertheless.
CHAPTER 18. A RETROSPECT
My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence—the unseen, unfelt progress of my life—from childhood up to youth! Let me think, as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can remember how it ran.
A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went together, every Sunday morning, assembling first at school for that purpose. The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back, and hold me hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking dream.
I am not the last boy in the school. I have risen in a few months, over several heads. But the first boy seems to me a mighty creature, dwelling afar off, whose giddy height is unattainable. Agnes says ‘No,’ but I say ‘Yes,’ and tell her that she little thinks what stores of knowledge have been mastered by the wonderful Being, at whose place she thinks I, even I, weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He is not my private friend and public patron, as Steerforth was, but I hold him in a reverential respect. I chiefly wonder what he’ll be, when he leaves Doctor Strong’s, and what mankind will do to maintain any place against him.
But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.
Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment. I adore Miss Shepherd. She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies come to the Cathedral too. I cannot look upon my book, for I must look upon Miss Shepherd. When the choristers chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the service I mentally insert Miss Shepherd’s name—I put her in among the Royal Family. At home, in my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry out, ‘Oh, Miss Shepherd!’ in a transport of love.
For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings, but, at length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair. I say nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shepherd and myself live but to be united.
Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a present, I wonder? They are not expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes!
Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life, how do I ever come to break with her? I can’t conceive. And yet a coolness grows between Miss Shepherd and myself. Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn’t stare so, and having avowed a preference for Master Jones—for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever! The gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes a face as she goes by, and laughs to her companion. All is over. The devotion of a life—it seems a life, it is all the same—is at an end; Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal Family know her no more.
I am higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace. I am not at all polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies, and shouldn’t dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and twenty times as beautiful. I think the dancing-school a tiresome affair, and wonder why the girls can’t dance by themselves and leave us alone. I am growing great in Latin verses, and neglect the laces of my boots. Doctor Strong refers to me in public as a promising young scholar. Mr. Dick is wild with joy, and my aunt remits me a guinea by the next post.
The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed head in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth of Canterbury. There is a vague belief abroad, that the beef suet with which he anoints his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that he is a match for a man. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked, young butcher, with rough red cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an injurious tongue. His main use of this tongue, is, to disparage Doctor Strong’s young gentlemen. He says, publicly, that if they want anything he’ll give it ‘em. He names individuals among them (myself included), whom he could undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him. He waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls challenges after me in the open streets. For these sufficient reasons I resolve to fight the butcher.
It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a wall. I meet the butcher by appointment. I am attended by a select body of our boys; the butcher, by two other butchers, a young publican, and a sweep. The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to face. In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left eyebrow. In another moment, I don’t know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon the trodden grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident; sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second’s knee; sometimes I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against his face, without appearing to discompose him at all. At last I awake, very queer about the head, as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walking off, congratulated by the two other butchers and the sweep and publican, and putting on his coat as he goes; from which I augur, justly, that the victory is his.
I am taken home in a sad plight, and I have beef-steaks put to my eyes, and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and find a great puffy place bursting out on my upper lip, which swells immoderately. For three or four days I remain at home, a very ill-looking subject, with a green shade over my eyes; and I should be very dull, but that Agnes is a sister to me, and condoles with me, and reads to me, and makes the time light and happy. Agnes has my confidence completely, always; I tell her all about the butcher, and the wrongs he has heaped upon me; she thinks I couldn’t have done otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks and trembles at my having fought him.
Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. Adams has left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a visit to Doctor Strong, there are not many there, besides myself, who know him. Adams is going to be called to the bar almost directly, and is to be an advocate, and to wear a wig. I am surprised to find him a meeker man than I had thought, and less imposing in appearance. He has not staggered the world yet, either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the same as if he had never joined it.
A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in stately hosts that seem to have no end—and what comes next! I am the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life—as something I have passed, rather than have actually been—and almost think of him as of someone else.
And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield’s, where is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture, a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes—my sweet sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend, the better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good, self-denying influence—is quite a woman.
What other changes have come upon me, besides the changes in my growth and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this while? I wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed coat; and I use a great deal of bear’s grease—which, taken in conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? I am. I worship the eldest Miss Larkins.
The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark, black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the eldest must be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all bounds.
The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers. It is an awful thing to bear. I see them speaking to her in the street. I see them cross the way to meet her, when her bonnet (she has a bright taste in bonnets) is seen coming down the pavement, accompanied by her sister’s bonnet. She laughs and talks, and seems to like it. I spend a good deal of my own spare time in walking up and down to meet her. If I can bow to her once in the day (I know her to bow to, knowing Mr. Larkins), I am happier. I deserve a bow now and then. The raging agonies I suffer on the night of the Race Ball, where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with the military, ought to have some compensation, if there be even-handed justice in the world.
My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk neckerchief continually. I have no relief but in putting on my best clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again. I seem, then, to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins. Everything that belongs to her, or is connected with her, is precious to me. Mr. Larkins (a gruff old gentleman with a double chin, and one of his eyes immovable in his head) is fraught with interest to me. When I can’t meet his daughter, I go where I am likely to meet him. To say ‘How do you do, Mr. Larkins? Are the young ladies and all the family quite well?’ seems so pointed, that I blush.
I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? Besides, I shall be one-and-twenty in no time almost. I regularly take walks outside Mr. Larkins’s house in the evening, though it cuts me to the heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up in the drawing-room, where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. I even walk, on two or three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner, round and round the house after the family are gone to bed, wondering which is the eldest Miss Larkins’s chamber (and pitching, I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins’s instead); wishing that a fire would burst out; that the assembled crowd would stand appalled; that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might rear it against her window, save her in my arms, go back for something she had left behind, and perish in the flames. For I am generally disinterested in my love, and think I could be content to make a figure before Miss Larkins, and expire.
Generally, but not always. Sometimes brighter visions rise before me. When I dress (the occupation of two hours), for a great ball given at the Larkins’s (the anticipation of three weeks), I indulge my fancy with pleasing images. I picture myself taking courage to make a declaration to Miss Larkins. I picture Miss Larkins sinking her head upon my shoulder, and saying, ‘Oh, Mr. Copperfield, can I believe my ears!’ I picture Mr. Larkins waiting on me next morning, and saying, ‘My dear Copperfield, my daughter has told me all. Youth is no objection. Here are twenty thousand pounds. Be happy!’ I picture my aunt relenting, and blessing us; and Mr. Dick and Doctor Strong being present at the marriage ceremony. I am a sensible fellow, I believe—I believe, on looking back, I mean—and modest I am sure; but all this goes on notwithstanding. I repair to the enchanted house, where there are lights, chattering, music, flowers, officers (I am sorry to see), and the eldest Miss Larkins, a blaze of beauty. She is dressed in blue, with blue flowers in her hair—forget-me-nots—as if SHE had any need to wear forget-me-nots. It is the first really grown-up party that I have ever been invited to, and I am a little uncomfortable; for I appear not to belong to anybody, and nobody appears to have anything to say to me, except Mr. Larkins, who asks me how my schoolfellows are, which he needn’t do, as I have not come there to be insulted.
But after I have stood in the doorway for some time, and feasted my eyes upon the goddess of my heart, she approaches me—she, the eldest Miss Larkins!—and asks me pleasantly, if I dance?
I stammer, with a bow, ‘With you, Miss Larkins.’
‘With no one else?’ inquires Miss Larkins.
‘I should have no pleasure in dancing with anyone else.’
Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says, ‘Next time but one, I shall be very glad.’
The time arrives. ‘It is a waltz, I think,’ Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. ‘Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey—’
But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it her, and say:
‘I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.’
‘Indeed! What is that?’ returns Miss Larkins.
‘A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.’
‘You’re a bold boy,’ says Miss Larkins. ‘There.’
She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my arm, and says, ‘Now take me back to Captain Bailey.’
I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman who has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says:
‘Oh! here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr. Copperfield.’
I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much gratified.
‘I admire your taste, sir,’ says Mr. Chestle. ‘It does you credit. I suppose you don’t take much interest in hops; but I am a pretty large grower myself; and if you ever like to come over to our neighbourhood—neighbourhood of Ashford—and take a run about our place,—we shall be glad for you to stop as long as you like.’
I thank Mr. Chestle warmly, and shake hands. I think I am in a happy dream. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins once again. She says I waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear divinity. For some days afterwards, I am lost in rapturous reflections; but I neither see her in the street, nor when I call. I am imperfectly consoled for this disappointment by the sacred pledge, the perished flower.
‘Trotwood,’ says Agnes, one day after dinner. ‘Who do you think is going to be married tomorrow? Someone you admire.’
‘Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’
‘Not me!’ raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. ‘Do you hear him, Papa?—The eldest Miss Larkins.’
‘To—to Captain Bailey?’ I have just enough power to ask.
‘No; to no Captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.’
I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I wear my worst clothes, I use no bear’s grease, and I frequently lament over the late Miss Larkins’s faded flower. Being, by that time, rather tired of this kind of life, and having received new provocation from the butcher, I throw the flower away, go out with the butcher, and gloriously defeat him.
This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear’s grease in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my progress to seventeen.
CHAPTER 19. I LOOK ABOUT ME, AND MAKE A DISCOVERY
I am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry, when my school-days drew to an end, and the time came for my leaving Doctor Strong’s. I had been very happy there, I had a great attachment for the Doctor, and I was eminent and distinguished in that little world. For these reasons I was sorry to go; but for other reasons, unsubstantial enough, I was glad. Misty ideas of being a young man at my own disposal, of the importance attaching to a young man at his own disposal, of the wonderful things to be seen and done by that magnificent animal, and the wonderful effects he could not fail to make upon society, lured me away. So powerful were these visionary considerations in my boyish mind, that I seem, according to my present way of thinking, to have left school without natural regret. The separation has not made the impression on me, that other separations have. I try in vain to recall how I felt about it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my recollection. I suppose the opening prospect confused me. I know that my juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and that life was more like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin to read, than anything else.
My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the calling to which I should be devoted. For a year or more I had endeavoured to find a satisfactory answer to her often-repeated question, ‘What I would like to be?’ But I had no particular liking, that I could discover, for anything. If I could have been inspired with a knowledge of the science of navigation, taken the command of a fast-sailing expedition, and gone round the world on a triumphant voyage of discovery, I think I might have considered myself completely suited. But, in the absence of any such miraculous provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit that would not lie too heavily upon her purse; and to do my duty in it, whatever it might be.
Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a meditative and sage demeanour. He never made a suggestion but once; and on that occasion (I don’t know what put it in his head), he suddenly proposed that I should be ‘a Brazier’. My aunt received this proposal so very ungraciously, that he never ventured on a second; but ever afterwards confined himself to looking watchfully at her for her suggestions, and rattling his money.
‘Trot, I tell you what, my dear,’ said my aunt, one morning in the Christmas season when I left school: ‘as this knotty point is still unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake in our decision if we can help it, I think we had better take a little breathing-time. In the meanwhile, you must try to look at it from a new point of view, and not as a schoolboy.’
‘I will, aunt.’
‘It has occurred to me,’ pursued my aunt, ‘that a little change, and a glimpse of life out of doors, may be useful in helping you to know your own mind, and form a cooler judgement. Suppose you were to go down into the old part of the country again, for instance, and see that—that out-of-the-way woman with the savagest of names,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose, for she could never thoroughly forgive Peggotty for being so called.
‘Of all things in the world, aunt, I should like it best!’
‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘that’s lucky, for I should like it too. But it’s natural and rational that you should like it. And I am very well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will always be natural and rational.’
‘I hope so, aunt.’
‘Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, ‘would have been as natural and rational a girl as ever breathed. You’ll be worthy of her, won’t you?’
‘I hope I shall be worthy of YOU, aunt. That will be enough for me.’
‘It’s a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of yours didn’t live,’ said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, ‘or she’d have been so vain of her boy by this time, that her soft little head would have been completely turned, if there was anything of it left to turn.’ (My aunt always excused any weakness of her own in my behalf, by transferring it in this way to my poor mother.) ‘Bless me, Trotwood, how you do remind me of her!’
‘Pleasantly, I hope, aunt?’ said I.
‘He’s as like her, Dick,’ said my aunt, emphatically, ‘he’s as like her, as she was that afternoon before she began to fret—bless my heart, he’s as like her, as he can look at me out of his two eyes!’
‘Is he indeed?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘And he’s like David, too,’ said my aunt, decisively.
‘He is very like David!’ said Mr. Dick.
‘But what I want you to be, Trot,’ resumed my aunt, ‘—I don’t mean physically, but morally; you are very well physically—is, a firm fellow. A fine firm fellow, with a will of your own. With resolution,’ said my aunt, shaking her cap at me, and clenching her hand. ‘With determination. With character, Trot—with strength of character that is not to be influenced, except on good reason, by anybody, or by anything. That’s what I want you to be. That’s what your father and mother might both have been, Heaven knows, and been the better for it.’
I intimated that I hoped I should be what she described.
‘That you may begin, in a small way, to have a reliance upon yourself, and to act for yourself,’ said my aunt, ‘I shall send you upon your trip, alone. I did think, once, of Mr. Dick’s going with you; but, on second thoughts, I shall keep him to take care of me.’
Mr. Dick, for a moment, looked a little disappointed; until the honour and dignity of having to take care of the most wonderful woman in the world, restored the sunshine to his face.
‘Besides,’ said my aunt, ‘there’s the Memorial—’
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick, in a hurry, ‘I intend, Trotwood, to get that done immediately—it really must be done immediately! And then it will go in, you know—and then—’ said Mr. Dick, after checking himself, and pausing a long time, ‘there’ll be a pretty kettle of fish!’
In pursuance of my aunt’s kind scheme, I was shortly afterwards fitted out with a handsome purse of money, and a portmanteau, and tenderly dismissed upon my expedition. At parting, my aunt gave me some good advice, and a good many kisses; and said that as her object was that I should look about me, and should think a little, she would recommend me to stay a few days in London, if I liked it, either on my way down into Suffolk, or in coming back. In a word, I was at liberty to do what I would, for three weeks or a month; and no other conditions were imposed upon my freedom than the before-mentioned thinking and looking about me, and a pledge to write three times a week and faithfully report myself.
I went to Canterbury first, that I might take leave of Agnes and Mr. Wickfield (my old room in whose house I had not yet relinquished), and also of the good Doctor. Agnes was very glad to see me, and told me that the house had not been like itself since I had left it.
‘I am sure I am not like myself when I am away,’ said I. ‘I seem to want my right hand, when I miss you. Though that’s not saying much; for there’s no head in my right hand, and no heart. Everyone who knows you, consults with you, and is guided by you, Agnes.’
‘Everyone who knows me, spoils me, I believe,’ she answered, smiling.
‘No. It’s because you are like no one else. You are so good, and so sweet-tempered. You have such a gentle nature, and you are always right.’
‘You talk,’ said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant laugh, as she sat at work, ‘as if I were the late Miss Larkins.’
‘Come! It’s not fair to abuse my confidence,’ I answered, reddening at the recollection of my blue enslaver. ‘But I shall confide in you, just the same, Agnes. I can never grow out of that. Whenever I fall into trouble, or fall in love, I shall always tell you, if you’ll let me—even when I come to fall in love in earnest.’
‘Why, you have always been in earnest!’ said Agnes, laughing again.
‘Oh! that was as a child, or a schoolboy,’ said I, laughing in my turn, not without being a little shame-faced. ‘Times are altering now, and I suppose I shall be in a terrible state of earnestness one day or other. My wonder is, that you are not in earnest yourself, by this time, Agnes.’
Agnes laughed again, and shook her head.
‘Oh, I know you are not!’ said I, ‘because if you had been you would have told me. Or at least’—for I saw a faint blush in her face, ‘you would have let me find it out for myself. But there is no one that I know of, who deserves to love you, Agnes. Someone of a nobler character, and more worthy altogether than anyone I have ever seen here, must rise up, before I give my consent. In the time to come, I shall have a wary eye on all admirers; and shall exact a great deal from the successful one, I assure you.’
We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest and earnest, that had long grown naturally out of our familiar relations, begun as mere children. But Agnes, now suddenly lifting up her eyes to mine, and speaking in a different manner, said:
‘Trotwood, there is something that I want to ask you, and that I may not have another opportunity of asking for a long time, perhaps—something I would ask, I think, of no one else. Have you observed any gradual alteration in Papa?’
I had observed it, and had often wondered whether she had too. I must have shown as much, now, in my face; for her eyes were in a moment cast down, and I saw tears in them.
‘Tell me what it is,’ she said, in a low voice.
‘I think—shall I be quite plain, Agnes, liking him so much?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I think he does himself no good by the habit that has increased upon him since I first came here. He is often very nervous—or I fancy so.’
‘It is not fancy,’ said Agnes, shaking her head.
‘His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and his eyes look wild. I have remarked that at those times, and when he is least like himself, he is most certain to be wanted on some business.’
‘By Uriah,’ said Agnes.
‘Yes; and the sense of being unfit for it, or of not having understood it, or of having shown his condition in spite of himself, seems to make him so uneasy, that next day he is worse, and next day worse, and so he becomes jaded and haggard. Do not be alarmed by what I say, Agnes, but in this state I saw him, only the other evening, lay down his head upon his desk, and shed tears like a child.’
Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was yet speaking, and in a moment she had met her father at the door of the room, and was hanging on his shoulder. The expression of her face, as they both looked towards me, I felt to be very touching. There was such deep fondness for him, and gratitude to him for all his love and care, in her beautiful look; and there was such a fervent appeal to me to deal tenderly by him, even in my inmost thoughts, and to let no harsh construction find any place against him; she was, at once, so proud of him and devoted to him, yet so compassionate and sorry, and so reliant upon me to be so, too; that nothing she could have said would have expressed more to me, or moved me more.
We were to drink tea at the Doctor’s. We went there at the usual hour; and round the study fireside found the Doctor, and his young wife, and her mother. The Doctor, who made as much of my going away as if I were going to China, received me as an honoured guest; and called for a log of wood to be thrown on the fire, that he might see the face of his old pupil reddening in the blaze.
‘I shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood’s stead, Wickfield,’ said the Doctor, warming his hands; ‘I am getting lazy, and want ease. I shall relinquish all my young people in another six months, and lead a quieter life.’
‘You have said so, any time these ten years, Doctor,’ Mr. Wickfield answered.
‘But now I mean to do it,’ returned the Doctor. ‘My first master will succeed me—I am in earnest at last—so you’ll soon have to arrange our contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like a couple of knaves.’
‘And to take care,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you’re not imposed on, eh? As you certainly would be, in any contract you should make for yourself. Well! I am ready. There are worse tasks than that, in my calling.’
‘I shall have nothing to think of then,’ said the Doctor, with a smile, ‘but my Dictionary; and this other contract-bargain—Annie.’
As Mr. Wickfield glanced towards her, sitting at the tea table by Agnes, she seemed to me to avoid his look with such unwonted hesitation and timidity, that his attention became fixed upon her, as if something were suggested to his thoughts.
‘There is a post come in from India, I observe,’ he said, after a short silence.
‘By the by! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!’ said the Doctor.
‘Indeed!’ ‘Poor dear Jack!’ said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head. ‘That trying climate!—like living, they tell me, on a sand-heap, underneath a burning-glass! He looked strong, but he wasn’t. My dear Doctor, it was his spirit, not his constitution, that he ventured on so boldly. Annie, my dear, I am sure you must perfectly recollect that your cousin never was strong—not what can be called ROBUST, you know,’ said Mrs. Markleham, with emphasis, and looking round upon us generally, ‘—from the time when my daughter and himself were children together, and walking about, arm-in-arm, the livelong day.’
Annie, thus addressed, made no reply.
‘Do I gather from what you say, ma’am, that Mr. Maldon is ill?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
‘Ill!’ replied the Old Soldier. ‘My dear sir, he’s all sorts of things.’
‘Except well?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘Except well, indeed!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘He has had dreadful strokes of the sun, no doubt, and jungle fevers and agues, and every kind of thing you can mention. As to his liver,’ said the Old Soldier resignedly, ‘that, of course, he gave up altogether, when he first went out!’
‘Does he say all this?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
‘Say? My dear sir,’ returned Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head and her fan, ‘you little know my poor Jack Maldon when you ask that question. Say? Not he. You might drag him at the heels of four wild horses first.’
‘Mama!’ said Mrs. Strong.
‘Annie, my dear,’ returned her mother, ‘once for all, I must really beg that you will not interfere with me, unless it is to confirm what I say. You know as well as I do that your cousin Maldon would be dragged at the heels of any number of wild horses—why should I confine myself to four! I WON’T confine myself to four—eight, sixteen, two-and-thirty, rather than say anything calculated to overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
‘Wickfield’s plans,’ said the Doctor, stroking his face, and looking penitently at his adviser. ‘That is to say, our joint plans for him. I said myself, abroad or at home.’
‘And I said’ added Mr. Wickfield gravely, ‘abroad. I was the means of sending him abroad. It’s my responsibility.’
‘Oh! Responsibility!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Everything was done for the best, my dear Mr. Wickfield; everything was done for the kindest and best, we know. But if the dear fellow can’t live there, he can’t live there. And if he can’t live there, he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll overturn the Doctor’s plans. I know him,’ said the Old Soldier, fanning herself, in a sort of calm prophetic agony, ‘and I know he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
‘Well, well, ma’am,’ said the Doctor cheerfully, ‘I am not bigoted to my plans, and I can overturn them myself. I can substitute some other plans. If Mr. Jack Maldon comes home on account of ill health, he must not be allowed to go back, and we must endeavour to make some more suitable and fortunate provision for him in this country.’
Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech—which, I need not say, she had not at all expected or led up to—that she could only tell the Doctor it was like himself, and go several times through that operation of kissing the sticks of her fan, and then tapping his hand with it. After which she gently chid her daughter Annie, for not being more demonstrative when such kindnesses were showered, for her sake, on her old playfellow; and entertained us with some particulars concerning other deserving members of her family, whom it was desirable to set on their deserving legs.
All this time, her daughter Annie never once spoke, or lifted up her eyes. All this time, Mr. Wickfield had his glance upon her as she sat by his own daughter’s side. It appeared to me that he never thought of being observed by anyone; but was so intent upon her, and upon his own thoughts in connexion with her, as to be quite absorbed. He now asked what Mr. Jack Maldon had actually written in reference to himself, and to whom he had written?
‘Why, here,’ said Mrs. Markleham, taking a letter from the chimney-piece above the Doctor’s head, ‘the dear fellow says to the Doctor himself—where is it? Oh!—“I am sorry to inform you that my health is suffering severely, and that I fear I may be reduced to the necessity of returning home for a time, as the only hope of restoration.” That’s pretty plain, poor fellow! His only hope of restoration! But Annie’s letter is plainer still. Annie, show me that letter again.’
‘Not now, mama,’ she pleaded in a low tone.
‘My dear, you absolutely are, on some subjects, one of the most ridiculous persons in the world,’ returned her mother, ‘and perhaps the most unnatural to the claims of your own family. We never should have heard of the letter at all, I believe, unless I had asked for it myself. Do you call that confidence, my love, towards Doctor Strong? I am surprised. You ought to know better.’
The letter was reluctantly produced; and as I handed it to the old lady, I saw how the unwilling hand from which I took it, trembled.
‘Now let us see,’ said Mrs. Markleham, putting her glass to her eye, ‘where the passage is. “The remembrance of old times, my dearest Annie”—and so forth—it’s not there. “The amiable old Proctor”—who’s he? Dear me, Annie, how illegibly your cousin Maldon writes, and how stupid I am! “Doctor,” of course. Ah! amiable indeed!’ Here she left off, to kiss her fan again, and shake it at the Doctor, who was looking at us in a state of placid satisfaction. ‘Now I have found it. “You may not be surprised to hear, Annie,”—no, to be sure, knowing that he never was really strong; what did I say just now?—“that I have undergone so much in this distant place, as to have decided to leave it at all hazards; on sick leave, if I can; on total resignation, if that is not to be obtained. What I have endured, and do endure here, is insupportable.” And but for the promptitude of that best of creatures,’ said Mrs. Markleham, telegraphing the Doctor as before, and refolding the letter, ‘it would be insupportable to me to think of.’
Mr. Wickfield said not one word, though the old lady looked to him as if for his commentary on this intelligence; but sat severely silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. Long after the subject was dismissed, and other topics occupied us, he remained so; seldom raising his eyes, unless to rest them for a moment, with a thoughtful frown, upon the Doctor, or his wife, or both.
The Doctor was very fond of music. Agnes sang with great sweetness and expression, and so did Mrs. Strong. They sang together, and played duets together, and we had quite a little concert. But I remarked two things: first, that though Annie soon recovered her composure, and was quite herself, there was a blank between her and Mr. Wickfield which separated them wholly from each other; secondly, that Mr. Wickfield seemed to dislike the intimacy between her and Agnes, and to watch it with uneasiness. And now, I must confess, the recollection of what I had seen on that night when Mr. Maldon went away, first began to return upon me with a meaning it had never had, and to trouble me. The innocent beauty of her face was not as innocent to me as it had been; I mistrusted the natural grace and charm of her manner; and when I looked at Agnes by her side, and thought how good and true Agnes was, suspicions arose within me that it was an ill-assorted friendship.
She was so happy in it herself, however, and the other was so happy too, that they made the evening fly away as if it were but an hour. It closed in an incident which I well remember. They were taking leave of each other, and Agnes was going to embrace her and kiss her, when Mr. Wickfield stepped between them, as if by accident, and drew Agnes quickly away. Then I saw, as though all the intervening time had been cancelled, and I were still standing in the doorway on the night of the departure, the expression of that night in the face of Mrs. Strong, as it confronted his.
I cannot say what an impression this made upon me, or how impossible I found it, when I thought of her afterwards, to separate her from this look, and remember her face in its innocent loveliness again. It haunted me when I got home. I seemed to have left the Doctor’s roof with a dark cloud lowering on it. The reverence that I had for his grey head, was mingled with commiseration for his faith in those who were treacherous to him, and with resentment against those who injured him. The impending shadow of a great affliction, and a great disgrace that had no distinct form in it yet, fell like a stain upon the quiet place where I had worked and played as a boy, and did it a cruel wrong. I had no pleasure in thinking, any more, of the grave old broad-leaved aloe-trees, which remained shut up in themselves a hundred years together, and of the trim smooth grass-plot, and the stone urns, and the Doctor’s walk, and the congenial sound of the Cathedral bell hovering above them all. It was as if the tranquil sanctuary of my boyhood had been sacked before my face, and its peace and honour given to the winds.
But morning brought with it my parting from the old house, which Agnes had filled with her influence; and that occupied my mind sufficiently. I should be there again soon, no doubt; I might sleep again—perhaps often—in my old room; but the days of my inhabiting there were gone, and the old time was past. I was heavier at heart when I packed up such of my books and clothes as still remained there to be sent to Dover, than I cared to show to Uriah Heep; who was so officious to help me, that I uncharitably thought him mighty glad that I was going.
I got away from Agnes and her father, somehow, with an indifferent show of being very manly, and took my seat upon the box of the London coach. I was so softened and forgiving, going through the town, that I had half a mind to nod to my old enemy the butcher, and throw him five shillings to drink. But he looked such a very obdurate butcher as he stood scraping the great block in the shop, and moreover, his appearance was so little improved by the loss of a front tooth which I had knocked out, that I thought it best to make no advances.
The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got fairly on the road, was to appear as old as possible to the coachman, and to speak extremely gruff. The latter point I achieved at great personal inconvenience; but I stuck to it, because I felt it was a grown-up sort of thing.
‘You are going through, sir?’ said the coachman.
‘Yes, William,’ I said, condescendingly (I knew him); ‘I am going to London. I shall go down into Suffolk afterwards.’
‘Shooting, sir?’ said the coachman.
He knew as well as I did that it was just as likely, at that time of year, I was going down there whaling; but I felt complimented, too.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, pretending to be undecided, ‘whether I shall take a shot or not.’ ‘Birds is got wery shy, I’m told,’ said William.
‘So I understand,’ said I.
‘Is Suffolk your county, sir?’ asked William.
‘Yes,’ I said, with some importance. ‘Suffolk’s my county.’
‘I’m told the dumplings is uncommon fine down there,’ said William.
I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it necessary to uphold the institutions of my county, and to evince a familiarity with them; so I shook my head, as much as to say, ‘I believe you!’
‘And the Punches,’ said William. ‘There’s cattle! A Suffolk Punch, when he’s a good un, is worth his weight in gold. Did you ever breed any Suffolk Punches yourself, sir?’
‘N-no,’ I said, ‘not exactly.’
‘Here’s a gen’lm’n behind me, I’ll pound it,’ said William, ‘as has bred ‘em by wholesale.’
The gentleman spoken of was a gentleman with a very unpromising squint, and a prominent chin, who had a tall white hat on with a narrow flat brim, and whose close-fitting drab trousers seemed to button all the way up outside his legs from his boots to his hips. His chin was cocked over the coachman’s shoulder, so near to me, that his breath quite tickled the back of my head; and as I looked at him, he leered at the leaders with the eye with which he didn’t squint, in a very knowing manner.
‘Ain’t you?’ asked William.
‘Ain’t I what?’ said the gentleman behind.
‘Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?’
‘I should think so,’ said the gentleman. ‘There ain’t no sort of orse that I ain’t bred, and no sort of dorg. Orses and dorgs is some men’s fancy. They’re wittles and drink to me—lodging, wife, and children—reading, writing, and Arithmetic—snuff, tobacker, and sleep.’
‘That ain’t a sort of man to see sitting behind a coach-box, is it though?’ said William in my ear, as he handled the reins.
I construed this remark into an indication of a wish that he should have my place, so I blushingly offered to resign it.
‘Well, if you don’t mind, sir,’ said William, ‘I think it would be more correct.’
I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. When I booked my place at the coach office I had had ‘Box Seat’ written against the entry, and had given the book-keeper half-a-crown. I was got up in a special great-coat and shawl, expressly to do honour to that distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon it a good deal; and had felt that I was a credit to the coach. And here, in the very first stage, I was supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who had no other merit than smelling like a livery-stables, and being able to walk across me, more like a fly than a human being, while the horses were at a canter!
A distrust of myself, which has often beset me in life on small occasions, when it would have been better away, was assuredly not stopped in its growth by this little incident outside the Canterbury coach. It was in vain to take refuge in gruffness of speech. I spoke from the pit of my stomach for the rest of the journey, but I felt completely extinguished, and dreadfully young.
It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be sitting up there behind four horses: well educated, well dressed, and with plenty of money in my pocket; and to look out for the places where I had slept on my weary journey. I had abundant occupation for my thoughts, in every conspicuous landmark on the road. When I looked down at the trampers whom we passed, and saw that well-remembered style of face turned up, I felt as if the tinker’s blackened hand were in the bosom of my shirt again. When we clattered through the narrow street of Chatham, and I caught a glimpse, in passing, of the lane where the old monster lived who had bought my jacket, I stretched my neck eagerly to look for the place where I had sat, in the sun and in the shade, waiting for my money. When we came, at last, within a stage of London, and passed the veritable Salem House where Mr. Creakle had laid about him with a heavy hand, I would have given all I had, for lawful permission to get down and thrash him, and let all the boys out like so many caged sparrows.
We went to the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a mouldy sort of establishment in a close neighbourhood. A waiter showed me into the coffee-room; and a chambermaid introduced me to my small bedchamber, which smelt like a hackney-coach, and was shut up like a family vault. I was still painfully conscious of my youth, for nobody stood in any awe of me at all: the chambermaid being utterly indifferent to my opinions on any subject, and the waiter being familiar with me, and offering advice to my inexperience.
‘Well now,’ said the waiter, in a tone of confidence, ‘what would you like for dinner? Young gentlemen likes poultry in general: have a fowl!’
I told him, as majestically as I could, that I wasn’t in the humour for a fowl.
‘Ain’t you?’ said the waiter. ‘Young gentlemen is generally tired of beef and mutton: have a weal cutlet!’
I assented to this proposal, in default of being able to suggest anything else.
‘Do you care for taters?’ said the waiter, with an insinuating smile, and his head on one side. ‘Young gentlemen generally has been overdosed with taters.’
I commanded him, in my deepest voice, to order a veal cutlet and potatoes, and all things fitting; and to inquire at the bar if there were any letters for Trotwood Copperfield, Esquire—which I knew there were not, and couldn’t be, but thought it manly to appear to expect.
He soon came back to say that there were none (at which I was much surprised) and began to lay the cloth for my dinner in a box by the fire. While he was so engaged, he asked me what I would take with it; and on my replying ‘Half a pint of sherry,’ thought it a favourable opportunity, I am afraid, to extract that measure of wine from the stale leavings at the bottoms of several small decanters. I am of this opinion, because, while I was reading the newspaper, I observed him behind a low wooden partition, which was his private apartment, very busy pouring out of a number of those vessels into one, like a chemist and druggist making up a prescription. When the wine came, too, I thought it flat; and it certainly had more English crumbs in it, than were to be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state, but I was bashful enough to drink it, and say nothing.
Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I infer that poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of the process), I resolved to go to the play. It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose; and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw Julius Caesar and the new Pantomime. To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of the whole show, the influence upon me of the poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the smooth stupendous changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, were so dazzling, and opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I came out into the rainy street, at twelve o’clock at night, I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.
I had emerged by another door, and stood in the street for a little while, as if I really were a stranger upon earth: but the unceremonious pushing and hustling that I received, soon recalled me to myself, and put me in the road back to the hotel; whither I went, revolving the glorious vision all the way; and where, after some porter and oysters, I sat revolving it still, at past one o’clock, with my eyes on the coffee-room fire.
I was so filled with the play, and with the past—for it was, in a manner, like a shining transparency, through which I saw my earlier life moving along—that I don’t know when the figure of a handsome well-formed young man dressed with a tasteful easy negligence which I have reason to remember very well, became a real presence to me. But I recollect being conscious of his company without having noticed his coming in—and my still sitting, musing, over the coffee-room fire.
At last I rose to go to bed, much to the relief of the sleepy waiter, who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was twisting them, and hitting them, and putting them through all kinds of contortions in his small pantry. In going towards the door, I passed the person who had come in, and saw him plainly. I turned directly, came back, and looked again. He did not know me, but I knew him in a moment.
At another time I might have wanted the confidence or the decision to speak to him, and might have put it off until next day, and might have lost him. But, in the then condition of my mind, where the play was still running high, his former protection of me appeared so deserving of my gratitude, and my old love for him overflowed my breast so freshly and spontaneously, that I went up to him at once, with a fast-beating heart, and said:
‘Steerforth! won’t you speak to me?’
He looked at me—just as he used to look, sometimes—but I saw no recognition in his face.
‘You don’t remember me, I am afraid,’ said I.
‘My God!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘It’s little Copperfield!’
I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them go. But for very shame, and the fear that it might displease him, I could have held him round the neck and cried.
‘I never, never, never was so glad! My dear Steerforth, I am so overjoyed to see you!’
‘And I am rejoiced to see you, too!’ he said, shaking my hands heartily. ‘Why, Copperfield, old boy, don’t be overpowered!’ And yet he was glad, too, I thought, to see how the delight I had in meeting him affected me.
I brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution had not been able to keep back, and I made a clumsy laugh of it, and we sat down together, side by side.
‘Why, how do you come to be here?’ said Steerforth, clapping me on the shoulder.
‘I came here by the Canterbury coach, today. I have been adopted by an aunt down in that part of the country, and have just finished my education there. How do YOU come to be here, Steerforth?’
‘Well, I am what they call an Oxford man,’ he returned; ‘that is to say, I get bored to death down there, periodically—and I am on my way now to my mother’s. You’re a devilish amiable-looking fellow, Copperfield. Just what you used to be, now I look at you! Not altered in the least!’
‘I knew you immediately,’ I said; ‘but you are more easily remembered.’
He laughed as he ran his hand through the clustering curls of his hair, and said gaily:
‘Yes, I am on an expedition of duty. My mother lives a little way out of town; and the roads being in a beastly condition, and our house tedious enough, I remained here tonight instead of going on. I have not been in town half-a-dozen hours, and those I have been dozing and grumbling away at the play.’
‘I have been at the play, too,’ said I. ‘At Covent Garden. What a delightful and magnificent entertainment, Steerforth!’
Steerforth laughed heartily.
‘My dear young Davy,’ he said, clapping me on the shoulder again, ‘you are a very Daisy. The daisy of the field, at sunrise, is not fresher than you are. I have been at Covent Garden, too, and there never was a more miserable business. Holloa, you sir!’
This was addressed to the waiter, who had been very attentive to our recognition, at a distance, and now came forward deferentially.
‘Where have you put my friend, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Steerforth.
‘Beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Where does he sleep? What’s his number? You know what I mean,’ said Steerforth.
‘Well, sir,’ said the waiter, with an apologetic air. ‘Mr. Copperfield is at present in forty-four, sir.’
‘And what the devil do you mean,’ retorted Steerforth, ‘by putting Mr. Copperfield into a little loft over a stable?’
‘Why, you see we wasn’t aware, sir,’ returned the waiter, still apologetically, ‘as Mr. Copperfield was anyways particular. We can give Mr. Copperfield seventy-two, sir, if it would be preferred. Next you, sir.’
‘Of course it would be preferred,’ said Steerforth. ‘And do it at once.’ The waiter immediately withdrew to make the exchange. Steerforth, very much amused at my having been put into forty-four, laughed again, and clapped me on the shoulder again, and invited me to breakfast with him next morning at ten o’clock—an invitation I was only too proud and happy to accept. It being now pretty late, we took our candles and went upstairs, where we parted with friendly heartiness at his door, and where I found my new room a great improvement on my old one, it not being at all musty, and having an immense four-post bedstead in it, which was quite a little landed estate. Here, among pillows enough for six, I soon fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed of ancient Rome, Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning coaches, rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me dream of thunder and the gods.
CHAPTER 20. STEERFORTH’S HOME
When the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o’clock, and informed me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the having no occasion for it, and blushed in my bed. The suspicion that she laughed too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the time I was dressing; and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and guilty air when I passed her on the staircase, as I was going down to breakfast. I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.
It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me, but in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted, where the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of the room, the fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little round mirror over the sideboard. I was rather bashful at first, Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant, and superior to me in all respects (age included); but his easy patronage soon put that to rights, and made me quite at home. I could not enough admire the change he had wrought in the Golden Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state I had held yesterday, with this morning’s comfort and this morning’s entertainment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.
‘Now, Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, when we were alone, ‘I should like to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all about you. I feel as if you were my property.’ Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended.
‘As you are in no hurry, then,’ said Steerforth, ‘come home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother—she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her—and she will be pleased with you.’
‘I should like to be as sure of that, as you are kind enough to say you are,’ I answered, smiling.
‘Oh!’ said Steerforth, ‘everyone who likes me, has a claim on her that is sure to be acknowledged.’
‘Then I think I shall be a favourite,’ said I.
‘Good!’ said Steerforth. ‘Come and prove it. We will go and see the lions for an hour or two—it’s something to have a fresh fellow like you to show them to, Copperfield—and then we’ll journey out to Highgate by the coach.’
I could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that I should wake presently in number forty-four, to the solitary box in the coffee-room and the familiar waiter again. After I had written to my aunt and told her of my fortunate meeting with my admired old schoolfellow, and my acceptance of his invitation, we went out in a hackney-chariot, and saw a Panorama and some other sights, and took a walk through the Museum, where I could not help observing how much Steerforth knew, on an infinite variety of subjects, and of how little account he seemed to make his knowledge.
‘You’ll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if you have not done so already; and they will have good reason to be proud of you.’
‘I take a degree!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Not I! my dear Daisy—will you mind my calling you Daisy?’
‘Not at all!’ said I.
‘That’s a good fellow! My dear Daisy,’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘I have not the least desire or intention to distinguish myself in that way. I have done quite sufficient for my purpose. I find that I am heavy company enough for myself as I am.’
‘But the fame—’ I was beginning.
‘You romantic Daisy!’ said Steerforth, laughing still more heartily: ‘why should I trouble myself, that a parcel of heavy-headed fellows may gape and hold up their hands? Let them do it at some other man. There’s fame for him, and he’s welcome to it.’
I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was glad to change the subject. Fortunately it was not difficult to do, for Steerforth could always pass from one subject to another with a carelessness and lightness that were his own.
Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter day wore away so fast, that it was dusk when the stage-coach stopped with us at an old brick house at Highgate on the summit of the hill. An elderly lady, though not very far advanced in years, with a proud carriage and a handsome face, was in the doorway as we alighted; and greeting Steerforth as ‘My dearest James,’ folded him in her arms. To this lady he presented me as his mother, and she gave me a stately welcome.
It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly. From the windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it. I had only time, in dressing, to glance at the solid furniture, the framed pieces of work (done, I supposed, by Steerforth’s mother when she was a girl), and some pictures in crayons of ladies with powdered hair and bodices, coming and going on the walls, as the newly-kindled fire crackled and sputtered, when I was called to dinner.
There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short figure, dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some appearance of good looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps because I had not expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her lip. It was an old scar—I should rather call it seam, for it was not discoloured, and had healed years ago—which had once cut through her mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across the table, except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had altered. I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years of age, and that she wished to be married. She was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.
She was introduced as Miss Dartle, and both Steerforth and his mother called her Rosa. I found that she lived there, and had been for a long time Mrs. Steerforth’s companion. It appeared to me that she never said anything she wanted to say, outright; but hinted it, and made a great deal more of it by this practice. For example, when Mrs. Steerforth observed, more in jest than earnest, that she feared her son led but a wild life at college, Miss Dartle put in thus:
‘Oh, really? You know how ignorant I am, and that I only ask for information, but isn’t it always so? I thought that kind of life was on all hands understood to be—eh?’ ‘It is education for a very grave profession, if you mean that, Rosa,’ Mrs. Steerforth answered with some coldness.
‘Oh! Yes! That’s very true,’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘But isn’t it, though?—I want to be put right, if I am wrong—isn’t it, really?’
‘Really what?’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
‘Oh! You mean it’s not!’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I’m very glad to hear it! Now, I know what to do! That’s the advantage of asking. I shall never allow people to talk before me about wastefulness and profligacy, and so forth, in connexion with that life, any more.’
‘And you will be right,’ said Mrs. Steerforth. ‘My son’s tutor is a conscientious gentleman; and if I had not implicit reliance on my son, I should have reliance on him.’
‘Should you?’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Dear me! Conscientious, is he? Really conscientious, now?’
‘Yes, I am convinced of it,’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
‘How very nice!’ exclaimed Miss Dartle. ‘What a comfort! Really conscientious? Then he’s not—but of course he can’t be, if he’s really conscientious. Well, I shall be quite happy in my opinion of him, from this time. You can’t think how it elevates him in my opinion, to know for certain that he’s really conscientious!’
Her own views of every question, and her correction of everything that was said to which she was opposed, Miss Dartle insinuated in the same way: sometimes, I could not conceal from myself, with great power, though in contradiction even of Steerforth. An instance happened before dinner was done. Mrs. Steerforth speaking to me about my intention of going down into Suffolk, I said at hazard how glad I should be, if Steerforth would only go there with me; and explaining to him that I was going to see my old nurse, and Mr. Peggotty’s family, I reminded him of the boatman whom he had seen at school.
‘Oh! That bluff fellow!’ said Steerforth. ‘He had a son with him, hadn’t he?’
‘No. That was his nephew,’ I replied; ‘whom he adopted, though, as a son. He has a very pretty little niece too, whom he adopted as a daughter. In short, his house—or rather his boat, for he lives in one, on dry land—is full of people who are objects of his generosity and kindness. You would be delighted to see that household.’
‘Should I?’ said Steerforth. ‘Well, I think I should. I must see what can be done. It would be worth a journey (not to mention the pleasure of a journey with you, Daisy), to see that sort of people together, and to make one of ‘em.’
My heart leaped with a new hope of pleasure. But it was in reference to the tone in which he had spoken of ‘that sort of people’, that Miss Dartle, whose sparkling eyes had been watchful of us, now broke in again.
‘Oh, but, really? Do tell me. Are they, though?’ she said.
‘Are they what? And are who what?’ said Steerforth.
‘That sort of people.---Are they really animals and clods, and beings of another order? I want to know SO much.’
‘Why, there’s a pretty wide separation between them and us,’ said Steerforth, with indifference. ‘They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or hurt easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say—some people contend for that, at least; and I am sure I don’t want to contradict them—but they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like their coarse rough skins, they are not easily wounded.’
‘Really!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I don’t know, now, when I have been better pleased than to hear that. It’s so consoling! It’s such a delight to know that, when they suffer, they don’t feel! Sometimes I have been quite uneasy for that sort of people; but now I shall just dismiss the idea of them, altogether. Live and learn. I had my doubts, I confess, but now they’re cleared up. I didn’t know, and now I do know, and that shows the advantage of asking—don’t it?’
I believed that Steerforth had said what he had, in jest, or to draw Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as much when she was gone, and we two were sitting before the fire. But he merely asked me what I thought of her.
‘She is very clever, is she not?’ I asked.
‘Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,’ said Steerforth, and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is all edge.’
‘What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!’ I said.
Steerforth’s face fell, and he paused a moment.
‘Why, the fact is,’ he returned, ‘I did that.’
‘By an unfortunate accident!’
‘No. I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw a hammer at her. A promising young angel I must have been!’ I was deeply sorry to have touched on such a painful theme, but that was useless now.
‘She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,’ said Steerforth; ‘and she’ll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one—though I can hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere. She was the motherless child of a sort of cousin of my father’s. He died one day. My mother, who was then a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has a couple of thousand pounds of her own, and saves the interest of it every year, to add to the principal. There’s the history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.’
‘And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?’ said I.
‘Humph!’ retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire. ‘Some brothers are not loved over much; and some love—but help yourself, Copperfield! We’ll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment to me—the more shame for me!’ A moody smile that had overspread his features cleared off as he said this merrily, and he was his own frank, winning self again.
I could not help glancing at the scar with a painful interest when we went in to tea. It was not long before I observed that it was the most susceptible part of her face, and that, when she turned pale, that mark altered first, and became a dull, lead-coloured streak, lengthening out to its full extent, like a mark in invisible ink brought to the fire. There was a little altercation between her and Steerforth about a cast of the dice at backgammon—when I thought her, for one moment, in a storm of rage; and then I saw it start forth like the old writing on the wall.
It was no matter of wonder to me to find Mrs. Steerforth devoted to her son. She seemed to be able to speak or think about nothing else. She showed me his picture as an infant, in a locket, with some of his baby-hair in it; she showed me his picture as he had been when I first knew him; and she wore at her breast his picture as he was now. All the letters he had ever written to her, she kept in a cabinet near her own chair by the fire; and she would have read me some of them, and I should have been very glad to hear them too, if he had not interposed, and coaxed her out of the design.
‘It was at Mr. Creakle’s, my son tells me, that you first became acquainted,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as she and I were talking at one table, while they played backgammon at another. ‘Indeed, I recollect his speaking, at that time, of a pupil younger than himself who had taken his fancy there; but your name, as you may suppose, has not lived in my memory.’
‘He was very generous and noble to me in those days, I assure you, ma’am,’ said I, ‘and I stood in need of such a friend. I should have been quite crushed without him.’
‘He is always generous and noble,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, proudly.
I subscribed to this with all my heart, God knows. She knew I did; for the stateliness of her manner already abated towards me, except when she spoke in praise of him, and then her air was always lofty.
‘It was not a fit school generally for my son,’ said she; ‘far from it; but there were particular circumstances to be considered at the time, of more importance even than that selection. My son’s high spirit made it desirable that he should be placed with some man who felt its superiority, and would be content to bow himself before it; and we found such a man there.’
I knew that, knowing the fellow. And yet I did not despise him the more for it, but thought it a redeeming quality in him if he could be allowed any grace for not resisting one so irresistible as Steerforth.
‘My son’s great capacity was tempted on, there, by a feeling of voluntary emulation and conscious pride,’ the fond lady went on to say. ‘He would have risen against all constraint; but he found himself the monarch of the place, and he haughtily determined to be worthy of his station. It was like himself.’
I echoed, with all my heart and soul, that it was like himself.
‘So my son took, of his own will, and on no compulsion, to the course in which he can always, when it is his pleasure, outstrip every competitor,’ she pursued. ‘My son informs me, Mr. Copperfield, that you were quite devoted to him, and that when you met yesterday you made yourself known to him with tears of joy. I should be an affected woman if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son’s inspiring such emotions; but I cannot be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible of his merit, and I am very glad to see you here, and can assure you that he feels an unusual friendship for you, and that you may rely on his protection.’
Miss Dartle played backgammon as eagerly as she did everything else. If I had seen her, first, at the board, I should have fancied that her figure had got thin, and her eyes had got large, over that pursuit, and no other in the world. But I am very much mistaken if she missed a word of this, or lost a look of mine as I received it with the utmost pleasure, and honoured by Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, felt older than I had done since I left Canterbury.
When the evening was pretty far spent, and a tray of glasses and decanters came in, Steerforth promised, over the fire, that he would seriously think of going down into the country with me. There was no hurry, he said; a week hence would do; and his mother hospitably said the same. While we were talking, he more than once called me Daisy; which brought Miss Dartle out again.
‘But really, Mr. Copperfield,’ she asked, ‘is it a nickname? And why does he give it you? Is it—eh?—because he thinks you young and innocent? I am so stupid in these things.’
I coloured in replying that I believed it was.
‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Now I am glad to know that! I ask for information, and I am glad to know it. He thinks you young and innocent; and so you are his friend. Well, that’s quite delightful!’
She went to bed soon after this, and Mrs. Steerforth retired too. Steerforth and I, after lingering for half-an-hour over the fire, talking about Traddles and all the rest of them at old Salem House, went upstairs together. Steerforth’s room was next to mine, and I went in to look at it. It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions and footstools, worked by his mother’s hand, and with no sort of thing omitted that could help to render it complete. Finally, her handsome features looked down on her darling from a portrait on the wall, as if it were even something to her that her likeness should watch him while he slept.
I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and the curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it a very snug appearance. I sat down in a great chair upon the hearth to meditate on my happiness; and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time, when I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from above the chimney-piece.
It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. The painter hadn’t made the scar, but I made it; and there it was, coming and going; now confined to the upper lip as I had seen it at dinner, and now showing the whole extent of the wound inflicted by the hammer, as I had seen it when she was passionate.
I wondered peevishly why they couldn’t put her anywhere else instead of quartering her on me. To get rid of her, I undressed quickly, extinguished my light, and went to bed. But, as I fell asleep, I could not forget that she was still there looking, ‘Is it really, though? I want to know’; and when I awoke in the night, I found that I was uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was or not—without knowing what I meant.
CHAPTER 21. LITTLE EM’LY
There was a servant in that house, a man who, I understood, was usually with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the University, who was in appearance a pattern of respectability. I believe there never existed in his station a more respectable-looking man. He was taciturn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to consideration was his respectability. He had not a pliant face, he had rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable. Nobody could have thought of putting him in a livery, he was so highly respectable. To have imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have been to inflict a wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable man. And of this, I noticed—the women-servants in the household were so intuitively conscious, that they always did such work themselves, and generally while he read the paper by the pantry fire.
Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that quality, as in every other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more respectable. Even the fact that no one knew his Christian name, seemed to form a part of his respectability. Nothing could be objected against his surname, Littimer, by which he was known. Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported; but Littimer was perfectly respectable.
It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of respectability in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in this man’s presence. How old he was himself, I could not guess—and that again went to his credit on the same score; for in the calmness of respectability he might have numbered fifty years as well as thirty.
Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was up, to bring me that reproachful shaving-water, and to put out my clothes. When I undrew the curtains and looked out of bed, I saw him, in an equable temperature of respectability, unaffected by the east wind of January, and not even breathing frostily, standing my boots right and left in the first dancing position, and blowing specks of dust off my coat as he laid it down like a baby.
I gave him good morning, and asked him what o’clock it was. He took out of his pocket the most respectable hunting-watch I ever saw, and preventing the spring with his thumb from opening far, looked in at the face as if he were consulting an oracular oyster, shut it up again, and said, if I pleased, it was half past eight.
‘Mr. Steerforth will be glad to hear how you have rested, sir.’
‘Thank you,’ said I, ‘very well indeed. Is Mr. Steerforth quite well?’
‘Thank you, sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.’ Another of his characteristics—no use of superlatives. A cool calm medium always.
‘Is there anything more I can have the honour of doing for you, sir? The warning-bell will ring at nine; the family take breakfast at half past nine.’
‘Nothing, I thank you.’
‘I thank YOU, sir, if you please’; and with that, and with a little inclination of his head when he passed the bed-side, as an apology for correcting me, he went out, shutting the door as delicately as if I had just fallen into a sweet sleep on which my life depended.
Every morning we held exactly this conversation: never any more, and never any less: and yet, invariably, however far I might have been lifted out of myself over-night, and advanced towards maturer years, by Steerforth’s companionship, or Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, or Miss Dartle’s conversation, in the presence of this most respectable man I became, as our smaller poets sing, ‘a boy again’.
He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew everything, gave me lessons in riding. He provided foils for us, and Steerforth gave me lessons in fencing—gloves, and I began, of the same master, to improve in boxing. It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth should find me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my want of skill before the respectable Littimer. I had no reason to believe that Littimer understood such arts himself; he never led me to suppose anything of the kind, by so much as the vibration of one of his respectable eyelashes; yet whenever he was by, while we were practising, I felt myself the greenest and most inexperienced of mortals.
I am particular about this man, because he made a particular effect on me at that time, and because of what took place thereafter.
The week passed away in a most delightful manner. It passed rapidly, as may be supposed, to one entranced as I was; and yet it gave me so many occasions for knowing Steerforth better, and admiring him more in a thousand respects, that at its close I seemed to have been with him for a much longer time. A dashing way he had of treating me like a plaything, was more agreeable to me than any behaviour he could have adopted. It reminded me of our old acquaintance; it seemed the natural sequel of it; it showed me that he was unchanged; it relieved me of any uneasiness I might have felt, in comparing my merits with his, and measuring my claims upon his friendship by any equal standard; above all, it was a familiar, unrestrained, affectionate demeanour that he used towards no one else. As he had treated me at school differently from all the rest, I joyfully believed that he treated me in life unlike any other friend he had. I believed that I was nearer to his heart than any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment to him. He made up his mind to go with me into the country, and the day arrived for our departure. He had been doubtful at first whether to take Littimer or not, but decided to leave him at home. The respectable creature, satisfied with his lot whatever it was, arranged our portmanteaux on the little carriage that was to take us into London, as if they were intended to defy the shocks of ages, and received my modestly proffered donation with perfect tranquillity.
We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with many thanks on my part, and much kindness on the devoted mother’s. The last thing I saw was Littimer’s unruffled eye; fraught, as I fancied, with the silent conviction that I was very young indeed.
What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old familiar places, I shall not endeavour to describe. We went down by the Mail. I was so concerned, I recollect, even for the honour of Yarmouth, that when Steerforth said, as we drove through its dark streets to the inn, that, as well as he could make out, it was a good, queer, out-of-the-way kind of hole, I was highly pleased. We went to bed on our arrival (I observed a pair of dirty shoes and gaiters in connexion with my old friend the Dolphin as we passed that door), and breakfasted late in the morning. Steerforth, who was in great spirits, had been strolling about the beach before I was up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the boatmen in the place. Moreover, he had seen, in the distance, what he was sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peggotty, with smoke coming out of the chimney; and had had a great mind, he told me, to walk in and swear he was myself grown out of knowledge.
‘When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?’ he said. ‘I am at your disposal. Make your own arrangements.’
‘Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good time, Steerforth, when they are all sitting round the fire. I should like you to see it when it’s snug, it’s such a curious place.’
‘So be it!’ returned Steerforth. ‘This evening.’
‘I shall not give them any notice that we are here, you know,’ said I, delighted. ‘We must take them by surprise.’
‘Oh, of course! It’s no fun,’ said Steerforth, ‘unless we take them by surprise. Let us see the natives in their aboriginal condition.’
‘Though they ARE that sort of people that you mentioned,’ I returned.
‘Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?’ he exclaimed with a quick look. ‘Confound the girl, I am half afraid of her. She’s like a goblin to me. But never mind her. Now what are you going to do? You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?’
‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I must see Peggotty first of all.’
‘Well,’ replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. ‘Suppose I deliver you up to be cried over for a couple of hours. Is that long enough?’
I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in that time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his renown had preceded him, and that he was almost as great a personage as I was.
‘I’ll come anywhere you like,’ said Steerforth, ‘or do anything you like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I’ll produce myself in any state you please, sentimental or comical.’
I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr. Barkis, carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on this understanding, went out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.
The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to Mr. Omer’s shop. OMER AND Joram was now written up, where OMER used to be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c., remained as it was.
My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop door, after I had read these words from over the way, that I went across the road and looked in. There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop, dancing a little child in her arms, while another little fellow clung to her apron. I had no difficulty in recognizing either Minnie or Minnie’s children. The glass door of the parlour was not open; but in the workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, as if it had never left off.
‘Is Mr. Omer at home?’ said I, entering. ‘I should like to see him, for a moment, if he is.’
‘Oh yes, sir, he is at home,’ said Minnie; ‘the weather don’t suit his asthma out of doors. Joe, call your grandfather!’
The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such a lusty shout, that the sound of it made him bashful, and he buried his face in her skirts, to her great admiration. I heard a heavy puffing and blowing coming towards us, and soon Mr. Omer, shorter-winded than of yore, but not much older-looking, stood before me.
‘Servant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ ‘You can shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,’ said I, putting out my own. ‘You were very good-natured to me once, when I am afraid I didn’t show that I thought so.’
‘Was I though?’ returned the old man. ‘I’m glad to hear it, but I don’t remember when. Are you sure it was me?’
‘Quite.’
‘I think my memory has got as short as my breath,’ said Mr. Omer, looking at me and shaking his head; ‘for I don’t remember you.’
‘Don’t you remember your coming to the coach to meet me, and my having breakfast here, and our riding out to Blunderstone together: you, and I, and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. Joram too—who wasn’t her husband then?’
‘Why, Lord bless my soul!’ exclaimed Mr. Omer, after being thrown by his surprise into a fit of coughing, ‘you don’t say so! Minnie, my dear, you recollect? Dear me, yes; the party was a lady, I think?’
‘My mother,’ I rejoined.
‘To—be—sure,’ said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat with his forefinger, ‘and there was a little child too! There was two parties. The little party was laid along with the other party. Over at Blunderstone it was, of course. Dear me! And how have you been since?’
Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been too.
‘Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That’s the best way, ain’t it?’
Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, and was assisted out of his fit by his daughter, who now stood close beside us, dancing her smallest child on the counter.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes, to be sure. Two parties! Why, in that very ride, if you’ll believe me, the day was named for my Minnie to marry Joram. “Do name it, sir,” says Joram. “Yes, do, father,” says Minnie. And now he’s come into the business. And look here! The youngest!’
Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her temples, as her father put one of his fat fingers into the hand of the child she was dancing on the counter.
‘Two parties, of course!’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head retrospectively. ‘Ex-actly so! And Joram’s at work, at this minute, on a grey one with silver nails, not this measurement’—the measurement of the dancing child upon the counter—‘by a good two inches.---Will you take something?’
I thanked him, but declined.
‘Let me see,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Barkis’s the carrier’s wife—Peggotty’s the boatman’s sister—she had something to do with your family? She was in service there, sure?’
My answering in the affirmative gave him great satisfaction.
‘I believe my breath will get long next, my memory’s getting so much so,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, we’ve got a young relation of hers here, under articles to us, that has as elegant a taste in the dress-making business—I assure you I don’t believe there’s a Duchess in England can touch her.’
‘Not little Em’ly?’ said I, involuntarily.
‘Em’ly’s her name,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and she’s little too. But if you’ll believe me, she has such a face of her own that half the women in this town are mad against her.’
‘Nonsense, father!’ cried Minnie.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘I don’t say it’s the case with you,’ winking at me, ‘but I say that half the women in Yarmouth—ah! and in five mile round—are mad against that girl.’
‘Then she should have kept to her own station in life, father,’ said Minnie, ‘and not have given them any hold to talk about her, and then they couldn’t have done it.’
‘Couldn’t have done it, my dear!’ retorted Mr. Omer. ‘Couldn’t have done it! Is that YOUR knowledge of life? What is there that any woman couldn’t do, that she shouldn’t do—especially on the subject of another woman’s good looks?’
I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had uttered this libellous pleasantry. He coughed to that extent, and his breath eluded all his attempts to recover it with that obstinacy, that I fully expected to see his head go down behind the counter, and his little black breeches, with the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees, come quivering up in a last ineffectual struggle. At length, however, he got better, though he still panted hard, and was so exhausted that he was obliged to sit on the stool of the shop-desk.
‘You see,’ he said, wiping his head, and breathing with difficulty, ‘she hasn’t taken much to any companions here; she hasn’t taken kindly to any particular acquaintances and friends, not to mention sweethearts. In consequence, an ill-natured story got about, that Em’ly wanted to be a lady. Now my opinion is, that it came into circulation principally on account of her sometimes saying, at the school, that if she was a lady she would like to do so-and-so for her uncle—don’t you see?—and buy him such-and-such fine things.’
‘I assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,’ I returned eagerly, ‘when we were both children.’
Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin. ‘Just so. Then out of a very little, she could dress herself, you see, better than most others could out of a deal, and that made things unpleasant. Moreover, she was rather what might be called wayward—I’ll go so far as to say what I should call wayward myself,’ said Mr. Omer; ‘didn’t know her own mind quite—a little spoiled—and couldn’t, at first, exactly bind herself down. No more than that was ever said against her, Minnie?’
‘No, father,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘That’s the worst, I believe.’
‘So when she got a situation,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘to keep a fractious old lady company, they didn’t very well agree, and she didn’t stop. At last she came here, apprenticed for three years. Nearly two of ‘em are over, and she has been as good a girl as ever was. Worth any six! Minnie, is she worth any six, now?’
‘Yes, father,’ replied Minnie. ‘Never say I detracted from her!’
‘Very good,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘That’s right. And so, young gentleman,’ he added, after a few moments’ further rubbing of his chin, ‘that you may not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that’s all about it.’
As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em’ly, I had no doubt that she was near. On my asking now, if that were not so, Mr. Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the parlour. My hurried inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with a free permission; and, looking through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. I saw her, a most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child of Minnie’s who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure, but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a good and happy course.
The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off—alas! it was the tune that never DOES leave off—was beating, softly, all the while.
‘Wouldn’t you like to step in,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and speak to her? Walk in and speak to her, sir! Make yourself at home!’
I was too bashful to do so then—I was afraid of confusing her, and I was no less afraid of confusing myself.—but I informed myself of the hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty’s.
Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had met.
‘Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?’ I said, feigning to speak roughly to her.
‘He’s at home, sir,’ returned Peggotty, ‘but he’s bad abed with the rheumatics.’
‘Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?’ I asked.
‘When he’s well he do,’ she answered.
‘Do YOU ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?’
She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her hands towards each other.
‘Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call the—what is it?—the Rookery,’ said I.
She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided frightened way, as if to keep me off.
‘Peggotty!’ I cried to her.
She cried, ‘My darling boy!’ and we both burst into tears, and were locked in one another’s arms.
What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my life, I dare say—not even to her—more freely than I did that morning.
‘Barkis will be so glad,’ said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron, ‘that it’ll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?’
Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my shoulder. At last, to make the matter easier, I went upstairs with her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.
He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be nothing but a face—like a conventional cherubim—he looked the queerest object I ever beheld.
‘What name was it, as I wrote up in the cart, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis, with a slow rheumatic smile.
‘Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn’t we?’
‘I was willin’ a long time, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘A long time,’ said I.
‘And I don’t regret it,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Do you remember what you told me once, about her making all the apple parsties and doing all the cooking?’
‘Yes, very well,’ I returned.
‘It was as true,’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘as turnips is. It was as true,’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis, ‘as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.’
Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this result of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.
‘Nothing’s truer than them,’ repeated Mr. Barkis; ‘a man as poor as I am, finds that out in his mind when he’s laid up. I’m a very poor man, sir!’
‘I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.’
‘A very poor man, indeed I am,’ said Mr. Barkis.
Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes, and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became composed.
‘Old clothes,’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Oh!’ said I.
‘I wish it was Money, sir,’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘I wish it was, indeed,’ said I.
‘But it AIN’T,’ said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he possibly could.
I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes more gently to his wife, said:
‘She’s the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise that anyone can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear, you’ll get a dinner today, for company; something good to eat and drink, will you?’
I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the bed, extremely anxious I should not. So I held my peace.
‘I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘but I’m a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for a short nap, I’ll try and find it when I wake.’
We left the room, in compliance with this request. When we got outside the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now ‘a little nearer’ than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint; but while Peggotty’s eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it. So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.
I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth’s arrival and it was not long before he came. I am persuaded she knew no difference between his having been a personal benefactor of hers, and a kind friend to me, and that she would have received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any case. But his easy, spirited good humour; his genial manner, his handsome looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to whomsoever he pleased, and making direct, when he cared to do it, to the main point of interest in anybody’s heart; bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His manner to me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these causes combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before he left the house that night.
He stayed there with me to dinner—if I were to say willingly, I should not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis’s room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in the remembrance.
We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs, unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth, hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall sleep at the hotel.’
‘But to bring you so far,’ I returned, ‘and to separate, seems bad companionship, Steerforth.’
‘Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?’ he said. ‘What is “seems”, compared to that?’ It was settled at once.
He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started forth, at eight o’clock, for Mr. Peggotty’s boat. Indeed, they were more and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception, and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me, then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was worthless to him, and next minute thrown away—I say, if anyone had told me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty’s door.
‘This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?’
‘Dismal enough in the dark,’ he said: ‘and the sea roars as if it were hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?’ ‘That’s the boat,’ said I.
‘And it’s the same I saw this morning,’ he returned. ‘I came straight to it, by instinct, I suppose.’
We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to keep close to me, went in.
A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands: which latter noise, I was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate Mrs. Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who was unusually excited. Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms wide open, as if for little Em’ly to run into them; Ham, with a mixed expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and a lumbering sort of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held little Em’ly by the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr. Peggotty; little Em’ly herself, blushing and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty’s delight, as her joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she saw us first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty’s embrace. In the first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of our passing from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this was the way in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the background, clapping her hands like a madwoman.
The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going in, that one might have doubted whether it had ever been. I was in the midst of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:
‘Mas’r Davy! It’s Mas’r Davy!’
In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet, and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head, and laughing with such glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.
‘Why, that you two gent’lmen—gent’lmen growed—should come to this here roof tonight, of all nights in my life,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is such a thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em’ly, my darling, come here! Come here, my little witch! There’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, my dear! There’s the gent’lman as you’ve heerd on, Em’ly. He comes to see you, along with Mas’r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle’s life as ever was or will be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!’
After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, and kissing it a dozen times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and patted it as if his hand had been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.
‘If you two gent’lmen—gent’lmen growed now, and such gent’lmen—’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘So th’ are, so th’ are!’ cried Ham. ‘Well said! So th’ are. Mas’r Davy bor’—gent’lmen growed—so th’ are!’
‘If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘don’t ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters, I’ll arks your pardon. Em’ly, my dear!—She knows I’m a going to tell,’ here his delight broke out again, ‘and has made off. Would you be so good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?’
Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.
‘If this ain’t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire, ‘the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shellfish—biled too—and more I can’t say. This here little Em’ly, sir,’ in a low voice to Steerforth, ‘—her as you see a blushing here just now—’
Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest, and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feelings, that the latter answered him as if he had spoken.
‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘That’s her, and so she is. Thankee, sir.’
Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.
‘This here little Em’ly of ours,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘has been, in our house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but that’s my belief) no one but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain’t my child; I never had one; but I couldn’t love her more. You understand! I couldn’t do it!’
‘I quite understand,’ said Steerforth.
‘I know you do, sir,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘and thankee again. Mas’r Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,’ sinking his voice lower yet, ‘that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge neither, though she has a world of merits.’ Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:
‘There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘something o’ my own build—rough—a good deal o’ the sou’-wester in him—wery salt—but, on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his art in the right place.’
I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which he sat grinning at us now.
‘What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment, ‘but he loses that there art of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a sort o’ servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking “There’s a man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives.”’
Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.
‘Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but he’s bashfuller than a little un, and he don’t like. So I speak. “What! Him!” says Em’ly. “Him that I’ve know’d so intimate so many years, and like so much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him. He’s such a good fellow!” I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to her than, “My dear, you’re right to speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, you’re as free as a little bird.” Then I aways to him, and I says, “I wish it could have been so, but it can’t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with her, like a man.” He says to me, a-shaking of my hand, “I will!” he says. And he was—honourable and manful—for two year going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.’
Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression with the various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth’s (previously wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided the following speech between us:
‘All of a sudden, one evening—as it might be tonight—comes little Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There ain’t so much in that, you’ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, “Look here! This is to be my little wife!” And she says, half bold and half shy, and half a laughing and half a crying, “Yes, Uncle! If you please.”—If I please!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea; ‘Lord, as if I should do anythink else!—“If you please, I am steadier now, and I have thought better of it, and I’ll be as good a little wife as I can to him, for he’s a dear, good fellow!” Then Missis Gummidge, she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder’s out!’ said Mr. Peggotty—‘You come in! It took place this here present hour; and here’s the man that’ll marry her, the minute she’s out of her time.’
Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering and great difficulty:
‘She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy—when you first come—when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her grown up—gent’lmen—like a flower. I’d lay down my life for her—Mas’r Davy—Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to me—gent’lmen—than—she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I—than ever I could say. I—I love her true. There ain’t a gent’lman in all the land—nor yet sailing upon all the sea—that can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a common man—would say better—what he meant.’
I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I don’t know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed to pain.
Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.
‘Mr. Peggotty,’ he said, ‘you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are tonight. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go. Any gap at your fireside on such a night—such a gap least of all—I wouldn’t make, for the wealth of the Indies!’
So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em’ly. At first little Em’ly didn’t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,—but she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away without any reserve.
Em’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr. Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him—and little Em’ly’s eyes were fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us—and little Em’ly laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed (Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, ‘When the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow’; and he sang a sailor’s song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.
As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been bewitched.
But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation. When little Em’ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully) across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire—Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.
As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men, now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly peeping after us, from behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we went.
‘A most engaging little Beauty!’ said Steerforth, taking my arm. ‘Well! It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it’s quite a new sensation to mix with them.’
‘How fortunate we are, too,’ I returned, ‘to have arrived to witness their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy. How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest joy, as we have been!’
‘That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn’t he?’ said Steerforth.
He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:
‘Ah, Steerforth! It’s well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s, or humour a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!’
He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, ‘Daisy, I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!’ Next moment he was gaily singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth.
CHAPTER 22. SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE
Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty, which was a favourite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My occupation of Peggotty’s spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth, lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen at Mr. Peggotty’s house of call, ‘The Willing Mind’, after I was in bed, and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen’s clothes, whole moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his proceedings surprised me.
Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively diverting himself where another man might not have found one.
For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recall every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I was far away. The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay—on which I had looked out, when it was my father’s only, with such curious feelings of compassion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby—the grave which Peggotty’s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the churchyard path, in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to me. My reflections at these times were always associated with the figure I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother’s side.
There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light of the rising sun.
Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South America, and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house, and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married again to a tall, raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby, with a heavy head that it couldn’t hold up, and two weak staring eyes, with which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.
It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.
My nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks, was by a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea, which I could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable circuit by the high road. Mr. Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place, and not a hundred yards out of my track, I always looked in as I went by. Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we went on together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling lights of the town.
One dark evening, when I was later than usual—for I had, that day, been making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return home—I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his meditations.
He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made me start too.
‘You come upon me,’ he said, almost angrily, ‘like a reproachful ghost!’
‘I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,’ I replied. ‘Have I called you down from the stars?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘No.’
‘Up from anywhere, then?’ said I, taking my seat near him.
‘I was looking at the pictures in the fire,’ he returned.
‘But you are spoiling them for me,’ said I, as he stirred it quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into the air.
‘You would not have seen them,’ he returned. ‘I detest this mongrel time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?’
‘I have been taking leave of my usual walk,’ said I.
‘And I have been sitting here,’ said Steerforth, glancing round the room, ‘thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down, might—to judge from the present wasted air of the place—be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm. David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!’
‘My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?’
‘I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!’
There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
‘It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,’ he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, ‘than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil’s bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!’
I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh—fretfully at first, but soon with returning gaiety.
‘Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!’ he replied. ‘I told you at the inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes. I have been a nightmare to myself, just now—must have had one, I think. At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognized for what they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who “didn’t care”, and became food for lions—a grander kind of going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors, have been creeping over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.’
‘You are afraid of nothing else, I think,’ said I.
‘Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,’ he answered. ‘Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!’
His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance bent on the fire.
‘So much for that!’ he said, making as if he tossed something light into the air, with his hand. “‘Why, being gone, I am a man again,” like Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not (Macbeth-like) broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.’
‘But where are they all, I wonder!’ said I.
‘God knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘After strolling to the ferry looking for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me thinking, and you found me thinking.’
The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house had happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was needed, against Mr. Peggotty’s return with the tide; and had left the door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em’ly, with whom it was an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits by a cheerful salutation and a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.
He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge’s, for they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious conversation as we went along.
‘And so,’ he said, gaily, ‘we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow, do we?’
‘So we agreed,’ I returned. ‘And our places by the coach are taken, you know.’
‘Ay! there’s no help for it, I suppose,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.’
‘As long as the novelty should last,’ said I, laughing.
‘Like enough,’ he returned; ‘though there’s a sarcastic meaning in that observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend. Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know I am; but while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. I could pass a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in these waters, I think.’
‘Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,’ I returned.
‘A nautical phenomenon, eh?’ laughed Steerforth.
‘Indeed he does, and you know how truly; I know how ardent you are in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it. And that amazes me most in you, Steerforth—that you should be contented with such fitful uses of your powers.’
‘Contented?’ he answered, merrily. ‘I am never contented, except with your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never learnt the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad apprenticeship, and now don’t care about it.---You know I have bought a boat down here?’
‘What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed, stopping—for this was the first I had heard of it. ‘When you may never care to come near the place again!’
‘I don’t know that,’ he returned. ‘I have taken a fancy to the place. At all events,’ walking me briskly on, ‘I have bought a boat that was for sale—a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is—and Mr. Peggotty will be master of her in my absence.’
‘Now I understand you, Steerforth!’ said I, exultingly. ‘You pretend to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so to confer a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first, knowing you. My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I think of your generosity?’
‘Tush!’ he answered, turning red. ‘The less said, the better.’
‘Didn’t I know?’ cried I, ‘didn’t I say that there was not a joy, or sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to you?’
‘Aye, aye,’ he answered, ‘you told me all that. There let it rest. We have said enough!’
Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker pace than before.
‘She must be newly rigged,’ said Steerforth, ‘and I shall leave Littimer behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete. Did I tell you Littimer had come down?’
‘No.’
‘Oh yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.’
As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference between him and his mother might have led to his being in the frame of mind in which I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted so.
‘Oh no!’ he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. ‘Nothing of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.’
‘The same as ever?’ said I.
‘The same as ever,’ said Steerforth. ‘Distant and quiet as the North Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She’s the “Stormy Petrel” now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels! I’ll have her christened again.’
‘By what name?’ I asked.
‘The “Little Em’ly”.’
As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder that he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could not help showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little, and he resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.
‘But see here,’ he said, looking before us, ‘where the original little Em’ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul, he’s a true knight. He never leaves her!’
Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman. He was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly withal, and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature at his side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty, and an undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, which were, to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came towards us, that they were well matched even in that particular.
She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained, walked by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light of a young moon.
Suddenly there passed us—evidently following them—a young woman whose approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level, absorbing their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than before.
‘That is a black shadow to be following the girl,’ said Steerforth, standing still; ‘what does it mean?’
He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.
‘She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,’ said I.
‘A beggar would be no novelty,’ said Steerforth; ‘but it is a strange thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,’ he said, after a pause, ‘of something like it, when it came by. Where the Devil did it come from, I wonder!’
‘From the shadow of this wall, I think,’ said I, as we emerged upon a road on which a wall abutted.
‘It’s gone!’ he returned, looking over his shoulder. ‘And all ill go with it. Now for our dinner!’
But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line glimmering afar off, and yet again. And he wondered about it, in some broken expressions, several times, in the short remainder of our walk; and only seemed to forget it when the light of fire and candle shone upon us, seated warm and merry, at table.
Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. When I said to him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well, he answered respectfully (and of course respectably), that they were tolerably well, he thanked me, and had sent their compliments. This was all, and yet he seemed to me to say as plainly as a man could say: ‘You are very young, sir; you are exceedingly young.’
We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards the table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather upon me, as I felt, he said to his master:
‘I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.’
‘Who?’ cried Steerforth, much astonished.
‘Miss Mowcher, sir.’
‘Why, what on earth does she do here?’ said Steerforth.
‘It appears to be her native part of the country, sir. She informs me that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year, sir. I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to know if she might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner, sir.’
‘Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth.
I was obliged to confess—I felt ashamed, even of being at this disadvantage before Littimer—that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly unacquainted.
‘Then you shall know her,’ said Steerforth, ‘for she is one of the seven wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher comes, show her in.’
I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially as Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her, and positively refused to answer any question of which I made her the subject. I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable expectation until the cloth had been removed some half an hour, and we were sitting over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened, and Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, announced:
‘Miss Mowcher!’
I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her nose against it. Her chin, which was what is called a double chin, was so fat that it entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she had none; waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning; for though she was more than full-sized down to where her waist would have been, if she had had any, and though she terminated, as human beings generally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that she stood at a common-sized chair as at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat. This lady—dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her forefinger together, with the difficulty I have described; standing with her head necessarily on one side, and, with one of her sharp eyes shut up, making an uncommonly knowing face—after ogling Steerforth for a few moments, broke into a torrent of words.
‘What! My flower!’ she pleasantly began, shaking her large head at him. ‘You’re there, are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you do so far away from home? Up to mischief, I’ll be bound. Oh, you’re a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I’m another, ain’t I? Ha, ha, ha! You’d have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn’t have seen me here, wouldn’t you? Bless you, man alive, I’m everywhere. I’m here and there, and where not, like the conjurer’s half-crown in the lady’s handkercher. Talking of handkerchers—and talking of ladies—what a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain’t you, my dear boy, over one of my shoulders, and I don’t say which!’
Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of the fire—making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.
‘Oh my stars and what’s-their-names!’ she went on, clapping a hand on each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me, ‘I’m of too full a habit, that’s the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as if it was a bucket of water. If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you’d think I was a fine woman, wouldn’t you?’
‘I should think that, wherever I saw you,’ replied Steerforth.
‘Go along, you dog, do!’ cried the little creature, making a whisk at him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, ‘and don’t be impudent! But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers’s last week—THERE’S a woman! How SHE wears!—and Mithers himself came into the room where I was waiting for her—THERE’S a man! How HE wears! and his wig too, for he’s had it these ten years—and he went on at that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I should be obliged to ring the bell. Ha! ha! ha! He’s a pleasant wretch, but he wants principle.’
‘What were you doing for Lady Mithers?’ asked Steerforth.
‘That’s tellings, my blessed infant,’ she retorted, tapping her nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of supernatural intelligence. ‘Never YOU mind! You’d like to know whether I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch up her complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn’t you? And so you shall, my darling—when I tell you! Do you know what my great grandfather’s name was?’
‘No,’ said Steerforth.
‘It was Walker, my sweet pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and he came of a long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates from.’
I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher’s wink except Miss Mowcher’s self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when listening to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, and one eye turned up like a magpie’s. Altogether I was lost in amazement, and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am afraid, of the laws of politeness.
She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was busily engaged in producing from the bag (plunging in her short arm to the shoulder, at every dive) a number of small bottles, sponges, combs, brushes, bits of flannel, little pairs of curling-irons, and other instruments, which she tumbled in a heap upon the chair. From this employment she suddenly desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to my confusion:
‘Who’s your friend?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Steerforth; ‘he wants to know you.’
‘Well, then, he shall! I thought he looked as if he did!’ returned Miss Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, and laughing on me as she came. ‘Face like a peach!’ standing on tiptoe to pinch my cheek as I sat. ‘Quite tempting! I’m very fond of peaches. Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I’m sure.’
I said that I congratulated myself on having the honour to make hers, and that the happiness was mutual.
‘Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. ‘What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it!’
This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the morsel of a hand came away from the face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag again.
‘What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?’ said Steerforth.
‘Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, to be sure, ain’t we, my sweet child?’ replied that morsel of a woman, feeling in the bag with her head on one side and her eye in the air. ‘Look here!’ taking something out. ‘Scraps of the Russian Prince’s nails. Prince Alphabet turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his name’s got all the letters in it, higgledy-piggledy.’
‘The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is he?’ said Steerforth.
‘I believe you, my pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher. ‘I keep his nails in order for him. Twice a week! Fingers and toes.’
‘He pays well, I hope?’ said Steerforth.
‘Pays, as he speaks, my dear child—through the nose,’ replied Miss Mowcher. ‘None of your close shavers the Prince ain’t. You’d say so, if you saw his moustachios. Red by nature, black by art.’
‘By your art, of course,’ said Steerforth.
Miss Mowcher winked assent. ‘Forced to send for me. Couldn’t help it. The climate affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but it was no go here. You never saw such a rusty Prince in all your born days as he was. Like old iron!’ ‘Is that why you called him a humbug, just now?’ inquired Steerforth.
‘Oh, you’re a broth of a boy, ain’t you?’ returned Miss Mowcher, shaking her head violently. ‘I said, what a set of humbugs we were in general, and I showed you the scraps of the Prince’s nails to prove it. The Prince’s nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort, than all my talents put together. I always carry ‘em about. They’re the best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the Prince’s nails, she must be all right. I give ‘em away to the young ladies. They put ‘em in albums, I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my life, “the whole social system” (as the men call it when they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of Prince’s nails!’ said this least of women, trying to fold her short arms, and nodding her large head.
Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed too. Miss Mowcher continuing all the time to shake her head (which was very much on one side), and to look into the air with one eye, and to wink with the other.
‘Well, well!’ she said, smiting her small knees, and rising, ‘this is not business. Come, Steerforth, let’s explore the polar regions, and have it over.’
She then selected two or three of the little instruments, and a little bottle, and asked (to my surprise) if the table would bear. On Steerforth’s replying in the affirmative, she pushed a chair against it, and begging the assistance of my hand, mounted up, pretty nimbly, to the top, as if it were a stage.
‘If either of you saw my ankles,’ she said, when she was safely elevated, ‘say so, and I’ll go home and destroy myself!’
‘I did not,’ said Steerforth.
‘I did not,’ said I.
‘Well then,’ cried Miss Mowcher, ‘I’ll consent to live. Now, ducky, ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be killed.’
This was an invitation to Steerforth to place himself under her hands; who, accordingly, sat himself down, with his back to the table, and his laughing face towards me, and submitted his head to her inspection, evidently for no other purpose than our entertainment. To see Miss Mowcher standing over him, looking at his rich profusion of brown hair through a large round magnifying glass, which she took out of her pocket, was a most amazing spectacle.
‘You’re a pretty fellow!’ said Miss Mowcher, after a brief inspection. ‘You’d be as bald as a friar on the top of your head in twelve months, but for me. Just half a minute, my young friend, and we’ll give you a polishing that shall keep your curls on for the next ten years!’
With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle on to one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting some of the virtues of that preparation to one of the little brushes, began rubbing and scraping away with both on the crown of Steerforth’s head in the busiest manner I ever witnessed, talking all the time.
‘There’s Charley Pyegrave, the duke’s son,’ she said. ‘You know Charley?’ peeping round into his face.
‘A little,’ said Steerforth.
‘What a man HE is! THERE’S a whisker! As to Charley’s legs, if they were only a pair (which they ain’t), they’d defy competition. Would you believe he tried to do without me—in the Life-Guards, too?’
‘Mad!’ said Steerforth.
‘It looks like it. However, mad or sane, he tried,’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘What does he do, but, lo and behold you, he goes into a perfumer’s shop, and wants to buy a bottle of the Madagascar Liquid.’
‘Charley does?’ said Steerforth.
‘Charley does. But they haven’t got any of the Madagascar Liquid.’
‘What is it? Something to drink?’ asked Steerforth.
‘To drink?’ returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap his cheek. ‘To doctor his own moustachios with, you know. There was a woman in the shop—elderly female—quite a Griffin—who had never even heard of it by name. “Begging pardon, sir,” said the Griffin to Charley, “it’s not—not—not ROUGE, is it?” “Rouge,” said Charley to the Griffin. “What the unmentionable to ears polite, do you think I want with rouge?” “No offence, sir,” said the Griffin; “we have it asked for by so many names, I thought it might be.” Now that, my child,’ continued Miss Mowcher, rubbing all the time as busily as ever, ‘is another instance of the refreshing humbug I was speaking of. I do something in that way myself—perhaps a good deal—perhaps a little—sharp’s the word, my dear boy—never mind!’
‘In what way do you mean? In the rouge way?’ said Steerforth.
‘Put this and that together, my tender pupil,’ returned the wary Mowcher, touching her nose, ‘work it by the rule of Secrets in all trades, and the product will give you the desired result. I say I do a little in that way myself. One Dowager, SHE calls it lip-salve. Another, SHE calls it gloves. Another, SHE calls it tucker-edging. Another, SHE calls it a fan. I call it whatever THEY call it. I supply it for ‘em, but we keep up the trick so, to one another, and make believe with such a face, that they’d as soon think of laying it on, before a whole drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait upon ‘em, they’ll say to me sometimes—WITH IT ON—thick, and no mistake—“How am I looking, Mowcher? Am I pale?” Ha! ha! ha! ha! Isn’t THAT refreshing, my young friend!’
I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as she stood upon the dining table, intensely enjoying this refreshment, rubbing busily at Steerforth’s head, and winking at me over it.
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Such things are not much in demand hereabouts. That sets me off again! I haven’t seen a pretty woman since I’ve been here, jemmy.’
‘No?’ said Steerforth.
‘Not the ghost of one,’ replied Miss Mowcher.
‘We could show her the substance of one, I think?’ said Steerforth, addressing his eyes to mine. ‘Eh, Daisy?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said I.
‘Aha?’ cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my face, and then peeping round at Steerforth’s. ‘Umph?’
The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both of us, and the second like a question put to Steerforth only. She seemed to have found no answer to either, but continued to rub, with her head on one side and her eye turned up, as if she were looking for an answer in the air and were confident of its appearing presently.
‘A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?’ she cried, after a pause, and still keeping the same look-out. ‘Aye, aye?’
‘No,’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘Nothing of the sort. On the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used—or I am much mistaken—to have a great admiration for her.’
‘Why, hasn’t he now?’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘Is he fickle? Oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his passion requited?—Is her name Polly?’
The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.
‘No, Miss Mowcher,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Emily.’
‘Aha?’ she cried exactly as before. ‘Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’
Her tone and look implied something that was not agreeable to me in connexion with the subject. So I said, in a graver manner than any of us had yet assumed: ‘She is as virtuous as she is pretty. She is engaged to be married to a most worthy and deserving man in her own station of life. I esteem her for her good sense, as much as I admire her for her good looks.’
‘Well said!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Hear, hear, hear! Now I’ll quench the curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, by leaving her nothing to guess at. She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled, or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in this town. Do you observe? Omer and Joram. The promise of which my friend has spoken, is made and entered into with her cousin; Christian name, Ham; surname, Peggotty; occupation, boat-builder; also of this town. She lives with a relative; Christian name, unknown; surname, Peggotty; occupation, seafaring; also of this town. She is the prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world. I admire her—as my friend does—exceedingly. If it were not that I might appear to disparage her Intended, which I know my friend would not like, I would add, that to me she seems to be throwing herself away; that I am sure she might do better; and that I swear she was born to be a lady.’
Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very slowly and distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and her eye in the air as if she were still looking for that answer. When he ceased she became brisk again in an instant, and rattled away with surprising volubility.
‘Oh! And that’s all about it, is it?’ she exclaimed, trimming his whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, that went glancing round his head in all directions. ‘Very well: very well! Quite a long story. Ought to end “and they lived happy ever afterwards”; oughtn’t it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because she’s enticing; I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’
Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not waiting for any reply, she continued, without drawing breath:
‘There! If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched up to perfection, you are, Steerforth. If I understand any noddle in the world, I understand yours. Do you hear me when I tell you that, my darling? I understand yours,’ peeping down into his face. ‘Now you may mizzle, jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the chair I’ll operate on him.’
‘What do you say, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth, laughing, and resigning his seat. ‘Will you be improved?’
‘Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.’
‘Don’t say no,’ returned the little woman, looking at me with the aspect of a connoisseur; ‘a little bit more eyebrow?’
‘Thank you,’ I returned, ‘some other time.’
‘Have it carried half a quarter of an inch towards the temple,’ said Miss Mowcher. ‘We can do it in a fortnight.’
‘No, I thank you. Not at present.’
‘Go in for a tip,’ she urged. ‘No? Let’s get the scaffolding up, then, for a pair of whiskers. Come!’
I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were on my weak point, now. But Miss Mowcher, finding that I was not at present disposed for any decoration within the range of her art, and that I was, for the time being, proof against the blandishments of the small bottle which she held up before one eye to enforce her persuasions, said we would make a beginning on an early day, and requested the aid of my hand to descend from her elevated station. Thus assisted, she skipped down with much agility, and began to tie her double chin into her bonnet.
‘The fee,’ said Steerforth, ‘is—’
‘Five bob,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and dirt cheap, my chicken. Ain’t I volatile, Mr. Copperfield?’
I replied politely: ‘Not at all.’ But I thought she was rather so, when she tossed up his two half-crowns like a goblin pieman, caught them, dropped them in her pocket, and gave it a loud slap.
‘That’s the Till!’ observed Miss Mowcher, standing at the chair again, and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous collection of little objects she had emptied out of it. ‘Have I got all my traps? It seems so. It won’t do to be like long Ned Beadwood, when they took him to church “to marry him to somebody”, as he says, and left the bride behind. Ha! ha! ha! A wicked rascal, Ned, but droll! Now, I know I’m going to break your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it. Good-bye, Mr. Copperfield! Take care of yourself, jockey of Norfolk! How I have been rattling on! It’s all the fault of you two wretches. I forgive you! “Bob swore!”—as the Englishman said for “Good night”, when he first learnt French, and thought it so like English. “Bob swore,” my ducks!’
With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she waddled away, she waddled to the door, where she stopped to inquire if she should leave us a lock of her hair. ‘Ain’t I volatile?’ she added, as a commentary on this offer, and, with her finger on her nose, departed.
Steerforth laughed to that degree, that it was impossible for me to help laughing too; though I am not sure I should have done so, but for this inducement. When we had had our laugh quite out, which was after some time, he told me that Miss Mowcher had quite an extensive connexion, and made herself useful to a variety of people in a variety of ways. Some people trifled with her as a mere oddity, he said; but she was as shrewdly and sharply observant as anyone he knew, and as long-headed as she was short-armed. He told me that what she had said of being here, and there, and everywhere, was true enough; for she made little darts into the provinces, and seemed to pick up customers everywhere, and to know everybody. I asked him what her disposition was: whether it was at all mischievous, and if her sympathies were generally on the right side of things: but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these questions after two or three attempts, I forbore or forgot to repeat them. He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal about her skill, and her profits; and about her being a scientific cupper, if I should ever have occasion for her service in that capacity.
She was the principal theme of our conversation during the evening: and when we parted for the night Steerforth called after me over the banisters, ‘Bob swore!’ as I went downstairs.
I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis’s house, to find Ham walking up and down in front of it, and still more surprised to learn from him that little Em’ly was inside. I naturally inquired why he was not there too, instead of pacing the streets by himself?
‘Why, you see, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, in a hesitating manner, ‘Em’ly, she’s talking to some ‘un in here.’
‘I should have thought,’ said I, smiling, ‘that that was a reason for your being in here too, Ham.’
‘Well, Mas’r Davy, in a general way, so ‘t would be,’ he returned; ‘but look’ee here, Mas’r Davy,’ lowering his voice, and speaking very gravely. ‘It’s a young woman, sir—a young woman, that Em’ly knowed once, and doen’t ought to know no more.’
When I heard these words, a light began to fall upon the figure I had seen following them, some hours ago.
‘It’s a poor wurem, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, ‘as is trod under foot by all the town. Up street and down street. The mowld o’ the churchyard don’t hold any that the folk shrink away from, more.’
‘Did I see her tonight, Ham, on the sand, after we met you?’
‘Keeping us in sight?’ said Ham. ‘It’s like you did, Mas’r Davy. Not that I know’d then, she was theer, sir, but along of her creeping soon arterwards under Em’ly’s little winder, when she see the light come, and whispering “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart towards me. I was once like you!” Those was solemn words, Mas’r Davy, fur to hear!’
‘They were indeed, Ham. What did Em’ly do?’ ‘Says Em’ly, “Martha, is it you? Oh, Martha, can it be you?”—for they had sat at work together, many a day, at Mr. Omer’s.’
‘I recollect her now!’ cried I, recalling one of the two girls I had seen when I first went there. ‘I recollect her quite well!’
‘Martha Endell,’ said Ham. ‘Two or three year older than Em’ly, but was at the school with her.’
‘I never heard her name,’ said I. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’
‘For the matter o’ that, Mas’r Davy,’ replied Ham, ‘all’s told a’most in them words, “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart towards me. I was once like you!” She wanted to speak to Em’ly. Em’ly couldn’t speak to her theer, for her loving uncle was come home, and he wouldn’t—no, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, with great earnestness, ‘he couldn’t, kind-natur’d, tender-hearted as he is, see them two together, side by side, for all the treasures that’s wrecked in the sea.’
I felt how true this was. I knew it, on the instant, quite as well as Ham.
‘So Em’ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,’ he pursued, ‘and gives it to her out o’ winder to bring here. “Show that,” she says, “to my aunt, Mrs. Barkis, and she’ll set you down by her fire, for the love of me, till uncle is gone out, and I can come.” By and by she tells me what I tell you, Mas’r Davy, and asks me to bring her. What can I do? She doen’t ought to know any such, but I can’t deny her, when the tears is on her face.’
He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket, and took out with great care a pretty little purse.
‘And if I could deny her when the tears was on her face, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough palm of his hand, ‘how could I deny her when she give me this to carry for her—knowing what she brought it for? Such a toy as it is!’ said Ham, thoughtfully looking on it. ‘With such a little money in it, Em’ly my dear.’
I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it away again—for that was more satisfactory to me than saying anything—and we walked up and down, for a minute or two, in silence. The door opened then, and Peggotty appeared, beckoning to Ham to come in. I would have kept away, but she came after me, entreating me to come in too. Even then, I would have avoided the room where they all were, but for its being the neat-tiled kitchen I have mentioned more than once. The door opening immediately into it, I found myself among them before I considered whither I was going.
The girl—the same I had seen upon the sands—was near the fire. She was sitting on the ground, with her head and one arm lying on a chair. I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em’ly had but newly risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been lying on her lap. I saw but little of the girl’s face, over which her hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had been disordering it with her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion. Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em’ly. Not a word was spoken when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, to tick twice as loud as usual. Em’ly spoke first.
‘Martha wants,’ she said to Ham, ‘to go to London.’
‘Why to London?’ returned Ham.
He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with a mixture of compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holding any companionship with her whom he loved so well, which I have always remembered distinctly. They both spoke as if she were ill; in a soft, suppressed tone that was plainly heard, although it hardly rose above a whisper.
‘Better there than here,’ said a third voice aloud—Martha’s, though she did not move. ‘No one knows me there. Everybody knows me here.’
‘What will she do there?’ inquired Ham.
She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him for a moment; then laid it down again, and curved her right arm about her neck, as a woman in a fever, or in an agony of pain from a shot, might twist herself.
‘She will try to do well,’ said little Em’ly. ‘You don’t know what she has said to us. Does he—do they—aunt?’
Peggotty shook her head compassionately.
‘I’ll try,’ said Martha, ‘if you’ll help me away. I never can do worse than I have done here. I may do better. Oh!’ with a dreadful shiver, ‘take me out of these streets, where the whole town knows me from a child!’
As Em’ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it a little canvas bag. She took it, as if she thought it were her purse, and made a step or two forward; but finding her mistake, came back to where he had retired near me, and showed it to him.
‘It’s all yourn, Em’ly,’ I could hear him say. ‘I haven’t nowt in all the wureld that ain’t yourn, my dear. It ain’t of no delight to me, except for you!’
The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away and went to Martha. What she gave her, I don’t know. I saw her stooping over her, and putting money in her bosom. She whispered something, as she asked was that enough? ‘More than enough,’ the other said, and took her hand and kissed it.
Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, covering her face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to the door. She stopped a moment before going out, as if she would have uttered something or turned back; but no word passed her lips. Making the same low, dreary, wretched moaning in her shawl, she went away.
As the door closed, little Em’ly looked at us three in a hurried manner and then hid her face in her hands, and fell to sobbing.
‘Doen’t, Em’ly!’ said Ham, tapping her gently on the shoulder. ‘Doen’t, my dear! You doen’t ought to cry so, pretty!’
‘Oh, Ham!’ she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, ‘I am not so good a girl as I ought to be! I know I have not the thankful heart, sometimes, I ought to have!’
‘Yes, yes, you have, I’m sure,’ said Ham.
‘No! no! no!’ cried little Em’ly, sobbing, and shaking her head. ‘I am not as good a girl as I ought to be. Not near! not near!’ And still she cried, as if her heart would break.
‘I try your love too much. I know I do!’ she sobbed. ‘I’m often cross to you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far different. You are never so to me. Why am I ever so to you, when I should think of nothing but how to be grateful, and to make you happy!’
‘You always make me so,’ said Ham, ‘my dear! I am happy in the sight of you. I am happy, all day long, in the thoughts of you.’
‘Ah! that’s not enough!’ she cried. ‘That is because you are good; not because I am! Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune for you, if you had been fond of someone else—of someone steadier and much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and changeable like me!’
‘Poor little tender-heart,’ said Ham, in a low voice. ‘Martha has overset her, altogether.’
‘Please, aunt,’ sobbed Em’ly, ‘come here, and let me lay my head upon you. Oh, I am very miserable tonight, aunt! Oh, I am not as good a girl as I ought to be. I am not, I know!’
Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire. Em’ly, with her arms around her neck, kneeled by her, looking up most earnestly into her face.
‘Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me! Ham, dear, try to help me! Mr. David, for the sake of old times, do, please, try to help me! I want to be a better girl than I am. I want to feel a hundred times more thankful than I do. I want to feel more, what a blessed thing it is to be the wife of a good man, and to lead a peaceful life. Oh me, oh me! Oh my heart, my heart!’
She dropped her face on my old nurse’s breast, and, ceasing this supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman’s, half a child’s, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and better suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner could have been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant.
She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; now talking encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began to raise her head and speak to us. So we got on, until she was able to smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half ashamed; while Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his darling had been crying.
I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before. I saw her innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep close to his bluff form as if it were her best support. When they went away together, in the waning moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their departure in my mind with Martha’s, I saw that she held his arm with both her hands, and still kept close to him.
CHAPTER 23. I CORROBORATE Mr. DICK, AND CHOOSE A PROFESSION
When I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em’ly, and her emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears—even to Steerforth’s—of what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw encircling her head. I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast; and there it gave her image a new grace.
While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt. As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home. For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends. Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at our departure; and I believe would even have opened the box again, and sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good-bye; and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth, when our portmanteaux went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it. In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned, and left a great many people very sorry behind US.
‘Do you stay long here, Littimer?’ said I, as he stood waiting to see the coach start.
‘No, sir,’ he replied; ‘probably not very long, sir.’
‘He can hardly say, just now,’ observed Steerforth, carelessly. ‘He knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.’
‘That I am sure he will,’ said I.
Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and I felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.
For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself, when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at any moment, pulled me by the arm:
‘Find a voice, David. What about that letter you were speaking of at breakfast?’
‘Oh!’ said I, taking it out of my pocket. ‘It’s from my aunt.’
‘And what does she say, requiring consideration?’
‘Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘that I came out on this expedition to look about me, and to think a little.’
‘Which, of course, you have done?’
‘Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am afraid I have forgotten it.’
‘Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,’ said Steerforth. ‘Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same. Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear, and there it is still.’ I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.
‘What says our aunt on the subject?’ inquired Steerforth, glancing at the letter in my hand. ‘Does she suggest anything?’
‘Why, yes,’ said I. ‘She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a proctor? What do you think of it?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied Steerforth, coolly. ‘You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose?’
I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and professions so equally; and I told him so.
‘What is a proctor, Steerforth?’ said I.
‘Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,’ replied Steerforth. ‘He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons,—a lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard—what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity. He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.’
‘Nonsense, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean to say that there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?’
‘I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,’ he returned; ‘but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary, apropos of the “Nancy” having run down the “Sarah Jane”, or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the “Nelson” Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant, profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audience.’
‘But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?’ said I, a little puzzled. ‘Are they?’
‘No,’ returned Steerforth, ‘the advocates are civilians—men who have taken a doctor’s degree at college—which is the first reason of my knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.’
I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that ‘lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard’, did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’ Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.
‘That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,’ said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; ‘and one deserving of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’ Commons.’
I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.
We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.
If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.
‘So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?’ said I. ‘I am sorry for that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?’
As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage lengthen very much.
‘I am sorry for it, too,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose. ‘I have had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.’ Before I could ask why, she told me.
‘I am convinced,’ said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness on the table, ‘that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green,’ said my aunt, with emphasis, ‘there was one this afternoon at four o’clock. A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a donkey!’
I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.
‘It was a donkey,’ said my aunt; ‘and it was the one with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my house.’ This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. ‘If there is any Donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another’s, that,’ said my aunt, striking the table, ‘is the animal!’
Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.
Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very high up—whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know—and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but little.
‘I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,’ said my aunt, ‘and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.’
‘Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?’ I hinted.
‘Certainly not,’ returned my aunt. ‘It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.’
I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which was of a smarter construction than usual (‘in case of fire’, my aunt said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her, according to certain established regulations from which no deviation, however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting opposite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me, from among the borders of her nightcap.
‘Well, Trot,’ she began, ‘what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have you not begun to think about it yet?’
‘I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like it exceedingly.’
‘Come!’ said my aunt. ‘That’s cheering!’
‘I have only one difficulty, aunt.’
‘Say what it is, Trot,’ she returned.
‘Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very expensive?’
‘It will cost,’ returned my aunt, ‘to article you, just a thousand pounds.’
‘Now, my dear aunt,’ said I, drawing my chair nearer, ‘I am uneasy in my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all things as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course? Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second mother, to consider. Are you certain?’
My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded skirts, replied as follows:
‘Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it—so is Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s conversation on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!’
She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:
‘It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn, perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means; at least’—here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused—‘no, I have no other claim upon my means—and you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my whims and fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you.’
It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if anything could.
‘All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll go to the Commons after breakfast tomorrow.’
We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and inquiring, ‘if I heard the engines?’ But towards morning she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.
At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who had this other general opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some silver.
We made a pause at the toy shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants of Saint Dunstan’s strike upon the bells—we had timed our going, so as to catch them at it, at twelve o’clock—and then went on towards Ludgate Hill, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place, when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed, and looked frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering ill-dressed man who had stopped and stared at us in passing, a little before, was coming so close after us as to brush against her.
‘Trot! My dear Trot!’ cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and pressing my arm. ‘I don’t know what I am to do.’
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said I. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Step into a shop, and I’ll soon get rid of this fellow.’
‘No, no, child!’ she returned. ‘Don’t speak to him for the world. I entreat, I order you!’
‘Good Heaven, aunt!’ said I. ‘He is nothing but a sturdy beggar.’
‘You don’t know what he is!’ replied my aunt. ‘You don’t know who he is! You don’t know what you say!’
We had stopped in an empty door-way, while this was passing, and he had stopped too.
‘Don’t look at him!’ said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly, ‘but get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul’s Churchyard.’
‘Wait for you?’ I replied.
‘Yes,’ rejoined my aunt. ‘I must go alone. I must go with him.’
‘With him, aunt? This man?’
‘I am in my senses,’ she replied, ‘and I tell you I must. Get me a coach!’
However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no right to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command. I hurried away a few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was passing empty. Almost before I could let down the steps, my aunt sprang in, I don’t know how, and the man followed. She waved her hand to me to go away, so earnestly, that, all confounded as I was, I turned from them at once. In doing so, I heard her say to the coachman, ‘Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!’ and presently the chariot passed me, going up the hill.
What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion of his, now came into my mind. I could not doubt that this person was the person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though what the nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was quite unable to imagine. After half an hour’s cooling in the churchyard, I saw the chariot coming back. The driver stopped beside me, and my aunt was sitting in it alone.
She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be quite prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get into the chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and down a little while. She said no more, except, ‘My dear child, never ask me what it was, and don’t refer to it,’ until she had perfectly regained her composure, when she told me she was quite herself now, and we might get out. On her giving me her purse to pay the driver, I found that all the guineas were gone, and only the loose silver remained.
Doctors’ Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we had taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the city seemed to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A few dull courts and narrow ways brought us to the sky-lighted offices of Spenlow and Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple, accessible to pilgrims without the ceremony of knocking, three or four clerks were at work as copyists. One of these, a little dry man, sitting by himself, who wore a stiff brown wig that looked as if it were made of gingerbread, rose to receive my aunt, and show us into Mr. Spenlow’s room.
‘Mr. Spenlow’s in Court, ma’am,’ said the dry man; ‘it’s an Arches day; but it’s close by, and I’ll send for him directly.’
As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture of the room was old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale as an old pauper. There were a great many bundles of papers on it, some endorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels, and some as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches Court, and some in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty Court, and some in the Delegates’ Court; giving me occasion to wonder much, how many Courts there might be in the gross, and how long it would take to understand them all. Besides these, there were sundry immense manuscript Books of Evidence taken on affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in massive sets, a set to each cause, as if every cause were a history in ten or twenty volumes. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought, and gave me an agreeable notion of a proctor’s business. I was casting my eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar objects, when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and Mr. Spenlow, in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying in, taking off his hat as he came.
He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and the stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. He was buttoned up, mighty trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of pains with his whiskers, which were accurately curled. His gold watch-chain was so massive, that a fancy came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which are put up over the goldbeaters’ shops. He was got up with such care, and was so stiff, that he could hardly bend himself; being obliged, when he glanced at some papers on his desk, after sitting down in his chair, to move his whole body, from the bottom of his spine, like Punch.
I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been courteously received. He now said:
‘And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our profession? I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the pleasure of an interview with her the other day,’—with another inclination of his body—Punch again—‘that there was a vacancy here. Miss Trotwood was good enough to mention that she had a nephew who was her peculiar care, and for whom she was seeking to provide genteelly in life. That nephew, I believe, I have now the pleasure of’—Punch again. I bowed my acknowledgements, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me that there was that opening, and that I believed I should like it very much. That I was strongly inclined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal. That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I knew something more about it. That although it was little else than a matter of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked it, before I bound myself to it irrevocably.
‘Oh surely! surely!’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘We always, in this house, propose a month—an initiatory month. I should be happy, myself, to propose two months—three—an indefinite period, in fact—but I have a partner. Mr. Jorkins.’
‘And the premium, sir,’ I returned, ‘is a thousand pounds?’
‘And the premium, Stamp included, is a thousand pounds,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by no mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but Mr. Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to respect Mr. Jorkins’s opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand pounds too little, in short.’
‘I suppose, sir,’ said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, ‘that it is not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly useful, and made himself a perfect master of his profession’—I could not help blushing, this looked so like praising myself—‘I suppose it is not the custom, in the later years of his time, to allow him any—’
Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out of his cravat to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word ‘salary’:
‘No. I will not say what consideration I might give to that point myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. Mr. Jorkins is immovable.’
I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. But I found out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament, whose place in the business was to keep himself in the background, and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men. If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such a proposition. If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however painful these things might be (and always were) to the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would have his bond. The heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would have been always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have grown older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!
It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation as soon as I pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return at its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to be the subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her signature. When we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and there, and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing enough to know, we went out with this object, leaving my aunt behind; who would trust herself, she said, in no such place, and who, I think, regarded all Courts of Law as a sort of powder-mills that might blow up at any time.
Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave brick houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors’ names upon the doors, to be the official abiding-places of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth had told me; and into a large dull room, not unlike a chapel to my thinking, on the left hand. The upper part of this room was fenced off from the rest; and there, on the two sides of a raised platform of the horse-shoe form, sitting on easy old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry gentlemen in red gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the Doctors aforesaid. Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in the curve of the horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen him in an aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who, I learned, was the presiding judge. In the space within the horse-shoe, lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of the floor, were sundry other gentlemen, of Mr. Spenlow’s rank, and dressed like him in black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting at a long green table. Their cravats were in general stiff, I thought, and their looks haughty; but in this last respect I presently conceived I had done them an injustice, for when two or three of them had to rise and answer a question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish. The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself at a stove in the centre of the Court. The languid stillness of the place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the voice of one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a perfect library of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to time, at little roadside inns of argument on the journey. Altogether, I have never, on any occasion, made one at such a cosey, dosey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life; and I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate to belong to it in any character—except perhaps as a suitor.
Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I informed Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we rejoined my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from the Commons, feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and Jorkins’s, on account of the clerks poking one another with their pens to point me out.
We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested painful associations to my aunt. We had another long talk about my plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she was anxious to get home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets, could never be considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London, I urged her not to be uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me to take care of myself.
‘I have not been here a week tomorrow, without considering that too, my dear,’ she returned. ‘There is a furnished little set of chambers to be let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to a marvel.’
With this brief introduction, she produced from her pocket an advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, setting forth that in Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there was to be let furnished, with a view of the river, a singularly desirable, and compact set of chambers, forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman, a member of one of the Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate possession. Terms moderate, and could be taken for a month only, if required.
‘Why, this is the very thing, aunt!’ said I, flushed with the possible dignity of living in chambers.
‘Then come,’ replied my aunt, immediately resuming the bonnet she had a minute before laid aside. ‘We’ll go and look at ‘em.’
Away we went. The advertisement directed us to apply to Mrs. Crupp on the premises, and we rung the area bell, which we supposed to communicate with Mrs. Crupp. It was not until we had rung three or four times that we could prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with us, but at last she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of flannel petticoat below a nankeen gown.
‘Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, ma’am,’ said my aunt.
‘For this gentleman?’ said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her pocket for her keys.
‘Yes, for my nephew,’ said my aunt.
‘And a sweet set they is for sich!’ said Mrs. Crupp.
So we went upstairs.
They were on the top of the house—a great point with my aunt, being near the fire-escape—and consisted of a little half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the river was outside the windows.
As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. Crupp withdrew into the pantry to discuss the terms, while I remained on the sitting-room sofa, hardly daring to think it possible that I could be destined to live in such a noble residence. After a single combat of some duration they returned, and I saw, to my joy, both in Mrs. Crupp’s countenance and in my aunt’s, that the deed was done.
‘Is it the last occupant’s furniture?’ inquired my aunt.
‘Yes, it is, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Crupp.
‘What’s become of him?’ asked my aunt.
Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the midst of which she articulated with much difficulty. ‘He was took ill here, ma’am, and—ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!—and he died!’
‘Hey! What did he die of?’ asked my aunt.
‘Well, ma’am, he died of drink,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in confidence. ‘And smoke.’
‘Smoke? You don’t mean chimneys?’ said my aunt.
‘No, ma’am,’ returned Mrs. Crupp. ‘Cigars and pipes.’
‘That’s not catching, Trot, at any rate,’ remarked my aunt, turning to me.
‘No, indeed,’ said I.
In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises, took them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when that time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook; every other necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that she should always yearn towards me as a son. I was to take possession the day after tomorrow, and Mrs. Crupp said, thank Heaven she had now found summun she could care for!
On our way back, my aunt informed me how she confidently trusted that the life I was now to lead would make me firm and self-reliant, which was all I wanted. She repeated this several times next day, in the intervals of our arranging for the transmission of my clothes and books from Mr. Wickfield’s; relative to which, and to all my late holiday, I wrote a long letter to Agnes, of which my aunt took charge, as she was to leave on the succeeding day. Not to lengthen these particulars, I need only add, that she made a handsome provision for all my possible wants during my month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great disappointment and hers too, did not make his appearance before she went away; that I saw her safely seated in the Dover coach, exulting in the coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, with Janet at her side; and that when the coach was gone, I turned my face to the Adelphi, pondering on the old days when I used to roam about its subterranean arches, and on the happy changes which had brought me to the surface.
CHAPTER 24. MY FIRST DISSIPATION
It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robinson Crusoe, when he had got into his fortification, and pulled his ladder up after him. It was a wonderfully fine thing to walk about town with the key of my house in my pocket, and to know that I could ask any fellow to come home, and make quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody, if it were not so to me. It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out, and to come and go without a word to anyone, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping, from the depths of the earth, when I wanted her—and when she was disposed to come. All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I must say, too, that there were times when it was very dreary.
It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings. It looked a very fresh, free life, by daylight: still fresher, and more free, by sunlight. But as the day declined, the life seemed to go down too. I don’t know how it was; it seldom looked well by candle-light. I wanted somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank, in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother me with his decease.
After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year, and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever.
Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he must be ill, I left the Commons early on the third day, and walked out to Highgate. Mrs. Steerforth was very glad to see me, and said that he had gone away with one of his Oxford friends to see another who lived near St. Albans, but that she expected him to return tomorrow. I was so fond of him, that I felt quite jealous of his Oxford friends.
As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I believe we talked about nothing but him all day. I told her how much the people liked him at Yarmouth, and what a delightful companion he had been. Miss Dartle was full of hints and mysterious questions, but took a great interest in all our proceedings there, and said, ‘Was it really though?’ and so forth, so often, that she got everything out of me she wanted to know. Her appearance was exactly what I have described it, when I first saw her; but the society of the two ladies was so agreeable, and came so natural to me, that I felt myself falling a little in love with her. I could not help thinking, several times in the course of the evening, and particularly when I walked home at night, what delightful company she would be in Buckingham Street.
I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning, before going to the Commons—and I may observe in this place that it is surprising how much coffee Mrs. Crupp used, and how weak it was, considering—when Steerforth himself walked in, to my unbounded joy.
‘My dear Steerforth,’ cried I, ‘I began to think I should never see you again!’
‘I was carried off, by force of arms,’ said Steerforth, ‘the very next morning after I got home. Why, Daisy, what a rare old bachelor you are here!’
I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the pantry, with no little pride, and he commended it highly. ‘I tell you what, old boy,’ he added, ‘I shall make quite a town-house of this place, unless you give me notice to quit.’
This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited for that, he would have to wait till doomsday.
‘But you shall have some breakfast!’ said I, with my hand on the bell-rope, ‘and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and I’ll toast you some bacon in a bachelor’s Dutch-oven, that I have got here.’
‘No, no!’ said Steerforth. ‘Don’t ring! I can’t! I am going to breakfast with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden.’
‘But you’ll come back to dinner?’ said I.
‘I can’t, upon my life. There’s nothing I should like better, but I must remain with these two fellows. We are all three off together tomorrow morning.’
‘Then bring them here to dinner,’ I returned. ‘Do you think they would come?’
‘Oh! they would come fast enough,’ said Steerforth; ‘but we should inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere.’
I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I really ought to have a little house-warming, and that there never could be a better opportunity. I had a new pride in my rooms after his approval of them, and burned with a desire to develop their utmost resources. I therefore made him promise positively in the names of his two friends, and we appointed six o’clock as the dinner-hour.
When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted her with my desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course it was well known she couldn’t be expected to wait, but she knew a handy young man, who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms would be five shillings, and what I pleased. I said, certainly we would have him. Next Mrs. Crupp said it was clear she couldn’t be in two places at once (which I felt to be reasonable), and that ‘a young gal’ stationed in the pantry with a bedroom candle, there never to desist from washing plates, would be indispensable. I said, what would be the expense of this young female? and Mrs. Crupp said she supposed eighteenpence would neither make me nor break me. I said I supposed not; and THAT was settled. Then Mrs. Crupp said, Now about the dinner.
It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the part of the ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp’s kitchen fireplace, that it was capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes. As to a fish-kittle, Mrs. Crupp said, well! would I only come and look at the range? She couldn’t say fairer than that. Would I come and look at it? As I should not have been much the wiser if I HAD looked at it, I declined, and said, ‘Never mind fish.’ But Mrs. Crupp said, Don’t say that; oysters was in, why not them? So THAT was settled. Mrs. Crupp then said what she would recommend would be this. A pair of hot roast fowls—from the pastry-cook’s; a dish of stewed beef, with vegetables—from the pastry-cook’s; two little corner things, as a raised pie and a dish of kidneys—from the pastrycook’s; a tart, and (if I liked) a shape of jelly—from the pastrycook’s. This, Mrs. Crupp said, would leave her at full liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes, and to serve up the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done.
I acted on Mrs. Crupp’s opinion, and gave the order at the pastry-cook’s myself. Walking along the Strand, afterwards, and observing a hard mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef shop, which resembled marble, but was labelled ‘Mock Turtle’, I went in and bought a slab of it, which I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed for fifteen people. This preparation, Mrs. Crupp, after some difficulty, consented to warm up; and it shrunk so much in a liquid state, that we found it what Steerforth called ‘rather a tight fit’ for four.
These preparations happily completed, I bought a little dessert in Covent Garden Market, and gave a rather extensive order at a retail wine-merchant’s in that vicinity. When I came home in the afternoon, and saw the bottles drawn up in a square on the pantry floor, they looked so numerous (though there were two missing, which made Mrs. Crupp very uncomfortable), that I was absolutely frightened at them.
One of Steerforth’s friends was named Grainger, and the other Markham. They were both very gay and lively fellows; Grainger, something older than Steerforth; Markham, youthful-looking, and I should say not more than twenty. I observed that the latter always spoke of himself indefinitely, as ‘a man’, and seldom or never in the first person singular.
‘A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Markham—meaning himself.
‘It’s not a bad situation,’ said I, ‘and the rooms are really commodious.’
‘I hope you have both brought appetites with you?’ said Steerforth.
‘Upon my honour,’ returned Markham, ‘town seems to sharpen a man’s appetite. A man is hungry all day long. A man is perpetually eating.’
Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was announced, and seated myself opposite to him. Everything was very good; we did not spare the wine; and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make the thing pass off well, that there was no pause in our festivity. I was not quite such good company during dinner as I could have wished to be, for my chair was opposite the door, and my attention was distracted by observing that the handy young man went out of the room very often, and that his shadow always presented itself, immediately afterwards, on the wall of the entry, with a bottle at its mouth. The ‘young gal’ likewise occasioned me some uneasiness: not so much by neglecting to wash the plates, as by breaking them. For being of an inquisitive disposition, and unable to confine herself (as her positive instructions were) to the pantry, she was constantly peering in at us, and constantly imagining herself detected; in which belief, she several times retired upon the plates (with which she had carefully paved the floor), and did a great deal of destruction.
These, however, were small drawbacks, and easily forgotten when the cloth was cleared, and the dessert put on the table; at which period of the entertainment the handy young man was discovered to be speechless. Giving him private directions to seek the society of Mrs. Crupp, and to remove the ‘young gal’ to the basement also, I abandoned myself to enjoyment.
I began, by being singularly cheerful and light-hearted; all sorts of half-forgotten things to talk about, came rushing into my mind, and made me hold forth in a most unwonted manner. I laughed heartily at my own jokes, and everybody else’s; called Steerforth to order for not passing the wine; made several engagements to go to Oxford; announced that I meant to have a dinner-party exactly like that, once a week, until further notice; and madly took so much snuff out of Grainger’s box, that I was obliged to go into the pantry, and have a private fit of sneezing ten minutes long.
I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was needed. I proposed Steerforth’s health. I said he was my dearest friend, the protector of my boyhood, and the companion of my prime. I said I was delighted to propose his health. I said I owed him more obligations than I could ever repay, and held him in a higher admiration than I could ever express. I finished by saying, ‘I’ll give you Steerforth! God bless him! Hurrah!’ We gave him three times three, and another, and a good one to finish with. I broke my glass in going round the table to shake hands with him, and I said (in two words)
‘Steerforth—you’retheguidingstarofmyexistence.’
I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a song. Markham was the singer, and he sang ‘When the heart of a man is depressed with care’. He said, when he had sung it, he would give us ‘Woman!’ I took objection to that, and I couldn’t allow it. I said it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as ‘The Ladies!’ I was very high with him, mainly I think because I saw Steerforth and Grainger laughing at me—or at him—or at both of us. He said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man was not to be insulted, then. I said he was right there—never under my roof, where the Lares were sacred, and the laws of hospitality paramount. He said it was no derogation from a man’s dignity to confess that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health.
Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. Steerforth had made a speech about me, in the course of which I had been affected almost to tears. I returned thanks, and hoped the present company would dine with me tomorrow, and the day after—each day at five o’clock, that we might enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through a long evening. I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt. Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!
Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as ‘Copperfield’, and saying, ‘Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t do it.’ Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair—only my hair, nothing else—looked drunk.
Somebody said to me, ‘Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!’ There was no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with glasses; the lamp; Grainger on my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth opposite—all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The theatre? To be sure. The very thing. Come along! But they must excuse me if I saw everybody out first, and turned the lamp off—in case of fire.
Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it.
A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for I hadn’t had it on before. Steerforth then said, ‘You are all right, Copperfield, are you not?’ and I told him, ‘Neverberrer.’
A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole-place, looked out of the fog, and took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember in the glimpse I had of him) whether to take the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards, we were very high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a large pit, that seemed to me to smoke; the people with whom it was crammed were so indistinct. There was a great stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after the streets; and there were people upon it, talking about something or other, but not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance of bright lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in the boxes, and I don’t know what more. The whole building looked to me as if it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unaccountable manner, when I tried to steady it.
On somebody’s motion, we resolved to go downstairs to the dress-boxes, where the ladies were. A gentleman lounging, full dressed, on a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, passed before my view, and also my own figure at full length in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of these boxes, and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people about me crying ‘Silence!’ to somebody, and ladies casting indignant glances at me, and—what! yes!—Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside her, whom I didn’t know. I see her face now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its indelible look of regret and wonder turned upon me.
‘Agnes!’ I said, thickly, ‘Lorblessmer! Agnes!’
‘Hush! Pray!’ she answered, I could not conceive why. ‘You disturb the company. Look at the stage!’
I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something of what was going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at her again by and by, and saw her shrink into her corner, and put her gloved hand to her forehead.
‘Agnes!’ I said. ‘I’mafraidyou’renorwell.’
‘Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Listen! Are you going away soon?’
‘Amigoarawaysoo?’ I repeated.
‘Yes.’
I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait, to hand her downstairs. I suppose I expressed it, somehow; for after she had looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared to understand, and replied in a low tone:
‘I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest in it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you home.’
She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I was angry with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short ‘Goori!’ (which I intended for ‘Good night!’) got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the box-door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling him that Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine.
How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over again, at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night—the bed a rocking sea that was never still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!
But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt when I became conscious next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate—my recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me—the torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, Beast that I was, how she came to be in London, or where she stayed—my disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been held—my racking head—the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of going out, or even getting up! Oh, what a day it was!
Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story as well as to his chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal all! What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire remains of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen breast and say, in heartfelt penitence, ‘Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp, never mind the broken meats! I am very miserable!’—only that I doubted, even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide in!
CHAPTER 25. GOOD AND BAD ANGELS
I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in his hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; but when he saw me on the top of the staircase, looking at him over the banisters, he swung into a trot, and came up panting as if he had run himself into a state of exhaustion.
‘T. Copperfield, Esquire,’ said the ticket-porter, touching his hat with his little cane.
I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the conviction that the letter came from Agnes. However, I told him I was T. Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the letter, which he said required an answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for the answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous state that I was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast table, and familiarize myself with the outside of it a little, before I could resolve to break the seal.
I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note, containing no reference to my condition at the theatre. All it said was, ‘My dear Trotwood. I am staying at the house of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in Ely Place, Holborn. Will you come and see me today, at any time you like to appoint? Ever yours affectionately, AGNES.’
It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written half-a-dozen answers at least. I began one, ‘How can I ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting impression’—there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up. I began another, ‘Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is that a man should put an enemy into his mouth’—that reminded me of Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note, in a six-syllable line, ‘Oh, do not remember’—but that associated itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many attempts, I wrote, ‘My dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what could I say of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come at four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T.C.’ With this missive (which I was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon as it was out of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.
If the day were half as tremendous to any other professional gentleman in Doctors’ Commons as it was to me, I sincerely believe he made some expiation for his share in that rotten old ecclesiastical cheese. Although I left the office at half past three, and was prowling about the place of appointment within a few minutes afterwards, the appointed time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, according to the clock of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient desperation to pull the private bell-handle let into the left-hand door-post of Mr. Waterbrook’s house.
The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook’s establishment was done on the ground-floor, and the genteel business (of which there was a good deal) in the upper part of the building. I was shown into a pretty but rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse.
She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my airy fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid wretch I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my self-reproach and shame, and—in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous.
‘If it had been anyone but you, Agnes,’ said I, turning away my head, ‘I should not have minded it half so much. But that it should have been you who saw me! I almost wish I had been dead, first.’
She put her hand—its touch was like no other hand—upon my arm for a moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.
‘Sit down,’ said Agnes, cheerfully. ‘Don’t be unhappy, Trotwood. If you cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?’
‘Ah, Agnes!’ I returned. ‘You are my good Angel!’
She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.
‘Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!’
‘If I were, indeed, Trotwood,’ she returned, ‘there is one thing that I should set my heart on very much.’
I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of her meaning.
‘On warning you,’ said Agnes, with a steady glance, ‘against your bad Angel.’
‘My dear Agnes,’ I began, ‘if you mean Steerforth—’
‘I do, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much. He my bad Angel, or anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, and a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to judge him from what you saw of me the other night?’
‘I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,’ she quietly replied.
‘From what, then?’
‘From many things—trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over you.’
There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a chord within me, answering to that sound alone. It was always earnest; but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a thrill in it that quite subdued me. I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on her work; I sat seeming still to listen to her; and Steerforth, in spite of all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone.
‘It is very bold in me,’ said Agnes, looking up again, ‘who have lived in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to give you my advice so confidently, or even to have this strong opinion. But I know in what it is engendered, Trotwood,—in how true a remembrance of our having grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relating to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am certain that what I say is right. I am quite sure it is. I feel as if it were someone else speaking to you, and not I, when I caution you that you have made a dangerous friend.’
Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was silent, and again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened.
‘I am not so unreasonable as to expect,’ said Agnes, resuming her usual tone, after a little while, ‘that you will, or that you can, at once, change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting disposition. You ought not hastily to do that. I only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me—I mean,’ with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her, and she knew why, ‘as often as you think of me—to think of what I have said. Do you forgive me for all this?’
‘I will forgive you, Agnes,’ I replied, ‘when you come to do Steerforth justice, and to like him as well as I do.’
‘Not until then?’ said Agnes.
I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this mention of him, but she returned my smile, and we were again as unreserved in our mutual confidence as of old.
‘And when, Agnes,’ said I, ‘will you forgive me the other night?’
‘When I recall it,’ said Agnes.
She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it to allow that, and insisted on telling her how it happened that I had disgraced myself, and what chain of accidental circumstances had had the theatre for its final link. It was a great relief to me to do this, and to enlarge on the obligation that I owed to Steerforth for his care of me when I was unable to take care of myself.
‘You must not forget,’ said Agnes, calmly changing the conversation as soon as I had concluded, ‘that you are always to tell me, not only when you fall into trouble, but when you fall in love. Who has succeeded to Miss Larkins, Trotwood?’
‘No one, Agnes.’
‘Someone, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, laughing, and holding up her finger.
‘No, Agnes, upon my word! There is a lady, certainly, at Mrs. Steerforth’s house, who is very clever, and whom I like to talk to—Miss Dartle—but I don’t adore her.’
Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me that if I were faithful to her in my confidence she thought she should keep a little register of my violent attachments, with the date, duration, and termination of each, like the table of the reigns of the kings and queens, in the History of England. Then she asked me if I had seen Uriah.
‘Uriah Heep?’ said I. ‘No. Is he in London?’
‘He comes to the office downstairs, every day,’ returned Agnes. ‘He was in London a week before me. I am afraid on disagreeable business, Trotwood.’
‘On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,’ said I. ‘What can that be?’
Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of hers:
‘I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.’
‘What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such promotion!’ I cried, indignantly. ‘Have you made no remonstrance about it, Agnes? Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak out. You must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You must prevent it, Agnes, while there’s time.’
Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking, with a faint smile at my warmth: and then replied:
‘You remember our last conversation about papa? It was not long after that—not more than two or three days—when he gave me the first intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him struggling between his desire to represent it to me as a matter of choice on his part, and his inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt very sorry.’
‘Forced upon him, Agnes! Who forces it upon him?’
‘Uriah,’ she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘has made himself indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has mastered papa’s weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until—to say all that I mean in a word, Trotwood,—until papa is afraid of him.’
There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or that she suspected; I clearly saw. I could not give her pain by asking what it was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father. It had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but feel, on the least reflection, that it had been going on to this for a long time. I remained silent.
‘His ascendancy over papa,’ said Agnes, ‘is very great. He professes humility and gratitude—with truth, perhaps: I hope so—but his position is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.’
I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to me.
‘At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,’ pursued Agnes, ‘he had told papa that he was going away; that he was very sorry, and unwilling to leave, but that he had better prospects. Papa was very much depressed then, and more bowed down by care than ever you or I have seen him; but he seemed relieved by this expedient of the partnership, though at the same time he seemed hurt by it and ashamed of it.’
‘And how did you receive it, Agnes?’
‘I did, Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to make it. I said it would lighten the load of his life—I hope it will!—and that it would give me increased opportunities of being his companion. Oh, Trotwood!’ cried Agnes, putting her hands before her face, as her tears started on it, ‘I almost feel as if I had been papa’s enemy, instead of his loving child. For I know how he has altered, in his devotion to me. I know how he has narrowed the circle of his sympathies and duties, in the concentration of his whole mind upon me. I know what a multitude of things he has shut out for my sake, and how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his life, and weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always upon one idea. If I could ever set this right! If I could ever work out his restoration, as I have so innocently been the cause of his decline!’
I had never before seen Agnes cry. I had seen tears in her eyes when I had brought new honours home from school, and I had seen them there when we last spoke about her father, and I had seen her turn her gentle head aside when we took leave of one another; but I had never seen her grieve like this. It made me so sorry that I could only say, in a foolish, helpless manner, ‘Pray, Agnes, don’t! Don’t, my dear sister!’
But Agnes was too superior to me in character and purpose, as I know well now, whatever I might know or not know then, to be long in need of my entreaties. The beautiful, calm manner, which makes her so different in my remembrance from everybody else, came back again, as if a cloud had passed from a serene sky.
‘We are not likely to remain alone much longer,’ said Agnes, ‘and while I have an opportunity, let me earnestly entreat you, Trotwood, to be friendly to Uriah. Don’t repel him. Don’t resent (as I think you have a general disposition to do) what may be uncongenial to you in him. He may not deserve it, for we know no certain ill of him. In any case, think first of papa and me!’
Agnes had no time to say more, for the room door opened, and Mrs. Waterbrook, who was a large lady—or who wore a large dress: I don’t exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was lady—came sailing in. I had a dim recollection of having seen her at the theatre, as if I had seen her in a pale magic lantern; but she appeared to remember me perfectly, and still to suspect me of being in a state of intoxication.
Finding by degrees, however, that I was sober, and (I hope) that I was a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Waterbrook softened towards me considerably, and inquired, firstly, if I went much into the parks, and secondly, if I went much into society. On my replying to both these questions in the negative, it occurred to me that I fell again in her good opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully, and invited me to dinner next day. I accepted the invitation, and took my leave, making a call on Uriah in the office as I went out, and leaving a card for him in his absence.
When I went to dinner next day, and on the street door being opened, plunged into a vapour-bath of haunch of mutton, I divined that I was not the only guest, for I immediately identified the ticket-porter in disguise, assisting the family servant, and waiting at the foot of the stairs to carry up my name. He looked, to the best of his ability, when he asked me for it confidentially, as if he had never seen me before; but well did I know him, and well did he know me. Conscience made cowards of us both.
I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs. Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s—say his aunt.
Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense deference was shown to the Henry Spikers, male and female; which Agnes told me was on account of Mr. Henry Spiker being solicitor to something or to somebody, I forget what or which, remotely connected with the Treasury.
I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a suit of black, and in deep humility. He told me, when I shook hands with him, that he was proud to be noticed by me, and that he really felt obliged to me for my condescension. I could have wished he had been less obliged to me, for he hovered about me in his gratitude all the rest of the evening; and whenever I said a word to Agnes, was sure, with his shadowless eyes and cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly down upon us from behind.
There were other guests—all iced for the occasion, as it struck me, like the wine. But there was one who attracted my attention before he came in, on account of my hearing him announced as Mr. Traddles! My mind flew back to Salem House; and could it be Tommy, I thought, who used to draw the skeletons!
I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual interest. He was a sober, steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair, and eyes that were rather wide open; and he got into an obscure corner so soon, that I had some difficulty in making him out. At length I had a good view of him, and either my vision deceived me, or it was the old unfortunate Tommy.
I made my way to Mr. Waterbrook, and said, that I believed I had the pleasure of seeing an old schoolfellow there.
‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Waterbrook, surprised. ‘You are too young to have been at school with Mr. Henry Spiker?’
‘Oh, I don’t mean him!’ I returned. ‘I mean the gentleman named Traddles.’
‘Oh! Aye, aye! Indeed!’ said my host, with much diminished interest. ‘Possibly.’
‘If it’s really the same person,’ said I, glancing towards him, ‘it was at a place called Salem House where we were together, and he was an excellent fellow.’
‘Oh yes. Traddles is a good fellow,’ returned my host nodding his head with an air of toleration. ‘Traddles is quite a good fellow.’
‘It’s a curious coincidence,’ said I.
‘It is really,’ returned my host, ‘quite a coincidence, that Traddles should be here at all: as Traddles was only invited this morning, when the place at table, intended to be occupied by Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, became vacant, in consequence of his indisposition. A very gentlemanly man, Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, Mr. Copperfield.’
I murmured an assent, which was full of feeling, considering that I knew nothing at all about him; and I inquired what Mr. Traddles was by profession.
‘Traddles,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, ‘is a young man reading for the bar. Yes. He is quite a good fellow—nobody’s enemy but his own.’
‘Is he his own enemy?’ said I, sorry to hear this.
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, pursing up his mouth, and playing with his watch-chain, in a comfortable, prosperous sort of way. ‘I should say he was one of those men who stand in their own light. Yes, I should say he would never, for example, be worth five hundred pound. Traddles was recommended to me by a professional friend. Oh yes. Yes. He has a kind of talent for drawing briefs, and stating a case in writing, plainly. I am able to throw something in Traddles’s way, in the course of the year; something—for him—considerable. Oh yes. Yes.’
I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner in which Mr. Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word ‘Yes’, every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.
My reflections on this theme were still in progress when dinner was announced. Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet’s aunt. Mr. Henry Spiker took Mrs. Waterbrook. Agnes, whom I should have liked to take myself, was given to a simpering fellow with weak legs. Uriah, Traddles, and I, as the junior part of the company, went down last, how we could. I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters. Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the gloom of Hamlet’s aunt. The dinner was very long, and the conversation was about the Aristocracy—and Blood. Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was Blood.
It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better, if we had not been quite so genteel. We were so exceedingly genteel, that our scope was very limited. A Mr. and Mrs. Gulpidge were of the party, who had something to do at second-hand (at least, Mr. Gulpidge had) with the law business of the Bank; and what with the Bank, and what with the Treasury, we were as exclusive as the Court Circular. To mend the matter, Hamlet’s aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that was introduced. These were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell back upon Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her nephew himself.
We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation assumed such a sanguine complexion.
‘I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,’ said Mr. Waterbrook, with his wine-glass at his eye. ‘Other things are all very well in their way, but give me Blood!’
‘Oh! There is nothing,’ observed Hamlet’s aunt, ‘so satisfactory to one! There is nothing that is so much one’s beau-ideal of—of all that sort of thing, speaking generally. There are some low minds (not many, I am happy to believe, but there are some) that would prefer to do what I should call bow down before idols. Positively Idols! Before service, intellect, and so on. But these are intangible points. Blood is not so. We see Blood in a nose, and we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and we say, “There it is! That’s Blood!” It is an actual matter of fact. We point it out. It admits of no doubt.’
The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down, stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.
‘Oh, you know, deuce take it,’ said this gentleman, looking round the board with an imbecile smile, ‘we can’t forego Blood, you know. We must have Blood, you know. Some young fellows, you know, may be a little behind their station, perhaps, in point of education and behaviour, and may go a little wrong, you know, and get themselves and other people into a variety of fixes—and all that—but deuce take it, it’s delightful to reflect that they’ve got Blood in ‘em! Myself, I’d rather at any time be knocked down by a man who had got Blood in him, than I’d be picked up by a man who hadn’t!’
This sentiment, as compressing the general question into a nutshell, gave the utmost satisfaction, and brought the gentleman into great notice until the ladies retired. After that, I observed that Mr. Gulpidge and Mr. Henry Spiker, who had hitherto been very distant, entered into a defensive alliance against us, the common enemy, and exchanged a mysterious dialogue across the table for our defeat and overthrow.
‘That affair of the first bond for four thousand five hundred pounds has not taken the course that was expected, Spiker,’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
‘Do you mean the D. of A.’s?’ said Mr. Spiker.
‘The C. of B.’s!’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
Mr. Spiker raised his eyebrows, and looked much concerned.
‘When the question was referred to Lord—I needn’t name him,’ said Mr. Gulpidge, checking himself—
‘I understand,’ said Mr. Spiker, ‘N.’
Mr. Gulpidge darkly nodded—‘was referred to him, his answer was, “Money, or no release.”’
‘Lord bless my soul!’ cried Mr. Spiker.
“‘Money, or no release,”’ repeated Mr. Gulpidge, firmly. ‘The next in reversion—you understand me?’
‘K.,’ said Mr. Spiker, with an ominous look.
‘—K. then positively refused to sign. He was attended at Newmarket for that purpose, and he point-blank refused to do it.’
Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite stony.
‘So the matter rests at this hour,’ said Mr. Gulpidge, throwing himself back in his chair. ‘Our friend Waterbrook will excuse me if I forbear to explain myself generally, on account of the magnitude of the interests involved.’
Mr. Waterbrook was only too happy, as it appeared to me, to have such interests, and such names, even hinted at, across his table. He assumed an expression of gloomy intelligence (though I am persuaded he knew no more about the discussion than I did), and highly approved of the discretion that had been observed. Mr. Spiker, after the receipt of such a confidence, naturally desired to favour his friend with a confidence of his own; therefore the foregoing dialogue was succeeded by another, in which it was Mr. Gulpidge’s turn to be surprised, and that by another in which the surprise came round to Mr. Spiker’s turn again, and so on, turn and turn about. All this time we, the outsiders, remained oppressed by the tremendous interests involved in the conversation; and our host regarded us with pride, as the victims of a salutary awe and astonishment. I was very glad indeed to get upstairs to Agnes, and to talk with her in a corner, and to introduce Traddles to her, who was shy, but agreeable, and the same good-natured creature still. As he was obliged to leave early, on account of going away next morning for a month, I had not nearly so much conversation with him as I could have wished; but we exchanged addresses, and promised ourselves the pleasure of another meeting when he should come back to town. He was greatly interested to hear that I knew Steerforth, and spoke of him with such warmth that I made him tell Agnes what he thought of him. But Agnes only looked at me the while, and very slightly shook her head when only I observed her.
As she was not among people with whom I believed she could be very much at home, I was almost glad to hear that she was going away within a few days, though I was sorry at the prospect of parting from her again so soon. This caused me to remain until all the company were gone. Conversing with her, and hearing her sing, was such a delightful reminder to me of my happy life in the grave old house she had made so beautiful, that I could have remained there half the night; but, having no excuse for staying any longer, when the lights of Mr. Waterbrook’s society were all snuffed out, I took my leave very much against my inclination. I felt then, more than ever, that she was my better Angel; and if I thought of her sweet face and placid smile, as though they had shone on me from some removed being, like an Angel, I hope I thought no harm.
I have said that the company were all gone; but I ought to have excepted Uriah, whom I don’t include in that denomination, and who had never ceased to hover near us. He was close behind me when I went downstairs. He was close beside me, when I walked away from the house, slowly fitting his long skeleton fingers into the still longer fingers of a great Guy Fawkes pair of gloves.
It was in no disposition for Uriah’s company, but in remembrance of the entreaty Agnes had made to me, that I asked him if he would come home to my rooms, and have some coffee.
‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,’ he rejoined—‘I beg your pardon, Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so natural, I don’t like that you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask a numble person like me to your ouse.’
‘There is no constraint in the case,’ said I. ‘Will you come?’
‘I should like to, very much,’ replied Uriah, with a writhe.
‘Well, then, come along!’ said I.
I could not help being rather short with him, but he appeared not to mind it. We went the nearest way, without conversing much upon the road; and he was so humble in respect of those scarecrow gloves, that he was still putting them on, and seemed to have made no advance in that labour, when we got to my place.
I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his head against anything, and really his damp cold hand felt so like a frog in mine, that I was tempted to drop it and run away. Agnes and hospitality prevailed, however, and I conducted him to my fireside. When I lighted my candles, he fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed to him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block-tin vessel in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because it was not intended for the purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because there was a patent invention of great price mouldering away in the pantry), he professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have scalded him.
‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,—I mean Mister Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘to see you waiting upon me is what I never could have expected! But, one way and another, so many things happen to me which I never could have expected, I am sure, in my umble station, that it seems to rain blessings on my ed. You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister Copperfield?’
As he sat on my sofa, with his long knees drawn up under his coffee-cup, his hat and gloves upon the ground close to him, his spoon going softly round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which looked as if they had scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then, and unused to disguise what I so strongly felt.
‘You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister Copperfield?’ observed Uriah.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘something.’
‘Ah! I thought Miss Agnes would know of it!’ he quietly returned. ‘I’m glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it. Oh, thank you, Master—Mister Copperfield!’
I could have thrown my bootjack at him (it lay ready on the rug), for having entrapped me into the disclosure of anything concerning Agnes, however immaterial. But I only drank my coffee.
‘What a prophet you have shown yourself, Mister Copperfield!’ pursued Uriah. ‘Dear me, what a prophet you have proved yourself to be! Don’t you remember saying to me once, that perhaps I should be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business, and perhaps it might be Wickfield and Heep? You may not recollect it; but when a person is umble, Master Copperfield, a person treasures such things up!’
‘I recollect talking about it,’ said I, ‘though I certainly did not think it very likely then.’ ‘Oh! who would have thought it likely, Mister Copperfield!’ returned Uriah, enthusiastically. ‘I am sure I didn’t myself. I recollect saying with my own lips that I was much too umble. So I considered myself really and truly.’
He sat, with that carved grin on his face, looking at the fire, as I looked at him.
‘But the umblest persons, Master Copperfield,’ he presently resumed, ‘may be the instruments of good. I am glad to think I have been the instrument of good to Mr. Wickfield, and that I may be more so. Oh what a worthy man he is, Mister Copperfield, but how imprudent he has been!’
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said I. I could not help adding, rather pointedly, ‘on all accounts.’
‘Decidedly so, Mister Copperfield,’ replied Uriah. ‘On all accounts. Miss Agnes’s above all! You don’t remember your own eloquent expressions, Master Copperfield; but I remember how you said one day that everybody must admire her, and how I thanked you for it! You have forgot that, I have no doubt, Master Copperfield?’
‘No,’ said I, drily.
‘Oh how glad I am you have not!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘To think that you should be the first to kindle the sparks of ambition in my umble breast, and that you’ve not forgot it! Oh!—Would you excuse me asking for a cup more coffee?’
Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those sparks, and something in the glance he directed at me as he said it, had made me start as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze of light. Recalled by his request, preferred in quite another tone of voice, I did the honours of the shaving-pot; but I did them with an unsteadiness of hand, a sudden sense of being no match for him, and a perplexed suspicious anxiety as to what he might be going to say next, which I felt could not escape his observation.
He said nothing at all. He stirred his coffee round and round, he sipped it, he felt his chin softly with his grisly hand, he looked at the fire, he looked about the room, he gasped rather than smiled at me, he writhed and undulated about, in his deferential servility, he stirred and sipped again, but he left the renewal of the conversation to me.
‘So, Mr. Wickfield,’ said I, at last, ‘who is worth five hundred of you—or me’; for my life, I think, I could not have helped dividing that part of the sentence with an awkward jerk; ‘has been imprudent, has he, Mr. Heep?’
‘Oh, very imprudent indeed, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, sighing modestly. ‘Oh, very much so! But I wish you’d call me Uriah, if you please. It’s like old times.’
‘Well! Uriah,’ said I, bolting it out with some difficulty.
‘Thank you,’ he returned, with fervour. ‘Thank you, Master Copperfield! It’s like the blowing of old breezes or the ringing of old bellses to hear YOU say Uriah. I beg your pardon. Was I making any observation?’
‘About Mr. Wickfield,’ I suggested.
‘Oh! Yes, truly,’ said Uriah. ‘Ah! Great imprudence, Master Copperfield. It’s a topic that I wouldn’t touch upon, to any soul but you. Even to you I can only touch upon it, and no more. If anyone else had been in my place during the last few years, by this time he would have had Mr. Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is, Master Copperfield, too!) under his thumb. Un—der—his thumb,’ said Uriah, very slowly, as he stretched out his cruel-looking hand above my table, and pressed his own thumb upon it, until it shook, and shook the room.
If I had been obliged to look at him with him splay foot on Mr. Wickfield’s head, I think I could scarcely have hated him more.
‘Oh, dear, yes, Master Copperfield,’ he proceeded, in a soft voice, most remarkably contrasting with the action of his thumb, which did not diminish its hard pressure in the least degree, ‘there’s no doubt of it. There would have been loss, disgrace, I don’t know what at all. Mr. Wickfield knows it. I am the umble instrument of umbly serving him, and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped to reach. How thankful should I be!’ With his face turned towards me, as he finished, but without looking at me, he took his crooked thumb off the spot where he had planted it, and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with it, as if he were shaving himself.
I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw his crafty face, with the appropriately red light of the fire upon it, preparing for something else.
‘Master Copperfield,’ he began—‘but am I keeping you up?’
‘You are not keeping me up. I generally go to bed late.’
‘Thank you, Master Copperfield! I have risen from my umble station since first you used to address me, it is true; but I am umble still. I hope I never shall be otherwise than umble. You will not think the worse of my umbleness, if I make a little confidence to you, Master Copperfield? Will you?’
‘Oh no,’ said I, with an effort.
‘Thank you!’ He took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began wiping the palms of his hands. ‘Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield—’ ‘Well, Uriah?’
‘Oh, how pleasant to be called Uriah, spontaneously!’ he cried; and gave himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish. ‘You thought her looking very beautiful tonight, Master Copperfield?’
‘I thought her looking as she always does: superior, in all respects, to everyone around her,’ I returned.
‘Oh, thank you! It’s so true!’ he cried. ‘Oh, thank you very much for that!’
‘Not at all,’ I said, loftily. ‘There is no reason why you should thank me.’
‘Why that, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘is, in fact, the confidence that I am going to take the liberty of reposing. Umble as I am,’ he wiped his hands harder, and looked at them and at the fire by turns, ‘umble as my mother is, and lowly as our poor but honest roof has ever been, the image of Miss Agnes (I don’t mind trusting you with my secret, Master Copperfield, for I have always overflowed towards you since the first moment I had the pleasure of beholding you in a pony-shay) has been in my breast for years. Oh, Master Copperfield, with what a pure affection do I love the ground my Agnes walks on!’
I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire, and running him through with it. It went from me with a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes, outraged by so much as a thought of this red-headed animal’s, remained in my mind when I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped his body, and made me giddy. He seemed to swell and grow before my eyes; the room seemed full of the echoes of his voice; and the strange feeling (to which, perhaps, no one is quite a stranger) that all this had occurred before, at some indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to say next, took possession of me.
A timely observation of the sense of power that there was in his face, did more to bring back to my remembrance the entreaty of Agnes, in its full force, than any effort I could have made. I asked him, with a better appearance of composure than I could have thought possible a minute before, whether he had made his feelings known to Agnes.
‘Oh no, Master Copperfield!’ he returned; ‘oh dear, no! Not to anyone but you. You see I am only just emerging from my lowly station. I rest a good deal of hope on her observing how useful I am to her father (for I trust to be very useful to him indeed, Master Copperfield), and how I smooth the way for him, and keep him straight. She’s so much attached to her father, Master Copperfield (oh, what a lovely thing it is in a daughter!), that I think she may come, on his account, to be kind to me.’
I fathomed the depth of the rascal’s whole scheme, and understood why he laid it bare.
‘If you’ll have the goodness to keep my secret, Master Copperfield,’ he pursued, ‘and not, in general, to go against me, I shall take it as a particular favour. You wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness. I know what a friendly heart you’ve got; but having only known me on my umble footing (on my umblest I should say, for I am very umble still), you might, unbeknown, go against me rather, with my Agnes. I call her mine, you see, Master Copperfield. There’s a song that says, “I’d crowns resign, to call her mine!” I hope to do it, one of these days.’
Dear Agnes! So much too loving and too good for anyone that I could think of, was it possible that she was reserved to be the wife of such a wretch as this!
‘There’s no hurry at present, you know, Master Copperfield,’ Uriah proceeded, in his slimy way, as I sat gazing at him, with this thought in my mind. ‘My Agnes is very young still; and mother and me will have to work our way upwards, and make a good many new arrangements, before it would be quite convenient. So I shall have time gradually to make her familiar with my hopes, as opportunities offer. Oh, I’m so much obliged to you for this confidence! Oh, it’s such a relief, you can’t think, to know that you understand our situation, and are certain (as you wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness in the family) not to go against me!’
He took the hand which I dared not withhold, and having given it a damp squeeze, referred to his pale-faced watch.
‘Dear me!’ he said, ‘it’s past one. The moments slip away so, in the confidence of old times, Master Copperfield, that it’s almost half past one!’
I answered that I had thought it was later. Not that I had really thought so, but because my conversational powers were effectually scattered.
‘Dear me!’ he said, considering. ‘The ouse that I am stopping at—a sort of a private hotel and boarding ouse, Master Copperfield, near the New River ed—will have gone to bed these two hours.’
‘I am sorry,’ I returned, ‘that there is only one bed here, and that I—’
‘Oh, don’t think of mentioning beds, Master Copperfield!’ he rejoined ecstatically, drawing up one leg. ‘But would you have any objections to my laying down before the fire?’
‘If it comes to that,’ I said, ‘pray take my bed, and I’ll lie down before the fire.’
His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in the excess of its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to the ears of Mrs. Crupp, then sleeping, I suppose, in a distant chamber, situated at about the level of low-water mark, soothed in her slumbers by the ticking of an incorrigible clock, to which she always referred me when we had any little difference on the score of punctuality, and which was never less than three-quarters of an hour too slow, and had always been put right in the morning by the best authorities. As no arguments I could urge, in my bewildered condition, had the least effect upon his modesty in inducing him to accept my bedroom, I was obliged to make the best arrangements I could, for his repose before the fire. The mattress of the sofa (which was a great deal too short for his lank figure), the sofa pillows, a blanket, the table-cover, a clean breakfast-cloth, and a great-coat, made him a bed and covering, for which he was more than thankful. Having lent him a night-cap, which he put on at once, and in which he made such an awful figure, that I have never worn one since, I left him to his rest.
I never shall forget that night. I never shall forget how I turned and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking about Agnes and this creature; how I considered what could I do, and what ought I to do; how I could come to no other conclusion than that the best course for her peace was to do nothing, and to keep to myself what I had heard. If I went to sleep for a few moments, the image of Agnes with her tender eyes, and of her father looking fondly on her, as I had so often seen him look, arose before me with appealing faces, and filled me with vague terrors. When I awoke, the recollection that Uriah was lying in the next room, sat heavy on me like a waking nightmare; and oppressed me with a leaden dread, as if I had had some meaner quality of devil for a lodger.
The poker got into my dozing thoughts besides, and wouldn’t come out. I thought, between sleeping and waking, that it was still red hot, and I had snatched it out of the fire, and run him through the body. I was so haunted at last by the idea, though I knew there was nothing in it, that I stole into the next room to look at him. There I saw him, lying on his back, with his legs extending to I don’t know where, gurglings taking place in his throat, stoppages in his nose, and his mouth open like a post-office. He was so much worse in reality than in my distempered fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking another look at him. Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and hopeless as ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky.
When I saw him going downstairs early in the morning (for, thank Heaven! he would not stay to breakfast), it appeared to me as if the night was going away in his person. When I went out to the Commons, I charged Mrs. Crupp with particular directions to leave the windows open, that my sitting-room might be aired, and purged of his presence.
CHAPTER 26. I FALL INTO CAPTIVITY
I saw no more of Uriah Heep, until the day when Agnes left town. I was at the coach office to take leave of her and see her go; and there was he, returning to Canterbury by the same conveyance. It was some small satisfaction to me to observe his spare, short-waisted, high-shouldered, mulberry-coloured great-coat perched up, in company with an umbrella like a small tent, on the edge of the back seat on the roof, while Agnes was, of course, inside; but what I underwent in my efforts to be friendly with him, while Agnes looked on, perhaps deserved that little recompense. At the coach window, as at the dinner-party, he hovered about us without a moment’s intermission, like a great vulture: gorging himself on every syllable that I said to Agnes, or Agnes said to me.
In the state of trouble into which his disclosure by my fire had thrown me, I had thought very much of the words Agnes had used in reference to the partnership. ‘I did what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to make it.’ A miserable foreboding that she would yield to, and sustain herself by, the same feeling in reference to any sacrifice for his sake, had oppressed me ever since. I knew how she loved him. I knew what the devotion of her nature was. I knew from her own lips that she regarded herself as the innocent cause of his errors, and as owing him a great debt she ardently desired to pay. I had no consolation in seeing how different she was from this detestable Rufus with the mulberry-coloured great-coat, for I felt that in the very difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul and the sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay. All this, doubtless, he knew thoroughly, and had, in his cunning, considered well.
Yet I was so certain that the prospect of such a sacrifice afar off, must destroy the happiness of Agnes; and I was so sure, from her manner, of its being unseen by her then, and having cast no shadow on her yet; that I could as soon have injured her, as given her any warning of what impended. Thus it was that we parted without explanation: she waving her hand and smiling farewell from the coach window; her evil genius writhing on the roof, as if he had her in his clutches and triumphed.
I could not get over this farewell glimpse of them for a long time. When Agnes wrote to tell me of her safe arrival, I was as miserable as when I saw her going away. Whenever I fell into a thoughtful state, this subject was sure to present itself, and all my uneasiness was sure to be redoubled. Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it. It became a part of my life, and as inseparable from my life as my own head.
I had ample leisure to refine upon my uneasiness: for Steerforth was at Oxford, as he wrote to me, and when I was not at the Commons, I was very much alone. I believe I had at this time some lurking distrust of Steerforth. I wrote to him most affectionately in reply to his, but I think I was glad, upon the whole, that he could not come to London just then. I suspect the truth to be, that the influence of Agnes was upon me, undisturbed by the sight of him; and that it was the more powerful with me, because she had so large a share in my thoughts and interest.
In the meantime, days and weeks slipped away. I was articled to Spenlow and Jorkins. I had ninety pounds a year (exclusive of my house-rent and sundry collateral matters) from my aunt. My rooms were engaged for twelve months certain: and though I still found them dreary of an evening, and the evenings long, I could settle down into a state of equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee; which I seem, on looking back, to have taken by the gallon at about this period of my existence. At about this time, too, I made three discoveries: first, that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to a curious disorder called ‘the spazzums’, which was generally accompanied with inflammation of the nose, and required to be constantly treated with peppermint; secondly, that something peculiar in the temperature of my pantry, made the brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that I was alone in the world, and much given to record that circumstance in fragments of English versification.
On the day when I was articled, no festivity took place, beyond my having sandwiches and sherry into the office for the clerks, and going alone to the theatre at night. I went to see The Stranger, as a Doctors’ Commons sort of play, and was so dreadfully cut up, that I hardly knew myself in my own glass when I got home. Mr. Spenlow remarked, on this occasion, when we concluded our business, that he should have been happy to have seen me at his house at Norwood to celebrate our becoming connected, but for his domestic arrangements being in some disorder, on account of the expected return of his daughter from finishing her education at Paris. But, he intimated that when she came home he should hope to have the pleasure of entertaining me. I knew that he was a widower with one daughter, and expressed my acknowledgements.
Mr. Spenlow was as good as his word. In a week or two, he referred to this engagement, and said, that if I would do him the favour to come down next Saturday, and stay till Monday, he would be extremely happy. Of course I said I would do him the favour; and he was to drive me down in his phaeton, and to bring me back.
When the day arrived, my very carpet-bag was an object of veneration to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at Norwood was a sacred mystery. One of them informed me that he had heard that Mr. Spenlow ate entirely off plate and china; and another hinted at champagne being constantly on draught, after the usual custom of table-beer. The old clerk with the wig, whose name was Mr. Tiffey, had been down on business several times in the course of his career, and had on each occasion penetrated to the breakfast-parlour. He described it as an apartment of the most sumptuous nature, and said that he had drunk brown East India sherry there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink. We had an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day—about excommunicating a baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate—and as the evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished. However, we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in no end of costs; and then the baker’s proctor, and the judge, and the advocates on both sides (who were all nearly related), went out of town together, and Mr. Spenlow and I drove away in the phaeton.
The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses arched their necks and lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to Doctors’ Commons. There was a good deal of competition in the Commons on all points of display, and it turned out some very choice equipages then; though I always have considered, and always shall consider, that in my time the great article of competition there was starch: which I think was worn among the proctors to as great an extent as it is in the nature of man to bear.
We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some hints in reference to my profession. He said it was the genteelest profession in the world, and must on no account be confounded with the profession of a solicitor: being quite another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive, less mechanical, and more profitable. We took things much more easily in the Commons than they could be taken anywhere else, he observed, and that set us, as a privileged class, apart. He said it was impossible to conceal the disagreeable fact, that we were chiefly employed by solicitors; but he gave me to understand that they were an inferior race of men, universally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions.
I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of professional business? He replied, that a good case of a disputed will, where there was a neat little estate of thirty or forty thousand pounds, was, perhaps, the best of all. In such a case, he said, not only were there very pretty pickings, in the way of arguments at every stage of the proceedings, and mountains upon mountains of evidence on interrogatory and counter-interrogatory (to say nothing of an appeal lying, first to the Delegates, and then to the Lords), but, the costs being pretty sure to come out of the estate at last, both sides went at it in a lively and spirited manner, and expense was no consideration. Then, he launched into a general eulogium on the Commons. What was to be particularly admired (he said) in the Commons, was its compactness. It was the most conveniently organized place in the world. It was the complete idea of snugness. It lay in a nutshell. For example: You brought a divorce case, or a restitution case, into the Consistory. Very good. You tried it in the Consistory. You made a quiet little round game of it, among a family group, and you played it out at leisure. Suppose you were not satisfied with the Consistory, what did you do then? Why, you went into the Arches. What was the Arches? The same court, in the same room, with the same bar, and the same practitioners, but another judge, for there the Consistory judge could plead any court-day as an advocate. Well, you played your round game out again. Still you were not satisfied. Very good. What did you do then? Why, you went to the Delegates. Who were the Delegates? Why, the Ecclesiastical Delegates were the advocates without any business, who had looked on at the round game when it was playing in both courts, and had seen the cards shuffled, and cut, and played, and had talked to all the players about it, and now came fresh, as judges, to settle the matter to the satisfaction of everybody! Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world,—‘Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!’
I listened to all this with attention; and though, I must say, I had my doubts whether the country was quite as much obliged to the Commons as Mr. Spenlow made out, I respectfully deferred to his opinion. That about the price of wheat per bushel, I modestly felt was too much for my strength, and quite settled the question. I have never, to this hour, got the better of that bushel of wheat. It has reappeared to annihilate me, all through my life, in connexion with all kinds of subjects. I don’t know now, exactly, what it has to do with me, or what right it has to crush me, on an infinite variety of occasions; but whenever I see my old friend the bushel brought in by the head and shoulders (as he always is, I observe), I give up a subject for lost.
This is a digression. I was not the man to touch the Commons, and bring down the country. I submissively expressed, by my silence, my acquiescence in all I had heard from my superior in years and knowledge; and we talked about The Stranger and the Drama, and the pairs of horses, until we came to Mr. Spenlow’s gate.
There was a lovely garden to Mr. Spenlow’s house; and though that was not the best time of the year for seeing a garden, it was so beautifully kept, that I was quite enchanted. There was a charming lawn, there were clusters of trees, and there were perspective walks that I could just distinguish in the dark, arched over with trellis-work, on which shrubs and flowers grew in the growing season. ‘Here Miss Spenlow walks by herself,’ I thought. ‘Dear me!’
We went into the house, which was cheerfully lighted up, and into a hall where there were all sorts of hats, caps, great-coats, plaids, gloves, whips, and walking-sticks. ‘Where is Miss Dora?’ said Mr. Spenlow to the servant. ‘Dora!’ I thought. ‘What a beautiful name!’
We turned into a room near at hand (I think it was the identical breakfast-room, made memorable by the brown East Indian sherry), and I heard a voice say, ‘Mr. Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my daughter Dora’s confidential friend!’ It was, no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice, but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!
She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was—anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.
‘I,’ observed a well-remembered voice, when I had bowed and murmured something, ‘have seen Mr. Copperfield before.’
The speaker was not Dora. No; the confidential friend, Miss Murdstone!
I don’t think I was much astonished. To the best of my judgement, no capacity of astonishment was left in me. There was nothing worth mentioning in the material world, but Dora Spenlow, to be astonished about. I said, ‘How do you do, Miss Murdstone? I hope you are well.’ She answered, ‘Very well.’ I said, ‘How is Mr. Murdstone?’ She replied, ‘My brother is robust, I am obliged to you.’
Mr. Spenlow, who, I suppose, had been surprised to see us recognize each other, then put in his word.
‘I am glad to find,’ he said, ‘Copperfield, that you and Miss Murdstone are already acquainted.’
‘Mr. Copperfield and myself,’ said Miss Murdstone, with severe composure, ‘are connexions. We were once slightly acquainted. It was in his childish days. Circumstances have separated us since. I should not have known him.’
I replied that I should have known her, anywhere. Which was true enough.
‘Miss Murdstone has had the goodness,’ said Mr. Spenlow to me, ‘to accept the office—if I may so describe it—of my daughter Dora’s confidential friend. My daughter Dora having, unhappily, no mother, Miss Murdstone is obliging enough to become her companion and protector.’
A passing thought occurred to me that Miss Murdstone, like the pocket instrument called a life-preserver, was not so much designed for purposes of protection as of assault. But as I had none but passing thoughts for any subject save Dora, I glanced at her, directly afterwards, and was thinking that I saw, in her prettily pettish manner, that she was not very much inclined to be particularly confidential to her companion and protector, when a bell rang, which Mr. Spenlow said was the first dinner-bell, and so carried me off to dress.
The idea of dressing one’s self, or doing anything in the way of action, in that state of love, was a little too ridiculous. I could only sit down before my fire, biting the key of my carpet-bag, and think of the captivating, girlish, bright-eyed lovely Dora. What a form she had, what a face she had, what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner!
The bell rang again so soon that I made a mere scramble of my dressing, instead of the careful operation I could have wished under the circumstances, and went downstairs. There was some company. Dora was talking to an old gentleman with a grey head. Grey as he was—and a great-grandfather into the bargain, for he said so—I was madly jealous of him.
What a state of mind I was in! I was jealous of everybody. I couldn’t bear the idea of anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than I did. It was torturing to me to hear them talk of occurrences in which I had had no share. When a most amiable person, with a highly polished bald head, asked me across the dinner table, if that were the first occasion of my seeing the grounds, I could have done anything to him that was savage and revengeful.
I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, I thought.
When she went out of the room with Miss Murdstone (no other ladies were of the party), I fell into a reverie, only disturbed by the cruel apprehension that Miss Murdstone would disparage me to her. The amiable creature with the polished head told me a long story, which I think was about gardening. I think I heard him say, ‘my gardener’, several times. I seemed to pay the deepest attention to him, but I was wandering in a garden of Eden all the while, with Dora.
My apprehensions of being disparaged to the object of my engrossing affection were revived when we went into the drawing-room, by the grim and distant aspect of Miss Murdstone. But I was relieved of them in an unexpected manner.
‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, beckoning me aside into a window. ‘A word.’
I confronted Miss Murdstone alone.
‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I need not enlarge upon family circumstances. They are not a tempting subject.’ ‘Far from it, ma’am,’ I returned.
‘Far from it,’ assented Miss Murdstone. ‘I do not wish to revive the memory of past differences, or of past outrages. I have received outrages from a person—a female I am sorry to say, for the credit of my sex—who is not to be mentioned without scorn and disgust; and therefore I would rather not mention her.’
I felt very fiery on my aunt’s account; but I said it would certainly be better, if Miss Murdstone pleased, not to mention her. I could not hear her disrespectfully mentioned, I added, without expressing my opinion in a decided tone.
Miss Murdstone shut her eyes, and disdainfully inclined her head; then, slowly opening her eyes, resumed:
‘David Copperfield, I shall not attempt to disguise the fact, that I formed an unfavourable opinion of you in your childhood. It may have been a mistaken one, or you may have ceased to justify it. That is not in question between us now. I belong to a family remarkable, I believe, for some firmness; and I am not the creature of circumstance or change. I may have my opinion of you. You may have your opinion of me.’
I inclined my head, in my turn.
‘But it is not necessary,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘that these opinions should come into collision here. Under existing circumstances, it is as well on all accounts that they should not. As the chances of life have brought us together again, and may bring us together on other occasions, I would say, let us meet here as distant acquaintances. Family circumstances are a sufficient reason for our only meeting on that footing, and it is quite unnecessary that either of us should make the other the subject of remark. Do you approve of this?’
‘Miss Murdstone,’ I returned, ‘I think you and Mr. Murdstone used me very cruelly, and treated my mother with great unkindness. I shall always think so, as long as I live. But I quite agree in what you propose.’
Miss Murdstone shut her eyes again, and bent her head. Then, just touching the back of my hand with the tips of her cold, stiff fingers, she walked away, arranging the little fetters on her wrists and round her neck; which seemed to be the same set, in exactly the same state, as when I had seen her last. These reminded me, in reference to Miss Murdstone’s nature, of the fetters over a jail door; suggesting on the outside, to all beholders, what was to be expected within.
All I know of the rest of the evening is, that I heard the empress of my heart sing enchanted ballads in the French language, generally to the effect that, whatever was the matter, we ought always to dance, Ta ra la, Ta ra la! accompanying herself on a glorified instrument, resembling a guitar. That I was lost in blissful delirium. That I refused refreshment. That my soul recoiled from punch particularly. That when Miss Murdstone took her into custody and led her away, she smiled and gave me her delicious hand. That I caught a view of myself in a mirror, looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic. That I retired to bed in a most maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatuation.
It was a fine morning, and early, and I thought I would go and take a stroll down one of those wire-arched walks, and indulge my passion by dwelling on her image. On my way through the hall, I encountered her little dog, who was called Jip—short for Gipsy. I approached him tenderly, for I loved even him; but he showed his whole set of teeth, got under a chair expressly to snarl, and wouldn’t hear of the least familiarity.
The garden was cool and solitary. I walked about, wondering what my feelings of happiness would be, if I could ever become engaged to this dear wonder. As to marriage, and fortune, and all that, I believe I was almost as innocently undesigning then, as when I loved little Em’ly. To be allowed to call her ‘Dora’, to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition—I am sure it was the summit of mine. There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all this, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it, let me laugh as I may.
I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and met her. I tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that corner, and my pen shakes in my hand.
‘You—are—out early, Miss Spenlow,’ said I.
‘It’s so stupid at home,’ she replied, ‘and Miss Murdstone is so absurd! She talks such nonsense about its being necessary for the day to be aired, before I come out. Aired!’ (She laughed, here, in the most melodious manner.) ‘On a Sunday morning, when I don’t practise, I must do something. So I told papa last night I must come out. Besides, it’s the brightest time of the whole day. Don’t you think so?’
I hazarded a bold flight, and said (not without stammering) that it was very bright to me then, though it had been very dark to me a minute before.
‘Do you mean a compliment?’ said Dora, ‘or that the weather has really changed?’
I stammered worse than before, in replying that I meant no compliment, but the plain truth; though I was not aware of any change having taken place in the weather. It was in the state of my own feelings, I added bashfully: to clench the explanation.
I never saw such curls—how could I, for there never were such curls!—as those she shook out to hide her blushes. As to the straw hat and blue ribbons which was on the top of the curls, if I could only have hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession it would have been!
‘You have just come home from Paris,’ said I.
‘Yes,’ said she. ‘Have you ever been there?’
‘No.’
‘Oh! I hope you’ll go soon! You would like it so much!’
Traces of deep-seated anguish appeared in my countenance. That she should hope I would go, that she should think it possible I could go, was insupportable. I depreciated Paris; I depreciated France. I said I wouldn’t leave England, under existing circumstances, for any earthly consideration. Nothing should induce me. In short, she was shaking the curls again, when the little dog came running along the walk to our relief.
He was mortally jealous of me, and persisted in barking at me. She took him up in her arms—oh my goodness!—and caressed him, but he persisted upon barking still. He wouldn’t let me touch him, when I tried; and then she beat him. It increased my sufferings greatly to see the pats she gave him for punishment on the bridge of his blunt nose, while he winked his eyes, and licked her hand, and still growled within himself like a little double-bass. At length he was quiet—well he might be with her dimpled chin upon his head!—and we walked away to look at a greenhouse.
‘You are not very intimate with Miss Murdstone, are you?’ said Dora. —‘My pet.’
(The two last words were to the dog. Oh, if they had only been to me!)
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not at all so.’
‘She is a tiresome creature,’ said Dora, pouting. ‘I can’t think what papa can have been about, when he chose such a vexatious thing to be my companion. Who wants a protector? I am sure I don’t want a protector. Jip can protect me a great deal better than Miss Murdstone,—can’t you, Jip, dear?’
He only winked lazily, when she kissed his ball of a head.
‘Papa calls her my confidential friend, but I am sure she is no such thing—is she, Jip? We are not going to confide in any such cross people, Jip and I. We mean to bestow our confidence where we like, and to find out our own friends, instead of having them found out for us—don’t we, Jip?’
Jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little like a tea-kettle when it sings. As for me, every word was a new heap of fetters, riveted above the last.
‘It is very hard, because we have not a kind Mama, that we are to have, instead, a sulky, gloomy old thing like Miss Murdstone, always following us about—isn’t it, Jip? Never mind, Jip. We won’t be confidential, and we’ll make ourselves as happy as we can in spite of her, and we’ll tease her, and not please her—won’t we, Jip?’
If it had lasted any longer, I think I must have gone down on my knees on the gravel, with the probability before me of grazing them, and of being presently ejected from the premises besides. But, by good fortune the greenhouse was not far off, and these words brought us to it.
It contained quite a show of beautiful geraniums. We loitered along in front of them, and Dora often stopped to admire this one or that one, and I stopped to admire the same one, and Dora, laughing, held the dog up childishly, to smell the flowers; and if we were not all three in Fairyland, certainly I was. The scent of a geranium leaf, at this day, strikes me with a half comical half serious wonder as to what change has come over me in a moment; and then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons, and a quantity of curls, and a little black dog being held up, in two slender arms, against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.
Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us here; and presented her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled with hair powder, to Dora to be kissed. Then she took Dora’s arm in hers, and marched us into breakfast as if it were a soldier’s funeral.
How many cups of tea I drank, because Dora made it, I don’t know. But, I perfectly remember that I sat swilling tea until my whole nervous system, if I had had any in those days, must have gone by the board. By and by we went to church. Miss Murdstone was between Dora and me in the pew; but I heard her sing, and the congregation vanished. A sermon was delivered—about Dora, of course—and I am afraid that is all I know of the service.
We had a quiet day. No company, a walk, a family dinner of four, and an evening of looking over books and pictures; Miss Murdstone with a homily before her, and her eye upon us, keeping guard vigilantly. Ah! little did Mr. Spenlow imagine, when he sat opposite to me after dinner that day, with his pocket-handkerchief over his head, how fervently I was embracing him, in my fancy, as his son-in-law! Little did he think, when I took leave of him at night, that he had just given his full consent to my being engaged to Dora, and that I was invoking blessings on his head!
We departed early in the morning, for we had a Salvage case coming on in the Admiralty Court, requiring a rather accurate knowledge of the whole science of navigation, in which (as we couldn’t be expected to know much about those matters in the Commons) the judge had entreated two old Trinity Masters, for charity’s sake, to come and help him out. Dora was at the breakfast-table to make the tea again, however; and I had the melancholy pleasure of taking off my hat to her in the phaeton, as she stood on the door-step with Jip in her arms.
What the Admiralty was to me that day; what nonsense I made of our case in my mind, as I listened to it; how I saw ‘DORA’ engraved upon the blade of the silver oar which they lay upon the table, as the emblem of that high jurisdiction; and how I felt when Mr. Spenlow went home without me (I had had an insane hope that he might take me back again), as if I were a mariner myself, and the ship to which I belonged had sailed away and left me on a desert island; I shall make no fruitless effort to describe. If that sleepy old court could rouse itself, and present in any visible form the daydreams I have had in it about Dora, it would reveal my truth.
I don’t mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day alone, but day after day, from week to week, and term to term. I went there, not to attend to what was going on, but to think about Dora. If ever I bestowed a thought upon the cases, as they dragged their slow length before me, it was only to wonder, in the matrimonial cases (remembering Dora), how it was that married people could ever be otherwise than happy; and, in the Prerogative cases, to consider, if the money in question had been left to me, what were the foremost steps I should immediately have taken in regard to Dora. Within the first week of my passion, I bought four sumptuous waistcoats—not for myself; I had no pride in them; for Dora—and took to wearing straw-coloured kid gloves in the streets, and laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever had. If the boots I wore at that period could only be produced and compared with the natural size of my feet, they would show what the state of my heart was, in a most affecting manner.
And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act of homage to Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the hope of seeing her. Not only was I soon as well known on the Norwood Road as the postmen on that beat, but I pervaded London likewise. I walked about the streets where the best shops for ladies were, I haunted the Bazaar like an unquiet spirit, I fagged through the Park again and again, long after I was quite knocked up. Sometimes, at long intervals and on rare occasions, I saw her. Perhaps I saw her glove waved in a carriage window; perhaps I met her, walked with her and Miss Murdstone a little way, and spoke to her. In the latter case I was always very miserable afterwards, to think that I had said nothing to the purpose; or that she had no idea of the extent of my devotion, or that she cared nothing about me. I was always looking out, as may be supposed, for another invitation to Mr. Spenlow’s house. I was always being disappointed, for I got none.
Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration; for when this attachment was but a few weeks old, and I had not had the courage to write more explicitly even to Agnes, than that I had been to Mr. Spenlow’s house, ‘whose family,’ I added, ‘consists of one daughter’;—I say Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration, for, even in that early stage, she found it out. She came up to me one evening, when I was very low, to ask (she being then afflicted with the disorder I have mentioned) if I could oblige her with a little tincture of cardamums mixed with rhubarb, and flavoured with seven drops of the essence of cloves, which was the best remedy for her complaint;—or, if I had not such a thing by me, with a little brandy, which was the next best. It was not, she remarked, so palatable to her, but it was the next best. As I had never even heard of the first remedy, and always had the second in the closet, I gave Mrs. Crupp a glass of the second, which (that I might have no suspicion of its being devoted to any improper use) she began to take in my presence.
‘Cheer up, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘I can’t abear to see you so, sir: I’m a mother myself.’
I did not quite perceive the application of this fact to myself, but I smiled on Mrs. Crupp, as benignly as was in my power.
‘Come, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘Excuse me. I know what it is, sir. There’s a lady in the case.’
‘Mrs. Crupp?’ I returned, reddening.
‘Oh, bless you! Keep a good heart, sir!’ said Mrs. Crupp, nodding encouragement. ‘Never say die, sir! If She don’t smile upon you, there’s a many as will. You are a young gentleman to be smiled on, Mr. Copperfull, and you must learn your walue, sir.’
Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull: firstly, no doubt, because it was not my name; and secondly, I am inclined to think, in some indistinct association with a washing-day.
‘What makes you suppose there is any young lady in the case, Mrs. Crupp?’ said I.
‘Mr. Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, with a great deal of feeling, ‘I’m a mother myself.’
For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her hand upon her nankeen bosom, and fortify herself against returning pain with sips of her medicine. At length she spoke again.
‘When the present set were took for you by your dear aunt, Mr. Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘my remark were, I had now found summun I could care for. “Thank Ev’in!” were the expression, “I have now found summun I can care for!”—You don’t eat enough, sir, nor yet drink.’
‘Is that what you found your supposition on, Mrs. Crupp?’ said I.
‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to severity, ‘I’ve laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentleman may be over-careful of himself, or he may be under-careful of himself. He may brush his hair too regular, or too un-regular. He may wear his boots much too large for him, or much too small. That is according as the young gentleman has his original character formed. But let him go to which extreme he may, sir, there’s a young lady in both of ‘em.’
Mrs. Crupp shook her head in such a determined manner, that I had not an inch of vantage-ground left.
‘It was but the gentleman which died here before yourself,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘that fell in love—with a barmaid—and had his waistcoats took in directly, though much swelled by drinking.’
‘Mrs. Crupp,’ said I, ‘I must beg you not to connect the young lady in my case with a barmaid, or anything of that sort, if you please.’
‘Mr. Copperfull,’ returned Mrs. Crupp, ‘I’m a mother myself, and not likely. I ask your pardon, sir, if I intrude. I should never wish to intrude where I were not welcome. But you are a young gentleman, Mr. Copperfull, and my adwice to you is, to cheer up, sir, to keep a good heart, and to know your own walue. If you was to take to something, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘if you was to take to skittles, now, which is healthy, you might find it divert your mind, and do you good.’
With these words, Mrs. Crupp, affecting to be very careful of the brandy—which was all gone—thanked me with a majestic curtsey, and retired. As her figure disappeared into the gloom of the entry, this counsel certainly presented itself to my mind in the light of a slight liberty on Mrs. Crupp’s part; but, at the same time, I was content to receive it, in another point of view, as a word to the wise, and a warning in future to keep my secret better.
CHAPTER 27. TOMMY TRADDLES
It may have been in consequence of Mrs. Crupp’s advice, and, perhaps, for no better reason than because there was a certain similarity in the sound of the word skittles and Traddles, that it came into my head, next day, to go and look after Traddles. The time he had mentioned was more than out, and he lived in a little street near the Veterinary College at Camden Town, which was principally tenanted, as one of our clerks who lived in that direction informed me, by gentlemen students, who bought live donkeys, and made experiments on those quadrupeds in their private apartments. Having obtained from this clerk a direction to the academic grove in question, I set out, the same afternoon, to visit my old schoolfellow.
I found that the street was not as desirable a one as I could have wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles. The inhabitants appeared to have a propensity to throw any little trifles they were not in want of, into the road: which not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy too, on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking out for the number I wanted.
The general air of the place reminded me forcibly of the days when I lived with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Happening to arrive at the door as it was opened to the afternoon milkman, I was reminded of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber more forcibly yet.
‘Now,’ said the milkman to a very youthful servant girl. ‘Has that there little bill of mine been heerd on?’
‘Oh, master says he’ll attend to it immediate,’ was the reply.
‘Because,’ said the milkman, going on as if he had received no answer, and speaking, as I judged from his tone, rather for the edification of somebody within the house, than of the youthful servant—an impression which was strengthened by his manner of glaring down the passage—‘because that there little bill has been running so long, that I begin to believe it’s run away altogether, and never won’t be heerd of. Now, I’m not a going to stand it, you know!’ said the milkman, still throwing his voice into the house, and glaring down the passage.
As to his dealing in the mild article of milk, by the by, there never was a greater anomaly. His deportment would have been fierce in a butcher or a brandy-merchant.
The voice of the youthful servant became faint, but she seemed to me, from the action of her lips, again to murmur that it would be attended to immediate.
‘I tell you what,’ said the milkman, looking hard at her for the first time, and taking her by the chin, ‘are you fond of milk?’
‘Yes, I likes it,’ she replied. ‘Good,’ said the milkman. ‘Then you won’t have none tomorrow. D’ye hear? Not a fragment of milk you won’t have tomorrow.’
I thought she seemed, upon the whole, relieved by the prospect of having any today. The milkman, after shaking his head at her darkly, released her chin, and with anything rather than good-will opened his can, and deposited the usual quantity in the family jug. This done, he went away, muttering, and uttered the cry of his trade next door, in a vindictive shriek.
‘Does Mr. Traddles live here?’ I then inquired.
A mysterious voice from the end of the passage replied ‘Yes.’ Upon which the youthful servant replied ‘Yes.’
‘Is he at home?’ said I.
Again the mysterious voice replied in the affirmative, and again the servant echoed it. Upon this, I walked in, and in pursuance of the servant’s directions walked upstairs; conscious, as I passed the back parlour-door, that I was surveyed by a mysterious eye, probably belonging to the mysterious voice.
When I got to the top of the stairs—the house was only a story high above the ground floor—Traddles was on the landing to meet me. He was delighted to see me, and gave me welcome, with great heartiness, to his little room. It was in the front of the house, and extremely neat, though sparely furnished. It was his only room, I saw; for there was a sofa-bedstead in it, and his blacking-brushes and blacking were among his books—on the top shelf, behind a dictionary. His table was covered with papers, and he was hard at work in an old coat. I looked at nothing, that I know of, but I saw everything, even to the prospect of a church upon his china inkstand, as I sat down—and this, too, was a faculty confirmed in me in the old Micawber times. Various ingenious arrangements he had made, for the disguise of his chest of drawers, and the accommodation of his boots, his shaving-glass, and so forth, particularly impressed themselves upon me, as evidences of the same Traddles who used to make models of elephants’ dens in writing-paper to put flies in; and to comfort himself under ill usage, with the memorable works of art I have so often mentioned.
In a corner of the room was something neatly covered up with a large white cloth. I could not make out what that was.
‘Traddles,’ said I, shaking hands with him again, after I had sat down, ‘I am delighted to see you.’
‘I am delighted to see YOU, Copperfield,’ he returned. ‘I am very glad indeed to see you. It was because I was thoroughly glad to see you when we met in Ely Place, and was sure you were thoroughly glad to see me, that I gave you this address instead of my address at chambers.’ ‘Oh! You have chambers?’ said I.
‘Why, I have the fourth of a room and a passage, and the fourth of a clerk,’ returned Traddles. ‘Three others and myself unite to have a set of chambers—to look business-like—and we quarter the clerk too. Half-a-crown a week he costs me.’
His old simple character and good temper, and something of his old unlucky fortune also, I thought, smiled at me in the smile with which he made this explanation.
‘It’s not because I have the least pride, Copperfield, you understand,’ said Traddles, ‘that I don’t usually give my address here. It’s only on account of those who come to me, who might not like to come here. For myself, I am fighting my way on in the world against difficulties, and it would be ridiculous if I made a pretence of doing anything else.’
‘You are reading for the bar, Mr. Waterbrook informed me?’ said I.
‘Why, yes,’ said Traddles, rubbing his hands slowly over one another. ‘I am reading for the bar. The fact is, I have just begun to keep my terms, after rather a long delay. It’s some time since I was articled, but the payment of that hundred pounds was a great pull. A great pull!’ said Traddles, with a wince, as if he had had a tooth out.
‘Do you know what I can’t help thinking of, Traddles, as I sit here looking at you?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ said he.
‘That sky-blue suit you used to wear.’
‘Lord, to be sure!’ cried Traddles, laughing. ‘Tight in the arms and legs, you know? Dear me! Well! Those were happy times, weren’t they?’
‘I think our schoolmaster might have made them happier, without doing any harm to any of us, I acknowledge,’ I returned.
‘Perhaps he might,’ said Traddles. ‘But dear me, there was a good deal of fun going on. Do you remember the nights in the bedroom? When we used to have the suppers? And when you used to tell the stories? Ha, ha, ha! And do you remember when I got caned for crying about Mr. Mell? Old Creakle! I should like to see him again, too!’
‘He was a brute to you, Traddles,’ said I, indignantly; for his good humour made me feel as if I had seen him beaten but yesterday.
‘Do you think so?’ returned Traddles. ‘Really? Perhaps he was rather. But it’s all over, a long while. Old Creakle!’
‘You were brought up by an uncle, then?’ said I.
‘Of course I was!’ said Traddles. ‘The one I was always going to write to. And always didn’t, eh! Ha, ha, ha! Yes, I had an uncle then. He died soon after I left school.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Yes. He was a retired—what do you call it!—draper—cloth-merchant—and had made me his heir. But he didn’t like me when I grew up.’
‘Do you really mean that?’ said I. He was so composed, that I fancied he must have some other meaning.
‘Oh dear, yes, Copperfield! I mean it,’ replied Traddles. ‘It was an unfortunate thing, but he didn’t like me at all. He said I wasn’t at all what he expected, and so he married his housekeeper.’
‘And what did you do?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t do anything in particular,’ said Traddles. ‘I lived with them, waiting to be put out in the world, until his gout unfortunately flew to his stomach—and so he died, and so she married a young man, and so I wasn’t provided for.’
‘Did you get nothing, Traddles, after all?’
‘Oh dear, yes!’ said Traddles. ‘I got fifty pounds. I had never been brought up to any profession, and at first I was at a loss what to do for myself. However, I began, with the assistance of the son of a professional man, who had been to Salem House—Yawler, with his nose on one side. Do you recollect him?’
No. He had not been there with me; all the noses were straight in my day.
‘It don’t matter,’ said Traddles. ‘I began, by means of his assistance, to copy law writings. That didn’t answer very well; and then I began to state cases for them, and make abstracts, and that sort of work. For I am a plodding kind of fellow, Copperfield, and had learnt the way of doing such things pithily. Well! That put it in my head to enter myself as a law student; and that ran away with all that was left of the fifty pounds. Yawler recommended me to one or two other offices, however—Mr. Waterbrook’s for one—and I got a good many jobs. I was fortunate enough, too, to become acquainted with a person in the publishing way, who was getting up an Encyclopaedia, and he set me to work; and, indeed’ (glancing at his table), ‘I am at work for him at this minute. I am not a bad compiler, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, preserving the same air of cheerful confidence in all he said, ‘but I have no invention at all; not a particle. I suppose there never was a young man with less originality than I have.’
As Traddles seemed to expect that I should assent to this as a matter of course, I nodded; and he went on, with the same sprightly patience—I can find no better expression—as before.
‘So, by little and little, and not living high, I managed to scrape up the hundred pounds at last,’ said Traddles; ‘and thank Heaven that’s paid—though it was—though it certainly was,’ said Traddles, wincing again as if he had had another tooth out, ‘a pull. I am living by the sort of work I have mentioned, still, and I hope, one of these days, to get connected with some newspaper: which would almost be the making of my fortune. Now, Copperfield, you are so exactly what you used to be, with that agreeable face, and it’s so pleasant to see you, that I sha’n’t conceal anything. Therefore you must know that I am engaged.’
Engaged! Oh, Dora!
‘She is a curate’s daughter,’ said Traddles; ‘one of ten, down in Devonshire. Yes!’ For he saw me glance, involuntarily, at the prospect on the inkstand. ‘That’s the church! You come round here to the left, out of this gate,’ tracing his finger along the inkstand, ‘and exactly where I hold this pen, there stands the house—facing, you understand, towards the church.’
The delight with which he entered into these particulars, did not fully present itself to me until afterwards; for my selfish thoughts were making a ground-plan of Mr. Spenlow’s house and garden at the same moment.
‘She is such a dear girl!’ said Traddles; ‘a little older than me, but the dearest girl! I told you I was going out of town? I have been down there. I walked there, and I walked back, and I had the most delightful time! I dare say ours is likely to be a rather long engagement, but our motto is “Wait and hope!” We always say that. “Wait and hope,” we always say. And she would wait, Copperfield, till she was sixty—any age you can mention—for me!’
Traddles rose from his chair, and, with a triumphant smile, put his hand upon the white cloth I had observed.
‘However,’ he said, ‘it’s not that we haven’t made a beginning towards housekeeping. No, no; we have begun. We must get on by degrees, but we have begun. Here,’ drawing the cloth off with great pride and care, ‘are two pieces of furniture to commence with. This flower-pot and stand, she bought herself. You put that in a parlour window,’ said Traddles, falling a little back from it to survey it with the greater admiration, ‘with a plant in it, and—and there you are! This little round table with the marble top (it’s two feet ten in circumference), I bought. You want to lay a book down, you know, or somebody comes to see you or your wife, and wants a place to stand a cup of tea upon, and—and there you are again!’ said Traddles. ‘It’s an admirable piece of workmanship—firm as a rock!’ I praised them both, highly, and Traddles replaced the covering as carefully as he had removed it.
‘It’s not a great deal towards the furnishing,’ said Traddles, ‘but it’s something. The table-cloths, and pillow-cases, and articles of that kind, are what discourage me most, Copperfield. So does the ironmongery—candle-boxes, and gridirons, and that sort of necessaries—because those things tell, and mount up. However, “wait and hope!” And I assure you she’s the dearest girl!’
‘I am quite certain of it,’ said I.
‘In the meantime,’ said Traddles, coming back to his chair; ‘and this is the end of my prosing about myself, I get on as well as I can. I don’t make much, but I don’t spend much. In general, I board with the people downstairs, who are very agreeable people indeed. Both Mr. and Mrs. Micawber have seen a good deal of life, and are excellent company.’
‘My dear Traddles!’ I quickly exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about?’
Traddles looked at me, as if he wondered what I was talking about.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ I repeated. ‘Why, I am intimately acquainted with them!’
An opportune double knock at the door, which I knew well from old experience in Windsor Terrace, and which nobody but Mr. Micawber could ever have knocked at that door, resolved any doubt in my mind as to their being my old friends. I begged Traddles to ask his landlord to walk up. Traddles accordingly did so, over the banister; and Mr. Micawber, not a bit changed—his tights, his stick, his shirt-collar, and his eye-glass, all the same as ever—came into the room with a genteel and youthful air.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, as he checked himself in humming a soft tune. ‘I was not aware that there was any individual, alien to this tenement, in your sanctum.’
Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and pulled up his shirt-collar.
‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’ said I.
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you are exceedingly obliging. I am in statu quo.’
‘And Mrs. Micawber?’ I pursued.
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘she is also, thank God, in statu quo.’
‘And the children, Mr. Micawber?’
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I rejoice to reply that they are, likewise, in the enjoyment of salubrity.’
All this time, Mr. Micawber had not known me in the least, though he had stood face to face with me. But now, seeing me smile, he examined my features with more attention, fell back, cried, ‘Is it possible! Have I the pleasure of again beholding Copperfield!’ and shook me by both hands with the utmost fervour.
‘Good Heaven, Mr. Traddles!’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to think that I should find you acquainted with the friend of my youth, the companion of earlier days! My dear!’ calling over the banisters to Mrs. Micawber, while Traddles looked (with reason) not a little amazed at this description of me. ‘Here is a gentleman in Mr. Traddles’s apartment, whom he wishes to have the pleasure of presenting to you, my love!’
Mr. Micawber immediately reappeared, and shook hands with me again.
‘And how is our good friend the Doctor, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘and all the circle at Canterbury?’
‘I have none but good accounts of them,’ said I.
‘I am most delighted to hear it,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘It was at Canterbury where we last met. Within the shadow, I may figuratively say, of that religious edifice immortalized by Chaucer, which was anciently the resort of Pilgrims from the remotest corners of—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘in the immediate neighbourhood of the Cathedral.’
I replied that it was. Mr. Micawber continued talking as volubly as he could; but not, I thought, without showing, by some marks of concern in his countenance, that he was sensible of sounds in the next room, as of Mrs. Micawber washing her hands, and hurriedly opening and shutting drawers that were uneasy in their action.
‘You find us, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, with one eye on Traddles, ‘at present established, on what may be designated as a small and unassuming scale; but, you are aware that I have, in the course of my career, surmounted difficulties, and conquered obstacles. You are no stranger to the fact, that there have been periods of my life, when it has been requisite that I should pause, until certain expected events should turn up; when it has been necessary that I should fall back, before making what I trust I shall not be accused of presumption in terming—a spring. The present is one of those momentous stages in the life of man. You find me, fallen back, FOR a spring; and I have every reason to believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the result.’
I was expressing my satisfaction, when Mrs. Micawber came in; a little more slatternly than she used to be, or so she seemed now, to my unaccustomed eyes, but still with some preparation of herself for company, and with a pair of brown gloves on.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, leading her towards me, ‘here is a gentleman of the name of Copperfield, who wishes to renew his acquaintance with you.’
It would have been better, as it turned out, to have led gently up to this announcement, for Mrs. Micawber, being in a delicate state of health, was overcome by it, and was taken so unwell, that Mr. Micawber was obliged, in great trepidation, to run down to the water-butt in the backyard, and draw a basinful to lave her brow with. She presently revived, however, and was really pleased to see me. We had half-an-hour’s talk, all together; and I asked her about the twins, who, she said, were ‘grown great creatures’; and after Master and Miss Micawber, whom she described as ‘absolute giants’, but they were not produced on that occasion.
Mr. Micawber was very anxious that I should stay to dinner. I should not have been averse to do so, but that I imagined I detected trouble, and calculation relative to the extent of the cold meat, in Mrs. Micawber’s eye. I therefore pleaded another engagement; and observing that Mrs. Micawber’s spirits were immediately lightened, I resisted all persuasion to forego it.
But I told Traddles, and Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, that before I could think of leaving, they must appoint a day when they would come and dine with me. The occupations to which Traddles stood pledged, rendered it necessary to fix a somewhat distant one; but an appointment was made for the purpose, that suited us all, and then I took my leave.
Mr. Micawber, under pretence of showing me a nearer way than that by which I had come, accompanied me to the corner of the street; being anxious (he explained to me) to say a few words to an old friend, in confidence.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I need hardly tell you that to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind like that which gleams—if I may be allowed the expression—which gleams—in your friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, who exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlour-window, dwelling next door, and a Bow-street officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his society is a source of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon commission. It is not an avocation of a remunerative description—in other words, it does not pay—and some temporary embarrassments of a pecuniary nature have been the consequence. I am, however, delighted to add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up (I am not at liberty to say in what direction), which I trust will enable me to provide, permanently, both for myself and for your friend Traddles, in whom I have an unaffected interest. You may, perhaps, be prepared to hear that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of health which renders it not wholly improbable that an addition may be ultimately made to those pledges of affection which—in short, to the infantine group. Mrs. Micawber’s family have been so good as to express their dissatisfaction at this state of things. I have merely to observe, that I am not aware that it is any business of theirs, and that I repel that exhibition of feeling with scorn, and with defiance!’
Mr. Micawber then shook hands with me again, and left me.
CHAPTER 28. Mr. MICAWBER’S GAUNTLET
Until the day arrived on which I was to entertain my newly-found old friends, I lived principally on Dora and coffee. In my love-lorn condition, my appetite languished; and I was glad of it, for I felt as though it would have been an act of perfidy towards Dora to have a natural relish for my dinner. The quantity of walking exercise I took, was not in this respect attended with its usual consequence, as the disappointment counteracted the fresh air. I have my doubts, too, founded on the acute experience acquired at this period of my life, whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can develop itself freely in any human subject who is always in torment from tight boots. I think the extremities require to be at peace before the stomach will conduct itself with vigour.
On the occasion of this domestic little party, I did not repeat my former extensive preparations. I merely provided a pair of soles, a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie. Mrs. Crupp broke out into rebellion on my first bashful hint in reference to the cooking of the fish and joint, and said, with a dignified sense of injury, ‘No! No, sir! You will not ask me sich a thing, for you are better acquainted with me than to suppose me capable of doing what I cannot do with ampial satisfaction to my own feelings!’ But, in the end, a compromise was effected; and Mrs. Crupp consented to achieve this feat, on condition that I dined from home for a fortnight afterwards.
And here I may remark, that what I underwent from Mrs. Crupp, in consequence of the tyranny she established over me, was dreadful. I never was so much afraid of anyone. We made a compromise of everything. If I hesitated, she was taken with that wonderful disorder which was always lying in ambush in her system, ready, at the shortest notice, to prey upon her vitals. If I rang the bell impatiently, after half-a-dozen unavailing modest pulls, and she appeared at last—which was not by any means to be relied upon—she would appear with a reproachful aspect, sink breathless on a chair near the door, lay her hand upon her nankeen bosom, and become so ill, that I was glad, at any sacrifice of brandy or anything else, to get rid of her. If I objected to having my bed made at five o’clock in the afternoon—which I do still think an uncomfortable arrangement—one motion of her hand towards the same nankeen region of wounded sensibility was enough to make me falter an apology. In short, I would have done anything in an honourable way rather than give Mrs. Crupp offence; and she was the terror of my life.
I bought a second-hand dumb-waiter for this dinner-party, in preference to re-engaging the handy young man; against whom I had conceived a prejudice, in consequence of meeting him in the Strand, one Sunday morning, in a waistcoat remarkably like one of mine, which had been missing since the former occasion. The ‘young gal’ was re-engaged; but on the stipulation that she should only bring in the dishes, and then withdraw to the landing-place, beyond the outer door; where a habit of sniffing she had contracted would be lost upon the guests, and where her retiring on the plates would be a physical impossibility.
Having laid in the materials for a bowl of punch, to be compounded by Mr. Micawber; having provided a bottle of lavender-water, two wax-candles, a paper of mixed pins, and a pincushion, to assist Mrs. Micawber in her toilette at my dressing-table; having also caused the fire in my bedroom to be lighted for Mrs. Micawber’s convenience; and having laid the cloth with my own hands, I awaited the result with composure.
At the appointed time, my three visitors arrived together. Mr. Micawber with more shirt-collar than usual, and a new ribbon to his eye-glass; Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel; Traddles carrying the parcel, and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm. They were all delighted with my residence. When I conducted Mrs. Micawber to my dressing-table, and she saw the scale on which it was prepared for her, she was in such raptures, that she called Mr. Micawber to come in and look.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘this is luxurious. This is a way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself in a state of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been solicited to plight her faith at the Hymeneal altar.’
‘He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, archly. ‘He cannot answer for others.’
‘My dear,’ returned Mr. Micawber with sudden seriousness, ‘I have no desire to answer for others. I am too well aware that when, in the inscrutable decrees of Fate, you were reserved for me, it is possible you may have been reserved for one, destined, after a protracted struggle, at length to fall a victim to pecuniary involvements of a complicated nature. I understand your allusion, my love. I regret it, but I can bear it.’
‘Micawber!’ exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears. ‘Have I deserved this! I, who never have deserted you; who never WILL desert you, Micawber!’ ‘My love,’ said Mr. Micawber, much affected, ‘you will forgive, and our old and tried friend Copperfield will, I am sure, forgive, the momentary laceration of a wounded spirit, made sensitive by a recent collision with the Minion of Power—in other words, with a ribald Turncock attached to the water-works—and will pity, not condemn, its excesses.’
Mr. Micawber then embraced Mrs. Micawber, and pressed my hand; leaving me to infer from this broken allusion that his domestic supply of water had been cut off that afternoon, in consequence of default in the payment of the company’s rates.
To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I informed Mr. Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to the lemons. His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum, and the steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon. It was wonderful to see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and looked as if he were making, instead of punch, a fortune for his family down to the latest posterity. As to Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cap, or the lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but she came out of my room, comparatively speaking, lovely. And the lark was never gayer than that excellent woman.
I suppose—I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose—that Mrs. Crupp, after frying the soles, was taken ill. Because we broke down at that point. The leg of mutton came up very red within, and very pale without: besides having a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over it, as if if had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen fireplace. But we were not in condition to judge of this fact from the appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the ‘young gal’ had dropped it all upon the stairs—where it remained, by the by, in a long train, until it was worn out. The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie: the crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath. In short, the banquet was such a failure that I should have been quite unhappy—about the failure, I mean, for I was always unhappy about Dora—if I had not been relieved by the great good humour of my company, and by a bright suggestion from Mr. Micawber.
‘My dear friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the—a—I would say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy. If you will allow me to take the liberty of remarking that there are few comestibles better, in their way, than a Devil, and that I believe, with a little division of labour, we could accomplish a good one if the young person in attendance could produce a gridiron, I would put it to you, that this little misfortune may be easily repaired.’
There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately applied ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber’s idea into effect. The division of labour to which he had referred was this:—Traddles cut the mutton into slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to perfection) covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cayenne; I put them on the gridiron, turned them with a fork, and took them off, under Mr. Micawber’s direction; and Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred, some mushroom ketchup in a little saucepan. When we had slices enough done to begin upon, we fell-to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the wrist, more slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention divided between the mutton on our plates, and the mutton then preparing.
What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the bustle of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the frequent sitting down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off the gridiron hot and hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the midst of such a tempting noise and savour, we reduced the leg of mutton to the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am ashamed to record it, but I really believe I forgot Dora for a little while. I am satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber could not have enjoyed the feast more, if they had sold a bed to provide it. Traddles laughed as heartily, almost the whole time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all did, all at once; and I dare say there was never a greater success.
We were at the height of our enjoyment, and were all busily engaged, in our several departments, endeavouring to bring the last batch of slices to a state of perfection that should crown the feast, when I was aware of a strange presence in the room, and my eyes encountered those of the staid Littimer, standing hat in hand before me.
‘What’s the matter?’ I involuntarily asked.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was directed to come in. Is my master not here, sir?’
‘No.’
‘Have you not seen him, sir?’
‘No; don’t you come from him?’
‘Not immediately so, sir.’
‘Did he tell you you would find him here?’
‘Not exactly so, sir. But I should think he might be here tomorrow, as he has not been here today.’
‘Is he coming up from Oxford?’
‘I beg, sir,’ he returned respectfully, ‘that you will be seated, and allow me to do this.’ With which he took the fork from my unresisting hand, and bent over the gridiron, as if his whole attention were concentrated on it.
We should not have been much discomposed, I dare say, by the appearance of Steerforth himself, but we became in a moment the meekest of the meek before his respectable serving-man. Mr. Micawber, humming a tune, to show that he was quite at ease, subsided into his chair, with the handle of a hastily concealed fork sticking out of the bosom of his coat, as if he had stabbed himself. Mrs. Micawber put on her brown gloves, and assumed a genteel languor. Traddles ran his greasy hands through his hair, and stood it bolt upright, and stared in confusion on the table-cloth. As for me, I was a mere infant at the head of my own table; and hardly ventured to glance at the respectable phenomenon, who had come from Heaven knows where, to put my establishment to rights.
Meanwhile he took the mutton off the gridiron, and gravely handed it round. We all took some, but our appreciation of it was gone, and we merely made a show of eating it. As we severally pushed away our plates, he noiselessly removed them, and set on the cheese. He took that off, too, when it was done with; cleared the table; piled everything on the dumb-waiter; gave us our wine-glasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled the dumb-waiter into the pantry. All this was done in a perfect manner, and he never raised his eyes from what he was about. Yet his very elbows, when he had his back towards me, seemed to teem with the expression of his fixed opinion that I was extremely young.
‘Can I do anything more, sir?’
I thanked him and said, No; but would he take no dinner himself?
‘None, I am obliged to you, sir.’
‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
‘I should imagine that he might be here tomorrow, sir. I rather thought he might have been here today, sir. The mistake is mine, no doubt, sir.’
‘If you should see him first—’ said I.
‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I don’t think I shall see him first.’
‘In case you do,’ said I, ‘pray say that I am sorry he was not here today, as an old schoolfellow of his was here.’
‘Indeed, sir!’ and he divided a bow between me and Traddles, with a glance at the latter.
He was moving softly to the door, when, in a forlorn hope of saying something naturally—which I never could, to this man—I said:
‘Oh! Littimer!’
‘Sir!’
‘Did you remain long at Yarmouth, that time?’
‘Not particularly so, sir.’
‘You saw the boat completed?’
‘Yes, sir. I remained behind on purpose to see the boat completed.’
‘I know!’ He raised his eyes to mine respectfully.
‘Mr. Steerforth has not seen it yet, I suppose?’
‘I really can’t say, sir. I think—but I really can’t say, sir. I wish you good night, sir.’
He comprehended everybody present, in the respectful bow with which he followed these words, and disappeared. My visitors seemed to breathe more freely when he was gone; but my own relief was very great, for besides the constraint, arising from that extraordinary sense of being at a disadvantage which I always had in this man’s presence, my conscience had embarrassed me with whispers that I had mistrusted his master, and I could not repress a vague uneasy dread that he might find it out. How was it, having so little in reality to conceal, that I always DID feel as if this man were finding me out?
Mr. Micawber roused me from this reflection, which was blended with a certain remorseful apprehension of seeing Steerforth himself, by bestowing many encomiums on the absent Littimer as a most respectable fellow, and a thoroughly admirable servant. Mr. Micawber, I may remark, had taken his full share of the general bow, and had received it with infinite condescension.
‘But punch, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, tasting it, ‘like time and tide, waits for no man. Ah! it is at the present moment in high flavour. My love, will you give me your opinion?’
Mrs. Micawber pronounced it excellent.
‘Then I will drink,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if my friend Copperfield will permit me to take that social liberty, to the days when my friend Copperfield and myself were younger, and fought our way in the world side by side. I may say, of myself and Copperfield, in words we have sung together before now, that
We twa hae run about the braes And pu’d the gowans’ fine
—in a figurative point of view—on several occasions. I am not exactly aware,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, and the old indescribable air of saying something genteel, ‘what gowans may be, but I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken a pull at them, if it had been feasible.’
Mr. Micawber, at the then present moment, took a pull at his punch. So we all did: Traddles evidently lost in wondering at what distant time Mr. Micawber and I could have been comrades in the battle of the world.
‘Ahem!’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat, and warming with the punch and with the fire. ‘My dear, another glass?’
Mrs. Micawber said it must be very little; but we couldn’t allow that, so it was a glassful.
‘As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, sipping her punch, ‘Mr. Traddles being a part of our domesticity, I should much like to have your opinion on Mr. Micawber’s prospects. For corn,’ said Mrs. Micawber argumentatively, ‘as I have repeatedly said to Mr. Micawber, may be gentlemanly, but it is not remunerative. Commission to the extent of two and ninepence in a fortnight cannot, however limited our ideas, be considered remunerative.’
We were all agreed upon that.
‘Then,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who prided herself on taking a clear view of things, and keeping Mr. Micawber straight by her woman’s wisdom, when he might otherwise go a little crooked, ‘then I ask myself this question. If corn is not to be relied upon, what is? Are coals to be relied upon? Not at all. We have turned our attention to that experiment, on the suggestion of my family, and we find it fallacious.’
Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, eyed us aside, and nodded his head, as much as to say that the case was very clearly put.
‘The articles of corn and coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber, still more argumentatively, ‘being equally out of the question, Mr. Copperfield, I naturally look round the world, and say, “What is there in which a person of Mr. Micawber’s talent is likely to succeed?” And I exclude the doing anything on commission, because commission is not a certainty. What is best suited to a person of Mr. Micawber’s peculiar temperament is, I am convinced, a certainty.’
Traddles and I both expressed, by a feeling murmur, that this great discovery was no doubt true of Mr. Micawber, and that it did him much credit.
‘I will not conceal from you, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I have long felt the Brewing business to be particularly adapted to Mr. Micawber. Look at Barclay and Perkins! Look at Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr. Micawber, I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to shine; and the profits, I am told, are e-NOR-MOUS! But if Mr. Micawber cannot get into those firms—which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his services even in an inferior capacity—what is the use of dwelling upon that idea? None. I may have a conviction that Mr. Micawber’s manners—’
‘Hem! Really, my dear,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
‘My love, be silent,’ said Mrs. Micawber, laying her brown glove on his hand. ‘I may have a conviction, Mr. Copperfield, that Mr. Micawber’s manners peculiarly qualify him for the Banking business. I may argue within myself, that if I had a deposit at a banking-house, the manners of Mr. Micawber, as representing that banking-house, would inspire confidence, and must extend the connexion. But if the various banking-houses refuse to avail themselves of Mr. Micawber’s abilities, or receive the offer of them with contumely, what is the use of dwelling upon THAT idea? None. As to originating a banking-business, I may know that there are members of my family who, if they chose to place their money in Mr. Micawber’s hands, might found an establishment of that description. But if they do NOT choose to place their money in Mr. Micawber’s hands—which they don’t—what is the use of that? Again I contend that we are no farther advanced than we were before.’
I shook my head, and said, ‘Not a bit.’ Traddles also shook his head, and said, ‘Not a bit.’
‘What do I deduce from this?’ Mrs. Micawber went on to say, still with the same air of putting a case lucidly. ‘What is the conclusion, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to which I am irresistibly brought? Am I wrong in saying, it is clear that we must live?’
I answered ‘Not at all!’ and Traddles answered ‘Not at all!’ and I found myself afterwards sagely adding, alone, that a person must either live or die.
‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, ‘It is precisely that. And the fact is, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that we can not live without something widely different from existing circumstances shortly turning up. Now I am convinced, myself, and this I have pointed out to Mr. Micawber several times of late, that things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must, in a measure, assist to turn them up. I may be wrong, but I have formed that opinion.’
Both Traddles and I applauded it highly.
‘Very well,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then what do I recommend? Here is Mr. Micawber with a variety of qualifications—with great talent—’
‘Really, my love,’ said Mr. Micawber.
‘Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here is Mr. Micawber, with a variety of qualifications, with great talent—I should say, with genius, but that may be the partiality of a wife—’
Traddles and I both murmured ‘No.’
‘And here is Mr. Micawber without any suitable position or employment. Where does that responsibility rest? Clearly on society. Then I would make a fact so disgraceful known, and boldly challenge society to set it right. It appears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, forcibly, ‘that what Mr. Micawber has to do, is to throw down the gauntlet to society, and say, in effect, “Show me who will take that up. Let the party immediately step forward.”’
I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be done.
‘By advertising,’ said Mrs. Micawber—‘in all the papers. It appears to me, that what Mr. Micawber has to do, in justice to himself, in justice to his family, and I will even go so far as to say in justice to society, by which he has been hitherto overlooked, is to advertise in all the papers; to describe himself plainly as so-and-so, with such and such qualifications and to put it thus: “Now employ me, on remunerative terms, and address, post-paid, to W. M., Post Office, Camden Town.”’
‘This idea of Mrs. Micawber’s, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, making his shirt-collar meet in front of his chin, and glancing at me sideways, ‘is, in fact, the Leap to which I alluded, when I last had the pleasure of seeing you.’
‘Advertising is rather expensive,’ I remarked, dubiously.
‘Exactly so!’ said Mrs. Micawber, preserving the same logical air. ‘Quite true, my dear Mr. Copperfield! I have made the identical observation to Mr. Micawber. It is for that reason especially, that I think Mr. Micawber ought (as I have already said, in justice to himself, in justice to his family, and in justice to society) to raise a certain sum of money—on a bill.’
Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass and cast his eyes up at the ceiling; but I thought him observant of Traddles, too, who was looking at the fire.
‘If no member of my family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘is possessed of sufficient natural feeling to negotiate that bill—I believe there is a better business-term to express what I mean—’
Mr. Micawber, with his eyes still cast up at the ceiling, suggested ‘Discount.’
‘To discount that bill,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘then my opinion is, that Mr. Micawber should go into the City, should take that bill into the Money Market, and should dispose of it for what he can get. If the individuals in the Money Market oblige Mr. Micawber to sustain a great sacrifice, that is between themselves and their consciences. I view it, steadily, as an investment. I recommend Mr. Micawber, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to do the same; to regard it as an investment which is sure of return, and to make up his mind to any sacrifice.’
I felt, but I am sure I don’t know why, that this was self-denying and devoted in Mrs. Micawber, and I uttered a murmur to that effect. Traddles, who took his tone from me, did likewise, still looking at the fire.
‘I will not,’ said Mrs. Micawber, finishing her punch, and gathering her scarf about her shoulders, preparatory to her withdrawal to my bedroom: ‘I will not protract these remarks on the subject of Mr. Micawber’s pecuniary affairs. At your fireside, my dear Mr. Copperfield, and in the presence of Mr. Traddles, who, though not so old a friend, is quite one of ourselves, I could not refrain from making you acquainted with the course I advise Mr. Micawber to take. I feel that the time is arrived when Mr. Micawber should exert himself and—I will add—assert himself, and it appears to me that these are the means. I am aware that I am merely a female, and that a masculine judgement is usually considered more competent to the discussion of such questions; still I must not forget that, when I lived at home with my papa and mama, my papa was in the habit of saying, “Emma’s form is fragile, but her grasp of a subject is inferior to none.” That my papa was too partial, I well know; but that he was an observer of character in some degree, my duty and my reason equally forbid me to doubt.’
With these words, and resisting our entreaties that she would grace the remaining circulation of the punch with her presence, Mrs. Micawber retired to my bedroom. And really I felt that she was a noble woman—the sort of woman who might have been a Roman matron, and done all manner of heroic things, in times of public trouble.
In the fervour of this impression, I congratulated Mr. Micawber on the treasure he possessed. So did Traddles. Mr. Micawber extended his hand to each of us in succession, and then covered his face with his pocket-handkerchief, which I think had more snuff upon it than he was aware of. He then returned to the punch, in the highest state of exhilaration.
He was full of eloquence. He gave us to understand that in our children we lived again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, any accession to their number was doubly welcome. He said that Mrs. Micawber had latterly had her doubts on this point, but that he had dispelled them, and reassured her. As to her family, they were totally unworthy of her, and their sentiments were utterly indifferent to him, and they might—I quote his own expression—go to the Devil.
Mr. Micawber then delivered a warm eulogy on Traddles. He said Traddles’s was a character, to the steady virtues of which he (Mr. Micawber) could lay no claim, but which, he thanked Heaven, he could admire. He feelingly alluded to the young lady, unknown, whom Traddles had honoured with his affection, and who had reciprocated that affection by honouring and blessing Traddles with her affection. Mr. Micawber pledged her. So did I. Traddles thanked us both, by saying, with a simplicity and honesty I had sense enough to be quite charmed with, ‘I am very much obliged to you indeed. And I do assure you, she’s the dearest girl!—’
Mr. Micawber took an early opportunity, after that, of hinting, with the utmost delicacy and ceremony, at the state of my affections. Nothing but the serious assurance of his friend Copperfield to the contrary, he observed, could deprive him of the impression that his friend Copperfield loved and was beloved. After feeling very hot and uncomfortable for some time, and after a good deal of blushing, stammering, and denying, I said, having my glass in my hand, ‘Well! I would give them D.!’ which so excited and gratified Mr. Micawber, that he ran with a glass of punch into my bedroom, in order that Mrs. Micawber might drink D., who drank it with enthusiasm, crying from within, in a shrill voice, ‘Hear, hear! My dear Mr. Copperfield, I am delighted. Hear!’ and tapping at the wall, by way of applause.
Our conversation, afterwards, took a more worldly turn; Mr. Micawber telling us that he found Camden Town inconvenient, and that the first thing he contemplated doing, when the advertisement should have been the cause of something satisfactory turning up, was to move. He mentioned a terrace at the western end of Oxford Street, fronting Hyde Park, on which he had always had his eye, but which he did not expect to attain immediately, as it would require a large establishment. There would probably be an interval, he explained, in which he should content himself with the upper part of a house, over some respectable place of business—say in Piccadilly,—which would be a cheerful situation for Mrs. Micawber; and where, by throwing out a bow-window, or carrying up the roof another story, or making some little alteration of that sort, they might live, comfortably and reputably, for a few years. Whatever was reserved for him, he expressly said, or wherever his abode might be, we might rely on this—there would always be a room for Traddles, and a knife and fork for me. We acknowledged his kindness; and he begged us to forgive his having launched into these practical and business-like details, and to excuse it as natural in one who was making entirely new arrangements in life.
Mrs. Micawber, tapping at the wall again to know if tea were ready, broke up this particular phase of our friendly conversation. She made tea for us in a most agreeable manner; and, whenever I went near her, in handing about the tea-cups and bread-and-butter, asked me, in a whisper, whether D. was fair, or dark, or whether she was short, or tall: or something of that kind; which I think I liked. After tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered to have considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favourite ballads of ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’, and ‘Little Tafflin’. For both of these songs Mrs. Micawber had been famous when she lived at home with her papa and mama. Mr. Micawber told us, that when he heard her sing the first one, on the first occasion of his seeing her beneath the parental roof, she had attracted his attention in an extraordinary degree; but that when it came to Little Tafflin, he had resolved to win that woman or perish in the attempt.
It was between ten and eleven o’clock when Mrs. Micawber rose to replace her cap in the whitey-brown paper parcel, and to put on her bonnet. Mr. Micawber took the opportunity of Traddles putting on his great-coat, to slip a letter into my hand, with a whispered request that I would read it at my leisure. I also took the opportunity of my holding a candle over the banisters to light them down, when Mr. Micawber was going first, leading Mrs. Micawber, and Traddles was following with the cap, to detain Traddles for a moment on the top of the stairs.
‘Traddles,’ said I, ‘Mr. Micawber don’t mean any harm, poor fellow: but, if I were you, I wouldn’t lend him anything.’
‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, smiling, ‘I haven’t got anything to lend.’
‘You have got a name, you know,’ said I.
‘Oh! You call THAT something to lend?’ returned Traddles, with a thoughtful look.
‘Certainly.’
‘Oh!’ said Traddles. ‘Yes, to be sure! I am very much obliged to you, Copperfield; but—I am afraid I have lent him that already.’
‘For the bill that is to be a certain investment?’ I inquired.
‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Not for that one. This is the first I have heard of that one. I have been thinking that he will most likely propose that one, on the way home. Mine’s another.’
‘I hope there will be nothing wrong about it,’ said I. ‘I hope not,’ said Traddles. ‘I should think not, though, because he told me, only the other day, that it was provided for. That was Mr. Micawber’s expression, “Provided for.”’
Mr. Micawber looking up at this juncture to where we were standing, I had only time to repeat my caution. Traddles thanked me, and descended. But I was much afraid, when I observed the good-natured manner in which he went down with the cap in his hand, and gave Mrs. Micawber his arm, that he would be carried into the Money Market neck and heels.
I returned to my fireside, and was musing, half gravely and half laughing, on the character of Mr. Micawber and the old relations between us, when I heard a quick step ascending the stairs. At first, I thought it was Traddles coming back for something Mrs. Micawber had left behind; but as the step approached, I knew it, and felt my heart beat high, and the blood rush to my face, for it was Steerforth’s.
I was never unmindful of Agnes, and she never left that sanctuary in my thoughts—if I may call it so—where I had placed her from the first. But when he entered, and stood before me with his hand out, the darkness that had fallen on him changed to light, and I felt confounded and ashamed of having doubted one I loved so heartily. I loved her none the less; I thought of her as the same benignant, gentle angel in my life; I reproached myself, not her, with having done him an injury; and I would have made him any atonement if I had known what to make, and how to make it.
‘Why, Daisy, old boy, dumb-foundered!’ laughed Steerforth, shaking my hand heartily, and throwing it gaily away. ‘Have I detected you in another feast, you Sybarite! These Doctors’ Commons fellows are the gayest men in town, I believe, and beat us sober Oxford people all to nothing!’ His bright glance went merrily round the room, as he took the seat on the sofa opposite to me, which Mrs. Micawber had recently vacated, and stirred the fire into a blaze.
‘I was so surprised at first,’ said I, giving him welcome with all the cordiality I felt, ‘that I had hardly breath to greet you with, Steerforth.’
‘Well, the sight of me is good for sore eyes, as the Scotch say,’ replied Steerforth, ‘and so is the sight of you, Daisy, in full bloom. How are you, my Bacchanal?’
‘I am very well,’ said I; ‘and not at all Bacchanalian tonight, though I confess to another party of three.’
‘All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your praise,’ returned Steerforth. ‘Who’s our friend in the tights?’
I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. Micawber. He laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and said he was a man to know, and he must know him. ‘But who do you suppose our other friend is?’ said I, in my turn.
‘Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Not a bore, I hope? I thought he looked a little like one.’
‘Traddles!’ I replied, triumphantly.
‘Who’s he?’ asked Steerforth, in his careless way.
‘Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room at Salem House?’
‘Oh! That fellow!’ said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the top of the fire, with the poker. ‘Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce did you pick him up?’
I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with a light nod, and a smile, and the remark that he would be glad to see the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I could give him anything to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious manner, he had sat idly beating on the lump of coal with the poker. I observed that he did the same thing while I was getting out the remains of the pigeon-pie, and so forth.
‘Why, Daisy, here’s a supper for a king!’ he exclaimed, starting out of his silence with a burst, and taking his seat at the table. ‘I shall do it justice, for I have come from Yarmouth.’
‘I thought you came from Oxford?’ I returned.
‘Not I,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have been seafaring—better employed.’
‘Littimer was here today, to inquire for you,’ I remarked, ‘and I understood him that you were at Oxford; though, now I think of it, he certainly did not say so.’
‘Littimer is a greater fool than I thought him, to have been inquiring for me at all,’ said Steerforth, jovially pouring out a glass of wine, and drinking to me. ‘As to understanding him, you are a cleverer fellow than most of us, Daisy, if you can do that.’
‘That’s true, indeed,’ said I, moving my chair to the table. ‘So you have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!’ interested to know all about it. ‘Have you been there long?’
‘No,’ he returned. ‘An escapade of a week or so.’
‘And how are they all? Of course, little Emily is not married yet?’
‘Not yet. Going to be, I believe—in so many weeks, or months, or something or other. I have not seen much of ‘em. By the by’; he laid down his knife and fork, which he had been using with great diligence, and began feeling in his pockets; ‘I have a letter for you.’
‘From whom?’
‘Why, from your old nurse,’ he returned, taking some papers out of his breast pocket. “‘J. Steerforth, Esquire, debtor, to The Willing Mind”; that’s not it. Patience, and we’ll find it presently. Old what’s-his-name’s in a bad way, and it’s about that, I believe.’
‘Barkis, do you mean?’
‘Yes!’ still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their contents: ‘it’s all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid. I saw a little apothecary there—surgeon, or whatever he is—who brought your worship into the world. He was mighty learned about the case, to me; but the upshot of his opinion was, that the carrier was making his last journey rather fast.---Put your hand into the breast pocket of my great-coat on the chair yonder, and I think you’ll find the letter. Is it there?’
‘Here it is!’ said I.
‘That’s right!’
It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, and brief. It informed me of her husband’s hopeless state, and hinted at his being ‘a little nearer’ than heretofore, and consequently more difficult to manage for his own comfort. It said nothing of her weariness and watching, and praised him highly. It was written with a plain, unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with ‘my duty to my ever darling’—meaning myself.
While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and drink.
‘It’s a bad job,’ he said, when I had done; ‘but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn’t be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men’s doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’
‘And win what race?’ said I.
‘The race that one has started in,’ said he. ‘Ride on!’
I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with his handsome head a little thrown back, and his glass raised in his hand, that, though the freshness of the sea-wind was on his face, and it was ruddy, there were traces in it, made since I last saw it, as if he had applied himself to some habitual strain of the fervent energy which, when roused, was so passionately roused within him. I had it in my thoughts to remonstrate with him upon his desperate way of pursuing any fancy that he took—such as this buffeting of rough seas, and braving of hard weather, for example—when my mind glanced off to the immediate subject of our conversation again, and pursued that instead.
‘I tell you what, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if your high spirits will listen to me—’
‘They are potent spirits, and will do whatever you like,’ he answered, moving from the table to the fireside again.
‘Then I tell you what, Steerforth. I think I will go down and see my old nurse. It is not that I can do her any good, or render her any real service; but she is so attached to me that my visit will have as much effect on her, as if I could do both. She will take it so kindly that it will be a comfort and support to her. It is no great effort to make, I am sure, for such a friend as she has been to me. Wouldn’t you go a day’s journey, if you were in my place?’
His face was thoughtful, and he sat considering a little before he answered, in a low voice, ‘Well! Go. You can do no harm.’
‘You have just come back,’ said I, ‘and it would be in vain to ask you to go with me?’
‘Quite,’ he returned. ‘I am for Highgate tonight. I have not seen my mother this long time, and it lies upon my conscience, for it’s something to be loved as she loves her prodigal son.---Bah! Nonsense!—You mean to go tomorrow, I suppose?’ he said, holding me out at arm’s length, with a hand on each of my shoulders.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Well, then, don’t go till next day. I wanted you to come and stay a few days with us. Here I am, on purpose to bid you, and you fly off to Yarmouth!’
‘You are a nice fellow to talk of flying off, Steerforth, who are always running wild on some unknown expedition or other!’
He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then rejoined, still holding me as before, and giving me a shake:
‘Come! Say the next day, and pass as much of tomorrow as you can with us! Who knows when we may meet again, else? Come! Say the next day! I want you to stand between Rosa Dartle and me, and keep us asunder.’
‘Would you love each other too much, without me?’
‘Yes; or hate,’ laughed Steerforth; ‘no matter which. Come! Say the next day!’
I said the next day; and he put on his great-coat and lighted his cigar, and set off to walk home. Finding him in this intention, I put on my own great-coat (but did not light my own cigar, having had enough of that for one while) and walked with him as far as the open road: a dull road, then, at night. He was in great spirits all the way; and when we parted, and I looked after him going so gallantly and airily homeward, I thought of his saying, ‘Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’ and wished, for the first time, that he had some worthy race to run.
I was undressing in my own room, when Mr. Micawber’s letter tumbled on the floor. Thus reminded of it, I broke the seal and read as follows. It was dated an hour and a half before dinner. I am not sure whether I have mentioned that, when Mr. Micawber was at any particularly desperate crisis, he used a sort of legal phraseology, which he seemed to think equivalent to winding up his affairs.
‘SIR—for I dare not say my dear Copperfield,
‘It is expedient that I should inform you that the undersigned is Crushed. Some flickering efforts to spare you the premature knowledge of his calamitous position, you may observe in him this day; but hope has sunk beneath the horizon, and the undersigned is Crushed.
‘The present communication is penned within the personal range (I cannot call it the society) of an individual, in a state closely bordering on intoxication, employed by a broker. That individual is in legal possession of the premises, under a distress for rent. His inventory includes, not only the chattels and effects of every description belonging to the undersigned, as yearly tenant of this habitation, but also those appertaining to Mr. Thomas Traddles, lodger, a member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.
‘If any drop of gloom were wanting in the overflowing cup, which is now “commended” (in the language of an immortal Writer) to the lips of the undersigned, it would be found in the fact, that a friendly acceptance granted to the undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr. Thomas Traddles, for the sum Of 23l 4s 9 1/2d is over due, and is NOT provided for. Also, in the fact that the living responsibilities clinging to the undersigned will, in the course of nature, be increased by the sum of one more helpless victim; whose miserable appearance may be looked for—in round numbers—at the expiration of a period not exceeding six lunar months from the present date.
‘After premising thus much, it would be a work of supererogation to add, that dust and ashes are for ever scattered
‘On ‘The ‘Head ‘Of ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
Poor Traddles! I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this time, to foresee that he might be expected to recover the blow; but my night’s rest was sorely distressed by thoughts of Traddles, and of the curate’s daughter, who was one of ten, down in Devonshire, and who was such a dear girl, and who would wait for Traddles (ominous praise!) until she was sixty, or any age that could be mentioned.
CHAPTER 29. I VISIT STEERFORTH AT HIS HOME, AGAIN
I mentioned to Mr. Spenlow in the morning, that I wanted leave of absence for a short time; and as I was not in the receipt of any salary, and consequently was not obnoxious to the implacable Jorkins, there was no difficulty about it. I took that opportunity, with my voice sticking in my throat, and my sight failing as I uttered the words, to express my hope that Miss Spenlow was quite well; to which Mr. Spenlow replied, with no more emotion than if he had been speaking of an ordinary human being, that he was much obliged to me, and she was very well.
We articled clerks, as germs of the patrician order of proctors, were treated with so much consideration, that I was almost my own master at all times. As I did not care, however, to get to Highgate before one or two o’clock in the day, and as we had another little excommunication case in court that morning, which was called The office of the judge promoted by Tipkins against Bullock for his soul’s correction, I passed an hour or two in attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably. It arose out of a scuffle between two churchwardens, one of whom was alleged to have pushed the other against a pump; the handle of which pump projecting into a school-house, which school-house was under a gable of the church-roof, made the push an ecclesiastical offence. It was an amusing case; and sent me up to Highgate, on the box of the stage-coach, thinking about the Commons, and what Mr. Spenlow had said about touching the Commons and bringing down the country.
Mrs. Steerforth was pleased to see me, and so was Rosa Dartle. I was agreeably surprised to find that Littimer was not there, and that we were attended by a modest little parlour-maid, with blue ribbons in her cap, whose eye it was much more pleasant, and much less disconcerting, to catch by accident, than the eye of that respectable man. But what I particularly observed, before I had been half-an-hour in the house, was the close and attentive watch Miss Dartle kept upon me; and the lurking manner in which she seemed to compare my face with Steerforth’s, and Steerforth’s with mine, and to lie in wait for something to come out between the two. So surely as I looked towards her, did I see that eager visage, with its gaunt black eyes and searching brow, intent on mine; or passing suddenly from mine to Steerforth’s; or comprehending both of us at once. In this lynx-like scrutiny she was so far from faltering when she saw I observed it, that at such a time she only fixed her piercing look upon me with a more intent expression still. Blameless as I was, and knew that I was, in reference to any wrong she could possibly suspect me of, I shrunk before her strange eyes, quite unable to endure their hungry lustre.
All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house. If I talked to Steerforth in his room, I heard her dress rustle in the little gallery outside. When he and I engaged in some of our old exercises on the lawn behind the house, I saw her face pass from window to window, like a wandering light, until it fixed itself in one, and watched us. When we all four went out walking in the afternoon, she closed her thin hand on my arm like a spring, to keep me back, while Steerforth and his mother went on out of hearing: and then spoke to me.
‘You have been a long time,’ she said, ‘without coming here. Is your profession really so engaging and interesting as to absorb your whole attention? I ask because I always want to be informed, when I am ignorant. Is it really, though?’
I replied that I liked it well enough, but that I certainly could not claim so much for it.
‘Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right when I am wrong,’ said Rosa Dartle. ‘You mean it is a little dry, perhaps?’
‘Well,’ I replied; ‘perhaps it was a little dry.’
‘Oh! and that’s a reason why you want relief and change—excitement and all that?’ said she. ‘Ah! very true! But isn’t it a little—Eh?—for him; I don’t mean you?’
A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking, with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond that, I was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt.
‘Don’t it—I don’t say that it does, mind I want to know—don’t it rather engross him? Don’t it make him, perhaps, a little more remiss than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting—eh?’ With another quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to look into my innermost thoughts.
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘pray do not think—’
‘I don’t!’ she said. ‘Oh dear me, don’t suppose that I think anything! I am not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don’t state any opinion. I want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it’s not so? Well! I am very glad to know it.’
‘It certainly is not the fact,’ said I, perplexed, ‘that I am accountable for Steerforth’s having been away from home longer than usual—if he has been: which I really don’t know at this moment, unless I understand it from you. I have not seen him this long while, until last night.’
‘No?’
‘Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!’
As she looked full at me, I saw her face grow sharper and paler, and the marks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut through the disfigured lip, and deep into the nether lip, and slanted down the face. There was something positively awful to me in this, and in the brightness of her eyes, as she said, looking fixedly at me:
‘What is he doing?’
I repeated the words, more to myself than her, being so amazed.
‘What is he doing?’ she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough to consume her like a fire. ‘In what is that man assisting him, who never looks at me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes? If you are honourable and faithful, I don’t ask you to betray your friend. I ask you only to tell me, is it anger, is it hatred, is it pride, is it restlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love, what is it, that is leading him?’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘how shall I tell you, so that you will believe me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from what there was when I first came here? I can think of nothing. I firmly believe there is nothing. I hardly understand even what you mean.’
As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing, from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly—a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine porcelain—and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, ‘I swear you to secrecy about this!’ said not a word more.
Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son’s society, and Steerforth was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and respectful to her. It was very interesting to me to see them together, not only on account of their mutual affection, but because of the strong personal resemblance between them, and the manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well no serious cause of division had ever come between them; or two such natures—I ought rather to express it, two such shades of the same nature—might have been harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation. The idea did not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but in a speech of Rosa Dartle’s.
She said at dinner:
‘Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking about it all day, and I want to know.’
‘You want to know what, Rosa?’ returned Mrs. Steerforth. ‘Pray, pray, Rosa, do not be mysterious.’
‘Mysterious!’ she cried. ‘Oh! really? Do you consider me so?’
‘Do I constantly entreat you,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘to speak plainly, in your own natural manner?’
‘Oh! then this is not my natural manner?’ she rejoined. ‘Now you must really bear with me, because I ask for information. We never know ourselves.’
‘It has become a second nature,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, without any displeasure; ‘but I remember,—and so must you, I think,—when your manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and was more trustful.’
‘I am sure you are right,’ she returned; ‘and so it is that bad habits grow upon one! Really? Less guarded and more trustful? How can I, imperceptibly, have changed, I wonder! Well, that’s very odd! I must study to regain my former self.’
‘I wish you would,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, with a smile.
‘Oh! I really will, you know!’ she answered. ‘I will learn frankness from—let me see—from James.’
‘You cannot learn frankness, Rosa,’ said Mrs. Steerforth quickly—for there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle said, though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious manner in the world—‘in a better school.’
‘That I am sure of,’ she answered, with uncommon fervour. ‘If I am sure of anything, of course, you know, I am sure of that.’
Mrs. Steerforth appeared to me to regret having been a little nettled; for she presently said, in a kind tone:
‘Well, my dear Rosa, we have not heard what it is that you want to be satisfied about?’
‘That I want to be satisfied about?’ she replied, with provoking coldness. ‘Oh! It was only whether people, who are like each other in their moral constitution—is that the phrase?’
‘It’s as good a phrase as another,’ said Steerforth.
‘Thank you:—whether people, who are like each other in their moral constitution, are in greater danger than people not so circumstanced, supposing any serious cause of variance to arise between them, of being divided angrily and deeply?’
‘I should say yes,’ said Steerforth.
‘Should you?’ she retorted. ‘Dear me! Supposing then, for instance—any unlikely thing will do for a supposition—that you and your mother were to have a serious quarrel.’
‘My dear Rosa,’ interposed Mrs. Steerforth, laughing good-naturedly, ‘suggest some other supposition! James and I know our duty to each other better, I pray Heaven!’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle, nodding her head thoughtfully. ‘To be sure. That would prevent it? Why, of course it would. Exactly. Now, I am glad I have been so foolish as to put the case, for it is so very good to know that your duty to each other would prevent it! Thank you very much.’
One other little circumstance connected with Miss Dartle I must not omit; for I had reason to remember it thereafter, when all the irremediable past was rendered plain. During the whole of this day, but especially from this period of it, Steerforth exerted himself with his utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease, to charm this singular creature into a pleasant and pleased companion. That he should succeed, was no matter of surprise to me. That she should struggle against the fascinating influence of his delightful art—delightful nature I thought it then—did not surprise me either; for I knew that she was sometimes jaundiced and perverse. I saw her features and her manner slowly change; I saw her look at him with growing admiration; I saw her try, more and more faintly, but always angrily, as if she condemned a weakness in herself, to resist the captivating power that he possessed; and finally, I saw her sharp glance soften, and her smile become quite gentle, and I ceased to be afraid of her as I had really been all day, and we all sat about the fire, talking and laughing together, with as little reserve as if we had been children.
Whether it was because we had sat there so long, or because Steerforth was resolved not to lose the advantage he had gained, I do not know; but we did not remain in the dining-room more than five minutes after her departure. ‘She is playing her harp,’ said Steerforth, softly, at the drawing-room door, ‘and nobody but my mother has heard her do that, I believe, these three years.’ He said it with a curious smile, which was gone directly; and we went into the room and found her alone.
‘Don’t get up,’ said Steerforth (which she had already done)’ my dear Rosa, don’t! Be kind for once, and sing us an Irish song.’
‘What do you care for an Irish song?’ she returned.
‘Much!’ said Steerforth. ‘Much more than for any other. Here is Daisy, too, loves music from his soul. Sing us an Irish song, Rosa! and let me sit and listen as I used to do.’
He did not touch her, or the chair from which she had risen, but sat himself near the harp. She stood beside it for some little while, in a curious way, going through the motion of playing it with her right hand, but not sounding it. At length she sat down, and drew it to her with one sudden action, and played and sang.
I don’t know what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been written, or set to music, but sprung out of passion within her; which found imperfect utterance in the low sounds of her voice, and crouched again when all was still. I was dumb when she leaned beside the harp again, playing it, but not sounding it, with her right hand.
A minute more, and this had roused me from my trance:—Steerforth had left his seat, and gone to her, and had put his arm laughingly about her, and had said, ‘Come, Rosa, for the future we will love each other very much!’ And she had struck him, and had thrown him off with the fury of a wild cat, and had burst out of the room.
‘What is the matter with Rosa?’ said Mrs. Steerforth, coming in.
‘She has been an angel, mother,’ returned Steerforth, ‘for a little while; and has run into the opposite extreme, since, by way of compensation.’
‘You should be careful not to irritate her, James. Her temper has been soured, remember, and ought not to be tried.’
Rosa did not come back; and no other mention was made of her, until I went with Steerforth into his room to say Good night. Then he laughed about her, and asked me if I had ever seen such a fierce little piece of incomprehensibility.
I expressed as much of my astonishment as was then capable of expression, and asked if he could guess what it was that she had taken so much amiss, so suddenly.
‘Oh, Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Anything you like—or nothing! I told you she took everything, herself included, to a grindstone, and sharpened it. She is an edge-tool, and requires great care in dealing with. She is always dangerous. Good night!’
‘Good night!’ said I, ‘my dear Steerforth! I shall be gone before you wake in the morning. Good night!’
He was unwilling to let me go; and stood, holding me out, with a hand on each of my shoulders, as he had done in my own room.
‘Daisy,’ he said, with a smile—‘for though that’s not the name your godfathers and godmothers gave you, it’s the name I like best to call you by—and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!’
‘Why so I can, if I choose,’ said I.
‘Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me at my best, old boy. Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances should ever part us!’
‘You have no best to me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘and no worst. You are always equally loved, and cherished in my heart.’
So much compunction for having ever wronged him, even by a shapeless thought, did I feel within me, that the confession of having done so was rising to my lips. But for the reluctance I had to betray the confidence of Agnes, but for my uncertainty how to approach the subject with no risk of doing so, it would have reached them before he said, ‘God bless you, Daisy, and good night!’ In my doubt, it did NOT reach them; and we shook hands, and we parted.
I was up with the dull dawn, and, having dressed as quietly as I could, looked into his room. He was fast asleep; lying, easily, with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
The time came in its season, and that was very soon, when I almost wondered that nothing troubled his repose, as I looked at him. But he slept—let me think of him so again—as I had often seen him sleep at school; and thus, in this silent hour, I left him. —Never more, oh God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive hand in love and friendship. Never, never more!
CHAPTER 30. A LOSS
I got down to Yarmouth in the evening, and went to the inn. I knew that Peggotty’s spare room—my room—was likely to have occupation enough in a little while, if that great Visitor, before whose presence all the living must give place, were not already in the house; so I betook myself to the inn, and dined there, and engaged my bed.
It was ten o’clock when I went out. Many of the shops were shut, and the town was dull. When I came to Omer and Joram’s, I found the shutters up, but the shop door standing open. As I could obtain a perspective view of Mr. Omer inside, smoking his pipe by the parlour door, I entered, and asked him how he was.
‘Why, bless my life and soul!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘how do you find yourself? Take a seat.---Smoke not disagreeable, I hope?’
‘By no means,’ said I. ‘I like it—in somebody else’s pipe.’
‘What, not in your own, eh?’ Mr. Omer returned, laughing. ‘All the better, sir. Bad habit for a young man. Take a seat. I smoke, myself, for the asthma.’
Mr. Omer had made room for me, and placed a chair. He now sat down again very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it contained a supply of that necessary, without which he must perish.
‘I am sorry to have heard bad news of Mr. Barkis,’ said I.
Mr. Omer looked at me, with a steady countenance, and shook his head.
‘Do you know how he is tonight?’ I asked.
‘The very question I should have put to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Omer, ‘but on account of delicacy. It’s one of the drawbacks of our line of business. When a party’s ill, we can’t ask how the party is.’
The difficulty had not occurred to me; though I had had my apprehensions too, when I went in, of hearing the old tune. On its being mentioned, I recognized it, however, and said as much.
‘Yes, yes, you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head. ‘We dursn’t do it. Bless you, it would be a shock that the generality of parties mightn’t recover, to say “Omer and Joram’s compliments, and how do you find yourself this morning?”—or this afternoon—as it may be.’
Mr. Omer and I nodded at each other, and Mr. Omer recruited his wind by the aid of his pipe.
‘It’s one of the things that cut the trade off from attentions they could often wish to show,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Take myself. If I have known Barkis a year, to move to as he went by, I have known him forty years. But I can’t go and say, “how is he?”’
I felt it was rather hard on Mr. Omer, and I told him so.
‘I’m not more self-interested, I hope, than another man,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Look at me! My wind may fail me at any moment, and it ain’t likely that, to my own knowledge, I’d be self-interested under such circumstances. I say it ain’t likely, in a man who knows his wind will go, when it DOES go, as if a pair of bellows was cut open; and that man a grandfather,’ said Mr. Omer.
I said, ‘Not at all.’
‘It ain’t that I complain of my line of business,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It ain’t that. Some good and some bad goes, no doubt, to all callings. What I wish is, that parties was brought up stronger-minded.’
Mr. Omer, with a very complacent and amiable face, took several puffs in silence; and then said, resuming his first point:
‘Accordingly we’re obleeged, in ascertaining how Barkis goes on, to limit ourselves to Em’ly. She knows what our real objects are, and she don’t have any more alarms or suspicions about us, than if we was so many lambs. Minnie and Joram have just stepped down to the house, in fact (she’s there, after hours, helping her aunt a bit), to ask her how he is tonight; and if you was to please to wait till they come back, they’d give you full partic’lers. Will you take something? A glass of srub and water, now? I smoke on srub and water, myself,’ said Mr. Omer, taking up his glass, ‘because it’s considered softening to the passages, by which this troublesome breath of mine gets into action. But, Lord bless you,’ said Mr. Omer, huskily, ‘it ain’t the passages that’s out of order! “Give me breath enough,” said I to my daughter Minnie, “and I’ll find passages, my dear.”’
He really had no breath to spare, and it was very alarming to see him laugh. When he was again in a condition to be talked to, I thanked him for the proffered refreshment, which I declined, as I had just had dinner; and, observing that I would wait, since he was so good as to invite me, until his daughter and his son-in-law came back, I inquired how little Emily was?
‘Well, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, removing his pipe, that he might rub his chin: ‘I tell you truly, I shall be glad when her marriage has taken place.’
‘Why so?’ I inquired.
‘Well, she’s unsettled at present,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It ain’t that she’s not as pretty as ever, for she’s prettier—I do assure you, she is prettier. It ain’t that she don’t work as well as ever, for she does. She WAS worth any six, and she IS worth any six. But somehow she wants heart. If you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, after rubbing his chin again, and smoking a little, ‘what I mean in a general way by the expression, “A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, my hearties, hurrah!” I should say to you, that that was—in a general way—what I miss in Em’ly.’
Mr. Omer’s face and manner went for so much, that I could conscientiously nod my head, as divining his meaning. My quickness of apprehension seemed to please him, and he went on: ‘Now I consider this is principally on account of her being in an unsettled state, you see. We have talked it over a good deal, her uncle and myself, and her sweetheart and myself, after business; and I consider it is principally on account of her being unsettled. You must always recollect of Em’ly,’ said Mr. Omer, shaking his head gently, ‘that she’s a most extraordinary affectionate little thing. The proverb says, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Well, I don’t know about that. I rather think you may, if you begin early in life. She has made a home out of that old boat, sir, that stone and marble couldn’t beat.’
‘I am sure she has!’ said I.
‘To see the clinging of that pretty little thing to her uncle,’ said Mr. Omer; ‘to see the way she holds on to him, tighter and tighter, and closer and closer, every day, is to see a sight. Now, you know, there’s a struggle going on when that’s the case. Why should it be made a longer one than is needful?’
I listened attentively to the good old fellow, and acquiesced, with all my heart, in what he said.
‘Therefore, I mentioned to them,’ said Mr. Omer, in a comfortable, easy-going tone, ‘this. I said, “Now, don’t consider Em’ly nailed down in point of time, at all. Make it your own time. Her services have been more valuable than was supposed; her learning has been quicker than was supposed; Omer and Joram can run their pen through what remains; and she’s free when you wish. If she likes to make any little arrangement, afterwards, in the way of doing any little thing for us at home, very well. If she don’t, very well still. We’re no losers, anyhow.” For—don’t you see,’ said Mr. Omer, touching me with his pipe, ‘it ain’t likely that a man so short of breath as myself, and a grandfather too, would go and strain points with a little bit of a blue-eyed blossom, like her?’
‘Not at all, I am certain,’ said I.
‘Not at all! You’re right!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, her cousin—you know it’s a cousin she’s going to be married to?’
‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘I know him well.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir! Her cousin being, as it appears, in good work, and well to do, thanked me in a very manly sort of manner for this (conducting himself altogether, I must say, in a way that gives me a high opinion of him), and went and took as comfortable a little house as you or I could wish to clap eyes on. That little house is now furnished right through, as neat and complete as a doll’s parlour; and but for Barkis’s illness having taken this bad turn, poor fellow, they would have been man and wife—I dare say, by this time. As it is, there’s a postponement.’
‘And Emily, Mr. Omer?’ I inquired. ‘Has she become more settled?’
‘Why that, you know,’ he returned, rubbing his double chin again, ‘can’t naturally be expected. The prospect of the change and separation, and all that, is, as one may say, close to her and far away from her, both at once. Barkis’s death needn’t put it off much, but his lingering might. Anyway, it’s an uncertain state of matters, you see.’
‘I see,’ said I.
‘Consequently,’ pursued Mr. Omer, ‘Em’ly’s still a little down, and a little fluttered; perhaps, upon the whole, she’s more so than she was. Every day she seems to get fonder and fonder of her uncle, and more loth to part from all of us. A kind word from me brings the tears into her eyes; and if you was to see her with my daughter Minnie’s little girl, you’d never forget it. Bless my heart alive!’ said Mr. Omer, pondering, ‘how she loves that child!’
Having so favourable an opportunity, it occurred to me to ask Mr. Omer, before our conversation should be interrupted by the return of his daughter and her husband, whether he knew anything of Martha.
‘Ah!’ he rejoined, shaking his head, and looking very much dejected. ‘No good. A sad story, sir, however you come to know it. I never thought there was harm in the girl. I wouldn’t wish to mention it before my daughter Minnie—for she’d take me up directly—but I never did. None of us ever did.’
Mr. Omer, hearing his daughter’s footstep before I heard it, touched me with his pipe, and shut up one eye, as a caution. She and her husband came in immediately afterwards.
Their report was, that Mr. Barkis was ‘as bad as bad could be’; that he was quite unconscious; and that Mr. Chillip had mournfully said in the kitchen, on going away just now, that the College of Physicians, the College of Surgeons, and Apothecaries’ Hall, if they were all called in together, couldn’t help him. He was past both Colleges, Mr. Chillip said, and the Hall could only poison him.
Hearing this, and learning that Mr. Peggotty was there, I determined to go to the house at once. I bade good night to Mr. Omer, and to Mr. and Mrs. Joram; and directed my steps thither, with a solemn feeling, which made Mr. Barkis quite a new and different creature.
My low tap at the door was answered by Mr. Peggotty. He was not so much surprised to see me as I had expected. I remarked this in Peggotty, too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises dwindle into nothing.
I shook hands with Mr. Peggotty, and passed into the kitchen, while he softly closed the door. Little Emily was sitting by the fire, with her hands before her face. Ham was standing near her.
We spoke in whispers; listening, between whiles, for any sound in the room above. I had not thought of it on the occasion of my last visit, but how strange it was to me, now, to miss Mr. Barkis out of the kitchen!
‘This is very kind of you, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘It’s oncommon kind,’ said Ham.
‘Em’ly, my dear,’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘See here! Here’s Mas’r Davy come! What, cheer up, pretty! Not a wured to Mas’r Davy?’
There was a trembling upon her, that I can see now. The coldness of her hand when I touched it, I can feel yet. Its only sign of animation was to shrink from mine; and then she glided from the chair, and creeping to the other side of her uncle, bowed herself, silently and trembling still, upon his breast.
‘It’s such a loving art,’ said Mr. Peggotty, smoothing her rich hair with his great hard hand, ‘that it can’t abear the sorrer of this. It’s nat’ral in young folk, Mas’r Davy, when they’re new to these here trials, and timid, like my little bird,—it’s nat’ral.’
She clung the closer to him, but neither lifted up her face, nor spoke a word.
‘It’s getting late, my dear,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and here’s Ham come fur to take you home. Theer! Go along with t’other loving art! What’ Em’ly? Eh, my pretty?’
The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as if he listened to her, and then said:
‘Let you stay with your uncle? Why, you doen’t mean to ask me that! Stay with your uncle, Moppet? When your husband that’ll be so soon, is here fur to take you home? Now a person wouldn’t think it, fur to see this little thing alongside a rough-weather chap like me,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking round at both of us, with infinite pride; ‘but the sea ain’t more salt in it than she has fondness in her for her uncle—a foolish little Em’ly!’
‘Em’ly’s in the right in that, Mas’r Davy!’ said Ham. ‘Lookee here! As Em’ly wishes of it, and as she’s hurried and frightened, like, besides, I’ll leave her till morning. Let me stay too!’
‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You doen’t ought—a married man like you—or what’s as good—to take and hull away a day’s work. And you doen’t ought to watch and work both. That won’t do. You go home and turn in. You ain’t afeerd of Em’ly not being took good care on, I know.’
Ham yielded to this persuasion, and took his hat to go. Even when he kissed her—and I never saw him approach her, but I felt that nature had given him the soul of a gentleman—she seemed to cling closer to her uncle, even to the avoidance of her chosen husband. I shut the door after him, that it might cause no disturbance of the quiet that prevailed; and when I turned back, I found Mr. Peggotty still talking to her.
‘Now, I’m a going upstairs to tell your aunt as Mas’r Davy’s here, and that’ll cheer her up a bit,’ he said. ‘Sit ye down by the fire, the while, my dear, and warm those mortal cold hands. You doen’t need to be so fearsome, and take on so much. What? You’ll go along with me?—Well! come along with me—come! If her uncle was turned out of house and home, and forced to lay down in a dyke, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with no less pride than before, ‘it’s my belief she’d go along with him, now! But there’ll be someone else, soon,—someone else, soon, Em’ly!’
Afterwards, when I went upstairs, as I passed the door of my little chamber, which was dark, I had an indistinct impression of her being within it, cast down upon the floor. But, whether it was really she, or whether it was a confusion of the shadows in the room, I don’t know now.
I had leisure to think, before the kitchen fire, of pretty little Emily’s dread of death—which, added to what Mr. Omer had told me, I took to be the cause of her being so unlike herself—and I had leisure, before Peggotty came down, even to think more leniently of the weakness of it: as I sat counting the ticking of the clock, and deepening my sense of the solemn hush around me. Peggotty took me in her arms, and blessed and thanked me over and over again for being such a comfort to her (that was what she said) in her distress. She then entreated me to come upstairs, sobbing that Mr. Barkis had always liked me and admired me; that he had often talked of me, before he fell into a stupor; and that she believed, in case of his coming to himself again, he would brighten up at sight of me, if he could brighten up at any earthly thing.
The probability of his ever doing so, appeared to me, when I saw him, to be very small. He was lying with his head and shoulders out of bed, in an uncomfortable attitude, half resting on the box which had cost him so much pain and trouble. I learned, that, when he was past creeping out of bed to open it, and past assuring himself of its safety by means of the divining rod I had seen him use, he had required to have it placed on the chair at the bed-side, where he had ever since embraced it, night and day. His arm lay on it now. Time and the world were slipping from beneath him, but the box was there; and the last words he had uttered were (in an explanatory tone) ‘Old clothes!’
‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty, almost cheerfully: bending over him, while her brother and I stood at the bed’s foot. ‘Here’s my dear boy—my dear boy, Master Davy, who brought us together, Barkis! That you sent messages by, you know! Won’t you speak to Master Davy?’
He was as mute and senseless as the box, from which his form derived the only expression it had.
‘He’s a going out with the tide,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his hand.
My eyes were dim and so were Mr. Peggotty’s; but I repeated in a whisper, ‘With the tide?’
‘People can’t die, along the coast,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh in—not properly born, till flood. He’s a going out with the tide. It’s ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he’ll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide.’
We remained there, watching him, a long time—hours. What mysterious influence my presence had upon him in that state of his senses, I shall not pretend to say; but when he at last began to wander feebly, it is certain he was muttering about driving me to school.
‘He’s coming to himself,’ said Peggotty.
Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence. ‘They are both a-going out fast.’
‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty.
‘C. P. Barkis,’ he cried faintly. ‘No better woman anywhere!’
‘Look! Here’s Master Davy!’ said Peggotty. For he now opened his eyes.
I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch out his arm, and said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile:
‘Barkis is willin’!’
And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.
CHAPTER 31. A GREATER LOSS
It was not difficult for me, on Peggotty’s solicitation, to resolve to stay where I was, until after the remains of the poor carrier should have made their last journey to Blunderstone. She had long ago bought, out of her own savings, a little piece of ground in our old churchyard near the grave of ‘her sweet girl’, as she always called my mother; and there they were to rest.
In keeping Peggotty company, and doing all I could for her (little enough at the utmost), I was as grateful, I rejoice to think, as even now I could wish myself to have been. But I am afraid I had a supreme satisfaction, of a personal and professional nature, in taking charge of Mr. Barkis’s will, and expounding its contents.
I may claim the merit of having originated the suggestion that the will should be looked for in the box. After some search, it was found in the box, at the bottom of a horse’s nose-bag; wherein (besides hay) there was discovered an old gold watch, with chain and seals, which Mr. Barkis had worn on his wedding-day, and which had never been seen before or since; a silver tobacco-stopper, in the form of a leg; an imitation lemon, full of minute cups and saucers, which I have some idea Mr. Barkis must have purchased to present to me when I was a child, and afterwards found himself unable to part with; eighty-seven guineas and a half, in guineas and half-guineas; two hundred and ten pounds, in perfectly clean Bank notes; certain receipts for Bank of England stock; an old horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an oyster-shell. From the circumstance of the latter article having been much polished, and displaying prismatic colours on the inside, I conclude that Mr. Barkis had some general ideas about pearls, which never resolved themselves into anything definite.
For years and years, Mr. Barkis had carried this box, on all his journeys, every day. That it might the better escape notice, he had invented a fiction that it belonged to ‘Mr. Blackboy’, and was ‘to be left with Barkis till called for’; a fable he had elaborately written on the lid, in characters now scarcely legible.
He had hoarded, all these years, I found, to good purpose. His property in money amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. Of this he bequeathed the interest of one thousand to Mr. Peggotty for his life; on his decease, the principal to be equally divided between Peggotty, little Emily, and me, or the survivor or survivors of us, share and share alike. All the rest he died possessed of, he bequeathed to Peggotty; whom he left residuary legatee, and sole executrix of that his last will and testament.
I felt myself quite a proctor when I read this document aloud with all possible ceremony, and set forth its provisions, any number of times, to those whom they concerned. I began to think there was more in the Commons than I had supposed. I examined the will with the deepest attention, pronounced it perfectly formal in all respects, made a pencil-mark or so in the margin, and thought it rather extraordinary that I knew so much.
In this abstruse pursuit; in making an account for Peggotty, of all the property into which she had come; in arranging all the affairs in an orderly manner; and in being her referee and adviser on every point, to our joint delight; I passed the week before the funeral. I did not see little Emily in that interval, but they told me she was to be quietly married in a fortnight.
I did not attend the funeral in character, if I may venture to say so. I mean I was not dressed up in a black coat and a streamer, to frighten the birds; but I walked over to Blunderstone early in the morning, and was in the churchyard when it came, attended only by Peggotty and her brother. The mad gentleman looked on, out of my little window; Mr. Chillip’s baby wagged its heavy head, and rolled its goggle eyes, at the clergyman, over its nurse’s shoulder; Mr. Omer breathed short in the background; no one else was there; and it was very quiet. We walked about the churchyard for an hour, after all was over; and pulled some young leaves from the tree above my mother’s grave.
A dread falls on me here. A cloud is lowering on the distant town, towards which I retraced my solitary steps. I fear to approach it. I cannot bear to think of what did come, upon that memorable night; of what must come again, if I go on.
It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. It is done. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.
My old nurse was to go to London with me next day, on the business of the will. Little Emily was passing that day at Mr. Omer’s. We were all to meet in the old boathouse that night. Ham would bring Emily at the usual hour. I would walk back at my leisure. The brother and sister would return as they had come, and be expecting us, when the day closed in, at the fireside.
I parted from them at the wicket-gate, where visionary Strap had rested with Roderick Random’s knapsack in the days of yore; and, instead of going straight back, walked a little distance on the road to Lowestoft. Then I turned, and walked back towards Yarmouth. I stayed to dine at a decent alehouse, some mile or two from the Ferry I have mentioned before; and thus the day wore away, and it was evening when I reached it. Rain was falling heavily by that time, and it was a wild night; but there was a moon behind the clouds, and it was not dark.
I was soon within sight of Mr. Peggotty’s house, and of the light within it shining through the window. A little floundering across the sand, which was heavy, brought me to the door, and I went in.
It looked very comfortable indeed. Mr. Peggotty had smoked his evening pipe and there were preparations for some supper by and by. The fire was bright, the ashes were thrown up, the locker was ready for little Emily in her old place. In her own old place sat Peggotty, once more, looking (but for her dress) as if she had never left it. She had fallen back, already, on the society of the work-box with St. Paul’s upon the lid, the yard-measure in the cottage, and the bit of wax-candle; and there they all were, just as if they had never been disturbed. Mrs. Gummidge appeared to be fretting a little, in her old corner; and consequently looked quite natural, too.
‘You’re first of the lot, Mas’r Davy!’ said Mr. Peggotty with a happy face. ‘Doen’t keep in that coat, sir, if it’s wet.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, giving him my outer coat to hang up. ‘It’s quite dry.’
‘So ‘tis!’ said Mr. Peggotty, feeling my shoulders. ‘As a chip! Sit ye down, sir. It ain’t o’ no use saying welcome to you, but you’re welcome, kind and hearty.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty, I am sure of that. Well, Peggotty!’ said I, giving her a kiss. ‘And how are you, old woman?’
‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, sitting down beside us, and rubbing his hands in his sense of relief from recent trouble, and in the genuine heartiness of his nature; ‘there’s not a woman in the wureld, sir—as I tell her—that need to feel more easy in her mind than her! She done her dooty by the departed, and the departed know’d it; and the departed done what was right by her, as she done what was right by the departed;—and—and—and it’s all right!’
Mrs. Gummidge groaned.
‘Cheer up, my pritty mawther!’ said Mr. Peggotty. (But he shook his head aside at us, evidently sensible of the tendency of the late occurrences to recall the memory of the old one.) ‘Doen’t be down! Cheer up, for your own self, on’y a little bit, and see if a good deal more doen’t come nat’ral!’
‘Not to me, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘Nothink’s nat’ral to me but to be lone and lorn.’
‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty, soothing her sorrows.
‘Yes, yes, Dan’l!’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I ain’t a person to live with them as has had money left. Things go too contrary with me. I had better be a riddance.’
‘Why, how should I ever spend it without you?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with an air of serious remonstrance. ‘What are you a talking on? Doen’t I want you more now, than ever I did?’
‘I know’d I was never wanted before!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, with a pitiable whimper, ‘and now I’m told so! How could I expect to be wanted, being so lone and lorn, and so contrary!’
Mr. Peggotty seemed very much shocked at himself for having made a speech capable of this unfeeling construction, but was prevented from replying, by Peggotty’s pulling his sleeve, and shaking her head. After looking at Mrs. Gummidge for some moments, in sore distress of mind, he glanced at the Dutch clock, rose, snuffed the candle, and put it in the window.
‘Theer!’ said Mr. Peggotty, cheerily. ‘Theer we are, Missis Gummidge!’ Mrs. Gummidge slightly groaned. ‘Lighted up, accordin’ to custom! You’re a wonderin’ what that’s fur, sir! Well, it’s fur our little Em’ly. You see, the path ain’t over light or cheerful arter dark; and when I’m here at the hour as she’s a comin’ home, I puts the light in the winder. That, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, bending over me with great glee, ‘meets two objects. She says, says Em’ly, “Theer’s home!” she says. And likewise, says Em’ly, “My uncle’s theer!” Fur if I ain’t theer, I never have no light showed.’
‘You’re a baby!’ said Peggotty; very fond of him for it, if she thought so.
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, standing with his legs pretty wide apart, and rubbing his hands up and down them in his comfortable satisfaction, as he looked alternately at us and at the fire. ‘I doen’t know but I am. Not, you see, to look at.’
‘Not azackly,’ observed Peggotty.
‘No,’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, ‘not to look at, but to—to consider on, you know. I doen’t care, bless you! Now I tell you. When I go a looking and looking about that theer pritty house of our Em’ly’s, I’m—I’m Gormed,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with sudden emphasis—‘theer! I can’t say more—if I doen’t feel as if the littlest things was her, a’most. I takes ‘em up and I put ‘em down, and I touches of ‘em as delicate as if they was our Em’ly. So ‘tis with her little bonnets and that. I couldn’t see one on ‘em rough used a purpose—not fur the whole wureld. There’s a babby fur you, in the form of a great Sea Porkypine!’ said Mr. Peggotty, relieving his earnestness with a roar of laughter.
Peggotty and I both laughed, but not so loud.
‘It’s my opinion, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a delighted face, after some further rubbing of his legs, ‘as this is along of my havin’ played with her so much, and made believe as we was Turks, and French, and sharks, and every wariety of forinners—bless you, yes; and lions and whales, and I doen’t know what all!—when she warn’t no higher than my knee. I’ve got into the way on it, you know. Why, this here candle, now!’ said Mr. Peggotty, gleefully holding out his hand towards it, ‘I know wery well that arter she’s married and gone, I shall put that candle theer, just the same as now. I know wery well that when I’m here o’ nights (and where else should I live, bless your arts, whatever fortun’ I come into!) and she ain’t here or I ain’t theer, I shall put the candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I’m expecting of her, like I’m a doing now. THERE’S a babby for you,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, ‘in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Why, at the present minute, when I see the candle sparkle up, I says to myself, “She’s a looking at it! Em’ly’s a coming!” THERE’S a babby for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Right for all that,’ said Mr. Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and smiting his hands together; ‘fur here she is!’
It was only Ham. The night should have turned more wet since I came in, for he had a large sou’wester hat on, slouched over his face.
‘Wheer’s Em’ly?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside. Mr. Peggotty took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the table, and was busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not moved, said:
‘Mas’r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em’ly and me has got to show you?’
We went out. As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my astonishment and fright, that he was deadly pale. He pushed me hastily into the open air, and closed the door upon us. Only upon us two.
‘Ham! what’s the matter?’
‘Mas’r Davy!—’ Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!
I was paralysed by the sight of such grief. I don’t know what I thought, or what I dreaded. I could only look at him.
‘Ham! Poor good fellow! For Heaven’s sake, tell me what’s the matter!’
‘My love, Mas’r Davy—the pride and hope of my art—her that I’d have died for, and would die for now—she’s gone!’
‘Gone!’
‘Em’ly’s run away! Oh, Mas’r Davy, think HOW she’s run away, when I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!’
The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his clasped hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with the lonely waste, in my remembrance, to this hour. It is always night there, and he is the only object in the scene.
‘You’re a scholar,’ he said, hurriedly, ‘and know what’s right and best. What am I to say, indoors? How am I ever to break it to him, Mas’r Davy?’
I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on the outside, to gain a moment’s time. It was too late. Mr. Peggotty thrust forth his face; and never could I forget the change that came upon it when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred years.
I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him, and we all standing in the room; I with a paper in my hand, which Ham had given me; Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair wild, his face and lips quite white, and blood trickling down his bosom (it had sprung from his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at me.
‘Read it, sir,’ he said, in a low shivering voice. ‘Slow, please. I doen’t know as I can understand.’
In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted letter:
‘“When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved, even when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away.”’
‘I shall be fur away,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Stop! Em’ly fur away. Well!’
‘“When I leave my dear home—my dear home—oh, my dear home!—in the morning,”’
the letter bore date on the previous night:
‘“—it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to write about myself! Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad. Oh, for mercy’s sake, tell uncle that I never loved him half so dear as now. Oh, don’t remember how affectionate and kind you have all been to me—don’t remember we were ever to be married—but try to think as if I died when I was little, and was buried somewhere. Pray Heaven that I am going away from, have compassion on my uncle! Tell him that I never loved him half so dear. Be his comfort. Love some good girl that will be what I was once to uncle, and be true to you, and worthy of you, and know no shame but me. God bless all! I’ll pray for all, often, on my knees. If he don’t bring me back a lady, and I don’t pray for my own self, I’ll pray for all. My parting love to uncle. My last tears, and my last thanks, for uncle!”’
That was all.
He stood, long after I had ceased to read, still looking at me. At length I ventured to take his hand, and to entreat him, as well as I could, to endeavour to get some command of himself. He replied, ‘I thankee, sir, I thankee!’ without moving.
Ham spoke to him. Mr. Peggotty was so far sensible of HIS affliction, that he wrung his hand; but, otherwise, he remained in the same state, and no one dared to disturb him.
Slowly, at last, he moved his eyes from my face, as if he were waking from a vision, and cast them round the room. Then he said, in a low voice:
‘Who’s the man? I want to know his name.’
Ham glanced at me, and suddenly I felt a shock that struck me back.
‘There’s a man suspected,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Who is it?’
‘Mas’r Davy!’ implored Ham. ‘Go out a bit, and let me tell him what I must. You doen’t ought to hear it, sir.’
I felt the shock again. I sank down in a chair, and tried to utter some reply; but my tongue was fettered, and my sight was weak.
‘I want to know his name!’ I heard said once more.
‘For some time past,’ Ham faltered, ‘there’s been a servant about here, at odd times. There’s been a gen’lm’n too. Both of ‘em belonged to one another.’
Mr. Peggotty stood fixed as before, but now looking at him.
‘The servant,’ pursued Ham, ‘was seen along with—our poor girl—last night. He’s been in hiding about here, this week or over. He was thought to have gone, but he was hiding. Doen’t stay, Mas’r Davy, doen’t!’
I felt Peggotty’s arm round my neck, but I could not have moved if the house had been about to fall upon me.
‘A strange chay and hosses was outside town, this morning, on the Norwich road, a’most afore the day broke,’ Ham went on. ‘The servant went to it, and come from it, and went to it again. When he went to it again, Em’ly was nigh him. The t’other was inside. He’s the man.’
‘For the Lord’s love,’ said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting out his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded. ‘Doen’t tell me his name’s Steerforth!’
‘Mas’r Davy,’ exclaimed Ham, in a broken voice, ‘it ain’t no fault of yourn—and I am far from laying of it to you—but his name is Steerforth, and he’s a damned villain!’
Mr. Peggotty uttered no cry, and shed no tear, and moved no more, until he seemed to wake again, all at once, and pulled down his rough coat from its peg in a corner.
‘Bear a hand with this! I’m struck of a heap, and can’t do it,’ he said, impatiently. ‘Bear a hand and help me. Well!’ when somebody had done so. ‘Now give me that theer hat!’
Ham asked him whither he was going.
‘I’m a going to seek my niece. I’m a going to seek my Em’ly. I’m a going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I would have drownded him, as I’m a living soul, if I had had one thought of what was in him! As he sat afore me,’ he said, wildly, holding out his clenched right hand, ‘as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down dead, but I’d have drownded him, and thought it right!—I’m a going to seek my niece.’
‘Where?’ cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.
‘Anywhere! I’m a going to seek my niece through the wureld. I’m a going to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me! I tell you I’m a going to seek my niece!’
‘No, no!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying. ‘No, no, Dan’l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone lorn Dan’l, and that’ll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you, Dan’l—what have my contraries ever been to this!—and let us speak a word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It’ll soften your poor heart, Dan’l,’ laying her head upon his shoulder, ‘and you’ll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan’l, “As you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me”,—and that can never fail under this roof, that’s been our shelter for so many, many year!’
He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better feeling. My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.
CHAPTER 32. THE BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY
What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have loved him so well still—though he fascinated me no longer—I should have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united. That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known—they were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed—but mine of him were as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead.
Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history! My sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne; but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!
The news of what had happened soon spread through the town; insomuch that as I passed along the streets next morning, I overheard the people speaking of it at their doors. Many were hard upon her, some few were hard upon him, but towards her second father and her lover there was but one sentiment. Among all kinds of people a respect for them in their distress prevailed, which was full of gentleness and delicacy. The seafaring men kept apart, when those two were seen early, walking with slow steps on the beach; and stood in knots, talking compassionately among themselves.
It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them. It would have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last night, even if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still sitting just as I left them, when it was broad day. They looked worn; and I thought Mr. Peggotty’s head was bowed in one night more than in all the years I had known him. But they were both as grave and steady as the sea itself, then lying beneath a dark sky, waveless—yet with a heavy roll upon it, as if it breathed in its rest—and touched, on the horizon, with a strip of silvery light from the unseen sun.
‘We have had a mort of talk, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we had all three walked a little while in silence, ‘of what we ought and doen’t ought to do. But we see our course now.’
I happened to glance at Ham, then looking out to sea upon the distant light, and a frightful thought came into my mind—not that his face was angry, for it was not; I recall nothing but an expression of stern determination in it—that if ever he encountered Steerforth, he would kill him.
‘My dooty here, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is done. I’m a going to seek my—’ he stopped, and went on in a firmer voice: ‘I’m a going to seek her. That’s my dooty evermore.’
He shook his head when I asked him where he would seek her, and inquired if I were going to London tomorrow? I told him I had not gone today, fearing to lose the chance of being of any service to him; but that I was ready to go when he would.
‘I’ll go along with you, sir,’ he rejoined, ‘if you’re agreeable, tomorrow.’
We walked again, for a while, in silence.
‘Ham,’ he presently resumed, ‘he’ll hold to his present work, and go and live along with my sister. The old boat yonder—’
‘Will you desert the old boat, Mr. Peggotty?’ I gently interposed.
‘My station, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, ‘ain’t there no longer; and if ever a boat foundered, since there was darkness on the face of the deep, that one’s gone down. But no, sir, no; I doen’t mean as it should be deserted. Fur from that.’
We walked again for a while, as before, until he explained:
‘My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and summer, as it has always looked, since she fust know’d it. If ever she should come a wandering back, I wouldn’t have the old place seem to cast her off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw nigher to ‘t, and to peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind and rain, through the old winder, at the old seat by the fire. Then, maybe, Mas’r Davy, seein’ none but Missis Gummidge there, she might take heart to creep in, trembling; and might come to be laid down in her old bed, and rest her weary head where it was once so gay.’
I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.
‘Every night,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as reg’lar as the night comes, the candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she should see it, it may seem to say “Come back, my child, come back!” If ever there’s a knock, Ham (partic’ler a soft knock), arter dark, at your aunt’s door, doen’t you go nigh it. Let it be her—not you—that sees my fallen child!’
He walked a little in front of us, and kept before us for some minutes. During this interval, I glanced at Ham again, and observing the same expression on his face, and his eyes still directed to the distant light, I touched his arm.
Twice I called him by his name, in the tone in which I might have tried to rouse a sleeper, before he heeded me. When I at last inquired on what his thoughts were so bent, he replied:
‘On what’s afore me, Mas’r Davy; and over yon.’ ‘On the life before you, do you mean?’ He had pointed confusedly out to sea.
‘Ay, Mas’r Davy. I doen’t rightly know how ‘tis, but from over yon there seemed to me to come—the end of it like,’ looking at me as if he were waking, but with the same determined face.
‘What end?’ I asked, possessed by my former fear.
‘I doen’t know,’ he said, thoughtfully; ‘I was calling to mind that the beginning of it all did take place here—and then the end come. But it’s gone! Mas’r Davy,’ he added; answering, as I think, my look; ‘you han’t no call to be afeerd of me: but I’m kiender muddled; I don’t fare to feel no matters,’—which was as much as to say that he was not himself, and quite confounded.
Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no more. The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former thought, however, haunted me at intervals, even until the inexorable end came at its appointed time.
We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast. She took Mr. Peggotty’s hat, and placed his seat for him, and spoke so comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.
‘Dan’l, my good man,’ said she, ‘you must eat and drink, and keep up your strength, for without it you’ll do nowt. Try, that’s a dear soul! An if I disturb you with my clicketten,’ she meant her chattering, ‘tell me so, Dan’l, and I won’t.’
When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other clothes belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing them in an old oilskin bag, such as sailors carry. Meanwhile, she continued talking, in the same quiet manner:
‘All times and seasons, you know, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, ‘I shall be allus here, and everythink will look accordin’ to your wishes. I’m a poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times, when you’re away, and send my letters to Mas’r Davy. Maybe you’ll write to me too, Dan’l, odd times, and tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journies.’
‘You’ll be a solitary woman heer, I’m afeerd!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘No, no, Dan’l,’ she returned, ‘I shan’t be that. Doen’t you mind me. I shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you’ (Mrs. Gummidge meant a home), ‘again you come back—to keep a Beein here for any that may hap to come back, Dan’l. In the fine time, I shall set outside the door as I used to do. If any should come nigh, they shall see the old widder woman true to ‘em, a long way off.’
What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time! She was another woman. She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the outhouse—as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all sorts of unnecessary errands. As to deploring her misfortunes, she appeared to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any. She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy, which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come over her. Querulousness was out of the question. I did not even observe her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her eyes, the whole day through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr. Peggotty being alone together, and he having fallen asleep in perfect exhaustion, she broke into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing and crying, and taking me to the door, said, ‘Ever bless you, Mas’r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!’ Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty’s affliction; and I could not meditate enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new experience she unfolded to me.
It was between nine and ten o’clock when, strolling in a melancholy manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer’s door. Mr. Omer had taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had been very low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his pipe.
‘A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘There was no good in her, ever!’
‘Don’t say so,’ I returned. ‘You don’t think so.’
‘Yes, I do!’ cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.
‘No, no,’ said I.
Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and cross; but she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. I was young, to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for this sympathy, and fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and mother, very well indeed.
‘What will she ever do!’ sobbed Minnie. ‘Where will she go! What will become of her! Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and him!’
I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.
‘My little Minnie,’ said Mrs. Joram, ‘has only just now been got to sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em’ly. All day long, little Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether Em’ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em’ly tied a ribbon off her own neck round little Minnie’s the last night she was here, and laid her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The ribbon’s round my little Minnie’s neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps, but what can I do? Em’ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another. And the child knows nothing!’
Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty’s; more melancholy myself, if possible, than I had been yet.
That good creature—I mean Peggotty—all untired by her late anxieties and sleepless nights, was at her brother’s, where she meant to stay till morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the house’s only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will, and sat down before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.
I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon the door, as if it were given by a child.
It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down, to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss Mowcher.
I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts were unable to shut up, she had shown me the ‘volatile’ expression of face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest; and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.
‘Miss Mowcher!’ said I, after glancing up and down the empty street, without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; ‘how do you come here? What is the matter?’ She motioned to me with her short right arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender—it was a low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon—in the shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.
Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again, ‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you ill?’
‘My dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here, I am very ill. To think that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!’
Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro; while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.
‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and serious’—when she interrupted me.
‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that’s the way. The old way!’
‘It may be, with others,’ I returned, ‘but I do assure you it is not with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I thought.’
‘What can I do?’ returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out her arms to show herself. ‘See! What I am, my father was; and my sister is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many years—hard, Mr. Copperfield—all day. I must live. I do no harm. If there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?’
No. Not Miss Mowcher’s, I perceived.
‘If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,’ pursued the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness, ‘how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had? If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard? Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn’t do it. No. She might whistle for her bread and butter till she died of Air.’
Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.
‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you giants, be gentle with me.’
Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me with very intent expression all the while, and pursued:
‘I saw you in the street just now. You may suppose I am not able to walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I couldn’t overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after you. I have been here before, today, but the good woman wasn’t at home.’
‘Do you know her?’ I demanded.
‘I know of her, and about her,’ she replied, ‘from Omer and Joram. I was there at seven o’clock this morning. Do you remember what Steerforth said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when I saw you both at the inn?’
The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher’s head, and the greater bonnet on the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked this question.
I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my thoughts many times that day. I told her so.
‘May the Father of all Evil confound him,’ said the little woman, holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, ‘and ten times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was YOU who had a boyish passion for her!’
‘I?’ I repeated.
‘Child, child! In the name of blind ill-fortune,’ cried Miss Mowcher, wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro again upon the fender, ‘why did you praise her so, and blush, and look disturbed?’
I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a reason very different from her supposition.
‘What did I know?’ said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief again, and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short intervals, she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once. ‘He was crossing you and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in his hands, I saw. Had I left the room a minute, when his man told me that “Young Innocence” (so he called you, and you may call him “Old Guilt” all the days of your life) had set his heart upon her, and she was giddy and liked him, but his master was resolved that no harm should come of it—more for your sake than for hers—and that that was their business here? How could I BUT believe him? I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once when I spoke to you of her. What could I think—what DID I think—but that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you (having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my finding out the truth,’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with her two short arms distressfully lifted up, ‘because I am a sharp little thing—I need be, to get through the world at all!—and they deceived me altogether, and I gave the poor unfortunate girl a letter, which I fully believe was the beginning of her ever speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on purpose!’
I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at Miss Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was out of breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her face with her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without otherwise moving, and without breaking silence.
‘My country rounds,’ she added at length, ‘brought me to Norwich, Mr. Copperfield, the night before last. What I happened to find there, about their secret way of coming and going, without you—which was strange—led to my suspecting something wrong. I got into the coach from London last night, as it came through Norwich, and was here this morning. Oh, oh, oh! too late!’
Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and fretting, that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor little wet feet in among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at the fire, like a large doll. I sat in a chair on the other side of the hearth, lost in unhappy reflections, and looking at the fire too, and sometimes at her.
‘I must go,’ she said at last, rising as she spoke. ‘It’s late. You don’t mistrust me?’
Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me, I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.
‘Come!’ said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, ‘you know you wouldn’t mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman!’
I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of myself.
‘You are a young man,’ she said, nodding. ‘Take a word of advice, even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.’
She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. I told her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself, and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands. She thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.
‘Now, mind!’ she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door, and looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger up again.—‘I have some reason to suspect, from what I have heard—my ears are always open; I can’t afford to spare what powers I have—that they are gone abroad. But if ever they return, if ever any one of them returns, while I am alive, I am more likely than another, going about as I do, to find it out soon. Whatever I know, you shall know. If ever I can do anything to serve the poor betrayed girl, I will do it faithfully, please Heaven! And Littimer had better have a bloodhound at his back, than little Mowcher!’
I placed implicit faith in this last statement, when I marked the look with which it was accompanied.
‘Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a full-sized woman,’ said the little creature, touching me appealingly on the wrist. ‘If ever you see me again, unlike what I am now, and like what I was when you first saw me, observe what company I am in. Call to mind that I am a very helpless and defenceless little thing. Think of me at home with my brother like myself and sister like myself, when my day’s work is done. Perhaps you won’t, then, be very hard upon me, or surprised if I can be distressed and serious. Good night!’
I gave Miss Mowcher my hand, with a very different opinion of her from that which I had hitherto entertained, and opened the door to let her out. It was not a trifling business to get the great umbrella up, and properly balanced in her grasp; but at last I successfully accomplished this, and saw it go bobbing down the street through the rain, without the least appearance of having anybody underneath it, except when a heavier fall than usual from some over-charged water-spout sent it toppling over, on one side, and discovered Miss Mowcher struggling violently to get it right. After making one or two sallies to her relief, which were rendered futile by the umbrella’s hopping on again, like an immense bird, before I could reach it, I came in, went to bed, and slept till morning.
In the morning I was joined by Mr. Peggotty and by my old nurse, and we went at an early hour to the coach office, where Mrs. Gummidge and Ham were waiting to take leave of us.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ Ham whispered, drawing me aside, while Mr. Peggotty was stowing his bag among the luggage, ‘his life is quite broke up. He doen’t know wheer he’s going; he doen’t know—what’s afore him; he’s bound upon a voyage that’ll last, on and off, all the rest of his days, take my wured for ‘t, unless he finds what he’s a seeking of. I am sure you’ll be a friend to him, Mas’r Davy?’
‘Trust me, I will indeed,’ said I, shaking hands with Ham earnestly.
‘Thankee. Thankee, very kind, sir. One thing furder. I’m in good employ, you know, Mas’r Davy, and I han’t no way now of spending what I gets. Money’s of no use to me no more, except to live. If you can lay it out for him, I shall do my work with a better art. Though as to that, sir,’ and he spoke very steadily and mildly, ‘you’re not to think but I shall work at all times, like a man, and act the best that lays in my power!’
I told him I was well convinced of it; and I hinted that I hoped the time might even come, when he would cease to lead the lonely life he naturally contemplated now.
‘No, sir,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘all that’s past and over with me, sir. No one can never fill the place that’s empty. But you’ll bear in mind about the money, as theer’s at all times some laying by for him?’
Reminding him of the fact, that Mr. Peggotty derived a steady, though certainly a very moderate income from the bequest of his late brother-in-law, I promised to do so. We then took leave of each other. I cannot leave him even now, without remembering with a pang, at once his modest fortitude and his great sorrow.
As to Mrs. Gummidge, if I were to endeavour to describe how she ran down the street by the side of the coach, seeing nothing but Mr. Peggotty on the roof, through the tears she tried to repress, and dashing herself against the people who were coming in the opposite direction, I should enter on a task of some difficulty. Therefore I had better leave her sitting on a baker’s door-step, out of breath, with no shape at all remaining in her bonnet, and one of her shoes off, lying on the pavement at a considerable distance.
When we got to our journey’s end, our first pursuit was to look about for a little lodging for Peggotty, where her brother could have a bed. We were so fortunate as to find one, of a very clean and cheap description, over a chandler’s shop, only two streets removed from me. When we had engaged this domicile, I bought some cold meat at an eating-house, and took my fellow-travellers home to tea; a proceeding, I regret to state, which did not meet with Mrs. Crupp’s approval, but quite the contrary. I ought to observe, however, in explanation of that lady’s state of mind, that she was much offended by Peggotty’s tucking up her widow’s gown before she had been ten minutes in the place, and setting to work to dust my bedroom. This Mrs. Crupp regarded in the light of a liberty, and a liberty, she said, was a thing she never allowed.
Mr. Peggotty had made a communication to me on the way to London for which I was not unprepared. It was, that he purposed first seeing Mrs. Steerforth. As I felt bound to assist him in this, and also to mediate between them; with the view of sparing the mother’s feelings as much as possible, I wrote to her that night. I told her as mildly as I could what his wrong was, and what my own share in his injury. I said he was a man in very common life, but of a most gentle and upright character; and that I ventured to express a hope that she would not refuse to see him in his heavy trouble. I mentioned two o’clock in the afternoon as the hour of our coming, and I sent the letter myself by the first coach in the morning.
At the appointed time, we stood at the door—the door of that house where I had been, a few days since, so happy: where my youthful confidence and warmth of heart had been yielded up so freely: which was closed against me henceforth: which was now a waste, a ruin.
No Littimer appeared. The pleasanter face which had replaced his, on the occasion of my last visit, answered to our summons, and went before us to the drawing-room. Mrs. Steerforth was sitting there. Rosa Dartle glided, as we went in, from another part of the room and stood behind her chair.
I saw, directly, in his mother’s face, that she knew from himself what he had done. It was very pale; and bore the traces of deeper emotion than my letter alone, weakened by the doubts her fondness would have raised upon it, would have been likely to create. I thought her more like him than ever I had thought her; and I felt, rather than saw, that the resemblance was not lost on my companion.
She sat upright in her arm-chair, with a stately, immovable, passionless air, that it seemed as if nothing could disturb. She looked very steadfastly at Mr. Peggotty when he stood before her; and he looked quite as steadfastly at her. Rosa Dartle’s keen glance comprehended all of us. For some moments not a word was spoken.
She motioned to Mr. Peggotty to be seated. He said, in a low voice, ‘I shouldn’t feel it nat’ral, ma’am, to sit down in this house. I’d sooner stand.’ And this was succeeded by another silence, which she broke thus:
‘I know, with deep regret, what has brought you here. What do you want of me? What do you ask me to do?’
He put his hat under his arm, and feeling in his breast for Emily’s letter, took it out, unfolded it, and gave it to her. ‘Please to read that, ma’am. That’s my niece’s hand!’
She read it, in the same stately and impassive way,—untouched by its contents, as far as I could see,—and returned it to him.
‘“Unless he brings me back a lady,”’ said Mr. Peggotty, tracing out that part with his finger. ‘I come to know, ma’am, whether he will keep his wured?’
‘No,’ she returned.
‘Why not?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘It is impossible. He would disgrace himself. You cannot fail to know that she is far below him.’
‘Raise her up!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘She is uneducated and ignorant.’
‘Maybe she’s not; maybe she is,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I think not, ma’am; but I’m no judge of them things. Teach her better!’
‘Since you oblige me to speak more plainly, which I am very unwilling to do, her humble connexions would render such a thing impossible, if nothing else did.’
‘Hark to this, ma’am,’ he returned, slowly and quietly. ‘You know what it is to love your child. So do I. If she was a hundred times my child, I couldn’t love her more. You doen’t know what it is to lose your child. I do. All the heaps of riches in the wureld would be nowt to me (if they was mine) to buy her back! But, save her from this disgrace, and she shall never be disgraced by us. Not one of us that she’s growed up among, not one of us that’s lived along with her and had her for their all in all, these many year, will ever look upon her pritty face again. We’ll be content to let her be; we’ll be content to think of her, far off, as if she was underneath another sun and sky; we’ll be content to trust her to her husband,—to her little children, p’raps,—and bide the time when all of us shall be alike in quality afore our God!’
The rugged eloquence with which he spoke, was not devoid of all effect. She still preserved her proud manner, but there was a touch of softness in her voice, as she answered:
‘I justify nothing. I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight my son’s career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than that it never can take place, and never will. If there is any other compensation—’
‘I am looking at the likeness of the face,’ interrupted Mr. Peggotty, with a steady but a kindling eye, ‘that has looked at me, in my home, at my fireside, in my boat—wheer not?---smiling and friendly, when it was so treacherous, that I go half wild when I think of it. If the likeness of that face don’t turn to burning fire, at the thought of offering money to me for my child’s blight and ruin, it’s as bad. I doen’t know, being a lady’s, but what it’s worse.’
She changed now, in a moment. An angry flush overspread her features; and she said, in an intolerant manner, grasping the arm-chair tightly with her hands:
‘What compensation can you make to ME for opening such a pit between me and my son? What is your love to mine? What is your separation to ours?’
Miss Dartle softly touched her, and bent down her head to whisper, but she would not hear a word.
‘No, Rosa, not a word! Let the man listen to what I say! My son, who has been the object of my life, to whom its every thought has been devoted, whom I have gratified from a child in every wish, from whom I have had no separate existence since his birth,—to take up in a moment with a miserable girl, and avoid me! To repay my confidence with systematic deception, for her sake, and quit me for her! To set this wretched fancy, against his mother’s claims upon his duty, love, respect, gratitude—claims that every day and hour of his life should have strengthened into ties that nothing could be proof against! Is this no injury?’
Again Rosa Dartle tried to soothe her; again ineffectually.
‘I say, Rosa, not a word! If he can stake his all upon the lightest object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does. Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her for ever, he comes humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness. This is my right. This is the acknowledgement I WILL HAVE. This is the separation that there is between us! And is this,’ she added, looking at her visitor with the proud intolerant air with which she had begun, ‘no injury?’
While I heard and saw the mother as she said these words, I seemed to hear and see the son, defying them. All that I had ever seen in him of an unyielding, wilful spirit, I saw in her. All the understanding that I had now of his misdirected energy, became an understanding of her character too, and a perception that it was, in its strongest springs, the same.
She now observed to me, aloud, resuming her former restraint, that it was useless to hear more, or to say more, and that she begged to put an end to the interview. She rose with an air of dignity to leave the room, when Mr. Peggotty signified that it was needless.
‘Doen’t fear me being any hindrance to you, I have no more to say, ma’am,’ he remarked, as he moved towards the door. ‘I come heer with no hope, and I take away no hope. I have done what I thowt should be done, but I never looked fur any good to come of my stan’ning where I do. This has been too evil a house fur me and mine, fur me to be in my right senses and expect it.’
With this, we departed; leaving her standing by her elbow-chair, a picture of a noble presence and a handsome face.
We had, on our way out, to cross a paved hall, with glass sides and roof, over which a vine was trained. Its leaves and shoots were green then, and the day being sunny, a pair of glass doors leading to the garden were thrown open. Rosa Dartle, entering this way with a noiseless step, when we were close to them, addressed herself to me:
‘You do well,’ she said, ‘indeed, to bring this fellow here!’
Such a concentration of rage and scorn as darkened her face, and flashed in her jet-black eyes, I could not have thought compressible even into that face. The scar made by the hammer was, as usual in this excited state of her features, strongly marked. When the throbbing I had seen before, came into it as I looked at her, she absolutely lifted up her hand, and struck it.
‘This is a fellow,’ she said, ‘to champion and bring here, is he not? You are a true man!’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you are surely not so unjust as to condemn ME!’
‘Why do you bring division between these two mad creatures?’ she returned. ‘Don’t you know that they are both mad with their own self-will and pride?’
‘Is it my doing?’ I returned.
‘Is it your doing!’ she retorted. ‘Why do you bring this man here?’
‘He is a deeply-injured man, Miss Dartle,’ I replied. ‘You may not know it.’
‘I know that James Steerforth,’ she said, with her hand on her bosom, as if to prevent the storm that was raging there, from being loud, ‘has a false, corrupt heart, and is a traitor. But what need I know or care about this fellow, and his common niece?’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you deepen the injury. It is sufficient already. I will only say, at parting, that you do him a great wrong.’
‘I do him no wrong,’ she returned. ‘They are a depraved, worthless set. I would have her whipped!’
Mr. Peggotty passed on, without a word, and went out at the door.
‘Oh, shame, Miss Dartle! shame!’ I said indignantly. ‘How can you bear to trample on his undeserved affliction!’
‘I would trample on them all,’ she answered. ‘I would have his house pulled down. I would have her branded on the face, dressed in rags, and cast out in the streets to starve. If I had the power to sit in judgement on her, I would see it done. See it done? I would do it! I detest her. If I ever could reproach her with her infamous condition, I would go anywhere to do so. If I could hunt her to her grave, I would. If there was any word of comfort that would be a solace to her in her dying hour, and only I possessed it, I wouldn’t part with it for Life itself.’
The mere vehemence of her words can convey, I am sensible, but a weak impression of the passion by which she was possessed, and which made itself articulate in her whole figure, though her voice, instead of being raised, was lower than usual. No description I could give of her would do justice to my recollection of her, or to her entire deliverance of herself to her anger. I have seen passion in many forms, but I have never seen it in such a form as that.
When I joined Mr. Peggotty, he was walking slowly and thoughtfully down the hill. He told me, as soon as I came up with him, that having now discharged his mind of what he had purposed doing in London, he meant ‘to set out on his travels’, that night. I asked him where he meant to go? He only answered, ‘I’m a going, sir, to seek my niece.’
We went back to the little lodging over the chandler’s shop, and there I found an opportunity of repeating to Peggotty what he had said to me. She informed me, in return, that he had said the same to her that morning. She knew no more than I did, where he was going, but she thought he had some project shaped out in his mind.
I did not like to leave him, under such circumstances, and we all three dined together off a beefsteak pie—which was one of the many good things for which Peggotty was famous—and which was curiously flavoured on this occasion, I recollect well, by a miscellaneous taste of tea, coffee, butter, bacon, cheese, new loaves, firewood, candles, and walnut ketchup, continually ascending from the shop. After dinner we sat for an hour or so near the window, without talking much; and then Mr. Peggotty got up, and brought his oilskin bag and his stout stick, and laid them on the table.
He accepted, from his sister’s stock of ready money, a small sum on account of his legacy; barely enough, I should have thought, to keep him for a month. He promised to communicate with me, when anything befell him; and he slung his bag about him, took his hat and stick, and bade us both ‘Good-bye!’
‘All good attend you, dear old woman,’ he said, embracing Peggotty, ‘and you too, Mas’r Davy!’ shaking hands with me. ‘I’m a-going to seek her, fur and wide. If she should come home while I’m away—but ah, that ain’t like to be!—or if I should bring her back, my meaning is, that she and me shall live and die where no one can’t reproach her. If any hurt should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
He said this solemnly, bare-headed; then, putting on his hat, he went down the stairs, and away. We followed to the door. It was a warm, dusty evening, just the time when, in the great main thoroughfare out of which that by-way turned, there was a temporary lull in the eternal tread of feet upon the pavement, and a strong red sunshine. He turned, alone, at the corner of our shady street, into a glow of light, in which we lost him.
Rarely did that hour of the evening come, rarely did I wake at night, rarely did I look up at the moon, or stars, or watch the falling rain, or hear the wind, but I thought of his solitary figure toiling on, poor pilgrim, and recalled the words:
‘I’m a going to seek her, fur and wide. If any hurt should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
CHAPTER 33. BLISSFUL
All this time, I had gone on loving Dora, harder than ever. Her idea was my refuge in disappointment and distress, and made some amends to me, even for the loss of my friend. The more I pitied myself, or pitied others, the more I sought for consolation in the image of Dora. The greater the accumulation of deceit and trouble in the world, the brighter and the purer shone the star of Dora high above the world. I don’t think I had any definite idea where Dora came from, or in what degree she was related to a higher order of beings; but I am quite sure I should have scouted the notion of her being simply human, like any other young lady, with indignation and contempt.
If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.
The first thing I did, on my own account, when I came back, was to take a night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable riddle of my childhood, to go ‘round and round the house, without ever touching the house’, thinking about Dora. I believe the theme of this incomprehensible conundrum was the moon. No matter what it was, I, the moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round the house and garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting my chin by dint of violent exertion above the rusty nails on the top, blowing kisses at the lights in the windows, and romantically calling on the night, at intervals, to shield my Dora—I don’t exactly know what from, I suppose from fire. Perhaps from mice, to which she had a great objection.
My love was so much in my mind and it was so natural to me to confide in Peggotty, when I found her again by my side of an evening with the old set of industrial implements, busily making the tour of my wardrobe, that I imparted to her, in a sufficiently roundabout way, my great secret. Peggotty was strongly interested, but I could not get her into my view of the case at all. She was audaciously prejudiced in my favour, and quite unable to understand why I should have any misgivings, or be low-spirited about it. ‘The young lady might think herself well off,’ she observed, ‘to have such a beau. And as to her Pa,’ she said, ‘what did the gentleman expect, for gracious sake!’
I observed, however, that Mr. Spenlow’s proctorial gown and stiff cravat took Peggotty down a little, and inspired her with a greater reverence for the man who was gradually becoming more and more etherealized in my eyes every day, and about whom a reflected radiance seemed to me to beam when he sat erect in Court among his papers, like a little lighthouse in a sea of stationery. And by the by, it used to be uncommonly strange to me to consider, I remember, as I sat in Court too, how those dim old judges and doctors wouldn’t have cared for Dora, if they had known her; how they wouldn’t have gone out of their senses with rapture, if marriage with Dora had been proposed to them; how Dora might have sung, and played upon that glorified guitar, until she led me to the verge of madness, yet not have tempted one of those slow-goers an inch out of his road!
I despised them, to a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flower-beds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of a public-house.
Taking the management of Peggotty’s affairs into my own hands, with no little pride, I proved the will, and came to a settlement with the Legacy Duty-office, and took her to the Bank, and soon got everything into an orderly train. We varied the legal character of these proceedings by going to see some perspiring Wax-work, in Fleet Street (melted, I should hope, these twenty years); and by visiting Miss Linwood’s Exhibition, which I remember as a Mausoleum of needlework, favourable to self-examination and repentance; and by inspecting the Tower of London; and going to the top of St. Paul’s. All these wonders afforded Peggotty as much pleasure as she was able to enjoy, under existing circumstances: except, I think, St. Paul’s, which, from her long attachment to her work-box, became a rival of the picture on the lid, and was, in some particulars, vanquished, she considered, by that work of art.
Peggotty’s business, which was what we used to call ‘common-form business’ in the Commons (and very light and lucrative the common-form business was), being settled, I took her down to the office one morning to pay her bill. Mr. Spenlow had stepped out, old Tiffey said, to get a gentleman sworn for a marriage licence; but as I knew he would be back directly, our place lying close to the Surrogate’s, and to the Vicar-General’s office too, I told Peggotty to wait.
We were a little like undertakers, in the Commons, as regarded Probate transactions; generally making it a rule to look more or less cut up, when we had to deal with clients in mourning. In a similar feeling of delicacy, we were always blithe and light-hearted with the licence clients. Therefore I hinted to Peggotty that she would find Mr. Spenlow much recovered from the shock of Mr. Barkis’s decease; and indeed he came in like a bridegroom.
But neither Peggotty nor I had eyes for him, when we saw, in company with him, Mr. Murdstone. He was very little changed. His hair looked as thick, and was certainly as black, as ever; and his glance was as little to be trusted as of old.
‘Ah, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘You know this gentleman, I believe?’
I made my gentleman a distant bow, and Peggotty barely recognized him. He was, at first, somewhat disconcerted to meet us two together; but quickly decided what to do, and came up to me.
‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you are doing well?’
‘It can hardly be interesting to you,’ said I. ‘Yes, if you wish to know.’
We looked at each other, and he addressed himself to Peggotty.
‘And you,’ said he. ‘I am sorry to observe that you have lost your husband.’
‘It’s not the first loss I have had in my life, Mr. Murdstone,’ replied Peggotty, trembling from head to foot. ‘I am glad to hope that there is nobody to blame for this one,—nobody to answer for it.’
‘Ha!’ said he; ‘that’s a comfortable reflection. You have done your duty?’
‘I have not worn anybody’s life away,’ said Peggotty, ‘I am thankful to think! No, Mr. Murdstone, I have not worrited and frightened any sweet creetur to an early grave!’
He eyed her gloomily—remorsefully I thought—for an instant; and said, turning his head towards me, but looking at my feet instead of my face:
‘We are not likely to encounter soon again;—a source of satisfaction to us both, no doubt, for such meetings as this can never be agreeable. I do not expect that you, who always rebelled against my just authority, exerted for your benefit and reformation, should owe me any good-will now. There is an antipathy between us—’
‘An old one, I believe?’ said I, interrupting him.
He smiled, and shot as evil a glance at me as could come from his dark eyes.
‘It rankled in your baby breast,’ he said. ‘It embittered the life of your poor mother. You are right. I hope you may do better, yet; I hope you may correct yourself.’
Here he ended the dialogue, which had been carried on in a low voice, in a corner of the outer office, by passing into Mr. Spenlow’s room, and saying aloud, in his smoothest manner:
‘Gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow’s profession are accustomed to family differences, and know how complicated and difficult they always are!’ With that, he paid the money for his licence; and, receiving it neatly folded from Mr. Spenlow, together with a shake of the hand, and a polite wish for his happiness and the lady’s, went out of the office.
I might have had more difficulty in constraining myself to be silent under his words, if I had had less difficulty in impressing upon Peggotty (who was only angry on my account, good creature!) that we were not in a place for recrimination, and that I besought her to hold her peace. She was so unusually roused, that I was glad to compound for an affectionate hug, elicited by this revival in her mind of our old injuries, and to make the best I could of it, before Mr. Spenlow and the clerks.
Mr. Spenlow did not appear to know what the connexion between Mr. Murdstone and myself was; which I was glad of, for I could not bear to acknowledge him, even in my own breast, remembering what I did of the history of my poor mother. Mr. Spenlow seemed to think, if he thought anything about the matter, that my aunt was the leader of the state party in our family, and that there was a rebel party commanded by somebody else—so I gathered at least from what he said, while we were waiting for Mr. Tiffey to make out Peggotty’s bill of costs.
‘Miss Trotwood,’ he remarked, ‘is very firm, no doubt, and not likely to give way to opposition. I have an admiration for her character, and I may congratulate you, Copperfield, on being on the right side. Differences between relations are much to be deplored—but they are extremely general—and the great thing is, to be on the right side’: meaning, I take it, on the side of the moneyed interest.
‘Rather a good marriage this, I believe?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
I explained that I knew nothing about it.
‘Indeed!’ he said. ‘Speaking from the few words Mr. Murdstone dropped—as a man frequently does on these occasions—and from what Miss Murdstone let fall, I should say it was rather a good marriage.’
‘Do you mean that there is money, sir?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I understand there’s money. Beauty too, I am told.’
‘Indeed! Is his new wife young?’
‘Just of age,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘So lately, that I should think they had been waiting for that.’
‘Lord deliver her!’ said Peggotty. So very emphatically and unexpectedly, that we were all three discomposed; until Tiffey came in with the bill.
Old Tiffey soon appeared, however, and handed it to Mr. Spenlow, to look over. Mr. Spenlow, settling his chin in his cravat and rubbing it softly, went over the items with a deprecatory air—as if it were all Jorkins’s doing—and handed it back to Tiffey with a bland sigh.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s right. Quite right. I should have been extremely happy, Copperfield, to have limited these charges to the actual expenditure out of pocket, but it is an irksome incident in my professional life, that I am not at liberty to consult my own wishes. I have a partner—Mr. Jorkins.’
As he said this with a gentle melancholy, which was the next thing to making no charge at all, I expressed my acknowledgements on Peggotty’s behalf, and paid Tiffey in banknotes. Peggotty then retired to her lodging, and Mr. Spenlow and I went into Court, where we had a divorce-suit coming on, under an ingenious little statute (repealed now, I believe, but in virtue of which I have seen several marriages annulled), of which the merits were these. The husband, whose name was Thomas Benjamin, had taken out his marriage licence as Thomas only; suppressing the Benjamin, in case he should not find himself as comfortable as he expected. NOT finding himself as comfortable as he expected, or being a little fatigued with his wife, poor fellow, he now came forward, by a friend, after being married a year or two, and declared that his name was Thomas Benjamin, and therefore he was not married at all. Which the Court confirmed, to his great satisfaction.
I must say that I had my doubts about the strict justice of this, and was not even frightened out of them by the bushel of wheat which reconciles all anomalies. But Mr. Spenlow argued the matter with me. He said, Look at the world, there was good and evil in that; look at the ecclesiastical law, there was good and evil in THAT. It was all part of a system. Very good. There you were!
I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora’s father that possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I thought we might improve the Commons. Mr. Spenlow replied that he would particularly advise me to dismiss that idea from my mind, as not being worthy of my gentlemanly character; but that he would be glad to hear from me of what improvement I thought the Commons susceptible?
Taking that part of the Commons which happened to be nearest to us—for our man was unmarried by this time, and we were out of Court, and strolling past the Prerogative Office—I submitted that I thought the Prerogative Office rather a queerly managed institution. Mr. Spenlow inquired in what respect? I replied, with all due deference to his experience (but with more deference, I am afraid, to his being Dora’s father), that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries, should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the public’s wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to get rid of them cheaply. That, perhaps, it was a little unreasonable that these registrars in the receipt of profits amounting to eight or nine thousand pounds a year (to say nothing of the profits of the deputy registrars, and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to spend a little of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the important documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand over to them, whether they would or no. That, perhaps, it was a little unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important services, in London. That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not),—while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous. That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard, which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.
Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and then argued this question with me as he had argued the other. He said, what was it after all? It was a question of feeling. If the public felt that their wills were in safe keeping, and took it for granted that the office was not to be made better, who was the worse for it? Nobody. Who was the better for it? All the Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good predominated. It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect; but what he objected to, was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them; and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time. I deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself. I find he was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the present moment, but has done so in the teeth of a great parliamentary report made (not too willingly) eighteen years ago, when all these objections of mine were set forth in detail, and when the existing stowage for wills was described as equal to the accumulation of only two years and a half more. What they have done with them since; whether they have lost many, or whether they sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don’t know. I am glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet awhile.
I have set all this down, in my present blissful chapter, because here it comes into its natural place. Mr. Spenlow and I falling into this conversation, prolonged it and our saunter to and fro, until we diverged into general topics. And so it came about, in the end, that Mr. Spenlow told me this day week was Dora’s birthday, and he would be glad if I would come down and join a little picnic on the occasion. I went out of my senses immediately; became a mere driveller next day, on receipt of a little lace-edged sheet of note-paper, ‘Favoured by papa. To remind’; and passed the intervening period in a state of dotage.
I think I committed every possible absurdity in the way of preparation for this blessed event. I turn hot when I remember the cravat I bought. My boots might be placed in any collection of instruments of torture. I provided, and sent down by the Norwood coach the night before, a delicate little hamper, amounting in itself, I thought, almost to a declaration. There were crackers in it with the tenderest mottoes that could be got for money. At six in the morning, I was in Covent Garden Market, buying a bouquet for Dora. At ten I was on horseback (I hired a gallant grey, for the occasion), with the bouquet in my hat, to keep it fresh, trotting down to Norwood.
I suppose that when I saw Dora in the garden and pretended not to see her, and rode past the house pretending to be anxiously looking for it, I committed two small fooleries which other young gentlemen in my circumstances might have committed—because they came so very natural to me. But oh! when I DID find the house, and DID dismount at the garden-gate, and drag those stony-hearted boots across the lawn to Dora sitting on a garden-seat under a lilac tree, what a spectacle she was, upon that beautiful morning, among the butterflies, in a white chip bonnet and a dress of celestial blue! There was a young lady with her—comparatively stricken in years—almost twenty, I should say. Her name was Miss Mills. And Dora called her Julia. She was the bosom friend of Dora. Happy Miss Mills!
Jip was there, and Jip WOULD bark at me again. When I presented my bouquet, he gnashed his teeth with jealousy. Well he might. If he had the least idea how I adored his mistress, well he might!
‘Oh, thank you, Mr. Copperfield! What dear flowers!’ said Dora.
I had had an intention of saying (and had been studying the best form of words for three miles) that I thought them beautiful before I saw them so near HER. But I couldn’t manage it. She was too bewildering. To see her lay the flowers against her little dimpled chin, was to lose all presence of mind and power of language in a feeble ecstasy. I wonder I didn’t say, ‘Kill me, if you have a heart, Miss Mills. Let me die here!’
Then Dora held my flowers to Jip to smell. Then Jip growled, and wouldn’t smell them. Then Dora laughed, and held them a little closer to Jip, to make him. Then Jip laid hold of a bit of geranium with his teeth, and worried imaginary cats in it. Then Dora beat him, and pouted, and said, ‘My poor beautiful flowers!’ as compassionately, I thought, as if Jip had laid hold of me. I wished he had!
‘You’ll be so glad to hear, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Dora, ‘that that cross Miss Murdstone is not here. She has gone to her brother’s marriage, and will be away at least three weeks. Isn’t that delightful?’
I said I was sure it must be delightful to her, and all that was delightful to her was delightful to me. Miss Mills, with an air of superior wisdom and benevolence, smiled upon us.
‘She is the most disagreeable thing I ever saw,’ said Dora. ‘You can’t believe how ill-tempered and shocking she is, Julia.’
‘Yes, I can, my dear!’ said Julia.
‘YOU can, perhaps, love,’ returned Dora, with her hand on Julia’s. ‘Forgive my not excepting you, my dear, at first.’
I learnt, from this, that Miss Mills had had her trials in the course of a chequered existence; and that to these, perhaps, I might refer that wise benignity of manner which I had already noticed. I found, in the course of the day, that this was the case: Miss Mills having been unhappy in a misplaced affection, and being understood to have retired from the world on her awful stock of experience, but still to take a calm interest in the unblighted hopes and loves of youth.
But now Mr. Spenlow came out of the house, and Dora went to him, saying, ‘Look, papa, what beautiful flowers!’ And Miss Mills smiled thoughtfully, as who should say, ‘Ye Mayflies, enjoy your brief existence in the bright morning of life!’ And we all walked from the lawn towards the carriage, which was getting ready.
I shall never have such a ride again. I have never had such another. There were only those three, their hamper, my hamper, and the guitar-case, in the phaeton; and, of course, the phaeton was open; and I rode behind it, and Dora sat with her back to the horses, looking towards me. She kept the bouquet close to her on the cushion, and wouldn’t allow Jip to sit on that side of her at all, for fear he should crush it. She often carried it in her hand, often refreshed herself with its fragrance. Our eyes at those times often met; and my great astonishment is that I didn’t go over the head of my gallant grey into the carriage.
There was dust, I believe. There was a good deal of dust, I believe. I have a faint impression that Mr. Spenlow remonstrated with me for riding in it; but I knew of none. I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of nothing else. He stood up sometimes, and asked me what I thought of the prospect. I said it was delightful, and I dare say it was; but it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wild flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud. My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me. Miss Mills alone could enter into my feelings thoroughly.
I don’t know how long we were going, and to this hour I know as little where we went. Perhaps it was near Guildford. Perhaps some Arabian-night magician, opened up the place for the day, and shut it up for ever when we came away. It was a green spot, on a hill, carpeted with soft turf. There were shady trees, and heather, and, as far as the eye could see, a rich landscape.
It was a trying thing to find people here, waiting for us; and my jealousy, even of the ladies, knew no bounds. But all of my own sex—especially one impostor, three or four years my elder, with a red whisker, on which he established an amount of presumption not to be endured—were my mortal foes.
We all unpacked our baskets, and employed ourselves in getting dinner ready. Red Whisker pretended he could make a salad (which I don’t believe), and obtruded himself on public notice. Some of the young ladies washed the lettuces for him, and sliced them under his directions. Dora was among these. I felt that fate had pitted me against this man, and one of us must fall.
Red Whisker made his salad (I wondered how they could eat it. Nothing should have induced ME to touch it!) and voted himself into the charge of the wine-cellar, which he constructed, being an ingenious beast, in the hollow trunk of a tree. By and by, I saw him, with the majority of a lobster on his plate, eating his dinner at the feet of Dora!
I have but an indistinct idea of what happened for some time after this baleful object presented itself to my view. I was very merry, I know; but it was hollow merriment. I attached myself to a young creature in pink, with little eyes, and flirted with her desperately. She received my attentions with favour; but whether on my account solely, or because she had any designs on Red Whisker, I can’t say. Dora’s health was drunk. When I drank it, I affected to interrupt my conversation for that purpose, and to resume it immediately afterwards. I caught Dora’s eye as I bowed to her, and I thought it looked appealing. But it looked at me over the head of Red Whisker, and I was adamant.
The young creature in pink had a mother in green; and I rather think the latter separated us from motives of policy. Howbeit, there was a general breaking up of the party, while the remnants of the dinner were being put away; and I strolled off by myself among the trees, in a raging and remorseful state. I was debating whether I should pretend that I was not well, and fly—I don’t know where—upon my gallant grey, when Dora and Miss Mills met me.
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘you are dull.’
I begged her pardon. Not at all.
‘And Dora,’ said Miss Mills, ‘YOU are dull.’
Oh dear no! Not in the least.
‘Mr. Copperfield and Dora,’ said Miss Mills, with an almost venerable air. ‘Enough of this. Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed. I speak,’ said Miss Mills, ‘from experience of the past—the remote, irrevocable past. The gushing fountains which sparkle in the sun, must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of Sahara must not be plucked up idly.’
I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that extraordinary extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it—and she let me! I kissed Miss Mills’s hand; and we all seemed, to my thinking, to go straight up to the seventh heaven. We did not come down again. We stayed up there all the evening. At first we strayed to and fro among the trees: I with Dora’s shy arm drawn through mine: and Heaven knows, folly as it all was, it would have been a happy fate to have been struck immortal with those foolish feelings, and have stayed among the trees for ever!
But, much too soon, we heard the others laughing and talking, and calling ‘where’s Dora?’ So we went back, and they wanted Dora to sing. Red Whisker would have got the guitar-case out of the carriage, but Dora told him nobody knew where it was, but I. So Red Whisker was done for in a moment; and I got it, and I unlocked it, and I took the guitar out, and I sat by her, and I held her handkerchief and gloves, and I drank in every note of her dear voice, and she sang to ME who loved her, and all the others might applaud as much as they liked, but they had nothing to do with it!
I was intoxicated with joy. I was afraid it was too happy to be real, and that I should wake in Buckingham Street presently, and hear Mrs. Crupp clinking the teacups in getting breakfast ready. But Dora sang, and others sang, and Miss Mills sang—about the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory; as if she were a hundred years old—and the evening came on; and we had tea, with the kettle boiling gipsy-fashion; and I was still as happy as ever.
I was happier than ever when the party broke up, and the other people, defeated Red Whisker and all, went their several ways, and we went ours through the still evening and the dying light, with sweet scents rising up around us. Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the champagne—honour to the soil that grew the grape, to the grape that made the wine, to the sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who adulterated it!—and being fast asleep in a corner of the carriage, I rode by the side and talked to Dora. She admired my horse and patted him—oh, what a dear little hand it looked upon a horse!—and her shawl would not keep right, and now and then I drew it round her with my arm; and I even fancied that Jip began to see how it was, and to understand that he must make up his mind to be friends with me.
That sagacious Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up, recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who had done with the world, and mustn’t on any account have the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what a kind thing she did!
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘come to this side of the carriage a moment—if you can spare a moment. I want to speak to you.’
Behold me, on my gallant grey, bending at the side of Miss Mills, with my hand upon the carriage door!
‘Dora is coming to stay with me. She is coming home with me the day after tomorrow. If you would like to call, I am sure papa would be happy to see you.’ What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss Mills’s head, and store Miss Mills’s address in the securest corner of my memory! What could I do but tell Miss Mills, with grateful looks and fervent words, how much I appreciated her good offices, and what an inestimable value I set upon her friendship!
Then Miss Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, ‘Go back to Dora!’ and I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against it, and ‘took the bark off’, as his owner told me, ‘to the tune of three pun’ sivin’—which I paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses—and recalling, I suppose, the ancient days when she and earth had anything in common.
Norwood was many miles too near, and we reached it many hours too soon; but Mr. Spenlow came to himself a little short of it, and said, ‘You must come in, Copperfield, and rest!’ and I consenting, we had sandwiches and wine-and-water. In the light room, Dora blushing looked so lovely, that I could not tear myself away, but sat there staring, in a dream, until the snoring of Mr. Spenlow inspired me with sufficient consciousness to take my leave. So we parted; I riding all the way to London with the farewell touch of Dora’s hand still light on mine, recalling every incident and word ten thousand times; lying down in my own bed at last, as enraptured a young noodle as ever was carried out of his five wits by love.
When I awoke next morning, I was resolute to declare my passion to Dora, and know my fate. Happiness or misery was now the question. There was no other question that I knew of in the world, and only Dora could give the answer to it. I passed three days in a luxury of wretchedness, torturing myself by putting every conceivable variety of discouraging construction on all that ever had taken place between Dora and me. At last, arrayed for the purpose at a vast expense, I went to Miss Mills’s, fraught with a declaration.
How many times I went up and down the street, and round the square—painfully aware of being a much better answer to the old riddle than the original one—before I could persuade myself to go up the steps and knock, is no matter now. Even when, at last, I had knocked, and was waiting at the door, I had some flurried thought of asking if that were Mr. Blackboy’s (in imitation of poor Barkis), begging pardon, and retreating. But I kept my ground.
Mr. Mills was not at home. I did not expect he would be. Nobody wanted HIM. Miss Mills was at home. Miss Mills would do.
I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. Jip was there. Miss Mills was copying music (I recollect, it was a new song, called ‘Affection’s Dirge’), and Dora was painting flowers. What were my feelings, when I recognized my own flowers; the identical Covent Garden Market purchase! I cannot say that they were very like, or that they particularly resembled any flowers that have ever come under my observation; but I knew from the paper round them which was accurately copied, what the composition was.
Miss Mills was very glad to see me, and very sorry her papa was not at home: though I thought we all bore that with fortitude. Miss Mills was conversational for a few minutes, and then, laying down her pen upon ‘Affection’s Dirge’, got up, and left the room.
I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
‘I hope your poor horse was not tired, when he got home at night,’ said Dora, lifting up her beautiful eyes. ‘It was a long way for him.’
I began to think I would do it today.
‘It was a long way for him,’ said I, ‘for he had nothing to uphold him on the journey.’
‘Wasn’t he fed, poor thing?’ asked Dora.
I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
‘Ye-yes,’ I said, ‘he was well taken care of. I mean he had not the unutterable happiness that I had in being so near you.’
Dora bent her head over her drawing and said, after a little while—I had sat, in the interval, in a burning fever, and with my legs in a very rigid state—
‘You didn’t seem to be sensible of that happiness yourself, at one time of the day.’
I saw now that I was in for it, and it must be done on the spot.
‘You didn’t care for that happiness in the least,’ said Dora, slightly raising her eyebrows, and shaking her head, ‘when you were sitting by Miss Kitt.’
Kitt, I should observe, was the name of the creature in pink, with the little eyes.
‘Though certainly I don’t know why you should,’ said Dora, ‘or why you should call it a happiness at all. But of course you don’t mean what you say. And I am sure no one doubts your being at liberty to do whatever you like. Jip, you naughty boy, come here!’
I don’t know how I did it. I did it in a moment. I intercepted Jip. I had Dora in my arms. I was full of eloquence. I never stopped for a word. I told her how I loved her. I told her I should die without her. I told her that I idolized and worshipped her. Jip barked madly all the time.
When Dora hung her head and cried, and trembled, my eloquence increased so much the more. If she would like me to die for her, she had but to say the word, and I was ready. Life without Dora’s love was not a thing to have on any terms. I couldn’t bear it, and I wouldn’t. I had loved her every minute, day and night, since I first saw her. I loved her at that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute, to distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but no lover had loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora. The more I raved, the more Jip barked. Each of us, in his own way, got more mad every moment.
Well, well! Dora and I were sitting on the sofa by and by, quiet enough, and Jip was lying in her lap, winking peacefully at me. It was off my mind. I was in a state of perfect rapture. Dora and I were engaged.
I suppose we had some notion that this was to end in marriage. We must have had some, because Dora stipulated that we were never to be married without her papa’s consent. But, in our youthful ecstasy, I don’t think that we really looked before us or behind us; or had any aspiration beyond the ignorant present. We were to keep our secret from Mr. Spenlow; but I am sure the idea never entered my head, then, that there was anything dishonourable in that.
Miss Mills was more than usually pensive when Dora, going to find her, brought her back;—I apprehend, because there was a tendency in what had passed to awaken the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory. But she gave us her blessing, and the assurance of her lasting friendship, and spoke to us, generally, as became a Voice from the Cloister.
What an idle time it was! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time it was!
When I measured Dora’s finger for a ring that was to be made of Forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure, found me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me anything he liked for the pretty little toy, with its blue stones—so associated in my remembrance with Dora’s hand, that yesterday, when I saw such another, by chance, on the finger of my own daughter, there was a momentary stirring in my heart, like pain!
When I walked about, exalted with my secret, and full of my own interest, and felt the dignity of loving Dora, and of being beloved, so much, that if I had walked the air, I could not have been more above the people not so situated, who were creeping on the earth!
When we had those meetings in the garden of the square, and sat within the dingy summer-house, so happy, that I love the London sparrows to this hour, for nothing else, and see the plumage of the tropics in their smoky feathers! When we had our first great quarrel (within a week of our betrothal), and when Dora sent me back the ring, enclosed in a despairing cocked-hat note, wherein she used the terrible expression that ‘our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!’ which dreadful words occasioned me to tear my hair, and cry that all was over!
When, under cover of the night, I flew to Miss Mills, whom I saw by stealth in a back kitchen where there was a mangle, and implored Miss Mills to interpose between us and avert insanity. When Miss Mills undertook the office and returned with Dora, exhorting us, from the pulpit of her own bitter youth, to mutual concession, and the avoidance of the Desert of Sahara!
When we cried, and made it up, and were so blest again, that the back kitchen, mangle and all, changed to Love’s own temple, where we arranged a plan of correspondence through Miss Mills, always to comprehend at least one letter on each side every day!
What an idle time! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly.
CHAPTER 34. MY AUNT ASTONISHES ME
I wrote to Agnes as soon as Dora and I were engaged. I wrote her a long letter, in which I tried to make her comprehend how blest I was, and what a darling Dora was. I entreated Agnes not to regard this as a thoughtless passion which could ever yield to any other, or had the least resemblance to the boyish fancies that we used to joke about. I assured her that its profundity was quite unfathomable, and expressed my belief that nothing like it had ever been known.
Somehow, as I wrote to Agnes on a fine evening by my open window, and the remembrance of her clear calm eyes and gentle face came stealing over me, it shed such a peaceful influence upon the hurry and agitation in which I had been living lately, and of which my very happiness partook in some degree, that it soothed me into tears. I remember that I sat resting my head upon my hand, when the letter was half done, cherishing a general fancy as if Agnes were one of the elements of my natural home. As if, in the retirement of the house made almost sacred to me by her presence, Dora and I must be happier than anywhere. As if, in love, joy, sorrow, hope, or disappointment; in all emotions; my heart turned naturally there, and found its refuge and best friend.
Of Steerforth I said nothing. I only told her there had been sad grief at Yarmouth, on account of Emily’s flight; and that on me it made a double wound, by reason of the circumstances attending it. I knew how quick she always was to divine the truth, and that she would never be the first to breathe his name.
To this letter, I received an answer by return of post. As I read it, I seemed to hear Agnes speaking to me. It was like her cordial voice in my ears. What can I say more!
While I had been away from home lately, Traddles had called twice or thrice. Finding Peggotty within, and being informed by Peggotty (who always volunteered that information to whomsoever would receive it), that she was my old nurse, he had established a good-humoured acquaintance with her, and had stayed to have a little chat with her about me. So Peggotty said; but I am afraid the chat was all on her own side, and of immoderate length, as she was very difficult indeed to stop, God bless her! when she had me for her theme.
This reminds me, not only that I expected Traddles on a certain afternoon of his own appointing, which was now come, but that Mrs. Crupp had resigned everything appertaining to her office (the salary excepted) until Peggotty should cease to present herself. Mrs. Crupp, after holding divers conversations respecting Peggotty, in a very high-pitched voice, on the staircase—with some invisible Familiar it would appear, for corporeally speaking she was quite alone at those times—addressed a letter to me, developing her views. Beginning it with that statement of universal application, which fitted every occurrence of her life, namely, that she was a mother herself, she went on to inform me that she had once seen very different days, but that at all periods of her existence she had had a constitutional objection to spies, intruders, and informers. She named no names, she said; let them the cap fitted, wear it; but spies, intruders, and informers, especially in widders’ weeds (this clause was underlined), she had ever accustomed herself to look down upon. If a gentleman was the victim of spies, intruders, and informers (but still naming no names), that was his own pleasure. He had a right to please himself; so let him do. All that she, Mrs. Crupp, stipulated for, was, that she should not be ‘brought in contract’ with such persons. Therefore she begged to be excused from any further attendance on the top set, until things were as they formerly was, and as they could be wished to be; and further mentioned that her little book would be found upon the breakfast-table every Saturday morning, when she requested an immediate settlement of the same, with the benevolent view of saving trouble ‘and an ill-conwenience’ to all parties.
After this, Mrs. Crupp confined herself to making pitfalls on the stairs, principally with pitchers, and endeavouring to delude Peggotty into breaking her legs. I found it rather harassing to live in this state of siege, but was too much afraid of Mrs. Crupp to see any way out of it.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ cried Traddles, punctually appearing at my door, in spite of all these obstacles, ‘how do you do?’
‘My dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘I am delighted to see you at last, and very sorry I have not been at home before. But I have been so much engaged—’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Traddles, ‘of course. Yours lives in London, I think.’
‘What did you say?’
‘She—excuse me—Miss D., you know,’ said Traddles, colouring in his great delicacy, ‘lives in London, I believe?’
‘Oh yes. Near London.’
‘Mine, perhaps you recollect,’ said Traddles, with a serious look, ‘lives down in Devonshire—one of ten. Consequently, I am not so much engaged as you—in that sense.’
‘I wonder you can bear,’ I returned, ‘to see her so seldom.’
‘Hah!’ said Traddles, thoughtfully. ‘It does seem a wonder. I suppose it is, Copperfield, because there is no help for it?’
‘I suppose so,’ I replied with a smile, and not without a blush. ‘And because you have so much constancy and patience, Traddles.’
‘Dear me!’ said Traddles, considering about it, ‘do I strike you in that way, Copperfield? Really I didn’t know that I had. But she is such an extraordinarily dear girl herself, that it’s possible she may have imparted something of those virtues to me. Now you mention it, Copperfield, I shouldn’t wonder at all. I assure you she is always forgetting herself, and taking care of the other nine.’
‘Is she the eldest?’ I inquired.
‘Oh dear, no,’ said Traddles. ‘The eldest is a Beauty.’
He saw, I suppose, that I could not help smiling at the simplicity of this reply; and added, with a smile upon his own ingenuous face:
‘Not, of course, but that my Sophy—pretty name, Copperfield, I always think?’
‘Very pretty!’ said I.
‘Not, of course, but that Sophy is beautiful too in my eyes, and would be one of the dearest girls that ever was, in anybody’s eyes (I should think). But when I say the eldest is a Beauty, I mean she really is a—’ he seemed to be describing clouds about himself, with both hands: ‘Splendid, you know,’ said Traddles, energetically. ‘Indeed!’ said I.
‘Oh, I assure you,’ said Traddles, ‘something very uncommon, indeed! Then, you know, being formed for society and admiration, and not being able to enjoy much of it in consequence of their limited means, she naturally gets a little irritable and exacting, sometimes. Sophy puts her in good humour!’
‘Is Sophy the youngest?’ I hazarded.
‘Oh dear, no!’ said Traddles, stroking his chin. ‘The two youngest are only nine and ten. Sophy educates ‘em.’
‘The second daughter, perhaps?’ I hazarded.
‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Sarah’s the second. Sarah has something the matter with her spine, poor girl. The malady will wear out by and by, the doctors say, but in the meantime she has to lie down for a twelvemonth. Sophy nurses her. Sophy’s the fourth.’
‘Is the mother living?’ I inquired.
‘Oh yes,’ said Traddles, ‘she is alive. She is a very superior woman indeed, but the damp country is not adapted to her constitution, and—in fact, she has lost the use of her limbs.’
‘Dear me!’ said I.
‘Very sad, is it not?’ returned Traddles. ‘But in a merely domestic view it is not so bad as it might be, because Sophy takes her place. She is quite as much a mother to her mother, as she is to the other nine.’
I felt the greatest admiration for the virtues of this young lady; and, honestly with the view of doing my best to prevent the good-nature of Traddles from being imposed upon, to the detriment of their joint prospects in life, inquired how Mr. Micawber was?
‘He is quite well, Copperfield, thank you,’ said Traddles. ‘I am not living with him at present.’
‘No?’
‘No. You see the truth is,’ said Traddles, in a whisper, ‘he had changed his name to Mortimer, in consequence of his temporary embarrassments; and he don’t come out till after dark—and then in spectacles. There was an execution put into our house, for rent. Mrs. Micawber was in such a dreadful state that I really couldn’t resist giving my name to that second bill we spoke of here. You may imagine how delightful it was to my feelings, Copperfield, to see the matter settled with it, and Mrs. Micawber recover her spirits.’
‘Hum!’ said I. ‘Not that her happiness was of long duration,’ pursued Traddles, ‘for, unfortunately, within a week another execution came in. It broke up the establishment. I have been living in a furnished apartment since then, and the Mortimers have been very private indeed. I hope you won’t think it selfish, Copperfield, if I mention that the broker carried off my little round table with the marble top, and Sophy’s flower-pot and stand?’
‘What a hard thing!’ I exclaimed indignantly.
‘It was a—it was a pull,’ said Traddles, with his usual wince at that expression. ‘I don’t mention it reproachfully, however, but with a motive. The fact is, Copperfield, I was unable to repurchase them at the time of their seizure; in the first place, because the broker, having an idea that I wanted them, ran the price up to an extravagant extent; and, in the second place, because I—hadn’t any money. Now, I have kept my eye since, upon the broker’s shop,’ said Traddles, with a great enjoyment of his mystery, ‘which is up at the top of Tottenham Court Road, and, at last, today I find them put out for sale. I have only noticed them from over the way, because if the broker saw me, bless you, he’d ask any price for them! What has occurred to me, having now the money, is, that perhaps you wouldn’t object to ask that good nurse of yours to come with me to the shop—I can show it her from round the corner of the next street—and make the best bargain for them, as if they were for herself, that she can!’
The delight with which Traddles propounded this plan to me, and the sense he had of its uncommon artfulness, are among the freshest things in my remembrance.
I told him that my old nurse would be delighted to assist him, and that we would all three take the field together, but on one condition. That condition was, that he should make a solemn resolution to grant no more loans of his name, or anything else, to Mr. Micawber.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, ‘I have already done so, because I begin to feel that I have not only been inconsiderate, but that I have been positively unjust to Sophy. My word being passed to myself, there is no longer any apprehension; but I pledge it to you, too, with the greatest readiness. That first unlucky obligation, I have paid. I have no doubt Mr. Micawber would have paid it if he could, but he could not. One thing I ought to mention, which I like very much in Mr. Micawber, Copperfield. It refers to the second obligation, which is not yet due. He don’t tell me that it is provided for, but he says it WILL BE. Now, I think there is something very fair and honest about that!’
I was unwilling to damp my good friend’s confidence, and therefore assented. After a little further conversation, we went round to the chandler’s shop, to enlist Peggotty; Traddles declining to pass the evening with me, both because he endured the liveliest apprehensions that his property would be bought by somebody else before he could re-purchase it, and because it was the evening he always devoted to writing to the dearest girl in the world.
I never shall forget him peeping round the corner of the street in Tottenham Court Road, while Peggotty was bargaining for the precious articles; or his agitation when she came slowly towards us after vainly offering a price, and was hailed by the relenting broker, and went back again. The end of the negotiation was, that she bought the property on tolerably easy terms, and Traddles was transported with pleasure.
‘I am very much obliged to you, indeed,’ said Traddles, on hearing it was to be sent to where he lived, that night. ‘If I might ask one other favour, I hope you would not think it absurd, Copperfield?’
I said beforehand, certainly not.
‘Then if you WOULD be good enough,’ said Traddles to Peggotty, ‘to get the flower-pot now, I think I should like (it being Sophy’s, Copperfield) to carry it home myself!’
Peggotty was glad to get it for him, and he overwhelmed her with thanks, and went his way up Tottenham Court Road, carrying the flower-pot affectionately in his arms, with one of the most delighted expressions of countenance I ever saw.
We then turned back towards my chambers. As the shops had charms for Peggotty which I never knew them possess in the same degree for anybody else, I sauntered easily along, amused by her staring in at the windows, and waiting for her as often as she chose. We were thus a good while in getting to the Adelphi.
On our way upstairs, I called her attention to the sudden disappearance of Mrs. Crupp’s pitfalls, and also to the prints of recent footsteps. We were both very much surprised, coming higher up, to find my outer door standing open (which I had shut) and to hear voices inside.
We looked at one another, without knowing what to make of this, and went into the sitting-room. What was my amazement to find, of all people upon earth, my aunt there, and Mr. Dick! My aunt sitting on a quantity of luggage, with her two birds before her, and her cat on her knee, like a female Robinson Crusoe, drinking tea. Mr. Dick leaning thoughtfully on a great kite, such as we had often been out together to fly, with more luggage piled about him!
‘My dear aunt!’ cried I. ‘Why, what an unexpected pleasure!’
We cordially embraced; and Mr. Dick and I cordially shook hands; and Mrs. Crupp, who was busy making tea, and could not be too attentive, cordially said she had knowed well as Mr. Copperfull would have his heart in his mouth, when he see his dear relations.
‘Holloa!’ said my aunt to Peggotty, who quailed before her awful presence. ‘How are YOU?’
‘You remember my aunt, Peggotty?’ said I.
‘For the love of goodness, child,’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘don’t call the woman by that South Sea Island name! If she married and got rid of it, which was the best thing she could do, why don’t you give her the benefit of the change? What’s your name now,—P?’ said my aunt, as a compromise for the obnoxious appellation.
‘Barkis, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, with a curtsey.
‘Well! That’s human,’ said my aunt. ‘It sounds less as if you wanted a missionary. How d’ye do, Barkis? I hope you’re well?’
Encouraged by these gracious words, and by my aunt’s extending her hand, Barkis came forward, and took the hand, and curtseyed her acknowledgements.
‘We are older than we were, I see,’ said my aunt. ‘We have only met each other once before, you know. A nice business we made of it then! Trot, my dear, another cup.’
I handed it dutifully to my aunt, who was in her usual inflexible state of figure; and ventured a remonstrance with her on the subject of her sitting on a box.
‘Let me draw the sofa here, or the easy-chair, aunt,’ said I. ‘Why should you be so uncomfortable?’
‘Thank you, Trot,’ replied my aunt, ‘I prefer to sit upon my property.’ Here my aunt looked hard at Mrs. Crupp, and observed, ‘We needn’t trouble you to wait, ma’am.’
‘Shall I put a little more tea in the pot afore I go, ma’am?’ said Mrs. Crupp.
‘No, I thank you, ma’am,’ replied my aunt.
‘Would you let me fetch another pat of butter, ma’am?’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘Or would you be persuaded to try a new-laid hegg? or should I brile a rasher? Ain’t there nothing I could do for your dear aunt, Mr. Copperfull?’
‘Nothing, ma’am,’ returned my aunt. ‘I shall do very well, I thank you.’
Mrs. Crupp, who had been incessantly smiling to express sweet temper, and incessantly holding her head on one side, to express a general feebleness of constitution, and incessantly rubbing her hands, to express a desire to be of service to all deserving objects, gradually smiled herself, one-sided herself, and rubbed herself, out of the room. ‘Dick!’ said my aunt. ‘You know what I told you about time-servers and wealth-worshippers?’
Mr. Dick—with rather a scared look, as if he had forgotten it—returned a hasty answer in the affirmative.
‘Mrs. Crupp is one of them,’ said my aunt. ‘Barkis, I’ll trouble you to look after the tea, and let me have another cup, for I don’t fancy that woman’s pouring-out!’
I knew my aunt sufficiently well to know that she had something of importance on her mind, and that there was far more matter in this arrival than a stranger might have supposed. I noticed how her eye lighted on me, when she thought my attention otherwise occupied; and what a curious process of hesitation appeared to be going on within her, while she preserved her outward stiffness and composure. I began to reflect whether I had done anything to offend her; and my conscience whispered me that I had not yet told her about Dora. Could it by any means be that, I wondered!
As I knew she would only speak in her own good time, I sat down near her, and spoke to the birds, and played with the cat, and was as easy as I could be. But I was very far from being really easy; and I should still have been so, even if Mr. Dick, leaning over the great kite behind my aunt, had not taken every secret opportunity of shaking his head darkly at me, and pointing at her.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt at last, when she had finished her tea, and carefully smoothed down her dress, and wiped her lips—‘you needn’t go, Barkis!—Trot, have you got to be firm and self-reliant?’
‘I hope so, aunt.’
‘What do you think?’ inquired Miss Betsey.
‘I think so, aunt.’
‘Then why, my love,’ said my aunt, looking earnestly at me, ‘why do you think I prefer to sit upon this property of mine tonight?’
I shook my head, unable to guess.
‘Because,’ said my aunt, ‘it’s all I have. Because I’m ruined, my dear!’
If the house, and every one of us, had tumbled out into the river together, I could hardly have received a greater shock.
‘Dick knows it,’ said my aunt, laying her hand calmly on my shoulder. ‘I am ruined, my dear Trot! All I have in the world is in this room, except the cottage; and that I have left Janet to let. Barkis, I want to get a bed for this gentleman tonight. To save expense, perhaps you can make up something here for myself. Anything will do. It’s only for tonight. We’ll talk about this, more, tomorrow.’
I was roused from my amazement, and concern for her—I am sure, for her—by her falling on my neck, for a moment, and crying that she only grieved for me. In another moment she suppressed this emotion; and said with an aspect more triumphant than dejected:
‘We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!’
CHAPTER 35. DEPRESSION
As soon as I could recover my presence of mind, which quite deserted me in the first overpowering shock of my aunt’s intelligence, I proposed to Mr. Dick to come round to the chandler’s shop, and take possession of the bed which Mr. Peggotty had lately vacated. The chandler’s shop being in Hungerford Market, and Hungerford Market being a very different place in those days, there was a low wooden colonnade before the door (not very unlike that before the house where the little man and woman used to live, in the old weather-glass), which pleased Mr. Dick mightily. The glory of lodging over this structure would have compensated him, I dare say, for many inconveniences; but, as there were really few to bear, beyond the compound of flavours I have already mentioned, and perhaps the want of a little more elbow-room, he was perfectly charmed with his accommodation. Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, ‘You know, Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to ME!’
I tried to ascertain whether Mr. Dick had any understanding of the causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt’s affairs. As I might have expected, he had none at all. The only account he could give of it was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before yesterday, ‘Now, Dick, are you really and truly the philosopher I take you for?’ That then he had said, Yes, he hoped so. That then my aunt had said, ‘Dick, I am ruined.’ That then he had said, ‘Oh, indeed!’ That then my aunt had praised him highly, which he was glad of. And that then they had come to me, and had had bottled porter and sandwiches on the road.
Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine. I took infinitely greater pains to cheer him up again than I had taken to depress him; and I soon understood (as I ought to have known at first) that he had been so confident, merely because of his faith in the wisest and most wonderful of women, and his unbounded reliance on my intellectual resources. The latter, I believe, he considered a match for any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal.
‘What can we do, Trotwood?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘There’s the Memorial-’
‘To be sure there is,’ said I. ‘But all we can do just now, Mr. Dick, is to keep a cheerful countenance, and not let my aunt see that we are thinking about it.’
He assented to this in the most earnest manner; and implored me, if I should see him wandering an inch out of the right course, to recall him by some of those superior methods which were always at my command. But I regret to state that the fright I had given him proved too much for his best attempts at concealment. All the evening his eyes wandered to my aunt’s face, with an expression of the most dismal apprehension, as if he saw her growing thin on the spot. He was conscious of this, and put a constraint upon his head; but his keeping that immovable, and sitting rolling his eyes like a piece of machinery, did not mend the matter at all. I saw him look at the loaf at supper (which happened to be a small one), as if nothing else stood between us and famine; and when my aunt insisted on his making his customary repast, I detected him in the act of pocketing fragments of his bread and cheese; I have no doubt for the purpose of reviving us with those savings, when we should have reached an advanced stage of attenuation.
My aunt, on the other hand, was in a composed frame of mind, which was a lesson to all of us—to me, I am sure. She was extremely gracious to Peggotty, except when I inadvertently called her by that name; and, strange as I knew she felt in London, appeared quite at home. She was to have my bed, and I was to lie in the sitting-room, to keep guard over her. She made a great point of being so near the river, in case of a conflagration; and I suppose really did find some satisfaction in that circumstance.
‘Trot, my dear,’ said my aunt, when she saw me making preparations for compounding her usual night-draught, ‘No!’
‘Nothing, aunt?’
‘Not wine, my dear. Ale.’
‘But there is wine here, aunt. And you always have it made of wine.’
‘Keep that, in case of sickness,’ said my aunt. ‘We mustn’t use it carelessly, Trot. Ale for me. Half a pint.’
I thought Mr. Dick would have fallen, insensible. My aunt being resolute, I went out and got the ale myself. As it was growing late, Peggotty and Mr. Dick took that opportunity of repairing to the chandler’s shop together. I parted from him, poor fellow, at the corner of the street, with his great kite at his back, a very monument of human misery.
My aunt was walking up and down the room when I returned, crimping the borders of her nightcap with her fingers. I warmed the ale and made the toast on the usual infallible principles. When it was ready for her, she was ready for it, with her nightcap on, and the skirt of her gown turned back on her knees.
‘My dear,’ said my aunt, after taking a spoonful of it; ‘it’s a great deal better than wine. Not half so bilious.’
I suppose I looked doubtful, for she added:
‘Tut, tut, child. If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well off.’
‘I should think so myself, aunt, I am sure,’ said I.
‘Well, then, why DON’T you think so?’ said my aunt.
‘Because you and I are very different people,’ I returned.
‘Stuff and nonsense, Trot!’ replied my aunt.
My aunt went on with a quiet enjoyment, in which there was very little affectation, if any; drinking the warm ale with a tea-spoon, and soaking her strips of toast in it.
‘Trot,’ said she, ‘I don’t care for strange faces in general, but I rather like that Barkis of yours, do you know!’
‘It’s better than a hundred pounds to hear you say so!’ said I.
‘It’s a most extraordinary world,’ observed my aunt, rubbing her nose; ‘how that woman ever got into it with that name, is unaccountable to me. It would be much more easy to be born a Jackson, or something of that sort, one would think.’
‘Perhaps she thinks so, too; it’s not her fault,’ said I.
‘I suppose not,’ returned my aunt, rather grudging the admission; ‘but it’s very aggravating. However, she’s Barkis now. That’s some comfort. Barkis is uncommonly fond of you, Trot.’
‘There is nothing she would leave undone to prove it,’ said I.
‘Nothing, I believe,’ returned my aunt. ‘Here, the poor fool has been begging and praying about handing over some of her money—because she has got too much of it. A simpleton!’
My aunt’s tears of pleasure were positively trickling down into the warm ale.
‘She’s the most ridiculous creature that ever was born,’ said my aunt. ‘I knew, from the first moment when I saw her with that poor dear blessed baby of a mother of yours, that she was the most ridiculous of mortals. But there are good points in Barkis!’
Affecting to laugh, she got an opportunity of putting her hand to her eyes. Having availed herself of it, she resumed her toast and her discourse together.
‘Ah! Mercy upon us!’ sighed my aunt. ‘I know all about it, Trot! Barkis and myself had quite a gossip while you were out with Dick. I know all about it. I don’t know where these wretched girls expect to go to, for my part. I wonder they don’t knock out their brains against—against mantelpieces,’ said my aunt; an idea which was probably suggested to her by her contemplation of mine.
‘Poor Emily!’ said I.
‘Oh, don’t talk to me about poor,’ returned my aunt. ‘She should have thought of that, before she caused so much misery! Give me a kiss, Trot. I am sorry for your early experience.’
As I bent forward, she put her tumbler on my knee to detain me, and said:
‘Oh, Trot, Trot! And so you fancy yourself in love! Do you?’
‘Fancy, aunt!’ I exclaimed, as red as I could be. ‘I adore her with my whole soul!’
‘Dora, indeed!’ returned my aunt. ‘And you mean to say the little thing is very fascinating, I suppose?’
‘My dear aunt,’ I replied, ‘no one can form the least idea what she is!’
‘Ah! And not silly?’ said my aunt.
‘Silly, aunt!’
I seriously believe it had never once entered my head for a single moment, to consider whether she was or not. I resented the idea, of course; but I was in a manner struck by it, as a new one altogether.
‘Not light-headed?’ said my aunt.
‘Light-headed, aunt!’ I could only repeat this daring speculation with the same kind of feeling with which I had repeated the preceding question.
‘Well, well!’ said my aunt. ‘I only ask. I don’t depreciate her. Poor little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?’
She asked me this so kindly, and with such a gentle air, half playful and half sorrowful, that I was quite touched.
‘We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I know,’ I replied; ‘and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is rather foolish. But we love one another truly, I am sure. If I thought Dora could ever love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could ever love anybody else, or cease to love her; I don’t know what I should do—go out of my mind, I think!’
‘Ah, Trot!’ said my aunt, shaking her head, and smiling gravely; ‘blind, blind, blind!’
‘Someone that I know, Trot,’ my aunt pursued, after a pause, ‘though of a very pliant disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look for, to sustain him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.’
‘If you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!’ I cried.
‘Oh, Trot!’ she said again; ‘blind, blind!’ and without knowing why, I felt a vague unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a cloud.
‘However,’ said my aunt, ‘I don’t want to put two young creatures out of conceit with themselves, or to make them unhappy; so, though it is a girl and boy attachment, and girl and boy attachments very often—mind! I don’t say always!—come to nothing, still we’ll be serious about it, and hope for a prosperous issue one of these days. There’s time enough for it to come to anything!’
This was not upon the whole very comforting to a rapturous lover; but I was glad to have my aunt in my confidence, and I was mindful of her being fatigued. So I thanked her ardently for this mark of her affection, and for all her other kindnesses towards me; and after a tender good night, she took her nightcap into my bedroom.
How miserable I was, when I lay down! How I thought and thought about my being poor, in Mr. Spenlow’s eyes; about my not being what I thought I was, when I proposed to Dora; about the chivalrous necessity of telling Dora what my worldly condition was, and releasing her from her engagement if she thought fit; about how I should contrive to live, during the long term of my articles, when I was earning nothing; about doing something to assist my aunt, and seeing no way of doing anything; about coming down to have no money in my pocket, and to wear a shabby coat, and to be able to carry Dora no little presents, and to ride no gallant greys, and to show myself in no agreeable light! Sordid and selfish as I knew it was, and as I tortured myself by knowing that it was, to let my mind run on my own distress so much, I was so devoted to Dora that I could not help it. I knew that it was base in me not to think more of my aunt, and less of myself; but, so far, selfishness was inseparable from Dora, and I could not put Dora on one side for any mortal creature. How exceedingly miserable I was, that night!
As to sleep, I had dreams of poverty in all sorts of shapes, but I seemed to dream without the previous ceremony of going to sleep. Now I was ragged, wanting to sell Dora matches, six bundles for a halfpenny; now I was at the office in a nightgown and boots, remonstrated with by Mr. Spenlow on appearing before the clients in that airy attire; now I was hungrily picking up the crumbs that fell from old Tiffey’s daily biscuit, regularly eaten when St. Paul’s struck one; now I was hopelessly endeavouring to get a licence to marry Dora, having nothing but one of Uriah Heep’s gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole Commons rejected; and still, more or less conscious of my own room, I was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a sea of bed-clothes.
My aunt was restless, too, for I frequently heard her walking to and fro. Two or three times in the course of the night, attired in a long flannel wrapper in which she looked seven feet high, she appeared, like a disturbed ghost, in my room, and came to the side of the sofa on which I lay. On the first occasion I started up in alarm, to learn that she inferred from a particular light in the sky, that Westminster Abbey was on fire; and to be consulted in reference to the probability of its igniting Buckingham Street, in case the wind changed. Lying still, after that, I found that she sat down near me, whispering to herself ‘Poor boy!’ And then it made me twenty times more wretched, to know how unselfishly mindful she was of me, and how selfishly mindful I was of myself.
It was difficult to believe that a night so long to me, could be short to anybody else. This consideration set me thinking and thinking of an imaginary party where people were dancing the hours away, until that became a dream too, and I heard the music incessantly playing one tune, and saw Dora incessantly dancing one dance, without taking the least notice of me. The man who had been playing the harp all night, was trying in vain to cover it with an ordinary-sized nightcap, when I awoke; or I should rather say, when I left off trying to go to sleep, and saw the sun shining in through the window at last.
There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of the streets out of the Strand—it may be there still—in which I have had many a cold plunge. Dressing myself as quietly as I could, and leaving Peggotty to look after my aunt, I tumbled head foremost into it, and then went for a walk to Hampstead. I had a hope that this brisk treatment might freshen my wits a little; and I think it did them good, for I soon came to the conclusion that the first step I ought to take was, to try if my articles could be cancelled and the premium recovered. I got some breakfast on the Heath, and walked back to Doctors’ Commons, along the watered roads and through a pleasant smell of summer flowers, growing in gardens and carried into town on hucksters’ heads, intent on this first effort to meet our altered circumstances.
I arrived at the office so soon, after all, that I had half an hour’s loitering about the Commons, before old Tiffey, who was always first, appeared with his key. Then I sat down in my shady corner, looking up at the sunlight on the opposite chimney-pots, and thinking about Dora; until Mr. Spenlow came in, crisp and curly.
‘How are you, Copperfield?’ said he. ‘Fine morning!’
‘Beautiful morning, sir,’ said I. ‘Could I say a word to you before you go into Court?’
‘By all means,’ said he. ‘Come into my room.’
I followed him into his room, and he began putting on his gown, and touching himself up before a little glass he had, hanging inside a closet door.
‘I am sorry to say,’ said I, ‘that I have some rather disheartening intelligence from my aunt.’
‘No!’ said he. ‘Dear me! Not paralysis, I hope?’
‘It has no reference to her health, sir,’ I replied. ‘She has met with some large losses. In fact, she has very little left, indeed.’
‘You as-tound me, Copperfield!’ cried Mr. Spenlow.
I shook my head. ‘Indeed, sir,’ said I, ‘her affairs are so changed, that I wished to ask you whether it would be possible—at a sacrifice on our part of some portion of the premium, of course,’ I put in this, on the spur of the moment, warned by the blank expression of his face—‘to cancel my articles?’
What it cost me to make this proposal, nobody knows. It was like asking, as a favour, to be sentenced to transportation from Dora.
‘To cancel your articles, Copperfield? Cancel?’
I explained with tolerable firmness, that I really did not know where my means of subsistence were to come from, unless I could earn them for myself. I had no fear for the future, I said—and I laid great emphasis on that, as if to imply that I should still be decidedly eligible for a son-in-law one of these days—but, for the present, I was thrown upon my own resources. ‘I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘Extremely sorry. It is not usual to cancel articles for any such reason. It is not a professional course of proceeding. It is not a convenient precedent at all. Far from it. At the same time—’
‘You are very good, sir,’ I murmured, anticipating a concession.
‘Not at all. Don’t mention it,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘At the same time, I was going to say, if it had been my lot to have my hands unfettered—if I had not a partner—Mr. Jorkins—’
My hopes were dashed in a moment, but I made another effort.
‘Do you think, sir,’ said I, ‘if I were to mention it to Mr. Jorkins—’
Mr. Spenlow shook his head discouragingly. ‘Heaven forbid, Copperfield,’ he replied, ‘that I should do any man an injustice: still less, Mr. Jorkins. But I know my partner, Copperfield. Mr. Jorkins is not a man to respond to a proposition of this peculiar nature. Mr. Jorkins is very difficult to move from the beaten track. You know what he is!’
I am sure I knew nothing about him, except that he had originally been alone in the business, and now lived by himself in a house near Montagu Square, which was fearfully in want of painting; that he came very late of a day, and went away very early; that he never appeared to be consulted about anything; and that he had a dingy little black-hole of his own upstairs, where no business was ever done, and where there was a yellow old cartridge-paper pad upon his desk, unsoiled by ink, and reported to be twenty years of age.
‘Would you object to my mentioning it to him, sir?’ I asked.
‘By no means,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘But I have some experience of Mr. Jorkins, Copperfield. I wish it were otherwise, for I should be happy to meet your views in any respect. I cannot have the objection to your mentioning it to Mr. Jorkins, Copperfield, if you think it worth while.’
Availing myself of this permission, which was given with a warm shake of the hand, I sat thinking about Dora, and looking at the sunlight stealing from the chimney-pots down the wall of the opposite house, until Mr. Jorkins came. I then went up to Mr. Jorkins’s room, and evidently astonished Mr. Jorkins very much by making my appearance there.
‘Come in, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Come in!’
I went in, and sat down; and stated my case to Mr. Jorkins pretty much as I had stated it to Mr. Spenlow. Mr. Jorkins was not by any means the awful creature one might have expected, but a large, mild, smooth-faced man of sixty, who took so much snuff that there was a tradition in the Commons that he lived principally on that stimulant, having little room in his system for any other article of diet.
‘You have mentioned this to Mr. Spenlow, I suppose?’ said Mr. Jorkins; when he had heard me, very restlessly, to an end.
I answered Yes, and told him that Mr. Spenlow had introduced his name.
‘He said I should object?’ asked Mr. Jorkins.
I was obliged to admit that Mr. Spenlow had considered it probable.
‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Copperfield, I can’t advance your object,’ said Mr. Jorkins, nervously. ‘The fact is—but I have an appointment at the Bank, if you’ll have the goodness to excuse me.’
With that he rose in a great hurry, and was going out of the room, when I made bold to say that I feared, then, there was no way of arranging the matter?
‘No!’ said Mr. Jorkins, stopping at the door to shake his head. ‘Oh, no! I object, you know,’ which he said very rapidly, and went out. ‘You must be aware, Mr. Copperfield,’ he added, looking restlessly in at the door again, ‘if Mr. Spenlow objects—’
‘Personally, he does not object, sir,’ said I.
‘Oh! Personally!’ repeated Mr. Jorkins, in an impatient manner. ‘I assure you there’s an objection, Mr. Copperfield. Hopeless! What you wish to be done, can’t be done. I—I really have got an appointment at the Bank.’ With that he fairly ran away; and to the best of my knowledge, it was three days before he showed himself in the Commons again.
Being very anxious to leave no stone unturned, I waited until Mr. Spenlow came in, and then described what had passed; giving him to understand that I was not hopeless of his being able to soften the adamantine Jorkins, if he would undertake the task.
‘Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Spenlow, with a gracious smile, ‘you have not known my partner, Mr. Jorkins, as long as I have. Nothing is farther from my thoughts than to attribute any degree of artifice to Mr. Jorkins. But Mr. Jorkins has a way of stating his objections which often deceives people. No, Copperfield!’ shaking his head. ‘Mr. Jorkins is not to be moved, believe me!’
I was completely bewildered between Mr. Spenlow and Mr. Jorkins, as to which of them really was the objecting partner; but I saw with sufficient clearness that there was obduracy somewhere in the firm, and that the recovery of my aunt’s thousand pounds was out of the question. In a state of despondency, which I remember with anything but satisfaction, for I know it still had too much reference to myself (though always in connexion with Dora), I left the office, and went homeward.
I was trying to familiarize my mind with the worst, and to present to myself the arrangements we should have to make for the future in their sternest aspect, when a hackney-chariot coming after me, and stopping at my very feet, occasioned me to look up. A fair hand was stretched forth to me from the window; and the face I had never seen without a feeling of serenity and happiness, from the moment when it first turned back on the old oak staircase with the great broad balustrade, and when I associated its softened beauty with the stained-glass window in the church, was smiling on me.
‘Agnes!’ I joyfully exclaimed. ‘Oh, my dear Agnes, of all people in the world, what a pleasure to see you!’
‘Is it, indeed?’ she said, in her cordial voice.
‘I want to talk to you so much!’ said I. ‘It’s such a lightening of my heart, only to look at you! If I had had a conjuror’s cap, there is no one I should have wished for but you!’
‘What?’ returned Agnes.
‘Well! perhaps Dora first,’ I admitted, with a blush.
‘Certainly, Dora first, I hope,’ said Agnes, laughing.
‘But you next!’ said I. ‘Where are you going?’
She was going to my rooms to see my aunt. The day being very fine, she was glad to come out of the chariot, which smelt (I had my head in it all this time) like a stable put under a cucumber-frame. I dismissed the coachman, and she took my arm, and we walked on together. She was like Hope embodied, to me. How different I felt in one short minute, having Agnes at my side!
My aunt had written her one of the odd, abrupt notes—very little longer than a Bank note—to which her epistolary efforts were usually limited. She had stated therein that she had fallen into adversity, and was leaving Dover for good, but had quite made up her mind to it, and was so well that nobody need be uncomfortable about her. Agnes had come to London to see my aunt, between whom and herself there had been a mutual liking these many years: indeed, it dated from the time of my taking up my residence in Mr. Wickfield’s house. She was not alone, she said. Her papa was with her—and Uriah Heep.
‘And now they are partners,’ said I. ‘Confound him!’
‘Yes,’ said Agnes. ‘They have some business here; and I took advantage of their coming, to come too. You must not think my visit all friendly and disinterested, Trotwood, for—I am afraid I may be cruelly prejudiced—I do not like to let papa go away alone, with him.’ ‘Does he exercise the same influence over Mr. Wickfield still, Agnes?’
Agnes shook her head. ‘There is such a change at home,’ said she, ‘that you would scarcely know the dear old house. They live with us now.’
‘They?’ said I.
‘Mr. Heep and his mother. He sleeps in your old room,’ said Agnes, looking up into my face.
‘I wish I had the ordering of his dreams,’ said I. ‘He wouldn’t sleep there long.’
‘I keep my own little room,’ said Agnes, ‘where I used to learn my lessons. How the time goes! You remember? The little panelled room that opens from the drawing-room?’
‘Remember, Agnes? When I saw you, for the first time, coming out at the door, with your quaint little basket of keys hanging at your side?’
‘It is just the same,’ said Agnes, smiling. ‘I am glad you think of it so pleasantly. We were very happy.’
‘We were, indeed,’ said I.
‘I keep that room to myself still; but I cannot always desert Mrs. Heep, you know. And so,’ said Agnes, quietly, ‘I feel obliged to bear her company, when I might prefer to be alone. But I have no other reason to complain of her. If she tires me, sometimes, by her praises of her son, it is only natural in a mother. He is a very good son to her.’
I looked at Agnes when she said these words, without detecting in her any consciousness of Uriah’s design. Her mild but earnest eyes met mine with their own beautiful frankness, and there was no change in her gentle face.
‘The chief evil of their presence in the house,’ said Agnes, ‘is that I cannot be as near papa as I could wish—Uriah Heep being so much between us—and cannot watch over him, if that is not too bold a thing to say, as closely as I would. But if any fraud or treachery is practising against him, I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.’
A certain bright smile, which I never saw on any other face, died away, even while I thought how good it was, and how familiar it had once been to me; and she asked me, with a quick change of expression (we were drawing very near my street), if I knew how the reverse in my aunt’s circumstances had been brought about. On my replying no, she had not told me yet, Agnes became thoughtful, and I fancied I felt her arm tremble in mine.
We found my aunt alone, in a state of some excitement. A difference of opinion had arisen between herself and Mrs. Crupp, on an abstract question (the propriety of chambers being inhabited by the gentler sex); and my aunt, utterly indifferent to spasms on the part of Mrs. Crupp, had cut the dispute short, by informing that lady that she smelt of my brandy, and that she would trouble her to walk out. Both of these expressions Mrs. Crupp considered actionable, and had expressed her intention of bringing before a ‘British Judy’—meaning, it was supposed, the bulwark of our national liberties.
My aunt, however, having had time to cool, while Peggotty was out showing Mr. Dick the soldiers at the Horse Guards—and being, besides, greatly pleased to see Agnes—rather plumed herself on the affair than otherwise, and received us with unimpaired good humour. When Agnes laid her bonnet on the table, and sat down beside her, I could not but think, looking on her mild eyes and her radiant forehead, how natural it seemed to have her there; how trustfully, although she was so young and inexperienced, my aunt confided in her; how strong she was, indeed, in simple love and truth.
We began to talk about my aunt’s losses, and I told them what I had tried to do that morning.
‘Which was injudicious, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘but well meant. You are a generous boy—I suppose I must say, young man, now—and I am proud of you, my dear. So far, so good. Now, Trot and Agnes, let us look the case of Betsey Trotwood in the face, and see how it stands.’
I observed Agnes turn pale, as she looked very attentively at my aunt. My aunt, patting her cat, looked very attentively at Agnes.
‘Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, who had always kept her money matters to herself. ‘—I don’t mean your sister, Trot, my dear, but myself—had a certain property. It don’t matter how much; enough to live on. More; for she had saved a little, and added to it. Betsey funded her property for some time, and then, by the advice of her man of business, laid it out on landed security. That did very well, and returned very good interest, till Betsey was paid off. I am talking of Betsey as if she was a man-of-war. Well! Then, Betsey had to look about her, for a new investment. She thought she was wiser, now, than her man of business, who was not such a good man of business by this time, as he used to be—I am alluding to your father, Agnes—and she took it into her head to lay it out for herself. So she took her pigs,’ said my aunt, ‘to a foreign market; and a very bad market it turned out to be. First, she lost in the mining way, and then she lost in the diving way—fishing up treasure, or some such Tom Tiddler nonsense,’ explained my aunt, rubbing her nose; ‘and then she lost in the mining way again, and, last of all, to set the thing entirely to rights, she lost in the banking way. I don’t know what the Bank shares were worth for a little while,’ said my aunt; ‘cent per cent was the lowest of it, I believe; but the Bank was at the other end of the world, and tumbled into space, for what I know; anyhow, it fell to pieces, and never will and never can pay sixpence; and Betsey’s sixpences were all there, and there’s an end of them. Least said, soonest mended!’
My aunt concluded this philosophical summary, by fixing her eyes with a kind of triumph on Agnes, whose colour was gradually returning.
‘Dear Miss Trotwood, is that all the history?’ said Agnes.
‘I hope it’s enough, child,’ said my aunt. ‘If there had been more money to lose, it wouldn’t have been all, I dare say. Betsey would have contrived to throw that after the rest, and make another chapter, I have little doubt. But there was no more money, and there’s no more story.’
Agnes had listened at first with suspended breath. Her colour still came and went, but she breathed more freely. I thought I knew why. I thought she had had some fear that her unhappy father might be in some way to blame for what had happened. My aunt took her hand in hers, and laughed.
‘Is that all?’ repeated my aunt. ‘Why, yes, that’s all, except, “And she lived happy ever afterwards.” Perhaps I may add that of Betsey yet, one of these days. Now, Agnes, you have a wise head. So have you, Trot, in some things, though I can’t compliment you always’; and here my aunt shook her own at me, with an energy peculiar to herself. ‘What’s to be done? Here’s the cottage, taking one time with another, will produce say seventy pounds a year. I think we may safely put it down at that. Well!—That’s all we’ve got,’ said my aunt; with whom it was an idiosyncrasy, as it is with some horses, to stop very short when she appeared to be in a fair way of going on for a long while.
‘Then,’ said my aunt, after a rest, ‘there’s Dick. He’s good for a hundred a-year, but of course that must be expended on himself. I would sooner send him away, though I know I am the only person who appreciates him, than have him, and not spend his money on himself. How can Trot and I do best, upon our means? What do you say, Agnes?’
‘I say, aunt,’ I interposed, ‘that I must do something!’
‘Go for a soldier, do you mean?’ returned my aunt, alarmed; ‘or go to sea? I won’t hear of it. You are to be a proctor. We’re not going to have any knockings on the head in THIS family, if you please, sir.’
I was about to explain that I was not desirous of introducing that mode of provision into the family, when Agnes inquired if my rooms were held for any long term?
‘You come to the point, my dear,’ said my aunt. ‘They are not to be got rid of, for six months at least, unless they could be underlet, and that I don’t believe. The last man died here. Five people out of six would die—of course—of that woman in nankeen with the flannel petticoat. I have a little ready money; and I agree with you, the best thing we can do, is, to live the term out here, and get a bedroom hard by.’
I thought it my duty to hint at the discomfort my aunt would sustain, from living in a continual state of guerilla warfare with Mrs. Crupp; but she disposed of that objection summarily by declaring that, on the first demonstration of hostilities, she was prepared to astonish Mrs. Crupp for the whole remainder of her natural life.
‘I have been thinking, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, diffidently, ‘that if you had time—’
‘I have a good deal of time, Agnes. I am always disengaged after four or five o’clock, and I have time early in the morning. In one way and another,’ said I, conscious of reddening a little as I thought of the hours and hours I had devoted to fagging about town, and to and fro upon the Norwood Road, ‘I have abundance of time.’
‘I know you would not mind,’ said Agnes, coming to me, and speaking in a low voice, so full of sweet and hopeful consideration that I hear it now, ‘the duties of a secretary.’
‘Mind, my dear Agnes?’
‘Because,’ continued Agnes, ‘Doctor Strong has acted on his intention of retiring, and has come to live in London; and he asked papa, I know, if he could recommend him one. Don’t you think he would rather have his favourite old pupil near him, than anybody else?’
‘Dear Agnes!’ said I. ‘What should I do without you! You are always my good angel. I told you so. I never think of you in any other light.’
Agnes answered with her pleasant laugh, that one good Angel (meaning Dora) was enough; and went on to remind me that the Doctor had been used to occupy himself in his study, early in the morning, and in the evening—and that probably my leisure would suit his requirements very well. I was scarcely more delighted with the prospect of earning my own bread, than with the hope of earning it under my old master; in short, acting on the advice of Agnes, I sat down and wrote a letter to the Doctor, stating my object, and appointing to call on him next day at ten in the forenoon. This I addressed to Highgate—for in that place, so memorable to me, he lived—and went and posted, myself, without losing a minute.
Wherever Agnes was, some agreeable token of her noiseless presence seemed inseparable from the place. When I came back, I found my aunt’s birds hanging, just as they had hung so long in the parlour window of the cottage; and my easy-chair imitating my aunt’s much easier chair in its position at the open window; and even the round green fan, which my aunt had brought away with her, screwed on to the window-sill. I knew who had done all this, by its seeming to have quietly done itself; and I should have known in a moment who had arranged my neglected books in the old order of my school days, even if I had supposed Agnes to be miles away, instead of seeing her busy with them, and smiling at the disorder into which they had fallen.
My aunt was quite gracious on the subject of the Thames (it really did look very well with the sun upon it, though not like the sea before the cottage), but she could not relent towards the London smoke, which, she said, ‘peppered everything’. A complete revolution, in which Peggotty bore a prominent part, was being effected in every corner of my rooms, in regard of this pepper; and I was looking on, thinking how little even Peggotty seemed to do with a good deal of bustle, and how much Agnes did without any bustle at all, when a knock came at the door.
‘I think,’ said Agnes, turning pale, ‘it’s papa. He promised me that he would come.’
I opened the door, and admitted, not only Mr. Wickfield, but Uriah Heep. I had not seen Mr. Wickfield for some time. I was prepared for a great change in him, after what I had heard from Agnes, but his appearance shocked me.
It was not that he looked many years older, though still dressed with the old scrupulous cleanliness; or that there was an unwholesome ruddiness upon his face; or that his eyes were full and bloodshot; or that there was a nervous trembling in his hand, the cause of which I knew, and had for some years seen at work. It was not that he had lost his good looks, or his old bearing of a gentleman—for that he had not—but the thing that struck me most, was, that with the evidences of his native superiority still upon him, he should submit himself to that crawling impersonation of meanness, Uriah Heep. The reversal of the two natures, in their relative positions, Uriah’s of power and Mr. Wickfield’s of dependence, was a sight more painful to me than I can express. If I had seen an Ape taking command of a Man, I should hardly have thought it a more degrading spectacle.
He appeared to be only too conscious of it himself. When he came in, he stood still; and with his head bowed, as if he felt it. This was only for a moment; for Agnes softly said to him, ‘Papa! Here is Miss Trotwood—and Trotwood, whom you have not seen for a long while!’ and then he approached, and constrainedly gave my aunt his hand, and shook hands more cordially with me. In the moment’s pause I speak of, I saw Uriah’s countenance form itself into a most ill-favoured smile. Agnes saw it too, I think, for she shrank from him.
What my aunt saw, or did not see, I defy the science of physiognomy to have made out, without her own consent. I believe there never was anybody with such an imperturbable countenance when she chose. Her face might have been a dead-wall on the occasion in question, for any light it threw upon her thoughts; until she broke silence with her usual abruptness.
‘Well, Wickfield!’ said my aunt; and he looked up at her for the first time. ‘I have been telling your daughter how well I have been disposing of my money for myself, because I couldn’t trust it to you, as you were growing rusty in business matters. We have been taking counsel together, and getting on very well, all things considered. Agnes is worth the whole firm, in my opinion.’
‘If I may umbly make the remark,’ said Uriah Heep, with a writhe, ‘I fully agree with Miss Betsey Trotwood, and should be only too appy if Miss Agnes was a partner.’
‘You’re a partner yourself, you know,’ returned my aunt, ‘and that’s about enough for you, I expect. How do you find yourself, sir?’
In acknowledgement of this question, addressed to him with extraordinary curtness, Mr. Heep, uncomfortably clutching the blue bag he carried, replied that he was pretty well, he thanked my aunt, and hoped she was the same.
‘And you, Master—I should say, Mister Copperfield,’ pursued Uriah. ‘I hope I see you well! I am rejoiced to see you, Mister Copperfield, even under present circumstances.’ I believed that; for he seemed to relish them very much. ‘Present circumstances is not what your friends would wish for you, Mister Copperfield, but it isn’t money makes the man: it’s—I am really unequal with my umble powers to express what it is,’ said Uriah, with a fawning jerk, ‘but it isn’t money!’
Here he shook hands with me: not in the common way, but standing at a good distance from me, and lifting my hand up and down like a pump handle, that he was a little afraid of.
‘And how do you think we are looking, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister?’ fawned Uriah. ‘Don’t you find Mr. Wickfield blooming, sir? Years don’t tell much in our firm, Master Copperfield, except in raising up the umble, namely, mother and self—and in developing,’ he added, as an afterthought, ‘the beautiful, namely, Miss Agnes.’
He jerked himself about, after this compliment, in such an intolerable manner, that my aunt, who had sat looking straight at him, lost all patience.
‘Deuce take the man!’ said my aunt, sternly, ‘what’s he about? Don’t be galvanic, sir!’
‘I ask your pardon, Miss Trotwood,’ returned Uriah; ‘I’m aware you’re nervous.’
‘Go along with you, sir!’ said my aunt, anything but appeased. ‘Don’t presume to say so! I am nothing of the sort. If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir! Good God!’ said my aunt, with great indignation, ‘I am not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!’
Mr. Heep was rather abashed, as most people might have been, by this explosion; which derived great additional force from the indignant manner in which my aunt afterwards moved in her chair, and shook her head as if she were making snaps or bounces at him. But he said to me aside in a meek voice:
‘I am well aware, Master Copperfield, that Miss Trotwood, though an excellent lady, has a quick temper (indeed I think I had the pleasure of knowing her, when I was a numble clerk, before you did, Master Copperfield), and it’s only natural, I am sure, that it should be made quicker by present circumstances. The wonder is, that it isn’t much worse! I only called to say that if there was anything we could do, in present circumstances, mother or self, or Wickfield and Heep,—we should be really glad. I may go so far?’ said Uriah, with a sickly smile at his partner.
‘Uriah Heep,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in a monotonous forced way, ‘is active in the business, Trotwood. What he says, I quite concur in. You know I had an old interest in you. Apart from that, what Uriah says I quite concur in!’
‘Oh, what a reward it is,’ said Uriah, drawing up one leg, at the risk of bringing down upon himself another visitation from my aunt, ‘to be so trusted in! But I hope I am able to do something to relieve him from the fatigues of business, Master Copperfield!’
‘Uriah Heep is a great relief to me,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in the same dull voice. ‘It’s a load off my mind, Trotwood, to have such a partner.’
The red fox made him say all this, I knew, to exhibit him to me in the light he had indicated on the night when he poisoned my rest. I saw the same ill-favoured smile upon his face again, and saw how he watched me.
‘You are not going, papa?’ said Agnes, anxiously. ‘Will you not walk back with Trotwood and me?’
He would have looked to Uriah, I believe, before replying, if that worthy had not anticipated him.
‘I am bespoke myself,’ said Uriah, ‘on business; otherwise I should have been appy to have kept with my friends. But I leave my partner to represent the firm. Miss Agnes, ever yours! I wish you good-day, Master Copperfield, and leave my umble respects for Miss Betsey Trotwood.’
With those words, he retired, kissing his great hand, and leering at us like a mask.
We sat there, talking about our pleasant old Canterbury days, an hour or two. Mr. Wickfield, left to Agnes, soon became more like his former self; though there was a settled depression upon him, which he never shook off. For all that, he brightened; and had an evident pleasure in hearing us recall the little incidents of our old life, many of which he remembered very well. He said it was like those times, to be alone with Agnes and me again; and he wished to Heaven they had never changed. I am sure there was an influence in the placid face of Agnes, and in the very touch of her hand upon his arm, that did wonders for him.
My aunt (who was busy nearly all this while with Peggotty, in the inner room) would not accompany us to the place where they were staying, but insisted on my going; and I went. We dined together. After dinner, Agnes sat beside him, as of old, and poured out his wine. He took what she gave him, and no more—like a child—and we all three sat together at a window as the evening gathered in. When it was almost dark, he lay down on a sofa, Agnes pillowing his head and bending over him a little while; and when she came back to the window, it was not so dark but I could see tears glittering in her eyes.
I pray Heaven that I never may forget the dear girl in her love and truth, at that time of my life; for if I should, I must be drawing near the end, and then I would desire to remember her best! She filled my heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my weakness so, by her example, so directed—I know not how, she was too modest and gentle to advise me in many words—the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose within me, that all the little good I have done, and all the harm I have forborne, I solemnly believe I may refer to her.
And how she spoke to me of Dora, sitting at the window in the dark; listened to my praises of her; praised again; and round the little fairy-figure shed some glimpses of her own pure light, that made it yet more precious and more innocent to me! Oh, Agnes, sister of my boyhood, if I had known then, what I knew long afterwards—!
There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: ‘Blind! Blind! Blind!’
CHAPTER 36. ENTHUSIASM
I began the next day with another dive into the Roman bath, and then started for Highgate. I was not dispirited now. I was not afraid of the shabby coat, and had no yearnings after gallant greys. My whole manner of thinking of our late misfortune was changed. What I had to do, was, to show my aunt that her past goodness to me had not been thrown away on an insensible, ungrateful object. What I had to do, was, to turn the painful discipline of my younger days to account, by going to work with a resolute and steady heart. What I had to do, was, to take my woodman’s axe in my hand, and clear my own way through the forest of difficulty, by cutting down the trees until I came to Dora. And I went on at a mighty rate, as if it could be done by walking.
When I found myself on the familiar Highgate road, pursuing such a different errand from that old one of pleasure, with which it was associated, it seemed as if a complete change had come on my whole life. But that did not discourage me. With the new life, came new purpose, new intention. Great was the labour; priceless the reward. Dora was the reward, and Dora must be won.
I got into such a transport, that I felt quite sorry my coat was not a little shabby already. I wanted to be cutting at those trees in the forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove my strength. I had a good mind to ask an old man, in wire spectacles, who was breaking stones upon the road, to lend me his hammer for a little while, and let me begin to beat a path to Dora out of granite. I stimulated myself into such a heat, and got so out of breath, that I felt as if I had been earning I don’t know how much.
In this state, I went into a cottage that I saw was to let, and examined it narrowly,—for I felt it necessary to be practical. It would do for me and Dora admirably: with a little front garden for Jip to run about in, and bark at the tradespeople through the railings, and a capital room upstairs for my aunt. I came out again, hotter and faster than ever, and dashed up to Highgate, at such a rate that I was there an hour too early; and, though I had not been, should have been obliged to stroll about to cool myself, before I was at all presentable.
My first care, after putting myself under this necessary course of preparation, was to find the Doctor’s house. It was not in that part of Highgate where Mrs. Steerforth lived, but quite on the opposite side of the little town. When I had made this discovery, I went back, in an attraction I could not resist, to a lane by Mrs. Steerforth’s, and looked over the corner of the garden wall. His room was shut up close. The conservatory doors were standing open, and Rosa Dartle was walking, bareheaded, with a quick, impetuous step, up and down a gravel walk on one side of the lawn. She gave me the idea of some fierce thing, that was dragging the length of its chain to and fro upon a beaten track, and wearing its heart out.
I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that part of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it, strolled about until it was ten o’clock. The church with the slender spire, that stands on the top of the hill now, was not there then to tell me the time. An old red-brick mansion, used as a school, was in its place; and a fine old house it must have been to go to school at, as I recollect it.
When I approached the Doctor’s cottage—a pretty old place, on which he seemed to have expended some money, if I might judge from the embellishments and repairs that had the look of being just completed—I saw him walking in the garden at the side, gaiters and all, as if he had never left off walking since the days of my pupilage. He had his old companions about him, too; for there were plenty of high trees in the neighbourhood, and two or three rooks were on the grass, looking after him, as if they had been written to about him by the Canterbury rooks, and were observing him closely in consequence.
Knowing the utter hopelessness of attracting his attention from that distance, I made bold to open the gate, and walk after him, so as to meet him when he should turn round. When he did, and came towards me, he looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, evidently without thinking about me at all; and then his benevolent face expressed extraordinary pleasure, and he took me by both hands.
‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said the Doctor, ‘you are a man! How do you do? I am delighted to see you. My dear Copperfield, how very much you have improved! You are quite—yes—dear me!’
I hoped he was well, and Mrs. Strong too.
‘Oh dear, yes!’ said the Doctor; ‘Annie’s quite well, and she’ll be delighted to see you. You were always her favourite. She said so, last night, when I showed her your letter. And—yes, to be sure—you recollect Mr. Jack Maldon, Copperfield?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘To be sure. He’s pretty well, too.’
‘Has he come home, sir?’ I inquired.
‘From India?’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes. Mr. Jack Maldon couldn’t bear the climate, my dear. Mrs. Markleham—you have not forgotten Mrs. Markleham?’
Forgotten the Old Soldier! And in that short time!
‘Mrs. Markleham,’ said the Doctor, ‘was quite vexed about him, poor thing; so we have got him at home again; and we have bought him a little Patent place, which agrees with him much better.’ I knew enough of Mr. Jack Maldon to suspect from this account that it was a place where there was not much to do, and which was pretty well paid. The Doctor, walking up and down with his hand on my shoulder, and his kind face turned encouragingly to mine, went on:
‘Now, my dear Copperfield, in reference to this proposal of yours. It’s very gratifying and agreeable to me, I am sure; but don’t you think you could do better? You achieved distinction, you know, when you were with us. You are qualified for many good things. You have laid a foundation that any edifice may be raised upon; and is it not a pity that you should devote the spring-time of your life to such a poor pursuit as I can offer?’
I became very glowing again, and, expressing myself in a rhapsodical style, I am afraid, urged my request strongly; reminding the Doctor that I had already a profession.
‘Well, well,’ said the Doctor, ‘that’s true. Certainly, your having a profession, and being actually engaged in studying it, makes a difference. But, my good young friend, what’s seventy pounds a year?’
‘It doubles our income, Doctor Strong,’ said I.
‘Dear me!’ replied the Doctor. ‘To think of that! Not that I mean to say it’s rigidly limited to seventy pounds a-year, because I have always contemplated making any young friend I might thus employ, a present too. Undoubtedly,’ said the Doctor, still walking me up and down with his hand on my shoulder. ‘I have always taken an annual present into account.’
‘My dear tutor,’ said I (now, really, without any nonsense), ‘to whom I owe more obligations already than I ever can acknowledge—’
‘No, no,’ interposed the Doctor. ‘Pardon me!’
‘If you will take such time as I have, and that is my mornings and evenings, and can think it worth seventy pounds a year, you will do me such a service as I cannot express.’
‘Dear me!’ said the Doctor, innocently. ‘To think that so little should go for so much! Dear, dear! And when you can do better, you will? On your word, now?’ said the Doctor,—which he had always made a very grave appeal to the honour of us boys.
‘On my word, sir!’ I returned, answering in our old school manner.
‘Then be it so,’ said the Doctor, clapping me on the shoulder, and still keeping his hand there, as we still walked up and down.
‘And I shall be twenty times happier, sir,’ said I, with a little—I hope innocent—flattery, ‘if my employment is to be on the Dictionary.’
The Doctor stopped, smilingly clapped me on the shoulder again, and exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had penetrated to the profoundest depths of mortal sagacity, ‘My dear young friend, you have hit it. It IS the Dictionary!’
How could it be anything else! His pockets were as full of it as his head. It was sticking out of him in all directions. He told me that since his retirement from scholastic life, he had been advancing with it wonderfully; and that nothing could suit him better than the proposed arrangements for morning and evening work, as it was his custom to walk about in the daytime with his considering cap on. His papers were in a little confusion, in consequence of Mr. Jack Maldon having lately proffered his occasional services as an amanuensis, and not being accustomed to that occupation; but we should soon put right what was amiss, and go on swimmingly. Afterwards, when we were fairly at our work, I found Mr. Jack Maldon’s efforts more troublesome to me than I had expected, as he had not confined himself to making numerous mistakes, but had sketched so many soldiers, and ladies’ heads, over the Doctor’s manuscript, that I often became involved in labyrinths of obscurity.
The Doctor was quite happy in the prospect of our going to work together on that wonderful performance, and we settled to begin next morning at seven o’clock. We were to work two hours every morning, and two or three hours every night, except on Saturdays, when I was to rest. On Sundays, of course, I was to rest also, and I considered these very easy terms.
Our plans being thus arranged to our mutual satisfaction, the Doctor took me into the house to present me to Mrs. Strong, whom we found in the Doctor’s new study, dusting his books,—a freedom which he never permitted anybody else to take with those sacred favourites.
They had postponed their breakfast on my account, and we sat down to table together. We had not been seated long, when I saw an approaching arrival in Mrs. Strong’s face, before I heard any sound of it. A gentleman on horseback came to the gate, and leading his horse into the little court, with the bridle over his arm, as if he were quite at home, tied him to a ring in the empty coach-house wall, and came into the breakfast parlour, whip in hand. It was Mr. Jack Maldon; and Mr. Jack Maldon was not at all improved by India, I thought. I was in a state of ferocious virtue, however, as to young men who were not cutting down trees in the forest of difficulty; and my impression must be received with due allowance.
‘Mr. Jack!’ said the Doctor. ‘Copperfield!’
Mr. Jack Maldon shook hands with me; but not very warmly, I believed; and with an air of languid patronage, at which I secretly took great umbrage. But his languor altogether was quite a wonderful sight; except when he addressed himself to his cousin Annie. ‘Have you breakfasted this morning, Mr. Jack?’ said the Doctor.
‘I hardly ever take breakfast, sir,’ he replied, with his head thrown back in an easy-chair. ‘I find it bores me.’
‘Is there any news today?’ inquired the Doctor.
‘Nothing at all, sir,’ replied Mr. Maldon. ‘There’s an account about the people being hungry and discontented down in the North, but they are always being hungry and discontented somewhere.’
The Doctor looked grave, and said, as though he wished to change the subject, ‘Then there’s no news at all; and no news, they say, is good news.’
‘There’s a long statement in the papers, sir, about a murder,’ observed Mr. Maldon. ‘But somebody is always being murdered, and I didn’t read it.’
A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars. Perhaps it impressed me the more then, because it was new to me, but it certainly did not tend to exalt my opinion of, or to strengthen my confidence in, Mr. Jack Maldon.
‘I came out to inquire whether Annie would like to go to the opera tonight,’ said Mr. Maldon, turning to her. ‘It’s the last good night there will be, this season; and there’s a singer there, whom she really ought to hear. She is perfectly exquisite. Besides which, she is so charmingly ugly,’ relapsing into languor.
The Doctor, ever pleased with what was likely to please his young wife, turned to her and said:
‘You must go, Annie. You must go.’
‘I would rather not,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I prefer to remain at home. I would much rather remain at home.’
Without looking at her cousin, she then addressed me, and asked me about Agnes, and whether she should see her, and whether she was not likely to come that day; and was so much disturbed, that I wondered how even the Doctor, buttering his toast, could be blind to what was so obvious.
But he saw nothing. He told her, good-naturedly, that she was young and ought to be amused and entertained, and must not allow herself to be made dull by a dull old fellow. Moreover, he said, he wanted to hear her sing all the new singer’s songs to him; and how could she do that well, unless she went? So the Doctor persisted in making the engagement for her, and Mr. Jack Maldon was to come back to dinner. This concluded, he went to his Patent place, I suppose; but at all events went away on his horse, looking very idle.
I was curious to find out next morning, whether she had been. She had not, but had sent into London to put her cousin off; and had gone out in the afternoon to see Agnes, and had prevailed upon the Doctor to go with her; and they had walked home by the fields, the Doctor told me, the evening being delightful. I wondered then, whether she would have gone if Agnes had not been in town, and whether Agnes had some good influence over her too!
She did not look very happy, I thought; but it was a good face, or a very false one. I often glanced at it, for she sat in the window all the time we were at work; and made our breakfast, which we took by snatches as we were employed. When I left, at nine o’clock, she was kneeling on the ground at the Doctor’s feet, putting on his shoes and gaiters for him. There was a softened shade upon her face, thrown from some green leaves overhanging the open window of the low room; and I thought all the way to Doctors’ Commons, of the night when I had seen it looking at him as he read.
I was pretty busy now; up at five in the morning, and home at nine or ten at night. But I had infinite satisfaction in being so closely engaged, and never walked slowly on any account, and felt enthusiastically that the more I tired myself, the more I was doing to deserve Dora. I had not revealed myself in my altered character to Dora yet, because she was coming to see Miss Mills in a few days, and I deferred all I had to tell her until then; merely informing her in my letters (all our communications were secretly forwarded through Miss Mills), that I had much to tell her. In the meantime, I put myself on a short allowance of bear’s grease, wholly abandoned scented soap and lavender water, and sold off three waistcoats at a prodigious sacrifice, as being too luxurious for my stern career.
Not satisfied with all these proceedings, but burning with impatience to do something more, I went to see Traddles, now lodging up behind the parapet of a house in Castle Street, Holborn. Mr. Dick, who had been with me to Highgate twice already, and had resumed his companionship with the Doctor, I took with me.
I took Mr. Dick with me, because, acutely sensitive to my aunt’s reverses, and sincerely believing that no galley-slave or convict worked as I did, he had begun to fret and worry himself out of spirits and appetite, as having nothing useful to do. In this condition, he felt more incapable of finishing the Memorial than ever; and the harder he worked at it, the oftener that unlucky head of King Charles the First got into it. Seriously apprehending that his malady would increase, unless we put some innocent deception upon him and caused him to believe that he was useful, or unless we could put him in the way of being really useful (which would be better), I made up my mind to try if Traddles could help us. Before we went, I wrote Traddles a full statement of all that had happened, and Traddles wrote me back a capital answer, expressive of his sympathy and friendship.
We found him hard at work with his inkstand and papers, refreshed by the sight of the flower-pot stand and the little round table in a corner of the small apartment. He received us cordially, and made friends with Mr. Dick in a moment. Mr. Dick professed an absolute certainty of having seen him before, and we both said, ‘Very likely.’
The first subject on which I had to consult Traddles was this,—I had heard that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun life by reporting the debates in Parliament. Traddles having mentioned newspapers to me, as one of his hopes, I had put the two things together, and told Traddles in my letter that I wished to know how I could qualify myself for this pursuit. Traddles now informed me, as the result of his inquiries, that the mere mechanical acquisition necessary, except in rare cases, for thorough excellence in it, that is to say, a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand writing and reading, was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages; and that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the course of a few years. Traddles reasonably supposed that this would settle the business; but I, only feeling that here indeed were a few tall trees to be hewn down, immediately resolved to work my way on to Dora through this thicket, axe in hand.
‘I am very much obliged to you, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘I’ll begin tomorrow.’
Traddles looked astonished, as he well might; but he had no notion as yet of my rapturous condition.
‘I’ll buy a book,’ said I, ‘with a good scheme of this art in it; I’ll work at it at the Commons, where I haven’t half enough to do; I’ll take down the speeches in our court for practice—Traddles, my dear fellow, I’ll master it!’
‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, opening his eyes, ‘I had no idea you were such a determined character, Copperfield!’
I don’t know how he should have had, for it was new enough to me. I passed that off, and brought Mr. Dick on the carpet.
‘You see,’ said Mr. Dick, wistfully, ‘if I could exert myself, Mr. Traddles—if I could beat a drum—or blow anything!’
Poor fellow! I have little doubt he would have preferred such an employment in his heart to all others. Traddles, who would not have smiled for the world, replied composedly:
‘But you are a very good penman, sir. You told me so, Copperfield?’ ‘Excellent!’ said I. And indeed he was. He wrote with extraordinary neatness.
‘Don’t you think,’ said Traddles, ‘you could copy writings, sir, if I got them for you?’
Mr. Dick looked doubtfully at me. ‘Eh, Trotwood?’
I shook my head. Mr. Dick shook his, and sighed. ‘Tell him about the Memorial,’ said Mr. Dick.
I explained to Traddles that there was a difficulty in keeping King Charles the First out of Mr. Dick’s manuscripts; Mr. Dick in the meanwhile looking very deferentially and seriously at Traddles, and sucking his thumb.
‘But these writings, you know, that I speak of, are already drawn up and finished,’ said Traddles after a little consideration. ‘Mr. Dick has nothing to do with them. Wouldn’t that make a difference, Copperfield? At all events, wouldn’t it be well to try?’
This gave us new hope. Traddles and I laying our heads together apart, while Mr. Dick anxiously watched us from his chair, we concocted a scheme in virtue of which we got him to work next day, with triumphant success.
On a table by the window in Buckingham Street, we set out the work Traddles procured for him—which was to make, I forget how many copies of a legal document about some right of way—and on another table we spread the last unfinished original of the great Memorial. Our instructions to Mr. Dick were that he should copy exactly what he had before him, without the least departure from the original; and that when he felt it necessary to make the slightest allusion to King Charles the First, he should fly to the Memorial. We exhorted him to be resolute in this, and left my aunt to observe him. My aunt reported to us, afterwards, that, at first, he was like a man playing the kettle-drums, and constantly divided his attentions between the two; but that, finding this confuse and fatigue him, and having his copy there, plainly before his eyes, he soon sat at it in an orderly business-like manner, and postponed the Memorial to a more convenient time. In a word, although we took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for him, and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he earned by the following Saturday night ten shillings and nine-pence; and never, while I live, shall I forget his going about to all the shops in the neighbourhood to change this treasure into sixpences, or his bringing them to my aunt arranged in the form of a heart upon a waiter, with tears of joy and pride in his eyes. He was like one under the propitious influence of a charm, from the moment of his being usefully employed; and if there were a happy man in the world, that Saturday night, it was the grateful creature who thought my aunt the most wonderful woman in existence, and me the most wonderful young man.
‘No starving now, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking hands with me in a corner. ‘I’ll provide for her, Sir!’ and he flourished his ten fingers in the air, as if they were ten banks.
I hardly know which was the better pleased, Traddles or I. ‘It really,’ said Traddles, suddenly, taking a letter out of his pocket, and giving it to me, ‘put Mr. Micawber quite out of my head!’
The letter (Mr. Micawber never missed any possible opportunity of writing a letter) was addressed to me, ‘By the kindness of T. Traddles, Esquire, of the Inner Temple.’ It ran thus:—
‘MY DEAR COPPERFIELD,
‘You may possibly not be unprepared to receive the intimation that something has turned up. I may have mentioned to you on a former occasion that I was in expectation of such an event.
‘I am about to establish myself in one of the provincial towns of our favoured island (where the society may be described as a happy admixture of the agricultural and the clerical), in immediate connexion with one of the learned professions. Mrs. Micawber and our offspring will accompany me. Our ashes, at a future period, will probably be found commingled in the cemetery attached to a venerable pile, for which the spot to which I refer has acquired a reputation, shall I say from China to Peru?
‘In bidding adieu to the modern Babylon, where we have undergone many vicissitudes, I trust not ignobly, Mrs. Micawber and myself cannot disguise from our minds that we part, it may be for years and it may be for ever, with an individual linked by strong associations to the altar of our domestic life. If, on the eve of such a departure, you will accompany our mutual friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, to our present abode, and there reciprocate the wishes natural to the occasion, you will confer a Boon
‘On ‘One ‘Who ‘Is ‘Ever yours, ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
I was glad to find that Mr. Micawber had got rid of his dust and ashes, and that something really had turned up at last. Learning from Traddles that the invitation referred to the evening then wearing away, I expressed my readiness to do honour to it; and we went off together to the lodging which Mr. Micawber occupied as Mr. Mortimer, and which was situated near the top of the Gray’s Inn Road.
The resources of this lodging were so limited, that we found the twins, now some eight or nine years old, reposing in a turn-up bedstead in the family sitting-room, where Mr. Micawber had prepared, in a wash-hand-stand jug, what he called ‘a Brew’ of the agreeable beverage for which he was famous. I had the pleasure, on this occasion, of renewing the acquaintance of Master Micawber, whom I found a promising boy of about twelve or thirteen, very subject to that restlessness of limb which is not an unfrequent phenomenon in youths of his age. I also became once more known to his sister, Miss Micawber, in whom, as Mr. Micawber told us, ‘her mother renewed her youth, like the Phoenix’.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘yourself and Mr. Traddles find us on the brink of migration, and will excuse any little discomforts incidental to that position.’
Glancing round as I made a suitable reply, I observed that the family effects were already packed, and that the amount of luggage was by no means overwhelming. I congratulated Mrs. Micawber on the approaching change.
‘My dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘of your friendly interest in all our affairs, I am well assured. My family may consider it banishment, if they please; but I am a wife and mother, and I never will desert Mr. Micawber.’
Traddles, appealed to by Mrs. Micawber’s eye, feelingly acquiesced.
‘That,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that, at least, is my view, my dear Mr. Copperfield and Mr. Traddles, of the obligation which I took upon myself when I repeated the irrevocable words, “I, Emma, take thee, Wilkins.” I read the service over with a flat-candle on the previous night, and the conclusion I derived from it was, that I never could desert Mr. Micawber. And,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘though it is possible I may be mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I never will!’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, a little impatiently, ‘I am not conscious that you are expected to do anything of the sort.’
‘I am aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I am now about to cast my lot among strangers; and I am also aware that the various members of my family, to whom Mr. Micawber has written in the most gentlemanly terms, announcing that fact, have not taken the least notice of Mr. Micawber’s communication. Indeed I may be superstitious,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘but it appears to me that Mr. Micawber is destined never to receive any answers whatever to the great majority of the communications he writes. I may augur, from the silence of my family, that they object to the resolution I have taken; but I should not allow myself to be swerved from the path of duty, Mr. Copperfield, even by my papa and mama, were they still living.’
I expressed my opinion that this was going in the right direction. ‘It may be a sacrifice,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘to immure one’s-self in a Cathedral town; but surely, Mr. Copperfield, if it is a sacrifice in me, it is much more a sacrifice in a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities.’
‘Oh! You are going to a Cathedral town?’ said I.
Mr. Micawber, who had been helping us all, out of the wash-hand-stand jug, replied:
‘To Canterbury. In fact, my dear Copperfield, I have entered into arrangements, by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to our friend Heep, to assist and serve him in the capacity of—and to be—his confidential clerk.’
I stared at Mr. Micawber, who greatly enjoyed my surprise.
‘I am bound to state to you,’ he said, with an official air, ‘that the business habits, and the prudent suggestions, of Mrs. Micawber, have in a great measure conduced to this result. The gauntlet, to which Mrs. Micawber referred upon a former occasion, being thrown down in the form of an advertisement, was taken up by my friend Heep, and led to a mutual recognition. Of my friend Heep,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘who is a man of remarkable shrewdness, I desire to speak with all possible respect. My friend Heep has not fixed the positive remuneration at too high a figure, but he has made a great deal, in the way of extrication from the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, contingent on the value of my services; and on the value of those services I pin my faith. Such address and intelligence as I chance to possess,’ said Mr. Micawber, boastfully disparaging himself, with the old genteel air, ‘will be devoted to my friend Heep’s service. I have already some acquaintance with the law—as a defendant on civil process—and I shall immediately apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and remarkable of our English jurists. I believe it is unnecessary to add that I allude to Mr. justice Blackstone.’
These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber’s discovering that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general interests of society; and by Master Micawber’s receiving those discoveries in a resentful spirit. I sat all the while, amazed by Mr. Micawber’s disclosure, and wondering what it meant; until Mrs. Micawber resumed the thread of the discourse, and claimed my attention.
‘What I particularly request Mr. Micawber to be careful of, is,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that he does not, my dear Mr. Copperfield, in applying himself to this subordinate branch of the law, place it out of his power to rise, ultimately, to the top of the tree. I am convinced that Mr. Micawber, giving his mind to a profession so adapted to his fertile resources, and his flow of language, must distinguish himself. Now, for example, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mrs. Micawber, assuming a profound air, ‘a judge, or even say a Chancellor. Does an individual place himself beyond the pale of those preferments by entering on such an office as Mr. Micawber has accepted?’
‘My dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber—but glancing inquisitively at Traddles, too; ‘we have time enough before us, for the consideration of those questions.’
‘Micawber,’ she returned, ‘no! Your mistake in life is, that you do not look forward far enough. You are bound, in justice to your family, if not to yourself, to take in at a comprehensive glance the extremest point in the horizon to which your abilities may lead you.’
Mr. Micawber coughed, and drank his punch with an air of exceeding satisfaction—still glancing at Traddles, as if he desired to have his opinion.
‘Why, the plain state of the case, Mrs. Micawber,’ said Traddles, mildly breaking the truth to her. ‘I mean the real prosaic fact, you know—’
‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘my dear Mr. Traddles, I wish to be as prosaic and literal as possible on a subject of so much importance.’
‘—Is,’ said Traddles, ‘that this branch of the law, even if Mr. Micawber were a regular solicitor—’
‘Exactly so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. (‘Wilkins, you are squinting, and will not be able to get your eyes back.’)
‘—Has nothing,’ pursued Traddles, ‘to do with that. Only a barrister is eligible for such preferments; and Mr. Micawber could not be a barrister, without being entered at an inn of court as a student, for five years.’
‘Do I follow you?’ said Mrs. Micawber, with her most affable air of business. ‘Do I understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that, at the expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would be eligible as a Judge or Chancellor?’
‘He would be ELIGIBLE,’ returned Traddles, with a strong emphasis on that word.
‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘That is quite sufficient. If such is the case, and Mr. Micawber forfeits no privilege by entering on these duties, my anxiety is set at rest. I speak,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘as a female, necessarily; but I have always been of opinion that Mr. Micawber possesses what I have heard my papa call, when I lived at home, the judicial mind; and I hope Mr. Micawber is now entering on a field where that mind will develop itself, and take a commanding station.’
I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw himself, in his judicial mind’s eye, on the woolsack. He passed his hand complacently over his bald head, and said with ostentatious resignation:
‘My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees of fortune. If I am reserved to wear a wig, I am at least prepared, externally,’ in allusion to his baldness, ‘for that distinction. I do not,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘regret my hair, and I may have been deprived of it for a specific purpose. I cannot say. It is my intention, my dear Copperfield, to educate my son for the Church; I will not deny that I should be happy, on his account, to attain to eminence.’
‘For the Church?’ said I, still pondering, between whiles, on Uriah Heep.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘He has a remarkable head-voice, and will commence as a chorister. Our residence at Canterbury, and our local connexion, will, no doubt, enable him to take advantage of any vacancy that may arise in the Cathedral corps.’
On looking at Master Micawber again, I saw that he had a certain expression of face, as if his voice were behind his eyebrows; where it presently appeared to be, on his singing us (as an alternative between that and bed) ‘The Wood-Pecker tapping’. After many compliments on this performance, we fell into some general conversation; and as I was too full of my desperate intentions to keep my altered circumstances to myself, I made them known to Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. I cannot express how extremely delighted they both were, by the idea of my aunt’s being in difficulties; and how comfortable and friendly it made them.
When we were nearly come to the last round of the punch, I addressed myself to Traddles, and reminded him that we must not separate, without wishing our friends health, happiness, and success in their new career. I begged Mr. Micawber to fill us bumpers, and proposed the toast in due form: shaking hands with him across the table, and kissing Mrs. Micawber, to commemorate that eventful occasion. Traddles imitated me in the first particular, but did not consider himself a sufficiently old friend to venture on the second.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, rising with one of his thumbs in each of his waistcoat pockets, ‘the companion of my youth: if I may be allowed the expression—and my esteemed friend Traddles: if I may be permitted to call him so—will allow me, on the part of Mrs. Micawber, myself, and our offspring, to thank them in the warmest and most uncompromising terms for their good wishes. It may be expected that on the eve of a migration which will consign us to a perfectly new existence,’ Mr. Micawber spoke as if they were going five hundred thousand miles, ‘I should offer a few valedictory remarks to two such friends as I see before me. But all that I have to say in this way, I have said. Whatever station in society I may attain, through the medium of the learned profession of which I am about to become an unworthy member, I shall endeavour not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be safe to adorn. Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts recoil—I allude to spectacles—and possessing myself of a cognomen, to which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on that score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the God of Day is once more high upon the mountain tops. On Monday next, on the arrival of the four o’clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my native heath—my name, Micawber!’
Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and drank two glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said with much solemnity:
‘One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete, and that is to perform an act of justice. My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles has, on two several occasions, “put his name”, if I may use a common expression, to bills of exchange for my accommodation. On the first occasion Mr. Thomas Traddles was left—let me say, in short, in the lurch. The fulfilment of the second has not yet arrived. The amount of the first obligation,’ here Mr. Micawber carefully referred to papers, ‘was, I believe, twenty-three, four, nine and a half, of the second, according to my entry of that transaction, eighteen, six, two. These sums, united, make a total, if my calculation is correct, amounting to forty-one, ten, eleven and a half. My friend Copperfield will perhaps do me the favour to check that total?’
I did so and found it correct.
‘To leave this metropolis,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘and my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part of this obligation, would weigh upon my mind to an insupportable extent. I have, therefore, prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, and I now hold in my hand, a document, which accomplishes the desired object. I beg to hand to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles my I.O.U. for forty-one, ten, eleven and a half, and I am happy to recover my moral dignity, and to know that I can once more walk erect before my fellow man!’
With this introduction (which greatly affected him), Mr. Micawber placed his I.O.U. in the hands of Traddles, and said he wished him well in every relation of life. I am persuaded, not only that this was quite the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it. Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength of this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he lighted us downstairs. We parted with great heartiness on both sides; and when I had seen Traddles to his own door, and was going home alone, I thought, among the other odd and contradictory things I mused upon, that, slippery as Mr. Micawber was, I was probably indebted to some compassionate recollection he retained of me as his boy-lodger, for never having been asked by him for money. I certainly should not have had the moral courage to refuse it; and I have no doubt he knew that (to his credit be it written), quite as well as I did.
CHAPTER 37. A LITTLE COLD WATER
My new life had lasted for more than a week, and I was stronger than ever in those tremendous practical resolutions that I felt the crisis required. I continued to walk extremely fast, and to have a general idea that I was getting on. I made it a rule to take as much out of myself as I possibly could, in my way of doing everything to which I applied my energies. I made a perfect victim of myself. I even entertained some idea of putting myself on a vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in becoming a graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora.
As yet, little Dora was quite unconscious of my desperate firmness, otherwise than as my letters darkly shadowed it forth. But another Saturday came, and on that Saturday evening she was to be at Miss Mills’s; and when Mr. Mills had gone to his whist-club (telegraphed to me in the street, by a bird-cage in the drawing-room middle window), I was to go there to tea.
By this time, we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street, where Mr. Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute felicity. My aunt had obtained a signal victory over Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing the first pitcher she planted on the stairs out of window, and protecting in person, up and down the staircase, a supernumerary whom she engaged from the outer world. These vigorous measures struck such terror to the breast of Mrs. Crupp, that she subsided into her own kitchen, under the impression that my aunt was mad. My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs. Crupp’s opinion and everybody else’s, and rather favouring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the bold, became within a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than encounter my aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her portly form behind doors—leaving visible, however, a wide margin of flannel petticoat—or would shrink into dark corners. This gave my aunt such unspeakable satisfaction, that I believe she took a delight in prowling up and down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the top of her head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was likely to be in the way.
My aunt, being uncommonly neat and ingenious, made so many little improvements in our domestic arrangements, that I seemed to be richer instead of poorer. Among the rest, she converted the pantry into a dressing-room for me; and purchased and embellished a bedstead for my occupation, which looked as like a bookcase in the daytime as a bedstead could. I was the object of her constant solicitude; and my poor mother herself could not have loved me better, or studied more how to make me happy.
Peggotty had considered herself highly privileged in being allowed to participate in these labours; and, although she still retained something of her old sentiment of awe in reference to my aunt, had received so many marks of encouragement and confidence, that they were the best friends possible. But the time had now come (I am speaking of the Saturday when I was to take tea at Miss Mills’s) when it was necessary for her to return home, and enter on the discharge of the duties she had undertaken in behalf of Ham. ‘So good-bye, Barkis,’ said my aunt, ‘and take care of yourself! I am sure I never thought I could be sorry to lose you!’
I took Peggotty to the coach office and saw her off. She cried at parting, and confided her brother to my friendship as Ham had done. We had heard nothing of him since he went away, that sunny afternoon.
‘And now, my own dear Davy,’ said Peggotty, ‘if, while you’re a prentice, you should want any money to spend; or if, when you’re out of your time, my dear, you should want any to set you up (and you must do one or other, or both, my darling); who has such a good right to ask leave to lend it you, as my sweet girl’s own old stupid me!’
I was not so savagely independent as to say anything in reply, but that if ever I borrowed money of anyone, I would borrow it of her. Next to accepting a large sum on the spot, I believe this gave Peggotty more comfort than anything I could have done.
‘And, my dear!’ whispered Peggotty, ‘tell the pretty little angel that I should so have liked to see her, only for a minute! And tell her that before she marries my boy, I’ll come and make your house so beautiful for you, if you’ll let me!’
I declared that nobody else should touch it; and this gave Peggotty such delight that she went away in good spirits.
I fatigued myself as much as I possibly could in the Commons all day, by a variety of devices, and at the appointed time in the evening repaired to Mr. Mills’s street. Mr. Mills, who was a terrible fellow to fall asleep after dinner, had not yet gone out, and there was no bird-cage in the middle window.
He kept me waiting so long, that I fervently hoped the Club would fine him for being late. At last he came out; and then I saw my own Dora hang up the bird-cage, and peep into the balcony to look for me, and run in again when she saw I was there, while Jip remained behind, to bark injuriously at an immense butcher’s dog in the street, who could have taken him like a pill.
Dora came to the drawing-room door to meet me; and Jip came scrambling out, tumbling over his own growls, under the impression that I was a Bandit; and we all three went in, as happy and loving as could be. I soon carried desolation into the bosom of our joys—not that I meant to do it, but that I was so full of the subject—by asking Dora, without the smallest preparation, if she could love a beggar?
My pretty, little, startled Dora! Her only association with the word was a yellow face and a nightcap, or a pair of crutches, or a wooden leg, or a dog with a decanter-stand in his mouth, or something of that kind; and she stared at me with the most delightful wonder.
‘How can you ask me anything so foolish?’ pouted Dora. ‘Love a beggar!’
‘Dora, my own dearest!’ said I. ‘I am a beggar!’
‘How can you be such a silly thing,’ replied Dora, slapping my hand, ‘as to sit there, telling such stories? I’ll make Jip bite you!’
Her childish way was the most delicious way in the world to me, but it was necessary to be explicit, and I solemnly repeated:
‘Dora, my own life, I am your ruined David!’
‘I declare I’ll make Jip bite you!’ said Dora, shaking her curls, ‘if you are so ridiculous.’
But I looked so serious, that Dora left off shaking her curls, and laid her trembling little hand upon my shoulder, and first looked scared and anxious, then began to cry. That was dreadful. I fell upon my knees before the sofa, caressing her, and imploring her not to rend my heart; but, for some time, poor little Dora did nothing but exclaim Oh dear! Oh dear! And oh, she was so frightened! And where was Julia Mills! And oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! until I was almost beside myself.
At last, after an agony of supplication and protestation, I got Dora to look at me, with a horrified expression of face, which I gradually soothed until it was only loving, and her soft, pretty cheek was lying against mine. Then I told her, with my arms clasped round her, how I loved her, so dearly, and so dearly; how I felt it right to offer to release her from her engagement, because now I was poor; how I never could bear it, or recover it, if I lost her; how I had no fears of poverty, if she had none, my arm being nerved and my heart inspired by her; how I was already working with a courage such as none but lovers knew; how I had begun to be practical, and look into the future; how a crust well earned was sweeter far than a feast inherited; and much more to the same purpose, which I delivered in a burst of passionate eloquence quite surprising to myself, though I had been thinking about it, day and night, ever since my aunt had astonished me.
‘Is your heart mine still, dear Dora?’ said I, rapturously, for I knew by her clinging to me that it was.
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Dora. ‘Oh, yes, it’s all yours. Oh, don’t be dreadful!’
I dreadful! To Dora!
‘Don’t talk about being poor, and working hard!’ said Dora, nestling closer to me. ‘Oh, don’t, don’t!’
‘My dearest love,’ said I, ‘the crust well-earned—’
‘Oh, yes; but I don’t want to hear any more about crusts!’ said Dora. ‘And Jip must have a mutton-chop every day at twelve, or he’ll die.’
I was charmed with her childish, winning way. I fondly explained to Dora that Jip should have his mutton-chop with his accustomed regularity. I drew a picture of our frugal home, made independent by my labour—sketching in the little house I had seen at Highgate, and my aunt in her room upstairs.
‘I am not dreadful now, Dora?’ said I, tenderly.
‘Oh, no, no!’ cried Dora. ‘But I hope your aunt will keep in her own room a good deal. And I hope she’s not a scolding old thing!’
If it were possible for me to love Dora more than ever, I am sure I did. But I felt she was a little impracticable. It damped my new-born ardour, to find that ardour so difficult of communication to her. I made another trial. When she was quite herself again, and was curling Jip’s ears, as he lay upon her lap, I became grave, and said:
‘My own! May I mention something?’
‘Oh, please don’t be practical!’ said Dora, coaxingly. ‘Because it frightens me so!’
‘Sweetheart!’ I returned; ‘there is nothing to alarm you in all this. I want you to think of it quite differently. I want to make it nerve you, and inspire you, Dora!’
‘Oh, but that’s so shocking!’ cried Dora.
‘My love, no. Perseverance and strength of character will enable us to bear much worse things.’ ‘But I haven’t got any strength at all,’ said Dora, shaking her curls. ‘Have I, Jip? Oh, do kiss Jip, and be agreeable!’
It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me for that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into kissing form, as she directed the operation, which she insisted should be performed symmetrically, on the centre of his nose. I did as she bade me—rewarding myself afterwards for my obedience—and she charmed me out of my graver character for I don’t know how long.
‘But, Dora, my beloved!’ said I, at last resuming it; ‘I was going to mention something.’
The judge of the Prerogative Court might have fallen in love with her, to see her fold her little hands and hold them up, begging and praying me not to be dreadful any more.
‘Indeed I am not going to be, my darling!’ I assured her. ‘But, Dora, my love, if you will sometimes think,—not despondingly, you know; far from that!—but if you will sometimes think—just to encourage yourself—that you are engaged to a poor man—’
‘Don’t, don’t! Pray don’t!’ cried Dora. ‘It’s so very dreadful!’
‘My soul, not at all!’ said I, cheerfully. ‘If you will sometimes think of that, and look about now and then at your papa’s housekeeping, and endeavour to acquire a little habit—of accounts, for instance—’
Poor little Dora received this suggestion with something that was half a sob and half a scream.
‘—It would be so useful to us afterwards,’ I went on. ‘And if you would promise me to read a little—a little Cookery Book that I would send you, it would be so excellent for both of us. For our path in life, my Dora,’ said I, warming with the subject, ‘is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!’
I was going on at a great rate, with a clenched hand, and a most enthusiastic countenance; but it was quite unnecessary to proceed. I had said enough. I had done it again. Oh, she was so frightened! Oh, where was Julia Mills! Oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! So that, in short, I was quite distracted, and raved about the drawing-room.
I thought I had killed her, this time. I sprinkled water on her face. I went down on my knees. I plucked at my hair. I denounced myself as a remorseless brute and a ruthless beast. I implored her forgiveness. I besought her to look up. I ravaged Miss Mills’s work-box for a smelling-bottle, and in my agony of mind applied an ivory needle-case instead, and dropped all the needles over Dora. I shook my fists at Jip, who was as frantic as myself. I did every wild extravagance that could be done, and was a long way beyond the end of my wits when Miss Mills came into the room.
‘Who has done this?’ exclaimed Miss Mills, succouring her friend.
I replied, ‘I, Miss Mills! I have done it! Behold the destroyer!’—or words to that effect—and hid my face from the light, in the sofa cushion.
At first Miss Mills thought it was a quarrel, and that we were verging on the Desert of Sahara; but she soon found out how matters stood, for my dear affectionate little Dora, embracing her, began exclaiming that I was ‘a poor labourer’; and then cried for me, and embraced me, and asked me would I let her give me all her money to keep, and then fell on Miss Mills’s neck, sobbing as if her tender heart were broken.
Miss Mills must have been born to be a blessing to us. She ascertained from me in a few words what it was all about, comforted Dora, and gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer—from my manner of stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was a navigator, and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day with a wheelbarrow—and so brought us together in peace. When we were quite composed, and Dora had gone up-stairs to put some rose-water to her eyes, Miss Mills rang for tea. In the ensuing interval, I told Miss Mills that she was evermore my friend, and that my heart must cease to vibrate ere I could forget her sympathy.
I then expounded to Miss Mills what I had endeavoured, so very unsuccessfully, to expound to Dora. Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.
I said to Miss Mills that this was very true, and who should know it better than I, who loved Dora with a love that never mortal had experienced yet? But on Miss Mills observing, with despondency, that it were well indeed for some hearts if this were so, I explained that I begged leave to restrict the observation to mortals of the masculine gender.
I then put it to Miss Mills, to say whether she considered that there was or was not any practical merit in the suggestion I had been anxious to make, concerning the accounts, the housekeeping, and the Cookery Book?
Miss Mills, after some consideration, thus replied:
‘Mr. Copperfield, I will be plain with you. Mental suffering and trial supply, in some natures, the place of years, and I will be as plain with you as if I were a Lady Abbess. No. The suggestion is not appropriate to our Dora. Our dearest Dora is a favourite child of nature. She is a thing of light, and airiness, and joy. I am free to confess that if it could be done, it might be well, but—’ And Miss Mills shook her head.
I was encouraged by this closing admission on the part of Miss Mills to ask her, whether, for Dora’s sake, if she had any opportunity of luring her attention to such preparations for an earnest life, she would avail herself of it? Miss Mills replied in the affirmative so readily, that I further asked her if she would take charge of the Cookery Book; and, if she ever could insinuate it upon Dora’s acceptance, without frightening her, undertake to do me that crowning service. Miss Mills accepted this trust, too; but was not sanguine.
And Dora returned, looking such a lovely little creature, that I really doubted whether she ought to be troubled with anything so ordinary. And she loved me so much, and was so captivating (particularly when she made Jip stand on his hind legs for toast, and when she pretended to hold that nose of his against the hot teapot for punishment because he wouldn’t), that I felt like a sort of Monster who had got into a Fairy’s bower, when I thought of having frightened her, and made her cry.
After tea we had the guitar; and Dora sang those same dear old French songs about the impossibility of ever on any account leaving off dancing, La ra la, La ra la, until I felt a much greater Monster than before.
We had only one check to our pleasure, and that happened a little while before I took my leave, when, Miss Mills chancing to make some allusion to tomorrow morning, I unluckily let out that, being obliged to exert myself now, I got up at five o’clock. Whether Dora had any idea that I was a Private Watchman, I am unable to say; but it made a great impression on her, and she neither played nor sang any more.
It was still on her mind when I bade her adieu; and she said to me, in her pretty coaxing way—as if I were a doll, I used to think:
‘Now don’t get up at five o’clock, you naughty boy. It’s so nonsensical!’
‘My love,’ said I, ‘I have work to do.’
‘But don’t do it!’ returned Dora. ‘Why should you?’
It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face, otherwise than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.
‘Oh! How ridiculous!’ cried Dora.
‘How shall we live without, Dora?’ said I.
‘How? Any how!’ said Dora.
She seemed to think she had quite settled the question, and gave me such a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent heart, that I would hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer, for a fortune.
Well! I loved her, and I went on loving her, most absorbingly, entirely, and completely. But going on, too, working pretty hard, and busily keeping red-hot all the irons I now had in the fire, I would sit sometimes of a night, opposite my aunt, thinking how I had frightened Dora that time, and how I could best make my way with a guitar-case through the forest of difficulty, until I used to fancy that my head was turning quite grey.
CHAPTER 38. A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies’ legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; in short, it was almost heart-breaking.
It might have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora, who was the stay and anchor of my tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of difficulty, and I went on cutting them down, one after another, with such vigour, that in three or four months I was in a condition to make an experiment on one of our crack speakers in the Commons. Shall I ever forget how the crack speaker walked off from me before I began, and left my imbecile pencil staggering about the paper as if it were in a fit!
This would not do, it was quite clear. I was flying too high, and should never get on, so. I resorted to Traddles for advice; who suggested that he should dictate speeches to me, at a pace, and with occasional stoppages, adapted to my weakness. Very grateful for this friendly aid, I accepted the proposal; and night after night, almost every night, for a long time, we had a sort of Private Parliament in Buckingham Street, after I came home from the Doctor’s.
I should like to see such a Parliament anywhere else! My aunt and Mr. Dick represented the Government or the Opposition (as the case might be), and Traddles, with the assistance of Enfield’s Speakers, or a volume of parliamentary orations, thundered astonishing invectives against them. Standing by the table, with his finger in the page to keep the place, and his right arm flourishing above his head, Traddles, as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Burke, Lord Castlereagh, Viscount Sidmouth, or Mr. Canning, would work himself into the most violent heats, and deliver the most withering denunciations of the profligacy and corruption of my aunt and Mr. Dick; while I used to sit, at a little distance, with my notebook on my knee, fagging after him with all my might and main. The inconsistency and recklessness of Traddles were not to be exceeded by any real politician. He was for any description of policy, in the compass of a week; and nailed all sorts of colours to every denomination of mast. My aunt, looking very like an immovable Chancellor of the Exchequer, would occasionally throw in an interruption or two, as ‘Hear!’ or ‘No!’ or ‘Oh!’ when the text seemed to require it: which was always a signal to Mr. Dick (a perfect country gentleman) to follow lustily with the same cry. But Mr. Dick got taxed with such things in the course of his Parliamentary career, and was made responsible for such awful consequences, that he became uncomfortable in his mind sometimes. I believe he actually began to be afraid he really had been doing something, tending to the annihilation of the British constitution, and the ruin of the country.
Often and often we pursued these debates until the clock pointed to midnight, and the candles were burning down. The result of so much good practice was, that by and by I began to keep pace with Traddles pretty well, and should have been quite triumphant if I had had the least idea what my notes were about. But, as to reading them after I had got them, I might as well have copied the Chinese inscriptions of an immense collection of tea-chests, or the golden characters on all the great red and green bottles in the chemists’ shops!
There was nothing for it, but to turn back and begin all over again. It was very hard, but I turned back, though with a heavy heart, and began laboriously and methodically to plod over the same tedious ground at a snail’s pace; stopping to examine minutely every speck in the way, on all sides, and making the most desperate efforts to know these elusive characters by sight wherever I met them. I was always punctual at the office; at the Doctor’s too: and I really did work, as the common expression is, like a cart-horse. One day, when I went to the Commons as usual, I found Mr. Spenlow in the doorway looking extremely grave, and talking to himself. As he was in the habit of complaining of pains in his head—he had naturally a short throat, and I do seriously believe he over-starched himself—I was at first alarmed by the idea that he was not quite right in that direction; but he soon relieved my uneasiness.
Instead of returning my ‘Good morning’ with his usual affability, he looked at me in a distant, ceremonious manner, and coldly requested me to accompany him to a certain coffee-house, which, in those days, had a door opening into the Commons, just within the little archway in St. Paul’s Churchyard. I complied, in a very uncomfortable state, and with a warm shooting all over me, as if my apprehensions were breaking out into buds. When I allowed him to go on a little before, on account of the narrowness of the way, I observed that he carried his head with a lofty air that was particularly unpromising; and my mind misgave me that he had found out about my darling Dora.
If I had not guessed this, on the way to the coffee-house, I could hardly have failed to know what was the matter when I followed him into an upstairs room, and found Miss Murdstone there, supported by a background of sideboard, on which were several inverted tumblers sustaining lemons, and two of those extraordinary boxes, all corners and flutings, for sticking knives and forks in, which, happily for mankind, are now obsolete.
Miss Murdstone gave me her chilly finger-nails, and sat severely rigid. Mr. Spenlow shut the door, motioned me to a chair, and stood on the hearth-rug in front of the fireplace.
‘Have the goodness to show Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, what you have in your reticule, Miss Murdstone.’
I believe it was the old identical steel-clasped reticule of my childhood, that shut up like a bite. Compressing her lips, in sympathy with the snap, Miss Murdstone opened it—opening her mouth a little at the same time—and produced my last letter to Dora, teeming with expressions of devoted affection.
‘I believe that is your writing, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
I was very hot, and the voice I heard was very unlike mine, when I said, ‘It is, sir!’
‘If I am not mistaken,’ said Mr. Spenlow, as Miss Murdstone brought a parcel of letters out of her reticule, tied round with the dearest bit of blue ribbon, ‘those are also from your pen, Mr. Copperfield?’
I took them from her with a most desolate sensation; and, glancing at such phrases at the top, as ‘My ever dearest and own Dora,’ ‘My best beloved angel,’ ‘My blessed one for ever,’ and the like, blushed deeply, and inclined my head.
‘No, thank you!’ said Mr. Spenlow, coldly, as I mechanically offered them back to him. ‘I will not deprive you of them. Miss Murdstone, be so good as to proceed!’
That gentle creature, after a moment’s thoughtful survey of the carpet, delivered herself with much dry unction as follows.
‘I must confess to having entertained my suspicions of Miss Spenlow, in reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I observed Miss Spenlow and David Copperfield, when they first met; and the impression made upon me then was not agreeable. The depravity of the human heart is such—’
‘You will oblige me, ma’am,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, ‘by confining yourself to facts.’
Miss Murdstone cast down her eyes, shook her head as if protesting against this unseemly interruption, and with frowning dignity resumed:
‘Since I am to confine myself to facts, I will state them as dryly as I can. Perhaps that will be considered an acceptable course of proceeding. I have already said, sir, that I have had my suspicions of Miss Spenlow, in reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I have frequently endeavoured to find decisive corroboration of those suspicions, but without effect. I have therefore forborne to mention them to Miss Spenlow’s father’; looking severely at him—‘knowing how little disposition there usually is in such cases, to acknowledge the conscientious discharge of duty.’
Mr. Spenlow seemed quite cowed by the gentlemanly sternness of Miss Murdstone’s manner, and deprecated her severity with a conciliatory little wave of his hand.
‘On my return to Norwood, after the period of absence occasioned by my brother’s marriage,’ pursued Miss Murdstone in a disdainful voice, ‘and on the return of Miss Spenlow from her visit to her friend Miss Mills, I imagined that the manner of Miss Spenlow gave me greater occasion for suspicion than before. Therefore I watched Miss Spenlow closely.’
Dear, tender little Dora, so unconscious of this Dragon’s eye!
‘Still,’ resumed Miss Murdstone, ‘I found no proof until last night. It appeared to me that Miss Spenlow received too many letters from her friend Miss Mills; but Miss Mills being her friend with her father’s full concurrence,’ another telling blow at Mr. Spenlow, ‘it was not for me to interfere. If I may not be permitted to allude to the natural depravity of the human heart, at least I may—I must—be permitted, so far to refer to misplaced confidence.’
Mr. Spenlow apologetically murmured his assent.
‘Last evening after tea,’ pursued Miss Murdstone, ‘I observed the little dog starting, rolling, and growling about the drawing-room, worrying something. I said to Miss Spenlow, “Dora, what is that the dog has in his mouth? It’s paper.” Miss Spenlow immediately put her hand to her frock, gave a sudden cry, and ran to the dog. I interposed, and said, “Dora, my love, you must permit me.”’
Oh Jip, miserable Spaniel, this wretchedness, then, was your work!
‘Miss Spenlow endeavoured,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘to bribe me with kisses, work-boxes, and small articles of jewellery—that, of course, I pass over. The little dog retreated under the sofa on my approaching him, and was with great difficulty dislodged by the fire-irons. Even when dislodged, he still kept the letter in his mouth; and on my endeavouring to take it from him, at the imminent risk of being bitten, he kept it between his teeth so pertinaciously as to suffer himself to be held suspended in the air by means of the document. At length I obtained possession of it. After perusing it, I taxed Miss Spenlow with having many such letters in her possession; and ultimately obtained from her the packet which is now in David Copperfield’s hand.’
Here she ceased; and snapping her reticule again, and shutting her mouth, looked as if she might be broken, but could never be bent.
‘You have heard Miss Murdstone,’ said Mr. Spenlow, turning to me. ‘I beg to ask, Mr. Copperfield, if you have anything to say in reply?’
The picture I had before me, of the beautiful little treasure of my heart, sobbing and crying all night—of her being alone, frightened, and wretched, then—of her having so piteously begged and prayed that stony-hearted woman to forgive her—of her having vainly offered her those kisses, work-boxes, and trinkets—of her being in such grievous distress, and all for me—very much impaired the little dignity I had been able to muster. I am afraid I was in a tremulous state for a minute or so, though I did my best to disguise it.
‘There is nothing I can say, sir,’ I returned, ‘except that all the blame is mine. Dora—’
‘Miss Spenlow, if you please,’ said her father, majestically.
‘—was induced and persuaded by me,’ I went on, swallowing that colder designation, ‘to consent to this concealment, and I bitterly regret it.’
‘You are very much to blame, sir,’ said Mr. Spenlow, walking to and fro upon the hearth-rug, and emphasizing what he said with his whole body instead of his head, on account of the stiffness of his cravat and spine. ‘You have done a stealthy and unbecoming action, Mr. Copperfield. When I take a gentleman to my house, no matter whether he is nineteen, twenty-nine, or ninety, I take him there in a spirit of confidence. If he abuses my confidence, he commits a dishonourable action, Mr. Copperfield.’
‘I feel it, sir, I assure you,’ I returned. ‘But I never thought so, before. Sincerely, honestly, indeed, Mr. Spenlow, I never thought so, before. I love Miss Spenlow to that extent—’
‘Pooh! nonsense!’ said Mr. Spenlow, reddening. ‘Pray don’t tell me to my face that you love my daughter, Mr. Copperfield!’
‘Could I defend my conduct if I did not, sir?’ I returned, with all humility.
‘Can you defend your conduct if you do, sir?’ said Mr. Spenlow, stopping short upon the hearth-rug. ‘Have you considered your years, and my daughter’s years, Mr. Copperfield? Have you considered what it is to undermine the confidence that should subsist between my daughter and myself? Have you considered my daughter’s station in life, the projects I may contemplate for her advancement, the testamentary intentions I may have with reference to her? Have you considered anything, Mr. Copperfield?’
‘Very little, sir, I am afraid;’ I answered, speaking to him as respectfully and sorrowfully as I felt; ‘but pray believe me, I have considered my own worldly position. When I explained it to you, we were already engaged—’
‘I BEG,’ said Mr. Spenlow, more like Punch than I had ever seen him, as he energetically struck one hand upon the other—I could not help noticing that even in my despair; ‘that YOU Will NOT talk to me of engagements, Mr. Copperfield!’
The otherwise immovable Miss Murdstone laughed contemptuously in one short syllable.
‘When I explained my altered position to you, sir,’ I began again, substituting a new form of expression for what was so unpalatable to him, ‘this concealment, into which I am so unhappy as to have led Miss Spenlow, had begun. Since I have been in that altered position, I have strained every nerve, I have exerted every energy, to improve it. I am sure I shall improve it in time. Will you grant me time—any length of time? We are both so young, sir,—’
‘You are right,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, nodding his head a great many times, and frowning very much, ‘you are both very young. It’s all nonsense. Let there be an end of the nonsense. Take away those letters, and throw them in the fire. Give me Miss Spenlow’s letters to throw in the fire; and although our future intercourse must, you are aware, be restricted to the Commons here, we will agree to make no further mention of the past. Come, Mr. Copperfield, you don’t want sense; and this is the sensible course.’
No. I couldn’t think of agreeing to it. I was very sorry, but there was a higher consideration than sense. Love was above all earthly considerations, and I loved Dora to idolatry, and Dora loved me. I didn’t exactly say so; I softened it down as much as I could; but I implied it, and I was resolute upon it. I don’t think I made myself very ridiculous, but I know I was resolute.
‘Very well, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I must try my influence with my daughter.’
Miss Murdstone, by an expressive sound, a long drawn respiration, which was neither a sigh nor a moan, but was like both, gave it as her opinion that he should have done this at first.
‘I must try,’ said Mr. Spenlow, confirmed by this support, ‘my influence with my daughter. Do you decline to take those letters, Mr. Copperfield?’ For I had laid them on the table.
Yes. I told him I hoped he would not think it wrong, but I couldn’t possibly take them from Miss Murdstone.
‘Nor from me?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
No, I replied with the profoundest respect; nor from him.
‘Very well!’ said Mr. Spenlow.
A silence succeeding, I was undecided whether to go or stay. At length I was moving quietly towards the door, with the intention of saying that perhaps I should consult his feelings best by withdrawing: when he said, with his hands in his coat pockets, into which it was as much as he could do to get them; and with what I should call, upon the whole, a decidedly pious air:
‘You are probably aware, Mr. Copperfield, that I am not altogether destitute of worldly possessions, and that my daughter is my nearest and dearest relative?’
I hurriedly made him a reply to the effect, that I hoped the error into which I had been betrayed by the desperate nature of my love, did not induce him to think me mercenary too?
‘I don’t allude to the matter in that light,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘It would be better for yourself, and all of us, if you WERE mercenary, Mr. Copperfield—I mean, if you were more discreet and less influenced by all this youthful nonsense. No. I merely say, with quite another view, you are probably aware I have some property to bequeath to my child?’
I certainly supposed so.
‘And you can hardly think,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘having experience of what we see, in the Commons here, every day, of the various unaccountable and negligent proceedings of men, in respect of their testamentary arrangements—of all subjects, the one on which perhaps the strangest revelations of human inconsistency are to be met with—but that mine are made?’
I inclined my head in acquiescence.
‘I should not allow,’ said Mr. Spenlow, with an evident increase of pious sentiment, and slowly shaking his head as he poised himself upon his toes and heels alternately, ‘my suitable provision for my child to be influenced by a piece of youthful folly like the present. It is mere folly. Mere nonsense. In a little while, it will weigh lighter than any feather. But I might—I might—if this silly business were not completely relinquished altogether, be induced in some anxious moment to guard her from, and surround her with protections against, the consequences of any foolish step in the way of marriage. Now, Mr. Copperfield, I hope that you will not render it necessary for me to open, even for a quarter of an hour, that closed page in the book of life, and unsettle, even for a quarter of an hour, grave affairs long since composed.’
There was a serenity, a tranquillity, a calm sunset air about him, which quite affected me. He was so peaceful and resigned—clearly had his affairs in such perfect train, and so systematically wound up—that he was a man to feel touched in the contemplation of. I really think I saw tears rise to his eyes, from the depth of his own feeling of all this.
But what could I do? I could not deny Dora and my own heart. When he told me I had better take a week to consider of what he had said, how could I say I wouldn’t take a week, yet how could I fail to know that no amount of weeks could influence such love as mine?
‘In the meantime, confer with Miss Trotwood, or with any person with any knowledge of life,’ said Mr. Spenlow, adjusting his cravat with both hands. ‘Take a week, Mr. Copperfield.’
I submitted; and, with a countenance as expressive as I was able to make it of dejected and despairing constancy, came out of the room. Miss Murdstone’s heavy eyebrows followed me to the door—I say her eyebrows rather than her eyes, because they were much more important in her face—and she looked so exactly as she used to look, at about that hour of the morning, in our parlour at Blunderstone, that I could have fancied I had been breaking down in my lessons again, and that the dead weight on my mind was that horrible old spelling-book, with oval woodcuts, shaped, to my youthful fancy, like the glasses out of spectacles.
When I got to the office, and, shutting out old Tiffey and the rest of them with my hands, sat at my desk, in my own particular nook, thinking of this earthquake that had taken place so unexpectedly, and in the bitterness of my spirit cursing Jip, I fell into such a state of torment about Dora, that I wonder I did not take up my hat and rush insanely to Norwood. The idea of their frightening her, and making her cry, and of my not being there to comfort her, was so excruciating, that it impelled me to write a wild letter to Mr. Spenlow, beseeching him not to visit upon her the consequences of my awful destiny. I implored him to spare her gentle nature—not to crush a fragile flower—and addressed him generally, to the best of my remembrance, as if, instead of being her father, he had been an Ogre, or the Dragon of Wantley. This letter I sealed and laid upon his desk before he returned; and when he came in, I saw him, through the half-opened door of his room, take it up and read it.
He said nothing about it all the morning; but before he went away in the afternoon he called me in, and told me that I need not make myself at all uneasy about his daughter’s happiness. He had assured her, he said, that it was all nonsense; and he had nothing more to say to her. He believed he was an indulgent father (as indeed he was), and I might spare myself any solicitude on her account.
‘You may make it necessary, if you are foolish or obstinate, Mr. Copperfield,’ he observed, ‘for me to send my daughter abroad again, for a term; but I have a better opinion of you. I hope you will be wiser than that, in a few days. As to Miss Murdstone,’ for I had alluded to her in the letter, ‘I respect that lady’s vigilance, and feel obliged to her; but she has strict charge to avoid the subject. All I desire, Mr. Copperfield, is, that it should be forgotten. All you have got to do, Mr. Copperfield, is to forget it.’
All! In the note I wrote to Miss Mills, I bitterly quoted this sentiment. All I had to do, I said, with gloomy sarcasm, was to forget Dora. That was all, and what was that! I entreated Miss Mills to see me, that evening. If it could not be done with Mr. Mills’s sanction and concurrence, I besought a clandestine interview in the back kitchen where the Mangle was. I informed her that my reason was tottering on its throne, and only she, Miss Mills, could prevent its being deposed. I signed myself, hers distractedly; and I couldn’t help feeling, while I read this composition over, before sending it by a porter, that it was something in the style of Mr. Micawber.
However, I sent it. At night I repaired to Miss Mills’s street, and walked up and down, until I was stealthily fetched in by Miss Mills’s maid, and taken the area way to the back kitchen. I have since seen reason to believe that there was nothing on earth to prevent my going in at the front door, and being shown up into the drawing-room, except Miss Mills’s love of the romantic and mysterious.
In the back kitchen, I raved as became me. I went there, I suppose, to make a fool of myself, and I am quite sure I did it. Miss Mills had received a hasty note from Dora, telling her that all was discovered, and saying. ‘Oh pray come to me, Julia, do, do!’ But Miss Mills, mistrusting the acceptability of her presence to the higher powers, had not yet gone; and we were all benighted in the Desert of Sahara.
Miss Mills had a wonderful flow of words, and liked to pour them out. I could not help feeling, though she mingled her tears with mine, that she had a dreadful luxury in our afflictions. She petted them, as I may say, and made the most of them. A deep gulf, she observed, had opened between Dora and me, and Love could only span it with its rainbow. Love must suffer in this stern world; it ever had been so, it ever would be so. No matter, Miss Mills remarked. Hearts confined by cobwebs would burst at last, and then Love was avenged.
This was small consolation, but Miss Mills wouldn’t encourage fallacious hopes. She made me much more wretched than I was before, and I felt (and told her with the deepest gratitude) that she was indeed a friend. We resolved that she should go to Dora the first thing in the morning, and find some means of assuring her, either by looks or words, of my devotion and misery. We parted, overwhelmed with grief; and I think Miss Mills enjoyed herself completely.
I confided all to my aunt when I got home; and in spite of all she could say to me, went to bed despairing. I got up despairing, and went out despairing. It was Saturday morning, and I went straight to the Commons.
I was surprised, when I came within sight of our office-door, to see the ticket-porters standing outside talking together, and some half-dozen stragglers gazing at the windows which were shut up. I quickened my pace, and, passing among them, wondering at their looks, went hurriedly in.
The clerks were there, but nobody was doing anything. Old Tiffey, for the first time in his life I should think, was sitting on somebody else’s stool, and had not hung up his hat.
‘This is a dreadful calamity, Mr. Copperfield,’ said he, as I entered.
‘What is?’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Don’t you know?’ cried Tiffey, and all the rest of them, coming round me.
‘No!’ said I, looking from face to face.
‘Mr. Spenlow,’ said Tiffey.
‘What about him!’
‘Dead!’ I thought it was the office reeling, and not I, as one of the clerks caught hold of me. They sat me down in a chair, untied my neck-cloth, and brought me some water. I have no idea whether this took any time.
‘Dead?’ said I.
‘He dined in town yesterday, and drove down in the phaeton by himself,’ said Tiffey, ‘having sent his own groom home by the coach, as he sometimes did, you know—’
‘Well?’
‘The phaeton went home without him. The horses stopped at the stable-gate. The man went out with a lantern. Nobody in the carriage.’
‘Had they run away?’
‘They were not hot,’ said Tiffey, putting on his glasses; ‘no hotter, I understand, than they would have been, going down at the usual pace. The reins were broken, but they had been dragging on the ground. The house was roused up directly, and three of them went out along the road. They found him a mile off.’
‘More than a mile off, Mr. Tiffey,’ interposed a junior.
‘Was it? I believe you are right,’ said Tiffey,—‘more than a mile off—not far from the church—lying partly on the roadside, and partly on the path, upon his face. Whether he fell out in a fit, or got out, feeling ill before the fit came on—or even whether he was quite dead then, though there is no doubt he was quite insensible—no one appears to know. If he breathed, certainly he never spoke. Medical assistance was got as soon as possible, but it was quite useless.’
I cannot describe the state of mind into which I was thrown by this intelligence. The shock of such an event happening so suddenly, and happening to one with whom I had been in any respect at variance—the appalling vacancy in the room he had occupied so lately, where his chair and table seemed to wait for him, and his handwriting of yesterday was like a ghost—the indefinable impossibility of separating him from the place, and feeling, when the door opened, as if he might come in—the lazy hush and rest there was in the office, and the insatiable relish with which our people talked about it, and other people came in and out all day, and gorged themselves with the subject—this is easily intelligible to anyone. What I cannot describe is, how, in the innermost recesses of my own heart, I had a lurking jealousy even of Death. How I felt as if its might would push me from my ground in Dora’s thoughts. How I was, in a grudging way I have no words for, envious of her grief. How it made me restless to think of her weeping to others, or being consoled by others. How I had a grasping, avaricious wish to shut out everybody from her but myself, and to be all in all to her, at that unseasonable time of all times.
In the trouble of this state of mind—not exclusively my own, I hope, but known to others—I went down to Norwood that night; and finding from one of the servants, when I made my inquiries at the door, that Miss Mills was there, got my aunt to direct a letter to her, which I wrote. I deplored the untimely death of Mr. Spenlow, most sincerely, and shed tears in doing so. I entreated her to tell Dora, if Dora were in a state to hear it, that he had spoken to me with the utmost kindness and consideration; and had coupled nothing but tenderness, not a single or reproachful word, with her name. I know I did this selfishly, to have my name brought before her; but I tried to believe it was an act of justice to his memory. Perhaps I did believe it.
My aunt received a few lines next day in reply; addressed, outside, to her; within, to me. Dora was overcome by grief; and when her friend had asked her should she send her love to me, had only cried, as she was always crying, ‘Oh, dear papa! oh, poor papa!’ But she had not said No, and that I made the most of.
Mr. Jorkins, who had been at Norwood since the occurrence, came to the office a few days afterwards. He and Tiffey were closeted together for some few moments, and then Tiffey looked out at the door and beckoned me in.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Mr. Tiffey and myself, Mr. Copperfield, are about to examine the desks, the drawers, and other such repositories of the deceased, with the view of sealing up his private papers, and searching for a Will. There is no trace of any, elsewhere. It may be as well for you to assist us, if you please.’
I had been in agony to obtain some knowledge of the circumstances in which my Dora would be placed—as, in whose guardianship, and so forth—and this was something towards it. We began the search at once; Mr. Jorkins unlocking the drawers and desks, and we all taking out the papers. The office-papers we placed on one side, and the private papers (which were not numerous) on the other. We were very grave; and when we came to a stray seal, or pencil-case, or ring, or any little article of that kind which we associated personally with him, we spoke very low.
We had sealed up several packets; and were still going on dustily and quietly, when Mr. Jorkins said to us, applying exactly the same words to his late partner as his late partner had applied to him:
‘Mr. Spenlow was very difficult to move from the beaten track. You know what he was! I am disposed to think he had made no will.’
‘Oh, I know he had!’ said I.
They both stopped and looked at me. ‘On the very day when I last saw him,’ said I, ‘he told me that he had, and that his affairs were long since settled.’
Mr. Jorkins and old Tiffey shook their heads with one accord.
‘That looks unpromising,’ said Tiffey.
‘Very unpromising,’ said Mr. Jorkins.
‘Surely you don’t doubt—’ I began.
‘My good Mr. Copperfield!’ said Tiffey, laying his hand upon my arm, and shutting up both his eyes as he shook his head: ‘if you had been in the Commons as long as I have, you would know that there is no subject on which men are so inconsistent, and so little to be trusted.’
‘Why, bless my soul, he made that very remark!’ I replied persistently.
‘I should call that almost final,’ observed Tiffey. ‘My opinion is—no will.’
It appeared a wonderful thing to me, but it turned out that there was no will. He had never so much as thought of making one, so far as his papers afforded any evidence; for there was no kind of hint, sketch, or memorandum, of any testamentary intention whatever. What was scarcely less astonishing to me, was, that his affairs were in a most disordered state. It was extremely difficult, I heard, to make out what he owed, or what he had paid, or of what he died possessed. It was considered likely that for years he could have had no clear opinion on these subjects himself. By little and little it came out, that, in the competition on all points of appearance and gentility then running high in the Commons, he had spent more than his professional income, which was not a very large one, and had reduced his private means, if they ever had been great (which was exceedingly doubtful), to a very low ebb indeed. There was a sale of the furniture and lease, at Norwood; and Tiffey told me, little thinking how interested I was in the story, that, paying all the just debts of the deceased, and deducting his share of outstanding bad and doubtful debts due to the firm, he wouldn’t give a thousand pounds for all the assets remaining.
This was at the expiration of about six weeks. I had suffered tortures all the time; and thought I really must have laid violent hands upon myself, when Miss Mills still reported to me, that my broken-hearted little Dora would say nothing, when I was mentioned, but ‘Oh, poor papa! Oh, dear papa!’ Also, that she had no other relations than two aunts, maiden sisters of Mr. Spenlow, who lived at Putney, and who had not held any other than chance communication with their brother for many years. Not that they had ever quarrelled (Miss Mills informed me); but that having been, on the occasion of Dora’s christening, invited to tea, when they considered themselves privileged to be invited to dinner, they had expressed their opinion in writing, that it was ‘better for the happiness of all parties’ that they should stay away. Since which they had gone their road, and their brother had gone his.
These two ladies now emerged from their retirement, and proposed to take Dora to live at Putney. Dora, clinging to them both, and weeping, exclaimed, ‘O yes, aunts! Please take Julia Mills and me and Jip to Putney!’ So they went, very soon after the funeral.
How I found time to haunt Putney, I am sure I don’t know; but I contrived, by some means or other, to prowl about the neighbourhood pretty often. Miss Mills, for the more exact discharge of the duties of friendship, kept a journal; and she used to meet me sometimes, on the Common, and read it, or (if she had not time to do that) lend it to me. How I treasured up the entries, of which I subjoin a sample—!
‘Monday. My sweet D. still much depressed. Headache. Called attention to J. as being beautifully sleek. D. fondled J. Associations thus awakened, opened floodgates of sorrow. Rush of grief admitted. (Are tears the dewdrops of the heart? J. M.)
‘Tuesday. D. weak and nervous. Beautiful in pallor. (Do we not remark this in moon likewise? J. M.) D., J. M. and J. took airing in carriage. J. looking out of window, and barking violently at dustman, occasioned smile to overspread features of D. (Of such slight links is chain of life composed! J. M.)
‘Wednesday. D. comparatively cheerful. Sang to her, as congenial melody, “Evening Bells”. Effect not soothing, but reverse. D. inexpressibly affected. Found sobbing afterwards, in own room. Quoted verses respecting self and young Gazelle. Ineffectually. Also referred to Patience on Monument. (Qy. Why on monument? J. M.)
‘Thursday. D. certainly improved. Better night. Slight tinge of damask revisiting cheek. Resolved to mention name of D. C. Introduced same, cautiously, in course of airing. D. immediately overcome. “Oh, dear, dear Julia! Oh, I have been a naughty and undutiful child!” Soothed and caressed. Drew ideal picture of D. C. on verge of tomb. D. again overcome. “Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do? Oh, take me somewhere!” Much alarmed. Fainting of D. and glass of water from public-house. (Poetical affinity. Chequered sign on door-post; chequered human life. Alas! J. M.)
‘Friday. Day of incident. Man appears in kitchen, with blue bag, “for lady’s boots left out to heel”. Cook replies, “No such orders.” Man argues point. Cook withdraws to inquire, leaving man alone with J. On Cook’s return, man still argues point, but ultimately goes. J. missing. D. distracted. Information sent to police. Man to be identified by broad nose, and legs like balustrades of bridge. Search made in every direction. No J. D. weeping bitterly, and inconsolable. Renewed reference to young Gazelle. Appropriate, but unavailing. Towards evening, strange boy calls. Brought into parlour. Broad nose, but no balustrades. Says he wants a pound, and knows a dog. Declines to explain further, though much pressed. Pound being produced by D. takes Cook to little house, where J. alone tied up to leg of table. Joy of D. who dances round J. while he eats his supper. Emboldened by this happy change, mention D. C. upstairs. D. weeps afresh, cries piteously, “Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t! It is so wicked to think of anything but poor papa!”—embraces J. and sobs herself to sleep. (Must not D. C. confine himself to the broad pinions of Time? J. M.)’
Miss Mills and her journal were my sole consolation at this period. To see her, who had seen Dora but a little while before—to trace the initial letter of Dora’s name through her sympathetic pages—to be made more and more miserable by her—were my only comforts. I felt as if I had been living in a palace of cards, which had tumbled down, leaving only Miss Mills and me among the ruins; I felt as if some grim enchanter had drawn a magic circle round the innocent goddess of my heart, which nothing indeed but those same strong pinions, capable of carrying so many people over so much, would enable me to enter!
CHAPTER 39. WICKFIELD AND HEEP
My aunt, beginning, I imagine, to be made seriously uncomfortable by my prolonged dejection, made a pretence of being anxious that I should go to Dover, to see that all was working well at the cottage, which was let; and to conclude an agreement, with the same tenant, for a longer term of occupation. Janet was drafted into the service of Mrs. Strong, where I saw her every day. She had been undecided, on leaving Dover, whether or no to give the finishing touch to that renunciation of mankind in which she had been educated, by marrying a pilot; but she decided against that venture. Not so much for the sake of principle, I believe, as because she happened not to like him.
Although it required an effort to leave Miss Mills, I fell rather willingly into my aunt’s pretence, as a means of enabling me to pass a few tranquil hours with Agnes. I consulted the good Doctor relative to an absence of three days; and the Doctor wishing me to take that relaxation,—he wished me to take more; but my energy could not bear that,—I made up my mind to go.
As to the Commons, I had no great occasion to be particular about my duties in that quarter. To say the truth, we were getting in no very good odour among the tip-top proctors, and were rapidly sliding down to but a doubtful position. The business had been indifferent under Mr. Jorkins, before Mr. Spenlow’s time; and although it had been quickened by the infusion of new blood, and by the display which Mr. Spenlow made, still it was not established on a sufficiently strong basis to bear, without being shaken, such a blow as the sudden loss of its active manager. It fell off very much. Mr. Jorkins, notwithstanding his reputation in the firm, was an easy-going, incapable sort of man, whose reputation out of doors was not calculated to back it up. I was turned over to him now, and when I saw him take his snuff and let the business go, I regretted my aunt’s thousand pounds more than ever.
But this was not the worst of it. There were a number of hangers-on and outsiders about the Commons, who, without being proctors themselves, dabbled in common-form business, and got it done by real proctors, who lent their names in consideration of a share in the spoil;—and there were a good many of these too. As our house now wanted business on any terms, we joined this noble band; and threw out lures to the hangers-on and outsiders, to bring their business to us. Marriage licences and small probates were what we all looked for, and what paid us best; and the competition for these ran very high indeed. Kidnappers and inveiglers were planted in all the avenues of entrance to the Commons, with instructions to do their utmost to cut off all persons in mourning, and all gentlemen with anything bashful in their appearance, and entice them to the offices in which their respective employers were interested; which instructions were so well observed, that I myself, before I was known by sight, was twice hustled into the premises of our principal opponent. The conflicting interests of these touting gentlemen being of a nature to irritate their feelings, personal collisions took place; and the Commons was even scandalized by our principal inveigler (who had formerly been in the wine trade, and afterwards in the sworn brokery line) walking about for some days with a black eye. Any one of these scouts used to think nothing of politely assisting an old lady in black out of a vehicle, killing any proctor whom she inquired for, representing his employer as the lawful successor and representative of that proctor, and bearing the old lady off (sometimes greatly affected) to his employer’s office. Many captives were brought to me in this way. As to marriage licences, the competition rose to such a pitch, that a shy gentleman in want of one, had nothing to do but submit himself to the first inveigler, or be fought for, and become the prey of the strongest. One of our clerks, who was an outsider, used, in the height of this contest, to sit with his hat on, that he might be ready to rush out and swear before a surrogate any victim who was brought in. The system of inveigling continues, I believe, to this day. The last time I was in the Commons, a civil able-bodied person in a white apron pounced out upon me from a doorway, and whispering the word ‘Marriage-licence’ in my ear, was with great difficulty prevented from taking me up in his arms and lifting me into a proctor’s. From this digression, let me proceed to Dover.
I found everything in a satisfactory state at the cottage; and was enabled to gratify my aunt exceedingly by reporting that the tenant inherited her feud, and waged incessant war against donkeys. Having settled the little business I had to transact there, and slept there one night, I walked on to Canterbury early in the morning. It was now winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day, and the sweeping downland, brightened up my hopes a little.
Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober pleasure that calmed my spirits, and eased my heart. There were the old signs, the old names over the shops, the old people serving in them. It appeared so long, since I had been a schoolboy there, that I wondered the place was so little changed, until I reflected how little I was changed myself. Strange to say, that quiet influence which was inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed to pervade even the city where she dwelt. The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and rooks whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence would have done; the battered gateways, one stuck full with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses, the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere—on everything—I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit.
Arrived at Mr. Wickfield’s house, I found, in the little lower room on the ground floor, where Uriah Heep had been of old accustomed to sit, Mr. Micawber plying his pen with great assiduity. He was dressed in a legal-looking suit of black, and loomed, burly and large, in that small office.
Mr. Micawber was extremely glad to see me, but a little confused too. He would have conducted me immediately into the presence of Uriah, but I declined.
‘I know the house of old, you recollect,’ said I, ‘and will find my way upstairs. How do you like the law, Mr. Micawber?’
‘My dear Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,’ said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was writing, ‘the mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of expression. Still, it is a great pursuit. A great pursuit!’
He then told me that he had become the tenant of Uriah Heep’s old house; and that Mrs. Micawber would be delighted to receive me, once more, under her own roof.
‘It is humble,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘—to quote a favourite expression of my friend Heep; but it may prove the stepping-stone to more ambitious domiciliary accommodation.’
I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to be satisfied with his friend Heep’s treatment of him? He got up to ascertain if the door were close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice:
‘My dear Copperfield, a man who labours under the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage. That disadvantage is not diminished, when that pressure necessitates the drawing of stipendiary emoluments, before those emoluments are strictly due and payable. All I can say is, that my friend Heep has responded to appeals to which I need not more particularly refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally to the honour of his head, and of his heart.’
‘I should not have supposed him to be very free with his money either,’ I observed.
‘Pardon me!’ said Mr. Micawber, with an air of constraint, ‘I speak of my friend Heep as I have experience.’
‘I am glad your experience is so favourable,’ I returned.
‘You are very obliging, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber; and hummed a tune.
‘Do you see much of Mr. Wickfield?’ I asked, to change the subject.
‘Not much,’ said Mr. Micawber, slightingly. ‘Mr. Wickfield is, I dare say, a man of very excellent intentions; but he is—in short, he is obsolete.’
‘I am afraid his partner seeks to make him so,’ said I.
‘My dear Copperfield!’ returned Mr. Micawber, after some uneasy evolutions on his stool, ‘allow me to offer a remark! I am here, in a capacity of confidence. I am here, in a position of trust. The discussion of some topics, even with Mrs. Micawber herself (so long the partner of my various vicissitudes, and a woman of a remarkable lucidity of intellect), is, I am led to consider, incompatible with the functions now devolving on me. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that in our friendly intercourse—which I trust will never be disturbed!—we draw a line. On one side of this line,’ said Mr. Micawber, representing it on the desk with the office ruler, ‘is the whole range of the human intellect, with a trifling exception; on the other, IS that exception; that is to say, the affairs of Messrs Wickfield and Heep, with all belonging and appertaining thereunto. I trust I give no offence to the companion of my youth, in submitting this proposition to his cooler judgement?’
Though I saw an uneasy change in Mr. Micawber, which sat tightly on him, as if his new duties were a misfit, I felt I had no right to be offended. My telling him so, appeared to relieve him; and he shook hands with me.
‘I am charmed, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘let me assure you, with Miss Wickfield. She is a very superior young lady, of very remarkable attractions, graces, and virtues. Upon my honour,’ said Mr. Micawber, indefinitely kissing his hand and bowing with his genteelest air, ‘I do Homage to Miss Wickfield! Hem!’ ‘I am glad of that, at least,’ said I.
‘If you had not assured us, my dear Copperfield, on the occasion of that agreeable afternoon we had the happiness of passing with you, that D. was your favourite letter,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I should unquestionably have supposed that A. had been so.’
We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time—of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances—of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it! I never had this mysterious impression more strongly in my life, than before he uttered those words.
I took my leave of Mr. Micawber, for the time, charging him with my best remembrances to all at home. As I left him, resuming his stool and his pen, and rolling his head in his stock, to get it into easier writing order, I clearly perceived that there was something interposed between him and me, since he had come into his new functions, which prevented our getting at each other as we used to do, and quite altered the character of our intercourse.
There was no one in the quaint old drawing-room, though it presented tokens of Mrs. Heep’s whereabouts. I looked into the room still belonging to Agnes, and saw her sitting by the fire, at a pretty old-fashioned desk she had, writing.
My darkening the light made her look up. What a pleasure to be the cause of that bright change in her attentive face, and the object of that sweet regard and welcome!
‘Ah, Agnes!’ said I, when we were sitting together, side by side; ‘I have missed you so much, lately!’
‘Indeed?’ she replied. ‘Again! And so soon?’
I shook my head.
‘I don’t know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that I ought to have. You were so much in the habit of thinking for me, in the happy old days here, and I came so naturally to you for counsel and support, that I really think I have missed acquiring it.’
‘And what is it?’ said Agnes, cheerfully.
‘I don’t know what to call it,’ I replied. ‘I think I am earnest and persevering?’
‘I am sure of it,’ said Agnes.
‘And patient, Agnes?’ I inquired, with a little hesitation.
‘Yes,’ returned Agnes, laughing. ‘Pretty well.’
‘And yet,’ said I, ‘I get so miserable and worried, and am so unsteady and irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know I must want—shall I call it—reliance, of some kind?’
‘Call it so, if you will,’ said Agnes.
‘Well!’ I returned. ‘See here! You come to London, I rely on you, and I have an object and a course at once. I am driven out of it, I come here, and in a moment I feel an altered person. The circumstances that distressed me are not changed, since I came into this room; but an influence comes over me in that short interval that alters me, oh, how much for the better! What is it? What is your secret, Agnes?’
Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.
‘It’s the old story,’ said I. ‘Don’t laugh, when I say it was always the same in little things as it is in greater ones. My old troubles were nonsense, and now they are serious; but whenever I have gone away from my adopted sister—’
Agnes looked up—with such a Heavenly face!—and gave me her hand, which I kissed.
‘Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!’
I felt so deeply what I said, it affected me so sincerely, that my voice failed, and I covered my face with my hand, and broke into tears. I write the truth. Whatever contradictions and inconsistencies there were within me, as there are within so many of us; whatever might have been so different, and so much better; whatever I had done, in which I had perversely wandered away from the voice of my own heart; I knew nothing of. I only knew that I was fervently in earnest, when I felt the rest and peace of having Agnes near me.
In her placid sisterly manner; with her beaming eyes; with her tender voice; and with that sweet composure, which had long ago made the house that held her quite a sacred place to me; she soon won me from this weakness, and led me on to tell all that had happened since our last meeting.
‘And there is not another word to tell, Agnes,’ said I, when I had made an end of my confidence. ‘Now, my reliance is on you.’
‘But it must not be on me, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, with a pleasant smile. ‘It must be on someone else.’
‘On Dora?’ said I.
‘Assuredly.’
‘Why, I have not mentioned, Agnes,’ said I, a little embarrassed, ‘that Dora is rather difficult to—I would not, for the world, say, to rely upon, because she is the soul of purity and truth—but rather difficult to—I hardly know how to express it, really, Agnes. She is a timid little thing, and easily disturbed and frightened. Some time ago, before her father’s death, when I thought it right to mention to her—but I’ll tell you, if you will bear with me, how it was.’
Accordingly, I told Agnes about my declaration of poverty, about the cookery-book, the housekeeping accounts, and all the rest of it.
‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she remonstrated, with a smile. ‘Just your old headlong way! You might have been in earnest in striving to get on in the world, without being so very sudden with a timid, loving, inexperienced girl. Poor Dora!’
I never heard such sweet forbearing kindness expressed in a voice, as she expressed in making this reply. It was as if I had seen her admiringly and tenderly embracing Dora, and tacitly reproving me, by her considerate protection, for my hot haste in fluttering that little heart. It was as if I had seen Dora, in all her fascinating artlessness, caressing Agnes, and thanking her, and coaxingly appealing against me, and loving me with all her childish innocence.
I felt so grateful to Agnes, and admired her so! I saw those two together, in a bright perspective, such well-associated friends, each adorning the other so much!
‘What ought I to do then, Agnes?’ I inquired, after looking at the fire a little while. ‘What would it be right to do?’
‘I think,’ said Agnes, ‘that the honourable course to take, would be to write to those two ladies. Don’t you think that any secret course is an unworthy one?’
‘Yes. If YOU think so,’ said I.
‘I am poorly qualified to judge of such matters,’ replied Agnes, with a modest hesitation, ‘but I certainly feel—in short, I feel that your being secret and clandestine, is not being like yourself.’
‘Like myself, in the too high opinion you have of me, Agnes, I am afraid,’ said I.
‘Like yourself, in the candour of your nature,’ she returned; ‘and therefore I would write to those two ladies. I would relate, as plainly and as openly as possible, all that has taken place; and I would ask their permission to visit sometimes, at their house. Considering that you are young, and striving for a place in life, I think it would be well to say that you would readily abide by any conditions they might impose upon you. I would entreat them not to dismiss your request, without a reference to Dora; and to discuss it with her when they should think the time suitable. I would not be too vehement,’ said Agnes, gently, ‘or propose too much. I would trust to my fidelity and perseverance—and to Dora.’
‘But if they were to frighten Dora again, Agnes, by speaking to her,’ said I. ‘And if Dora were to cry, and say nothing about me!’
‘Is that likely?’ inquired Agnes, with the same sweet consideration in her face.
‘God bless her, she is as easily scared as a bird,’ said I. ‘It might be! Or if the two Miss Spenlows (elderly ladies of that sort are odd characters sometimes) should not be likely persons to address in that way!’
‘I don’t think, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes to mine, ‘I would consider that. Perhaps it would be better only to consider whether it is right to do this; and, if it is, to do it.’
I had no longer any doubt on the subject. With a lightened heart, though with a profound sense of the weighty importance of my task, I devoted the whole afternoon to the composition of the draft of this letter; for which great purpose, Agnes relinquished her desk to me. But first I went downstairs to see Mr. Wickfield and Uriah Heep.
I found Uriah in possession of a new, plaster-smelling office, built out in the garden; looking extraordinarily mean, in the midst of a quantity of books and papers. He received me in his usual fawning way, and pretended not to have heard of my arrival from Mr. Micawber; a pretence I took the liberty of disbelieving. He accompanied me into Mr. Wickfield’s room, which was the shadow of its former self—having been divested of a variety of conveniences, for the accommodation of the new partner—and stood before the fire, warming his back, and shaving his chin with his bony hand, while Mr. Wickfield and I exchanged greetings.
‘You stay with us, Trotwood, while you remain in Canterbury?’ said Mr. Wickfield, not without a glance at Uriah for his approval.
‘Is there room for me?’ said I.
‘I am sure, Master Copperfield—I should say Mister, but the other comes so natural,’ said Uriah,—‘I would turn out of your old room with pleasure, if it would be agreeable.’
‘No, no,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Why should you be inconvenienced? There’s another room. There’s another room.’ ‘Oh, but you know,’ returned Uriah, with a grin, ‘I should really be delighted!’
To cut the matter short, I said I would have the other room or none at all; so it was settled that I should have the other room; and, taking my leave of the firm until dinner, I went upstairs again.
I had hoped to have no other companion than Agnes. But Mrs. Heep had asked permission to bring herself and her knitting near the fire, in that room; on pretence of its having an aspect more favourable for her rheumatics, as the wind then was, than the drawing-room or dining-parlour. Though I could almost have consigned her to the mercies of the wind on the topmost pinnacle of the Cathedral, without remorse, I made a virtue of necessity, and gave her a friendly salutation.
‘I’m umbly thankful to you, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, in acknowledgement of my inquiries concerning her health, ‘but I’m only pretty well. I haven’t much to boast of. If I could see my Uriah well settled in life, I couldn’t expect much more I think. How do you think my Ury looking, sir?’
I thought him looking as villainous as ever, and I replied that I saw no change in him.
‘Oh, don’t you think he’s changed?’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘There I must umbly beg leave to differ from you. Don’t you see a thinness in him?’
‘Not more than usual,’ I replied.
‘Don’t you though!’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘But you don’t take notice of him with a mother’s eye!’
His mother’s eye was an evil eye to the rest of the world, I thought as it met mine, howsoever affectionate to him; and I believe she and her son were devoted to one another. It passed me, and went on to Agnes.
‘Don’t YOU see a wasting and a wearing in him, Miss Wickfield?’ inquired Mrs. Heep.
‘No,’ said Agnes, quietly pursuing the work on which she was engaged. ‘You are too solicitous about him. He is very well.’
Mrs. Heep, with a prodigious sniff, resumed her knitting.
She never left off, or left us for a moment. I had arrived early in the day, and we had still three or four hours before dinner; but she sat there, plying her knitting-needles as monotonously as an hour-glass might have poured out its sands. She sat on one side of the fire; I sat at the desk in front of it; a little beyond me, on the other side, sat Agnes. Whensoever, slowly pondering over my letter, I lifted up my eyes, and meeting the thoughtful face of Agnes, saw it clear, and beam encouragement upon me, with its own angelic expression, I was conscious presently of the evil eye passing me, and going on to her, and coming back to me again, and dropping furtively upon the knitting. What the knitting was, I don’t know, not being learned in that art; but it looked like a net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of knitting-needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-looking enchantress, baulked as yet by the radiant goodness opposite, but getting ready for a cast of her net by and by.
At dinner she maintained her watch, with the same unwinking eyes. After dinner, her son took his turn; and when Mr. Wickfield, himself, and I were left alone together, leered at me, and writhed until I could hardly bear it. In the drawing-room, there was the mother knitting and watching again. All the time that Agnes sang and played, the mother sat at the piano. Once she asked for a particular ballad, which she said her Ury (who was yawning in a great chair) doted on; and at intervals she looked round at him, and reported to Agnes that he was in raptures with the music. But she hardly ever spoke—I question if she ever did—without making some mention of him. It was evident to me that this was the duty assigned to her.
This lasted until bedtime. To have seen the mother and son, like two great bats hanging over the whole house, and darkening it with their ugly forms, made me so uncomfortable, that I would rather have remained downstairs, knitting and all, than gone to bed. I hardly got any sleep. Next day the knitting and watching began again, and lasted all day.
I had not an opportunity of speaking to Agnes, for ten minutes. I could barely show her my letter. I proposed to her to walk out with me; but Mrs. Heep repeatedly complaining that she was worse, Agnes charitably remained within, to bear her company. Towards the twilight I went out by myself, musing on what I ought to do, and whether I was justified in withholding from Agnes, any longer, what Uriah Heep had told me in London; for that began to trouble me again, very much.
I had not walked out far enough to be quite clear of the town, upon the Ramsgate road, where there was a good path, when I was hailed, through the dust, by somebody behind me. The shambling figure, and the scanty great-coat, were not to be mistaken. I stopped, and Uriah Heep came up.
‘Well?’ said I.
‘How fast you walk!’ said he. ‘My legs are pretty long, but you’ve given ‘em quite a job.’
‘Where are you going?’ said I.
‘I am going with you, Master Copperfield, if you’ll allow me the pleasure of a walk with an old acquaintance.’ Saying this, with a jerk of his body, which might have been either propitiatory or derisive, he fell into step beside me.
‘Uriah!’ said I, as civilly as I could, after a silence.
‘Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah.
‘To tell you the truth (at which you will not be offended), I came Out to walk alone, because I have had so much company.’
He looked at me sideways, and said with his hardest grin, ‘You mean mother.’
‘Why yes, I do,’ said I.
‘Ah! But you know we’re so very umble,’ he returned. ‘And having such a knowledge of our own umbleness, we must really take care that we’re not pushed to the wall by them as isn’t umble. All stratagems are fair in love, sir.’
Raising his great hands until they touched his chin, he rubbed them softly, and softly chuckled; looking as like a malevolent baboon, I thought, as anything human could look.
‘You see,’ he said, still hugging himself in that unpleasant way, and shaking his head at me, ‘you’re quite a dangerous rival, Master Copperfield. You always was, you know.’
‘Do you set a watch upon Miss Wickfield, and make her home no home, because of me?’ said I.
‘Oh! Master Copperfield! Those are very arsh words,’ he replied.
‘Put my meaning into any words you like,’ said I. ‘You know what it is, Uriah, as well as I do.’
‘Oh no! You must put it into words,’ he said. ‘Oh, really! I couldn’t myself.’
‘Do you suppose,’ said I, constraining myself to be very temperate and quiet with him, on account of Agnes, ‘that I regard Miss Wickfield otherwise than as a very dear sister?’
‘Well, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, ‘you perceive I am not bound to answer that question. You may not, you know. But then, you see, you may!’
Anything to equal the low cunning of his visage, and of his shadowless eyes without the ghost of an eyelash, I never saw.
‘Come then!’ said I. ‘For the sake of Miss Wickfield—’
‘My Agnes!’ he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself. ‘Would you be so good as call her Agnes, Master Copperfield!’
‘For the sake of Agnes Wickfield—Heaven bless her!’
‘Thank you for that blessing, Master Copperfield!’ he interposed.
‘I will tell you what I should, under any other circumstances, as soon have thought of telling to—Jack Ketch.’
‘To who, sir?’ said Uriah, stretching out his neck, and shading his ear with his hand.
‘To the hangman,’ I returned. ‘The most unlikely person I could think of,’—though his own face had suggested the allusion quite as a natural sequence. ‘I am engaged to another young lady. I hope that contents you.’
‘Upon your soul?’ said Uriah.
I was about indignantly to give my assertion the confirmation he required, when he caught hold of my hand, and gave it a squeeze.
‘Oh, Master Copperfield!’ he said. ‘If you had only had the condescension to return my confidence when I poured out the fulness of my art, the night I put you so much out of the way by sleeping before your sitting-room fire, I never should have doubted you. As it is, I’m sure I’ll take off mother directly, and only too appy. I know you’ll excuse the precautions of affection, won’t you? What a pity, Master Copperfield, that you didn’t condescend to return my confidence! I’m sure I gave you every opportunity. But you never have condescended to me, as much as I could have wished. I know you have never liked me, as I have liked you!’
All this time he was squeezing my hand with his damp fishy fingers, while I made every effort I decently could to get it away. But I was quite unsuccessful. He drew it under the sleeve of his mulberry-coloured great-coat, and I walked on, almost upon compulsion, arm-in-arm with him.
‘Shall we turn?’ said Uriah, by and by wheeling me face about towards the town, on which the early moon was now shining, silvering the distant windows.
‘Before we leave the subject, you ought to understand,’ said I, breaking a pretty long silence, ‘that I believe Agnes Wickfield to be as far above you, and as far removed from all your aspirations, as that moon herself!’
‘Peaceful! Ain’t she!’ said Uriah. ‘Very! Now confess, Master Copperfield, that you haven’t liked me quite as I have liked you. All along you’ve thought me too umble now, I shouldn’t wonder?’
‘I am not fond of professions of humility,’ I returned, ‘or professions of anything else.’ ‘There now!’ said Uriah, looking flabby and lead-coloured in the moonlight. ‘Didn’t I know it! But how little you think of the rightful umbleness of a person in my station, Master Copperfield! Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness—not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the monitor-medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. “Be umble, Uriah,” says father to me, “and you’ll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it’s what goes down best. Be umble,” says father, “and you’ll do!” And really it ain’t done bad!’
It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.
‘When I was quite a young boy,’ said Uriah, ‘I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, “Hold hard!” When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. “People like to be above you,” says father, “keep yourself down.” I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!’
And he said all this—I knew, as I saw his face in the moonlight—that I might understand he was resolved to recompense himself by using his power. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.
His account of himself was so far attended with an agreeable result, that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order that he might have another hug of himself under the chin. Once apart from him, I was determined to keep apart; and we walked back, side by side, saying very little more by the way. Whether his spirits were elevated by the communication I had made to him, or by his having indulged in this retrospect, I don’t know; but they were raised by some influence. He talked more at dinner than was usual with him; asked his mother (off duty, from the moment of our re-entering the house) whether he was not growing too old for a bachelor; and once looked at Agnes so, that I would have given all I had, for leave to knock him down.
When we three males were left alone after dinner, he got into a more adventurous state. He had taken little or no wine; and I presume it was the mere insolence of triumph that was upon him, flushed perhaps by the temptation my presence furnished to its exhibition.
I had observed yesterday, that he tried to entice Mr. Wickfield to drink; and, interpreting the look which Agnes had given me as she went out, had limited myself to one glass, and then proposed that we should follow her. I would have done so again today; but Uriah was too quick for me.
‘We seldom see our present visitor, sir,’ he said, addressing Mr. Wickfield, sitting, such a contrast to him, at the end of the table, ‘and I should propose to give him welcome in another glass or two of wine, if you have no objections. Mr. Copperfield, your elth and appiness!’
I was obliged to make a show of taking the hand he stretched across to me; and then, with very different emotions, I took the hand of the broken gentleman, his partner.
‘Come, fellow-partner,’ said Uriah, ‘if I may take the liberty,—now, suppose you give us something or another appropriate to Copperfield!’
I pass over Mr. Wickfield’s proposing my aunt, his proposing Mr. Dick, his proposing Doctors’ Commons, his proposing Uriah, his drinking everything twice; his consciousness of his own weakness, the ineffectual effort that he made against it; the struggle between his shame in Uriah’s deportment, and his desire to conciliate him; the manifest exultation with which Uriah twisted and turned, and held him up before me. It made me sick at heart to see, and my hand recoils from writing it.
‘Come, fellow-partner!’ said Uriah, at last, ‘I’ll give you another one, and I umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the divinest of her sex.’
Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it down, look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink back in his elbow-chair.
‘I’m an umble individual to give you her elth,’ proceeded Uriah, ‘but I admire—adore her.’
No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I think, could have been more terrible to me, than the mental endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands.
‘Agnes,’ said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what the nature of his action was, ‘Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends? To be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her usband—’
Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her father rose up from the table! ‘What’s the matter?’ said Uriah, turning of a deadly colour. ‘You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I hope? If I say I’ve an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to it as another man. I have a better right to it than any other man!’
I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that I could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm himself a little. He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair, beating his head, trying to force me from him, and to force himself from me, not answering a word, not looking at or seeing anyone; blindly striving for he knew not what, his face all staring and distorted—a frightful spectacle.
I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned manner, not to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me. I besought him to think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to recollect how Agnes and I had grown up together, how I honoured her and loved her, how she was his pride and joy. I tried to bring her idea before him in any form; I even reproached him with not having firmness to spare her the knowledge of such a scene as this. I may have effected something, or his wildness may have spent itself; but by degrees he struggled less, and began to look at me—strangely at first, then with recognition in his eyes. At length he said, ‘I know, Trotwood! My darling child and you—I know! But look at him!’
He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very much out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.
‘Look at my torturer,’ he replied. ‘Before him I have step by step abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.’
‘I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and quiet, and your house and home too,’ said Uriah, with a sulky, hurried, defeated air of compromise. ‘Don’t be foolish, Mr. Wickfield. If I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I suppose? There’s no harm done.’
‘I looked for single motives in everyone,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘and I was satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest. But see what he is—oh, see what he is!’
‘You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,’ cried Uriah, with his long forefinger pointing towards me. ‘He’ll say something presently—mind you!—he’ll be sorry to have said afterwards, and you’ll be sorry to have heard!’
‘I’ll say anything!’ cried Mr. Wickfield, with a desperate air. ‘Why should I not be in all the world’s power if I am in yours?’
‘Mind! I tell you!’ said Uriah, continuing to warn me. ‘If you don’t stop his mouth, you’re not his friend! Why shouldn’t you be in all the world’s power, Mr. Wickfield? Because you have got a daughter. You and me know what we know, don’t we? Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse ‘em? I don’t. Can’t you see I am as umble as I can be? I tell you, if I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. What would you have, sir?’
‘Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!’ exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands. ‘What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house! I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road I have traversed since! Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness. My natural grief for my child’s mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I dearly love, I know—you know! I thought it possible that I could truly love one creature in the world, and not love the rest; I thought it possible that I could truly mourn for one creature gone out of the world, and not have some part in the grief of all who mourned. Thus the lessons of my life have been perverted! I have preyed on my own morbid coward heart, and it has preyed on me. Sordid in my grief, sordid in my love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!’
He dropped into a chair, and weakly sobbed. The excitement into which he had been roused was leaving him. Uriah came out of his corner.
‘I don’t know all I have done, in my fatuity,’ said Mr. Wickfield, putting out his hands, as if to deprecate my condemnation. ‘He knows best,’ meaning Uriah Heep, ‘for he has always been at my elbow, whispering me. You see the millstone that he is about my neck. You find him in my house, you find him in my business. You heard him, but a little time ago. What need have I to say more!’
‘You haven’t need to say so much, nor half so much, nor anything at all,’ observed Uriah, half defiant, and half fawning. ‘You wouldn’t have took it up so, if it hadn’t been for the wine. You’ll think better of it tomorrow, sir. If I have said too much, or more than I meant, what of it? I haven’t stood by it!’
The door opened, and Agnes, gliding in, without a vestige of colour in her face, put her arm round his neck, and steadily said, ‘Papa, you are not well. Come with me!’
He laid his head upon her shoulder, as if he were oppressed with heavy shame, and went out with her. Her eyes met mine for but an instant, yet I saw how much she knew of what had passed.
‘I didn’t expect he’d cut up so rough, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘But it’s nothing. I’ll be friends with him tomorrow. It’s for his good. I’m umbly anxious for his good.’
I gave him no answer, and went upstairs into the quiet room where Agnes had so often sat beside me at my books. Nobody came near me until late at night. I took up a book, and tried to read. I heard the clocks strike twelve, and was still reading, without knowing what I read, when Agnes touched me.
‘You will be going early in the morning, Trotwood! Let us say good-bye, now!’
She had been weeping, but her face then was so calm and beautiful!
‘Heaven bless you!’ she said, giving me her hand.
‘Dearest Agnes!’ I returned, ‘I see you ask me not to speak of tonight—but is there nothing to be done?’
‘There is God to trust in!’ she replied.
‘Can I do nothing—I, who come to you with my poor sorrows?’
‘And make mine so much lighter,’ she replied. ‘Dear Trotwood, no!’
‘Dear Agnes,’ I said, ‘it is presumptuous for me, who am so poor in all in which you are so rich—goodness, resolution, all noble qualities—to doubt or direct you; but you know how much I love you, and how much I owe you. You will never sacrifice yourself to a mistaken sense of duty, Agnes?’
More agitated for a moment than I had ever seen her, she took her hands from me, and moved a step back.
‘Say you have no such thought, dear Agnes! Much more than sister! Think of the priceless gift of such a heart as yours, of such a love as yours!’
Oh! long, long afterwards, I saw that face rise up before me, with its momentary look, not wondering, not accusing, not regretting. Oh, long, long afterwards, I saw that look subside, as it did now, into the lovely smile, with which she told me she had no fear for herself—I need have none for her—and parted from me by the name of Brother, and was gone!
It was dark in the morning, when I got upon the coach at the inn door. The day was just breaking when we were about to start, and then, as I sat thinking of her, came struggling up the coach side, through the mingled day and night, Uriah’s head.
‘Copperfield!’ said he, in a croaking whisper, as he hung by the iron on the roof, ‘I thought you’d be glad to hear before you went off, that there are no squares broke between us. I’ve been into his room already, and we’ve made it all smooth. Why, though I’m umble, I’m useful to him, you know; and he understands his interest when he isn’t in liquor! What an agreeable man he is, after all, Master Copperfield!’
I obliged myself to say that I was glad he had made his apology.
‘Oh, to be sure!’ said Uriah. ‘When a person’s umble, you know, what’s an apology? So easy! I say! I suppose,’ with a jerk, ‘you have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?’
‘I suppose I have,’ I replied.
‘I did that last night,’ said Uriah; ‘but it’ll ripen yet! It only wants attending to. I can wait!’
Profuse in his farewells, he got down again as the coachman got up. For anything I know, he was eating something to keep the raw morning air out; but he made motions with his mouth as if the pear were ripe already, and he were smacking his lips over it.
CHAPTER 40. THE WANDERER
We had a very serious conversation in Buckingham Street that night, about the domestic occurrences I have detailed in the last chapter. My aunt was deeply interested in them, and walked up and down the room with her arms folded, for more than two hours afterwards. Whenever she was particularly discomposed, she always performed one of these pedestrian feats; and the amount of her discomposure might always be estimated by the duration of her walk. On this occasion she was so much disturbed in mind as to find it necessary to open the bedroom door, and make a course for herself, comprising the full extent of the bedrooms from wall to wall; and while Mr. Dick and I sat quietly by the fire, she kept passing in and out, along this measured track, at an unchanging pace, with the regularity of a clock-pendulum.
When my aunt and I were left to ourselves by Mr. Dick’s going out to bed, I sat down to write my letter to the two old ladies. By that time she was tired of walking, and sat by the fire with her dress tucked up as usual. But instead of sitting in her usual manner, holding her glass upon her knee, she suffered it to stand neglected on the chimney-piece; and, resting her left elbow on her right arm, and her chin on her left hand, looked thoughtfully at me. As often as I raised my eyes from what I was about, I met hers. ‘I am in the lovingest of tempers, my dear,’ she would assure me with a nod, ‘but I am fidgeted and sorry!’
I had been too busy to observe, until after she was gone to bed, that she had left her night-mixture, as she always called it, untasted on the chimney-piece. She came to her door, with even more than her usual affection of manner, when I knocked to acquaint her with this discovery; but only said, ‘I have not the heart to take it, Trot, tonight,’ and shook her head, and went in again.
She read my letter to the two old ladies, in the morning, and approved of it. I posted it, and had nothing to do then, but wait, as patiently as I could, for the reply. I was still in this state of expectation, and had been, for nearly a week; when I left the Doctor’s one snowy night, to walk home.
It had been a bitter day, and a cutting north-east wind had blown for some time. The wind had gone down with the light, and so the snow had come on. It was a heavy, settled fall, I recollect, in great flakes; and it lay thick. The noise of wheels and tread of people were as hushed, as if the streets had been strewn that depth with feathers.
My shortest way home,—and I naturally took the shortest way on such a night—was through St. Martin’s Lane. Now, the church which gives its name to the lane, stood in a less free situation at that time; there being no open space before it, and the lane winding down to the Strand. As I passed the steps of the portico, I encountered, at the corner, a woman’s face. It looked in mine, passed across the narrow lane, and disappeared. I knew it. I had seen it somewhere. But I could not remember where. I had some association with it, that struck upon my heart directly; but I was thinking of anything else when it came upon me, and was confused.
On the steps of the church, there was the stooping figure of a man, who had put down some burden on the smooth snow, to adjust it; my seeing the face, and my seeing him, were simultaneous. I don’t think I had stopped in my surprise; but, in any case, as I went on, he rose, turned, and came down towards me. I stood face to face with Mr. Peggotty!
Then I remembered the woman. It was Martha, to whom Emily had given the money that night in the kitchen. Martha Endell—side by side with whom, he would not have seen his dear niece, Ham had told me, for all the treasures wrecked in the sea.
We shook hands heartily. At first, neither of us could speak a word.
‘Mas’r Davy!’ he said, gripping me tight, ‘it do my art good to see you, sir. Well met, well met!’
‘Well met, my dear old friend!’ said I.
‘I had my thowts o’ coming to make inquiration for you, sir, tonight,’ he said, ‘but knowing as your aunt was living along wi’ you—fur I’ve been down yonder—Yarmouth way—I was afeerd it was too late. I should have come early in the morning, sir, afore going away.’
‘Again?’ said I.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, patiently shaking his head, ‘I’m away tomorrow.’
‘Where were you going now?’ I asked.
‘Well!’ he replied, shaking the snow out of his long hair, ‘I was a-going to turn in somewheers.’
In those days there was a side-entrance to the stable-yard of the Golden Cross, the inn so memorable to me in connexion with his misfortune, nearly opposite to where we stood. I pointed out the gateway, put my arm through his, and we went across. Two or three public-rooms opened out of the stable-yard; and looking into one of them, and finding it empty, and a good fire burning, I took him in there.
When I saw him in the light, I observed, not only that his hair was long and ragged, but that his face was burnt dark by the sun. He was greyer, the lines in his face and forehead were deeper, and he had every appearance of having toiled and wandered through all varieties of weather; but he looked very strong, and like a man upheld by steadfastness of purpose, whom nothing could tire out. He shook the snow from his hat and clothes, and brushed it away from his face, while I was inwardly making these remarks. As he sat down opposite to me at a table, with his back to the door by which we had entered, he put out his rough hand again, and grasped mine warmly.
‘I’ll tell you, Mas’r Davy,’ he said,—‘wheer all I’ve been, and what-all we’ve heerd. I’ve been fur, and we’ve heerd little; but I’ll tell you!’
I rang the bell for something hot to drink. He would have nothing stronger than ale; and while it was being brought, and being warmed at the fire, he sat thinking. There was a fine, massive gravity in his face, I did not venture to disturb.
‘When she was a child,’ he said, lifting up his head soon after we were left alone, ‘she used to talk to me a deal about the sea, and about them coasts where the sea got to be dark blue, and to lay a-shining and a-shining in the sun. I thowt, odd times, as her father being drownded made her think on it so much. I doen’t know, you see, but maybe she believed—or hoped—he had drifted out to them parts, where the flowers is always a-blowing, and the country bright.’
‘It is likely to have been a childish fancy,’ I replied.
‘When she was—lost,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I know’d in my mind, as he would take her to them countries. I know’d in my mind, as he’d have told her wonders of ‘em, and how she was to be a lady theer, and how he got her to listen to him fust, along o’ sech like. When we see his mother, I know’d quite well as I was right. I went across-channel to France, and landed theer, as if I’d fell down from the sky.’
I saw the door move, and the snow drift in. I saw it move a little more, and a hand softly interpose to keep it open.
‘I found out an English gen’leman as was in authority,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and told him I was a-going to seek my niece. He got me them papers as I wanted fur to carry me through—I doen’t rightly know how they’re called—and he would have give me money, but that I was thankful to have no need on. I thank him kind, for all he done, I’m sure! “I’ve wrote afore you,” he says to me, “and I shall speak to many as will come that way, and many will know you, fur distant from here, when you’re a-travelling alone.” I told him, best as I was able, what my gratitoode was, and went away through France.’
‘Alone, and on foot?’ said I.
‘Mostly a-foot,’ he rejoined; ‘sometimes in carts along with people going to market; sometimes in empty coaches. Many mile a day a-foot, and often with some poor soldier or another, travelling to see his friends. I couldn’t talk to him,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘nor he to me; but we was company for one another, too, along the dusty roads.’
I should have known that by his friendly tone.
‘When I come to any town,’ he pursued, ‘I found the inn, and waited about the yard till someone turned up (someone mostly did) as know’d English. Then I told how that I was on my way to seek my niece, and they told me what manner of gentlefolks was in the house, and I waited to see any as seemed like her, going in or out. When it warn’t Em’ly, I went on agen. By little and little, when I come to a new village or that, among the poor people, I found they know’d about me. They would set me down at their cottage doors, and give me what-not fur to eat and drink, and show me where to sleep; and many a woman, Mas’r Davy, as has had a daughter of about Em’ly’s age, I’ve found a-waiting fur me, at Our Saviour’s Cross outside the village, fur to do me sim’lar kindnesses. Some has had daughters as was dead. And God only knows how good them mothers was to me!’
It was Martha at the door. I saw her haggard, listening face distinctly. My dread was lest he should turn his head, and see her too.
‘They would often put their children—particular their little girls,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘upon my knee; and many a time you might have seen me sitting at their doors, when night was coming in, a’most as if they’d been my Darling’s children. Oh, my Darling!’
Overpowered by sudden grief, he sobbed aloud. I laid my trembling hand upon the hand he put before his face. ‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, ‘doen’t take no notice.’
In a very little while he took his hand away and put it on his breast, and went on with his story. ‘They often walked with me,’ he said, ‘in the morning, maybe a mile or two upon my road; and when we parted, and I said, “I’m very thankful to you! God bless you!” they always seemed to understand, and answered pleasant. At last I come to the sea. It warn’t hard, you may suppose, for a seafaring man like me to work his way over to Italy. When I got theer, I wandered on as I had done afore. The people was just as good to me, and I should have gone from town to town, maybe the country through, but that I got news of her being seen among them Swiss mountains yonder. One as know’d his servant see ‘em there, all three, and told me how they travelled, and where they was. I made fur them mountains, Mas’r Davy, day and night. Ever so fur as I went, ever so fur the mountains seemed to shift away from me. But I come up with ‘em, and I crossed ‘em. When I got nigh the place as I had been told of, I began to think within my own self, “What shall I do when I see her?”’
The listening face, insensible to the inclement night, still drooped at the door, and the hands begged me—prayed me—not to cast it forth.
‘I never doubted her,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘No! Not a bit! On’y let her see my face—on’y let her heer my voice—on’y let my stanning still afore her bring to her thoughts the home she had fled away from, and the child she had been—and if she had growed to be a royal lady, she’d have fell down at my feet! I know’d it well! Many a time in my sleep had I heerd her cry out, “Uncle!” and seen her fall like death afore me. Many a time in my sleep had I raised her up, and whispered to her, “Em’ly, my dear, I am come fur to bring forgiveness, and to take you home!”’
He stopped and shook his head, and went on with a sigh.
‘He was nowt to me now. Em’ly was all. I bought a country dress to put upon her; and I know’d that, once found, she would walk beside me over them stony roads, go where I would, and never, never, leave me more. To put that dress upon her, and to cast off what she wore—to take her on my arm again, and wander towards home—to stop sometimes upon the road, and heal her bruised feet and her worse-bruised heart—was all that I thowt of now. I doen’t believe I should have done so much as look at him. But, Mas’r Davy, it warn’t to be—not yet! I was too late, and they was gone. Wheer, I couldn’t learn. Some said heer, some said theer. I travelled heer, and I travelled theer, but I found no Em’ly, and I travelled home.’
‘How long ago?’ I asked.
‘A matter o’ fower days,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I sighted the old boat arter dark, and the light a-shining in the winder. When I come nigh and looked in through the glass, I see the faithful creetur Missis Gummidge sittin’ by the fire, as we had fixed upon, alone. I called out, “Doen’t be afeerd! It’s Dan’l!” and I went in. I never could have thowt the old boat would have been so strange!’ From some pocket in his breast, he took out, with a very careful hand a small paper bundle containing two or three letters or little packets, which he laid upon the table.
‘This fust one come,’ he said, selecting it from the rest, ‘afore I had been gone a week. A fifty pound Bank note, in a sheet of paper, directed to me, and put underneath the door in the night. She tried to hide her writing, but she couldn’t hide it from Me!’
He folded up the note again, with great patience and care, in exactly the same form, and laid it on one side.
‘This come to Missis Gummidge,’ he said, opening another, ‘two or three months ago.’ After looking at it for some moments, he gave it to me, and added in a low voice, ‘Be so good as read it, sir.’
I read as follows:
‘Oh what will you feel when you see this writing, and know it comes from my wicked hand! But try, try—not for my sake, but for uncle’s goodness, try to let your heart soften to me, only for a little little time! Try, pray do, to relent towards a miserable girl, and write down on a bit of paper whether he is well, and what he said about me before you left off ever naming me among yourselves—and whether, of a night, when it is my old time of coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one he used to love so dear. Oh, my heart is breaking when I think about it! I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as hard with me as I deserve—as I well, well, know I deserve—but to be so gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and to send it to me. You need not call me Little, you need not call me by the name I have disgraced; but oh, listen to my agony, and have mercy on me so far as to write me some word of uncle, never, never to be seen in this world by my eyes again!
‘Dear, if your heart is hard towards me—justly hard, I know—but, listen, if it is hard, dear, ask him I have wronged the most—him whose wife I was to have been—before you quite decide against my poor poor prayer! If he should be so compassionate as to say that you might write something for me to read—I think he would, oh, I think he would, if you would only ask him, for he always was so brave and so forgiving—tell him then (but not else), that when I hear the wind blowing at night, I feel as if it was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was going up to God against me. Tell him that if I was to die tomorrow (and oh, if I was fit, I would be so glad to die!) I would bless him and uncle with my last words, and pray for his happy home with my last breath!’
Some money was enclosed in this letter also. Five pounds. It was untouched like the previous sum, and he refolded it in the same way. Detailed instructions were added relative to the address of a reply, which, although they betrayed the intervention of several hands, and made it difficult to arrive at any very probable conclusion in reference to her place of concealment, made it at least not unlikely that she had written from that spot where she was stated to have been seen.
‘What answer was sent?’ I inquired of Mr. Peggotty.
‘Missis Gummidge,’ he returned, ‘not being a good scholar, sir, Ham kindly drawed it out, and she made a copy on it. They told her I was gone to seek her, and what my parting words was.’
‘Is that another letter in your hand?’ said I.
‘It’s money, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, unfolding it a little way. ‘Ten pound, you see. And wrote inside, “From a true friend,” like the fust. But the fust was put underneath the door, and this come by the post, day afore yesterday. I’m a-going to seek her at the post-mark.’
He showed it to me. It was a town on the Upper Rhine. He had found out, at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country, and they had drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very well understand. He laid it between us on the table; and, with his chin resting on one hand, tracked his course upon it with the other.
I asked him how Ham was? He shook his head.
‘He works,’ he said, ‘as bold as a man can. His name’s as good, in all that part, as any man’s is, anywheres in the wureld. Anyone’s hand is ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help them. He’s never been heerd fur to complain. But my sister’s belief is (‘twixt ourselves) as it has cut him deep.’
‘Poor fellow, I can believe it!’
‘He ain’t no care, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn whisper—‘kinder no care no-how for his life. When a man’s wanted for rough sarvice in rough weather, he’s theer. When there’s hard duty to be done with danger in it, he steps for’ard afore all his mates. And yet he’s as gentle as any child. There ain’t a child in Yarmouth that doen’t know him.’
He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his hand; put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in his breast again. The face was gone from the door. I still saw the snow drifting in; but nothing else was there.
‘Well!’ he said, looking to his bag, ‘having seen you tonight, Mas’r Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow morning. You have seen what I’ve got heer’; putting his hand on where the little packet lay; ‘all that troubles me is, to think that any harm might come to me, afore that money was give back. If I was to die, and it was lost, or stole, or elseways made away with, and it was never know’d by him but what I’d took it, I believe the t’other wureld wouldn’t hold me! I believe I must come back!’
He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again, before going out.
‘I’d go ten thousand mile,’ he said, ‘I’d go till I dropped dead, to lay that money down afore him. If I do that, and find my Em’ly, I’m content. If I doen’t find her, maybe she’ll come to hear, sometime, as her loving uncle only ended his search for her when he ended his life; and if I know her, even that will turn her home at last!’
As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure flit away before us. I turned him hastily on some pretence, and held him in conversation until it was gone.
He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he could find a clean, plain lodging for the night. I went with him over Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore. Everything seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he resumed his solitary journey through the snow.
I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the face, looked awfully around for it. It was not there. The snow had covered our late footprints; my new track was the only one to be seen; and even that began to die away (it snowed so fast) as I looked back over my shoulder.
CHAPTER 41. DORA’S AUNTS
At last, an answer came from the two old ladies. They presented their compliments to Mr. Copperfield, and informed him that they had given his letter their best consideration, ‘with a view to the happiness of both parties’—which I thought rather an alarming expression, not only because of the use they had made of it in relation to the family difference before-mentioned, but because I had (and have all my life) observed that conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks, easily let off, and liable to take a great variety of shapes and colours not at all suggested by their original form. The Misses Spenlow added that they begged to forbear expressing, ‘through the medium of correspondence’, an opinion on the subject of Mr. Copperfield’s communication; but that if Mr. Copperfield would do them the favour to call, upon a certain day (accompanied, if he thought proper, by a confidential friend), they would be happy to hold some conversation on the subject.
To this favour, Mr. Copperfield immediately replied, with his respectful compliments, that he would have the honour of waiting on the Misses Spenlow, at the time appointed; accompanied, in accordance with their kind permission, by his friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple. Having dispatched which missive, Mr. Copperfield fell into a condition of strong nervous agitation; and so remained until the day arrived.
It was a great augmentation of my uneasiness to be bereaved, at this eventful crisis, of the inestimable services of Miss Mills. But Mr. Mills, who was always doing something or other to annoy me—or I felt as if he were, which was the same thing—had brought his conduct to a climax, by taking it into his head that he would go to India. Why should he go to India, except to harass me? To be sure he had nothing to do with any other part of the world, and had a good deal to do with that part; being entirely in the India trade, whatever that was (I had floating dreams myself concerning golden shawls and elephants’ teeth); having been at Calcutta in his youth; and designing now to go out there again, in the capacity of resident partner. But this was nothing to me. However, it was so much to him that for India he was bound, and Julia with him; and Julia went into the country to take leave of her relations; and the house was put into a perfect suit of bills, announcing that it was to be let or sold, and that the furniture (Mangle and all) was to be taken at a valuation. So, here was another earthquake of which I became the sport, before I had recovered from the shock of its predecessor!
I was in several minds how to dress myself on the important day; being divided between my desire to appear to advantage, and my apprehensions of putting on anything that might impair my severely practical character in the eyes of the Misses Spenlow. I endeavoured to hit a happy medium between these two extremes; my aunt approved the result; and Mr. Dick threw one of his shoes after Traddles and me, for luck, as we went downstairs.
Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to him as I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that he had never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very upright. It gave him a surprised look—not to say a hearth-broomy kind of expression—which, my apprehensions whispered, might be fatal to us.
I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking to Putney; and saying that if he WOULD smooth it down a little—
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, lifting off his hat, and rubbing his hair all kinds of ways, ‘nothing would give me greater pleasure. But it won’t.’
‘Won’t be smoothed down?’ said I.
‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine.’
I was a little disappointed, I must confess, but thoroughly charmed by his good-nature too. I told him how I esteemed his good-nature; and said that his hair must have taken all the obstinacy out of his character, for he had none.
‘Oh!’ returned Traddles, laughing. ‘I assure you, it’s quite an old story, my unfortunate hair. My uncle’s wife couldn’t bear it. She said it exasperated her. It stood very much in my way, too, when I first fell in love with Sophy. Very much!’
‘Did she object to it?’
‘SHE didn’t,’ rejoined Traddles; ‘but her eldest sister—the one that’s the Beauty—quite made game of it, I understand. In fact, all the sisters laugh at it.’
‘Agreeable!’ said I.
‘Yes,’ returned Traddles with perfect innocence, ‘it’s a joke for us. They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in her desk, and is obliged to shut it in a clasped book, to keep it down. We laugh about it.’
‘By the by, my dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘your experience may suggest something to me. When you became engaged to the young lady whom you have just mentioned, did you make a regular proposal to her family? Was there anything like—what we are going through today, for instance?’ I added, nervously.
‘Why,’ replied Traddles, on whose attentive face a thoughtful shade had stolen, ‘it was rather a painful transaction, Copperfield, in my case. You see, Sophy being of so much use in the family, none of them could endure the thought of her ever being married. Indeed, they had quite settled among themselves that she never was to be married, and they called her the old maid. Accordingly, when I mentioned it, with the greatest precaution, to Mrs. Crewler—’
‘The mama?’ said I.
‘The mama,’ said Traddles—‘Reverend Horace Crewler—when I mentioned it with every possible precaution to Mrs. Crewler, the effect upon her was such that she gave a scream and became insensible. I couldn’t approach the subject again, for months.’
‘You did at last?’ said I.
‘Well, the Reverend Horace did,’ said Traddles. ‘He is an excellent man, most exemplary in every way; and he pointed out to her that she ought, as a Christian, to reconcile herself to the sacrifice (especially as it was so uncertain), and to bear no uncharitable feeling towards me. As to myself, Copperfield, I give you my word, I felt a perfect bird of prey towards the family.’
‘The sisters took your part, I hope, Traddles?’
‘Why, I can’t say they did,’ he returned. ‘When we had comparatively reconciled Mrs. Crewler to it, we had to break it to Sarah. You recollect my mentioning Sarah, as the one that has something the matter with her spine?’
‘Perfectly!’
‘She clenched both her hands,’ said Traddles, looking at me in dismay; ‘shut her eyes; turned lead-colour; became perfectly stiff; and took nothing for two days but toast-and-water, administered with a tea-spoon.’
‘What a very unpleasant girl, Traddles!’ I remarked.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Copperfield!’ said Traddles. ‘She is a very charming girl, but she has a great deal of feeling. In fact, they all have. Sophy told me afterwards, that the self-reproach she underwent while she was in attendance upon Sarah, no words could describe. I know it must have been severe, by my own feelings, Copperfield; which were like a criminal’s. After Sarah was restored, we still had to break it to the other eight; and it produced various effects upon them of a most pathetic nature. The two little ones, whom Sophy educates, have only just left off de-testing me.’
‘At any rate, they are all reconciled to it now, I hope?’ said I.
‘Ye-yes, I should say they were, on the whole, resigned to it,’ said Traddles, doubtfully. ‘The fact is, we avoid mentioning the subject; and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great consolation to them. There will be a deplorable scene, whenever we are married. It will be much more like a funeral, than a wedding. And they’ll all hate me for taking her away!’
His honest face, as he looked at me with a serio-comic shake of his head, impresses me more in the remembrance than it did in the reality, for I was by this time in a state of such excessive trepidation and wandering of mind, as to be quite unable to fix my attention on anything. On our approaching the house where the Misses Spenlow lived, I was at such a discount in respect of my personal looks and presence of mind, that Traddles proposed a gentle stimulant in the form of a glass of ale. This having been administered at a neighbouring public-house, he conducted me, with tottering steps, to the Misses Spenlow’s door.
I had a vague sensation of being, as it were, on view, when the maid opened it; and of wavering, somehow, across a hall with a weather-glass in it, into a quiet little drawing-room on the ground-floor, commanding a neat garden. Also of sitting down here, on a sofa, and seeing Traddles’s hair start up, now his hat was removed, like one of those obtrusive little figures made of springs, that fly out of fictitious snuff-boxes when the lid is taken off. Also of hearing an old-fashioned clock ticking away on the chimney-piece, and trying to make it keep time to the jerking of my heart,—which it wouldn’t. Also of looking round the room for any sign of Dora, and seeing none. Also of thinking that Jip once barked in the distance, and was instantly choked by somebody. Ultimately I found myself backing Traddles into the fireplace, and bowing in great confusion to two dry little elderly ladies, dressed in black, and each looking wonderfully like a preparation in chip or tan of the late Mr. Spenlow.
‘Pray,’ said one of the two little ladies, ‘be seated.’
When I had done tumbling over Traddles, and had sat upon something which was not a cat—my first seat was—I so far recovered my sight, as to perceive that Mr. Spenlow had evidently been the youngest of the family; that there was a disparity of six or eight years between the two sisters; and that the younger appeared to be the manager of the conference, inasmuch as she had my letter in her hand—so familiar as it looked to me, and yet so odd!—and was referring to it through an eye-glass. They were dressed alike, but this sister wore her dress with a more youthful air than the other; and perhaps had a trifle more frill, or tucker, or brooch, or bracelet, or some little thing of that kind, which made her look more lively. They were both upright in their carriage, formal, precise, composed, and quiet. The sister who had not my letter, had her arms crossed on her breast, and resting on each other, like an Idol.
‘Mr. Copperfield, I believe,’ said the sister who had got my letter, addressing herself to Traddles.
This was a frightful beginning. Traddles had to indicate that I was Mr. Copperfield, and I had to lay claim to myself, and they had to divest themselves of a preconceived opinion that Traddles was Mr. Copperfield, and altogether we were in a nice condition. To improve it, we all distinctly heard Jip give two short barks, and receive another choke.
‘Mr. Copperfield!’ said the sister with the letter.
I did something—bowed, I suppose—and was all attention, when the other sister struck in.
‘My sister Lavinia,’ said she ‘being conversant with matters of this nature, will state what we consider most calculated to promote the happiness of both parties.’
I discovered afterwards that Miss Lavinia was an authority in affairs of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr. Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured of her. My private opinion is, that this was entirely a gratuitous assumption, and that Pidger was altogether innocent of any such sentiments—to which he had never given any sort of expression that I could ever hear of. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a superstition, however, that he would have declared his passion, if he had not been cut short in his youth (at about sixty) by over-drinking his constitution, and over-doing an attempt to set it right again by swilling Bath water. They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed upon.
‘We will not,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘enter on the past history of this matter. Our poor brother Francis’s death has cancelled that.’
‘We had not,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘been in the habit of frequent association with our brother Francis; but there was no decided division or disunion between us. Francis took his road; we took ours. We considered it conducive to the happiness of all parties that it should be so. And it was so.’
Each of the sisters leaned a little forward to speak, shook her head after speaking, and became upright again when silent. Miss Clarissa never moved her arms. She sometimes played tunes upon them with her fingers—minuets and marches I should think—but never moved them.
‘Our niece’s position, or supposed position, is much changed by our brother Francis’s death,’ said Miss Lavinia; ‘and therefore we consider our brother’s opinions as regarded her position as being changed too. We have no reason to doubt, Mr. Copperfield, that you are a young gentleman possessed of good qualities and honourable character; or that you have an affection—or are fully persuaded that you have an affection—for our niece.’
I replied, as I usually did whenever I had a chance, that nobody had ever loved anybody else as I loved Dora. Traddles came to my assistance with a confirmatory murmur.
Miss Lavinia was going on to make some rejoinder, when Miss Clarissa, who appeared to be incessantly beset by a desire to refer to her brother Francis, struck in again:
‘If Dora’s mama,’ she said, ‘when she married our brother Francis, had at once said that there was not room for the family at the dinner-table, it would have been better for the happiness of all parties.’
‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia. ‘Perhaps we needn’t mind that now.’
‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘it belongs to the subject. With your branch of the subject, on which alone you are competent to speak, I should not think of interfering. On this branch of the subject I have a voice and an opinion. It would have been better for the happiness of all parties, if Dora’s mama, when she married our brother Francis, had mentioned plainly what her intentions were. We should then have known what we had to expect. We should have said “Pray do not invite us, at any time”; and all possibility of misunderstanding would have been avoided.’
When Miss Clarissa had shaken her head, Miss Lavinia resumed: again referring to my letter through her eye-glass. They both had little bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds’ eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries.
Miss Lavinia, as I have said, resumed:
‘You ask permission of my sister Clarissa and myself, Mr. Copperfield, to visit here, as the accepted suitor of our niece.’
‘If our brother Francis,’ said Miss Clarissa, breaking out again, if I may call anything so calm a breaking out, ‘wished to surround himself with an atmosphere of Doctors’ Commons, and of Doctors’ Commons only, what right or desire had we to object? None, I am sure. We have ever been far from wishing to obtrude ourselves on anyone. But why not say so? Let our brother Francis and his wife have their society. Let my sister Lavinia and myself have our society. We can find it for ourselves, I hope.’
As this appeared to be addressed to Traddles and me, both Traddles and I made some sort of reply. Traddles was inaudible. I think I observed, myself, that it was highly creditable to all concerned. I don’t in the least know what I meant.
‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, having now relieved her mind, ‘you can go on, my dear.’
Miss Lavinia proceeded:
‘Mr. Copperfield, my sister Clarissa and I have been very careful indeed in considering this letter; and we have not considered it without finally showing it to our niece, and discussing it with our niece. We have no doubt that you think you like her very much.’
‘Think, ma’am,’ I rapturously began, ‘oh!—’
But Miss Clarissa giving me a look (just like a sharp canary), as requesting that I would not interrupt the oracle, I begged pardon.
‘Affection,’ said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every clause, ‘mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lies in ambush, waits and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the shade.’
Of course I did not understand then that this was an allusion to her supposed experience of the stricken Pidger; but I saw, from the gravity with which Miss Clarissa nodded her head, that great weight was attached to these words.
‘The light—for I call them, in comparison with such sentiments, the light—inclinations of very young people,’ pursued Miss Lavinia, ‘are dust, compared to rocks. It is owing to the difficulty of knowing whether they are likely to endure or have any real foundation, that my sister Clarissa and myself have been very undecided how to act, Mr. Copperfield, and Mr.—’
‘Traddles,’ said my friend, finding himself looked at.
‘I beg pardon. Of the Inner Temple, I believe?’ said Miss Clarissa, again glancing at my letter.
Traddles said ‘Exactly so,’ and became pretty red in the face.
Now, although I had not received any express encouragement as yet, I fancied that I saw in the two little sisters, and particularly in Miss Lavinia, an intensified enjoyment of this new and fruitful subject of domestic interest, a settling down to make the most of it, a disposition to pet it, in which there was a good bright ray of hope. I thought I perceived that Miss Lavinia would have uncommon satisfaction in superintending two young lovers, like Dora and me; and that Miss Clarissa would have hardly less satisfaction in seeing her superintend us, and in chiming in with her own particular department of the subject whenever that impulse was strong upon her. This gave me courage to protest most vehemently that I loved Dora better than I could tell, or anyone believe; that all my friends knew how I loved her; that my aunt, Agnes, Traddles, everyone who knew me, knew how I loved her, and how earnest my love had made me. For the truth of this, I appealed to Traddles. And Traddles, firing up as if he were plunging into a Parliamentary Debate, really did come out nobly: confirming me in good round terms, and in a plain sensible practical manner, that evidently made a favourable impression.
‘I speak, if I may presume to say so, as one who has some little experience of such things,’ said Traddles, ‘being myself engaged to a young lady—one of ten, down in Devonshire—and seeing no probability, at present, of our engagement coming to a termination.’
‘You may be able to confirm what I have said, Mr. Traddles,’ observed Miss Lavinia, evidently taking a new interest in him, ‘of the affection that is modest and retiring; that waits and waits?’
‘Entirely, ma’am,’ said Traddles.
Miss Clarissa looked at Miss Lavinia, and shook her head gravely. Miss Lavinia looked consciously at Miss Clarissa, and heaved a little sigh. ‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘take my smelling-bottle.’
Miss Lavinia revived herself with a few whiffs of aromatic vinegar—Traddles and I looking on with great solicitude the while; and then went on to say, rather faintly:
‘My sister and myself have been in great doubt, Mr. Traddles, what course we ought to take in reference to the likings, or imaginary likings, of such very young people as your friend Mr. Copperfield and our niece.’
‘Our brother Francis’s child,’ remarked Miss Clarissa. ‘If our brother Francis’s wife had found it convenient in her lifetime (though she had an unquestionable right to act as she thought best) to invite the family to her dinner-table, we might have known our brother Francis’s child better at the present moment. Sister Lavinia, proceed.’
Miss Lavinia turned my letter, so as to bring the superscription towards herself, and referred through her eye-glass to some orderly-looking notes she had made on that part of it.
‘It seems to us,’ said she, ‘prudent, Mr. Traddles, to bring these feelings to the test of our own observation. At present we know nothing of them, and are not in a situation to judge how much reality there may be in them. Therefore we are inclined so far to accede to Mr. Copperfield’s proposal, as to admit his visits here.’
‘I shall never, dear ladies,’ I exclaimed, relieved of an immense load of apprehension, ‘forget your kindness!’
‘But,’ pursued Miss Lavinia,—‘but, we would prefer to regard those visits, Mr. Traddles, as made, at present, to us. We must guard ourselves from recognizing any positive engagement between Mr. Copperfield and our niece, until we have had an opportunity—’
‘Until YOU have had an opportunity, sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa.
‘Be it so,’ assented Miss Lavinia, with a sigh—‘until I have had an opportunity of observing them.’
‘Copperfield,’ said Traddles, turning to me, ‘you feel, I am sure, that nothing could be more reasonable or considerate.’
‘Nothing!’ cried I. ‘I am deeply sensible of it.’
‘In this position of affairs,’ said Miss Lavinia, again referring to her notes, ‘and admitting his visits on this understanding only, we must require from Mr. Copperfield a distinct assurance, on his word of honour, that no communication of any kind shall take place between him and our niece without our knowledge. That no project whatever shall be entertained with regard to our niece, without being first submitted to us—’ ‘To you, sister Lavinia,’ Miss Clarissa interposed.
‘Be it so, Clarissa!’ assented Miss Lavinia resignedly—‘to me—and receiving our concurrence. We must make this a most express and serious stipulation, not to be broken on any account. We wished Mr. Copperfield to be accompanied by some confidential friend today,’ with an inclination of her head towards Traddles, who bowed, ‘in order that there might be no doubt or misconception on this subject. If Mr. Copperfield, or if you, Mr. Traddles, feel the least scruple, in giving this promise, I beg you to take time to consider it.’
I exclaimed, in a state of high ecstatic fervour, that not a moment’s consideration could be necessary. I bound myself by the required promise, in a most impassioned manner; called upon Traddles to witness it; and denounced myself as the most atrocious of characters if I ever swerved from it in the least degree.
‘Stay!’ said Miss Lavinia, holding up her hand; ‘we resolved, before we had the pleasure of receiving you two gentlemen, to leave you alone for a quarter of an hour, to consider this point. You will allow us to retire.’
It was in vain for me to say that no consideration was necessary. They persisted in withdrawing for the specified time. Accordingly, these little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to receive the congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were translated to regions of exquisite happiness. Exactly at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity than they had disappeared. They had gone rustling away as if their little dresses were made of autumn-leaves: and they came rustling back, in like manner.
I then bound myself once more to the prescribed conditions.
‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘the rest is with you.’
Miss Clarissa, unfolding her arms for the first time, took the notes and glanced at them.
‘We shall be happy,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘to see Mr. Copperfield to dinner, every Sunday, if it should suit his convenience. Our hour is three.’
I bowed.
‘In the course of the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘we shall be happy to see Mr. Copperfield to tea. Our hour is half-past six.’
I bowed again.
‘Twice in the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘but, as a rule, not oftener.’
I bowed again.
‘Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘mentioned in Mr. Copperfield’s letter, will perhaps call upon us. When visiting is better for the happiness of all parties, we are glad to receive visits, and return them. When it is better for the happiness of all parties that no visiting should take place, (as in the case of our brother Francis, and his establishment) that is quite different.’
I intimated that my aunt would be proud and delighted to make their acquaintance; though I must say I was not quite sure of their getting on very satisfactorily together. The conditions being now closed, I expressed my acknowledgements in the warmest manner; and, taking the hand, first of Miss Clarissa, and then of Miss Lavinia, pressed it, in each case, to my lips.
Miss Lavinia then arose, and begging Mr. Traddles to excuse us for a minute, requested me to follow her. I obeyed, all in a tremble, and was conducted into another room. There I found my blessed darling stopping her ears behind the door, with her dear little face against the wall; and Jip in the plate-warmer with his head tied up in a towel.
Oh! How beautiful she was in her black frock, and how she sobbed and cried at first, and wouldn’t come out from behind the door! How fond we were of one another, when she did come out at last; and what a state of bliss I was in, when we took Jip out of the plate-warmer, and restored him to the light, sneezing very much, and were all three reunited!
‘My dearest Dora! Now, indeed, my own for ever!’
‘Oh, DON’T!’ pleaded Dora. ‘Please!’
‘Are you not my own for ever, Dora?’
‘Oh yes, of course I am!’ cried Dora, ‘but I am so frightened!’
‘Frightened, my own?’
‘Oh yes! I don’t like him,’ said Dora. ‘Why don’t he go?’
‘Who, my life?’
‘Your friend,’ said Dora. ‘It isn’t any business of his. What a stupid he must be!’
‘My love!’ (There never was anything so coaxing as her childish ways.) ‘He is the best creature!’
‘Oh, but we don’t want any best creatures!’ pouted Dora.
‘My dear,’ I argued, ‘you will soon know him well, and like him of all things. And here is my aunt coming soon; and you’ll like her of all things too, when you know her.’
‘No, please don’t bring her!’ said Dora, giving me a horrified little kiss, and folding her hands. ‘Don’t. I know she’s a naughty, mischief-making old thing! Don’t let her come here, Doady!’ which was a corruption of David.
Remonstrance was of no use, then; so I laughed, and admired, and was very much in love and very happy; and she showed me Jip’s new trick of standing on his hind legs in a corner—which he did for about the space of a flash of lightning, and then fell down—and I don’t know how long I should have stayed there, oblivious of Traddles, if Miss Lavinia had not come in to take me away. Miss Lavinia was very fond of Dora (she told me Dora was exactly like what she had been herself at her age—she must have altered a good deal), and she treated Dora just as if she had been a toy. I wanted to persuade Dora to come and see Traddles, but on my proposing it she ran off to her own room and locked herself in; so I went to Traddles without her, and walked away with him on air.
‘Nothing could be more satisfactory,’ said Traddles; ‘and they are very agreeable old ladies, I am sure. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you were to be married years before me, Copperfield.’
‘Does your Sophy play on any instrument, Traddles?’ I inquired, in the pride of my heart.
‘She knows enough of the piano to teach it to her little sisters,’ said Traddles.
‘Does she sing at all?’ I asked.
‘Why, she sings ballads, sometimes, to freshen up the others a little when they’re out of spirits,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing scientific.’
‘She doesn’t sing to the guitar?’ said I.
‘Oh dear no!’ said Traddles.
‘Paint at all?’
‘Not at all,’ said Traddles.
I promised Traddles that he should hear Dora sing, and see some of her flower-painting. He said he should like it very much, and we went home arm in arm in great good humour and delight. I encouraged him to talk about Sophy, on the way; which he did with a loving reliance on her that I very much admired. I compared her in my mind with Dora, with considerable inward satisfaction; but I candidly admitted to myself that she seemed to be an excellent kind of girl for Traddles, too.
Of course my aunt was immediately made acquainted with the successful issue of the conference, and with all that had been said and done in the course of it. She was happy to see me so happy, and promised to call on Dora’s aunts without loss of time. But she took such a long walk up and down our rooms that night, while I was writing to Agnes, that I began to think she meant to walk till morning.
My letter to Agnes was a fervent and grateful one, narrating all the good effects that had resulted from my following her advice. She wrote, by return of post, to me. Her letter was hopeful, earnest, and cheerful. She was always cheerful from that time.
I had my hands more full than ever, now. My daily journeys to Highgate considered, Putney was a long way off; and I naturally wanted to go there as often as I could. The proposed tea-drinkings being quite impracticable, I compounded with Miss Lavinia for permission to visit every Saturday afternoon, without detriment to my privileged Sundays. So, the close of every week was a delicious time for me; and I got through the rest of the week by looking forward to it.
I was wonderfully relieved to find that my aunt and Dora’s aunts rubbed on, all things considered, much more smoothly than I could have expected. My aunt made her promised visit within a few days of the conference; and within a few more days, Dora’s aunts called upon her, in due state and form. Similar but more friendly exchanges took place afterwards, usually at intervals of three or four weeks. I know that my aunt distressed Dora’s aunts very much, by utterly setting at naught the dignity of fly-conveyance, and walking out to Putney at extraordinary times, as shortly after breakfast or just before tea; likewise by wearing her bonnet in any manner that happened to be comfortable to her head, without at all deferring to the prejudices of civilization on that subject. But Dora’s aunts soon agreed to regard my aunt as an eccentric and somewhat masculine lady, with a strong understanding; and although my aunt occasionally ruffled the feathers of Dora’s aunts, by expressing heretical opinions on various points of ceremony, she loved me too well not to sacrifice some of her little peculiarities to the general harmony.
The only member of our small society who positively refused to adapt himself to circumstances, was Jip. He never saw my aunt without immediately displaying every tooth in his head, retiring under a chair, and growling incessantly: with now and then a doleful howl, as if she really were too much for his feelings. All kinds of treatment were tried with him, coaxing, scolding, slapping, bringing him to Buckingham Street (where he instantly dashed at the two cats, to the terror of all beholders); but he never could prevail upon himself to bear my aunt’s society. He would sometimes think he had got the better of his objection, and be amiable for a few minutes; and then would put up his snub nose, and howl to that extent, that there was nothing for it but to blind him and put him in the plate-warmer. At length, Dora regularly muffled him in a towel and shut him up there, whenever my aunt was reported at the door.
One thing troubled me much, after we had fallen into this quiet train. It was, that Dora seemed by one consent to be regarded like a pretty toy or plaything. My aunt, with whom she gradually became familiar, always called her Little Blossom; and the pleasure of Miss Lavinia’s life was to wait upon her, curl her hair, make ornaments for her, and treat her like a pet child. What Miss Lavinia did, her sister did as a matter of course. It was very odd to me; but they all seemed to treat Dora, in her degree, much as Dora treated Jip in his.
I made up my mind to speak to Dora about this; and one day when we were out walking (for we were licensed by Miss Lavinia, after a while, to go out walking by ourselves), I said to her that I wished she could get them to behave towards her differently.
‘Because you know, my darling,’ I remonstrated, ‘you are not a child.’
‘There!’ said Dora. ‘Now you’re going to be cross!’
‘I am sure they’re very kind to me,’ said Dora, ‘and I am very happy—’
‘Well! But my dearest life!’ said I, ‘you might be very happy, and yet be treated rationally.’
Dora gave me a reproachful look—the prettiest look!—and then began to sob, saying, if I didn’t like her, why had I ever wanted so much to be engaged to her? And why didn’t I go away, now, if I couldn’t bear her?
What could I do, but kiss away her tears, and tell her how I doted on her, after that!
‘I am sure I am very affectionate,’ said Dora; ‘you oughtn’t to be cruel to me, Doady!’
‘Cruel, my precious love! As if I would—or could—be cruel to you, for the world!’
‘Then don’t find fault with me,’ said Dora, making a rosebud of her mouth; ‘and I’ll be good.’
I was charmed by her presently asking me, of her own accord, to give her that cookery-book I had once spoken of, and to show her how to keep accounts as I had once promised I would. I brought the volume with me on my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to make it look less dry and more inviting); and as we strolled about the Common, I showed her an old housekeeping-book of my aunt’s, and gave her a set of tablets, and a pretty little pencil-case and box of leads, to practise housekeeping with.
But the cookery-book made Dora’s head ache, and the figures made her cry. They wouldn’t add up, she said. So she rubbed them out, and drew little nosegays and likenesses of me and Jip, all over the tablets.
Then I playfully tried verbal instruction in domestic matters, as we walked about on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes, for example, when we passed a butcher’s shop, I would say:
‘Now suppose, my pet, that we were married, and you were going to buy a shoulder of mutton for dinner, would you know how to buy it?’
My pretty little Dora’s face would fall, and she would make her mouth into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut mine with a kiss.
‘Would you know how to buy it, my darling?’ I would repeat, perhaps, if I were very inflexible.
Dora would think a little, and then reply, perhaps, with great triumph:
‘Why, the butcher would know how to sell it, and what need I know? Oh, you silly boy!’
So, when I once asked Dora, with an eye to the cookery-book, what she would do, if we were married, and I were to say I should like a nice Irish stew, she replied that she would tell the servant to make it; and then clapped her little hands together across my arm, and laughed in such a charming manner that she was more delightful than ever.
Consequently, the principal use to which the cookery-book was devoted, was being put down in the corner for Jip to stand upon. But Dora was so pleased, when she had trained him to stand upon it without offering to come off, and at the same time to hold the pencil-case in his mouth, that I was very glad I had bought it.
And we fell back on the guitar-case, and the flower-painting, and the songs about never leaving off dancing, Ta ra la! and were as happy as the week was long. I occasionally wished I could venture to hint to Miss Lavinia, that she treated the darling of my heart a little too much like a plaything; and I sometimes awoke, as it were, wondering to find that I had fallen into the general fault, and treated her like a plaything too—but not often.
CHAPTER 42. MISCHIEF
I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.
How much of the practice I have just reduced to precept, I owe to Agnes, I will not repeat here. My narrative proceeds to Agnes, with a thankful love.
She came on a visit of a fortnight to the Doctor’s. Mr. Wickfield was the Doctor’s old friend, and the Doctor wished to talk with him, and do him good. It had been matter of conversation with Agnes when she was last in town, and this visit was the result. She and her father came together. I was not much surprised to hear from her that she had engaged to find a lodging in the neighbourhood for Mrs. Heep, whose rheumatic complaint required change of air, and who would be charmed to have it in such company. Neither was I surprised when, on the very next day, Uriah, like a dutiful son, brought his worthy mother to take possession.
‘You see, Master Copperfield,’ said he, as he forced himself upon my company for a turn in the Doctor’s garden, ‘where a person loves, a person is a little jealous—leastways, anxious to keep an eye on the beloved one.’
‘Of whom are you jealous, now?’ said I.
‘Thanks to you, Master Copperfield,’ he returned, ‘of no one in particular just at present—no male person, at least.’
‘Do you mean that you are jealous of a female person?’
He gave me a sidelong glance out of his sinister red eyes, and laughed.
‘Really, Master Copperfield,’ he said, ‘—I should say Mister, but I know you’ll excuse the abit I’ve got into—you’re so insinuating, that you draw me like a corkscrew! Well, I don’t mind telling you,’ putting his fish-like hand on mine, ‘I’m not a lady’s man in general, sir, and I never was, with Mrs. Strong.’
His eyes looked green now, as they watched mine with a rascally cunning.
‘What do you mean?’ said I.
‘Why, though I am a lawyer, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, with a dry grin, ‘I mean, just at present, what I say.’
‘And what do you mean by your look?’ I retorted, quietly.
‘By my look? Dear me, Copperfield, that’s sharp practice! What do I mean by my look?’
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘By your look.’
He seemed very much amused, and laughed as heartily as it was in his nature to laugh. After some scraping of his chin with his hand, he went on to say, with his eyes cast downward—still scraping, very slowly:
‘When I was but an umble clerk, she always looked down upon me. She was for ever having my Agnes backwards and forwards at her ouse, and she was for ever being a friend to you, Master Copperfield; but I was too far beneath her, myself, to be noticed.’
‘Well?’ said I; ‘suppose you were!’
‘—And beneath him too,’ pursued Uriah, very distinctly, and in a meditative tone of voice, as he continued to scrape his chin.
‘Don’t you know the Doctor better,’ said I, ‘than to suppose him conscious of your existence, when you were not before him?’
He directed his eyes at me in that sidelong glance again, and he made his face very lantern-jawed, for the greater convenience of scraping, as he answered:
‘Oh dear, I am not referring to the Doctor! Oh no, poor man! I mean Mr. Maldon!’
My heart quite died within me. All my old doubts and apprehensions on that subject, all the Doctor’s happiness and peace, all the mingled possibilities of innocence and compromise, that I could not unravel, I saw, in a moment, at the mercy of this fellow’s twisting.
‘He never could come into the office, without ordering and shoving me about,’ said Uriah. ‘One of your fine gentlemen he was! I was very meek and umble—and I am. But I didn’t like that sort of thing—and I don’t!’
He left off scraping his chin, and sucked in his cheeks until they seemed to meet inside; keeping his sidelong glance upon me all the while.
‘She is one of your lovely women, she is,’ he pursued, when he had slowly restored his face to its natural form; ‘and ready to be no friend to such as me, I know. She’s just the person as would put my Agnes up to higher sort of game. Now, I ain’t one of your lady’s men, Master Copperfield; but I’ve had eyes in my ed, a pretty long time back. We umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking—and we look out of ‘em.’
I endeavoured to appear unconscious and not disquieted, but, I saw in his face, with poor success.
‘Now, I’m not a-going to let myself be run down, Copperfield,’ he continued, raising that part of his countenance, where his red eyebrows would have been if he had had any, with malignant triumph, ‘and I shall do what I can to put a stop to this friendship. I don’t approve of it. I don’t mind acknowledging to you that I’ve got rather a grudging disposition, and want to keep off all intruders. I ain’t a-going, if I know it, to run the risk of being plotted against.’
‘You are always plotting, and delude yourself into the belief that everybody else is doing the like, I think,’ said I.
‘Perhaps so, Master Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘But I’ve got a motive, as my fellow-partner used to say; and I go at it tooth and nail. I mustn’t be put upon, as a numble person, too much. I can’t allow people in my way. Really they must come out of the cart, Master Copperfield!’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said I.
‘Don’t you, though?’ he returned, with one of his jerks. ‘I’m astonished at that, Master Copperfield, you being usually so quick! I’ll try to be plainer, another time.---Is that Mr. Maldon a-norseback, ringing at the gate, sir?’
‘It looks like him,’ I replied, as carelessly as I could.
Uriah stopped short, put his hands between his great knobs of knees, and doubled himself up with laughter. With perfectly silent laughter. Not a sound escaped from him. I was so repelled by his odious behaviour, particularly by this concluding instance, that I turned away without any ceremony; and left him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like a scarecrow in want of support.
It was not on that evening; but, as I well remember, on the next evening but one, which was a Sunday; that I took Agnes to see Dora. I had arranged the visit, beforehand, with Miss Lavinia; and Agnes was expected to tea.
I was in a flutter of pride and anxiety; pride in my dear little betrothed, and anxiety that Agnes should like her. All the way to Putney, Agnes being inside the stage-coach, and I outside, I pictured Dora to myself in every one of the pretty looks I knew so well; now making up my mind that I should like her to look exactly as she looked at such a time, and then doubting whether I should not prefer her looking as she looked at such another time; and almost worrying myself into a fever about it.
I was troubled by no doubt of her being very pretty, in any case; but it fell out that I had never seen her look so well. She was not in the drawing-room when I presented Agnes to her little aunts, but was shyly keeping out of the way. I knew where to look for her, now; and sure enough I found her stopping her ears again, behind the same dull old door.
At first she wouldn’t come at all; and then she pleaded for five minutes by my watch. When at length she put her arm through mine, to be taken to the drawing-room, her charming little face was flushed, and had never been so pretty. But, when we went into the room, and it turned pale, she was ten thousand times prettier yet.
Dora was afraid of Agnes. She had told me that she knew Agnes was ‘too clever’. But when she saw her looking at once so cheerful and so earnest, and so thoughtful, and so good, she gave a faint little cry of pleased surprise, and just put her affectionate arms round Agnes’s neck, and laid her innocent cheek against her face.
I never was so happy. I never was so pleased as when I saw those two sit down together, side by side. As when I saw my little darling looking up so naturally to those cordial eyes. As when I saw the tender, beautiful regard which Agnes cast upon her.
Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa partook, in their way, of my joy. It was the pleasantest tea-table in the world. Miss Clarissa presided. I cut and handed the sweet seed-cake—the little sisters had a bird-like fondness for picking up seeds and pecking at sugar; Miss Lavinia looked on with benignant patronage, as if our happy love were all her work; and we were perfectly contented with ourselves and one another.
The gentle cheerfulness of Agnes went to all their hearts. Her quiet interest in everything that interested Dora; her manner of making acquaintance with Jip (who responded instantly); her pleasant way, when Dora was ashamed to come over to her usual seat by me; her modest grace and ease, eliciting a crowd of blushing little marks of confidence from Dora; seemed to make our circle quite complete.
‘I am so glad,’ said Dora, after tea, ‘that you like me. I didn’t think you would; and I want, more than ever, to be liked, now Julia Mills is gone.’
I have omitted to mention it, by the by. Miss Mills had sailed, and Dora and I had gone aboard a great East Indiaman at Gravesend to see her; and we had had preserved ginger, and guava, and other delicacies of that sort for lunch; and we had left Miss Mills weeping on a camp-stool on the quarter-deck, with a large new diary under her arm, in which the original reflections awakened by the contemplation of Ocean were to be recorded under lock and key.
Agnes said she was afraid I must have given her an unpromising character; but Dora corrected that directly.
‘Oh no!’ she said, shaking her curls at me; ‘it was all praise. He thinks so much of your opinion, that I was quite afraid of it.’
‘My good opinion cannot strengthen his attachment to some people whom he knows,’ said Agnes, with a smile; ‘it is not worth their having.’
‘But please let me have it,’ said Dora, in her coaxing way, ‘if you can!’
We made merry about Dora’s wanting to be liked, and Dora said I was a goose, and she didn’t like me at any rate, and the short evening flew away on gossamer-wings. The time was at hand when the coach was to call for us. I was standing alone before the fire, when Dora came stealing softly in, to give me that usual precious little kiss before I went.
‘Don’t you think, if I had had her for a friend a long time ago, Doady,’ said Dora, her bright eyes shining very brightly, and her little right hand idly busying itself with one of the buttons of my coat, ‘I might have been more clever perhaps?’
‘My love!’ said I, ‘what nonsense!’
‘Do you think it is nonsense?’ returned Dora, without looking at me. ‘Are you sure it is?’
‘Of course I am!’ ‘I have forgotten,’ said Dora, still turning the button round and round, ‘what relation Agnes is to you, you dear bad boy.’
‘No blood-relation,’ I replied; ‘but we were brought up together, like brother and sister.’
‘I wonder why you ever fell in love with me?’ said Dora, beginning on another button of my coat.
‘Perhaps because I couldn’t see you, and not love you, Dora!’
‘Suppose you had never seen me at all,’ said Dora, going to another button.
‘Suppose we had never been born!’ said I, gaily.
I wondered what she was thinking about, as I glanced in admiring silence at the little soft hand travelling up the row of buttons on my coat, and at the clustering hair that lay against my breast, and at the lashes of her downcast eyes, slightly rising as they followed her idle fingers. At length her eyes were lifted up to mine, and she stood on tiptoe to give me, more thoughtfully than usual, that precious little kiss—once, twice, three times—and went out of the room.
They all came back together within five minutes afterwards, and Dora’s unusual thoughtfulness was quite gone then. She was laughingly resolved to put Jip through the whole of his performances, before the coach came. They took some time (not so much on account of their variety, as Jip’s reluctance), and were still unfinished when it was heard at the door. There was a hurried but affectionate parting between Agnes and herself; and Dora was to write to Agnes (who was not to mind her letters being foolish, she said), and Agnes was to write to Dora; and they had a second parting at the coach door, and a third when Dora, in spite of the remonstrances of Miss Lavinia, would come running out once more to remind Agnes at the coach window about writing, and to shake her curls at me on the box.
The stage-coach was to put us down near Covent Garden, where we were to take another stage-coach for Highgate. I was impatient for the short walk in the interval, that Agnes might praise Dora to me. Ah! what praise it was! How lovingly and fervently did it commend the pretty creature I had won, with all her artless graces best displayed, to my most gentle care! How thoughtfully remind me, yet with no pretence of doing so, of the trust in which I held the orphan child!
Never, never, had I loved Dora so deeply and truly, as I loved her that night. When we had again alighted, and were walking in the starlight along the quiet road that led to the Doctor’s house, I told Agnes it was her doing.
‘When you were sitting by her,’ said I, ‘you seemed to be no less her guardian angel than mine; and you seem so now, Agnes.’
‘A poor angel,’ she returned, ‘but faithful.’
The clear tone of her voice, going straight to my heart, made it natural to me to say:
‘The cheerfulness that belongs to you, Agnes (and to no one else that ever I have seen), is so restored, I have observed today, that I have begun to hope you are happier at home?’
‘I am happier in myself,’ she said; ‘I am quite cheerful and light-hearted.’
I glanced at the serene face looking upward, and thought it was the stars that made it seem so noble.
‘There has been no change at home,’ said Agnes, after a few moments.
‘No fresh reference,’ said I, ‘to—I wouldn’t distress you, Agnes, but I cannot help asking—to what we spoke of, when we parted last?’
‘No, none,’ she answered.
‘I have thought so much about it.’
‘You must think less about it. Remember that I confide in simple love and truth at last. Have no apprehensions for me, Trotwood,’ she added, after a moment; ‘the step you dread my taking, I shall never take.’
Although I think I had never really feared it, in any season of cool reflection, it was an unspeakable relief to me to have this assurance from her own truthful lips. I told her so, earnestly.
‘And when this visit is over,’ said I,—‘for we may not be alone another time,—how long is it likely to be, my dear Agnes, before you come to London again?’
‘Probably a long time,’ she replied; ‘I think it will be best—for papa’s sake—to remain at home. We are not likely to meet often, for some time to come; but I shall be a good correspondent of Dora’s, and we shall frequently hear of one another that way.’
We were now within the little courtyard of the Doctor’s cottage. It was growing late. There was a light in the window of Mrs. Strong’s chamber, and Agnes, pointing to it, bade me good night.
‘Do not be troubled,’ she said, giving me her hand, ‘by our misfortunes and anxieties. I can be happier in nothing than in your happiness. If you can ever give me help, rely upon it I will ask you for it. God bless you always!’ In her beaming smile, and in these last tones of her cheerful voice, I seemed again to see and hear my little Dora in her company. I stood awhile, looking through the porch at the stars, with a heart full of love and gratitude, and then walked slowly forth. I had engaged a bed at a decent alehouse close by, and was going out at the gate, when, happening to turn my head, I saw a light in the Doctor’s study. A half-reproachful fancy came into my mind, that he had been working at the Dictionary without my help. With the view of seeing if this were so, and, in any case, of bidding him good night, if he were yet sitting among his books, I turned back, and going softly across the hall, and gently opening the door, looked in.
The first person whom I saw, to my surprise, by the sober light of the shaded lamp, was Uriah. He was standing close beside it, with one of his skeleton hands over his mouth, and the other resting on the Doctor’s table. The Doctor sat in his study chair, covering his face with his hands. Mr. Wickfield, sorely troubled and distressed, was leaning forward, irresolutely touching the Doctor’s arm.
For an instant, I supposed that the Doctor was ill. I hastily advanced a step under that impression, when I met Uriah’s eye, and saw what was the matter. I would have withdrawn, but the Doctor made a gesture to detain me, and I remained.
‘At any rate,’ observed Uriah, with a writhe of his ungainly person, ‘we may keep the door shut. We needn’t make it known to ALL the town.’
Saying which, he went on his toes to the door, which I had left open, and carefully closed it. He then came back, and took up his former position. There was an obtrusive show of compassionate zeal in his voice and manner, more intolerable—at least to me—than any demeanour he could have assumed.
‘I have felt it incumbent upon me, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘to point out to Doctor Strong what you and me have already talked about. You didn’t exactly understand me, though?’
I gave him a look, but no other answer; and, going to my good old master, said a few words that I meant to be words of comfort and encouragement. He put his hand upon my shoulder, as it had been his custom to do when I was quite a little fellow, but did not lift his grey head.
‘As you didn’t understand me, Master Copperfield,’ resumed Uriah in the same officious manner, ‘I may take the liberty of umbly mentioning, being among friends, that I have called Doctor Strong’s attention to the goings-on of Mrs. Strong. It’s much against the grain with me, I assure you, Copperfield, to be concerned in anything so unpleasant; but really, as it is, we’re all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be. That was what my meaning was, sir, when you didn’t understand me.’ I wonder now, when I recall his leer, that I did not collar him, and try to shake the breath out of his body.
‘I dare say I didn’t make myself very clear,’ he went on, ‘nor you neither. Naturally, we was both of us inclined to give such a subject a wide berth. Hows’ever, at last I have made up my mind to speak plain; and I have mentioned to Doctor Strong that—did you speak, sir?’
This was to the Doctor, who had moaned. The sound might have touched any heart, I thought, but it had no effect upon Uriah’s.
‘—mentioned to Doctor Strong,’ he proceeded, ‘that anyone may see that Mr. Maldon, and the lovely and agreeable lady as is Doctor Strong’s wife, are too sweet on one another. Really the time is come (we being at present all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be), when Doctor Strong must be told that this was full as plain to everybody as the sun, before Mr. Maldon went to India; that Mr. Maldon made excuses to come back, for nothing else; and that he’s always here, for nothing else. When you come in, sir, I was just putting it to my fellow-partner,’ towards whom he turned, ‘to say to Doctor Strong upon his word and honour, whether he’d ever been of this opinion long ago, or not. Come, Mr. Wickfield, sir! Would you be so good as tell us? Yes or no, sir? Come, partner!’
‘For God’s sake, my dear Doctor,’ said Mr. Wickfield again laying his irresolute hand upon the Doctor’s arm, ‘don’t attach too much weight to any suspicions I may have entertained.’
‘There!’ cried Uriah, shaking his head. ‘What a melancholy confirmation: ain’t it? Him! Such an old friend! Bless your soul, when I was nothing but a clerk in his office, Copperfield, I’ve seen him twenty times, if I’ve seen him once, quite in a taking about it—quite put out, you know (and very proper in him as a father; I’m sure I can’t blame him), to think that Miss Agnes was mixing herself up with what oughtn’t to be.’
‘My dear Strong,’ said Mr. Wickfield in a tremulous voice, ‘my good friend, I needn’t tell you that it has been my vice to look for some one master motive in everybody, and to try all actions by one narrow test. I may have fallen into such doubts as I have had, through this mistake.’
‘You have had doubts, Wickfield,’ said the Doctor, without lifting up his head. ‘You have had doubts.’
‘Speak up, fellow-partner,’ urged Uriah.
‘I had, at one time, certainly,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I—God forgive me—I thought YOU had.’
‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief. ‘I thought, at one time,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you wished to send Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.’
‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor. ‘To give Annie pleasure, by making some provision for the companion of her childhood. Nothing else.’
‘So I found,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I couldn’t doubt it, when you told me so. But I thought—I implore you to remember the narrow construction which has been my besetting sin—that, in a case where there was so much disparity in point of years—’
‘That’s the way to put it, you see, Master Copperfield!’ observed Uriah, with fawning and offensive pity.
‘—a lady of such youth, and such attractions, however real her respect for you, might have been influenced in marrying, by worldly considerations only. I make no allowance for innumerable feelings and circumstances that may have all tended to good. For Heaven’s sake remember that!’
‘How kind he puts it!’ said Uriah, shaking his head.
‘Always observing her from one point of view,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘but by all that is dear to you, my old friend, I entreat you to consider what it was; I am forced to confess now, having no escape-’
‘No! There’s no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ observed Uriah, ‘when it’s got to this.’
‘—that I did,’ said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distractedly at his partner, ‘that I did doubt her, and think her wanting in her duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel averse to Agnes being in such a familiar relation towards her, as to see what I saw, or in my diseased theory fancied that I saw. I never mentioned this to anyone. I never meant it to be known to anyone. And though it is terrible to you to hear,’ said Mr. Wickfield, quite subdued, ‘if you knew how terrible it is for me to tell, you would feel compassion for me!’
The Doctor, in the perfect goodness of his nature, put out his hand. Mr. Wickfield held it for a little while in his, with his head bowed down.
‘I am sure,’ said Uriah, writhing himself into the silence like a Conger-eel, ‘that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to everybody. But since we have got so far, I ought to take the liberty of mentioning that Copperfield has noticed it too.’
I turned upon him, and asked him how he dared refer to me!
‘Oh! it’s very kind of you, Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, undulating all over, ‘and we all know what an amiable character yours is; but you know that the moment I spoke to you the other night, you knew what I meant. You know you knew what I meant, Copperfield. Don’t deny it! You deny it with the best intentions; but don’t do it, Copperfield.’
I saw the mild eye of the good old Doctor turned upon me for a moment, and I felt that the confession of my old misgivings and remembrances was too plainly written in my face to be overlooked. It was of no use raging. I could not undo that. Say what I would, I could not unsay it.
We were silent again, and remained so, until the Doctor rose and walked twice or thrice across the room. Presently he returned to where his chair stood; and, leaning on the back of it, and occasionally putting his handkerchief to his eyes, with a simple honesty that did him more honour, to my thinking, than any disguise he could have effected, said:
‘I have been much to blame. I believe I have been very much to blame. I have exposed one whom I hold in my heart, to trials and aspersions—I call them aspersions, even to have been conceived in anybody’s inmost mind—of which she never, but for me, could have been the object.’
Uriah Heep gave a kind of snivel. I think to express sympathy.
‘Of which my Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘never, but for me, could have been the object. Gentlemen, I am old now, as you know; I do not feel, tonight, that I have much to live for. But my life—my Life—upon the truth and honour of the dear lady who has been the subject of this conversation!’
I do not think that the best embodiment of chivalry, the realization of the handsomest and most romantic figure ever imagined by painter, could have said this, with a more impressive and affecting dignity than the plain old Doctor did.
‘But I am not prepared,’ he went on, ‘to deny—perhaps I may have been, without knowing it, in some degree prepared to admit—that I may have unwittingly ensnared that lady into an unhappy marriage. I am a man quite unaccustomed to observe; and I cannot but believe that the observation of several people, of different ages and positions, all too plainly tending in one direction (and that so natural), is better than mine.’
I had often admired, as I have elsewhere described, his benignant manner towards his youthful wife; but the respectful tenderness he manifested in every reference to her on this occasion, and the almost reverential manner in which he put away from him the lightest doubt of her integrity, exalted him, in my eyes, beyond description.
‘I married that lady,’ said the Doctor, ‘when she was extremely young. I took her to myself when her character was scarcely formed. So far as it was developed, it had been my happiness to form it. I knew her father well. I knew her well. I had taught her what I could, for the love of all her beautiful and virtuous qualities. If I did her wrong; as I fear I did, in taking advantage (but I never meant it) of her gratitude and her affection; I ask pardon of that lady, in my heart!’
He walked across the room, and came back to the same place; holding the chair with a grasp that trembled, like his subdued voice, in its earnestness.
‘I regarded myself as a refuge, for her, from the dangers and vicissitudes of life. I persuaded myself that, unequal though we were in years, she would live tranquilly and contentedly with me. I did not shut out of my consideration the time when I should leave her free, and still young and still beautiful, but with her judgement more matured—no, gentlemen—upon my truth!’
His homely figure seemed to be lightened up by his fidelity and generosity. Every word he uttered had a force that no other grace could have imparted to it.
‘My life with this lady has been very happy. Until tonight, I have had uninterrupted occasion to bless the day on which I did her great injustice.’
His voice, more and more faltering in the utterance of these words, stopped for a few moments; then he went on:
‘Once awakened from my dream—I have been a poor dreamer, in one way or other, all my life—I see how natural it is that she should have some regretful feeling towards her old companion and her equal. That she does regard him with some innocent regret, with some blameless thoughts of what might have been, but for me, is, I fear, too true. Much that I have seen, but not noted, has come back upon me with new meaning, during this last trying hour. But, beyond this, gentlemen, the dear lady’s name never must be coupled with a word, a breath, of doubt.’
For a little while, his eye kindled and his voice was firm; for a little while he was again silent. Presently, he proceeded as before:
‘It only remains for me, to bear the knowledge of the unhappiness I have occasioned, as submissively as I can. It is she who should reproach; not I. To save her from misconstruction, cruel misconstruction, that even my friends have not been able to avoid, becomes my duty. The more retired we live, the better I shall discharge it. And when the time comes—may it come soon, if it be His merciful pleasure!—when my death shall release her from constraint, I shall close my eyes upon her honoured face, with unbounded confidence and love; and leave her, with no sorrow then, to happier and brighter days.’
I could not see him for the tears which his earnestness and goodness, so adorned by, and so adorning, the perfect simplicity of his manner, brought into my eyes. He had moved to the door, when he added:
‘Gentlemen, I have shown you my heart. I am sure you will respect it. What we have said tonight is never to be said more. Wickfield, give me an old friend’s arm upstairs!’
Mr. Wickfield hastened to him. Without interchanging a word they went slowly out of the room together, Uriah looking after them.
‘Well, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah, meekly turning to me. ‘The thing hasn’t took quite the turn that might have been expected, for the old Scholar—what an excellent man!—is as blind as a brickbat; but this family’s out of the cart, I think!’
I needed but the sound of his voice to be so madly enraged as I never was before, and never have been since.
‘You villain,’ said I, ‘what do you mean by entrapping me into your schemes? How dare you appeal to me just now, you false rascal, as if we had been in discussion together?’
As we stood, front to front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that he forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable, and had set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I couldn’t bear it. The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly before me, and I struck it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled as if I had burnt them.
He caught the hand in his, and we stood in that connexion, looking at each other. We stood so, a long time; long enough for me to see the white marks of my fingers die out of the deep red of his cheek, and leave it a deeper red.
‘Copperfield,’ he said at length, in a breathless voice, ‘have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘I have taken leave of you,’ said I, wresting my hand away. ‘You dog, I’ll know no more of you.’
‘Won’t you?’ said he, constrained by the pain of his cheek to put his hand there. ‘Perhaps you won’t be able to help it. Isn’t this ungrateful of you, now?’
‘I have shown you often enough,’ said I, ‘that I despise you. I have shown you now, more plainly, that I do. Why should I dread your doing your worst to all about you? What else do you ever do?’
He perfectly understood this allusion to the considerations that had hitherto restrained me in my communications with him. I rather think that neither the blow, nor the allusion, would have escaped me, but for the assurance I had had from Agnes that night. It is no matter.
There was another long pause. His eyes, as he looked at me, seemed to take every shade of colour that could make eyes ugly.
‘Copperfield,’ he said, removing his hand from his cheek, ‘you have always gone against me. I know you always used to be against me at Mr. Wickfield’s.’
‘You may think what you like,’ said I, still in a towering rage. ‘If it is not true, so much the worthier you.’
‘And yet I always liked you, Copperfield!’ he rejoined.
I deigned to make him no reply; and, taking up my hat, was going out to bed, when he came between me and the door.
‘Copperfield,’ he said, ‘there must be two parties to a quarrel. I won’t be one.’
‘You may go to the devil!’ said I.
‘Don’t say that!’ he replied. ‘I know you’ll be sorry afterwards. How can you make yourself so inferior to me, as to show such a bad spirit? But I forgive you.’
‘You forgive me!’ I repeated disdainfully.
‘I do, and you can’t help yourself,’ replied Uriah. ‘To think of your going and attacking me, that have always been a friend to you! But there can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be a friend to you, in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to expect.’
The necessity of carrying on this dialogue (his part in which was very slow; mine very quick) in a low tone, that the house might not be disturbed at an unseasonable hour, did not improve my temper; though my passion was cooling down. Merely telling him that I should expect from him what I always had expected, and had never yet been disappointed in, I opened the door upon him, as if he had been a great walnut put there to be cracked, and went out of the house. But he slept out of the house too, at his mother’s lodging; and before I had gone many hundred yards, came up with me.
‘You know, Copperfield,’ he said, in my ear (I did not turn my head), ‘you’re in quite a wrong position’; which I felt to be true, and that made me chafe the more; ‘you can’t make this a brave thing, and you can’t help being forgiven. I don’t intend to mention it to mother, nor to any living soul. I’m determined to forgive you. But I do wonder that you should lift your hand against a person that you knew to be so umble!’
I felt only less mean than he. He knew me better than I knew myself. If he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay tormented half the night.
In the morning, when I came out, the early church-bell was ringing, and he was walking up and down with his mother. He addressed me as if nothing had happened, and I could do no less than reply. I had struck him hard enough to give him the toothache, I suppose. At all events his face was tied up in a black silk handkerchief, which, with his hat perched on the top of it, was far from improving his appearance. I heard that he went to a dentist’s in London on the Monday morning, and had a tooth out. I hope it was a double one.
The Doctor gave out that he was not quite well; and remained alone, for a considerable part of every day, during the remainder of the visit. Agnes and her father had been gone a week, before we resumed our usual work. On the day preceding its resumption, the Doctor gave me with his own hands a folded note not sealed. It was addressed to myself; and laid an injunction on me, in a few affectionate words, never to refer to the subject of that evening. I had confided it to my aunt, but to no one else. It was not a subject I could discuss with Agnes, and Agnes certainly had not the least suspicion of what had passed.
Neither, I felt convinced, had Mrs. Strong then. Several weeks elapsed before I saw the least change in her. It came on slowly, like a cloud when there is no wind. At first, she seemed to wonder at the gentle compassion with which the Doctor spoke to her, and at his wish that she should have her mother with her, to relieve the dull monotony of her life. Often, when we were at work, and she was sitting by, I would see her pausing and looking at him with that memorable face. Afterwards, I sometimes observed her rise, with her eyes full of tears, and go out of the room. Gradually, an unhappy shadow fell upon her beauty, and deepened every day. Mrs. Markleham was a regular inmate of the cottage then; but she talked and talked, and saw nothing.
As this change stole on Annie, once like sunshine in the Doctor’s house, the Doctor became older in appearance, and more grave; but the sweetness of his temper, the placid kindness of his manner, and his benevolent solicitude for her, if they were capable of any increase, were increased. I saw him once, early on the morning of her birthday, when she came to sit in the window while we were at work (which she had always done, but now began to do with a timid and uncertain air that I thought very touching), take her forehead between his hands, kiss it, and go hurriedly away, too much moved to remain. I saw her stand where he had left her, like a statue; and then bend down her head, and clasp her hands, and weep, I cannot say how sorrowfully.
Sometimes, after that, I fancied that she tried to speak even to me, in intervals when we were left alone. But she never uttered a word. The Doctor always had some new project for her participating in amusements away from home, with her mother; and Mrs. Markleham, who was very fond of amusements, and very easily dissatisfied with anything else, entered into them with great good-will, and was loud in her commendations. But Annie, in a spiritless unhappy way, only went whither she was led, and seemed to have no care for anything.
I did not know what to think. Neither did my aunt; who must have walked, at various times, a hundred miles in her uncertainty. What was strangest of all was, that the only real relief which seemed to make its way into the secret region of this domestic unhappiness, made its way there in the person of Mr. Dick.
What his thoughts were on the subject, or what his observation was, I am as unable to explain, as I dare say he would have been to assist me in the task. But, as I have recorded in the narrative of my school days, his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and there is a subtlety of perception in real attachment, even when it is borne towards man by one of the lower animals, which leaves the highest intellect behind. To this mind of the heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some bright ray of the truth shot straight.
He had proudly resumed his privilege, in many of his spare hours, of walking up and down the garden with the Doctor; as he had been accustomed to pace up and down The Doctor’s Walk at Canterbury. But matters were no sooner in this state, than he devoted all his spare time (and got up earlier to make it more) to these perambulations. If he had never been so happy as when the Doctor read that marvellous performance, the Dictionary, to him; he was now quite miserable unless the Doctor pulled it out of his pocket, and began. When the Doctor and I were engaged, he now fell into the custom of walking up and down with Mrs. Strong, and helping her to trim her favourite flowers, or weed the beds. I dare say he rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet interest, and his wistful face, found immediate response in both their breasts; each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and he became what no one else could be—a link between them.
When I think of him, with his impenetrably wise face, walking up and down with the Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard words in the Dictionary; when I think of him carrying huge watering-pots after Annie; kneeling down, in very paws of gloves, at patient microscopic work among the little leaves; expressing as no philosopher could have expressed, in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her friend; showering sympathy, trustfulness, and affection, out of every hole in the watering-pot; when I think of him never wandering in that better mind of his to which unhappiness addressed itself, never bringing the unfortunate King Charles into the garden, never wavering in his grateful service, never diverted from his knowledge that there was something wrong, or from his wish to set it right—I really feel almost ashamed of having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of the utmost I have done with mine.
‘Nobody but myself, Trot, knows what that man is!’ my aunt would proudly remark, when we conversed about it. ‘Dick will distinguish himself yet!’
I must refer to one other topic before I close this chapter. While the visit at the Doctor’s was still in progress, I observed that the postman brought two or three letters every morning for Uriah Heep, who remained at Highgate until the rest went back, it being a leisure time; and that these were always directed in a business-like manner by Mr. Micawber, who now assumed a round legal hand. I was glad to infer, from these slight premises, that Mr. Micawber was doing well; and consequently was much surprised to receive, about this time, the following letter from his amiable wife.
‘CANTERBURY, Monday Evening.
‘You will doubtless be surprised, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to receive this communication. Still more so, by its contents. Still more so, by the stipulation of implicit confidence which I beg to impose. But my feelings as a wife and mother require relief; and as I do not wish to consult my family (already obnoxious to the feelings of Mr. Micawber), I know no one of whom I can better ask advice than my friend and former lodger.
‘You may be aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that between myself and Mr. Micawber (whom I will never desert), there has always been preserved a spirit of mutual confidence. Mr. Micawber may have occasionally given a bill without consulting me, or he may have misled me as to the period when that obligation would become due. This has actually happened. But, in general, Mr. Micawber has had no secrets from the bosom of affection—I allude to his wife—and has invariably, on our retirement to rest, recalled the events of the day.
‘You will picture to yourself, my dear Mr. Copperfield, what the poignancy of my feelings must be, when I inform you that Mr. Micawber is entirely changed. He is reserved. He is secret. His life is a mystery to the partner of his joys and sorrows—I again allude to his wife—and if I should assure you that beyond knowing that it is passed from morning to night at the office, I now know less of it than I do of the man in the south, connected with whose mouth the thoughtless children repeat an idle tale respecting cold plum porridge, I should adopt a popular fallacy to express an actual fact.
‘But this is not all. Mr. Micawber is morose. He is severe. He is estranged from our eldest son and daughter, he has no pride in his twins, he looks with an eye of coldness even on the unoffending stranger who last became a member of our circle. The pecuniary means of meeting our expenses, kept down to the utmost farthing, are obtained from him with great difficulty, and even under fearful threats that he will Settle himself (the exact expression); and he inexorably refuses to give any explanation whatever of this distracting policy.
‘This is hard to bear. This is heart-breaking. If you will advise me, knowing my feeble powers such as they are, how you think it will be best to exert them in a dilemma so unwonted, you will add another friendly obligation to the many you have already rendered me. With loves from the children, and a smile from the happily-unconscious stranger, I remain, dear Mr. Copperfield,
‘Your afflicted, ‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
I did not feel justified in giving a wife of Mrs. Micawber’s experience any other recommendation, than that she should try to reclaim Mr. Micawber by patience and kindness (as I knew she would in any case); but the letter set me thinking about him very much.
CHAPTER 43. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
Once again, let me pause upon a memorable period of my life. Let me stand aside, to see the phantoms of those days go by me, accompanying the shadow of myself, in dim procession.
Weeks, months, seasons, pass along. They seem little more than a summer day and a winter evening. Now, the Common where I walk with Dora is all in bloom, a field of bright gold; and now the unseen heather lies in mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. In a breath, the river that flows through our Sunday walks is sparkling in the summer sun, is ruffled by the winter wind, or thickened with drifting heaps of ice. Faster than ever river ran towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and rolls away.
Not a thread changes, in the house of the two little bird-like ladies. The clock ticks over the fireplace, the weather-glass hangs in the hall. Neither clock nor weather-glass is ever right; but we believe in both, devoutly.
I have come legally to man’s estate. I have attained the dignity of twenty-one. But this is a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one. Let me think what I have achieved.
I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery. I make a respectable income by it. I am in high repute for my accomplishment in all pertaining to the art, and am joined with eleven others in reporting the debates in Parliament for a Morning Newspaper. Night after night, I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in words. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape. I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know the worth of political life. I am quite an Infidel about it, and shall never be converted.
My dear old Traddles has tried his hand at the same pursuit, but it is not in Traddles’s way. He is perfectly good-humoured respecting his failure, and reminds me that he always did consider himself slow. He has occasional employment on the same newspaper, in getting up the facts of dry subjects, to be written about and embellished by more fertile minds. He is called to the bar; and with admirable industry and self-denial has scraped another hundred pounds together, to fee a Conveyancer whose chambers he attends. A great deal of very hot port wine was consumed at his call; and, considering the figure, I should think the Inner Temple must have made a profit by it.
I have come out in another way. I have taken with fear and trembling to authorship. I wrote a little something, in secret, and sent it to a magazine, and it was published in the magazine. Since then, I have taken heart to write a good many trifling pieces. Now, I am regularly paid for them. Altogether, I am well off, when I tell my income on the fingers of my left hand, I pass the third finger and take in the fourth to the middle joint.
We have removed, from Buckingham Street, to a pleasant little cottage very near the one I looked at, when my enthusiasm first came on. My aunt, however (who has sold the house at Dover, to good advantage), is not going to remain here, but intends removing herself to a still more tiny cottage close at hand. What does this portend? My marriage? Yes!
Yes! I am going to be married to Dora! Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa have given their consent; and if ever canary birds were in a flutter, they are. Miss Lavinia, self-charged with the superintendence of my darling’s wardrobe, is constantly cutting out brown-paper cuirasses, and differing in opinion from a highly respectable young man, with a long bundle, and a yard measure under his arm. A dressmaker, always stabbed in the breast with a needle and thread, boards and lodges in the house; and seems to me, eating, drinking, or sleeping, never to take her thimble off. They make a lay-figure of my dear. They are always sending for her to come and try something on. We can’t be happy together for five minutes in the evening, but some intrusive female knocks at the door, and says, ‘Oh, if you please, Miss Dora, would you step upstairs!’
Miss Clarissa and my aunt roam all over London, to find out articles of furniture for Dora and me to look at. It would be better for them to buy the goods at once, without this ceremony of inspection; for, when we go to see a kitchen fender and meat-screen, Dora sees a Chinese house for Jip, with little bells on the top, and prefers that. And it takes a long time to accustom Jip to his new residence, after we have bought it; whenever he goes in or out, he makes all the little bells ring, and is horribly frightened.
Peggotty comes up to make herself useful, and falls to work immediately. Her department appears to be, to clean everything over and over again. She rubs everything that can be rubbed, until it shines, like her own honest forehead, with perpetual friction. And now it is, that I begin to see her solitary brother passing through the dark streets at night, and looking, as he goes, among the wandering faces. I never speak to him at such an hour. I know too well, as his grave figure passes onward, what he seeks, and what he dreads.
Why does Traddles look so important when he calls upon me this afternoon in the Commons—where I still occasionally attend, for form’s sake, when I have time? The realization of my boyish day-dreams is at hand. I am going to take out the licence.
It is a little document to do so much; and Traddles contemplates it, as it lies upon my desk, half in admiration, half in awe. There are the names, in the sweet old visionary connexion, David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow; and there, in the corner, is that Parental Institution, the Stamp Office, which is so benignantly interested in the various transactions of human life, looking down upon our Union; and there is the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a blessing on us in print, and doing it as cheap as could possibly be expected.
Nevertheless, I am in a dream, a flustered, happy, hurried dream. I can’t believe that it is going to be; and yet I can’t believe but that everyone I pass in the street, must have some kind of perception, that I am to be married the day after tomorrow. The Surrogate knows me, when I go down to be sworn; and disposes of me easily, as if there were a Masonic understanding between us. Traddles is not at all wanted, but is in attendance as my general backer.
‘I hope the next time you come here, my dear fellow,’ I say to Traddles, ‘it will be on the same errand for yourself. And I hope it will be soon.’
‘Thank you for your good wishes, my dear Copperfield,’ he replies. ‘I hope so too. It’s a satisfaction to know that she’ll wait for me any length of time, and that she really is the dearest girl—’
‘When are you to meet her at the coach?’ I ask.
‘At seven,’ says Traddles, looking at his plain old silver watch—the very watch he once took a wheel out of, at school, to make a water-mill. ‘That is about Miss Wickfield’s time, is it not?’
‘A little earlier. Her time is half past eight.’ ‘I assure you, my dear boy,’ says Traddles, ‘I am almost as pleased as if I were going to be married myself, to think that this event is coming to such a happy termination. And really the great friendship and consideration of personally associating Sophy with the joyful occasion, and inviting her to be a bridesmaid in conjunction with Miss Wickfield, demands my warmest thanks. I am extremely sensible of it.’
I hear him, and shake hands with him; and we talk, and walk, and dine, and so on; but I don’t believe it. Nothing is real.
Sophy arrives at the house of Dora’s aunts, in due course. She has the most agreeable of faces,—not absolutely beautiful, but extraordinarily pleasant,—and is one of the most genial, unaffected, frank, engaging creatures I have ever seen. Traddles presents her to us with great pride; and rubs his hands for ten minutes by the clock, with every individual hair upon his head standing on tiptoe, when I congratulate him in a corner on his choice.
I have brought Agnes from the Canterbury coach, and her cheerful and beautiful face is among us for the second time. Agnes has a great liking for Traddles, and it is capital to see them meet, and to observe the glory of Traddles as he commends the dearest girl in the world to her acquaintance.
Still I don’t believe it. We have a delightful evening, and are supremely happy; but I don’t believe it yet. I can’t collect myself. I can’t check off my happiness as it takes place. I feel in a misty and unsettled kind of state; as if I had got up very early in the morning a week or two ago, and had never been to bed since. I can’t make out when yesterday was. I seem to have been carrying the licence about, in my pocket, many months.
Next day, too, when we all go in a flock to see the house—our house—Dora’s and mine—I am quite unable to regard myself as its master. I seem to be there, by permission of somebody else. I half expect the real master to come home presently, and say he is glad to see me. Such a beautiful little house as it is, with everything so bright and new; with the flowers on the carpets looking as if freshly gathered, and the green leaves on the paper as if they had just come out; with the spotless muslin curtains, and the blushing rose-coloured furniture, and Dora’s garden hat with the blue ribbon—do I remember, now, how I loved her in such another hat when I first knew her!—already hanging on its little peg; the guitar-case quite at home on its heels in a corner; and everybody tumbling over Jip’s pagoda, which is much too big for the establishment. Another happy evening, quite as unreal as all the rest of it, and I steal into the usual room before going away. Dora is not there. I suppose they have not done trying on yet. Miss Lavinia peeps in, and tells me mysteriously that she will not be long. She is rather long, notwithstanding; but by and by I hear a rustling at the door, and someone taps.
I say, ‘Come in!’ but someone taps again.
I go to the door, wondering who it is; there, I meet a pair of bright eyes, and a blushing face; they are Dora’s eyes and face, and Miss Lavinia has dressed her in tomorrow’s dress, bonnet and all, for me to see. I take my little wife to my heart; and Miss Lavinia gives a little scream because I tumble the bonnet, and Dora laughs and cries at once, because I am so pleased; and I believe it less than ever.
‘Do you think it pretty, Doady?’ says Dora.
Pretty! I should rather think I did.
‘And are you sure you like me very much?’ says Dora.
The topic is fraught with such danger to the bonnet, that Miss Lavinia gives another little scream, and begs me to understand that Dora is only to be looked at, and on no account to be touched. So Dora stands in a delightful state of confusion for a minute or two, to be admired; and then takes off her bonnet—looking so natural without it!—and runs away with it in her hand; and comes dancing down again in her own familiar dress, and asks Jip if I have got a beautiful little wife, and whether he’ll forgive her for being married, and kneels down to make him stand upon the cookery-book, for the last time in her single life.
I go home, more incredulous than ever, to a lodging that I have hard by; and get up very early in the morning, to ride to the Highgate road and fetch my aunt.
I have never seen my aunt in such state. She is dressed in lavender-coloured silk, and has a white bonnet on, and is amazing. Janet has dressed her, and is there to look at me. Peggotty is ready to go to church, intending to behold the ceremony from the gallery. Mr. Dick, who is to give my darling to me at the altar, has had his hair curled. Traddles, whom I have taken up by appointment at the turnpike, presents a dazzling combination of cream colour and light blue; and both he and Mr. Dick have a general effect about them of being all gloves.
No doubt I see this, because I know it is so; but I am astray, and seem to see nothing. Nor do I believe anything whatever. Still, as we drive along in an open carriage, this fairy marriage is real enough to fill me with a sort of wondering pity for the unfortunate people who have no part in it, but are sweeping out the shops, and going to their daily occupations.
My aunt sits with my hand in hers all the way. When we stop a little way short of the church, to put down Peggotty, whom we have brought on the box, she gives it a squeeze, and me a kiss.
‘God bless you, Trot! My own boy never could be dearer. I think of poor dear Baby this morning.’ ‘So do I. And of all I owe to you, dear aunt.’
‘Tut, child!’ says my aunt; and gives her hand in overflowing cordiality to Traddles, who then gives his to Mr. Dick, who then gives his to me, who then gives mine to Traddles, and then we come to the church door.
The church is calm enough, I am sure; but it might be a steam-power loom in full action, for any sedative effect it has on me. I am too far gone for that.
The rest is all a more or less incoherent dream.
A dream of their coming in with Dora; of the pew-opener arranging us, like a drill-sergeant, before the altar rails; of my wondering, even then, why pew-openers must always be the most disagreeable females procurable, and whether there is any religious dread of a disastrous infection of good-humour which renders it indispensable to set those vessels of vinegar upon the road to Heaven.
Of the clergyman and clerk appearing; of a few boatmen and some other people strolling in; of an ancient mariner behind me, strongly flavouring the church with rum; of the service beginning in a deep voice, and our all being very attentive.
Of Miss Lavinia, who acts as a semi-auxiliary bridesmaid, being the first to cry, and of her doing homage (as I take it) to the memory of Pidger, in sobs; of Miss Clarissa applying a smelling-bottle; of Agnes taking care of Dora; of my aunt endeavouring to represent herself as a model of sternness, with tears rolling down her face; of little Dora trembling very much, and making her responses in faint whispers.
Of our kneeling down together, side by side; of Dora’s trembling less and less, but always clasping Agnes by the hand; of the service being got through, quietly and gravely; of our all looking at each other in an April state of smiles and tears, when it is over; of my young wife being hysterical in the vestry, and crying for her poor papa, her dear papa.
Of her soon cheering up again, and our signing the register all round. Of my going into the gallery for Peggotty to bring her to sign it; of Peggotty’s hugging me in a corner, and telling me she saw my own dear mother married; of its being over, and our going away.
Of my walking so proudly and lovingly down the aisle with my sweet wife upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits, monuments, pews, fonts, organs, and church windows, in which there flutter faint airs of association with my childish church at home, so long ago.
Of their whispering, as we pass, what a youthful couple we are, and what a pretty little wife she is. Of our all being so merry and talkative in the carriage going back. Of Sophy telling us that when she saw Traddles (whom I had entrusted with the licence) asked for it, she almost fainted, having been convinced that he would contrive to lose it, or to have his pocket picked. Of Agnes laughing gaily; and of Dora being so fond of Agnes that she will not be separated from her, but still keeps her hand.
Of there being a breakfast, with abundance of things, pretty and substantial, to eat and drink, whereof I partake, as I should do in any other dream, without the least perception of their flavour; eating and drinking, as I may say, nothing but love and marriage, and no more believing in the viands than in anything else.
Of my making a speech in the same dreamy fashion, without having an idea of what I want to say, beyond such as may be comprehended in the full conviction that I haven’t said it. Of our being very sociably and simply happy (always in a dream though); and of Jip’s having wedding cake, and its not agreeing with him afterwards.
Of the pair of hired post-horses being ready, and of Dora’s going away to change her dress. Of my aunt and Miss Clarissa remaining with us; and our walking in the garden; and my aunt, who has made quite a speech at breakfast touching Dora’s aunts, being mightily amused with herself, but a little proud of it too.
Of Dora’s being ready, and of Miss Lavinia’s hovering about her, loth to lose the pretty toy that has given her so much pleasant occupation. Of Dora’s making a long series of surprised discoveries that she has forgotten all sorts of little things; and of everybody’s running everywhere to fetch them.
Of their all closing about Dora, when at last she begins to say good-bye, looking, with their bright colours and ribbons, like a bed of flowers. Of my darling being almost smothered among the flowers, and coming out, laughing and crying both together, to my jealous arms.
Of my wanting to carry Jip (who is to go along with us), and Dora’s saying no, that she must carry him, or else he’ll think she don’t like him any more, now she is married, and will break his heart. Of our going, arm in arm, and Dora stopping and looking back, and saying, ‘If I have ever been cross or ungrateful to anybody, don’t remember it!’ and bursting into tears.
Of her waving her little hand, and our going away once more. Of her once more stopping, and looking back, and hurrying to Agnes, and giving Agnes, above all the others, her last kisses and farewells.
We drive away together, and I awake from the dream. I believe it at last. It is my dear, dear, little wife beside me, whom I love so well!
‘Are you happy now, you foolish boy?’ says Dora, ‘and sure you don’t repent?’
I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.
CHAPTER 44. OUR HOUSEKEEPING
It was a strange condition of things, the honeymoon being over, and the bridesmaids gone home, when I found myself sitting down in my own small house with Dora; quite thrown out of employment, as I may say, in respect of the delicious old occupation of making love.
It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have Dora always there. It was so unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have to write to her, not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her. Sometimes of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it was that there we were, alone together as a matter of course—nobody’s business any more—all the romance of our engagement put away upon a shelf, to rust—no one to please but one another—one another to please, for life.
When there was a debate, and I was kept out very late, it seemed so strange to me, as I was walking home, to think that Dora was at home! It was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have her coming softly down to talk to me as I ate my supper. It was such a stupendous thing to know for certain that she put her hair in papers. It was altogether such an astonishing event to see her do it!
I doubt whether two young birds could have known less about keeping house, than I and my pretty Dora did. We had a servant, of course. She kept house for us. I have still a latent belief that she must have been Mrs. Crupp’s daughter in disguise, we had such an awful time of it with Mary Anne.
Her name was Paragon. Her nature was represented to us, when we engaged her, as being feebly expressed in her name. She had a written character, as large as a proclamation; and, according to this document, could do everything of a domestic nature that ever I heard of, and a great many things that I never did hear of. She was a woman in the prime of life; of a severe countenance; and subject (particularly in the arms) to a sort of perpetual measles or fiery rash. She had a cousin in the Life-Guards, with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else. His shell-jacket was as much too little for him as he was too big for the premises. He made the cottage smaller than it need have been, by being so very much out of proportion to it. Besides which, the walls were not thick, and, whenever he passed the evening at our house, we always knew of it by hearing one continual growl in the kitchen.
Our treasure was warranted sober and honest. I am therefore willing to believe that she was in a fit when we found her under the boiler; and that the deficient tea-spoons were attributable to the dustman.
But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. We felt our inexperience, and were unable to help ourselves. We should have been at her mercy, if she had had any; but she was a remorseless woman, and had none. She was the cause of our first little quarrel.
‘My dearest life,’ I said one day to Dora, ‘do you think Mary Anne has any idea of time?’
‘Why, Doady?’ inquired Dora, looking up, innocently, from her drawing.
‘My love, because it’s five, and we were to have dined at four.’
Dora glanced wistfully at the clock, and hinted that she thought it was too fast.
‘On the contrary, my love,’ said I, referring to my watch, ‘it’s a few minutes too slow.’
My little wife came and sat upon my knee, to coax me to be quiet, and drew a line with her pencil down the middle of my nose; but I couldn’t dine off that, though it was very agreeable.
‘Don’t you think, my dear,’ said I, ‘it would be better for you to remonstrate with Mary Anne?’
‘Oh no, please! I couldn’t, Doady!’ said Dora.
‘Why not, my love?’ I gently asked.
‘Oh, because I am such a little goose,’ said Dora, ‘and she knows I am!’
I thought this sentiment so incompatible with the establishment of any system of check on Mary Anne, that I frowned a little.
‘Oh, what ugly wrinkles in my bad boy’s forehead!’ said Dora, and still being on my knee, she traced them with her pencil; putting it to her rosy lips to make it mark blacker, and working at my forehead with a quaint little mockery of being industrious, that quite delighted me in spite of myself.
‘There’s a good child,’ said Dora, ‘it makes its face so much prettier to laugh.’ ‘But, my love,’ said I.
‘No, no! please!’ cried Dora, with a kiss, ‘don’t be a naughty Blue Beard! Don’t be serious!’
‘My precious wife,’ said I, ‘we must be serious sometimes. Come! Sit down on this chair, close beside me! Give me the pencil! There! Now let us talk sensibly. You know, dear’; what a little hand it was to hold, and what a tiny wedding-ring it was to see! ‘You know, my love, it is not exactly comfortable to have to go out without one’s dinner. Now, is it?’
‘N-n-no!’ replied Dora, faintly.
‘My love, how you tremble!’
‘Because I KNOW you’re going to scold me,’ exclaimed Dora, in a piteous voice.
‘My sweet, I am only going to reason.’
‘Oh, but reasoning is worse than scolding!’ exclaimed Dora, in despair. ‘I didn’t marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!’
I tried to pacify Dora, but she turned away her face, and shook her curls from side to side, and said, ‘You cruel, cruel boy!’ so many times, that I really did not exactly know what to do: so I took a few turns up and down the room in my uncertainty, and came back again.
‘Dora, my darling!’
‘No, I am not your darling. Because you must be sorry that you married me, or else you wouldn’t reason with me!’ returned Dora.
I felt so injured by the inconsequential nature of this charge, that it gave me courage to be grave.
‘Now, my own Dora,’ said I, ‘you are very childish, and are talking nonsense. You must remember, I am sure, that I was obliged to go out yesterday when dinner was half over; and that, the day before, I was made quite unwell by being obliged to eat underdone veal in a hurry; today, I don’t dine at all—and I am afraid to say how long we waited for breakfast—and then the water didn’t boil. I don’t mean to reproach you, my dear, but this is not comfortable.’
‘Oh, you cruel, cruel boy, to say I am a disagreeable wife!’ cried Dora.
‘Now, my dear Dora, you must know that I never said that!’
‘You said, I wasn’t comfortable!’ cried Dora. ‘I said the housekeeping was not comfortable!’
‘It’s exactly the same thing!’ cried Dora. And she evidently thought so, for she wept most grievously.
I took another turn across the room, full of love for my pretty wife, and distracted by self-accusatory inclinations to knock my head against the door. I sat down again, and said:
‘I am not blaming you, Dora. We have both a great deal to learn. I am only trying to show you, my dear, that you must—you really must’ (I was resolved not to give this up)—‘accustom yourself to look after Mary Anne. Likewise to act a little for yourself, and me.’
‘I wonder, I do, at your making such ungrateful speeches,’ sobbed Dora. ‘When you know that the other day, when you said you would like a little bit of fish, I went out myself, miles and miles, and ordered it, to surprise you.’
‘And it was very kind of you, my own darling,’ said I. ‘I felt it so much that I wouldn’t on any account have even mentioned that you bought a Salmon—which was too much for two. Or that it cost one pound six—which was more than we can afford.’
‘You enjoyed it very much,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And you said I was a Mouse.’
‘And I’ll say so again, my love,’ I returned, ‘a thousand times!’
But I had wounded Dora’s soft little heart, and she was not to be comforted. She was so pathetic in her sobbing and bewailing, that I felt as if I had said I don’t know what to hurt her. I was obliged to hurry away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night such pangs of remorse as made me miserable. I had the conscience of an assassin, and was haunted by a vague sense of enormous wickedness.
It was two or three hours past midnight when I got home. I found my aunt, in our house, sitting up for me.
‘Is anything the matter, aunt?’ said I, alarmed.
‘Nothing, Trot,’ she replied. ‘Sit down, sit down. Little Blossom has been rather out of spirits, and I have been keeping her company. That’s all.’
I leaned my head upon my hand; and felt more sorry and downcast, as I sat looking at the fire, than I could have supposed possible so soon after the fulfilment of my brightest hopes. As I sat thinking, I happened to meet my aunt’s eyes, which were resting on my face. There was an anxious expression in them, but it cleared directly.
‘I assure you, aunt,’ said I, ‘I have been quite unhappy myself all night, to think of Dora’s being so. But I had no other intention than to speak to her tenderly and lovingly about our home-affairs.’
My aunt nodded encouragement.
‘You must have patience, Trot,’ said she.
‘Of course. Heaven knows I don’t mean to be unreasonable, aunt!’
‘No, no,’ said my aunt. ‘But Little Blossom is a very tender little blossom, and the wind must be gentle with her.’
I thanked my good aunt, in my heart, for her tenderness towards my wife; and I was sure that she knew I did.
‘Don’t you think, aunt,’ said I, after some further contemplation of the fire, ‘that you could advise and counsel Dora a little, for our mutual advantage, now and then?’
‘Trot,’ returned my aunt, with some emotion, ‘no! Don’t ask me such a thing.’
Her tone was so very earnest that I raised my eyes in surprise.
‘I look back on my life, child,’ said my aunt, ‘and I think of some who are in their graves, with whom I might have been on kinder terms. If I judged harshly of other people’s mistakes in marriage, it may have been because I had bitter reason to judge harshly of my own. Let that pass. I have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of a woman, a good many years. I am still, and I always shall be. But you and I have done one another some good, Trot,—at all events, you have done me good, my dear; and division must not come between us, at this time of day.’
‘Division between us!’ cried I.
‘Child, child!’ said my aunt, smoothing her dress, ‘how soon it might come between us, or how unhappy I might make our Little Blossom, if I meddled in anything, a prophet couldn’t say. I want our pet to like me, and be as gay as a butterfly. Remember your own home, in that second marriage; and never do both me and her the injury you have hinted at!’
I comprehended, at once, that my aunt was right; and I comprehended the full extent of her generous feeling towards my dear wife.
‘These are early days, Trot,’ she pursued, ‘and Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year. You have chosen freely for yourself’; a cloud passed over her face for a moment, I thought; ‘and you have chosen a very pretty and a very affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too—of course I know that; I am not delivering a lecture—to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has, and not by the qualities she may not have. The latter you must develop in her, if you can. And if you cannot, child,’ here my aunt rubbed her nose, ‘you must just accustom yourself to do without ‘em. But remember, my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are to work it out for yourselves. This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless you both, in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!’
My aunt said this in a sprightly way, and gave me a kiss to ratify the blessing.
‘Now,’ said she, ‘light my little lantern, and see me into my bandbox by the garden path’; for there was a communication between our cottages in that direction. ‘Give Betsey Trotwood’s love to Blossom, when you come back; and whatever you do, Trot, never dream of setting Betsey up as a scarecrow, for if I ever saw her in the glass, she’s quite grim enough and gaunt enough in her private capacity!’
With this my aunt tied her head up in a handkerchief, with which she was accustomed to make a bundle of it on such occasions; and I escorted her home. As she stood in her garden, holding up her little lantern to light me back, I thought her observation of me had an anxious air again; but I was too much occupied in pondering on what she had said, and too much impressed—for the first time, in reality—by the conviction that Dora and I had indeed to work out our future for ourselves, and that no one could assist us, to take much notice of it.
Dora came stealing down in her little slippers, to meet me, now that I was alone; and cried upon my shoulder, and said I had been hard-hearted and she had been naughty; and I said much the same thing in effect, I believe; and we made it up, and agreed that our first little difference was to be our last, and that we were never to have another if we lived a hundred years.
The next domestic trial we went through, was the Ordeal of Servants. Mary Anne’s cousin deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions in arms, who took him away handcuffed in a procession that covered our front-garden with ignominy. This nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly, on receipt of wages, that I was surprised, until I found out about the tea-spoons, and also about the little sums she had borrowed in my name of the tradespeople without authority. After an interval of Mrs. Kidgerbury—the oldest inhabitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went out charing, but was too feeble to execute her conceptions of that art—we found another treasure, who was one of the most amiable of women, but who generally made a point of falling either up or down the kitchen stairs with the tray, and almost plunged into the parlour, as into a bath, with the tea-things. The ravages committed by this unfortunate, rendering her dismissal necessary, she was succeeded (with intervals of Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables; terminating in a young person of genteel appearance, who went to Greenwich Fair in Dora’s bonnet. After whom I remember nothing but an average equality of failure.
Everybody we had anything to do with seemed to cheat us. Our appearance in a shop was a signal for the damaged goods to be brought out immediately. If we bought a lobster, it was full of water. All our meat turned out to be tough, and there was hardly any crust to our loaves. In search of the principle on which joints ought to be roasted, to be roasted enough, and not too much, I myself referred to the Cookery Book, and found it there established as the allowance of a quarter of an hour to every pound, and say a quarter over. But the principle always failed us by some curious fatality, and we never could hit any medium between redness and cinders.
I had reason to believe that in accomplishing these failures we incurred a far greater expense than if we had achieved a series of triumphs. It appeared to me, on looking over the tradesmen’s books, as if we might have kept the basement storey paved with butter, such was the extensive scale of our consumption of that article. I don’t know whether the Excise returns of the period may have exhibited any increase in the demand for pepper; but if our performances did not affect the market, I should say several families must have left off using it. And the most wonderful fact of all was, that we never had anything in the house.
As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes, and coming in a state of penitent intoxication to apologize, I suppose that might have happened several times to anybody. Also the chimney on fire, the parish engine, and perjury on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend that we were personally fortunate in engaging a servant with a taste for cordials, who swelled our running account for porter at the public-house by such inexplicable items as ‘quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Half-quartern gin and cloves (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)’—the parentheses always referring to Dora, who was supposed, it appeared on explanation, to have imbibed the whole of these refreshments.
One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner to Traddles. I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me that afternoon. He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I would bring him home. It was pleasant weather, and on the road we made my domestic happiness the theme of conversation. Traddles was very full of it; and said, that, picturing himself with such a home, and Sophy waiting and preparing for him, he could think of nothing wanting to complete his bliss.
I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the opposite end of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat down, for a little more room. I did not know how it was, but though there were only two of us, we were at once always cramped for room, and yet had always room enough to lose everything in. I suspect it may have been because nothing had a place of its own, except Jip’s pagoda, which invariably blocked up the main thoroughfare. On the present occasion, Traddles was so hemmed in by the pagoda and the guitar-case, and Dora’s flower-painting, and my writing-table, that I had serious doubts of the possibility of his using his knife and fork; but he protested, with his own good-humour, ‘Oceans of room, Copperfield! I assure you, Oceans!’
There was another thing I could have wished, namely, that Jip had never been encouraged to walk about the tablecloth during dinner. I began to think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the melted butter. On this occasion he seemed to think he was introduced expressly to keep Traddles at bay; and he barked at my old friend, and made short runs at his plate, with such undaunted pertinacity, that he may be said to have engrossed the conversation.
However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favourite, I hinted no objection. For similar reasons I made no allusion to the skirmishing plates upon the floor; or to the disreputable appearance of the castors, which were all at sixes and sevens, and looked drunk; or to the further blockade of Traddles by wandering vegetable dishes and jugs. I could not help wondering in my own mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of mutton before me, previous to carving it, how it came to pass that our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes—and whether our butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world; but I kept my reflections to myself.
‘My love,’ said I to Dora, ‘what have you got in that dish?’
I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempting little faces at me, as if she wanted to kiss me.
‘Oysters, dear,’ said Dora, timidly.
‘Was that YOUR thought?’ said I, delighted.
‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora.
‘There never was a happier one!’ I exclaimed, laying down the carving-knife and fork. ‘There is nothing Traddles likes so much!’
‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora, ‘and so I bought a beautiful little barrel of them, and the man said they were very good. But I—I am afraid there’s something the matter with them. They don’t seem right.’ Here Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes.
‘They are only opened in both shells,’ said I. ‘Take the top one off, my love.’
‘But it won’t come off!’ said Dora, trying very hard, and looking very much distressed.
‘Do you know, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, cheerfully examining the dish, ‘I think it is in consequence—they are capital oysters, but I think it is in consequence—of their never having been opened.’
They never had been opened; and we had no oyster-knives—and couldn’t have used them if we had; so we looked at the oysters and ate the mutton. At least we ate as much of it as was done, and made up with capers. If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that Traddles would have made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a plateful of raw meat, to express enjoyment of the repast; but I would hear of no such immolation on the altar of friendship, and we had a course of bacon instead; there happening, by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder.
My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was not, that the discomfiture I had subdued, very soon vanished, and we passed a happy evening; Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By and by she made tea for us; which it was so pretty to see her do, as if she was busying herself with a set of doll’s tea-things, that I was not particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet over.
When Traddles went away, and I came back into the parlour from seeing him out, my wife planted her chair close to mine, and sat down by my side. ‘I am very sorry,’ she said. ‘Will you try to teach me, Doady?’
‘I must teach myself first, Dora,’ said I. ‘I am as bad as you, love.’
‘Ah! But you can learn,’ she returned; ‘and you are a clever, clever man!’
‘Nonsense, mouse!’ said I.
‘I wish,’ resumed my wife, after a long silence, ‘that I could have gone down into the country for a whole year, and lived with Agnes!’
Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder, and her chin rested on them, and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.
‘Why so?’ I asked.
‘I think she might have improved me, and I think I might have learned from her,’ said Dora.
‘All in good time, my love. Agnes has had her father to take care of for these many years, you should remember. Even when she was quite a child, she was the Agnes whom we know,’ said I.
‘Will you call me a name I want you to call me?’ inquired Dora, without moving.
‘What is it?’ I asked with a smile.
‘It’s a stupid name,’ she said, shaking her curls for a moment. ‘Child-wife.’
I laughingly asked my child-wife what her fancy was in desiring to be so called. She answered without moving, otherwise than as the arm I twined about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:
‘I don’t mean, you silly fellow, that you should use the name instead of Dora. I only mean that you should think of me that way. When you are going to be angry with me, say to yourself, “it’s only my child-wife!” When I am very disappointing, say, “I knew, a long time ago, that she would make but a child-wife!” When you miss what I should like to be, and I think can never be, say, “still my foolish child-wife loves me!” For indeed I do.’
I had not been serious with her; having no idea until now, that she was serious herself. But her affectionate nature was so happy in what I now said to her with my whole heart, that her face became a laughing one before her glittering eyes were dry. She was soon my child-wife indeed; sitting down on the floor outside the Chinese House, ringing all the little bells one after another, to punish Jip for his recent bad behaviour; while Jip lay blinking in the doorway with his head out, even too lazy to be teased.
This appeal of Dora’s made a strong impression on me. I look back on the time I write of; I invoke the innocent figure that I dearly loved, to come out from the mists and shadows of the past, and turn its gentle head towards me once again; and I can still declare that this one little speech was constantly in my memory. I may not have used it to the best account; I was young and inexperienced; but I never turned a deaf ear to its artless pleading.
Dora told me, shortly afterwards, that she was going to be a wonderful housekeeper. Accordingly, she polished the tablets, pointed the pencil, bought an immense account-book, carefully stitched up with a needle and thread all the leaves of the Cookery Book which Jip had torn, and made quite a desperate little attempt ‘to be good’, as she called it. But the figures had the old obstinate propensity—they WOULD NOT add up. When she had entered two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip would walk over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out. Her own little right-hand middle finger got steeped to the very bone in ink; and I think that was the only decided result obtained.
Sometimes, of an evening, when I was at home and at work—for I wrote a good deal now, and was beginning in a small way to be known as a writer—I would lay down my pen, and watch my child-wife trying to be good. First of all, she would bring out the immense account-book, and lay it down upon the table, with a deep sigh. Then she would open it at the place where Jip had made it illegible last night, and call Jip up, to look at his misdeeds. This would occasion a diversion in Jip’s favour, and some inking of his nose, perhaps, as a penalty. Then she would tell Jip to lie down on the table instantly, ‘like a lion’—which was one of his tricks, though I cannot say the likeness was striking—and, if he were in an obedient humour, he would obey. Then she would take up a pen, and begin to write, and find a hair in it. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and find that it spluttered. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and say in a low voice, ‘Oh, it’s a talking pen, and will disturb Doady!’ And then she would give it up as a bad job, and put the account-book away, after pretending to crush the lion with it.
Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she would sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and other documents, which looked more like curl-papers than anything else, and endeavour to get some result out of them. After severely comparing one with another, and making entries on the tablets, and blotting them out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again, backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed and discouraged, and would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to see her bright face clouded—and for me!—and I would go softly to her, and say:
‘What’s the matter, Dora?’
Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, ‘They won’t come right. They make my head ache so. And they won’t do anything I want!’
Then I would say, ‘Now let us try together. Let me show you, Dora.’
Then I would commence a practical demonstration, to which Dora would pay profound attention, perhaps for five minutes; when she would begin to be dreadfully tired, and would lighten the subject by curling my hair, or trying the effect of my face with my shirt-collar turned down. If I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me; and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.
I had a great deal of work to do, and had many anxieties, but the same considerations made me keep them to myself. I am far from sure, now, that it was right to do this, but I did it for my child-wife’s sake. I search my breast, and I commit its secrets, if I know them, without any reservation to this paper. The old unhappy loss or want of something had, I am conscious, some place in my heart; but not to the embitterment of my life. When I walked alone in the fine weather, and thought of the summer days when all the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment, I did miss something of the realization of my dreams; but I thought it was a softened glory of the Past, which nothing could have thrown upon the present time. I did feel, sometimes, for a little while, that I could have wished my wife had been my counsellor; had had more character and purpose, to sustain me and improve me by; had been endowed with power to fill up the void which somewhere seemed to be about me; but I felt as if this were an unearthly consummation of my happiness, that never had been meant to be, and never could have been.
I was a boyish husband as to years. I had known the softening influence of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves. If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now.
Thus it was that I took upon myself the toils and cares of our life, and had no partner in them. We lived much as before, in reference to our scrambling household arrangements; but I had got used to those, and Dora I was pleased to see was seldom vexed now. She was bright and cheerful in the old childish way, loved me dearly, and was happy with her old trifles.
When the debates were heavy—I mean as to length, not quality, for in the last respect they were not often otherwise—and I went home late, Dora would never rest when she heard my footsteps, but would always come downstairs to meet me. When my evenings were unoccupied by the pursuit for which I had qualified myself with so much pains, and I was engaged in writing at home, she would sit quietly near me, however late the hour, and be so mute, that I would often think she had dropped asleep. But generally, when I raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me with the quiet attention of which I have already spoken.
‘Oh, what a weary boy!’ said Dora one night, when I met her eyes as I was shutting up my desk.
‘What a weary girl!’ said I. ‘That’s more to the purpose. You must go to bed another time, my love. It’s far too late for you.’
‘No, don’t send me to bed!’ pleaded Dora, coming to my side. ‘Pray, don’t do that!’
‘Dora!’ To my amazement she was sobbing on my neck. ‘Not well, my dear! not happy!’
‘Yes! quite well, and very happy!’ said Dora. ‘But say you’ll let me stop, and see you write.’
‘Why, what a sight for such bright eyes at midnight!’ I replied.
‘Are they bright, though?’ returned Dora, laughing. ‘I’m so glad they’re bright.’ ‘Little Vanity!’ said I.
But it was not vanity; it was only harmless delight in my admiration. I knew that very well, before she told me so.
‘If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you write!’ said Dora. ‘Do you think them pretty?’
‘Very pretty.’
‘Then let me always stop and see you write.’
‘I am afraid that won’t improve their brightness, Dora.’
‘Yes, it will! Because, you clever boy, you’ll not forget me then, while you are full of silent fancies. Will you mind it, if I say something very, very silly?---more than usual?’ inquired Dora, peeping over my shoulder into my face.
‘What wonderful thing is that?’ said I.
‘Please let me hold the pens,’ said Dora. ‘I want to have something to do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the pens?’
The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a new pen—which I very often feigned to do—suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretence of wanting a page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear to other men.
She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling about the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to her slender waist. I seldom found that the places to which they belonged were locked, or that they were of any use except as a plaything for Jip—but Dora was pleased, and that pleased me. She was quite satisfied that a good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke.
So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me, and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was ‘a cross old thing’. I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone. She courted Jip, though Jip never responded; listened, day after day, to the guitar, though I am afraid she had no taste for music; never attacked the Incapables, though the temptation must have been severe; went wonderful distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that she found out Dora wanted; and never came in by the garden, and missed her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the stairs, in a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:
‘Where’s Little Blossom?’
CHAPTER 45. MR. DICK FULFILS MY AUNT’S PREDICTIONS
It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor. Living in his neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house on two or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent quarters under the Doctor’s roof. She was exactly the same as ever, and the same immortal butterflies hovered over her cap.
Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my life, Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her daughter was. She required a great deal of amusement, and, like a deep old soldier, pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to be devoting herself to her child. The Doctor’s desire that Annie should be entertained, was therefore particularly acceptable to this excellent parent; who expressed unqualified approval of his discretion.
I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor’s wound without knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so strongly commending his design of lightening the load of her life.
‘My dear soul,’ she said to him one day when I was present, ‘you know there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be always shut up here.’
The Doctor nodded his benevolent head. ‘When she comes to her mother’s age,’ said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan, ‘then it’ll be another thing. You might put ME into a Jail, with genteel society and a rubber, and I should never care to come out. But I am not Annie, you know; and Annie is not her mother.’
‘Surely, surely,’ said the Doctor.
‘You are the best of creatures—no, I beg your pardon!’ for the Doctor made a gesture of deprecation, ‘I must say before your face, as I always say behind your back, you are the best of creatures; but of course you don’t—now do you?---enter into the same pursuits and fancies as Annie?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor, in a sorrowful tone.
‘No, of course not,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘Take your Dictionary, for example. What a useful work a Dictionary is! What a necessary work! The meanings of words! Without Doctor Johnson, or somebody of that sort, we might have been at this present moment calling an Italian-iron, a bedstead. But we can’t expect a Dictionary—especially when it’s making—to interest Annie, can we?’
The Doctor shook his head.
‘And that’s why I so much approve,’ said Mrs. Markleham, tapping him on the shoulder with her shut-up fan, ‘of your thoughtfulness. It shows that you don’t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on young shoulders. You have studied Annie’s character, and you understand it. That’s what I find so charming!’
Even the calm and patient face of Doctor Strong expressed some little sense of pain, I thought, under the infliction of these compliments.
‘Therefore, my dear Doctor,’ said the Old Soldier, giving him several affectionate taps, ‘you may command me, at all times and seasons. Now, do understand that I am entirely at your service. I am ready to go with Annie to operas, concerts, exhibitions, all kinds of places; and you shall never find that I am tired. Duty, my dear Doctor, before every consideration in the universe!’
She was as good as her word. She was one of those people who can bear a great deal of pleasure, and she never flinched in her perseverance in the cause. She seldom got hold of the newspaper (which she settled herself down in the softest chair in the house to read through an eye-glass, every day, for two hours), but she found out something that she was certain Annie would like to see. It was in vain for Annie to protest that she was weary of such things. Her mother’s remonstrance always was, ‘Now, my dear Annie, I am sure you know better; and I must tell you, my love, that you are not making a proper return for the kindness of Doctor Strong.’
This was usually said in the Doctor’s presence, and appeared to me to constitute Annie’s principal inducement for withdrawing her objections when she made any. But in general she resigned herself to her mother, and went where the Old Soldier would.
It rarely happened now that Mr. Maldon accompanied them. Sometimes my aunt and Dora were invited to do so, and accepted the invitation. Sometimes Dora only was asked. The time had been, when I should have been uneasy in her going; but reflection on what had passed that former night in the Doctor’s study, had made a change in my mistrust. I believed that the Doctor was right, and I had no worse suspicions.
My aunt rubbed her nose sometimes when she happened to be alone with me, and said she couldn’t make it out; she wished they were happier; she didn’t think our military friend (so she always called the Old Soldier) mended the matter at all. My aunt further expressed her opinion, ‘that if our military friend would cut off those butterflies, and give ‘em to the chimney-sweepers for May-day, it would look like the beginning of something sensible on her part.’
But her abiding reliance was on Mr. Dick. That man had evidently an idea in his head, she said; and if he could only once pen it up into a corner, which was his great difficulty, he would distinguish himself in some extraordinary manner.
Unconscious of this prediction, Mr. Dick continued to occupy precisely the same ground in reference to the Doctor and to Mrs. Strong. He seemed neither to advance nor to recede. He appeared to have settled into his original foundation, like a building; and I must confess that my faith in his ever Moving, was not much greater than if he had been a building.
But one night, when I had been married some months, Mr. Dick put his head into the parlour, where I was writing alone (Dora having gone out with my aunt to take tea with the two little birds), and said, with a significant cough:
‘You couldn’t speak to me without inconveniencing yourself, Trotwood, I am afraid?’
‘Certainly, Mr. Dick,’ said I; ‘come in!’
‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, laying his finger on the side of his nose, after he had shaken hands with me. ‘Before I sit down, I wish to make an observation. You know your aunt?’
‘A little,’ I replied.
‘She is the most wonderful woman in the world, sir!’
After the delivery of this communication, which he shot out of himself as if he were loaded with it, Mr. Dick sat down with greater gravity than usual, and looked at me.
‘Now, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I am going to put a question to you.’
‘As many as you please,’ said I.
‘What do you consider me, sir?’ asked Mr. Dick, folding his arms.
‘A dear old friend,’ said I. ‘Thank you, Trotwood,’ returned Mr. Dick, laughing, and reaching across in high glee to shake hands with me. ‘But I mean, boy,’ resuming his gravity, ‘what do you consider me in this respect?’ touching his forehead.
I was puzzled how to answer, but he helped me with a word.
‘Weak?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Well,’ I replied, dubiously. ‘Rather so.’
‘Exactly!’ cried Mr. Dick, who seemed quite enchanted by my reply. ‘That is, Trotwood, when they took some of the trouble out of you-know-who’s head, and put it you know where, there was a—’ Mr. Dick made his two hands revolve very fast about each other a great number of times, and then brought them into collision, and rolled them over and over one another, to express confusion. ‘There was that sort of thing done to me somehow. Eh?’
I nodded at him, and he nodded back again.
‘In short, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘I am simple.’
I would have qualified that conclusion, but he stopped me.
‘Yes, I am! She pretends I am not. She won’t hear of it; but I am. I know I am. If she hadn’t stood my friend, sir, I should have been shut up, to lead a dismal life these many years. But I’ll provide for her! I never spend the copying money. I put it in a box. I have made a will. I’ll leave it all to her. She shall be rich—noble!’
Mr. Dick took out his pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes. He then folded it up with great care, pressed it smooth between his two hands, put it in his pocket, and seemed to put my aunt away with it.
‘Now you are a scholar, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘You are a fine scholar. You know what a learned man, what a great man, the Doctor is. You know what honour he has always done me. Not proud in his wisdom. Humble, humble—condescending even to poor Dick, who is simple and knows nothing. I have sent his name up, on a scrap of paper, to the kite, along the string, when it has been in the sky, among the larks. The kite has been glad to receive it, sir, and the sky has been brighter with it.’
I delighted him by saying, most heartily, that the Doctor was deserving of our best respect and highest esteem.
‘And his beautiful wife is a star,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘A shining star. I have seen her shine, sir. But,’ bringing his chair nearer, and laying one hand upon my knee—‘clouds, sir—clouds.’
I answered the solicitude which his face expressed, by conveying the same expression into my own, and shaking my head.
‘What clouds?’ said Mr. Dick.
He looked so wistfully into my face, and was so anxious to understand, that I took great pains to answer him slowly and distinctly, as I might have entered on an explanation to a child.
‘There is some unfortunate division between them,’ I replied. ‘Some unhappy cause of separation. A secret. It may be inseparable from the discrepancy in their years. It may have grown up out of almost nothing.’
Mr. Dick, who had told off every sentence with a thoughtful nod, paused when I had done, and sat considering, with his eyes upon my face, and his hand upon my knee.
‘Doctor not angry with her, Trotwood?’ he said, after some time.
‘No. Devoted to her.’
‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick.
The sudden exultation with which he slapped me on the knee, and leaned back in his chair, with his eyebrows lifted up as high as he could possibly lift them, made me think him farther out of his wits than ever. He became as suddenly grave again, and leaning forward as before, said—first respectfully taking out his pocket-handkerchief, as if it really did represent my aunt:
‘Most wonderful woman in the world, Trotwood. Why has she done nothing to set things right?’
‘Too delicate and difficult a subject for such interference,’ I replied.
‘Fine scholar,’ said Mr. Dick, touching me with his finger. ‘Why has HE done nothing?’
‘For the same reason,’ I returned.
‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick. And he stood up before me, more exultingly than before, nodding his head, and striking himself repeatedly upon the breast, until one might have supposed that he had nearly nodded and struck all the breath out of his body.
‘A poor fellow with a craze, sir,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘a simpleton, a weak-minded person—present company, you know!’ striking himself again, ‘may do what wonderful people may not do. I’ll bring them together, boy. I’ll try. They’ll not blame me. They’ll not object to me. They’ll not mind what I do, if it’s wrong. I’m only Mr. Dick. And who minds Dick? Dick’s nobody! Whoo!’ He blew a slight, contemptuous breath, as if he blew himself away.
It was fortunate he had proceeded so far with his mystery, for we heard the coach stop at the little garden gate, which brought my aunt and Dora home.
‘Not a word, boy!’ he pursued in a whisper; ‘leave all the blame with Dick—simple Dick—mad Dick. I have been thinking, sir, for some time, that I was getting it, and now I have got it. After what you have said to me, I am sure I have got it. All right!’ Not another word did Mr. Dick utter on the subject; but he made a very telegraph of himself for the next half-hour (to the great disturbance of my aunt’s mind), to enjoin inviolable secrecy on me.
To my surprise, I heard no more about it for some two or three weeks, though I was sufficiently interested in the result of his endeavours; descrying a strange gleam of good sense—I say nothing of good feeling, for that he always exhibited—in the conclusion to which he had come. At last I began to believe, that, in the flighty and unsettled state of his mind, he had either forgotten his intention or abandoned it.
One fair evening, when Dora was not inclined to go out, my aunt and I strolled up to the Doctor’s cottage. It was autumn, when there were no debates to vex the evening air; and I remember how the leaves smelt like our garden at Blunderstone as we trod them under foot, and how the old, unhappy feeling, seemed to go by, on the sighing wind.
It was twilight when we reached the cottage. Mrs. Strong was just coming out of the garden, where Mr. Dick yet lingered, busy with his knife, helping the gardener to point some stakes. The Doctor was engaged with someone in his study; but the visitor would be gone directly, Mrs. Strong said, and begged us to remain and see him. We went into the drawing-room with her, and sat down by the darkening window. There was never any ceremony about the visits of such old friends and neighbours as we were.
We had not sat here many minutes, when Mrs. Markleham, who usually contrived to be in a fuss about something, came bustling in, with her newspaper in her hand, and said, out of breath, ‘My goodness gracious, Annie, why didn’t you tell me there was someone in the Study!’
‘My dear mama,’ she quietly returned, ‘how could I know that you desired the information?’
‘Desired the information!’ said Mrs. Markleham, sinking on the sofa. ‘I never had such a turn in all my life!’
‘Have you been to the Study, then, mama?’ asked Annie.
‘BEEN to the Study, my dear!’ she returned emphatically. ‘Indeed I have! I came upon the amiable creature—if you’ll imagine my feelings, Miss Trotwood and David—in the act of making his will.’
Her daughter looked round from the window quickly.
‘In the act, my dear Annie,’ repeated Mrs. Markleham, spreading the newspaper on her lap like a table-cloth, and patting her hands upon it, ‘of making his last Will and Testament. The foresight and affection of the dear! I must tell you how it was. I really must, in justice to the darling—for he is nothing less!—tell you how it was. Perhaps you know, Miss Trotwood, that there is never a candle lighted in this house, until one’s eyes are literally falling out of one’s head with being stretched to read the paper. And that there is not a chair in this house, in which a paper can be what I call, read, except one in the Study. This took me to the Study, where I saw a light. I opened the door. In company with the dear Doctor were two professional people, evidently connected with the law, and they were all three standing at the table: the darling Doctor pen in hand. “This simply expresses then,” said the Doctor—Annie, my love, attend to the very words—“this simply expresses then, gentlemen, the confidence I have in Mrs. Strong, and gives her all unconditionally?” One of the professional people replied, “And gives her all unconditionally.” Upon that, with the natural feelings of a mother, I said, “Good God, I beg your pardon!” fell over the door-step, and came away through the little back passage where the pantry is.’
Mrs. Strong opened the window, and went out into the verandah, where she stood leaning against a pillar.
‘But now isn’t it, Miss Trotwood, isn’t it, David, invigorating,’ said Mrs. Markleham, mechanically following her with her eyes, ‘to find a man at Doctor Strong’s time of life, with the strength of mind to do this kind of thing? It only shows how right I was. I said to Annie, when Doctor Strong paid a very flattering visit to myself, and made her the subject of a declaration and an offer, I said, “My dear, there is no doubt whatever, in my opinion, with reference to a suitable provision for you, that Doctor Strong will do more than he binds himself to do.”’
Here the bell rang, and we heard the sound of the visitors’ feet as they went out.
‘It’s all over, no doubt,’ said the Old Soldier, after listening; ‘the dear creature has signed, sealed, and delivered, and his mind’s at rest. Well it may be! What a mind! Annie, my love, I am going to the Study with my paper, for I am a poor creature without news. Miss Trotwood, David, pray come and see the Doctor.’
I was conscious of Mr. Dick’s standing in the shadow of the room, shutting up his knife, when we accompanied her to the Study; and of my aunt’s rubbing her nose violently, by the way, as a mild vent for her intolerance of our military friend; but who got first into the Study, or how Mrs. Markleham settled herself in a moment in her easy-chair, or how my aunt and I came to be left together near the door (unless her eyes were quicker than mine, and she held me back), I have forgotten, if I ever knew. But this I know,—that we saw the Doctor before he saw us, sitting at his table, among the folio volumes in which he delighted, resting his head calmly on his hand. That, in the same moment, we saw Mrs. Strong glide in, pale and trembling. That Mr. Dick supported her on his arm. That he laid his other hand upon the Doctor’s arm, causing him to look up with an abstracted air. That, as the Doctor moved his head, his wife dropped down on one knee at his feet, and, with her hands imploringly lifted, fixed upon his face the memorable look I had never forgotten. That at this sight Mrs. Markleham dropped the newspaper, and stared more like a figure-head intended for a ship to be called The Astonishment, than anything else I can think of.
The gentleness of the Doctor’s manner and surprise, the dignity that mingled with the supplicating attitude of his wife, the amiable concern of Mr. Dick, and the earnestness with which my aunt said to herself, ‘That man mad!’ (triumphantly expressive of the misery from which she had saved him)—I see and hear, rather than remember, as I write about it.
‘Doctor!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘What is it that’s amiss? Look here!’
‘Annie!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Not at my feet, my dear!’
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I beg and pray that no one will leave the room! Oh, my husband and father, break this long silence. Let us both know what it is that has come between us!’
Mrs. Markleham, by this time recovering the power of speech, and seeming to swell with family pride and motherly indignation, here exclaimed, ‘Annie, get up immediately, and don’t disgrace everybody belonging to you by humbling yourself like that, unless you wish to see me go out of my mind on the spot!’
‘Mama!’ returned Annie. ‘Waste no words on me, for my appeal is to my husband, and even you are nothing here.’
‘Nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham. ‘Me, nothing! The child has taken leave of her senses. Please to get me a glass of water!’
I was too attentive to the Doctor and his wife, to give any heed to this request; and it made no impression on anybody else; so Mrs. Markleham panted, stared, and fanned herself.
‘Annie!’ said the Doctor, tenderly taking her in his hands. ‘My dear! If any unavoidable change has come, in the sequence of time, upon our married life, you are not to blame. The fault is mine, and only mine. There is no change in my affection, admiration, and respect. I wish to make you happy. I truly love and honour you. Rise, Annie, pray!’
But she did not rise. After looking at him for a little while, she sank down closer to him, laid her arm across his knee, and dropping her head upon it, said:
‘If I have any friend here, who can speak one word for me, or for my husband in this matter; if I have any friend here, who can give a voice to any suspicion that my heart has sometimes whispered to me; if I have any friend here, who honours my husband, or has ever cared for me, and has anything within his knowledge, no matter what it is, that may help to mediate between us, I implore that friend to speak!’
There was a profound silence. After a few moments of painful hesitation, I broke the silence.
‘Mrs. Strong,’ I said, ‘there is something within my knowledge, which I have been earnestly entreated by Doctor Strong to conceal, and have concealed until tonight. But, I believe the time has come when it would be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your appeal absolves me from his injunction.’
She turned her face towards me for a moment, and I knew that I was right. I could not have resisted its entreaty, if the assurance that it gave me had been less convincing.
‘Our future peace,’ she said, ‘may be in your hands. I trust it confidently to your not suppressing anything. I know beforehand that nothing you, or anyone, can tell me, will show my husband’s noble heart in any other light than one. Howsoever it may seem to you to touch me, disregard that. I will speak for myself, before him, and before God afterwards.’
Thus earnestly besought, I made no reference to the Doctor for his permission, but, without any other compromise of the truth than a little softening of the coarseness of Uriah Heep, related plainly what had passed in that same room that night. The staring of Mrs. Markleham during the whole narration, and the shrill, sharp interjections with which she occasionally interrupted it, defy description.
When I had finished, Annie remained, for some few moments, silent, with her head bent down, as I have described. Then, she took the Doctor’s hand (he was sitting in the same attitude as when we had entered the room), and pressed it to her breast, and kissed it. Mr. Dick softly raised her; and she stood, when she began to speak, leaning on him, and looking down upon her husband—from whom she never turned her eyes.
‘All that has ever been in my mind, since I was married,’ she said in a low, submissive, tender voice, ‘I will lay bare before you. I could not live and have one reservation, knowing what I know now.’
‘Nay, Annie,’ said the Doctor, mildly, ‘I have never doubted you, my child. There is no need; indeed there is no need, my dear.’
‘There is great need,’ she answered, in the same way, ‘that I should open my whole heart before the soul of generosity and truth, whom, year by year, and day by day, I have loved and venerated more and more, as Heaven knows!’
‘Really,’ interrupted Mrs. Markleham, ‘if I have any discretion at all—’
(‘Which you haven’t, you Marplot,’ observed my aunt, in an indignant whisper.) —‘I must be permitted to observe that it cannot be requisite to enter into these details.’
‘No one but my husband can judge of that, mama,’ said Annie without removing her eyes from his face, ‘and he will hear me. If I say anything to give you pain, mama, forgive me. I have borne pain first, often and long, myself.’
‘Upon my word!’ gasped Mrs. Markleham.
‘When I was very young,’ said Annie, ‘quite a little child, my first associations with knowledge of any kind were inseparable from a patient friend and teacher—the friend of my dead father—who was always dear to me. I can remember nothing that I know, without remembering him. He stored my mind with its first treasures, and stamped his character upon them all. They never could have been, I think, as good as they have been to me, if I had taken them from any other hands.’
‘Makes her mother nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham.
‘Not so mama,’ said Annie; ‘but I make him what he was. I must do that. As I grew up, he occupied the same place still. I was proud of his interest: deeply, fondly, gratefully attached to him. I looked up to him, I can hardly describe how—as a father, as a guide, as one whose praise was different from all other praise, as one in whom I could have trusted and confided, if I had doubted all the world. You know, mama, how young and inexperienced I was, when you presented him before me, of a sudden, as a lover.’
‘I have mentioned the fact, fifty times at least, to everybody here!’ said Mrs. Markleham.
(‘Then hold your tongue, for the Lord’s sake, and don’t mention it any more!’ muttered my aunt.)
‘It was so great a change: so great a loss, I felt it, at first,’ said Annie, still preserving the same look and tone, ‘that I was agitated and distressed. I was but a girl; and when so great a change came in the character in which I had so long looked up to him, I think I was sorry. But nothing could have made him what he used to be again; and I was proud that he should think me so worthy, and we were married.’ ‘—At Saint Alphage, Canterbury,’ observed Mrs. Markleham.
(‘Confound the woman!’ said my aunt, ‘she WON’T be quiet!’)
‘I never thought,’ proceeded Annie, with a heightened colour, ‘of any worldly gain that my husband would bring to me. My young heart had no room in its homage for any such poor reference. Mama, forgive me when I say that it was you who first presented to my mind the thought that anyone could wrong me, and wrong him, by such a cruel suspicion.’
‘Me!’ cried Mrs. Markleham.
(‘Ah! You, to be sure!’ observed my aunt, ‘and you can’t fan it away, my military friend!’)
‘It was the first unhappiness of my new life,’ said Annie. ‘It was the first occasion of every unhappy moment I have known. These moments have been more, of late, than I can count; but not—my generous husband!—not for the reason you suppose; for in my heart there is not a thought, a recollection, or a hope, that any power could separate from you!’
She raised her eyes, and clasped her hands, and looked as beautiful and true, I thought, as any Spirit. The Doctor looked on her, henceforth, as steadfastly as she on him.
‘Mama is blameless,’ she went on, ‘of having ever urged you for herself, and she is blameless in intention every way, I am sure,—but when I saw how many importunate claims were pressed upon you in my name; how you were traded on in my name; how generous you were, and how Mr. Wickfield, who had your welfare very much at heart, resented it; the first sense of my exposure to the mean suspicion that my tenderness was bought—and sold to you, of all men on earth—fell upon me like unmerited disgrace, in which I forced you to participate. I cannot tell you what it was—mama cannot imagine what it was—to have this dread and trouble always on my mind, yet know in my own soul that on my marriage-day I crowned the love and honour of my life!’
‘A specimen of the thanks one gets,’ cried Mrs. Markleham, in tears, ‘for taking care of one’s family! I wish I was a Turk!’
(‘I wish you were, with all my heart—and in your native country!’ said my aunt.)
‘It was at that time that mama was most solicitous about my Cousin Maldon. I had liked him’: she spoke softly, but without any hesitation: ‘very much. We had been little lovers once. If circumstances had not happened otherwise, I might have come to persuade myself that I really loved him, and might have married him, and been most wretched. There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some strange application that I could not divine. ‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose’—‘no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
‘There is nothing,’ said Annie, ‘that we have in common. I have long found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to my husband for no more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him for having saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart.’
She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with an earnestness that thrilled me. Yet her voice was just as quiet as before.
‘When he was waiting to be the object of your munificence, so freely bestowed for my sake, and when I was unhappy in the mercenary shape I was made to wear, I thought it would have become him better to have worked his own way on. I thought that if I had been he, I would have tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship. But I thought no worse of him, until the night of his departure for India. That night I knew he had a false and thankless heart. I saw a double meaning, then, in Mr. Wickfield’s scrutiny of me. I perceived, for the first time, the dark suspicion that shadowed my life.’
‘Suspicion, Annie!’ said the Doctor. ‘No, no, no!’
‘In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!’ she returned. ‘And when I came to you, that night, to lay down all my load of shame and grief, and knew that I had to tell that, underneath your roof, one of my own kindred, to whom you had been a benefactor, for the love of me, had spoken to me words that should have found no utterance, even if I had been the weak and mercenary wretch he thought me—my mind revolted from the taint the very tale conveyed. It died upon my lips, and from that hour till now has never passed them.’
Mrs. Markleham, with a short groan, leaned back in her easy-chair; and retired behind her fan, as if she were never coming out any more.
‘I have never, but in your presence, interchanged a word with him from that time; then, only when it has been necessary for the avoidance of this explanation. Years have passed since he knew, from me, what his situation here was. The kindnesses you have secretly done for his advancement, and then disclosed to me, for my surprise and pleasure, have been, you will believe, but aggravations of the unhappiness and burden of my secret.’
She sunk down gently at the Doctor’s feet, though he did his utmost to prevent her; and said, looking up, tearfully, into his face:
‘Do not speak to me yet! Let me say a little more! Right or wrong, if this were to be done again, I think I should do just the same. You never can know what it was to be devoted to you, with those old associations; to find that anyone could be so hard as to suppose that the truth of my heart was bartered away, and to be surrounded by appearances confirming that belief. I was very young, and had no adviser. Between mama and me, in all relating to you, there was a wide division. If I shrunk into myself, hiding the disrespect I had undergone, it was because I honoured you so much, and so much wished that you should honour me!’
‘Annie, my pure heart!’ said the Doctor, ‘my dear girl!’
‘A little more! a very few words more! I used to think there were so many whom you might have married, who would not have brought such charge and trouble on you, and who would have made your home a worthier home. I used to be afraid that I had better have remained your pupil, and almost your child. I used to fear that I was so unsuited to your learning and wisdom. If all this made me shrink within myself (as indeed it did), when I had that to tell, it was still because I honoured you so much, and hoped that you might one day honour me.’
‘That day has shone this long time, Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘and can have but one long night, my dear.’
‘Another word! I afterwards meant—steadfastly meant, and purposed to myself—to bear the whole weight of knowing the unworthiness of one to whom you had been so good. And now a last word, dearest and best of friends! The cause of the late change in you, which I have seen with so much pain and sorrow, and have sometimes referred to my old apprehension—at other times to lingering suppositions nearer to the truth—has been made clear tonight; and by an accident I have also come to know, tonight, the full measure of your noble trust in me, even under that mistake. I do not hope that any love and duty I may render in return, will ever make me worthy of your priceless confidence; but with all this knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear face, revered as a father’s, loved as a husband’s, sacred to me in my childhood as a friend’s, and solemnly declare that in my lightest thought I have never wronged you; never wavered in the love and the fidelity I owe you!’
She had her arms around the Doctor’s neck, and he leant his head down over her, mingling his grey hair with her dark brown tresses.
‘Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband! Never cast me out! Do not think or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except in all my many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have known this better, as I have esteemed you more and more. Oh, take me to your heart, my husband, for my love was founded on a rock, and it endures!’
In the silence that ensued, my aunt walked gravely up to Mr. Dick, without at all hurrying herself, and gave him a hug and a sounding kiss. And it was very fortunate, with a view to his credit, that she did so; for I am confident that I detected him at that moment in the act of making preparations to stand on one leg, as an appropriate expression of delight.
‘You are a very remarkable man, Dick!’ said my aunt, with an air of unqualified approbation; ‘and never pretend to be anything else, for I know better!’
With that, my aunt pulled him by the sleeve, and nodded to me; and we three stole quietly out of the room, and came away.
‘That’s a settler for our military friend, at any rate,’ said my aunt, on the way home. ‘I should sleep the better for that, if there was nothing else to be glad of!’
‘She was quite overcome, I am afraid,’ said Mr. Dick, with great commiseration.
‘What! Did you ever see a crocodile overcome?’ inquired my aunt.
‘I don’t think I ever saw a crocodile,’ returned Mr. Dick, mildly.
‘There never would have been anything the matter, if it hadn’t been for that old Animal,’ said my aunt, with strong emphasis. ‘It’s very much to be wished that some mothers would leave their daughters alone after marriage, and not be so violently affectionate. They seem to think the only return that can be made them for bringing an unfortunate young woman into the world—God bless my soul, as if she asked to be brought, or wanted to come!—is full liberty to worry her out of it again. What are you thinking of, Trot?’
I was thinking of all that had been said. My mind was still running on some of the expressions used. ‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’ ‘The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.’ ‘My love was founded on a rock.’ But we were at home; and the trodden leaves were lying under-foot, and the autumn wind was blowing.
CHAPTER 46. INTELLIGENCE
I must have been married, if I may trust to my imperfect memory for dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning from a solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing—for my success had steadily increased with my steady application, and I was engaged at that time upon my first work of fiction—I came past Mrs. Steerforth’s house. I had often passed it before, during my residence in that neighbourhood, though never when I could choose another road. Howbeit, it did sometimes happen that it was not easy to find another, without making a long circuit; and so I had passed that way, upon the whole, pretty often.
I had never done more than glance at the house, as I went by with a quickened step. It had been uniformly gloomy and dull. None of the best rooms abutted on the road; and the narrow, heavily-framed old-fashioned windows, never cheerful under any circumstances, looked very dismal, close shut, and with their blinds always drawn down. There was a covered way across a little paved court, to an entrance that was never used; and there was one round staircase window, at odds with all the rest, and the only one unshaded by a blind, which had the same unoccupied blank look. I do not remember that I ever saw a light in all the house. If I had been a casual passer-by, I should have probably supposed that some childless person lay dead in it. If I had happily possessed no knowledge of the place, and had seen it often in that changeless state, I should have pleased my fancy with many ingenious speculations, I dare say.
As it was, I thought as little of it as I might. But my mind could not go by it and leave it, as my body did; and it usually awakened a long train of meditations. Coming before me, on this particular evening that I mention, mingled with the childish recollections and later fancies, the ghosts of half-formed hopes, the broken shadows of disappointments dimly seen and understood, the blending of experience and imagination, incidental to the occupation with which my thoughts had been busy, it was more than commonly suggestive. I fell into a brown study as I walked on, and a voice at my side made me start.
It was a woman’s voice, too. I was not long in recollecting Mrs. Steerforth’s little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue ribbons in her cap. She had taken them out now, to adapt herself, I suppose, to the altered character of the house; and wore but one or two disconsolate bows of sober brown.
‘If you please, sir, would you have the goodness to walk in, and speak to Miss Dartle?’
‘Has Miss Dartle sent you for me?’ I inquired.
‘Not tonight, sir, but it’s just the same. Miss Dartle saw you pass a night or two ago; and I was to sit at work on the staircase, and when I saw you pass again, to ask you to step in and speak to her.’
I turned back, and inquired of my conductor, as we went along, how Mrs. Steerforth was. She said her lady was but poorly, and kept her own room a good deal.
When we arrived at the house, I was directed to Miss Dartle in the garden, and left to make my presence known to her myself. She was sitting on a seat at one end of a kind of terrace, overlooking the great city. It was a sombre evening, with a lurid light in the sky; and as I saw the prospect scowling in the distance, with here and there some larger object starting up into the sullen glare, I fancied it was no inapt companion to the memory of this fierce woman.
She saw me as I advanced, and rose for a moment to receive me. I thought her, then, still more colourless and thin than when I had seen her last; the flashing eyes still brighter, and the scar still plainer.
Our meeting was not cordial. We had parted angrily on the last occasion; and there was an air of disdain about her, which she took no pains to conceal.
‘I am told you wish to speak to me, Miss Dartle,’ said I, standing near her, with my hand upon the back of the seat, and declining her gesture of invitation to sit down.
‘If you please,’ said she. ‘Pray has this girl been found?’
‘No.’
‘And yet she has run away!’
I saw her thin lips working while she looked at me, as if they were eager to load her with reproaches.
‘Run away?’ I repeated.
‘Yes! From him,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘If she is not found, perhaps she never will be found. She may be dead!’
The vaunting cruelty with which she met my glance, I never saw expressed in any other face that ever I have seen.
‘To wish her dead,’ said I, ‘may be the kindest wish that one of her own sex could bestow upon her. I am glad that time has softened you so much, Miss Dartle.’
She condescended to make no reply, but, turning on me with another scornful laugh, said:
‘The friends of this excellent and much-injured young lady are friends of yours. You are their champion, and assert their rights. Do you wish to know what is known of her?’
‘Yes,’ said I.
She rose with an ill-favoured smile, and taking a few steps towards a wall of holly that was near at hand, dividing the lawn from a kitchen-garden, said, in a louder voice, ‘Come here!’—as if she were calling to some unclean beast.
‘You will restrain any demonstrative championship or vengeance in this place, of course, Mr. Copperfield?’ said she, looking over her shoulder at me with the same expression.
I inclined my head, without knowing what she meant; and she said, ‘Come here!’ again; and returned, followed by the respectable Mr. Littimer, who, with undiminished respectability, made me a bow, and took up his position behind her. The air of wicked grace: of triumph, in which, strange to say, there was yet something feminine and alluring: with which she reclined upon the seat between us, and looked at me, was worthy of a cruel Princess in a Legend.
‘Now,’ said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching the old wound as it throbbed: perhaps, in this instance, with pleasure rather than pain. ‘Tell Mr. Copperfield about the flight.’
‘Mr. James and myself, ma’am—’
‘Don’t address yourself to me!’ she interrupted with a frown.
‘Mr. James and myself, sir—’
‘Nor to me, if you please,’ said I.
Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most agreeable to him; and began again.
‘Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever since she left Yarmouth under Mr. James’s protection. We have been in a variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country. We have been in France, Switzerland, Italy, in fact, almost all parts.’
He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself to that; and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were striking chords upon a dumb piano.
‘Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman; and was more settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I have been in his service. The young woman was very improvable, and spoke the languages; and wouldn’t have been known for the same country-person. I noticed that she was much admired wherever we went.’
Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side. I saw him steal a glance at her, and slightly smile to himself.
‘Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress; what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of; what with this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted general notice.’
He made a short pause. Her eyes wandered restlessly over the distant prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy mouth.
Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded, with his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little advanced, and a little on one side:
‘The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary Mr. James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that kind; and things were not so comfortable. Mr. James he began to be restless again. The more restless he got, the worse she got; and I must say, for myself, that I had a very difficult time of it indeed between the two. Still matters were patched up here, and made good there, over and over again; and altogether lasted, I am sure, for a longer time than anybody could have expected.’
Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now, with her former air. Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his hand with a respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:
‘At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words and reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the neighbourhood of Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman being very partial to the sea), and, under pretence of coming back in a day or so, left it in charge with me to break it out, that, for the general happiness of all concerned, he was’—here an interruption of the short cough—‘gone. But Mr. James, I must say, certainly did behave extremely honourable; for he proposed that the young woman should marry a very respectable person, who was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular way: her connexions being very common.’
He changed legs again, and wetted his lips. I was convinced that the scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected in Miss Dartle’s face.
‘This I also had it in charge to communicate. I was willing to do anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has undergone so much on his account. Therefore I undertook the commission. The young woman’s violence when she came to, after I broke the fact of his departure, was beyond all expectations. She was quite mad, and had to be held by force; or, if she couldn’t have got to a knife, or got to the sea, she’d have beaten her head against the marble floor.’
Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation in her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had uttered.
‘But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to me,’ said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands uneasily, ‘which anybody might have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as a kind intention, then the young woman came out in her true colours. A more outrageous person I never did see. Her conduct was surprisingly bad. She had no more gratitude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason in her, than a stock or a stone. If I hadn’t been upon my guard, I am convinced she would have had my blood.’
‘I think the better of her for it,’ said I, indignantly.
Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, ‘Indeed, sir? But you’re young!’ and resumed his narrative.
‘It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything nigh her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury with, and to shut her up close. Notwithstanding which, she got out in the night; forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up myself; dropped on a vine that was trailed below; and never has been seen or heard of, to my knowledge, since.’
‘She is dead, perhaps,’ said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could have spurned the body of the ruined girl.
‘She may have drowned herself, miss,’ returned Mr. Littimer, catching at an excuse for addressing himself to somebody. ‘It’s very possible. Or, she may have had assistance from the boatmen, and the boatmen’s wives and children. Being given to low company, she was very much in the habit of talking to them on the beach, Miss Dartle, and sitting by their boats. I have known her do it, when Mr. James has been away, whole days. Mr. James was far from pleased to find out, once, that she had told the children she was a boatman’s daughter, and that in her own country, long ago, she had roamed about the beach, like them.’
Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her sitting on the far-off shore, among the children like herself when she was innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her Mother had she been a poor man’s wife; and to the great voice of the sea, with its eternal ‘Never more!’
‘When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle—’
‘Did I tell you not to speak to me?’ she said, with stern contempt.
‘You spoke to me, miss,’ he replied. ‘I beg your pardon. But it is my service to obey.’
‘Do your service,’ she returned. ‘Finish your story, and go!’
‘When it was clear,’ he said, with infinite respectability and an obedient bow, ‘that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James, at the place where it had been agreed that I should write to him, and informed him of what had occurred. Words passed between us in consequence, and I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear, and I have borne, a great deal from Mr. James; but he insulted me too far. He hurt me. Knowing the unfortunate difference between himself and his mother, and what her anxiety of mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of coming home to England, and relating—’
‘For money which I paid him,’ said Miss Dartle to me.
‘Just so, ma’am—and relating what I knew. I am not aware,’ said Mr. Littimer, after a moment’s reflection, ‘that there is anything else. I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to meet with a respectable situation.’
Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there were anything that I desired to ask. As there was something which had occurred to my mind, I said in reply:
‘I could wish to know from this—creature,’ I could not bring myself to utter any more conciliatory word, ‘whether they intercepted a letter that was written to her from home, or whether he supposes that she received it.’
He remained calm and silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against the tip of every finger of his left.
Miss Dartle turned her head disdainfully towards him.
‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ he said, awakening from his abstraction, ‘but, however submissive to you, I have my position, though a servant. Mr. Copperfield and you, miss, are different people. If Mr. Copperfield wishes to know anything from me, I take the liberty of reminding Mr. Copperfield that he can put a question to me. I have a character to maintain.’
After a momentary struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him, and said, ‘You have heard my question. Consider it addressed to yourself, if you choose. What answer do you make?’
‘Sir,’ he rejoined, with an occasional separation and reunion of those delicate tips, ‘my answer must be qualified; because, to betray Mr. James’s confidence to his mother, and to betray it to you, are two different actions. It is not probable, I consider, that Mr. James would encourage the receipt of letters likely to increase low spirits and unpleasantness; but further than that, sir, I should wish to avoid going.’
‘Is that all?’ inquired Miss Dartle of me.
I indicated that I had nothing more to say. ‘Except,’ I added, as I saw him moving off, ‘that I understand this fellow’s part in the wicked story, and that, as I shall make it known to the honest man who has been her father from her childhood, I would recommend him to avoid going too much into public.’
He had stopped the moment I began, and had listened with his usual repose of manner.
‘Thank you, sir. But you’ll excuse me if I say, sir, that there are neither slaves nor slave-drivers in this country, and that people are not allowed to take the law into their own hands. If they do, it is more to their own peril, I believe, than to other people’s. Consequently speaking, I am not at all afraid of going wherever I may wish, sir.’
With that, he made a polite bow; and, with another to Miss Dartle, went away through the arch in the wall of holly by which he had come. Miss Dartle and I regarded each other for a little while in silence; her manner being exactly what it was, when she had produced the man.
‘He says besides,’ she observed, with a slow curling of her lip, ‘that his master, as he hears, is coasting Spain; and this done, is away to gratify his seafaring tastes till he is weary. But this is of no interest to you. Between these two proud persons, mother and son, there is a wider breach than before, and little hope of its healing, for they are one at heart, and time makes each more obstinate and imperious. Neither is this of any interest to you; but it introduces what I wish to say. This devil whom you make an angel of. I mean this low girl whom he picked out of the tide-mud,’ with her black eyes full upon me, and her passionate finger up, ‘may be alive,—for I believe some common things are hard to die. If she is, you will desire to have a pearl of such price found and taken care of. We desire that, too; that he may not by any chance be made her prey again. So far, we are united in one interest; and that is why I, who would do her any mischief that so coarse a wretch is capable of feeling, have sent for you to hear what you have heard.’
I saw, by the change in her face, that someone was advancing behind me. It was Mrs. Steerforth, who gave me her hand more coldly than of yore, and with an augmentation of her former stateliness of manner, but still, I perceived—and I was touched by it—with an ineffaceable remembrance of my old love for her son. She was greatly altered. Her fine figure was far less upright, her handsome face was deeply marked, and her hair was almost white. But when she sat down on the seat, she was a handsome lady still; and well I knew the bright eye with its lofty look, that had been a light in my very dreams at school.
‘Is Mr. Copperfield informed of everything, Rosa?’
‘Yes.’
‘And has he heard Littimer himself?’
‘Yes; I have told him why you wished it.’ ‘You are a good girl. I have had some slight correspondence with your former friend, sir,’ addressing me, ‘but it has not restored his sense of duty or natural obligation. Therefore I have no other object in this, than what Rosa has mentioned. If, by the course which may relieve the mind of the decent man you brought here (for whom I am sorry—I can say no more), my son may be saved from again falling into the snares of a designing enemy, well!’
She drew herself up, and sat looking straight before her, far away.
‘Madam,’ I said respectfully, ‘I understand. I assure you I am in no danger of putting any strained construction on your motives. But I must say, even to you, having known this injured family from childhood, that if you suppose the girl, so deeply wronged, has not been cruelly deluded, and would not rather die a hundred deaths than take a cup of water from your son’s hand now, you cherish a terrible mistake.’
‘Well, Rosa, well!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as the other was about to interpose, ‘it is no matter. Let it be. You are married, sir, I am told?’
I answered that I had been some time married.
‘And are doing well? I hear little in the quiet life I lead, but I understand you are beginning to be famous.’
‘I have been very fortunate,’ I said, ‘and find my name connected with some praise.’
‘You have no mother?’—in a softened voice.
‘No.’
‘It is a pity,’ she returned. ‘She would have been proud of you. Good night!’
I took the hand she held out with a dignified, unbending air, and it was as calm in mine as if her breast had been at peace. Her pride could still its very pulses, it appeared, and draw the placid veil before her face, through which she sat looking straight before her on the far distance.
As I moved away from them along the terrace, I could not help observing how steadily they both sat gazing on the prospect, and how it thickened and closed around them. Here and there, some early lamps were seen to twinkle in the distant city; and in the eastern quarter of the sky the lurid light still hovered. But, from the greater part of the broad valley interposed, a mist was rising like a sea, which, mingling with the darkness, made it seem as if the gathering waters would encompass them. I have reason to remember this, and think of it with awe; for before I looked upon those two again, a stormy sea had risen to their feet.
Reflecting on what had been thus told me, I felt it right that it should be communicated to Mr. Peggotty. On the following evening I went into London in quest of him. He was always wandering about from place to place, with his one object of recovering his niece before him; but was more in London than elsewhere. Often and often, now, had I seen him in the dead of night passing along the streets, searching, among the few who loitered out of doors at those untimely hours, for what he dreaded to find.
He kept a lodging over the little chandler’s shop in Hungerford Market, which I have had occasion to mention more than once, and from which he first went forth upon his errand of mercy. Hither I directed my walk. On making inquiry for him, I learned from the people of the house that he had not gone out yet, and I should find him in his room upstairs.
He was sitting reading by a window in which he kept a few plants. The room was very neat and orderly. I saw in a moment that it was always kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out but he thought it possible he might bring her home. He had not heard my tap at the door, and only raised his eyes when I laid my hand upon his shoulder.
‘Mas’r Davy! Thankee, sir! thankee hearty, for this visit! Sit ye down. You’re kindly welcome, sir!’
‘Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, taking the chair he handed me, ‘don’t expect much! I have heard some news.’
‘Of Em’ly!’
He put his hand, in a nervous manner, on his mouth, and turned pale, as he fixed his eyes on mine.
‘It gives no clue to where she is; but she is not with him.’
He sat down, looking intently at me, and listened in profound silence to all I had to tell. I well remember the sense of dignity, beauty even, with which the patient gravity of his face impressed me, when, having gradually removed his eyes from mine, he sat looking downward, leaning his forehead on his hand. He offered no interruption, but remained throughout perfectly still. He seemed to pursue her figure through the narrative, and to let every other shape go by him, as if it were nothing.
When I had done, he shaded his face, and continued silent. I looked out of the window for a little while, and occupied myself with the plants.
‘How do you fare to feel about it, Mas’r Davy?’ he inquired at length.
‘I think that she is living,’ I replied.
‘I doen’t know. Maybe the first shock was too rough, and in the wildness of her art—! That there blue water as she used to speak on. Could she have thowt o’ that so many year, because it was to be her grave!’
He said this, musing, in a low, frightened voice; and walked across the little room.
‘And yet,’ he added, ‘Mas’r Davy, I have felt so sure as she was living—I have know’d, awake and sleeping, as it was so trew that I should find her—I have been so led on by it, and held up by it—that I doen’t believe I can have been deceived. No! Em’ly’s alive!’
He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face into a resolute expression.
‘My niece, Em’ly, is alive, sir!’ he said, steadfastly. ‘I doen’t know wheer it comes from, or how ‘tis, but I am told as she’s alive!’
He looked almost like a man inspired, as he said it. I waited for a few moments, until he could give me his undivided attention; and then proceeded to explain the precaution, that, it had occurred to me last night, it would be wise to take.
‘Now, my dear friend—‘I began.
‘Thankee, thankee, kind sir,’ he said, grasping my hand in both of his.
‘If she should make her way to London, which is likely—for where could she lose herself so readily as in this vast city; and what would she wish to do, but lose and hide herself, if she does not go home?—’
‘And she won’t go home,’ he interposed, shaking his head mournfully. ‘If she had left of her own accord, she might; not as It was, sir.’
‘If she should come here,’ said I, ‘I believe there is one person, here, more likely to discover her than any other in the world. Do you remember—hear what I say, with fortitude—think of your great object!—do you remember Martha?’
‘Of our town?’
I needed no other answer than his face.
‘Do you know that she is in London?’
‘I have seen her in the streets,’ he answered, with a shiver.
‘But you don’t know,’ said I, ‘that Emily was charitable to her, with Ham’s help, long before she fled from home. Nor, that, when we met one night, and spoke together in the room yonder, over the way, she listened at the door.’
‘Mas’r Davy!’ he replied in astonishment. ‘That night when it snew so hard?’
‘That night. I have never seen her since. I went back, after parting from you, to speak to her, but she was gone. I was unwilling to mention her to you then, and I am now; but she is the person of whom I speak, and with whom I think we should communicate. Do you understand?’
‘Too well, sir,’ he replied. We had sunk our voices, almost to a whisper, and continued to speak in that tone.
‘You say you have seen her. Do you think that you could find her? I could only hope to do so by chance.’
‘I think, Mas’r Davy, I know wheer to look.’
‘It is dark. Being together, shall we go out now, and try to find her tonight?’
He assented, and prepared to accompany me. Without appearing to observe what he was doing, I saw how carefully he adjusted the little room, put a candle ready and the means of lighting it, arranged the bed, and finally took out of a drawer one of her dresses (I remember to have seen her wear it), neatly folded with some other garments, and a bonnet, which he placed upon a chair. He made no allusion to these clothes, neither did I. There they had been waiting for her, many and many a night, no doubt.
‘The time was, Mas’r Davy,’ he said, as we came downstairs, ‘when I thowt this girl, Martha, a’most like the dirt underneath my Em’ly’s feet. God forgive me, theer’s a difference now!’
As we went along, partly to hold him in conversation, and partly to satisfy myself, I asked him about Ham. He said, almost in the same words as formerly, that Ham was just the same, ‘wearing away his life with kiender no care nohow for ‘t; but never murmuring, and liked by all’.
I asked him what he thought Ham’s state of mind was, in reference to the cause of their misfortunes? Whether he believed it was dangerous? What he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and Steerforth ever should encounter?
‘I doen’t know, sir,’ he replied. ‘I have thowt of it oftentimes, but I can’t awize myself of it, no matters.’
I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when we were all three on the beach. ‘Do you recollect,’ said I, ‘a certain wild way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about “the end of it”?’
‘Sure I do!’ said he.
‘What do you suppose he meant?’
‘Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘I’ve put the question to myself a mort o’ times, and never found no answer. And theer’s one curious thing—that, though he is so pleasant, I wouldn’t fare to feel comfortable to try and get his mind upon ‘t. He never said a wured to me as warn’t as dootiful as dootiful could be, and it ain’t likely as he’d begin to speak any other ways now; but it’s fur from being fleet water in his mind, where them thowts lays. It’s deep, sir, and I can’t see down.’
‘You are right,’ said I, ‘and that has sometimes made me anxious.’
‘And me too, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined. ‘Even more so, I do assure you, than his ventersome ways, though both belongs to the alteration in him. I doen’t know as he’d do violence under any circumstances, but I hope as them two may be kep asunders.’
We had come, through Temple Bar, into the city. Conversing no more now, and walking at my side, he yielded himself up to the one aim of his devoted life, and went on, with that hushed concentration of his faculties which would have made his figure solitary in a multitude. We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned his head and pointed to a solitary female figure flitting along the opposite side of the street. I knew it, readily, to be the figure that we sought.
We crossed the road, and were pressing on towards her, when it occurred to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman’s interest in the lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place, aloof from the crowd, and where we should be less observed. I advised my companion, therefore, that we should not address her yet, but follow her; consulting in this, likewise, an indistinct desire I had, to know where she went.
He acquiescing, we followed at a distance: never losing sight of her, but never caring to come very near, as she frequently looked about. Once, she stopped to listen to a band of music; and then we stopped too.
She went on a long way. Still we went on. It was evident, from the manner in which she held her course, that she was going to some fixed destination; and this, and her keeping in the busy streets, and I suppose the strange fascination in the secrecy and mystery of so following anyone, made me adhere to my first purpose. At length she turned into a dull, dark street, where the noise and crowd were lost; and I said, ‘We may speak to her now’; and, mending our pace, we went after her.
CHAPTER 47. MARTHA
We were now down in Westminster. We had turned back to follow her, having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the leading streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of the two currents of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that, between this and the advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her. At that moment she crossed the road, as if to avoid the footsteps that she heard so close behind; and, without looking back, passed on even more rapidly.
A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my companion without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her, and both followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as quietly as we could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.
There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying street, a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street ceases, and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river. As soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she had come to her destination; and presently went slowly along by the brink of the river, looking intently at it.
All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house; indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark glimpse of the river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her going no farther.
The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished, rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which—having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather—they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year’s handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.
As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the river’s brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and still, looking at the water.
There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. I then signed to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged from their shade to speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling; for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread within me.
I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed in gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and that she was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more like the action of a sleep-walker than a waking person. I know, and never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner which gave me no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes, until I had her arm within my grasp.
At the same moment I said ‘Martha!’
She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger hand than mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us. We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones, and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.
‘Oh, the river!’ she cried passionately. ‘Oh, the river!’
‘Hush, hush!’ said I. ‘Calm yourself.’
But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, ‘Oh, the river!’ over and over again.
‘I know it’s like me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know that I belong to it. I know that it’s the natural company of such as I am! It comes from country places, where there was once no harm in it—and it creeps through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable—and it goes away, like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled—and I feel that I must go with it!’ I have never known what despair was, except in the tone of those words.
‘I can’t keep away from it. I can’t forget it. It haunts me day and night. It’s the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that’s fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!’
The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion, as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his niece’s history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand—I touched it with my own, for his appearance alarmed me—was deadly cold.
‘She is in a state of frenzy,’ I whispered to him. ‘She will speak differently in a little time.’
I don’t know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to her with his outstretched hand.
A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more tranquil.
‘Martha,’ said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise—she seemed to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was weak, and leaned against a boat. ‘Do you know who this is, who is with me?’
She said faintly, ‘Yes.’
‘Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?’
She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against her forehead.
‘Are you composed enough,’ said I, ‘to speak on the subject which so interested you—I hope Heaven may remember it!—that snowy night?’
Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.
‘I want to say nothing for myself,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,’ she had shrunk away from him, ‘if you don’t feel too hard to me to do it, that I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.’ ‘It has never been attributed to you,’ I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.
‘It was you, if I don’t deceive myself,’ she said, in a broken voice, ‘that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so gentle to me; didn’t shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?’
‘It was,’ said I.
‘I should have been in the river long ago,’ she said, glancing at it with a terrible expression, ‘if any wrong to her had been upon my mind. I never could have kept out of it a single winter’s night, if I had not been free of any share in that!’
‘The cause of her flight is too well understood,’ I said. ‘You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,—we know.’
‘Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better heart!’ exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; ‘for she was always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself, knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever from her!’
Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.
‘And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some belonging to our town,’ cried Martha, ‘the bitterest thought in all my mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me, and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!’
Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and grief was terrible.
‘To have died, would not have been much—what can I say?---I would have lived!’ she cried. ‘I would have lived to be old, in the wretched streets—and to wander about, avoided, in the dark—and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me once—I would have done even that, to save her!’
Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.
‘What shall I ever do!’ she said, fighting thus with her despair. ‘How can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to everyone I come near!’ Suddenly she turned to my companion. ‘Stamp upon me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can’t believe—why should you?---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a word. I don’t complain. I don’t say she and I are alike—I know there is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her. Oh, don’t think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being what I am, and having ever known her; but don’t think that of me!’
He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.
‘Martha,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen’t know half the change that’s come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it likely. Well!’ he paused a moment, then went on. ‘You doen’t understand how ‘tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You doen’t understand what ‘tis we has afore us. Listen now!’
His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute.
‘If you heerd,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘owt of what passed between Mas’r Davy and me, th’ night when it snew so hard, you know as I have been—wheer not—fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,’ he repeated steadily. ‘Fur she’s more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear afore.’
She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.
‘I have heerd her tell,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you’d had such a friend, you’d have got into a way of being fond of him in course of time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.’
As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her, taking it up from the ground for that purpose.
‘Whereby,’ said he, ‘I know, both as she would go to the wureld’s furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would fly to the wureld’s furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she ain’t no call to doubt my love, and doen’t—and doen’t,’ he repeated, with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, ‘there’s shame steps in, and keeps betwixt us.’
I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself, new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature it presented.
‘According to our reckoning,’ he proceeded, ‘Mas’r Davy’s here, and mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to London. We believe—Mas’r Davy, me, and all of us—that you are as innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You’ve spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew she was! I knew she always was, to all. You’re thankful to her, and you love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!’
She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were doubtful of what he had said.
‘Will you trust me?’ she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.
‘Full and free!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to you, and bring you to her?’ she asked hurriedly.
We both replied together, ‘Yes!’
She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its passing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if that were possible, than she had been upon the river’s brink that night; and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!
She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the gloomy water.
We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.
She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not to know.
Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but remained inexorable.
‘There may be work to be got,’ she said. ‘I’ll try.’
‘At least take some assistance,’ I returned, ‘until you have tried.’
‘I could not do what I have promised, for money,’ she replied. ‘I could not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the river.’
‘In the name of the great judge,’ said I, ‘before whom you and all of us must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do some good, if we will.’
She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she answered:
‘It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to try for. I know no more, and I can say no more.’
Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes expressed privation and endurance.
We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets. I had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put it to Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like distrusting her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same mind, and equally reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours, which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way; and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort, there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss to interpret.
It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own gate, and was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul’s, the sound of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see that the door of my aunt’s cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining out across the road.
Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms, and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great surprise that I saw a man standing in her little garden.
He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking. I stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now, though obscured; and I recognized the man whom I had once supposed to be a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and had once encountered with my aunt in the streets of the city.
He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle on the ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though with a covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.
The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I heard it chink.
‘What’s the use of this?’ he demanded.
‘I can spare no more,’ returned my aunt.
‘Then I can’t go,’ said he. ‘Here! You may take it back!’
‘You bad man,’ returned my aunt, with great emotion; ‘how can you use me so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am! What have I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to your deserts?’
‘And why don’t you abandon me to my deserts?’ said he.
‘You ask me why!’ returned my aunt. ‘What a heart you must have!’
He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at length he said:
‘Is this all you mean to give me, then?’
‘It is all I CAN give you,’ said my aunt. ‘You know I have had losses, and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having got it, why do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing what you have become?’
‘I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,’ he said. ‘I lead the life of an owl.’
‘You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,’ said my aunt. ‘You closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and repent of it. Don’t add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done me!’
‘Aye!’ he returned. ‘It’s all very fine—Well! I must do the best I can, for the present, I suppose.’
In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt’s indignant tears, and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three quick steps, as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he came out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.
‘Aunt,’ said I, hurriedly. ‘This man alarming you again! Let me speak to him. Who is he?’
‘Child,’ returned my aunt, taking my arm, ‘come in, and don’t speak to me for ten minutes.’
We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the round green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a chair, and occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour. Then she came out, and took a seat beside me.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt, calmly, ‘it’s my husband.’
‘Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead!’
‘Dead to me,’ returned my aunt, ‘but living.’
I sat in silent amazement.
‘Betsey Trotwood don’t look a likely subject for the tender passion,’ said my aunt, composedly, ‘but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and for ever, in a grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.’
‘My dear, good aunt!’
‘I left him,’ my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of mine, ‘generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,’ said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; ‘and I believed him—I was a fool!—to be the soul of honour!’
She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.
‘He is nothing to me now, Trot—less than nothing. But, sooner than have him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in this country), I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn’t have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was.’
My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.
‘There, my dear!’ she said. ‘Now you know the beginning, middle, and end, and all about it. We won’t mention the subject to one another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is my grumpy, frumpy story, and we’ll keep it to ourselves, Trot!’
CHAPTER 48. DOMESTIC
I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise I got, the more I tried to deserve.
It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. They express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer to them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.
Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myself reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the old drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except, perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.
I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page. The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook; in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.
He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper occasions,—as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in the evening,—and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very much attached to us, and wouldn’t go. He was a tearful boy, and broke into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother—no anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands; and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.
This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum, was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew—and he grew like scarlet beans—with painful apprehensions of the time when he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey. I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he was an old man.
I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate’s manner of getting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora’s watch, which, like everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own; and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always a weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London and Uxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well as I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; when four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn’t play, were found upon his person.
The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeable to me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, and in a peculiar way—not in the lump, but by instalments. For example: the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he made certain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believed to be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles and corks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew of the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a new twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early every morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises, on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any money to hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being permitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the case that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amends in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.
At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life until he was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn’t be quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dora before he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when she found herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my life until he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherd of, ‘up the country’ somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.
All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora one evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.
‘My love,’ said I, ‘it is very painful to me to think that our want of system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have got used to), but other people.’
‘You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be cross!’ said Dora.
‘No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.’
‘I think I don’t want to know,’ said Dora.
‘But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down.’
Dora put his nose to mine, and said ‘Boh!’ to drive my seriousness away; but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking at me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression of countenance.
‘The fact is, my dear,’ I began, ‘there is contagion in us. We infect everyone about us.’
I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora’s face had not admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy, for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made my meaning plainer.
‘It is not merely, my pet,’ said I, ‘that we lose money and comfort, and even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out ill because we don’t turn out very well ourselves.’
‘Oh, what an accusation,’ exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; ‘to say that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!’
‘My dearest,’ I remonstrated, ‘don’t talk preposterous nonsense! Who has made the least allusion to gold watches?’
‘You did,’ returned Dora. ‘You know you did. You said I hadn’t turned out well, and compared me to him.’
‘To whom?’ I asked.
‘To the page,’ sobbed Dora. ‘Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn’t you tell me your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn’t you say, you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my goodness!’
‘Now, Dora, my love,’ I returned, gently trying to remove the handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, ‘this is not only very ridiculous of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it’s not true.’
‘You always said he was a story-teller,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And now you say the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!’
‘My darling girl,’ I retorted, ‘I really must entreat you to be reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora, unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice—which we are not—even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so—which we don’t—I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can’t help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss, and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that’s all. Come now. Don’t be foolish!’
Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief. She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why had I ever been married? Why hadn’t I said, even the day before we went to church, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If I couldn’t bear her, why didn’t I send her away to her aunts at Putney, or to Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would not call her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of the sort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being in that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.
What other course was left to take? To ‘form her mind’? This was a common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I resolved to form Dora’s mind.
I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I would have infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave—and disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her—and fatigued her to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quite casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion—and she started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers. No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little wife’s mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.
I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and whenever he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification of Dora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed upon Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but it had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always playing spider to Dora’s fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her infinite disturbance.
Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I should have ‘formed her mind’ to my entire satisfaction, I persevered, even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that perhaps Dora’s mind was already formed.
On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than in action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and to try to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tired of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.
Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; but there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mind that it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, I would keep it for the future in my own breast.
I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears; and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good company lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerely felt, and which indeed it was.
‘The truth is, Dora, my life,’ I said; ‘I have been trying to be wise.’
‘And to make me wise too,’ said Dora, timidly. ‘Haven’t you, Doady?’
I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissed the parted lips.
‘It’s of not a bit of use,’ said Dora, shaking her head, until the ear-rings rang again. ‘You know what a little thing I am, and what I wanted you to call me from the first. If you can’t do so, I am afraid you’ll never like me. Are you sure you don’t think, sometimes, it would have been better to have—’
‘Done what, my dear?’ For she made no effort to proceed.
‘Nothing!’ said Dora.
‘Nothing?’ I repeated.
She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see it.
‘Don’t I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to have tried to form my little wife’s mind?’ said I, laughing at myself. ‘Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do.’
‘Is that what you have been trying?’ cried Dora. ‘Oh what a shocking boy!’
‘But I shall never try any more,’ said I. ‘For I love her dearly as she is.’
‘Without a story—really?’ inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.
‘Why should I seek to change,’ said I, ‘what has been so precious to me for so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, my sweet Dora; and we’ll try no conceited experiments, but go back to our old way, and be happy.’
‘And be happy!’ returned Dora. ‘Yes! All day! And you won’t mind things going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?’
‘No, no,’ said I. ‘We must do the best we can.’
‘And you won’t tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,’ coaxed Dora; ‘will you? Because you know it’s so dreadfully cross!’
‘No, no,’ said I.
‘It’s better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn’t it?’ said Dora.
‘Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.’
‘In the world! Ah, Doady, it’s a large place!’
She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine, kissed me, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on Jip’s new collar.
So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora. I had been unhappy in trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I could not reconcile it with her former appeal to me as my child-wife. I resolved to do what I could, in a quiet way, to improve our proceedings myself, but I foresaw that my utmost would be very little, or I must degenerate into the spider again, and be for ever lying in wait.
And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more, but was to rest wholly on my own heart? How did that fall?
The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something wanting.
In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my mind on this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its secrets to the light. What I missed, I still regarded—I always regarded—as something that had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.
Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I felt was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me, and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no distinct sense of their opposition to each other. When I thought of the airy dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of the better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then the contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, like spectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, but never more could be reanimated here.
Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might have happened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never known each other? But she was so incorporated with my existence, that it was the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of my reach and sight, like gossamer floating in the air.
I always loved her. What I am describing, slumbered, and half awoke, and slept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it in me; I know of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I bore the weight of all our little cares, and all my projects; Dora held the pens; and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the case required. She was truly fond of me, and proud of me; and when Agnes wrote a few earnest words in her letters to Dora, of the pride and interest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation, and read my book as if they heard me speaking its contents, Dora read them out to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dear old clever, famous boy.
‘The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.’ Those words of Mrs. Strong’s were constantly recurring to me, at this time; were almost always present to my mind. I awoke with them, often, in the night; I remember to have even read them, in dreams, inscribed upon the walls of houses. For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when it first loved Dora; and that if it had been disciplined, it never could have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secret experience.
‘There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’ Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adapt Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. This was the discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think. It made my second year much happier than my first; and, what was better still, made Dora’s life all sunshine.
But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighter hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smile upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be. The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison, and, unconscious of captivity, took wing.
‘When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,’ said Dora, ‘I shall make Jip race. He is getting quite slow and lazy.’
‘I suspect, my dear,’ said my aunt quietly working by her side, ‘he has a worse disorder than that. Age, Dora.’
‘Do you think he is old?’ said Dora, astonished. ‘Oh, how strange it seems that Jip should be old!’
‘It’s a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on in life,’ said my aunt, cheerfully; ‘I don’t feel more free from it than I used to be, I assure you.’
‘But Jip,’ said Dora, looking at him with compassion, ‘even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!’
‘I dare say he’ll last a long time yet, Blossom,’ said my aunt, patting Dora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look at Jip, who responded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking himself in various asthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders. ‘He must have a piece of flannel in his house this winter, and I shouldn’t wonder if he came out quite fresh again, with the flowers in the spring. Bless the little dog!’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘if he had as many lives as a cat, and was on the point of losing ‘em all, he’d bark at me with his last breath, I believe!’
Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my aunt to such a furious extent, that he couldn’t keep straight, but barked himself sideways. The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproached her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutable reason he considered the glasses personal.
Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and when he was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through her hand, repeating thoughtfully, ‘Even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!’
‘His lungs are good enough,’ said my aunt, gaily, ‘and his dislikes are not at all feeble. He has a good many years before him, no doubt. But if you want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has lived too well for that, and I’ll give you one.’
‘Thank you, aunt,’ said Dora, faintly. ‘But don’t, please!’
‘No?’ said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.
‘I couldn’t have any other dog but Jip,’ said Dora. ‘It would be so unkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn’t be such friends with any other dog but Jip; because he wouldn’t have known me before I was married, and wouldn’t have barked at Doady when he first came to our house. I couldn’t care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid, aunt.’
‘To be sure!’ said my aunt, patting her cheek again. ‘You are right.’
‘You are not offended,’ said Dora. ‘Are you?’
‘Why, what a sensitive pet it is!’ cried my aunt, bending over her affectionately. ‘To think that I could be offended!’
‘No, no, I didn’t really think so,’ returned Dora; ‘but I am a little tired, and it made me silly for a moment—I am always a silly little thing, you know, but it made me more silly—to talk about Jip. He has known me in all that has happened to me, haven’t you, Jip? And I couldn’t bear to slight him, because he was a little altered—could I, Jip?’
Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.
‘You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you’ll leave your mistress yet?’ said Dora. ‘We may keep one another company a little longer!’
My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday, and was so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on Sunday), we thought she would be ‘running about as she used to do’, in a few days. But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait a few days more; and still she neither ran nor walked. She looked very pretty, and was very merry; but the little feet that used to be so nimble when they danced round Jip, were dull and motionless.
I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every night. She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as if I did it for a wager. Jip would bark and caper round us, and go on before, and look back on the landing, breathing short, to see that we were coming. My aunt, the best and most cheerful of nurses, would trudge after us, a moving mass of shawls and pillows. Mr. Dick would not have relinquished his post of candle-bearer to anyone alive. Traddles would be often at the bottom of the staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportive messages from Dora to the dearest girl in the world. We made quite a gay procession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.
But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter in my arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were approaching to some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. I avoided the recognition of this feeling by any name, or by any communing with myself; until one night, when it was very strong upon me, and my aunt had left her with a parting cry of ‘Good night, Little Blossom,’ I sat down at my desk alone, and tried to think, Oh what a fatal name it was, and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree!
CHAPTER 49. I AM INVOLVED IN MYSTERY
I received one morning by the post, the following letter, dated Canterbury, and addressed to me at Doctor’s Commons; which I read with some surprise:
‘MY DEAR SIR,
‘Circumstances beyond my individual control have, for a considerable lapse of time, effected a severance of that intimacy which, in the limited opportunities conceded to me in the midst of my professional duties, of contemplating the scenes and events of the past, tinged by the prismatic hues of memory, has ever afforded me, as it ever must continue to afford, gratifying emotions of no common description. This fact, my dear sir, combined with the distinguished elevation to which your talents have raised you, deters me from presuming to aspire to the liberty of addressing the companion of my youth, by the familiar appellation of Copperfield! It is sufficient to know that the name to which I do myself the honour to refer, will ever be treasured among the muniments of our house (I allude to the archives connected with our former lodgers, preserved by Mrs. Micawber), with sentiments of personal esteem amounting to affection.
‘It is not for one, situated, through his original errors and a fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered Bark (if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination), who now takes up the pen to address you—it is not, I repeat, for one so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of congratulation. That he leaves to abler and to purer hands.
‘If your more important avocations should admit of your ever tracing these imperfect characters thus far—which may be, or may not be, as circumstances arise—you will naturally inquire by what object am I influenced, then, in inditing the present missive? Allow me to say that I fully defer to the reasonable character of that inquiry, and proceed to develop it; premising that it is not an object of a pecuniary nature.
‘Without more directly referring to any latent ability that may possibly exist on my part, of wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging flame in any quarter, I may be permitted to observe, in passing, that my brightest visions are for ever dispelled—that my peace is shattered and my power of enjoyment destroyed—that my heart is no longer in the right place—and that I no more walk erect before my fellow man. The canker is in the flower. The cup is bitter to the brim. The worm is at his work, and will soon dispose of his victim. The sooner the better. But I will not digress. ‘Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber’s influence, though exercised in the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my intention to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a respite of eight-and-forty hours to revisiting some metropolitan scenes of past enjoyment. Among other havens of domestic tranquillity and peace of mind, my feet will naturally tend towards the King’s Bench Prison. In stating that I shall be (D. V.) on the outside of the south wall of that place of incarceration on civil process, the day after tomorrow, at seven in the evening, precisely, my object in this epistolary communication is accomplished.
‘I do not feel warranted in soliciting my former friend Mr. Copperfield, or my former friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple, if that gentleman is still existent and forthcoming, to condescend to meet me, and renew (so far as may be) our past relations of the olden time. I confine myself to throwing out the observation, that, at the hour and place I have indicated, may be found such ruined vestiges as yet
‘Remain, ‘Of ‘A ‘Fallen Tower, ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.
‘P.S. It may be advisable to superadd to the above, the statement that Mrs. Micawber is not in confidential possession of my intentions.’
I read the letter over several times. Making due allowance for Mr. Micawber’s lofty style of composition, and for the extraordinary relish with which he sat down and wrote long letters on all possible and impossible occasions, I still believed that something important lay hidden at the bottom of this roundabout communication. I put it down, to think about it; and took it up again, to read it once more; and was still pursuing it, when Traddles found me in the height of my perplexity.
‘My dear fellow,’ said I, ‘I never was better pleased to see you. You come to give me the benefit of your sober judgement at a most opportune time. I have received a very singular letter, Traddles, from Mr. Micawber.’
‘No?’ cried Traddles. ‘You don’t say so? And I have received one from Mrs. Micawber!’
With that, Traddles, who was flushed with walking, and whose hair, under the combined effects of exercise and excitement, stood on end as if he saw a cheerful ghost, produced his letter and made an exchange with me. I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber’s letter, and returned the elevation of eyebrows with which he said “‘Wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging flame!” Bless me, Copperfield!’—and then entered on the perusal of Mrs. Micawber’s epistle.
It ran thus:
‘My best regards to Mr. Thomas Traddles, and if he should still remember one who formerly had the happiness of being well acquainted with him, may I beg a few moments of his leisure time? I assure Mr. T. T. that I would not intrude upon his kindness, were I in any other position than on the confines of distraction.
‘Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber (formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr. Micawber’s conduct, of his wildness, of his violence. It has gradually augmented, until it assumes the appearance of aberration of intellect. Scarcely a day passes, I assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm does not take place. Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings, when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited confidence. The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is anything he would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a separation. Last night, on being childishly solicited for twopence, to buy ‘lemon-stunners’—a local sweetmeat—he presented an oyster-knife at the twins!
‘I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these details. Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to form the faintest conception of my heart-rending situation.
‘May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? Will he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? Oh yes, for I know his heart!
‘The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the female sex. Mr. Micawber is going to London. Though he studiously concealed his hand, this morning before breakfast, in writing the direction-card which he attached to the little brown valise of happier days, the eagle-glance of matrimonial anxiety detected, d, o, n, distinctly traced. The West-End destination of the coach, is the Golden Cross. Dare I fervently implore Mr. T. to see my misguided husband, and to reason with him? Dare I ask Mr. T. to endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his agonized family? Oh no, for that would be too much!
‘If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will Mr. T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar entreaties? In any case, he will have the benevolence to consider this communication strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be fraught with less painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who subscribes herself, in extreme distress,
‘Mr. Thomas Traddles’s respectful friend and suppliant,
‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
‘What do you think of that letter?’ said Traddles, casting his eyes upon me, when I had read it twice.
‘What do you think of the other?’ said I. For he was still reading it with knitted brows.
‘I think that the two together, Copperfield,’ replied Traddles, ‘mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their correspondence—but I don’t know what. They are both written in good faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion. Poor thing!’ he was now alluding to Mrs. Micawber’s letter, and we were standing side by side comparing the two; ‘it will be a charity to write to her, at all events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.’
I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself with having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking a good deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the family, and my hearing nothing more, had gradually ended in my dismissing the subject. I had often thought of the Micawbers, but chiefly to wonder what ‘pecuniary liabilities’ they were establishing in Canterbury, and to recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to Uriah Heep.
However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our joint names, and we both signed it. As we walked into town to post it, Traddles and I held a long conference, and launched into a number of speculations, which I need not repeat. We took my aunt into our counsels in the afternoon; but our only decided conclusion was, that we would be very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber’s appointment.
Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour before the time, we found Mr. Micawber already there. He was standing with his arms folded, over against the wall, looking at the spikes on the top, with a sentimental expression, as if they were the interlacing boughs of trees that had shaded him in his youth.
When we accosted him, his manner was something more confused, and something less genteel, than of yore. He had relinquished his legal suit of black for the purposes of this excursion, and wore the old surtout and tights, but not quite with the old air. He gradually picked up more and more of it as we conversed with him; but, his very eye-glass seemed to hang less easily, and his shirt-collar, though still of the old formidable dimensions, rather drooped.
‘Gentlemen!’ said Mr. Micawber, after the first salutations, ‘you are friends in need, and friends indeed. Allow me to offer my inquiries with reference to the physical welfare of Mrs. Copperfield in esse, and Mrs. Traddles in posse,—presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr. Traddles is not yet united to the object of his affections, for weal and for woe.’
We acknowledged his politeness, and made suitable replies. He then directed our attention to the wall, and was beginning, ‘I assure you, gentlemen,’ when I ventured to object to that ceremonious form of address, and to beg that he would speak to us in the old way.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ he returned, pressing my hand, ‘your cordiality overpowers me. This reception of a shattered fragment of the Temple once called Man—if I may be permitted so to express myself—bespeaks a heart that is an honour to our common nature. I was about to observe that I again behold the serene spot where some of the happiest hours of my existence fleeted by.’
‘Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,’ said I. ‘I hope she is well?’
‘Thank you,’ returned Mr. Micawber, whose face clouded at this reference, ‘she is but so-so. And this,’ said Mr. Micawber, nodding his head sorrowfully, ‘is the Bench! Where, for the first time in many revolving years, the overwhelming pressure of pecuniary liabilities was not proclaimed, from day to day, by importune voices declining to vacate the passage; where there was no knocker on the door for any creditor to appeal to; where personal service of process was not required, and detainees were merely lodged at the gate! Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘when the shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure has been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks. I have been familiar with every stone in the place. If I betray weakness, you will know how to excuse me.’
‘We have all got on in life since then, Mr. Micawber,’ said I.
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, ‘when I was an inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and punch his head if he offended me. My fellow-man and myself are no longer on those glorious terms!’
Turning from the building in a downcast manner, Mr. Micawber accepted my proffered arm on one side, and the proffered arm of Traddles on the other, and walked away between us.
‘There are some landmarks,’ observed Mr. Micawber, looking fondly back over his shoulder, ‘on the road to the tomb, which, but for the impiety of the aspiration, a man would wish never to have passed. Such is the Bench in my chequered career.’
‘Oh, you are in low spirits, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles.
‘I am, sir,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
‘I hope,’ said Traddles, ‘it is not because you have conceived a dislike to the law—for I am a lawyer myself, you know.’
Mr. Micawber answered not a word.
‘How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?’ said I, after a silence.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bursting into a state of much excitement, and turning pale, ‘if you ask after my employer as YOUR friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after him as MY friend, I sardonically smile at it. In whatever capacity you ask after my employer, I beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to this—that whatever his state of health may be, his appearance is foxy: not to say diabolical. You will allow me, as a private individual, to decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to the utmost verge of desperation in my professional capacity.’
I expressed my regret for having innocently touched upon a theme that roused him so much. ‘May I ask,’ said I, ‘without any hazard of repeating the mistake, how my old friends Mr. and Miss Wickfield are?’
‘Miss Wickfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, now turning red, ‘is, as she always is, a pattern, and a bright example. My dear Copperfield, she is the only starry spot in a miserable existence. My respect for that young lady, my admiration of her character, my devotion to her for her love and truth, and goodness!—Take me,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘down a turning, for, upon my soul, in my present state of mind I am not equal to this!’
We wheeled him off into a narrow street, where he took out his pocket-handkerchief, and stood with his back to a wall. If I looked as gravely at him as Traddles did, he must have found our company by no means inspiriting.
‘It is my fate,’ said Mr. Micawber, unfeignedly sobbing, but doing even that, with a shadow of the old expression of doing something genteel; ‘it is my fate, gentlemen, that the finer feelings of our nature have become reproaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield, is a flight of arrows in my bosom. You had better leave me, if you please, to walk the earth as a vagabond. The worm will settle my business in double-quick time.’
Without attending to this invocation, we stood by, until he put up his pocket-handkerchief, pulled up his shirt-collar, and, to delude any person in the neighbourhood who might have been observing him, hummed a tune with his hat very much on one side. I then mentioned—not knowing what might be lost if we lost sight of him yet—that it would give me great pleasure to introduce him to my aunt, if he would ride out to Highgate, where a bed was at his service.
‘You shall make us a glass of your own punch, Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘and forget whatever you have on your mind, in pleasanter reminiscences.’
‘Or, if confiding anything to friends will be more likely to relieve you, you shall impart it to us, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles, prudently.
‘Gentlemen,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘do with me as you will! I am a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants—I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.’
We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of starting; and arrived at Highgate without encountering any difficulties by the way. I was very uneasy and very uncertain in my mind what to say or do for the best—so was Traddles, evidently. Mr. Micawber was for the most part plunged into deep gloom. He occasionally made an attempt to smarten himself, and hum the fag-end of a tune; but his relapses into profound melancholy were only made the more impressive by the mockery of a hat exceedingly on one side, and a shirt-collar pulled up to his eyes.
We went to my aunt’s house rather than to mine, because of Dora’s not being well. My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and welcomed Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality. Mr. Micawber kissed her hand, retired to the window, and pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, had a mental wrestle with himself.
Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so exceedingly compassionate of anyone who seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to find any such person out, that he shook hands with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen times in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trouble, this warmth, on the part of a stranger, was so extremely touching, that he could only say, on the occasion of each successive shake, ‘My dear sir, you overpower me!’ Which gratified Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it again with greater vigour than before.
‘The friendliness of this gentleman,’ said Mr. Micawber to my aunt, ‘if you will allow me, ma’am, to cull a figure of speech from the vocabulary of our coarser national sports—floors me. To a man who is struggling with a complicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such a reception is trying, I assure you.’
‘My friend Mr. Dick,’ replied my aunt proudly, ‘is not a common man.’
‘That I am convinced of,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘My dear sir!’ for Mr. Dick was shaking hands with him again; ‘I am deeply sensible of your cordiality!’
‘How do you find yourself?’ said Mr. Dick, with an anxious look.
‘Indifferent, my dear sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, sighing.
‘You must keep up your spirits,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and make yourself as comfortable as possible.’
Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these friendly words, and by finding Mr. Dick’s hand again within his own. ‘It has been my lot,’ he observed, ‘to meet, in the diversified panorama of human existence, with an occasional oasis, but never with one so green, so gushing, as the present!’
At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to reveal something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that I was in a perfect fever. Traddles, sitting on the edge of his chair, with his eyes wide open, and his hair more emphatically erect than ever, stared by turns at the ground and at Mr. Micawber, without so much as attempting to put in a word. My aunt, though I saw that her shrewdest observation was concentrated on her new guest, had more useful possession of her wits than either of us; for she held him in conversation, and made it necessary for him to talk, whether he liked it or not.
‘You are a very old friend of my nephew’s, Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt. ‘I wish I had had the pleasure of seeing you before.’
‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I wish I had had the honour of knowing you at an earlier period. I was not always the wreck you at present behold.’
‘I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are well, sir,’ said my aunt.
Mr. Micawber inclined his head. ‘They are as well, ma’am,’ he desperately observed after a pause, ‘as Aliens and Outcasts can ever hope to be.’
‘Lord bless you, sir!’ exclaimed my aunt, in her abrupt way. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The subsistence of my family, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘trembles in the balance. My employer—’
Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and began to peel the lemons that had been under my directions set before him, together with all the other appliances he used in making punch.
‘Your employer, you know,’ said Mr. Dick, jogging his arm as a gentle reminder.
‘My good sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘you recall me, I am obliged to you.’ They shook hands again. ‘My employer, ma’am—Mr. Heep—once did me the favour to observe to me, that if I were not in the receipt of the stipendiary emoluments appertaining to my engagement with him, I should probably be a mountebank about the country, swallowing a sword-blade, and eating the devouring element. For anything that I can perceive to the contrary, it is still probable that my children may be reduced to seek a livelihood by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets their unnatural feats by playing the barrel-organ.’
Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive flourish of his knife, signified that these performances might be expected to take place after he was no more; then resumed his peeling with a desperate air.
My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round table that she usually kept beside her, and eyed him attentively. Notwithstanding the aversion with which I regarded the idea of entrapping him into any disclosure he was not prepared to make voluntarily, I should have taken him up at this point, but for the strange proceedings in which I saw him engaged; whereof his putting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into the snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug, and confidently attempting to pour boiling water out of a candlestick, were among the most remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand, and it came. He clattered all his means and implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out his pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, behind his handkerchief, ‘this is an occupation, of all others, requiring an untroubled mind, and self-respect. I cannot perform it. It is out of the question.’
‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘what is the matter? Pray speak out. You are among friends.’
‘Among friends, sir!’ repeated Mr. Micawber; and all he had reserved came breaking out of him. ‘Good heavens, it is principally because I AM among friends that my state of mind is what it is. What is the matter, gentlemen? What is NOT the matter? Villainy is the matter; baseness is the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name of the whole atrocious mass is—HEEP!’
My aunt clapped her hands, and we all started up as if we were possessed.
‘The struggle is over!’ said Mr. Micawber violently gesticulating with his pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to time with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. ‘I will lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel’s service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I’ll do it. With an appetite!’
I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and wouldn’t hear a word.
‘I’ll put my hand in no man’s hand,’ said Mr. Micawber, gasping, puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man fighting with cold water, ‘until I have—blown to fragments—the—a—detestable—serpent—HEEP! I’ll partake of no one’s hospitality, until I have—a—moved Mount Vesuvius—to eruption—on—a—the abandoned rascal—HEEP! Refreshment—a—underneath this roof—particularly punch—would—a—choke me—unless—I had—previously—choked the eyes—out of the head—a—of—interminable cheat, and liar—HEEP! I—a—I’ll know nobody—and—a—say nothing—and—a—live nowhere—until I have crushed—to—a—undiscoverable atoms—the—transcendent and immortal hypocrite and perjurer—HEEP!’
I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber’s dying on the spot. The manner in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences, and, whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep, fought his way on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and brought it out with a vehemence little less than marvellous, was frightful; but now, when he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked at us, with every possible colour in his face that had no business there, and an endless procession of lumps following one another in hot haste up his throat, whence they seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the appearance of being in the last extremity. I would have gone to his assistance, but he waved me off, and wouldn’t hear a word.
‘No, Copperfield!—No communication—a—until—Miss Wickfield—a—redress from wrongs inflicted by consummate scoundrel—HEEP!’ (I am quite convinced he could not have uttered three words, but for the amazing energy with which this word inspired him when he felt it coming.) ‘Inviolable secret—a—from the whole world—a—no exceptions—this day week—a—at breakfast-time—a—everybody present—including aunt—a—and extremely friendly gentleman—to be at the hotel at Canterbury—a—where—Mrs. Micawber and myself—Auld Lang Syne in chorus—and—a—will expose intolerable ruffian—HEEP! No more to say—a—or listen to persuasion—go immediately—not capable—a—bear society—upon the track of devoted and doomed traitor—HEEP!’
With this last repetition of the magic word that had kept him going at all, and in which he surpassed all his previous efforts, Mr. Micawber rushed out of the house; leaving us in a state of excitement, hope, and wonder, that reduced us to a condition little better than his own. But even then his passion for writing letters was too strong to be resisted; for while we were yet in the height of our excitement, hope, and wonder, the following pastoral note was brought to me from a neighbouring tavern, at which he had called to write it:—
‘Most secret and confidential. ‘MY DEAR SIR,
‘I beg to be allowed to convey, through you, my apologies to your excellent aunt for my late excitement. An explosion of a smouldering volcano long suppressed, was the result of an internal contest more easily conceived than described.
‘I trust I rendered tolerably intelligible my appointment for the morning of this day week, at the house of public entertainment at Canterbury, where Mrs. Micawber and myself had once the honour of uniting our voices to yours, in the well-known strain of the Immortal exciseman nurtured beyond the Tweed.
‘The duty done, and act of reparation performed, which can alone enable me to contemplate my fellow mortal, I shall be known no more. I shall simply require to be deposited in that place of universal resort, where
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,
‘—With the plain Inscription,
CHAPTER 50. Mr. PEGGOTTY’S DREAM COMES TRUE
By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the bank of the river with Martha. I had never seen her since, but she had communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions. Nothing had come of her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily’s fate. I confess that I began to despair of her recovery, and gradually to sink deeper and deeper into the belief that she was dead.
His conviction remained unchanged. So far as I know—and I believe his honest heart was transparent to me—he never wavered again, in his solemn certainty of finding her. His patience never tired. And, although I trembled for the agony it might one day be to him to have his strong assurance shivered at a blow, there was something so religious in it, so affectingly expressive of its anchor being in the purest depths of his fine nature, that the respect and honour in which I held him were exalted every day.
His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more. He had been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in all things wherein he wanted help he must do his own part faithfully, and help himself. I have known him set out in the night, on a misgiving that the light might not be, by some accident, in the window of the old boat, and walk to Yarmouth. I have known him, on reading something in the newspaper that might apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a journey of three—or four-score miles. He made his way by sea to Naples, and back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted me. All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily’s sake, when she should be found. In all this long pursuit, I never heard him repine; I never heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.
Dora had often seen him since our marriage, and was quite fond of him. I fancy his figure before me now, standing near her sofa, with his rough cap in his hand, and the blue eyes of my child-wife raised, with a timid wonder, to his face. Sometimes of an evening, about twilight, when he came to talk with me, I would induce him to smoke his pipe in the garden, as we slowly paced to and fro together; and then, the picture of his deserted home, and the comfortable air it used to have in my childish eyes of an evening when the fire was burning, and the wind moaning round it, came most vividly into my mind.
One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha waiting near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out, and that she had asked him not to leave London on any account, until he should have seen her again.
‘Did she tell you why?’ I inquired.
‘I asked her, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘but it is but few words as she ever says, and she on’y got my promise and so went away.’
‘Did she say when you might expect to see her again?’ I demanded.
‘No, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, drawing his hand thoughtfully down his face. ‘I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she could tell.’
As I had long forborne to encourage him with hopes that hung on threads, I made no other comment on this information than that I supposed he would see her soon. Such speculations as it engendered within me I kept to myself, and those were faint enough.
I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight afterwards. I remember that evening well. It was the second in Mr. Micawber’s week of suspense. There had been rain all day, and there was a damp feeling in the air. The leaves were thick upon the trees, and heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the sky was still dark; and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully. As I walked to and fro in the garden, and the twilight began to close around me, their little voices were hushed; and that peculiar silence which belongs to such an evening in the country when the lightest trees are quite still, save for the occasional droppings from their boughs, prevailed.
There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the side of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden where I was walking, into the road before the house. I happened to turn my eyes towards this place, as I was thinking of many things; and I saw a figure beyond, dressed in a plain cloak. It was bending eagerly towards me, and beckoning.
‘Martha!’ said I, going to it.
‘Can you come with me?’ she inquired, in an agitated whisper. ‘I have been to him, and he is not at home. I wrote down where he was to come, and left it on his table with my own hand. They said he would not be out long. I have tidings for him. Can you come directly?’
My answer was, to pass out at the gate immediately. She made a hasty gesture with her hand, as if to entreat my patience and my silence, and turned towards London, whence, as her dress betokened, she had come expeditiously on foot.
I asked her if that were not our destination? On her motioning Yes, with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty coach that was coming by, and we got into it. When I asked her where the coachman was to drive, she answered, ‘Anywhere near Golden Square! And quick!’—then shrunk into a corner, with one trembling hand before her face, and the other making the former gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.
Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and dread, I looked at her for some explanation. But seeing how strongly she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my own natural inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to break the silence. We proceeded without a word being spoken. Sometimes she glanced out of the window, as though she thought we were going slowly, though indeed we were going fast; but otherwise remained exactly as at first.
We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had mentioned, where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that we might have some occasion for it. She laid her hand on my arm, and hurried me on to one of the sombre streets, of which there are several in that part, where the houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation of single families, but have, and had, long degenerated into poor lodgings let off in rooms. Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was like a tributary channel to the street.
The house swarmed with inmates. As we went up, doors of rooms were opened and people’s heads put out; and we passed other people on the stairs, who were coming down. In glancing up from the outside, before we entered, I had seen women and children lolling at the windows over flower-pots; and we seemed to have attracted their curiosity, for these were principally the observers who looked out of their doors. It was a broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood; cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and broad seats in the windows. But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe. Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away from the other. Several of the back windows on the staircase had been darkened or wholly blocked up. In those that remained, there was scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the mansion.
We proceeded to the top-storey of the house. Two or three times, by the way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts of a female figure going up before us. As we turned to ascend the last flight of stairs between us and the roof, we caught a full view of this figure pausing for a moment, at a door. Then it turned the handle, and went in.
‘What’s this!’ said Martha, in a whisper. ‘She has gone into my room. I don’t know her!’
I knew her. I had recognized her with amazement, for Miss Dartle.
I said something to the effect that it was a lady whom I had seen before, in a few words, to my conductress; and had scarcely done so, when we heard her voice in the room, though not, from where we stood, what she was saying. Martha, with an astonished look, repeated her former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and then, by a little back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which she pushed open with a touch, into a small empty garret with a low sloping roof, little better than a cupboard. Between this, and the room she had called hers, there was a small door of communication, standing partly open. Here we stopped, breathless with our ascent, and she placed her hand lightly on my lips. I could only see, of the room beyond, that it was pretty large; that there was a bed in it; and that there were some common pictures of ships upon the walls. I could not see Miss Dartle, or the person whom we had heard her address. Certainly, my companion could not, for my position was the best. A dead silence prevailed for some moments. Martha kept one hand on my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.
‘It matters little to me her not being at home,’ said Rosa Dartle haughtily, ‘I know nothing of her. It is you I come to see.’
‘Me?’ replied a soft voice.
At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame. For it was Emily’s!
‘Yes,’ returned Miss Dartle, ‘I have come to look at you. What? You are not ashamed of the face that has done so much?’
The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had seen her standing in the light. I saw the flashing black eyes, and the passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.
‘I have come to see,’ she said, ‘James Steerforth’s fancy; the girl who ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like James Steerforth. I want to know what such a thing is like.’
There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself before it. It was succeeded by a moment’s pause.
When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a stamp upon the ground.
‘Stay there!’ she said, ‘or I’ll proclaim you to the house, and the whole street! If you try to evade me, I’ll stop you, if it’s by the hair, and raise the very stones against you!’
A frightened murmur was the only reply that reached my ears. A silence succeeded. I did not know what to do. Much as I desired to put an end to the interview, I felt that I had no right to present myself; that it was for Mr. Peggotty alone to see her and recover her. Would he never come? I thought impatiently.
‘So!’ said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, ‘I see her at last! Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate mock-modesty, and that hanging head!’
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, spare me!’ exclaimed Emily. ‘Whoever you are, you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven’s sake spare me, if you would be spared yourself!’
‘If I would be spared!’ returned the other fiercely; ‘what is there in common between US, do you think!’
‘Nothing but our sex,’ said Emily, with a burst of tears.
‘And that,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘is so strong a claim, preferred by one so infamous, that if I had any feeling in my breast but scorn and abhorrence of you, it would freeze it up. Our sex! You are an honour to our sex!’
‘I have deserved this,’ said Emily, ‘but it’s dreadful! Dear, dear lady, think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen! Oh, Martha, come back! Oh, home, home!’
Miss Dartle placed herself in a chair, within view of the door, and looked downward, as if Emily were crouching on the floor before her. Being now between me and the light, I could see her curled lip, and her cruel eyes intently fixed on one place, with a greedy triumph.
‘Listen to what I say!’ she said; ‘and reserve your false arts for your dupes. Do you hope to move me by your tears? No more than you could charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.’
‘Oh, have some mercy on me!’ cried Emily. ‘Show me some compassion, or I shall die mad!’
‘It would be no great penance,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘for your crimes. Do you know what you have done? Do you ever think of the home you have laid waste?’
‘Oh, is there ever night or day, when I don’t think of it!’ cried Emily; and now I could just see her, on her knees, with her head thrown back, her pale face looking upward, her hands wildly clasped and held out, and her hair streaming about her. ‘Has there ever been a single minute, waking or sleeping, when it hasn’t been before me, just as it used to be in the lost days when I turned my back upon it for ever and for ever! Oh, home, home! Oh dear, dear uncle, if you ever could have known the agony your love would cause me when I fell away from good, you never would have shown it to me so constant, much as you felt it; but would have been angry to me, at least once in my life, that I might have had some comfort! I have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them were always fond of me!’ She dropped on her face, before the imperious figure in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her dress.
Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of brass. Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she must keep a strong constraint upon herself—I write what I sincerely believe—or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful form with her foot. I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of her face and character seemed forced into that expression.---Would he never come?
‘The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!’ she said, when she had so far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could trust herself to speak. ‘YOUR home! Do you imagine that I bestow a thought on it, or suppose you could do any harm to that low place, which money would not pay for, and handsomely? YOUR home! You were a part of the trade of your home, and were bought and sold like any other vendible thing your people dealt in.’
‘Oh, not that!’ cried Emily. ‘Say anything of me; but don’t visit my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as honourable as you! Have some respect for them, as you are a lady, if you have no mercy for me.’
‘I speak,’ she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal, and drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily’s touch, ‘I speak of HIS home—where I live. Here,’ she said, stretching out her hand with her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, ‘is a worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief in a house where she wouldn’t have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of anger, and repining, and reproach. This piece of pollution, picked up from the water-side, to be made much of for an hour, and then tossed back to her original place!’
‘No! no!’ cried Emily, clasping her hands together. ‘When he first came into my way—that the day had never dawned upon me, and he had met me being carried to my grave!—I had been brought up as virtuous as you or any lady, and was going to be the wife of as good a man as you or any lady in the world can ever marry. If you live in his home and know him, you know, perhaps, what his power with a weak, vain girl might be. I don’t defend myself, but I know well, and he knows well, or he will know when he comes to die, and his mind is troubled with it, that he used all his power to deceive me, and that I believed him, trusted him, and loved him!’
Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them. The blow, which had no aim, fell upon the air. As she now stood panting, looking at her with the utmost detestation that she was capable of expressing, and trembling from head to foot with rage and scorn, I thought I had never seen such a sight, and never could see such another.
‘YOU love him? You?’ she cried, with her clenched hand, quivering as if it only wanted a weapon to stab the object of her wrath.
Emily had shrunk out of my view. There was no reply.
‘And tell that to ME,’ she added, ‘with your shameful lips? Why don’t they whip these creatures? If I could order it to be done, I would have this girl whipped to death.’
And so she would, I have no doubt. I would not have trusted her with the rack itself, while that furious look lasted. She slowly, very slowly, broke into a laugh, and pointed at Emily with her hand, as if she were a sight of shame for gods and men.
‘SHE love!’ she said. ‘THAT carrion! And he ever cared for her, she’d tell me. Ha, ha! The liars that these traders are!’
Her mockery was worse than her undisguised rage. Of the two, I would have much preferred to be the object of the latter. But, when she suffered it to break loose, it was only for a moment. She had chained it up again, and however it might tear her within, she subdued it to herself.
‘I came here, you pure fountain of love,’ she said, ‘to see—as I began by telling you—what such a thing as you was like. I was curious. I am satisfied. Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours, with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are expecting you, and whom your money will console. When it’s all gone, you can believe, and trust, and love again, you know! I thought you a broken toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished, and thrown away. But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and trustfulness—which you look like, and is quite consistent with your story!—I have something more to say. Attend to it; for what I say I’ll do. Do you hear me, you fairy spirit? What I say, I mean to do!’
Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.
‘Hide yourself,’ she pursued, ‘if not at home, somewhere. Let it be somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life—or, better still, in some obscure death. I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have found no way of helping it to be still! I have heard of such means sometimes. I believe they may be easily found.’
A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here. She stopped, and listened to it as if it were music.
‘I am of a strange nature, perhaps,’ Rosa Dartle went on; ‘but I can’t breathe freely in the air you breathe. I find it sickly. Therefore, I will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you. If you live here tomorrow, I’ll have your story and your character proclaimed on the common stair. There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed. If, leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me), the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat. Being assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your hand, I am sanguine as to that.’
Would he never, never come? How long was I to bear this? How long could I bear it? ‘Oh me, oh me!’ exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there was no relenting in Rosa Dartle’s smile. ‘What, what, shall I do!’
‘Do?’ returned the other. ‘Live happy in your own reflections! Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth’s tenderness—he would have made you his serving-man’s wife, would he not?---or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who would have taken you as his gift. Or, if those proud remembrances, and the consciousness of your own virtues, and the honourable position to which they have raised you in the eyes of everything that wears the human shape, will not sustain you, marry that good man, and be happy in his condescension. If this will not do either, die! There are doorways and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair—find one, and take your flight to Heaven!’
I heard a distant foot upon the stairs. I knew it, I was certain. It was his, thank God!
She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out of my sight.
‘But mark!’ she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door to go away, ‘I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds that I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my reach altogether, or drop your pretty mask. This is what I had to say; and what I say, I mean to do!’
The foot upon the stairs came nearer—nearer—passed her as she went down—rushed into the room!
‘Uncle!’
A fearful cry followed the word. I paused a moment, and looking in, saw him supporting her insensible figure in his arms. He gazed for a few seconds in the face; then stooped to kiss it—oh, how tenderly!—and drew a handkerchief before it.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, in a low tremulous voice, when it was covered, ‘I thank my Heav’nly Father as my dream’s come true! I thank Him hearty for having guided of me, in His own ways, to my darling!’
With those words he took her up in his arms; and, with the veiled face lying on his bosom, and addressed towards his own, carried her, motionless and unconscious, down the stairs.
CHAPTER 51. THE BEGINNING OF A LONGER JOURNEY
It was yet early in the morning of the following day, when, as I was walking in my garden with my aunt (who took little other exercise now, being so much in attendance on my dear Dora), I was told that Mr. Peggotty desired to speak with me. He came into the garden to meet me half-way, on my going towards the gate; and bared his head, as it was always his custom to do when he saw my aunt, for whom he had a high respect. I had been telling her all that had happened overnight. Without saying a word, she walked up with a cordial face, shook hands with him, and patted him on the arm. It was so expressively done, that she had no need to say a word. Mr. Peggotty understood her quite as well as if she had said a thousand.
‘I’ll go in now, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘and look after Little Blossom, who will be getting up presently.’
‘Not along of my being heer, ma’am, I hope?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Unless my wits is gone a bahd’s neezing’—by which Mr. Peggotty meant to say, bird’s-nesting—‘this morning, ‘tis along of me as you’re a-going to quit us?’
‘You have something to say, my good friend,’ returned my aunt, ‘and will do better without me.’
‘By your leave, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘I should take it kind, pervising you doen’t mind my clicketten, if you’d bide heer.’
‘Would you?’ said my aunt, with short good-nature. ‘Then I am sure I will!’
So, she drew her arm through Mr. Peggotty’s, and walked with him to a leafy little summer-house there was at the bottom of the garden, where she sat down on a bench, and I beside her. There was a seat for Mr. Peggotty too, but he preferred to stand, leaning his hand on the small rustic table. As he stood, looking at his cap for a little while before beginning to speak, I could not help observing what power and force of character his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good and trusty companion it was to his honest brow and iron-grey hair.
‘I took my dear child away last night,’ Mr. Peggotty began, as he raised his eyes to ours, ‘to my lodging, wheer I have a long time been expecting of her and preparing fur her. It was hours afore she knowed me right; and when she did, she kneeled down at my feet, and kiender said to me, as if it was her prayers, how it all come to be. You may believe me, when I heerd her voice, as I had heerd at home so playful—and see her humbled, as it might be in the dust our Saviour wrote in with his blessed hand—I felt a wownd go to my ‘art, in the midst of all its thankfulness.’
He drew his sleeve across his face, without any pretence of concealing why; and then cleared his voice.
‘It warn’t for long as I felt that; for she was found. I had on’y to think as she was found, and it was gone. I doen’t know why I do so much as mention of it now, I’m sure. I didn’t have it in my mind a minute ago, to say a word about myself; but it come up so nat’ral, that I yielded to it afore I was aweer.’
‘You are a self-denying soul,’ said my aunt, ‘and will have your reward.’
Mr. Peggotty, with the shadows of the leaves playing athwart his face, made a surprised inclination of the head towards my aunt, as an acknowledgement of her good opinion; then took up the thread he had relinquished.
‘When my Em’ly took flight,’ he said, in stern wrath for the moment, ‘from the house wheer she was made a prisoner by that theer spotted snake as Mas’r Davy see,—and his story’s trew, and may GOD confound him!—she took flight in the night. It was a dark night, with a many stars a-shining. She was wild. She ran along the sea beach, believing the old boat was theer; and calling out to us to turn away our faces, for she was a-coming by. She heerd herself a-crying out, like as if it was another person; and cut herself on them sharp-pinted stones and rocks, and felt it no more than if she had been rock herself. Ever so fur she run, and there was fire afore her eyes, and roarings in her ears. Of a sudden—or so she thowt, you unnerstand—the day broke, wet and windy, and she was lying b’low a heap of stone upon the shore, and a woman was a-speaking to her, saying, in the language of that country, what was it as had gone so much amiss?’
He saw everything he related. It passed before him, as he spoke, so vividly, that, in the intensity of his earnestness, he presented what he described to me, with greater distinctness than I can express. I can hardly believe, writing now long afterwards, but that I was actually present in these scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity.
‘As Em’ly’s eyes—which was heavy—see this woman better,’ Mr. Peggotty went on, ‘she know’d as she was one of them as she had often talked to on the beach. Fur, though she had run (as I have said) ever so fur in the night, she had oftentimes wandered long ways, partly afoot, partly in boats and carriages, and know’d all that country, ‘long the coast, miles and miles. She hadn’t no children of her own, this woman, being a young wife; but she was a-looking to have one afore long. And may my prayers go up to Heaven that ‘twill be a happiness to her, and a comfort, and a honour, all her life! May it love her and be dootiful to her, in her old age; helpful of her at the last; a Angel to her heer, and heerafter!’
‘Amen!’ said my aunt.
‘She had been summat timorous and down,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and had sat, at first, a little way off, at her spinning, or such work as it was, when Em’ly talked to the children. But Em’ly had took notice of her, and had gone and spoke to her; and as the young woman was partial to the children herself, they had soon made friends. Sermuchser, that when Em’ly went that way, she always giv Em’ly flowers. This was her as now asked what it was that had gone so much amiss. Em’ly told her, and she—took her home. She did indeed. She took her home,’ said Mr. Peggotty, covering his face.
He was more affected by this act of kindness, than I had ever seen him affected by anything since the night she went away. My aunt and I did not attempt to disturb him.
‘It was a little cottage, you may suppose,’ he said, presently, ‘but she found space for Em’ly in it,—her husband was away at sea,—and she kep it secret, and prevailed upon such neighbours as she had (they was not many near) to keep it secret too. Em’ly was took bad with fever, and, what is very strange to me is,—maybe ‘tis not so strange to scholars,—the language of that country went out of her head, and she could only speak her own, that no one unnerstood. She recollects, as if she had dreamed it, that she lay there always a-talking her own tongue, always believing as the old boat was round the next pint in the bay, and begging and imploring of ‘em to send theer and tell how she was dying, and bring back a message of forgiveness, if it was on’y a wured. A’most the whole time, she thowt,—now, that him as I made mention on just now was lurking for her unnerneath the winder; now that him as had brought her to this was in the room,—and cried to the good young woman not to give her up, and know’d, at the same time, that she couldn’t unnerstand, and dreaded that she must be took away. Likewise the fire was afore her eyes, and the roarings in her ears; and theer was no today, nor yesterday, nor yet tomorrow; but everything in her life as ever had been, or as ever could be, and everything as never had been, and as never could be, was a crowding on her all at once, and nothing clear nor welcome, and yet she sang and laughed about it! How long this lasted, I doen’t know; but then theer come a sleep; and in that sleep, from being a many times stronger than her own self, she fell into the weakness of the littlest child.’
Here he stopped, as if for relief from the terrors of his own description. After being silent for a few moments, he pursued his story.
‘It was a pleasant arternoon when she awoke; and so quiet, that there warn’t a sound but the rippling of that blue sea without a tide, upon the shore. It was her belief, at first, that she was at home upon a Sunday morning; but the vine leaves as she see at the winder, and the hills beyond, warn’t home, and contradicted of her. Then, come in her friend to watch alongside of her bed; and then she know’d as the old boat warn’t round that next pint in the bay no more, but was fur off; and know’d where she was, and why; and broke out a-crying on that good young woman’s bosom, wheer I hope her baby is a-lying now, a-cheering of her with its pretty eyes!’
He could not speak of this good friend of Emily’s without a flow of tears. It was in vain to try. He broke down again, endeavouring to bless her!
‘That done my Em’ly good,’ he resumed, after such emotion as I could not behold without sharing in; and as to my aunt, she wept with all her heart; ‘that done Em’ly good, and she begun to mend. But, the language of that country was quite gone from her, and she was forced to make signs. So she went on, getting better from day to day, slow, but sure, and trying to learn the names of common things—names as she seemed never to have heerd in all her life—till one evening come, when she was a-setting at her window, looking at a little girl at play upon the beach. And of a sudden this child held out her hand, and said, what would be in English, “Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!”—for you are to unnerstand that they used at first to call her “Pretty lady”, as the general way in that country is, and that she had taught ‘em to call her “Fisherman’s daughter” instead. The child says of a sudden, “Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!” Then Em’ly unnerstands her; and she answers, bursting out a-crying; and it all comes back!
‘When Em’ly got strong again,’ said Mr. Peggotty, after another short interval of silence, ‘she cast about to leave that good young creetur, and get to her own country. The husband was come home, then; and the two together put her aboard a small trader bound to Leghorn, and from that to France. She had a little money, but it was less than little as they would take for all they done. I’m a’most glad on it, though they was so poor! What they done, is laid up wheer neither moth or rust doth corrupt, and wheer thieves do not break through nor steal. Mas’r Davy, it’ll outlast all the treasure in the wureld.
‘Em’ly got to France, and took service to wait on travelling ladies at a inn in the port. Theer, theer come, one day, that snake. —Let him never come nigh me. I doen’t know what hurt I might do him!—Soon as she see him, without him seeing her, all her fear and wildness returned upon her, and she fled afore the very breath he draw’d. She come to England, and was set ashore at Dover.
‘I doen’t know,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘for sure, when her ‘art begun to fail her; but all the way to England she had thowt to come to her dear home. Soon as she got to England she turned her face tow’rds it. But, fear of not being forgiv, fear of being pinted at, fear of some of us being dead along of her, fear of many things, turned her from it, kiender by force, upon the road: “Uncle, uncle,” she says to me, “the fear of not being worthy to do what my torn and bleeding breast so longed to do, was the most fright’ning fear of all! I turned back, when my ‘art was full of prayers that I might crawl to the old door-step, in the night, kiss it, lay my wicked face upon it, and theer be found dead in the morning.”
‘She come,’ said Mr. Peggotty, dropping his voice to an awe-stricken whisper, ‘to London. She—as had never seen it in her life—alone—without a penny—young—so pretty—come to London. A’most the moment as she lighted heer, all so desolate, she found (as she believed) a friend; a decent woman as spoke to her about the needle-work as she had been brought up to do, about finding plenty of it fur her, about a lodging fur the night, and making secret inquiration concerning of me and all at home, tomorrow. When my child,’ he said aloud, and with an energy of gratitude that shook him from head to foot, ‘stood upon the brink of more than I can say or think on—Martha, trew to her promise, saved her.’
I could not repress a cry of joy.
‘Mas’r Davy!’ said he, gripping my hand in that strong hand of his, ‘it was you as first made mention of her to me. I thankee, sir! She was arnest. She had know’d of her bitter knowledge wheer to watch and what to do. She had done it. And the Lord was above all! She come, white and hurried, upon Em’ly in her sleep. She says to her, “Rise up from worse than death, and come with me!” Them belonging to the house would have stopped her, but they might as soon have stopped the sea. “Stand away from me,” she says, “I am a ghost that calls her from beside her open grave!” She told Em’ly she had seen me, and know’d I loved her, and forgive her. She wrapped her, hasty, in her clothes. She took her, faint and trembling, on her arm. She heeded no more what they said, than if she had had no ears. She walked among ‘em with my child, minding only her; and brought her safe out, in the dead of the night, from that black pit of ruin!
‘She attended on Em’ly,’ said Mr. Peggotty, who had released my hand, and put his own hand on his heaving chest; ‘she attended to my Em’ly, lying wearied out, and wandering betwixt whiles, till late next day. Then she went in search of me; then in search of you, Mas’r Davy. She didn’t tell Em’ly what she come out fur, lest her ‘art should fail, and she should think of hiding of herself. How the cruel lady know’d of her being theer, I can’t say. Whether him as I have spoke so much of, chanced to see ‘em going theer, or whether (which is most like, to my thinking) he had heerd it from the woman, I doen’t greatly ask myself. My niece is found.
‘All night long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘we have been together, Em’ly and me. ‘Tis little (considering the time) as she has said, in wureds, through them broken-hearted tears; ‘tis less as I have seen of her dear face, as grow’d into a woman’s at my hearth. But, all night long, her arms has been about my neck; and her head has laid heer; and we knows full well, as we can put our trust in one another, ever more.’
He ceased to speak, and his hand upon the table rested there in perfect repose, with a resolution in it that might have conquered lions.
‘It was a gleam of light upon me, Trot,’ said my aunt, drying her eyes, ‘when I formed the resolution of being godmother to your sister Betsey Trotwood, who disappointed me; but, next to that, hardly anything would have given me greater pleasure, than to be godmother to that good young creature’s baby!’
Mr. Peggotty nodded his understanding of my aunt’s feelings, but could not trust himself with any verbal reference to the subject of her commendation. We all remained silent, and occupied with our own reflections (my aunt drying her eyes, and now sobbing convulsively, and now laughing and calling herself a fool); until I spoke.
‘You have quite made up your mind,’ said I to Mr. Peggotty, ‘as to the future, good friend? I need scarcely ask you.’
‘Quite, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned; ‘and told Em’ly. Theer’s mighty countries, fur from heer. Our future life lays over the sea.’
‘They will emigrate together, aunt,’ said I.
‘Yes!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a hopeful smile. ‘No one can’t reproach my darling in Australia. We will begin a new life over theer!’
I asked him if he yet proposed to himself any time for going away.
‘I was down at the Docks early this morning, sir,’ he returned, ‘to get information concerning of them ships. In about six weeks or two months from now, there’ll be one sailing—I see her this morning—went aboard—and we shall take our passage in her.’
‘Quite alone?’ I asked.
‘Aye, Mas’r Davy!’ he returned. ‘My sister, you see, she’s that fond of you and yourn, and that accustomed to think on’y of her own country, that it wouldn’t be hardly fair to let her go. Besides which, theer’s one she has in charge, Mas’r Davy, as doen’t ought to be forgot.’
‘Poor Ham!’ said I.
‘My good sister takes care of his house, you see, ma’am, and he takes kindly to her,’ Mr. Peggotty explained for my aunt’s better information. ‘He’ll set and talk to her, with a calm spirit, wen it’s like he couldn’t bring himself to open his lips to another. Poor fellow!’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘theer’s not so much left him, that he could spare the little as he has!’
‘And Mrs. Gummidge?’ said I.
‘Well, I’ve had a mort of consideration, I do tell you,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, with a perplexed look which gradually cleared as he went on, ‘concerning of Missis Gummidge. You see, wen Missis Gummidge falls a-thinking of the old ‘un, she an’t what you may call good company. Betwixt you and me, Mas’r Davy—and you, ma’am—wen Mrs. Gummidge takes to wimicking,’—our old country word for crying,—‘she’s liable to be considered to be, by them as didn’t know the old ‘un, peevish-like. Now I DID know the old ‘un,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and I know’d his merits, so I unnerstan’ her; but ‘tan’t entirely so, you see, with others—nat’rally can’t be!’
My aunt and I both acquiesced.
‘Wheerby,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘my sister might—I doen’t say she would, but might—find Missis Gummidge give her a leetle trouble now-and-again. Theerfur ‘tan’t my intentions to moor Missis Gummidge ‘long with them, but to find a Beein’ fur her wheer she can fisherate for herself.’ (A Beein’ signifies, in that dialect, a home, and to fisherate is to provide.) ‘Fur which purpose,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I means to make her a ‘lowance afore I go, as’ll leave her pretty comfort’ble. She’s the faithfullest of creeturs. ‘Tan’t to be expected, of course, at her time of life, and being lone and lorn, as the good old Mawther is to be knocked about aboardship, and in the woods and wilds of a new and fur-away country. So that’s what I’m a-going to do with her.’
He forgot nobody. He thought of everybody’s claims and strivings, but his own.
‘Em’ly,’ he continued, ‘will keep along with me—poor child, she’s sore in need of peace and rest!—until such time as we goes upon our voyage. She’ll work at them clothes, as must be made; and I hope her troubles will begin to seem longer ago than they was, wen she finds herself once more by her rough but loving uncle.’
My aunt nodded confirmation of this hope, and imparted great satisfaction to Mr. Peggotty.
‘Theer’s one thing furder, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, putting his hand in his breast-pocket, and gravely taking out the little paper bundle I had seen before, which he unrolled on the table. ‘Theer’s these here banknotes—fifty pound, and ten. To them I wish to add the money as she come away with. I’ve asked her about that (but not saying why), and have added of it up. I an’t a scholar. Would you be so kind as see how ‘tis?’
He handed me, apologetically for his scholarship, a piece of paper, and observed me while I looked it over. It was quite right.
‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, taking it back. ‘This money, if you doen’t see objections, Mas’r Davy, I shall put up jest afore I go, in a cover directed to him; and put that up in another, directed to his mother. I shall tell her, in no more wureds than I speak to you, what it’s the price on; and that I’m gone, and past receiving of it back.’
I told him that I thought it would be right to do so—that I was thoroughly convinced it would be, since he felt it to be right.
‘I said that theer was on’y one thing furder,’ he proceeded with a grave smile, when he had made up his little bundle again, and put it in his pocket; ‘but theer was two. I warn’t sure in my mind, wen I come out this morning, as I could go and break to Ham, of my own self, what had so thankfully happened. So I writ a letter while I was out, and put it in the post-office, telling of ‘em how all was as ‘tis; and that I should come down tomorrow to unload my mind of what little needs a-doing of down theer, and, most-like, take my farewell leave of Yarmouth.’
‘And do you wish me to go with you?’ said I, seeing that he left something unsaid.
‘If you could do me that kind favour, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied. ‘I know the sight on you would cheer ‘em up a bit.’
My little Dora being in good spirits, and very desirous that I should go—as I found on talking it over with her—I readily pledged myself to accompany him in accordance with his wish. Next morning, consequently, we were on the Yarmouth coach, and again travelling over the old ground.
As we passed along the familiar street at night—Mr. Peggotty, in despite of all my remonstrances, carrying my bag—I glanced into Omer and Joram’s shop, and saw my old friend Mr. Omer there, smoking his pipe. I felt reluctant to be present, when Mr. Peggotty first met his sister and Ham; and made Mr. Omer my excuse for lingering behind.
‘How is Mr. Omer, after this long time?’ said I, going in.
He fanned away the smoke of his pipe, that he might get a better view of me, and soon recognized me with great delight.
‘I should get up, sir, to acknowledge such an honour as this visit,’ said he, ‘only my limbs are rather out of sorts, and I am wheeled about. With the exception of my limbs and my breath, howsoever, I am as hearty as a man can be, I’m thankful to say.’
I congratulated him on his contented looks and his good spirits, and saw, now, that his easy-chair went on wheels.
‘It’s an ingenious thing, ain’t it?’ he inquired, following the direction of my glance, and polishing the elbow with his arm. ‘It runs as light as a feather, and tracks as true as a mail-coach. Bless you, my little Minnie—my grand-daughter you know, Minnie’s child—puts her little strength against the back, gives it a shove, and away we go, as clever and merry as ever you see anything! And I tell you what—it’s a most uncommon chair to smoke a pipe in.’
I never saw such a good old fellow to make the best of a thing, and find out the enjoyment of it, as Mr. Omer. He was as radiant, as if his chair, his asthma, and the failure of his limbs, were the various branches of a great invention for enhancing the luxury of a pipe.
‘I see more of the world, I can assure you,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘in this chair, than ever I see out of it. You’d be surprised at the number of people that looks in of a day to have a chat. You really would! There’s twice as much in the newspaper, since I’ve taken to this chair, as there used to be. As to general reading, dear me, what a lot of it I do get through! That’s what I feel so strong, you know! If it had been my eyes, what should I have done? If it had been my ears, what should I have done? Being my limbs, what does it signify? Why, my limbs only made my breath shorter when I used ‘em. And now, if I want to go out into the street or down to the sands, I’ve only got to call Dick, Joram’s youngest ‘prentice, and away I go in my own carriage, like the Lord Mayor of London.’
He half suffocated himself with laughing here.
‘Lord bless you!’ said Mr. Omer, resuming his pipe, ‘a man must take the fat with the lean; that’s what he must make up his mind to, in this life. Joram does a fine business. Ex-cellent business!’
‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said I.
‘I knew you would be,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘And Joram and Minnie are like Valentines. What more can a man expect? What’s his limbs to that!’
His supreme contempt for his own limbs, as he sat smoking, was one of the pleasantest oddities I have ever encountered.
‘And since I’ve took to general reading, you’ve took to general writing, eh, sir?’ said Mr. Omer, surveying me admiringly. ‘What a lovely work that was of yours! What expressions in it! I read it every word—every word. And as to feeling sleepy! Not at all!’
I laughingly expressed my satisfaction, but I must confess that I thought this association of ideas significant.
‘I give you my word and honour, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘that when I lay that book upon the table, and look at it outside; compact in three separate and indiwidual wollumes—one, two, three; I am as proud as Punch to think that I once had the honour of being connected with your family. And dear me, it’s a long time ago, now, ain’t it? Over at Blunderstone. With a pretty little party laid along with the other party. And you quite a small party then, yourself. Dear, dear!’
I changed the subject by referring to Emily. After assuring him that I did not forget how interested he had always been in her, and how kindly he had always treated her, I gave him a general account of her restoration to her uncle by the aid of Martha; which I knew would please the old man. He listened with the utmost attention, and said, feelingly, when I had done:
‘I am rejoiced at it, sir! It’s the best news I have heard for many a day. Dear, dear, dear! And what’s going to be undertook for that unfortunate young woman, Martha, now?’
‘You touch a point that my thoughts have been dwelling on since yesterday,’ said I, ‘but on which I can give you no information yet, Mr. Omer. Mr. Peggotty has not alluded to it, and I have a delicacy in doing so. I am sure he has not forgotten it. He forgets nothing that is disinterested and good.’
‘Because you know,’ said Mr. Omer, taking himself up, where he had left off, ‘whatever is done, I should wish to be a member of. Put me down for anything you may consider right, and let me know. I never could think the girl all bad, and I am glad to find she’s not. So will my daughter Minnie be. Young women are contradictory creatures in some things—her mother was just the same as her—but their hearts are soft and kind. It’s all show with Minnie, about Martha. Why she should consider it necessary to make any show, I don’t undertake to tell you. But it’s all show, bless you. She’d do her any kindness in private. So, put me down for whatever you may consider right, will you be so good? and drop me a line where to forward it. Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘when a man is drawing on to a time of life, where the two ends of life meet; when he finds himself, however hearty he is, being wheeled about for the second time, in a speeches of go-cart; he should be over-rejoiced to do a kindness if he can. He wants plenty. And I don’t speak of myself, particular,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘because, sir, the way I look at it is, that we are all drawing on to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are, on account of time never standing still for a single moment. So let us always do a kindness, and be over-rejoiced. To be sure!’
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it on a ledge in the back of his chair, expressly made for its reception.
‘There’s Em’ly’s cousin, him that she was to have been married to,’ said Mr. Omer, rubbing his hands feebly, ‘as fine a fellow as there is in Yarmouth! He’ll come and talk or read to me, in the evening, for an hour together sometimes. That’s a kindness, I should call it! All his life’s a kindness.’
‘I am going to see him now,’ said I.
‘Are you?’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Tell him I was hearty, and sent my respects. Minnie and Joram’s at a ball. They would be as proud to see you as I am, if they was at home. Minnie won’t hardly go out at all, you see, “on account of father”, as she says. So I swore tonight, that if she didn’t go, I’d go to bed at six. In consequence of which,’ Mr. Omer shook himself and his chair with laughter at the success of his device, ‘she and Joram’s at a ball.’
I shook hands with him, and wished him good night.
‘Half a minute, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘If you was to go without seeing my little elephant, you’d lose the best of sights. You never see such a sight! Minnie!’ A musical little voice answered, from somewhere upstairs, ‘I am coming, grandfather!’ and a pretty little girl with long, flaxen, curling hair, soon came running into the shop.
‘This is my little elephant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, fondling the child. ‘Siamese breed, sir. Now, little elephant!’
The little elephant set the door of the parlour open, enabling me to see that, in these latter days, it was converted into a bedroom for Mr. Omer who could not be easily conveyed upstairs; and then hid her pretty forehead, and tumbled her long hair, against the back of Mr. Omer’s chair.
‘The elephant butts, you know, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, winking, ‘when he goes at a object. Once, elephant. Twice. Three times!’
At this signal, the little elephant, with a dexterity that was next to marvellous in so small an animal, whisked the chair round with Mr. Omer in it, and rattled it off, pell-mell, into the parlour, without touching the door-post: Mr. Omer indescribably enjoying the performance, and looking back at me on the road as if it were the triumphant issue of his life’s exertions.
After a stroll about the town I went to Ham’s house. Peggotty had now removed here for good; and had let her own house to the successor of Mr. Barkis in the carrying business, who had paid her very well for the good-will, cart, and horse. I believe the very same slow horse that Mr. Barkis drove was still at work.
I found them in the neat kitchen, accompanied by Mrs. Gummidge, who had been fetched from the old boat by Mr. Peggotty himself. I doubt if she could have been induced to desert her post, by anyone else. He had evidently told them all. Both Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge had their aprons to their eyes, and Ham had just stepped out ‘to take a turn on the beach’. He presently came home, very glad to see me; and I hope they were all the better for my being there. We spoke, with some approach to cheerfulness, of Mr. Peggotty’s growing rich in a new country, and of the wonders he would describe in his letters. We said nothing of Emily by name, but distantly referred to her more than once. Ham was the serenest of the party.
But, Peggotty told me, when she lighted me to a little chamber where the Crocodile book was lying ready for me on the table, that he always was the same. She believed (she told me, crying) that he was broken-hearted; though he was as full of courage as of sweetness, and worked harder and better than any boat-builder in any yard in all that part. There were times, she said, of an evening, when he talked of their old life in the boat-house; and then he mentioned Emily as a child. But, he never mentioned her as a woman.
I thought I had read in his face that he would like to speak to me alone. I therefore resolved to put myself in his way next evening, as he came home from his work. Having settled this with myself, I fell asleep. That night, for the first time in all those many nights, the candle was taken out of the window, Mr. Peggotty swung in his old hammock in the old boat, and the wind murmured with the old sound round his head.
All next day, he was occupied in disposing of his fishing-boat and tackle; in packing up, and sending to London by waggon, such of his little domestic possessions as he thought would be useful to him; and in parting with the rest, or bestowing them on Mrs. Gummidge. She was with him all day. As I had a sorrowful wish to see the old place once more, before it was locked up, I engaged to meet them there in the evening. But I so arranged it, as that I should meet Ham first.
It was easy to come in his way, as I knew where he worked. I met him at a retired part of the sands, which I knew he would cross, and turned back with him, that he might have leisure to speak to me if he really wished. I had not mistaken the expression of his face. We had walked but a little way together, when he said, without looking at me:
‘Mas’r Davy, have you seen her?’
‘Only for a moment, when she was in a swoon,’ I softly answered.
We walked a little farther, and he said:
‘Mas’r Davy, shall you see her, d’ye think?’
‘It would be too painful to her, perhaps,’ said I.
‘I have thowt of that,’ he replied. ‘So ‘twould, sir, so ‘twould.’
‘But, Ham,’ said I, gently, ‘if there is anything that I could write to her, for you, in case I could not tell it; if there is anything you would wish to make known to her through me; I should consider it a sacred trust.’
‘I am sure on’t. I thankee, sir, most kind! I think theer is something I could wish said or wrote.’
‘What is it?’
We walked a little farther in silence, and then he spoke.
‘’Tan’t that I forgive her. ‘Tan’t that so much. ‘Tis more as I beg of her to forgive me, for having pressed my affections upon her. Odd times, I think that if I hadn’t had her promise fur to marry me, sir, she was that trustful of me, in a friendly way, that she’d have told me what was struggling in her mind, and would have counselled with me, and I might have saved her.’
I pressed his hand. ‘Is that all?’ ‘Theer’s yet a something else,’ he returned, ‘if I can say it, Mas’r Davy.’
We walked on, farther than we had walked yet, before he spoke again. He was not crying when he made the pauses I shall express by lines. He was merely collecting himself to speak very plainly.
‘I loved her—and I love the mem’ry of her—too deep—to be able to lead her to believe of my own self as I’m a happy man. I could only be happy—by forgetting of her—and I’m afeerd I couldn’t hardly bear as she should be told I done that. But if you, being so full of learning, Mas’r Davy, could think of anything to say as might bring her to believe I wasn’t greatly hurt: still loving of her, and mourning for her: anything as might bring her to believe as I was not tired of my life, and yet was hoping fur to see her without blame, wheer the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest—anything as would ease her sorrowful mind, and yet not make her think as I could ever marry, or as ‘twas possible that anyone could ever be to me what she was—I should ask of you to say that—with my prayers for her—that was so dear.’
I pressed his manly hand again, and told him I would charge myself to do this as well as I could.
‘I thankee, sir,’ he answered. ‘’Twas kind of you to meet me. ‘Twas kind of you to bear him company down. Mas’r Davy, I unnerstan’ very well, though my aunt will come to Lon’on afore they sail, and they’ll unite once more, that I am not like to see him agen. I fare to feel sure on’t. We doen’t say so, but so ‘twill be, and better so. The last you see on him—the very last—will you give him the lovingest duty and thanks of the orphan, as he was ever more than a father to?’
This I also promised, faithfully.
‘I thankee agen, sir,’ he said, heartily shaking hands. ‘I know wheer you’re a-going. Good-bye!’
With a slight wave of his hand, as though to explain to me that he could not enter the old place, he turned away. As I looked after his figure, crossing the waste in the moonlight, I saw him turn his face towards a strip of silvery light upon the sea, and pass on, looking at it, until he was a shadow in the distance.
The door of the boat-house stood open when I approached; and, on entering, I found it emptied of all its furniture, saving one of the old lockers, on which Mrs. Gummidge, with a basket on her knee, was seated, looking at Mr. Peggotty. He leaned his elbow on the rough chimney-piece, and gazed upon a few expiring embers in the grate; but he raised his head, hopefully, on my coming in, and spoke in a cheery manner.
‘Come, according to promise, to bid farewell to ‘t, eh, Mas’r Davy?’ he said, taking up the candle. ‘Bare enough, now, an’t it?’ ‘Indeed you have made good use of the time,’ said I.
‘Why, we have not been idle, sir. Missis Gummidge has worked like a—I doen’t know what Missis Gummidge an’t worked like,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at her, at a loss for a sufficiently approving simile.
Mrs. Gummidge, leaning on her basket, made no observation.
‘Theer’s the very locker that you used to sit on, ‘long with Em’ly!’ said Mr. Peggotty, in a whisper. ‘I’m a-going to carry it away with me, last of all. And heer’s your old little bedroom, see, Mas’r Davy! A’most as bleak tonight, as ‘art could wish!’
In truth, the wind, though it was low, had a solemn sound, and crept around the deserted house with a whispered wailing that was very mournful. Everything was gone, down to the little mirror with the oyster-shell frame. I thought of myself, lying here, when that first great change was being wrought at home. I thought of the blue-eyed child who had enchanted me. I thought of Steerforth: and a foolish, fearful fancy came upon me of his being near at hand, and liable to be met at any turn.
‘’Tis like to be long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, in a low voice, ‘afore the boat finds new tenants. They look upon ‘t, down heer, as being unfortunate now!’
‘Does it belong to anybody in the neighbourhood?’ I asked.
‘To a mast-maker up town,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I’m a-going to give the key to him tonight.’
We looked into the other little room, and came back to Mrs. Gummidge, sitting on the locker, whom Mr. Peggotty, putting the light on the chimney-piece, requested to rise, that he might carry it outside the door before extinguishing the candle.
‘Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, suddenly deserting her basket, and clinging to his arm ‘my dear Dan’l, the parting words I speak in this house is, I mustn’t be left behind. Doen’t ye think of leaving me behind, Dan’l! Oh, doen’t ye ever do it!’
Mr. Peggotty, taken aback, looked from Mrs. Gummidge to me, and from me to Mrs. Gummidge, as if he had been awakened from a sleep.
‘Doen’t ye, dearest Dan’l, doen’t ye!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, fervently. ‘Take me ‘long with you, Dan’l, take me ‘long with you and Em’ly! I’ll be your servant, constant and trew. If there’s slaves in them parts where you’re a-going, I’ll be bound to you for one, and happy, but doen’t ye leave me behind, Dan’l, that’s a deary dear!’
‘My good soul,’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘you doen’t know what a long voyage, and what a hard life ‘tis!’ ‘Yes, I do, Dan’l! I can guess!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘But my parting words under this roof is, I shall go into the house and die, if I am not took. I can dig, Dan’l. I can work. I can live hard. I can be loving and patient now—more than you think, Dan’l, if you’ll on’y try me. I wouldn’t touch the ‘lowance, not if I was dying of want, Dan’l Peggotty; but I’ll go with you and Em’ly, if you’ll on’y let me, to the world’s end! I know how ‘tis; I know you think that I am lone and lorn; but, deary love, ‘tan’t so no more! I ain’t sat here, so long, a-watching, and a-thinking of your trials, without some good being done me. Mas’r Davy, speak to him for me! I knows his ways, and Em’ly’s, and I knows their sorrows, and can be a comfort to ‘em, some odd times, and labour for ‘em allus! Dan’l, deary Dan’l, let me go ‘long with you!’
And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he well deserved.
We brought the locker out, extinguished the candle, fastened the door on the outside, and left the old boat close shut up, a dark speck in the cloudy night. Next day, when we were returning to London outside the coach, Mrs. Gummidge and her basket were on the seat behind, and Mrs. Gummidge was happy.
CHAPTER 52. I ASSIST AT AN EXPLOSION
When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was within four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted how we should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave Dora. Ah! how easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!
We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber’s stipulation for my aunt’s attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be represented by Mr. Dick and me. In short, we had resolved to take this course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she never would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy, if my aunt remained behind, on any pretence.
‘I won’t speak to you,’ said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt. ‘I’ll be disagreeable! I’ll make Jip bark at you all day. I shall be sure that you really are a cross old thing, if you don’t go!’
‘Tut, Blossom!’ laughed my aunt. ‘You know you can’t do without me!’
‘Yes, I can,’ said Dora. ‘You are no use to me at all. You never run up and down stairs for me, all day long. You never sit and tell me stories about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he was covered with dust—oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow! You never do anything at all to please me, do you, dear?’ Dora made haste to kiss my aunt, and say, ‘Yes, you do! I’m only joking!’-lest my aunt should think she really meant it.
‘But, aunt,’ said Dora, coaxingly, ‘now listen. You must go. I shall tease you, ‘till you let me have my own way about it. I shall lead my naughty boy such a life, if he don’t make you go. I shall make myself so disagreeable—and so will Jip! You’ll wish you had gone, like a good thing, for ever and ever so long, if you don’t go. Besides,’ said Dora, putting back her hair, and looking wonderingly at my aunt and me, ‘why shouldn’t you both go? I am not very ill indeed. Am I?’
‘Why, what a question!’ cried my aunt.
‘What a fancy!’ said I.
‘Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!’ said Dora, slowly looking from one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to kiss us as she lay upon her couch. ‘Well, then, you must both go, or I shall not believe you; and then I shall cry!’
I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora brightened again, as she saw it too.
‘You’ll come back with so much to tell me, that it’ll take at least a week to make me understand!’ said Dora. ‘Because I know I shan’t understand, for a length of time, if there’s any business in it. And there’s sure to be some business in it! If there’s anything to add up, besides, I don’t know when I shall make it out; and my bad boy will look so miserable all the time. There! Now you’ll go, won’t you? You’ll only be gone one night, and Jip will take care of me while you are gone. Doady will carry me upstairs before you go, and I won’t come down again till you come back; and you shall take Agnes a dreadfully scolding letter from me, because she has never been to see us!’
We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go, and that Dora was a little Impostor, who feigned to be rather unwell, because she liked to be petted. She was greatly pleased, and very merry; and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick, Traddles, and I, went down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that night.
At the hotel where Mr. Micawber had requested us to await him, which we got into, with some trouble, in the middle of the night, I found a letter, importing that he would appear in the morning punctually at half past nine. After which, we went shivering, at that uncomfortable hour, to our respective beds, through various close passages; which smelt as if they had been steeped, for ages, in a solution of soup and stables.
Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth. Yet the bells, when they sounded, told me sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of their own age, and my pretty Dora’s youth; and of the many, never old, who had lived and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells had hummed through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in air, as circles do in water.
I looked at the old house from the corner of the street, but did not go nearer to it, lest, being observed, I might unwittingly do any harm to the design I had come to aid. The early sun was striking edgewise on its gables and lattice-windows, touching them with gold; and some beams of its old peace seemed to touch my heart.
I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last night’s sleep. Among those who were stirring in the shops, I saw my ancient enemy the butcher, now advanced to top-boots and a baby, and in business for himself. He was nursing the baby, and appeared to be a benignant member of society.
We all became very anxious and impatient, when we sat down to breakfast. As it approached nearer and nearer to half past nine o’clock, our restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased. At last we made no more pretence of attending to the meal, which, except with Mr. Dick, had been a mere form from the first; but my aunt walked up and down the room. Traddles sat upon the sofa affecting to read the paper with his eyes on the ceiling; and I looked out of the window to give early notice of Mr. Micawber’s coming. Nor had I long to watch, for, at the first chime of the half hour, he appeared in the street.
‘Here he is,’ said I, ‘and not in his legal attire!’
My aunt tied the strings of her bonnet (she had come down to breakfast in it), and put on her shawl, as if she were ready for anything that was resolute and uncompromising. Traddles buttoned his coat with a determined air. Mr. Dick, disturbed by these formidable appearances, but feeling it necessary to imitate them, pulled his hat, with both hands, as firmly over his ears as he possibly could; and instantly took it off again, to welcome Mr. Micawber.
‘Gentlemen, and madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘good morning! My dear sir,’ to Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him violently, ‘you are extremely good.’
‘Have you breakfasted?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Have a chop!’
‘Not for the world, my good sir!’ cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him on his way to the bell; ‘appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long been strangers.’
Mr. Dixon was so well pleased with his new name, and appeared to think it so obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he shook hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.
‘Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘attention!’
Mr. Dick recovered himself, with a blush.
‘Now, sir,’ said my aunt to Mr. Micawber, as she put on her gloves, ‘we are ready for Mount Vesuvius, or anything else, as soon as YOU please.’
‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I trust you will shortly witness an eruption. Mr. Traddles, I have your permission, I believe, to mention here that we have been in communication together?’
‘It is undoubtedly the fact, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, to whom I looked in surprise. ‘Mr. Micawber has consulted me in reference to what he has in contemplation; and I have advised him to the best of my judgement.’
‘Unless I deceive myself, Mr. Traddles,’ pursued Mr. Micawber, ‘what I contemplate is a disclosure of an important nature.’
‘Highly so,’ said Traddles.
‘Perhaps, under such circumstances, madam and gentlemen,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you will do me the favour to submit yourselves, for the moment, to the direction of one who, however unworthy to be regarded in any other light but as a Waif and Stray upon the shore of human nature, is still your fellow-man, though crushed out of his original form by individual errors, and the accumulative force of a combination of circumstances?’
‘We have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘and will do what you please.’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘your confidence is not, at the existing juncture, ill-bestowed. I would beg to be allowed a start of five minutes by the clock; and then to receive the present company, inquiring for Miss Wickfield, at the office of Wickfield and Heep, whose Stipendiary I am.’
My aunt and I looked at Traddles, who nodded his approval.
‘I have no more,’ observed Mr. Micawber, ‘to say at present.’
With which, to my infinite surprise, he included us all in a comprehensive bow, and disappeared; his manner being extremely distant, and his face extremely pale.
Traddles only smiled, and shook his head (with his hair standing upright on the top of it), when I looked to him for an explanation; so I took out my watch, and, as a last resource, counted off the five minutes. My aunt, with her own watch in her hand, did the like. When the time was expired, Traddles gave her his arm; and we all went out together to the old house, without saying one word on the way.
We found Mr. Micawber at his desk, in the turret office on the ground floor, either writing, or pretending to write, hard. The large office-ruler was stuck into his waistcoat, and was not so well concealed but that a foot or more of that instrument protruded from his bosom, like a new kind of shirt-frill.
As it appeared to me that I was expected to speak, I said aloud:
‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, gravely, ‘I hope I see you well?’
‘Is Miss Wickfield at home?’ said I.
‘Mr. Wickfield is unwell in bed, sir, of a rheumatic fever,’ he returned; ‘but Miss Wickfield, I have no doubt, will be happy to see old friends. Will you walk in, sir?’
He preceded us to the dining-room—the first room I had entered in that house—and flinging open the door of Mr. Wickfield’s former office, said, in a sonorous voice:
‘Miss Trotwood, Mr. David Copperfield, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and Mr. Dixon!’
I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow. Our visit astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it astonished ourselves. He did not gather his eyebrows together, for he had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he almost closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his grisly hand to his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise. This was only when we were in the act of entering his room, and when I caught a glance at him over my aunt’s shoulder. A moment afterwards, he was as fawning and as humble as ever.
‘Well, I am sure,’ he said. ‘This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! To have, as I may say, all friends round St. Paul’s at once, is a treat unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you well, and—if I may umbly express myself so—friendly towards them as is ever your friends, whether or not. Mrs. Copperfield, sir, I hope she’s getting on. We have been made quite uneasy by the poor accounts we have had of her state, lately, I do assure you.’
I felt ashamed to let him take my hand, but I did not know yet what else to do.
‘Things are changed in this office, Miss Trotwood, since I was an umble clerk, and held your pony; ain’t they?’ said Uriah, with his sickliest smile. ‘But I am not changed, Miss Trotwood.’
‘Well, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘to tell you the truth, I think you are pretty constant to the promise of your youth; if that’s any satisfaction to you.’
‘Thank you, Miss Trotwood,’ said Uriah, writhing in his ungainly manner, ‘for your good opinion! Micawber, tell ‘em to let Miss Agnes know—and mother. Mother will be quite in a state, when she sees the present company!’ said Uriah, setting chairs.
‘You are not busy, Mr. Heep?’ said Traddles, whose eye the cunning red eye accidentally caught, as it at once scrutinized and evaded us.
‘No, Mr. Traddles,’ replied Uriah, resuming his official seat, and squeezing his bony hands, laid palm to palm between his bony knees. ‘Not so much so as I could wish. But lawyers, sharks, and leeches, are not easily satisfied, you know! Not but what myself and Micawber have our hands pretty full, in general, on account of Mr. Wickfield’s being hardly fit for any occupation, sir. But it’s a pleasure as well as a duty, I am sure, to work for him. You’ve not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield, I think, Mr. Traddles? I believe I’ve only had the honour of seeing you once myself?’
‘No, I have not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield,’ returned Traddles; ‘or I might perhaps have waited on you long ago, Mr. Heep.’
There was something in the tone of this reply, which made Uriah look at the speaker again, with a very sinister and suspicious expression. But, seeing only Traddles, with his good-natured face, simple manner, and hair on end, he dismissed it as he replied, with a jerk of his whole body, but especially his throat:
‘I am sorry for that, Mr. Traddles. You would have admired him as much as we all do. His little failings would only have endeared him to you the more. But if you would like to hear my fellow-partner eloquently spoken of, I should refer you to Copperfield. The family is a subject he’s very strong upon, if you never heard him.’
I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by Mr. Micawber. She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I thought; and had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue. But her earnest cordiality, and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler lustre for it.
I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of an ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit. In the meanwhile, some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and Traddles; and Traddles, unobserved except by me, went out.
‘Don’t wait, Micawber,’ said Uriah.
Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood erect before the door, most unmistakably contemplating one of his fellow-men, and that man his employer.
‘What are you waiting for?’ said Uriah. ‘Micawber! did you hear me tell you not to wait?’
‘Yes!’ replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.
‘Then why DO you wait?’ said Uriah.
‘Because I—in short, choose,’ replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.
Uriah’s cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at Mr. Micawber attentively, with his whole face breathing short and quick in every feature.
‘You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,’ he said, with an effort at a smile, ‘and I am afraid you’ll oblige me to get rid of you. Go along! I’ll talk to you presently.’
‘If there is a scoundrel on this earth,’ said Mr. Micawber, suddenly breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, ‘with whom I have already talked too much, that scoundrel’s name is—HEEP!’
Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:
‘Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take care. You’ll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you and me. There’s no love between us. You were always a puppy with a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you? None of your plots against me; I’ll counterplot you! Micawber, you be off. I’ll talk to you presently.’
‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘there is a sudden change in this fellow, in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to bay. Deal with him as he deserves!’
‘You are a precious set of people, ain’t you?’ said Uriah, in the same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his forehead, with his long lean hand, ‘to buy over my clerk, who is the very scum of society,—as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you,—to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I’ll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I won’t know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not join that gang. I’ll ruin him, if you do. Now, come! I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don’t want to be crushed. I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently, you fool! while there’s time to retreat. Where’s mother?’ he said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles, and pulling down the bell-rope. ‘Fine doings in a person’s own house!’
‘Mrs. Heep is here, sir,’ said Traddles, returning with that worthy mother of a worthy son. ‘I have taken the liberty of making myself known to her.’
‘Who are you to make yourself known?’ retorted Uriah. ‘And what do you want here?’
‘I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ said Traddles, in a composed and business-like way. ‘And I have a power of attorney from him in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.’
‘The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,’ said Uriah, turning uglier than before, ‘and it has been got from him by fraud!’
‘Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,’ returned Traddles quietly; ‘and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.’
‘Ury—!’ Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.
‘YOU hold your tongue, mother,’ he returned; ‘least said, soonest mended.’
‘But, my Ury—’
‘Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?’
Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done—all this time being desperate too, and at his wits’ end for the means of getting the better of us—though perfectly consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.
I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing us, one after another; for I had always understood that he hated me, and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when his eyes passed on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt his power over her slipping away, and the exhibition, in their disappointment, of the odious passions that had led him to aspire to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within sight of such a man.
After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking at us with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.
‘You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride yourself so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak about my place, eaves-dropping with my clerk? If it had been ME, I shouldn’t have wondered; for I don’t make myself out a gentleman (though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according to Micawber), but being you!—And you’re not afraid of doing this, either? You don’t think at all of what I shall do, in return; or of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very well. We shall see! Mr. What’s-your-name, you were going to refer some question to Micawber. There’s your referee. Why don’t you make him speak? He has learnt his lesson, I see.’
Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat on the edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of his splay feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for what might follow.
Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the first syllable of SCOUN-drel! without getting to the second, now burst forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a defensive weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap document, folded in the form of a large letter. Opening this packet, with his old flourish, and glancing at the contents, as if he cherished an artistic admiration of their style of composition, he began to read as follows:
‘“Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen—“’
‘Bless and save the man!’ exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. ‘He’d write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!’
Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.
‘“In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate Villain that has ever existed,”’ Mr. Micawber, without looking off the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah Heep, ‘“I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances. Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have, collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career.”’
The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself as a prey to these dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis with which he read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered to it with a roll of his head, when he thought he had hit a sentence very hard indeed.
‘“In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I entered the office—or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would term it, the Bureau—of the Firm, nominally conducted under the appellation of Wickfield and—HEEP, but in reality, wielded by—HEEP alone. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the mainspring of that machine. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the Forger and the Cheat.”’
Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the letter, as if to tear it in pieces. Mr. Micawber, with a perfect miracle of dexterity or luck, caught his advancing knuckles with the ruler, and disabled his right hand. It dropped at the wrist, as if it were broken. The blow sounded as if it had fallen on wood.
‘The Devil take you!’ said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain. ‘I’ll be even with you.’
‘Approach me again, you—you—you HEEP of infamy,’ gasped Mr. Micawber, ‘and if your head is human, I’ll break it. Come on, come on!’
I think I never saw anything more ridiculous—I was sensible of it, even at the time—than Mr. Micawber making broad-sword guards with the ruler, and crying, ‘Come on!’ while Traddles and I pushed him back into a corner, from which, as often as we got him into it, he persisted in emerging again.
His enemy, muttering to himself, after wringing his wounded hand for sometime, slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up; then held it in his other hand, and sat upon his table with his sullen face looking down.
Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool, proceeded with his letter.
‘“The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered into the service of—HEEP,”’ always pausing before that word and uttering it with astonishing vigour, ‘“were not defined, beyond the pittance of twenty-two shillings and six per week. The rest was left contingent on the value of my professional exertions; in other and more expressive words, on the baseness of my nature, the cupidity of my motives, the poverty of my family, the general moral (or rather immoral) resemblance between myself and—HEEP. Need I say, that it soon became necessary for me to solicit from—HEEP—pecuniary advances towards the support of Mrs. Micawber, and our blighted but rising family? Need I say that this necessity had been foreseen by—HEEP? That those advances were secured by I.O.U.’s and other similar acknowledgements, known to the legal institutions of this country? And that I thus became immeshed in the web he had spun for my reception?”’
Mr. Micawber’s enjoyment of his epistolary powers, in describing this unfortunate state of things, really seemed to outweigh any pain or anxiety that the reality could have caused him. He read on:
‘“Then it was that—HEEP—began to favour me with just so much of his confidence, as was necessary to the discharge of his infernal business. Then it was that I began, if I may so Shakespearianly express myself, to dwindle, peak, and pine. I found that my services were constantly called into requisition for the falsification of business, and the mystification of an individual whom I will designate as Mr. W. That Mr. W. was imposed upon, kept in ignorance, and deluded, in every possible way; yet, that all this while, the ruffian—HEEP—was professing unbounded gratitude to, and unbounded friendship for, that much-abused gentleman. This was bad enough; but, as the philosophic Dane observes, with that universal applicability which distinguishes the illustrious ornament of the Elizabethan Era, worse remains behind!”’
Mr. Micawber was so very much struck by this happy rounding off with a quotation, that he indulged himself, and us, with a second reading of the sentence, under pretence of having lost his place.
‘“It is not my intention,”’ he continued reading on, ‘“to enter on a detailed list, within the compass of the present epistle (though it is ready elsewhere), of the various malpractices of a minor nature, affecting the individual whom I have denominated Mr. W., to which I have been a tacitly consenting party. My object, when the contest within myself between stipend and no stipend, baker and no baker, existence and non-existence, ceased, was to take advantage of my opportunities to discover and expose the major malpractices committed, to that gentleman’s grievous wrong and injury, by—HEEP. Stimulated by the silent monitor within, and by a no less touching and appealing monitor without—to whom I will briefly refer as Miss W.—I entered on a not unlaborious task of clandestine investigation, protracted—now, to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief, over a period exceeding twelve calendar months.”’
He read this passage as if it were from an Act of Parliament; and appeared majestically refreshed by the sound of the words.
‘“My charges against—HEEP,”’ he read on, glancing at him, and drawing the ruler into a convenient position under his left arm, in case of need, ‘“are as follows.”’
We all held our breath, I think. I am sure Uriah held his.
‘“First,”’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘“When Mr. W.’s faculties and memory for business became, through causes into which it is not necessary or expedient for me to enter, weakened and confused,—HEEP—designedly perplexed and complicated the whole of the official transactions. When Mr. W. was least fit to enter on business,—HEEP was always at hand to force him to enter on it. He obtained Mr. W.’s signature under such circumstances to documents of importance, representing them to be other documents of no importance. He induced Mr. W. to empower him to draw out, thus, one particular sum of trust-money, amounting to twelve six fourteen, two and nine, and employed it to meet pretended business charges and deficiencies which were either already provided for, or had never really existed. He gave this proceeding, throughout, the appearance of having originated in Mr. W.’s own dishonest intention, and of having been accomplished by Mr. W.’s own dishonest act; and has used it, ever since, to torture and constrain him.”’
‘You shall prove this, you Copperfield!’ said Uriah, with a threatening shake of the head. ‘All in good time!’
‘Ask—HEEP—Mr. Traddles, who lived in his house after him,’ said Mr. Micawber, breaking off from the letter; ‘will you?’
‘The fool himself—and lives there now,’ said Uriah, disdainfully.
‘Ask—HEEP—if he ever kept a pocket-book in that house,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘will you?’
I saw Uriah’s lank hand stop, involuntarily, in the scraping of his chin.
‘Or ask him,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if he ever burnt one there. If he says yes, and asks you where the ashes are, refer him to Wilkins Micawber, and he will hear of something not at all to his advantage!’
The triumphant flourish with which Mr. Micawber delivered himself of these words, had a powerful effect in alarming the mother; who cried out, in much agitation:
‘Ury, Ury! Be umble, and make terms, my dear!’
‘Mother!’ he retorted, ‘will you keep quiet? You’re in a fright, and don’t know what you say or mean. Umble!’ he repeated, looking at me, with a snarl; ‘I’ve umbled some of ‘em for a pretty long time back, umble as I was!’
Mr. Micawber, genteelly adjusting his chin in his cravat, presently proceeded with his composition.
‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief—“’
‘But that won’t do,’ muttered Uriah, relieved. ‘Mother, you keep quiet.’
‘We will endeavour to provide something that WILL do, and do for you finally, sir, very shortly,’ replied Mr. Micawber.
‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief, systematically forged, to various entries, books, and documents, the signature of Mr. W.; and has distinctly done so in one instance, capable of proof by me. To wit, in manner following, that is to say:”’
Again, Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words, which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not at all peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the course of my life, in numbers of men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In the taking of legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy themselves mightily when they come to several good words in succession, for the expression of one idea; as, that they utterly detest, abominate, and abjure, or so forth; and the old anathemas were made relishing on the same principle. We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words.
Mr. Micawber read on, almost smacking his lips:
‘“To wit, in manner following, that is to say. Mr. W. being infirm, and it being within the bounds of probability that his decease might lead to some discoveries, and to the downfall of—HEEP’S—power over the W. family,—as I, Wilkins Micawber, the undersigned, assume—unless the filial affection of his daughter could be secretly influenced from allowing any investigation of the partnership affairs to be ever made, the said—HEEP—deemed it expedient to have a bond ready by him, as from Mr. W., for the before-mentioned sum of twelve six fourteen, two and nine, with interest, stated therein to have been advanced by—HEEP—to Mr. W. to save Mr. W. from dishonour; though really the sum was never advanced by him, and has long been replaced. The signatures to this instrument purporting to be executed by Mr. W. and attested by Wilkins Micawber, are forgeries by—HEEP. I have, in my possession, in his hand and pocket-book, several similar imitations of Mr. W.’s signature, here and there defaced by fire, but legible to anyone. I never attested any such document. And I have the document itself, in my possession.”’ Uriah Heep, with a start, took out of his pocket a bunch of keys, and opened a certain drawer; then, suddenly bethought himself of what he was about, and turned again towards us, without looking in it.
‘“And I have the document,”’ Mr. Micawber read again, looking about as if it were the text of a sermon, ‘“in my possession,—that is to say, I had, early this morning, when this was written, but have since relinquished it to Mr. Traddles.”’
‘It is quite true,’ assented Traddles.
‘Ury, Ury!’ cried the mother, ‘be umble and make terms. I know my son will be umble, gentlemen, if you’ll give him time to think. Mr. Copperfield, I’m sure you know that he was always very umble, sir!’
It was singular to see how the mother still held to the old trick, when the son had abandoned it as useless.
‘Mother,’ he said, with an impatient bite at the handkerchief in which his hand was wrapped, ‘you had better take and fire a loaded gun at me.’
‘But I love you, Ury,’ cried Mrs. Heep. And I have no doubt she did; or that he loved her, however strange it may appear; though, to be sure, they were a congenial couple. ‘And I can’t bear to hear you provoking the gentlemen, and endangering of yourself more. I told the gentleman at first, when he told me upstairs it was come to light, that I would answer for your being umble, and making amends. Oh, see how umble I am, gentlemen, and don’t mind him!’
‘Why, there’s Copperfield, mother,’ he angrily retorted, pointing his lean finger at me, against whom all his animosity was levelled, as the prime mover in the discovery; and I did not undeceive him; ‘there’s Copperfield, would have given you a hundred pound to say less than you’ve blurted out!’
‘I can’t help it, Ury,’ cried his mother. ‘I can’t see you running into danger, through carrying your head so high. Better be umble, as you always was.’
He remained for a little, biting the handkerchief, and then said to me with a scowl:
‘What more have you got to bring forward? If anything, go on with it. What do you look at me for?’
Mr. Micawber promptly resumed his letter, glad to revert to a performance with which he was so highly satisfied.
‘“Third. And last. I am now in a condition to show, by—HEEP’S—false books, and—HEEP’S—real memoranda, beginning with the partially destroyed pocket-book (which I was unable to comprehend, at the time of its accidental discovery by Mrs. Micawber, on our taking possession of our present abode, in the locker or bin devoted to the reception of the ashes calcined on our domestic hearth), that the weaknesses, the faults, the very virtues, the parental affections, and the sense of honour, of the unhappy Mr. W. have been for years acted on by, and warped to the base purposes of—HEEP. That Mr. W. has been for years deluded and plundered, in every conceivable manner, to the pecuniary aggrandisement of the avaricious, false, and grasping—HEEP. That the engrossing object of—HEEP—was, next to gain, to subdue Mr. and Miss W. (of his ulterior views in reference to the latter I say nothing) entirely to himself. That his last act, completed but a few months since, was to induce Mr. W. to execute a relinquishment of his share in the partnership, and even a bill of sale on the very furniture of his house, in consideration of a certain annuity, to be well and truly paid by—HEEP—on the four common quarter-days in each and every year. That these meshes; beginning with alarming and falsified accounts of the estate of which Mr. W. is the receiver, at a period when Mr. W. had launched into imprudent and ill-judged speculations, and may not have had the money, for which he was morally and legally responsible, in hand; going on with pretended borrowings of money at enormous interest, really coming from—HEEP—and by—HEEP—fraudulently obtained or withheld from Mr. W. himself, on pretence of such speculations or otherwise; perpetuated by a miscellaneous catalogue of unscrupulous chicaneries—gradually thickened, until the unhappy Mr. W. could see no world beyond. Bankrupt, as he believed, alike in circumstances, in all other hope, and in honour, his sole reliance was upon the monster in the garb of man,”’—Mr. Micawber made a good deal of this, as a new turn of expression,—‘“who, by making himself necessary to him, had achieved his destruction. All this I undertake to show. Probably much more!”’
I whispered a few words to Agnes, who was weeping, half joyfully, half sorrowfully, at my side; and there was a movement among us, as if Mr. Micawber had finished. He said, with exceeding gravity, ‘Pardon me,’ and proceeded, with a mixture of the lowest spirits and the most intense enjoyment, to the peroration of his letter.
‘“I have now concluded. It merely remains for me to substantiate these accusations; and then, with my ill-starred family, to disappear from the landscape on which we appear to be an encumbrance. That is soon done. It may be reasonably inferred that our baby will first expire of inanition, as being the frailest member of our circle; and that our twins will follow next in order. So be it! For myself, my Canterbury Pilgrimage has done much; imprisonment on civil process, and want, will soon do more. I trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation—of which the smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure of arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at rise of morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of one whom it were superfluous to call Demon—combined with the struggle of parental Poverty to turn it, when completed, to the right account, may be as the sprinkling of a few drops of sweet water on my funeral pyre. I ask no more. Let it be, in justice, merely said of me, as of a gallant and eminent naval Hero, with whom I have no pretensions to cope, that what I have done, I did, in despite of mercenary and selfish objects,
For England, home, and Beauty.
‘“Remaining always, &c. &c., WILKINS MICAWBER.”’
Much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up his letter, and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as something she might like to keep.
There was, as I had noticed on my first visit long ago, an iron safe in the room. The key was in it. A hasty suspicion seemed to strike Uriah; and, with a glance at Mr. Micawber, he went to it, and threw the doors clanking open. It was empty.
‘Where are the books?’ he cried, with a frightful face. ‘Some thief has stolen the books!’
Mr. Micawber tapped himself with the ruler. ‘I did, when I got the key from you as usual—but a little earlier—and opened it this morning.’
‘Don’t be uneasy,’ said Traddles. ‘They have come into my possession. I will take care of them, under the authority I mentioned.’
‘You receive stolen goods, do you?’ cried Uriah.
‘Under such circumstances,’ answered Traddles, ‘yes.’
What was my astonishment when I beheld my aunt, who had been profoundly quiet and attentive, make a dart at Uriah Heep, and seize him by the collar with both hands!
‘You know what I want?’ said my aunt.
‘A strait-waistcoat,’ said he.
‘No. My property!’ returned my aunt. ‘Agnes, my dear, as long as I believed it had been really made away with by your father, I wouldn’t—and, my dear, I didn’t, even to Trot, as he knows—breathe a syllable of its having been placed here for investment. But, now I know this fellow’s answerable for it, and I’ll have it! Trot, come and take it away from him!’
Whether my aunt supposed, for the moment, that he kept her property in his neck-kerchief, I am sure I don’t know; but she certainly pulled at it as if she thought so. I hastened to put myself between them, and to assure her that we would all take care that he should make the utmost restitution of everything he had wrongly got. This, and a few moments’ reflection, pacified her; but she was not at all disconcerted by what she had done (though I cannot say as much for her bonnet) and resumed her seat composedly.
During the last few minutes, Mrs. Heep had been clamouring to her son to be ‘umble’; and had been going down on her knees to all of us in succession, and making the wildest promises. Her son sat her down in his chair; and, standing sulkily by her, holding her arm with his hand, but not rudely, said to me, with a ferocious look:
‘What do you want done?’
‘I will tell you what must be done,’ said Traddles.
‘Has that Copperfield no tongue?’ muttered Uriah, ‘I would do a good deal for you if you could tell me, without lying, that somebody had cut it out.’
‘My Uriah means to be umble!’ cried his mother. ‘Don’t mind what he says, good gentlemen!’
‘What must be done,’ said Traddles, ‘is this. First, the deed of relinquishment, that we have heard of, must be given over to me now—here.’
‘Suppose I haven’t got it,’ he interrupted.
‘But you have,’ said Traddles; ‘therefore, you know, we won’t suppose so.’ And I cannot help avowing that this was the first occasion on which I really did justice to the clear head, and the plain, patient, practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow. ‘Then,’ said Traddles, ‘you must prepare to disgorge all that your rapacity has become possessed of, and to make restoration to the last farthing. All the partnership books and papers must remain in our possession; all your books and papers; all money accounts and securities, of both kinds. In short, everything here.’
‘Must it? I don’t know that,’ said Uriah. ‘I must have time to think about that.’
‘Certainly,’ replied Traddles; ‘but, in the meanwhile, and until everything is done to our satisfaction, we shall maintain possession of these things; and beg you—in short, compel you—to keep to your own room, and hold no communication with anyone.’
‘I won’t do it!’ said Uriah, with an oath.
‘Maidstone jail is a safer place of detention,’ observed Traddles; ‘and though the law may be longer in righting us, and may not be able to right us so completely as you can, there is no doubt of its punishing YOU. Dear me, you know that quite as well as I! Copperfield, will you go round to the Guildhall, and bring a couple of officers?’
Here, Mrs. Heep broke out again, crying on her knees to Agnes to interfere in their behalf, exclaiming that he was very humble, and it was all true, and if he didn’t do what we wanted, she would, and much more to the same purpose; being half frantic with fears for her darling. To inquire what he might have done, if he had had any boldness, would be like inquiring what a mongrel cur might do, if it had the spirit of a tiger. He was a coward, from head to foot; and showed his dastardly nature through his sullenness and mortification, as much as at any time of his mean life.
‘Stop!’ he growled to me; and wiped his hot face with his hand. ‘Mother, hold your noise. Well! Let ‘em have that deed. Go and fetch it!’
‘Do you help her, Mr. Dick,’ said Traddles, ‘if you please.’
Proud of his commission, and understanding it, Mr. Dick accompanied her as a shepherd’s dog might accompany a sheep. But, Mrs. Heep gave him little trouble; for she not only returned with the deed, but with the box in which it was, where we found a banker’s book and some other papers that were afterwards serviceable.
‘Good!’ said Traddles, when this was brought. ‘Now, Mr. Heep, you can retire to think: particularly observing, if you please, that I declare to you, on the part of all present, that there is only one thing to be done; that it is what I have explained; and that it must be done without delay.’
Uriah, without lifting his eyes from the ground, shuffled across the room with his hand to his chin, and pausing at the door, said:
‘Copperfield, I have always hated you. You’ve always been an upstart, and you’ve always been against me.’
‘As I think I told you once before,’ said I, ‘it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.’
‘Or as certain as they used to teach at school (the same school where I picked up so much umbleness), from nine o’clock to eleven, that labour was a curse; and from eleven o’clock to one, that it was a blessing and a cheerfulness, and a dignity, and I don’t know what all, eh?’ said he with a sneer. ‘You preach, about as consistent as they did. Won’t umbleness go down? I shouldn’t have got round my gentleman fellow-partner without it, I think. —Micawber, you old bully, I’ll pay YOU!’
Mr. Micawber, supremely defiant of him and his extended finger, and making a great deal of his chest until he had slunk out at the door, then addressed himself to me, and proffered me the satisfaction of ‘witnessing the re-establishment of mutual confidence between himself and Mrs. Micawber’. After which, he invited the company generally to the contemplation of that affecting spectacle.
‘The veil that has long been interposed between Mrs. Micawber and myself, is now withdrawn,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘and my children and the Author of their Being can once more come in contact on equal terms.’
As we were all very grateful to him, and all desirous to show that we were, as well as the hurry and disorder of our spirits would permit, I dare say we should all have gone, but that it was necessary for Agnes to return to her father, as yet unable to bear more than the dawn of hope; and for someone else to hold Uriah in safe keeping. So, Traddles remained for the latter purpose, to be presently relieved by Mr. Dick; and Mr. Dick, my aunt, and I, went home with Mr. Micawber. As I parted hurriedly from the dear girl to whom I owed so much, and thought from what she had been saved, perhaps, that morning—her better resolution notwithstanding—I felt devoutly thankful for the miseries of my younger days which had brought me to the knowledge of Mr. Micawber.
His house was not far off; and as the street door opened into the sitting-room, and he bolted in with a precipitation quite his own, we found ourselves at once in the bosom of the family. Mr. Micawber exclaiming, ‘Emma! my life!’ rushed into Mrs. Micawber’s arms. Mrs. Micawber shrieked, and folded Mr. Micawber in her embrace. Miss Micawber, nursing the unconscious stranger of Mrs. Micawber’s last letter to me, was sensibly affected. The stranger leaped. The twins testified their joy by several inconvenient but innocent demonstrations. Master Micawber, whose disposition appeared to have been soured by early disappointment, and whose aspect had become morose, yielded to his better feelings, and blubbered.
‘Emma!’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘The cloud is past from my mind. Mutual confidence, so long preserved between us once, is restored, to know no further interruption. Now, welcome poverty!’ cried Mr. Micawber, shedding tears. ‘Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us to the end!’
With these expressions, Mr. Micawber placed Mrs. Micawber in a chair, and embraced the family all round; welcoming a variety of bleak prospects, which appeared, to the best of my judgement, to be anything but welcome to them; and calling upon them to come out into Canterbury and sing a chorus, as nothing else was left for their support.
But Mrs. Micawber having, in the strength of her emotions, fainted away, the first thing to be done, even before the chorus could be considered complete, was to recover her. This my aunt and Mr. Micawber did; and then my aunt was introduced, and Mrs. Micawber recognized me.
‘Excuse me, dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said the poor lady, giving me her hand, ‘but I am not strong; and the removal of the late misunderstanding between Mr. Micawber and myself was at first too much for me.’
‘Is this all your family, ma’am?’ said my aunt.
‘There are no more at present,’ returned Mrs. Micawber.
‘Good gracious, I didn’t mean that, ma’am,’ said my aunt. ‘I mean, are all these yours?’
‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is a true bill.’
‘And that eldest young gentleman, now,’ said my aunt, musing, ‘what has he been brought up to?’
‘It was my hope when I came here,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to have got Wilkins into the Church: or perhaps I shall express my meaning more strictly, if I say the Choir. But there was no vacancy for a tenor in the venerable Pile for which this city is so justly eminent; and he has—in short, he has contracted a habit of singing in public-houses, rather than in sacred edifices.’
‘But he means well,’ said Mrs. Micawber, tenderly.
‘I dare say, my love,’ rejoined Mr. Micawber, ‘that he means particularly well; but I have not yet found that he carries out his meaning, in any given direction whatsoever.’
Master Micawber’s moroseness of aspect returned upon him again, and he demanded, with some temper, what he was to do? Whether he had been born a carpenter, or a coach-painter, any more than he had been born a bird? Whether he could go into the next street, and open a chemist’s shop? Whether he could rush to the next assizes, and proclaim himself a lawyer? Whether he could come out by force at the opera, and succeed by violence? Whether he could do anything, without being brought up to something?
My aunt mused a little while, and then said:
‘Mr. Micawber, I wonder you have never turned your thoughts to emigration.’
‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘it was the dream of my youth, and the fallacious aspiration of my riper years.’ I am thoroughly persuaded, by the by, that he had never thought of it in his life.
‘Aye?’ said my aunt, with a glance at me. ‘Why, what a thing it would be for yourselves and your family, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, if you were to emigrate now.’
‘Capital, madam, capital,’ urged Mr. Micawber, gloomily.
‘That is the principal, I may say the only difficulty, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ assented his wife.
‘Capital?’ cried my aunt. ‘But you are doing us a great service—have done us a great service, I may say, for surely much will come out of the fire—and what could we do for you, that would be half so good as to find the capital?’
‘I could not receive it as a gift,’ said Mr. Micawber, full of fire and animation, ‘but if a sufficient sum could be advanced, say at five per cent interest, per annum, upon my personal liability—say my notes of hand, at twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months, respectively, to allow time for something to turn up—’
‘Could be? Can be and shall be, on your own terms,’ returned my aunt, ‘if you say the word. Think of this now, both of you. Here are some people David knows, going out to Australia shortly. If you decide to go, why shouldn’t you go in the same ship? You may help each other. Think of this now, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Take your time, and weigh it well.’
‘There is but one question, my dear ma’am, I could wish to ask,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘The climate, I believe, is healthy?’
‘Finest in the world!’ said my aunt.
‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then my question arises. Now, are the circumstances of the country such, that a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities would have a fair chance of rising in the social scale? I will not say, at present, might he aspire to be Governor, or anything of that sort; but would there be a reasonable opening for his talents to develop themselves—that would be amply sufficient—and find their own expansion?’
‘No better opening anywhere,’ said my aunt, ‘for a man who conducts himself well, and is industrious.’
‘For a man who conducts himself well,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, with her clearest business manner, ‘and is industrious. Precisely. It is evident to me that Australia is the legitimate sphere of action for Mr. Micawber!’
‘I entertain the conviction, my dear madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that it is, under existing circumstances, the land, the only land, for myself and family; and that something of an extraordinary nature will turn up on that shore. It is no distance—comparatively speaking; and though consideration is due to the kindness of your proposal, I assure you that is a mere matter of form.’
Shall I ever forget how, in a moment, he was the most sanguine of men, looking on to fortune; or how Mrs. Micawber presently discoursed about the habits of the kangaroo! Shall I ever recall that street of Canterbury on a market-day, without recalling him, as he walked back with us; expressing, in the hardy roving manner he assumed, the unsettled habits of a temporary sojourner in the land; and looking at the bullocks, as they came by, with the eye of an Australian farmer!
CHAPTER 53. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
I must pause yet once again. O, my child-wife, there is a figure in the moving crowd before my memory, quiet and still, saying in its innocent love and childish beauty, Stop to think of me—turn to look upon the Little Blossom, as it flutters to the ground!
I do. All else grows dim, and fades away. I am again with Dora, in our cottage. I do not know how long she has been ill. I am so used to it in feeling, that I cannot count the time. It is not really long, in weeks or months; but, in my usage and experience, it is a weary, weary while.
They have left off telling me to ‘wait a few days more’. I have begun to fear, remotely, that the day may never shine, when I shall see my child-wife running in the sunlight with her old friend Jip.
He is, as it were suddenly, grown very old. It may be that he misses in his mistress, something that enlivened him and made him younger; but he mopes, and his sight is weak, and his limbs are feeble, and my aunt is sorry that he objects to her no more, but creeps near her as he lies on Dora’s bed—she sitting at the bedside—and mildly licks her hand.
Dora lies smiling on us, and is beautiful, and utters no hasty or complaining word. She says that we are very good to her; that her dear old careful boy is tiring himself out, she knows; that my aunt has no sleep, yet is always wakeful, active, and kind. Sometimes, the little bird-like ladies come to see her; and then we talk about our wedding-day, and all that happy time.
What a strange rest and pause in my life there seems to be—and in all life, within doors and without—when I sit in the quiet, shaded, orderly room, with the blue eyes of my child-wife turned towards me, and her little fingers twining round my hand! Many and many an hour I sit thus; but, of all those times, three times come the freshest on my mind.
It is morning; and Dora, made so trim by my aunt’s hands, shows me how her pretty hair will curl upon the pillow yet, an how long and bright it is, and how she likes to have it loosely gathered in that net she wears.
‘Not that I am vain of it, now, you mocking boy,’ she says, when I smile; ‘but because you used to say you thought it so beautiful; and because, when I first began to think about you, I used to peep in the glass, and wonder whether you would like very much to have a lock of it. Oh what a foolish fellow you were, Doady, when I gave you one!’
‘That was on the day when you were painting the flowers I had given you, Dora, and when I told you how much in love I was.’
‘Ah! but I didn’t like to tell you,’ says Dora, ‘then, how I had cried over them, because I believed you really liked me! When I can run about again as I used to do, Doady, let us go and see those places where we were such a silly couple, shall we? And take some of the old walks? And not forget poor papa?’
‘Yes, we will, and have some happy days. So you must make haste to get well, my dear.’
‘Oh, I shall soon do that! I am so much better, you don’t know!’
It is evening; and I sit in the same chair, by the same bed, with the same face turned towards me. We have been silent, and there is a smile upon her face. I have ceased to carry my light burden up and down stairs now. She lies here all the day.
‘Doady!’
‘My dear Dora!’
‘You won’t think what I am going to say, unreasonable, after what you told me, such a little while ago, of Mr. Wickfield’s not being well? I want to see Agnes. Very much I want to see her.’
‘I will write to her, my dear.’
‘Will you?’
‘Directly.’
‘What a good, kind boy! Doady, take me on your arm. Indeed, my dear, it’s not a whim. It’s not a foolish fancy. I want, very much indeed, to see her!’
‘I am certain of it. I have only to tell her so, and she is sure to come.’
‘You are very lonely when you go downstairs, now?’ Dora whispers, with her arm about my neck.
‘How can I be otherwise, my own love, when I see your empty chair?’
‘My empty chair!’ She clings to me for a little while, in silence. ‘And you really miss me, Doady?’ looking up, and brightly smiling. ‘Even poor, giddy, stupid me?’
‘My heart, who is there upon earth that I could miss so much?’
‘Oh, husband! I am so glad, yet so sorry!’ creeping closer to me, and folding me in both her arms. She laughs and sobs, and then is quiet, and quite happy.
‘Quite!’ she says. ‘Only give Agnes my dear love, and tell her that I want very, very, much to see her; and I have nothing left to wish for.’
‘Except to get well again, Dora.’
‘Ah, Doady! Sometimes I think—you know I always was a silly little thing!—that that will never be!’
‘Don’t say so, Dora! Dearest love, don’t think so!’
‘I won’t, if I can help it, Doady. But I am very happy; though my dear boy is so lonely by himself, before his child-wife’s empty chair!’
It is night; and I am with her still. Agnes has arrived; has been among us for a whole day and an evening. She, my aunt, and I, have sat with Dora since the morning, all together. We have not talked much, but Dora has been perfectly contented and cheerful. We are now alone.
Do I know, now, that my child-wife will soon leave me? They have told me so; they have told me nothing new to my thoughts—but I am far from sure that I have taken that truth to heart. I cannot master it. I have withdrawn by myself, many times today, to weep. I have remembered Who wept for a parting between the living and the dead. I have bethought me of all that gracious and compassionate history. I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared.
‘I am going to speak to you, Doady. I am going to say something I have often thought of saying, lately. You won’t mind?’ with a gentle look.
‘Mind, my darling?’
‘Because I don’t know what you will think, or what you may have thought sometimes. Perhaps you have often thought the same. Doady, dear, I am afraid I was too young.’
I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes, and speaks very softly. Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a stricken heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.
‘I am afraid, dear, I was too young. I don’t mean in years only, but in experience, and thoughts, and everything. I was such a silly little creature! I am afraid it would have been better, if we had only loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it. I have begun to think I was not fit to be a wife.’
I try to stay my tears, and to reply, ‘Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be a husband!’
‘I don’t know,’ with the old shake of her curls. ‘Perhaps! But if I had been more fit to be married I might have made you more so, too. Besides, you are very clever, and I never was.’
‘We have been very happy, my sweet Dora.’
‘I was very happy, very. But, as years went on, my dear boy would have wearied of his child-wife. She would have been less and less a companion for him. He would have been more and more sensible of what was wanting in his home. She wouldn’t have improved. It is better as it is.’
‘Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so. Every word seems a reproach!’
‘No, not a syllable!’ she answers, kissing me. ‘Oh, my dear, you never deserved it, and I loved you far too well to say a reproachful word to you, in earnest—it was all the merit I had, except being pretty—or you thought me so. Is it lonely, down-stairs, Doady?’
‘Very! Very!’
‘Don’t cry! Is my chair there?’
‘In its old place.’
‘Oh, how my poor boy cries! Hush, hush! Now, make me one promise. I want to speak to Agnes. When you go downstairs, tell Agnes so, and send her up to me; and while I speak to her, let no one come—not even aunt. I want to speak to Agnes by herself. I want to speak to Agnes, quite alone.’
I promise that she shall, immediately; but I cannot leave her, for my grief.
‘I said that it was better as it is!’ she whispers, as she holds me in her arms. ‘Oh, Doady, after more years, you never could have loved your child-wife better than you do; and, after more years, she would so have tried and disappointed you, that you might not have been able to love her half so well! I know I was too young and foolish. It is much better as it is!’
Agnes is downstairs, when I go into the parlour; and I give her the message. She disappears, leaving me alone with Jip.
His Chinese house is by the fire; and he lies within it, on his bed of flannel, querulously trying to sleep. The bright moon is high and clear. As I look out on the night, my tears fall fast, and my undisciplined heart is chastened heavily—heavily.
I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage. I think of every little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that trifles make the sum of life. Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the image of the dear child as I knew her first, graced by my young love, and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich. Would it, indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and a girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!
How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my child-wife’s old companion. More restless than he was, he crawls out of his house, and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and whines to go upstairs.
‘Not tonight, Jip! Not tonight!’
He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hand, and lifts his dim eyes to my face.
‘Oh, Jip! It may be, never again!’
He lies down at my feet, stretches himself out as if to sleep, and with a plaintive cry, is dead.
‘Oh, Agnes! Look, look, here!’ —That face, so full of pity, and of grief, that rain of tears, that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn hand upraised towards Heaven!
‘Agnes?’
It is over. Darkness comes before my eyes; and, for a time, all things are blotted out of my remembrance.
CHAPTER 54. Mr. MICAWBER’S TRANSACTIONS
This is not the time at which I am to enter on the state of my mind beneath its load of sorrow. I came to think that the Future was walled up before me, that the energy and action of my life were at an end, that I never could find any refuge but in the grave. I came to think so, I say, but not in the first shock of my grief. It slowly grew to that. If the events I go on to relate, had not thickened around me, in the beginning to confuse, and in the end to augment, my affliction, it is possible (though I think not probable), that I might have fallen at once into this condition. As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew my own distress; an interval, in which I even supposed that its sharpest pangs were past; and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that was closed for ever.
When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came to be agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my peace in change and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that I assume I may refer the project to her influence. But her influence was so quiet that I know no more.
And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. In all that sorrow, from the moment, never to be forgotten, when she stood before me with her upraised hand, she was like a sacred presence in my lonely house. When the Angel of Death alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep—they told me so when I could bear to hear it—on her bosom, with a smile. From my swoon, I first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a purer region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and softening its pain.
Let me go on.
I was to go abroad. That seemed to have been determined among us from the first. The ground now covering all that could perish of my departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the ‘final pulverization of Heep’; and for the departure of the emigrants.
At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber’s house; where, and at Mr. Wickfield’s, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes, she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs. Micawber’s heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many years.
‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,’ was my aunt’s first salutation after we were seated. ‘Pray, have you thought about that emigration proposal of mine?’
‘My dear madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘perhaps I cannot better express the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and I may add our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing the language of an illustrious poet, to reply that our Boat is on the shore, and our Bark is on the sea.’
‘That’s right,’ said my aunt. ‘I augur all sort of good from your sensible decision.’
‘Madam, you do us a great deal of honour,’ he rejoined. He then referred to a memorandum. ‘With respect to the pecuniary assistance enabling us to launch our frail canoe on the ocean of enterprise, I have reconsidered that important business-point; and would beg to propose my notes of hand—drawn, it is needless to stipulate, on stamps of the amounts respectively required by the various Acts of Parliament applying to such securities—at eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months. The proposition I originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four; but I am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not allow sufficient time for the requisite amount of—Something—to turn up. We might not,’ said Mr. Micawber, looking round the room as if it represented several hundred acres of highly cultivated land, ‘on the first responsibility becoming due, have been successful in our harvest, or we might not have got our harvest in. Labour, I believe, is sometimes difficult to obtain in that portion of our colonial possessions where it will be our lot to combat with the teeming soil.’
‘Arrange it in any way you please, sir,’ said my aunt.
‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘Mrs. Micawber and myself are deeply sensible of the very considerate kindness of our friends and patrons. What I wish is, to be perfectly business-like, and perfectly punctual. Turning over, as we are about to turn over, an entirely new leaf; and falling back, as we are now in the act of falling back, for a Spring of no common magnitude; it is important to my sense of self-respect, besides being an example to my son, that these arrangements should be concluded as between man and man.’
I don’t know that Mr. Micawber attached any meaning to this last phrase; I don’t know that anybody ever does, or did; but he appeared to relish it uncommonly, and repeated, with an impressive cough, ‘as between man and man’.
‘I propose,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Bills—a convenience to the mercantile world, for which, I believe, we are originally indebted to the Jews, who appear to me to have had a devilish deal too much to do with them ever since—because they are negotiable. But if a Bond, or any other description of security, would be preferred, I should be happy to execute any such instrument. As between man and man.’
My aunt observed, that in a case where both parties were willing to agree to anything, she took it for granted there would be no difficulty in settling this point. Mr. Micawber was of her opinion.
‘In reference to our domestic preparations, madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, with some pride, ‘for meeting the destiny to which we are now understood to be self-devoted, I beg to report them. My eldest daughter attends at five every morning in a neighbouring establishment, to acquire the process—if process it may be called—of milking cows. My younger children are instructed to observe, as closely as circumstances will permit, the habits of the pigs and poultry maintained in the poorer parts of this city: a pursuit from which they have, on two occasions, been brought home, within an inch of being run over. I have myself directed some attention, during the past week, to the art of baking; and my son Wilkins has issued forth with a walking-stick and driven cattle, when permitted, by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge, to render any voluntary service in that direction—which I regret to say, for the credit of our nature, was not often; he being generally warned, with imprecations, to desist.’
‘All very right indeed,’ said my aunt, encouragingly. ‘Mrs. Micawber has been busy, too, I have no doubt.’
‘My dear madam,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, with her business-like air. ‘I am free to confess that I have not been actively engaged in pursuits immediately connected with cultivation or with stock, though well aware that both will claim my attention on a foreign shore. Such opportunities as I have been enabled to alienate from my domestic duties, I have devoted to corresponding at some length with my family. For I own it seems to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always fell back on me, I suppose from old habit, to whomsoever else she might address her discourse at starting, ‘that the time is come when the past should be buried in oblivion; when my family should take Mr. Micawber by the hand, and Mr. Micawber should take my family by the hand; when the lion should lie down with the lamb, and my family be on terms with Mr. Micawber.’
I said I thought so too.
‘This, at least, is the light, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘in which I view the subject. When I lived at home with my papa and mama, my papa was accustomed to ask, when any point was under discussion in our limited circle, “In what light does my Emma view the subject?” That my papa was too partial, I know; still, on such a point as the frigid coldness which has ever subsisted between Mr. Micawber and my family, I necessarily have formed an opinion, delusive though it may be.’
‘No doubt. Of course you have, ma’am,’ said my aunt.
‘Precisely so,’ assented Mrs. Micawber. ‘Now, I may be wrong in my conclusions; it is very likely that I am, but my individual impression is, that the gulf between my family and Mr. Micawber may be traced to an apprehension, on the part of my family, that Mr. Micawber would require pecuniary accommodation. I cannot help thinking,’ said Mrs. Micawber, with an air of deep sagacity, ‘that there are members of my family who have been apprehensive that Mr. Micawber would solicit them for their names.---I do not mean to be conferred in Baptism upon our children, but to be inscribed on Bills of Exchange, and negotiated in the Money Market.’
The look of penetration with which Mrs. Micawber announced this discovery, as if no one had ever thought of it before, seemed rather to astonish my aunt; who abruptly replied, ‘Well, ma’am, upon the whole, I shouldn’t wonder if you were right!’
‘Mr. Micawber being now on the eve of casting off the pecuniary shackles that have so long enthralled him,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘and of commencing a new career in a country where there is sufficient range for his abilities,—which, in my opinion, is exceedingly important; Mr. Micawber’s abilities peculiarly requiring space,—it seems to me that my family should signalize the occasion by coming forward. What I could wish to see, would be a meeting between Mr. Micawber and my family at a festive entertainment, to be given at my family’s expense; where Mr. Micawber’s health and prosperity being proposed, by some leading member of my family, Mr. Micawber might have an opportunity of developing his views.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, with some heat, ‘it may be better for me to state distinctly, at once, that if I were to develop my views to that assembled group, they would possibly be found of an offensive nature: my impression being that your family are, in the aggregate, impertinent Snobs; and, in detail, unmitigated Ruffians.’
‘Micawber,’ said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, ‘no! You have never understood them, and they have never understood you.’
Mr. Micawber coughed.
‘They have never understood you, Micawber,’ said his wife. ‘They may be incapable of it. If so, that is their misfortune. I can pity their misfortune.’
‘I am extremely sorry, my dear Emma,’ said Mr. Micawber, relenting, ‘to have been betrayed into any expressions that might, even remotely, have the appearance of being strong expressions. All I would say is, that I can go abroad without your family coming forward to favour me,—in short, with a parting Shove of their cold shoulders; and that, upon the whole, I would rather leave England with such impetus as I possess, than derive any acceleration of it from that quarter. At the same time, my dear, if they should condescend to reply to your communications—which our joint experience renders most improbable—far be it from me to be a barrier to your wishes.’
The matter being thus amicably settled, Mr. Micawber gave Mrs. Micawber his arm, and glancing at the heap of books and papers lying before Traddles on the table, said they would leave us to ourselves; which they ceremoniously did.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, leaning back in his chair when they were gone, and looking at me with an affection that made his eyes red, and his hair all kinds of shapes, ‘I don’t make any excuse for troubling you with business, because I know you are deeply interested in it, and it may divert your thoughts. My dear boy, I hope you are not worn out?’
‘I am quite myself,’ said I, after a pause. ‘We have more cause to think of my aunt than of anyone. You know how much she has done.’
‘Surely, surely,’ answered Traddles. ‘Who can forget it!’
‘But even that is not all,’ said I. ‘During the last fortnight, some new trouble has vexed her; and she has been in and out of London every day. Several times she has gone out early, and been absent until evening. Last night, Traddles, with this journey before her, it was almost midnight before she came home. You know what her consideration for others is. She will not tell me what has happened to distress her.’
My aunt, very pale, and with deep lines in her face, sat immovable until I had finished; when some stray tears found their way to her cheeks, and she put her hand on mine.
‘It’s nothing, Trot; it’s nothing. There will be no more of it. You shall know by and by. Now Agnes, my dear, let us attend to these affairs.’
‘I must do Mr. Micawber the justice to say,’ Traddles began, ‘that although he would appear not to have worked to any good account for himself, he is a most untiring man when he works for other people. I never saw such a fellow. If he always goes on in the same way, he must be, virtually, about two hundred years old, at present. The heat into which he has been continually putting himself; and the distracted and impetuous manner in which he has been diving, day and night, among papers and books; to say nothing of the immense number of letters he has written me between this house and Mr. Wickfield’s, and often across the table when he has been sitting opposite, and might much more easily have spoken; is quite extraordinary.’
‘Letters!’ cried my aunt. ‘I believe he dreams in letters!’
‘There’s Mr. Dick, too,’ said Traddles, ‘has been doing wonders! As soon as he was released from overlooking Uriah Heep, whom he kept in such charge as I never saw exceeded, he began to devote himself to Mr. Wickfield. And really his anxiety to be of use in the investigations we have been making, and his real usefulness in extracting, and copying, and fetching, and carrying, have been quite stimulating to us.’
‘Dick is a very remarkable man,’ exclaimed my aunt; ‘and I always said he was. Trot, you know it.’
‘I am happy to say, Miss Wickfield,’ pursued Traddles, at once with great delicacy and with great earnestness, ‘that in your absence Mr. Wickfield has considerably improved. Relieved of the incubus that had fastened upon him for so long a time, and of the dreadful apprehensions under which he had lived, he is hardly the same person. At times, even his impaired power of concentrating his memory and attention on particular points of business, has recovered itself very much; and he has been able to assist us in making some things clear, that we should have found very difficult indeed, if not hopeless, without him. But what I have to do is to come to results; which are short enough; not to gossip on all the hopeful circumstances I have observed, or I shall never have done.’ His natural manner and agreeable simplicity made it transparent that he said this to put us in good heart, and to enable Agnes to hear her father mentioned with greater confidence; but it was not the less pleasant for that.
‘Now, let me see,’ said Traddles, looking among the papers on the table. ‘Having counted our funds, and reduced to order a great mass of unintentional confusion in the first place, and of wilful confusion and falsification in the second, we take it to be clear that Mr. Wickfield might now wind up his business, and his agency-trust, and exhibit no deficiency or defalcation whatever.’
‘Oh, thank Heaven!’ cried Agnes, fervently.
‘But,’ said Traddles, ‘the surplus that would be left as his means of support—and I suppose the house to be sold, even in saying this—would be so small, not exceeding in all probability some hundreds of pounds, that perhaps, Miss Wickfield, it would be best to consider whether he might not retain his agency of the estate to which he has so long been receiver. His friends might advise him, you know; now he is free. You yourself, Miss Wickfield—Copperfield—I—’
‘I have considered it, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, looking to me, ‘and I feel that it ought not to be, and must not be; even on the recommendation of a friend to whom I am so grateful, and owe so much.’
‘I will not say that I recommend it,’ observed Traddles. ‘I think it right to suggest it. No more.’
‘I am happy to hear you say so,’ answered Agnes, steadily, ‘for it gives me hope, almost assurance, that we think alike. Dear Mr. Traddles and dear Trotwood, papa once free with honour, what could I wish for! I have always aspired, if I could have released him from the toils in which he was held, to render back some little portion of the love and care I owe him, and to devote my life to him. It has been, for years, the utmost height of my hopes. To take our future on myself, will be the next great happiness—the next to his release from all trust and responsibility—that I can know.’
‘Have you thought how, Agnes?’
‘Often! I am not afraid, dear Trotwood. I am certain of success. So many people know me here, and think kindly of me, that I am certain. Don’t mistrust me. Our wants are not many. If I rent the dear old house, and keep a school, I shall be useful and happy.’
The calm fervour of her cheerful voice brought back so vividly, first the dear old house itself, and then my solitary home, that my heart was too full for speech. Traddles pretended for a little while to be busily looking among the papers.
‘Next, Miss Trotwood,’ said Traddles, ‘that property of yours.’
‘Well, sir,’ sighed my aunt. ‘All I have got to say about it is, that if it’s gone, I can bear it; and if it’s not gone, I shall be glad to get it back.’
‘It was originally, I think, eight thousand pounds, Consols?’ said Traddles.
‘Right!’ replied my aunt.
‘I can’t account for more than five,’ said Traddles, with an air of perplexity.
‘—thousand, do you mean?’ inquired my aunt, with uncommon composure, ‘or pounds?’
‘Five thousand pounds,’ said Traddles.
‘It was all there was,’ returned my aunt. ‘I sold three, myself. One, I paid for your articles, Trot, my dear; and the other two I have by me. When I lost the rest, I thought it wise to say nothing about that sum, but to keep it secretly for a rainy day. I wanted to see how you would come out of the trial, Trot; and you came out nobly—persevering, self-reliant, self-denying! So did Dick. Don’t speak to me, for I find my nerves a little shaken!’
Nobody would have thought so, to see her sitting upright, with her arms folded; but she had wonderful self-command.
‘Then I am delighted to say,’ cried Traddles, beaming with joy, ‘that we have recovered the whole money!’
‘Don’t congratulate me, anybody!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘How so, sir?’
‘You believed it had been misappropriated by Mr. Wickfield?’ said Traddles.
‘Of course I did,’ said my aunt, ‘and was therefore easily silenced. Agnes, not a word!’
‘And indeed,’ said Traddles, ‘it was sold, by virtue of the power of management he held from you; but I needn’t say by whom sold, or on whose actual signature. It was afterwards pretended to Mr. Wickfield, by that rascal,—and proved, too, by figures,—that he had possessed himself of the money (on general instructions, he said) to keep other deficiencies and difficulties from the light. Mr. Wickfield, being so weak and helpless in his hands as to pay you, afterwards, several sums of interest on a pretended principal which he knew did not exist, made himself, unhappily, a party to the fraud.’
‘And at last took the blame upon himself,’ added my aunt; ‘and wrote me a mad letter, charging himself with robbery, and wrong unheard of. Upon which I paid him a visit early one morning, called for a candle, burnt the letter, and told him if he ever could right me and himself, to do it; and if he couldn’t, to keep his own counsel for his daughter’s sake.---If anybody speaks to me, I’ll leave the house!’
We all remained quiet; Agnes covering her face.
‘Well, my dear friend,’ said my aunt, after a pause, ‘and you have really extorted the money back from him?’
‘Why, the fact is,’ returned Traddles, ‘Mr. Micawber had so completely hemmed him in, and was always ready with so many new points if an old one failed, that he could not escape from us. A most remarkable circumstance is, that I really don’t think he grasped this sum even so much for the gratification of his avarice, which was inordinate, as in the hatred he felt for Copperfield. He said so to me, plainly. He said he would even have spent as much, to baulk or injure Copperfield.’
‘Ha!’ said my aunt, knitting her brows thoughtfully, and glancing at Agnes. ‘And what’s become of him?’
‘I don’t know. He left here,’ said Traddles, ‘with his mother, who had been clamouring, and beseeching, and disclosing, the whole time. They went away by one of the London night coaches, and I know no more about him; except that his malevolence to me at parting was audacious. He seemed to consider himself hardly less indebted to me, than to Mr. Micawber; which I consider (as I told him) quite a compliment.’
‘Do you suppose he has any money, Traddles?’ I asked.
‘Oh dear, yes, I should think so,’ he replied, shaking his head, seriously. ‘I should say he must have pocketed a good deal, in one way or other. But, I think you would find, Copperfield, if you had an opportunity of observing his course, that money would never keep that man out of mischief. He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that whatever object he pursues, he must pursue crookedly. It’s his only compensation for the outward restraints he puts upon himself. Always creeping along the ground to some small end or other, he will always magnify every object in the way; and consequently will hate and suspect everybody that comes, in the most innocent manner, between him and it. So the crooked courses will become crookeder, at any moment, for the least reason, or for none. It’s only necessary to consider his history here,’ said Traddles, ‘to know that.’
‘He’s a monster of meanness!’ said my aunt.
‘Really I don’t know about that,’ observed Traddles thoughtfully. ‘Many people can be very mean, when they give their minds to it.’
‘And now, touching Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt.
‘Well, really,’ said Traddles, cheerfully, ‘I must, once more, give Mr. Micawber high praise. But for his having been so patient and persevering for so long a time, we never could have hoped to do anything worth speaking of. And I think we ought to consider that Mr. Micawber did right, for right’s sake, when we reflect what terms he might have made with Uriah Heep himself, for his silence.’
‘I think so too,’ said I.
‘Now, what would you give him?’ inquired my aunt.
‘Oh! Before you come to that,’ said Traddles, a little disconcerted, ‘I am afraid I thought it discreet to omit (not being able to carry everything before me) two points, in making this lawless adjustment—for it’s perfectly lawless from beginning to end—of a difficult affair. Those I.O.U.’s, and so forth, which Mr. Micawber gave him for the advances he had—’
‘Well! They must be paid,’ said my aunt.
‘Yes, but I don’t know when they may be proceeded on, or where they are,’ rejoined Traddles, opening his eyes; ‘and I anticipate, that, between this time and his departure, Mr. Micawber will be constantly arrested, or taken in execution.’
‘Then he must be constantly set free again, and taken out of execution,’ said my aunt. ‘What’s the amount altogether?’
‘Why, Mr. Micawber has entered the transactions—he calls them transactions—with great form, in a book,’ rejoined Traddles, smiling; ‘and he makes the amount a hundred and three pounds, five.’
‘Now, what shall we give him, that sum included?’ said my aunt. ‘Agnes, my dear, you and I can talk about division of it afterwards. What should it be? Five hundred pounds?’
Upon this, Traddles and I both struck in at once. We both recommended a small sum in money, and the payment, without stipulation to Mr. Micawber, of the Uriah claims as they came in. We proposed that the family should have their passage and their outfit, and a hundred pounds; and that Mr. Micawber’s arrangement for the repayment of the advances should be gravely entered into, as it might be wholesome for him to suppose himself under that responsibility. To this, I added the suggestion, that I should give some explanation of his character and history to Mr. Peggotty, who I knew could be relied on; and that to Mr. Peggotty should be quietly entrusted the discretion of advancing another hundred. I further proposed to interest Mr. Micawber in Mr. Peggotty, by confiding so much of Mr. Peggotty’s story to him as I might feel justified in relating, or might think expedient; and to endeavour to bring each of them to bear upon the other, for the common advantage. We all entered warmly into these views; and I may mention at once, that the principals themselves did so, shortly afterwards, with perfect good will and harmony.
Seeing that Traddles now glanced anxiously at my aunt again, I reminded him of the second and last point to which he had adverted.
‘You and your aunt will excuse me, Copperfield, if I touch upon a painful theme, as I greatly fear I shall,’ said Traddles, hesitating; ‘but I think it necessary to bring it to your recollection. On the day of Mr. Micawber’s memorable denunciation a threatening allusion was made by Uriah Heep to your aunt’s—husband.’
My aunt, retaining her stiff position, and apparent composure, assented with a nod.
‘Perhaps,’ observed Traddles, ‘it was mere purposeless impertinence?’
‘No,’ returned my aunt.
‘There was—pardon me—really such a person, and at all in his power?’ hinted Traddles.
‘Yes, my good friend,’ said my aunt.
Traddles, with a perceptible lengthening of his face, explained that he had not been able to approach this subject; that it had shared the fate of Mr. Micawber’s liabilities, in not being comprehended in the terms he had made; that we were no longer of any authority with Uriah Heep; and that if he could do us, or any of us, any injury or annoyance, no doubt he would.
My aunt remained quiet; until again some stray tears found their way to her cheeks. ‘You are quite right,’ she said. ‘It was very thoughtful to mention it.’
‘Can I—or Copperfield—do anything?’ asked Traddles, gently.
‘Nothing,’ said my aunt. ‘I thank you many times. Trot, my dear, a vain threat! Let us have Mr. and Mrs. Micawber back. And don’t any of you speak to me!’ With that she smoothed her dress, and sat, with her upright carriage, looking at the door.
‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ said my aunt, when they entered. ‘We have been discussing your emigration, with many apologies to you for keeping you out of the room so long; and I’ll tell you what arrangements we propose.’
These she explained to the unbounded satisfaction of the family,—children and all being then present,—and so much to the awakening of Mr. Micawber’s punctual habits in the opening stage of all bill transactions, that he could not be dissuaded from immediately rushing out, in the highest spirits, to buy the stamps for his notes of hand. But, his joy received a sudden check; for within five minutes, he returned in the custody of a sheriff’s officer, informing us, in a flood of tears, that all was lost. We, being quite prepared for this event, which was of course a proceeding of Uriah Heep’s, soon paid the money; and in five minutes more Mr. Micawber was seated at the table, filling up the stamps with an expression of perfect joy, which only that congenial employment, or the making of punch, could impart in full completeness to his shining face. To see him at work on the stamps, with the relish of an artist, touching them like pictures, looking at them sideways, taking weighty notes of dates and amounts in his pocket-book, and contemplating them when finished, with a high sense of their precious value, was a sight indeed.
‘Now, the best thing you can do, sir, if you’ll allow me to advise you,’ said my aunt, after silently observing him, ‘is to abjure that occupation for evermore.’
‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is my intention to register such a vow on the virgin page of the future. Mrs. Micawber will attest it. I trust,’ said Mr. Micawber, solemnly, ‘that my son Wilkins will ever bear in mind, that he had infinitely better put his fist in the fire, than use it to handle the serpents that have poisoned the life-blood of his unhappy parent!’ Deeply affected, and changed in a moment to the image of despair, Mr. Micawber regarded the serpents with a look of gloomy abhorrence (in which his late admiration of them was not quite subdued), folded them up and put them in his pocket.
This closed the proceedings of the evening. We were weary with sorrow and fatigue, and my aunt and I were to return to London on the morrow. It was arranged that the Micawbers should follow us, after effecting a sale of their goods to a broker; that Mr. Wickfield’s affairs should be brought to a settlement, with all convenient speed, under the direction of Traddles; and that Agnes should also come to London, pending those arrangements. We passed the night at the old house, which, freed from the presence of the Heeps, seemed purged of a disease; and I lay in my old room, like a shipwrecked wanderer come home.
We went back next day to my aunt’s house—not to mine—and when she and I sat alone, as of old, before going to bed, she said:
‘Trot, do you really wish to know what I have had upon my mind lately?’
‘Indeed I do, aunt. If there ever was a time when I felt unwilling that you should have a sorrow or anxiety which I could not share, it is now.’
‘You have had sorrow enough, child,’ said my aunt, affectionately, ‘without the addition of my little miseries. I could have no other motive, Trot, in keeping anything from you.’
‘I know that well,’ said I. ‘But tell me now.’
‘Would you ride with me a little way tomorrow morning?’ asked my aunt.
‘Of course.’
‘At nine,’ said she. ‘I’ll tell you then, my dear.’
At nine, accordingly, we went out in a little chariot, and drove to London. We drove a long way through the streets, until we came to one of the large hospitals. Standing hard by the building was a plain hearse. The driver recognized my aunt, and, in obedience to a motion of her hand at the window, drove slowly off; we following.
‘You understand it now, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He is gone!’
‘Did he die in the hospital?’
‘Yes.’
She sat immovable beside me; but, again I saw the stray tears on her face.
‘He was there once before,’ said my aunt presently. ‘He was ailing a long time—a shattered, broken man, these many years. When he knew his state in this last illness, he asked them to send for me. He was sorry then. Very sorry.’
‘You went, I know, aunt.’
‘I went. I was with him a good deal afterwards.’
‘He died the night before we went to Canterbury?’ said I. My aunt nodded. ‘No one can harm him now,’ she said. ‘It was a vain threat.’
We drove away, out of town, to the churchyard at Hornsey. ‘Better here than in the streets,’ said my aunt. ‘He was born here.’
We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember well, where the service was read consigning it to the dust.
‘Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, my dear,’ said my aunt, as we walked back to the chariot, ‘I was married. God forgive us all!’ We took our seats in silence; and so she sat beside me for a long time, holding my hand. At length she suddenly burst into tears, and said:
‘He was a fine-looking man when I married him, Trot—and he was sadly changed!’
It did not last long. After the relief of tears, she soon became composed, and even cheerful. Her nerves were a little shaken, she said, or she would not have given way to it. God forgive us all!
So we rode back to her little cottage at Highgate, where we found the following short note, which had arrived by that morning’s post from Mr. Micawber:
‘Canterbury,
‘Friday.
‘My dear Madam, and Copperfield,
‘The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon is again enveloped in impenetrable mists, and for ever withdrawn from the eyes of a drifting wretch whose Doom is sealed!
‘Another writ has been issued (in His Majesty’s High Court of King’s Bench at Westminster), in another cause of HEEP V. MICAWBER, and the defendant in that cause is the prey of the sheriff having legal jurisdiction in this bailiwick.
‘Now’s the day, and now’s the hour, See the front of battle lower, See approach proud EDWARD’S power— Chains and slavery!
‘Consigned to which, and to a speedy end (for mental torture is not supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have attained), my course is run. Bless you, bless you! Some future traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let us hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, as he traces on its wall, inscribed with a rusty nail,
‘The obscure initials,
‘W. M.
‘P.S. I re-open this to say that our common friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles (who has not yet left us, and is looking extremely well), has paid the debt and costs, in the noble name of Miss Trotwood; and that myself and family are at the height of earthly bliss.’
CHAPTER 55. TEMPEST
I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it, in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its fore-cast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days.
For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often. I have started up so vividly impressed by it, that its fury has yet seemed raging in my quiet room, in the still night. I dream of it sometimes, though at lengthened and uncertain intervals, to this hour. I have an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest mention of a sea-shore, as strong as any of which my mind is conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to write it down. I do not recall it, but see it done; for it happens again before me.
The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship, my good old nurse (almost broken-hearted for me, when we first met) came up to London. I was constantly with her, and her brother, and the Micawbers (they being very much together); but Emily I never saw.
One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with Peggotty and her brother. Our conversation turned on Ham. She described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how manfully and quietly he had borne himself. Most of all, of late, when she believed he was most tried. It was a subject of which the affectionate creature never tired; and our interest in hearing the many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate, was equal to hers in relating them.
My aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at Highgate; I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house at Dover. We had a temporary lodging in Covent Garden. As I walked home to it, after this evening’s conversation, reflecting on what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth, I wavered in the original purpose I had formed, of leaving a letter for Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on board the ship, and thought it would be better to write to her now. She might desire, I thought, after receiving my communication, to send some parting word by me to her unhappy lover. I ought to give her the opportunity.
I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to her. I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me to tell her what I have already written in its place in these sheets. I faithfully repeated it. I had no need to enlarge upon it, if I had had the right. Its deep fidelity and goodness were not to be adorned by me or any man. I left it out, to be sent round in the morning; with a line to Mr. Peggotty, requesting him to give it to her; and went to bed at daybreak.
I was weaker than I knew then; and, not falling asleep until the sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day. I was roused by the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside. I felt it in my sleep, as I suppose we all do feel such things.
‘Trot, my dear,’ she said, when I opened my eyes, ‘I couldn’t make up my mind to disturb you. Mr. Peggotty is here; shall he come up?’
I replied yes, and he soon appeared.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, when we had shaken hands, ‘I giv Em’ly your letter, sir, and she writ this heer; and begged of me fur to ask you to read it, and if you see no hurt in’t, to be so kind as take charge on’t.’
‘Have you read it?’ said I.
He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows:
‘I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for your good and blessed kindness to me!
‘I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I die. They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have prayed over them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you are, and what uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.
‘Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in this world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore.’
This, blotted with tears, was the letter.
‘May I tell her as you doen’t see no hurt in’t, and as you’ll be so kind as take charge on’t, Mas’r Davy?’ said Mr. Peggotty, when I had read it. ‘Unquestionably,’ said I—‘but I am thinking—’
‘Yes, Mas’r Davy?’
‘I am thinking,’ said I, ‘that I’ll go down again to Yarmouth. There’s time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude; to put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am restless, and shall be better in motion. I’ll go down tonight.’
Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was of my mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my intention, would have had the effect. He went round to the coach office, at my request, and took the box-seat for me on the mail. In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many vicissitudes.
‘Don’t you think that,’ I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of London, ‘a very remarkable sky? I don’t remember to have seen one like it.’
‘Nor I—not equal to it,’ he replied. ‘That’s wind, sir. There’ll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.’
It was a murky confusion—here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel—of flying clouds, tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and blew hard.
But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.
When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich—very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in the market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church-tower, and flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered about the roads and fields. Still, there was no abatement in the storm, but it blew harder.
As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.
I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea; staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and holding by people I met, at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.
Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads, as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; ship-owners, excited and uneasy; children, huddling together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.
The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.
Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind—for it is still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow upon that coast—had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back ways and by-lanes, to the yard where he worked. I learned, there, that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship-repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would be back tomorrow morning, in good time.
I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o’clock in the afternoon. I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to stir it, as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads, and trying, in great distress, to keep off shore. Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had another night like the last!
I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary; and felt an uneasiness in Ham’s not being there, disproportionate to the occasion. I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by late events; and my long exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections, that I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I think, to encounter someone who I knew must be then in London. So to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place naturally awakened; and they were particularly distinct and vivid.
In this state, the waiter’s dismal intelligence about the ships immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an apprehension of his returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being lost. This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat-builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely? If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.
I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none too soon; for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking the yard-gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out of them, would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham Peggotty, who had been born to seafaring.
So sensible of this, beforehand, that I had really felt ashamed of doing what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the inn. If such a wind could rise, I think it was rising. The howl and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in the morning. But there was now a great darkness besides; and that invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.
I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them. Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with the thundering sea,—the storm, and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the fore-ground.
My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself with a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber before the fire, without losing my consciousness, either of the uproar out of doors, or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror; and when I awoke—or rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair—my whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.
I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the awful noises: looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire. At length, the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.
It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense refined.
For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining, now, that I heard shrieks out at sea; now, that I distinctly heard the firing of signal guns; and now, the fall of houses in the town. I got up, several times, and looked out; but could see nothing, except the reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.
At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried on my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the watchers were clustered together, in various attitudes, about a table, purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought near the door. A pretty girl, who had her ears stopped with her apron, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a spirit; but the others had more presence of mind, and were glad of an addition to their company. One man, referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down, were out in the storm?
I remained there, I dare say, two hours. Once, I opened the yard-gate, and looked into the empty street. The sand, the sea-weed, and the flakes of foam, were driving by; and I was obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again, and make it fast against the wind.
There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when I at length returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell—off a tower and down a precipice—into the depths of sleep. I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing in my dream. At length, I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don’t know, at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.
The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could not hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great exertion and awoke. It was broad day—eight or nine o’clock; the storm raging, in lieu of the batteries; and someone knocking and calling at my door.
‘What is the matter?’ I cried.
‘A wreck! Close by!’
I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?
‘A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It’s thought, down on the beach, she’ll go to pieces every moment.’
The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase; and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street.
Numbers of people were there before me, all running in one direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea.
The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of, had been diminished by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every appearance it had then presented, bore the expression of being swelled; and the height to which the breakers rose, and, looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling. In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo’d arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!
One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment’s pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.
The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach; four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.
There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on the shore increased. Men groaned, and clasped their hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.
They were making out to me, in an agitated way—I don’t know how, for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to understand—that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.
I ran to him—as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. But, distracted though I was, by a sight so new to me and terrible, the determination in his face, and his look out to sea—exactly the same look as I remembered in connexion with the morning after Emily’s flight—awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms; and implored the men with whom I had been speaking, not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand!
Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.
Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind. ‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, ‘if my time is come, ‘tis come. If ‘tan’t, I’ll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I’m a-going off!’
I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don’t know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then, I saw him standing alone, in a seaman’s frock and trousers: a rope in his hand, or slung to his wrist: another round his body: and several of the best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.
The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still, he clung to it. He had a singular red cap on,—not like a sailor’s cap, but of a finer colour; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction rolled and bulged, and his anticipative death-knell rung, he was seen by all of us to wave it. I saw him do it now, and thought I was going distracted, when his action brought an old remembrance to my mind of a once dear friend.
Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land. They hauled in hastily.
He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from where I stood; but he took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him more free—or so I judged from the motion of his arm—and was gone as before.
And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was so near, that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,—when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!
Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet—insensible—dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration were tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.
As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done, a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and ever since, whispered my name at the door.
‘Sir,’ said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face, which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, ‘will you come over yonder?’
The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look. I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to support me:
‘Has a body come ashore?’
He said, ‘Yes.’
‘Do I know it?’ I asked then.
He answered nothing.
But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she and I had looked for shells, two children—on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by the wind—among the ruins of the home he had wronged—I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
CHAPTER 56. THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD
No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together, in that hour which I so little deemed to be our parting-hour—no need to have said, ‘Think of me at my best!’ I had done that ever; and could I change now, looking on this sight!
They brought a hand-bier, and laid him on it, and covered him with a flag, and took him up and bore him on towards the houses. All the men who carried him had known him, and gone sailing with him, and seen him merry and bold. They carried him through the wild roar, a hush in the midst of all the tumult; and took him to the cottage where Death was already.
But when they set the bier down on the threshold, they looked at one another, and at me, and whispered. I knew why. They felt as if it were not right to lay him down in the same quiet room.
We went into the town, and took our burden to the inn. So soon as I could at all collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged him to provide me a conveyance in which it could be got to London in the night. I knew that the care of it, and the hard duty of preparing his mother to receive it, could only rest with me; and I was anxious to discharge that duty as faithfully as I could.
I chose the night for the journey, that there might be less curiosity when I left the town. But, although it was nearly midnight when I came out of the yard in a chaise, followed by what I had in charge, there were many people waiting. At intervals, along the town, and even a little way out upon the road, I saw more: but at length only the bleak night and the open country were around me, and the ashes of my youthful friendship.
Upon a mellow autumn day, about noon, when the ground was perfumed by fallen leaves, and many more, in beautiful tints of yellow, red, and brown, yet hung upon the trees, through which the sun was shining, I arrived at Highgate. I walked the last mile, thinking as I went along of what I had to do; and left the carriage that had followed me all through the night, awaiting orders to advance.
The house, when I came up to it, looked just the same. Not a blind was raised; no sign of life was in the dull paved court, with its covered way leading to the disused door. The wind had quite gone down, and nothing moved.
I had not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate; and when I did ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound of the bell. The little parlour-maid came out, with the key in her hand; and looking earnestly at me as she unlocked the gate, said:
‘I beg your pardon, sir. Are you ill?’
‘I have been much agitated, and am fatigued.’
‘Is anything the matter, sir?---Mr. James?—’ ‘Hush!’ said I. ‘Yes, something has happened, that I have to break to Mrs. Steerforth. She is at home?’
The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out now, even in a carriage; that she kept her room; that she saw no company, but would see me. Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss Dartle was with her. What message should she take upstairs?
Giving her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to carry in my card and say I waited, I sat down in the drawing-room (which we had now reached) until she should come back. Its former pleasant air of occupation was gone, and the shutters were half closed. The harp had not been used for many and many a day. His picture, as a boy, was there. The cabinet in which his mother had kept his letters was there. I wondered if she ever read them now; if she would ever read them more!
The house was so still that I heard the girl’s light step upstairs. On her return, she brought a message, to the effect that Mrs. Steerforth was an invalid and could not come down; but that if I would excuse her being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me. In a few moments I stood before her.
She was in his room; not in her own. I felt, of course, that she had taken to occupy it, in remembrance of him; and that the many tokens of his old sports and accomplishments, by which she was surrounded, remained there, just as he had left them, for the same reason. She murmured, however, even in her reception of me, that she was out of her own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to her infirmity; and with her stately look repelled the least suspicion of the truth.
At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil tidings. The scar sprung into view that instant. She withdrew herself a step behind the chair, to keep her own face out of Mrs. Steerforth’s observation; and scrutinized me with a piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk.
‘I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir,’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
‘I am unhappily a widower,’ said I.
‘You are very young to know so great a loss,’ she returned. ‘I am grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be good to you.’
‘I hope Time,’ said I, looking at her, ‘will be good to all of us. Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest misfortunes.’
The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed her. The whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and change.
I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it trembled. She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then, addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:
‘My son is ill.’
‘Very ill.’
‘You have seen him?’
‘I have.’
‘Are you reconciled?’
I could not say Yes, I could not say No. She slightly turned her head towards the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to Rosa, ‘Dead!’
That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read, plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp them on her face.
The handsome lady—so like, oh so like!—regarded me with a fixed look, and put her hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm, and prepare herself to bear what I had to tell; but I should rather have entreated her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.
‘When I was last here,’ I faltered, ‘Miss Dartle told me he was sailing here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he was; and if the vessel that was seen should really be the ship which—’
‘Rosa!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘come to me!’
She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed like fire as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful laugh.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘is your pride appeased, you madwoman? Now has he made atonement to you—with his life! Do you hear?---His life!’
Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no sound but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.
‘Aye!’ cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, ‘look at me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!’ striking the scar, ‘at your dead child’s handiwork!’
The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to My heart. Always the same. Always inarticulate and stifled. Always accompanied with an incapable motion of the head, but with no change of face. Always proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed teeth, as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain.
‘Do you remember when he did this?’ she proceeded. ‘Do you remember when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me, marked until I die with his high displeasure; and moan and groan for what you made him!’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I entreated her. ‘For Heaven’s sake—’
‘I WILL speak!’ she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. ‘Be silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false son! Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him, moan for your loss of him, moan for mine!’
She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure, as if her passion were killing her by inches.
‘You, resent his self-will!’ she exclaimed. ‘You, injured by his haughty temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey, the qualities which made both when you gave him birth! YOU, who from his cradle reared him to be what he was, and stunted what he should have been! Are you rewarded, now, for your years of trouble?’
‘Oh, Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!’
‘I tell you,’ she returned, ‘I WILL speak to her. No power on earth should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent all these years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved him!’ turning on her fiercely. ‘I could have loved him, and asked no return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it better than I? You were exacting, proud, punctilious, selfish. My love would have been devoted—would have trod your paltry whimpering under foot!’
With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did it.
‘Look here!’ she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless hand. ‘When he grew into the better understanding of what he had done, he saw it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk to him, and show the ardour that I felt in all he did, and attain with labour to such knowledge as most interested him; and I attracted him. When he was freshest and truest, he loved me. Yes, he did! Many a time, when you were put off with a slight word, he has taken Me to his heart!’
She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy—for it was little less—yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which the smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.
‘I descended—as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me with his boyish courtship—into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him. When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his fancy died out, I would no more have tried to strengthen any power I had, than I would have married him on his being forced to take me for his wife. We fell away from one another without a word. Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry. Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece of furniture between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no remembrances. Moan? Moan for what you made him; not for your love. I tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than you ever did!’
She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if the face had been a picture.
‘Miss Dartle,’ said I, ‘if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for this afflicted mother—’
‘Who feels for me?’ she sharply retorted. ‘She has sown this. Let her moan for the harvest that she reaps today!’
‘And if his faults—’ I began.
‘Faults!’ she cried, bursting into passionate tears. ‘Who dares malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!’
‘No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer remembrance than I,’ I replied. ‘I meant to say, if you have no compassion for his mother; or if his faults—you have been bitter on them—’
‘It’s false,’ she cried, tearing her black hair; ‘I loved him!’
‘—if his faults cannot,’ I went on, ‘be banished from your remembrance, in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you have never seen before, and render it some help!’
All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. Motionless, rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no other sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it, and began to loosen the dress.
‘A curse upon you!’ she said, looking round at me, with a mingled expression of rage and grief. ‘It was in an evil hour that you ever came here! A curse upon you! Go!’
After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it, calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the dormant senses. No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back again; and alarmed the house as I went out.
Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother’s room. She was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her; doctors were in attendance, many things had been tried; but she lay like a statue, except for the low sound now and then.
I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The windows of the chamber where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden hand, and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed death and silence, broken only by his mother’s moaning.
CHAPTER 57. THE EMIGRANTS
One thing more, I had to do, before yielding myself to the shock of these emotions. It was, to conceal what had occurred, from those who were going away; and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance. In this, no time was to be lost.
I took Mr. Micawber aside that same night, and confided to him the task of standing between Mr. Peggotty and intelligence of the late catastrophe. He zealously undertook to do so, and to intercept any newspaper through which it might, without such precautions, reach him.
‘If it penetrates to him, sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, striking himself on the breast, ‘it shall first pass through this body!’
Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not absolutely lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might have supposed him a child of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out of the confines of civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.
He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit of oilskin, and a straw hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked on the outside. In this rough clothing, with a common mariner’s telescope under his arm, and a shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky as looking out for dirty weather, he was far more nautical, after his manner, than Mr. Peggotty. His whole family, if I may so express it, were cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber in the closest and most uncompromising of bonnets, made fast under the chin; and in a shawl which tied her up (as I had been tied up, when my aunt first received me) like a bundle, and was secured behind at the waist, in a strong knot. Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy weather, in the same manner; with nothing superfluous about her. Master Micawber was hardly visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shaggiest suit of slops I ever saw; and the children were done up, like preserved meats, in impervious cases. Both Mr. Micawber and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely turned back at the wrists, as being ready to lend a hand in any direction, and to ‘tumble up’, or sing out, ‘Yeo—Heave—Yeo!’ on the shortest notice.
Thus Traddles and I found them at nightfall, assembled on the wooden steps, at that time known as Hungerford Stairs, watching the departure of a boat with some of their property on board. I had told Traddles of the terrible event, and it had greatly shocked him; but there could be no doubt of the kindness of keeping it a secret, and he had come to help me in this last service. It was here that I took Mr. Micawber aside, and received his promise.
The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants, being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford, attracted so many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. My aunt and Agnes were there, busily making some little extra comforts, in the way of dress, for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting, with the old insensible work-box, yard-measure, and bit of wax-candle before her, that had now outlived so much.
It was not easy to answer her inquiries; still less to whisper Mr. Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the letter, and all was well. But I did both, and made them happy. If I showed any trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient to account for it.
‘And when does the ship sail, Mr. Micawber?’ asked my aunt.
Mr. Micawber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or his wife, by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected yesterday.
‘The boat brought you word, I suppose?’ said my aunt.
‘It did, ma’am,’ he returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt. ‘And she sails—’
‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘I am informed that we must positively be on board before seven tomorrow morning.’
‘Heyday!’ said my aunt, ‘that’s soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr. Peggotty?’ ‘’Tis so, ma’am. She’ll drop down the river with that theer tide. If Mas’r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen’, arternoon o’ next day, they’ll see the last on us.’
‘And that we shall do,’ said I, ‘be sure!’
‘Until then, and until we are at sea,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with a glance of intelligence at me, ‘Mr. Peggotty and myself will constantly keep a double look-out together, on our goods and chattels. Emma, my love,’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way, ‘my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so obliging as to solicit, in my ear, that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary to the composition of a moderate portion of that Beverage which is peculiarly associated, in our minds, with the Roast Beef of Old England. I allude to—in short, Punch. Under ordinary circumstances, I should scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield, but-’
‘I can only say for myself,’ said my aunt, ‘that I will drink all happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost pleasure.’
‘And I too!’ said Agnes, with a smile.
Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug. I could not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his own clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler, was about a foot long; and which he wiped, not wholly without ostentation, on the sleeve of his coat. Mrs. Micawber and the two elder members of the family I now found to be provided with similar formidable instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its body by a strong line. In a similar anticipation of life afloat, and in the Bush, Mr. Micawber, instead of helping Mrs. Micawber and his eldest son and daughter to punch, in wine-glasses, which he might easily have done, for there was a shelf-full in the room, served it out to them in a series of villainous little tin pots; and I never saw him enjoy anything so much as drinking out of his own particular pint pot, and putting it in his pocket at the close of the evening.
‘The luxuries of the old country,’ said Mr. Micawber, with an intense satisfaction in their renouncement, ‘we abandon. The denizens of the forest cannot, of course, expect to participate in the refinements of the land of the Free.’
Here, a boy came in to say that Mr. Micawber was wanted downstairs.
‘I have a presentiment,’ said Mrs. Micawber, setting down her tin pot, ‘that it is a member of my family!’
‘If so, my dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with his usual suddenness of warmth on that subject, ‘as the member of your family—whoever he, she, or it, may be—has kept us waiting for a considerable period, perhaps the Member may now wait MY convenience.’
‘Micawber,’ said his wife, in a low tone, ‘at such a time as this—’
‘“It is not meet,”’ said Mr. Micawber, rising, ‘“that every nice offence should bear its comment!” Emma, I stand reproved.’
‘The loss, Micawber,’ observed his wife, ‘has been my family’s, not yours. If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to which their own conduct has, in the past, exposed them, and now desire to extend the hand of fellowship, let it not be repulsed.’
‘My dear,’ he returned, ‘so be it!’
‘If not for their sakes; for mine, Micawber,’ said his wife.
‘Emma,’ he returned, ‘that view of the question is, at such a moment, irresistible. I cannot, even now, distinctly pledge myself to fall upon your family’s neck; but the member of your family, who is now in attendance, shall have no genial warmth frozen by me.’
Mr. Micawber withdrew, and was absent some little time; in the course of which Mrs. Micawber was not wholly free from an apprehension that words might have arisen between him and the Member. At length the same boy reappeared, and presented me with a note written in pencil, and headed, in a legal manner, ‘Heep v. Micawber’. From this document, I learned that Mr. Micawber being again arrested, ‘Was in a final paroxysm of despair; and that he begged me to send him his knife and pint pot, by bearer, as they might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of his existence, in jail. He also requested, as a last act of friendship, that I would see his family to the Parish Workhouse, and forget that such a Being ever lived.
Of course I answered this note by going down with the boy to pay the money, where I found Mr. Micawber sitting in a corner, looking darkly at the Sheriff ‘s Officer who had effected the capture. On his release, he embraced me with the utmost fervour; and made an entry of the transaction in his pocket-book—being very particular, I recollect, about a halfpenny I inadvertently omitted from my statement of the total.
This momentous pocket-book was a timely reminder to him of another transaction. On our return to the room upstairs (where he accounted for his absence by saying that it had been occasioned by circumstances over which he had no control), he took out of it a large sheet of paper, folded small, and quite covered with long sums, carefully worked. From the glimpse I had of them, I should say that I never saw such sums out of a school ciphering-book. These, it seemed, were calculations of compound interest on what he called ‘the principal amount of forty-one, ten, eleven and a half’, for various periods. After a careful consideration of these, and an elaborate estimate of his resources, he had come to the conclusion to select that sum which represented the amount with compound interest to two years, fifteen calendar months, and fourteen days, from that date. For this he had drawn a note-of-hand with great neatness, which he handed over to Traddles on the spot, a discharge of his debt in full (as between man and man), with many acknowledgements.
‘I have still a presentiment,’ said Mrs. Micawber, pensively shaking her head, ‘that my family will appear on board, before we finally depart.’
Mr. Micawber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but he put it in his tin pot and swallowed it.
‘If you have any opportunity of sending letters home, on your passage, Mrs. Micawber,’ said my aunt, ‘you must let us hear from you, you know.’
‘My dear Miss Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘I shall only be too happy to think that anyone expects to hear from us. I shall not fail to correspond. Mr. Copperfield, I trust, as an old and familiar friend, will not object to receive occasional intelligence, himself, from one who knew him when the twins were yet unconscious?’
I said that I should hope to hear, whenever she had an opportunity of writing.
‘Please Heaven, there will be many such opportunities,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘The ocean, in these times, is a perfect fleet of ships; and we can hardly fail to encounter many, in running over. It is merely crossing,’ said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass, ‘merely crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.’
I think, now, how odd it was, but how wonderfully like Mr. Micawber, that, when he went from London to Canterbury, he should have talked as if he were going to the farthest limits of the earth; and, when he went from England to Australia, as if he were going for a little trip across the channel.
‘On the voyage, I shall endeavour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘occasionally to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust, be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs. Micawber has her sea-legs on—an expression in which I hope there is no conventional impropriety—she will give them, I dare say, “Little Tafflin”. Porpoises and dolphins, I believe, will be frequently observed athwart our Bows; and, either on the starboard or the larboard quarter, objects of interest will be continually descried. In short,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old genteel air, ‘the probability is, all will be found so exciting, alow and aloft, that when the lookout, stationed in the main-top, cries Land-oh! we shall be very considerably astonished!’
With that he flourished off the contents of his little tin pot, as if he had made the voyage, and had passed a first-class examination before the highest naval authorities.
‘What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family, but to our children’s children. However vigorous the sapling,’ said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, ‘I cannot forget the parent-tree; and when our race attains to eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that fortune to flow into the coffers of Britannia.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Britannia must take her chance. I am bound to say that she has never done much for me, and that I have no particular wish upon the subject.’
‘Micawber,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, ‘there, you are wrong. You are going out, Micawber, to this distant clime, to strengthen, not to weaken, the connexion between yourself and Albion.’
‘The connexion in question, my love,’ rejoined Mr. Micawber, ‘has not laid me, I repeat, under that load of personal obligation, that I am at all sensitive as to the formation of another connexion.’
‘Micawber,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘There, I again say, you are wrong. You do not know your power, Micawber. It is that which will strengthen, even in this step you are about to take, the connexion between yourself and Albion.’
Mr. Micawber sat in his elbow-chair, with his eyebrows raised; half receiving and half repudiating Mrs. Micawber’s views as they were stated, but very sensible of their foresight.
‘My dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I wish Mr. Micawber to feel his position. It appears to me highly important that Mr. Micawber should, from the hour of his embarkation, feel his position. Your old knowledge of me, my dear Mr. Copperfield, will have told you that I have not the sanguine disposition of Mr. Micawber. My disposition is, if I may say so, eminently practical. I know that this is a long voyage. I know that it will involve many privations and inconveniences. I cannot shut my eyes to those facts. But I also know what Mr. Micawber is. I know the latent power of Mr. Micawber. And therefore I consider it vitally important that Mr. Micawber should feel his position.’
‘My love,’ he observed, ‘perhaps you will allow me to remark that it is barely possible that I DO feel my position at the present moment.’
‘I think not, Micawber,’ she rejoined. ‘Not fully. My dear Mr. Copperfield, Mr. Micawber’s is not a common case. Mr. Micawber is going to a distant country expressly in order that he may be fully understood and appreciated for the first time. I wish Mr. Micawber to take his stand upon that vessel’s prow, and firmly say, “This country I am come to conquer! Have you honours? Have you riches? Have you posts of profitable pecuniary emolument? Let them be brought forward. They are mine!”’
Mr. Micawber, glancing at us all, seemed to think there was a good deal in this idea.
‘I wish Mr. Micawber, if I make myself understood,’ said Mrs. Micawber, in her argumentative tone, ‘to be the Caesar of his own fortunes. That, my dear Mr. Copperfield, appears to me to be his true position. From the first moment of this voyage, I wish Mr. Micawber to stand upon that vessel’s prow and say, “Enough of delay: enough of disappointment: enough of limited means. That was in the old country. This is the new. Produce your reparation. Bring it forward!”’
Mr. Micawber folded his arms in a resolute manner, as if he were then stationed on the figure-head.
‘And doing that,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘—feeling his position—am I not right in saying that Mr. Micawber will strengthen, and not weaken, his connexion with Britain? An important public character arising in that hemisphere, shall I be told that its influence will not be felt at home? Can I be so weak as to imagine that Mr. Micawber, wielding the rod of talent and of power in Australia, will be nothing in England? I am but a woman; but I should be unworthy of myself and of my papa, if I were guilty of such absurd weakness.’
Mrs. Micawber’s conviction that her arguments were unanswerable, gave a moral elevation to her tone which I think I had never heard in it before.
‘And therefore it is,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I the more wish, that, at a future period, we may live again on the parent soil. Mr. Micawber may be—I cannot disguise from myself that the probability is, Mr. Micawber will be—a page of History; and he ought then to be represented in the country which gave him birth, and did NOT give him employment!’
‘My love,’ observed Mr. Micawber, ‘it is impossible for me not to be touched by your affection. I am always willing to defer to your good sense. What will be—will be. Heaven forbid that I should grudge my native country any portion of the wealth that may be accumulated by our descendants!’
‘That’s well,’ said my aunt, nodding towards Mr. Peggotty, ‘and I drink my love to you all, and every blessing and success attend you!’
Mr. Peggotty put down the two children he had been nursing, one on each knee, to join Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in drinking to all of us in return; and when he and the Micawbers cordially shook hands as comrades, and his brown face brightened with a smile, I felt that he would make his way, establish a good name, and be beloved, go where he would.
Even the children were instructed, each to dip a wooden spoon into Mr. Micawber’s pot, and pledge us in its contents. When this was done, my aunt and Agnes rose, and parted from the emigrants. It was a sorrowful farewell. They were all crying; the children hung about Agnes to the last; and we left poor Mrs. Micawber in a very distressed condition, sobbing and weeping by a dim candle, that must have made the room look, from the river, like a miserable light-house.
I went down again next morning to see that they were away. They had departed, in a boat, as early as five o’clock. It was a wonderful instance to me of the gap such partings make, that although my association of them with the tumble-down public-house and the wooden stairs dated only from last night, both seemed dreary and deserted, now that they were gone.
In the afternoon of the next day, my old nurse and I went down to Gravesend. We found the ship in the river, surrounded by a crowd of boats; a favourable wind blowing; the signal for sailing at her mast-head. I hired a boat directly, and we put off to her; and getting through the little vortex of confusion of which she was the centre, went on board.
Mr. Peggotty was waiting for us on deck. He told me that Mr. Micawber had just now been arrested again (and for the last time) at the suit of Heep, and that, in compliance with a request I had made to him, he had paid the money, which I repaid him. He then took us down between decks; and there, any lingering fears I had of his having heard any rumours of what had happened, were dispelled by Mr. Micawber’s coming out of the gloom, taking his arm with an air of friendship and protection, and telling me that they had scarcely been asunder for a moment, since the night before last.
It was such a strange scene to me, and so confined and dark, that, at first, I could make out hardly anything; but, by degrees, it cleared, as my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and I seemed to stand in a picture by OSTADE. Among the great beams, bulks, and ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths, and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous baggage—‘lighted up, here and there, by dangling lanterns; and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a windsail or a hatchway—were crowded groups of people, making new friendships, taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating and drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their few feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others, despairing of a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately. From babies who had but a week or two of life behind them, to crooked old men and women who seemed to have but a week or two of life before them; and from ploughmen bodily carrying out soil of England on their boots, to smiths taking away samples of its soot and smoke upon their skins; every age and occupation appeared to be crammed into the narrow compass of the ‘tween decks.
As my eye glanced round this place, I thought I saw sitting, by an open port, with one of the Micawber children near her, a figure like Emily’s; it first attracted my attention, by another figure parting from it with a kiss; and as it glided calmly away through the disorder, reminding me of—Agnes! But in the rapid motion and confusion, and in the unsettlement of my own thoughts, I lost it again; and only knew that the time was come when all visitors were being warned to leave the ship; that my nurse was crying on a chest beside me; and that Mrs. Gummidge, assisted by some younger stooping woman in black, was busily arranging Mr. Peggotty’s goods.
‘Is there any last wured, Mas’r Davy?’ said he. ‘Is there any one forgotten thing afore we parts?’
‘One thing!’ said I. ‘Martha!’
He touched the younger woman I have mentioned on the shoulder, and Martha stood before me.
‘Heaven bless you, you good man!’ cried I. ‘You take her with you!’
She answered for him, with a burst of tears. I could speak no more at that time, but I wrung his hand; and if ever I have loved and honoured any man, I loved and honoured that man in my soul.
The ship was clearing fast of strangers. The greatest trial that I had, remained. I told him what the noble spirit that was gone, had given me in charge to say at parting. It moved him deeply. But when he charged me, in return, with many messages of affection and regret for those deaf ears, he moved me more.
The time was come. I embraced him, took my weeping nurse upon my arm, and hurried away. On deck, I took leave of poor Mrs. Micawber. She was looking distractedly about for her family, even then; and her last words to me were, that she never would desert Mr. Micawber.
We went over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water, with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, and there clustering, for a moment, bare-headed and silent, I never saw.
Silent, only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind, and the ship began to move, there broke from all the boats three resounding cheers, which those on board took up, and echoed back, and which were echoed and re-echoed. My heart burst out when I heard the sound, and beheld the waving of the hats and handkerchiefs—and then I saw her!
Then I saw her, at her uncle’s side, and trembling on his shoulder. He pointed to us with an eager hand; and she saw us, and waved her last good-bye to me. Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to him with the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has clung to thee, with all the might of his great love!
Surrounded by the rosy light, and standing high upon the deck, apart together, she clinging to him, and he holding her, they solemnly passed away. The night had fallen on the Kentish hills when we were rowed ashore—and fallen darkly upon me.
CHAPTER 58. ABSENCE
It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.
I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away; and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no conception of the wound with which it had to strive.
The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grain by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepened and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow, wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees, it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost—love, friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered—my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that remained—a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon.
If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so. I mourned for my child-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young. I mourned for him who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won mine long ago. I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in the stormy sea; and for the wandering remnants of the simple home, where I had heard the night-wind blowing, when I was a child.
From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no hope of ever issuing again. I roamed from place to place, carrying my burden with me everywhere. I felt its whole weight now; and I drooped beneath it, and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened.
When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die. Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and actually turned back on my road, that I might get there soon. At other times, I passed on farther away,—from city to city, seeking I know not what, and trying to leave I know not what behind.
It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases of distress of mind through which I passed. There are some dreams that can only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself to look back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream. I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets—the old abiding places of History and Fancy—as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it—as at last I did, thank Heaven!—and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn.
For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon my mind. Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home—reasons then struggling within me, vainly, for more distinct expression—kept me on my pilgrimage. Sometimes, I had proceeded restlessly from place to place, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had lingered long in one spot. I had had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me, anywhere.
I was in Switzerland. I had come out of Italy, over one of the great passes of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among the by-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to my heart, I did not know it. I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of ice and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else.
I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was to rest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track along the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I remember pausing once, with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive, not quite despairing. I remember almost hoping that some better change was possible within me.
I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the remote heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the mountain’s-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so dwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys. So did even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridge across the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, and roared away among the trees. In the quiet air, there was a sound of distant singing—shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening cloud floated midway along the mountain’s-side, I could almost have believed it came from there, and was not earthly music. All at once, in this serenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to lay down my weary head upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept yet, since Dora died!
I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before, and had strolled out of the village to read them while my supper was making ready. Other packets had missed me, and I had received none for a long time. Beyond a line or two, to say that I was well, and had arrived at such a place, I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a letter since I left home.
The packet was in my hand. I opened it, and read the writing of Agnes.
She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped. That was all she told me of herself. The rest referred to me.
She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to do.
I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago! When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow upon the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet felt that the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing, there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward, than ever until then.
I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told her that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not, and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me to be that, and I would try.
I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since the beginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until the expiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley, and its neighbourhood, all the time.
The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which was growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen; to work.
I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature, never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interest I had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as many friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before the winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordial greetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed in English words.
I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it to Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from travellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, I fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strong possession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt it more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was my third work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval of rest, I thought of returning home.
For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomed myself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I left England, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in many countries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge.
I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this term of absence—with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, with no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewhere said, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep the most secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on it now. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, as to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and brightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my grief it first became associated with the reflection, that, in my wayward boyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I may have heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss or want of something never to be realized, of which I had been sensible. But the thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, when I was left so sad and lonely in the world.
If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of my desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when I was first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borne to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in that betrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown.
I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me had grown up in my own free choice and course. That if she had ever loved me with another love—and I sometimes thought the time was when she might have done so—I had cast it away. It was nothing, now, that I had accustomed myself to think of her, when we were both mere children, as one who was far removed from my wild fancies. I had bestowed my passionate tenderness upon another object; and what I might have done, I had not done; and what Agnes was to me, I and her own noble heart had made her.
In the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me, when I tried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man, I did glance, through some indefinite probation, to a period when I might possibly hope to cancel the mistaken past, and to be so blessed as to marry her. But, as time wore on, this shadowy prospect faded, and departed from me. If she had ever loved me, then, I should hold her the more sacred; remembering the confidences I had reposed in her, her knowledge of my errant heart, the sacrifice she must have made to be my friend and sister, and the victory she had won. If she had never loved me, could I believe that she would love me now?
I had always felt my weakness, in comparison with her constancy and fortitude; and now I felt it more and more. Whatever I might have been to her, or she to me, if I had been more worthy of her long ago, I was not now, and she was not. The time was past. I had let it go by, and had deservedly lost her.
That I suffered much in these contentions, that they filled me with unhappiness and remorse, and yet that I had a sustaining sense that it was required of me, in right and honour, to keep away from myself, with shame, the thought of turning to the dear girl in the withering of my hopes, from whom I had frivolously turned when they were bright and fresh—which consideration was at the root of every thought I had concerning her—is all equally true. I made no effort to conceal from myself, now, that I loved her, that I was devoted to her; but I brought the assurance home to myself, that it was now too late, and that our long-subsisting relation must be undisturbed.
I had thought, much and often, of my Dora’s shadowing out to me what might have happened, in those years that were destined not to try us; I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished. The very years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; and would have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had parted in our earliest folly. I endeavoured to convert what might have been between myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying, more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors. Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at the conviction that it could never be.
These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my return home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since the sailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that same hour of sunset, and in the same place, I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought me home, looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that ship reflected.
Three years. Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. And home was very dear to me, and Agnes too—but she was not mine—she was never to be mine. She might have been, but that was past!
CHAPTER 59. RETURN
I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining, and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach; and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy friends.
I have often remarked—I suppose everybody has—that one’s going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it. As I looked out of the coach window, and observed that an old house on Fish-street Hill, which had stood untouched by painter, carpenter, or bricklayer, for a century, had been pulled down in my absence; and that a neighbouring street, of time-honoured insalubrity and inconvenience, was being drained and widened; I half expected to find St. Paul’s Cathedral looking older.
For some changes in the fortunes of my friends, I was prepared. My aunt had long been re-established at Dover, and Traddles had begun to get into some little practice at the Bar, in the very first term after my departure. He had chambers in Gray’s Inn, now; and had told me, in his last letters, that he was not without hopes of being soon united to the dearest girl in the world.
They expected me home before Christmas; but had no idea of my returning so soon. I had purposely misled them, that I might have the pleasure of taking them by surprise. And yet, I was perverse enough to feel a chill and disappointment in receiving no welcome, and rattling, alone and silent, through the misty streets.
The well-known shops, however, with their cheerful lights, did something for me; and when I alighted at the door of the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house, I had recovered my spirits. It recalled, at first, that so-different time when I had put up at the Golden Cross, and reminded me of the changes that had come to pass since then; but that was natural.
‘Do you know where Mr. Traddles lives in the Inn?’ I asked the waiter, as I warmed myself by the coffee-room fire.
‘Holborn Court, sir. Number two.’
‘Mr. Traddles has a rising reputation among the lawyers, I believe?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ returned the waiter, ‘probably he has, sir; but I am not aware of it myself.’
This waiter, who was middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a waiter of more authority—a stout, potential old man, with a double chin, in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a place like a churchwarden’s pew, at the end of the coffee-room, where he kept company with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, and other books and papers.
‘Mr. Traddles,’ said the spare waiter. ‘Number two in the Court.’
The potential waiter waved him away, and turned, gravely, to me.
‘I was inquiring,’ said I, ‘whether Mr. Traddles, at number two in the Court, has not a rising reputation among the lawyers?’
‘Never heard his name,’ said the waiter, in a rich husky voice.
I felt quite apologetic for Traddles.
‘He’s a young man, sure?’ said the portentous waiter, fixing his eyes severely on me. ‘How long has he been in the Inn?’
‘Not above three years,’ said I.
The waiter, who I supposed had lived in his churchwarden’s pew for forty years, could not pursue such an insignificant subject. He asked me what I would have for dinner?
I felt I was in England again, and really was quite cast down on Traddles’s account. There seemed to be no hope for him. I meekly ordered a bit of fish and a steak, and stood before the fire musing on his obscurity.
As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy—if he ever was a boy, which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming or cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine below; and both England, and the law, appeared to me to be very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom to change my wet clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted apartment (which was over the archway leading to the Inn, I remember), and the sedate immensity of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the meal, and the orderly silence of the place—which was bare of guests, the Long Vacation not yet being over—were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a livelihood for twenty years to come.
I had seen nothing like this since I went away, and it quite dashed my hopes for my friend. The chief waiter had had enough of me. He came near me no more; but devoted himself to an old gentleman in long gaiters, to meet whom a pint of special port seemed to come out of the cellar of its own accord, for he gave no order. The second waiter informed me, in a whisper, that this old gentleman was a retired conveyancer living in the Square, and worth a mint of money, which it was expected he would leave to his laundress’s daughter; likewise that it was rumoured that he had a service of plate in a bureau, all tarnished with lying by, though more than one spoon and a fork had never yet been beheld in his chambers by mortal vision. By this time, I quite gave Traddles up for lost; and settled in my own mind that there was no hope for him.
Being very anxious to see the dear old fellow, nevertheless, I dispatched my dinner, in a manner not at all calculated to raise me in the opinion of the chief waiter, and hurried out by the back way. Number two in the Court was soon reached; and an inscription on the door-post informing me that Mr. Traddles occupied a set of chambers on the top storey, I ascended the staircase. A crazy old staircase I found it to be, feebly lighted on each landing by a club-headed little oil wick, dying away in a little dungeon of dirty glass.
In the course of my stumbling upstairs, I fancied I heard a pleasant sound of laughter; and not the laughter of an attorney or barrister, or attorney’s clerk or barrister’s clerk, but of two or three merry girls. Happening, however, as I stopped to listen, to put my foot in a hole where the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn had left a plank deficient, I fell down with some noise, and when I recovered my footing all was silent.
Groping my way more carefully, for the rest of the journey, my heart beat high when I found the outer door, which had Mr. TRADDLES painted on it, open. I knocked. A considerable scuffling within ensued, but nothing else. I therefore knocked again.
A small sharp-looking lad, half-footboy and half-clerk, who was very much out of breath, but who looked at me as if he defied me to prove it legally, presented himself.
‘Is Mr. Traddles within?’ I said.
‘Yes, sir, but he’s engaged.’
‘I want to see him.’
After a moment’s survey of me, the sharp-looking lad decided to let me in; and opening the door wider for that purpose, admitted me, first, into a little closet of a hall, and next into a little sitting-room; where I came into the presence of my old friend (also out of breath), seated at a table, and bending over papers.
‘Good God!’ cried Traddles, looking up. ‘It’s Copperfield!’ and rushed into my arms, where I held him tight.
‘All well, my dear Traddles?’
‘All well, my dear, dear Copperfield, and nothing but good news!’
We cried with pleasure, both of us.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Traddles, rumpling his hair in his excitement, which was a most unnecessary operation, ‘my dearest Copperfield, my long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to see you! How brown you are! How glad I am! Upon my life and honour, I never was so rejoiced, my beloved Copperfield, never!’
I was equally at a loss to express my emotions. I was quite unable to speak, at first.
‘My dear fellow!’ said Traddles. ‘And grown so famous! My glorious Copperfield! Good gracious me, WHEN did you come, WHERE have you come from, WHAT have you been doing?’
Never pausing for an answer to anything he said, Traddles, who had clapped me into an easy-chair by the fire, all this time impetuously stirred the fire with one hand, and pulled at my neck-kerchief with the other, under some wild delusion that it was a great-coat. Without putting down the poker, he now hugged me again; and I hugged him; and, both laughing, and both wiping our eyes, we both sat down, and shook hands across the hearth.
‘To think,’ said Traddles, ‘that you should have been so nearly coming home as you must have been, my dear old boy, and not at the ceremony!’
‘What ceremony, my dear Traddles?’
‘Good gracious me!’ cried Traddles, opening his eyes in his old way. ‘Didn’t you get my last letter?’
‘Certainly not, if it referred to any ceremony.’
‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, sticking his hair upright with both hands, and then putting his hands on my knees, ‘I am married!’
‘Married!’ I cried joyfully.
‘Lord bless me, yes!’ said Traddles—‘by the Reverend Horace—to Sophy—down in Devonshire. Why, my dear boy, she’s behind the window curtain! Look here!’
To my amazement, the dearest girl in the world came at that same instant, laughing and blushing, from her place of concealment. And a more cheerful, amiable, honest, happy, bright-looking bride, I believe (as I could not help saying on the spot) the world never saw. I kissed her as an old acquaintance should, and wished them joy with all my might of heart.
‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, ‘what a delightful re-union this is! You are so extremely brown, my dear Copperfield! God bless my soul, how happy I am!’
‘And so am I,’ said I.
‘And I am sure I am!’ said the blushing and laughing Sophy.
‘We are all as happy as possible!’ said Traddles. ‘Even the girls are happy. Dear me, I declare I forgot them!’
‘Forgot?’ said I.
‘The girls,’ said Traddles. ‘Sophy’s sisters. They are staying with us. They have come to have a peep at London. The fact is, when—was it you that tumbled upstairs, Copperfield?’
‘It was,’ said I, laughing.
‘Well then, when you tumbled upstairs,’ said Traddles, ‘I was romping with the girls. In point of fact, we were playing at Puss in the Corner. But as that wouldn’t do in Westminster Hall, and as it wouldn’t look quite professional if they were seen by a client, they decamped. And they are now—listening, I have no doubt,’ said Traddles, glancing at the door of another room.
‘I am sorry,’ said I, laughing afresh, ‘to have occasioned such a dispersion.’
‘Upon my word,’ rejoined Traddles, greatly delighted, ‘if you had seen them running away, and running back again, after you had knocked, to pick up the combs they had dropped out of their hair, and going on in the maddest manner, you wouldn’t have said so. My love, will you fetch the girls?’
Sophy tripped away, and we heard her received in the adjoining room with a peal of laughter.
‘Really musical, isn’t it, my dear Copperfield?’ said Traddles. ‘It’s very agreeable to hear. It quite lights up these old rooms. To an unfortunate bachelor of a fellow who has lived alone all his life, you know, it’s positively delicious. It’s charming. Poor things, they have had a great loss in Sophy—who, I do assure you, Copperfield is, and ever was, the dearest girl!—and it gratifies me beyond expression to find them in such good spirits. The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.’
Observing that he slightly faltered, and comprehending that in the goodness of his heart he was fearful of giving me some pain by what he had said, I expressed my concurrence with a heartiness that evidently relieved and pleased him greatly.
‘But then,’ said Traddles, ‘our domestic arrangements are, to say the truth, quite unprofessional altogether, my dear Copperfield. Even Sophy’s being here, is unprofessional. And we have no other place of abode. We have put to sea in a cockboat, but we are quite prepared to rough it. And Sophy’s an extraordinary manager! You’ll be surprised how those girls are stowed away. I am sure I hardly know how it’s done!’
‘Are many of the young ladies with you?’ I inquired.
‘The eldest, the Beauty is here,’ said Traddles, in a low confidential voice, ‘Caroline. And Sarah’s here—the one I mentioned to you as having something the matter with her spine, you know. Immensely better! And the two youngest that Sophy educated are with us. And Louisa’s here.’
‘Indeed!’ cried I.
‘Yes,’ said Traddles. ‘Now the whole set—I mean the chambers—is only three rooms; but Sophy arranges for the girls in the most wonderful way, and they sleep as comfortably as possible. Three in that room,’ said Traddles, pointing. ‘Two in that.’
I could not help glancing round, in search of the accommodation remaining for Mr. and Mrs. Traddles. Traddles understood me.
‘Well!’ said Traddles, ‘we are prepared to rough it, as I said just now, and we did improvise a bed last week, upon the floor here. But there’s a little room in the roof—a very nice room, when you’re up there—which Sophy papered herself, to surprise me; and that’s our room at present. It’s a capital little gipsy sort of place. There’s quite a view from it.’
‘And you are happily married at last, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘How rejoiced I am!’
‘Thank you, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, as we shook hands once more. ‘Yes, I am as happy as it’s possible to be. There’s your old friend, you see,’ said Traddles, nodding triumphantly at the flower-pot and stand; ‘and there’s the table with the marble top! All the other furniture is plain and serviceable, you perceive. And as to plate, Lord bless you, we haven’t so much as a tea-spoon.’
‘All to be earned?’ said I, cheerfully.
‘Exactly so,’ replied Traddles, ‘all to be earned. Of course we have something in the shape of tea-spoons, because we stir our tea. But they’re Britannia metal.’
‘The silver will be the brighter when it comes,’ said I.
‘The very thing we say!’ cried Traddles. ‘You see, my dear Copperfield,’ falling again into the low confidential tone, ‘after I had delivered my argument in DOE dem. JIPES versus WIGZIELL, which did me great service with the profession, I went down into Devonshire, and had some serious conversation in private with the Reverend Horace. I dwelt upon the fact that Sophy—who I do assure you, Copperfield, is the dearest girl!—’
‘I am certain she is!’ said I.
‘She is, indeed!’ rejoined Traddles. ‘But I am afraid I am wandering from the subject. Did I mention the Reverend Horace?’
‘You said that you dwelt upon the fact—’
‘True! Upon the fact that Sophy and I had been engaged for a long period, and that Sophy, with the permission of her parents, was more than content to take me—in short,’ said Traddles, with his old frank smile, ‘on our present Britannia-metal footing. Very well. I then proposed to the Reverend Horace—who is a most excellent clergyman, Copperfield, and ought to be a Bishop; or at least ought to have enough to live upon, without pinching himself—that if I could turn the corner, say of two hundred and fifty pounds, in one year; and could see my way pretty clearly to that, or something better, next year; and could plainly furnish a little place like this, besides; then, and in that case, Sophy and I should be united. I took the liberty of representing that we had been patient for a good many years; and that the circumstance of Sophy’s being extraordinarily useful at home, ought not to operate with her affectionate parents, against her establishment in life—don’t you see?’
‘Certainly it ought not,’ said I.
‘I am glad you think so, Copperfield,’ rejoined Traddles, ‘because, without any imputation on the Reverend Horace, I do think parents, and brothers, and so forth, are sometimes rather selfish in such cases. Well! I also pointed out, that my most earnest desire was, to be useful to the family; and that if I got on in the world, and anything should happen to him—I refer to the Reverend Horace—’
‘I understand,’ said I.
‘—Or to Mrs. Crewler—it would be the utmost gratification of my wishes, to be a parent to the girls. He replied in a most admirable manner, exceedingly flattering to my feelings, and undertook to obtain the consent of Mrs. Crewler to this arrangement. They had a dreadful time of it with her. It mounted from her legs into her chest, and then into her head—’
‘What mounted?’ I asked.
‘Her grief,’ replied Traddles, with a serious look. ‘Her feelings generally. As I mentioned on a former occasion, she is a very superior woman, but has lost the use of her limbs. Whatever occurs to harass her, usually settles in her legs; but on this occasion it mounted to the chest, and then to the head, and, in short, pervaded the whole system in a most alarming manner. However, they brought her through it by unremitting and affectionate attention; and we were married yesterday six weeks. You have no idea what a Monster I felt, Copperfield, when I saw the whole family crying and fainting away in every direction! Mrs. Crewler couldn’t see me before we left—couldn’t forgive me, then, for depriving her of her child—but she is a good creature, and has done so since. I had a delightful letter from her, only this morning.’
‘And in short, my dear friend,’ said I, ‘you feel as blest as you deserve to feel!’
‘Oh! That’s your partiality!’ laughed Traddles. ‘But, indeed, I am in a most enviable state. I work hard, and read Law insatiably. I get up at five every morning, and don’t mind it at all. I hide the girls in the daytime, and make merry with them in the evening. And I assure you I am quite sorry that they are going home on Tuesday, which is the day before the first day of Michaelmas Term. But here,’ said Traddles, breaking off in his confidence, and speaking aloud, ‘ARE the girls! Mr. Copperfield, Miss Crewler—Miss Sarah—Miss Louisa—Margaret and Lucy!’
They were a perfect nest of roses; they looked so wholesome and fresh. They were all pretty, and Miss Caroline was very handsome; but there was a loving, cheerful, fireside quality in Sophy’s bright looks, which was better than that, and which assured me that my friend had chosen well. We all sat round the fire; while the sharp boy, who I now divined had lost his breath in putting the papers out, cleared them away again, and produced the tea-things. After that, he retired for the night, shutting the outer door upon us with a bang. Mrs. Traddles, with perfect pleasure and composure beaming from her household eyes, having made the tea, then quietly made the toast as she sat in a corner by the fire.
She had seen Agnes, she told me while she was toasting. ‘Tom’ had taken her down into Kent for a wedding trip, and there she had seen my aunt, too; and both my aunt and Agnes were well, and they had all talked of nothing but me. ‘Tom’ had never had me out of his thoughts, she really believed, all the time I had been away. ‘Tom’ was the authority for everything. ‘Tom’ was evidently the idol of her life; never to be shaken on his pedestal by any commotion; always to be believed in, and done homage to with the whole faith of her heart, come what might.
The deference which both she and Traddles showed towards the Beauty, pleased me very much. I don’t know that I thought it very reasonable; but I thought it very delightful, and essentially a part of their character. If Traddles ever for an instant missed the tea-spoons that were still to be won, I have no doubt it was when he handed the Beauty her tea. If his sweet-tempered wife could have got up any self-assertion against anyone, I am satisfied it could only have been because she was the Beauty’s sister. A few slight indications of a rather petted and capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural endowment. If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees, they could not have been more satisfied of that.
But their self-forgetfulness charmed me. Their pride in these girls, and their submission of themselves to all their whims, was the pleasantest little testimony to their own worth I could have desired to see. If Traddles were addressed as ‘a darling’, once in the course of that evening; and besought to bring something here, or carry something there, or take something up, or put something down, or find something, or fetch something, he was so addressed, by one or other of his sisters-in-law, at least twelve times in an hour. Neither could they do anything without Sophy. Somebody’s hair fell down, and nobody but Sophy could put it up. Somebody forgot how a particular tune went, and nobody but Sophy could hum that tune right. Somebody wanted to recall the name of a place in Devonshire, and only Sophy knew it. Something was wanted to be written home, and Sophy alone could be trusted to write before breakfast in the morning. Somebody broke down in a piece of knitting, and no one but Sophy was able to put the defaulter in the right direction. They were entire mistresses of the place, and Sophy and Traddles waited on them. How many children Sophy could have taken care of in her time, I can’t imagine; but she seemed to be famous for knowing every sort of song that ever was addressed to a child in the English tongue; and she sang dozens to order with the clearest little voice in the world, one after another (every sister issuing directions for a different tune, and the Beauty generally striking in last), so that I was quite fascinated. The best of all was, that, in the midst of their exactions, all the sisters had a great tenderness and respect both for Sophy and Traddles. I am sure, when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming out to walk with me to the coffee-house, I thought I had never seen an obstinate head of hair, or any other head of hair, rolling about in such a shower of kisses.
Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with pleasure, for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles good night. If I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set of chambers, in that withered Gray’s Inn, they could not have brightened it half so much. The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the attorneys’ offices; and of the tea and toast, and children’s songs, in that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the Sultan’s famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water into Gray’s Inn Hall. Somehow, I found that I had taken leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffee-house, with a great change in my despondency about him. I began to think he would get on, in spite of all the many orders of chief waiters in England.
Drawing a chair before one of the coffee-room fires to think about him at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his happiness to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking, as they broke and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and separations that had marked my life. I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth, which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.
I could think of the past now, gravely, but not bitterly; and could contemplate the future in a brave spirit. Home, in its best sense, was for me no more. She in whom I might have inspired a dearer love, I had taught to be my sister. She would marry, and would have new claimants on her tenderness; and in doing it, would never know the love for her that had grown up in my heart. It was right that I should pay the forfeit of my headlong passion. What I reaped, I had sown.
I was thinking. And had I truly disciplined my heart to this, and could I resolutely bear it, and calmly hold the place in her home which she had calmly held in mine,—when I found my eyes resting on a countenance that might have arisen out of the fire, in its association with my early remembrances.
Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted in the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper in the shadow of an opposite corner. He was tolerably stricken in years by this time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.
Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his elbow. He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.
I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, ‘How do you do, Mr. Chillip?’
He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a stranger, and replied, in his slow way, ‘I thank you, sir, you are very good. Thank you, sir. I hope YOU are well.’
‘You don’t remember me?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking his head as he surveyed me, ‘I have a kind of an impression that something in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I couldn’t lay my hand upon your name, really.’
‘And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,’ I returned.
‘Did I indeed, sir?’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Is it possible that I had the honour, sir, of officiating when—?’
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘Dear me!’ cried Mr. Chillip. ‘But no doubt you are a good deal changed since then, sir?’
‘Probably,’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ observed Mr. Chillip, ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, if I am compelled to ask the favour of your name?’
On my telling him my name, he was really moved. He quite shook hands with me—which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advance of his hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with it. Even now, he put his hand in his coat-pocket as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed relieved when he had got it safe back.
‘Dear me, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip, surveying me with his head on one side. ‘And it’s Mr. Copperfield, is it? Well, sir, I think I should have known you, if I had taken the liberty of looking more closely at you. There’s a strong resemblance between you and your poor father, sir.’
‘I never had the happiness of seeing my father,’ I observed.
‘Very true, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, in a soothing tone. ‘And very much to be deplored it was, on all accounts! We are not ignorant, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his little head again, ‘down in our part of the country, of your fame. There must be great excitement here, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, tapping himself on the forehead with his forefinger. ‘You must find it a trying occupation, sir!’
‘What is your part of the country now?’ I asked, seating myself near him.
‘I am established within a few miles of Bury St. Edmund’s, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Mrs. Chillip, coming into a little property in that neighbourhood, under her father’s will, I bought a practice down there, in which you will be glad to hear I am doing well. My daughter is growing quite a tall lass now, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, giving his little head another little shake. ‘Her mother let down two tucks in her frocks only last week. Such is time, you see, sir!’
As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made this reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would keep him company with another. ‘Well, sir,’ he returned, in his slow way, ‘it’s more than I am accustomed to; but I can’t deny myself the pleasure of your conversation. It seems but yesterday that I had the honour of attending you in the measles. You came through them charmingly, sir!’
I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was soon produced. ‘Quite an uncommon dissipation!’ said Mr. Chillip, stirring it, ‘but I can’t resist so extraordinary an occasion. You have no family, sir?’
I shook my head.
‘I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘I heard it from your father-in-law’s sister. Very decided character there, sir?’
‘Why, yes,’ said I, ‘decided enough. Where did you see her, Mr. Chillip?’
‘Are you not aware, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest smile, ‘that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine?’
‘No,’ said I.
‘He is indeed, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Married a young lady of that part, with a very good little property, poor thing.---And this action of the brain now, sir? Don’t you find it fatigue you?’ said Mr. Chillip, looking at me like an admiring Robin.
I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones. ‘I was aware of his being married again. Do you attend the family?’ I asked.
‘Not regularly. I have been called in,’ he replied. ‘Strong phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr. Murdstone and his sister, sir.’
I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was emboldened by that, and the negus together, to give his head several short shakes, and thoughtfully exclaim, ‘Ah, dear me! We remember old times, Mr. Copperfield!’
‘And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are they?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ replied Mr. Chillip, ‘a medical man, being so much in families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his profession. Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to this life and the next.’
‘The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare say,’ I returned: ‘what are they doing as to this?’
Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.
‘She was a charming woman, sir!’ he observed in a plaintive manner.
‘The present Mrs. Murdstone?’
‘A charming woman indeed, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘as amiable, I am sure, as it was possible to be! Mrs. Chillip’s opinion is, that her spirit has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is all but melancholy mad. And the ladies,’ observed Mr. Chillip, timorously, ‘are great observers, sir.’
‘I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable mould, Heaven help her!’ said I. ‘And she has been.’
‘Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘but she is quite a shadow now. Would it be considered forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that since the sister came to help, the brother and sister between them have nearly reduced her to a state of imbecility?’
I told him I could easily believe it.
‘I have no hesitation in saying,’ said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself with another sip of negus, ‘between you and me, sir, that her mother died of it—or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone nearly imbecile. She was a lively young woman, sir, before marriage, and their gloom and austerity destroyed her. They go about with her, now, more like her keepers than her husband and sister-in-law. That was Mrs. Chillip’s remark to me, only last week. And I assure you, sir, the ladies are great observers. Mrs. Chillip herself is a great observer!’
‘Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in such association) religious still?’ I inquired.
‘You anticipate, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging. ‘One of Mrs. Chillip’s most impressive remarks. Mrs. Chillip,’ he proceeded, in the calmest and slowest manner, ‘quite electrified me, by pointing out that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself, and calls it the Divine Nature. You might have knocked me down on the flat of my back, sir, with the feather of a pen, I assure you, when Mrs. Chillip said so. The ladies are great observers, sir?’
‘Intuitively,’ said I, to his extreme delight.
‘I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,’ he rejoined. ‘It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical opinion, I assure you. Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses sometimes, and it is said,—in short, sir, it is said by Mrs. Chillip,—that the darker tyrant he has lately been, the more ferocious is his doctrine.’
‘I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,’ said I.
‘Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,’ pursued the meekest of little men, much encouraged, ‘that what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say, sir,’ he continued, mildly laying his head on one side, ‘that I DON’T find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament?’
‘I never found it either!’ said I.
‘In the meantime, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, ‘they are much disliked; and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. Now, sir, about that brain of yours, if you’ll excuse my returning to it. Don’t you expose it to a good deal of excitement, sir?’
I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip’s own brain, under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from this topic to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he was quite loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces of information, that he was then at the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house to lay his professional evidence before a Commission of Lunacy, touching the state of mind of a patient who had become deranged from excessive drinking. ‘And I assure you, sir,’ he said, ‘I am extremely nervous on such occasions. I could not support being what is called Bullied, sir. It would quite unman me. Do you know it was some time before I recovered the conduct of that alarming lady, on the night of your birth, Mr. Copperfield?’
I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that night, early in the morning; and that she was one of the most tender-hearted and excellent of women, as he would know full well if he knew her better. The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again, appeared to terrify him. He replied with a small pale smile, ‘Is she so, indeed, sir? Really?’ and almost immediately called for a candle, and went to bed, as if he were not quite safe anywhere else. He did not actually stagger under the negus; but I should think his placid little pulse must have made two or three more beats in a minute, than it had done since the great night of my aunt’s disappointment, when she struck at him with her bonnet.
Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt’s old parlour while she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of his holding her in such dread remembrance; and both she and Peggotty had a great deal to say about my poor mother’s second husband, and ‘that murdering woman of a sister’,—on whom I think no pain or penalty would have induced my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any other designation.
CHAPTER 60. AGNES
My aunt and I, when we were left alone, talked far into the night. How the emigrants never wrote home, otherwise than cheerfully and hopefully; how Mr. Micawber had actually remitted divers small sums of money, on account of those ‘pecuniary liabilities’, in reference to which he had been so business-like as between man and man; how Janet, returning into my aunt’s service when she came back to Dover, had finally carried out her renunciation of mankind by entering into wedlock with a thriving tavern-keeper; and how my aunt had finally set her seal on the same great principle, by aiding and abetting the bride, and crowning the marriage-ceremony with her presence; were among our topics—already more or less familiar to me through the letters I had had. Mr. Dick, as usual, was not forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly occupied himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and kept King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her life that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous restraint; and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she could ever fully know what he was.
‘And when, Trot,’ said my aunt, patting the back of my hand, as we sat in our old way before the fire, ‘when are you going over to Canterbury?’
‘I shall get a horse, and ride over tomorrow morning, aunt, unless you will go with me?’
‘No!’ said my aunt, in her short abrupt way. ‘I mean to stay where I am.’
Then, I should ride, I said. I could not have come through Canterbury today without stopping, if I had been coming to anyone but her.
She was pleased, but answered, ‘Tut, Trot; MY old bones would have kept till tomorrow!’ and softly patted my hand again, as I sat looking thoughtfully at the fire.
Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes, without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less regrets. ‘Oh, Trot,’ I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I understood her better now—‘Blind, blind, blind!’
We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful as it had been once.
‘You will find her father a white-haired old man,’ said my aunt, ‘though a better man in all other respects—a reclaimed man. Neither will you find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink very much, before they can be measured off in that way.’
‘Indeed they must,’ said I.
‘You will find her,’ pursued my aunt, ‘as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.’
There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how had I strayed so far away!
‘If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like herself,’ said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with tears, ‘Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful and happy, as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than useful and happy!’
‘Has Agnes any—’ I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.
‘Well? Hey? Any what?’ said my aunt, sharply.
‘Any lover,’ said I.
‘A score,’ cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. ‘She might have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!’
‘No doubt,’ said I. ‘No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of her? Agnes could care for no other.’
My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand. Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:
‘I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.’
‘A prosperous one?’ said I.
‘Trot,’ returned my aunt gravely, ‘I can’t say. I have no right to tell you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it.’
She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble), that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts. I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in all those many days and nights, and all those many conflicts of my heart.
‘If it should be so,’ I began, ‘and I hope it is-’
‘I don’t know that it is,’ said my aunt curtly. ‘You must not be ruled by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very slight, perhaps. I have no right to speak.’
‘If it should be so,’ I repeated, ‘Agnes will tell me at her own good time. A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will not be reluctant to confide in me.’
My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned them upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and by she put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat, looking into the past, without saying another word, until we parted for the night.
I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days. I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was gaining a victory over myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking on her face again.
The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the quiet streets, where every stone was a boy’s book to me. I went on foot to the old house, and went away with a heart too full to enter. I returned; and looking, as I passed, through the low window of the turret-room where first Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit, saw that it was a little parlour now, and that there was no office. Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its cleanliness and order, still just as it had been when I first saw it. I requested the new maid who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman who waited on her from a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave old staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the unchanged drawing-room. The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many a night, stood yet at the same old corner of the table. All the little changes that had crept in when the Heeps were there, were changed again. Everything was as it used to be, in the happy time.
I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons, when I first came there; and how I had used to speculate about the people who appeared at any of the windows, and had followed them with my eyes up and down stairs, while women went clicking along the pavement in pattens, and the dull rain fell in slanting lines, and poured out of the water-spout yonder, and flowed into the road. The feeling with which I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.
The opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start and turn. Her beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards me. She stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her in my arms.
‘Agnes! my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you.’
‘No, no! I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood!’
‘Dear Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again!’
I folded her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both silent. Presently we sat down, side by side; and her angel-face was turned upon me with the welcome I had dreamed of, waking and sleeping, for whole years.
She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good,—I owed her so much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find no utterance for what I felt. I tried to bless her, tried to thank her, tried to tell her (as I had often done in letters) what an influence she had upon me; but all my efforts were in vain. My love and joy were dumb.
With her own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led me back to the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had visited, in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora’s grave. With the unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one jarred within me; I could listen to the sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink from nothing it awoke. How could I, when, blended with it all, was her dear self, the better angel of my life?
‘And you, Agnes,’ I said, by and by. ‘Tell me of yourself. You have hardly ever told me of your own life, in all this lapse of time!’
‘What should I tell?’ she answered, with her radiant smile. ‘Papa is well. You see us here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set at rest, our home restored to us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood, you know all.’
‘All, Agnes?’ said I.
She looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.
‘Is there nothing else, Sister?’ I said.
Her colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again. She smiled; with a quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.
I had sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for, sharply painful to me as it must be to receive that confidence, I was to discipline my heart, and do my duty to her. I saw, however, that she was uneasy, and I let it pass.
‘You have much to do, dear Agnes?’
‘With my school?’ said she, looking up again, in all her bright composure.
‘Yes. It is laborious, is it not?’
‘The labour is so pleasant,’ she returned, ‘that it is scarcely grateful in me to call it by that name.’
‘Nothing good is difficult to you,’ said I.
Her colour came and went once more; and once more, as she bent her head, I saw the same sad smile.
‘You will wait and see papa,’ said Agnes, cheerfully, ‘and pass the day with us? Perhaps you will sleep in your own room? We always call it yours.’
I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt’s at night; but I would pass the day there, joyfully.
‘I must be a prisoner for a little while,’ said Agnes, ‘but here are the old books, Trotwood, and the old music.’
‘Even the old flowers are here,’ said I, looking round; ‘or the old kinds.’
‘I have found a pleasure,’ returned Agnes, smiling, ‘while you have been absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we were children. For we were very happy then, I think.’
‘Heaven knows we were!’ said I.
‘And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,’ said Agnes, with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, ‘has been a welcome companion. Even this,’ showing me the basket-trifle, full of keys, still hanging at her side, ‘seems to jingle a kind of old tune!’
She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.
It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. It was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure. If I once shook the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage, in virtue of which it was given to me, it was lost, and could never be recovered. I set this steadily before myself. The better I loved her, the more it behoved me never to forget it.
I walked through the streets; and, once more seeing my old adversary the butcher—now a constable, with his staff hanging up in the shop—went down to look at the place where I had fought him; and there meditated on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss Larkins, and all the idle loves and likings, and dislikings, of that time. Nothing seemed to have survived that time but Agnes; and she, ever a star above me, was brighter and higher.
When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost every day. I found him as my aunt had described him. We sat down to dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he seemed but the shadow of his handsome picture on the wall.
The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no wine, and I desiring none, we went up-stairs; where Agnes and her little charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the children left us; and we three sat together, talking of the bygone days.
‘My part in them,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, ‘has much matter for regret—for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you well know. But I would not cancel it, if it were in my power.’
I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.
‘I should cancel with it,’ he pursued, ‘such patience and devotion, such fidelity, such a child’s love, as I must not forget, no! even to forget myself.’
‘I understand you, sir,’ I softly said. ‘I hold it—I have always held it—in veneration.’
‘But no one knows, not even you,’ he returned, ‘how much she has done, how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes!’
She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was very, very pale.
‘Well, well!’ he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my aunt had told me. ‘Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has anyone?’
‘Never, sir.’
‘It’s not much—though it was much to suffer. She married me in opposition to her father’s wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was a very hard man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed her. He broke her heart.’
Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
‘She had an affectionate and gentle heart,’ he said; ‘and it was broken. I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always labouring, in secret, under this distress; and being delicate and downcast at the time of his last repulse—for it was not the first, by many—pined away and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old; and the grey hair that you recollect me with, when you first came.’ He kissed Agnes on her cheek.
‘My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself, Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her. If I give you any clue to what I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it, I know. What Agnes is, I need not say. I have always read something of her poor mother’s story, in her character; and so I tell it you tonight, when we three are again together, after such great changes. I have told it all.’
His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more pathetic meaning from it than they had had before. If I had wanted anything by which to mark this night of our re-union, I should have found it in this.
Agnes rose up from her father’s side, before long; and going softly to her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had often listened in that place.
‘Have you any intention of going away again?’ Agnes asked me, as I was standing by.
‘What does my sister say to that?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Then I have no such intention, Agnes.’
‘I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,’ she said, mildly. ‘Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power of doing good; and if I could spare my brother,’ with her eyes upon me, ‘perhaps the time could not.’
‘What I am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best.’
‘I made you, Trotwood?’
‘Yes! Agnes, my dear girl!’ I said, bending over her. ‘I tried to tell you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts since Dora died. You remember, when you came down to me in our little room—pointing upward, Agnes?’
‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she returned, her eyes filled with tears. ‘So loving, so confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget?’
‘As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something better; ever directing me to higher things!’
She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet smile.
‘And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that there is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don’t know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall look up to you, and be guided by you, as I have been through the darkness that is past. Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now, and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource, as you have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always before me, pointing upward!’
She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me. ‘Do you know, what I have heard tonight, Agnes,’ said I, ‘strangely seems to be a part of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first—with which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?’
‘You knew I had no mother,’ she replied with a smile, ‘and felt kindly towards me.’
‘More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story, that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can now understand it was), but was not so in you.’
She softly played on, looking at me still.
‘Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?’
‘No!’
‘Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease to be so, until you ceased to live?---Will you laugh at such a dream?’
‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’
For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me with her own calm smile.
As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.
CHAPTER 61. I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS
For a time—at all events until my book should be completed, which would be the work of several months—I took up my abode in my aunt’s house at Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly pursued my task.
In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the rest will be of interest to no one.
Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no knowledge—chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer—I agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of State without the salary.
Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence, and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything to make it worse.
The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles’s door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her, the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his official closet with melody.
I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book; and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?
‘Oh, DON’T, Tom!’ cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the fire.
‘My dear,’ returned Tom, in a delighted state, ‘why not? What do you say to that writing, Copperfield?’
‘It’s extraordinarily legal and formal,’ said I. ‘I don’t think I ever saw such a stiff hand.’
‘Not like a lady’s hand, is it?’ said Traddles.
‘A lady’s!’ I repeated. ‘Bricks and mortar are more like a lady’s hand!’
Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was Sophy’s writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off—I forget how many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all this, and said that when ‘Tom’ was made a judge he wouldn’t be so ready to proclaim it. Which ‘Tom’ denied; averring that he should always be equally proud of it, under all circumstances.
‘What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!’ said I, when she had gone away, laughing.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, ‘she is, without any exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness, Copperfield!’
‘Indeed, you have reason to commend her!’ I returned. ‘You are a happy fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the happiest people in the world.’
‘I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,’ returned Traddles. ‘I admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day’s arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn, caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up at night with me if it’s ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can’t believe it, Copperfield!’
He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.
‘I positively sometimes can’t believe it,’ said Traddles. ‘Then our pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful! When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and draw those curtains—which she made—where could we be more snug? When it’s fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the jewellers’ shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents, coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices, butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let, sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT do, if I was made a judge? And we parcel it out—such a room for us, such rooms for the girls, and so forth; until we settle to our satisfaction that it would do, or it wouldn’t do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at half-price to the pit of the theatre—the very smell of which is cheap, in my opinion, at the money—and there we thoroughly enjoy the play: which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home, perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook’s-shop, or a little lobster at the fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn’t do this!’
‘You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,’ thought I, ‘that would be pleasant and amiable. And by the way,’ I said aloud, ‘I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?’
‘Really,’ replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, ‘I can’t wholly deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For being in one of the back rows of the King’s Bench the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am afraid there’s a skeleton—in a wig—on the ledge of the desk.’
After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, ‘Old Creakle!’
‘I have a letter from that old—Rascal here,’ said I. For I never was less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, than when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.
‘From Creakle the schoolmaster?’ exclaimed Traddles. ‘No!’
‘Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and fortune,’ said I, looking over my letters, ‘and who discover that they were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex Magistrate.’
I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at all.
‘How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?’ said I.
‘Oh dear me!’ replied Traddles, ‘it would be very difficult to answer that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody, or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the county to nominate him for the commission.’
‘On the commission he is, at any rate,’ said I. ‘And he writes to me here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making sincere and lasting converts and penitents—which, you know, is by solitary confinement. What do you say?’
‘To the system?’ inquired Traddles, looking grave.
‘No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?’
‘I don’t object,’ said Traddles.
‘Then I’ll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose, and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Traddles.
‘Yet, if you’ll read his letter, you’ll find he is the tenderest of men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,’ said I; ‘though I can’t find that his tenderness extends to any other class of created beings.’
Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my observation of similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.
On the appointed day—I think it was the next day, but no matter—Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.
In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought. He received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and had always loved me tenderly. On my introducing Traddles, Mr. Creakle expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior degree, that he had always been Traddles’s guide, philosopher, and friend. Our venerable instructor was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance. His face was as fiery as ever; his eyes were as small, and rather deeper set. The scanty, wet-looking grey hair, by which I remembered him, was almost gone; and the thick veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable to look at.
After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might have supposed that there was nothing in the world to be legitimately taken into account but the supreme comfort of prisoners, at any expense, and nothing on the wide earth to be done outside prison-doors, we began our inspection. It being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner’s dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the ‘system’ required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, ‘the system’ put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.
As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I inquired of Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be the main advantages of this all-governing and universally over-riding system? I found them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners—so that no one man in confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition and repentance.
Now, it struck me, when we began to visit individuals in their cells, and to traverse the passages in which those cells were, and to have the manner of the going to chapel and so forth, explained to us, that there was a strong probability of the prisoners knowing a good deal about each other, and of their carrying on a pretty complete system of intercourse. This, at the time I write, has been proved, I believe, to be the case; but, as it would have been flat blasphemy against the system to have hinted such a doubt then, I looked out for the penitence as diligently as I could.
And here again, I had great misgivings. I found as prevalent a fashion in the form of the penitence, as I had left outside in the forms of the coats and waistcoats in the windows of the tailors’ shops. I found a vast amount of profession, varying very little in character: varying very little (which I thought exceedingly suspicious), even in words. I found a great many foxes, disparaging whole vineyards of inaccessible grapes; but I found very few foxes whom I would have trusted within reach of a bunch. Above all, I found that the most professing men were the greatest objects of interest; and that their conceit, their vanity, their want of excitement, and their love of deception (which many of them possessed to an almost incredible extent, as their histories showed), all prompted to these professions, and were all gratified by them.
However, I heard so repeatedly, in the course of our goings to and fro, of a certain Number Twenty Seven, who was the Favourite, and who really appeared to be a Model Prisoner, that I resolved to suspend my judgement until I should see Twenty Seven. Twenty Eight, I understood, was also a bright particular star; but it was his misfortune to have his glory a little dimmed by the extraordinary lustre of Twenty Seven. I heard so much of Twenty Seven, of his pious admonitions to everybody around him, and of the beautiful letters he constantly wrote to his mother (whom he seemed to consider in a very bad way), that I became quite impatient to see him.
I had to restrain my impatience for some time, on account of Twenty Seven being reserved for a concluding effect. But, at last, we came to the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a little hole in it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest admiration, that he was reading a Hymn Book.
There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty Seven reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up, six or seven heads deep. To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into the passage. This was done; and whom should Traddles and I then behold, to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!
He knew us directly; and said, as he came out—with the old writhe,—
‘How do you do, Mr. Copperfield? How do you do, Mr. Traddles?’
This recognition caused a general admiration in the party. I rather thought that everyone was struck by his not being proud, and taking notice of us.
‘Well, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. ‘How do you find yourself today?’
‘I am very umble, sir!’ replied Uriah Heep.
‘You are always so, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle.
Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: ‘Are you quite comfortable?’
‘Yes, I thank you, sir!’ said Uriah Heep, looking in that direction. ‘Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. I see my follies, now, sir. That’s what makes me comfortable.’
Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner, forcing himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: ‘How do you find the beef?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of this voice, ‘it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it’s my duty to bear. I have committed follies, gentlemen,’ said Uriah, looking round with a meek smile, ‘and I ought to bear the consequences without repining.’ A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven’s celestial state of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately made by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the midst of us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly meritorious museum. That we, the neophytes, might have an excess of light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to let out Twenty Eight.
I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good book!
‘Twenty Eight,’ said a gentleman in spectacles, who had not yet spoken, ‘you complained last week, my good fellow, of the cocoa. How has it been since?’
‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, ‘it has been better made. If I might take the liberty of saying so, sir, I don’t think the milk which is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir, that there is a great adulteration of milk, in London, and that the article in a pure state is difficult to be obtained.’
It appeared to me that the gentleman in spectacles backed his Twenty Eight against Mr. Creakle’s Twenty Seven, for each of them took his own man in hand.
‘What is your state of mind, Twenty Eight?’ said the questioner in spectacles.
‘I thank you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer; ‘I see my follies now, sir. I am a good deal troubled when I think of the sins of my former companions, sir; but I trust they may find forgiveness.’
‘You are quite happy yourself?’ said the questioner, nodding encouragement.
‘I am much obliged to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer. ‘Perfectly so.’
‘Is there anything at all on your mind now?’ said the questioner. ‘If so, mention it, Twenty Eight.’
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, without looking up, ‘if my eyes have not deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with me in my former life. It may be profitable to that gentleman to know, sir, that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having lived a thoughtless life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist. I hope that gentleman will take warning, sir, and will not be offended at my freedom. It is for his good. I am conscious of my own past follies. I hope he may repent of all the wickedness and sin to which he has been a party.’
I observed that several gentlemen were shading their eyes, each with one hand, as if they had just come into church.
‘This does you credit, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner. ‘I should have expected it of you. Is there anything else?’
‘Sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer, slightly lifting up his eyebrows, but not his eyes, ‘there was a young woman who fell into dissolute courses, that I endeavoured to save, sir, but could not rescue. I beg that gentleman, if he has it in his power, to inform that young woman from me that I forgive her her bad conduct towards myself, and that I call her to repentance—if he will be so good.’
‘I have no doubt, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner, ‘that the gentleman you refer to feels very strongly—as we all must—what you have so properly said. We will not detain you.’
‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer. ‘Gentlemen, I wish you a good day, and hoping you and your families will also see your wickedness, and amend!’
With this, Number Twenty Eight retired, after a glance between him and Uriah; as if they were not altogether unknown to each other, through some medium of communication; and a murmur went round the group, as his door shut upon him, that he was a most respectable man, and a beautiful case.
‘Now, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, entering on a clear stage with his man, ‘is there anything that anyone can do for you? If so, mention it.’
‘I would umbly ask, sir,’ returned Uriah, with a jerk of his malevolent head, ‘for leave to write again to mother.’
‘It shall certainly be granted,’ said Mr. Creakle.
‘Thank you, sir! I am anxious about mother. I am afraid she ain’t safe.’
Somebody incautiously asked, what from? But there was a scandalized whisper of ‘Hush!’
‘Immortally safe, sir,’ returned Uriah, writhing in the direction of the voice. ‘I should wish mother to be got into my state. I never should have been got into my present state if I hadn’t come here. I wish mother had come here. It would be better for everybody, if they got took up, and was brought here.’
This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction—greater satisfaction, I think, than anything that had passed yet.
‘Before I come here,’ said Uriah, stealing a look at us, as if he would have blighted the outer world to which we belonged, if he could, ‘I was given to follies; but now I am sensible of my follies. There’s a deal of sin outside. There’s a deal of sin in mother. There’s nothing but sin everywhere—except here.’
‘You are quite changed?’ said Mr. Creakle.
‘Oh dear, yes, sir!’ cried this hopeful penitent.
‘You wouldn’t relapse, if you were going out?’ asked somebody else.
‘Oh de-ar no, sir!’
‘Well!’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘this is very gratifying. You have addressed Mr. Copperfield, Twenty Seven. Do you wish to say anything further to him?’
‘You knew me, a long time before I came here and was changed, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Uriah, looking at me; and a more villainous look I never saw, even on his visage. ‘You knew me when, in spite of my follies, I was umble among them that was proud, and meek among them that was violent—you was violent to me yourself, Mr. Copperfield. Once, you struck me a blow in the face, you know.’
General commiseration. Several indignant glances directed at me.
‘But I forgive you, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Uriah, making his forgiving nature the subject of a most impious and awful parallel, which I shall not record. ‘I forgive everybody. It would ill become me to bear malice. I freely forgive you, and I hope you’ll curb your passions in future. I hope Mr. W. will repent, and Miss W., and all of that sinful lot. You’ve been visited with affliction, and I hope it may do you good; but you’d better have come here. Mr. W. had better have come here, and Miss W. too. The best wish I could give you, Mr. Copperfield, and give all of you gentlemen, is, that you could be took up and brought here. When I think of my past follies, and my present state, I am sure it would be best for you. I pity all who ain’t brought here!’
He sneaked back into his cell, amidst a little chorus of approbation; and both Traddles and I experienced a great relief when he was locked in.
It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain to ask what these two men had done, to be there at all. That appeared to be the last thing about which they had anything to say. I addressed myself to one of the two warders, who, I suspected from certain latent indications in their faces, knew pretty well what all this stir was worth.
‘Do you know,’ said I, as we walked along the passage, ‘what felony was Number Twenty Seven’s last “folly”?’
The answer was that it was a Bank case.
‘A fraud on the Bank of England?’ I asked. ‘Yes, sir. Fraud, forgery, and conspiracy. He and some others. He set the others on. It was a deep plot for a large sum. Sentence, transportation for life. Twenty Seven was the knowingest bird of the lot, and had very nearly kept himself safe; but not quite. The Bank was just able to put salt upon his tail—and only just.’
‘Do you know Twenty Eight’s offence?’
‘Twenty Eight,’ returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage, to guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful reference to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; ‘Twenty Eight (also transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master of a matter of two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables, the night before they were going abroad. I particularly recollect his case, from his being took by a dwarf.’
‘A what?’
‘A little woman. I have forgot her name?’
‘Not Mowcher?’
‘That’s it! He had eluded pursuit, and was going to America in a flaxen wig, and whiskers, and such a complete disguise as never you see in all your born days; when the little woman, being in Southampton, met him walking along the street—picked him out with her sharp eye in a moment—ran betwixt his legs to upset him—and held on to him like grim Death.’
‘Excellent Miss Mowcher!’ cried I.
‘You’d have said so, if you had seen her, standing on a chair in the witness-box at the trial, as I did,’ said my friend. ‘He cut her face right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner, when she took him; but she never loosed her hold till he was locked up. She held so tight to him, in fact, that the officers were obliged to take ‘em both together. She gave her evidence in the gamest way, and was highly complimented by the Bench, and cheered right home to her lodgings. She said in Court that she’d have took him single-handed (on account of what she knew concerning him), if he had been Samson. And it’s my belief she would!’
It was mine too, and I highly respected Miss Mowcher for it.
We had now seen all there was to see. It would have been in vain to represent to such a man as the Worshipful Mr. Creakle, that Twenty Seven and Twenty Eight were perfectly consistent and unchanged; that exactly what they were then, they had always been; that the hypocritical knaves were just the subjects to make that sort of profession in such a place; that they knew its market-value at least as well as we did, in the immediate service it would do them when they were expatriated; in a word, that it was a rotten, hollow, painfully suggestive piece of business altogether. We left them to their system and themselves, and went home wondering.
‘Perhaps it’s a good thing, Traddles,’ said I, ‘to have an unsound Hobby ridden hard; for it’s the sooner ridden to death.’
‘I hope so,’ replied Traddles.
CHAPTER 62. A LIGHT SHINES ON MY WAY
The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above two months. I had seen Agnes frequently. However loud the general voice might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the emotions and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest word of praise as I heard nothing else.
At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and passed the evening. I usually rode back at night; for the old unhappy sense was always hovering about me now—most sorrowfully when I left her—and I was glad to be up and out, rather than wandering over the past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams. I wore away the longest part of many wild sad nights, in those rides; reviving, as I went, the thoughts that had occupied me in my long absence.
Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those thoughts, I should better express the truth. They spoke to me from afar off. I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable place. When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening face; moved her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I lived; I thought what a fate mine might have been—but only thought so, as I had thought after I was married to Dora, what I could have wished my wife to be.
My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted, I wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my matured assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and won what I had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur, and must bear; comprised what I felt and what I had learned. But I loved her: and now it even became some consolation to me, vaguely to conceive a distant day when I might blamelessly avow it; when all this should be over; when I could say ‘Agnes, so it was when I came home; and now I am old, and I never have loved since!’
She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always had been to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.
Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion, since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or an avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding that we thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into words. When, according to our old custom, we sat before the fire at night, we often fell into this train; as naturally, and as consciously to each other, as if we had unreservedly said so. But we preserved an unbroken silence. I believed that she had read, or partly read, my thoughts that night; and that she fully comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.
This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my mind—whether she could have that perception of the true state of my breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me pain—began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice was nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every poor action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to set this right beyond all doubt;—if such a barrier were between us, to break it down at once with a determined hand.
It was—what lasting reason have I to remember it!—a cold, harsh, winter day. There had been snow, some hours before; and it lay, not deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond my window, the wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been thinking of it, sweeping over those mountain wastes of snow in Switzerland, then inaccessible to any human foot; and had been speculating which was the lonelier, those solitary regions, or a deserted ocean.
‘Riding today, Trot?’ said my aunt, putting her head in at the door.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I am going over to Canterbury. It’s a good day for a ride.’
‘I hope your horse may think so too,’ said my aunt; ‘but at present he is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door there, as if he thought his stable preferable.’
My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground, but had not at all relented towards the donkeys.
‘He will be fresh enough, presently!’ said I.
‘The ride will do his master good, at all events,’ observed my aunt, glancing at the papers on my table. ‘Ah, child, you pass a good many hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them.’
‘It’s work enough to read them, sometimes,’ I returned. ‘As to the writing, it has its own charms, aunt.’
‘Ah! I see!’ said my aunt. ‘Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and much more, I suppose? Well: go along with you!’
‘Do you know anything more,’ said I, standing composedly before her—she had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair—‘of that attachment of Agnes?’
She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:
‘I think I do, Trot.’
‘Are you confirmed in your impression?’ I inquired.
‘I think I am, Trot.’
She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger determination to show her a perfectly cheerful face.
‘And what is more, Trot—’ said my aunt.
‘Yes!’
‘I think Agnes is going to be married.’
‘God bless her!’ said I, cheerfully.
‘God bless her!’ said my aunt, ‘and her husband too!’
I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs, mounted, and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do what I had resolved to do.
How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice, brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face; the hard clatter of the horse’s hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground; the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with the waggon of old hay, stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically; the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky, as if they were drawn on a huge slate!
I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes now, and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book on seeing me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her work-basket and sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.
I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was doing, and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made since my last visit. Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly predicted that I should soon become too famous to be talked to, on such subjects.
‘So I make the most of the present time, you see,’ said Agnes, ‘and talk to you while I may.’
As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she raised her mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.
‘You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!’
‘Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.’
She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.
‘My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?’
‘No!’ she answered, with a look of astonishment.
‘Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?’
‘No!’ she answered, as before.
‘Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards you?’
‘I remember it,’ she said, gently, ‘very well.’
‘You have a secret,’ said I. ‘Let me share it, Agnes.’
She cast down her eyes, and trembled.
‘I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard—but from other lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange—that there is someone upon whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me, as you say you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in this matter, of all others!’
With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the heart.
And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart. Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with hope than fear or sorrow.
‘Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?’
‘Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak to you by and by—another time. I will write to you. Don’t speak to me now. Don’t! don’t!’
I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very world that I must search through in a moment. ‘Agnes, I cannot bear to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl, dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!’
‘Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!’ was all I could distinguish.
Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think of?
‘I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven’s sake, Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy; dismiss it, for I don’t deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain. You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what I feel for you.’
She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:
‘I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood—which, indeed, I do not doubt—to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened for me. If I have any secret, it is—no new one; and is—not what you suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and must remain mine.’
‘Agnes! Stay! A moment!’
She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her waist. ‘In the course of years!’ ‘It is not a new one!’ New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.
‘Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour—whom I so devotedly love! When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different from Sister!—’
Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.
‘Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!’
Still weeping, but not sadly—joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
‘When I loved Dora—fondly, Agnes, as you know—’
‘Yes!’ she cried, earnestly. ‘I am glad to know it!’
‘When I loved her—even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!’
Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
‘I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!’
And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!
‘I am so blest, Trotwood—my heart is so overcharged—but there is one thing I must say.’
‘Dearest, what?’
She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my face.
‘Do you know, yet, what it is?’
‘I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.’
‘I have loved you all my life!’
O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we thanked our GOD for having guided us to this tranquillity.
We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.
It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by the fire.
‘Goodness me!’ said my aunt, peering through the dusk, ‘who’s this you’re bringing home?’
‘Agnes,’ said I.
As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said ‘Agnes’; but seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair, and rubbed her nose with them.
She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.
‘By the by, aunt,’ said I, after dinner; ‘I have been speaking to Agnes about what you told me.’
‘Then, Trot,’ said my aunt, turning scarlet, ‘you did wrong, and broke your promise.’
‘You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won’t be, when you learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt.
As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first and only time in all my knowledge of her.
The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honoured, but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were all happy together.
I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes was going to be married; and that I now knew better than anyone how true it was.
We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a rock!
‘Dearest husband!’ said Agnes. ‘Now that I may call you by that name, I have one thing more to tell you.’
‘Let me hear it, love.’
‘It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.’
‘She did.’
‘She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?’
I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to my side.
‘She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last charge.’
‘And it was—’
‘That only I would occupy this vacant place.’
And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her, though we were so happy.
CHAPTER 63. A VISITOR
What I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but there is yet an incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with delight, and without which one thread in the web I have spun would have a ravelled end.
I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had been married ten happy years. Agnes and I were sitting by the fire, in our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our children were playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.
He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered No; he had come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. He was an old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.
As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like the beginning of a favourite story Agnes used to tell them, introductory to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who hated everybody, it produced some commotion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother’s lap to be out of harm’s way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left her doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap of golden curls from between the window-curtains, to see what happened next.
‘Let him come in here!’ said I.
There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway as he entered, a hale, grey-haired old man. Little Agnes, attracted by his looks, had run to bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face, when my wife, starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and agitated voice, that it was Mr. Peggotty!
It WAS Mr. Peggotty. An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty, strong old age. When our first emotion was over, and he sat before the fire with the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on his face, he looked, to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as handsome, an old man, as ever I had seen.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ said he. And the old name in the old tone fell so naturally on my ear! ‘Mas’r Davy, ‘tis a joyful hour as I see you, once more, ‘long with your own trew wife!’
‘A joyful hour indeed, old friend!’ cried I.
‘And these heer pretty ones,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘To look at these heer flowers! Why, Mas’r Davy, you was but the heighth of the littlest of these, when I first see you! When Em’ly warn’t no bigger, and our poor lad were BUT a lad!’
‘Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then,’ said I. ‘But let these dear rogues go to bed; and as no house in England but this must hold you, tell me where to send for your luggage (is the old black bag among it, that went so far, I wonder!), and then, over a glass of Yarmouth grog, we will have the tidings of ten years!’
‘Are you alone?’ asked Agnes.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, kissing her hand, ‘quite alone.’
We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough; and as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have fancied he was still pursuing his long journey in search of his darling niece.
‘It’s a mort of water,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘fur to come across, and on’y stay a matter of fower weeks. But water (‘specially when ‘tis salt) comes nat’ral to me; and friends is dear, and I am heer. —Which is verse,’ said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out, ‘though I hadn’t such intentions.’
‘Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?’ asked Agnes.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he returned. ‘I giv the promise to Em’ly, afore I come away. You see, I doen’t grow younger as the years comes round, and if I hadn’t sailed as ‘twas, most like I shouldn’t never have done ‘t. And it’s allus been on my mind, as I must come and see Mas’r Davy and your own sweet blooming self, in your wedded happiness, afore I got to be too old.’
He looked at us, as if he could never feast his eyes on us sufficiently. Agnes laughingly put back some scattered locks of his grey hair, that he might see us better.
‘And now tell us,’ said I, ‘everything relating to your fortunes.’
‘Our fortuns, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, ‘is soon told. We haven’t fared nohows, but fared to thrive. We’ve allus thrived. We’ve worked as we ought to ‘t, and maybe we lived a leetle hard at first or so, but we have allus thrived. What with sheep-farming, and what with stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with t’other, we are as well to do, as well could be. Theer’s been kiender a blessing fell upon us,’ said Mr. Peggotty, reverentially inclining his head, ‘and we’ve done nowt but prosper. That is, in the long run. If not yesterday, why then today. If not today, why then tomorrow.’
‘And Emily?’ said Agnes and I, both together.
‘Em’ly,’ said he, ‘arter you left her, ma’am—and I never heerd her saying of her prayers at night, t’other side the canvas screen, when we was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name—and arter she and me lost sight of Mas’r Davy, that theer shining sundown—was that low, at first, that, if she had know’d then what Mas’r Davy kep from us so kind and thowtful, ‘tis my opinion she’d have drooped away. But theer was some poor folks aboard as had illness among ‘em, and she took care of them; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of them; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped her.’
‘When did she first hear of it?’ I asked.
‘I kep it from her arter I heerd on ‘t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘going on nigh a year. We was living then in a solitary place, but among the beautifullest trees, and with the roses a-covering our Beein to the roof. Theer come along one day, when I was out a-working on the land, a traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I doen’t rightly mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv him to eat and drink, and made him welcome. We all do that, all the colony over. He’d got an old newspaper with him, and some other account in print of the storm. That’s how she know’d it. When I came home at night, I found she know’d it.’
He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so well remembered overspread his face.
‘Did it change her much?’ we asked.
‘Aye, for a good long time,’ he said, shaking his head; ‘if not to this present hour. But I think the solitoode done her good. And she had a deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and minded of it, and come through. I wonder,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if you could see my Em’ly now, Mas’r Davy, whether you’d know her!’
‘Is she so altered?’ I inquired.
‘I doen’t know. I see her ev’ry day, and doen’t know; But, odd-times, I have thowt so. A slight figure,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire, ‘kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way—timid a’most. That’s Em’ly!’
We silently observed him as he sat, still looking at the fire.
‘Some thinks,’ he said, ‘as her affection was ill-bestowed; some, as her marriage was broken off by death. No one knows how ‘tis. She might have married well, a mort of times, “but, uncle,” she says to me, “that’s gone for ever.” Cheerful along with me; retired when others is by; fond of going any distance fur to teach a child, or fur to tend a sick person, or fur to do some kindness tow’rds a young girl’s wedding (and she’s done a many, but has never seen one); fondly loving of her uncle; patient; liked by young and old; sowt out by all that has any trouble. That’s Em’ly!’
He drew his hand across his face, and with a half-suppressed sigh looked up from the fire.
‘Is Martha with you yet?’ I asked.
‘Martha,’ he replied, ‘got married, Mas’r Davy, in the second year. A young man, a farm-labourer, as come by us on his way to market with his mas’r’s drays—a journey of over five hundred mile, theer and back—made offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very scarce theer), and then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush. She spoke to me fur to tell him her trew story. I did. They was married, and they live fower hundred mile away from any voices but their own and the singing birds.’
‘Mrs. Gummidge?’ I suggested.
It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr. Peggotty suddenly burst into a roar of laughter, and rubbed his hands up and down his legs, as he had been accustomed to do when he enjoyed himself in the long-shipwrecked boat.
‘Would you believe it!’ he said. ‘Why, someun even made offer fur to marry her! If a ship’s cook that was turning settler, Mas’r Davy, didn’t make offers fur to marry Missis Gummidge, I’m Gormed—and I can’t say no fairer than that!’
I never saw Agnes laugh so. This sudden ecstasy on the part of Mr. Peggotty was so delightful to her, that she could not leave off laughing; and the more she laughed the more she made me laugh, and the greater Mr. Peggotty’s ecstasy became, and the more he rubbed his legs.
‘And what did Mrs. Gummidge say?’ I asked, when I was grave enough.
‘If you’ll believe me,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘Missis Gummidge, ‘stead of saying “thank you, I’m much obleeged to you, I ain’t a-going fur to change my condition at my time of life,” up’d with a bucket as was standing by, and laid it over that theer ship’s cook’s head ‘till he sung out fur help, and I went in and reskied of him.’
Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I both kept him company.
‘But I must say this, for the good creetur,’ he resumed, wiping his face, when we were quite exhausted; ‘she has been all she said she’d be to us, and more. She’s the willingest, the trewest, the honestest-helping woman, Mas’r Davy, as ever draw’d the breath of life. I have never know’d her to be lone and lorn, for a single minute, not even when the colony was all afore us, and we was new to it. And thinking of the old ‘un is a thing she never done, I do assure you, since she left England!’
‘Now, last, not least, Mr. Micawber,’ said I. ‘He has paid off every obligation he incurred here—even to Traddles’s bill, you remember my dear Agnes—and therefore we may take it for granted that he is doing well. But what is the latest news of him?’
Mr. Peggotty, with a smile, put his hand in his breast-pocket, and produced a flat-folded, paper parcel, from which he took out, with much care, a little odd-looking newspaper.
‘You are to understan’, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, ‘as we have left the Bush now, being so well to do; and have gone right away round to Port Middlebay Harbour, wheer theer’s what we call a town.’
‘Mr. Micawber was in the Bush near you?’ said I.
‘Bless you, yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and turned to with a will. I never wish to meet a better gen’l’man for turning to with a will. I’ve seen that theer bald head of his a perspiring in the sun, Mas’r Davy, till I a’most thowt it would have melted away. And now he’s a Magistrate.’
‘A Magistrate, eh?’ said I.
Mr. Peggotty pointed to a certain paragraph in the newspaper, where I read aloud as follows, from the Port Middlebay Times:
‘The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and townsman, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, Port Middlebay District Magistrate, came off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel, which was crowded to suffocation. It is estimated that not fewer than forty-seven persons must have been accommodated with dinner at one time, exclusive of the company in the passage and on the stairs. The beauty, fashion, and exclusiveness of Port Middlebay, flocked to do honour to one so deservedly esteemed, so highly talented, and so widely popular. Doctor Mell (of Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay) presided, and on his right sat the distinguished guest. After the removal of the cloth, and the singing of Non Nobis (beautifully executed, and in which we were at no loss to distinguish the bell-like notes of that gifted amateur, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR), the usual loyal and patriotic toasts were severally given and rapturously received. Doctor Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, then proposed “Our distinguished Guest, the ornament of our town. May he never leave us but to better himself, and may his success among us be such as to render his bettering himself impossible!” The cheering with which the toast was received defies description. Again and again it rose and fell, like the waves of ocean. At length all was hushed, and WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, presented himself to return thanks. Far be it from us, in the present comparatively imperfect state of the resources of our establishment, to endeavour to follow our distinguished townsman through the smoothly-flowing periods of his polished and highly-ornate address! Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present. The remaining toasts were DOCTOR MELL; Mrs. MICAWBER (who gracefully bowed her acknowledgements from the side-door, where a galaxy of beauty was elevated on chairs, at once to witness and adorn the gratifying scene), Mrs. RIDGER BEGS (late Miss Micawber); Mrs. MELL; WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR (who convulsed the assembly by humorously remarking that he found himself unable to return thanks in a speech, but would do so, with their permission, in a song); Mrs. MICAWBER’S FAMILY (well known, it is needless to remark, in the mother-country), &c. &c. &c. At the conclusion of the proceedings the tables were cleared as if by art-magic for dancing. Among the votaries of TERPSICHORE, who disported themselves until Sol gave warning for departure, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior, and the lovely and accomplished Miss Helena, fourth daughter of Doctor Mell, were particularly remarkable.’
I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty pointing to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own name, and I read thus:
‘TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE,
‘THE EMINENT AUTHOR.
‘My Dear Sir,
‘Years have elapsed, since I had an opportunity of ocularly perusing the lineaments, now familiar to the imaginations of a considerable portion of the civilized world.
‘But, my dear Sir, though estranged (by the force of circumstances over which I have had no control) from the personal society of the friend and companion of my youth, I have not been unmindful of his soaring flight. Nor have I been debarred,
Though seas between us braid ha’ roared,
(BURNS) from participating in the intellectual feasts he has spread before us.
‘I cannot, therefore, allow of the departure from this place of an individual whom we mutually respect and esteem, without, my dear Sir, taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own behalf, and, I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the Inhabitants of Port Middlebay, for the gratification of which you are the ministering agent.
‘Go on, my dear Sir! You are not unknown here, you are not unappreciated. Though “remote”, we are neither “unfriended”, “melancholy”, nor (I may add) “slow”. Go on, my dear Sir, in your Eagle course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!
‘Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the globe, will ever be found, while it has light and life,
‘The ‘Eye ‘Appertaining to
‘WILKINS MICAWBER, ‘Magistrate.’
I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper, that Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that journal. There was another letter from him in the same paper, touching a bridge; there was an advertisement of a collection of similar letters by him, to be shortly republished, in a neat volume, ‘with considerable additions’; and, unless I am very much mistaken, the Leading Article was his also.
We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr. Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his stay,—which, I think, was something less than a month,—and his sister and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more, on earth.
But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.
‘For Em’ly,’ he said, as he put it in his breast. ‘I promised, Mas’r Davy.’
CHAPTER 64. A LAST RETROSPECT
And now my written story ends. I look back, once more—for the last time—before I close these leaves.
I see myself, with Agnes at my side, journeying along the road of life. I see our children and our friends around us; and I hear the roar of many voices, not indifferent to me as I travel on.
What faces are the most distinct to me in the fleeting crowd? Lo, these; all turning to me as I ask my thoughts the question!
Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of four-score years and more, but upright yet, and a steady walker of six miles at a stretch in winter weather.
Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse, likewise in spectacles, accustomed to do needle-work at night very close to the lamp, but never sitting down to it without a bit of wax candle, a yard-measure in a little house, and a work-box with a picture of St. Paul’s upon the lid.
The cheeks and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish days, when I wondered why the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples, are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they glitter still); but her rough forefinger, which I once associated with a pocket nutmeg-grater, is just the same, and when I see my least child catching at it as it totters from my aunt to her, I think of our little parlour at home, when I could scarcely walk. My aunt’s old disappointment is set right, now. She is godmother to a real living Betsey Trotwood; and Dora (the next in order) says she spoils her.
There is something bulky in Peggotty’s pocket. It is nothing smaller than the Crocodile Book, which is in rather a dilapidated condition by this time, with divers of the leaves torn and stitched across, but which Peggotty exhibits to the children as a precious relic. I find it very curious to see my own infant face, looking up at me from the Crocodile stories; and to be reminded by it of my old acquaintance Brooks of Sheffield.
Among my boys, this summer holiday time, I see an old man making giant kites, and gazing at them in the air, with a delight for which there are no words. He greets me rapturously, and whispers, with many nods and winks, ‘Trotwood, you will be glad to hear that I shall finish the Memorial when I have nothing else to do, and that your aunt’s the most extraordinary woman in the world, sir!’
Who is this bent lady, supporting herself by a stick, and showing me a countenance in which there are some traces of old pride and beauty, feebly contending with a querulous, imbecile, fretful wandering of the mind? She is in a garden; and near her stands a sharp, dark, withered woman, with a white scar on her lip. Let me hear what they say.
‘Rosa, I have forgotten this gentleman’s name.’
Rosa bends over her, and calls to her, ‘Mr. Copperfield.’
‘I am glad to see you, sir. I am sorry to observe you are in mourning. I hope Time will be good to you.’
Her impatient attendant scolds her, tells her I am not in mourning, bids her look again, tries to rouse her.
‘You have seen my son, sir,’ says the elder lady. ‘Are you reconciled?’
Looking fixedly at me, she puts her hand to her forehead, and moans. Suddenly, she cries, in a terrible voice, ‘Rosa, come to me. He is dead!’ Rosa kneeling at her feet, by turns caresses her, and quarrels with her; now fiercely telling her, ‘I loved him better than you ever did!’—now soothing her to sleep on her breast, like a sick child. Thus I leave them; thus I always find them; thus they wear their time away, from year to year.
What ship comes sailing home from India, and what English lady is this, married to a growling old Scotch Croesus with great flaps of ears? Can this be Julia Mills?
Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to carry cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a copper-coloured woman in linen, with a bright handkerchief round her head, to serve her Tiffin in her dressing-room. But Julia keeps no diary in these days; never sings Affection’s Dirge; eternally quarrels with the old Scotch Croesus, who is a sort of yellow bear with a tanned hide. Julia is steeped in money to the throat, and talks and thinks of nothing else. I liked her better in the Desert of Sahara.
Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara! For, though Julia has a stately house, and mighty company, and sumptuous dinners every day, I see no green growth near her; nothing that can ever come to fruit or flower. What Julia calls ‘society’, I see; among it Mr. Jack Maldon, from his Patent Place, sneering at the hand that gave it him, and speaking to me of the Doctor as ‘so charmingly antique’. But when society is the name for such hollow gentlemen and ladies, Julia, and when its breeding is professed indifference to everything that can advance or can retard mankind, I think we must have lost ourselves in that same Desert of Sahara, and had better find the way out.
And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his Dictionary (somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home and wife. Also the Old Soldier, on a considerably reduced footing, and by no means so influential as in days of yore!
Working at his chambers in the Temple, with a busy aspect, and his hair (where he is not bald) made more rebellious than ever by the constant friction of his lawyer’s-wig, I come, in a later time, upon my dear old Traddles. His table is covered with thick piles of papers; and I say, as I look around me:
‘If Sophy were your clerk, now, Traddles, she would have enough to do!’
‘You may say that, my dear Copperfield! But those were capital days, too, in Holborn Court! Were they not?’
‘When she told you you would be a judge? But it was not the town talk then!’
‘At all events,’ says Traddles, ‘if I ever am one—’ ‘Why, you know you will be.’
‘Well, my dear Copperfield, WHEN I am one, I shall tell the story, as I said I would.’
We walk away, arm in arm. I am going to have a family dinner with Traddles. It is Sophy’s birthday; and, on our road, Traddles discourses to me of the good fortune he has enjoyed.
‘I really have been able, my dear Copperfield, to do all that I had most at heart. There’s the Reverend Horace promoted to that living at four hundred and fifty pounds a year; there are our two boys receiving the very best education, and distinguishing themselves as steady scholars and good fellows; there are three of the girls married very comfortably; there are three more living with us; there are three more keeping house for the Reverend Horace since Mrs. Crewler’s decease; and all of them happy.’
‘Except—’ I suggest.
‘Except the Beauty,’ says Traddles. ‘Yes. It was very unfortunate that she should marry such a vagabond. But there was a certain dash and glare about him that caught her. However, now we have got her safe at our house, and got rid of him, we must cheer her up again.’
Traddles’s house is one of the very houses—or it easily may have been—which he and Sophy used to parcel out, in their evening walks. It is a large house; but Traddles keeps his papers in his dressing-room and his boots with his papers; and he and Sophy squeeze themselves into upper rooms, reserving the best bedrooms for the Beauty and the girls. There is no room to spare in the house; for more of ‘the girls’ are here, and always are here, by some accident or other, than I know how to count. Here, when we go in, is a crowd of them, running down to the door, and handing Traddles about to be kissed, until he is out of breath. Here, established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow with a little girl; here, at dinner on Sophy’s birthday, are the three married girls with their three husbands, and one of the husband’s brothers, and another husband’s cousin, and another husband’s sister, who appears to me to be engaged to the cousin. Traddles, exactly the same simple, unaffected fellow as he ever was, sits at the foot of the large table like a Patriarch; and Sophy beams upon him, from the head, across a cheerful space that is certainly not glittering with Britannia metal.
And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.
I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.
My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.
O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!
CHAPTER 1. I AM BORN
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o’clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark, that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith and preferred cork jackets, I don’t know; all I know is, that there was but one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney connected with the bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and the balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning on any higher bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn at a dead loss—for as to sherry, my poor dear mother’s own sherry was in the market then—and ten years afterwards, the caul was put up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to fifty members at half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was present myself, and I remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused, at a part of myself being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly, produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and twopence halfpenny short—as it took an immense time and a great waste of arithmetic, to endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is a fact which will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two. I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others, who had the presumption to go ‘meandering’ about the world. It was in vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included, resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of her objection, ‘Let us have no meandering.’
Not to meander myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.
I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or ‘there by’, as they say in Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father’s eyes had closed upon the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I have of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in the churchyard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlour was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house were—almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes—bolted and locked against it.
An aunt of my father’s, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom I shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal magnate of our family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married to a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the sense of the homely adage, ‘handsome is, that handsome does’—for he was strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs’ window. These evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think it must have been a Baboo—or a Begum. Anyhow, from India tidings of his death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt, nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible retirement.
My father had once been a favourite of hers, I believe; but she was mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was ‘a wax doll’. She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not yet twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double my mother’s age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came into the world.
CAPITOLO 1. NASCO
Che io diventerò l’eroe della mia stessa vita, o che tale ruolo sarà ricoperto da qualcun altro, queste pagine dovranno dimostrarlo. Per iniziare la mia vita dall’inizio della mia vita, annoto che nacqui (come mi è stato riferito e credo) di venerdì, alle dodici di notte. Fu osservato che l’orologio cominciò a suonare e io a piangere, contemporaneamente.
Tenuto conto del giorno e dell’ora della mia nascita, fu dichiarato dalla levatrice, e da alcune sagge donne del vicinato che si erano interessate vivamente a me diversi mesi prima che ci fosse la possibilità di conoscerci personalmente, in primo luogo, che ero destinato a essere sfortunato nella vita; e in secondo luogo, che avevo il privilegio di vedere fantasmi e spiriti; entrambi questi doni si attaccavano inevitabilmente, come credevano, a tutti i bambini sfortunati di entrambi i sessi, nati verso le prime ore di una notte di venerdì.
Non ho nulla da dire qui, riguardo al primo punto, perché nulla può dimostrare meglio della mia storia se quella previsione sia stata verificata o confutata dal risultato. Per quanto riguarda il secondo aspetto della questione, osservo solo che, a meno che non abbia sprecato quella parte della mia eredità mentre ero ancora un bambino, non l’ho ancora ricevuta. Ma non mi lamento affatto di essere stato tenuto fuori da questa proprietà; e se qualcun altro ne stesse attualmente godendo, è più che benvenuto a tenerla.
Sono nato con una membrana, che fu messa in vendita sui giornali al prezzo basso di quindici ghinee. Se i marinai erano a corto di soldi in quel periodo, o se erano a corto di fede e preferivano i giubbotti di sughero, non lo so; tutto ciò che so è che ci fu un’unica offerta, e fu da un avvocato legato al commercio di cambiali, che propose due sterline in contanti e il saldo in sherry, ma rifiutò di essere garantito contro l’annegamento a un prezzo più alto. Di conseguenza l’annuncio fu ritirato con una perdita totale — perché per quanto riguarda lo sherry, lo sherry della mia povera cara madre era già sul mercato — e dieci anni dopo, la membrana fu messa all’asta nella nostra zona del paese, a cinquanta membri a mezza corona a testa, con il vincitore che doveva spendere cinque scellini. Ero presente io stesso, e ricordo di essermi sentito piuttosto a disagio e confuso, vedendo una parte di me stessa venduta in quel modo. La membrana fu vinta, se ben ricordo, da una vecchia signora con un cestino, che, molto a malincuore, ne estrasse i cinque scellini pattuiti, tutti in mezzi penny, e due penny e mezzo in meno — come ci volle un immenso tempo e un grande spreco di aritmetica per cercare, senza successo, di dimostrarglielo. È un fatto che sarà lungamente ricordato come notevole laggiù, che non annegò mai, ma morì trionfalmente nel suo letto, a novantadue anni. Ho saputo che, fino all’ultimo, il suo vanto più grande era di non essere mai stata sull’acqua in vita sua, tranne che su un ponte; e che, durante il suo tè (a cui era estremamente affezionata), fino all’ultimo esprimeva la sua indignazione per l’empia presunzione di marinai e altri che si permettevano di andare in giro per il mondo. Fu inutile farle notare che alcuni comodità, forse incluso il tè, derivavano da questa pratica obiettata. Lei rispondeva sempre, con maggiore enfasi e con una conoscenza istintiva della forza della sua obiezione, ‘Niente giri del mondo.’
Per non divagare troppo, al momento, tornerò al mio nascere.
Nacqui a Blunderstone, nel Suffolk, o “nei dintorni”, come dicono in Scozia. Ero un bambino nato dopo la morte del padre. Gli occhi di mio padre si erano chiusi alla luce di questo mondo sei mesi prima che i miei si aprissero. C’è qualcosa di strano per me, anche ora, nel pensiero che non mi abbia mai visto; e qualcosa di ancora più strano nel vago ricordo che ho delle mie prime associazioni infantili con la sua bianca lapide nel cimitero, e della indefinibile compassione che provavo per essa, là sola nel buio della notte, mentre il nostro piccolo salotto era caldo e luminoso di fuoco e candela, e le porte della nostra casa erano – quasi crudelmente, mi sembrava a volte – chiuse a chiave contro di essa.
Una zia di mio padre, e quindi una mia prozia, di cui avrò modo di raccontare più avanti, era la principale magnate della nostra famiglia. Miss Trotwood, o Miss Betsey, come la chiamava sempre mia povera madre, quando riusciva a superare sufficientemente il suo timore di questa formidabile persona per nominarla (il che accadeva raramente), era stata sposata con un marito più giovane di lei, che era molto bello, tranne nel senso del vecchio adagio “bello è colui che fa belle cose” — perché si sospettava fortemente che avesse picchiato Miss Betsey, e persino che una volta, su una questione controversa di forniture, avesse fatto alcuni arrangiamenti affrettati ma decisi per buttarla fuori da una finestra al secondo piano. Queste prove di incompatibilità di temperamento indussero Miss Betsey a pagarlo e a ottenere una separazione di comune accordo. Lui andò in India con il suo capitale, e lì, secondo una leggenda selvaggia nella nostra famiglia, una volta fu visto cavalcare un elefante, in compagnia di un Babuino; ma penso che dovesse essere un Babu — o una Begum. Comunque, dall’India giunsero notizie della sua morte a casa, entro dieci anni. Come colpirono mia zia, nessuno lo sapeva; perché subito dopo la separazione, riprese il suo nome da nubile, comprò una casetta in un borghetto sulla costa, molto lontano, si stabilì lì come donna single con una serva, e si diceva vivesse in seguito appartata, in un ritiro inflessibile.
Mio padre era stato, credo, un suo favorito; ma fu mortalmente offesa dal suo matrimonio, perché mia madre era una «bambola di cera». Non aveva mai visto mia madre, ma sapeva che non aveva ancora vent’anni. Mio padre e Miss Betsey non si incontrarono mai più. Aveva il doppio dell’età di mia madre quando si sposò, e una costituzione delicata. Morì un anno dopo, e, come ho detto, sei mesi prima che io venissi al mondo.
This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what I may be excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can make no claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters stood; or to have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what follows.
My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer upstairs, to a world not at all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her, when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she saw a strange lady coming up the garden.
My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was Miss Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to nobody else.
When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity. My father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became perfectly flat and white in a moment.
She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.
My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and inquiringly, began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen’s Head in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to come and open the door. My mother went.
‘Mrs. David Copperfield, I think,’ said Miss Betsey; the emphasis referring, perhaps, to my mother’s mourning weeds, and her condition.
‘Yes,’ said my mother, faintly.
‘Miss Trotwood,’ said the visitor. ‘You have heard of her, I dare say?’
My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a disagreeable consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had been an overpowering pleasure.
‘Now you see her,’ said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her head, and begged her to walk in.
They went into the parlour my mother had come from, the fire in the best room on the other side of the passage not being lighted—not having been lighted, indeed, since my father’s funeral; and when they were both seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying to restrain herself, began to cry. ‘Oh tut, tut, tut!’ said Miss Betsey, in a hurry. ‘Don’t do that! Come, come!’
My mother couldn’t help it notwithstanding, so she cried until she had had her cry out.
‘Take off your cap, child,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and let me see you.’
My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this odd request, if she had any disposition to do so. Therefore she did as she was told, and did it with such nervous hands that her hair (which was luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.
‘Why, bless my heart!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey. ‘You are a very Baby!’
My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for her years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor thing, and said, sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a childish widow, and would be but a childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and that with no ungentle hand; but, looking at her, in her timid hope, she found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands folded on one knee, and her feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.
‘In the name of Heaven,’ said Miss Betsey, suddenly, ‘why Rookery?’
‘Do you mean the house, ma’am?’ asked my mother.
‘Why Rookery?’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Cookery would have been more to the purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of you.’
‘The name was Mr. Copperfield’s choice,’ returned my mother. ‘When he bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks about it.’
The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall old elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms bent to one another, like giants who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of such repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind, some weatherbeaten ragged old rooks’-nests, burdening their higher branches, swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.
‘Where are the birds?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘The—?’ My mother had been thinking of something else.
‘The rooks—what has become of them?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘There have not been any since we have lived here,’ said my mother. ‘We thought—Mr. Copperfield thought—it was quite a large rookery; but the nests were very old ones, and the birds have deserted them a long while.’
‘David Copperfield all over!’ cried Miss Betsey. ‘David Copperfield from head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there’s not a rook near it, and takes the birds on trust, because he sees the nests!’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned my mother, ‘is dead, and if you dare to speak unkindly of him to me—’
My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily have settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far better training for such an encounter than she was that evening. But it passed with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again very meekly, and fainted.
Tale era lo stato delle cose nel pomeriggio di quel venerdì, come mi sarà consentito chiamarlo, così ricco di eventi e così importante. Non posso quindi affermare di aver saputo, in quel momento, come stavano le cose, né di avere alcun ricordo, basato sulla testimonianza dei miei sensi, di quanto segue.
Mia madre era seduta accanto al fuoco, ma in cattiva salute e molto abbattuta, lo guardava tra le lacrime e si disperava per se stessa e per il piccolo orfano, che era già accolto da alcune dozzine di spilli profetici in un cassetto al piano di sopra, in un mondo che non si era affatto emozionato per il suo arrivo; mia madre, dico, era seduta accanto al fuoco, quella luminosa e ventosa pomeriggio di marzo, molto timorosa e triste, e molto dubbiosa di uscire viva dalla prova che l’attendeva, quando, alzando gli occhi mentre si asciugava le lacrime, verso la finestra di fronte, vide una strana signora che saliva lungo il giardino.
Mia madre ebbe un presentimento sicuro al secondo sguardo che si trattasse di Miss Betsey. Il sole al tramonto brillava sulla strana signora, oltre il cancello del giardino, e lei si avvicinava alla porta con una rigidità di figura e una compostezza di volto che non potevano appartenere a nessun altro.
Quando raggiunse la casa, diede un’altra prova della sua identità. Mio padre aveva spesso accennato che raramente si comportava come una qualsiasi cristiana ordinaria; e ora, invece di suonare il campanello, venne e guardò dentro proprio quella stessa finestra, premendo la punta del naso contro il vetro a tal punto che la mia povera cara madre era solita dire che diventava perfettamente piatta e bianca in un attimo.
Lei fece talmente paura a mia madre che sono sempre stato convinto di dover ringraziare Miss Betsey per essere nato di venerdì.
Mia madre aveva lasciato la sua sedia nella sua agitazione, ed era andata dietro di essa nell’angolo. Miss Betsey, guardandosi intorno per la stanza, lentamente e con aria interrogativa, iniziò dall’altro lato, e portò i suoi occhi avanti, come una testa di saraceno in un orologio olandese, finché non raggiunsero mia madre. Poi fece una smorfia e un gesto a mia madre, come uno a cui era abituato ad essere obbedito, per venire ad aprire la porta. Mia madre andò.
«Signora David Copperfield, credo», disse Miss Betsey; l’enfasi si riferiva, forse, ai vestiti da lutto di mia madre e alla sua condizione.
«Sì», disse mia madre, con voce debole.
“Miss Trotwood”, disse il visitatore. “Ne avrete sentito parlare, immagino.”
Mia madre rispose che aveva avuto quel piacere. E aveva una spiacevole consapevolezza di non sembrare implicare che fosse stato un piacere travolgente.
«Ora la vedete», disse Miss Betsey. Mia madre chinò il capo e la pregò di entrare.
Entrarono nel salotto da cui mia madre era appena uscita, dato che il fuoco nella sala migliore dall’altra parte del corridoio non era acceso, anzi, non era stato acceso da quando avevano seppellito mio padre; e quando furono entrambe sedute, e Miss Betsey non disse nulla, mia madre, dopo aver cercato invano di trattenersi, scoppiò a piangere. «Oh, tut, tut, tut!» disse Miss Betsey, in fretta. «Non fare così! Dai, dai!»
Mia madre non poteva farci nulla, nonostante ciò, così pianse finché non ebbe sfogato il suo pianto.
«Togli il cappello, bambino,» disse Miss Betsey, «e fammi vedere.»
Mia madre aveva troppa paura di lei per rifiutare di accondiscendere a questa strana richiesta, se avesse avuto la minima intenzione di farlo. Perciò fece come le era stato detto, e lo fece con mani così tremanti che i suoi capelli (che erano rigogliosi e belli) le ricaddero tutti intorno al viso.
“Ma, benedetto il mio cuore!” esclamò Miss Betsey. “Sei proprio un Bambino!”
Mia madre era, senza dubbio, insolitamente giovane nell’aspetto anche per la sua età; abbassava la testa, come se fosse colpa sua, poverina, e diceva, singhiozzando, che in effetti temeva di essere una vedova infantile, e che sarebbe stata una madre infantile se avesse vissuto. In una breve pausa che seguì, ebbe la fantasia di sentire Miss Betsey toccarle i capelli, e non con una mano poco gentile; ma, guardandola, nella sua timida speranza, la trovò seduta con l’orlo del vestito rimboccato, le mani piegate su un ginocchio, e i piedi sul parafuoco, che aggrottava la fronte al fuoco.
‘In nome del cielo’, disse Miss Betsey, improvvisamente, ‘perché Rookery?’
«Intende la casa, signora?» chiese mia madre.
«Perché Rookery?» disse Miss Betsey. «Cookery sarebbe stato più adatto, se uno di voi due avesse avuto qualche idea pratica della vita.»
«Il nome era la scelta del signor Copperfield», rispose mia madre. «Quando comprò la casa, gli piaceva pensare che ci fossero dei corvi intorno.»
Il vento serale ha fatto un tale baccano poco fa, tra alcuni vecchi e alti olmi in fondo al giardino, che né mia madre né Miss Betsey hanno potuto trattenersi dal dare un’occhiata in quella direzione. Mentre gli olmi si inchinavano l’uno verso l’altro, come giganti che si sussurravano segreti, e dopo alcuni secondi di tale quiete cadevano in una violenta agitazione, agitando le loro braccia selvagge, come se le loro recenti confidenze fossero davvero troppo malvage per la loro pace interiore, alcuni vecchi nidi di corvi, logori e malconci, che gravavano sui loro rami più alti, oscillavano come relitti su un mare tempestoso.
«Dov’è finito il uccello?», chiese Miss Betsey.
«Il—?» Mia madre stava pensando ad altro.
«I corvi — che ne è stato di loro?» chiese Miss Betsey.
«Non ce ne sono state da quando viviamo qui», disse mia madre. «Pensavamo - il signor Copperfield pensava - che fosse un bel grande nido di corvi; ma i nidi erano molto vecchi e gli uccelli li hanno abbandonati da molto tempo».
«David Copperfield daccapo!» esclamò Miss Betsey. «David Copperfield dalla testa ai piedi! Chiama casa un cascinale quando non c’è un corvo in giro, e si fida dei uccelli perché vede i nidi!»
«Il signor Copperfield», rispose mia madre, «è morto, e se osi parlare male di lui con me —»
La mia povera cara madre, immagino, ebbe un’idea momentanea di compiere un atto di violenza contro mia zia, che avrebbe potuto facilmente sopraffarla con una mano sola, anche se mia madre fosse stata in condizioni ben migliori per un simile scontro di quanto non fosse quella sera. Ma l’idea svanì con il gesto di alzarsi dalla sedia; e lei si risistemò con molta mansuetudine, e svenne.
When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her, whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window. The twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as they saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid of the fire.
‘Well?’ said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she had only been taking a casual look at the prospect; ‘and when do you expect—’
‘I am all in a tremble,’ faltered my mother. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter. I shall die, I am sure!’
‘No, no, no,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Have some tea.’
‘Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?’ cried my mother in a helpless manner.
‘Of course it will,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘It’s nothing but fancy. What do you call your girl?’
‘I don’t know that it will be a girl, yet, ma’am,’ said my mother innocently.
‘Bless the Baby!’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer upstairs, but applying it to my mother instead of me, ‘I don’t mean that. I mean your servant-girl.’
‘Peggotty,’ said my mother.
‘Peggotty!’ repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. ‘Do you mean to say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church, and got herself named Peggotty?’ ‘It’s her surname,’ said my mother, faintly. ‘Mr. Copperfield called her by it, because her Christian name was the same as mine.’
‘Here! Peggotty!’ cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlour door. ‘Tea. Your mistress is a little unwell. Don’t dawdle.’
Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she had been a recognized authority in the house ever since it had been a house, and having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming along the passage with a candle at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut the door again, and sat down as before: with her feet on the fender, the skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one knee.
‘You were speaking about its being a girl,’ said Miss Betsey. ‘I have no doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl. Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl—’
‘Perhaps boy,’ my mother took the liberty of putting in.
‘I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl,’ returned Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t contradict. From the moment of this girl’s birth, child, I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg you’ll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes in life with THIS Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with HER affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and well guarded from reposing any foolish confidences where they are not deserved. I must make that MY care.’
There was a twitch of Miss Betsey’s head, after each of these sentences, as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected, at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too much scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or to know what to say.
‘And was David good to you, child?’ asked Miss Betsey, when she had been silent for a little while, and these motions of her head had gradually ceased. ‘Were you comfortable together?’
‘We were very happy,’ said my mother. ‘Mr. Copperfield was only too good to me.’
‘What, he spoilt you, I suppose?’ returned Miss Betsey.
‘For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough world again, yes, I fear he did indeed,’ sobbed my mother.
‘Well! Don’t cry!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘You were not equally matched, child—if any two people can be equally matched—and so I asked the question. You were an orphan, weren’t you?’ ‘Yes.’
‘And a governess?’
‘I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal of notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last proposed to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married,’ said my mother simply.
‘Ha! Poor Baby!’ mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon the fire. ‘Do you know anything?’
‘I beg your pardon, ma’am,’ faltered my mother.
‘About keeping house, for instance,’ said Miss Betsey.
‘Not much, I fear,’ returned my mother. ‘Not so much as I could wish. But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me—’
(‘Much he knew about it himself!’) said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis. —‘And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and he very patient to teach me, if the great misfortune of his death’—my mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. —‘I kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it with Mr. Copperfield every night,’ cried my mother in another burst of distress, and breaking down again.
‘Well, well!’ said Miss Betsey. ‘Don’t cry any more.’ —‘And I am sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except when Mr. Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like each other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,’ resumed my mother in another burst, and breaking down again.
‘You’ll make yourself ill,’ said Miss Betsey, ‘and you know that will not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You mustn’t do it!’
This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her increasing indisposition had a larger one. There was an interval of silence, only broken by Miss Betsey’s occasionally ejaculating ‘Ha!’ as she sat with her feet upon the fender.
‘David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know,’ said she, by and by. ‘What did he do for you?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said my mother, answering with some difficulty, ‘was so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to me.’
Quando tornò in sé, o quando Miss Betsey l’ebbe ristabilita, qualunque cosa fosse successa, trovò quest’ultima in piedi alla finestra. Il crepuscolo stava ormai scendendo nell’oscurità; e anche se si vedevano a malapena, non avrebbero potuto farlo senza l’aiuto del fuoco.
«Bene?», disse Miss Betsey, tornando alla sua sedia, come se avesse solo dato un’occhiata casuale al panorama; «e quando ti aspetti—»
«Sono tutta tremante», balbettò mia madre, «non so che cosa mi sia preso. Sono sicura che morirò!»
‘No, no, no’, disse Miss Betsey. ‘Prendi un po’ di tè’.
«Oh, caro me, caro me, pensi che mi farà bene?» esclamò mia madre in modo impotente.
«Certo che lo sarà», disse Miss Betsey. «Non è altro che fantasia. Come chiami la tua ragazza?»
«Non so se sarà una bambina, ancora, signora», disse mia madre con innocenza.
«Dio benedica il bambino!» esclamò Miss Betsey, citando inconsciamente il secondo motto del cuscino da cucito nel cassetto di sopra, ma applicandolo a mia madre invece che a me, «Non intendevo questo. Intendevo la vostra domestica.»
«Peggotty», disse mia madre.
«Peggotty!» ripeté Miss Betsey, con qualche indignazione. «Vuoi dire, bambina, che un essere umano sia entrato in una chiesa cristiana e si sia fatta chiamare Peggotty?» «È il suo cognome», disse mia madre, con voce flebile. «Il signor Copperfield la chiamava così perché il suo nome di battesimo era lo stesso del mio.»
«Ehi! Peggotty!» gridò Miss Betsey, aprendo la porta del salotto. «Il tè. La tua padrona non sta molto bene. Non perdere tempo.»
Aver emesso questo mandato con la stessa potenzialità che avrebbe avuto se fosse stata un’autorità riconosciuta nella casa da quando era una casa, e aver guardato fuori per affrontare la stupita Peggotty che arrivava lungo il corridoio con una candela al suono di una voce strana, Miss Betsey richiuse la porta e si sedette come prima: con i piedi sul parafuoco, l’orlo del suo abito rimboccato e le mani incrociate su un ginocchio.
«Stavi parlando del fatto che sarebbe una bambina», disse Miss Betsey. «Non ho dubbio che sarà una bambina. Ho il presentimento che debba essere una bambina. Ora, bambino, dal momento della nascita di questa bambina, »
«Forse, ragazzo», si permise di intervenire mia madre.
«Le dico che ho il presentimento che debba essere una bambina», replicò Miss Betsey. «Non contraddica. Dal momento della nascita di questa bambina, bambino, intendo essere sua amica. Intendo essere la sua madrina, e le chiedo di chiamarla Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. Non ci devono essere errori nella vita di QUESTA Betsey Trotwood. Non si deve giocare con i suoi sentimenti, povera cara. Deve essere ben educata e ben protetta dal riporre fiducia in persone che non la meritano. Devo farne la MIA cura.»
Dopo ciascuna di queste frasi, la testa della signorina Betsey ebbe un sussulto, come se i suoi vecchi torti si agitassero dentro di lei, e lei reprimesse ogni riferimento più esplicito con un forte autocontrollo. Così almeno sospettava mia madre, mentre la osservava alla luce fioca del fuoco: troppo spaventata dalla signorina Betsey, troppo inquieta in se stessa, e troppo sottomessa e disorientata in generale, per osservare qualcosa con molta chiarezza, o per sapere cosa dire.
«E David è stato buono con te, bambino?» chiese Miss Betsey, dopo essere rimasta in silenzio per un po’ e dopo che quei movimenti della testa erano gradualmente cessati. «Eravate felici insieme?»
“Eravamo molto felici”, disse mia madre. “Il signor Copperfield era troppo buono con me.”
«Che cosa, lui ti ha viziato, immagino» rispose Miss Betsey.
«Per essere di nuovo completamente sola e dipendente da me stessa in questo mondo duro, sì, temo che lo abbia fatto davvero», singhiozzò mia madre.
«Ebbene! Non piangere!» disse Miss Betsey. «Non eravate una coppia equilibrata, bambina—se due persone possono mai esserlo—e così ho fatto la domanda. Eravate un’orfana, vero?» «Sì.»
‘E una governante?’
«Ero la governante in una famiglia dove venne a far visita il signor Copperfield. Il signor Copperfield fu molto gentile con me, mi prestò molta attenzione, mi fece molti complimenti, e alla fine mi chiese di sposarlo. E io accettai. E così ci sposammo», disse semplicemente mia madre.
«Ah! Povero bambino!» rifletté Miss Betsey, con la sua espressione corrucciata ancora rivolta al fuoco. «Sai qualcosa?»
«Le chiedo scusa, signora», balbettò mia madre.
«Per quanto riguarda la gestione della casa, per esempio», disse Miss Betsey.
«Non molto, temo», rispose mia madre, «non tanto quanto vorrei. Ma il signor Copperfield mi stava insegnando, »
(«Era molto al corrente della situazione!») disse Miss Betsey tra parentesi. «E spero di essere migliorata, dato che ero molto desiderosa di imparare, e lui molto paziente nell’insegnarmi, se non fosse stato per la grande disgrazia della sua morte» — mia madre si fermò di nuovo qui, e non poté continuare.
«Bene, bene!» disse Miss Betsey. —«Tenevo il mio libro delle spese in regola e lo bilanciavo con il signor Copperfield ogni sera», gridò mia madre in un altro scoppio di disperazione, e crollò di nuovo.
«Bene, bene!» disse Miss Betsey. «Non piangere più.» — «E sono sicura che non abbiamo mai avuto una parola di disaccordo al riguardo, tranne quando il signor Copperfield obiettava che i miei tre e cinque erano troppo simili tra loro, o che mettevo code arricciate ai miei sette e nove,» riprese mia madre in un altro scoppio, e crollando di nuovo.
«Vi ammalerete», disse Miss Betsey, «e sapete che non sarà bene né per voi né per la mia compagna di giochi. Su! Non dovete farlo!»
Questo argomento contribuì in parte a calmare mia madre, anche se la sua crescente indisposizione ebbe un ruolo maggiore. Ci fu un intervallo di silenzio, rotto solo dalle occasionali esclamazioni di “Ah!” di Miss Betsey, mentre sedeva con i piedi sul parafuoco.
«David aveva acquistato un’annuità per se stesso con i suoi soldi, lo so», disse dopo un po’. «Cosa ha fatto per te?»
«Il signor Copperfield», rispose mia madre con qualche difficoltà, «ebbe la cortesia e la bontà di assicurarmi la reversibilità di una parte di essa.»
‘How much?’ asked Miss Betsey.
‘A hundred and five pounds a year,’ said my mother.
‘He might have done worse,’ said my aunt.
The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse that Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a glance how ill she was,—as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there had been light enough,—conveyed her upstairs to her own room with all speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my mother, as a special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.
Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers’ cotton. Peggotty knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her, she was quite a mystery in the parlour; and the fact of her having a magazine of jewellers’ cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article in her ears in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her presence.
The doctor having been upstairs and come down again, and having satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for some hours, laid himself out to be polite and social. He was the meekest of his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody else. It is nothing to say that he hadn’t a word to throw at a dog. He couldn’t have thrown a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him one gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly as he walked; but he wouldn’t have been rude to him, and he couldn’t have been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.
Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt with his head on one side, and making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the jewellers’ cotton, as he softly touched his left ear:
‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
‘What!’ replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like a cork.
Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness—as he told my mother afterwards—that it was a mercy he didn’t lose his presence of mind. But he repeated sweetly:
‘Some local irritation, ma’am?’
‘Nonsense!’ replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one blow.
Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her feebly, as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called upstairs again. After some quarter of an hour’s absence, he returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to him.
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are—we are progressing slowly, ma’am.’
‘Ba—a—ah!’ said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous interjection. And corked herself as before.
Really—really—as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost shocked; speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was almost shocked. But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for nearly two hours, as she sat looking at the fire, until he was again called out. After another absence, he again returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.
‘Well, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘we are—we are progressing slowly, ma’am.’
‘Ya—a—ah!’ said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that Mr. Chillip absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to break his spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to go and sit upon the stairs, in the dark and a strong draught, until he was again sent for.
Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very dragon at his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a credible witness, reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlour-door an hour after this, he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could make his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest. That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled his hair, made light of his linen, stopped his ears as if she confounded them with her own, and otherwise tousled and maltreated him. This was in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half past twelve o’clock, soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as I was.
The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if at any time. He sidled into the parlour as soon as he was at liberty, and said to my aunt in his meekest manner:
‘Well, ma’am, I am happy to congratulate you.’
‘What upon?’ said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt’s manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to mollify her.
‘Mercy on the man, what’s he doing!’ cried my aunt, impatiently. ‘Can’t he speak?’
‘Be calm, my dear ma’am,’ said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.
‘There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma’am. Be calm.’
It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn’t shake him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own head at him, but in a way that made him quail.
‘Well, ma’am,’ resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, ‘I am happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma’am, and well over.’
During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.
‘How is she?’ said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied on one of them.
‘Well, ma’am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope,’ returned Mr. Chillip. ‘Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be, under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any objection to your seeing her presently, ma’am. It may do her good.’
‘And SHE. How is SHE?’ said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my aunt like an amiable bird.
‘The baby,’ said my aunt. ‘How is she?’
‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Chillip, ‘I apprehended you had known. It’s a boy.’
My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip’s head with it, put it on bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.
No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he, without whom I had never been.
«Quanto?» chiese Miss Betsey.
«Centocinque sterline l’anno», disse mia madre.
«Avrebbe potuto fare peggio», disse mia zia.
La parola era appropriata al momento. Mia madre era così peggiorata che Peggotty, entrando con il vassoio del tè e le candele, e vedendo in un attimo quanto fosse malata,—come avrebbe potuto fare Miss Betsey prima se ci fosse stata abbastanza luce,—la trasportò di sopra nella sua stanza con tutta celerità; e immediatamente spedì Ham Peggotty, suo nipote, che era stato negli ultimi giorni nascosto in casa, senza che mia madre lo sapesse, come un messaggero speciale in caso di emergenza, a chiamare l’infermiera e il dottore.
Quelle potenze alleate furono notevolmente sorprese, quando arrivarono a pochi minuti l’una dall’altra, di trovare una signora sconosciuta di aspetto portentoso, seduta davanti al fuoco, con il cappello legato sul braccio sinistro, tappandosi le orecchie con cotone da gioielliere. Peggotty non sapeva nulla di lei, e mia madre non diceva nulla di lei, era un vero mistero nel salotto; e il fatto che avesse una scorta di cotone da gioielliere in tasca, e che se lo infilasse nelle orecchie in quel modo, non toglieva nulla alla solennità della sua presenza.
Il dottore era salito di sopra e poi era ridisceso, e, suppongo, essendosi convinto che c’era la probabilità che lui e questa sconosciuta dovessero rimanere seduti lì, faccia a faccia, per alcune ore, si era dato da fare per essere gentile e socievole. Era il più mite della sua specie, il più tranquillo dei piccoli uomini. Si infilava dentro e fuori da una stanza, per occupare meno spazio. Camminava silenziosamente come il fantasma in Amleto, e più lentamente. Teneva la testa inclinata da un lato, in parte in modesta svalutazione di se stesso, in parte in modesta propiziatoria di tutti gli altri. Non c’è bisogno di dire che non aveva una parola da rivolgere a un cane. Non avrebbe potuto rivolgere una parola a un cane rabbioso. Avrebbe potuto offrirgliene una dolcemente, o mezza, o un frammento; perché parlava lentamente quanto camminava; ma non sarebbe stato scortese con lui, e non avrebbe potuto essere veloce con lui, per nessuna considerazione terrena.
Il signor Chillip, guardando con dolcezza mia zia, con la testa piegata di lato e facendole un piccolo inchino, disse, alludendo al cotone dei gioiellieri, mentre si toccava delicatamente l’orecchio sinistro:
‘Un po’ di irritazione locale, signora?’
«Che cosa!» rispose la mia zia, tirando fuori il cotone da un orecchio come un tappo.
Il signor Chillip era così spaventato dalla sua bruschezza — come raccontò a mia madre in seguito — che fu una fortuna che non perdesse la calma. Ma ripeté dolcemente:
‘Un po’ di irritazione locale, signora?’
«Nonsense!» rispose mia zia, e si tappò di nuovo il collo, in un solo colpo.
Mr. Chillip non poté fare altro che sedersi e guardarla debolmente, mentre lei sedeva e guardava il fuoco, finché non fu chiamato di nuovo al piano di sopra. Dopo un quarto d’ora di assenza, tornò.
«Bene?», disse mia zia, togliendo il cotone dall’orecchio più vicino a lui.
«Beh, signora», rispose il signor Chillip, «stiamo, stiamo procedendo lentamente, signora».
«Ba—a—ah!», disse la zia, con un perfetto tremolio nella sua interiezione sprezzante. E si richiuse come prima.
Davvero — davvero — come il signor Chillip disse a mia madre, era quasi scioccato; parlando da un punto di vista professionale esclusivamente, era quasi scioccato. Ma rimase seduto a guardarla, nonostante tutto, per quasi due ore, mentre lei sedeva a guardare il fuoco, finché non fu chiamato di nuovo fuori. Dopo un’altra assenza, tornò di nuovo.
«Bene?», disse mia zia, tirando fuori di nuovo il cotone da quel lato.
«Beh, signora», rispose il signor Chillip, «stiamo, stiamo procedendo lentamente, signora».
«Ya—a—ah!», disse mia zia, con un ringhio tale che il signor Chillip non poté proprio sopportarlo. Era davvero fatto apposta per spezzargli il cuore, disse poi. Preferì andare a sedersi sulle scale, al buio e in una corrente d’aria, finché non fu di nuovo chiamato.
Ham Peggotty, che frequentava la scuola nazionale e era un vero e proprio drago nel suo catechismo, e che quindi può essere considerato un testimone credibile, riferì il giorno dopo che, capitando di dare un’occhiata alla porta del salotto un’ora dopo, fu immediatamente individuato da Miss Betsey, che allora camminava avanti e indietro in uno stato di agitazione, e fu catturato prima che potesse scappare. Che ora c’erano suoni occasionali di passi e voci sopra di lui, che dedusse il cotone non escludesse, dal fatto di essere stato evidentemente afferrato dalla signora come una vittima su cui sfogare la sua agitazione superabundante quando i suoni erano più forti. Che, marciandolo costantemente su e giù per il colletto (come se avesse preso troppo laudano), lei, in quei momenti, lo scuoteva, gli arruffava i capelli, si prendeva gioco della sua biancheria, gli tappava le orecchie come se le confondesse con le proprie, e altrimenti lo scompigliava e lo maltrattava. Questo fu in parte confermato da sua zia, che lo vide alle dodici e mezza, poco dopo il suo rilascio, e affermò che allora era rosso come lo ero io.
Il mite signor Chillip non poteva assolutamente serbare rancore in un momento del genere, se mai in un momento. Si insinuò nel salotto non appena fu libero e disse a mia zia nel suo modo più mite:
«Bene, signora, sono felice di congratularmi con voi.»
«Che cosa?», disse mia zia, bruscamente.
Il signor Chillip si turbò di nuovo, a causa della severità estrema del comportamento di mia zia; così le fece un piccolo inchino e le rivolse un piccolo sorriso, per ammorbidirla.
«Pietà per l’uomo, che cosa sta facendo!» esclamò la mia zia, impaziente. «Non può parlare?»
«Sii calma, mia cara signora», disse il signor Chillip con i toni più dolci.
‘Non c’è più motivo di preoccuparsi, signora. Resti tranquilla.’
Da allora è stato considerato quasi un miracolo che mia zia non lo abbia scosso e non gli abbia fatto sputare fuori quello che aveva da dire. Lei si limitò a scuotere la propria testa davanti a lui, ma in un modo che lo fece rabbrividire.
«Beh, signora», riprese il signor Chillip, non appena ebbe coraggio, «sono felice di congratularmi con lei. Ora tutto è finito, signora, e bene finito».
Durante i cinque minuti circa che il signor Chillip dedicò alla pronuncia di questo discorso, mia zia lo osservò attentamente.
«Come sta?» disse mia zia, incrociando le braccia con il cappello ancora legato a una di esse.
«Beh, signora, presto starà molto bene, spero,» rispose il signor Chillip. «Tanto bene quanto possiamo aspettarci che una giovane madre stia, in queste circostanze domestiche malinconiche. Non ci può essere alcuna obiezione a che la veda tra poco, signora. Potrebbe farle bene.»
«E LEI. Come sta LEI?» disse mia zia, bruscamente.
Il signor Chillip inclinò un po’ di più la testa da un lato e guardò mia zia come un uccellino amichevole.
«La bambina», disse mia zia. «Come sta?»
«Signora», rispose il signor Chillip, «credevo lo sapesse. È un maschio.»
Mia zia non disse mai una parola, ma prese il suo cappello per le stringhe, come se fosse una fionda, glielo scagliò contro la testa del signor Chillip, se lo mise storto, uscì e non tornò mai più. Sparì come una fata scontenta; o come uno di quegli esseri soprannaturali che, secondo la credenza popolare, avevo il potere di vedere; e non tornò mai più.
No. Io giacevo nel mio cesto, e mia madre giaceva nel suo letto; ma Betsey Trotwood Copperfield era per sempre nella terra dei sogni e delle ombre, la tremenda regione da cui ero appena tornato; e la luce sulla finestra della nostra stanza brillava sulla meta terrena di tutti i viaggiatori come me, e sulla collina sopra la cenere e la polvere che una volta era lui, senza il quale io non sarei mai esistito.
CHAPTER 2. I OBSERVE
The first objects that assume a distinct presence before me, as I look far back, into the blank of my infancy, are my mother with her pretty hair and youthful shape, and Peggotty with no shape at all, and eyes so dark that they seemed to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, and cheeks and arms so hard and red that I wondered the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples.
I believe I can remember these two at a little distance apart, dwarfed to my sight by stooping down or kneeling on the floor, and I going unsteadily from the one to the other. I have an impression on my mind which I cannot distinguish from actual remembrance, of the touch of Peggotty’s forefinger as she used to hold it out to me, and of its being roughened by needlework, like a pocket nutmeg-grater.
This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.
I might have a misgiving that I am ‘meandering’ in stopping to say this, but that it brings me to remark that I build these conclusions, in part upon my own experience of myself; and if it should appear from anything I may set down in this narrative that I was a child of close observation, or that as a man I have a strong memory of my childhood, I undoubtedly lay claim to both of these characteristics.
Looking back, as I was saying, into the blank of my infancy, the first objects I can remember as standing out by themselves from a confusion of things, are my mother and Peggotty. What else do I remember? Let me see.
There comes out of the cloud, our house—not new to me, but quite familiar, in its earliest remembrance. On the ground-floor is Peggotty’s kitchen, opening into a back yard; with a pigeon-house on a pole, in the centre, without any pigeons in it; a great dog-kennel in a corner, without any dog; and a quantity of fowls that look terribly tall to me, walking about, in a menacing and ferocious manner. There is one cock who gets upon a post to crow, and seems to take particular notice of me as I look at him through the kitchen window, who makes me shiver, he is so fierce. Of the geese outside the side-gate who come waddling after me with their long necks stretched out when I go that way, I dream at night: as a man environed by wild beasts might dream of lions.
Here is a long passage—what an enormous perspective I make of it!—leading from Peggotty’s kitchen to the front door. A dark store-room opens out of it, and that is a place to be run past at night; for I don’t know what may be among those tubs and jars and old tea-chests, when there is nobody in there with a dimly-burning light, letting a mouldy air come out of the door, in which there is the smell of soap, pickles, pepper, candles, and coffee, all at one whiff. Then there are the two parlours: the parlour in which we sit of an evening, my mother and I and Peggotty—for Peggotty is quite our companion, when her work is done and we are alone—and the best parlour where we sit on a Sunday; grandly, but not so comfortably. There is something of a doleful air about that room to me, for Peggotty has told me—I don’t know when, but apparently ages ago—about my father’s funeral, and the company having their black cloaks put on. One Sunday night my mother reads to Peggotty and me in there, how Lazarus was raised up from the dead. And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged to take me out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard out of the bedroom window, with the dead all lying in their graves at rest, below the solemn moon.
There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere, as the grass of that churchyard; nothing half so shady as its trees; nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up, early in the morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother’s room, to look out at it; and I see the red light shining on the sun-dial, and think within myself, ‘Is the sun-dial glad, I wonder, that it can tell the time again?’
Here is our pew in the church. What a high-backed pew! With a window near it, out of which our house can be seen, and IS seen many times during the morning’s service, by Peggotty, who likes to make herself as sure as she can that it’s not being robbed, or is not in flames. But though Peggotty’s eye wanders, she is much offended if mine does, and frowns to me, as I stand upon the seat, that I am to look at the clergyman. But I can’t always look at him—I know him without that white thing on, and I am afraid of his wondering why I stare so, and perhaps stopping the service to inquire—and what am I to do? It’s a dreadful thing to gape, but I must do something. I look at my mother, but she pretends not to see me. I look at a boy in the aisle, and he makes faces at me. I look at the sunlight coming in at the open door through the porch, and there I see a stray sheep—I don’t mean a sinner, but mutton—half making up his mind to come into the church. I feel that if I looked at him any longer, I might be tempted to say something out loud; and what would become of me then! I look up at the monumental tablets on the wall, and try to think of Mr. Bodgers late of this parish, and what the feelings of Mrs. Bodgers must have been, when affliction sore, long time Mr. Bodgers bore, and physicians were in vain. I wonder whether they called in Mr. Chillip, and he was in vain; and if so, how he likes to be reminded of it once a week. I look from Mr. Chillip, in his Sunday neckcloth, to the pulpit; and think what a good place it would be to play in, and what a castle it would make, with another boy coming up the stairs to attack it, and having the velvet cushion with the tassels thrown down on his head. In time my eyes gradually shut up; and, from seeming to hear the clergyman singing a drowsy song in the heat, I hear nothing, until I fall off the seat with a crash, and am taken out, more dead than alive, by Peggotty.
CAPITOLO 2. IO OSSERVO
I primi oggetti che assumono una presenza distinta davanti a me, mentre guardo lontano, nel vuoto della mia infanzia, sono mia madre con i suoi bei capelli e la sua figura giovane, e Peggotty senza alcuna forma, e occhi così scuri che sembravano oscurare tutto il loro vicinato sul suo viso, e guance e braccia così dure e rosse che mi chiedevo perché gli uccelli non la beccassero preferibilmente alle mele.
Credo di poter ricordare questi due a una certa distanza l’uno dall’altro, rimpiccioliti ai miei occhi perché si erano chinati o inginocchiati sul pavimento, e io che andavo instabilmente dall’uno all’altro. Ho un’impressione nella mia mente che non posso distinguere da un vero e proprio ricordo, del tocco dell’indice di Peggotty mentre lo tendeva verso di me, e di come fosse resosi ruvido dal cucito, come un grattugia noce moscata da taschino.
Può darsi che sia un’illusione, sebbene io creda che la memoria della maggior parte di noi possa risalire più indietro di quanto molti di noi suppongano; così come credo che la capacità di osservazione di molti bambini molto piccoli sia davvero straordinaria per la sua precisione e accuratezza. In effetti, credo che la maggior parte degli uomini adulti che sono notevoli sotto questo aspetto possano essere definiti, con maggiore proprietà, come coloro che non hanno perso tale facoltà, piuttosto che coloro che l’hanno acquisita; tanto più che, in genere, osservo che tali uomini conservano una certa freschezza, gentilezza e capacità di essere soddisfatti, che sono anche un’eredità che hanno preservato dalla loro infanzia.
Potrei temere di “vagare” nel fermarmi a dirlo, ma ciò mi porta a osservare che costruisco queste conclusioni, in parte, sulla mia esperienza personale; e se dovesse apparire da qualcosa che potrei scrivere in questo racconto che ero un bambino attento, o che da uomo ho un forte ricordo della mia infanzia, rivendico senza dubbio entrambe queste caratteristiche.
Ripensando, come dicevo, al vuoto della mia infanzia, i primi oggetti che ricordo come distinti da una confusione di cose sono mia madre e Peggotty. Cosa altro ricordo? Vediamo un po’.
Dalla nuvola emerge la nostra casa: non nuova per me, ma familiare fin dai primi ricordi. Al piano terra c’è la cucina di Peggotty, che si apre su un cortile sul retro; al centro c’è una casa per i piccioni su un palo, senza piccioni; un grande canile in un angolo, senza cane; e una quantità di pollame che mi sembra terribilmente alto, che cammina in giro in modo minaccioso e feroce. C’è un gallo che sale su un palo per cantare, e sembra fare particolare attenzione a me mentre lo guardo attraverso la finestra della cucina, che mi fa rabbrividire, è così feroce. Dei anatre fuori del cancello laterale che vengono barcollando dietro di me con i loro lunghi colli tesi quando vado da quella parte, sogno di notte: come un uomo circondato da bestie feroci potrebbe sognare i leoni.
Ecco un lungo passaggio — che enorme prospettiva ne faccio! — che va dalla cucina di Peggotty alla porta d’ingresso. Si apre su di esso un buio ripostiglio, che bisogna percorrere di corsa di notte; perché non so cosa possa nascondersi tra quei tini e vasi e vecchie casse di tè, quando non c’è nessuno lì con una luce che brucia fioca, lasciando uscire dalla porta un’aria muffita, in cui si sente l’odore di sapone, sottaceti, pepe, candele e caffè, tutto in un solo soffio. Poi ci sono i due salotti: il salotto in cui ci sediamo la sera, mia madre, io e Peggotty — perché Peggotty è proprio la nostra compagna, quando ha finito il suo lavoro e siamo soli — e il salotto migliore dove ci sediamo di domenica; in modo grandioso, ma non così comodo. C’è qualcosa di un’aria malinconica in quella stanza per me, perché Peggotty mi ha raccontato — non so quando, ma apparentemente secoli fa — del funerale di mio padre, e della gente che si metteva i mantelli neri. Una domenica sera mia madre legge a Peggotty e a me lì dentro, come Lazzaro fu risuscitato dai morti. E io ho così paura che poi sono costretti a tirarmi fuori dal letto e a mostrarmi il tranquillo cimitero dalla finestra della camera da letto, con i morti che giacciono tutti nelle loro tombe a riposo, sotto la solenne luna.
Non c’è nulla di così verde che io conosca in nessun posto, come l’erba di quel camposanto; nulla di così ombroso come i suoi alberi; nulla di così tranquillo come le sue lapidi. Le pecore stanno pascolando lì, quando mi alzo in piedi, la mattina presto, nel mio piccolo letto in un armadio nella stanza di mia madre, per guardar fuori; e vedo la luce rossa che brilla sull’orologio solare, e penso tra me e me, ‘L’orologio solare è felice, mi chiedo, che può dire l’ora di nuovo?’
Ecco il nostro posto in chiesa. Che posto alto! Con una finestra vicina, da cui si può vedere la nostra casa, e che viene vista molte volte durante la funzione del mattino da Peggotty, che le piace assicurarsi il più possibile che non venga derubata, o che non sia in fiamme. Ma sebbene l’occhio di Peggotty vaghi, lei si offende molto se lo faccio io, e mi fa cenno, mentre sto in piedi sulla panca, che devo guardare il sacerdote. Ma non posso sempre guardarlo—lo conosco senza quella cosa bianca, e ho paura che si chieda perché lo fisso tanto, e forse che interrompa la funzione per chiedere—e cosa devo fare? È una cosa terribile sbadigliare, ma devo fare qualcosa. Guardo mia madre, ma lei finge di non vedermi. Guardo un ragazzo nel corridoio, e lui mi fa le boccacce. Guardo la luce del sole che entra dalla porta aperta attraverso il portico, e lì vedo una pecora smarrita—non intendo un peccatore, ma un agnello—che sta quasi decidendo di entrare in chiesa. Sento che se lo guardassi ancora a lungo, potrei essere tentato di dire qualcosa ad alta voce; e cosa ne sarebbe di me allora! Guardo in su le targhe commemorative sul muro, e cerco di pensare al signor Bodgers, defunto di questa parrocchia, e quali sentimenti deve aver provato la signora Bodgers, quando l’afflizione dura, lungo tempo il signor Bodgers sopportò, e i medici furono inutili. Mi domando se chiamarono il signor Chillip, e lui fu inutile; e se così fosse, come gli piace essere ricordato una volta a settimana. Guardo dal signor Chillip, nel suo fazzoletto da domenica, al pulpito; e penso che sarebbe un ottimo posto per giocare, e che castello farebbe, con un altro ragazzo che sale le scale per attaccarlo, e che ha il cuscino di velluto con i pompon gettato sulla sua testa. In tempo i miei occhi si chiudono gradualmente; e, dal sembrare di sentire il sacerdote cantare una canzone sonnolenta nel caldo, non sento più nulla, finché non cado dalla panca con un tonfo, e vengo portato fuori, più morto che vivo, da Peggotty.
And now I see the outside of our house, with the latticed bedroom-windows standing open to let in the sweet-smelling air, and the ragged old rooks’-nests still dangling in the elm-trees at the bottom of the front garden. Now I am in the garden at the back, beyond the yard where the empty pigeon-house and dog-kennel are—a very preserve of butterflies, as I remember it, with a high fence, and a gate and padlock; where the fruit clusters on the trees, riper and richer than fruit has ever been since, in any other garden, and where my mother gathers some in a basket, while I stand by, bolting furtive gooseberries, and trying to look unmoved. A great wind rises, and the summer is gone in a moment. We are playing in the winter twilight, dancing about the parlour. When my mother is out of breath and rests herself in an elbow-chair, I watch her winding her bright curls round her fingers, and straitening her waist, and nobody knows better than I do that she likes to look so well, and is proud of being so pretty.
That is among my very earliest impressions. That, and a sense that we were both a little afraid of Peggotty, and submitted ourselves in most things to her direction, were among the first opinions—if they may be so called—that I ever derived from what I saw.
Peggotty and I were sitting one night by the parlour fire, alone. I had been reading to Peggotty about crocodiles. I must have read very perspicuously, or the poor soul must have been deeply interested, for I remember she had a cloudy impression, after I had done, that they were a sort of vegetable. I was tired of reading, and dead sleepy; but having leave, as a high treat, to sit up until my mother came home from spending the evening at a neighbour’s, I would rather have died upon my post (of course) than have gone to bed. I had reached that stage of sleepiness when Peggotty seemed to swell and grow immensely large. I propped my eyelids open with my two forefingers, and looked perseveringly at her as she sat at work; at the little bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread—how old it looked, being so wrinkled in all directions!—at the little house with a thatched roof, where the yard-measure lived; at her work-box with a sliding lid, with a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral (with a pink dome) painted on the top; at the brass thimble on her finger; at herself, whom I thought lovely. I felt so sleepy, that I knew if I lost sight of anything for a moment, I was gone.
‘Peggotty,’ says I, suddenly, ‘were you ever married?’
‘Lord, Master Davy,’ replied Peggotty. ‘What’s put marriage in your head?’
She answered with such a start, that it quite awoke me. And then she stopped in her work, and looked at me, with her needle drawn out to its thread’s length.
‘But WERE you ever married, Peggotty?’ says I. ‘You are a very handsome woman, an’t you?’
I thought her in a different style from my mother, certainly; but of another school of beauty, I considered her a perfect example. There was a red velvet footstool in the best parlour, on which my mother had painted a nosegay. The ground-work of that stool, and Peggotty’s complexion appeared to me to be one and the same thing. The stool was smooth, and Peggotty was rough, but that made no difference.
‘Me handsome, Davy!’ said Peggotty. ‘Lawk, no, my dear! But what put marriage in your head?’
‘I don’t know!—You mustn’t marry more than one person at a time, may you, Peggotty?’
‘Certainly not,’ says Peggotty, with the promptest decision.
‘But if you marry a person, and the person dies, why then you may marry another person, mayn’t you, Peggotty?’
‘YOU MAY,’ says Peggotty, ‘if you choose, my dear. That’s a matter of opinion.’
‘But what is your opinion, Peggotty?’ said I.
I asked her, and looked curiously at her, because she looked so curiously at me.
‘My opinion is,’ said Peggotty, taking her eyes from me, after a little indecision and going on with her work, ‘that I never was married myself, Master Davy, and that I don’t expect to be. That’s all I know about the subject.’
‘You an’t cross, I suppose, Peggotty, are you?’ said I, after sitting quiet for a minute.
I really thought she was, she had been so short with me; but I was quite mistaken: for she laid aside her work (which was a stocking of her own), and opening her arms wide, took my curly head within them, and gave it a good squeeze. I know it was a good squeeze, because, being very plump, whenever she made any little exertion after she was dressed, some of the buttons on the back of her gown flew off. And I recollect two bursting to the opposite side of the parlour, while she was hugging me.
‘Now let me hear some more about the Crorkindills,’ said Peggotty, who was not quite right in the name yet, ‘for I an’t heard half enough.’
I couldn’t quite understand why Peggotty looked so queer, or why she was so ready to go back to the crocodiles. However, we returned to those monsters, with fresh wakefulness on my part, and we left their eggs in the sand for the sun to hatch; and we ran away from them, and baffled them by constantly turning, which they were unable to do quickly, on account of their unwieldy make; and we went into the water after them, as natives, and put sharp pieces of timber down their throats; and in short we ran the whole crocodile gauntlet. I did, at least; but I had my doubts of Peggotty, who was thoughtfully sticking her needle into various parts of her face and arms, all the time.
We had exhausted the crocodiles, and begun with the alligators, when the garden-bell rang. We went out to the door; and there was my mother, looking unusually pretty, I thought, and with her a gentleman with beautiful black hair and whiskers, who had walked home with us from church last Sunday.
As my mother stooped down on the threshold to take me in her arms and kiss me, the gentleman said I was a more highly privileged little fellow than a monarch—or something like that; for my later understanding comes, I am sensible, to my aid here.
E ora vedo l’esterno della nostra casa, con le finestre della camera da letto a graticcio aperte per far entrare l’aria profumata, e i vecchi nidi di corvo sdruciti che ancora pendono dagli alberi di olmo in fondo al giardino davanti. Ora sono nel giardino dietro, oltre il cortile dove si trovano la casa vuota per i piccioni e la cuccia del cane, un vero e proprio rifugio di farfalle, come lo ricordo, con un alto recinto, un cancello e un lucchetto; dove i frutti si ammassano sugli alberi, più maturi e ricchi di quanto siano mai stati da allora in qualsiasi altro giardino, e dove mia madre ne raccoglie alcuni in un cesto, mentre io sto lì accanto, ingozzandomi furtivamente di uva spina, cercando di sembrare impassibile. Sorge un grande vento e l’estate svanisce in un attimo. Stiamo giocando al crepuscolo d’inverno, ballando in salotto. Quando mia madre è senza fiato e si riposa su una poltrona a braccioli, la guardo mentre si avvolge i riccioli lucenti intorno alle dita e si sistema la vita, e nessuno sa meglio di me che le piace apparire così bene, e che è orgogliosa di essere così carina.
Questo è tra le mie impressioni più antiche. Questo, e il fatto che avevamo un po’ paura di Peggotty e ci sottomettevamo alla sua direzione in quasi tutto, erano tra le prime opinioni — se così si possono chiamare — che ho mai tratto da ciò che vedevo.
Peggotty ed io eravamo seduti una notte accanto al camino del salotto, da soli. Avevo letto a Peggotty qualcosa sui coccodrilli. Devo aver letto con molta chiarezza, o la povera anima doveva essere profondamente interessata, perché ricordo che aveva un’impressione confusa, dopo che avevo finito, che fossero una specie di vegetale. Ero stanco di leggere e morto di sonno; ma avendo il permesso, come un grande piacere, di restare alzato fino a quando mia madre non fosse tornata a casa dopo aver trascorso la serata da una vicina, sarei morto sul posto (ovviamente) piuttosto che andare a letto. Avevo raggiunto quel livello di sonnolenza in cui Peggotty sembrava gonfiarsi e diventare immensamente grande. Tenevo aperte le palpebre con due dita, e la guardavo con insistenza mentre sedeva al lavoro; il piccolo pezzo di candela di cera che teneva per il suo filo—com’era vecchia, essendo così raggrinzita in tutte le direzioni!—la piccola casetta con un tetto di paglia, dove viveva il metro da giardino; la sua scatola da lavoro con un coperchio scorrevole, con una vista della Cattedrale di San Paolo (con una cupola rosa) dipinta sulla parte superiore; il ditale di ottone sul suo dito; lei stessa, che trovavo incantevole. Ero così assonnato, che sapevo che se per un momento perdevo di vista qualcosa, ero spacciato.
“Peggotty”, le chiedo all’improvviso, “è mai stata sposata?
«Signore, padron Davy», rispose Peggotty. «Che cosa ti ha messo in testa il matrimonio?»
Rispose con un tale sobbalzo che mi svegliò completamente. E poi si fermò nel suo lavoro e mi guardò, con l’ago tirato fuori fino alla lunghezza del filo.
“Ma sei mai stata sposata, Peggotty?” dico io. “Sei una donna molto bella, vero?”
La pensavo in uno stile diverso da quello di mia madre, certo; ma di un’altra scuola di bellezza, la consideravo un esempio perfetto. C’era uno sgabello di velluto rosso nel salotto migliore, su cui mia madre aveva dipinto un mazzo di fiori. Il fondo di quello sgabello e il colorito di Peggotty mi sembravano una cosa sola. Lo sgabello era liscio, e Peggotty era ruvida, ma ciò non faceva alcuna differenza.
«Io bella, Davy!» disse Peggotty. «Oh, no, mia cara! Ma che cosa ti ha messo in testa il matrimonio?»
«Non lo so!—Non devi sposare più di una persona alla volta, vero, Peggotty?»
«Certamente no», dice Peggotty con la più pronta decisione.
«Ma se sposi una persona, e quella persona muore, allora puoi sposare un’altra persona, no, Peggotty?»
“PUOI”, dice Peggotty, “se lo desideri, mia cara. È una questione di opinione.”
«Ma qual è la tua opinione, Peggotty?» dissi io.
Glielo chiesi e la guardai con curiosità, perché lei mi guardava con tanta curiosità.
«Il mio parere è,» disse Peggotty, distogliendo gli occhi da me dopo un po’ di esitazione e continuando il suo lavoro, «che io non mi sono mai sposata, signor Davy, e che non mi aspetto di farlo. Questo è tutto ciò che so sull’argomento.»
«Non siete irritata, immagino, Peggotty, vero?» dissi, dopo essere rimasto seduto tranquillo per un minuto.
Pensavo davvero che lo fosse, perché era stata così brusca con me; ma mi sbagliavo di grosso: perché mise da parte il suo lavoro (che era un calzino suo), e aprendo le braccia, prese la mia testa riccia tra di esse e la strinse forte. So che fu una bella stretta, perché, essendo molto grassa, ogni volta che faceva uno sforzo dopo essersi vestita, alcuni dei bottoni sul retro del suo abito volavano via. E ricordo che due di essi schizzarono fino all’altra parte del salotto, mentre mi stringeva tra le braccia.
«Ora voglio sentire qualcosa di più sui Crorkindills», disse Peggotty, che non aveva ancora ben capito il nome, «perché non ne ho sentito abbastanza».
Non riuscivo a capire bene perché Peggotty avesse un’aria così strana, o perché fosse così pronta a tornare dai coccodrilli. Comunque, siamo tornati da quei mostri, con una nuova attenzione da parte mia, e abbiamo lasciato le loro uova nella sabbia perché le covasse il sole; e siamo scappati da loro, e li abbiamo confusi girando continuamente, cosa che loro non potevano fare rapidamente, a causa della loro mole ingombrante; e siamo andati in acqua dietro di loro, come nativi, e abbiamo messo pezzi di legno appuntiti giù per le loro gole; e insomma abbiamo superato l’intero banco di coccodrilli. Almeno io; ma avevo i miei dubbi su Peggotty, che stava pensierosamente conficcando l’ago in vari punti del suo viso e delle sue braccia, tutto il tempo.
Avevamo esaurito i coccodrilli e iniziato con gli alligatori, quando la campana del giardino suonò. Uscimmo alla porta; e c’era mia madre, che mi sembrò insolitamente carina, e con lei un signore con bellissimi capelli e baffi neri, che aveva fatto ritorno a casa con noi dalla chiesa la scorsa domenica.
Quando mia madre si chinò sulla soglia per prendermi tra le braccia e baciarmi, il signore disse che ero un piccolo privilegiato più di un monarca — o qualcosa del genere; perché la mia comprensione successiva, lo so, mi viene in aiuto qui.
‘What does that mean?’ I asked him, over her shoulder.
He patted me on the head; but somehow, I didn’t like him or his deep voice, and I was jealous that his hand should touch my mother’s in touching me—which it did. I put it away, as well as I could.
‘Oh, Davy!’ remonstrated my mother.
‘Dear boy!’ said the gentleman. ‘I cannot wonder at his devotion!’
I never saw such a beautiful colour on my mother’s face before. She gently chid me for being rude; and, keeping me close to her shawl, turned to thank the gentleman for taking so much trouble as to bring her home. She put out her hand to him as she spoke, and, as he met it with his own, she glanced, I thought, at me.
‘Let us say “good night”, my fine boy,’ said the gentleman, when he had bent his head—I saw him!—over my mother’s little glove.
‘Good night!’ said I.
‘Come! Let us be the best friends in the world!’ said the gentleman, laughing. ‘Shake hands!’
My right hand was in my mother’s left, so I gave him the other.
‘Why, that’s the Wrong hand, Davy!’ laughed the gentleman.
My mother drew my right hand forward, but I was resolved, for my former reason, not to give it him, and I did not. I gave him the other, and he shook it heartily, and said I was a brave fellow, and went away.
At this minute I see him turn round in the garden, and give us a last look with his ill-omened black eyes, before the door was shut.
Peggotty, who had not said a word or moved a finger, secured the fastenings instantly, and we all went into the parlour. My mother, contrary to her usual habit, instead of coming to the elbow-chair by the fire, remained at the other end of the room, and sat singing to herself. —‘Hope you have had a pleasant evening, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, standing as stiff as a barrel in the centre of the room, with a candlestick in her hand.
‘Much obliged to you, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, in a cheerful voice, ‘I have had a VERY pleasant evening.’
‘A stranger or so makes an agreeable change,’ suggested Peggotty.
‘A very agreeable change, indeed,’ returned my mother.
Peggotty continuing to stand motionless in the middle of the room, and my mother resuming her singing, I fell asleep, though I was not so sound asleep but that I could hear voices, without hearing what they said. When I half awoke from this uncomfortable doze, I found Peggotty and my mother both in tears, and both talking.
‘Not such a one as this, Mr. Copperfield wouldn’t have liked,’ said Peggotty. ‘That I say, and that I swear!’
‘Good Heavens!’ cried my mother, ‘you’ll drive me mad! Was ever any poor girl so ill-used by her servants as I am! Why do I do myself the injustice of calling myself a girl? Have I never been married, Peggotty?’
‘God knows you have, ma’am,’ returned Peggotty. ‘Then, how can you dare,’ said my mother—‘you know I don’t mean how can you dare, Peggotty, but how can you have the heart—to make me so uncomfortable and say such bitter things to me, when you are well aware that I haven’t, out of this place, a single friend to turn to?’
‘The more’s the reason,’ returned Peggotty, ‘for saying that it won’t do. No! That it won’t do. No! No price could make it do. No!’—I thought Peggotty would have thrown the candlestick away, she was so emphatic with it.
‘How can you be so aggravating,’ said my mother, shedding more tears than before, ‘as to talk in such an unjust manner! How can you go on as if it was all settled and arranged, Peggotty, when I tell you over and over again, you cruel thing, that beyond the commonest civilities nothing has passed! You talk of admiration. What am I to do? If people are so silly as to indulge the sentiment, is it my fault? What am I to do, I ask you? Would you wish me to shave my head and black my face, or disfigure myself with a burn, or a scald, or something of that sort? I dare say you would, Peggotty. I dare say you’d quite enjoy it.’
Peggotty seemed to take this aspersion very much to heart, I thought.
‘And my dear boy,’ cried my mother, coming to the elbow-chair in which I was, and caressing me, ‘my own little Davy! Is it to be hinted to me that I am wanting in affection for my precious treasure, the dearest little fellow that ever was!’
‘Nobody never went and hinted no such a thing,’ said Peggotty.
‘You did, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You know you did. What else was it possible to infer from what you said, you unkind creature, when you know as well as I do, that on his account only last quarter I wouldn’t buy myself a new parasol, though that old green one is frayed the whole way up, and the fringe is perfectly mangy? You know it is, Peggotty. You can’t deny it.’ Then, turning affectionately to me, with her cheek against mine, ‘Am I a naughty mama to you, Davy? Am I a nasty, cruel, selfish, bad mama? Say I am, my child; say “yes”, dear boy, and Peggotty will love you; and Peggotty’s love is a great deal better than mine, Davy. I don’t love you at all, do I?’
At this, we all fell a-crying together. I think I was the loudest of the party, but I am sure we were all sincere about it. I was quite heart-broken myself, and am afraid that in the first transports of wounded tenderness I called Peggotty a ‘Beast’. That honest creature was in deep affliction, I remember, and must have become quite buttonless on the occasion; for a little volley of those explosives went off, when, after having made it up with my mother, she kneeled down by the elbow-chair, and made it up with me.
We went to bed greatly dejected. My sobs kept waking me, for a long time; and when one very strong sob quite hoisted me up in bed, I found my mother sitting on the coverlet, and leaning over me. I fell asleep in her arms, after that, and slept soundly.
Whether it was the following Sunday when I saw the gentleman again, or whether there was any greater lapse of time before he reappeared, I cannot recall. I don’t profess to be clear about dates. But there he was, in church, and he walked home with us afterwards. He came in, too, to look at a famous geranium we had, in the parlour-window. It did not appear to me that he took much notice of it, but before he went he asked my mother to give him a bit of the blossom. She begged him to choose it for himself, but he refused to do that—I could not understand why—so she plucked it for him, and gave it into his hand. He said he would never, never part with it any more; and I thought he must be quite a fool not to know that it would fall to pieces in a day or two.
«Che cosa significa?» gli chiesi, sporgendomi sopra la sua spalla.
Mi accarezzò la testa; ma in qualche modo, non mi piaceva né lui né la sua voce profonda, e provavo gelosia che la sua mano toccasse quella di mia madre mentre mi toccava — e lo fece. Cercai di allontanarla, per quanto possibile.
«Oh, Davy!» protestò mia madre.
«Caro ragazzo!» disse il signore. «Non posso meravigliarmi della sua devozione!»
Non avevo mai visto un colore così bello sul viso di mia madre. Lei mi rimproverò dolcemente per essere stato scortese; e, tenendomi vicino al suo scialle, si voltò per ringraziare il signore per aver preso tanto disturbo per portarla a casa. Mentre parlava, gli porse la mano, e, mentre lui la stringeva con la sua, mi parve che mi guardasse.
«Diciamo “buona notte”, mio caro ragazzo», disse il signore, dopo aver chinato la testa - l’ho visto! - sulla piccola guantiera di mia madre.
«Buona notte!» dissi io.
«Ebbene! Diventiamo i migliori amici del mondo!» disse il signore, ridendo. «Stringiamoci la mano!»
La mia mano destra era nella mano sinistra di mia madre, così gli porsi l’altra.
«Ma quella è la mano sbagliata, Davy!» rise il signore.
Mia madre mi spinse avanti la mano destra, ma io ero deciso, per il motivo che ho già detto, a non dargliela, e non lo feci. Gli porsi l’altra, e lui la strinse con vigore, dicendo che ero un bravo ragazzo, e se ne andò.
In questo momento lo vedo girarsi nel giardino e darci un’ultima occhiata con i suoi neri occhi di malaugurio, prima che la porta si chiudesse.
Peggotty, che non aveva detto una parola né mosso un dito, assicurò subito i fermi e tutti andammo nel salotto. Mia madre, contrariamente al suo solito, invece di venire alla poltrona a braccioli accanto al fuoco, rimase all’altra estremità della stanza e si mise a cantare tra sé. «Spero che abbiate passato una piacevole serata, signora», disse Peggotty, rimanendo rigida come un fusto al centro della stanza, con un candeliere in mano.
«Molto obbligata, Peggotty», rispose mia madre con voce allegra, «ho passato una SERA molto piacevole.»
«Un forestiero o qualcosa del genere fa una piacevole novità», suggerì Peggotty.
«Un cambiamento davvero piacevole», rispose mia madre.
Peggotty continuando a rimanere immobile al centro della stanza, e mia madre riprendendo a cantare, mi addormentai, anche se non così profondamente da non sentire le voci, senza però capire cosa dicessero. Quando mi svegliai a metà da questo scomodo pisolino, trovai Peggotty e mia madre entrambe in lacrime, e entrambe che parlavano.
«Non una come questa, Mr. Copperfield non l’avrebbe voluta», disse Peggotty. «Questo dico, e questo giuro!»
«Buon Dio!» esclamò mia madre «mi farai impazzire! Fu mai una povera ragazza maltrattata dai suoi servi come lo sono io! Perché mi faccio l’ingiustizia di chiamarmi ragazza? Non sono mai stata sposata, Peggotty?»
«Dio sa che l’avete fatto, signora», rispose Peggotty. «Allora, come può lei», disse mia madre—«sa che non intendo come può lei, Peggotty, ma come può avere il coraggio—di farmi sentire così a disagio e dirmi cose così amare, quando sa benissimo che io non ho, fuori di questo posto, un solo amico a cui rivolgermi?»
«Tanto più è motivo,» rispose Peggotty, «per dire che non va bene. No! Che non va bene. No! Nessun prezzo potrebbe farlo andare bene. No!» — Pensai che Peggotty avrebbe gettato via il candelabro, tanto era enfatica con esso.
«Come puoi essere così esasperante», disse mia madre, versando più lacrime di prima, «da parlare in modo così ingiusto! Come puoi continuare come se tutto fosse deciso e sistemato, Peggotty, quando ti ripeto più e più volte, tu crudele, che oltre alle più comuni cortesie non è successo nulla! Parli di ammirazione. Cosa dovrei fare? Se le persone sono così sciocche da nutrire questo sentimento, è forse colpa mia? Cosa dovrei fare, ti chiedo? Vorresti che mi radessi la testa e mi dipingessi il viso di nero, o che mi sfigurassi con una bruciatura, o una scottatura, o qualcosa del genere? Scommetto che lo vorresti, Peggotty. Scommetto che ti divertirebbe un mondo.»
Peggotty sembrava prendere questa aspersione molto a cuore, pensai.
«E il mio caro ragazzo», esclamò mia madre, avvicinandosi alla poltrona in cui ero seduto e accarezzandomi, «il mio piccolo Davy! Si vuole forse insinuare che manco di affetto per il mio prezioso tesoro, il più caro piccolo essere che sia mai esistito!»
«Nessuno è mai andato a insinuare una cosa del genere», disse Peggotty.
«L’hai fatto, Peggotty!» replicò mia madre. «Lo sai che l’hai fatto. Cosa altro si poteva dedurre da quello che hai detto, tu, creatura senza cuore, quando sai bene quanto me che solo per colpa sua, già il trimestre scorso, non mi sono comprata un nuovo parasole, anche se quello vecchio verde è sfilacciato per tutta la lunghezza e la frangia è perfettamente spelacchiata? Lo sai che è così, Peggotty. Non puoi negarlo.» Poi, rivolgendosi affettuosamente a me, con la guancia contro la mia, «Sono una mamma cattiva per te, Davy? Sono una mamma cattiva, crudele, egoista, malvagia? Di’ che lo sono, mio bambino; di’ “sì”, caro ragazzo, e Peggotty ti amerà; e l’amore di Peggotty è molto meglio del mio, Davy. Non ti amo per niente, vero?»
A questo punto, scoppiammo tutti a piangere insieme. Credo che io fossi il più rumoroso del gruppo, ma sono sicuro che fossimo tutti sinceri. Io stesso ero completamente distrutto, e temo che nei primi impulsi di tenerezza ferita chiamai Peggotty una “Bestia”. Quella onesta creatura era in profonda afflizione, me lo ricordo, e deve essersi completamente sbottonata in quell’occasione; perché una piccola raffica di quegli esplosivi partì, quando, dopo essermi riconciliato con mia madre, si inginocchiò accanto alla poltrona a braccioli e si riconciliò con me.
Andammo a letto molto abbattuti. I miei singhiozzi continuavano a svegliarmi, per un lungo periodo; e quando un singhiozzo molto forte mi fece addirittura sollevare a letto, trovai mia madre seduta sul copriletto, che si chinava su di me. Mi addormentai tra le sue braccia, dopo di che, e dormii profondamente.
Non ricordo se fu la domenica successiva che vidi di nuovo il signore, o se ci fu un intervallo di tempo più lungo prima che riapparisse. Non pretendo di essere preciso sulle date. Ma eccolo lì, in chiesa, e dopo camminò fino a casa con noi. Entrò anche per dare un’occhiata a un famoso geranio che avevamo, nella finestra del salotto. Non mi sembrò che ci facesse molto caso, ma prima di andarsene chiese a mia madre di dargli un pezzetto del fiore. Lei lo pregò di sceglierlo da sé, ma lui rifiutò di farlo—non capivo perché—così lei lo colse per lui e glielo mise in mano. Disse che non si sarebbe mai, mai separato da quel fiore; e pensai che dovesse essere proprio un pazzo a non sapere che si sarebbe disfatto in un giorno o due.
Peggotty began to be less with us, of an evening, than she had always been. My mother deferred to her very much—more than usual, it occurred to me—and we were all three excellent friends; still we were different from what we used to be, and were not so comfortable among ourselves. Sometimes I fancied that Peggotty perhaps objected to my mother’s wearing all the pretty dresses she had in her drawers, or to her going so often to visit at that neighbour’s; but I couldn’t, to my satisfaction, make out how it was.
Gradually, I became used to seeing the gentleman with the black whiskers. I liked him no better than at first, and had the same uneasy jealousy of him; but if I had any reason for it beyond a child’s instinctive dislike, and a general idea that Peggotty and I could make much of my mother without any help, it certainly was not THE reason that I might have found if I had been older. No such thing came into my mind, or near it. I could observe, in little pieces, as it were; but as to making a net of a number of these pieces, and catching anybody in it, that was, as yet, beyond me.
One autumn morning I was with my mother in the front garden, when Mr. Murdstone—I knew him by that name now—came by, on horseback. He reined up his horse to salute my mother, and said he was going to Lowestoft to see some friends who were there with a yacht, and merrily proposed to take me on the saddle before him if I would like the ride.
The air was so clear and pleasant, and the horse seemed to like the idea of the ride so much himself, as he stood snorting and pawing at the garden-gate, that I had a great desire to go. So I was sent upstairs to Peggotty to be made spruce; and in the meantime Mr. Murdstone dismounted, and, with his horse’s bridle drawn over his arm, walked slowly up and down on the outer side of the sweetbriar fence, while my mother walked slowly up and down on the inner to keep him company. I recollect Peggotty and I peeping out at them from my little window; I recollect how closely they seemed to be examining the sweetbriar between them, as they strolled along; and how, from being in a perfectly angelic temper, Peggotty turned cross in a moment, and brushed my hair the wrong way, excessively hard.
Mr. Murdstone and I were soon off, and trotting along on the green turf by the side of the road. He held me quite easily with one arm, and I don’t think I was restless usually; but I could not make up my mind to sit in front of him without turning my head sometimes, and looking up in his face. He had that kind of shallow black eye—I want a better word to express an eye that has no depth in it to be looked into—which, when it is abstracted, seems from some peculiarity of light to be disfigured, for a moment at a time, by a cast. Several times when I glanced at him, I observed that appearance with a sort of awe, and wondered what he was thinking about so closely. His hair and whiskers were blacker and thicker, looked at so near, than even I had given them credit for being. A squareness about the lower part of his face, and the dotted indication of the strong black beard he shaved close every day, reminded me of the wax-work that had travelled into our neighbourhood some half-a-year before. This, his regular eyebrows, and the rich white, and black, and brown, of his complexion—confound his complexion, and his memory!—made me think him, in spite of my misgivings, a very handsome man. I have no doubt that my poor dear mother thought him so too.
We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking cigars in a room by themselves. Each of them was lying on at least four chairs, and had a large rough jacket on. In a corner was a heap of coats and boat-cloaks, and a flag, all bundled up together.
They both rolled on to their feet in an untidy sort of manner, when we came in, and said, ‘Halloa, Murdstone! We thought you were dead!’
‘Not yet,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘And who’s this shaver?’ said one of the gentlemen, taking hold of me.
‘That’s Davy,’ returned Mr. Murdstone.
‘Davy who?’ said the gentleman. ‘Jones?’
‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘What! Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield’s encumbrance?’ cried the gentleman. ‘The pretty little widow?’
‘Quinion,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘take care, if you please. Somebody’s sharp.’
‘Who is?’ asked the gentleman, laughing. I looked up, quickly; being curious to know.
‘Only Brooks of Sheffield,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield; for, at first, I really thought it was I.
There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also. After some laughing, the gentleman whom he had called Quinion, said:
‘And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in reference to the projected business?’
‘Why, I don’t know that Brooks understands much about it at present,’ replied Mr. Murdstone; ‘but he is not generally favourable, I believe.’
There was more laughter at this, and Mr. Quinion said he would ring the bell for some sherry in which to drink to Brooks. This he did; and when the wine came, he made me have a little, with a biscuit, and, before I drank it, stand up and say, ‘Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield!’ The toast was received with great applause, and such hearty laughter that it made me laugh too; at which they laughed the more. In short, we quite enjoyed ourselves.
We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the grass, and looked at things through a telescope—I could make out nothing myself when it was put to my eye, but I pretended I could—and then we came back to the hotel to an early dinner. All the time we were out, the two gentlemen smoked incessantly—which, I thought, if I might judge from the smell of their rough coats, they must have been doing, ever since the coats had first come home from the tailor’s. I must not forget that we went on board the yacht, where they all three descended into the cabin, and were busy with some papers. I saw them quite hard at work, when I looked down through the open skylight. They left me, during this time, with a very nice man with a very large head of red hair and a very small shiny hat upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat on, with ‘Skylark’ in capital letters across the chest. I thought it was his name; and that as he lived on board ship and hadn’t a street door to put his name on, he put it there instead; but when I called him Mr. Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.
Peggotty cominciò a stare meno con noi la sera, rispetto a come era sempre stata. Mia madre le dava molta importanza, più del solito, mi sembrava, e tutti e tre eravamo ottimi amici; eppure eravamo diversi da come eravamo prima, e non eravamo più così a nostro agio insieme. A volte mi veniva da pensare che forse Peggotty obiettava contro il fatto che mia madre indossasse tutti i bei vestiti che aveva nei cassetti, o che andasse così spesso a far visita a quella vicina; ma non riuscivo a capire bene come stessero le cose.
A poco a poco, mi abituai a vedere il signore con i baffi neri. Non mi piaceva più di prima, e provavo la stessa inquietante gelosia nei suoi confronti; ma se c’era qualche ragione per questo oltre al bambino’s istintivo disprezzo e un’idea generale che Peggotty ed io potessimo fare molto per mia madre senza alcun aiuto, certamente non era LA ragione che avrei potuto trovare se fossi stato più grande. Niente del genere mi veniva in mente, o neanche vicino. Potevo osservare, a piccoli pezzi, per così dire; ma quanto a fare una rete con un certo numero di questi pezzi, e catturare qualcuno in essa, questo era, per il momento, al di là delle mie possibilità.
Una mattina d’autunno ero con mia madre nel giardino davanti alla casa, quando il signor Murdstone — ora lo conoscevo con quel nome — passò a cavallo. Tirò le redini del suo cavallo per salutare mia madre e disse che stava andando a Lowestoft per trovare alcuni amici che erano lì con uno yacht, e propose allegramente di portarmi in sella davanti a lui se mi andava di fare un giro a cavallo.
L’aria era così limpida e piacevole, e il cavallo sembrava gradire l’idea della passeggiata, tanto che, mentre stava lì a soffiare e scalciare alla porta del giardino, io avevo una gran voglia di andare. Così fui mandato di sopra da Peggotty per essere messo a posto; e nel frattempo il signor Murdstone smontò, e, con la briglia del suo cavallo sul braccio, si mise a camminare lentamente su e giù lungo il lato esterno della siepe di rosaio, mentre mia madre camminava lentamente su e giù lungo il lato interno per tenergli compagnia. Ricordo che Peggotty ed io spiavamo loro dalla mia piccola finestra; ricordo come sembravano esaminare attentamente il rosaio tra loro, mentre passeggiavano; e come, da un temperamento perfettamente angelico, Peggotty divenne irritata in un momento, e mi pettinò i capelli al contrario, con estrema durezza.
Il signor Murdstone e io partimmo presto, e trotterellavamo lungo il tappeto erboso ai lati della strada. Mi teneva con un braccio solo, e non credo che fossi solitamente irrequieto; ma non riuscivo a decidermi a stare seduto davanti a lui senza voltare la testa di tanto in tanto, e guardarlo in faccia. Aveva quel genere di occhio nero superficiale — vorrei trovare una parola migliore per descrivere un occhio che non ha profondità in cui guardare — che, quando è distratto, sembra per qualche peculiare effetto di luce essere sfigurato, per un momento alla volta, da una strabotteria. Diverse volte, quando lo guardavo, osservavo quell’aspetto con una specie di timore, e mi chiedevo su cosa stesse pensando così intensamente. I suoi capelli e i suoi baffi erano più neri e più folti, visti così da vicino, di quanto avessi mai creduto. La quadratura della parte inferiore del suo viso, e l’indicazione a puntini della forte barba nera che si radeva da vicino ogni giorno, mi ricordavano la cera che era stata esposta nel nostro quartiere circa mezzo anno prima. Questo, le sue sopracciglia regolari, e il ricco bianco, nero e marrone del suo colorito — confondi il suo colorito, e la sua memoria!— mi facevano pensare, nonostante i miei dubbi, che fosse un uomo molto bello. Non ho dubbio che la mia povera cara madre lo pensasse anche lei.
Andammo in un albergo sul mare, dove due signori stavano fumando sigari in una stanza da soli. Ognuno di loro era sdraiato su almeno quattro sedie, e indossava un grande giaccone ruvido. In un angolo c’era un mucchio di cappotti e paltò da barca, e una bandiera, tutti ammassati insieme.
Entrambi rotolarono in piedi in modo disordinato quando entrammo e dissero: «Ehi, Murdstone! Pensavamo fossi morto!»
«Non ancora», disse il signor Murdstone.
«E chi è questo moccioso?» disse uno dei signori, afferrandomi.
«Questo è Davy», rispose il signor Murdstone.
‘Davy chi?’ disse il signore. ‘Jones?’
«Copperfield», disse il signor Murdstone.
«Che cosa! Incantare l’impedimento della signora Copperfield?» esclamò il signore. «La graziosa piccola vedova?»
“Quinion,” disse il signor Murdstone, “fai attenzione, per favore. Qualcuno è sveglio.”
«Chi è?» chiese il signore ridendo. Alzai subito gli occhi, perché ero curioso di saperlo.
«Solo Brooks di Sheffield», disse il signor Murdstone.
Fui davvero sollevato nel scoprire che si trattava solo di Brooks di Sheffield; perché, all’inizio, pensavo davvero che fosse io.
C’era qualcosa di molto comico nella reputazione del signor Brooks di Sheffield, perché entrambi i signori risero di gusto quando fu menzionato, e anche il signor Murdstone si divertì parecchio. Dopo aver riso un po’, il signore che aveva chiamato Quinion disse:
‘E qual è l’opinione di Brooks di Sheffield riguardo all’impresa progettata?’
«Ebbene, non so se Brooks ne capisca molto al momento», rispose il signor Murdstone, «ma non è generalmente favorevole, credo.»
Ci fu ancora più risate a questo punto, e il signor Quinion disse che avrebbe suonato il campanello per chiedere dello sherry con cui brindare a Brooks. Così fece; e quando arrivò il vino, mi fece prendere un po’, con un biscotto, e, prima che lo bevessi, mi fece alzare in piedi e dire: «Confusione a Brooks di Sheffield!». Il brindisi fu accolto con grandi applausi e risate così cupe che mi fecero ridere anch’io; a quel punto risero ancora di più. Insomma, ci divertimmo un mondo.
Camminammo sulla scogliera dopo di che, e ci sedemmo sull’erba, e guardammo le cose attraverso un telescopio — io non riuscivo a distinguere nulla quando lo portavo all’occhio, ma feci finta di sì — e poi tornammo all’albergo per una cena anticipata. Tutti i tempo che siamo stati fuori, i due signori hanno fumato incessantemente — il che, pensavo, se potevo giudicare dall’odore dei loro ruvidi cappotti, dovevano aver fatto, fin da quando i cappotti erano usciti casa dal sarto. Non devo dimenticare che siamo saliti a bordo dello yacht, dove tutti e tre sono scesi nella cabina, e si sono occupati di alcuni documenti. Li ho visti al lavoro, quando ho guardato giù attraverso il lucernario aperto. Mi hanno lasciato, durante questo tempo, con un uomo molto gentile con una testa molto grande di capelli rossi e un cappello molto piccolo e lucido sopra, che indossava una camicia o un gilet con una croce a barre, con “Skylark” in lettere maiuscole sul petto. Pensavo fosse il suo nome; e che, dato che viveva a bordo nave e non aveva una porta di strada su cui mettere il suo nome, lo avesse messo lì; ma quando lo chiamai signor Skylark, disse che si riferiva alla nave.
I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier than the two gentlemen. They were very gay and careless. They joked freely with one another, but seldom with him. It appeared to me that he was more clever and cold than they were, and that they regarded him with something of my own feeling. I remarked that, once or twice when Mr. Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr. Murdstone sideways, as if to make sure of his not being displeased; and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the other gentleman) was in high spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave him a secret caution with his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was sitting stern and silent. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke—and that, by the by, was his own.
We went home early in the evening. It was a very fine evening, and my mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbriar, while I was sent in to get my tea. When he was gone, my mother asked me all about the day I had had, and what they had said and done. I mentioned what they had said about her, and she laughed, and told me they were impudent fellows who talked nonsense—but I knew it pleased her. I knew it quite as well as I know it now. I took the opportunity of asking if she was at all acquainted with Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she supposed he must be a manufacturer in the knife and fork way.
Can I say of her face—altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is—that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded, and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only; and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?
I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this talk, and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully by the side of the bed, and laying her chin upon her hands, and laughing, said:
‘What was it they said, Davy? Tell me again. I can’t believe it.’
‘“Bewitching—”’ I began.
My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.
‘It was never bewitching,’ she said, laughing. ‘It never could have been bewitching, Davy. Now I know it wasn’t!’
‘Yes, it was. “Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield”,’ I repeated stoutly. ‘And, “pretty.”’
‘No, no, it was never pretty. Not pretty,’ interposed my mother, laying her fingers on my lips again.
‘Yes it was. “Pretty little widow.”’
‘What foolish, impudent creatures!’ cried my mother, laughing and covering her face. ‘What ridiculous men! An’t they? Davy dear—’
‘Well, Ma.’
‘Don’t tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them. I am dreadfully angry with them myself; but I would rather Peggotty didn’t know.’
I promised, of course; and we kissed one another over and over again, and I soon fell fast asleep.
It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next day when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition I am about to mention; but it was probably about two months afterwards.
We were sitting as before, one evening (when my mother was out as before), in company with the stocking and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax, and the box with St. Paul’s on the lid, and the crocodile book, when Peggotty, after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth as if she were going to speak, without doing it—which I thought was merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed—said coaxingly:
‘Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a fortnight at my brother’s at Yarmouth? Wouldn’t that be a treat?’
‘Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?’ I inquired, provisionally.
‘Oh, what an agreeable man he is!’ cried Peggotty, holding up her hands. ‘Then there’s the sea; and the boats and ships; and the fishermen; and the beach; and Am to play with—’
Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter; but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.
I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?
‘Why then I’ll as good as bet a guinea,’ said Peggotty, intent upon my face, ‘that she’ll let us go. I’ll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever she comes home. There now!’
‘But what’s she to do while we’re away?’ said I, putting my small elbows on the table to argue the point. ‘She can’t live by herself.’
If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth darning.
‘I say! Peggotty! She can’t live by herself, you know.’
‘Oh, bless you!’ said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. ‘Don’t you know? She’s going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs. Grayper’s going to have a lot of company.’
Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the utmost impatience, until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper’s (for it was that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get leave to carry out this great idea. Without being nearly so much surprised as I had expected, my mother entered into it readily; and it was all arranged that night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be paid for.
The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that it came soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half afraid that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other great convulsion of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition. We were to go in a carrier’s cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up over-night, and sleep in my hat and boots.
It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home; to think how little I suspected what I did leave for ever.
I am glad to recollect that when the carrier’s cart was at the gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made me cry. I am glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat against mine.
I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate, and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up her face to mine, and did so.
As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so moved. I was looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what business it was of his. Peggotty, who was also looking back on the other side, seemed anything but satisfied; as the face she brought back in the cart denoted.
I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like the boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home again by the buttons she would shed.
Notai tutto il giorno che il signor Murdstone era più grave e serio dei due gentiluomini. Costoro erano molto allegri e spensierati. Scherzavano liberamente tra loro, ma raramente con lui. Mi parve che fosse più intelligente e freddo di loro, e che lo considerassero con qualcosa del mio stesso sentimento. Notai che, una o due volte mentre il signor Quinion parlava, guardava il signor Murdstone di sottecchi, come per assicurarsi che non fosse scontento; e che una volta, quando il signor Passnidge (l’altro gentiluomo) era di ottimo umore, gli calpestò il piede e gli fece un segno d’intesa con gli occhi, per farlo osservare il signor Murdstone, che sedeva severo e silenzioso. Non ricordo nemmeno che il signor Murdstone ridesse affatto quel giorno, tranne per la barzelletta di Sheffield, che, tra l’altro, era di sua invenzione.
Tornammo a casa presto la sera. Era una bellissima serata, e mia madre e lui fecero un’altra passeggiata vicino al rosmarino, mentre io fui mandato a prendere il tè. Quando lui se ne fu andato, mia madre mi chiese tutto della giornata che avevo passato, e di quello che avevano detto e fatto. Menzionai quello che avevano detto di lei, e lei rise, e mi disse che erano dei mascalzoni impertinenti che parlavano a vanvera — ma sapevo che le aveva fatto piacere. Lo sapevo bene quanto lo so ora. Approfittai dell’occasione per chiedere se conoscesse il signor Brooks di Sheffield, ma lei rispose di no, anche se immaginava che dovesse essere un produttore di coltelli e posate.
Posso dire del suo volto, alterato come ho motivo di ricordarlo, perduto come so che è, che è sparito, quando eccolo qui davanti a me in questo istante, distinto come qualsiasi volto che io possa scegliere di guardare in una strada affollata? Posso dire della sua innocente e fanciullesca bellezza che è sbiadita e non c’è più, quando il suo respiro cade ora sulla mia guancia, come cadde quella notte? Posso dire che lei sia mai cambiata, quando il mio ricordo la riporta in vita, solo così; e, più fedele alla sua giovinezza amorevole di quanto io sia stato, o un uomo possa mai essere, ancora tiene stretto ciò che allora amava?
La descrivo così com’era quando ero andato a letto dopo quella conversazione, e lei era venuta a darmi la buona notte. Si era inginocchiata scherzosamente accanto al letto, appoggiando il mento sulle mani, e ridendo, disse:
‘Cosa hanno detto, Davy? Dimmi di nuovo. Non ci credo.’
«“Incantevole, ”» cominciai.
Mia madre mi mise le mani sulle labbra per farmi stare zitto.
«Non è mai stata incantevole», disse ridendo. «Non avrebbe mai potuto essere incantevole, Davy. Ora so che non lo era!»
“Sì, lo era. ‘L’affascinante signora Copperfield’, ripetei con fermezza. ‘E ‘bella”
«No, no, non è mai stata carina. Non carina», intervenne mia madre, posandomi di nuovo le dita sulle labbra.
“Sì, lo era. ‘Bellissima vedova’.”
«Che creature sciocche e impudenti!» esclamò mia madre, ridendo e coprendosi il viso. «Che uomini ridicoli! Non sono così? Davy caro, »
«Beh, mamma.»
«Non dire niente a Peggotty; potrebbe arrabbiarsi con loro. Io sono terribilmente arrabbiato con loro; ma preferirei che Peggotty non lo sapesse.»
Naturalmente promisi; e ci baciammo più e più volte, e ben presto mi addormentai profondamente.
Mi sembra, a questa distanza di tempo, che fosse il giorno dopo quando Peggotty avanzò la sorprendente e avventurosa proposta che sto per menzionare; ma probabilmente erano passati circa due mesi.
Eravamo seduti come prima, una sera (quando mia madre era uscita come prima), in compagnia del calzino e del metro, e del pezzetto di cera, e della scatola con San Paolo sul coperchio, e del libro del coccodrillo, quando Peggotty, dopo avermi guardato diverse volte, e aver aperto la bocca come se stesse per parlare, senza farlo — cosa che io pensavo fosse semplicemente sbadigliare, altrimenti sarei stato piuttosto allarmato — disse con fare affettuoso:
«Master Davy, come vi piacerebbe venire con me e trascorrere due settimane da mio fratello a Yarmouth? Non sarebbe una bella gita?»
«È un uomo piacevole, tuo fratello, Peggotty?» chiesi, provvisoriamente.
«Oh, che uomo piacevole è!» esclamò Peggotty, alzando le mani. «Poi c’è il mare; e le barche e le navi; e i pescatori; e la spiaggia; e Am con cui giocare—»
Peggotty intendeva suo nipote Ham, menzionato nel mio primo capitolo; ma lo descrisse come un pezzetto di grammatica inglese.
Ero arrossito per il suo elenco di delizie, e risposi che sarebbe stato davvero un piacere, ma cosa avrebbe detto mia madre?
«Allora scommetterei quasi una ghinea», disse Peggotty, scrutando il mio viso, «che ci lascerà andare. Se vuoi, la chiederò non appena tornerà a casa. Ecco fatto!»
«Ma che cosa farà mentre siamo via?» dissi, appoggiando i miei piccoli gomiti sul tavolo per discutere la questione. «Non può vivere da sola.»
Se Peggotty stava cercando, all’improvviso, un buco nel tallone di quel calzino, doveva essere davvero piccolissimo, e non valeva la pena di rammendarlo.
‘Dico io! Peggotty! Non può vivere da sola, lo sai.’
«Oh, benedetto!» disse Peggotty, guardandomi di nuovo finalmente. «Non lo sai? Sta per rimanere per due settimane da Mrs. Grayper. Mrs. Grayper avrà un sacco di compagnia.»
Oh! Se era questo il problema, ero più che pronto a partire. Aspettai, con la massima impazienza, che mia madre tornasse a casa dalla signora Grayper (perché era proprio quella vicina di casa), per scoprire se potevamo ottenere il permesso di realizzare questo grande progetto. Senza essere quasi sorpresa come mi aspettavo, mia madre accettò prontamente; e tutto fu organizzato quella sera, e il mio vitto e alloggio durante la visita sarebbero stati pagati.
Il giorno del nostro viaggio arrivò presto. Era così presto che arrivò presto anche per me, che ero in preda a una febbre di attesa e mezzo spaventato che un terremoto o una montagna infuocata, o qualche altra grande convulsione della natura, potesse intervenire per fermare l’impresa. Dovevamo partire su un carro del carrettiere, che partiva la mattina dopo colazione. Avrei dato qualsiasi cosa per essere autorizzato a avvolgermi per tutta la notte, e dormire con il mio cappello e gli stivali.
Mi tocca profondamente ora, anche se lo racconto con leggerezza, ricordare quanto ero ansioso di lasciare la mia felice casa; pensare a quanto poco sospettassi che stavo lasciando per sempre.
Mi fa piacere ricordare che quando il carretto del facchino era al cancello e mia madre mi baciava lì, un affetto grato e tenero per lei e per il vecchio posto da cui non avevo mai voltato le spalle prima, mi fece piangere. Mi fa piacere sapere che anche mia madre piangeva e che sentivo il suo cuore battere contro il mio.
Mi fa piacere ricordare che quando il carro del facchino iniziò a muoversi, mia madre corse fuori dal cancello e gli gridò di fermarsi, perché potesse baciarmi ancora una volta. Mi fa piacere soffermarmi sulla serietà e sull’amore con cui alzò il suo viso verso il mio e lo fece.
Quando la lasciammo in piedi sulla strada, il signor Murdstone si avvicinò a lei e sembrò rimproverarla per essersi così commossa. Io guardavo indietro da sotto il telone del carro e mi chiedevo che diritto avesse di farlo. Peggotty, che guardava anche lei indietro dall’altro lato, non sembrava affatto contenta, come si poteva vedere dalla faccia che riportò nel carro.
Sedetti a guardare Peggotty per un po’ di tempo, in una fantasticheria su questo caso ipotetico: se, se lei fosse stata incaricata di perdermi come il ragazzo della fiaba, sarei stato in grado di ritrovare la strada per casa seguendo i bottoni che avrebbe perso.
CHAPTER 3. I HAVE A CHANGE
The carrier’s horse was the laziest horse in the world, I should hope, and shuffled along, with his head down, as if he liked to keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough. The carrier had a way of keeping his head down, like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say ‘drove’, but it struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all that; and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling.
Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have lasted us out handsomely, if we had been going to London by the same conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of which never relaxed; and I could not have believed unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much.
We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river; and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles; which would account for it.
As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it; and also that if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that, for her part, she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth Bloater.
When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me) and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place an injustice; and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe.
‘Here’s my Am!’ screamed Peggotty, ‘growed out of knowledge!’
He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house; and asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me. But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry me home. He was, now, a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered; but with a simpering boy’s face and curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you couldn’t so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.
Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm, and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders’ yards, shipwrights’ yards, ship-breakers’ yards, caulkers’ yards, riggers’ lofts, smiths’ forges, and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance; when Ham said,
‘Yon’s our house, Mas’r Davy!’
I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could I make out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily; but nothing else in the way of a habitation that was visible to me.
‘That’s not it?’ said I. ‘That ship-looking thing?’
‘That’s it, Mas’r Davy,’ returned Ham.
If it had been Aladdin’s palace, roc’s egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in it; but the wonderful charm of it was, that it was a real boat which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely; but never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.
It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child who was trundling a hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down, by a bible; and the tray, if it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects; such as I have never seen since in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole interior of Peggotty’s brother’s house again, at one view. Abraham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over the little mantelshelf, was a picture of the ‘Sarah Jane’ lugger, built at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck on to it; a work of art, combining composition with carpentry, which I considered to be one of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not divine then; and some lockers and boxes and conveniences of that sort, which served for seats and eked out the chairs.
CAPITOLO 3. HO UN CAMBIAMENTO
Il cavallo del vetturino era il cavallo più pigro del mondo, ne sono certo, e procedeva a passo lento, con la testa bassa, come se gli piacesse far aspettare le persone a cui erano indirizzati i pacchi. Mi sembrava, anzi, che talvolta si lasciasse sfuggire una risatina a questa idea, ma il vetturino diceva che aveva solo un po’ di tosse. Il vetturino aveva l’abitudine di tenere la testa bassa, come il suo cavallo, e di inclinarsi sonnolento in avanti mentre guidava, con un braccio su ogni ginocchio. Dico “guidava”, ma mi è parso che il carro sarebbe arrivato a Yarmouth altrettanto bene anche senza di lui, perché tutto lo faceva il cavallo; e per quanto riguarda la conversazione, non aveva idea di niente se non del fischiettare.
Peggotty aveva sulle ginocchia un cesto di rinfreschi che ci sarebbero bastati a lungo, se fossimo andati a Londra con lo stesso mezzo di trasporto. Mangiammo molto e dormimmo molto. Peggotty si addormentava sempre con il mento sul manico del cesto, che non lasciava mai; e non avrei mai creduto, se non l’avessi sentita, che una donna indifesa potesse russare così tanto.
Facemmo così tante deviazioni su e giù per i vicoli, e impiegammo un tempo così lungo a consegnare un telaio per letto in un albergo e a fare altre consegne in altri posti, che ero davvero stanco e molto contento quando vedemmo Yarmouth. Mi sembrò piuttosto spugnoso e acquoso, pensai, mentre portavo lo sguardo sulla grande distesa opaca che si estendeva oltre il fiume; e non potevo fare a meno di chiedermi, se il mondo fosse davvero così rotondo come diceva il mio libro di geografia, come mai una parte di esso fosse così piatta. Ma riflettei che Yarmouth poteva trovarsi a uno dei poli; il che avrebbe spiegato tutto.
Mentre ci avvicinavamo un po’ di più e vedevamo l’intero panorama circostante disteso in una linea bassa e diritta sotto il cielo, feci presente a Peggotty che un tumulo o giù di lì avrebbe potuto migliorare il tutto; e anche che se la terra fosse stata un po’ più separata dal mare, e la città e la marea non fossero state così mescolate, come acqua e pane tostato, sarebbe stato più bello. Ma Peggotty disse, con maggiore enfasi del solito, che dovevamo prendere le cose come le trovavamo, e che, per quanto la riguardava, era orgogliosa di chiamarsi Yarmouth Bloater.
Quando arrivammo in strada (che per me era abbastanza strana) e sentimmo l’odore di pesce, pece, sugna, catrame, e vedemmo i marinai che camminavano in giro, e i carri che tintinnavano su e giù sulle pietre, sentii che avevo fatto un torto a quel posto così vivace; e lo dissi a Peggotty, che ascoltò le mie espressioni di gioia con grande compiacimento, e mi disse che era noto (suppongo a coloro che avevano la fortuna di essere nati Bloaters) che Yarmouth era, tutto sommato, il posto più bello dell’universo.
‘Ecco il mio Am!’ gridò Peggotty, ‘cresciuto oltre ogni riconoscimento!’
Ci aspettava, infatti, all’osteria; e mi chiese come mi trovassi, come se fossimo vecchi conoscenti. All’inizio non sentivo di conoscerlo bene quanto lui conosceva me, perché non era mai venuto a casa nostra dalla notte in cui ero nato, e naturalmente aveva un vantaggio su di me. Ma la nostra intimità crebbe molto quando mi prese in groppa per portarmi a casa. Era, ora, un enorme e robusto ragazzo di sei piedi di altezza, largo in proporzione e con le spalle curve; ma con un viso da bambino imbronciato e capelli chiari ricci che gli davano un’aria piuttosto ovina. Era vestito con una giacca di tela e un paio di pantaloni così rigidi che sarebbero stati in grado di stare in piedi bene da soli, senza gambe dentro. E non si poteva dire propriamente che indossasse un cappello, ma che fosse coperto in cima, come un vecchio edificio, con qualcosa di appiccicoso.
Con Ham che mi portava sulle spalle e una piccola scatola nostra sotto il braccio, e Peggotty che portava un’altra piccola scatola nostra, ci inoltrammo per viuzze costellate di pezzetti di trucioli e piccoli cumuli di sabbia, e passammo davanti a impianti per la produzione del gas, cantieri per la costruzione di corde, cantieri navali, cantiere di demolizione di navei, cantieri di calafati, soffitte di equipaggiatori, fucine di fabbri, e un gran disordine di posti del genere, finché non sbucammo sulla desolata distesa che avevo già visto da lontano; quando Ham disse,
«Quella è la nostra casa, Mas’r Davy!»
Guardai in tutte le direzioni, quanto più lontano potevo scrutare nella landa, e lontano verso il mare, e lontano verso il fiume, ma non riuscivo a individuare nessuna casa. C’era una barca nera, o qualche altro tipo di imbarcazione antiquata, non lontano, alta e asciutta a terra, con un camino di ferro che spuntava fuori e fumava molto accogliente; ma nient’altro in termini di abitazione che fosse visibile a me.
«Non è quello?» dissi io. «Quella cosa che sembra una nave?»
«Ecco fatto, signor Davy», rispose Ham.
Se fosse stato il palazzo di Aladino, con l’uovo dello roc e tutto, immagino che non avrei potuto essere più incantato dall’idea romantica di viverci. C’era una deliziosa porta tagliata sul lato, ed era coperta da un tetto, e c’erano piccole finestre; ma il fascino meraviglioso era che era un vero e proprio battello che non aveva mai avuto dubbio di essere stato sull’acqua centinaia di volte, e che non era mai stato destinato a essere abitato, sulla terraferma. Questo era per me il suo fascino. Se fosse mai stato destinato a essere abitato, avrei potuto pensare che fosse piccolo, o scomodo, o solitario; ma non essendo mai stato progettato per un uso del genere, divenne un alloggio perfetto.
All’interno era bellissimamente pulito e ordinato quanto mai. C’era un tavolo, e un orologio olandese, e un cassettone, e sul cassettone c’era un vassoio da tè con un dipinto di una signora con un ombrello, che faceva una passeggiata con un bambino dall’aria militaresca che faceva rotolare un cerchio. Il vassoio era tenuto in equilibrio da una Bibbia; e se il vassoio fosse caduto, avrebbe rotto una quantità di tazze, piattini e una teiera che erano raggruppati intorno al libro. Alle pareti c’erano alcune comuni immagini colorate, incorniciate e vetrate, con soggetti biblici; come non ne ho mai più viste da allora nelle mani dei venditori ambulanti, senza rivedere l’intero interno della casa del fratello di Peggotty, tutto in una volta. Abramo in rosso che va a sacrificare Isacco in blu, e Daniele in giallo gettato in una fossa di leoni verdi, erano i più prominenti di questi. Sopra il piccolo camino, c’era un quadro della goletta “Sarah Jane”, costruita a Sunderland, con un vero piccolo timone di legno attaccato; un’opera d’arte, che combinava composizione e falegnameria, che consideravo una delle possessioni più invidiabili che il mondo potesse offrire. C’erano alcuni ganci nelle travi del soffitto, il cui uso non riuscivo a capire allora; e alcuni armadietti e scatole e comodità di quel tipo, che servivano come sedie e completavano le sedie.
All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the threshold—child-like, according to my theory—and then Peggotty opened a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most desirable bedroom ever seen—in the stern of the vessel; with a little window, where the rudder used to go through; a little looking-glass, just the right height for me, nailed against the wall, and framed with oyster-shells; a little bed, which there was just room enough to get into; and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful house, was the smell of fish; which was so searching, that when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish; and I afterwards found that a heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with one another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little wooden outhouse where the pots and kettles were kept.
We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had seen curtseying at the door when I was on Ham’s back, about a quarter of a mile off. Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so) with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn’t let me kiss her when I offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As he called Peggotty ‘Lass’, and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, that he was her brother; and so he turned out—being presently introduced to me as Mr. Peggotty, the master of the house.
‘Glad to see you, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You’ll find us rough, sir, but you’ll find us ready.’
I thanked him, and replied that I was sure I should be happy in such a delightful place.
‘How’s your Ma, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Did you leave her pretty jolly?’
I gave Mr. Peggotty to understand that she was as jolly as I could wish, and that she desired her compliments—which was a polite fiction on my part.
‘I’m much obleeged to her, I’m sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Well, sir, if you can make out here, fur a fortnut, ‘long wi’ her,’ nodding at his sister, ‘and Ham, and little Em’ly, we shall be proud of your company.’
Having done the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking that ‘cold would never get his muck off’. He soon returned, greatly improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn’t help thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish,—that it went into the hot water very black, and came out very red.
After tea, when the door was shut and all was made snug (the nights being cold and misty now), it seemed to me the most delicious retreat that the imagination of man could conceive. To hear the wind getting up out at sea, to know that the fog was creeping over the desolate flat outside, and to look at the fire, and think that there was no house near but this one, and this one a boat, was like enchantment. Little Em’ly had overcome her shyness, and was sitting by my side upon the lowest and least of the lockers, which was just large enough for us two, and just fitted into the chimney corner. Mrs. Peggotty with the white apron, was knitting on the opposite side of the fire. Peggotty at her needlework was as much at home with St. Paul’s and the bit of wax-candle, as if they had never known any other roof. Ham, who had been giving me my first lesson in all-fours, was trying to recollect a scheme of telling fortunes with the dirty cards, and was printing off fishy impressions of his thumb on all the cards he turned. Mr. Peggotty was smoking his pipe. I felt it was a time for conversation and confidence.
‘Mr. Peggotty!’ says I.
‘Sir,’ says he.
‘Did you give your son the name of Ham, because you lived in a sort of ark?’
Mr. Peggotty seemed to think it a deep idea, but answered:
‘No, sir. I never giv him no name.’
‘Who gave him that name, then?’ said I, putting question number two of the catechism to Mr. Peggotty.
‘Why, sir, his father giv it him,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘I thought you were his father!’
‘My brother Joe was his father,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after a respectful pause.
‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
I was very much surprised that Mr. Peggotty was not Ham’s father, and began to wonder whether I was mistaken about his relationship to anybody else there. I was so curious to know, that I made up my mind to have it out with Mr. Peggotty.
‘Little Em’ly,’ I said, glancing at her. ‘She is your daughter, isn’t she, Mr. Peggotty?’
‘No, sir. My brother-in-law, Tom, was her father.’
I couldn’t help it. ‘—Dead, Mr. Peggotty?’ I hinted, after another respectful silence.
‘Drowndead,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
I felt the difficulty of resuming the subject, but had not got to the bottom of it yet, and must get to the bottom somehow. So I said:
‘Haven’t you ANY children, Mr. Peggotty?’
‘No, master,’ he answered with a short laugh. ‘I’m a bacheldore.’
‘A bachelor!’ I said, astonished. ‘Why, who’s that, Mr. Peggotty?’ pointing to the person in the apron who was knitting.
‘That’s Missis Gummidge,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘Gummidge, Mr. Peggotty?’
But at this point Peggotty—I mean my own peculiar Peggotty—made such impressive motions to me not to ask any more questions, that I could only sit and look at all the silent company, until it was time to go to bed. Then, in the privacy of my own little cabin, she informed me that Ham and Em’ly were an orphan nephew and niece, whom my host had at different times adopted in their childhood, when they were left destitute: and that Mrs. Gummidge was the widow of his partner in a boat, who had died very poor. He was but a poor man himself, said Peggotty, but as good as gold and as true as steel—those were her similes. The only subject, she informed me, on which he ever showed a violent temper or swore an oath, was this generosity of his; and if it were ever referred to, by any one of them, he struck the table a heavy blow with his right hand (had split it on one such occasion), and swore a dreadful oath that he would be ‘Gormed’ if he didn’t cut and run for good, if it was ever mentioned again. It appeared, in answer to my inquiries, that nobody had the least idea of the etymology of this terrible verb passive to be gormed; but that they all regarded it as constituting a most solemn imprecation.
Tutto questo lo vidi al primo sguardo dopo aver varcato la soglia — infantile, secondo la mia teoria — e poi Peggotty aprì una porticina e mi mostrò la mia cameretta. Era la cameretta più completa e desiderabile che si fosse mai vista — nella poppa della nave; con una piccola finestra, dove passava il timone; uno specchietto, proprio della mia altezza, inchiodato al muro e incorniciato con conchiglie d’ostrea; un lettino, in cui c’era appena spazio per entrare; e un mazzetto di alghe in una tazza blu sul tavolo. Le pareti erano imbiancate a calce bianca come il latte, e la trapunta a pezzi faceva male agli occhi per la sua luminosità. Una cosa che notai particolarmente in questa deliziosa casa, era l’odore di pesce; che era così penetrante, che quando tirai fuori il fazzoletto per asciugarmi il naso, scoprii che puzzava esattamente come se avesse avvolto un aragosta. Quando comunicai questa scoperta in confidenza a Peggotty, mi informò che suo fratello commerciava in aragoste, granchi e gamberi; e in seguito scoprii che un mucchio di queste creature, in uno stato di meravigliosa conglomerazione l’una con l’altra, e che non smettevano mai di pizzicare tutto ciò che afferravano, erano solitamente da trovare in una piccola rimessa di legno dove si tenevano le pentole e i paioli.
Fummo accolti da una donna molto gentile con un grembiule bianco, che avevo visto fare la riverenza alla porta quando ero sulla schiena di Ham, a circa mezzo chilometro di distanza. Allo stesso modo da una bambina molto bella (o almeno così la pensavo) con un collanino di perline blu, che non mi lasciò baciarla quando glielo proposi, ma scappò via e si nascose. Dopo un po’, quando avevamo cenato in modo sontuoso con filetti di pesce bolliti, burro fuso e patate, con un bistecca per me, un uomo peloso con un viso molto bonario tornò a casa. Poiché chiamava Peggotty “Lass” e le dava un vigoroso bacio sulla guancia, non avevo alcun dubbio, data la generalità della sua condotta, che fosse suo fratello; e così si rivelò, essendo presentato a me come il signor Peggotty, il padrone della casa.
«Sono felice di vederla, signore», disse il signor Peggotty. «Ci troverà rozzi, signore, ma ci troverà pronti».
Lo ringraziai e risposi che ero sicuro che sarei stato felice in un luogo così delizioso.
‘Come sta tua madre, signore?’ disse il signor Peggotty. ‘L’hai lasciata in buona forma?’
Feci capire a Mr. Peggotty che lei era allegra come avrei potuto desiderare, e che desiderava i suoi complimenti, il che era una cortese finzione da parte mia.
«Sono davvero molto grato a lei», disse il signor Peggotty. «Bene, signore, se riesce a cavarsela qui per due settimane, insieme a lei», facendo un cenno con la testa verso sua sorella, «e Ham e la piccola Emily, saremo onorati della sua compagnia».
Dopo aver fatto gli onori di casa in questo modo ospitale, il signor Peggotty uscì per lavarsi in un bollitore pieno di acqua calda, osservando che “il freddo non avrebbe mai tolto la sua sporcizia”. Tornò presto, molto migliorato nell’aspetto; ma così rubicondo, che non potevo fare a meno di pensare che il suo viso aveva in comune con i gamberi, i granchi e i gamberetti, che entrava nell’acqua calda molto scuro e ne usciva molto rosso.
Dopo il tè, quando la porta era chiusa e tutto era accogliente (le notti erano fredde e nebbiose ormai), mi sembrava il rifugio più delizioso che l’immaginazione dell’uomo potesse concepire. Sentire il vento che si alzava dal mare, sapere che la nebbia si insinuava nella desolata pianura esterna, e guardare il fuoco, e pensare che non c’era nessuna casa vicina se non questa, e questa una barca, era come un incantesimo. La piccola Em’ly aveva superato la sua timidezza, e stava seduta al mio fianco sul più basso e piccolo dei cassetti, che era appena abbastanza grande per noi due, e si adattava perfettamente all’angolo del camino. La signora Peggotty con il grembiule bianco stava facendo un lavoro a maglia sul lato opposto del fuoco. Peggotty al suo lavoro a maglia era altrettanto a suo agio con San Paolo e il pezzetto di candela di cera, come se non avessero mai conosciuto altro tetto. Ham, che mi aveva dato la mia prima lezione di tutti i quattro, stava cercando di ricordare un sistema per indovinare il futuro con le carte sporche, e stava stampando le impronte del suo pollice su tutte le carte che girava. Il signor Peggotty stava fumando la sua pipa. Sentivo che era un momento per la conversazione e la confidenza.
«Signor Peggotty!» dissi io.
«Signore», dice lui.
«Avete chiamato vostro figlio Ham perché vivevate in una specie di arca?»
Mr. Peggotty sembrava considerarlo un’idea profonda, ma rispose:
‘No, signore. Non gli ho mai dato un nome.’
«E chi gli ha dato quel nome?» chiesi, ponendo la domanda numero due del catechismo a Mr. Peggotty.
«Perché, signore, suo padre gliel’ha data», disse il signor Peggotty.
‘Credevo che fossi suo padre!’
«Mio fratello Joe era suo padre», disse il signor Peggotty.
«Morta, signor Peggotty?» suggerii, dopo una pausa rispettosa.
«Drowndead», disse il signor Peggotty.
Fui molto sorpreso di apprendere che il signor Peggotty non era il padre di Ham e cominciai a domandarmi se mi fossi sbagliato anche riguardo al suo rapporto con qualcun altro di loro. Ero così curioso di saperlo che decisi di chiarire la questione col signor Peggotty.
“Little Em’ly”, dissi, guardandola. “È sua figlia, vero, signor Peggotty?”
‘No, signore. Mio cognato Tom era suo padre.’
Non potevo farne a meno. «—Morta, signor Peggotty?» insinuai, dopo un altro silenzio rispettoso.
«Drowndead», disse il signor Peggotty.
Sentivo la difficoltà di riprendere l’argomento, ma non ne avevo ancora raggiunto il fondo e dovevo in qualche modo raggiungere il fondo. Così dissi:
‘Non ha NESSUN bambino, signor Peggotty?’
‘No, padrone’, rispose con una breve risata. ‘Sono un scapolo.’
«Un celibe!» dissi, stupito. «Ma chi è, signor Peggotty?» indicando la persona con il grembiule che stava facendo un lavoro a maglia.
«Questa è la signora Gummidge», disse il signor Peggotty.
‘Gummidge, signor Peggotty?’
Ma a questo punto Peggotty — intendo la mia Peggotty — fece dei gesti così eloquenti per farmi capire di non fare altre domande, che non potei far altro che sedermi e guardare tutti i presenti in silenzio, finché non fu ora di andare a letto. Poi, nella privacy della mia piccola cabina, mi informò che Ham ed Em’ly erano un nipote e una nipote orfani, che il mio ospite aveva adottato in tempi diversi durante la loro infanzia, quando erano stati abbandonati: e che la signora Gummidge era la vedova del suo socio in una barca, che era morto molto povero. Era un uomo povero, disse Peggotty, ma buono come l’oro e fedele come l’acciaio — questi erano i suoi confronti. L’unico argomento, mi informò, su cui mostrava mai un temperamento violento o pronunciava un giuramento, era questa sua generosità; e se mai qualcuno di loro vi faceva riferimento, colpiva il tavolo con un forte pugno con la mano destra (una volta si era rotto un dito in una di queste occasioni) e pronunciava un terribile giuramento che sarebbe stato “Gormed” se non se ne fosse andato per sempre, se mai fosse stato menzionato di nuovo. Sembrava, in risposta alle mie domande, che nessuno avesse la minima idea dell’etimologia di questo terribile verbo passivo essere gormed; ma che tutti lo considerassero come una solenne imprecazione.
I was very sensible of my entertainer’s goodness, and listened to the women’s going to bed in another little crib like mine at the opposite end of the boat, and to him and Ham hanging up two hammocks for themselves on the hooks I had noticed in the roof, in a very luxurious state of mind, enhanced by my being sleepy. As slumber gradually stole upon me, I heard the wind howling out at sea and coming on across the flat so fiercely, that I had a lazy apprehension of the great deep rising in the night. But I bethought myself that I was in a boat, after all; and that a man like Mr. Peggotty was not a bad person to have on board if anything did happen.
Nothing happened, however, worse than morning. Almost as soon as it shone upon the oyster-shell frame of my mirror I was out of bed, and out with little Em’ly, picking up stones upon the beach.
‘You’re quite a sailor, I suppose?’ I said to Em’ly. I don’t know that I supposed anything of the kind, but I felt it an act of gallantry to say something; and a shining sail close to us made such a pretty little image of itself, at the moment, in her bright eye, that it came into my head to say this.
‘No,’ replied Em’ly, shaking her head, ‘I’m afraid of the sea.’
‘Afraid!’ I said, with a becoming air of boldness, and looking very big at the mighty ocean. ‘I an’t!’
‘Ah! but it’s cruel,’ said Em’ly. ‘I have seen it very cruel to some of our men. I have seen it tear a boat as big as our house, all to pieces.’
‘I hope it wasn’t the boat that—’
‘That father was drownded in?’ said Em’ly. ‘No. Not that one, I never see that boat.’
‘Nor him?’ I asked her.
Little Em’ly shook her head. ‘Not to remember!’
Here was a coincidence! I immediately went into an explanation how I had never seen my own father; and how my mother and I had always lived by ourselves in the happiest state imaginable, and lived so then, and always meant to live so; and how my father’s grave was in the churchyard near our house, and shaded by a tree, beneath the boughs of which I had walked and heard the birds sing many a pleasant morning. But there were some differences between Em’ly’s orphanhood and mine, it appeared. She had lost her mother before her father; and where her father’s grave was no one knew, except that it was somewhere in the depths of the sea.
‘Besides,’ said Em’ly, as she looked about for shells and pebbles, ‘your father was a gentleman and your mother is a lady; and my father was a fisherman and my mother was a fisherman’s daughter, and my uncle Dan is a fisherman.’
‘Dan is Mr. Peggotty, is he?’ said I.
‘Uncle Dan—yonder,’ answered Em’ly, nodding at the boat-house.
‘Yes. I mean him. He must be very good, I should think?’
‘Good?’ said Em’ly. ‘If I was ever to be a lady, I’d give him a sky-blue coat with diamond buttons, nankeen trousers, a red velvet waistcoat, a cocked hat, a large gold watch, a silver pipe, and a box of money.’
I said I had no doubt that Mr. Peggotty well deserved these treasures. I must acknowledge that I felt it difficult to picture him quite at his ease in the raiment proposed for him by his grateful little niece, and that I was particularly doubtful of the policy of the cocked hat; but I kept these sentiments to myself.
Little Em’ly had stopped and looked up at the sky in her enumeration of these articles, as if they were a glorious vision. We went on again, picking up shells and pebbles.
‘You would like to be a lady?’ I said.
Emily looked at me, and laughed and nodded ‘yes’.
‘I should like it very much. We would all be gentlefolks together, then. Me, and uncle, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge. We wouldn’t mind then, when there comes stormy weather.---Not for our own sakes, I mean. We would for the poor fishermen’s, to be sure, and we’d help ‘em with money when they come to any hurt.’ This seemed to me to be a very satisfactory and therefore not at all improbable picture. I expressed my pleasure in the contemplation of it, and little Em’ly was emboldened to say, shyly,
‘Don’t you think you are afraid of the sea, now?’
It was quiet enough to reassure me, but I have no doubt if I had seen a moderately large wave come tumbling in, I should have taken to my heels, with an awful recollection of her drowned relations. However, I said ‘No,’ and I added, ‘You don’t seem to be either, though you say you are,’—for she was walking much too near the brink of a sort of old jetty or wooden causeway we had strolled upon, and I was afraid of her falling over.
‘I’m not afraid in this way,’ said little Em’ly. ‘But I wake when it blows, and tremble to think of Uncle Dan and Ham and believe I hear ‘em crying out for help. That’s why I should like so much to be a lady. But I’m not afraid in this way. Not a bit. Look here!’
She started from my side, and ran along a jagged timber which protruded from the place we stood upon, and overhung the deep water at some height, without the least defence. The incident is so impressed on my remembrance, that if I were a draughtsman I could draw its form here, I dare say, accurately as it was that day, and little Em’ly springing forward to her destruction (as it appeared to me), with a look that I have never forgotten, directed far out to sea.
The light, bold, fluttering little figure turned and came back safe to me, and I soon laughed at my fears, and at the cry I had uttered; fruitlessly in any case, for there was no one near. But there have been times since, in my manhood, many times there have been, when I have thought, Is it possible, among the possibilities of hidden things, that in the sudden rashness of the child and her wild look so far off, there was any merciful attraction of her into danger, any tempting her towards him permitted on the part of her dead father, that her life might have a chance of ending that day? There has been a time since when I have wondered whether, if the life before her could have been revealed to me at a glance, and so revealed as that a child could fully comprehend it, and if her preservation could have depended on a motion of my hand, I ought to have held it up to save her. There has been a time since—I do not say it lasted long, but it has been—when I have asked myself the question, would it have been better for little Em’ly to have had the waters close above her head that morning in my sight; and when I have answered Yes, it would have been.
Ero molto consapevole della gentilezza del mio ospite, e ascoltavo le donne che andavano a letto in un altro piccolo alloggio come il mio all’estremità opposta della barca, e lui e Ham che appendevano due amache per loro stessi agli uncini che avevo notato sul soffitto, in uno stato d’animo molto lussuoso, aumentato dal fatto che ero assonnato. Mentre il sonno mi rubava gradualmente, sentivo il vento ululare in mare aperto e venire verso di noi attraverso la pianura così furiosamente, che avevo una pigrissima apprensione del grande abisso che si alzava nella notte. Ma mi ricordai che ero in una barca, dopotutto; e che un uomo come il signor Peggotty non era una cattiva persona da avere a bordo se succedeva qualcosa.
Non accadde nulla, tuttavia, di peggio del mattino. Appena brillò sul telaio di conchiglia della mia specchiera mi alzai dal letto e uscii con la piccola Emily a raccogliere sassi sulla spiaggia.
«Siete una vera navigatrice, immagino» dissi a Emily. Non so che cosa avessi immaginato, ma sentii che era un atto di galanteria dire qualcosa; e una vela lucente vicina a noi si rifletteva in quel momento in modo così grazioso nel suo occhio brillante, che mi venne in mente di dire questo.
‘No’, rispose Emily, scuotendo la testa, ‘ho paura del mare’.
«Spaventato!» dissi, con un’aria di coraggio degna di me, e guardando molto in alto verso l’oceano immenso. «Non lo sono!»
«Ah! ma è crudele», disse Em’ly. «L’ho vista essere molto crudele con alcuni dei nostri uomini. L’ho vista distruggere una barca grande come la nostra casa, riducendola in mille pezzi.»
«Spero che non sia stata la barca che—»
“Quel padre è annegato?” disse Emily. “No, non quello. Non ho mai visto quella barca.”
«Nemmeno lui?» le chiesi.
Little Em’ly scuote la testa. “Non ricordare!”
Ecco una coincidenza! Mi misi subito a spiegare che non avevo mai visto mio padre; e che mia madre e io avevamo sempre vissuto da soli nello stato più felice immaginabile, e vivevamo così allora, e avevamo sempre inteso vivere così; e che la tomba di mio padre era nel cimitero vicino alla nostra casa, e ombreggiata da un albero, sotto i cui rami avevo camminato e sentito cantare gli uccelli in molte piacevoli mattinate. Ma sembrava che ci fossero alcune differenze tra l’orfania di Em’ly e la mia. Lei aveva perso sua madre prima di suo padre; e dove fosse la tomba di suo padre nessuno lo sapeva, tranne che era da qualche parte nelle profondità del mare.
«Inoltre», disse Emily mentre cercava conchiglie e sassolini, «tuo padre era un gentiluomo e tua madre è una signora; mio padre era un pescatore, mia madre era la figlia di un pescatore, e mio zio Dan è un pescatore.»
«Dan è il signor Peggotty, vero?» dissi io.
«Zio Dan laggiù», rispose Em’ly, indicando con un cenno la barca-casa.
‘Sì. Intendo lui. Deve essere molto bravo, immagino?’
«Buono?» disse Emily. «Se dovessi mai diventare una signora, gli darei un cappotto celeste con bottoni di diamanti, pantaloni di nankeen, un gilet di velluto rosso, un cappello a tricorno, un grande orologio d’oro, una pipa d’argento e una scatola piena di soldi.»
Dissi che non avevo dubbio che il signor Peggotty ben meritasse questi tesori. Devo ammettere che mi sembrava difficile immaginarlo del tutto a suo agio nei panni che la sua riconoscente nipotina gli aveva proposto, e che ero particolarmente scettico sulla opportunità del cappello a tricorno; ma mi tenni per me queste opinioni.
La piccola Emily si era fermata e aveva alzato lo sguardo al cielo mentre elencava questi oggetti, come se fossero una visione gloriosa. Riprendemmo a camminare, raccogliendo conchiglie e sassolini.
«Vorreste essere una signora?» dissi.
Emily mi guardò, rise e annuì con un cenno «sì».
«Mi piacerebbe molto. Saremmo tutti gentiluomini insieme, allora. Io, e lo zio, e Ham, e la signora Gummidge. Non ci dispiacerebbe allora, quando arriva il tempo burrascoso.---Non per noi stessi, voglio dire. Lo faremmo per i poveri pescatori, certo, e li aiuteremmo con i soldi quando arrivano a qualche danno.» Questo mi sembrava essere un quadro molto soddisfacente e quindi per nulla improbabile. Espressi il mio piacere nel contemplarlo, e la piccola Em’ly fu incoraggiata a dire, timidamente,
‘Non credi di aver paura del mare, ora?’
Era abbastanza tranquillo da rassicurarmi, ma non ho dubbio che se avessi visto una onda di medie dimensioni avvicinarsi, mi sarei messo a correre, con un terribile ricordo delle sue parenti annegate. Tuttavia, dissi “No”, e aggiunsi: “Non sembri esserlo, anche se lo dici”, — perché lei stava camminando troppo vicino al bordo di una specie di vecchio molo o passerella di legno su cui ci eravamo incamminati, e temevo che potesse cadere.
«Non ho paura in questo modo», disse la piccola Emily. «Ma mi sveglio quando soffia il vento, e tremo al pensiero di zio Dan e Ham e credo di sentirli gridare aiuto. Ecco perché vorrei tanto essere una signora. Ma non ho paura in questo modo. Niente affatto. Guarda qui!»
Si staccò dal mio fianco e corse lungo un pezzo di legname frastagliato che sporgeva dal luogo dove ci trovavamo, e si protendeva sulle profonde acque a una certa altezza, senza la minima protezione. L’incidente è così impresso nella mia memoria che se fossi un disegnatore potrei disegnarne la forma qui, oserei dire, con la stessa precisione di quel giorno, e la piccola Emily che balzava in avanti verso la sua distruzione (così mi sembrò), con uno sguardo che non ho mai dimenticato, rivolto lontano verso il mare.
La leggera, audace, frullante piccola figura si voltò e tornò sana e salva da me, e presto risi delle mie paure, e del grido che avevo emesso; inutilmente in ogni caso, perché non c’era nessuno vicino. Ma ci sono stati tempi da allora, nella mia maturità, molti tempi ci sono stati, quando ho pensato, è possibile, tra le possibilità di cose nascoste, che nella repentina impulsività del bambino e nel suo sguardo selvaggio così lontano, ci fosse qualche attrazione misericordiosa di lei verso il pericolo, qualche tentazione verso lui permessa da parte di suo padre defunto, affinché la sua vita potesse avere una possibilità di finire quel giorno? C’è stato un tempo da quando mi sono chiesto se, se la vita davanti a lei avrebbe potuto essere rivelata a me in un attimo, e così rivelata che un bambino potesse comprenderla appieno, e se la sua salvezza avrebbe potuto dipendere da un movimento della mia mano, avrei dovuto alzarla per salvarla. C’è stato un tempo da allora—non dico che sia durato a lungo, ma è stato—quando mi sono posto la domanda, sarebbe stato meglio per la piccola Em’ly che le acque si chiudessero sopra la sua testa quella mattina davanti ai miei occhi; e quando ho risposto Sì, sarebbe stato.
This may be premature. I have set it down too soon, perhaps. But let it stand.
We strolled a long way, and loaded ourselves with things that we thought curious, and put some stranded starfish carefully back into the water—I hardly know enough of the race at this moment to be quite certain whether they had reason to feel obliged to us for doing so, or the reverse—and then made our way home to Mr. Peggotty’s dwelling. We stopped under the lee of the lobster-outhouse to exchange an innocent kiss, and went in to breakfast glowing with health and pleasure.
‘Like two young mavishes,’ Mr. Peggotty said. I knew this meant, in our local dialect, like two young thrushes, and received it as a compliment.
Of course I was in love with little Em’ly. I am sure I loved that baby quite as truly, quite as tenderly, with greater purity and more disinterestedness, than can enter into the best love of a later time of life, high and ennobling as it is. I am sure my fancy raised up something round that blue-eyed mite of a child, which etherealized, and made a very angel of her. If, any sunny forenoon, she had spread a little pair of wings and flown away before my eyes, I don’t think I should have regarded it as much more than I had had reason to expect.
We used to walk about that dim old flat at Yarmouth in a loving manner, hours and hours. The days sported by us, as if Time had not grown up himself yet, but were a child too, and always at play. I told Em’ly I adored her, and that unless she confessed she adored me I should be reduced to the necessity of killing myself with a sword. She said she did, and I have no doubt she did.
As to any sense of inequality, or youthfulness, or other difficulty in our way, little Em’ly and I had no such trouble, because we had no future. We made no more provision for growing older, than we did for growing younger. We were the admiration of Mrs. Gummidge and Peggotty, who used to whisper of an evening when we sat, lovingly, on our little locker side by side, ‘Lor! wasn’t it beautiful!’ Mr. Peggotty smiled at us from behind his pipe, and Ham grinned all the evening and did nothing else. They had something of the sort of pleasure in us, I suppose, that they might have had in a pretty toy, or a pocket model of the Colosseum.
I soon found out that Mrs. Gummidge did not always make herself so agreeable as she might have been expected to do, under the circumstances of her residence with Mr. Peggotty. Mrs. Gummidge’s was rather a fretful disposition, and she whimpered more sometimes than was comfortable for other parties in so small an establishment. I was very sorry for her; but there were moments when it would have been more agreeable, I thought, if Mrs. Gummidge had had a convenient apartment of her own to retire to, and had stopped there until her spirits revived.
Mr. Peggotty went occasionally to a public-house called The Willing Mind. I discovered this, by his being out on the second or third evening of our visit, and by Mrs. Gummidge’s looking up at the Dutch clock, between eight and nine, and saying he was there, and that, what was more, she had known in the morning he would go there.
Mrs. Gummidge had been in a low state all day, and had burst into tears in the forenoon, when the fire smoked. ‘I am a lone lorn creetur’,’ were Mrs. Gummidge’s words, when that unpleasant occurrence took place, ‘and everythink goes contrary with me.’
‘Oh, it’ll soon leave off,’ said Peggotty—I again mean our Peggotty—‘and besides, you know, it’s not more disagreeable to you than to us.’
‘I feel it more,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
It was a very cold day, with cutting blasts of wind. Mrs. Gummidge’s peculiar corner of the fireside seemed to me to be the warmest and snuggest in the place, as her chair was certainly the easiest, but it didn’t suit her that day at all. She was constantly complaining of the cold, and of its occasioning a visitation in her back which she called ‘the creeps’. At last she shed tears on that subject, and said again that she was ‘a lone lorn creetur’ and everythink went contrary with her’.
‘It is certainly very cold,’ said Peggotty. ‘Everybody must feel it so.’
‘I feel it more than other people,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
So at dinner; when Mrs. Gummidge was always helped immediately after me, to whom the preference was given as a visitor of distinction. The fish were small and bony, and the potatoes were a little burnt. We all acknowledged that we felt this something of a disappointment; but Mrs. Gummidge said she felt it more than we did, and shed tears again, and made that former declaration with great bitterness.
Accordingly, when Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o’clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em’ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes since tea.
‘Well, Mates,’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking his seat, ‘and how are you?’
We all said something, or looked something, to welcome him, except Mrs. Gummidge, who only shook her head over her knitting.
‘What’s amiss?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a clap of his hands. ‘Cheer up, old Mawther!’ (Mr. Peggotty meant old girl.)
Mrs. Gummidge did not appear to be able to cheer up. She took out an old black silk handkerchief and wiped her eyes; but instead of putting it in her pocket, kept it out, and wiped them again, and still kept it out, ready for use.
‘What’s amiss, dame?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘Nothing,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘You’ve come from The Willing Mind, Dan’l?’
‘Why yes, I’ve took a short spell at The Willing Mind tonight,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘I’m sorry I should drive you there,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.
Potrebbe essere prematuro. Forse l’ho scritto troppo presto. Ma lasciamolo così.
Camminammo a lungo, e ci caricammo di cose che trovavamo curiose, e rimettemmo con cura alcune stelle marine spiaggiate nella acqua—a malapena ne so abbastanza sulla specie in questo momento per essere sicuro se avessero avuto ragione di sentirsi obbligate nei nostri confronti per averlo fatto, o il contrario—e poi ci dirigemmo a casa dell’abitazione di Mr. Peggotty. Ci fermammo al riparo della baracca per aragoste per scambiarci un bacio innocente, e entrammo a fare colazione, rossi di salute e di piacere.
«Come due giovani mavishes», disse il signor Peggotty. Sapevo che ciò significava, nel nostro dialetto locale, come due giovani tordi, e lo presi come un complimento.
Naturalmente ero innamorato della piccola Emily. Sono sicuro di aver amato quella bambina con altrettanta sincerità, altrettanta tenerezza, con una purezza maggiore e una disinteressatezza più grande, di quanto possa entrare nel migliore amore di un’età più avanzata della vita, alta e nobile com’è. Sono sicuro che la mia fantasia ha creato qualcosa attorno a quella piccola bambina dagli occhi azzurri, che l’ha resa eterea, trasformandola in un vero angelo. Se, in una mattinata soleggiata, avesse spiegato un piccolo paio di ali e fosse volata via davanti ai miei occhi, non credo che l’avrei considerato molto più di quanto avessi avuto motivo di aspettarmi.
Eravamo soliti passeggiare in quel vecchio appartamento buio a Yarmouth in modo affettuoso, per ore e ore. I giorni ci sfrecciavano accanto, come se il Tempo non fosse ancora cresciuto lui stesso, ma fosse un bambino anche lui, e sempre al gioco. Dissi ad Em’ly che la adoravo, e che a meno che non confessasse di adorare me sarei stato costretto a uccidermi con una spada. Lei disse che lo faceva, e non ho alcun dubbio che lo facesse.
Per quanto riguarda qualsiasi senso di disuguaglianza, o giovinezza, o altra difficoltà che si frapponesse al nostro cammino, né la piccola Emily né io avevamo tali problemi, perché non avevamo alcun futuro. Non ci preoccupavamo di invecchiare più di quanto non ci preoccupassimo di ringiovanire. Eravamo l’ammirazione di Mrs. Gummidge e di Peggotty, che sussurravano la sera, quando sedevamo amorevolmente uno accanto all’altro sulla nostra piccola cassapanca, «Oh! non era meraviglioso?» Mr. Peggotty ci sorrideva da dietro la pipa, e Ham ghignava per tutta la sera senza fare altro. Immagino che provassero per noi una specie di piacere simile a quello che avrebbero provato per un bel giocattolo, o per un modello in miniatura del Colosseo.
Scoprii presto che la signora Gummidge non si rendeva sempre così simpatica come ci si sarebbe potuto aspettare, date le circostanze della sua convivenza con il signor Peggotty. La signora Gummidge aveva un carattere piuttosto lamentoso, e talvolta si lamentava più del conveniente per gli altri in una famiglia così piccola. Mi dispiaceva per lei; ma c’erano momenti in cui sarebbe stato più piacevole, pensavo, se la signora Gummidge avesse avuto una stanza comoda tutta per sé dove ritirarsi, e vi fosse rimasta finché il suo umore non fosse migliorato.
Il signor Peggotty andava occasionalmente in un’osteria chiamata The Willing Mind. Scoprii questo perché era fuori la seconda o terza sera della nostra visita, e perché la signora Gummidge guardò l’orologio olandese tra le otto e le nove e disse che era lì, e che, per di più, aveva saputo la mattina che sarebbe andato lì.
La signora Gummidge era stata in uno stato di prostrazione per tutto il giorno, ed era scoppiata a piangere al mattino quando il fuoco fumava. «Sono una povera creatura abbandonata», erano le parole della signora Gummidge quando si verificò quell’evento spiacevole, «e tutto va storto per me».
«Oh, passerà presto», disse Peggotty - intendo di nuovo la nostra Peggotty - «e poi, sapete, non è più sgradevole per voi che per noi».
«Lo sento ancora di più», disse la signora Gummidge.
Era una giornata molto fredda, con raffiche di vento taglienti. L’angolo particolare di Mrs. Gummidge accanto al caminetto mi sembrava il più caldo e accogliente del posto, come la sua sedia era certamente la più comoda, ma quel giorno non le andava bene per niente. Si lamentava costantemente del freddo e del fatto che glielo facesse sentire nella schiena, una cosa che chiamava “i brividi”. Alla fine versò lacrime per questo motivo, e disse di nuovo che era “una povera creatura solitaria” e che tutto le andava contro.
‘È sicuramente molto freddo’, disse Peggotty. ‘Tutti lo sentono così.’
«Io lo sento più degli altri», disse la signora Gummidge.
Così a cena; quando la signora Gummidge veniva sempre servita subito dopo di me, a cui veniva dato il privilegio in quanto ospite di riguardo. Il pesce era piccolo e pieno di lische, e le patate erano un po’ bruciate. Tutti riconoscemmo che ci sentivamo un po’ delusi; ma la signora Gummidge disse che lo sentiva più di noi, e versò di nuovo lacrime e ripeté quella dichiarazione precedente con grande amarezza.
Di conseguenza, quando il signor Peggotty tornò a casa verso le nove di sera, questa sfortunata signora Gummidge stava lavorando a maglia nel suo angolo, in condizioni molto pietose e meschine. Peggotty aveva lavorato di buon umore. Ham aveva riparato un grande paio di stivali da acqua; e io, con la piccola Emily al mio fianco, avevo letto loro qualcosa. La signora Gummidge non aveva mai fatto altro che sospirare disperata, e non aveva mai alzato gli occhi da quando avevamo preso il tè.
«Bene, ragazzi», disse il signor Peggotty, accomodandosi, «e come state?»
Tutti dicemmo qualcosa, o facemmo un gesto, per dargli il benvenuto, tranne la signora Gummidge, che si limitò a scuotere la testa sul suo lavoro a maglia.
«Che succede?» disse il signor Peggotty, battendo le mani. «Su, coraggio, vecchia Mawther!» (Il signor Peggotty intendeva vecchia ragazza.)
La signora Gummidge non sembrava capace di rallegrarsi. Si tirò fuori un vecchio fazzoletto di seta nera e si asciugò gli occhi; ma invece di rimetterlo in tasca, lo tenne fuori, e se li asciugò di nuovo, e continuò a tenerlo fuori, pronto all’uso.
«Che c’è che non va, signora?» disse il signor Peggotty.
“Niente”, rispose la signora Gummidge. “Sei venuto dal Willing Mind, Dan’l?”
«Perché sì, ho fatto una breve sosta al Willing Mind stasera», disse il signor Peggotty.
«Mi dispiace di dovervi portare là», disse la signora Gummidge.
‘Drive! I don’t want no driving,’ returned Mr. Peggotty with an honest laugh. ‘I only go too ready.’
‘Very ready,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, shaking her head, and wiping her eyes. ‘Yes, yes, very ready. I am sorry it should be along of me that you’re so ready.’
‘Along o’ you! It an’t along o’ you!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Don’t ye believe a bit on it.’
‘Yes, yes, it is,’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I know what I am. I know that I am a lone lorn creetur’, and not only that everythink goes contrary with me, but that I go contrary with everybody. Yes, yes. I feel more than other people do, and I show it more. It’s my misfortun’.’
I really couldn’t help thinking, as I sat taking in all this, that the misfortune extended to some other members of that family besides Mrs. Gummidge. But Mr. Peggotty made no such retort, only answering with another entreaty to Mrs. Gummidge to cheer up.
‘I an’t what I could wish myself to be,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I am far from it. I know what I am. My troubles has made me contrary. I feel my troubles, and they make me contrary. I wish I didn’t feel ‘em, but I do. I wish I could be hardened to ‘em, but I an’t. I make the house uncomfortable. I don’t wonder at it. I’ve made your sister so all day, and Master Davy.’
Here I was suddenly melted, and roared out, ‘No, you haven’t, Mrs. Gummidge,’ in great mental distress.
‘It’s far from right that I should do it,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘It an’t a fit return. I had better go into the house and die. I am a lone lorn creetur’, and had much better not make myself contrary here. If thinks must go contrary with me, and I must go contrary myself, let me go contrary in my parish. Dan’l, I’d better go into the house, and die and be a riddance!’
Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked round upon us, and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, said in a whisper:
‘She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’
I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham, ‘Poor thing! She’s been thinking of the old ‘un!’ And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the tenderest commiseration.
So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty’s times of going out and coming in, and altered Ham’s engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row. I don’t know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em’ly leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us the ships, like their own shadows.
At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving little Em’ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her. (I redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let.) We were greatly overcome at parting; and if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my heart, I had one made that day.
Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed to point that way with a ready finger; and I felt, all the more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend.
This gained upon me as we went along; so that the nearer we drew, the more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more excited I was to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing in those transports, tried to check them (though very kindly), and looked confused and out of sorts.
Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the carrier’s horse pleased—and did. How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!
The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying in my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange servant.
‘Why, Peggotty!’ I said, ruefully, ‘isn’t she come home?’
‘Yes, yes, Master Davy,’ said Peggotty. ‘She’s come home. Wait a bit, Master Davy, and I’ll—I’ll tell you something.’
Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of herself, but I felt too blank and strange to tell her so. When she had got down, she took me by the hand; led me, wondering, into the kitchen; and shut the door.
‘Peggotty!’ said I, quite frightened. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing’s the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!’ she answered, assuming an air of sprightliness.
«Guidare! Non voglio guidare», rispose il signor Peggotty con una risata sincera. «Io vado già troppo di fretta.»
«Sono prontissima», disse la signora Gummidge, scuotendo la testa e asciugandosi gli occhi. «Sì, sì, prontissima. Mi dispiace che sia per colpa mia che siete così pronta.»
“Per colpa tua! Non è per colpa tua!” disse il signor Peggotty. “Non ci credo per un attimo.”
«Sì, sì, lo è», gridò la signora Gummidge. «So quello che sono. So di essere una povera creatura solitaria, e non solo che tutto va storto per me, ma che io vado storta con tutti. Sì, sì. Io sento più degli altri, e lo dimostro di più. È la mia disgrazia.»
Seduto lì, mentre tutto questo mi entrava dentro, non potevo fare a meno di pensare che la sfortuna si estendesse ad altri membri della famiglia oltre a Mrs. Gummidge. Ma Mr. Peggotty non fece alcuna tale replica, limitandosi a rispondere con un’altra esortazione a Mrs. Gummidge a tirarsi su.
«Non sono come vorrei essere», disse la signora Gummidge, «sono lontana da esserlo. So bene com’è la mia condizione. Le mie disgrazie mi hanno resa ribelle. Le sento, queste disgrazie, e mi rendono ribelle. Vorrei non sentirle, ma le sento. Vorrei potermele far passare, ma non ci riesco. Rendo la casa sgradevole. Non mi meraviglio di questo. Ho reso così tua sorella per tutto il giorno, e anche il piccolo Davy.»
E qui mi sono improvvisamente commosso e ho esclamato: «No, non l’ha fatto, signora Gummidge», in grande angoscia mentale.
«Non è giusto che io lo faccia», disse la signora Gummidge. «Non è un giusto ritorno. È meglio che io entri in casa e muoia. Sono una povera creatura sola e sarebbe molto meglio se non mi rendessi antipatica qui. Se le cose devono andare storte per me, e io devo essere io stessa contraria, lasciatemi andare contrariamente nella mia parrocchia. Dan’l, sarebbe meglio che io entrassi in casa, morissi e fossi una liberazione!»
La signora Gummidge si ritirò con queste parole e andò a letto. Quando se ne fu andata, il signor Peggotty, che non aveva mostrato traccia di alcun sentimento se non la più profonda compassione, si guardò intorno, e annuendo con un’espressione vivace di quel sentimento che ancora animava il suo volto, disse sottovoce:
‘Stava pensando al vecchio!’
Non capivo bene su cosa la vecchia signora Gummidge avesse fissato la sua attenzione, finché Peggotty, accompagnandomi a letto, mi spiegò che si trattava del defunto signor Gummidge; e che suo fratello considerava sempre questo un fatto accertato in tali occasioni, e che ciò lo commuoveva sempre. Qualche tempo dopo che lui era nella sua amaca quella sera, lo sentii ripetere a Ham: «Poverina! Stava pensando al vecchio!». E ogni volta che la signora Gummidge si lasciava prendere da un sentimento simile durante il resto del nostro soggiorno (il che accadeva alcune volte), lui diceva sempre la stessa cosa per attenuare la circostanza, e sempre con la più tenera compassione.
Così la quindicina trascorse, variata da nulla se non dalla variazione della marea, che alterava gli orari di uscita e rientro del signor Peggotty, e alterava anche gli impegni di Ham. Quando quest’ultimo era disoccupato, a volte camminava con noi per mostrarci le barche e le navi, e una o due volte ci portò a fare un giro in barca. Non so perché un insieme di impressioni leggere sia più particolarmente associato a un luogo rispetto a un altro, anche se credo che questo accada alla maggior parte delle persone, in riferimento soprattutto alle associazioni della loro infanzia. Non sento mai il nome, o leggo il nome, di Yarmouth, senza essere ricordato di una certa domenica mattina sulla spiaggia, le campane che suonano per la chiesa, la piccola Em’ly che si appoggia alla mia spalla, Ham che lascia cadere pigramente pietre nell’acqua, e il sole, lontano in mare, che sta appena rompendo attraverso la fitta nebbia, e mostrandoci le navi, come le loro stesse ombre.
Finalmente arrivò il giorno di andare a casa. Riuscii a sopportare la separazione da Mr. Peggotty e Mrs. Gummidge, ma la mia angoscia nell’abbandonare la piccola Em’ly era lancinante. Andammo a braccetto fino all’osteria dove il facchino si fermava, e io promisi, lungo la strada, di scriverle. (Mantenni quella promessa in seguito, con caratteri più grandi di quelli con cui di solito si annunciano gli appartamenti in vendita.) Eravamo molto addolorati nel separarci; e se mai, nella mia vita, ho avuto un vuoto nel cuore, quel giorno ne ebbi uno.
Ora, tutto il tempo che ero stato in visita, ero stato di nuovo ingrato verso la mia casa e non avevo pensato quasi nulla a riguardo. Ma non appena mi voltai verso di essa, la mia giovane coscienza accusatrice sembrò indicare quella direzione con un dito pronto; e sentii, tanto più per il cedimento del mio spirito, che era il mio nido, e che mia madre era la mia consolatrice e amica.
Questo cresceva in me man mano che procedevamo; così che più ci avvicinavamo, più gli oggetti che incontravamo mi diventavano familiari, e più ero impaziente di arrivare e di correre tra le sue braccia. Ma Peggotty, invece di condividere quelle effusioni, cercava di frenarle (anche se molto gentilmente), e aveva un’aria confusa e scontenta.
La Blunderstone Rookery sarebbe comunque arrivata, nonostante lei, quando il cavallo del facchino avrebbe voluto - e volle. Quanto bene me lo ricordo, in un freddo pomeriggio grigio, con un cielo plumbeo, che minacciava pioggia!
La porta si aprì, e io guardai, tra il ridere e il piangere nella mia piacevole agitazione, per mia madre. Non era lei, ma una strana serva.
«Ma, Peggotty!» dissi, con rammarico, «non è tornata a casa?»
«Sì, sì, Master Davy», disse Peggotty. «È tornata a casa. Aspetta un attimo, Master Davy, e ti dirò qualcosa.»
Tra l’agitazione e la sua naturale goffaggine nel scendere dal carro, Peggotty si stava trasformando in un festone davvero straordinario, ma mi sentivo troppo svuotato e strano per dirglielo. Quando fu scesa, mi prese per mano; mi condusse, stupito, in cucina; e chiuse la porta.
“Peggotty!” dissi, spaventato. “Che succede?”
«Non c’è niente che non va, ti benedica, caro Master Davy!» rispose, assumendo un’aria vivace.
‘Something’s the matter, I’m sure. Where’s mama?’
‘Where’s mama, Master Davy?’ repeated Peggotty.
‘Yes. Why hasn’t she come out to the gate, and what have we come in here for? Oh, Peggotty!’ My eyes were full, and I felt as if I were going to tumble down.
‘Bless the precious boy!’ cried Peggotty, taking hold of me. ‘What is it? Speak, my pet!’
‘Not dead, too! Oh, she’s not dead, Peggotty?’
Peggotty cried out No! with an astonishing volume of voice; and then sat down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn.
I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in anxious inquiry.
‘You see, dear, I should have told you before now,’ said Peggotty, ‘but I hadn’t an opportunity. I ought to have made it, perhaps, but I couldn’t azackly’—that was always the substitute for exactly, in Peggotty’s militia of words—‘bring my mind to it.’
‘Go on, Peggotty,’ said I, more frightened than before.
‘Master Davy,’ said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way. ‘What do you think? You have got a Pa!’
I trembled, and turned white. Something—I don’t know what, or how—connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.
‘A new one,’ said Peggotty.
‘A new one?’ I repeated.
Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was very hard, and, putting out her hand, said:
‘Come and see him.’
‘I don’t want to see him.’
—‘And your mama,’ said Peggotty.
I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour, where she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the other, Mr. Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly I thought.
‘Now, Clara my dear,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘Recollect! control yourself, always control yourself! Davy boy, how do you do?’
I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my mother: she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him, I knew quite well that he was looking at us both; and I turned to the window and looked out there, at some shrubs that were drooping their heads in the cold.
As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs. My old dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled downstairs to find anything that was like itself, so altered it all seemed; and roamed into the yard. I very soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel was filled up with a great dog—deep mouthed and black-haired like Him—and he was very angry at the sight of me, and sprang out to get at me.
‘Qualcosa non va, ne sono sicuro. Dov’è mamma?’
«Dov’è la mamma, Davy?» ripeté Peggotty.
«Sì. Perché non è venuta alla porta, e perché siamo entrati qui? Oh, Peggotty!» Gli occhi mi si riempirono di lacrime e mi sentii come se stessi per cadere a terra.
“Benedetto quel ragazzo prezioso!” esclamò Peggotty, prendendomi. “Che succede? Parla, tesoro mio!”
“Non è morta anche lei, vero? Oh, non è morta, Peggotty?”
Peggotty gridò No! con un volume di voce sorprendente; e poi si sedette, e cominciò a ansimare, e disse che le avevo dato una scossa.
La abbracciai per farle passare la vertigine, o per farle fare un’altra volta nella giusta direzione, e poi mi piantai davanti a lei, guardandola con ansiosa curiosità.
«Vedi, cara, avrei dovuto dirtelo prima», disse Peggotty, «ma non ho avuto l’occasione. Forse avrei dovuto crearla, ma non riuscivo proprio» — che era sempre il sostituto di esattamente, nella milizia di parole di Peggotty — «a decidermi.»
«Continua, Peggotty», dissi, più spaventato di prima.
«Signor Davy», disse Peggotty, slacciandosi il cappello con mano tremante e parlando in modo affannoso. «Che cosa ne pensi? Hai un padre!»
Tremavo e mi sono impallidito. Qualcosa - non so cosa, o come - collegato alla tomba nel cimitero e alla resurrezione dei morti, sembrava colpirmi come un vento malsano.
«Una nuova», disse Peggotty.
«Un nuovo?» ripetei.
Peggotty emise un rantolo, come se stesse inghiottendo qualcosa di molto duro, e, tendendo la mano, disse:
‘Venite a vederlo.’
‘Non voglio vederlo.’
—«E tua mamma», disse Peggotty.
Non indietreggiai più e andammo direttamente nel miglior salotto, dove lei mi lasciò. Da un lato del fuoco, sedeva mia madre; dall’altro, il signor Murdstone. Mia madre lasciò cadere il lavoro e si alzò in fretta, ma timidamente, pensai.
«Ora, Clara mia cara», disse il signor Murdstone, «ricordati! controllati, controllati sempre! Davy, come stai?»
Gli porsi la mano. Dopo un momento di sospensione, andai a baciare mia madre: lei mi baciò, mi accarezzò dolcemente la spalla e si rimise al suo lavoro. Non potevo guardarla, non potevo guardarlo, sapevo benissimo che lui ci stava guardando entrambi; e mi voltai verso la finestra e guardai fuori, verso alcuni cespugli che si chinavano al freddo.
Non appena potei sgattaiolare via, salii di sopra. La mia vecchia e cara cameretta era cambiata, e avrei dovuto dormire lontano da lì. Vagai al piano di sotto per trovare qualcosa che fosse rimasto com’era, tanto tutto sembrava cambiato; e mi aggirai nel cortile. Tornai indietro ben presto, perché la cuccia vuota era stata riempita da un grosso cane — dalla bocca larga e dai capelli neri come lui — e si era mostrato molto arrabbiato nel vedermi, e si era scagliato fuori per venirmi addosso.
CHAPTER 4. I FALL INTO DISGRACE
If the room to which my bed was removed were a sentient thing that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day—who sleeps there now, I wonder!—to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I carried to it. I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way while I climbed the stairs; and, looking as blank and strange upon the room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my small hands crossed, and thought.
I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the walls, of the flaws in the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but, except that I was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I never thought why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em’ly, and had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself up in a corner of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep.
I was awoke by somebody saying ‘Here he is!’ and uncovering my hot head. My mother and Peggotty had come to look for me, and it was one of them who had done it.
‘Davy,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
I thought it was very strange that she should ask me, and answered, ‘Nothing.’ I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my trembling lip, which answered her with greater truth. ‘Davy,’ said my mother. ‘Davy, my child!’
I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected me so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in the bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have raised me up.
‘This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!’ said my mother. ‘I have no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your conscience, I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is dear to me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?’
Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in a sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner, ‘Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute, may you never be truly sorry!’
‘It’s enough to distract me,’ cried my mother. ‘In my honeymoon, too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!’ cried my mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish wilful manner, ‘what a troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to be as agreeable as possible!’
I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor Peggotty’s, and slipped to my feet at the bed-side. It was Mr. Murdstone’s hand, and he kept it on my arm as he said:
‘What’s this? Clara, my love, have you forgotten?—Firmness, my dear!’
‘I am very sorry, Edward,’ said my mother. ‘I meant to be very good, but I am so uncomfortable.’
‘Indeed!’ he answered. ‘That’s a bad hearing, so soon, Clara.’
‘I say it’s very hard I should be made so now,’ returned my mother, pouting; ‘and it is—very hard—isn’t it?’
He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew as well, when I saw my mother’s head lean down upon his shoulder, and her arm touch his neck—I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.
‘Go you below, my love,’ said Mr. Murdstone. ‘David and I will come down, together. My friend,’ turning a darkening face on Peggotty, when he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with a nod and a smile; ‘do you know your mistress’s name?’
‘She has been my mistress a long time, sir,’ answered Peggotty, ‘I ought to know it.’ ‘That’s true,’ he answered. ‘But I thought I heard you, as I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not hers. She has taken mine, you know. Will you remember that?’
Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the room without replying; seeing, I suppose, that she was expected to go, and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were left alone, he shut the door, and sitting on a chair, and holding me standing before him, looked steadily into my eyes. I felt my own attracted, no less steadily, to his. As I recall our being opposed thus, face to face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and high.
‘David,’ he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, ‘if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I beat him.’
I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now.
‘I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, “I’ll conquer that fellow”; and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do it. What is that upon your face?’
‘Dirt,’ I said.
He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him so.
‘You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow,’ he said, with a grave smile that belonged to him, ‘and you understood me very well, I see. Wash that face, sir, and come down with me.’
He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. I had little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would have knocked me down without the least compunction, if I had hesitated.
CAPITOLO 4. CADO IN DISGRAZIA
Se la stanza in cui fu trasferito il mio letto fosse una cosa sensibile che potesse testimoniare, potrei ancora oggi appellarmi a essa — chi vi dorme ora, mi domando! — per testimoniare quale cuore pesante portassi con me. Salii lassù, sentendo il cane nel cortile abbaiare dietro di me per tutto il tragitto mentre salivo le scale; e, guardando la stanza con la stessa aria vuota e strana con cui la stanza guardava me, mi sedetti con le mie piccole mani incrociate e pensai.
Pensavo alle cose più strane. Alla forma della stanza, alle crepe nel soffitto, alla carta da parati, ai difetti del vetro della finestra che creavano increspature e fossette sulla prospettiva, al tavolino da toeletta traballante sulle sue tre gambe, che aveva un’aria scontenta che mi ricordava la signora Gummidge sotto l’influenza del vecchio. Piangevo tutto il tempo, ma, a parte il fatto che ero consapevole di essere freddo e abbattuto, sono sicuro di non aver mai pensato perché piangevo. Alla fine, nella mia disperazione, cominciai a considerare che ero terribilmente innamorato della piccola Emily, e che ero stato strappato a lei per venire qui dove nessuno sembrava volermi, o preoccuparsi di me, nemmeno la metà di quanto faceva lei. Questo rendeva la situazione così miserabile che mi raggomitolai in un angolo della coperta e piansi fino a addormentarmi.
Mi svegliai perché qualcuno disse: «Eccolo!» e mi tolse il cappello dalla testa accaldata. Mia madre e Peggotty erano venute a cercarmi, e una delle due aveva fatto questo.
“Davy”, disse mia madre. “Che succede?”
Pensai che fosse molto strano che me lo chiedesse, e risposi: «Nulla». Mi girai sulla faccia, ricordo, per nascondere il mio labbro tremante, che le rispondeva con maggiore verità. «Davy», disse mia madre, «Davy, mio figlio!»
Oso dire che nessuna parola che avrebbe potuto pronunciare mi avrebbe toccato tanto, allora, quanto chiamarmi suo figlio. Mi nascosi le lacrime tra le lenzuola e la respinsi con la mano quando avrebbe voluto rialzarmi.
«Questo è opera tua, Peggotty, tu che sei crudele!» disse mia madre. «Non ho dubbio al riguardo. Come puoi conciliarlo con la tua coscienza, mi domando, per influenzare mio figlio contro di me, o contro chiunque sia caro a me? Cosa intendi fare, Peggotty?»
La povera Peggotty alzò le mani e gli occhi, e rispose solo, in una specie di parafrasi della preghiera che di solito ripetevo dopo cena: «Signore, perdonala, signora Copperfield, e per quello che ha detto in questo minuto, che non le venga mai davvero a mancare!»
«È sufficiente a distrarmi», esclamò mia madre. «Anche nel mio viaggio di nozze, quando anche il mio nemico più accanito potrebbe forse cedere, e non invidiarmi un po’ di pace e felicità. Davy, birbante! Peggotty, selvaggia! Oh, mio Dio!», esclamò mia madre, passando dall’uno all’altro di noi, nel suo modo capriccioso e testardo, «che mondo complicato è questo, quando si ha più diritto di aspettarsi che sia il più piacevole possibile!»
Sentii il tocco di una mano che sapevo non essere né la sua né quella di Peggotty, e mi alzai in piedi accanto al letto. Era la mano del signor Murdstone, e lui la tenne sul mio braccio mentre diceva:
«Che cos’è questo? Clara, la mia amore, hai dimenticato? — Fermezza, mia cara!»
«Mi dispiace molto, Edward», disse mia madre. «Volevo essere molto buona, ma mi sento così a disagio».
“Infatti!” rispose. “È una brutta notizia, così presto, Clara.”
«Dico che è davvero crudele che io sia ridotta così», replicò mia madre, con aria di broncio, «e lo è, davvero crudele, non è vero?»
La attirò a sé, le sussurrò all’orecchio e la baciò. Lo sapevo bene, quando vidi la testa di mia madre appoggiarsi sulla sua spalla, e il suo braccio toccargli il collo: sapevo bene che lui poteva modellare la sua natura malleabile in qualsiasi forma volesse, come so, ora, che lo fece.
«Scendi tu di sotto, mia cara», disse il signor Murdstone. «David ed io scenderemo insieme. Mio caro amico», rivolgendosi a Peggotty con un volto che si faceva sempre più scuro, dopo aver accompagnato mia madre fuori e congedarla con un cenno del capo e un sorriso; «sai come si chiama la tua padrona?»
«È stata la mia padrona per un lungo periodo, signore», rispose Peggotty, «dovrei saperlo.» «È vero», rispose lui. «Ma pensavo di averla sentita, mentre salivo le scale, chiamarla con un nome che non è il suo. Ha preso il mio, lo sa. Se ne ricorderà?»
Peggotty, lanciandomi qualche sguardo inquieto, si congedò dalla stanza senza rispondere; credo che avesse capito che ci si aspettava che se ne andasse, e non aveva scuse per rimanere. Quando restammo soli noi due, lui chiuse la porta, si sedette su una sedia e, tenendomi in piedi davanti a lui, mi fissò negli occhi. Sentivo i miei occhi attratti, con la stessa intensità, dai suoi. Quando ripenso a come ci trovavamo così, uno di fronte all’altro, mi sembra di sentire di nuovo il mio cuore battere forte e veloce.
«David», disse, stringendo le labbra fino a farle diventare sottili, «se ho a che fare con un cavallo o un cane ostinato, cosa credi che faccia?»
‘Non lo so.’
‘L’ho picchiato.’
Avevo risposto con una specie di sussurro senza fiato, ma sentivo, nel mio silenzio, che il mio respiro era ora più corto.
«Gli faccio sussultare e soffrire. Mi dico: “Lo sconfiggerò”; e anche se gli costasse tutto il sangue che ha, lo farei. Cosa c’è sul tuo viso?»
«Sporcizia», dissi.
Sapeva che era il segno delle lacrime tanto quanto me. Ma se me lo avesse chiesto venti volte, ogni volta con venti colpi, credo che il mio cuore da bambino sarebbe scoppiato prima che io glielo dicessi.
«Avete un bel po’ d’intelligenza per un ragazzino», disse, con un sorriso serio che gli era proprio, «e avete capito molto bene, vedo. Lavatevi quella faccia, signore, e scendete con me.»
Indicò il lavabo, che avevo riconosciuto come simile alla signora Gummidge, e mi fece cenno con la testa di obbedirgli immediatamente. Allora avevo pochi dubbi e ora ne ho ancora meno che mi avrebbe colpito senza il minimo rimorso, se avessi esitato.
‘Clara, my dear,’ he said, when I had done his bidding, and he walked me into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm; ‘you will not be made uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve our youthful humours.’
God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have been made another creature perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate him. I thought my mother was sorry to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and that, presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with her eyes more sorrowfully still—missing, perhaps, some freedom in my childish tread—but the word was not spoken, and the time for it was gone.
We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my mother—I am afraid I liked him none the better for that—and she was very fond of him. I gathered from what they said, that an elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that evening. I am not certain whether I found out then, or afterwards, that, without being actively concerned in any business, he had some share in, or some annual charge upon the profits of, a wine-merchant’s house in London, with which his family had been connected from his great-grandfather’s time, and in which his sister had a similar interest; but I may mention it in this place, whether or no.
After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house, a coach drove up to the garden-gate and he went out to receive the visitor. My mother followed him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlour door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to do, whispered me to love my new father and be obedient to him. She did this hurriedly and secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly; and, putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew hers through his arm.
It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.
She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said:
‘Is that your boy, sister-in-law?’
My mother acknowledged me.
‘Generally speaking,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I don’t like boys. How d’ye do, boy?’
Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same; with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:
‘Wants manner!’
Having uttered which, with great distinctness, she begged the favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with which Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable array.
As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. She began to ‘help’ my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was, her being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him.
Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open; but I could not concur in this idea; for I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn’t be done.
On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:
‘Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You’re much too pretty and thoughtless’—my mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character—‘to have any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you’ll be so good as give me your keys, my dear, I’ll attend to all this sort of thing in future.’
From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had.
«Clara, mia cara», disse, quando ebbi eseguito il suo ordine e mi condusse nel salotto, con la mano ancora sul mio braccio; «non ti renderanno più a disagio, lo spero. Presto miglioreremo i nostri umori giovanili».
Dio mi aiuti, forse avrei potuto migliorare per tutta la vita, forse avrei potuto essere trasformata in un’altra persona, per tutta la vita, da una parola gentile in quel momento. Una parola di incoraggiamento e spiegazione, di pietà per la mia ignoranza infantile, di benvenuto a casa, di rassicurazione che fosse casa, avrebbe potuto farmi essere devota a lui nel mio cuore da quel momento in poi, invece che solo esteriormente, e avrebbe potuto farmi rispettarlo invece di odiarlo. Pensavo che mia madre fosse dispiaciuta di vedermi in piedi nella stanza così spaventata e strana, e che, poco dopo, quando mi avvicinai furtivamente a una sedia, mi seguisse con gli occhi ancora più tristemente, forse rimpiangendo un po’ di libertà nel mio passo infantile, ma la parola non fu pronunciata, e il momento era passato.
Cenammo da soli, noi tre insieme. Sembrava molto affezionato a mia madre - temo di non averlo apprezzato di più per questo - e lei era molto affezionata a lui. Ho capito da quello che dicevano che una sorella maggiore di lui sarebbe venuta a stare con loro, e che era attesa quella sera. Non sono sicuro se lo scoprii allora o in seguito, che, senza essere attivamente coinvolto in alcun affare, aveva una certa partecipazione, o una certa quota annuale sui profitti, di un’azienda di commercio di vini a Londra, con la quale la sua famiglia era stata in rapporto fin dai tempi del suo bisnonno, time, e nella quale sua sorella aveva un interesse simile; ma posso menzionarlo in questo punto, sia che lo abbia scoperto allora o in seguito.
Dopo cena, mentre eravamo seduti accanto al fuoco, e io stavo meditando una fuga da Peggotty senza avere il coraggio di sgattaiolare via, per timore di offendere il padrone di casa, una carrozza si fermò al cancello del giardino e lui uscì per ricevere il visitatore. Mia madre lo seguì. Stavo timidamente seguendo lei, quando si voltò sulla porta del salotto, nel crepuscolo, e prendendomi tra le sue braccia come era solita fare, mi sussurrò di amare il mio nuovo padre e di essere obbediente a lui. Lo fece in fretta e in segreto, come se fosse sbagliato, ma con tenerezza; e, tendendo la mano dietro di sé, tenne la mia fino a quando non ci avvicinammo a dove lui stava in piedi nel giardino, dove lasciò andare la mia mano e passò la sua sotto il suo braccio.
Era arrivata la signorina Murdstone, e una signora dall’aria cupa era; scura, come suo fratello, a cui assomigliava molto nel viso e nella voce; e con sopracciglia molto pesanti, che si univano quasi sopra il suo grande naso, come se, essendo impedita dalle ingiustizie del suo sesso di portare i baffi, li avesse trasferiti a quel conto. Portava con sé due rigide valigie nere, con le sue iniziali sui coperchi in chiodi di metallo duro. Quando pagò il cocchiere, tirò fuori i soldi da una borsa d’acciaio duro, e teneva la borsa in una specie di carcere di una borsa che le pendeva dal braccio appesa a una pesante catena, e si chiudeva come una morsicatura. Non avevo mai visto, in quel periodo, una signora così metallica come la signorina Murdstone.
Fu fatta entrare nel salotto con molti segni di benvenuto, e lì riconobbe formalmente mia madre come una nuova e stretta parente. Poi mi guardò e disse:
‘È tuo figlio, cognata?’
Mia madre mi riconobbe.
“In generale”, disse Miss Murdstone, “non mi piacciono i ragazzi. Come va, ragazzo?”
In queste circostanze incoraggianti, risposi che stavo molto bene, e che speravo che stesse altrettanto bene lei; con una grazia così indifferente, che la signorina Murdstone mi liquidò in due parole:
‘Voglio educazione!’
Aveva pronunciato queste parole con grande chiarezza, quando chiese il favore di essere accompagnata nella sua stanza, che da quel momento in poi divenne per me un luogo di timore e di paura, dove le due scatole nere non venivano mai viste aperte né lasciate sbloccate, e dove (perché ho sbirciato una o due volte quando era fuori) numerosi piccoli ceppi di acciaio e bulloni, con i quali la signorina Murdstone si adornava quando si vestiva, erano generalmente appesi allo specchio in un’ordinata fila minacciosa.
Per quanto potessi capire, era venuta per restare e non aveva intenzione di ripartire mai più. La mattina seguente cominciò ad “aiutare” mia madre, e passò tutta la giornata ad andare dentro e fuori dalla dispensa, mettendo a posto le cose e facendo strage dei vecchi arrangiamenti. Quasi la prima cosa notevole che osservai in Miss Murdstone fu che era costantemente perseguitata da un sospetto che i domestici avessero nascosto un uomo da qualche parte nella casa. Sotto l’influenza di questo delirio, si tuffava nella cantina del carbone alle ore più inopportune, e quasi mai apriva la porta di un armadio buio senza richiuderla subito, nella convinzione di averlo catturato.
Anche se non c’era nulla di particolarmente vivace in Miss Murdstone, era un perfetto allodola per quanto riguardava il risveglio. Era già in piedi (e, come credo ancora oggi, alla ricerca di quell’uomo) prima che chiunque nella casa si muovesse. Peggotty era dell’opinione che dormisse con un occhio aperto; ma non potevo concordare con questa idea; perché ci ho provato io stesso dopo aver sentito fare questa supposizione, e ho scoperto che non si poteva fare.
Il mattino stesso del suo arrivo, si alzò e suonò il campanello all’ora in cui cantò il gallo. Quando mia madre scese a fare colazione e stava per preparare il tè, la signorina Murdstone le diede una specie di piccolo bacio sulla guancia, che era il più vicino avvicinamento a un bacio, e disse:
«Ora, Clara, mia cara, sono venuto qui, sapete, per liberarvi di tutti i problemi che posso. Siete troppo graziosa e spensierata»—mia madre arrossì ma rise, e sembrò non dispiacersi di questo ritratto—«per avere imposto a voi stessi doveri che io posso assumere. Se vorrete avere la bontà di darmi le vostre chiavi, mia cara, mi occuperò di tutte queste cose in futuro.»
Da quel momento, la signorina Murdstone teneva le chiavi nella sua piccola prigione tutto il giorno e sotto il cuscino tutta la notte, e mia madre non aveva più nulla a che fare con esse di quanto ne avessi io.
My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have been consulted.
‘Clara!’ said Mr. Murdstone sternly. ‘Clara! I wonder at you.’
‘Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!’ cried my mother, ‘and it’s very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn’t like it yourself.’
Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. and Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour, that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this. Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception. She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm, and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing there was no other firmness upon earth.
‘It’s very hard,’ said my mother, ‘that in my own house—’
‘My own house?’ repeated Mr. Murdstone. ‘Clara!’
‘OUR own house, I mean,’ faltered my mother, evidently frightened—‘I hope you must know what I mean, Edward—it’s very hard that in YOUR own house I may not have a word to say about domestic matters. I am sure I managed very well before we were married. There’s evidence,’ said my mother, sobbing; ‘ask Peggotty if I didn’t do very well when I wasn’t interfered with!’
‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end of this. I go tomorrow.’
‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘be silent! How dare you to insinuate that you don’t know my character better than your words imply?’
‘I am sure,’ my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage, and with many tears, ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I should be very miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I don’t ask much. I am not unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased, once, with my being a little inexperienced and girlish, Edward—I am sure you said so—but you seem to hate me for it now, you are so severe.’
‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, again, ‘let there be an end of this. I go tomorrow.’
‘Jane Murdstone,’ thundered Mr. Murdstone. ‘Will you be silent? How dare you?’
Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held it before her eyes.
‘Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you surprise me! You astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which it stood in need. But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets with a base return—’
‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’ cried my mother, ‘don’t accuse me of being ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was before. I have many faults, but not that. Oh, don’t, my dear!’
‘When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,’ he went on, after waiting until my mother was silent, ‘with a base return, that feeling of mine is chilled and altered.’
‘Don’t, my love, say that!’ implored my mother very piteously. ‘Oh, don’t, Edward! I can’t bear to hear it. Whatever I am, I am affectionate. I know I am affectionate. I wouldn’t say it, if I wasn’t sure that I am. Ask Peggotty. I am sure she’ll tell you I’m affectionate.’
‘There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone in reply, ‘that can have the least weight with me. You lose breath.’
‘Pray let us be friends,’ said my mother, ‘I couldn’t live under coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have a great many defects, I know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving—’ My mother was too much overcome to go on.
‘Jane Murdstone,’ said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, ‘any harsh words between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so unusual an occurrence has taken place tonight. I was betrayed into it by another. Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let us both try to forget it. And as this,’ he added, after these magnanimous words, ‘is not a fit scene for the boy—David, go to bed!’
I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my eyes. I was so sorry for my mother’s distress; but I groped my way out, and groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even having the heart to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle from her. When her coming up to look for me, an hour or so afterwards, awoke me, she said that my mother had gone to bed poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were sitting alone.
Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused outside the parlour door, on hearing my mother’s voice. She was very earnestly and humbly entreating Miss Murdstone’s pardon, which that lady granted, and a perfect reconciliation took place. I never knew my mother afterwards to give an opinion on any matter, without first appealing to Miss Murdstone, or without having first ascertained by some sure means, what Miss Murdstone’s opinion was; and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out of temper (she was infirm that way), move her hand towards her bag as if she were going to take out the keys and offer to resign them to my mother, without seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright.
Mia madre non tollerava che la sua autorità le venisse sottratta senza un’ombra di protesta. Una sera in cui la signorina Murdstone aveva esposto a suo fratello alcuni piani domestici ai quali lui aveva espresso il suo assenso, mia madre scoppiò improvvisamente a piangere e disse che pensava di poter essere stata consultata.
«Clara!» disse il signor Murdstone severamente. «Clara! Mi meraviglio di te.»
«Oh, è molto bene dire che ti meravigli, Edward!» esclamò mia madre, «e è molto bene parlare di fermezza, ma non ti piacerebbe nemmeno a te.»
Posso osservare che la fermezza era la grande qualità su cui sia il signor Murdstone che la signorina Murdstone si basavano. Qualunque cosa avessi potuto esprimere riguardo alla mia comprensione di essa in quel periodo, se mi avessero chiesto di farlo, compresi nondimeno a modo mio che era un altro nome per la tirannia; e per un certo umore cupo, arrogante, diabolico umore, che era in loro entrambi. Il credo, come lo descriverei ora, era questo. Il signor Murdstone era fermo; nessuno nel suo mondo doveva essere così fermo come il signor Murdstone; nessun altro nel suo mondo doveva essere fermo affatto, perché tutti dovevano piegarsi alla sua fermezza. La signorina Murdstone era un’eccezione. Poteva essere ferma, ma solo per parentela, e in un grado inferiore e tributario. Mia madre era un’altra eccezione. Poteva essere ferma, e doveva esserlo; ma solo nel sopportare la loro fermezza, e nel credere fermamente che non ci fosse altra fermezza sulla terra.
«È molto difficile», disse mia madre, «che nella mia casa—»
«La mia casa?» ripeté il signor Murdstone. «Clara!»
«La nostra casa, intendo dire», balbettò mia madre, evidentemente spaventata, «spero che tu sappia cosa intendo, Edward, è davvero ingiusto che nella TUA casa io non possa avere una parola da dire sugli affari domestici. Sono sicura di aver gestito tutto molto bene prima che ci sposassimo. Ce ne sono le prove», disse mia madre, singhiozzando, «chiedi a Peggotty se non ho fatto molto bene quando non venivo ostacolata!»
‘Edward,’ disse Miss Murdstone, ‘basta con questa storia. Parto domani.’
«Jane Murdstone», disse suo fratello, «taci! Come osi insinuare che non conosci il mio carattere meglio di quanto lascino intendere le tue parole?»
«Sono sicura», continuò la mia povera madre, in grave svantaggio e con molte lacrime, «che non voglio che nessuno se ne vada. Sarei molto infelice e scontenta se qualcuno se ne andasse. Non chiedo molto. Non sono irragionevole. Voglio solo essere consultata a volte. Sono molto grata a chiunque mi aiuti, e voglio solo essere consultata come una semplice formalità, a volte. Pensavo che una volta fossi contento che fossi un po’ inesperta e fanciullesca, Edward — sono sicura che lo hai detto — ma ora sembri odiarmi per questo, sei così severo.»
‘Edward’, disse Miss Murdstone, ‘questa storia finisce qui. Me ne vado domani’.
‘Jane Murdstone,’ tuonò il signor Murdstone. ‘Ti tacerai? Come osi?’
La signorina Murdstone estrasse con gesto carcerario il suo fazzoletto e lo tenne davanti agli occhi.
«Clara», continuò, guardando mia madre, «mi sorprendi! Mi sbalordisci! Sì, provavo una certa soddisfazione all’idea di sposare una persona inesperta e semplice, di formarne il carattere e di infonderle un po’ di quella fermezza e decisione di cui aveva bisogno. Ma quando Jane Murdstone ha la gentilezza di venirmi in aiuto in questo tentativo, e di assumere, per il mio bene, una condizione simile a quella di una governante, e quando riceve un compenso così vile, »
«Oh, ti prego, ti prego, Edward», esclamò mia madre, «non accusarmi di essere ingrata. Sono sicura di non esserlo. Nessuno l’ha mai detto prima. Ho molti difetti, ma non quello. Oh, no, mio caro!»
«Quando Jane Murdstone si comporta, dico io», continuò, dopo aver atteso che mia madre fosse silenziosa, «con un vile ritorno, quel sentimento mio si raffredda e si altera.»
«Non dire così, mio amore!», implorò mia madre con grande pietà. «Oh, non dire così, Edward! Non riesco a sopportarlo. Qualunque cosa io sia, sono affettuosa. So di essere affettuosa. Non lo direi se non ne fossi sicura. Chiedi a Peggotty. Sono sicura che ti dirà che sono affettuosa.»
«Non esiste alcuna debolezza, Clara», rispose il signor Murdstone, «che possa avere il minimo peso per me. Perdi fiato.»
«Ti prego, siamo amici», disse mia madre, «non potrei vivere in mezzo a freddezza o cattiveria. Mi dispiace tanto. So di avere molti difetti, e sei molto buono, Edward, con la tua forza d’animo, a cercare di correggerli per me. Jane, non ho nulla in contrario. Sarei davvero disperata se pensaste di andarvene, » Mia madre era troppo sopraffatta per continuare.
«Jane Murdstone», disse il signor Murdstone a sua sorella, «le parole dure tra noi sono, spero, rare. Non è colpa mia che sia accaduto un fatto così insolito questa sera. Sono stato indotto in errore da un altro. Né è colpa tua. Anche tu sei stata indotta in errore da un altro. Cerchiamo entrambi di dimenticarlo. E poiché questo», aggiunse, dopo queste parole magnanime, «non è uno spettacolo adatto al ragazzo—David, vai a letto!»
A malapena riuscivo a trovare la porta, per le lacrime che mi offuscavano gli occhi. Mi dispiaceva molto per la sofferenza di mia madre; ma mi feci strada tastoni fino all’uscita, e tastoni fino alla mia stanza al buio, senza nemmeno avere il coraggio di dire buona notte a Peggotty, o di chiederle una candela. Quando, circa un’ora dopo, venne a cercarmi e mi svegliò, mi disse che mia madre era andata a letto non bene, e che il signor e la signorina Murdstone erano seduti da soli.
Scendendo la mattina dopo, piuttosto più presto del solito, mi fermai fuori dalla porta del salotto, sentendo la voce di mia madre. Stava chiedendo con grande fervore e umiltà il perdono di Miss Murdstone, che la signorina accordò, e avvenne una perfetta riconciliazione. Non ho mai saputo in seguito che mia madre esprimesse un’opinione su qualsiasi argomento, senza prima rivolgersi a Miss Murdstone, o senza aver prima accertato con certezza qual era l’opinione di Miss Murdstone; e non ho mai visto Miss Murdstone, quando era di cattivo umore (era soggetta a questo), muovere la mano verso la sua borsa come se stesse per prendere le chiavi e offrirle a mia madre, senza vedere che mia madre era in preda a una terribile paura.
The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone, in a black velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall, follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says ‘miserable sinners’, as if she were calling all the congregation names. Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the angels in Heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her prayer-book, and makes my side ache.
Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking at my mother and at me, and whispering. Again, as the three go on arm-in-arm, and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those looks, and wonder if my mother’s step be really not so light as I have seen it, and if the gaiety of her beauty be really almost worried away. Again, I wonder whether any of the neighbours call to mind, as I do, how we used to walk home together, she and I; and I wonder stupidly about that, all the dreary dismal day.
There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-school. Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother had of course agreed with them. Nothing, however, was concluded on the subject yet. In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home. Shall I ever forget those lessons! They were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been cheered by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They were very long, very numerous, very hard—perfectly unintelligible, some of them, to me—and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I believe my poor mother was herself.
Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again.
I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books, and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head, all sliding away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder where they do go, by the by?
I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:
‘Oh, Davy, Davy!’
‘Now, Clara,’ says Mr. Murdstone, ‘be firm with the boy. Don’t say, “Oh, Davy, Davy!” That’s childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know it.’
‘He does NOT know it,’ Miss Murdstone interposes awfully.
‘I am really afraid he does not,’ says my mother.
‘Then, you see, Clara,’ returns Miss Murdstone, ‘you should just give him the book back, and make him know it.’
‘Yes, certainly,’ says my mother; ‘that is what I intend to do, my dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t be stupid.’
I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before, and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr. Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be worked out when my other tasks are done.
La tinta cupa che era nel sangue dei Murdstone oscurava la religione dei Murdstone, che era austera e iraconda. Da allora ho pensato che il suo assumere quel carattere fosse una conseguenza necessaria della fermezza del signor Murdstone, che non gli permetteva di esimere nessuno dal massimo peso delle pene più severe per le quali potesse trovare una scusa. Comunque sia, ricordo bene le facce terribili con cui andavamo in chiesa e l’aria cambiata del luogo. Ancora una volta, la temuta domenica torna, e io entro per primo nella vecchia panca, come un prigioniero custodito portato a un servizio di condanna. Ancora, la signorina Murdstone, in un abito di velluto nero, che sembra fatto con un panno funebre, mi segue da vicino; poi mia madre; poi suo marito. Non c’è più Peggotty, come ai vecchi tempi. Ancora, ascolto la signorina Murdstone borbottare le risposte, e sottolineare tutte le parole spaventose con un gusto crudele. Ancora, la vedo con i suoi occhi scuri che si muovono per la chiesa quando dice “peccatori miserabili”, come se stesse chiamando tutti i fedeli con nomi offensivi. Ancora, intravedo mia madre che muove le labbra timidamente tra i due, con uno di loro che mormora a ogni orecchio come un tuono lontano. Ancora, mi domando con un improvviso timore se sia probabile che il nostro buon vecchio parroco possa sbagliarsi, e il signor e la signorina Murdstone avere ragione, e che tutti gli angeli in Cielo possano essere angeli distruttori. Ancora, se muovo un dito o rilasso un muscolo del mio viso, la signorina Murdstone mi punge con il suo libro di preghiere, e mi fa male al fianco.
Sì, e ancora, mentre camminiamo a casa, noto alcuni vicini che guardano mia madre e me, e sussurrano. Ancora, mentre i tre continuano a camminare braccio a braccio, e io rimango indietro solo, seguo alcuni di quegli sguardi, e mi chiedo se il passo di mia madre sia davvero non così leggero come l’ho visto, e se la gaietà della sua bellezza sia davvero quasi consumata dall’angoscia. Ancora, mi chiedo se qualcuno dei vicini ricordi, come faccio io, come eravamo soliti camminare a casa insieme, lei e io; e mi chiedo stupidamente di questo, per tutto il giorno triste e desolato.
Si era parlato, in alcune occasioni, di mandarmi a scuola. Mr. e Miss Murdstone ne erano stati i fautori, e mia madre aveva naturalmente dato loro ragione. Non si era però ancora deciso nulla al riguardo. Nel frattempo, studiavo a casa. Dimenticherò mai quelle lezioni! Erano nominalmente sotto la direzione di mia madre, ma in realtà di Mr. Murdstone e di sua sorella, che erano sempre presenti e le trovavano un’occasione propizia per impartire a mia madre lezioni di quella cosiddetta fermezza, che fu la rovina della vita di entrambi. Credo che mi tenessero a casa proprio per questo. Ero stato abbastanza capace e disposto a imparare quando mia madre ed io vivevamo soli insieme. Ricordo vagamente di aver imparato l’alfabeto sulle sue ginocchia. Ancora oggi, quando guardo le grosse lettere nere del primo libro, la difficile novità delle loro forme, e la facile buona-indole di O e Q e S, sembrano presentarsi di nuovo davanti a me come facevano allora. Ma non evocano in me alcun sentimento di disgusto o riluttanza. Al contrario, mi sembra di aver camminato lungo un sentiero di fiori fino al libro del coccodrillo, e di essere stato incoraggiato dalla dolcezza della voce e dei modi di mia madre per tutto il tragitto. Ma queste solenni lezioni che seguirono quelle, le ricordo come il colpo di morte alla mia pace, e una penosa e miserabile fatica quotidiana. Erano molto lunghe, molto numerose, molto difficili—perfettamente incomprensibili, alcune di esse, per me—e in genere ero altrettanto confuso da esse quanto lo credo fosse la mia povera madre.
Ricordiamoci come fosse un tempo, e facciamo tornare una mattina.
Dopo colazione, entro nel secondo salotto con i miei libri, un quaderno di esercizi e una lavagna. Mia madre è pronta per me alla sua scrivania, ma non è nemmeno la metà di pronta come il signor Murdstone nella sua poltrona accanto alla finestra (anche se finge di leggere un libro), o come la signorina Murdstone, seduta vicino a mia madre mentre infila perline d’acciaio. La sola vista di questi due ha un tale influsso su di me, che inizio a sentire le parole che ho fatto di tutto per imparare a memoria, scivolare via, andando chissà dove. Mi domando, tra l’altro, dove vadano?
Porgo il primo libro a mia madre. Forse è una grammatica, forse una storia, o una geografia. Lancio un ultimo sguardo annegante alla pagina mentre la metto nelle sue mani, e inizio a leggere ad alta voce a un ritmo sfrenato mentre è ancora fresco nella mia mente. Inciampo su una parola. Il signor Murdstone alza lo sguardo. Inciampo su un’altra parola. La signorina Murdstone alza lo sguardo. Arrossisco, inciampo su mezza dozzina di parole e mi fermo. Penso che mia madre mi mostrerebbe il libro se osasse, ma non osa, e dice dolcemente:
“Oh, Davy, Davy!”
«Ora, Clara», dice il signor Murdstone, «sii ferma con il ragazzo. Non dire: “Oh, Davy, Davy!” È infantile. Sa la sua lezione, oppure non la sa.»
«Non lo sa», interviene terribilmente la signorina Murdstone.
«Temo proprio che non lo faccia», dice mia madre.
«Allora, vede, Clara», risponde la signorina Murdstone, «dovrebbe semplicemente restituirgli il libro e farglielo sapere.»
«Sì, certo», dice mia madre, «è quello che intendo fare, mia cara Jane. Ora, Davy, prova ancora una volta, e non fare lo stupido».
Obbedisco alla prima clausola dell’ingiunzione provando ancora una volta, ma non ho lo stesso successo con la seconda, perché sono molto stupido. Cado prima di arrivare al vecchio punto, in un punto in cui prima andavo bene, e mi fermo a pensare. Ma non riesco a pensare alla lezione. Penso al numero di iarde di rete nel cappello della signorina Murdstone, o al prezzo dell’abito da camera del signor Murdstone, o a qualche altro ridicolo problema che non mi riguarda e con cui non voglio avere nulla a che fare. Il signor Murdstone fa un gesto di impazienza che aspettavo da un lungo periodo. La signorina Murdstone fa lo stesso. Mia madre li guarda sottomessa, chiude il libro e lo mette da parte come un arretrato da scontare quando avrò finito gli altri compiti.
There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The case is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these miserable lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her) tries to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along, says in a deep warning voice:
‘Clara!’
My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with it, and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.
Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the shape of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, ‘If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each, present payment’—at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed. I pore over these cheeses without any result or enlightenment until dinner-time, when, having made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt of the slate into the pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help me out with the cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of the evening.
It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her brother’s attention to me by saying, ‘Clara, my dear, there’s nothing like work—give your boy an exercise’; which caused me to be clapped down to some new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers (though there WAS a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and held that they contaminated one another.
The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circumstance.
It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time,—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,—and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my favourite characters in them—as I did—and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones—which I did too. I have been Tom Jones (a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and Travels—I forget what, now—that were on those shelves; and for days and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house, armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees—the perfect realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price. The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or alive.
This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life. Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind, connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.
The reader now understands, as well as I do, what I was when I came to that point of my youthful history to which I am now coming again.
One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone binding something round the bottom of a cane—a lithe and limber cane, which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in the air.
‘I tell you, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘I have been often flogged myself.’
‘To be sure; of course,’ said Miss Murdstone.
C’è una pila di questi arretrati che si accumula molto presto, e si gonfia come una palla di neve che rotola. Più diventa grande, più io divento stupido. Il caso è così disperato, e sento che mi sto affondando in un pantano di assurdità, che rinuncio a ogni idea di uscirne e mi abbandono al mio destino. Il modo disperato in cui mia madre e io ci guardiamo, mentre io continuo a sbagliare, è veramente malinconico. Ma l’effetto più grande in queste miserabili lezioni è quando mia madre (pensando che nessuno la stia osservando) cerca di darmi la battuta giusta muovendo le labbra. In quel momento, la signorina Murdstone, che ha aspettato solo questo per tutto il tempo, dice con una voce profonda e ammonitrice:
‘Clara!’
Mia madre trasalisce, arrossisce e sorride debolmente. Il signor Murdstone si alza dalla sedia, prende il libro, me lo scaglia addosso o mi dà una sberla con quello, e mi caccia dalla stanza spingendomi per le spalle.
Anche quando le lezioni sono finite, il peggio deve ancora arrivare, sotto forma di una somma spaventosa. Questa è inventata per me e mi viene comunicata oralmente dal signor Murdstone, e inizia così: «Se entro nel negozio di un formaggiaio e compro cinquemila formaggi doppi-di Gloucester a quattro pence e mezzo l’uno, pagamento immediato» — a questo punto vedo che la signorina Murdstone è segretamente felice. Mi concentro su questi formaggi senza ottenere alcun risultato o illuminazione fino all’ora di cena, quando, dopo essermi trasformato in un Mulatto per aver fatto penetrare la polvere della lavagna nei pori della mia pelle, ho una fetta di pane per aiutarmi con i formaggi, e vengo considerato in disgrazia per il resto della serata.
Mi sembra, a questa distanza di tempo, che i miei sfortunati studi seguissero generalmente questo corso. Avrei potuto andare molto bene se non ci fossero stati i Murdstone; ma l’influenza dei Murdstone su di me era come l’incantesimo di due serpenti su un povero giovane uccellino. Anche quando riuscivo a superare la mattinata con un credito accettabile, non guadagnavo molto oltre al pranzo; perché la signorina Murdstone non poteva sopportare di vedermi senza compiti, e se osavo mostrare di essere inattivo, attirava l’attenzione di suo fratello dicendo: «Clara, mia cara, non c’è niente di meglio del lavoro: dai a tuo figlio un esercizio»; il che mi faceva essere messo subito a qualche nuovo lavoro, lì e allora. Per quanto riguarda il divertimento con altri bambini della mia età, ne avevo ben poco; perché la tetra teologia dei Murdstone considerava tutti i bambini come uno sciame di piccoli vipistrelli (sebbene ci FOSSE stato un bambino posto in mezzo ai Discepoli), e riteneva che si contaminassero a vicenda.
Il naturale risultato di questo trattamento, continuato, credo, per circa sei mesi o più, fu di rendermi scontroso, ottuso e ostinato. Non mi aiutava certo la consapevolezza di essere ogni giorno più escluso e alienato da mia madre. Credo che sarei stato quasi imbrutito se non fosse stato per un fatto.
Ecco com’era. Mio padre aveva lasciato una piccola raccolta di libri in una stanzetta al piano di sopra, a cui avevo accesso (perché confinava con la mia) e che nessun altro nella nostra casa si preoccupava mai di visitare. Da quella benedetta stanzetta uscivano Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, il Vicario di Wakefield, Don Chisciotte, Gil Blas e Robinson Crusoe, una schiera gloriosa che mi faceva compagnia. Essi mantenevano viva la mia fantasia e la mia speranza di qualcosa oltre quel luogo e quel tempo, insieme alle Mille e una notte e ai Racconti dei Geni, e non mi fecero alcun male; perché qualunque male ci fosse in alcuni di essi non era lì per me; non ne sapevo nulla. Ora mi stupisco di come trovassi il tempo, in mezzo alle mie riflessioni e ai miei errori su temi più pesanti, per leggere quei libri come facevo. È curioso come riuscissi a consolarmi dei miei piccoli guai (che per me erano grandi guai) impersonando i miei personaggi preferiti, come facevo, e mettendo il signor e la signorina Murdstone in tutti i ruoli negativi, cosa che facevo anch’io. Sono stato Tom Jones (un Tom bambino Jones, una creatura innocua) per una settimana di fila. Ho sostenuto la mia idea di Roderick Random per un mese di seguito, credo proprio di sì. Avevo un grande gusto per alcuni volumi di Viaggi e Navigazioni, dimentico quali, che erano su quegli scaffali; e per giorni e giorni ricordo di aver girovagato per la mia zona della nostra casa, armato del pezzo centrale di un vecchio set di alberi per scarpe, la perfetta realizzazione del Capitano Qualcuno, della Reale Marina Britannica, in pericolo di essere assalito dai selvaggi, e deciso a vendere la sua vita a caro prezzo. Il Capitano non perse mai la sua dignità, anche se gli davano delle sberle con la Grammatica Latina. Io sì; ma il Capitano era un Capitano e un eroe, nonostante tutte le grammatiche di tutte le lingue del mondo, morte o vive.
Questo era il mio unico e costante conforto. Quando ci penso, la scena mi appare sempre davanti agli occhi: una sera d’estate, i ragazzi che giocano nel cimitero della chiesa, e io seduto sul mio letto, che leggo come se fosse questione di vita o di morte. Ogni fienile dei dintorni, ogni pietra della chiesa, e ogni metro del cimitero, avevano nella mia mente una loro associazione connessa a questi libri, e rappresentavano qualche località resa famosa in essi. Ho visto Tom Pipes arrampicarsi sulla torre della chiesa; ho osservato Strap, con lo zaino in spalla, fermarsi a riposarsi sul cancello; e so che il Commodoro Trunnion teneva quel club con il signor Pickle, nel salotto della nostra piccola birreria di villaggio.
Il lettore comprende ora, altrettanto bene quanto me, chi fossi quando raggiunsi quel punto della mia giovinezza di cui sto ora parlando di nuovo.
Una mattina, quando entrai nel salotto con i miei libri, trovai mia madre preoccupata, la signorina Murdstone risoluta e il signor Murdstone che avvolgeva qualcosa intorno alla base di una canna — una canna flessibile e malleabile, che smise di avvolgere quando entrai, e che fece roteare e frustare nell’aria.
«Te lo dico, Clara», disse il signor Murdstone, «anch’io sono stato spesso frustato.
«Certo, naturalmente», disse la signorina Murdstone.
‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, meekly. ‘But—but do you think it did Edward good?’
‘Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?’ asked Mr. Murdstone, gravely.
‘That’s the point,’ said his sister.
To this my mother returned, ‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ and said no more.
I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue, and sought Mr. Murdstone’s eye as it lighted on mine.
‘Now, David,’ he said—and I saw that cast again as he said it—‘you must be far more careful today than usual.’ He gave the cane another poise, and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it, laid it down beside him, with an impressive look, and took up his book.
This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I felt the words of my lessons slipping off, not one by one, or line by line, but by the entire page; I tried to lay hold of them; but they seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim away from me with a smoothness there was no checking.
We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in with an idea of distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well prepared; but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was added to the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of us all the time. And when we came at last to the five thousand cheeses (canes he made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying.
‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.
‘I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think,’ said my mother.
I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking up the cane:
‘Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness, the worry and torment that David has occasioned her today. That would be stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and improved, but we can hardly expect so much from her. David, you and I will go upstairs, boy.’
As he took me out at the door, my mother ran towards us. Miss Murdstone said, ‘Clara! are you a perfect fool?’ and interfered. I saw my mother stop her ears then, and I heard her crying.
He walked me up to my room slowly and gravely—I am certain he had a delight in that formal parade of executing justice—and when we got there, suddenly twisted my head under his arm.
‘Mr. Murdstone! Sir!’ I cried to him. ‘Don’t! Pray don’t beat me! I have tried to learn, sir, but I can’t learn while you and Miss Murdstone are by. I can’t indeed!’
‘Can’t you, indeed, David?’ he said. ‘We’ll try that.’
He had my head as in a vice, but I twined round him somehow, and stopped him for a moment, entreating him not to beat me. It was only a moment that I stopped him, for he cut me heavily an instant afterwards, and in the same instant I caught the hand with which he held me in my mouth, between my teeth, and bit it through. It sets my teeth on edge to think of it.
He beat me then, as if he would have beaten me to death. Above all the noise we made, I heard them running up the stairs, and crying out—I heard my mother crying out—and Peggotty. Then he was gone; and the door was locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor.
How well I recollect, when I became quiet, what an unnatural stillness seemed to reign through the whole house! How well I remember, when my smart and passion began to cool, how wicked I began to feel!
I sat listening for a long while, but there was not a sound. I crawled up from the floor, and saw my face in the glass, so swollen, red, and ugly that it almost frightened me. My stripes were sore and stiff, and made me cry afresh, when I moved; but they were nothing to the guilt I felt. It lay heavier on my breast than if I had been a most atrocious criminal, I dare say.
It had begun to grow dark, and I had shut the window (I had been lying, for the most part, with my head upon the sill, by turns crying, dozing, and looking listlessly out), when the key was turned, and Miss Murdstone came in with some bread and meat, and milk. These she put down upon the table without a word, glaring at me the while with exemplary firmness, and then retired, locking the door after her.
Long after it was dark I sat there, wondering whether anybody else would come. When this appeared improbable for that night, I undressed, and went to bed; and, there, I began to wonder fearfully what would be done to me. Whether it was a criminal act that I had committed? Whether I should be taken into custody, and sent to prison? Whether I was at all in danger of being hanged?
I never shall forget the waking, next morning; the being cheerful and fresh for the first moment, and then the being weighed down by the stale and dismal oppression of remembrance. Miss Murdstone reappeared before I was out of bed; told me, in so many words, that I was free to walk in the garden for half an hour and no longer; and retired, leaving the door open, that I might avail myself of that permission.
I did so, and did so every morning of my imprisonment, which lasted five days. If I could have seen my mother alone, I should have gone down on my knees to her and besought her forgiveness; but I saw no one, Miss Murdstone excepted, during the whole time—except at evening prayers in the parlour; to which I was escorted by Miss Murdstone after everybody else was placed; where I was stationed, a young outlaw, all alone by myself near the door; and whence I was solemnly conducted by my jailer, before any one arose from the devotional posture. I only observed that my mother was as far off from me as she could be, and kept her face another way so that I never saw it; and that Mr. Murdstone’s hand was bound up in a large linen wrapper.
The length of those five days I can convey no idea of to any one. They occupy the place of years in my remembrance. The way in which I listened to all the incidents of the house that made themselves audible to me; the ringing of bells, the opening and shutting of doors, the murmuring of voices, the footsteps on the stairs; to any laughing, whistling, or singing, outside, which seemed more dismal than anything else to me in my solitude and disgrace—the uncertain pace of the hours, especially at night, when I would wake thinking it was morning, and find that the family were not yet gone to bed, and that all the length of night had yet to come—the depressed dreams and nightmares I had—the return of day, noon, afternoon, evening, when the boys played in the churchyard, and I watched them from a distance within the room, being ashamed to show myself at the window lest they should know I was a prisoner—the strange sensation of never hearing myself speak—the fleeting intervals of something like cheerfulness, which came with eating and drinking, and went away with it—the setting in of rain one evening, with a fresh smell, and its coming down faster and faster between me and the church, until it and gathering night seemed to quench me in gloom, and fear, and remorse—all this appears to have gone round and round for years instead of days, it is so vividly and strongly stamped on my remembrance. On the last night of my restraint, I was awakened by hearing my own name spoken in a whisper. I started up in bed, and putting out my arms in the dark, said:
«Certamente, mia cara Jane», balbettò mia madre, mansueta. «Ma, ma credi che abbia fatto bene a Edward?»
«Pensi che abbia fatto del male a Edward, Clara?» chiese gravemente il signor Murdstone.
«Questo è il punto», disse sua sorella.
A questo mio madre rispose: «Certamente, mia cara Jane», e non disse altro.
Mi sentivo in ansia perché ero personalmente interessato a questo dialogo, e cercai lo sguardo del signor Murdstone mentre si posava sul mio.
«Ora, David», disse - e vidi di nuovo quel guizzo mentre lo diceva - «oggi devi stare molto più attento del solito». Fece oscillare ancora un po’ il bastone, e lo fece schioccare ancora una volta; e avendo finito di prepararlo, lo depose accanto a sé, con uno sguardo significativo, e prese il suo libro.
Questo fu un buon rinfresco per la mia presenza di spirito, come inizio. Sentivo le parole delle mie lezioni scivolare via, non una per una, o riga per riga, ma per intera pagina; cercai di afferrarle; ma sembravano, se posso esprimermi così, di essersi messe i pattini e di sfuggirmi con una fluidità che non si poteva frenare.
Cominciammo male e andammo peggio. Ero entrato con l’idea di distinguermi, pensando di essere molto preparato; ma si rivelò un completo errore. Libro dopo libro si aggiungeva al mucchio dei fallimenti, mentre la signorina Murdstone ci sorvegliava con fermezza tutto il tempo. E quando arrivammo finalmente ai cinquemila formaggi (cani, come li chiamava quel giorno, me lo ricordo), mia madre scoppiò a piangere.
«Clara!» disse la signorina Murdstone con la sua voce ammonitrice.
«Non mi sento del tutto bene, mia cara Jane, credo», disse mia madre.
Lo vidi strizzar l’occhio, solennemente, a sua sorella, mentre si alzava e diceva, prendendo il bastone:
«Jane, non possiamo certo aspettarci che Clara sopporti con perfetta fermezza le preoccupazioni e le angosce che David le ha procurato oggi. Sarebbe stoico. Clara è molto più forte e migliorata, ma non possiamo certo aspettarci tanto da lei. David, tu e io saliremo di sopra, ragazzo.»
Mentre mi portava fuori dalla porta, mia madre corse verso di noi. Miss Murdstone disse: «Clara! sei una perfetta sciocca?» e intervenne. Vidi mia madre tapparsi le orecchie allora, e la sentii piangere.
Mi accompagnò lentamente e con gravità fino alla mia stanza - sono certo che provasse un piacere in quella parata formale di esecuzione della giustizia - e quando arrivammo lì, mi girò improvvisamente la testa sotto il suo braccio.
«Signor Murdstone! Signore!» gridai. «No! La prego, non mi picchi! Ho cercato di imparare, signore, ma non posso imparare mentre lei e la signorina Murdstone siete qui. Non posso davvero!»
“Non puoi, davvero, David?” disse. “Proviamo.”
Mi aveva la testa stretta come in una morsa, ma in qualche modo mi avvolsi intorno a lui e lo trattenni per un momento, supplicandolo di non picchiarmi. Lo trattenni solo per un momento, perché subito dopo mi colpì pesantemente, e nello stesso istante afferrai con la bocca la mano con cui mi teneva, tra i denti, e la morsi fino a farla sanguinare. Mi fa venire i brividi al solo pensiero.
Mi picchiò allora, come se mi avesse voluto picchiare fino alla morte. Sopra tutto il rumore che facevamo, li sentii salire le scale di corsa, e gridare—li sentii gridare mia madre—e Peggotty. Poi lui se ne andò; e la porta fu chiusa dall’esterno; e io giacevo, febbricitante e caldo, e lacerato, e dolorante, e infuriato a modo mio, sul pavimento.
Quanto bene ricordo, quando mi calmai, che strana immobilità pareva regnare in tutta la casa! Quanto bene ricordo, quando il mio dolore e la mia rabbia cominciarono a placarsi, quanto mi sentii malvagio!
Sedetti ad ascoltare per un bel po’, ma non c’era alcun suono. Mi alzai dal pavimento e vidi il mio viso nello specchio, così gonfio, rosso e brutto che mi fece quasi paura. Le mie strisce erano doloranti e rigide, e mi fecero piangere di nuovo quando mi mossi; ma non erano nulla rispetto alla colpa che provavo. Mi gravava sul petto più di quanto avrebbe fatto se fossi stato il più atroce dei criminali, oserei dire.
Cominciava a far buio, e io avevo chiuso la finestra (per la maggior parte del tempo ero rimasto sdraiato, con la testa sul davanzale, alternando pianti, sonnellini e sguardi svogliati verso l’esterno), quando la chiave girò nella serratura e Miss Murdstone entrò con del pane, della carne e del latte. Li mise sul tavolo senza dire una parola, guardandomi con esemplare fermezza, e poi se ne andò, chiudendo la porta a chiave dietro di sé.
Restai seduto lì a lungo dopo che fu buio, chiedendomi se sarebbe venuto qualcun altro. Quando ciò parve improbabile per quella notte, mi spogliai e andai a letto; e lì cominciai a domandarmi con terrore cosa mi sarebbe stato fatto. Se si trattava di un atto criminale che avevo commesso? Se sarei stato arrestato e mandato in carcere? Se c’era il pericolo che fossi impiccato?
Non dimenticherò mai la sveglia del mattino dopo; l’essere allegro e fresco per un primo momento, e poi l’essere schiacciato dall’oppressione stantia e tetra del ricordo. Miss Murdstone riapparve prima che fossi fuori dal letto; mi disse, in termini espliciti, che ero libero di passeggiare nel giardino per mezz’ora e non più; e si ritirò, lasciando la porta aperta, affinché potessi approfittare di quel permesso.
Così feci, e così feci ogni mattina del mio carcere, che durò cinque giorni. Se avessi potuto vedere mia madre da sola, mi sarei messo in ginocchio davanti a lei e le avrei supplicato il perdono; ma non vidi nessuno, a parte Miss Murdstone, durante tutto quel periodo—salvo che alle preghiere serali nel salotto; a cui ero scortato da Miss Murdstone dopo che tutti gli altri erano già al loro posto; dove ero piazzato, un giovane fuorilegge, tutto solo vicino alla porta; e da dove ero solennemente condotto via dal mio carceriere, prima che qualcuno si alzasse dalla posizione devota. Notai solo che mia madre era il più lontana possibile da me, e teneva il viso rivolto dall’altra parte così che non lo vidi mai; e che la mano di Mr. Murdstone era fasciata in un grosso panno di lino.
Non posso dare alcuna idea della durata di quei cinque giorni a nessuno. Occupano il posto di anni nei miei ricordi. Il modo in cui ascoltavo tutti gli incidenti della casa che si rendevano udibili a me; il suono delle campane, l’apertura e la chiusura delle porte, il mormorio delle voci, i passi sulle scale; qualsiasi risata, fischio o canto all’esterno, che mi sembrava più desolato di qualsiasi altra cosa nella mia solitudine e vergogna—il passo incerto delle ore, specialmente di notte, quando mi svegliavo pensando che fosse mattina, e scopriavo che la famiglia non era ancora andata a letto, e che tutta la lunghezza della notte doveva ancora venire—i sogni depressi e gli incubi che avevo—il ritorno del giorno, del mezzogiorno, del pomeriggio, della sera, quando i ragazzi giocavano nel cimitero, e io li guardavo da lontano all’interno della stanza, vergognandomi di mostrarmi alla finestra per paura che sapessero che ero un prigioniero—la strana sensazione di non sentirmi mai parlare—gli intervalli fugaci di qualcosa di simile alla allegria, che veniva con mangiare e bere, e se ne andava con esso—l’inizio della pioggia una sera, con un odore fresco, e il suo scendere sempre più veloce tra me e la chiesa, fino a quando essa e la notte che si raccoglieva sembravano spegnere in me il buio, la paura, e il rimorso—tutto questo sembra essersi ripetuto per anni invece che per giorni, è così vivamente e fortemente impresso nel mio ricordo. Sull’ultima notte del mio carcere, fui svegliato sentendo pronunciare il mio nome sussurrato. Mi alzai di scatto a letto, e allungando le braccia nel buio, dissi:
‘Is that you, Peggotty?’
There was no immediate answer, but presently I heard my name again, in a tone so very mysterious and awful, that I think I should have gone into a fit, if it had not occurred to me that it must have come through the keyhole.
I groped my way to the door, and putting my own lips to the keyhole, whispered: ‘Is that you, Peggotty dear?’
‘Yes, my own precious Davy,’ she replied. ‘Be as soft as a mouse, or the Cat’ll hear us.’
I understood this to mean Miss Murdstone, and was sensible of the urgency of the case; her room being close by.
‘How’s mama, dear Peggotty? Is she very angry with me?’
I could hear Peggotty crying softly on her side of the keyhole, as I was doing on mine, before she answered. ‘No. Not very.’
‘What is going to be done with me, Peggotty dear? Do you know?’
‘School. Near London,’ was Peggotty’s answer. I was obliged to get her to repeat it, for she spoke it the first time quite down my throat, in consequence of my having forgotten to take my mouth away from the keyhole and put my ear there; and though her words tickled me a good deal, I didn’t hear them.
‘When, Peggotty?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Is that the reason why Miss Murdstone took the clothes out of my drawers?’ which she had done, though I have forgotten to mention it.
‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Box.’
‘Shan’t I see mama?’
‘Yes,’ said Peggotty. ‘Morning.’
Then Peggotty fitted her mouth close to the keyhole, and delivered these words through it with as much feeling and earnestness as a keyhole has ever been the medium of communicating, I will venture to assert: shooting in each broken little sentence in a convulsive little burst of its own.
‘Davy, dear. If I ain’t been azackly as intimate with you. Lately, as I used to be. It ain’t because I don’t love you. Just as well and more, my pretty poppet. It’s because I thought it better for you. And for someone else besides. Davy, my darling, are you listening? Can you hear?’
‘Ye-ye-ye-yes, Peggotty!’ I sobbed.
‘My own!’ said Peggotty, with infinite compassion. ‘What I want to say, is. That you must never forget me. For I’ll never forget you. And I’ll take as much care of your mama, Davy. As ever I took of you. And I won’t leave her. The day may come when she’ll be glad to lay her poor head. On her stupid, cross old Peggotty’s arm again. And I’ll write to you, my dear. Though I ain’t no scholar. And I’ll—I’ll—’ Peggotty fell to kissing the keyhole, as she couldn’t kiss me.
‘Thank you, dear Peggotty!’ said I. ‘Oh, thank you! Thank you! Will you promise me one thing, Peggotty? Will you write and tell Mr. Peggotty and little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge and Ham, that I am not so bad as they might suppose, and that I sent ‘em all my love—especially to little Em’ly? Will you, if you please, Peggotty?’
The kind soul promised, and we both of us kissed the keyhole with the greatest affection—I patted it with my hand, I recollect, as if it had been her honest face—and parted. From that night there grew up in my breast a feeling for Peggotty which I cannot very well define. She did not replace my mother; no one could do that; but she came into a vacancy in my heart, which closed upon her, and I felt towards her something I have never felt for any other human being. It was a sort of comical affection, too; and yet if she had died, I cannot think what I should have done, or how I should have acted out the tragedy it would have been to me.
In the morning Miss Murdstone appeared as usual, and told me I was going to school; which was not altogether such news to me as she supposed. She also informed me that when I was dressed, I was to come downstairs into the parlour, and have my breakfast. There, I found my mother, very pale and with red eyes: into whose arms I ran, and begged her pardon from my suffering soul.
‘Oh, Davy!’ she said. ‘That you could hurt anyone I love! Try to be better, pray to be better! I forgive you; but I am so grieved, Davy, that you should have such bad passions in your heart.’
They had persuaded her that I was a wicked fellow, and she was more sorry for that than for my going away. I felt it sorely. I tried to eat my parting breakfast, but my tears dropped upon my bread-and-butter, and trickled into my tea. I saw my mother look at me sometimes, and then glance at the watchful Miss Murdstone, and than look down, or look away.
‘Master Copperfield’s box there!’ said Miss Murdstone, when wheels were heard at the gate.
I looked for Peggotty, but it was not she; neither she nor Mr. Murdstone appeared. My former acquaintance, the carrier, was at the door. The box was taken out to his cart, and lifted in.
‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, in her warning note.
‘Ready, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother. ‘Good-bye, Davy. You are going for your own good. Good-bye, my child. You will come home in the holidays, and be a better boy.’
‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
‘Certainly, my dear Jane,’ replied my mother, who was holding me. ‘I forgive you, my dear boy. God bless you!’
‘Clara!’ Miss Murdstone repeated.
Miss Murdstone was good enough to take me out to the cart, and to say on the way that she hoped I would repent, before I came to a bad end; and then I got into the cart, and the lazy horse walked off with it.
‘È lei, Peggotty?’
Non ci fu risposta immediata, ma poco dopo udii di nuovo il mio nome, in un tono così misterioso e spaventoso che credo sarei svenuto se non mi fossi reso conto che doveva essere passato per la toppa della serratura.
Mi frugai la strada fino alla porta, e avvicinando le mie labbra alla toppa della serratura, sussurrai: «Sei tu, cara Peggotty?»
“Sì, mio caro Davy,” rispose. “Sii silenzioso come un topo, o il Gatto ci sentirà.”
Comprendevo che si trattava della signorina Murdstone, e ne coglievo l’urgenza; la sua stanza era vicinissima.
‘Come sta la mamma, cara Peggotty? È molto arrabbiata con me?’
Sentivo Peggotty piangere sommessamente dalla sua parte del buco della serratura, mentre io piangevo dalla mia, prima che rispondesse: «No. Non molto.»
‘Che ne sarà di me, cara Peggotty? Lo sai?’
«Scuola. Vicino a Londra», rispose Peggotty. Fui costretto a farle ripetere la risposta, perché la prima volta me la sussurrò proprio in gola, a causa del fatto che avevo dimenticato di togliere la bocca dal buco della serratura e di mettere l’orecchio al suo posto; e sebbene le sue parole mi facessero solletico parecchio, non le sentii.
‘Quando, Peggotty?’
‘Domani.’
«È questa la ragione per cui Miss Murdstone ha tolto i vestiti dai miei cassetti?», cosa che aveva fatto, sebbene io l’abbia dimenticato di menzionarlo.
“Sì”, disse Peggotty. “Box”.
‘Non vedrò la mamma?’
‘Sì’, disse Peggotty. ‘Buongiorno’.
Poi Peggotty avvicinò la bocca alla serratura e pronunciò queste parole attraverso di essa con altrettanto sentimento e convinzione di quanti ne siano mai stati comunicati attraverso una serratura, oserei affermare: sparando ogni breve frase spezzata in un piccolo scoppio convulso.
«Davy, tesoro. Se non sono stata esattamente così intima con te. Ultimamente, come ero solita essere. Non è perché non ti amo. Proprio come bene e di più, mio dolce tesoro. È perché ho pensato che fosse meglio per te. E per qualcun altro oltre a te. Davy, mio caro, mi stai ascoltando? Mi senti?»
«Sì-sì-sì, Peggotty!» singhiozzai.
«La mia creatura!» disse Peggotty, con infinita compassione. «Quello che voglio dire è che non dovete mai dimenticarmi. Perché io non dimenticherò mai voi. E mi prenderò cura di vostra madre, Davy, come ho sempre fatto con voi. E non la lascerò. Potrebbe arrivare il giorno in cui sarà felice di appoggiare la sua povera testa sul braccio della sua vecchia, stupida e irascibile Peggotty. E vi scriverò, mio caro, anche se non sono una studiosa. E io, io, » Peggotty si mise a baciare la toppa della serratura, dato che non poteva baciare me.
«Grazie, cara Peggotty!» dissi io. «Oh, grazie! Grazie! Mi prometti una cosa, Peggotty? Scriverai a Mr. Peggotty e a piccola Emily, e a Mrs. Gummidge e a Ham, che non sono così cattivo come potrebbero pensare, e che ho mandato a tutti loro il mio affetto—soprattutto a piccola Emily? Lo farai, per favore, Peggotty?»
L’anima gentile promise, e noi due baciammo la toppa della serratura con la più grande affetto — ricordo che la accarezzai con la mano, come se fosse stato il suo onesto viso — e ci separammo. Da quella notte crebbe nel mio petto un sentimento per Peggotty che non posso definire molto bene. Non sostituiva mia madre; nessuno avrebbe potuto farlo; ma entrò in una vacanza nel mio cuore, che si chiuse su di lei, e provai per lei qualcosa che non ho mai provato per nessun altro essere umano. Era anche una sorta di affetto comico; eppure, se fosse morta, non posso pensare a cosa avrei fatto, o come avrei interpretato la tragedia che sarebbe stata per me.
La mattina la signorina Murdstone apparve come al solito e mi disse che sarei andato a scuola; che non fu per me una notizia così inaspettata come lei credeva. Mi disse anche che, una volta vestito, dovevo scendere in salotto a fare colazione. Lì trovai mia madre, molto pallida e con gli occhi rossi: nelle cui braccia mi precipitai, chiedendole perdono con la mia sofferente anima.
«Oh, Davy!» disse. «Che tu possa ferire qualcuno che amo! Cerca di essere migliore, prega di essere migliore! Ti perdono; ma sono così addolorata, Davy, che tu abbia tali passioni cattive nel tuo cuore.»
Mi avevano convinta che fossi un cattivo ragazzo, e lei era più dispiaciuta per questo che per la mia partenza. Lo sentii molto. Cercavo di mangiare la mia colazione di addio, ma le mie lacrime cadevano sul mio pane e burro e gocciolavano nel mio tè. Vidi mia madre guardarmi a volte, poi lanciare un’occhiata alla vigile Miss Murdstone, e poi abbassare lo sguardo o distoglierlo.
«La scatola del piccolo Copperfield!» disse la signorina Murdstone, quando si udirono le ruote alla porta.
Cercavo Peggotty, ma non era lei; né lei né il signor Murdstone si vedevano. Il mio vecchio conoscente, il facchino, era alla porta. La scatola fu portata fuori fino al suo carretto e caricata.
«Clara!», disse la signorina Murdstone con la sua nota ammonitrice.
«Pronta, mia cara Jane», rispose mia madre. «Addio, Davy. Vai per il tuo bene. Addio, mio bambino. Tornerai a casa per le vacanze e sarai un ragazzo migliore.»
«Clara!» ripeté la signorina Murdstone.
«Certamente, mia cara Jane», rispose mia madre, che mi teneva in braccio. «Ti perdono, mio caro ragazzo. Dio ti benedica!»
«Clara!» ripeté la signorina Murdstone.
La signorina Murdstone ebbe la bontà di accompagnarmi fino al carro e, lungo il tragitto, mi disse che sperava che mi sarei pentito prima di arrivare a una brutta fine; poi salii sul carro e il cavallo pigro si mise a trainarlo.
CHAPTER 5. I AM SENT AWAY FROM HOME
We might have gone about half a mile, and my pocket-handkerchief was quite wet through, when the carrier stopped short. Looking out to ascertain for what, I saw, to My amazement, Peggotty burst from a hedge and climb into the cart. She took me in both her arms, and squeezed me to her stays until the pressure on my nose was extremely painful, though I never thought of that till afterwards when I found it very tender. Not a single word did Peggotty speak. Releasing one of her arms, she put it down in her pocket to the elbow, and brought out some paper bags of cakes which she crammed into my pockets, and a purse which she put into my hand, but not one word did she say. After another and a final squeeze with both arms, she got down from the cart and ran away; and, my belief is, and has always been, without a solitary button on her gown. I picked up one, of several that were rolling about, and treasured it as a keepsake for a long time.
The carrier looked at me, as if to inquire if she were coming back. I shook my head, and said I thought not. ‘Then come up,’ said the carrier to the lazy horse; who came up accordingly.
Having by this time cried as much as I possibly could, I began to think it was of no use crying any more, especially as neither Roderick Random, nor that Captain in the Royal British Navy, had ever cried, that I could remember, in trying situations. The carrier, seeing me in this resolution, proposed that my pocket-handkerchief should be spread upon the horse’s back to dry. I thanked him, and assented; and particularly small it looked, under those circumstances.
I had now leisure to examine the purse. It was a stiff leather purse, with a snap, and had three bright shillings in it, which Peggotty had evidently polished up with whitening, for my greater delight. But its most precious contents were two half-crowns folded together in a bit of paper, on which was written, in my mother’s hand, ‘For Davy. With my love.’ I was so overcome by this, that I asked the carrier to be so good as to reach me my pocket-handkerchief again; but he said he thought I had better do without it, and I thought I really had, so I wiped my eyes on my sleeve and stopped myself.
For good, too; though, in consequence of my previous emotions, I was still occasionally seized with a stormy sob. After we had jogged on for some little time, I asked the carrier if he was going all the way.
‘All the way where?’ inquired the carrier.
‘There,’ I said.
‘Where’s there?’ inquired the carrier.
‘Near London,’ I said.
‘Why that horse,’ said the carrier, jerking the rein to point him out, ‘would be deader than pork afore he got over half the ground.’
‘Are you only going to Yarmouth then?’ I asked.
‘That’s about it,’ said the carrier. ‘And there I shall take you to the stage-cutch, and the stage-cutch that’ll take you to—wherever it is.’
As this was a great deal for the carrier (whose name was Mr. Barkis) to say—he being, as I observed in a former chapter, of a phlegmatic temperament, and not at all conversational—I offered him a cake as a mark of attention, which he ate at one gulp, exactly like an elephant, and which made no more impression on his big face than it would have done on an elephant’s.
‘Did SHE make ‘em, now?’ said Mr. Barkis, always leaning forward, in his slouching way, on the footboard of the cart with an arm on each knee.
‘Peggotty, do you mean, sir?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Her.’
‘Yes. She makes all our pastry, and does all our cooking.’
‘Do she though?’ said Mr. Barkis. He made up his mouth as if to whistle, but he didn’t whistle. He sat looking at the horse’s ears, as if he saw something new there; and sat so, for a considerable time. By and by, he said:
‘No sweethearts, I b’lieve?’
‘Sweetmeats did you say, Mr. Barkis?’ For I thought he wanted something else to eat, and had pointedly alluded to that description of refreshment.
‘Hearts,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Sweet hearts; no person walks with her!’
‘With Peggotty?’
‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Her.’
‘Oh, no. She never had a sweetheart.’
‘Didn’t she, though!’ said Mr. Barkis.
Again he made up his mouth to whistle, and again he didn’t whistle, but sat looking at the horse’s ears.
‘So she makes,’ said Mr. Barkis, after a long interval of reflection, ‘all the apple parsties, and doos all the cooking, do she?’
I replied that such was the fact.
‘Well. I’ll tell you what,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘P’raps you might be writin’ to her?’
‘I shall certainly write to her,’ I rejoined.
‘Ah!’ he said, slowly turning his eyes towards me. ‘Well! If you was writin’ to her, p’raps you’d recollect to say that Barkis was willin’; would you?’
‘That Barkis is willing,’ I repeated, innocently. ‘Is that all the message?’
‘Ye-es,’ he said, considering. ‘Ye-es. Barkis is willin’.’
‘But you will be at Blunderstone again tomorrow, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, faltering a little at the idea of my being far away from it then, and could give your own message so much better.’
As he repudiated this suggestion, however, with a jerk of his head, and once more confirmed his previous request by saying, with profound gravity, ‘Barkis is willin’. That’s the message,’ I readily undertook its transmission. While I was waiting for the coach in the hotel at Yarmouth that very afternoon, I procured a sheet of paper and an inkstand, and wrote a note to Peggotty, which ran thus: ‘My dear Peggotty. I have come here safe. Barkis is willing. My love to mama. Yours affectionately. P.S. He says he particularly wants you to know—BARKIS IS WILLING.’
When I had taken this commission on myself prospectively, Mr. Barkis relapsed into perfect silence; and I, feeling quite worn out by all that had happened lately, lay down on a sack in the cart and fell asleep. I slept soundly until we got to Yarmouth; which was so entirely new and strange to me in the inn-yard to which we drove, that I at once abandoned a latent hope I had had of meeting with some of Mr. Peggotty’s family there, perhaps even with little Em’ly herself.
CAPITOLO 5. VENGO MANDATO VIA DA CASA
Avremmo potuto percorrere mezzo miglio, e il mio fazzoletto da taschino era completamente bagnato, quando il vetturino si fermò di colpo. Guardando fuori per capire il motivo, vidi, con mio grande stupore, Peggotty uscire da una siepe e salire sul carro. Mi prese tra le sue braccia e mi strinse al suo corsetto fino a quando la pressione sul mio naso divenne estremamente dolorosa, anche se non ci pensai fino a dopo, quando lo trovai molto sensibile. Peggotty non disse una sola parola. Liberando uno dei suoi bracci, lo infilò in tasca fino al gomito e tirò fuori alcuni sacchetti di carta con dei dolci che mi mise nelle tasche, e un portafoglio che mi mise in mano, ma non disse una parola. Dopo un’ultima e definitiva stretta con entrambe le braccia, scese dal carro e corse via; e, secondo me, e lo è sempre stato, senza un solo bottone sul suo abito. Raccolsi uno dei tanti che erano rotolanti per terra e lo conservai come ricordo per un lungo periodo.
Il vetturino mi guardò, come per chiedermi se sarebbe tornata. Scossi la testa e dissi che non credevo. «Allora vieni su», disse il vetturino al cavallo pigro; che salì di conseguenza.
Avendo pianto, a questo punto, quanto potevo, cominciai a pensare che non servisse più a nulla piangere, specialmente perché né Roderick Random, né quel Capitano nella Reale Marina Britannica, avevano mai pianto, per quanto ne ricordassi, in situazioni difficili. Il vetturino, vedendomi in questa risoluzione, propose che il mio fazzoletto da taschino fosse steso sulla cavallo’s back to dry. Lo ringraziai e acconsentii; e particolarmente piccolo sembrava, in quelle circostanze.
Ora avevo il tempo di esaminare il portamonete. Era un portamonete rigido di pelle, con un fermaglio, e conteneva tre scellini lucenti, che Peggotty aveva evidentemente lucidato con candeggina, per il mio maggiore divertimento. Ma il suo contenuto più prezioso erano due mezzecorone piegate insieme in un pezzetto di carta, su cui era scritto, di pugno di mia madre, «Per Davy. Con il mio affetto.» Ne fui così sopraffatto che chiesi al carrettiere di avere la gentilezza di passarmi di nuovo il fazzoletto; ma lui disse che pensava fosse meglio che me ne facessi a meno, e io pensai che in effetti era così, così mi asciugai gli occhi sulla manica e mi controllai.
Per il meglio, anche se, a causa delle mie precedenti emozioni, ero ancora occasionalmente preso da un singhiozzo tempestoso. Dopo che eravamo andati avanti per un po’ di tempo, chiesi al vetturino se stava andando fino in fondo.
«Tutto il percorso fino a dove?» chiese il vetturale.
«Ecco fatto», dissi.
«Dove c’è?» chiese il vetturale.
«Vicino a Londra,» dissi.
«Per quel cavallo,» disse il facchino, tirando le redini per indicarlo, «sarebbe più morto del maiale prima di aver percorso metà del terreno.»
«Voi andate soltanto a Yarmouth, dunque?» domandai.
«Questo è tutto», disse il vetturale. «E lì vi porterò alla carrozza di posta, e la carrozza di posta che vi porterà a, dove sia.»
Poiché questo era molto per il vetturino (che si chiamava signor Barkis) – essendo, come ho osservato in un capitolo precedente, di temperamento flemmatico e per nulla loquace – gli offrii una torta come segno di attenzione, che lui inghiottì in un sol boccone, esattamente come un elefante, e che non fece più impressione sulla sua faccia larga di quanto avrebbe fatto su quella di un elefante.
«Le ha fatte LEI, allora?» disse il signor Barkis, sempre proteso in avanti, in quella sua maniera accasciata, sul predellino del carro con un braccio su ogni ginocchio.
“Peggotty, intende dire, signore?”
‘Ah!’ disse il signor Barkis. ‘Lei.’
‘Sì. Fa tutta la nostra pasticceria e cucina per noi.’
«Ma è così?» disse il signor Barkis. Si mise in bocca le labbra come se volesse fischiare, ma non fischiò. Sedette guardando le orecchie del cavallo, come se vedesse qualcosa di nuovo; e rimase così, per un bel po’ di tempo. Dopo un po’, disse:
‘Nessun innamorato, credo?’
«Dolciumi ha detto, signor Barkis?» Perché pensavo che volesse qualcos’altro da mangiare, e avesse alluso in modo esplicito a quel tipo di rinfresco.
‘Cuori’, disse il signor Barkis. ‘Cuori dolci; nessuno cammina con lei!’
‘Con Peggotty?’
‘Ah!’ disse. ‘Lei.’
“Oh, no. Non ha mai avuto un fidanzato.”
«Non è così?» disse il signor Barkis.
Di nuovo fece per fischiare, e di nuovo non fischiò, ma rimase seduto a guardare le orecchie del cavallo.
«Dunque lei prepara», disse il signor Barkis, dopo una lunga pausa di riflessione, «tutte le torte di mele e fa tutta la cucina, è così?»
Risposi che era proprio così.
«Bene. Vediamo un po’,» disse il signor Barkis. «Forse le scriverà?»
«Le scriverò certamente», replicai.
«Ah!» disse, voltandosi lentamente verso di me. «Bene! Se scrivessi a lei, forse ti ricorderesti di dire che Barkis è disposto; lo faresti?»
«Barkis è d’accordo», ripetei ingenuamente. «Questo è tutto il messaggio?»
‘Sì,’ disse, riflettendo. ‘Sì. Barkis è d’accordo.’
«Ma domani sarete di nuovo a Blunderstone, signor Barkis», dissi, vacillando un po’ all’idea di essere lontano da lì allora, e potreste comunicare il vostro messaggio molto meglio».
Poiché egli respinse, tuttavia, questa proposta con un gesto della testa, e confermò ancora una volta la sua precedente richiesta dicendo, con profonda gravità, «Barkis è disposto. Questo è il messaggio», mi impegno prontamente a trasmetterlo. Mentre aspettavo il calesse all’hotel a Yarmouth proprio quel pomeriggio, procurai un foglio di carta e un calamaio, e scrissi una nota a Peggotty, che recitava così: «Mia cara Peggotty. Sono arrivato qui sano e salvo. Barkis è disposto. Il mio affetto a mamma. Tuo affezionato. P.S. Dice che vuole particolarmente che tu sappia—BARKIS È DISPOSTO».
Quando avevo preso su di me questa commissione in prospettiva, il signor Barkis ricadde in un perfetto silenzio; e io, sentendomi completamente sfinito da tutto ciò che era accaduto di recente, mi sdraiai su un sacco nel carro e mi addormentai. Dormii profondamente fino a quando non arrivammo a Yarmouth; che era così completamente nuovo e strano per me nel cortile della locanda in cui ci dirigevamo, che abbandonai subito una speranza latente che avevo avuto di incontrare lì alcuni membri della famiglia del signor Peggotty, forse persino la piccola Em’ly stessa.
The coach was in the yard, shining very much all over, but without any horses to it as yet; and it looked in that state as if nothing was more unlikely than its ever going to London. I was thinking this, and wondering what would ultimately become of my box, which Mr. Barkis had put down on the yard-pavement by the pole (he having driven up the yard to turn his cart), and also what would ultimately become of me, when a lady looked out of a bow-window where some fowls and joints of meat were hanging up, and said:
‘Is that the little gentleman from Blunderstone?’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said.
‘What name?’ inquired the lady.
‘Copperfield, ma’am,’ I said.
‘That won’t do,’ returned the lady. ‘Nobody’s dinner is paid for here, in that name.’
‘Is it Murdstone, ma’am?’ I said.
‘If you’re Master Murdstone,’ said the lady, ‘why do you go and give another name, first?’
I explained to the lady how it was, who than rang a bell, and called out, ‘William! show the coffee-room!’ upon which a waiter came running out of a kitchen on the opposite side of the yard to show it, and seemed a good deal surprised when he was only to show it to me.
It was a large long room with some large maps in it. I doubt if I could have felt much stranger if the maps had been real foreign countries, and I cast away in the middle of them. I felt it was taking a liberty to sit down, with my cap in my hand, on the corner of the chair nearest the door; and when the waiter laid a cloth on purpose for me, and put a set of castors on it, I think I must have turned red all over with modesty.
He brought me some chops, and vegetables, and took the covers off in such a bouncing manner that I was afraid I must have given him some offence. But he greatly relieved my mind by putting a chair for me at the table, and saying, very affably, ‘Now, six-foot! come on!’
I thanked him, and took my seat at the board; but found it extremely difficult to handle my knife and fork with anything like dexterity, or to avoid splashing myself with the gravy, while he was standing opposite, staring so hard, and making me blush in the most dreadful manner every time I caught his eye. After watching me into the second chop, he said:
‘There’s half a pint of ale for you. Will you have it now?’
I thanked him and said, ‘Yes.’ Upon which he poured it out of a jug into a large tumbler, and held it up against the light, and made it look beautiful.
‘My eye!’ he said. ‘It seems a good deal, don’t it?’
‘It does seem a good deal,’ I answered with a smile. For it was quite delightful to me, to find him so pleasant. He was a twinkling-eyed, pimple-faced man, with his hair standing upright all over his head; and as he stood with one arm a-kimbo, holding up the glass to the light with the other hand, he looked quite friendly.
‘There was a gentleman here, yesterday,’ he said—‘a stout gentleman, by the name of Topsawyer—perhaps you know him?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t think—’
‘In breeches and gaiters, broad-brimmed hat, grey coat, speckled choker,’ said the waiter.
‘No,’ I said bashfully, ‘I haven’t the pleasure—’
‘He came in here,’ said the waiter, looking at the light through the tumbler, ‘ordered a glass of this ale—WOULD order it—I told him not—drank it, and fell dead. It was too old for him. It oughtn’t to be drawn; that’s the fact.’
I was very much shocked to hear of this melancholy accident, and said I thought I had better have some water.
‘Why you see,’ said the waiter, still looking at the light through the tumbler, with one of his eyes shut up, ‘our people don’t like things being ordered and left. It offends ‘em. But I’ll drink it, if you like. I’m used to it, and use is everything. I don’t think it’ll hurt me, if I throw my head back, and take it off quick. Shall I?’
I replied that he would much oblige me by drinking it, if he thought he could do it safely, but by no means otherwise. When he did throw his head back, and take it off quick, I had a horrible fear, I confess, of seeing him meet the fate of the lamented Mr. Topsawyer, and fall lifeless on the carpet. But it didn’t hurt him. On the contrary, I thought he seemed the fresher for it.
‘What have we got here?’ he said, putting a fork into my dish. ‘Not chops?’
‘Chops,’ I said.
‘Lord bless my soul!’ he exclaimed, ‘I didn’t know they were chops. Why, a chop’s the very thing to take off the bad effects of that beer! Ain’t it lucky?’
So he took a chop by the bone in one hand, and a potato in the other, and ate away with a very good appetite, to my extreme satisfaction. He afterwards took another chop, and another potato; and after that, another chop and another potato. When we had done, he brought me a pudding, and having set it before me, seemed to ruminate, and to become absent in his mind for some moments.
‘How’s the pie?’ he said, rousing himself.
‘It’s a pudding,’ I made answer.
‘Pudding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, bless me, so it is! What!’ looking at it nearer. ‘You don’t mean to say it’s a batter-pudding!’
‘Yes, it is indeed.’
‘Why, a batter-pudding,’ he said, taking up a table-spoon, ‘is my favourite pudding! Ain’t that lucky? Come on, little ‘un, and let’s see who’ll get most.’
The waiter certainly got most. He entreated me more than once to come in and win, but what with his table-spoon to my tea-spoon, his dispatch to my dispatch, and his appetite to my appetite, I was left far behind at the first mouthful, and had no chance with him. I never saw anyone enjoy a pudding so much, I think; and he laughed, when it was all gone, as if his enjoyment of it lasted still.
Finding him so very friendly and companionable, it was then that I asked for the pen and ink and paper, to write to Peggotty. He not only brought it immediately, but was good enough to look over me while I wrote the letter. When I had finished it, he asked me where I was going to school.
I said, ‘Near London,’ which was all I knew.
‘Oh! my eye!’ he said, looking very low-spirited, ‘I am sorry for that.’
‘Why?’ I asked him.
‘Oh, Lord!’ he said, shaking his head, ‘that’s the school where they broke the boy’s ribs—two ribs—a little boy he was. I should say he was—let me see—how old are you, about?’
I told him between eight and nine.
‘That’s just his age,’ he said. ‘He was eight years and six months old when they broke his first rib; eight years and eight months old when they broke his second, and did for him.’
I could not disguise from myself, or from the waiter, that this was an uncomfortable coincidence, and inquired how it was done. His answer was not cheering to my spirits, for it consisted of two dismal words, ‘With whopping.’
The blowing of the coach-horn in the yard was a seasonable diversion, which made me get up and hesitatingly inquire, in the mingled pride and diffidence of having a purse (which I took out of my pocket), if there were anything to pay.
‘There’s a sheet of letter-paper,’ he returned. ‘Did you ever buy a sheet of letter-paper?’
I could not remember that I ever had.
‘It’s dear,’ he said, ‘on account of the duty. Threepence. That’s the way we’re taxed in this country. There’s nothing else, except the waiter. Never mind the ink. I lose by that.’
‘What should you—what should I—how much ought I to—what would it be right to pay the waiter, if you please?’ I stammered, blushing.
‘If I hadn’t a family, and that family hadn’t the cowpock,’ said the waiter, ‘I wouldn’t take a sixpence. If I didn’t support a aged pairint, and a lovely sister,’—here the waiter was greatly agitated—‘I wouldn’t take a farthing. If I had a good place, and was treated well here, I should beg acceptance of a trifle, instead of taking of it. But I live on broken wittles—and I sleep on the coals’—here the waiter burst into tears.
I was very much concerned for his misfortunes, and felt that any recognition short of ninepence would be mere brutality and hardness of heart. Therefore I gave him one of my three bright shillings, which he received with much humility and veneration, and spun up with his thumb, directly afterwards, to try the goodness of.
It was a little disconcerting to me, to find, when I was being helped up behind the coach, that I was supposed to have eaten all the dinner without any assistance. I discovered this, from overhearing the lady in the bow-window say to the guard, ‘Take care of that child, George, or he’ll burst!’ and from observing that the women-servants who were about the place came out to look and giggle at me as a young phenomenon. My unfortunate friend the waiter, who had quite recovered his spirits, did not appear to be disturbed by this, but joined in the general admiration without being at all confused. If I had any doubt of him, I suppose this half awakened it; but I am inclined to believe that with the simple confidence of a child, and the natural reliance of a child upon superior years (qualities I am very sorry any children should prematurely change for worldly wisdom), I had no serious mistrust of him on the whole, even then.
I felt it rather hard, I must own, to be made, without deserving it, the subject of jokes between the coachman and guard as to the coach drawing heavy behind, on account of my sitting there, and as to the greater expediency of my travelling by waggon. The story of my supposed appetite getting wind among the outside passengers, they were merry upon it likewise; and asked me whether I was going to be paid for, at school, as two brothers or three, and whether I was contracted for, or went upon the regular terms; with other pleasant questions. But the worst of it was, that I knew I should be ashamed to eat anything, when an opportunity offered, and that, after a rather light dinner, I should remain hungry all night—for I had left my cakes behind, at the hotel, in my hurry. My apprehensions were realized. When we stopped for supper I couldn’t muster courage to take any, though I should have liked it very much, but sat by the fire and said I didn’t want anything. This did not save me from more jokes, either; for a husky-voiced gentleman with a rough face, who had been eating out of a sandwich-box nearly all the way, except when he had been drinking out of a bottle, said I was like a boa-constrictor who took enough at one meal to last him a long time; after which, he actually brought a rash out upon himself with boiled beef.
We had started from Yarmouth at three o’clock in the afternoon, and we were due in London about eight next morning. It was Mid-summer weather, and the evening was very pleasant. When we passed through a village, I pictured to myself what the insides of the houses were like, and what the inhabitants were about; and when boys came running after us, and got up behind and swung there for a little way, I wondered whether their fathers were alive, and whether they were happy at home. I had plenty to think of, therefore, besides my mind running continually on the kind of place I was going to—which was an awful speculation. Sometimes, I remember, I resigned myself to thoughts of home and Peggotty; and to endeavouring, in a confused blind way, to recall how I had felt, and what sort of boy I used to be, before I bit Mr. Murdstone: which I couldn’t satisfy myself about by any means, I seemed to have bitten him in such a remote antiquity.
The night was not so pleasant as the evening, for it got chilly; and being put between two gentlemen (the rough-faced one and another) to prevent my tumbling off the coach, I was nearly smothered by their falling asleep, and completely blocking me up. They squeezed me so hard sometimes, that I could not help crying out, ‘Oh! If you please!’—which they didn’t like at all, because it woke them. Opposite me was an elderly lady in a great fur cloak, who looked in the dark more like a haystack than a lady, she was wrapped up to such a degree. This lady had a basket with her, and she hadn’t known what to do with it, for a long time, until she found that on account of my legs being short, it could go underneath me. It cramped and hurt me so, that it made me perfectly miserable; but if I moved in the least, and made a glass that was in the basket rattle against something else (as it was sure to do), she gave me the cruellest poke with her foot, and said, ‘Come, don’t YOU fidget. YOUR bones are young enough, I’m sure!’
«Perché?» gli chiesi.
«Oh, Signore!» disse, scuotendo la testa, «quella è la scuola dove hanno rotto le costole al ragazzo, due costole, era un ragazzino. Direi che aveva, vediamo, quanti anni hai tu, più o meno?»
Gli dissi tra le otto e le nove.
«È solo la sua età», disse. «Aveva otto anni e sei mesi quando gli fratturarono la prima costola; otto anni e otto mesi quando gli fratturarono la seconda, e lo finirono.»
Non potevo nascondere né a me stesso né al cameriere che si trattava di una coincidenza scomoda, e chiesi come fosse stato fatto. La sua risposta non fu incoraggiante per il mio spirito, perché consisteva in due parole lugubri: «Con un colpo violento».
Il suono del corno del carro nel cortile fu una distrazione opportuna, che mi fece alzare e chiedere esitante, tra la fierezza e la timidezza di avere una borsa (che tirai fuori dalla tasca), se ci fosse qualcosa da pagare.
«C’è un foglio di carta da lettera», rispose. «Avete mai comprato un foglio di carta da lettera?»
Non riuscivo a ricordare di averlo mai fatto.
«È caro», disse, «a causa della tassa. Tre penny. Questo è il modo in cui siamo tassati in questo paese. Non c’è altro, tranne il cameriere. Non preoccuparti dell’inchiostro. Perdo su quello.»
«Che cosa dovrebbe lei—che cosa dovrei—quanto dovrei—quanto sarebbe giusto dare di mancia al cameriere, per piacere?» balbettai, arrossendo.
«Se non avessi una famiglia, e quella famiglia non avesse la vaccinazione,» disse il cameriere, «non prenderei sei pence. Se non dovessi mantenere un vecchio pittore e una sorella adorabile,» — qui il cameriere si agitò molto — «non prenderei un soldo. Se avessi un buon posto e fossi trattato bene qui, chiederei di accettare un piccolo regalo, invece di prenderlo. Ma vivo di avanzi — e dormo sulle braci» — qui il cameriere scoppiò in lacrime.
Ero molto preoccupato per le sue disgrazie e pensavo che qualsiasi riconoscimento inferiore a nove pence sarebbe stato pura brutalità e durezza di cuore. Così gli diedi uno dei miei tre scellini lucenti, che egli ricevette con molta umiltà e venerazione, e subito dopo fece ruotare con il pollice, per verificarne la qualità.
Mi risultò un po’ sconcertante scoprire, mentre mi aiutavano a salire sul retro del calesse, che si credeva che avessi mangiato tutto il pranzo senza alcun aiuto. Scoprii questo, sentendo la signora nel finestrino anteriore dire al guardiano: «Prenditi cura di quel bambino, George, o scoppierà!», e notando che le cameriere che si trovavano nei paraggi uscivano per guardarmi e ridacchiare di me come se fossi un giovane fenomeno. Il mio sfortunato amico il cameriere, che si era completamente ripreso dallo shock, non sembrava essere turbato da questo, ma si univa all’ammirazione generale senza essere affatto confuso. Se avevo qualche dubbio su di lui, suppongo che questo me lo avesse fatto nascere; ma sono incline a credere che con la semplice fiducia di un bambino e la naturale fiducia di un bambino verso chi ha più anni (qualità che mi dispiace molto che i bambini cambino prematuramente con la saggezza del mondo), non nutrivo alcun serio sospetto su di lui nel complesso, anche allora.
Devo ammettere che mi parve piuttosto duro essere, senza meritarlo, oggetto di battute tra il cocchiere e il guardiano riguardo al fatto che il calesse tirava pesante dietro, a causa della mia presenza, e riguardo alla maggiore convenienza di viaggiare in carrozza. La storia del mio presunto appetito che si era sparsa tra i passeggeri esterni, fu motivo di allegria anche per loro; e mi chiesero se sarei stato pagato a scuola come due o tre fratelli, e se ero sotto contratto, o se andavo ai termini regolari; con altre domande piacevoli. Ma la cosa peggiore era che sapevo che mi sarei vergognato di mangiare qualcosa, quando si fosse presentata l’occasione, e che, dopo una cena piuttosto leggera, sarei rimasto affamato tutta la notte—perché avevo lasciato i miei dolci all’hotel, nella fretta. Le mie apprensioni si realizzarono. Quando ci fermammo per cena non riuscii a trovare il coraggio di prenderne, anche se mi sarebbe piaciuto molto, ma mi sedetti vicino al fuoco e dissi che non volevo nulla. Questo non mi salvò da altre battute, però; perché un gentiluomo dalla voce roca e dal viso ruvido, che aveva mangiato da una scatola di sandwich per quasi tutto il viaggio, tranne quando aveva bevuto da una bottiglia, disse che ero come un boa constrictor che prendeva abbastanza in un pasto per durare a lungo tempo; dopo di che, gli venne effettivamente un’eruzione cutanea con il manzo bollito.
Eravamo partiti da Yarmouth alle tre del pomeriggio e saremmo arrivati a Londra circa alle otto del mattino seguente. Era tempo di metà estate e la sera era molto piacevole. Quando passavamo per un villaggio, mi immaginavo com’era l’interno delle case e cosa facessero gli abitanti; e quando dei ragazzi ci correvano dietro, si arrampicavano dietro e vi si aggrappavano per un po’, mi chiedevo se i loro padri fossero vivi e se fossero felici a casa. Avevo quindi molto su cui riflettere, oltre al fatto che la mia mente era continuamente presa dal tipo di posto in cui stavo andando, che era un’orribile speculazione. A volte, ricordo, mi abbandonavo ai pensieri di casa e di Peggotty; e cercavo, in un modo confuso e cieco, di ricordare come mi sentivo, e che tipo di ragazzo ero, prima che mordessi il signor Murdstone: su cui non riuscivo a convincermi in alcun modo, mi sembrava di averlo morso in un’antichità così remota.
La notte non fu così piacevole come la serata, perché faceva freddo; e essendo stato messo tra due signori (quello dal viso ruvido e un altro) per impedirmi di cadere dal calesse, fui quasi soffocato dal loro addormentarsi e bloccarmi completamente. A volte mi stringevano così forte che non potevo fare a meno di gridare: «Oh! Se non vi dispiace!»—cosa che non gradivano affatto, perché li svegliava. Di fronte a me c’era una signora anziana in un grande mantello di pelliccia, che al buio sembrava più un pagliaio che una signora, tanto era avvolta. Questa signora aveva un cesto con sé, e non aveva saputo cosa farne per un lungo tempo, finché non scoprì che, dato che le mie gambe erano corte, poteva metterlo sotto di me. Mi faceva così male e mi dava così fastidio, che mi rendeva perfettamente infelice; ma se mi muovevo anche solo un po’, e facevo tintinnare un bicchiere che c’era nel cesto contro qualcos’altro (come era sicuro che facesse), mi dava la più crudele spinta con il piede, e diceva: «Su, non ti agitare. Le TUE ossa sono abbastanza giovani, sono sicura!»
At last the sun rose, and then my companions seemed to sleep easier. The difficulties under which they had laboured all night, and which had found utterance in the most terrific gasps and snorts, are not to be conceived. As the sun got higher, their sleep became lighter, and so they gradually one by one awoke. I recollect being very much surprised by the feint everybody made, then, of not having been to sleep at all, and by the uncommon indignation with which everyone repelled the charge. I labour under the same kind of astonishment to this day, having invariably observed that of all human weaknesses, the one to which our common nature is the least disposed to confess (I cannot imagine why) is the weakness of having gone to sleep in a coach.
What an amazing place London was to me when I saw it in the distance, and how I believed all the adventures of all my favourite heroes to be constantly enacting and re-enacting there, and how I vaguely made it out in my own mind to be fuller of wonders and wickedness than all the cities of the earth, I need not stop here to relate. We approached it by degrees, and got, in due time, to the inn in the Whitechapel district, for which we were bound. I forget whether it was the Blue Bull, or the Blue Boar; but I know it was the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted up on the back of the coach.
The guard’s eye lighted on me as he was getting down, and he said at the booking-office door:
‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster booked in the name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, to be left till called for?’
Nobody answered.
‘Try Copperfield, if you please, sir,’ said I, looking helplessly down.
‘Is there anybody here for a yoongster, booked in the name of Murdstone, from Bloonderstone, Sooffolk, but owning to the name of Copperfield, to be left till called for?’ said the guard. ‘Come! IS there anybody?’
No. There was nobody. I looked anxiously around; but the inquiry made no impression on any of the bystanders, if I except a man in gaiters, with one eye, who suggested that they had better put a brass collar round my neck, and tie me up in the stable.
A ladder was brought, and I got down after the lady, who was like a haystack: not daring to stir, until her basket was removed. The coach was clear of passengers by that time, the luggage was very soon cleared out, the horses had been taken out before the luggage, and now the coach itself was wheeled and backed off by some hostlers, out of the way. Still, nobody appeared, to claim the dusty youngster from Blunderstone, Suffolk.
More solitary than Robinson Crusoe, who had nobody to look at him and see that he was solitary, I went into the booking-office, and, by invitation of the clerk on duty, passed behind the counter, and sat down on the scale at which they weighed the luggage. Here, as I sat looking at the parcels, packages, and books, and inhaling the smell of stables (ever since associated with that morning), a procession of most tremendous considerations began to march through my mind. Supposing nobody should ever fetch me, how long would they consent to keep me there? Would they keep me long enough to spend seven shillings? Should I sleep at night in one of those wooden bins, with the other luggage, and wash myself at the pump in the yard in the morning; or should I be turned out every night, and expected to come again to be left till called for, when the office opened next day? Supposing there was no mistake in the case, and Mr. Murdstone had devised this plan to get rid of me, what should I do? If they allowed me to remain there until my seven shillings were spent, I couldn’t hope to remain there when I began to starve. That would obviously be inconvenient and unpleasant to the customers, besides entailing on the Blue Whatever-it-was, the risk of funeral expenses. If I started off at once, and tried to walk back home, how could I ever find my way, how could I ever hope to walk so far, how could I make sure of anyone but Peggotty, even if I got back? If I found out the nearest proper authorities, and offered myself to go for a soldier, or a sailor, I was such a little fellow that it was most likely they wouldn’t take me in. These thoughts, and a hundred other such thoughts, turned me burning hot, and made me giddy with apprehension and dismay. I was in the height of my fever when a man entered and whispered to the clerk, who presently slanted me off the scale, and pushed me over to him, as if I were weighed, bought, delivered, and paid for.
As I went out of the office, hand in hand with this new acquaintance, I stole a look at him. He was a gaunt, sallow young man, with hollow cheeks, and a chin almost as black as Mr. Murdstone’s; but there the likeness ended, for his whiskers were shaved off, and his hair, instead of being glossy, was rusty and dry. He was dressed in a suit of black clothes which were rather rusty and dry too, and rather short in the sleeves and legs; and he had a white neck-kerchief on, that was not over-clean. I did not, and do not, suppose that this neck-kerchief was all the linen he wore, but it was all he showed or gave any hint of.
‘You’re the new boy?’ he said. ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
I supposed I was. I didn’t know.
‘I’m one of the masters at Salem House,’ he said.
I made him a bow and felt very much overawed. I was so ashamed to allude to a commonplace thing like my box, to a scholar and a master at Salem House, that we had gone some little distance from the yard before I had the hardihood to mention it. We turned back, on my humbly insinuating that it might be useful to me hereafter; and he told the clerk that the carrier had instructions to call for it at noon.
‘If you please, sir,’ I said, when we had accomplished about the same distance as before, ‘is it far?’
‘It’s down by Blackheath,’ he said.
Alla fine il sole sorse, e allora i miei compagni sembrarono dormire più tranquilli. Le difficoltà che avevano affrontato tutta la notte, e che si erano manifestate nei più terribili sospiri e russamenti, sono inimmaginabili. Man mano che il sole saliva, il loro sonno diventava più leggero, e così a poco a poco si svegliavano uno dopo l’altro. Ricordo di essere rimasto molto sorpreso dalla finzione di tutti di non aver dormito affatto, e dall’indignazione insolita con cui ognuno respingeva l’accusa. Fino ad oggi provo lo stesso tipo di stupore, avendo osservato invariabilmente che di tutte le debolezze umane, quella a cui la nostra comune natura è meno incline a confessare (non riesco a immaginare perché) è la debolezza di essersi addormentati su un autobus.
Che posto straordinario era Londra per me quando la vidi in lontananza, e come credevo che tutte le avventure di tutti i miei eroi preferiti si stessero costantemente svolgendo e risvolgendo lì, e come vagamente la immaginavo nella mia mente come più piena di meraviglie e malvagità di tutte le città della terra, non è necessario che mi fermi qui a raccontarlo. Ci avvicinammo a poco a poco e, nel dovuto tempo, raggiungemmo la locanda nel quartiere di Whitechapel, dove eravamo diretti. Non ricordo se fosse il Blue Bull o il Blue Boar; ma so che era il Blue Qualcosa, e che la sua immagine era dipinta sul retro del carro.
L’occhio del guardiano si posò su di me mentre stava scendendo, e disse alla porta dell’ufficio prenotazioni:
«C’è qualcuno qui per un giovanotto prenotato col nome di Murdstone, da Bloonderstone, Suffolk, da lasciare fino a quando non verrà chiamato?»
Nessuno rispose.
«Provi Copperfield, se le fa comodo, signore», dissi, guardando in basso impotente.
«C’è qualcuno qui per un giovanotto, prenotato col nome di Murdstone, da Bloonderstone, Suffolk, ma che risponde al nome di Copperfield, da lasciare in deposito fino a richiesta?» disse il guardiano. «Su, C’È qualcuno?»
No. Non c’era nessuno. Guardai intorno con ansia; ma la domanda non fece alcuna impressione su nessuno degli astanti, se non si eccettua un uomo con gli speroni e un occhio solo, che suggerì che sarebbe stato meglio mettermi un collare di ottone al collo e legarmi nella stalla.
Fu portata una scala, e io scesi dopo la signora, che era come un cumulo di fieno: non osava muoversi, finché non le fu tolto il cesto. Il carro era ormai privo di passeggeri, il bagaglio fu presto rimosso, i cavalli erano stati fatti uscire prima del bagaglio, e ora il carro stesso fu spinto e allontanato da alcuni stallieri, fuori dalla strada. Eppure, nessuno si presentò, per reclamare il giovane polveroso di Blunderstone, Suffolk.
Più solitario di Robinson Crusoe, che non aveva nessuno che lo guardasse e vedesse che era solo, entrai nell’ufficio prenotazioni e, su invito del commesso di turno, passai dietro il banco e mi sedetti sulla bilancia dove pesavano i bagagli. Qui, mentre sedevo guardando i pacchi, i colli e i libri, e inspirando l’odore di stalla (che da allora mi ricorda quella mattina), una processione di considerazioni terribili iniziò a sfilare nella mia mente. Supponendo che nessuno venisse mai a prendermi, per quanto tempo avrebbero acconsentito a tenermi lì? Mi avrebbero tenuto abbastanza a lungo da spendere sette scellini? Avrei dormito di notte in uno di quei cassonetti di legno, con gli altri bagagli, e lavato me stesso alla pompa nel cortile al mattino; o mi avrebbero cacciato ogni notte, e aspettato che tornassi di nuovo per essere lasciato lì fino a quando non fossi stato chiamato, quando l’ufficio avesse riaperto il giorno dopo? Supponendo che non ci fosse stato alcun errore, e che il signor Murdstone avesse escogitato questo piano per liberarsi di me, che cosa avrei fatto? Se mi avessero permesso di rimanere lì fino a quando i miei sette scellini non fossero stati spesi, non avrei potuto sperare di rimanere lì quando avessi iniziato a morire di fame. Questo sarebbe stato ovviamente scomodo e spiacevole per i clienti, oltre a far correre al Blue Whatever-it-was il rischio delle spese funebri. Se fossi partito subito, e avessi provato a camminare fino a casa, come avrei mai potuto trovare la strada, come avrei mai potuto sperare di camminare così lontano, come avrei potuto essere sicuro di qualcuno se non Peggotty, anche se fossi tornato? Se avessi trovato le autorità più vicine e adeguate, e mi fossi offerto di andare a fare il soldato, o il marinaio, ero così piccolo che era molto probabile che non mi avrebbero preso. Questi pensieri, e centinaia di altri pensieri simili, mi resero bollente di febbre, e mi fecero girare la testa per l’apprensione e lo sconforto. Ero al culmine della mia febbre quando un uomo entrò e sussurrò al commesso, che subito mi fece scendere dalla bilancia e mi spinse verso di lui, come se fossi stato pesato, comprato, consegnato e pagato.
Mentre uscivo dall’ufficio mano nella mano con questo nuovo conoscente, mi permisi di guardarlo. Era un giovane magro e giallastro, con le guance incavate e un mento quasi nero come quello del signor Murdstone; ma qui finiva la somiglianza, perché i suoi baffetti erano rasati e i suoi capelli, invece di essere lucidi, erano arrugginiti e secchi. Era vestito con un completo nero che era anch’esso un po’ arrugginito e secco, e un po’ corto nelle maniche e nelle gambe; e aveva un fazzoletto bianco al collo, che non era troppo pulito. Non supponevo, né suppongo, che questo fazzoletto al collo fosse tutto il lino che indossava, ma era tutto ciò che mostrava o lasciava intravedere.
«Sei il nuovo ragazzo?» disse. «Sì, signore», dissi.
Suppongo di esserlo stato. Non lo sapevo.
«Sono uno dei maestri alla scuola di Salem», disse.
Mi inchinai e mi sentii molto intimidito. Ero così imbarazzato all’idea di accennare a una cosa banale come la mia valigia, a un dottore e un maestro di [[house|Salem House]], che percorremmo un bel tratto di strada prima che avessi il coraggio di parlarne. Tornammo indietro, dopo che io, con umiltà, avevo insinuato che forse mi sarebbe stata utile in seguito; e lui disse al commesso che il vetturale aveva istruzioni di passare a prenderla a mezzogiorno.
«Se non le dispiace, signore», dissi, quando avevamo percorso circa la stessa distanza di prima, «è lontano?»
«È giù a Blackheath», disse.
‘Is that far, sir?’ I diffidently asked.
‘It’s a good step,’ he said. ‘We shall go by the stage-coach. It’s about six miles.’
I was so faint and tired, that the idea of holding out for six miles more, was too much for me. I took heart to tell him that I had had nothing all night, and that if he would allow me to buy something to eat, I should be very much obliged to him. He appeared surprised at this—I see him stop and look at me now—and after considering for a few moments, said he wanted to call on an old person who lived not far off, and that the best way would be for me to buy some bread, or whatever I liked best that was wholesome, and make my breakfast at her house, where we could get some milk.
Accordingly we looked in at a baker’s window, and after I had made a series of proposals to buy everything that was bilious in the shop, and he had rejected them one by one, we decided in favour of a nice little loaf of brown bread, which cost me threepence. Then, at a grocer’s shop, we bought an egg and a slice of streaky bacon; which still left what I thought a good deal of change, out of the second of the bright shillings, and made me consider London a very cheap place. These provisions laid in, we went on through a great noise and uproar that confused my weary head beyond description, and over a bridge which, no doubt, was London Bridge (indeed I think he told me so, but I was half asleep), until we came to the poor person’s house, which was a part of some alms-houses, as I knew by their look, and by an inscription on a stone over the gate which said they were established for twenty-five poor women.
The Master at Salem House lifted the latch of one of a number of little black doors that were all alike, and had each a little diamond-paned window on one side, and another little diamond—paned window above; and we went into the little house of one of these poor old women, who was blowing a fire to make a little saucepan boil. On seeing the master enter, the old woman stopped with the bellows on her knee, and said something that I thought sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but on seeing me come in too, she got up, and rubbing her hands made a confused sort of half curtsey.
‘Can you cook this young gentleman’s breakfast for him, if you please?’ said the Master at Salem House.
‘Can I?’ said the old woman. ‘Yes can I, sure!’
‘How’s Mrs. Fibbitson today?’ said the Master, looking at another old woman in a large chair by the fire, who was such a bundle of clothes that I feel grateful to this hour for not having sat upon her by mistake.
‘Ah, she’s poorly,’ said the first old woman. ‘It’s one of her bad days. If the fire was to go out, through any accident, I verily believe she’d go out too, and never come to life again.’
As they looked at her, I looked at her also. Although it was a warm day, she seemed to think of nothing but the fire. I fancied she was jealous even of the saucepan on it; and I have reason to know that she took its impressment into the service of boiling my egg and broiling my bacon, in dudgeon; for I saw her, with my own discomfited eyes, shake her fist at me once, when those culinary operations were going on, and no one else was looking. The sun streamed in at the little window, but she sat with her own back and the back of the large chair towards it, screening the fire as if she were sedulously keeping IT warm, instead of it keeping her warm, and watching it in a most distrustful manner. The completion of the preparations for my breakfast, by relieving the fire, gave her such extreme joy that she laughed aloud—and a very unmelodious laugh she had, I must say.
I sat down to my brown loaf, my egg, and my rasher of bacon, with a basin of milk besides, and made a most delicious meal. While I was yet in the full enjoyment of it, the old woman of the house said to the Master:
‘Have you got your flute with you?’
‘Yes,’ he returned.
‘Have a blow at it,’ said the old woman, coaxingly. ‘Do!’
The Master, upon this, put his hand underneath the skirts of his coat, and brought out his flute in three pieces, which he screwed together, and began immediately to play. My impression is, after many years of consideration, that there never can have been anybody in the world who played worse. He made the most dismal sounds I have ever heard produced by any means, natural or artificial. I don’t know what the tunes were—if there were such things in the performance at all, which I doubt—but the influence of the strain upon me was, first, to make me think of all my sorrows until I could hardly keep my tears back; then to take away my appetite; and lastly, to make me so sleepy that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. They begin to close again, and I begin to nod, as the recollection rises fresh upon me. Once more the little room, with its open corner cupboard, and its square-backed chairs, and its angular little staircase leading to the room above, and its three peacock’s feathers displayed over the mantelpiece—I remember wondering when I first went in, what that peacock would have thought if he had known what his finery was doomed to come to—fades from before me, and I nod, and sleep. The flute becomes inaudible, the wheels of the coach are heard instead, and I am on my journey. The coach jolts, I wake with a start, and the flute has come back again, and the Master at Salem House is sitting with his legs crossed, playing it dolefully, while the old woman of the house looks on delighted. She fades in her turn, and he fades, and all fades, and there is no flute, no Master, no Salem House, no David Copperfield, no anything but heavy sleep.
I dreamed, I thought, that once while he was blowing into this dismal flute, the old woman of the house, who had gone nearer and nearer to him in her ecstatic admiration, leaned over the back of his chair and gave him an affectionate squeeze round the neck, which stopped his playing for a moment. I was in the middle state between sleeping and waking, either then or immediately afterwards; for, as he resumed—it was a real fact that he had stopped playing—I saw and heard the same old woman ask Mrs. Fibbitson if it wasn’t delicious (meaning the flute), to which Mrs. Fibbitson replied, ‘Ay, ay! yes!’ and nodded at the fire: to which, I am persuaded, she gave the credit of the whole performance.
«È lontano, signore?» chiesi con timidezza.
“È un buon passo,” disse. “Andremo in carrozza. Sono circa sei miglia.”
Ero così debole e stanco che l’idea di percorrere altri sei miglia era troppo per me. Mi decisi a dirgli che non avevo mangiato per tutta la notte, e che se mi avesse permesso di comprare qualcosa da mangiare, gliene sarei stato molto grato. Sembrò sorpreso da questa richiesta — vedo che si ferma e mi guarda ora — e dopo averci pensato per qualche istante, disse che voleva fare visita a una vecchia che abitava non lontano, e che la cosa migliore sarebbe stata per me comprare del pane, o qualunque cosa mi piacesse di più che fosse sana, e fare colazione nella sua casa, dove avremmo potuto prendere del latte.
Di conseguenza, abbiamo guardato in una vetrina di un fornaio, e dopo che io avevo fatto una serie di proposte per comprare tutto ciò che era amaro nel negozio, e lui le aveva rifiutate una dopo l’altra, abbiamo deciso di optare per un bel piccolo pane di pane integrale, che mi è costato tre penny. Poi, in un negozio di un droghiere, abbiamo comprato un uovo e una fetta di pancetta; il che ha lasciato ancora quello che ritenevo un bel po’ di resto, del secondo dei brillanti scellini, e mi ha fatto considerare Londra un posto molto economico. Con queste provviste, siamo andati avanti attraverso un grande rumore e tumulto che ha confuso la mia testa stanca oltre ogni descrizione, e su un ponte che, senza dubbio, era il ponte di Londra (infatti penso che me lo abbia detto, ma ero mezzo addormentato), fino a quando siamo arrivati alla casa della persona povera, che era parte di alcuni ospizi, come sapevo dal loro aspetto, e da un’iscrizione su una pietra sopra il cancello che diceva che erano stati istituiti per venticinque donne povere.
Il Maestro di Salem House sollevò il chiavistello di una delle numerose piccole porte nere che erano tutte uguali, e ognuna aveva una piccola finestra con vetri a rombi da un lato, e un’altra piccola finestra con vetri a rombi sopra; e entrammo nella piccola casa di una di queste povere vecchiette, che stava soffiando sul fuoco per far bollire una piccola pentola. Vedendo entrare il maestro, la vecchietta si fermò con il mantice sulle ginocchia e disse qualcosa che mi parve suonare come ‘My Charley!’ ma vedendomi entrare anch’io, si alzò, e strofinandosi le mani fece una specie di mezza riverenza confusa.
«Potete preparare la colazione a questo giovane gentiluomo, per favore?» disse il Maestro alla scuola di Salem.
“Posso?” disse la vecchia. “Sì, posso, certo!”
«Come sta la signora Fibbitson oggi?», disse il Maestro, guardando un’altra vecchia signora in una grande poltrona accanto al fuoco, che era talmente un ammasso di vestiti che mi sento grato ancora oggi di non essermi seduto su di lei per errore.
«Ah, è malata», disse la prima vecchia. «È uno dei suoi giorni neri. Se il fuoco si spegnesse, per qualsiasi incidente, credo proprio che si spegnerebbe anche lei, e non tornerebbe mai più in vita.»
Mentre loro la guardavano, la guardavo anch’io. Anche se era una giornata calda, sembrava non pensare ad altro che al fuoco. Immaginavo che fosse gelosa anche della pentola sopra; e ho motivo di sapere che prese il suo arruolamento nel servizio di bollire il mio uovo e di arrostire il mio pancetta, in malumore; perché l’ho vista, con i miei stessi occhi sconcertati, scuotere il pugno contro di me una volta, quando quelle operazioni culinarie erano in corso, e nessun altro guardava. Il sole entrava a fiotti dalla piccola finestra, ma lei sedeva con la sua schiena e lo schienale della grande sedia rivolti verso di esso, schermava il fuoco come se stesse diligentemente mantenendolo caldo, invece di esso che la manteneva calda, e lo guardava con grande diffidenza. Il completamento dei preparativi per la mia colazione, alleggerendo il fuoco, le diede una gioia così estrema che rise ad alta voce—e aveva una risata molto non melodiosa, devo dire.
Mi sedetti al mio pane integrale, al mio uovo e alla mia fetta di pancetta, con in più una ciotola di latte, e feci un pasto squisito. Mentre ero ancora nel pieno del mio godimento, la vecchia della casa disse al padrone:
‘Avete con voi il flauto?’
«Sì», rispose.
“Prova a colpirlo”, disse la vecchia, incoraggiante. “Fallo!”
Il Maestro, a questo punto, infilò la mano sotto la giacca e tirò fuori il flauto in tre pezzi, che avvitò insieme, e cominciò subito a suonare. Dopo averci riflettuto per molti anni, la mia impressione è che non ci sia mai stato nessuno al mondo che suonasse peggio di lui. Faceva i suoni più tetri che io abbia mai sentito produrre in qualsiasi modo, naturale o artificiale. Non so quali fossero le melodie — se c’era qualcosa del genere in quella performance, il che dubito — ma l’influenza della musica su di me fu, prima, di farmi pensare a tutti i miei dolori fino a quando non riuscivo quasi a trattenere le lacrime; poi, di togliermi l’appetito; e infine, di farmi diventare così assonnato che non riuscivo a tenere gli occhi aperti. Cominciano a chiudersi di nuovo, e io comincio ad annuire, mentre il ricordo risale fresco in me. Ancora una volta la piccola stanza, con il suo armadio angolare aperto, e le sue sedie a schienale quadrato, e la sua piccola scala angolare che porta alla stanza sopra, e le sue tre piume di pavone esposte sopra il caminetto — mi ricordo di avermi chiesto quando entrai per la prima volta, cosa avrebbe pensato quel pavone se avesse saputo a cosa era destinato il suo sfarzo — svanisce davanti a me, e io annuisco, e dormo. Il flauto diventa inudibile, si sentono invece le ruote del calesse, e io sono nel mio viaggio. Il calesse sussulta, mi sveglio di soprassalto, e il flauto è tornato, e il Maestro alla Casa di Salem è seduto con le gambe incrociate, suonandolo dolosamente, mentre la vecchia della casa lo guarda deliziata. Anche lei svanisce a sua volta, e lui svanisce, e tutto svanisce, e non c’è flauto, né Maestro, né Casa di Salem, né David Copperfield, né niente tranne un pesante sonno.
Ho sognato, ho pensato, che una volta mentre suonava questa squallida flauto, la vecchia della casa, che si era avvicinata sempre più a lui nella sua estasiata ammirazione, si è chinata sullo schienale della sua sedia e gli ha dato un affettuoso abbraccio al collo, che ha interrotto il suo suonare per un momento. Ero in quello stato intermedio tra il sonno e la veglia, allora o subito dopo; perché, quando ha ripreso - era un fatto reale che aveva smesso di suonare - ho visto e sentito la stessa vecchia chiedere alla signora Fibbitson se non fosse delizioso (intendendo il flauto), a cui la signora Fibbitson ha risposto, ‘Ay, ay! sì!’ e ha annuito verso il fuoco: a cui, sono convinto, ha attribuito il merito di tutta la performance.
When I seemed to have been dozing a long while, the Master at Salem House unscrewed his flute into the three pieces, put them up as before, and took me away. We found the coach very near at hand, and got upon the roof; but I was so dead sleepy, that when we stopped on the road to take up somebody else, they put me inside where there were no passengers, and where I slept profoundly, until I found the coach going at a footpace up a steep hill among green leaves. Presently, it stopped, and had come to its destination.
A short walk brought us—I mean the Master and me—to Salem House, which was enclosed with a high brick wall, and looked very dull. Over a door in this wall was a board with SALEM HOUSE upon it; and through a grating in this door we were surveyed when we rang the bell by a surly face, which I found, on the door being opened, belonged to a stout man with a bull-neck, a wooden leg, overhanging temples, and his hair cut close all round his head.
‘The new boy,’ said the Master.
The man with the wooden leg eyed me all over—it didn’t take long, for there was not much of me—and locked the gate behind us, and took out the key. We were going up to the house, among some dark heavy trees, when he called after my conductor. ‘Hallo!’
We looked back, and he was standing at the door of a little lodge, where he lived, with a pair of boots in his hand.
‘Here! The cobbler’s been,’ he said, ‘since you’ve been out, Mr. Mell, and he says he can’t mend ‘em any more. He says there ain’t a bit of the original boot left, and he wonders you expect it.’
With these words he threw the boots towards Mr. Mell, who went back a few paces to pick them up, and looked at them (very disconsolately, I was afraid), as we went on together. I observed then, for the first time, that the boots he had on were a good deal the worse for wear, and that his stocking was just breaking out in one place, like a bud.
Salem House was a square brick building with wings; of a bare and unfurnished appearance. All about it was so very quiet, that I said to Mr. Mell I supposed the boys were out; but he seemed surprised at my not knowing that it was holiday-time. That all the boys were at their several homes. That Mr. Creakle, the proprietor, was down by the sea-side with Mrs. and Miss Creakle; and that I was sent in holiday-time as a punishment for my misdoing, all of which he explained to me as we went along.
I gazed upon the schoolroom into which he took me, as the most forlorn and desolate place I had ever seen. I see it now. A long room with three long rows of desks, and six of forms, and bristling all round with pegs for hats and slates. Scraps of old copy-books and exercises litter the dirty floor. Some silkworms’ houses, made of the same materials, are scattered over the desks. Two miserable little white mice, left behind by their owner, are running up and down in a fusty castle made of pasteboard and wire, looking in all the corners with their red eyes for anything to eat. A bird, in a cage very little bigger than himself, makes a mournful rattle now and then in hopping on his perch, two inches high, or dropping from it; but neither sings nor chirps. There is a strange unwholesome smell upon the room, like mildewed corduroys, sweet apples wanting air, and rotten books. There could not well be more ink splashed about it, if it had been roofless from its first construction, and the skies had rained, snowed, hailed, and blown ink through the varying seasons of the year.
Mr. Mell having left me while he took his irreparable boots upstairs, I went softly to the upper end of the room, observing all this as I crept along. Suddenly I came upon a pasteboard placard, beautifully written, which was lying on the desk, and bore these words: ‘TAKE CARE OF HIM. HE BITES.’
I got upon the desk immediately, apprehensive of at least a great dog underneath. But, though I looked all round with anxious eyes, I could see nothing of him. I was still engaged in peering about, when Mr. Mell came back, and asked me what I did up there?
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ says I, ‘if you please, I’m looking for the dog.’
‘Dog?’ he says. ‘What dog?’
‘Isn’t it a dog, sir?’
‘Isn’t what a dog?’
‘That’s to be taken care of, sir; that bites.’
‘No, Copperfield,’ says he, gravely, ‘that’s not a dog. That’s a boy. My instructions are, Copperfield, to put this placard on your back. I am sorry to make such a beginning with you, but I must do it.’ With that he took me down, and tied the placard, which was neatly constructed for the purpose, on my shoulders like a knapsack; and wherever I went, afterwards, I had the consolation of carrying it.
What I suffered from that placard, nobody can imagine. Whether it was possible for people to see me or not, I always fancied that somebody was reading it. It was no relief to turn round and find nobody; for wherever my back was, there I imagined somebody always to be. That cruel man with the wooden leg aggravated my sufferings. He was in authority; and if he ever saw me leaning against a tree, or a wall, or the house, he roared out from his lodge door in a stupendous voice, ‘Hallo, you sir! You Copperfield! Show that badge conspicuous, or I’ll report you!’ The playground was a bare gravelled yard, open to all the back of the house and the offices; and I knew that the servants read it, and the butcher read it, and the baker read it; that everybody, in a word, who came backwards and forwards to the house, of a morning when I was ordered to walk there, read that I was to be taken care of, for I bit, I recollect that I positively began to have a dread of myself, as a kind of wild boy who did bite.
There was an old door in this playground, on which the boys had a custom of carving their names. It was completely covered with such inscriptions. In my dread of the end of the vacation and their coming back, I could not read a boy’s name, without inquiring in what tone and with what emphasis HE would read, ‘Take care of him. He bites.’ There was one boy—a certain J. Steerforth—who cut his name very deep and very often, who, I conceived, would read it in a rather strong voice, and afterwards pull my hair. There was another boy, one Tommy Traddles, who I dreaded would make game of it, and pretend to be dreadfully frightened of me. There was a third, George Demple, who I fancied would sing it. I have looked, a little shrinking creature, at that door, until the owners of all the names—there were five-and-forty of them in the school then, Mr. Mell said—seemed to send me to Coventry by general acclamation, and to cry out, each in his own way, ‘Take care of him. He bites!’
Quando sembrava che avessi dormicchiato a lungo, il Maestro di Salem House smontò il suo flauto in tre pezzi, li ripose come prima, e mi portò via. Trovammo la carrozza molto vicina, e salimmo sul tetto; ma ero così addormentato che quando ci fermammo sulla strada per prendere qualcun altro, mi misero all’interno dove non c’erano passeggeri, e dove dormii profondamente, fino a quando non trovai la carrozza che procedeva al passo su una ripida collina tra verdi foglie. Poco dopo, si fermò, e aveva raggiunto la sua destinazione.
Una breve passeggiata ci portò - voglio dire il Maestro e me - a Salem House, che era circondata da un alto muro di mattoni e aveva un aspetto molto triste. Sopra una porta in questo muro c’era una targa con su scritto Salem House; e attraverso una grata in questa porta fummo scrutati, quando suonammo il campanello, da un volto scontroso, che scoprii, quando la porta fu aperta, appartenere a un uomo robusto con un collo da toro, una gamba di legno, tempie sporgenti e i capelli tagliati corti tutto intorno alla testa.
«Il nuovo ragazzo», disse il Maestro.
L’uomo con la gamba di legno mi squadrò da capo a piedi - non ci volle molto, perché non c’era molto di me - e chiuse il cancello dietro di noi, e tirò fuori la chiave. Stavamo salendo verso la casa, tra alcuni alberi scuri e pesanti, quando lui chiamò il mio accompagnatore. «Ehi!»
Ci voltammo, e lui era in piedi sulla porta di una piccola guardiola, dove abitava, con un paio di scarpe in mano.
«Ecco! Il calzolaio è stato qui,» disse, «da quando sei uscito, signor Mell, e dice che non può ripararli più. Dice che non c’è più un pezzo del originale stivale, e si stupisce che tu te lo aspetti.»
Con queste parole lanciò gli stivali verso il signor Mell, che indietreggiò di qualche passo per raccoglierli, e li guardò (con grande disperazione, temetti), mentre proseguivamo insieme. Fu allora che notai, per la prima volta, che gli stivali che indossava erano piuttosto consumati, e che il suo calzino si stava strappando in un punto, come un germoglio.
La casa di Salem era un edificio quadrato in mattoni con ali laterali; aveva un aspetto spoglio e non arredato. Tutto intorno era così silenzioso che dissi a Mr. Mell che supponevo che i ragazzi fossero fuori; ma lui sembrò sorpreso che io non sapessi che era periodo di vacanza. Che tutti i ragazzi erano nelle loro rispettive case. Che il proprietario, Mr. Creakle, era al mare con Mrs. e Miss Creakle; e che ero stato mandato in periodo di vacanza come punizione per i miei misfatti, tutto ciò me lo spiegò mentre camminavamo.
Contemplai la scuola in cui mi condusse come il luogo più desolato e solitario che avessi mai visto. Lo vedo ancora. Una lunga stanza con tre lunghi banchi e sei file di panche, e tutta intorno piene di ganci per cappelli e lavagne. Frammenti di vecchi quaderni e compiti sparsi sul pavimento sporco. Alcune case per bachi da seta, fatte dello stesso materiale, sono sparse sui banchi. Due piccoli topi bianchi, abbandonati dal loro proprietario, corrono su e giù in un vecchio castello di cartone e filo, cercando con i loro occhi rossi in ogni angolo qualcosa da mangiare. Un uccello, in una gabbia solo un po’ più grande di lui, fa un triste rumore di tanto in tanto saltellando sul trespolo alto due pollici, o cadendone; ma non canta né cinguetta. C’è un odore strano e malsano nella stanza, come di velluto ammuffito, mele dolci senza aria e libri marci. Non ci potrebbe essere più inchiostro sparso, se fosse stata senza tetto dalla sua prima costruzione, e il cielo avesse piovuto, nevicato, grandinato e soffiato inchiostro attraverso le diverse stagioni dell’anno.
Il signor Mell mi aveva lasciato mentre portava di sopra le sue scarpe irrimediabili, e io mi avvicinai in punta di piedi all’estremità superiore della stanza, osservando tutto ciò mentre mi avvicinavo improvvisamente mi imbattei in un cartellino di cartone, scritto con grande cura, che era posato sulla scrivania, e recava queste parole: «FATE ATTENZIONE A LUI. MORDE.»
Salii immediatamente sulla cattedra, temendo almeno la presenza di un grosso cane sotto di essa. Ma, sebbene guardassi dappertutto con occhi ansiosi, non riuscivo a vederlo. Ero ancora impegnato a scrutare intorno quando il signor Mell tornò e mi chiese cosa stessi facendo lassù?
“Mi scusi, signore,” dissi, “se non le dispiace, sto cercando il cane.”
‘Cane?’ dice. ‘Che cane?’
‘Non è un cane, signore?’
‘Non è forse un cane?’
‘Ci penseremo noi, signore; questo morde.’
«No, Copperfield», disse lui, con gravità, «quello non è un cane. È un ragazzo. I miei ordini sono, Copperfield, di metterti questo cartello sulla schiena. Mi dispiace dover iniziare così con te, ma devo farlo». Detto ciò, mi fece inginocchiare e mi legò il cartello, che era stato costruito appositamente per questo scopo, sulle spalle come uno zaino; e ovunque andassi, dopo, avevo la consolazione di portarlo con me.
Nessuno può immaginare cosa ho sofferto a causa di quel cartello. Che la gente potesse vedermi o no, io mi immaginavo sempre che qualcuno lo stesse leggendo. Non era un sollievo girarmi e non trovare nessuno; perché ovunque fosse la mia schiena, lì immaginavo che ci fosse sempre qualcuno. Quell’uomo crudele con la gamba di legno aggravava le mie sofferenze. Era in autorità; e se mi vedeva mai appoggiato a un albero, o a un muro, o alla casa, ruggiva dalla porta della sua guardiola con una voce strepitosa: «Ehi, lei! Lei, Copperfield! Mostri quel distintivo in modo evidente, o la segnalo!» Il cortile era un semplice piazzale ghiaioso, aperto a tutto il retro della casa e degli uffici; e sapevo che i domestici lo leggevano, e il macellaio lo leggeva, e il fornaio lo leggeva; insomma, che tutti, in una parola, che andavano avanti e indietro alla casa, al mattino quando mi era ordinato di camminare lì, leggevano che dovevo essere tenuto d’occhio, perché mordevo; mi ricordo che ho iniziato positivamente ad avere paura di me stesso, come di una specie di ragazzo selvaggio che mordeva davvero.
C’era una vecchia porta in questo cortile, sulla quale era usanza dei ragazzi incidere i loro nomi. Era completamente ricoperta di tali iscrizioni. Nella mia paura della fine delle vacanze e del loro ritorno, non potevo leggere il nome di un ragazzo senza chiedermi in quale tono e con quale enfasi LUI avrebbe letto: «Stategli attorno, morde». C’era un ragazzo, un certo J. Steerforth, che aveva inciso il suo nome molto profondamente e spesso, e che, pensavo, lo avrebbe letto con una voce piuttosto forte, per poi tirarmi i capelli. C’era un altro ragazzo, Tommy Traddles, che temevo avrebbe preso in giro la cosa, fingendo di averne una paura terribile. C’era un terzo, George Demple, che immaginavo avrebbe cantato la frase. Ho guardato, tremante, quella porta, finché i proprietari di tutti i nomi - ce n’erano quarantacinque nella scuola allora, diceva il signor Mell - mi sembravano mandarmi al diavolo all’unanimità, e gridare, ognuno a modo suo: «Stategli attorno, morde!»
It was the same with the places at the desks and forms. It was the same with the groves of deserted bedsteads I peeped at, on my way to, and when I was in, my own bed. I remember dreaming night after night, of being with my mother as she used to be, or of going to a party at Mr. Peggotty’s, or of travelling outside the stage-coach, or of dining again with my unfortunate friend the waiter, and in all these circumstances making people scream and stare, by the unhappy disclosure that I had nothing on but my little night-shirt, and that placard.
In the monotony of my life, and in my constant apprehension of the re-opening of the school, it was such an insupportable affliction! I had long tasks every day to do with Mr. Mell; but I did them, there being no Mr. and Miss Murdstone here, and got through them without disgrace. Before, and after them, I walked about—supervised, as I have mentioned, by the man with the wooden leg. How vividly I call to mind the damp about the house, the green cracked flagstones in the court, an old leaky water-butt, and the discoloured trunks of some of the grim trees, which seemed to have dripped more in the rain than other trees, and to have blown less in the sun! At one we dined, Mr. Mell and I, at the upper end of a long bare dining-room, full of deal tables, and smelling of fat. Then, we had more tasks until tea, which Mr. Mell drank out of a blue teacup, and I out of a tin pot. All day long, and until seven or eight in the evening, Mr. Mell, at his own detached desk in the schoolroom, worked hard with pen, ink, ruler, books, and writing-paper, making out the bills (as I found) for last half-year. When he had put up his things for the night he took out his flute, and blew at it, until I almost thought he would gradually blow his whole being into the large hole at the top, and ooze away at the keys.
I picture my small self in the dimly-lighted rooms, sitting with my head upon my hand, listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and conning tomorrow’s lessons. I picture myself with my books shut up, still listening to the doleful performance of Mr. Mell, and listening through it to what used to be at home, and to the blowing of the wind on Yarmouth flats, and feeling very sad and solitary. I picture myself going up to bed, among the unused rooms, and sitting on my bed-side crying for a comfortable word from Peggotty. I picture myself coming downstairs in the morning, and looking through a long ghastly gash of a staircase window at the school-bell hanging on the top of an out-house with a weathercock above it; and dreading the time when it shall ring J. Steerforth and the rest to work: which is only second, in my foreboding apprehensions, to the time when the man with the wooden leg shall unlock the rusty gate to give admission to the awful Mr. Creakle. I cannot think I was a very dangerous character in any of these aspects, but in all of them I carried the same warning on my back.
Mr. Mell never said much to me, but he was never harsh to me. I suppose we were company to each other, without talking. I forgot to mention that he would talk to himself sometimes, and grin, and clench his fist, and grind his teeth, and pull his hair in an unaccountable manner. But he had these peculiarities: and at first they frightened me, though I soon got used to them.
Era la stessa cosa con i posti alle scrivanie e ai banchi. Era la stessa cosa con i grovigli di letti vuoti che spiavo, mentre mi recavo, e quando ero nel mio letto. Ricordo di aver sognato notte dopo notte, di essere con mia madre com’era un tempo, o di andare a una festa da Mr. Peggotty, o di viaggiare fuori dalla carrozza postale, o di cenare di nuovo con il mio sfortunato amico il cameriere, e in tutte queste circostanze facevo urlare e fissare la gente, per la sfortunata rivelazione che non avevo addosso altro che la mia piccola notte-camicia, e quel cartello.
Nella monotonia della mia vita, e nella mia costante apprensione per la riapertura della scuola, era una tale afflizione insopportabile! Avevo ogni giorno lunghi compiti da fare con il signor Mell; ma li facevo, dato che non c’erano il signor e la signorina Murdstone qui, e li portavo a termine senza disonore. Prima e dopo di essi, camminavo—sotto la sorveglianza, come ho già detto, dell’uomo con la gamba di legno. Quanto vivamente mi tornano alla mente l’umidità intorno alla casa, le vecchie piastre di pietra screpolate nel cortile, una vecchia botte per l’acqua che perdeva, e i tronchi scoloriti di alcuni degli alberi cupi, che sembravano aver gocciolato più nella pioggia di altri alberi, e aver soffiato meno al sole! A una di notte, il signor Mell ed io pranzavamo, alla testa di una lunga sala da pranzo spoglia, piena di tavoli di pino, e che puzzava di grasso. Poi, avevamo altri compiti fino al tè, che il signor Mell beveva da una tazza blu, e io da un bollitore di latta. Tutto il giorno, e fino alle sette o alle otto di sera, il signor Mell, al suo scrittoio separato nella sala di lezione, lavorava sodo con penna, inchiostro, riga, libri e carta da lettera, facendo i conti (come scoprii) per l’ultimo semestre. Quando aveva riposto le sue cose per la notte tirava fuori il suo flauto, e suonava, fino a che quasi pensavo che avrebbe gradualmente soffiato tutto il suo essere nel grande foro in cima, e sarebbe fuoriuscito dai tasti.
Mi immagino il mio piccolo io nelle stanze poco illuminate, seduto con la testa appoggiata sulla mano, ascoltando la triste esibizione del signor Mell e studiando le lezioni di domani. Mi immagino con i libri chiusi, ancora ascoltando la triste esibizione del signor Mell, e ascoltando attraverso di essa ciò che era a casa, e il soffio del vento sulle pianure di Yarmouth, e sentendomi molto triste e solitario. Mi immagino che vado a letto, tra le stanze disabitate, e seduto sul bordo del mio letto piangendo per una parola di conforto da Peggotty. Mi immagino che scendo al mattino, e guardo attraverso una lunga e spettrale ferita di una finestra delle scale il campanello della scuola appeso in cima a un edificio annesso con un gallo del vento sopra; e temendo il momento in cui suonerà per chiamare J. Steerforth e gli altri al lavoro: che è solo secondo, nelle mie apprensioni presaghe, al momento in cui l’uomo con la gamba di legno sbloccherà il cancello arrugginito per dare accesso al terribile signor Creakle. Non posso pensare di essere stato un personaggio molto pericoloso in nessuno di questi aspetti, ma in tutti ho portato lo stesso avvertimento sulla schiena.
Il signor Mell non mi diceva mai molto, ma non era mai severo con me. Immagino che ci facessimo compagnia a vicenda, senza parlare. Dimenticavo di dire che a volte parlava tra sé, ghignava, stringeva il pugno, digrignava i denti e si tirava i capelli in modo inspiegabile. Ma aveva queste peculiarità: e all’inizio mi spaventavano, anche se presto mi ci abituai.
CHAPTER 6. I ENLARGE MY CIRCLE OF ACQUAINTANCE
I HAD led this life about a month, when the man with the wooden leg began to stump about with a mop and a bucket of water, from which I inferred that preparations were making to receive Mr. Creakle and the boys. I was not mistaken; for the mop came into the schoolroom before long, and turned out Mr. Mell and me, who lived where we could, and got on how we could, for some days, during which we were always in the way of two or three young women, who had rarely shown themselves before, and were so continually in the midst of dust that I sneezed almost as much as if Salem House had been a great snuff-box.
One day I was informed by Mr. Mell that Mr. Creakle would be home that evening. In the evening, after tea, I heard that he was come. Before bedtime, I was fetched by the man with the wooden leg to appear before him.
Mr. Creakle’s part of the house was a good deal more comfortable than ours, and he had a snug bit of garden that looked pleasant after the dusty playground, which was such a desert in miniature, that I thought no one but a camel, or a dromedary, could have felt at home in it. It seemed to me a bold thing even to take notice that the passage looked comfortable, as I went on my way, trembling, to Mr. Creakle’s presence: which so abashed me, when I was ushered into it, that I hardly saw Mrs. Creakle or Miss Creakle (who were both there, in the parlour), or anything but Mr. Creakle, a stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an arm-chair, with a tumbler and bottle beside him.
‘So!’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘This is the young gentleman whose teeth are to be filed! Turn him round.’
The wooden-legged man turned me about so as to exhibit the placard; and having afforded time for a full survey of it, turned me about again, with my face to Mr. Creakle, and posted himself at Mr. Creakle’s side. Mr. Creakle’s face was fiery, and his eyes were small, and deep in his head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin wet-looking hair that was just turning grey, brushed across each temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his forehead. But the circumstance about him which impressed me most, was, that he had no voice, but spoke in a whisper. The exertion this cost him, or the consciousness of talking in that feeble way, made his angry face so much more angry, and his thick veins so much thicker, when he spoke, that I am not surprised, on looking back, at this peculiarity striking me as his chief one. ‘Now,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘What’s the report of this boy?’
‘There’s nothing against him yet,’ returned the man with the wooden leg. ‘There has been no opportunity.’
I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. and Miss Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were, both, thin and quiet) were not disappointed.
‘Come here, sir!’ said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.
‘Come here!’ said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the gesture.
‘I have the happiness of knowing your father-in-law,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, taking me by the ear; ‘and a worthy man he is, and a man of a strong character. He knows me, and I know him. Do YOU know me? Hey?’ said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness.
‘Not yet, sir,’ I said, flinching with the pain.
‘Not yet? Hey?’ repeated Mr. Creakle. ‘But you will soon. Hey?’
‘You will soon. Hey?’ repeated the man with the wooden leg. I afterwards found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr. Creakle’s interpreter to the boys.
I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. I felt, all this while, as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so hard.
‘I’ll tell you what I am,’ whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at last, with a screw at parting that brought the water into my eyes. ‘I’m a Tartar.’
‘A Tartar,’ said the man with the wooden leg.
‘When I say I’ll do a thing, I do it,’ said Mr. Creakle; ‘and when I say I will have a thing done, I will have it done.’
‘—Will have a thing done, I will have it done,’ repeated the man with the wooden leg.
‘I am a determined character,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘That’s what I am. I do my duty. That’s what I do. My flesh and blood’—he looked at Mrs. Creakle as he said this—‘when it rises against me, is not my flesh and blood. I discard it. Has that fellow’—to the man with the wooden leg—‘been here again?’
‘No,’ was the answer.
‘No,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘He knows better. He knows me. Let him keep away. I say let him keep away,’ said Mr. Creakle, striking his hand upon the table, and looking at Mrs. Creakle, ‘for he knows me. Now you have begun to know me too, my young friend, and you may go. Take him away.’
I was very glad to be ordered away, for Mrs. and Miss Creakle were both wiping their eyes, and I felt as uncomfortable for them as I did for myself. But I had a petition on my mind which concerned me so nearly, that I couldn’t help saying, though I wondered at my own courage:
‘If you please, sir—’
Mr. Creakle whispered, ‘Hah! What’s this?’ and bent his eyes upon me, as if he would have burnt me up with them.
‘If you please, sir,’ I faltered, ‘if I might be allowed (I am very sorry indeed, sir, for what I did) to take this writing off, before the boys come back—’
Whether Mr. Creakle was in earnest, or whether he only did it to frighten me, I don’t know, but he made a burst out of his chair, before which I precipitately retreated, without waiting for the escort of the man with the wooden leg, and never once stopped until I reached my own bedroom, where, finding I was not pursued, I went to bed, as it was time, and lay quaking, for a couple of hours.
Next morning Mr. Sharp came back. Mr. Sharp was the first master, and superior to Mr. Mell. Mr. Mell took his meals with the boys, but Mr. Sharp dined and supped at Mr. Creakle’s table. He was a limp, delicate-looking gentleman, I thought, with a good deal of nose, and a way of carrying his head on one side, as if it were a little too heavy for him. His hair was very smooth and wavy; but I was informed by the very first boy who came back that it was a wig (a second-hand one HE said), and that Mr. Sharp went out every Saturday afternoon to get it curled.
CAPITOLO 6. AMPLIO IL MIO CERCHIO DI CONOSCENZE
Avevo condotto questa vita da circa un mese, quando l’uomo con la gamba di legno cominciò a trascinarsi in giro con uno straccio e un secchio di acqua, da cui dedussi che si stavano facendo i preparativi per ricevere il signor Creakle e i ragazzi. Non mi sbagliavo; infatti lo straccio entrò presto nella sala di lezione e cacciò fuori il signor Mell e me, che vivevamo dove potevamo e ce la cavavamo come potevamo, per alcuni giorni, durante i quali eravamo sempre tra i piedi di due o tre giovani donne, che si erano fatte raramente vedere prima, e che erano così continuamente in mezzo alla polvere che starnutivo quasi quanto se Salem House fosse stata una grande scatola di tabacco da fiuto.
Un giorno, Mr. Mell mi informò che Mr. Creakle sarebbe stato a casa quella sera. La sera, dopo il tè, appresi che era arrivato. Prima di andare a letto, fui chiamato dall’uomo con la gamba di legno per comparire davanti a lui.
La parte della casa del signor Creakle era molto più confortevole della nostra, e aveva un accogliente pezzetto di giardino che sembrava piacevole dopo il polveroso cortile, che era un deserto in miniatura, tanto che pensavo che solo un cammello, o un dromedario, potesse sentirsi a casa lì. Mi sembrava una cosa audace anche solo notare che il passaggio sembrava confortevole, mentre mi dirigevo, tremante, verso la presenza del signor Creakle: il che mi turbò così tanto, quando fui introdotto, che a malapena vidi la signora Creakle o la signorina Creakle (che erano entrambe lì, nel salotto), o qualcosa di diverso dal signor Creakle, un signore robusto con un mazzo di catenelle e sigilli dell’orologio, in una poltrona, con un bicchiere e una bottiglia accanto.
«Ah!» disse il signor Creakle. «Questo è il giovane gentiluomo i cui denti devono essere limati! Giratelo.»
L’uomo con la gamba di legno mi fece girare per mostrare il cartello; e, dopo avermi concesso tempo per un’accurata ispezione, mi fece girare di nuovo, con la faccia rivolta verso il signor Creakle, e si posizionò al fianco del signor Creakle. Il viso del signor Creakle era acceso, e i suoi occhi erano piccoli e profondi nella testa; aveva vene spesse sulla fronte, un naso piccolo e un mento grande. Era calvo sulla sommità del capo; e aveva dei capelli sottili e umidi che stavano appena diventando grigi, spazzolati su ciascuna tempia, in modo che i due lati si intrecciassero sulla sua fronte. Ma la circostanza che mi colpì maggiormente fu che non aveva voce, ma parlava sussurrando. Lo sforzo che gli costava questo, o la consapevolezza di parlare in quel modo debole, rendeva il suo viso arrabbiato ancora più arrabbiato, e le sue vene spesse ancora più spesse, quando parlava, che non mi sorprende, guardando indietro, che questa peculiarità mi colpisse come la sua caratteristica principale. «Ora», disse il signor Creakle. «Qual è il rapporto su questo ragazzo?»
«Non c’è ancora niente contro di lui», rispose l’uomo con la gamba di legno. «Non si è presentata l’occasione».
Pensavo che il signor Creakle fosse deluso. Pensavo che la signora e la signorina Creakle (le quali guardai per la prima volta e che erano, entrambe, magre e silenziose) non fossero deluse.
«Avvicinatevi, signore!» disse il signor Creakle, facendomi cenno di avvicinarmi.
«Vieni qui!», disse l’uomo con la gamba di legno, ripetendo il gesto.
«Ho la felicità di conoscere suo suocero», sussurrò il signor Creakle, prendendomi per l’orecchio; «e un uomo di valore è, e un uomo di forte carattere. Lui conosce me, e io conosco lui. TU mi conosci? Eh?», disse il signor Creakle, pizzicandomi l’orecchio con feroce giocosità.
«Non ancora, signore», dissi, ritraendomi per il dolore.
“Non ancora? Ehi?” ripeté il signor Creakle. “Ma lo farai presto. Ehi?”
«Lo saprai presto. Ehi?» ripeté l’uomo con la gamba di legno. In seguito scoprii che in genere, con la sua voce forte, faceva da interprete di Mr. Creakle ai ragazzi.
Ero molto spaventato e dissi che speravo di sì, se lui lo desiderava. Durante tutto questo tempo, sentivo come se il mio orecchio fosse in fiamme; me lo strizzava così forte.
«Vi dirò chi sono», sussurrò il signor Creakle, lasciandomi finalmente andare, con un’ultima stretta che fece salire le lacrime ai miei occhi. «Sono un Tartaro.»
«Un tartaro», disse l’uomo con la gamba di legno.
«Quando dico che farò una cosa, la faccio», disse il signor Creakle; «e quando dico che voglio che una cosa sia fatta, la voglio fatta».
«—Se voglio che una cosa sia fatta, la voglio fatta», ripeté l’uomo con la gamba di legno.
«Sono un uomo deciso», disse il signor Creakle. «Questo sono. Faccio il mio dovere. Questo faccio. La mia carne e sangue» — guardò la signora Creakle mentre lo diceva — «quando si ribella contro di me, non è la mia carne e sangue. La scarto. Quel tizio» — rivolto all’uomo con la gamba di legno — «è tornato?»
«No», fu la risposta.
«No», disse il signor Creakle. «Sa come vanno le cose. Mi conosce. Che se ne stia alla larga. Dico che se ne stia alla larga», disse il signor Creakle, battendo la mano sul tavolo e guardando la signora Creakle, «perché mi conosce. Ora anche tu mi hai imparato a conoscere, giovane amico, e puoi andare. Portatelo via.»
Fui molto contento di ricevere l’ordine di andarmene, perché sia la signora che la signorina Creakle si stavano asciugando gli occhi, e mi sentivo a disagio tanto per loro quanto per me stesso. Ma avevo in mente una petizione che mi riguardava così da vicino, che non potei fare a meno di parlare, anche se mi stupivo della mia stessa coraggio:
‘Con permesso, signore—’
Il signor Creakle sussurrò: «Ah! Che cos’è questo?» e mi fissò con gli occhi, come se volesse bruciarmi con il loro sguardo.
«Se non le dispiace, signore», balbettai, «se mi fosse concesso (mi dispiace davvero molto, signore, per quello che ho fatto) di togliere questo scritto, prima che i ragazzi tornino, »
Non so se il signor Creakle fosse serio, o se lo facesse solo per spaventarmi, ma si alzò di scatto dalla sedia, davanti a cui io mi ritirai precipitosamente, senza aspettare l’accompagnamento dell’uomo con la gamba di legno, e non mi fermai mai finché non raggiunsi la mia camera da letto, dove, trovando che non ero inseguito, andai a letto, poiché era ora, e giacqui tremante, per un paio d’ore.
La mattina dopo tornò il signor Sharp. Il signor Sharp era il primo maestro, e superiore al signor Mell. Il signor Mell prendeva i suoi pasti con i ragazzi, ma il signor Sharp pranzava e cenava al tavolo del signor Creakle. Era un gentiluomo dall’aspetto gracile e delicato, pensai, con un naso piuttosto pronunciato e un modo di portare la testa da un lato, come se fosse un po’ troppo pesante per lui. I suoi capelli erano molto lisci e ondulati; ma fui informato dal primo ragazzo che tornò che era una parrucca (di seconda mano, disse), e che il signor Sharp usciva ogni sabato pomeriggio per farla arricciare.
It was no other than Tommy Traddles who gave me this piece of intelligence. He was the first boy who returned. He introduced himself by informing me that I should find his name on the right-hand corner of the gate, over the top-bolt; upon that I said, ‘Traddles?’ to which he replied, ‘The same,’ and then he asked me for a full account of myself and family.
It was a happy circumstance for me that Traddles came back first. He enjoyed my placard so much, that he saved me from the embarrassment of either disclosure or concealment, by presenting me to every other boy who came back, great or small, immediately on his arrival, in this form of introduction, ‘Look here! Here’s a game!’ Happily, too, the greater part of the boys came back low-spirited, and were not so boisterous at my expense as I had expected. Some of them certainly did dance about me like wild Indians, and the greater part could not resist the temptation of pretending that I was a dog, and patting and soothing me, lest I should bite, and saying, ‘Lie down, sir!’ and calling me Towzer. This was naturally confusing, among so many strangers, and cost me some tears, but on the whole it was much better than I had anticipated.
I was not considered as being formally received into the school, however, until J. Steerforth arrived. Before this boy, who was reputed to be a great scholar, and was very good-looking, and at least half-a-dozen years my senior, I was carried as before a magistrate. He inquired, under a shed in the playground, into the particulars of my punishment, and was pleased to express his opinion that it was ‘a jolly shame’; for which I became bound to him ever afterwards.
‘What money have you got, Copperfield?’ he said, walking aside with me when he had disposed of my affair in these terms. I told him seven shillings.
‘You had better give it to me to take care of,’ he said. ‘At least, you can if you like. You needn’t if you don’t like.’
I hastened to comply with his friendly suggestion, and opening Peggotty’s purse, turned it upside down into his hand.
‘Do you want to spend anything now?’ he asked me.
‘No thank you,’ I replied.
‘You can, if you like, you know,’ said Steerforth. ‘Say the word.’
‘No, thank you, sir,’ I repeated.
‘Perhaps you’d like to spend a couple of shillings or so, in a bottle of currant wine by and by, up in the bedroom?’ said Steerforth. ‘You belong to my bedroom, I find.’
It certainly had not occurred to me before, but I said, Yes, I should like that.
‘Very good,’ said Steerforth. ‘You’ll be glad to spend another shilling or so, in almond cakes, I dare say?’
I said, Yes, I should like that, too.
‘And another shilling or so in biscuits, and another in fruit, eh?’ said Steerforth. ‘I say, young Copperfield, you’re going it!’
I smiled because he smiled, but I was a little troubled in my mind, too.
‘Well!’ said Steerforth. ‘We must make it stretch as far as we can; that’s all. I’ll do the best in my power for you. I can go out when I like, and I’ll smuggle the prog in.’ With these words he put the money in his pocket, and kindly told me not to make myself uneasy; he would take care it should be all right. He was as good as his word, if that were all right which I had a secret misgiving was nearly all wrong—for I feared it was a waste of my mother’s two half-crowns—though I had preserved the piece of paper they were wrapped in: which was a precious saving. When we went upstairs to bed, he produced the whole seven shillings’ worth, and laid it out on my bed in the moonlight, saying:
‘There you are, young Copperfield, and a royal spread you’ve got.’
I couldn’t think of doing the honours of the feast, at my time of life, while he was by; my hand shook at the very thought of it. I begged him to do me the favour of presiding; and my request being seconded by the other boys who were in that room, he acceded to it, and sat upon my pillow, handing round the viands—with perfect fairness, I must say—and dispensing the currant wine in a little glass without a foot, which was his own property. As to me, I sat on his left hand, and the rest were grouped about us, on the nearest beds and on the floor.
How well I recollect our sitting there, talking in whispers; or their talking, and my respectfully listening, I ought rather to say; the moonlight falling a little way into the room, through the window, painting a pale window on the floor, and the greater part of us in shadow, except when Steerforth dipped a match into a phosphorus-box, when he wanted to look for anything on the board, and shed a blue glare over us that was gone directly! A certain mysterious feeling, consequent on the darkness, the secrecy of the revel, and the whisper in which everything was said, steals over me again, and I listen to all they tell me with a vague feeling of solemnity and awe, which makes me glad that they are all so near, and frightens me (though I feign to laugh) when Traddles pretends to see a ghost in the corner.
I heard all kinds of things about the school and all belonging to it. I heard that Mr. Creakle had not preferred his claim to being a Tartar without reason; that he was the sternest and most severe of masters; that he laid about him, right and left, every day of his life, charging in among the boys like a trooper, and slashing away, unmercifully. That he knew nothing himself, but the art of slashing, being more ignorant (J. Steerforth said) than the lowest boy in the school; that he had been, a good many years ago, a small hop-dealer in the Borough, and had taken to the schooling business after being bankrupt in hops, and making away with Mrs. Creakle’s money. With a good deal more of that sort, which I wondered how they knew.
I heard that the man with the wooden leg, whose name was Tungay, was an obstinate barbarian who had formerly assisted in the hop business, but had come into the scholastic line with Mr. Creakle, in consequence, as was supposed among the boys, of his having broken his leg in Mr. Creakle’s service, and having done a deal of dishonest work for him, and knowing his secrets. I heard that with the single exception of Mr. Creakle, Tungay considered the whole establishment, masters and boys, as his natural enemies, and that the only delight of his life was to be sour and malicious. I heard that Mr. Creakle had a son, who had not been Tungay’s friend, and who, assisting in the school, had once held some remonstrance with his father on an occasion when its discipline was very cruelly exercised, and was supposed, besides, to have protested against his father’s usage of his mother. I heard that Mr. Creakle had turned him out of doors, in consequence; and that Mrs. and Miss Creakle had been in a sad way, ever since.
Fu nientemeno che Tommy Traddles a darmi questa notizia. Fu il primo ragazzo a tornare. Si presentò dicendomi che avrei trovato il suo nome nell’angolo destro del cancello, sopra il chiavistello; a questo punto dissi: «Traddles?», e lui rispose: «Proprio lui», e poi mi chiese un resoconto completo di me stesso e della mia famiglia.
Fu una fortunata circostanza per me che Traddles tornasse per primo. Gli piaceva tanto il mio cartello che mi risparmiò l’imbarazzo di doverlo rivelare o nascondere, presentandomi a tutti gli altri ragazzi che tornavano, grandi o piccoli, subito al loro arrivo, con questa forma di introduzione: «Ecco qua! Ecco un gioco!». Fortunatamente, anche la maggior parte dei ragazzi tornò di cattivo umore e non furono così chiassosi a mie spese come mi aspettavo. Alcuni di loro, è vero, mi danzavano intorno come indiani selvaggi, e la maggior parte non resisteva alla tentazione di fingere che fossi un cane, accarezzandomi e blandendomi, per paura che potessi mordere, e dicendomi: «Stai giù, signore!», e chiamandomi Towzer. Questo era naturalmente confuso, tra tanti sconosciuti, e mi costò qualche lacrima, ma nel complesso andò molto meglio di quanto mi aspettassi.
Tuttavia, non fui considerato formalmente accolto nella scuola fino all’arrivo di J. Steerforth. Prima di questo ragazzo, che godeva della reputazione di grande studioso, era molto bello e aveva almeno sei anni più di me, fui portato come davanti a un magistrato. Egli si informò, sotto un capanno nel cortile, sui particolari della mia punizione, e si compiacque di esprimere la sua opinione che fosse «un vero peccato»; per questo gli fui sempre riconoscente in seguito.
«Che soldi hai, Copperfield?» mi disse, allontanandosi con me dopo aver sistemato la mia faccenda in questi termini. Gli dissi sette scellini.
«È meglio che me lo dia lei perché me ne occupi», disse. «Almeno, se le va. Non deve, se non le va.»
Mi affrettai a seguire il suo amichevole suggerimento e, aprendo la borsa di Peggotty, la rovesciai sul palmo della sua mano.
«Volete spendere qualcosa adesso?» mi chiese.
«No, grazie», risposi.
“Se vuoi, puoi farlo”, disse Steerforth. “Basta che lo dici.”
«No, grazie, signore», ripetei.
«Forse vorresti spendere una mezza corona o giù di lì, per una bottiglia di vino di Corinto più tardi, nella mia camera?» disse Steerforth. «Mi pare di capire che la camera è mia.»
Non mi era certamente venuto in mente prima, ma dissi: «Sì, mi piacerebbe».
«Molto bene», disse Steerforth. «Sarai felice di spendere un altro scellino o giù di lì, in paste di mandorle, immagino?»
Dissi: «Sì, anche a me piacerebbe».
«E un altro scellino o giù di lì in biscotti, e un altro in frutta, eh?» disse Steerforth. «Dico, giovane Copperfield, ci state andando a gonfie vele!»
Sorrisi perché lui sorrideva, ma ero anche un po’ turbato.
«Bene!» disse Steerforth. «Dobbiamo farlo durare quanto più a lungo possibile; è tutto quello che possiamo fare. Farò del mio meglio per te. Posso uscire quando voglio, e contrabbanderò il cibo.» Con queste parole mise i soldi in tasca, e gentilmente mi disse di non preoccuparmi; si sarebbe assicurato che tutto andasse bene. Mantenne la sua promessa, se tutto fosse stato a posto, cosa che temevo fosse quasi del tutto sbagliata, perché temevo che fosse uno spreco delle due mezzecorone di mia madre, anche se avevo conservato il pezzo di carta in cui erano avvolte: che era un prezioso risparmio. Quando salimmo di sopra per andare a letto, tirò fuori tutti i sette scellini e li dispose sul mio letto alla luce della luna, dicendo:
‘Eccoti qui, giovane Copperfield, e che banchetto regale hai davanti.’
Non potevo pensare di fare gli onori della festa, alla mia età, mentre lui era lì; la mano mi tremava al solo pensiero. Gli chiesi di farmi il favore di presiedere; e la mia richiesta fu appoggiata dagli altri ragazzi che erano in quella stanza, così accettò, e si sedette sul mio cuscino, passando i cibi — devo dire con perfetta equità — e distribuendo il vino di uva corinzie in un piccolo bicchiere senza piede, che era di sua proprietà. Quanto a me, mi sedetti alla sua sinistra, e gli altri si raggrupparono intorno a noi, sui letti più vicini e sul pavimento.
Quanto mi ricordo bene di quando eravamo seduti lì a parlare sottovoce; o meglio, loro parlavano e io li ascoltavo con rispetto; la luce della luna entrava un po’ nella stanza attraverso la finestra, disegnando una pallida finestra sul pavimento, e la maggior parte di noi era in ombra, tranne quando Steerforth immergeva un fiammifero in una scatola di fosforo, quando voleva cercare qualcosa sul tavolo, e ci illuminava con una luce blu che spariva subito! Un certo sentimento misterioso, conseguenza dell’oscurità, della segretezza della baldoria e del sussurro con cui veniva detto tutto, mi ruba di nuovo, e ascolto tutto ciò che mi raccontano con un vago senso di solennità e timore, che mi rende felice che siano tutti così vicini, e mi spaventa (anche se fingo di ridere) quando Traddles finge di vedere un fantasma nell’angolo.
Sentii parlare di ogni sorta di cose riguardo alla scuola e a tutto ciò che le apparteneva. Sentii che il signor Creakle non aveva avanzato la sua pretesa di essere un Tartaro senza ragione; che era il più severo e rigido dei maestri; che si dava da fare, a destra e a sinistra, ogni giorno della sua vita, caricando tra i ragazzi come un soldato, e colpendo senza pietà. Che non sapeva nulla lui stesso, se non l’arte di colpire, essendo più ignorante (disse J. Steerforth) del ragazzo più basso della scuola; che molti anni fa era stato un piccolo commerciante di luppolo nel Borough, e si era dedicato all’attività scolastica dopo essere fallito con il luppolo, e aver speso i soldi della signora Creakle. Con molto altro di questo genere, che mi chiedevo come facessero a saperlo.
Sentii dire che l’uomo con la gamba di legno, di nome Tungay, era un ostinato barbaro che in precedenza aveva lavorato nel commercio del luppolo, ma era entrato nel mondo scolastico con il signor Creakle, di conseguenza, come si sospettava tra i ragazzi, per aver rotto la gamba al servizio del signor Creakle, e aver fatto un sacco di lavori disonesti per lui, e conoscere i suoi segreti. Sentii dire che, con l’unica eccezione del signor Creakle, Tungay considerava l’intero istituto, maestri e ragazzi, come i suoi nemici naturali, e che l’unico piacere della sua vita era essere acido e maligno. Sentii dire che il signor Creakle aveva un figlio, che non era stato amico di Tungay, e che, assistendo nella scuola, aveva una volta avuto una rimostranza con suo padre in un’occasione in cui la disciplina era stata esercitata in modo molto crudele, e si sospettava, inoltre, di aver protestato contro il comportamento di suo padre verso sua madre. Sentii dire che il signor Creakle lo aveva cacciato di casa, di conseguenza; e che la signora e la signorina Creakle erano state in un brutto guaio, da allora.
But the greatest wonder that I heard of Mr. Creakle was, there being one boy in the school on whom he never ventured to lay a hand, and that boy being J. Steerforth. Steerforth himself confirmed this when it was stated, and said that he should like to begin to see him do it. On being asked by a mild boy (not me) how he would proceed if he did begin to see him do it, he dipped a match into his phosphorus-box on purpose to shed a glare over his reply, and said he would commence by knocking him down with a blow on the forehead from the seven-and-sixpenny ink-bottle that was always on the mantelpiece. We sat in the dark for some time, breathless.
I heard that Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both supposed to be wretchedly paid; and that when there was hot and cold meat for dinner at Mr. Creakle’s table, Mr. Sharp was always expected to say he preferred cold; which was again corroborated by J. Steerforth, the only parlour-boarder. I heard that Mr. Sharp’s wig didn’t fit him; and that he needn’t be so ‘bounceable’—somebody else said ‘bumptious’—about it, because his own red hair was very plainly to be seen behind.
I heard that one boy, who was a coal-merchant’s son, came as a set-off against the coal-bill, and was called, on that account, ‘Exchange or Barter’—a name selected from the arithmetic book as expressing this arrangement. I heard that the table beer was a robbery of parents, and the pudding an imposition. I heard that Miss Creakle was regarded by the school in general as being in love with Steerforth; and I am sure, as I sat in the dark, thinking of his nice voice, and his fine face, and his easy manner, and his curling hair, I thought it very likely. I heard that Mr. Mell was not a bad sort of fellow, but hadn’t a sixpence to bless himself with; and that there was no doubt that old Mrs. Mell, his mother, was as poor as job. I thought of my breakfast then, and what had sounded like ‘My Charley!’ but I was, I am glad to remember, as mute as a mouse about it.
The hearing of all this, and a good deal more, outlasted the banquet some time. The greater part of the guests had gone to bed as soon as the eating and drinking were over; and we, who had remained whispering and listening half-undressed, at last betook ourselves to bed, too.
‘Good night, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth. ‘I’ll take care of you.’ ‘You’re very kind,’ I gratefully returned. ‘I am very much obliged to you.’
‘You haven’t got a sister, have you?’ said Steerforth, yawning.
‘No,’ I answered.
‘That’s a pity,’ said Steerforth. ‘If you had had one, I should think she would have been a pretty, timid, little, bright-eyed sort of girl. I should have liked to know her. Good night, young Copperfield.’
‘Good night, sir,’ I replied.
I thought of him very much after I went to bed, and raised myself, I recollect, to look at him where he lay in the moonlight, with his handsome face turned up, and his head reclining easily on his arm. He was a person of great power in my eyes; that was, of course, the reason of my mind running on him. No veiled future dimly glanced upon him in the moonbeams. There was no shadowy picture of his footsteps, in the garden that I dreamed of walking in all night.
Ma la più grande meraviglia che ho sentito raccontare di Mr. Creakle era che c’era un ragazzo a scuola su cui non osava mai mettere le mani, e quel ragazzo era J. Steerforth. Steerforth stesso confermò questo quando fu affermato, e disse che gli sarebbe piaciuto vedere lui iniziare a farlo. Quando gli fu chiesto da un ragazzo mite (non io) come avrebbe proceduto se avesse iniziato a vederlo fare, immerse un fiammifero nella sua scatola di fosforo apposta per far brillare la sua risposta, e disse che avrebbe iniziato colpendolo con un pugno sulla fronte dalla bottiglia d’inchiostro da sette e sei penny che era sempre sul camino. Sedemmo al buio per qualche tempo, senza fiato.
Sentivo dire che il signor Sharp e il signor Mell erano entrambi pagati in modo miserevole; e che quando c’era carne calda e fredda per cena a casa del signor Creakle, si aspettava sempre che il signor Sharp dicesse che preferiva la fredda; il che era confermato da J. Steerforth, l’unico pensionante del salotto. Sentivo dire che la parrucca del signor Sharp non gli stava bene; e che non doveva essere così “arrogante” — qualcun altro disse “presuntuoso” — al riguardo, perché i suoi capelli rossi erano ben visibili dietro.
Sentii che un ragazzo, figlio di un commerciante di carbone, era stato dato in compenso per il conto del carbone, e per questo motivo veniva chiamato “Scambio o Baratto”, un nome scelto dal libro di aritmetica perché esprimeva questo accordo. Sentii che la birra da tavola era un furto ai danni dei genitori, e che il budino era un’imposizione. Sentii che la scuola in generale riteneva che la signorina Creakle fosse innamorata di Steerforth; e sono sicuro che, mentre sedevo al buio, pensando alla sua bella voce, al suo bel viso, alla sua disinvoltura e ai suoi capelli ricci, pensavo che fosse molto probabile. Sentii che il signor Mell non era un cattivo tipo, ma non aveva un soldo da benedire; e che non c’era dubbio che la vecchia signora Mell, sua madre, fosse povera come Giobbe. Pensai alla mia colazione e a quello che aveva suonato come “Il mio Charley!”, ma ero, e mi fa piacere ricordarlo, muto come un topo al riguardo.
L’ascolto di tutto ciò, e di molto altro, durò più a lungo del banchetto per qualche tempo. La maggior parte degli ospiti era andata a letto non appena il mangiare e il bere erano finiti; e noi, che eravamo rimasti a bisbigliare e ascoltare mezzo svestiti, alla fine ci siamo messi a letto anche noi.
«Buona notte, giovane Copperfield», disse Steerforth. «Mi prenderò cura di te.» «Sei molto gentile», risposi con gratitudine. «Ti sono molto obbligato.»
«Non hai una sorella, vero?» disse Steerforth sbadigliando.
«No», risposi.
“Che peccato,” disse Steerforth. “Se ne avesse avuta una, penso che sarebbe stata una ragazza carina, timida, con gli occhi lucenti. Mi sarebbe piaciuto conoscerla. Buona notte, giovane Copperfield.”
«Buona notte, signore», risposi.
Pensai molto a lui dopo essere andato a letto, e mi ricordo di essermi alzato per guardarlo mentre giaceva alla luce della luna, con il suo bel viso rivolto verso l’alto e la testa appoggiata con disinvoltura sul braccio. Era una persona di grande potere ai miei occhi; questo era, naturalmente, il motivo per cui la mia mente continuava a soffermarsi su di lui. Nessun futuro velato si intravedeva su di lui nei raggi lunari. Non c’era alcuna immagine ombrosa dei suoi passi nel giardino in cui sognavo di passeggiare tutta la notte.
CHAPTER 7. MY ‘FIRST HALF’ AT SALEM HOUSE
School began in earnest next day. A profound impression was made upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly becoming hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after breakfast, and stood in the doorway looking round upon us like a giant in a story-book surveying his captives.
Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle’s elbow. He had no occasion, I thought, to cry out ‘Silence!’ so ferociously, for the boys were all struck speechless and motionless.
Mr. Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, to this effect.
‘Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you’re about, in this new half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up to the punishment. I won’t flinch. It will be of no use your rubbing yourselves; you won’t rub the marks out that I shall give you. Now get to work, every boy!’
When this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had stumped out again, Mr. Creakle came to where I sat, and told me that if I were famous for biting, he was famous for biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and asked me what I thought of THAT, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey? Was it a double tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, hey? Did it bite, hey? Did it bite? At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe; so I was very soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth said), and was very soon in tears also.
Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction, which only I received. On the contrary, a large majority of the boys (especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar instances of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the schoolroom. Half the establishment was writhing and crying, before the day’s work began; and how much of it had writhed and cried before the day’s work was over, I am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.
I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am confident that he couldn’t resist a chubby boy, especially; that there was a fascination in such a subject, which made him restless in his mind, until he had scored and marked him for the day. I was chubby myself, and ought to know. I am sure when I think of the fellow now, my blood rises against him with the disinterested indignation I should feel if I could have known all about him without having ever been in his power; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an incapable brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held, than to be Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief—in either of which capacities it is probable that he would have done infinitely less mischief.
Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject we were to him! What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!
Here I sit at the desk again, watching his eye—humbly watching his eye, as he rules a ciphering-book for another victim whose hands have just been flattened by that identical ruler, and who is trying to wipe the sting out with a pocket-handkerchief. I have plenty to do. I don’t watch his eye in idleness, but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he will do next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody else’s. A lane of small boys beyond me, with the same interest in his eye, watch it too. I think he knows it, though he pretends he don’t. He makes dreadful mouths as he rules the ciphering-book; and now he throws his eye sideways down our lane, and we all droop over our books and tremble. A moment afterwards we are again eyeing him. An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect exercise, approaches at his command. The culprit falters excuses, and professes a determination to do better tomorrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he beats him, and we laugh at it,—miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.
Here I sit at the desk again, on a drowsy summer afternoon. A buzz and hum go up around me, as if the boys were so many bluebottles. A cloggy sensation of the lukewarm fat of meat is upon me (we dined an hour or two ago), and my head is as heavy as so much lead. I would give the world to go to sleep. I sit with my eye on Mr. Creakle, blinking at him like a young owl; when sleep overpowers me for a minute, he still looms through my slumber, ruling those ciphering-books, until he softly comes behind me and wakes me to plainer perception of him, with a red ridge across my back.
Here I am in the playground, with my eye still fascinated by him, though I can’t see him. The window at a little distance from which I know he is having his dinner, stands for him, and I eye that instead. If he shows his face near it, mine assumes an imploring and submissive expression. If he looks out through the glass, the boldest boy (Steerforth excepted) stops in the middle of a shout or yell, and becomes contemplative. One day, Traddles (the most unfortunate boy in the world) breaks that window accidentally, with a ball. I shudder at this moment with the tremendous sensation of seeing it done, and feeling that the ball has bounded on to Mr. Creakle’s sacred head.
Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys. He was always being caned—I think he was caned every day that half-year, except one holiday Monday when he was only ruler’d on both hands—and was always going to write to his uncle about it, and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little while, he would cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last for ever. But I believe he only did it because they were easy, and didn’t want any features.
CAPITOLO 7. LA MIA «PRIMA META» A SALEM HOUSE
La scuola iniziò sul serio il giorno dopo. Ricordo che su di me fece una profonda impressione il brusco silenzio che calò sulle voci che rimbombavano nella sala di lezione quando il signor Creakle entrò dopo colazione e si fermò sulla soglia a guardarci come un gigante di un libro di fiabe che osserva i suoi prigionieri.
Tungay stava al gomito del signor Creakle. Non aveva motivo, pensai, di gridare “Silenzio!” così ferocemente, dato che i ragazzi erano tutti colpiti da mutismo e immobilità.
Si vide che il signor Creakle parlava, e si sentì Tungay, in questi termini.
«Ora, ragazzi, questa è una nuova metà. State attenti a quello che fate, in questa nuova metà. Vi consiglio di venire freschi alle lezioni, perché io vengo fresco alle punizioni. Non esiterò. Non servirà a nulla strofinarvi; non riuscirete a cancellare i segni che vi darò. Ora mettetevi al lavoro, ogni ragazzo!»
Quando questo terribile esordio fu finito, e Tungay se ne fu andato di nuovo, il signor Creakle venne dove ero seduto e mi disse che se ero famoso per mordere, anche lui era famoso per mordere. Poi mi mostrò la canna e mi chiese che cosa ne pensassi DI QUESTO, come dente? Era un dente affilato, eh? Era un dente doppio, eh? Aveva una punta profonda, eh? Mordeva, eh? Mordeva? Ad ogni domanda mi dava un taglio carnoso con essa che mi faceva contorcersi; così fui reso molto presto libero di Salem House (come disse Steerforth), e fui anche molto presto in lacrime.
Non voglio dire che queste fossero particolari segni di distinzione, che solo io ricevessi. Al contrario, la grande maggioranza dei ragazzi (specialmente i più piccoli) subivano simili attenzioni mentre il signor Creakle faceva il giro della sala di lezione. Metà dell’istituto si contorceva e piangeva prima che la giornata di lavoro avesse inizio; e quanto se ne fosse contorto e pianto prima che la giornata di lavoro fosse finita, ho veramente paura di ricordare, per timore di sembrare esagerato.
Penso che non ci sia mai stato un uomo che si sia goduto la sua professione più di quanto facesse il signor Creakle. Provava un piacere nel picchiare i ragazzi che era come la soddisfazione di un appetito insaziabile. Sono sicuro che non poteva resistere a un ragazzo paffuto, soprattutto; che c’era una fascinazione in un soggetto del genere, che lo rendeva irrequieto finché non lo aveva marchiato e segnato per il giorno. Io stesso ero paffuto, e dovrei saperlo. Sono sicuro che quando penso a quel tizio ora, il mio sangue ribolle contro di lui con l’indignazione disinteressata che proverei se avessi potuto sapere tutto di lui senza essere mai stato in suo potere; ma ribolle di rabbia, perché so che era un bruto incapace, che non aveva più diritto di essere possessore del grande potere che deteneva, che di essere Lord High Admiral, o Comandante in Capo — in ciascuna di queste cariche è probabile che avrebbe fatto infinitamente meno danni.
Miserabili piccoli propiziatori di un idolo spietato, quanto eravamo abietti davanti a lui! Che partenza nella vita penso ora, guardando indietro, essere così meschini e servili con un uomo di tali doti e pretese!
Eccomi di nuovo seduto alla scrivania, a osservare il suo sguardo, a osservare umilmente il suo sguardo, mentre traccia le righe su un quaderno di aritmetica per un’altra vittima le cui mani sono state appena schiacciate da quella stessa riga, e che sta cercando di asciugare il dolore con un fazzoletto. Ho molto da fare. Non osservo il suo sguardo per pigrizia, ma perché ne sono morboso attratto, spinto da un terribile desiderio di sapere cosa farà dopo, e se toccherà a me soffrire, o a qualcun altro. Una fila di ragazzini, oltre me, con lo stesso interesse per il suo sguardo, lo osservano anche loro. Penso che lo sappia, anche se finge di no. Fa smorfie terribili mentre traccia le righe sul quaderno di aritmetica; e ora lancia il suo sguardo di traverso lungo la nostra fila, e noi ci chiniamo sui nostri libri e tremiamo. Un momento dopo lo stiamo di nuovo osservando. Un disgraziato colpevole, trovato colpevole di un esercizio imperfetto, si avvicina su suo comando. Il colpevole balbetta scuse e dichiara di voler fare meglio domani. Il signor Creakle fa una battuta prima di picchiarlo, e noi ridiamo, poveri piccoli cani, ridiamo, con i volti pallidi come ceneri e il cuore che ci scende fino alle scarpe.
Eccomi di nuovo seduto alla scrivania, in un pomeriggio d’estate che mi fa venire sonno. Un ronzio mi circonda, come se i ragazzi fossero tanti calabroni. Sento addosso una sensazione appiccicosa di grasso tiepido (abbiamo cenato un’ora o due fa), e la testa mi pesa come se fosse di piombo. Darei tutto per andare a dormire. Sono seduto con lo sguardo fisso su Mr. Creakle, che lo guardo sbattendo le palpebre come un giovane gufo; quando il sonno mi vince per un minuto, lui continua a svettare nel mio dormiveglia, correggendo quei libri di calcolo, finché non si avvicina silenziosamente dietro di me e mi risveglia a una percezione più nitida di lui, con una striscia rossa sulla schiena.
Eccomi qui nel cortile, con lo sguardo ancora affascinato da lui, anche se non riesco a vederlo. La finestra a poca distanza, da cui so che sta mangiando, lo rappresenta, e invece guardo quella. Se si affaccia vicino ad essa, il mio viso assume un’espressione supplichevole e sottomessa. Se guarda fuori attraverso il vetro, il ragazzo più coraggioso (a parte Steerforth) si ferma a metà di un grido o di un urlo, e diventa contemplativo. Un giorno, Traddles (il ragazzo più sfortunato del mondo) rompe quella finestra accidentalmente, con una palla. In questo momento rabbrividisco con la tremenda sensazione di vederlo fatto, e sentire che la palla è rimbalzata sulla sacra testa del signor Creakle.
Povero Traddles! In un aderente completo blu cielo che faceva sembrare le sue braccia e le sue gambe come salsicce tedesche, o budini rotondi, era il più allegro e il più infelice di tutti i ragazzi. Era sempre frustato - credo che fosse frustato ogni giorno di quel semestre, tranne un lunedì festivo quando fu colpito solo con la riga su entrambe le mani - e stava sempre per scrivere a suo zio a riguardo, ma non lo fece mai. Dopo aver appoggiato la testa sulla scrivania per un po’, si sarebbe in qualche modo risollevato, avrebbe ricominciato a ridere e disegnare scheletri su tutta la lavagna, prima ancora che i suoi occhi fossero asciutti. All’inizio mi meravigliavo di quale conforto Traddles trovasse nel disegnare scheletri; e per un certo periodo lo considerai una sorta di eremita, che si ricordava attraverso quei simboli della mortalità che le frustate non potevano durare per sempre. Ma credo che lo facesse solo perché erano facili da disegnare e non richiedevano particolari dettagli.
He was very honourable, Traddles was, and held it as a solemn duty in the boys to stand by one another. He suffered for this on several occasions; and particularly once, when Steerforth laughed in church, and the Beadle thought it was Traddles, and took him out. I see him now, going away in custody, despised by the congregation. He never said who was the real offender, though he smarted for it next day, and was imprisoned so many hours that he came forth with a whole churchyard-full of skeletons swarming all over his Latin Dictionary. But he had his reward. Steerforth said there was nothing of the sneak in Traddles, and we all felt that to be the highest praise. For my part, I could have gone through a good deal (though I was much less brave than Traddles, and nothing like so old) to have won such a recompense.
To see Steerforth walk to church before us, arm-in-arm with Miss Creakle, was one of the great sights of my life. I didn’t think Miss Creakle equal to little Em’ly in point of beauty, and I didn’t love her (I didn’t dare); but I thought her a young lady of extraordinary attractions, and in point of gentility not to be surpassed. When Steerforth, in white trousers, carried her parasol for her, I felt proud to know him; and believed that she could not choose but adore him with all her heart. Mr. Sharp and Mr. Mell were both notable personages in my eyes; but Steerforth was to them what the sun was to two stars.
Steerforth continued his protection of me, and proved a very useful friend; since nobody dared to annoy one whom he honoured with his countenance. He couldn’t—or at all events he didn’t—defend me from Mr. Creakle, who was very severe with me; but whenever I had been treated worse than usual, he always told me that I wanted a little of his pluck, and that he wouldn’t have stood it himself; which I felt he intended for encouragement, and considered to be very kind of him. There was one advantage, and only one that I know of, in Mr. Creakle’s severity. He found my placard in his way when he came up or down behind the form on which I sat, and wanted to make a cut at me in passing; for this reason it was soon taken off, and I saw it no more.
An accidental circumstance cemented the intimacy between Steerforth and me, in a manner that inspired me with great pride and satisfaction, though it sometimes led to inconvenience. It happened on one occasion, when he was doing me the honour of talking to me in the playground, that I hazarded the observation that something or somebody—I forget what now—was like something or somebody in Peregrine Pickle. He said nothing at the time; but when I was going to bed at night, asked me if I had got that book?
I told him no, and explained how it was that I had read it, and all those other books of which I have made mention.
‘And do you recollect them?’ Steerforth said.
‘Oh yes,’ I replied; I had a good memory, and I believed I recollected them very well.
‘Then I tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, ‘you shall tell ‘em to me. I can’t get to sleep very early at night, and I generally wake rather early in the morning. We’ll go over ‘em one after another. We’ll make some regular Arabian Nights of it.’
I felt extremely flattered by this arrangement, and we commenced carrying it into execution that very evening. What ravages I committed on my favourite authors in the course of my interpretation of them, I am not in a condition to say, and should be very unwilling to know; but I had a profound faith in them, and I had, to the best of my belief, a simple, earnest manner of narrating what I did narrate; and these qualities went a long way.
The drawback was, that I was often sleepy at night, or out of spirits and indisposed to resume the story; and then it was rather hard work, and it must be done; for to disappoint or to displease Steerforth was of course out of the question. In the morning, too, when I felt weary, and should have enjoyed another hour’s repose very much, it was a tiresome thing to be roused, like the Sultana Scheherazade, and forced into a long story before the getting-up bell rang; but Steerforth was resolute; and as he explained to me, in return, my sums and exercises, and anything in my tasks that was too hard for me, I was no loser by the transaction. Let me do myself justice, however. I was moved by no interested or selfish motive, nor was I moved by fear of him. I admired and loved him, and his approval was return enough. It was so precious to me that I look back on these trifles, now, with an aching heart.
Steerforth was considerate, too; and showed his consideration, in one particular instance, in an unflinching manner that was a little tantalizing, I suspect, to poor Traddles and the rest. Peggotty’s promised letter—what a comfortable letter it was!—arrived before ‘the half’ was many weeks old; and with it a cake in a perfect nest of oranges, and two bottles of cowslip wine. This treasure, as in duty bound, I laid at the feet of Steerforth, and begged him to dispense.
‘Now, I’ll tell you what, young Copperfield,’ said he: ‘the wine shall be kept to wet your whistle when you are story-telling.’
I blushed at the idea, and begged him, in my modesty, not to think of it. But he said he had observed I was sometimes hoarse—a little roopy was his exact expression—and it should be, every drop, devoted to the purpose he had mentioned. Accordingly, it was locked up in his box, and drawn off by himself in a phial, and administered to me through a piece of quill in the cork, when I was supposed to be in want of a restorative. Sometimes, to make it a more sovereign specific, he was so kind as to squeeze orange juice into it, or to stir it up with ginger, or dissolve a peppermint drop in it; and although I cannot assert that the flavour was improved by these experiments, or that it was exactly the compound one would have chosen for a stomachic, the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning, I drank it gratefully and was very sensible of his attention.
Era molto onorevole, Traddles, e considerava un dovere solenne che i ragazzi si sostenessero a vicenda. Ne soffrì in diverse occasioni; e in particolare una volta, quando Steerforth rise in chiesa, e il sagrestano pensò che fosse stato Traddles, e lo portò fuori. Lo vedo ancora, che se ne va in custodia, disprezzato dalla congregazione. Non disse mai chi fosse il vero colpevole, anche se ne risentì il giorno dopo, e fu rinchiuso per così tante ore che ne uscì con un intero cimitero di scheletri che gli brulicavano tutto sul dizionario di latino. Ma ebbe la sua ricompensa. Steerforth disse che non c’era nulla di infame in Traddles, e tutti noi sentimmo che fosse il più alto elogio. Per parte mia, avrei potuto sopportare molto (anche se ero molto meno coraggioso di Traddles, e nulla di paragonabile alla sua età) per aver vinto una tale ricompensa.
Vedere Steerforth camminare davanti a noi verso la chiesa, a braccetto con la signorina Creakle, fu una delle grandi visioni della mia vita. Non pensavo che la signorina Creakle fosse all’altezza della piccola Em’ly per quanto riguarda la bellezza, e non la amavo (non osavo); ma la consideravo una giovane signora di attrattive straordinarie, e per quanto riguarda l’eleganza insuperabile. Quando Steerforth, in pantaloni bianchi, le portava il parasole, mi sentivo orgoglioso di conoscerlo; e credevo che lei non potesse fare a meno di adorarlo con tutto il cuore. Il signor Sharp e il signor Mell erano entrambi personaggi notevoli ai miei occhi; ma Steerforth era per loro ciò che il sole era per due stelle.
Steerforth continuò a proteggermi e si rivelò un amico davvero utile, poiché nessuno osava infastidire chi aveva l’onore del suo appoggio. Non poteva - o almeno non lo fece - difendermi dal signor Creakle, che era molto severo con me; ma ogni volta che ero stato trattato peggio del solito, lui mi diceva che mi mancava un po’ del suo coraggio, e che lui non l’avrebbe tollerato; il che sentivo che intendeva come incoraggiamento, e consideravo molto gentile da parte sua. C’era un vantaggio, e solo uno che conosco, nella severità del signor Creakle. Trovava il mio cartello di troppo quando saliva o scendeva dietro il banco su cui sedevo, e voleva farmi un taglio passando; per questo motivo fu presto tolto, e non lo vidi più.
Una circostanza casuale rafforzò l’intimità tra Steerforth e me, in un modo che mi ispirò grande orgoglio e soddisfazione, sebbene a volte portasse a inconvenienti. Accadde una volta, mentre mi faceva l’onore di parlarmi nel cortile, che osai fare l’osservazione che qualcosa o qualcuno - ora non ricordo cosa - era come qualcosa o qualcuno in Peregrine Pickle. Non disse nulla in quel momento; ma quando andai a letto la sera, mi chiese se avevo quel libro?
Gli dissi di no, e gli spiegai come era stato che l’avevo letto, e tutti quegli altri libri di cui ho fatto menzione.
«E li ricordi?» disse Steerforth.
«Oh sì», risposi; avevo una buona memoria, e credevo di ricordarli molto bene.
«Allora, ti dico una cosa, giovane Copperfield», disse Steerforth, «me le racconterai tu. Non riesco a dormire molto presto la sera, e di solito mi sveglio piuttosto presto al mattino. Le passeremo in rassegna una dopo l’altra. Ne faremo delle vere e proprie Mille e una notte.»
Mi sentii estremamente lusingato da questo accordo, e iniziammo a metterlo in pratica quella stessa sera. Quali stragi commisi sui miei autori preferiti nel corso della mia interpretazione di essi, non sono in grado di dire, e non vorrei saperlo; ma avevo una profonda fede in loro, e avevo, per quanto mi era possibile, un modo semplice e sincero di raccontare ciò che raccontavo; e queste qualità andavano molto lontano.
L’inconveniente era che spesso di notte avevo sonno, o ero di cattivo umore e non avevo voglia di riprendere la storia; e allora era piuttosto faticoso, e bisognava farlo; perché deludere o dispiacere Steerforth era, naturalmente, fuori questione. Anche al mattino, quando mi sentivo stanco e avrei apprezzato molto un altro’ora di riposo, era una cosa noiosa essere svegliato, come la Sultana Scheherazade, e costretto a raccontare una lunga storia prima che suonasse la campana per alzarsi; ma Steerforth era risoluto; e poiché mi spiegava, in cambio, i miei calcoli e i miei esercizi, e qualsiasi cosa nei miei compiti fosse troppo difficile per me, non perdevo nulla in questa transazione. Tuttavia, fatemi giustizia. Non ero mosso da alcun motivo interessato o egoistico, né ero mosso dalla paura di lui. Lo ammiravo e lo amavo, e il suo approvazione era una ricompensa sufficiente. Era così prezioso per me che ora, guardando indietro a queste piccole cose, mi sento il cuore spezzato.
Steerforth era premuroso e dimostrava la sua premura, in un caso particolare, in modo così inflessibile che sospetto fosse un po’ frustrante per il povero Traddles e gli altri. La lettera promessa da Peggotty - che lettera confortante era! - arrivò prima che “la metà” fosse passata da molte settimane; e con essa una torta in un perfetto nido di arance e due bottiglie di vino di primule. Questo tesoro, come era mio dovere, lo deposi ai piedi di Steerforth e lo pregai di distribuirlo.
«Ora, le dirò una cosa, giovane Copperfield», disse: «il vino verrà conservato per bagnarsi il gargarozzo quando racconterà storie.»
Arrossii all’idea e, nella mia modestia, lo pregai di non pensarci neanche. Ma lui disse che aveva notato che a volte ero rauco - “un po’ roco” furono le sue esatte parole - e che ogni goccia doveva essere dedicata allo scopo che aveva menzionato. Di conseguenza, fu chiuso nella sua scatola, prelevato da lui in una fiala e somministratomi attraverso un pezzo di penna nel tappo, quando si pensava che avessi bisogno di un rimedio. A volte, per renderlo un rimedio ancora più efficace, fu così gentile da aggiungervi il succo d’arancia, o mescolarlo con lo zenzero, o sciogliervi una pastiglia di menta piperita; e sebbene non possa affermare che il sapore fosse migliorato da questi esperimenti, o che fosse esattamente la miscela che si sarebbe scelta per uno stomaco, l’ultima cosa alla notte e la prima al mattino, la bevevo con gratitudine e apprezzavo molto la sua attenzione.
We seem, to me, to have been months over Peregrine, and months more over the other stories. The institution never flagged for want of a story, I am certain; and the wine lasted out almost as well as the matter. Poor Traddles—I never think of that boy but with a strange disposition to laugh, and with tears in my eyes—was a sort of chorus, in general; and affected to be convulsed with mirth at the comic parts, and to be overcome with fear when there was any passage of an alarming character in the narrative. This rather put me out, very often. It was a great jest of his, I recollect, to pretend that he couldn’t keep his teeth from chattering, whenever mention was made of an Alguazill in connexion with the adventures of Gil Blas; and I remember that when Gil Blas met the captain of the robbers in Madrid, this unlucky joker counterfeited such an ague of terror, that he was overheard by Mr. Creakle, who was prowling about the passage, and handsomely flogged for disorderly conduct in the bedroom. Whatever I had within me that was romantic and dreamy, was encouraged by so much story-telling in the dark; and in that respect the pursuit may not have been very profitable to me. But the being cherished as a kind of plaything in my room, and the consciousness that this accomplishment of mine was bruited about among the boys, and attracted a good deal of notice to me though I was the youngest there, stimulated me to exertion. In a school carried on by sheer cruelty, whether it is presided over by a dunce or not, there is not likely to be much learnt. I believe our boys were, generally, as ignorant a set as any schoolboys in existence; they were too much troubled and knocked about to learn; they could no more do that to advantage, than any one can do anything to advantage in a life of constant misfortune, torment, and worry. But my little vanity, and Steerforth’s help, urged me on somehow; and without saving me from much, if anything, in the way of punishment, made me, for the time I was there, an exception to the general body, insomuch that I did steadily pick up some crumbs of knowledge.
In this I was much assisted by Mr. Mell, who had a liking for me that I am grateful to remember. It always gave me pain to observe that Steerforth treated him with systematic disparagement, and seldom lost an occasion of wounding his feelings, or inducing others to do so. This troubled me the more for a long time, because I had soon told Steerforth, from whom I could no more keep such a secret, than I could keep a cake or any other tangible possession, about the two old women Mr. Mell had taken me to see; and I was always afraid that Steerforth would let it out, and twit him with it.
We little thought, any one of us, I dare say, when I ate my breakfast that first morning, and went to sleep under the shadow of the peacock’s feathers to the sound of the flute, what consequences would come of the introduction into those alms-houses of my insignificant person. But the visit had its unforeseen consequences; and of a serious sort, too, in their way.
One day when Mr. Creakle kept the house from indisposition, which naturally diffused a lively joy through the school, there was a good deal of noise in the course of the morning’s work. The great relief and satisfaction experienced by the boys made them difficult to manage; and though the dreaded Tungay brought his wooden leg in twice or thrice, and took notes of the principal offenders’ names, no great impression was made by it, as they were pretty sure of getting into trouble tomorrow, do what they would, and thought it wise, no doubt, to enjoy themselves today.
It was, properly, a half-holiday; being Saturday. But as the noise in the playground would have disturbed Mr. Creakle, and the weather was not favourable for going out walking, we were ordered into school in the afternoon, and set some lighter tasks than usual, which were made for the occasion. It was the day of the week on which Mr. Sharp went out to get his wig curled; so Mr. Mell, who always did the drudgery, whatever it was, kept school by himself. If I could associate the idea of a bull or a bear with anyone so mild as Mr. Mell, I should think of him, in connexion with that afternoon when the uproar was at its height, as of one of those animals, baited by a thousand dogs. I recall him bending his aching head, supported on his bony hand, over the book on his desk, and wretchedly endeavouring to get on with his tiresome work, amidst an uproar that might have made the Speaker of the House of Commons giddy. Boys started in and out of their places, playing at puss in the corner with other boys; there were laughing boys, singing boys, talking boys, dancing boys, howling boys; boys shuffled with their feet, boys whirled about him, grinning, making faces, mimicking him behind his back and before his eyes; mimicking his poverty, his boots, his coat, his mother, everything belonging to him that they should have had consideration for.
‘Silence!’ cried Mr. Mell, suddenly rising up, and striking his desk with the book. ‘What does this mean! It’s impossible to bear it. It’s maddening. How can you do it to me, boys?’
It was my book that he struck his desk with; and as I stood beside him, following his eye as it glanced round the room, I saw the boys all stop, some suddenly surprised, some half afraid, and some sorry perhaps.
Steerforth’s place was at the bottom of the school, at the opposite end of the long room. He was lounging with his back against the wall, and his hands in his pockets, and looked at Mr. Mell with his mouth shut up as if he were whistling, when Mr. Mell looked at him.
‘Silence, Mr. Steerforth!’ said Mr. Mell.
‘Silence yourself,’ said Steerforth, turning red. ‘Whom are you talking to?’
‘Sit down,’ said Mr. Mell.
‘Sit down yourself,’ said Steerforth, ‘and mind your business.’
Mi sembra che abbiamo passato mesi su Peregrine, e altri mesi sulle altre storie. Sono certo che l’istituto non ha mai mancato di storie; e il vino è durato quasi quanto le storie. Povero Traddles - non penso mai a quel ragazzo senza una strana voglia di ridere, e con le lacrime agli occhi - era una specie di coro, in generale; e fingeva di essere convulso di riso nelle parti comiche, e sopraffatto dalla paura quando c’era qualche passaggio inquietante nella narrazione. Questo mi metteva spesso in imbarazzo. Ricordo che una delle sue grandi battute era fingere di non poter trattenere i denti dal battere, ogni volta che si parlava di un Alguazill in relazione alle avventure di Gil Blas; e ricordo che quando Gil Blas incontrò il capitano dei ladri a Madrid, questo sfortunato scherzoso simulò un tale attacco di paura che fu udito dal signor Creakle, che si aggirava per il corridoio, e fu frustato per condotta sconveniente in camera. Qualsiasi cosa fosse in me di romantico e sognante, era incoraggiata da tante storie raccontate al buio; e sotto questo aspetto l’attività potrebbe non essere stata molto proficua per me. Ma il fatto di essere coccolato come una specie di giocattolo nella mia stanza, e la consapevolezza che questo mio talento era noto tra i ragazzi, e attirava parecchia attenzione su di me, anche se ero il più giovane, mi stimolava a sforzarmi. In una scuola gestita con pura crudeltà, che sia presieduta da un idiota o no, non si impara molto. Credo che i nostri ragazzi fossero, in generale, un gruppo di ignoranti come qualsiasi altro di scolari in esistenza; erano troppo turbati e malmenati per imparare; non potevano farlo con profitto più di quanto chiunque possa fare qualcosa di buono in una vita di costante sfortuna, tormento e preoccupazione. Ma la mia piccola vanità, e l’aiuto di Steerforth, mi spingevano in qualche modo; e senza salvarmi da molto, se non da nulla, in termini di punizioni, mi resero, per il tempo che fui lì, un’eccezione al corpo generale, tanto che riuscii costantemente a raccogliere qualche briciolo di conoscenza.
In questo fui molto aiutato dal signor Mell, che provava per me un’affezione di cui sono grato nel ricordarla. Mi dava sempre dolore osservare che Steerforth lo trattava con sistematico disprezzo, e raramente perdeva l’occasione di ferire i suoi sentimenti, o di indurre altri a farlo. Questo mi turbava ancora di più per un lungo periodo, perché avevo presto raccontato a Steerforth, da cui non potevo nascondere un segreto più di quanto potessi nascondere una torta o qualsiasi altra proprietà tangibile, delle due vecchie donne che il signor Mell mi aveva portato a vedere; e avevo sempre paura che Steerforth lo rivelasse, e lo rimproverasse per questo.
Poco ci aspettavamo, ognuno di noi, oserei dire, quando feci colazione quel primo mattino, e andai a dormire sotto l’ombra delle piume del pavone al suono del flauto, quali conseguenze sarebbero derivate dall’introduzione in quei ricoveri della mia insignificante persona. Ma la visita ebbe le sue conseguenze impreviste; e anche di un tipo serio, per di più.
Un giorno in cui il signor Creakle teneva la casa chiusa per indisposizione, il che diffondeva naturalmente una vivace gioia in tutta la scuola, si fece molto rumore durante il lavoro mattutino. Il grande sollievo e la soddisfazione provati dai ragazzi li rendevano difficili da controllare; e sebbene il temuto Tungay portasse la sua gamba di legno due o tre volte e prendesse nota dei nomi dei principali colpevoli, non fece grande impressione, dato che erano abbastanza sicuri di finire nei guai domani, qualunque cosa facessero, e pensavano fosse saggio, senza dubbio, divertirsi oggi.
Era, a tutti gli effetti, un mezzo giorno festivo; essendo sabato. Ma poiché il rumore nel cortile avrebbe disturbato il signor Creakle, e il tempo non era favorevole per uscire a passeggiare, ci fu ordinato di andare a scuola nel pomeriggio, e ci fu dato qualche compito più leggero del solito, appositamente preparato per l’occasione. Era il giorno della settimana in cui il signor Sharp usciva per farsi arricciare la parrucca; così il signor Mell, che faceva sempre i lavori più pesanti, qualunque fossero, tenne la scuola da solo. Se potessi associare l’idea di un toro o di un orso a qualcuno di così mite come il signor Mell, lo penserei, in connessione con quel pomeriggio in cui il tumulto era al culmine, come uno di quegli animali, incalzato da mille cani. Ricordo che si piegava con la testa dolorante, appoggiata sulla sua mano ossuta, sul libro sulla sua scrivania, e cercava miseramente di andare avanti con il suo lavoro noioso, in mezzo a un tumulto che avrebbe potuto far girare la testa al presidente della Camera. I ragazzi si alzavano e si sedevano dai loro posti, giocando a nascondino con altri ragazzi; c’erano ragazzi che ridevano, ragazzi che cantavano, ragazzi che parlavano, ragazzi che ballavano, ragazzi che ululavano; ragazzi che si trascinavano con i piedi, ragazzi che gli giravano intorno, ghignando, facendo smorfie, imitandolo alle sue spalle e davanti ai suoi occhi; imitando la sua povertà, le sue scarpe, il suo cappotto, sua madre, tutto ciò che gli apparteneva e per cui avrebbero dovuto avere considerazione.
«Silenzio!», gridò il signor Mell, alzandosi improvvisamente e colpendo la scrivania con il libro. «Che cosa significa tutto questo! È impossibile sopportarlo. È esasperante. Come potete farmi questo, ragazzi?»
Fu il mio libro che colpì con la mano sulla scrivania; e mentre stavo in piedi accanto a lui, seguendo il suo sguardo mentre si posava in giro per la stanza, vidi che tutti i ragazzi si fermavano, alcuni improvvisamente sorpresi, alcuni mezzo spaventati, e forse alcuni dispiaciuti.
Il posto di Steerforth era in fondo alla scuola, all’estremità opposta della lunga stanza. Era appoggiato alla parete con le mani in tasca, e guardava il signor Mell con la bocca chiusa come se stesse fischiettando, quando il signor Mell lo guardava.
«Silenzio, signor Steerforth!» disse il signor Mell.
‘Zitto’, disse Steerforth, arrossendo. ‘Con chi stai parlando?’
«Sedetevi», disse il signor Mell.
‘Sedetevi,’ disse Steerforth, ‘e occupatevi dei vostri affari.’
There was a titter, and some applause; but Mr. Mell was so white, that silence immediately succeeded; and one boy, who had darted out behind him to imitate his mother again, changed his mind, and pretended to want a pen mended.
‘If you think, Steerforth,’ said Mr. Mell, ‘that I am not acquainted with the power you can establish over any mind here’—he laid his hand, without considering what he did (as I supposed), upon my head—‘or that I have not observed you, within a few minutes, urging your juniors on to every sort of outrage against me, you are mistaken.’
‘I don’t give myself the trouble of thinking at all about you,’ said Steerforth, coolly; ‘so I’m not mistaken, as it happens.’
‘And when you make use of your position of favouritism here, sir,’ pursued Mr. Mell, with his lip trembling very much, ‘to insult a gentleman—’
‘A what?—where is he?’ said Steerforth.
Here somebody cried out, ‘Shame, J. Steerforth! Too bad!’ It was Traddles; whom Mr. Mell instantly discomfited by bidding him hold his tongue. —‘To insult one who is not fortunate in life, sir, and who never gave you the least offence, and the many reasons for not insulting whom you are old enough and wise enough to understand,’ said Mr. Mell, with his lips trembling more and more, ‘you commit a mean and base action. You can sit down or stand up as you please, sir. Copperfield, go on.’
‘Young Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, coming forward up the room, ‘stop a bit. I tell you what, Mr. Mell, once for all. When you take the liberty of calling me mean or base, or anything of that sort, you are an impudent beggar. You are always a beggar, you know; but when you do that, you are an impudent beggar.’
I am not clear whether he was going to strike Mr. Mell, or Mr. Mell was going to strike him, or there was any such intention on either side. I saw a rigidity come upon the whole school as if they had been turned into stone, and found Mr. Creakle in the midst of us, with Tungay at his side, and Mrs. and Miss Creakle looking in at the door as if they were frightened. Mr. Mell, with his elbows on his desk and his face in his hands, sat, for some moments, quite still.
‘Mr. Mell,’ said Mr. Creakle, shaking him by the arm; and his whisper was so audible now, that Tungay felt it unnecessary to repeat his words; ‘you have not forgotten yourself, I hope?’
‘No, sir, no,’ returned the Master, showing his face, and shaking his head, and rubbing his hands in great agitation. ‘No, sir. No. I have remembered myself, I—no, Mr. Creakle, I have not forgotten myself, I—I have remembered myself, sir. I—I—could wish you had remembered me a little sooner, Mr. Creakle. It—it—would have been more kind, sir, more just, sir. It would have saved me something, sir.’
Mr. Creakle, looking hard at Mr. Mell, put his hand on Tungay’s shoulder, and got his feet upon the form close by, and sat upon the desk. After still looking hard at Mr. Mell from his throne, as he shook his head, and rubbed his hands, and remained in the same state of agitation, Mr. Creakle turned to Steerforth, and said:
‘Now, sir, as he don’t condescend to tell me, what is this?’
Steerforth evaded the question for a little while; looking in scorn and anger on his opponent, and remaining silent. I could not help thinking even in that interval, I remember, what a noble fellow he was in appearance, and how homely and plain Mr. Mell looked opposed to him.
‘What did he mean by talking about favourites, then?’ said Steerforth at length.
‘Favourites?’ repeated Mr. Creakle, with the veins in his forehead swelling quickly. ‘Who talked about favourites?’
‘He did,’ said Steerforth.
‘And pray, what did you mean by that, sir?’ demanded Mr. Creakle, turning angrily on his assistant.
‘I meant, Mr. Creakle,’ he returned in a low voice, ‘as I said; that no pupil had a right to avail himself of his position of favouritism to degrade me.’
‘To degrade YOU?’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘My stars! But give me leave to ask you, Mr. What’s-your-name’; and here Mr. Creakle folded his arms, cane and all, upon his chest, and made such a knot of his brows that his little eyes were hardly visible below them; ‘whether, when you talk about favourites, you showed proper respect to me? To me, sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, darting his head at him suddenly, and drawing it back again, ‘the principal of this establishment, and your employer.’
‘It was not judicious, sir, I am willing to admit,’ said Mr. Mell. ‘I should not have done so, if I had been cool.’
Here Steerforth struck in.
‘Then he said I was mean, and then he said I was base, and then I called him a beggar. If I had been cool, perhaps I shouldn’t have called him a beggar. But I did, and I am ready to take the consequences of it.’
Without considering, perhaps, whether there were any consequences to be taken, I felt quite in a glow at this gallant speech. It made an impression on the boys too, for there was a low stir among them, though no one spoke a word.
‘I am surprised, Steerforth—although your candour does you honour,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘does you honour, certainly—I am surprised, Steerforth, I must say, that you should attach such an epithet to any person employed and paid in Salem House, sir.’
Steerforth gave a short laugh.
‘That’s not an answer, sir,’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘to my remark. I expect more than that from you, Steerforth.’
If Mr. Mell looked homely, in my eyes, before the handsome boy, it would be quite impossible to say how homely Mr. Creakle looked. ‘Let him deny it,’ said Steerforth.
‘Deny that he is a beggar, Steerforth?’ cried Mr. Creakle. ‘Why, where does he go a-begging?’
‘If he is not a beggar himself, his near relation’s one,’ said Steerforth. ‘It’s all the same.’
He glanced at me, and Mr. Mell’s hand gently patted me upon the shoulder. I looked up with a flush upon my face and remorse in my heart, but Mr. Mell’s eyes were fixed on Steerforth. He continued to pat me kindly on the shoulder, but he looked at him.
Ci fu una risatina e qualche applauso; ma il signor Mell era così pallido che silenzio subito calò; e un ragazzo, che si era precipitato dietro di lui per imitare di nuovo sua madre, cambiò idea e fece finta di voler riparare una penna.
«Se pensi, Steerforth», disse il signor Mell, «che io non sia a conoscenza del potere che puoi esercitare su qualsiasi mente qui» — appoggiò la mano, senza rendersi conto di ciò che faceva (come supponevo), sulla mia testa — «o che io non ti abbia osservato, in pochi minuti, spingere i tuoi più giovani a ogni sorta di offesa nei miei confronti, ti sbagli.»
«Non mi do la pena di pensare a voi», disse Steerforth, con freddezza; «quindi non mi sbaglio, per caso».
«E quando lei sfrutta la sua posizione di favoritismo qui, signore», proseguì il signor Mell, con il labbro che tremava molto, «per insultare un gentiluomo—»
«Un che? — dove si trova?» disse Steerforth.
A questo punto qualcuno gridò: «Vergogna, J. Steerforth! Che vergogna!». Era Traddles, che il signor Mell mise subito a tacere intimandogli di chiudere il becco. —«Insultare uno che non ha avuto fortuna nella vita, signore, e che non vi ha mai dato il minimo motivo di offesa, e che per molte ragioni non si dovrebbe insultare, ragioni che siete abbastanza vecchio e saggio da comprendere», disse il signor Mell, con le labbra che tremavano sempre più, «è un’azione vile e bassa. Potete sedervi o alzarvi come preferite, signore. Copperfield, continui.»
«Giovane Copperfield», disse Steerforth, avanzando nella stanza, «fermati un momento. Le dico una cosa, signor Mell, una volta per tutte. Quando si permette di chiamarmi meschino o vile, o cose del genere, è un mendicante impudente. È sempre un mendicante, lo sa; ma quando fa questo, è un mendicante impudente».
Non capisco se fosse lui a voler colpire il signor Mell, o se fosse il signor Mell a voler colpire lui, o se ci fosse l’intenzione di farlo da una parte o dall’altra. Vidi una rigidità scendere su tutta la scuola come se fossero stati trasformati in pietra, e trovai il signor Creakle in mezzo a noi, con Tungay al suo fianco, e la signora e la signorina Creakle che guardavano dalla porta come se avessero paura. Il signor Mell, con i gomiti sulla scrivania e il viso tra le mani, rimase seduto, per alcuni momenti, completamente immobile.
«Signor Mell», disse il signor Creakle, scuotendolo per il braccio; e il suo sussurro era così udibile ora, che Tungay non lo riteneva necessario ripetere le sue parole; «non si è dimenticato, spero?»
«No, signore, no», rispose il Maestro, mostrando il suo volto, scuotendo la testa e strofinandosi le mani in grande agitazione. «No, signore. No. Mi sono ricordato, io, no, signor Creakle, non mi sono dimenticato, io, mi sono ricordato, signore. Io, io, avrei desiderato che vi foste ricordato un po’ prima, signor Creakle. Sarebbe stato più gentile, signore, più giusto, signore. Mi avrebbe risparmiato qualcosa, signore.»
Il signor Creakle, guardando fisso il signor Mell, mise la mano sulla spalla di Tungay, si mise i piedi sulla panca vicina e si sedette sulla cattedra. Dopo aver continuato a guardare fisso il signor Mell dal suo trono, mentre scuoteva la testa, si strofinava le mani e rimaneva nello stesso stato di agitazione, il signor Creakle si rivolse a Steerforth e disse:
‘Ora, signore, dato che non si degna di dirmelo, cos’è questo?’
Steerforth eluse la domanda per un po’; guardando con disprezzo e rabbia il suo avversario, e rimanendo in silenzio. Non potevo fare a meno di pensare anche in quell’intervallo, ricordo, che nobile ragazzo fosse nell’aspetto, e quanto banale e ordinario sembrasse il signor Mell in confronto a lui.
«Che cosa intendeva allora parlando di favoriti?» disse Steerforth dopo un po’.
«Favoriti?» ripeté il signor Creakle, con le vene sulla fronte che si gonfiavano rapidamente. «Chi ha parlato di favoriti?»
«Lo ha fatto», disse Steerforth.
«E prego, cosa intendeva con questo, signore?» chiese il signor Creakle, rivolgendosi con rabbia al suo assistente.
«Intendevo, signor Creakle», rispose con voce bassa, «come ho detto; che nessun allievo aveva il diritto di approfittare della sua posizione di favoritismo per degradarmi.»
«Degravare VOI?» disse il signor Creakle. «Miei numi! Ma permettetemi di chiedervi, signor Come-si-chiama»; e qui il signor Creakle si incrociò le braccia, canna e tutto, sul petto, e aggrottò così tanto le sopracciglia che i suoi piccoli occhi erano a malapena visibili al di sotto di esse; «se, quando parlate di favoriti, avete mostrato il dovuto rispetto nei miei confronti? Nei miei confronti, signore», disse il signor Creakle, scattando con la testa verso di lui all’improvviso e ritraendola indietro, «io, il direttore di questo istituto e il vostro datore di lavoro».
«Non fu una cosa saggia, signore, sono disposto ad ammetterlo», disse il signor Mell. «Non l’avrei fatto se fossi stato calmo.»
Qui intervenne Steerforth.
«Poi disse che ero meschino, e poi disse che ero vile, e poi io lo chiamai un mendicante. Se fossi stato calmo, forse non lo avrei chiamato un mendicante. Ma l’ho fatto, e sono pronto ad affrontarne le conseguenze.»
Senza chiedermi, forse, se ci fossero delle conseguenze da considerare, mi sentii tutto in fiamme per questo discorso galante. Fece colpo anche sui ragazzi, perché tra loro ci fu un mormorio sommesso, anche se nessuno disse una parola.
«Sono sorpreso, Steerforth — sebbene la tua schiettezza ti faccia onore,» disse il signor Creakle, «ti fa onore, certamente — sono sorpreso, Steerforth, devo dire, che tu possa attribuire un simile epiteto a chiunque sia impiegato e retribuito a Salem House, signore.»
Steerforth emise una breve risata.
«Questo non è una risposta, signore», disse il signor Creakle, «alla mia osservazione. Mi aspetto di più da te, Steerforth.»
Se il signor Mell appariva dimesso, ai miei occhi, accanto al ragazzo bello, sarebbe stato del tutto impossibile dire quanto dimesso apparisse il signor Creakle. «Che lo neghi pure», disse Steerforth.
«Neghi che sia un mendicante, Steerforth?» esclamò il signor Creakle. «Dove va a mendicare?»
«Se non è un mendicante lui stesso, lo è qualche suo parente stretto», disse Steerforth. «È la stessa cosa.»
Mi guardò, e la mano del signor Mell mi accarezzò dolcemente la spalla. Alzai gli occhi con le guance in fiamme e il cuore pieno di rimorso, ma gli occhi del signor Mell erano fissi su Steerforth. Continuò ad accarezzarmi con gentilezza la spalla, ma guardava lui.
‘Since you expect me, Mr. Creakle, to justify myself,’ said Steerforth, ‘and to say what I mean,—what I have to say is, that his mother lives on charity in an alms-house.’
Mr. Mell still looked at him, and still patted me kindly on the shoulder, and said to himself, in a whisper, if I heard right: ‘Yes, I thought so.’
Mr. Creakle turned to his assistant, with a severe frown and laboured politeness:
‘Now, you hear what this gentleman says, Mr. Mell. Have the goodness, if you please, to set him right before the assembled school.’
‘He is right, sir, without correction,’ returned Mr. Mell, in the midst of a dead silence; ‘what he has said is true.’
‘Be so good then as declare publicly, will you,’ said Mr. Creakle, putting his head on one side, and rolling his eyes round the school, ‘whether it ever came to my knowledge until this moment?’
‘I believe not directly,’ he returned.
‘Why, you know not,’ said Mr. Creakle. ‘Don’t you, man?’
‘I apprehend you never supposed my worldly circumstances to be very good,’ replied the assistant. ‘You know what my position is, and always has been, here.’
‘I apprehend, if you come to that,’ said Mr. Creakle, with his veins swelling again bigger than ever, ‘that you’ve been in a wrong position altogether, and mistook this for a charity school. Mr. Mell, we’ll part, if you please. The sooner the better.’
‘There is no time,’ answered Mr. Mell, rising, ‘like the present.’
‘Sir, to you!’ said Mr. Creakle.
‘I take my leave of you, Mr. Creakle, and all of you,’ said Mr. Mell, glancing round the room, and again patting me gently on the shoulders. ‘James Steerforth, the best wish I can leave you is that you may come to be ashamed of what you have done today. At present I would prefer to see you anything rather than a friend, to me, or to anyone in whom I feel an interest.’
Once more he laid his hand upon my shoulder; and then taking his flute and a few books from his desk, and leaving the key in it for his successor, he went out of the school, with his property under his arm. Mr. Creakle then made a speech, through Tungay, in which he thanked Steerforth for asserting (though perhaps too warmly) the independence and respectability of Salem House; and which he wound up by shaking hands with Steerforth, while we gave three cheers—I did not quite know what for, but I supposed for Steerforth, and so joined in them ardently, though I felt miserable. Mr. Creakle then caned Tommy Traddles for being discovered in tears, instead of cheers, on account of Mr. Mell’s departure; and went back to his sofa, or his bed, or wherever he had come from.
We were left to ourselves now, and looked very blank, I recollect, on one another. For myself, I felt so much self-reproach and contrition for my part in what had happened, that nothing would have enabled me to keep back my tears but the fear that Steerforth, who often looked at me, I saw, might think it unfriendly—or, I should rather say, considering our relative ages, and the feeling with which I regarded him, undutiful—if I showed the emotion which distressed me. He was very angry with Traddles, and said he was glad he had caught it.
Poor Traddles, who had passed the stage of lying with his head upon the desk, and was relieving himself as usual with a burst of skeletons, said he didn’t care. Mr. Mell was ill-used.
‘Who has ill-used him, you girl?’ said Steerforth.
‘Why, you have,’ returned Traddles.
‘What have I done?’ said Steerforth.
‘What have you done?’ retorted Traddles. ‘Hurt his feelings, and lost him his situation.’
‘His feelings?’ repeated Steerforth disdainfully. ‘His feelings will soon get the better of it, I’ll be bound. His feelings are not like yours, Miss Traddles. As to his situation—which was a precious one, wasn’t it?—do you suppose I am not going to write home, and take care that he gets some money? Polly?’
We thought this intention very noble in Steerforth, whose mother was a widow, and rich, and would do almost anything, it was said, that he asked her. We were all extremely glad to see Traddles so put down, and exalted Steerforth to the skies: especially when he told us, as he condescended to do, that what he had done had been done expressly for us, and for our cause; and that he had conferred a great boon upon us by unselfishly doing it. But I must say that when I was going on with a story in the dark that night, Mr. Mell’s old flute seemed more than once to sound mournfully in my ears; and that when at last Steerforth was tired, and I lay down in my bed, I fancied it playing so sorrowfully somewhere, that I was quite wretched.
I soon forgot him in the contemplation of Steerforth, who, in an easy amateur way, and without any book (he seemed to me to know everything by heart), took some of his classes until a new master was found. The new master came from a grammar school; and before he entered on his duties, dined in the parlour one day, to be introduced to Steerforth. Steerforth approved of him highly, and told us he was a Brick. Without exactly understanding what learned distinction was meant by this, I respected him greatly for it, and had no doubt whatever of his superior knowledge: though he never took the pains with me—not that I was anybody—that Mr. Mell had taken.
There was only one other event in this half-year, out of the daily school-life, that made an impression upon me which still survives. It survives for many reasons.
One afternoon, when we were all harassed into a state of dire confusion, and Mr. Creakle was laying about him dreadfully, Tungay came in, and called out in his usual strong way: ‘Visitors for Copperfield!’
A few words were interchanged between him and Mr. Creakle, as, who the visitors were, and what room they were to be shown into; and then I, who had, according to custom, stood up on the announcement being made, and felt quite faint with astonishment, was told to go by the back stairs and get a clean frill on, before I repaired to the dining-room. These orders I obeyed, in such a flutter and hurry of my young spirits as I had never known before; and when I got to the parlour door, and the thought came into my head that it might be my mother—I had only thought of Mr. or Miss Murdstone until then—I drew back my hand from the lock, and stopped to have a sob before I went in.
«Poiché vi aspettate da me, signor Creakle, che mi giustifichi» disse Steerforth, «e che dica ciò che intendo,—quello che ho da dire è che sua madre vive di elemosina in un ospizio.»
Il signor Mell continuava a guardarlo, e continuava a darmi pacche amichevoli sulla spalla, e diceva tra sé, sussurrando, se avevo sentito bene: «Sì, lo pensavo».
Mr. Creakle si rivolse al suo assistente con un cipiglio severo e una fatica di cortesia:
«Ora, ascoltate ciò che dice questo signore, signor Mell. Avete la bontà, per cortesia, di metterlo a posto davanti alla scuola riunita.»
«Ha ragione, signore, senza eccezioni», rispose il signor Mell, nel mezzo di un morto silenzio; «quello che ha detto è vero.»
«Avete la bontà, allora, di dichiarare pubblicamente», disse il signor Creakle, inclinando la testa da un lato e facendo girare gli occhi per la scuola, «se è mai giunto alla mia conoscenza fino a questo momento?»
«Non credo direttamente», rispose.
“Non lo sai”, disse il signor Creakle. “Non lo sai, uomo?”
«Immagino che lei non abbia mai pensato che le mie condizioni materiali fossero molto buone», rispose l’assistente. «Sa qual è la mia posizione qui, e quale è sempre stata.»
«Mi sembra di capire, se è per questo», disse il signor Creakle, con le vene che si gonfiavano di nuovo più che mai, «che lei si è trovato in una posizione sbagliata fin dall’inizio, e ha scambiato questa per una scuola di beneficenza. Signor Mell, ci separeremo, se non le dispiace. Prima è meglio è».
«Non c’è tempo», rispose il signor Mell, alzandosi, «come il presente.»
«Signore, a voi!» disse il signor Creakle.
«Mi congedo da voi, signor Creakle, e da tutti voi», disse il signor Mell, guardandosi intorno nella stanza e di nuovo accarezzandomi dolcemente le spalle. «James Steerforth, il miglior augurio che posso lasciarvi è che possiate vergognarvi di ciò che avete fatto oggi. Al momento preferirei vedervi diverso da un amico, per me, o per chiunque in cui io nutra un interesse».
Ancora una volta egli posò la mano sulla mia spalla; quindi, presa la sua flauto e alcuni libri dalla scrivania, lasciando la chiave per il suo successore, uscì dalla scuola, con i suoi averi sotto il braccio. Il signor Creakle fece allora un discorso, tramite Tungay, nel quale ringraziava Steerforth per aver affermato (sebbene forse con troppo calore) l’indipendenza e la rispettabilità della Casa di Salem; e che concluse stringendo la mano a Steerforth, mentre noi gli facemmo tre evviva — non sapevo bene per cosa, ma supponevo fosse per Steerforth, e così vi partecipai con ardore, benché mi sentissi miserabile. Il signor Creakle frustò allora Tommy Traddles per essere stato scoperto in lacrime, invece che in evviva, a motivo della partenza del signor Mell; e tornò al suo divano, o al suo letto, o da dove era venuto.
Ora eravamo rimasti soli e, ricordo, ci guardavamo con aria molto smarrita. Per quanto mi riguarda, provavo un tale senso di autocommiserazione e di pentimento per la mia parte in quanto era accaduto, che nulla mi avrebbe impedito di trattenere le lacrime se non la paura che Steerforth, che spesso mi guardava, come vidi, potesse pensare che fosse un comportamento poco amichevole — o, per meglio dire, considerando la nostra differenza di età e il sentimento con cui lo consideravo, poco rispettoso — se avessi mostrato l’emozione che mi angosciava. Era molto arrabbiato con Traddles e diceva di essere contento che avesse ricevuto la sua punizione.
Povero Traddles, che aveva superato la fase di dormire con la testa sul banco e si stava come al solito rilassando con un’esplosione di scheletri, disse che non gli importava. Il signor Mell era maltrattato.
«Chi l’ha maltrattato, ragazza?» disse Steerforth.
«Ma sì, ce l’hai», rispose Traddles.
«Che cosa ho fatto?» disse Steerforth.
‘Che cosa hai fatto?’ ribatté Traddles. ‘Hai ferito i suoi sentimenti e gli hai fatto perdere il lavoro.’
«I suoi sentimenti?» ripeté Steerforth con disprezzo. «I suoi sentimenti presto avranno la meglio, ne sono certo. I suoi sentimenti non sono come i suoi, Miss Traddles. Per quanto riguarda la sua situazione—che era davvero preziosa, non è vero?—crede che non stia per scrivere a casa e assicurarmi che riceva dei soldi? Polly?»
Pensavamo che questa intenzione fosse molto nobile in Steerforth, la cui madre era una vedova, ricca, e avrebbe fatto quasi qualsiasi cosa, si diceva, che lui le chiedesse. Eravamo tutti estremamente contenti di vedere Traddles così umiliato, e esaltavamo Steerforth fino alle stelle: specialmente quando ci disse, come si degnò di fare, che ciò che aveva fatto lo aveva fatto espressamente per noi, e per la nostra causa; e che ci aveva conferito un grande beneficio facendolo disinteressatamente. Ma devo dire che mentre proseguivo con una storia al buio quella notte, il vecchio flauto del signor Mell sembrò più di una volta suonare in modo malinconico alle mie orecchie; e che quando finalmente Steerforth si stancò, e mi sdraiai nel mio letto, mi sembrò che suonasse così tristemente da qualche parte, che ero proprio infelice.
Ben presto lo dimenticai, preso com’ero dall’ammirazione per Steerforth, che, in modo disinvolto e da dilettante, e senza alcun libro (mi sembrava che conoscesse tutto a memoria), si occupò di alcune delle sue classi fino a quando non fu trovato un nuovo maestro. Il nuovo maestro proveniva da una scuola superiore; e prima di assumere le sue funzioni, un giorno pranzò nel salotto per essere presentato a Steerforth. Steerforth lo approvò in modo entusiasta e ci disse che era un Brick. Senza capire esattamente quale distinzione accademica fosse intesa con questo, lo rispettavo enormemente per questo, e non avevo alcun dubbio sulla sua superiorità di conoscenza: anche se non si prese mai la briga con me - non che fossi qualcuno - come aveva fatto il signor Mell.
C’era solo un altro evento in questo semestre, al di fuori della vita scolastica quotidiana, che ha lasciato in me un’impressione che sopravvive ancora. Sopravvive per molte ragioni.
Un pomeriggio, quando eravamo tutti travolti in uno stato di terribile confusione, e il signor Creakle stava facendo un gran chiasso, entrò Tungay e gridò nel suo solito modo deciso: «Visite per Copperfield!»
Si scambiarono poche parole tra lui e il signor Creakle, su chi fossero i visitatori e in quale stanza dovessero essere fatti accomodare; e poi io, che, secondo l’usanza, mi ero alzato in piedi all’annuncio e mi sentivo quasi svenire per lo stupore, mi fu detto di andare per le scale di servizio e di mettermi un colletto pulito prima di recarmi nella sala da pranzo. Obbedii a questi ordini con un batticuore e una fretta dei miei giovani spiriti come non avevo mai provato prima; e quando arrivai alla porta del salotto e mi venne in mente che poteva essere mia madre - fino ad allora avevo pensato solo al signor o alla signorina Murdstone - ritrassi la mano dalla serratura e mi fermai a singhiozzare un po’ prima di entrare.
At first I saw nobody; but feeling a pressure against the door, I looked round it, and there, to my amazement, were Mr. Peggotty and Ham, ducking at me with their hats, and squeezing one another against the wall. I could not help laughing; but it was much more in the pleasure of seeing them, than at the appearance they made. We shook hands in a very cordial way; and I laughed and laughed, until I pulled out my pocket-handkerchief and wiped my eyes.
Mr. Peggotty (who never shut his mouth once, I remember, during the visit) showed great concern when he saw me do this, and nudged Ham to say something.
‘Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ said Ham, in his simpering way. ‘Why, how you have growed!’
‘Am I grown?’ I said, drying my eyes. I was not crying at anything in particular that I know of; but somehow it made me cry, to see old friends.
‘Growed, Mas’r Davy bor’? Ain’t he growed!’ said Ham.
‘Ain’t he growed!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
They made me laugh again by laughing at each other, and then we all three laughed until I was in danger of crying again.
‘Do you know how mama is, Mr. Peggotty?’ I said. ‘And how my dear, dear, old Peggotty is?’
‘Oncommon,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘And little Em’ly, and Mrs. Gummidge?’
‘On—common,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
There was a silence. Mr. Peggotty, to relieve it, took two prodigious lobsters, and an enormous crab, and a large canvas bag of shrimps, out of his pockets, and piled them up in Ham’s arms.
‘You see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘knowing as you was partial to a little relish with your wittles when you was along with us, we took the liberty. The old Mawther biled ‘em, she did. Mrs. Gummidge biled ‘em. Yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, slowly, who I thought appeared to stick to the subject on account of having no other subject ready, ‘Mrs. Gummidge, I do assure you, she biled ‘em.’
I expressed my thanks; and Mr. Peggotty, after looking at Ham, who stood smiling sheepishly over the shellfish, without making any attempt to help him, said:
‘We come, you see, the wind and tide making in our favour, in one of our Yarmouth lugs to Gravesen’. My sister she wrote to me the name of this here place, and wrote to me as if ever I chanced to come to Gravesen’, I was to come over and inquire for Mas’r Davy and give her dooty, humbly wishing him well and reporting of the fam’ly as they was oncommon toe-be-sure. Little Em’ly, you see, she’ll write to my sister when I go back, as I see you and as you was similarly oncommon, and so we make it quite a merry-go-rounder.’
I was obliged to consider a little before I understood what Mr. Peggotty meant by this figure, expressive of a complete circle of intelligence. I then thanked him heartily; and said, with a consciousness of reddening, that I supposed little Em’ly was altered too, since we used to pick up shells and pebbles on the beach?
‘She’s getting to be a woman, that’s wot she’s getting to be,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Ask HIM.’ He meant Ham, who beamed with delight and assent over the bag of shrimps.
‘Her pretty face!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his own shining like a light.
‘Her learning!’ said Ham.
‘Her writing!’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Why it’s as black as jet! And so large it is, you might see it anywheres.’
It was perfectly delightful to behold with what enthusiasm Mr. Peggotty became inspired when he thought of his little favourite. He stands before me again, his bluff hairy face irradiating with a joyful love and pride, for which I can find no description. His honest eyes fire up, and sparkle, as if their depths were stirred by something bright. His broad chest heaves with pleasure. His strong loose hands clench themselves, in his earnestness; and he emphasizes what he says with a right arm that shows, in my pigmy view, like a sledge-hammer.
Ham was quite as earnest as he. I dare say they would have said much more about her, if they had not been abashed by the unexpected coming in of Steerforth, who, seeing me in a corner speaking with two strangers, stopped in a song he was singing, and said: ‘I didn’t know you were here, young Copperfield!’ (for it was not the usual visiting room) and crossed by us on his way out.
I am not sure whether it was in the pride of having such a friend as Steerforth, or in the desire to explain to him how I came to have such a friend as Mr. Peggotty, that I called to him as he was going away. But I said, modestly—Good Heaven, how it all comes back to me this long time afterwards—!
‘Don’t go, Steerforth, if you please. These are two Yarmouth boatmen—very kind, good people—who are relations of my nurse, and have come from Gravesend to see me.’
‘Aye, aye?’ said Steerforth, returning. ‘I am glad to see them. How are you both?’
There was an ease in his manner—a gay and light manner it was, but not swaggering—which I still believe to have borne a kind of enchantment with it. I still believe him, in virtue of this carriage, his animal spirits, his delightful voice, his handsome face and figure, and, for aught I know, of some inborn power of attraction besides (which I think a few people possess), to have carried a spell with him to which it was a natural weakness to yield, and which not many persons could withstand. I could not but see how pleased they were with him, and how they seemed to open their hearts to him in a moment.
‘You must let them know at home, if you please, Mr. Peggotty,’ I said, ‘when that letter is sent, that Mr. Steerforth is very kind to me, and that I don’t know what I should ever do here without him.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘You mustn’t tell them anything of the sort.’
‘And if Mr. Steerforth ever comes into Norfolk or Suffolk, Mr. Peggotty,’ I said, ‘while I am there, you may depend upon it I shall bring him to Yarmouth, if he will let me, to see your house. You never saw such a good house, Steerforth. It’s made out of a boat!’
‘Made out of a boat, is it?’ said Steerforth. ‘It’s the right sort of a house for such a thorough-built boatman.’
All’inizio non vidi nessuno; ma sentendo una pressione contro la porta, guardai dietro di essa, e lì, con mia grande sorpresa, c’erano il signor Peggotty e Ham, che si inchinavano a me con i loro cappelli, e si spingevano l’un l’altro contro il muro. Non potei fare a meno di ridere; ma era molto più per il piacere di vederli, che per l’aspetto che avevano. Ci stringemmo la mano in modo molto cordiale; e io risi e risi, finché non tirai fuori il mio fazzoletto e mi asciugai gli occhi.
Il signor Peggotty (che non chiuse mai la bocca, ricordo, durante la visita) mostrò grande preoccupazione quando mi vide fare ciò, e gomitoò Ham per dire qualcosa.
‘Cheer up, Mas’r Davy bor’!’, disse Ham, con il suo modo sdolcinato. ‘Ma guarda come sei cresciuto!’
«Sono cresciuto?» dissi, asciugandomi gli occhi. Non piangevo per qualcosa di particolare, per quanto ne so; ma in qualche modo mi faceva piangere, vedere vecchi amici.
«Cresciuto, signor Davy? Nato? Non è cresciuto!», disse Ham.
«Non è cresciuto!» disse il signor Peggotty.
Mi fecero ridere di nuovo ridendo l’uno dell’altro, e poi tutti e tre ridemmo fino a che io fui in pericolo di piangere di nuovo.
‘Sai come è la mamma, signor Peggotty?’ dissi. ‘E come sta il mio caro, caro vecchio Peggotty?’
«Fuori dal comune», disse il signor Peggotty.
“E la piccola Emily e la signora Gummidge?”
«Su, coraggio», disse il signor Peggotty.
Ci fu un silenzio. Per alleviarlo, il signor Peggotty tirò fuori dalle tasche due enormi astici, un enorme granchio e una grande borsa di tela piena di gamberetti, e li accumulò tra le braccia di Ham.
«Vedete», disse il signor Peggotty, «sapendo che vi piaceva un po’ di condimento con il cibo quando eravate con noi, ci siamo presi la libertà. La vecchia Mawther le ha bollite, sì. La signora Gummidge le ha bollite. Sì», disse il signor Peggotty, lentamente, che mi parve voler insistere sull’argomento per mancanza di altri argomenti, «la signora Gummidge, ve lo assicuro, le ha bollite».
Espressi i miei ringraziamenti; e il signor Peggotty, dopo aver guardato Ham, che stava sorridendo imbarazzato sopra i frutti di mare, senza fare alcun tentativo di aiutarlo, disse:
«Veniamo, vedi, dato che il vento e la marea sono favorevoli, in uno dei nostri battelli di Yarmouth fino a Gravesend». Mia sorella mi ha scritto il nome di questo posto, e mi ha scritto che se mai capitassi a Gravesend, dovevo passare a chiedere del padrone Davy e portarle i saluti, augurandogli umilmente ogni bene e riferendo che la famiglia stava bene in modo straordinario. La piccola Emily, vedi, scriverà a mia sorella quando tornerò, che ti ho visto e che eri ugualmente straordinario, e così facciamo una bella girandola».
Dovetti riflettere un po’ prima di capire cosa intendesse il signor Peggotty con questa figura, espressiva di un cerchio completo di intelligenza. Poi lo ringraziai di cuore; e dissi, con la consapevolezza di arrossire, che supponevo che anche la piccola Em’ly fosse cambiata, da quando raccoglievamo conchiglie e sassolini sulla spiaggia?
«Sta diventando una donna, ecco cosa sta diventando», disse il signor Peggotty. «Chiedete a LUI.» Si riferiva a Ham, che irradiava gioia e assenso sopra il sacchetto di gamberetti.
«Il suo bel viso!» disse il signor Peggotty, con il suo che brillava come una luce.
«La sua erudizione!» disse Ham.
«La sua scrittura!» disse il signor Peggotty. «Perbacco, è nera come l’ebano! E così grande che si potrebbe vedere ovunque.»
Era perfettamente delizioso osservare con quale entusiasmo il signor Peggotty si ispirasse quando pensava alla sua piccola preferita. Mi appare di nuovo davanti, il suo viso rude e peloso irraggia di un gioioso amore e orgoglio, per cui non riesco a trovare una descrizione. I suoi onesti occhi si accendono e scintillano, come se le loro profondità fossero mosse da qualcosa di luminoso. Il suo ampio petto si gonfia di piacere. Le sue forti mani larghe si stringono, nella sua serietà; e sottolinea ciò che dice con un braccio destro che, nella mia vista di pigmeo, sembra un martello da fabbro.
Ham era altrettanto serio quanto lui. Immagino che avrebbero detto molto di più su di lei, se non fossero stati intimiditi dall’improvvisa comparsa di Steerforth, che, vedendomi in un angolo a parlare con due sconosciuti, si fermò in una canzone che stava cantando e disse: ‘Non sapevo che fossi qui, giovane Copperfield!’ (perché non era la solita sala visite) e ci passò accanto uscendo.
Non sono sicuro se fu per l’orgoglio di avere un amico come Steerforth, o per il desiderio di spiegargli come mi fossi trovato un amico come il signor Peggotty, che lo chiamai mentre stava andando via. Ma dissi, modestamente - Buon Dio, come tutto mi ritorna alla mente dopo questo lungo periodo!
«Non andartene, Steerforth, ti prego. Questi sono due barcaioli di Yarmouth, persone molto gentili e buone, che sono parenti della mia balia e sono venuti da Gravesend per vedermi.»
“Sì, sì?” disse Steerforth, tornando. “Sono contento di vederli. Come state entrambi?”
C’era una disinvoltura nel suo modo di fare, un modo allegro e spensierato, ma non spaccone, che credo ancora avesse in sé una specie di incantesimo. Credo ancora che, grazie a questo portamento, al suo spirito vivace, alla sua voce deliziosa, al suo bel viso e figura, e, per quel che ne so, a qualche potere di attrazione innato (che credo poche persone possiedano), portasse con sé un fascino al quale era una debolezza naturale cedere, e che poche persone potevano resistere. Non potevo fare a meno di vedere quanto fossero contenti di lui, e come sembravano aprirgli il cuore in un attimo.
«Dovete far sapere a casa, se non vi dispiace, signor Peggotty», dissi, «quando quella lettera sarà spedita, che il signor Steerforth è molto gentile con me, e che non so cosa farei mai qui senza di lui.»
‘Nonsense!’ disse Steerforth ridendo. ‘Non devi dir loro niente del genere.’
«E se mai il signor Steerforth dovesse venire in Norfolk o Suffolk, signor Peggotty», dissi, «mentre io sono là, potete star certo che lo porterò a Yarmouth, se mi permetterà, a vedere la vostra casa. Non avete mai visto una casa così bella, Steerforth. È fatta con una barca!»
«È fatta con una barca, vero?» disse Steerforth. «È il tipo giusto di casa per un barcaiolo così ben costruito.»
‘So ‘tis, sir, so ‘tis, sir,’ said Ham, grinning. ‘You’re right, young gen’l’m’n! Mas’r Davy bor’, gen’l’m’n’s right. A thorough-built boatman! Hor, hor! That’s what he is, too!’
Mr. Peggotty was no less pleased than his nephew, though his modesty forbade him to claim a personal compliment so vociferously.
‘Well, sir,’ he said, bowing and chuckling, and tucking in the ends of his neckerchief at his breast: ‘I thankee, sir, I thankee! I do my endeavours in my line of life, sir.’
‘The best of men can do no more, Mr. Peggotty,’ said Steerforth. He had got his name already.
‘I’ll pound it, it’s wot you do yourself, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘and wot you do well—right well! I thankee, sir. I’m obleeged to you, sir, for your welcoming manner of me. I’m rough, sir, but I’m ready—least ways, I hope I’m ready, you unnerstand. My house ain’t much for to see, sir, but it’s hearty at your service if ever you should come along with Mas’r Davy to see it. I’m a reg’lar Dodman, I am,’ said Mr. Peggotty, by which he meant snail, and this was in allusion to his being slow to go, for he had attempted to go after every sentence, and had somehow or other come back again; ‘but I wish you both well, and I wish you happy!’
Ham echoed this sentiment, and we parted with them in the heartiest manner. I was almost tempted that evening to tell Steerforth about pretty little Em’ly, but I was too timid of mentioning her name, and too much afraid of his laughing at me. I remember that I thought a good deal, and in an uneasy sort of way, about Mr. Peggotty having said that she was getting on to be a woman; but I decided that was nonsense.
We transported the shellfish, or the ‘relish’ as Mr. Peggotty had modestly called it, up into our room unobserved, and made a great supper that evening. But Traddles couldn’t get happily out of it. He was too unfortunate even to come through a supper like anybody else. He was taken ill in the night—quite prostrate he was—in consequence of Crab; and after being drugged with black draughts and blue pills, to an extent which Demple (whose father was a doctor) said was enough to undermine a horse’s constitution, received a caning and six chapters of Greek Testament for refusing to confess.
The rest of the half-year is a jumble in my recollection of the daily strife and struggle of our lives; of the waning summer and the changing season; of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of bread-and-butter, dog’s-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet-puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink, surrounding all.
I well remember though, how the distant idea of the holidays, after seeming for an immense time to be a stationary speck, began to come towards us, and to grow and grow. How from counting months, we came to weeks, and then to days; and how I then began to be afraid that I should not be sent for and when I learnt from Steerforth that I had been sent for, and was certainly to go home, had dim forebodings that I might break my leg first. How the breaking-up day changed its place fast, at last, from the week after next to next week, this week, the day after tomorrow, tomorrow, today, tonight—when I was inside the Yarmouth mail, and going home.
I had many a broken sleep inside the Yarmouth mail, and many an incoherent dream of all these things. But when I awoke at intervals, the ground outside the window was not the playground of Salem House, and the sound in my ears was not the sound of Mr. Creakle giving it to Traddles, but the sound of the coachman touching up the horses.
«È così, signore, è così, signore», disse Ham, sogghignando. «Avete ragione, giovane gentiluomo! Il piccolo Davy è nato per essere un gentiluomo, e ha il sangue di un vero barcaiolo! Ah, ah! E questo è proprio quello che è!»
Il signor Peggotty non fu meno contento di suo nipote, sebbene la sua modestia gli impedisse di rivendicare un complimento personale con altrettanto clamore.
«Beh, signore», disse, inchinandosi e ridacchiando, e sistemando gli angoli del suo fazzoletto da collo sul petto: «la ringrazio, signore, la ringrazio! Faccio del mio meglio nel mio campo, signore».
«Il meglio che gli uomini possano fare non è più di così, signor Peggotty», disse Steerforth. Aveva già appreso il suo nome.
«La sbatterò, è quello che si fa, signore», disse il signor Peggotty, scuotendo la testa, «e lo si fa bene—proprio bene! La ringrazio, signore. Sono obbligato a lei, signore, per il suo benvenuto. Sono un uomo rude, signore, ma sono pronto—almeno, spero di essere pronto, capisce. La mia casa non è molto da vedere, signore, ma è tutta a sua disposizione se mai dovesse venire con il piccolo Davy a vederla. Sono un regolare Dodman, lo sono», disse il signor Peggotty, per indicare una lumaca, e ciò alludeva al fatto che era lento ad andarsene, perché aveva tentato di andarsene dopo ogni frase, e in qualche modo era tornato indietro; «ma vi auguro entrambi ogni bene, e vi auguro felicità!»
Ham fece eco a questo sentimento, e ci separammo con loro nel modo più cordiale. Quella sera fui quasi tentato di raccontare a Steerforth della graziosa piccola Em’ly, ma ero troppo timido per menzionare il suo nome, e troppo spaventato all’idea che lui si ridesse di me. Ricordo che pensai molto, e in un certo senso con inquietudine, a quanto aveva detto il signor Peggotty sul fatto che lei stava diventando una donna; ma decisi che era una sciocchezza.
Trasportammo i frutti di mare, o il “gusto” come li aveva chiamati modestamente il signor Peggotty, nella nostra stanza senza essere visti, e quella sera facemmo una grande cena. Ma Traddles non riuscì a cavarsela felicemente. Era troppo sfortunato per superare una cena come chiunque altro. Si ammalò durante la notte — era completamente prostrato — a causa del granchio; e dopo essere stato drogato con decotti neri e pillole blu, in una misura che Demple (il cui padre era un medico) disse essere sufficiente a minare la costituzione di un cavallo, ricevette una bastonatura e sei capitoli del Vangelo greco per aver rifiutato di confessare.
Il resto del semestre è un groviglio nella mia memoria della lotta quotidiana della nostra vita; del estate che declina e del cambiamento della stagione; delle mattine gelide in cui venivamo chiamati fuori dal letto, e del freddo, freddo odore delle notti buie quando venivamo chiamati di nuovo a letto; della sala di scuola serale debolmente illuminata e indifferentemente riscaldata, e della sala di scuola mattutina che non era altro che una grande macchina per tremare; dell’alternanza di manzo bollito con manzo arrosto, e di agnello bollito con agnello arrosto; di pezzi di pane e burro, libri di lezioni con gli angoli piegati, lavagne crepate, quaderni di copiatura macchiati di lacrime, punizioni con la bacchetta, con la riga, tagli di capelli, domeniche piovose, budini di suet, e un’atmosfera sporca d’inchiostro che circonda tutto.
Mi ricordo bene, però, come l’idea lontana delle vacanze, dopo aver sembrato per un tempo immenso un puntino fermo, cominciò ad avvicinarsi a noi e a crescere e crescere. Come da contare i mesi, passammo alle settimane, e poi ai giorni; e come allora cominciai a temere che non mi avrebbero chiamato e quando appresi da Steerforth che ero stato chiamato e che sarei certamente andato a casa, ebbi presentimenti confusi che forse mi sarei rotto una gamba prima. Come il giorno della fine delle lezioni cambiò rapidamente posto, alla fine, dalla settimana dopo quella successiva alla settimana successiva, a questa settimana, dopodomani, domani, oggi, stasera — quando ero dentro la corriera per Yarmouth, e stavo andando a casa.
Ho fatto molti sonni spezzati dentro la diligenza di Yarmouth, e molti sogni incoerenti di tutte queste cose. Ma quando mi svegliavo a intervalli, il terreno fuori dal finestrino non era il cortile della scuola di Salem, e il suono che sentivo non era quello del signor Creakle che dava una lezione a Traddles, ma il suono del cocchiere che spronava i cavalli.
CHAPTER 8. MY HOLIDAYS. ESPECIALLY ONE HAPPY AFTERNOON
When we arrived before day at the inn where the mail stopped, which was not the inn where my friend the waiter lived, I was shown up to a nice little bedroom, with DOLPHIN painted on the door. Very cold I was, I know, notwithstanding the hot tea they had given me before a large fire downstairs; and very glad I was to turn into the Dolphin’s bed, pull the Dolphin’s blankets round my head, and go to sleep.
Mr. Barkis the carrier was to call for me in the morning at nine o’clock. I got up at eight, a little giddy from the shortness of my night’s rest, and was ready for him before the appointed time. He received me exactly as if not five minutes had elapsed since we were last together, and I had only been into the hotel to get change for sixpence, or something of that sort.
As soon as I and my box were in the cart, and the carrier seated, the lazy horse walked away with us all at his accustomed pace.
‘You look very well, Mr. Barkis,’ I said, thinking he would like to know it.
Mr. Barkis rubbed his cheek with his cuff, and then looked at his cuff as if he expected to find some of the bloom upon it; but made no other acknowledgement of the compliment.
‘I gave your message, Mr. Barkis,’ I said: ‘I wrote to Peggotty.’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis.
Mr. Barkis seemed gruff, and answered drily.
‘Wasn’t it right, Mr. Barkis?’ I asked, after a little hesitation.
‘Why, no,’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Not the message?’
‘The message was right enough, perhaps,’ said Mr. Barkis; ‘but it come to an end there.’
Not understanding what he meant, I repeated inquisitively: ‘Came to an end, Mr. Barkis?’
‘Nothing come of it,’ he explained, looking at me sideways. ‘No answer.’
‘There was an answer expected, was there, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, opening my eyes. For this was a new light to me.
‘When a man says he’s willin’,’ said Mr. Barkis, turning his glance slowly on me again, ‘it’s as much as to say, that man’s a-waitin’ for a answer.’
‘Well, Mr. Barkis?’
‘Well,’ said Mr. Barkis, carrying his eyes back to his horse’s ears; ‘that man’s been a-waitin’ for a answer ever since.’
‘Have you told her so, Mr. Barkis?’
‘No—no,’ growled Mr. Barkis, reflecting about it. ‘I ain’t got no call to go and tell her so. I never said six words to her myself, I ain’t a-goin’ to tell her so.’
‘Would you like me to do it, Mr. Barkis?’ said I, doubtfully. ‘You might tell her, if you would,’ said Mr. Barkis, with another slow look at me, ‘that Barkis was a-waitin’ for a answer. Says you—what name is it?’
‘Her name?’
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Barkis, with a nod of his head.
‘Peggotty.’
‘Chrisen name? Or nat’ral name?’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Oh, it’s not her Christian name. Her Christian name is Clara.’
‘Is it though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
He seemed to find an immense fund of reflection in this circumstance, and sat pondering and inwardly whistling for some time.
‘Well!’ he resumed at length. ‘Says you, “Peggotty! Barkis is waitin’ for a answer.” Says she, perhaps, “Answer to what?” Says you, “To what I told you.” “What is that?” says she. “Barkis is willin’,” says you.’
This extremely artful suggestion Mr. Barkis accompanied with a nudge of his elbow that gave me quite a stitch in my side. After that, he slouched over his horse in his usual manner; and made no other reference to the subject except, half an hour afterwards, taking a piece of chalk from his pocket, and writing up, inside the tilt of the cart, ‘Clara Peggotty’—apparently as a private memorandum.
Ah, what a strange feeling it was to be going home when it was not home, and to find that every object I looked at, reminded me of the happy old home, which was like a dream I could never dream again! The days when my mother and I and Peggotty were all in all to one another, and there was no one to come between us, rose up before me so sorrowfully on the road, that I am not sure I was glad to be there—not sure but that I would rather have remained away, and forgotten it in Steerforth’s company. But there I was; and soon I was at our house, where the bare old elm-trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air, and shreds of the old rooks’-nests drifted away upon the wind.
The carrier put my box down at the garden-gate, and left me. I walked along the path towards the house, glancing at the windows, and fearing at every step to see Mr. Murdstone or Miss Murdstone lowering out of one of them. No face appeared, however; and being come to the house, and knowing how to open the door, before dark, without knocking, I went in with a quiet, timid step.
God knows how infantine the memory may have been, that was awakened within me by the sound of my mother’s voice in the old parlour, when I set foot in the hall. She was singing in a low tone. I think I must have lain in her arms, and heard her singing so to me when I was but a baby. The strain was new to me, and yet it was so old that it filled my heart brim-full; like a friend come back from a long absence.
I believed, from the solitary and thoughtful way in which my mother murmured her song, that she was alone. And I went softly into the room. She was sitting by the fire, suckling an infant, whose tiny hand she held against her neck. Her eyes were looking down upon its face, and she sat singing to it. I was so far right, that she had no other companion.
I spoke to her, and she started, and cried out. But seeing me, she called me her dear Davy, her own boy! and coming half across the room to meet me, kneeled down upon the ground and kissed me, and laid my head down on her bosom near the little creature that was nestling there, and put its hand to my lips.
I wish I had died. I wish I had died then, with that feeling in my heart! I should have been more fit for Heaven than I ever have been since.
CAPITOLO 8. LE MIE VACANZE. SPECIALMENTE UN POMERIGGIO FELICE
Quando arrivammo prima dell’alba all’osteria dove si fermava la diligenza, che non era l’osteria dove viveva il mio amico cameriere, mi mostrarono una bella cameretta, con un DOLFINO dipinto sulla porta. Ero davvero molto freddo, lo so, nonostante il tè caldo che mi avevano dato davanti a un grande fuoco al piano di sotto; e fui davvero felice di infilarmi nel letto del Delfino, tirare le coperte del Delfino sopra la testa e andare a dormire.
Il trasportatore, il signor Barkis, doveva venire a prendermi la mattina alle nove in punto. Mi alzai alle otto, un po’ stordito per la brevità del mio riposo notturno, e fui pronto per lui prima dell’ora stabilita. Mi accolse esattamente come se non fossero passati cinque minuti da quando eravamo stati insieme l’ultima volta, e fossi stato solo all’hotel per cambiare sei pence, o qualcosa del genere.
Non appena io e la mia scatola fummo sul carro e il vetturino seduto, il cavallo pigro si mise in marcia con noi tutti al suo solito passo.
«Avete un aspetto molto bene, signor Barkis», dissi, pensando che gli sarebbe piaciuto saperlo.
Il signor Barkis si strofinò la guancia con il polsino, e poi guardò il polsino come se si aspettasse di trovare un po’ di quel rossore su di esso; ma non fece altro riconoscimento del complimento.
Ho consegnato il tuo messaggio, signor Barkis, ho scritto a Peggotty
«Ah!» disse il signor Barkis.
Il signor Barkis sembrava burbero e rispondeva in modo secco.
«Non era giusto, signor Barkis?» chiesi, dopo un po’ di esitazione.
«Perché no?», disse il signor Barkis.
‘Non è il messaggio?’
“Il messaggio era corretto, forse,” disse il signor Barkis; “ma finì lì.”
Non capendo cosa intendesse, ripetei con curiosità: “È finita, signor Barkis?”
“Non è successo nulla”, spiegò, guardandomi di traverso. “Nessuna risposta.”
«Si aspettava una risposta, vero, signor Barkis?» dissi, aprendo gli occhi. Perché questa era una nuova luce per me.
«Quando un uomo dice che è disposto», disse il signor Barkis, rivolgendo di nuovo lentamente lo sguardo su di me, «è come dire che quell’uomo sta aspettando una risposta.»
«Bene, signor Barkis?»
«Bene,» disse il signor Barkis, riportando lo sguardo sulle orecchie del suo cavallo; «quell’uomo aspetta una risposta da allora.»
‘Gliel’ha detto, signor Barkis?’
«No, no», borbottò il signor Barkis, riflettendo sulla cosa. «Non ho nessuna ragione di andare a dirglielo. Non le ho mai detto sei parole, non ho intenzione di andare a dirglielo.»
«Volete che lo faccia io, signor Barkis?» proposi, dubbioso. «Potreste dirle, se volete» disse il signor Barkis, con un altro sguardo lento su di me, «che Barkis aspetta una risposta. Ditele voi, com’è il nome?»
‘Il suo nome?’
«Ah!» disse il signor Barkis, con un cenno del capo.
‘Peggotty.’
«Nome di battesimo? O nome vero?» disse il signor Barkis.
“Oh, non è il suo nome di battesimo. Il suo nome di battesimo è Clara.”
«È davvero così?» disse il signor Barkis.
Sembrava trovare un immenso motivo di riflessione in questa circostanza, e rimase seduto a meditare e fischiare tra sé per un po’ di tempo.
«Bene!» riprese dopo un po’. «Lei dice: “Peggotty! Barkis aspetta una risposta.” Lei forse dice: “Risposta a cosa?” Lei dice: “A quello che ti ho detto.” “Cosa è?” dice lei. “Barkis è disposto”, dice lei.»
Questa estremamente abile proposta la accompagnò Mr. Barkis con una gomitata che mi procurò un forte dolore al fianco. Dopo di che, si accasciò sulla sua cavalla nel suo solito modo; e non fece più riferimento all’argomento se non, mezz’ora dopo, prendendo un pezzo di gessetto dalla tasca e scrivendo all’interno del telone del carro “Clara Peggotty” — apparentemente come un promemoria privato.
Ah, che strana sensazione era quella di andare a casa quando non era casa, e di scoprire che ogni oggetto che guardavo mi ricordava la vecchia casa felice, che era come un sogno che non avrei mai più potuto sognare! I giorni in cui mia madre, io e Peggotty eravamo tutto l’uno per l’altro, e non c’era nessuno che potesse mettersi in mezzo, mi apparvero così tristemente sulla strada, che non sono sicuro di essere stato felice di essere lì, non sono sicuro che non avrei preferito rimanere lontano e dimenticarla in compagnia di Steerforth. Ma lì ero; e presto fui nella nostra casa, dove i vecchi alberi di olmo spogli si torcevano le molte mani nell’aria fredda e invernale, e brandelli dei vecchi nidi di cornacchie venivano trascinati via dal vento.
Il corriere mise giù la mia scatola al cancello del giardino e mi lasciò. Camminai lungo il sentiero verso la casa, guardando le finestre e temendo ad ogni passo di vedere il signor Murdstone o la signorina Murdstone affacciarsi da una di esse. Tuttavia, nessun volto apparve; e giunto alla casa, e sapendo come aprire la porta, prima che facesse buio, senza bussare, entrai con un passo tranquillo e timido.
Dio sa quanto infantile fosse la memoria che fu risvegliata dentro di me dal suono della voce di mia madre nel vecchio salotto, quando misi piede nell’atrio. Stava cantando a bassa voce. Penso che io debba essere stato tra le sue braccia, e averla sentita cantare così a me quando ero solo un bambino. La melodia era nuova per me, eppure era così vecchia che riempì il mio cuore fino all’orlo; come un amico tornato da un lungo assente.
Credetti, dal modo solitario e pensieroso in cui mia madre mormorava la sua canzone, che fosse sola. E io entrai dolcemente nella stanza. Era seduta accanto al fuoco, allattando un bambino, la cui piccola mano teneva contro il suo collo. I suoi occhi guardavano giù sul suo viso, e sedeva cantando per lui. Avevo ragione fino a quel punto, che non aveva altri compagni.
Le parlai, e lei trasalì e gridò. Ma vedendomi, mi chiamò il suo caro Davy, il suo bambino! e venendomi incontro a metà stanza, si inginocchiò a terra e mi baciò, e posò la mia testa sul suo seno vicino alla piccola creatura che vi si annidava, e mise la sua manina sulle mie labbra.
Vorrei essere morto. Vorrei essere morto allora, con quel sentimento nel mio cuore! Sarei stato più degno del Cielo di quanto non sia mai stato da allora.
‘He is your brother,’ said my mother, fondling me. ‘Davy, my pretty boy! My poor child!’ Then she kissed me more and more, and clasped me round the neck. This she was doing when Peggotty came running in, and bounced down on the ground beside us, and went mad about us both for a quarter of an hour.
It seemed that I had not been expected so soon, the carrier being much before his usual time. It seemed, too, that Mr. and Miss Murdstone had gone out upon a visit in the neighbourhood, and would not return before night. I had never hoped for this. I had never thought it possible that we three could be together undisturbed, once more; and I felt, for the time, as if the old days were come back.
We dined together by the fireside. Peggotty was in attendance to wait upon us, but my mother wouldn’t let her do it, and made her dine with us. I had my own old plate, with a brown view of a man-of-war in full sail upon it, which Peggotty had hoarded somewhere all the time I had been away, and would not have had broken, she said, for a hundred pounds. I had my own old mug with David on it, and my own old little knife and fork that wouldn’t cut.
While we were at table, I thought it a favourable occasion to tell Peggotty about Mr. Barkis, who, before I had finished what I had to tell her, began to laugh, and throw her apron over her face.
‘Peggotty,’ said my mother. ‘What’s the matter?’
Peggotty only laughed the more, and held her apron tight over her face when my mother tried to pull it away, and sat as if her head were in a bag.
‘What are you doing, you stupid creature?’ said my mother, laughing.
‘Oh, drat the man!’ cried Peggotty. ‘He wants to marry me.’
‘It would be a very good match for you; wouldn’t it?’ said my mother.
‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Peggotty. ‘Don’t ask me. I wouldn’t have him if he was made of gold. Nor I wouldn’t have anybody.’
‘Then, why don’t you tell him so, you ridiculous thing?’ said my mother.
‘Tell him so,’ retorted Peggotty, looking out of her apron. ‘He has never said a word to me about it. He knows better. If he was to make so bold as say a word to me, I should slap his face.’
Her own was as red as ever I saw it, or any other face, I think; but she only covered it again, for a few moments at a time, when she was taken with a violent fit of laughter; and after two or three of those attacks, went on with her dinner.
I remarked that my mother, though she smiled when Peggotty looked at her, became more serious and thoughtful. I had seen at first that she was changed. Her face was very pretty still, but it looked careworn, and too delicate; and her hand was so thin and white that it seemed to me to be almost transparent. But the change to which I now refer was superadded to this: it was in her manner, which became anxious and fluttered. At last she said, putting out her hand, and laying it affectionately on the hand of her old servant,
‘Peggotty, dear, you are not going to be married?’
‘Me, ma’am?’ returned Peggotty, staring. ‘Lord bless you, no!’
‘Not just yet?’ said my mother, tenderly.
‘Never!’ cried Peggotty.
My mother took her hand, and said:
‘Don’t leave me, Peggotty. Stay with me. It will not be for long, perhaps. What should I ever do without you!’
‘Me leave you, my precious!’ cried Peggotty. ‘Not for all the world and his wife. Why, what’s put that in your silly little head?’—For Peggotty had been used of old to talk to my mother sometimes like a child.
But my mother made no answer, except to thank her, and Peggotty went running on in her own fashion.
‘Me leave you? I think I see myself. Peggotty go away from you? I should like to catch her at it! No, no, no,’ said Peggotty, shaking her head, and folding her arms; ‘not she, my dear. It isn’t that there ain’t some Cats that would be well enough pleased if she did, but they sha’n’t be pleased. They shall be aggravated. I’ll stay with you till I am a cross cranky old woman. And when I’m too deaf, and too lame, and too blind, and too mumbly for want of teeth, to be of any use at all, even to be found fault with, than I shall go to my Davy, and ask him to take me in.’
‘And, Peggotty,’ says I, ‘I shall be glad to see you, and I’ll make you as welcome as a queen.’
‘Bless your dear heart!’ cried Peggotty. ‘I know you will!’ And she kissed me beforehand, in grateful acknowledgement of my hospitality. After that, she covered her head up with her apron again and had another laugh about Mr. Barkis. After that, she took the baby out of its little cradle, and nursed it. After that, she cleared the dinner table; after that, came in with another cap on, and her work-box, and the yard-measure, and the bit of wax-candle, all just the same as ever.
We sat round the fire, and talked delightfully. I told them what a hard master Mr. Creakle was, and they pitied me very much. I told them what a fine fellow Steerforth was, and what a patron of mine, and Peggotty said she would walk a score of miles to see him. I took the little baby in my arms when it was awake, and nursed it lovingly. When it was asleep again, I crept close to my mother’s side according to my old custom, broken now a long time, and sat with my arms embracing her waist, and my little red cheek on her shoulder, and once more felt her beautiful hair drooping over me—like an angel’s wing as I used to think, I recollect—and was very happy indeed.
While I sat thus, looking at the fire, and seeing pictures in the red-hot coals, I almost believed that I had never been away; that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were such pictures, and would vanish when the fire got low; and that there was nothing real in all that I remembered, save my mother, Peggotty, and I.
Peggotty darned away at a stocking as long as she could see, and then sat with it drawn on her left hand like a glove, and her needle in her right, ready to take another stitch whenever there was a blaze. I cannot conceive whose stockings they can have been that Peggotty was always darning, or where such an unfailing supply of stockings in want of darning can have come from. From my earliest infancy she seems to have been always employed in that class of needlework, and never by any chance in any other.
«È tuo fratello», disse mia madre, accarezzandomi. «Davy, mio caro ragazzo! Mio povero bambino!» Poi mi baciò sempre più, e mi strinse al collo. Stava facendo questo quando Peggotty entrò correndo, e si lasciò cadere a terra accanto a noi, e impazzì per noi due per un quarto d’ora.
Mi sembrava che non mi aspettassero così presto, dato che il facchino era arrivato molto prima del solito orario. Mi sembrava anche che il signor e la signorina Murdstone fossero usciti per una visita nei dintorni e non sarebbero tornati prima di notte. Non avevo mai sperato in questo. Non avevo mai pensato che fosse possibile che noi tre potessimo essere di nuovo insieme indisturbati; e mi sentivo, per allora, come se i vecchi tempi fossero tornati.
Cenammo insieme accanto al caminetto. Peggotty era presente per servirci, ma mia madre non le permise di farlo e la fece cenare con noi. Avevo il mio vecchio piatto, con una veduta marrone di una nave da guerra in piena navigazione, che Peggotty aveva conservato chissà dove per tutto il tempo in cui ero stato via, e che non avrebbe voluto vedere rotto, diceva, nemmeno per cento sterline. Avevo la mia vecchia tazza con David sopra, e il mio vecchio coltellino e forchettina che non tagliavano.
Mentre eravamo a tavola, pensai che fosse un’occasione propizia per parlare a Peggotty di Mr. Barkis, che, prima che avessi finito di raccontarle tutto, cominciò a ridere e si coprì il viso con il grembiule.
“Peggotty”, disse mia madre, “che succede?”
Peggotty rise ancora di più e si tenne stretto il grembiule sul viso quando mia madre cercò di tirarlo via, e rimase seduta come se la testa fosse in un sacco.
«Che cosa stai facendo, sciocca creatura?» disse mia madre ridendo.
“Oh, maledizione all’uomo!” esclamò Peggotty. “Vuole sposarmi.”
«Sarebbe un ottimo partito per te, non credi?» disse mia madre.
«Oh! Non lo so», disse Peggotty. «Non chiedetemelo. Non lo vorrei neanche se fosse fatto d’oro. E non vorrei nessuno.»
«Allora, perché non glielo dici, sciocchina?» disse mia madre.
«Diglielo tu», ribatté Peggotty, guardandosi intorno. «Non mi ha mai detto una parola al riguardo. Sa come stanno le cose. Se avesse il coraggio di dirmi una sola parola, gli darei uno schiaffo.»
Il suo era rosso come non ne avevo mai visto, o qualsiasi altro viso, credo; ma lei lo copriva di nuovo, per pochi istanti alla volta, quando veniva presa da una violenta crisi di riso; e dopo due o tre di quegli attacchi, continuava con la sua cena.
Osservai che mia madre, sebbene sorridesse quando Peggotty la guardava, diventava più seria e pensierosa. Avevo notato fin dall’inizio che era cambiata. Il suo viso era ancora molto grazioso, ma appariva affaticato e troppo delicato; e la sua mano era così magra e bianca che mi sembrava quasi trasparente. Ma il cambiamento a cui ora mi riferisco si era aggiunto a questo: era nel suo modo di fare, che era diventato ansioso e agitato. Alla fine disse, tendendo la mano e posandola affettuosamente sulla mano della sua vecchia serva,
‘Peggotty, cara, non hai intenzione di sposarti?’
‘Io, signora?’ rispose Peggotty, sbigottita. ‘Signore, no!’
«Non ancora?», disse mia madre, con dolcezza.
«Mai!» esclamò Peggotty.
Mia madre le prese la mano e disse:
«Non lasciarmi, Peggotty. Resta con me. Non sarà per molto tempo, forse. Cosa mai potrei fare senza di te!»
«Io lasciarti, mio tesoro!» esclamò Peggotty. «Non per tutto il mondo e sua moglie. Ma che cosa ti è venuto in quella testolina sciocca?» — perché Peggotty era solita, un tempo, a parlare a mia madre come se fosse una bambina.
Ma mia madre non rispose, se non per ringraziarla, e Peggotty continuò a parlare a ruota libera nel suo stile.
«Lasciarti? Mi sembra di vederla. Peggotty andarsene da te? Mi piacerebbe vederla fare una cosa del genere! No, no, no», disse Peggotty, scuotendo la testa e incrociando le braccia, «non lei, tesoro mio. Non è che non ci siano dei gatti che sarebbero ben contenti se lo facesse, ma non saranno contenti. Saranno esasperati. Resterò con te finché non sarò una croce vecchia e lunatica. E quando sarò troppo sorda, troppo zoppa, troppo cieca e troppo senza denti per essere utile in qualche modo, anche solo per essere criticata, allora andrò dal mio Davy e gli chiederò di prendermi con sé.»
«E, Peggotty», dissi, «sarò felice di rivederti, e ti farò sentire benvenuta come una regina.»
«Benedica il suo caro cuore!» esclamò Peggotty. «So che lo farà!» E mi baciò in anticipo, in riconoscente accettazione della mia ospitalità. Dopo di che, si coprì di nuovo la testa con il grembiule e rise ancora di Mr. Barkis. Dopo di che, prese il bambino dalla sua piccola culla e lo allattò. Dopo di che, sparecchiò la tavola da pranzo; dopo di che, entrò con un altro copricapo, e la sua scatola da lavoro, e il metro da sarto, e il pezzetto di candela di cera, tutti esattamente come sempre.
Ci sedemmo intorno al fuoco, e parlammo deliziosamente. Dissi loro che genere di duro padrone fosse il signor Creakle, e mi compatirono molto. Dissi loro che genere di gaglioffo fosse Steerforth, e che genere di mio patrono, e Peggotty disse che avrebbe camminato una ventina di miglia per vederlo. Presi il piccolo bambino tra le mie braccia quando era sveglio, e lo curai amorevolmente. Quando si addormentò di nuovo, mi avvicinai furtivamente al fianco di mia madre secondo la mia vecchia abitudine, ormai interrotta da un lungo periodo, e mi sedetti con le mie braccia che le cingevano la vita, e la mia piccola guancia rossa sulla sua spalla, e ancora una volta sentii i suoi bei capelli che mi cadevano addosso—come l’ala di un angelo come ero solito pensare, mi ricordo—e fui davvero molto felice.
Mentre sedevo così, guardando il fuoco e vedendo immagini nelle braci ardenti, quasi credevo di non essere mai stato via; che il signor e la signorina Murdstone fossero tali immagini, e sarebbero svanite quando il fuoco si sarebbe abbassato; e che non ci fosse nulla di reale in tutto ciò che ricordavo, salvo mia madre, Peggotty e io.
Peggotty rammendava una calza finché poteva vedere, e poi se ne stava seduta con la calza infilata sulla mano sinistra come un guanto, e l’ago in quella destra, pronta a fare un altro punto ogni volta che c’era luce. Non riesco a immaginare di chi potessero essere tutte quelle calze che Peggotty rammendava, o da dove potesse provenire un approvvigionamento inesauribile di calze bisognose di rammendo. Fin dalla mia più tenera infanzia sembra che fosse sempre occupata in quel tipo di lavoro a ago, e mai, per nessuna ragione, in un altro.
‘I wonder,’ said Peggotty, who was sometimes seized with a fit of wondering on some most unexpected topic, ‘what’s become of Davy’s great-aunt?’ ‘Lor, Peggotty!’ observed my mother, rousing herself from a reverie, ‘what nonsense you talk!’
‘Well, but I really do wonder, ma’am,’ said Peggotty.
‘What can have put such a person in your head?’ inquired my mother. ‘Is there nobody else in the world to come there?’
‘I don’t know how it is,’ said Peggotty, ‘unless it’s on account of being stupid, but my head never can pick and choose its people. They come and they go, and they don’t come and they don’t go, just as they like. I wonder what’s become of her?’
‘How absurd you are, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘One would suppose you wanted a second visit from her.’
‘Lord forbid!’ cried Peggotty.
‘Well then, don’t talk about such uncomfortable things, there’s a good soul,’ said my mother. ‘Miss Betsey is shut up in her cottage by the sea, no doubt, and will remain there. At all events, she is not likely ever to trouble us again.’
‘No!’ mused Peggotty. ‘No, that ain’t likely at all.---I wonder, if she was to die, whether she’d leave Davy anything?’
‘Good gracious me, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘what a nonsensical woman you are! when you know that she took offence at the poor dear boy’s ever being born at all.’
‘I suppose she wouldn’t be inclined to forgive him now,’ hinted Peggotty.
‘Why should she be inclined to forgive him now?’ said my mother, rather sharply.
‘Now that he’s got a brother, I mean,’ said Peggotty.
My mother immediately began to cry, and wondered how Peggotty dared to say such a thing.
‘As if this poor little innocent in its cradle had ever done any harm to you or anybody else, you jealous thing!’ said she. ‘You had much better go and marry Mr. Barkis, the carrier. Why don’t you?’
‘I should make Miss Murdstone happy, if I was to,’ said Peggotty.
‘What a bad disposition you have, Peggotty!’ returned my mother. ‘You are as jealous of Miss Murdstone as it is possible for a ridiculous creature to be. You want to keep the keys yourself, and give out all the things, I suppose? I shouldn’t be surprised if you did. When you know that she only does it out of kindness and the best intentions! You know she does, Peggotty—you know it well.’
Peggotty muttered something to the effect of ‘Bother the best intentions!’ and something else to the effect that there was a little too much of the best intentions going on.
‘I know what you mean, you cross thing,’ said my mother. ‘I understand you, Peggotty, perfectly. You know I do, and I wonder you don’t colour up like fire. But one point at a time. Miss Murdstone is the point now, Peggotty, and you sha’n’t escape from it. Haven’t you heard her say, over and over again, that she thinks I am too thoughtless and too—a—a—’
‘Pretty,’ suggested Peggotty.
‘Well,’ returned my mother, half laughing, ‘and if she is so silly as to say so, can I be blamed for it?’
‘No one says you can,’ said Peggotty.
‘No, I should hope not, indeed!’ returned my mother. ‘Haven’t you heard her say, over and over again, that on this account she wished to spare me a great deal of trouble, which she thinks I am not suited for, and which I really don’t know myself that I AM suited for; and isn’t she up early and late, and going to and fro continually—and doesn’t she do all sorts of things, and grope into all sorts of places, coal-holes and pantries and I don’t know where, that can’t be very agreeable—and do you mean to insinuate that there is not a sort of devotion in that?’
‘I don’t insinuate at all,’ said Peggotty.
‘You do, Peggotty,’ returned my mother. ‘You never do anything else, except your work. You are always insinuating. You revel in it. And when you talk of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions—’
‘I never talked of ‘em,’ said Peggotty.
‘No, Peggotty,’ returned my mother, ‘but you insinuated. That’s what I told you just now. That’s the worst of you. You WILL insinuate. I said, at the moment, that I understood you, and you see I did. When you talk of Mr. Murdstone’s good intentions, and pretend to slight them (for I don’t believe you really do, in your heart, Peggotty), you must be as well convinced as I am how good they are, and how they actuate him in everything. If he seems to have been at all stern with a certain person, Peggotty—you understand, and so I am sure does Davy, that I am not alluding to anybody present—it is solely because he is satisfied that it is for a certain person’s benefit. He naturally loves a certain person, on my account; and acts solely for a certain person’s good. He is better able to judge of it than I am; for I very well know that I am a weak, light, girlish creature, and that he is a firm, grave, serious man. And he takes,’ said my mother, with the tears which were engendered in her affectionate nature, stealing down her face, ‘he takes great pains with me; and I ought to be very thankful to him, and very submissive to him even in my thoughts; and when I am not, Peggotty, I worry and condemn myself, and feel doubtful of my own heart, and don’t know what to do.’
Peggotty sat with her chin on the foot of the stocking, looking silently at the fire.
‘There, Peggotty,’ said my mother, changing her tone, ‘don’t let us fall out with one another, for I couldn’t bear it. You are my true friend, I know, if I have any in the world. When I call you a ridiculous creature, or a vexatious thing, or anything of that sort, Peggotty, I only mean that you are my true friend, and always have been, ever since the night when Mr. Copperfield first brought me home here, and you came out to the gate to meet me.’
Peggotty was not slow to respond, and ratify the treaty of friendship by giving me one of her best hugs. I think I had some glimpses of the real character of this conversation at the time; but I am sure, now, that the good creature originated it, and took her part in it, merely that my mother might comfort herself with the little contradictory summary in which she had indulged. The design was efficacious; for I remember that my mother seemed more at ease during the rest of the evening, and that Peggotty observed her less.
«Mi domando,» disse Peggotty, che a volte era presa da un attacco di curiosità su argomenti del tutto inaspettati, «che fine ha fatto la prozia di Davy?» «Oh, Peggotty!» osservò mia madre, risvegliandosi da una reverie, «che sciocchezze dici!»
«Bene, ma davvero mi domando, signora», disse Peggotty.
«Che cosa può aver messo una persona del genere nella tua testa?» chiese mia madre. «Non c’è nessun altro al mondo che possa venire lì?»
«Non so come sia», disse Peggotty, «a meno che non sia per via dell’essere stupida, ma la mia testa non riesce mai a scegliere le persone. Vengono e se ne vanno, e non vengono e non se ne vanno, proprio come vogliono. Mi domando che fine abbia fatto?»
«Come sei assurda, Peggotty!» replicò mia madre. «Si direbbe che tu voglia una seconda visita da parte sua.»
«Dio ce ne scampi!» esclamò Peggotty.
«Bene, allora, non parliamo di cose così sgradevoli, anima buona», disse mia madre. «Miss Betsey è rinchiusa nel suo cottage sul mare, senza dubbio, e rimarrà lì. In ogni caso, non è probabile che ci disturbi mai più.»
‘No!’ rifletté Peggotty. ‘No, non è affatto probabile.---Mi domando, se morisse, se lascerebbe qualcosa a Davy?’
«Dio mio, Peggotty», rispose mia madre, «che donna senza senso sei! quando sai che si è offesa perché il povero caro ragazzo è venuto al mondo.»
«Suppongo che non sarebbe incline a perdonarlo ora», insinuò Peggotty.
«Perché dovrebbe essere incline a perdonarlo ora?» disse mia madre, piuttosto severamente.
«Ora che ha un fratello, intendo dire», disse Peggotty.
Mia madre si mise subito a piangere e si chiedeva come Peggotty avesse osato dire una cosa del genere.
«Come se questo povero piccolo innocente nella sua culla avesse mai fatto del male a te o a chiunque altro, tu gelosa!» disse lei. «Faresti molto meglio ad andare a sposare il signor Barkis, il facchino. Perché non lo fai?»
«Dovrei rendere felice Miss Murdstone, se lo volessi», disse Peggotty.
«Che brutto carattere hai, Peggotty!» rispose mia madre. «Sei gelosa di Miss Murdstone quanto può esserlo una creatura ridicola. Vuoi tenere tu le chiavi e distribuire tu tutte le cose, immagino? Non sarei sorpresa se lo facessi. Quando sai che lo fa solo per gentilezza e con le migliori intenzioni! Lo sai, Peggotty, lo sai bene.»
Peggotty borbottò qualcosa del tipo «Che vadano al diavolo le migliori intenzioni!» e qualcos’altro del tipo che c’erano troppe di quelle migliori intenzioni in giro.
«So cosa intendi, cosa croce», disse mia madre. «Ti capisco, Peggotty, perfettamente. Lo sai che ti capisco, e mi meraviglio che tu non arrossisca come un fuoco. Ma un punto alla volta. Ora il punto è Miss Murdstone, Peggotty, e non ti lascerò scappare. Non l’hai sentita dire, più e più volte, che pensa che io sia troppo sconsiderata e troppo—a—a—»
«Bella», suggerì Peggotty.
«Beh,» rispose mia madre, ridendo a metà, «e se è così sciocca da dirlo, posso essere biasimata per questo?»
«Nessuno dice che puoi», disse Peggotty.
«No, spero proprio di no!» rispose mia madre. «Non l’hai sentita ripetere più e più volte che per questo motivo desiderava risparmiarmi un sacco di fatica, che lei ritiene io non sia adatta a sostenere, e che in verità non so nemmeno io di essere adatta a sostenere; e non si alza presto e va a letto tardi, e va avanti e indietro continuamente— e non fa di tutto, e non fruga in ogni sorta di posti, nei cantine del carbone e nelle dispensa e non so dove, che non possono essere molto piacevoli—e intendi insinuare che non c’è una sorta di devozione in tutto ciò?»
«Non intendo insinuare affatto», disse Peggotty.
«Lo fate, Peggotty», replicò mia madre. «Non fate mai altro, tranne il vostro lavoro. Siete sempre insinuante. Ve ne deliziate. E quando parlate delle buone intenzioni del signor Murdstone—»
«Non ne ho mai parlato», disse Peggotty.
«No, Peggotty», rispose mia madre, «ma tu hai insinuato. Questo è ciò che ti ho detto poco fa. Questo è il tuo peggior difetto. Tu INSINUERAI. Ho detto, in quel momento, che ti avevo capita, e vedi che è così. Quando parli delle buone intenzioni del signor Murdstone, e fingi di minimizzarle (perché non credo che tu lo faccia davvero, nel tuo cuore, Peggotty), devi essere altrettanto convinta quanto lo sono io di quanto siano buone, e di come lo guidino in tutto. Se sembra essere stato severo con una certa persona, Peggotty - capisci, e sono sicura che anche Davy capisce, che non mi riferisco a nessuno presente - è solo perché è convinto che sia per il bene di quella certa persona. Naturalmente ama una certa persona, per il mio bene; e agisce solo per il bene di quella certa persona. È più capace di giudicare di me; perché so molto bene di essere una creatura debole, leggera, da ragazzina, e che lui è un uomo fermo, serio, grave. E lui si dà», disse mia madre, con le lacrime che le scendevano lungo il viso, generate dalla sua affettuosa natura, «si dà molto da fare per me; e dovrei essere molto grata a lui, e molto sottomessa a lui anche nei miei pensieri; e quando non lo sono, Peggotty, mi preoccupo e mi condanno, e mi sento insicura del mio cuore, e non so cosa fare.»
Peggotty sedeva con il mento sul bordo del calzino, guardando in silenzio il fuoco.
«Ecco, Peggotty», disse mia madre, cambiando tono, «non litighiamo, perché non potrei sopportarlo. Sei la mia vera amica, lo so, se ne ho qualcuna al mondo. Quando ti chiamo creatura ridicola, o cosa irritante, o qualsiasi altra cosa del genere, Peggotty, voglio solo dire che sei la mia vera amica, e lo sei sempre stata, fin dalla notte in cui il signor Copperfield mi portò per la prima volta a casa qui, e tu uscisti al cancello per venirmi incontro.»
Peggotty non si fece attendere a rispondere e a ratificare il trattato di amicizia con uno dei suoi migliori abbracci. Penso che già all’epoca avessi qualche intuizione sulla vera natura di quella conversazione; ma ora ne sono certo: la buona donna l’aveva iniziata e vi aveva preso parte solo perché mia madre potesse consolarsi con il piccolo riassunto contraddittorio in cui si era abbandonata. Il piano funzionò; ricordo che mia madre sembrò più serena per il resto della serata e che Peggotty la osservò meno.
When we had had our tea, and the ashes were thrown up, and the candles snuffed, I read Peggotty a chapter out of the Crocodile Book, in remembrance of old times—she took it out of her pocket: I don’t know whether she had kept it there ever since—and then we talked about Salem House, which brought me round again to Steerforth, who was my great subject. We were very happy; and that evening, as the last of its race, and destined evermore to close that volume of my life, will never pass out of my memory.
It was almost ten o’clock before we heard the sound of wheels. We all got up then; and my mother said hurriedly that, as it was so late, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone approved of early hours for young people, perhaps I had better go to bed. I kissed her, and went upstairs with my candle directly, before they came in. It appeared to my childish fancy, as I ascended to the bedroom where I had been imprisoned, that they brought a cold blast of air into the house which blew away the old familiar feeling like a feather.
I felt uncomfortable about going down to breakfast in the morning, as I had never set eyes on Mr. Murdstone since the day when I committed my memorable offence. However, as it must be done, I went down, after two or three false starts half-way, and as many runs back on tiptoe to my own room, and presented myself in the parlour.
He was standing before the fire with his back to it, while Miss Murdstone made the tea. He looked at me steadily as I entered, but made no sign of recognition whatever. I went up to him, after a moment of confusion, and said: ‘I beg your pardon, sir. I am very sorry for what I did, and I hope you will forgive me.’
‘I am glad to hear you are sorry, David,’ he replied.
The hand he gave me was the hand I had bitten. I could not restrain my eye from resting for an instant on a red spot upon it; but it was not so red as I turned, when I met that sinister expression in his face.
‘How do you do, ma’am?’ I said to Miss Murdstone.
‘Ah, dear me!’ sighed Miss Murdstone, giving me the tea-caddy scoop instead of her fingers. ‘How long are the holidays?’
‘A month, ma’am.’
‘Counting from when?’
‘From today, ma’am.’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Then here’s one day off.’
She kept a calendar of the holidays in this way, and every morning checked a day off in exactly the same manner. She did it gloomily until she came to ten, but when she got into two figures she became more hopeful, and, as the time advanced, even jocular.
It was on this very first day that I had the misfortune to throw her, though she was not subject to such weakness in general, into a state of violent consternation. I came into the room where she and my mother were sitting; and the baby (who was only a few weeks old) being on my mother’s lap, I took it very carefully in my arms. Suddenly Miss Murdstone gave such a scream that I all but dropped it.
‘My dear Jane!’ cried my mother.
‘Good heavens, Clara, do you see?’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone.
‘See what, my dear Jane?’ said my mother; ‘where?’
‘He’s got it!’ cried Miss Murdstone. ‘The boy has got the baby!’
She was limp with horror; but stiffened herself to make a dart at me, and take it out of my arms. Then, she turned faint; and was so very ill that they were obliged to give her cherry brandy. I was solemnly interdicted by her, on her recovery, from touching my brother any more on any pretence whatever; and my poor mother, who, I could see, wished otherwise, meekly confirmed the interdict, by saying: ‘No doubt you are right, my dear Jane.’
On another occasion, when we three were together, this same dear baby—it was truly dear to me, for our mother’s sake—was the innocent occasion of Miss Murdstone’s going into a passion. My mother, who had been looking at its eyes as it lay upon her lap, said:
‘Davy! come here!’ and looked at mine.
I saw Miss Murdstone lay her beads down.
‘I declare,’ said my mother, gently, ‘they are exactly alike. I suppose they are mine. I think they are the colour of mine. But they are wonderfully alike.’
‘What are you talking about, Clara?’ said Miss Murdstone.
‘My dear Jane,’ faltered my mother, a little abashed by the harsh tone of this inquiry, ‘I find that the baby’s eyes and Davy’s are exactly alike.’
‘Clara!’ said Miss Murdstone, rising angrily, ‘you are a positive fool sometimes.’
‘My dear Jane,’ remonstrated my mother.
‘A positive fool,’ said Miss Murdstone. ‘Who else could compare my brother’s baby with your boy? They are not at all alike. They are exactly unlike. They are utterly dissimilar in all respects. I hope they will ever remain so. I will not sit here, and hear such comparisons made.’ With that she stalked out, and made the door bang after her.
In short, I was not a favourite with Miss Murdstone. In short, I was not a favourite there with anybody, not even with myself; for those who did like me could not show it, and those who did not, showed it so plainly that I had a sensitive consciousness of always appearing constrained, boorish, and dull.
I felt that I made them as uncomfortable as they made me. If I came into the room where they were, and they were talking together and my mother seemed cheerful, an anxious cloud would steal over her face from the moment of my entrance. If Mr. Murdstone were in his best humour, I checked him. If Miss Murdstone were in her worst, I intensified it. I had perception enough to know that my mother was the victim always; that she was afraid to speak to me or to be kind to me, lest she should give them some offence by her manner of doing so, and receive a lecture afterwards; that she was not only ceaselessly afraid of her own offending, but of my offending, and uneasily watched their looks if I only moved. Therefore I resolved to keep myself as much out of their way as I could; and many a wintry hour did I hear the church clock strike, when I was sitting in my cheerless bedroom, wrapped in my little great-coat, poring over a book.
Quando avemmo preso il tè, e le ceneri furono spolverate, e le candele spente, lessi a Peggotty un capitolo del Libro dei Coccodrilli, in ricordo dei vecchi tempi — lo tirò fuori di tasca: non so se lo aveva tenuto lì fin da allora — e poi parlammo di Salem House, il che mi riportò di nuovo a Steerforth, che era il mio grande argomento. Eravamo molto felici; e quella sera, come l’ultima della sua serie, e destinata a chiudere per sempre quel capitolo della mia vita, non passerà mai dalla mia memoria.
Erano quasi le dieci quando sentimmo il rumore delle ruote. Allora ci alzammo tutti; e mia madre disse in fretta che, dato che era così tardi, e che il signor e la signorina Murdstone approvavano le ore di sonno anticipate per i giovani, forse era meglio che io andassi a letto. La baciai e salii subito in camera mia con la mia candela, prima che entrassero. Mi parve, nella mia fantasia infantile, mentre salivo nella camera dove ero stato rinchiuso, che portassero nella casa una folata d’aria fredda che spazzava via il vecchio sentimento familiare come una piuma.
Mi sentivo a disagio all’idea di scendere a colazione la mattina, dato che non avevo mai rivisto Mr. Murdstone da quel giorno in cui avevo commesso il mio memorabile misfatto. Tuttavia, dato che era inevitabile, scesi, dopo due o tre tentativi abortiti a metà strada e altrettanti ritorni in punta di piedi nella mia stanza, e mi presentai nel salotto.
Era in piedi davanti al fuoco con le spalle rivolte verso di esso, mentre la signorina Murdstone preparava il tè. Mi guardò con fermezza mentre entravo, ma non fece alcun cenno di riconoscimento. Mi avvicinai a lui, dopo un momento di confusione, e dissi: «Chiedo scusa, signore. Mi dispiace molto per quello che ho fatto, e spero che vorrete perdonarmi».
«Sono contento di sentire che ti dispiace, David», rispose.
La mano che mi porgeva era quella che avevo morso. Non potei impedire ai miei occhi di soffermarsi per un istante su una macchia rossa che vi era rimasta; ma non era così rossa come divenni io, quando incontrai quella sinistra espressione sul suo volto.
«Come state, signorina?» dissi alla signorina Murdstone.
«Ah, caro me!» sospirò la signorina Murdstone, porgendomi il cucchiaio del barattolo del tè invece delle dita. «Quanto dureranno le vacanze?»
‘Un mese, signora.’
‘Contare da quando?’
‘Da oggi, signora.’
“Oh!” disse Miss Murdstone. “Allora oggi è un giorno libero.”
Teneva un calendario delle vacanze in questo modo, e ogni mattina cancellava un giorno esattamente nello stesso modo. Lo faceva con aria cupa fino a quando non arrivava a dieci, ma quando raggiungeva le due cifre diventava più speranzosa, e, man mano che il tempo passava, addirittura scherzosa.
Fu proprio in quel primo giorno che ebbi la sfortuna di gettarla, sebbene in generale non fosse soggetta a tali debolezze, in uno stato di violenta costernazione. Entrai nella stanza dove lei e mia madre erano sedute; e dato che il bambino (che aveva solo poche settimane) era in grembo a mia madre, lo presi molto cautamente tra le mie braccia. Improvvisamente la signorina Murdstone lanciò un tale urlo che stavo per lasciarlo cadere.
«Mia cara Jane!» esclamò mia madre.
«Buon Dio, Clara, lo vedi?» esclamò Miss Murdstone.
“Vedi cosa, mia cara Jane?” disse mia madre; “dove?”
“Ce l’ha!” gridò la signorina Murdstone. “Il ragazzo ha preso il bambino!”
Era inerte per l’orrore, ma si raddrizzò per lanciarsi contro di me e strapparmelo dalle braccia. Poi svenne e fu così male che furono costretti a darle del brandy di ciliegie. Al suo risveglio, mi proibì solennemente di toccare mio fratello ancora, per qualsiasi motivo; e mia povera madre, che vedevo desiderare il contrario, confermò mansueta il divieto, dicendo: «Non c’è dubbio che tu abbia ragione, mia cara Jane».
In un’altra occasione, quando eravamo tutti e tre insieme, questo stesso caro bambino - era veramente caro a me, per amore di nostra madre - fu la causa innocente di una crisi di rabbia di Miss Murdstone. Mia madre, che lo aveva guardato negli occhi mentre era disteso sulle sue ginocchia, disse:
«Davy! vieni qui!» e guardò il mio.
Vidi la signorina Murdstone deporre le sue preghiere.
«Dichiaro», disse mia madre dolcemente, «che sono esattamente uguali. Suppongo che siano miei. Penso che abbiano il colore dei miei. Ma sono meravigliosamente uguali.»
«Di che cosa stai parlando, Clara?» disse la signorina Murdstone.
«Mia cara Jane», balbettò mia madre, un po’ imbarazzata dal tono aspro di questa domanda, «ho scoperto che gli occhi del bambino e quelli di Davy sono esattamente uguali».
«Clara!», disse la signorina Murdstone, alzandosi con rabbia, «a volte sei una vera e propria sciocca.»
«Mia cara Jane», obiettò mia madre.
«Un vero sciocco», disse Miss Murdstone. «Chi altro potrebbe paragonare il bambino di mio fratello con il vostro ragazzo? Non sono affatto simili. Sono esattamente diversi. Sono completamente dissimili in tutti gli aspetti. Spero che rimangano sempre così. Non starò qui a sentire fare questi paragoni.» Detto ciò, uscì a grandi passi e sbatté la porta dietro di sé.
Insomma, non ero il beniamino della signorina Murdstone. Insomma, non ero il beniamino di nessuno, nemmeno di me stesso; perché coloro che mi volevano bene non potevano dimostrarlo, e coloro che non me ne volevano lo dimostravano così apertamente che avevo la sensazione di apparire sempre impacciato, goffo e noioso.
Sentivo di renderli altrettanto a disagio quanto loro rendevano me. Se entravo nella stanza dove si trovavano, e stavano parlando insieme e mia madre sembrava allegra, un’ansiosa nuvola le si insinuava sul volto dal momento in cui entravo. Se il signor Murdstone era nel suo migliore umore, lo inibivo. Se la signorina Murdstone era nel suo peggio, lo intensificavo. Avevo abbastanza percezione per sapere che mia madre era sempre la vittima; che aveva paura di parlarmi o di essere gentile con me, per timore di offenderli con il suo modo di farlo, e di ricevere una ramanzina dopo; che non aveva solo paura di offendere continuamente, ma anche di offendere me, e osservava con disagio i loro sguardi se solo mi muovevo. Pertanto decisi di tenermi il più possibile alla larga da loro quanto potevo; e molte ore invernali sentii suonare le campane della chiesa, quando ero seduto nella mia triste cameretta, avvolto nel mio piccolo soprabito, assorto nella lettura di un libro.
In the evening, sometimes, I went and sat with Peggotty in the kitchen. There I was comfortable, and not afraid of being myself. But neither of these resources was approved of in the parlour. The tormenting humour which was dominant there stopped them both. I was still held to be necessary to my poor mother’s training, and, as one of her trials, could not be suffered to absent myself.
‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, one day after dinner when I was going to leave the room as usual; ‘I am sorry to observe that you are of a sullen disposition.’
‘As sulky as a bear!’ said Miss Murdstone.
I stood still, and hung my head.
‘Now, David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘a sullen obdurate disposition is, of all tempers, the worst.’
‘And the boy’s is, of all such dispositions that ever I have seen,’ remarked his sister, ‘the most confirmed and stubborn. I think, my dear Clara, even you must observe it?’
‘I beg your pardon, my dear Jane,’ said my mother, ‘but are you quite sure—I am certain you’ll excuse me, my dear Jane—that you understand Davy?’
‘I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,’ returned Miss Murdstone, ‘if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don’t profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense.’
‘No doubt, my dear Jane,’ returned my mother, ‘your understanding is very vigorous—’
‘Oh dear, no! Pray don’t say that, Clara,’ interposed Miss Murdstone, angrily.
‘But I am sure it is,’ resumed my mother; ‘and everybody knows it is. I profit so much by it myself, in many ways—at least I ought to—that no one can be more convinced of it than myself; and therefore I speak with great diffidence, my dear Jane, I assure you.’
‘We’ll say I don’t understand the boy, Clara,’ returned Miss Murdstone, arranging the little fetters on her wrists. ‘We’ll agree, if you please, that I don’t understand him at all. He is much too deep for me. But perhaps my brother’s penetration may enable him to have some insight into his character. And I believe my brother was speaking on the subject when we—not very decently—interrupted him.’
‘I think, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone, in a low grave voice, ‘that there may be better and more dispassionate judges of such a question than you.’
‘Edward,’ replied my mother, timidly, ‘you are a far better judge of all questions than I pretend to be. Both you and Jane are. I only said—’
‘You only said something weak and inconsiderate,’ he replied. ‘Try not to do it again, my dear Clara, and keep a watch upon yourself.’
My mother’s lips moved, as if she answered ‘Yes, my dear Edward,’ but she said nothing aloud.
‘I was sorry, David, I remarked,’ said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head and his eyes stiffly towards me, ‘to observe that you are of a sullen disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop itself beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. You must endeavour, sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ I faltered. ‘I have never meant to be sullen since I came back.’
‘Don’t take refuge in a lie, sir!’ he returned so fiercely, that I saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose between us. ‘You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your own room. You have kept your own room when you ought to have been here. You know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there. Further, that I require you to bring obedience here. You know me, David. I will have it done.’
Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.
‘I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing towards myself,’ he continued, ‘and towards Jane Murdstone, and towards your mother. I will not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a child. Sit down.’
He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.
‘One thing more,’ he said. ‘I observe that you have an attachment to low and common company. You are not to associate with servants. The kitchen will not improve you, in the many respects in which you need improvement. Of the woman who abets you, I say nothing—since you, Clara,’ addressing my mother in a lower voice, ‘from old associations and long-established fancies, have a weakness respecting her which is not yet overcome.’
‘A most unaccountable delusion it is!’ cried Miss Murdstone.
‘I only say,’ he resumed, addressing me, ‘that I disapprove of your preferring such company as Mistress Peggotty, and that it is to be abandoned. Now, David, you understand me, and you know what will be the consequence if you fail to obey me to the letter.’
I knew well—better perhaps than he thought, as far as my poor mother was concerned—and I obeyed him to the letter. I retreated to my own room no more; I took refuge with Peggotty no more; but sat wearily in the parlour day after day, looking forward to night, and bedtime.
What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same attitude hours upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg lest Miss Murdstone should complain (as she did on the least pretence) of my restlessness, and afraid to move an eye lest she should light on some look of dislike or scrutiny that would find new cause for complaint in mine! What intolerable dulness to sit listening to the ticking of the clock; and watching Miss Murdstone’s little shiny steel beads as she strung them; and wondering whether she would ever be married, and if so, to what sort of unhappy man; and counting the divisions in the moulding of the chimney-piece; and wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among the curls and corkscrews in the paper on the wall!
What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter weather, carrying that parlour, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone in it, everywhere: a monstrous load that I was obliged to bear, a daymare that there was no possibility of breaking in, a weight that brooded on my wits, and blunted them!
What meals I had in silence and embarrassment, always feeling that there were a knife and fork too many, and that mine; an appetite too many, and that mine; a plate and chair too many, and those mine; a somebody too many, and that I!
What evenings, when the candles came, and I was expected to employ myself, but, not daring to read an entertaining book, pored over some hard-headed, harder-hearted treatise on arithmetic; when the tables of weights and measures set themselves to tunes, as ‘Rule Britannia’, or ‘Away with Melancholy’; when they wouldn’t stand still to be learnt, but would go threading my grandmother’s needle through my unfortunate head, in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into, in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps with; what answers I never got, to little observations that I rarely made; what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and yet was in everybody’s way; what a heavy relief it was to hear Miss Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, and order me to bed!
Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss Murdstone said: ‘Here’s the last day off!’ and gave me the closing cup of tea of the vacation.
I was not sorry to go. I had lapsed into a stupid state; but I was recovering a little and looking forward to Steerforth, albeit Mr. Creakle loomed behind him. Again Mr. Barkis appeared at the gate, and again Miss Murdstone in her warning voice, said: ‘Clara!’ when my mother bent over me, to bid me farewell.
I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not sorry to go away, for the gulf between us was there, and the parting was there, every day. And it is not so much the embrace she gave me, that lives in my mind, though it was as fervent as could be, as what followed the embrace.
I was in the carrier’s cart when I heard her calling to me. I looked out, and she stood at the garden-gate alone, holding her baby up in her arms for me to see. It was cold still weather; and not a hair of her head, nor a fold of her dress, was stirred, as she looked intently at me, holding up her child.
So I lost her. So I saw her afterwards, in my sleep at school—a silent presence near my bed—looking at me with the same intent face—holding up her baby in her arms.
La sera, a volte, andavo a sedermi con Peggotty in cucina. Lì mi sentivo a mio agio e non avevo paura di essere me stesso. Ma nessuna di queste risorse era gradita nel salotto. Il tormentante umore che dominava lì le impediva entrambe. Ero ancora considerato necessario per l’educazione di mia povera madre, e, come una delle sue prove, non potevo permettermi di assentarmi.
«David», disse il signor Murdstone, un giorno dopo pranzo, mentre stavo per uscire dalla stanza come al solito, «mi dispiace notare che sei di un umore cupo.»
«Altrettanto scontroso di un orso!» disse la signorina Murdstone.
Mi fermai e abbassai la testa.
«Ora, David», disse il signor Murdstone, «un carattere ostinato e malinconico è, di tutti i temperamenti, il peggiore.»
«E il ragazzo è, di tutti i caratteri che io abbia mai visto,» osservò sua sorella «il più irremovibile e testardo. Penso, mia cara Clara, che anche tu debba averlo notato?»
«Vi prego di scusarmi, mia cara Jane», disse mia madre, «ma siete proprio sicura - sono certa che mi perdonerete, mia cara Jane - di aver capito Davy?»
«Mi vergognerei un po’ di me stessa, Clara», rispose la signorina Murdstone, «se non potessi capire il ragazzo, o qualsiasi ragazzo. Non pretendo di essere profonda; ma rivendico di avere il buon senso.»
«Nessun dubbio, mia cara Jane», rispose mia madre, «la tua comprensione è molto vigorosa —»
«Oh, no, per favore! Non dica questo, Clara», intervenne la signorina Murdstone, con rabbia.
«Ma ne sono sicura», riprese mia madre, «e tutti lo sanno. Io stessa ne traggo grande giovamento in molti modi - almeno dovrei - e quindi nessuno può esserne più convinto di me; e per questo motivo parlo con grande esitazione, mia cara Jane, ve lo assicuro.»
«Diremo che non capisco il ragazzo, Clara», rispose Miss Murdstone, aggiustandosi le piccole catenelle ai polsi. «Se vuoi, diremo che non lo capisco affatto. È troppo profondo per me. Ma forse la perspicacia di mio fratello gli permetterà di avere qualche intuizione sul suo carattere. E credo che mio fratello stesse parlando di questo argomento quando noi, non molto decorosamente, lo abbiamo interrotto.»
«Penso, Clara», disse il signor Murdstone con una voce bassa e grave, «che ci possano essere giudici migliori e più impassibili di una questione del genere di lei».
«Edward», rispose mia madre, timidamente, «tu sei un giudice molto migliore di me in tutte le questioni. Lo sei tu e lo è Jane. Io ho solo detto, »
«Hai solo detto qualcosa di debole e sconsiderato», rispose. «Cerca di non farlo più, mia cara Clara, e tieni d’occhio te stessa.»
Le labbra di mia madre si mossero, come se rispondesse «Sì, mio caro Edward», ma non disse nulla ad alta voce.
«Mi dispiaceva, David, ho notato», disse il signor Murdstone, girando la testa e gli occhi rigidamente verso di me, «di osservare che sei di un umore cupo. Questo non è un carattere che posso tollerare che si sviluppi sotto i miei occhi senza un tentativo di miglioramento. Dovete sforzarvi, signore, di cambiarlo. Dovremo sforzarci di cambiarlo per voi.»
“Mi scusi, signore,” balbettai. “Non ho mai voluto essere scontroso da quando sono tornato.”
«Non rifugiatevi in una bugia, signore!» replicò così furiosamente che vidi mia madre tendere involontariamente la mano tremante come per mettersi tra noi. «Vi siete ritirato nella vostra stanza per il vostro malumore. Siete rimasto nella vostra stanza quando avreste dovuto essere qui. Sapete, una volta per tutte, che vi esigo di essere qui, e non là. Inoltre, che vi esigo di portare qui l’obbedienza. Mi conoscete, David. Voglio che sia fatto.»
La signorina Murdstone emise una risatina rauca.
«Avrò un comportamento rispettoso, pronto e attento nei confronti di me stesso», continuò, «e nei confronti di Jane Murdstone, e nei confronti di vostra madre. Non permetterò che questa stanza venga evitata come se fosse infetta, per il capriccio di un bambino. Sedetevi.»
Mi comandava come un cane, e io obbedivo come un cane.
«Un’altra cosa», disse. «Ho notato che hai una predilezione per compagnie di bassa estrazione e volgari. Non devi frequentare i domestici. La cucina non ti migliorerà, in tutti i sensi in cui hai bisogno di migliorare. Non dico nulla della donna che ti aiuta — poiché tu, Clara», rivolgendosi a mia madre con voce più bassa, «per vecchie frequentazioni e fantasie consolidate, hai una debolezza nei suoi confronti che non è ancora superata.»
«È una delusione davvero inspiegabile!» esclamò la signorina Murdstone.
«Io dico soltanto», riprese, rivolgendosi a me, «che disapprovo la tua preferenza per compagnie come quella della signorina Peggotty, e che devono essere abbandonate. Ora, David, mi hai capito, e sai quali saranno le conseguenze se non mi ubbidirai alla lettera».
Lo sapevo bene — forse meglio di quanto lui pensasse, per quanto riguardava la mia povera madre — e gli obbedivo alla lettera. Non mi ritiravo più nella mia stanza; non cercavo più rifugio da Peggotty; ma sedevo stancamente nel salotto giorno dopo giorno, aspettando con ansia la notte e l’ora di andare a letto.
Quale fastidiosa costrizione subivo, seduto nella stessa posizione per ore e ore, con paura di muovere un braccio o una gamba per timore che Miss Murdstone si lamentasse (come faceva al minimo pretesto) della mia irrequietezza, e con paura di muovere un occhio per timore che lei cogliesse qualche sguardo di disapprovazione o di esame che avrebbe trovato nuova ragione per lamentarsi! Quale insopportabile noia stare seduti ad ascoltare il ticchettio dell’orologio; e guardare le piccole perline di acciaio lucido di Miss Murdstone mentre le infilava; e chiedersi se si sarebbe mai sposata, e in caso affermativo, con che sorta di uomo infelice; e contare le divisioni nel modellino del caminetto; e vagare con gli occhi, verso il soffitto, tra i riccioli e le spirali del foglio da parati!
Che passeggiate facevo da solo, per i sentieri fangosi, nel brutto tempo invernale, portando ovunque quel salotto, e il signor e la signorina Murdstone al suo interno: un carico mostruoso che ero costretto a sopportare, un incubo diurno che non c’era nessuna possibilità di alleviare, un peso che gravava sulla mia mente e la ottenebrava!
Che pasti ho consumato in silenzio e imbarazzo, sentendo sempre che c’erano un coltello e una forchetta in più, e che erano i miei; un appetito in più, e che era il mio; un piatto e una sedia in più, e che erano i miei; un qualcuno in più, e che ero io!
Che sere, quando venivano accese le candele e mi si aspettava che mi dedicassi a qualcosa, ma, non osando leggere un libro divertente, mi immergevo in qualche trattato di aritmetica dal capo duro e dal cuore ancora più duro; quando le tabelle di pesi e misure si trasformavano in melodie, come ‘Rule Britannia’ o ‘Away with Melanconia’; quando non si fermavano per essere imparate, ma si mettevano a infilare l’ago di mia nonna nella mia sfortunata testa, entrando da un orecchio e uscendo dall’altro! In quali sbadigli e sonnolenze cadevo, nonostante tutta la mia attenzione; con quali sussulti mi risvegliavo da sonni nascosti; con quali risposte non ricevute a piccole osservazioni che raramente facevo; quale spazio vuoto sembravo, che tutti ignoravano, eppure era d’intralcio a tutti; che grande sollievo era sentire Miss Murdstone annunciare il primo rintocco delle nove di sera e ordinarmi di andare a letto!
Così le vacanze si trascinarono fino a quando arrivò la mattina in cui la signorina Murdstone disse: «Ecco l’ultimo giorno di riposo!» e mi diede l’ultima tazza di tè delle vacanze.
Non mi dispiaceva andarmene. Ero caduto in uno stato di ottusa stupidità, ma stavo riprendendomi un po’ e aspettavo con impazienza l’arrivo di Steerforth, anche se dietro di lui incombeva la figura di Mr. Creakle. Ancora una volta Mr. Barkis apparve al cancello, e ancora una volta Miss Murdstone, con la sua voce ammonitrice, disse: «Clara!» quando mia madre si chinò su di me per salutarmi.
La baciai, e baciai mio fratellino, e in quel momento mi dispiacque molto; ma non mi dispiacque di andarmene, perché il baratro tra noi era lì, e la separazione era lì, ogni giorno. E non è tanto l’abbraccio che mi diede a vivere nella mia mente, sebbene fosse quanto mai appassionato, quanto ciò che seguì l’abbraccio.
Ero nel carretto del corriere quando l’ho sentita chiamarmi. Ho guardato fuori e lei era in piedi al cancello del giardino da sola, con il suo bambino tra le braccia per farmelo vedere. Era una giornata fredda e calma; e non un capello della sua testa, né una piega del suo vestito si muovevano, mentre lei mi guardava intensamente, tenendo in alto il suo bambino.
Così la persi. Così la vidi dopo, nel mio sonno a scuola - una presenza silenziosa vicino al mio letto - che mi guardava con la stessa faccia seria - che teneva in braccio il suo bambino.
CHAPTER 9. I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY
I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of my birthday came round in March. Except that Steerforth was more to be admired than ever, I remember nothing. He was going away at the end of the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging than before; but beyond this I remember nothing. The great remembrance by which that time is marked in my mind, seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections, and to exist alone.
It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that birthday. I can only understand that the fact was so, because I know it must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that there was no interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the other’s heels.
How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor. It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the playground, when Mr. Sharp entered and said:
‘David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.’
I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order. Some of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in the distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with great alacrity.
‘Don’t hurry, David,’ said Mr. Sharp. ‘There’s time enough, my boy, don’t hurry.’
I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke, if I had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards. I hurried away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle, sitting at his breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him, and Mrs. Creakle with an opened letter in her hand. But no hamper.
‘David Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and sitting down beside me. ‘I want to speak to you very particularly. I have something to tell you, my child.’
Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without looking at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of buttered toast.
‘You are too young to know how the world changes every day,’ said Mrs. Creakle, ‘and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times of our lives.’
I looked at her earnestly.
‘When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,’ said Mrs. Creakle, after a pause, ‘were they all well?’ After another pause, ‘Was your mama well?’
I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her earnestly, making no attempt to answer.
‘Because,’ said she, ‘I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your mama is very ill.’
A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face, and it was steady again.
‘She is very dangerously ill,’ she added.
I knew all now.
‘She is dead.’
There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.
She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me alone sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke and cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that there was no ease for.
And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of our house shut up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had been pining away for some time, and who, they believed, would die too. I thought of my father’s grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of my mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well. I stood upon a chair when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes were, and how sorrowful my face. I considered, after some hours were gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be, what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think of when I drew near home—for I was going home to the funeral. I am sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the rest of the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.
If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I remember that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in the playground that afternoon while the boys were in school. When I saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as they went up to their classes, I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked slower. When school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt it rather good in myself not to be proud to any of them, and to take exactly the same notice of them all, as before.
I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used by country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the road. We had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me his pillow. I don’t know what good he thought it would do me, for I had one of my own: but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, except a sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons; and that he gave me at parting, as a soother of my sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.
CAPITOLO 9. HO UN COMPLEANNO INDIMENTICABILE
PASSO sopra tutto ciò che accadde a scuola, fino a quando l’anniversario del mio compleanno tornò in marzo. Tranne che Steerforth era più ammirevole che mai, non ricordo nulla. Doveva partire alla fine del semestre, se non prima, ed era più vivace e indipendente che mai ai miei occhi, e quindi più affascinante che mai; ma oltre a questo non ricordo nulla. Il grande ricordo per cui quel periodo è segnato nella mia mente, sembra aver inghiottito tutti i ricordi minori, ed esistere da solo.
Mi è persino difficile credere che ci fosse un intervallo di ben due mesi tra il mio ritorno a Salem House e l’arrivo di quel compleanno. Posso solo capire che il fatto è stato così, perché so che deve essere stato così; altrimenti sarei convinto che non ci fosse alcun intervallo, e che l’una occasione calpestasse i talloni dell’altra.
Quanto bene ricordo che tipo di giorno fosse! Sento l’odore della nebbia che aleggiava intorno al luogo; vedo la brina, spettrale, attraverso di essa; sento i miei capelli appiccicosi per la brina cadere umidi sulla mia guancia; guardo lungo la fievole prospettiva della sala di lezione, con una candela che sputacchia qua e là per illuminare la mattinata nebbiosa, e il respiro dei ragazzi che si avvolge e fuma nel freddo pungente mentre soffiano sulle dita e battono i piedi sul pavimento. Era dopo colazione, e ci avevano convocato dal cortile, quando il signor Sharp entrò e disse:
«David Copperfield deve andare nel salotto.»
Aspettavo una cesta da Peggotty e mi rallegrai dell’ordine. Alcuni dei ragazzi intorno a me chiesero di non essere dimenticati nella distribuzione delle leccornie, mentre mi alzavo dal mio posto con grande prontezza.
«Non avere fretta, David», disse il signor Sharp. «C’è tempo a sufficienza, ragazzo mio, non avere fretta».
Avrei potuto essere sorpreso dal tono emotivo con cui parlava, se ci avessi pensato; ma non ci pensai fino a dopo. Mi affrettai a raggiungere il salotto; e lì trovai il signor Creakle, seduto a colazione con il bastone e un giornale davanti, e la signora Creakle con una lettera aperta in mano. Ma nessun paniere.
«David Copperfield», disse la signora Creakle, conducendomi verso un divano e sedendosi accanto a me. «Voglio parlarle in modo particolare. Ho qualcosa da dirle, mio bambino.»
Il signor Creakle, a cui ovviamente rivolsi lo sguardo, scosse la testa senza guardarmi e soffocò un sospiro con un pezzo enorme di pane tostato burroso.
«Sei troppo giovane per sapere come il mondo cambi ogni giorno», disse la signora Creakle, «e come le persone che lo abitano scompaiano. Ma tutti dobbiamo impararlo, David; alcuni di noi quando siamo giovani, alcuni di noi quando siamo vecchi, alcuni di noi in ogni momento della nostra vita.»
La guardai con attenzione.
«Quando siete partito da casa alla fine delle vacanze», disse la signora Creakle dopo una pausa, «erano tutti benissimo?» Dopo un’altra pausa, «Era benissimo vostra madre?»
Tremavo senza sapere bene perché, e continuavo a guardarla con attenzione, senza cercare di rispondere.
«Perché», disse, «mi addolora dirvelo, ma questa mattina ho saputo che vostra madre è gravemente malata.»
Una nebbiolina salì tra me e la signora Creakle, e la sua figura sembrò muoversi in essa per un istante. Poi sentii le lacrime scorrere calde sul mio viso, e tutto tornò stabile.
«È gravemente malata», aggiunse.
Ora sapevo tutto.
‘È morta.’
Non c’era bisogno di dirmelo. Ero già scoppiato in un grido desolato, e mi sentivo un orfano nel vasto mondo.
Fu molto gentile con me. Mi tenne lì tutto il giorno, e a volte mi lasciava solo; e io piangevo, e mi consumavo nel sonno, e mi svegliavo e piangevo di nuovo. Quando non potevo più piangere, cominciai a pensare; e allora l’oppressione sul mio petto era più forte, e il mio dolore era un dolore sordo che non aveva sollievo.
Eppure i miei pensieri erano oziosi; non concentrati sulla calamità che gravava sul mio cuore, ma vagavano oziosamente intorno ad essa. Pensavo alla nostra casa chiusa e silenziosa. Pensavo al piccolo bambino, che, come diceva la signora Creakle, si stava consumando da qualche tempo, e che, credevano, sarebbe morto anche lui. Pensavo alla tomba di mio padre nel cimitero, vicino alla nostra casa, e a mia madre che giaceva lì sotto l’albero che conoscevo così bene. Mi misi su una sedia quando rimasi solo e mi guardai allo specchio per vedere quanto fossero arrossati i miei occhi e quanto fosse triste il mio viso. Dopo alcune ore, mi chiesi se le mie lacrime fossero davvero difficili da versare ora, come sembravano essere, e a cosa, in relazione alla mia perdita, mi sarebbe importato di più pensare quando mi sarei avvicinato a casa—perché stavo andando a casa per il funerale. Sono consapevole di aver sentito che mi era attribuita una certa dignità tra gli altri ragazzi, e che ero importante nella mia afflizione.
Se mai un bambino fu colpito da un vero dolore, quello fui io. Ma ricordo che questa importanza era una specie di soddisfazione per me, quando camminavo nel cortile quel pomeriggio mentre i ragazzi erano a scuola. Quando li vedevo sbirciarmi dalle finestre, mentre andavano alle loro classi, mi sentivo distinto, e assumevo un’aria più malinconica, e camminavo più lentamente. Quando la scuola finì, e uscirono e mi parlarono, mi sentii piuttosto bene in me stesso per non essere orgoglioso con nessuno di loro, e per fare esattamente la stessa attenzione a tutti, come prima.
Dovevo tornare a casa la sera seguente; non con la posta, ma con il pesante sera-diligenza, che si chiamava il Contadino e veniva utilizzata principalmente da gente del posto che viaggiava per brevi distanze intermedie sulla strada. Quella sera non raccontammo storie, e Traddles insistette per prestarmi il suo cuscino. Non so quale beneficio pensasse che mi avrebbe fatto, dato che ne avevo già uno mio: ma era tutto ciò che aveva da prestare, poveretto, a parte un foglio di carta per lettere pieno di scheletri; e quello me lo diede al momento di separarci, come un lenitivo per le mie pene e un contributo alla mia pace interiore.
I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon. I little thought then that I left it, never to return. We travelled very slowly all night, and did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o’clock in the morning. I looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there; and instead of him a fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat, came puffing up to the coach window, and said:
‘Master Copperfield?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,’ he said, opening the door, ‘and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.’
I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c. It was a close and stifling little shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We went into a little back-parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work on a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table, and little bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor. There was a good fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black crape—I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.
The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on with their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At the same time there came from a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a regular sound of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, without any variation.
‘Well,’ said my conductor to one of the three young women. ‘How do you get on, Minnie?’
‘We shall be ready by the trying-on time,’ she replied gaily, without looking up. ‘Don’t you be afraid, father.’
Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted. He was so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could say:
‘That’s right.’
‘Father!’ said Minnie, playfully. ‘What a porpoise you do grow!’
‘Well, I don’t know how it is, my dear,’ he replied, considering about it. ‘I am rather so.’
‘You are such a comfortable man, you see,’ said Minnie. ‘You take things so easy.’
‘No use taking ‘em otherwise, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer.
‘No, indeed,’ returned his daughter. ‘We are all pretty gay here, thank Heaven! Ain’t we, father?’
‘I hope so, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘As I have got my breath now, I think I’ll measure this young scholar. Would you walk into the shop, Master Copperfield?’
I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after showing me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too good mourning for anything short of parents, he took my various dimensions, and put them down in a book. While he was recording them he called my attention to his stock in trade, and to certain fashions which he said had ‘just come up’, and to certain other fashions which he said had ‘just gone out’.
‘And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of money,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that point of view.’
I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly have been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me back into the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.
He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a door: ‘Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!’ which, after some time, during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and listening to the stitching in the room and the tune that was being hammered across the yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be for me.
‘I have been acquainted with you,’ said Mr. Omer, after watching me for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on the breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, ‘I have been acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.’
‘Have you, sir?’
‘All your life,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I may say before it. I knew your father before you. He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays in five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.’
‘RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat,’ across the yard.
‘He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a fraction,’ said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. ‘It was either his request or her direction, I forget which.’
‘Do you know how my little brother is, sir?’ I inquired.
Mr. Omer shook his head.
‘RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat.’
‘He is in his mother’s arms,’ said he.
‘Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?’
‘Don’t mind it more than you can help,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes. The baby’s dead.’
My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left the scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another table, in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily cleared, lest I should spot the mourning that was lying there with my tears. She was a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a soft, kind touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished her work and being in good time, and was so different from me!
Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came across the yard into the room. He had a hammer in his hand, and his mouth was full of little nails, which he was obliged to take out before he could speak.
‘Well, Joram!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘How do you get on?’
‘All right,’ said Joram. ‘Done, sir.’
Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one another.
‘What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I was at the club, then? Were you?’ said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.
Lasciai la casa di Salem il pomeriggio seguente. Allora non pensavo minimamente che l’avrei lasciata per non farvi più ritorno. Viaggiammo molto lentamente tutta la notte, e non arrivammo a Yarmouth prima delle nove o delle dieci del mattino. Cercai di vedere il signor Barkis, ma non c’era; e al suo posto un vecchietto grasso, affannoso, di bell’aspetto, in abito nero, con piccoli ciuffi di nastri arrugginiti alle ginocchia dei calzoni, calze nere, e un cappello a larghe tese, venne ansimando verso il finestrino del diligenza, e disse:
‘Signor Copperfield?’
“Sì, signore.”
«Vorreste venire con me, giovane signore, se non vi dispiace», disse, aprendo la porta, «e avrò il piacere di portarvi a casa.»
Misi la mia mano nella sua, chiedendomi chi fosse, e ci allontanammo verso un negozio in una strada stretta, su cui era scritto OMER, DRAPPERO, SARTO, CAPPELLAIO, FORNITORE DI POMPE FUNEBRI, ecc. Era un piccolo negozio chiuso e soffocante; pieno di ogni sorta di abbigliamento, fatto e non fatto, compresa una vitrina piena di cappelli di castoro e cappellini. Entrammo in un piccolo salottino sul retro del negozio, dove trovammo tre giovani donne al lavoro su una quantità di materiali neri, che erano ammucchiati sul tavolo, e piccoli pezzi e ritagli dei quali erano sparsi per tutto il pavimento. C’era un buon fuoco nella stanza, e un odore soffocante di crespo nero caldo — non sapevo che cosa fosse quell’odore allora, ma ora lo so.
Le tre giovani donne, che sembravano molto laboriose e agiate, alzarono la testa per guardarmi, e poi continuarono il loro lavoro. Punto, punto, punto. Nello stesso tempo proveniva da un laboratorio dall’altra parte di un piccolo cortile fuori dalla finestra, un suono regolare di martellate che manteneva una specie di ritmo: RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, senza alcuna variazione.
«Bene,» disse il mio accompagnatore a una delle tre giovani donne. «Come va, Minnie?»
«Saremo pronte per l’ora della prova», rispose allegra, senza alzare lo sguardo. «Non aver paura, papà.»
Il signor Omer si tolse il cappello a larghe tese, si sedette e ansimò. Era così grasso che fu costretto ad ansimare per un po’ di tempo prima di poter dire:
‘Esatto.’
“Papà!” disse Minnie, scherzando. “Che delfino sei diventato!”
«Beh, non so come sia, mia cara», rispose, riflettendoci su. «Sono piuttosto così.»
‘È un uomo così tranquillo, vede’, disse Minnie. ‘Prende le cose con calma.’
«Non serve a nulla prenderle in altro modo, mia cara», disse il signor Omer.
«No, davvero», rispose la figlia. «Siamo tutti piuttosto allegri qui, grazie a Dio! Non è vero, papà?»
«Lo spero, mia cara», disse il signor Omer. «Ora che ho ripreso fiato, credo che misurerò questo giovane studioso. Vuole entrare nel negozio, signorino Copperfield?»
Obbedendo al suo invito, presi posto davanti a Mr. Omer; e dopo avermi mostrato un rotolo di stoffa che definì “extra super” e troppo buona per il lutto di chiunque tranne che per i genitori, mi prese le varie misure e le annotò su un quaderno. Mentre le annotava, attirò la mia attenzione sul suo magazzino, e su certe mode che, disse, erano “appena arrivate”, e su certe altre mode che, disse, erano “appena uscite”.
«E con questo genere di cose spesso perdiamo una piccola miniera d’oro», disse il signor Omer. «Ma le mode sono come gli esseri umani. Arrivano, nessuno sa quando, perché o come; e se ne vanno, nessuno sa quando, perché o come. Tutto è come la vita, secondo me, se lo si guarda da questo punto di vista.»
Ero troppo addolorato per discutere la questione, che forse sarebbe stata al di là delle mie possibilità in ogni caso; e il signor Omer mi riportò nel salotto, respirando con qualche difficoltà lungo il tragitto.
Poi chiamò giù una piccola serie di gradini pericolosi dietro una porta: «Portate su quel tè e quel pane burro!», che, dopo un po’ di tempo, durante il quale ero seduto a guardarmi intorno e a pensare, e ad ascoltare il cucito nella stanza e la melodia che veniva martellata attraverso il cortile, apparve su un vassoio, e si rivelò essere per me.
«Sono in sua conoscenza», disse il signor Omer, dopo avermi osservato per alcuni minuti, durante i quali non avevo fatto molta impressione sulla colazione, perché le cose nere mi avevano tolto l’appetito, «Sono in sua conoscenza da un lungo periodo, mio giovane amico.»
‘Vera, signore?’
«Tutta la sua vita», disse il signor Omer. «Posso dire prima di essa. Conoscevo suo padre prima di lei. Era alto cinque piedi e nove pollici e mezzo, e giace in un terreno di venticinque piedi.»
«RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat», attraverso il cortile.
«È sepolto in un terreno di cinque piedi e venti, se è sepolto in una frazione», disse il signor Omer, piacevolmente. «Era o la sua richiesta o la sua direttiva, non ricordo quale.»
«Sa come sta mio fratellino, signore?» domandai.
Il signor Omer scosse la testa.
‘RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat, RAT—tat-tat.’
«È tra le braccia di sua madre», disse lui.
‘Oh, povero piccolo! È morto?’
“Non preoccuparti più del necessario”, disse il signor Omer. “Sì, il bambino è morto.”
Le mie ferite si riaprirono a questa notizia. Lasciai la colazione appena assaggiata e andai a posare la testa su un altro tavolo, in un angolo della piccola stanza, che Minnie si affrettò a liberare, per timore che io potessi notare il lutto che vi giaceva con le mie lacrime. Era una ragazza carina e di buon cuore, e mi scostò i capelli dagli occhi con un tocco dolce e gentile; ma era molto allegra per aver quasi finito il suo lavoro e per essere in buon tempo, e così diversa da me!
Poco dopo la melodia cessò, e un giovane di bell’aspetto entrò nella stanza attraversando il cortile. Aveva un martello in mano e la bocca piena di piccoli chiodi, che dovette togliere prima di poter parlare.
«Bene, Joram!» disse il signor Omer. «Come va?»
“Va bene”, disse Joram. “Affare fatto, signore.”
Minnie arrossì un po’, e le altre due ragazze si scambiarono un sorriso.
«Che! eravate al lavoro a lume di candela ieri sera, quando io ero al club, allora? Eravate?» disse il signor Omer, chiudendo un occhio.
‘Yes,’ said Joram. ‘As you said we could make a little trip of it, and go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me—and you.’
‘Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,’ said Mr. Omer, laughing till he coughed.
‘—As you was so good as to say that,’ resumed the young man, ‘why I turned to with a will, you see. Will you give me your opinion of it?’
‘I will,’ said Mr. Omer, rising. ‘My dear’; and he stopped and turned to me: ‘would you like to see your—’
‘No, father,’ Minnie interposed.
‘I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘But perhaps you’re right.’
I can’t say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother’s coffin that they went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never seen one that I know of.—but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was going on; and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what he had been doing.
The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not heard, brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went into the shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers. Minnie stayed behind to fold up what they had made, and pack it in two baskets. This she did upon her knees, humming a lively little tune the while. Joram, who I had no doubt was her lover, came in and stole a kiss from her while she was busy (he didn’t appear to mind me, at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he went out again; and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket, and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.
All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my head leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different things. The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and the baskets being put in first, I was put in next, and those three followed. I remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half pianoforte-van, painted of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black horse with a long tail. There was plenty of room for us all.
I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon them for their hardness of heart.
So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and enjoyed themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but kept my fast unbroken. So, when we reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind, as quickly as possible, that I might not be in their company before those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes once bright. And oh, how little need I had had to think what would move me to tears when I came back—seeing the window of my mother’s room, and next it that which, in the better time, was mine!
I was in Peggotty’s arms before I got to the door, and she took me into the house. Her grief burst out when she first saw me; but she controlled it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if the dead could be disturbed. She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time. She sat up at night still, and watched. As long as her poor dear pretty was above the ground, she said, she would never desert her.
Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk, which was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold finger-nails, and asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for my mourning.
I said: ‘Yes.’
‘And your shirts,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘have you brought ‘em home?’
‘Yes, ma’am. I have brought home all my clothes.’
This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me. I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her turn for business; and she showed it now in reducing everything to pen and ink, and being moved by nothing. All the rest of that day, and from morning to night afterwards, she sat at that desk, scratching composedly with a hard pen, speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to everybody; never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening a tone of her voice, or appearing with an atom of her dress astray.
Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and counting his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke to her, and never to me. He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the clocks, in the whole motionless house.
In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty, except that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close to the room where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she came to me every night, and sat by my bed’s head while I went to sleep. A day or two before the burial—I think it was a day or two before, but I am conscious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with nothing to mark its progress—she took me into the room. I only recollect that underneath some white covering on the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all around it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that was in the house; and that when she would have turned the cover gently back, I cried: ‘Oh no! oh no!’ and held her hand.
«Sì», disse Joram. «Come dicevi, potremmo farne una piccola gita e andarci insieme, se fosse fatto, Minnie e io, e tu.»
«Oh! Ho pensato che aveste intenzione di escludermi del tutto», disse il signor Omer, ridendo fino a tossire.
«—Poiché lei è stato così gentile da dirlo,» riprese il giovane, «mi sono messo al lavoro con impegno, vede. Mi darebbe la sua opinione?»
«Lo farò», disse il signor Omer, alzandosi. «Mia cara»; e si fermò e si voltò verso di me: «vorresti vedere la tua—»
«No, padre», intervenne Minnie.
“Pensavo che potesse essere piacevole, mia cara”, disse il signor Omer. “Ma forse hai ragione.”
Non so dire come ho capito che era la bara di mia madre, la mia cara, cara madre, quella che andavano a vedere. Non avevo mai sentito costruire una bara; non ne avevo mai vista una, che io sappia. — ma mentre quel rumore continuava, mi è venuto in mente che cosa fosse; e quando è entrato il giovane, sono sicuro di aver capito che cosa aveva fatto.
Il lavoro era ora finito, e le due ragazze, i cui nomi non avevo sentito, si spazzolarono le briciole e i fili dai vestiti, e andarono nel negozio per mettere a posto e aspettare i clienti. Minnie rimase indietro per ripiegare ciò che avevano fatto, e metterlo in due cesti. Questo lo fece in ginocchio, canticchiando una vivace canzoncina nel frattempo. Joram, di cui non avevo dubbio che fosse il suo fidanzato, entrò e le rubò un bacio mentre era occupata (non sembrava importargli di me, per niente), e disse che suo padre era andato a prendere la carrozza, e che doveva sbrigarsi a prepararsi. Poi uscì di nuovo; e poi lei mise il suo ditale e le forbici in tasca, e infilò un ago con un filo nero ordinatamente nel corpetto del suo vestito, e si mise i suoi abiti esterni con eleganza, davanti a uno specchietto dietro la porta, nel quale vidi il riflesso del suo viso soddisfatto.
Osservavo tutto questo seduto al tavolo nell’angolo, con la testa appoggiata sulla mano e la mente che vagava su cose ben diverse. La carrozza arrivò presto davanti al negozio, e dopo aver messo dentro i cesti, ci fecero salire me e poi i tre che mi seguivano. Ricordo che era una specie di mezza carrozza, mezzo furgone per il pianoforte, dipinta di un colore scuro, e trainata da un cavallo nero con una lunga coda. C’era spazio a sufficienza per tutti noi.
Non credo di aver mai provato una sensazione così strana in vita mia (ora sono più saggio, forse) come quella di stare con loro, ricordando come si erano comportati, e vederli godersi il viaggio. Non ero arrabbiato con loro; avevo più paura di loro, come se fossi stato abbandonato tra creature con cui non avevo nulla in comune di natura. Erano molto allegri. Il vecchio sedeva davanti per guidare, e i due giovani sedevano dietro di lui, e ogni volta che lui parlava a loro si sporgevano in avanti, uno da un lato del suo viso paffuto e l’altro dall’altro, e lo coccolavano molto. Avrebbero parlato anche con me, ma mi tenevo indietro, e rimuginavo nel mio angolo; spaventato dalle loro dimostrazioni di amore e allegria, sebbene fossero tutt’altro che rumorose, e quasi mi chiedevo come mai non fosse scesa su di loro nessuna punizione per la loro durezza di cuore.
Così, quando si fermarono a dare da mangiare al cavallo, e mangiarono e bevvero e si divertirono, non potevo toccare nulla di ciò che toccavano loro, ma mantenni il mio digiuno ininterrotto. Così, quando raggiungemmo casa, scesi dalla carrozza il più velocemente possibile, per non trovarmi in loro compagnia davanti a quelle finestre solenni, che mi guardavano ciecamente come occhi una volta luminosi ora chiusi. E oh, quanto poco avevo avuto bisogno di pensare a ciò che mi avrebbe commosso fino alle lacrime al mio ritorno, vedendo la finestra della stanza di mia madre, e accanto a essa quella che, nei tempi migliori, era mia!
Ero tra le braccia di Peggotty prima ancora di arrivare alla porta, e lei mi portò in casa. La sua tristezza esplose quando mi vide per la prima volta; ma la controllò presto, e parlò a bassa voce, e camminò piano, come se i morti potessero essere disturbati. Scoprii che non era andata a letto da molto tempo. Sedeva ancora di notte e vegliava. Finché la sua povera cara bella era ancora sulla terra, disse, non l’avrebbe mai abbandonata.
Il signor Murdstone non mi degnò di uno sguardo quando entrai nel salotto dove si trovava, ma rimase seduto accanto al caminetto, piangendo silenziosamente e meditando nella sua poltrona a braccioli. La signorina Murdstone, che era intenta al suo scrittoio, coperto di lettere e documenti, mi porse le sue fredde unghie e mi chiese, con un sussurro di ferro, se mi avevano preso le misure per il lutto.
Ho detto: “Sì”.
«E le tue camicie», disse Miss Murdstone, «le hai portate a casa?»
«Sì, signora. Ho portato a casa tutti i miei vestiti.»
Questa fu tutta la consolazione che la sua fermezza mi dispensò. Non dubito che provasse un piacere particolare nel mostrare ciò che chiamava il suo autocontrollo, la sua fermezza, la sua forza d’animo, il suo buon senso, e tutto il diabolico catalogo delle sue sgradevoli qualità, in un’occasione del genere. Era particolarmente orgogliosa della sua attitudine per gli affari; e ora la dimostrava riducendo tutto a penna e inchiostro, senza lasciarsi commuovere da nulla. Per tutto il resto di quella giornata, e da mattina a sera nei giorni successivi, rimase seduta a quella scrivania, scribacchiando con calma con una penna dura, parlando con lo stesso sussurro imperturbabile a tutti; senza mai rilassare un muscolo del viso, o ammorbidire un tono della voce, o apparire con un solo capello fuori posto.
A volte suo fratello prendeva un libro, ma non lo vidi mai leggerlo. Lo apriva e lo guardava come se stesse leggendo, ma rimaneva per un’ora intera senza girare la pagina, e poi lo posava e camminava avanti e indietro nella stanza. Io sedevo con le mani incrociate a osservarlo, e contavo i suoi passi, ora dopo ora. Le parlava molto raramente, e mai con me. Sembrava l’unica cosa irrequieta, a parte gli orologi, in tutta la casa immobile.
In quei giorni prima del funerale, vedevo Peggotty raramente, tranne che, salendo o scendendo le scale, la trovavo sempre vicino alla stanza dove giacevano mia madre e il suo bambino, e tranne che veniva da me ogni notte e sedeva accanto al mio letto mentre andavo a dormire. Un giorno o due prima della sepoltura - credo fosse un giorno o due prima, ma ho la mente confusa riguardo a quel pesante periodo, senza nulla che ne segnasse il trascorrere - mi portò nella stanza. Ricordo solo che sotto una copertura bianca sul letto, con una bellezza di pulizia e freschezza tutt’intorno, mi sembrava di vedere incarnata la solennità silenziosa che era nella casa; e quando lei avrebbe voluto scostare delicatamente la coperta, io gridai: «Oh no! oh no!» e le tenni la mano.
If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. The very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the decanters, the patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the odour of Miss Murdstone’s dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is in the room, and comes to speak to me.
‘And how is Master David?’ he says, kindly.
I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in his.
‘Dear me!’ says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining in his eye. ‘Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out of our knowledge, ma’am?’ This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no reply.
‘There is a great improvement here, ma’am?’ says Mr. Chillip.
Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend: Mr. Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and opens his mouth no more.
I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not because I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to the same grave were made ready in the same room.
There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip, and I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are in the garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the elms, and through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have so often heard the birds sing on a summer morning.
We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from every other day, and the light not of the same colour—of a sadder colour. Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from home with what is resting in the mould; and while we stand bareheaded, I hear the voice of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and plain, saying: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!’ Then I hear sobs; and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day say: ‘Well done.’
There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces that I knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces that first saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do not mind them—I mind nothing but my grief—and yet I see and know them all; and even in the background, far away, see Minnie looking on, and her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is near me.
It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on; and Mr. Chillip talks to me; and when we get home, puts some water to my lips; and when I ask his leave to go up to my room, dismisses me with the gentleness of a woman.
All this, I say, is yesterday’s event. Events of later date have floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this stands like a high rock in the ocean.
I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath stillness of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have forgotten that) was suited to us both. She sat down by my side upon my little bed; and holding my hand, and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes smoothing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little brother, told me, in her way, all that she had to tell concerning what had happened.
‘She was never well,’ said Peggotty, ‘for a long time. She was uncertain in her mind, and not happy. When her baby was born, I thought at first she would get better, but she was more delicate, and sunk a little every day. She used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she cried; but afterwards she used to sing to it—so soft, that I once thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the air, that was rising away.
‘I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of late; and that a hard word was like a blow to her. But she was always the same to me. She never changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn’t my sweet girl.’
Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.
‘The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, “I never shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the truth, I know.”
‘She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me—she was afraid of saying it to anybody else—till one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she said to him: “My dear, I think I am dying.”
‘“It’s off my mind now, Peggotty,” she told me, when I laid her in her bed that night. “He will believe it more and more, poor fellow, every day for a few days to come; and then it will be past. I am very tired. If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don’t leave me. God bless both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy!”
‘I never left her afterwards,’ said Peggotty. ‘She often talked to them two downstairs—for she loved them; she couldn’t bear not to love anyone who was about her—but when they went away from her bed-side, she always turned to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never fell asleep in any other way.
‘On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: “If my baby should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms, and bury us together.” (It was done; for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond her.) “Let my dearest boy go with us to our resting-place,” she said, “and tell him that his mother, when she lay here, blessed him not once, but a thousand times.”’
Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my hand.
‘It was pretty far in the night,’ said Peggotty, ‘when she asked me for some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the dear!—so beautiful!
‘Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy man in hers. “Peggotty, my dear,” she said then, “put me nearer to you,” for she was very weak. “Lay your good arm underneath my neck,” she said, “and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it to be near.” I put it as she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when my first parting words to you were true—when she was glad to lay her poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty’s arm—and she died like a child that had gone to sleep!’
Thus ended Peggotty’s narration. From the moment of my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.
The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.
Se il funerale fosse stato ieri, non potrei ricordarlo meglio. L’aria stessa del miglior salotto, quando entrai dalla porta, lo stato brillante del fuoco, la lucentezza del vino nei decantatori, i disegni dei bicchieri e dei piatti, il debole profumo dolce della torta, l’odore dell’abito della signorina Murdstone e i nostri vestiti neri. Il signor Chillip è nella stanza e viene a parlarmi.
«E come sta il piccolo David?», dice gentilmente.
Non posso dirglielo molto bene. Gli do la mia mano, che lui tiene nella sua.
«Oh, davvero!» dice il signor Chillip, sorridendo con dolcezza, con qualcosa di luccicante negli occhi. «I nostri piccoli amici crescono intorno a noi. Crescono al di là della nostra conoscenza, signorina?» Questo è rivolto alla signorina Murdstone, che non risponde.
«C’è un grande miglioramento qui, signora?» dice il signor Chillip.
La signorina Murdstone si limita a rispondere con una smorfia e un inchino formale: il signor Chillip, sconcertato, si ritira in un angolo, tenendomi con sé, e non apre più bocca.
Lo noto perché noto tutto ciò che accade, non perché mi interessi di me stesso, o perché mi sia interessato da quando sono tornato a casa. E ora la campana comincia a suonare, e il signor Omer e un altro vengono a prepararci. Come Peggotty era solita dirmi, tanto tempo fa, i seguaci di mio padre verso la stessa tomba furono preparati nella stessa stanza.
Ci sono il signor Murdstone, il nostro vicino signor Grayper, il signor Chillip e io. Quando usciamo dalla porta, i Portatori e il loro carico sono nel giardino; e si muovono davanti a noi lungo il sentiero, passando per gli olmi, attraverso il cancello e nel cimitero della chiesa, dove ho così spesso sentito cantare gli uccelli in una mattinata d’estate.
Ci fermiamo intorno alla tomba. La giornata mi sembra diversa da tutte le altre, e la luce non dello stesso colore, ma di un colore più triste. Ora c’è un silenzio solenne, che abbiamo portato da casa con ciò che riposa nella terra; e mentre stiamo a capo scoperto, sento la voce del sacerdote, che risuona lontana nell’aria aperta, eppure distinta e chiara, che dice: «Io sono la risurrezione e la vita, dice il Signore!» Poi sento dei singhiozzi; e, in piedi a parte tra gli spettatori, vedo quel buon e fedele servitore, che di tutte le persone sulla terra io amo di più, e a cui il mio cuore infantile è certo che un giorno il Signore dirà: «Hai fatto bene.»
Tra la piccola folla ci sono molti volti che conosco; volti che ho visto in chiesa, quando la mia mente vagava sempre; volti che furono i primi a vedere mia madre, quando arrivò al villaggio nel fiore della sua giovinezza. Non mi importa di loro, non mi importa di nulla tranne che del mio dolore; eppure li vedo e li riconosco tutti; e anche in lontananza, sullo sfondo, vedo Minnie che osserva, e il suo sguardo che si posa sul suo fidanzato, che è vicino a me.
È finita, la terra è stata riempita e ci voltiamo per andarcene. Davanti a noi si erge la nostra casa, così graziosa e immutata, così legata nella mia mente all’idea giovanile di ciò che è scomparso, che tutto il mio dolore non è nulla rispetto al dolore che essa evoca. Ma loro mi portano via; e il signor Chillip mi parla; e quando arriviamo a casa, mi mette un po’ di acqua sulle labbra; e quando chiedo il suo permesso di salire in camera mia, mi congeda con la dolcezza di una donna.
Tutto questo, dico, è un evento di ieri. Eventi di data più recente sono fluiti da me fino alla riva dove tutte le cose dimenticate riappariranno, ma questo rimane come un alto scoglio nell’oceano.
Sapevo che Peggotty sarebbe venuta da me nella mia stanza. La quiete del tempo del Sabato (il giorno era così simile a una domenica! Me ne ero dimenticato) ci si addiceva entrambi. Si sedette accanto a me sul mio piccolo letto; e tenendomi la mano, e talvolta portandola alle labbra, e talvolta accarezzandola con la sua, come avrebbe potuto consolare mio fratellino, mi raccontò, a modo suo, tutto ciò che aveva da dire riguardo a quanto era accaduto.
«Non è mai stata bene,» disse Peggotty, «per un lungo periodo. Era incerta nella sua mente, e non felice. Quando nacque il suo bambino, pensai all’inizio che sarebbe migliorata, ma era più delicata, e peggiorava un po’ ogni giorno. Le piaceva stare da sola prima che nascesse il suo bambino, e allora piangeva; ma dopo cantava per lui—così dolcemente, che una volta pensai, quando la sentii, che fosse come una voce lassù in aria, che stava salendo via.
«Penso che ultimamente fosse diventata più timida e spaventata; e che una parola dura fosse per lei come uno schiaffo. Ma con me è sempre stata la stessa. Non è mai cambiata con la sua sciocca Peggotty, non è vero, mia dolce ragazza?»
Qui Peggotty si fermò e per un po’ batté dolcemente sulla mia mano.
«L’ultima volta che l’ho vista come la sua vecchia vecchia sé, fu la notte in cui tu tornasti a casa, mia cara. Il giorno in cui te ne andasti, mi disse: “Non rivedrò mai più la mia bella cara. Qualcosa me lo dice, e so che dice la verità.»
«Cercò di reggersi in piedi dopo di allora; e molte volte, quando le dicevano che era sconsiderata e spensierata, fingeva di esserlo; ma tutto era ormai passato. Non raccontò mai a suo marito quello che aveva raccontato a me—aveva paura di dirlo a qualcun altro—fino a una notte, un po’ più di una settimana prima che accadesse, quando gli disse: «Mio caro, credo di stare morendo».
«“Ora non ci penso più, Peggotty”, mi disse, quando la misi a letto quella notte. “Ne sarà sempre più convinto, poveretto, ogni giorno per qualche giorno ancora; e poi sarà passata. Sono molto stanca. Se questo è sonno, siediti vicino a me mentre dormo: non lasciarmi. Dio benedica entrambi i miei bambini! Dio protegga e custodisca il mio ragazzo senza padre!”»
«Non l’ho mai lasciata dopo», disse Peggotty. «Spesso parlava con i due al piano di sotto - perché li amava; non poteva sopportare di non amare chiunque fosse vicino a lei - ma quando se ne andavano dal suo capezzale, si voltava sempre verso di me, come se ci fosse riposo dove c’era Peggotty, e non si addormentava mai in altro modo.
«Nell’ultima notte, la sera, mi baciò e disse: “Se anche il mio bambino dovesse morire, Peggotty, per favore lascia che lo mettano tra le mie braccia e seppelliscici insieme”. (Fu fatto; perché il povero agnello visse solo un giorno più di lei.) “Lascia che il mio caro ragazzo venga con noi nel nostro luogo di riposo”, disse, “e digli che sua madre, quando giaceva qui, lo ha benedetto non una volta, ma mille volte.”»
Seguì un altro silenzio e un altro delicato colpetto sulla mia mano.
«Era già molto avanzata la notte», disse Peggotty, «quando mi chiese da bere; e dopo aver bevuto, mi rivolse un sorriso così paziente, la cara!, così bello!
«L’alba era giunta, e il sole stava sorgendo, quando mi disse quanto il signor Copperfield fosse sempre stato gentile e premuroso con lei, e come avesse sopportato e le avesse detto, quando lei dubitava di sé, che un cuore affettuoso fosse migliore e più forte della saggezza, e che lui era un uomo felice nel suo. “Peggotty, mia cara”, disse allora, “mettimi più vicino a te”, perché era molto debole. “Mettimi il tuo braccio buono sotto il collo”, disse, “e voltami verso di te, perché il tuo viso si sta allontanando, e io voglio che sia vicino”. La misi come chiedeva; e oh Davy! era giunto il tempo in cui le mie prime parole di addio erano vere, quando lei fu felice di posare la sua povera testa sul braccio della sua stupida vecchia croce Peggotty, e morì come un bambino che fosse andato a dormire!»
Così finì il racconto di Peggotty. Dal momento in cui seppi della morte di mia madre, l’idea di lei com’era stata di recente era svanita in me. Da quell’istante, la ricordavo solo come la giovane madre delle mie prime impressioni, che era solita avvolgere i suoi riccioli lucenti intorno al dito e ballare con me al crepuscolo nel salotto. Quello che Peggotty mi aveva appena raccontato, lungi dal riportarmi al periodo successivo, radicò l’immagine precedente nella mia mente. Può sembrare curioso, ma è vero. Nella sua morte ella spiccò il volo verso la sua tranquilla e serena giovinezza, cancellando tutto il resto.
La madre che giaceva nella tomba era la madre della mia infanzia; la piccola creatura tra le sue braccia ero io, come ero stato una volta, per sempre silenzioso sul suo seno.
CHAPTER 10. I BECOME NEGLECTED, AND AM PROVIDED FOR
The first act of business Miss Murdstone performed when the day of the solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was to give Peggotty a month’s warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me why; and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity.
As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a month’s warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither she nor I could pick up any information on the subject.
There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me, was quite abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in the parlour, that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off from Peggotty’s society, that, provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone’s, I was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone’s devoting herself to it; but I soon began to think that such fears were groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect.
I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was still giddy with the shock of my mother’s death, and in a kind of stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted away, left the wall blank again.
‘Peggotty,’ I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, ‘Mr. Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not even see me now, if he can help it.’
‘Perhaps it’s his sorrow,’ said Peggotty, stroking my hair.
‘I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it’s not that; oh, no, it’s not that.’
‘How do you know it’s not that?’ said Peggotty, after a silence.
‘Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.’
‘What would he be?’ said Peggotty.
‘Angry,’ I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown. ‘If he was only sorry, he wouldn’t look at me as he does. I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.’
Peggotty said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as silent as she.
‘Davy,’ she said at length.
‘Yes, Peggotty?’ ‘I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of—all the ways there are, and all the ways there ain’t, in short—to get a suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there’s no such a thing, my love.’
‘And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,’ says I, wistfully. ‘Do you mean to go and seek your fortune?’
‘I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,’ replied Peggotty, ‘and live there.’
‘You might have gone farther off,’ I said, brightening a little, ‘and been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty, there. You won’t be quite at the other end of the world, will you?’
‘Contrary ways, please God!’ cried Peggotty, with great animation. ‘As long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to see you. One day, every week of my life!’
I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:
‘I’m a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother’s, first, for another fortnight’s visit—just till I have had time to look about me, and get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that perhaps, as they don’t want you here at present, you might be let to go along with me.’
If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em’ly, telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells and pebbles on the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone’s giving her consent; but even that was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening grope in the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and Peggotty, with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the spot.
‘The boy will be idle there,’ said Miss Murdstone, looking into a pickle-jar, ‘and idleness is the root of all evil. But, to be sure, he would be idle here—or anywhere, in my opinion.’
CAPITOLO 10. Vengo trascurato e provveduto
La prima cosa che la signorina Murdstone fece quando la giornata di festa fu finita e la luce fu liberamente ammessa nella casa, fu di dare a Peggotty un mese di preavviso. Per quanto Peggotty avrebbe disprezzato un tale servizio, credo che lo avrebbe mantenuto, per il mio bene, preferendolo al meglio che ci fosse al mondo. Mi disse che dovevamo separarci, e mi disse perché; e ci consolammo a vicenda, con tutta sincerità.
Per quanto riguardava me o il mio futuro, non fu detto una parola, né fu fatto un passo. Sono sicuro che sarebbero stati felici se avessero potuto licenziarmi con un preavviso di un mese. Una volta raccolsi coraggio per chiedere a Miss Murdstone quando sarei tornato a scuola; e lei rispose seccamente che credeva che non sarei tornato affatto. Non mi fu detto altro. Ero molto ansioso di sapere cosa si sarebbe fatto di me, e lo era anche Peggotty; ma né lei né io riuscimmo a raccogliere alcuna informazione sull’argomento.
C’era un cambiamento nella mia condizione che, sebbene mi alleviasse da una grande quantità di attuale inquietudine, avrebbe potuto rendermi, se fossi stato capace di considerarlo attentamente, ancora più a disagio per il futuro. Era questo. Il vincolo che mi era stato imposto era stato abbandonato del tutto. Ero così lontano dall’essere costretto a mantenere il mio noioso posto nel salotto, che in diverse occasioni, quando mi sedevo lì, la signorina Murdstone mi faceva cenno con la fronte di andarmene. Ero così lontano dall’essere allontanato dalla compagnia di Peggotty, che, a patto che non fossi con il signor Murdstone, non mi si cercava né si chiedeva di me. All’inizio ero in costante timore che lui riprendesse in mano la mia educazione o che la signorina Murdstone si dedicasse a essa; ma presto ho iniziato a pensare che tali paure fossero infondate, e che tutto ciò che avevo da aspettarmi fosse l’abbandono.
Non credo che questa scoperta mi abbia procurato molto dolore allora. Ero ancora stordito dallo shock della morte di mia madre, e in una specie di stato di intorpidimento riguardo a tutte le cose secondarie. Ricordo, infatti, di aver speculato, a tratti, sulla possibilità di non essere più istruito, o di non essere più curato; e di crescere diventando un uomo trasandato e malinconico, che trascorre una vita oziosa, in giro per il villaggio; così come sulla possibilità di liberarmi di questa immagine andando via da qualche parte, come il eroe di una storia, per cercare la mia fortuna: ma queste erano visioni effimere, sogni a occhi aperti che a volte guardavo, come se fossero debolmente dipinti o scritti sul muro della mia stanza, e che, mentre svanivano, lasciavano il muro di nuovo vuoto.
«Peggotty», dissi in un sussurro pensieroso, una sera, mentre mi scaldavo le mani al fuoco della cucina, «il signor Murdstone mi vuole meno bene di prima. Non mi ha mai voluto molto bene, Peggotty; ma ora preferirebbe non vedermi affatto, se può evitarlo».
«Forse è la sua tristezza», disse Peggotty, accarezzandomi i capelli.
«Sono sicuro, Peggotty, e mi dispiace anche a me. Se credessi che fosse il suo dolore, non ci penserei affatto. Ma non è così; oh, no, non è così.»
«Come fate a sapere che non è quello?» disse Peggotty, dopo un silenzio.
«Oh, il suo dolore è un’altra cosa, e ben diversa. In questo momento è dispiaciuto, seduto accanto al caminetto con la signorina Murdstone; ma se io entrassi, Peggotty, sarebbe qualcosa di più.»
«Che cosa vorrebbe essere?» disse Peggotty.
«Arrabbiato», risposi, con un’imitazione involontaria della sua espressione cupa. «Se fosse solo dispiaciuto, non mi guarderebbe come fa. Io sono solo dispiaciuto, e questo mi rende più gentile.»
Peggotty non disse nulla per un po’; e io mi riscaldai le mani, in silenzio come lei.
«Davy», disse infine.
«Sì, Peggotty?» «Ho provato, mia cara, tutti i modi che mi venivano in mente - tutti i modi che ci sono, e tutti i modi che non ci sono, insomma - per trovare un servizio adatto qui, a Blunderstone; ma non c’è niente del genere, mia cara.»
«E che cosa intendi fare, Peggotty», dissi con malinconia, «vuoi andare a cercare la tua fortuna?»
«Mi aspetto di dover andare a Yarmouth», rispose Peggotty, «e vivere lì».
«Avreste potuto andare più lontano», dissi, illuminandomi un po’, «e essere quasi smarrita. Ti vedrò qualche volta, mia cara vecchia Peggotty, là. Non sarete proprio all’altra estremità del mondo, vero?»
«Modi diversi, per favore Dio!» esclamò Peggotty, con grande vivacità. «Finché sarai qui, mio tesoro, verrò a trovarti ogni settimana della mia vita. Un giorno, ogni settimana della mia vita!»
Mi sentii sollevato da un grande peso grazie a questa promessa: ma non era tutto, perché Peggotty continuò dicendo:
«Sto per andare, Davy, come vedi, prima da mio fratello, per un’altra visita di due settimane, giusto finché non avrò avuto tempo di guardarmi intorno e di tornare un po’ più me stesso. Ora, ho pensato che forse, dato che al momento non ti vogliono qui, potrebbero permetterti di venire con me».
Se qualcosa, a parte il trovarmi in una relazione diversa con tutti quelli che mi circondavano, tranne Peggotty, avrebbe potuto darmi una sensazione di piacere in quel momento, sarebbe stato questo progetto più di ogni altro. L’idea di essere di nuovo circondato da quei volti onesti, che mi accoglievano con calore; di rivivere la tranquillità della dolce domenica mattina, quando le campane suonavano, le pietre cadevano nell’acqua, e le navi ombrose si facevano strada attraverso la nebbia; di vagare su e giù con la piccola Em’ly, raccontandole i miei problemi, e trovando rimedi contro di essi nelle conchiglie e nei sassolini sulla spiaggia; creò una calma nel mio cuore. Fu turbata nel momento successivo, è vero, da un dubbio sul consenso della signorina Murdstone; ma anche questo fu presto risolto, perché uscì per fare una perlustrazione serale nell’armadio delle provviste mentre eravamo ancora in conversazione, e Peggotty, con una audacia che mi stupì, affrontò l’argomento sul momento.
«Il ragazzo sarà pigro lì», disse Miss Murdstone, guardando dentro un barattolo di sottaceti, «e la pigrizia è la radice di tutti i mali. Ma, è ovvio, sarebbe pigro qui - o dovunque, secondo me.»
Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed it for my sake, and remained silent.
‘Humph!’ said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles; ‘it is of more importance than anything else—it is of paramount importance—that my brother should not be disturbed or made uncomfortable. I suppose I had better say yes.’
I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it should induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could I help thinking this a prudent course, since she looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its contents. However, the permission was given, and was never retracted; for when the month was out, Peggotty and I were ready to depart.
Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty’s boxes. I had never known him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he came into the house. And he gave me a look as he shouldered the largest box and went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be said to find its way into Mr. Barkis’s visage.
Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her home so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her life—for my mother and myself—had been formed. She had been walking in the churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the cart, and sat in it with her handkerchief at her eyes.
So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and attitude like a great stuffed figure. But when she began to look about her, and to speak to me, he nodded his head and grinned several times. I have not the least notion at whom, or what he meant by it.
‘It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!’ I said, as an act of politeness.
‘It ain’t bad,’ said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his speech, and rarely committed himself.
‘Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,’ I remarked, for his satisfaction.
‘Is she, though?’ said Mr. Barkis.
After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her, and said:
‘ARE you pretty comfortable?’
Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative.
‘But really and truly, you know. Are you?’ growled Mr. Barkis, sliding nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. ‘Are you? Really and truly pretty comfortable? Are you? Eh?’
At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded together in the left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly bear it.
Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a little more room at once, and got away by degrees. But I could not help observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without the inconvenience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled over it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating, ‘Are you pretty comfortable though?’ bore down upon us as before, until the breath was nearly edged out of my body. By and by he made another descent upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At length, I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board, pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well.
He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our account, and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer. Even when Peggotty was in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of those approaches, and almost choked her. But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he had more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth pavement, we were all too much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have any leisure for anything else.
Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. They received me and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr. Barkis, who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a shame-faced leer upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a vacant appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty’s trunks, and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly made a sign to me with his forefinger to come under an archway.
‘I say,’ growled Mr. Barkis, ‘it was all right.’
I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very profound: ‘Oh!’
‘It didn’t come to a end there,’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding confidentially. ‘It was all right.’
Again I answered, ‘Oh!’
‘You know who was willin’,’ said my friend. ‘It was Barkis, and Barkis only.’
I nodded assent.
‘It’s all right,’ said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; ‘I’m a friend of your’n. You made it all right, first. It’s all right.’
In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for Peggotty’s calling me away. As we were going along, she asked me what he had said; and I told her he had said it was all right.
‘Like his impudence,’ said Peggotty, ‘but I don’t mind that! Davy dear, what should you think if I was to think of being married?’
‘Why—I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you do now?’ I returned, after a little consideration.
Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as well as of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged to stop and embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her unalterable love.
‘Tell me what should you say, darling?’ she asked again, when this was over, and we were walking on.
‘If you were thinking of being married—to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?’
‘Yes,’ said Peggotty.
‘I should think it would be a very good thing. For then you know, Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.’
Peggotty aveva una risposta arrabbiata pronta, potevo vederlo; ma la trattenne per il mio bene e rimase in silenzio.
«Humph!» disse Miss Murdstone, continuando a tenere d’occhio le sottaceti; «è più importante di qualsiasi altra cosa — è di importanza fondamentale — che mio fratello non venga disturbato o messo a disagio. Suppongo che sia meglio che io dica di sì.»
La ringraziai, senza manifestare alcuna espressione di gioia, per timore che ciò la indusse a ritirare il suo consenso. E non potei fare a meno di pensare che fosse una scelta prudente, dato che mi guardava dal barattolo di sottaceti con un’aria talmente acida che sembrava che i suoi occhi neri avessero assorbito il contenuto. Comunque, il permesso fu concesso e mai ritirato; infatti, quando il mese fu trascorso, Peggotty ed io eravamo pronti a partire.
Il signor Barkis entrò in casa per le casse di Peggotty. Non l’avevo mai visto passare dal cancello del giardino prima, ma in questa occasione entrò in casa. E mi lanciò uno sguardo mentre si caricava in spalla la cassa più grande e usciva, che mi parve significativo, se mai si poté dire che il significato riuscì a trovare la strada per il volto del signor Barkis.
Peggotty era naturalmente di cattivo umore all’idea di lasciare ciò che era stato il suo casa per tanti anni, e dove si erano formate le due forti attaccature della sua vita, per mia madre e per me. Era anche andata a passeggiare nel cimitero molto presto; e salì sul carro, e vi si sedette con il fazzoletto sugli occhi.
Finché rimase in questo stato, il signor Barkis non diede alcun segno di vita. Sedeva nel suo solito posto e nella sua solita posizione, come una grande figura imbalsamata. Ma quando lei cominciò a guardarsi intorno e a parlarmi, lui annuì e ghignò più volte. Non ho la minima idea di chi, o cosa intendesse con questo.
«È una bella giornata, signor Barkis!» dissi, per gentilezza.
«Non è male», disse il signor Barkis, che generalmente si esprimeva con cautela e raramente si esponeva.
«Peggotty sta benissimo ora, signor Barkis», osservai, per tranquillizzarlo.
«E invece lo è?» disse il signor Barkis.
Dopo averci riflettuto con aria saggia, il signor Barkis la guardò e disse:
‘Ti senti abbastanza a tuo agio?’
Peggotty rise in una risata e rispose affermativamente.
«Ma davvero e veramente, sapete. Lo siete?» brontolò il signor Barkis, scivolando più vicino a lei sul sedile e gomitateandola col gomito. «Lo siete? Davvero e veramente piuttosto comoda? Lo siete? Eh?»
Ad ogni domanda, il signor Barkis si avvicinava un po’ di più a lei e le dava un’altra gomitata; così alla fine eravamo tutti ammassati nell’angolo sinistro del carro, e io ero così schiacciato che non ce la facevo più.
Peggotty attirando l’attenzione di Mr. Barkis sulle mie sofferenze, mi concesse subito un po’ più di spazio e se ne andò gradualmente. Ma non potevo fare a meno di notare che sembrava pensare di aver trovato un espediente meraviglioso per esprimersi in modo elegante, piacevole e incisivo, senza il fastidio di inventare una conversazione. Ne rise manifestamente per qualche tempo. Dopo un po’ si rivolse di nuovo a Peggotty, ripetendo: «Sei abbastanza comoda, però?», e ci sovrastò come prima, fino a togliermi quasi il respiro dal mio corpo. Dopo un po’ ci fece un’altra visita con la stessa domanda e lo stesso risultato. Alla fine, mi alzavo ogni volta che lo vedevo arrivare e, rimanendo sul predellino, facevo finta di guardare il panorama; dopo di che andai molto bene.
Fu così gentile da fermarsi in un osteria appositamente per noi, e ci intrattenne con agnello alla griglia e birra. Anche quando Peggotty stava per bere, fu colpito da uno di quegli attacchi, e quasi la soffocò. Ma mentre ci avvicinavamo alla fine del nostro viaggio, lui aveva più cose da fare e meno tempo per la galanteria; e quando arrivammo sul marciapiede di Yarmouth, eravamo tutti troppo scossi e sballottati, credo, per avere il tempo per altro.
Il signor Peggotty e Ham ci aspettavano al solito posto. Ci accolsero con affetto, me e Peggotty, e strinsero la mano al signor Barkis, che, con il cappello in fondo alla nuca, e un ghigno imbarazzato sul viso, e che gli pervadeva fino alle gambe, aveva un aspetto piuttosto vacuo, mi parve. Ognuno prese uno dei bauli di Peggotty, e stavamo per andarcene, quando il signor Barkis mi fece solennemente cenno con l’indice di seguirlo sotto un porticato.
“Volevo dire”, borbottò il signor Barkis, “che era tutto a posto”.
Ho alzato lo sguardo verso di lui e ho risposto, cercando di essere molto profondo: “Oh!”
«Non finì lì», disse il signor Barkis, annuendo con fare confidenziale. «Andò tutto bene.»
Di nuovo risposi: «Oh!»
‘Sai chi era disposto’, disse il mio amico. ‘Era Barkis, e solo Barkis.’
Annuii in segno di assenso.
«Va tutto bene», disse il signor Barkis, stringendogli la mano, «sono un amico di suo padre. Lei ha fatto tutto bene, la prima volta. Va tutto bene».
Nel tentativo di essere particolarmente chiaro, il signor Barkis era così estremamente misterioso, che avrei potuto rimanere a guardarlo in faccia per un’ora, e sicuramente avrei ottenuto tante informazioni da lui come da il volto di un orologio fermo, se Peggotty non mi avesse chiamato via. Mentre camminavamo, mi chiese cosa avesse detto; e le dissi che aveva detto che tutto era a posto.
«Come la sua impudenza», disse Peggotty, «ma non me ne importa! Davy caro, che cosa ne penseresti se dovessi pensare di sposarmi?»
«Beh, immagino che allora mi vorresti bene quanto ora, Peggotty», replicai, dopo averci riflettuto un po’.
Grandemente a stupore dei passeggeri per la strada, così come dei suoi parenti che procedevano davanti, la buona anima fu costretta a fermarsi e abbracciarmi sul posto, con molte protestazioni del suo inalterabile amore.
«Dimmi che cosa diresti, tesoro?» chiese di nuovo, quando tutto fu finito e stavamo riprendendo a camminare.
“Se pensavi di sposarti, con il signor Barkis, Peggotty?”
«Sì», disse Peggotty.
«Penso che sarebbe una cosa molto buona. Perché allora, Peggotty, avresti sempre il cavallo e il carretto per venire a trovarmi, e potresti venire senza spese, e sarebbe certo che verresti.»
‘The sense of the dear!’ cried Peggotty. ‘What I have been thinking of, this month back! Yes, my precious; and I think I should be more independent altogether, you see; let alone my working with a better heart in my own house, than I could in anybody else’s now. I don’t know what I might be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And I shall be always near my pretty’s resting-place,’ said Peggotty, musing, ‘and be able to see it when I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid not far off from my darling girl!’
We neither of us said anything for a little while.
‘But I wouldn’t so much as give it another thought,’ said Peggotty, cheerily ‘if my Davy was anyways against it—not if I had been asked in church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out the ring in my pocket.’
‘Look at me, Peggotty,’ I replied; ‘and see if I am not really glad, and don’t truly wish it!’ As indeed I did, with all my heart.
‘Well, my life,’ said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, ‘I have thought of it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right way; but I’ll think of it again, and speak to my brother about it, and in the meantime we’ll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good plain creature,’ said Peggotty, ‘and if I tried to do my duty by him, I think it would be my fault if I wasn’t—if I wasn’t pretty comfortable,’ said Peggotty, laughing heartily. This quotation from Mr. Barkis was so appropriate, and tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and again, and were quite in a pleasant humour when we came within view of Mr. Peggotty’s cottage.
It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk a little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as if she had stood there ever since. All within was the same, down to the seaweed in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same state of conglomeration in the same old corner.
But there was no little Em’ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty where she was.
‘She’s at school, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat consequent on the porterage of Peggotty’s box from his forehead; ‘she’ll be home,’ looking at the Dutch clock, ‘in from twenty minutes to half-an-hour’s time. We all on us feel the loss of her, bless ye!’
Mrs. Gummidge moaned.
‘Cheer up, Mawther!’ cried Mr. Peggotty.
‘I feel it more than anybody else,’ said Mrs. Gummidge; ‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’, and she used to be a’most the only thing that didn’t go contrary with me.’
Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she was so engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand: ‘The old ‘un!’ From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had taken place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits.
Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as delightful a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the same way. I felt rather disappointed with it. Perhaps it was because little Em’ly was not at home. I knew the way by which she would come, and presently found myself strolling along the path to meet her.
A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it to be Em’ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she was grown. But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken.
Little Em’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage before I caught her.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said little Em’ly.
‘Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’ said I.
‘And didn’t YOU know who it was?’ said Em’ly. I was going to kiss her, but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn’t a baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.
She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I wondered at very much. The tea table was ready, and our little locker was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit by me, she went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge: and on Mr. Peggotty’s inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide it, and could do nothing but laugh.
‘A little puss, it is!’ said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his great hand.
‘So sh’ is! so sh’ is!’ cried Ham. ‘Mas’r Davy bor’, so sh’ is!’ and he sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled admiration and delight, that made his face a burning red.
Little Em’ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured, and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that she captivated me more than ever.
She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire after tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to the loss I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she looked at me so kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful to her.
‘Ah!’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over his hand like water, ‘here’s another orphan, you see, sir. And here,’ said Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the chest, ‘is another of ‘em, though he don’t look much like it.’
«Il senso del caro!» esclamò Peggotty. «A cosa ho pensato questo mese! Sì, mia preziosa; e penso che sarei più indipendente in assoluto, vedi; lascia perdere il fatto che lavorerei con un cuore migliore nella mia casa, che non potrei fare in quella di nessun altro ora. Non so a cosa potrei essere adatta, ora, come serva di uno sconosciuto. E sarò sempre vicino al luogo di riposo della mia bella», disse Peggotty, meditando, «e potrò vederlo quando voglio; e quando mi sdraio per riposare, potrei essere deposta non lontano dalla mia adorata ragazza!»
Nessuno di noi due disse nulla per un po’.
«Ma non ci penserei neanche per un istante», disse Peggotty allegra, «se il mio Davy fosse in qualche modo contrario, neanche se mi avessero chiesto in chiesa trenta volte tre volte e stessi consumando l’anello in tasca.»
«Guardami, Peggotty», risposi, «e vedi se non sono davvero felice e se non lo desidero veramente!» E in effetti lo ero, con tutto il cuore.
«Beh, la mia vita», disse Peggotty, stringendomi, «ci ho pensato notte e giorno, in tutti i modi possibili, e spero nel modo giusto; ma ci ripenserò, e ne parlerò con mio fratello, e nel frattempo ne terremo conto solo noi due, Davy. Barkis è una brava persona semplice», disse Peggotty, «e se provassi a fare il mio dovere con lui, penso che sarebbe colpa mia se non fossi—se non fossi piuttosto comoda», disse Peggotty, ridendo di gusto. Questo riferimento a Mr. Barkis era così appropriato, e ci fece ridere così tanto, che ridemmo ancora e ancora, e eravamo di ottimo umore quando arrivammo in vista della casetta di Mr. Peggotty.
Sembrava esattamente la stessa, tranne che forse era un po’ più piccola ai miei occhi; e la signora Gummidge era in attesa alla porta come se ci fosse stata lì da allora. Tutto all’interno era identico, fino alla alghe nel boccale blu nella mia camera da letto. Sono andato nella rimessa per guardarmi intorno; e gli stessi granchi, gamberi e astici, mossi dallo stesso desiderio di pizzicare il mondo in generale, sembravano essere nello stesso stato di conglomerato nello stesso vecchio angolo.
Ma non c’era nessuna piccola Emily in vista, così chiesi al signor Peggotty dove fosse.
«È a scuola, signore», disse il signor Peggotty, asciugandosi il sudore dovuto al trasporto della cassa di Peggotty dalla fronte; «tornerà a casa», guardando l’orologio olandese, «tra venti minuti o mezz’ora di tempo. Tutti noi sentiamo la sua mancanza, Dio la benedica!»
La signora Gummidge gemette.
«Faccia coraggio, Mawther!» esclamò il signor Peggotty.
«Lo sento più di chiunque altro», disse la signora Gummidge; «Sono una povera creatura sola e abbandonata, e lei era quasi l’unica cosa che non mi fosse contraria.»
La signora Gummidge, singhiozzando e scuotendo la testa, si mise a soffiare sul fuoco. Mentre era così impegnata, il signor Peggotty, guardandoci intorno, disse a bassa voce, coprendosi la bocca con la mano: ‘La vecchia ‘un!’ Da ciò dedussi giustamente che non c’era stato alcun miglioramento dallo stato d’animo della signora Gummidge dalla mia ultima visita.
Ora, il posto era, o avrebbe dovuto essere, un luogo del tutto delizioso come sempre; eppure non mi colpì nello stesso modo. Mi sentii piuttosto deluso. Forse era perché la piccola Emily non era a casa. Conoscevo il percorso che avrebbe fatto per arrivare e mi ritrovai presto a passeggiare lungo il sentiero per andarle incontro.
Dopo poco apparve una figura in lontananza, e ben presto riconobbi che era Em’ly, che era ancora una piccola creatura di statura, anche se era cresciuta. Ma quando si avvicinò, e vidi i suoi occhi azzurri che sembravano più azzurri, e il suo viso con le fossette che sembrava più luminoso, e tutta la sua persona più carina e più allegra, mi venne una strana sensazione che mi fece fingere di non conoscerla, e passare oltre come se stessi guardando qualcosa di molto lontano. Ho fatto una cosa del genere anche in seguito, o mi sbaglio.
La piccola Emily non se ne curava affatto. Mi vedeva abbastanza bene; ma invece di voltarsi e chiamarmi, scappò via ridendo. Questo mi obbligò a inseguirla, e lei correva così veloce che eravamo molto vicini alla casetta prima che la raggiungessi.
«Oh, siete voi, allora?» disse la piccola Emily.
«Ma tu sapevi chi era, Emily», dissi io.
«E tu non sapevi chi fosse?» disse Em’ly. Stavo per baciarla, ma lei si coprì le sue labbra di ciliegia con le mani e disse che non era più una bambina, e corse via, ridendo più che mai, nella casa.
Mi sembrava che si divertisse a prendermi in giro, il che era un cambiamento in lei che mi lasciò molto perplesso. Il tavolo da tè era pronto e il nostro piccolo armadietto era stato messo al suo vecchio posto, ma invece di venire a sedersi accanto a me, andò a fare compagnia a quella brontolona della signora Gummidge: e quando il signor Peggotty le chiese il perché, si arruffò i capelli sulla faccia per nasconderla e non fece altro che ridere.
«Una piccola gattina, è!» disse il signor Peggotty, accarezzandola con la sua grande mano.
«Eh sì, lo è! Eh sì, lo è!» gridò Ham. «Il piccolo Davy, lo è!» e rimase seduto a ridacchiare di lei per un po’ di tempo, in uno stato di ammirazione e delizia mescolate che gli arrossava il viso.
La piccola Emily era viziata da tutti, in effetti; e da nessuno più che dal signor Peggotty stesso, che lei avrebbe potuto convincere a fare qualsiasi cosa, solo andando a posargli la guancia contro i suoi ruvidi baffi. Questo era almeno il mio pensiero, quando la vidi farlo; e ritenevo che il signor Peggotty avesse tutta la ragione. Ma lei era così affettuosa e di buon cuore, e aveva un modo così piacevole di essere allo stesso tempo maliziosa e timida, che mi conquistò più che mai.
Era anche di cuore tenero; perché quando, mentre eravamo seduti intorno al fuoco dopo il tè, il signor Peggotty accennò, fumando la pipa, alla perdita che avevo subito, le lacrime le salirono agli occhi e mi guardò così gentilmente dall’altra parte del tavolo che mi sentii davvero grato verso di lei.
«Ah!» disse il signor Peggotty, prendendo i suoi riccioli e passandoli sulla mano come acqua, «ecco un’altra orfana, vede, signore. E qui», disse il signor Peggotty, dando a Ham un colpo dietro la schiena, «ce n’è un altro, anche se non sembra molto.»
‘If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, shaking my head, ‘I don’t think I should FEEL much like it.’
‘Well said, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ cried Ham, in an ecstasy. ‘Hoorah! Well said! Nor more you wouldn’t! Hor! Hor!’—Here he returned Mr. Peggotty’s back-hander, and little Em’ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. ‘And how’s your friend, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty to me.
‘Steerforth?’ said I.
‘That’s the name!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. ‘I knowed it was something in our way.’
‘You said it was Rudderford,’ observed Ham, laughing.
‘Well!’ retorted Mr. Peggotty. ‘And ye steer with a rudder, don’t ye? It ain’t fur off. How is he, sir?’
‘He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.’
‘There’s a friend!’ said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. ‘There’s a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord love my heart alive, if it ain’t a treat to look at him!’
‘He is very handsome, is he not?’ said I, my heart warming with this praise.
‘Handsome!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘He stands up to you like—like a—why I don’t know what he don’t stand up to you like. He’s so bold!’
‘Yes! That’s just his character,’ said I. ‘He’s as brave as a lion, and you can’t think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.’
‘And I do suppose, now,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through the smoke of his pipe, ‘that in the way of book-larning he’d take the wind out of a’most anything.’
‘Yes,’ said I, delighted; ‘he knows everything. He is astonishingly clever.’
‘There’s a friend!’ murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his head.
‘Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,’ said I. ‘He knows a task if he only looks at it. He is the best cricketer you ever saw. He will give you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.’
Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘Of course he will.’
‘He is such a speaker,’ I pursued, ‘that he can win anybody over; and I don’t know what you’d say if you were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.’
Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘I have no doubt of it.’
‘Then, he’s such a generous, fine, noble fellow,’ said I, quite carried away by my favourite theme, ‘that it’s hardly possible to give him as much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and lower in the school than himself.’
I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little Em’ly’s face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels, and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked at her.
‘Em’ly is like me,’ said Peggotty, ‘and would like to see him.’
Em’ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head, and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept away till it was nearly bedtime.
I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em’ly, and so dropping lovingly asleep.
The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except—it was a great exception—that little Em’ly and I seldom wandered on the beach now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of childish whims as Em’ly was, she was more of a little woman than I had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me, in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air.
On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double set of pigs’ trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes, a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.
Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty, who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one.
«Se avessi voi per tutore, signor Peggotty», dissi, scuotendo la testa, «non credo che mi sentirei molto per questo.»
«Bene detto, Mas’r Davy bor’!» esclamò Ham, in estasi. «Hurrà! Bene detto! E neanche un altro! Hurrà! Hurrà!» — Qui restituì il pugno di Mr. Peggotty, e la piccola Em’ly si alzò e baciò Mr. Peggotty. «E come sta il suo amico, signore?» mi chiese Mr. Peggotty.
«Steerforth?» dissi io.
«Questo è il nome!» esclamò il signor Peggotty, rivolgendosi a Ham. «Lo sapevo che era qualcosa di adatto a noi.»
«Avete detto che era Rudderford», osservò Ham, ridendo.
«Bene!» ribatté Mr. Peggotty. «E voi governate con un timone, vero? Non è lontano. Come sta, signore?»
«Era davvero molto bene quando me ne sono andato, signor Peggotty.»
«C’è un amico!» disse il signor Peggotty, allungando la pipa. «C’è un amico, se si parla di amici! Perbacco, se non è una gioia guardarlo!»
«È molto bello, non è vero?» dissi, il mio cuore si riscaldava con questo elogio.
«Bello!» esclamò il signor Peggotty. «Si erge davanti a voi come, come un, insomma, non so a cosa non si eriga davanti a voi. È così audace!»
«Sì! È proprio il suo carattere», dissi io. «È coraggioso come un leone, e non si può immaginare quanto sia franco, signor Peggotty.»
«E immagino che, ora», disse il signor Peggotty, guardandomi attraverso il fumo della sua pipa, «per quanto riguarda l’istruzione, egli avrebbe potuto superare quasi chiunque.»
“Sì”, dissi io, entusiasta; “sa tutto. È incredibilmente intelligente.”
«C’è un amico!» mormorò il signor Peggotty, con un grave cenno del capo.
«Non sembra che nulla gli costi fatica», dissi io. «Conosce un compito se lo guarda. È il miglior giocatore di cricket che abbiate mai visto. Vi darà quasi tutti i pezzi che volete a dama, e vi batterà facilmente.»
Mr. Peggotty scosse di nuovo la testa, come a dire: ‘Certo che lo farà.’
«È un oratore così bravo», continuai, «che riesce a convincere chiunque; e non so cosa direste se lo sentiste cantare, signor Peggotty.»
Mr. Peggotty died un’altra scrollata di testa, come per dire: “Non ho alcun dubbio al riguardo”.
«Poi, è un ragazzo così generoso, così squisito, così nobile», dissi, completamente trascinato dal mio tema preferito, «che è quasi impossibile lodarlo quanto merita. Sono sicuro che non potrò mai essere abbastanza grato per la generosità con cui mi ha protetto, essendo io così più giovane e più in basso nella scuola rispetto a lui».
Stavo correndo avanti, davvero molto veloce, quando i miei occhi si posarono sul viso della piccola Em’ly, che era china sul tavolo, ascoltando con la massima attenzione, trattenendo il respiro, i suoi occhi azzurri scintillanti come gioielli, e il colore che le saliva alle guance. Sembrava così straordinariamente seria e carina, che mi fermai in una sorta di meraviglia; e tutti la osservarono nello stesso momento, perché quando mi fermai, risero e la guardarono.
“Emily è come me”, disse Peggotty, “e vorrebbe vederlo”.
Emily era confusa dal fatto che tutti la osservassimo, e abbassò la testa, e il suo viso si coprì di rossori. Dopo un po’ alzò lo sguardo tra i riccioli che le cadevano sul viso, e vedendo che tutti la stavano ancora guardando (io, per esempio, avrei potuto guardarla per ore), scappò via, e rimase lontana fino a quando fu quasi l’ora di andare a letto.
Mi sdraiai nel vecchio lettino nella parte posteriore della barca, e il vento veniva a lamentarsi sulla pianura come aveva fatto prima. Ma non potevo fare a meno di immaginare, ora, che si lamentasse di coloro che erano andati via; e invece di pensare che il mare potesse alzarsi nella notte e far galleggiare via la barca, pensavo al mare che si era alzato, da quando avevo sentito per l’ultima volta quei suoni, e aveva sommerso la mia felice casa. Ricordo che, mentre il vento e l’acqua cominciavano a suonare più deboli alle mie orecchie, aggiunsi una breve clausola alle mie preghiere, chiedendo che potessi crescere abbastanza da sposare la piccola Emily, e così mi addormentai dolcemente.
I giorni passavano più o meno come erano passati prima, tranne - e questa era una grande eccezione - che la piccola Em’ly e io raramente vagavamo ora sulla spiaggia. Aveva compiti da imparare e lavori all’uncinetto da fare; e assente per gran parte di ogni giorno. Ma sentivo che non avremmo avuto quelle vecchie vagabondate, anche se le cose fossero state altrimenti. Selvaggia e piena di capricci infantili come era, Em’ly era più una piccola donna di quanto avessi supposto. Sembrava che si fosse allontanata molto da me, in poco più di un anno. Le piacevo, ma rideva di me, e mi tormentava; e quando andavo a incontrarla, tornava a casa per un’altra strada, e rideva alla porta quando tornavo, deluso. I momenti migliori erano quando sedeva tranquillamente al lavoro sulla porta, e io sedevo sul gradino di legno ai suoi piedi, leggendo per lei. Mi sembra, in questo momento, di non aver mai visto una luce solare come quella di quelle luminose pomeriggi di aprile; che non ho mai visto una figura così soleggiata come quella che usavo vedere, seduta sulla porta della vecchia barca; che non ho mai contemplato un cielo così, né acqua così, né navi così glorificate che veleggiavano via nell’aria dorata.
La sera stessa del nostro arrivo, il signor Barkis apparve in condizioni estremamente svagate e impacciate, e con un pacco di arance avvolto in un fazzoletto. Poiché non fece alcun cenno a questo pacco, si pensò che lo avesse dimenticato lì per caso quando se ne andò; finché Ham, correndogli dietro per restituirglielo, tornò con la notizia che era destinato a Peggotty. Dopo quell’occasione, apparve ogni sera esattamente alla stessa ora, e sempre con un piccolo pacco, al quale non faceva mai riferimento, e che metteva regolarmente dietro la porta e lasciava lì. Questi doni d’affetto erano di una descrizione molto varia ed eccentrica. Tra questi ricordo un doppio set di zampette di maiale, un enorme cuscino da spilla, mezzo bushel circa di mele, un paio di orecchini di lapislazzuli, alcune cipolle spagnole, una scatola di domino, un canarino e la sua gabbia, e una zampa di maiale sottaceto.
Il corteggiamento di Mr. Barkis, come lo ricordo, era del tutto di un genere peculiare. Parlava molto raramente; ma si sedeva accanto al fuoco nella stessa posizione in cui si sedeva sul suo carro, e fissava con insistenza Peggotty, che era di fronte. Una sera, essendo, come suppongo, ispirato dall’amore, fece un balzo verso il pezzetto di candela di cera che lei teneva per il suo filo, e lo mise nella tasca del panciotto e lo portò via. Dopo di che, il suo grande divertimento era tirarlo fuori quando serviva, attaccato al fodero della sua tasca, in uno stato parzialmente fuso, e rimetterlo in tasca quando aveva finito. Sembrava divertirsi molto, e non sentiva affatto il bisogno di parlare. Anche quando portava Peggotty a fare una passeggiata sulle pianure, non aveva, credo, alcuna inquietudine su quel fronte; accontentandosi di chiederle di tanto in tanto se si sentiva abbastanza a suo agio; e ricordo che a volte, dopo che se n’era andato, Peggotty si copriva il viso con il grembiule e rideva per mezz’ora. In effetti, eravamo tutti più o meno divertiti, tranne quella povera Mrs. Gummidge, il cui corteggiamento sembrava essere di una natura esattamente parallela, dato che veniva continuamente ricordata da queste transazioni quella vecchia.
At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day’s holiday together, and that little Em’ly and I were to accompany them. I had but a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of a whole day with Em’ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance, driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections.
Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr. Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.
When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck, and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose.
‘No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and everythink that reminds me of creetur’s that ain’t lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.’
‘Come, old gal!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘Take and heave it.’
‘No, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head. ‘If I felt less, I could do more. You don’t feel like me, Dan’l; thinks don’t go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it yourself.’
But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we all were by this time (Em’ly and I on two little chairs, side by side), that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on.
Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em’ly and me alone in the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em’ly’s waist, and propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little Em’ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate; informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her affections.
How merry little Em’ly made herself about it! With what a demure assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little woman said I was ‘a silly boy’; and then laughed so charmingly that I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the pleasure of looking at her.
Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along, Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,—by the by, I should hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:
‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?’
‘Clara Peggotty,’ I answered.
‘What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt here?’
‘Clara Peggotty, again?’ I suggested.
‘Clara Peggotty BARKIS!’ he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter that shook the chaise.
In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she was very glad it was over.
We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went out for a stroll with little Em’ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite; for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large quantity without any emotion.
I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis’s mind to an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my hearing, on that very occasion, that I was ‘a young Roeshus’—by which I think he meant prodigy.
When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em’ly and I made a cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey. Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such guileless hearts at Peggotty’s marriage as little Em’ly’s and mine. I am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely procession.
Alla fine, quando il termine della mia visita era quasi scaduto, si diffuse la notizia che Peggotty e il signor Barkis avrebbero fatto una giornata di vacanza insieme, e che la piccola Emily e io li avremmo accompagnati. Avevo dormito male la notte prima, in previsione del piacere di passare un’intera giornata con Emily. Eravamo tutti in piedi presto al mattino; e mentre eravamo ancora a colazione, il signor Barkis apparve in lontananza, guidando un carretto verso l’oggetto dei suoi affetti.
Peggotty era vestita come al solito, nel suo lutto ordinato e sobrio; ma il signor Barkis fioriva in un nuovo cappotto blu, di cui il sarto gli aveva dato una misura così generosa che i polsini avrebbero reso superflue le guanti anche nel clima più freddo, mentre il colletto era così alto da spingere i capelli in su sulla sommità della testa. Anche i suoi bottoni lucenti erano di dimensioni massicce. Completato da pantaloni di fustagno e un panciotto color cera, pensavo che il signor Barkis fosse un fenomeno di rispettabilità.
Quando eravamo tutti in gran fermento fuori dalla porta, scoprii che il signor Peggotty si era preparato con un vecchio scarpone che avrebbe dovuto essere lanciato dietro di noi per portarci fortuna, e che offrì a tale scopo alla signora Gummidge.
«No. È meglio che lo faccia qualcun altro, Dan’l», disse la signora Gummidge. «Sono una povera creatura sola e abbandonata, e tutto ciò che mi ricorda creature che non sono sole e abbandonate, mi va contro.»
“Avanti, vecchia mia!” gridò il signor Peggotty. “Prendila e sollevala.”
«No, Dan’l», rispose la signora Gummidge, singhiozzando e scuotendo la testa. «Se mi sentissi meno a terra, potrei fare di più. Non ti senti come me, Dan’l; le cose non vanno storte con te, né tu con loro; è meglio che lo faccia tu stesso.»
Ma qui Peggotty, che si era mossa da uno all’altro in modo affrettato, baciando tutti, chiamò dal carro, in cui eravamo tutti a quest’ora (Em’ly ed io su due piccole sedie, fianco a fianco), che la signora Gummidge dovesse farlo. Così la signora Gummidge lo fece; e, mi dispiace dirlo, gettò un’ombra sul carattere festoso della nostra partenza, scoppiando immediatamente in lacrime, e affondando sottomessa tra le braccia di Ham, con la dichiarazione che sapeva di essere un peso, e sarebbe stato meglio portarla alla Casa subito. Cosa che in realtà pensavo fosse un’idea sensata, che Ham avrebbe potuto mettere in pratica.
Partimmo comunque per la nostra gita di vacanza; e la prima cosa che facemmo fu fermarci in una chiesa, dove il signor Barkis legò il cavallo a delle sbarre e entrò con Peggotty, lasciando la piccola Em’ly e me soli nella carrozza. Approfittai dell’occasione per mettere il braccio intorno alla vita di Em’ly e proporre che, dato che me ne sarei andato così presto, avremmo deciso di essere molto affettuosi l’uno con l’altra e molto felici per tutto il giorno. La piccola Em’ly acconsentì e mi permise di baciarla, e io diventai disperato; le dissi, ricordo, che non avrei mai potuto amare un’altra, e che ero pronto a versare il sangue di chiunque avesse aspirato ai suoi affetti.
Com’era allegra la piccola Emily! Con quale aria di essere immensamente più vecchia e più saggia di me, la piccola fata di donna mi disse che ero “un bambino sciocco”; e poi rise così incantevolmente che dimenticai il dolore di essere chiamato con quel nome dispregiativo, nel piacere di guardarla.
Il signor Barkis e Peggotty rimasero a lungo in chiesa, ma alla fine uscirono, e poi ci allontanammo in carrozza verso la campagna. Mentre procedevamo, il signor Barkis si voltò verso di me e disse, strizzando l’occhio, - tra l’altro, non avrei mai pensato, prima, che potesse strizzare l’occhio:
‘Che nome ho scritto sul carro?’
«Clara Peggotty», risposi.
‘Che nome dovrei scrivere adesso, se ci fosse un torneo qui?’
«Clara Peggotty, di nuovo?» suggerii.
«Clara Peggotty BARKIS!», rispose, e scoppiò in una risata fragorosa che fece tremare la carrozza.
In breve, erano sposati, ed erano andati in chiesa per nessun altro scopo. Peggotty era risoluta che tutto si svolgesse in modo tranquillo; e il sagrestano l’aveva data in sposa, e non c’erano stati testimoni della cerimonia. Era un po’ confusa quando il signor Barkis fece questo brusco annuncio della loro unione, e non poteva abbracciarmi abbastanza in segno del suo affetto intatto; ma presto tornò a essere se stessa, e disse che era molto contenta che fosse finita.
Ci recammo in una piccola locanda in una strada secondaria, dove ci aspettavano, e dove facemmo una cena molto confortevole, e passammo la giornata con grande soddisfazione. Se Peggotty si fosse sposata ogni giorno negli ultimi dieci anni, non avrebbe potuto essere più a suo agio; non fece alcuna differenza in lei: era esattamente la stessa di sempre, e uscì a fare una passeggiata con la piccola Emily e me prima del tè, mentre il signor Barkis fumava filosoficamente la sua pipa, e si godeva, immagino, la contemplazione della sua felicità. Se così fosse stato, gli avrebbe affinato l’appetito; perché ricordo distintamente che, sebbene avesse mangiato parecchio maiale e verdure a cena, e avesse finito con un paio di polli, fu costretto a prendere del bacon bollito freddo per il tè, e ne consumò una grande quantità senza alcuna emozione.
Da allora ho spesso pensato che deve essere stato un matrimonio davvero strano, innocente e fuori dal comune! Siamo risaliti sulla carrozza poco dopo il buio e siamo tornati indietro comodamente, guardando le stelle e parlandone. Ero io il loro principale esperto e ho ampliato notevolmente la conoscenza di Mr. Barkis. Gli ho raccontato tutto quello che sapevo, ma lui avrebbe creduto a qualsiasi cosa mi fosse venuto in mente di dirgli; perché aveva una profonda venerazione per le mie capacità e, in mia presenza, in quell’occasione, ha informato sua moglie che ero “un giovane Roeshus”, con cui credo intendesse dire un prodigio.
Quando avevamo esaurito l’argomento delle stelle, o meglio quando io avevo esaurito le facoltà mentali del signor Barkis, io e la piccola Em’ly facemmo un mantello con un vecchio involucro e ci sedemmo sotto di esso per il resto del viaggio. Ah, come l’amavo! Quale felicità (pensavo) se fossimo stati sposati, e fossimo andati via da qualche parte a vivere tra gli alberi e nei campi, senza invecchiare mai, senza diventare mai più saggi, bambini per sempre, girovagando mano nella mano attraverso la luce del sole e tra i prati fioriti, appoggiando le nostre teste sul muschio di notte, in un dolce sonno di purezza e pace, e sepolti dai uccelli quando fossimo morti! Un quadro simile, senza un mondo reale in esso, luminoso con la luce della nostra innocenza, e vago come le stelle lontane era nella mia mente per tutto il tempo. Sono felice di pensare che ci fossero due cuori così ingenui al matrimonio di Peggotty come quello della piccola Em’ly e il mio. Sono felice di pensare che gli Amori e le Grazie prendessero forme così aeree nella sua semplice processione.
Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof but that which sheltered little Em’ly’s head.
Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away. Little Em’ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful day.
It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary house, the protector of Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons until morning.
With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too. After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty’s house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now.
I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little Em’ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty’s, in a little room in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed’s head) which was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me in exactly the same state.
‘Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over my head,’ said Peggotty, ‘you shall find it as if I expected you here directly minute. I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China, you might think of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.’
I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart, and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was going home in the morning, and I went home in the morning, with herself and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on, taking Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the house, in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking any more.
And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition,—apart from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless thoughts,—which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.
What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that ever was kept!—to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly, steadily, overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone’s means were straitened at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him—and succeeded.
I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness; whether I should have lain down in my lonely room, and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have helped me out.
When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding something in a mortar under his mild directions.
For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty dutifully expressed it, was ‘a little near’, and kept a heap of money in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.
Bene, siamo tornati alla vecchia barca in buon tempo al buio; e lì il signor e la signora Barkis ci hanno salutato e si sono allontanati comodamente verso la loro casa. In quel momento ho sentito, per la prima volta, che avevo perso Peggotty. Sarei andato a letto con il cuore pesante sotto qualsiasi altro tetto se non fosse stato quello che riparava la testolina di piccola Emily.
Il signor Peggotty e Ham sapevano cosa avevo in mente altrettanto bene quanto me, e erano pronti con un po’ di cena e i loro volti ospitali a scacciarlo. La piccola Emily venne a sedersi accanto a me sulla panca per l’unica volta in tutta quella visita; e fu in ogni modo una conclusione meravigliosa per una giornata meravigliosa.
Era la notte alta; e poco dopo che ci fummo messi a letto, il signor Peggotty e Ham uscirono a pescare. Mi sentivo molto coraggioso per essere rimasto solo nella solitaria casa, il protettore di Em’ly e della signora Gummidge, e desideravo solo che un leone o un serpente, o qualsiasi mostro malevolo, ci attaccasse, per poterlo distruggere e coprirmi di gloria. Ma poiché nulla di simile si trovava a vagare per le paludi di Yarmouth quella notte, mi procurai il miglior sostituto possibile sognando draghi fino al mattino.
Con la mattina arrivò Peggotty, che mi chiamò come al solito sotto la finestra, come se il signor Barkis il facchino fosse stato un sogno dall’inizio alla fine. Dopo colazione mi portò nella sua casa, e che bella piccola casa era. Di tutti i mobili che conteneva, devo essere stato colpito da un certo vecchio scrittoio di legno scuro nel salotto (la cucina con il pavimento di mattonelle era la sala comune), con un piano inclinato che si apriva, si abbassava e diventava una scrivania, all’interno della quale c’era una grande edizione in quarto del Libro dei Martiri di Foxe. Questo prezioso volume, di cui non ricordo una parola, lo scoprii immediatamente e mi applicai subito a leggerlo; e ogni volta che visitavo la casa in seguito, mi inginocchiavo su una sedia, aprivo il cassetto dove era custodita questa gemma, spingevo le braccia sulla scrivania e mi mettevo a divorare di nuovo il libro. Ero principalmente edificato, temo, dalle illustrazioni, che erano numerose e rappresentavano ogni sorta di orrori tetri; ma i Martiri e la casa di Peggotty sono stati inseparabili nella mia mente da allora, e lo sono ancora oggi.
Quel giorno presi congedo da Mr. Peggotty, Ham, Mrs. Gummidge e la piccola Em’ly; e passai la notte da Peggotty, in una stanzina sotto il tetto (con il Libro dei Coccodrilli su uno scaffale accanto al capo del letto) che, come disse Peggotty, sarebbe stata sempre mia e sarebbe stata sempre tenuta per me esattamente nello stesso stato.
«Giovane o vecchio, caro Davy, finché sarò viva e avrò questa casa sopra la testa», disse Peggotty, «la troverai sempre come se ti aspettassi qui da un momento all’altro. La manterrò ogni giorno, come tenevo la tua vecchia cameretta, mio tesoro; e se dovessi andare in Cina, potresti pensare che sia rimasta esattamente la stessa, tutto il tempo che sarai lontano».
Sentivo la verità e la costanza della mia cara vecchia balia con tutto il cuore, e la ringraziai come meglio potevo. Non fu molto bene, perché lei mi parlò così, con le braccia intorno al collo, al mattino, e io stavo per tornare a casa al mattino, e tornai a casa al mattino, con lei e il signor Barkis sul carro. Mi lasciarono al cancello, non facilmente o leggermente; e fu una vista strana per me vedere il carro andare avanti, portando via Peggotty, e lasciandomi sotto i vecchi olmi a guardare la casa, nella quale non c’era più un volto che mi guardasse con amore o simpatia.
E ora caddi in uno stato di trascuratezza, che non posso ricordare senza compassione. Caddi subito in una condizione di solitudine,—lontano da ogni amichevole attenzione, lontano dalla compagnia di tutti gli altri ragazzi della mia età, lontano da ogni amicizia se non dai miei stessi pensieri senza spirito,—che sembra gettare la sua ombra su questo foglio mentre scrivo.
Che cosa avrei dato per essere stato mandato alla scuola più dura che mai sia esistita! — per essere stato istruito in qualcosa, in qualche modo, in qualche luogo! Nessuna simile speranza si affacciò a me. Non mi volevano bene; e mi ignoravano con rancore, severità, costanza. Penso che le finanze del signor Murdstone fossero strette in quel periodo; ma non è questo il punto. Non poteva sopportarmi; e nel mettermi da parte cercò, credo, di allontanare l’idea che io avessi qualche pretesa su di lui — e ci riuscì.
Non fui maltrattato in modo attivo. Non fui picchiato, né lasciato morire di fame; ma il torto che mi fu fatto non ebbe intervalli di pietà, e fu fatto in modo sistematico, impassibile. Giorno dopo giorno, settimana dopo settimana, mese dopo mese, fui freddamente trascurato. A volte mi chiedo, quando ci penso, cosa avrebbero fatto se fossi stato colpito da una malattia; se sarei rimasto sdraiato nella mia stanza solitaria, e l’avrei superata nel mio solito modo solitario, o se qualcuno mi avrebbe aiutato a superarla.
Quando il signor e la signorina Murdstone erano a casa, prendevo i pasti con loro; in loro assenza, mangiavo e bevevo da solo. In ogni momento mi aggiravo per la casa e i dintorni completamente ignorato, tranne che erano gelosi che facessi amicizie: pensando, forse, che se lo avessi fatto, avrei potuto lamentarmi con qualcuno. Per questo motivo, sebbene il signor Chillip spesso mi invitasse a andare a trovarlo (era vedovo, avendo perso alcuni anni prima una piccola moglie bionda e minuta, che riesco appena a ricordare associata nei miei pensieri a un gatto chiaro di tartaruga), era raro che potessi godere della felicità di trascorrere un pomeriggio nel suo studiolo di farmacia; leggendo qualche libro nuovo per me, con l’odore dell’intera Farmacopea che mi saliva al naso, o macinando qualcosa in un mortaio sotto le sue dolci istruzioni.
Per la stessa ragione, senza aggiungere alcun dubbio al vecchio dispiacere che provavo per lei, mi era raramente permesso di visitare Peggotty. Fedele alla sua promessa, lei veniva a trovarmi o mi incontrava da qualche parte nelle vicinanze, una volta alla settimana, e mai a mani vuote; ma furono molte e amare le delusioni che ebbi, quando mi veniva negato il permesso di andare a trovarla nella sua casa. Tuttavia, poche volte, a lunghi intervalli, mi fu concesso di andarci; e allora scoprii che il signor Barkis era un po’ avaro, o come Peggotty esprimeva con devozione, era “un po’ tirchio”, e teneva un mucchio di soldi in una scatola sotto il suo letto, che fingeva fosse piena solo di giacche e pantaloni. In questo scrigno, le sue ricchezze si nascondevano con una modestia così tenace, che solo piccoli importi potevano essere tirati fuori con l’astuzia; così che Peggotty doveva preparare un piano lungo e elaborato, una vera e propria congiura, per le spese di ogni sabato.
All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read them over and over I don’t know how many times more.
I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and haunted happier times.
I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless, meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman cried:
‘What! Brooks!’
‘No, sir, David Copperfield,’ I said.
‘Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’ said the gentleman. ‘You are Brooks of Sheffield. That’s your name.’
At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before—it is no matter—I need not recall when.
‘And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?’ said Mr. Quinion.
He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr. Murdstone.
‘He is at home at present,’ said the latter. ‘He is not being educated anywhere. I don’t know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.’
That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.
‘Humph!’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. ‘Fine weather!’
Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:
‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?’
‘Aye! He is sharp enough,’ said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. ‘You had better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.’
On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my way home. Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr. Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion talking to him. They were both looking after me, and I felt that they were speaking of me.
Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room, when Mr. Murdstone called me back. He then gravely repaired to another table, where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them all.
‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘to the young this is a world for action; not for moping and droning in.’ —‘As you do,’ added his sister.
‘Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to bend it and break it.’
‘For stubbornness won’t do here,’ said his sister ‘What it wants is, to be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!’
He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on:
‘I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it now. You have received some considerable education already. Education is costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it, I am of opinion that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school. What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin it, the better.’
I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way: but it occurs to me now, whether or no.
‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned sometimes,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘The counting-house, sir?’ I repeated. ‘Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the wine trade,’ he replied.
I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:
‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned, or the business, or the cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.’
‘I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,’ I said, remembering what I vaguely knew of his and his sister’s resources. ‘But I don’t know when.’
‘It does not matter when,’ he returned. ‘Mr. Quinion manages that business.’
I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window.
‘Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys, and that he sees no reason why it shouldn’t, on the same terms, give employment to you.’
‘He having,’ Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning round, ‘no other prospect, Murdstone.’
Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed, without noticing what he had said:
‘Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for your eating and drinking, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing—’
‘—Which will be kept down to my estimate,’ said his sister.
‘Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,’ said Mr. Murdstone; ‘as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on your own account.’
‘In short, you are provided for,’ observed his sister; ‘and will please to do your duty.’
Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to go upon the morrow.
Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a black crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff corduroy trousers—which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off. Behold me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said), in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. Quinion to the London coach at Yarmouth! See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance; how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects; how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky is empty!
Tutto questo tempo fui così consapevole dello spreco di ogni promessa che avevo fatto, e di essere completamente trascurato, che sarei stato perfettamente infelice, non ho dubbi, se non fosse stato per i vecchi libri. Erano il mio unico conforto; e fui fedele a loro come loro lo furono a me, e li lessi più e più volte, non so quante volte di più.
Mi avvicino ora a un periodo della mia vita, di cui non potrò mai perdere il ricordo, finché avrò memoria di qualcosa: e il cui ricordo mi è spesso apparso, senza che io lo evocassi, come un fantasma, e ha perseguitato tempi più felici.
Ero uscito, un giorno, a vagabondare chissà dove, con quell’aria svogliata e meditabonda che il mio modo di vivere mi aveva insegnato, quando, svoltando l’angolo di un vicolo vicino alla nostra casa, mi imbattei nel signor Murdstone che passeggiava con un signore. Confuso, stavo per passare oltre, quando il signore esclamò:
‘Che! Brooks!’
«No, signore, David Copperfield», dissi.
«Non dirmi niente. Lei è Brooks», disse il signore. «Lei è Brooks di Sheffield. Questo è il suo nome.»
A queste parole, osservai il signore più attentamente. Ricordandomi anche la sua risata, lo riconobbi come il signor Quinion, che avevo accompagnato a Lowestoft con il signor Murdstone per una visita, prima di — non ha importanza — non è necessario che ricordi quando.
«E come va, e dove stai studiando, Brooks?» disse il signor Quinion.
Mi aveva messo la mano sulla spalla e mi aveva fatto voltare per camminare insieme a loro. Non sapevo cosa rispondere e guardai dubbiosamente il signor Murdstone.
«È a casa al momento», disse quest’ultimo. «Non sta studiando da nessuna parte. Non so cosa fare con lui. È un soggetto difficile.»
Quell’antico sguardo doppio mi fissò per un momento; poi i suoi occhi si oscurarono in una smorfia, mentre si volgeva, in segno di avversione, altrove.
«Humph!» disse il signor Quinion, guardandoci entrambi, credo io. «Bella giornata!»
Seguì un silenzio e io stavo pensando a come potessi liberare la mia spalla dalla sua mano e andarmene, quando lui disse:
‘Suppongo che tu sia ancora un tipo piuttosto furbo, eh, Brooks?’
«Sì! È abbastanza sveglio», disse il signor Murdstone, impaziente. «Fareste meglio a lasciarlo andare. Non vi ringrazierà per averlo disturbato.»
Su questo suggerimento, il signor Quinion mi lasciò andare, e io mi affrettai a tornare a casa. Guardandomi indietro mentre svoltavo nel giardino anteriore, vidi il signor Murdstone appoggiato al cancello del cimitero, e il signor Quinion che gli parlava. Entrambi mi stavano guardando, e sentii che stavano parlando di me.
Il signor Quinion passò la notte nella nostra casa. Dopo colazione, la mattina seguente, avevo riposto la mia sedia e stavo uscendo dalla stanza, quando il signor Murdstone mi richiamò indietro. Poi si recò con gravità a un altro tavolo, dove sua sorella si sedette alla sua scrivania. Il signor Quinion, con le mani in tasca, stava guardando fuori dalla finestra; e io stavo guardando tutti loro.
«David», disse il signor Murdstone, «per i giovani questo è un mondo d’azione, non di lamenti e di ozio.» «Come invece fate voi», aggiunse sua sorella.
«Jane Murdstone, lascia fare a me, se non ti dispiace. Dico, David, per i giovani questo è un mondo d’azione, e non di sospiri e lamenti. Lo è specialmente per un giovane ragazzo del tuo temperamento, che ha bisogno di essere corretto parecchio; e al quale non si può fare un servizio maggiore che costringerlo a conformarsi ai modi del mondo del lavoro, e piegarlo e domarlo.»
«Perché la testardaggine qui non serve», disse sua sorella «Ciò che serve è che venga schiacciata. E schiacciata deve essere. Sarà, anche!»
Le lanciò un’occhiata, metà di rimprovero, metà di approvazione, e continuò:
«Suppongo che tu sappia, David, che non sono ricco. A ogni modo, ora lo sai. Hai già ricevuto un’educazione considerevole. L’educazione costa cara; e anche se non costasse nulla, e potessi permettermela, sono dell’opinione che non sarebbe affatto vantaggioso per te continuare a frequentare la scuola. Ciò che ti aspetta è una lotta con il mondo; e più presto la inizi, meglio è.»
Penso che mi fosse già venuto in mente che l’avevo già iniziata, a modo mio: ma ora mi viene in mente, che lo fosse o no.
«Avete sentito parlare qualche volta della “cassa di conto”», disse il signor Murdstone.
«La contabilità, signore?» ripetei. «Di Murdstone e Grinby, nel commercio del vino», rispose.
Suppongo che il mio sguardo fosse incerto, perché lui continuò in fretta:
«Avete sentito parlare della “casa di conte”, o dell’attività, o delle cantine, o del molo, o di qualcosa del genere.»
«Credo di aver sentito parlare di quell’affare, signore», dissi, ricordando ciò che vagamente sapevo delle risorse sue e di sua sorella. «Ma non so quando.»
“Non importa quando,” rispose. “Mr. Quinion gestisce quell’affare.”
Diedi un’occhiata rispettosa a quest’ultimo mentre stava guardando fuori dalla finestra.
«Il signor Quinion suggerisce che dà lavoro ad alcuni altri ragazzi, e che non vede alcuna ragione per cui non dovrebbe, alle stesse condizioni, dare lavoro anche a voi.»
«Avendo lui», osservò Mr. Quinion a bassa voce, girandosi a metà, «nessuna altra prospettiva, Murdstone.»
Il signor Murdstone, con un gesto impaziente, anzi, addirittura arrabbiato, riprese, senza badare a ciò che aveva detto:
«Le condizioni sono che tu guadagnerai abbastanza per te stesso per provvedere al tuo vitto e al tuo denaro di tasca. Il tuo alloggio (che ho organizzato io) sarà pagato da me. Così come il tuo bucato—»
«—Che verrà mantenuto al mio livello di stima», disse sua sorella.
«Anche i tuoi vestiti saranno curati per te», disse il signor Murdstone, «poiché per un po’ di tempo non sarai ancora in grado di procurarteli da solo. Quindi ora andrai a Londra, David, con il signor Quinion, per iniziare a vivere per conto tuo.»
“In breve, sei provveduto,” osservò sua sorella; “e ti prego di fare il tuo dovere.”
Anche se capivo benissimo che lo scopo di questo annuncio era di liberarsi di me, non ho un ricordo preciso se mi facesse piacere o mi spaventasse. La mia impressione è che fossi in uno stato di confusione a riguardo, e, oscillando tra i due estremi, non toccavo né l’uno né l’altro. Né avevo molto tempo per schiarirmi le idee, dato che il signor Quinion doveva partire il giorno dopo.
Ecco me, il giorno dopo, con un piccolo cappello bianco molto consumato, con un nastro di crespo nero per mia madre, una giacca nera e un paio di rigidi pantaloni di cordura — che la signorina Murdstone considerava la migliore armatura per le gambe in quella lotta con il mondo che ora stava per iniziare. Ecco me così vestito, e con tutto il mio piccolo mondo davanti a me in una piccola valigia, seduto, un bambino solo e abbandonato (come avrebbe potuto dire la signora Gummidge), nella carrozza postale che stava portando il signor Quinion alla Londra coach a Yarmouth! Guarda, come la nostra casa e la chiesa si fanno più piccole in lontananza; come la tomba sotto l’albero viene cancellata dagli oggetti che si frappongono; come la guglia non punta più verso l’alto dal mio vecchio campo da gioco, e il cielo è vuoto!
CHAPTER 11. I BEGIN LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT, AND DON’T LIKE IT
I know enough of the world now, to have almost lost the capacity of being much surprised by anything; but it is matter of some surprise to me, even now, that I can have been so easily thrown away at such an age. A child of excellent abilities, and with strong powers of observation, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt bodily or mentally, it seems wonderful to me that nobody should have made any sign in my behalf. But none was made; and I became, at ten years old, a little labouring hind in the service of Murdstone and Grinby.
Murdstone and Grinby’s warehouse was at the waterside. It was down in Blackfriars. Modern improvements have altered the place; but it was the last house at the bottom of a narrow street, curving down hill to the river, with some stairs at the end, where people took boat. It was a crazy old house with a wharf of its own, abutting on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, and literally overrun with rats. Its panelled rooms, discoloured with the dirt and smoke of a hundred years, I dare say; its decaying floors and staircase; the squeaking and scuffling of the old grey rats down in the cellars; and the dirt and rottenness of the place; are things, not of many years ago, in my mind, but of the present instant. They are all before me, just as they were in the evil hour when I went among them for the first time, with my trembling hand in Mr. Quinion’s.
Murdstone and Grinby’s trade was among a good many kinds of people, but an important branch of it was the supply of wines and spirits to certain packet ships. I forget now where they chiefly went, but I think there were some among them that made voyages both to the East and West Indies. I know that a great many empty bottles were one of the consequences of this traffic, and that certain men and boys were employed to examine them against the light, and reject those that were flawed, and to rinse and wash them. When the empty bottles ran short, there were labels to be pasted on full ones, or corks to be fitted to them, or seals to be put upon the corks, or finished bottles to be packed in casks. All this work was my work, and of the boys employed upon it I was one.
There were three or four of us, counting me. My working place was established in a corner of the warehouse, where Mr. Quinion could see me, when he chose to stand up on the bottom rail of his stool in the counting-house, and look at me through a window above the desk. Hither, on the first morning of my so auspiciously beginning life on my own account, the oldest of the regular boys was summoned to show me my business. His name was Mick Walker, and he wore a ragged apron and a paper cap. He informed me that his father was a bargeman, and walked, in a black velvet head-dress, in the Lord Mayor’s Show. He also informed me that our principal associate would be another boy whom he introduced by the—to me—extraordinary name of Mealy Potatoes. I discovered, however, that this youth had not been christened by that name, but that it had been bestowed upon him in the warehouse, on account of his complexion, which was pale or mealy. Mealy’s father was a waterman, who had the additional distinction of being a fireman, and was engaged as such at one of the large theatres; where some young relation of Mealy’s—I think his little sister—did Imps in the Pantomimes.
No words can express the secret agony of my soul as I sunk into this companionship; compared these henceforth everyday associates with those of my happier childhood—not to say with Steerforth, Traddles, and the rest of those boys; and felt my hopes of growing up to be a learned and distinguished man, crushed in my bosom. The deep remembrance of the sense I had, of being utterly without hope now; of the shame I felt in my position; of the misery it was to my young heart to believe that day by day what I had learned, and thought, and delighted in, and raised my fancy and my emulation up by, would pass away from me, little by little, never to be brought back any more; cannot be written. As often as Mick Walker went away in the course of that forenoon, I mingled my tears with the water in which I was washing the bottles; and sobbed as if there were a flaw in my own breast, and it were in danger of bursting.
The counting-house clock was at half past twelve, and there was general preparation for going to dinner, when Mr. Quinion tapped at the counting-house window, and beckoned to me to go in. I went in, and found there a stoutish, middle-aged person, in a brown surtout and black tights and shoes, with no more hair upon his head (which was a large one, and very shining) than there is upon an egg, and with a very extensive face, which he turned full upon me. His clothes were shabby, but he had an imposing shirt-collar on. He carried a jaunty sort of a stick, with a large pair of rusty tassels to it; and a quizzing-glass hung outside his coat,—for ornament, I afterwards found, as he very seldom looked through it, and couldn’t see anything when he did.
‘This,’ said Mr. Quinion, in allusion to myself, ‘is he.’
‘This,’ said the stranger, with a certain condescending roll in his voice, and a certain indescribable air of doing something genteel, which impressed me very much, ‘is Master Copperfield. I hope I see you well, sir?’
I said I was very well, and hoped he was. I was sufficiently ill at ease, Heaven knows; but it was not in my nature to complain much at that time of my life, so I said I was very well, and hoped he was.
‘I am,’ said the stranger, ‘thank Heaven, quite well. I have received a letter from Mr. Murdstone, in which he mentions that he would desire me to receive into an apartment in the rear of my house, which is at present unoccupied—and is, in short, to be let as a—in short,’ said the stranger, with a smile and in a burst of confidence, ‘as a bedroom—the young beginner whom I have now the pleasure to—’ and the stranger waved his hand, and settled his chin in his shirt-collar.
CAPITOLO 11. INIZIO LA VITA DA SOLO, E NON MI PIACE
So che ormai conosco abbastanza il mondo da aver quasi perso la capacità di sorprendermi molto per qualsiasi cosa; ma è per me motivo di qualche sorpresa, anche ora, che io possa essere stato così facilmente abbandonato a quell’età. Un bambino di eccellenti capacità, con forti poteri di osservazione, rapido, desideroso, delicato e presto ferito fisicamente o mentalmente, mi sembra meraviglioso che nessuno abbia fatto alcun segno in mio favore. Ma nessuno fu fatto; e divenni, a dieci anni, un piccolo aiutante lavoratore al servizio di Murdstone e Grinby.
Il magazzino di Murdstone e Grinby si trovava lungo il fiume. Era a Blackfriars. Le migliorie moderne hanno cambiato il posto; ma era l’ultima casa in fondo a una strada stretta, che curvava in discesa lungo la collina fino al fiume, con delle scale alla fine, dove la gente prendeva la barca. Era una vecchia casa malandata con un molo tutto suo, che dava sull’acqua quando la marea era alta, e sulla melma quando la marea era bassa, e letteralmente invasa dai ratti. Le sue stanze pannellate, imbrattate dalla sporcizia e dal fumo di cento anni, oserei dire; i suoi pavimenti e la scala in rovina; lo stridere e il frusciare dei vecchi ratti grigi giù nelle cantine; e la sporcizia e la putrefazione del posto; sono cose che non risalgono a molti anni fa, nella mia mente, ma al momento presente. Sono tutti davanti a me, proprio come erano nel momento nefasto in cui mi sono avventurato tra loro per la prima volta, con la mia mano tremante in quella di Mr. Quinion.
Il commercio di Murdstone e Grinby era rivolto a molte categorie di persone, ma un ramo importante era la fornitura di vini e liquori a certe navi passeggeri. Ora non ricordo dove andassero principalmente, ma credo che alcune di esse facessero viaggi sia per le Indie Orientali che Occidentali. So che una delle conseguenze di questo traffico erano moltissime bottiglie vuote, e che certi uomini e ragazzi erano impiegati per esaminarle alla luce, scartare quelle difettose e sciacquarle e lavarle. Quando le bottiglie vuote scarseggiavano, c’erano etichette da incollare su quelle piene, o tappi da adattare, o sigilli da mettere sui tappi, o bottiglie finite da imballare in botti. Tutti questi lavori erano i miei lavori, e dei ragazzi impiegati in essi io ero uno.
Eravamo in tre o quattro, contandomi anche io. Il mio posto di lavoro era stabilito in un angolo del magazzino, dove il signor Quinion poteva vedermi quando decideva di alzarsi sul piedistallo della sua sedia nella stanza dei contabili, e guardarmi attraverso una finestra sopra la scrivania. Qui, la prima mattina della mia così auspicatamente iniziata vita per conto mio, venne convocato il più anziano dei ragazzi regolari per mostrarmi il mio lavoro. Si chiamava Mick Walker, e indossava un grembiule strappato e un cappello di carta. Mi informò che suo padre era un barcaiolo, e che partecipava, con un copricapo di velluto nero, alla sfilata del Lord Mayor. Mi informò anche che il nostro principale collega sarebbe stato un altro ragazzo che mi presentò con il nome — per me — straordinario di Mealy Patate. Scoprii, tuttavia, che questo giovane non era stato battezzato con quel nome, ma che gli era stato conferito nel magazzino, a causa del suo colorito, che era pallido o farinoso. Il padre di Mealy era un barcaiolo, che aveva in più la distinzione di essere un vigile del fuoco, e lavorava come tale in uno dei grandi teatri; dove una giovane parente di Mealy — credo sua sorella minore — faceva le Imps nei Pantomimi.
Nessuna parola può esprimere l’agonia segreta della mia anima mentre affondavo in questa compagnia; mentre confrontavo questi compagni d’ogni giorno con quelli della mia più felice infanzia — per non parlare di Steerforth, Traddles e degli altri ragazzi; e sentivo le mie speranze di diventare un uomo colto e distinto, schiacciate nel mio petto. Il profondo ricordo della sensazione di essere completamente senza speranza ora; della vergogna che provavo per la mia posizione; della miseria che era per il mio giovane cuore credere che giorno dopo giorno ciò che avevo imparato, pensato, amato, e che aveva sollevato la mia fantasia e la mia emulazione, sarebbe svanito via da me, poco a poco, per non tornare mai più; non può essere scritto. Ogni volta che Mick Walker se ne andava nel corso di quella mattinata, mescolavo le mie lacrime con l’acqua in cui lavavo le bottiglie; e singhiozzavo come se ci fosse un difetto nel mio stesso petto, e fosse in pericolo di scoppiare.
L’orologio della bottega era a mezz’ora dopo le dodici, e c’era un’attiva preparazione per andare a pranzo, quando il signor Quinion bussò al vetro della bottega e mi fece cenno di entrare. Entrai e trovai lì una persona robusta, di mezza età, in un soprabito marrone e calzoni e scarpe neri, con non più capelli sulla testa (che era grande e molto lucente) di quanti ce ne siano su un uovo, e con un viso molto esteso, che rivolse completamente verso di me. I suoi vestiti erano malandati, ma aveva un colletto della camicia imponente. Portava un bastone di un genere spavaldo, con un grande paio di tasselli arrugginiti; e un monocolo pendeva fuori dal suo soprabito,—per ornamento, come scoprii in seguito, dato che guardava molto raramente attraverso di esso, e non vedeva nulla quando lo faceva.
‘Questo,’ disse il signor Quinion, riferendosi a me, ‘è lui.’
«Questo», disse lo sconosciuto, con una certa rotazione condiscendente nella voce e un certo indescrivibile atteggiamento di fare qualcosa di gentile, che mi colpì molto, «è il piccolo Copperfield. Spero di vederla bene, signore?»
Dissi che stavo molto bene, e speravo che stesse bene anche lui. Ero sufficientemente a disagio, Dio sa; ma non era nella mia natura lamentarmi molto in quel periodo della mia vita, così dissi che stavo molto bene, e speravo che stesse bene anche lui.
«Sono», disse lo sconosciuto, «grazie a Dio, del tutto benone. Ho ricevuto una lettera dal signor Murdstone, nella quale mi dice che desidera che io ospiti in un appartamento sul retro della mia casa, che al momento è disabitato—e, in breve, è in affitto come una—in breve», disse lo sconosciuto, con un sorriso e in un impeto di confidenza, «come una camera da letto—il giovane principiante che ora ho il piacere di—» e lo sconosciuto fece un gesto con la mano e si sistemò il mento nel colletto della camicia.
‘This is Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion to me.
‘Ahem!’ said the stranger, ‘that is my name.’
‘Mr. Micawber,’ said Mr. Quinion, ‘is known to Mr. Murdstone. He takes orders for us on commission, when he can get any. He has been written to by Mr. Murdstone, on the subject of your lodgings, and he will receive you as a lodger.’
‘My address,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘is Windsor Terrace, City Road. I—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the same genteel air, and in another burst of confidence—‘I live there.’
I made him a bow.
‘Under the impression,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that your peregrinations in this metropolis have not as yet been extensive, and that you might have some difficulty in penetrating the arcana of the Modern Babylon in the direction of the City Road,—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another burst of confidence, ‘that you might lose yourself—I shall be happy to call this evening, and install you in the knowledge of the nearest way.’
I thanked him with all my heart, for it was friendly in him to offer to take that trouble.
‘At what hour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘shall I—’
‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Quinion.
‘At about eight,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘I beg to wish you good day, Mr. Quinion. I will intrude no longer.’
So he put on his hat, and went out with his cane under his arm: very upright, and humming a tune when he was clear of the counting-house.
Mr. Quinion then formally engaged me to be as useful as I could in the warehouse of Murdstone and Grinby, at a salary, I think, of six shillings a week. I am not clear whether it was six or seven. I am inclined to believe, from my uncertainty on this head, that it was six at first and seven afterwards. He paid me a week down (from his own pocket, I believe), and I gave Mealy sixpence out of it to get my trunk carried to Windsor Terrace that night: it being too heavy for my strength, small as it was. I paid sixpence more for my dinner, which was a meat pie and a turn at a neighbouring pump; and passed the hour which was allowed for that meal, in walking about the streets.
At the appointed time in the evening, Mr. Micawber reappeared. I washed my hands and face, to do the greater honour to his gentility, and we walked to our house, as I suppose I must now call it, together; Mr. Micawber impressing the name of streets, and the shapes of corner houses upon me, as we went along, that I might find my way back, easily, in the morning.
Arrived at this house in Windsor Terrace (which I noticed was shabby like himself, but also, like himself, made all the show it could), he presented me to Mrs. Micawber, a thin and faded lady, not at all young, who was sitting in the parlour (the first floor was altogether unfurnished, and the blinds were kept down to delude the neighbours), with a baby at her breast. This baby was one of twins; and I may remark here that I hardly ever, in all my experience of the family, saw both the twins detached from Mrs. Micawber at the same time. One of them was always taking refreshment.
There were two other children; Master Micawber, aged about four, and Miss Micawber, aged about three. These, and a dark-complexioned young woman, with a habit of snorting, who was servant to the family, and informed me, before half an hour had expired, that she was ‘a Orfling’, and came from St. Luke’s workhouse, in the neighbourhood, completed the establishment. My room was at the top of the house, at the back: a close chamber; stencilled all over with an ornament which my young imagination represented as a blue muffin; and very scantily furnished.
‘I never thought,’ said Mrs. Micawber, when she came up, twin and all, to show me the apartment, and sat down to take breath, ‘before I was married, when I lived with papa and mama, that I should ever find it necessary to take a lodger. But Mr. Micawber being in difficulties, all considerations of private feeling must give way.’
I said: ‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are almost overwhelming just at present,’ said Mrs. Micawber; ‘and whether it is possible to bring him through them, I don’t know. When I lived at home with papa and mama, I really should have hardly understood what the word meant, in the sense in which I now employ it, but experientia does it,—as papa used to say.’
I cannot satisfy myself whether she told me that Mr. Micawber had been an officer in the Marines, or whether I have imagined it. I only know that I believe to this hour that he WAS in the Marines once upon a time, without knowing why. He was a sort of town traveller for a number of miscellaneous houses, now; but made little or nothing of it, I am afraid.
‘If Mr. Micawber’s creditors will not give him time,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘they must take the consequences; and the sooner they bring it to an issue the better. Blood cannot be obtained from a stone, neither can anything on account be obtained at present (not to mention law expenses) from Mr. Micawber.’
I never can quite understand whether my precocious self-dependence confused Mrs. Micawber in reference to my age, or whether she was so full of the subject that she would have talked about it to the very twins if there had been nobody else to communicate with, but this was the strain in which she began, and she went on accordingly all the time I knew her.
Poor Mrs. Micawber! She said she had tried to exert herself, and so, I have no doubt, she had. The centre of the street door was perfectly covered with a great brass-plate, on which was engraved ‘Mrs. Micawber’s Boarding Establishment for Young Ladies’: but I never found that any young lady had ever been to school there; or that any young lady ever came, or proposed to come; or that the least preparation was ever made to receive any young lady. The only visitors I ever saw, or heard of, were creditors. THEY used to come at all hours, and some of them were quite ferocious. One dirty-faced man, I think he was a boot-maker, used to edge himself into the passage as early as seven o’clock in the morning, and call up the stairs to Mr. Micawber—‘Come! You ain’t out yet, you know. Pay us, will you? Don’t hide, you know; that’s mean. I wouldn’t be mean if I was you. Pay us, will you? You just pay us, d’ye hear? Come!’ Receiving no answer to these taunts, he would mount in his wrath to the words ‘swindlers’ and ‘robbers’; and these being ineffectual too, would sometimes go to the extremity of crossing the street, and roaring up at the windows of the second floor, where he knew Mr. Micawber was. At these times, Mr. Micawber would be transported with grief and mortification, even to the length (as I was once made aware by a scream from his wife) of making motions at himself with a razor; but within half-an-hour afterwards, he would polish up his shoes with extraordinary pains, and go out, humming a tune with a greater air of gentility than ever. Mrs. Micawber was quite as elastic. I have known her to be thrown into fainting fits by the king’s taxes at three o’clock, and to eat lamb chops, breaded, and drink warm ale (paid for with two tea-spoons that had gone to the pawnbroker’s) at four. On one occasion, when an execution had just been put in, coming home through some chance as early as six o’clock, I saw her lying (of course with a twin) under the grate in a swoon, with her hair all torn about her face; but I never knew her more cheerful than she was, that very same night, over a veal cutlet before the kitchen fire, telling me stories about her papa and mama, and the company they used to keep.
«Questo è il signor Micawber», mi disse il signor Quinion.
‘Ahem!’ disse lo sconosciuto, ‘questo è il mio nome.’
«Il signor Micawber», disse il signor Quinion, «è conosciuto dal signor Murdstone. Prende ordini per noi a commissione, quando riesce a trovarne. Il signor Murdstone gli ha scritto riguardo al suo alloggio, e lui la accoglierà come inquilino.»
«Il mio indirizzo», disse il signor Micawber, «è Windsor Terrace, City Road. Io, in breve», disse il signor Micawber, con lo stesso tono gentile e in un altro impeto di confidenza, «ci vivo».
Mi inchinai.
«Sotto l’impressione», disse il signor Micawber, «che le sue peregrinazioni in questa metropoli non siano state finora estese, e che lei potrebbe avere qualche difficoltà a penetrare gli arcana della Babilonia moderna nella direzione della City Road, — in breve», disse il signor Micawber, in un’altra esplosione di confidenza, «che lei potrebbe perdersi — sarò felice di venire questa sera, e di installarla nella conoscenza della via più vicina.»
Lo ringraziai con tutto il cuore, perché fu gentile da parte sua offrirsi di prendersi quel disturbo.
“A che ora”, disse il signor Micawber, “sarò, ”
«Alle otto circa», disse il signor Quinion.
«Alle otto circa», disse il signor Micawber. «Le auguro una buona giornata, signor Quinion. Non intendo più importunarla».
Così si mise il cappello e uscì con il bastone sotto il braccio: molto dritto, e canticchiando una melodia quando fu lontano dallo studio contabile.
Il signor Quinion mi assunse quindi formalmente per essere il più utile possibile nella ditta Murdstone e Grinby, con uno stipendio, credo, di sei scellini a settimana. Non sono sicuro se fossero sei o sette. Sono inclinato a credere, dalla mia incertezza al riguardo, che fossero sei all’inizio e sette in seguito. Mi pagò una settimana in anticipo (dalla sua tasca, credo), e io diedi a Mealy sei pence per far portare la mia valigia a Windsor Terrace quella sera: era troppo pesante per la mia forza, piccola com’era. Pagai altri sei pence per il mio pranzo, che era una torta di carne e un giro a una pompa vicina; e passai l’ora che era concesso per quel pasto, camminando per le strade.
All’ora stabilita della sera, il signor Micawber riapparve. Mi lavai le mani e il viso, per rendere il massimo onore alla sua gentilezza, e insieme camminammo verso la nostra casa, come suppongo debba chiamarla ora; il signor Micawber mi indicava i nomi delle strade e le forme delle case all’angolo mentre procedevamo, affinché potessi ritrovare facilmente la strada al mattino.
Arrivato a questa casa in Windsor Terrace (che notai essere trasandata come lui, ma anche, come lui, che faceva tutto lo sfoggio possibile), mi presentò alla signora Micawber, una donna magra e sbiadita, per nulla giovane, che era seduta nel salotto (il primo piano era del tutto non arredato, e le tende erano abbassate per ingannare i vicini), con un bambino al seno. Questo bambino era uno dei gemelli; e posso osservare qui che, in tutta la mia esperienza con la famiglia, ho visto raramente entrambi i gemelli separati dalla signora Micawber allo stesso tempo. Uno di loro era sempre in fase di nutrizione.
C’erano altri due bambini: il piccolo Micawber, di circa quattro anni, e la piccola Micawber, di circa tre. Questi, insieme a una giovane donna di carnagione scura, con l’abitudine di soffiare il naso, che era la serva della famiglia e che mi informò, prima che fosse trascorsa mezz’ora, che era “un’orfana” e proveniva dal ricovero di San Luca, nelle vicinanze, completavano l’organico della famiglia. La mia stanza era in cima alla casa, sul retro: una stanza chiusa, decorata con un motivo a stampa che la mia giovane immaginazione rappresentava come una muffin blu, e arredata in modo molto spartano.
«Non avrei mai pensato», disse la signora Micawber, quando salì, con i gemelli e tutto, per mostrarmi l’appartamento, e si sedette per riprendere fiato, «prima di sposarmi, quando vivevo con papà e mamma, che avrei mai trovato necessario prendere un inquilino. Ma il signor Micawber essendo in difficoltà, tutte le considerazioni di sentimento personale devono cedere il passo.»
Ho risposto: “Sì, signora”.
«Le difficoltà del signor Micawber sono quasi insormontabili in questo momento», disse la signora Micawber; «e non so se sia possibile aiutarlo a superarle. Quando vivevo a casa con papà e mamma, non avrei mai capito davvero cosa significasse quella parola, nel senso in cui la uso ora, ma l’esperienza insegna,—come diceva sempre papà.»
Non riesco a capire se mi disse che il signor Micawber era stato un ufficiale dei Marines, o se me lo sono immaginato. So solo che credo ancora oggi che sia stato nei Marines una volta, senza sapere perché. Era una specie di rappresentante per un certo numero di case varie, ora; ma ne ricavava poco o niente, temo.
«Se i creditori del signor Micawber non gli concederanno tempo,» disse la signora Micawber, «dovranno affrontare le conseguenze; e tanto meglio se lo risolveranno al più presto. Non si può ottenere sangue da una pietra, né si può ottenere alcunché al momento (per non parlare delle spese legali) dal signor Micawber.»
Non riesco mai a capire se la mia precoce indipendenza mi abbia reso incomprensibile a Mrs. Micawber riguardo alla mia età, o se fosse così presa dall’argomento che ne avrebbe parlato anche ai gemelli se non ci fosse stato nessun altro con cui comunicare, ma è in questo modo che ha iniziato, e ha continuato così per tutto il tempo che l’ho conosciuta.
Povera signora Micawber! Disse che aveva cercato di sforzarsi, e quindi, non ho dubbio alcuno, che lo abbia fatto. Il centro della porta di strada era perfettamente coperto da una grande targa di ottone, su cui era inciso “Pensione per giovani signorine della signora Micawber”: ma non ho mai scoperto che qualche giovane signorina fosse mai andata a scuola lì; o che qualche giovane signorina fosse mai arrivata, o avesse proposto di venire; o che fosse mai stata fatta la minima preparazione per ricevere qualche giovane signorina. Gli unici visitatori che ho mai visto, o di cui ho sentito parlare, erano i creditori. LORO usavano venire a tutte le ore, e alcuni di loro erano del tutto feroci. Un uomo dal viso sporco, credo fosse un calzolaio, usava insinuarsi nel corridoio già alle sette del m attina e chiamare su per le scale il signor Micawber—‘Ehi! Non sei ancora uscito, lo sai. Pagaci, vuoi? Non nasconderti, lo sai; è meschino. Non sarei meschino se fossi io. Pagaci, vuoi? Basta che ci paghi, capisci? Ehi!’ Non ricevendo risposta a questi insulti, saliva nella sua ira fino alle parole “truffatori” e “ladri”; e dato che anche queste erano inefficaci, a volte arrivava all’estremo di attraversare la strada, e ruggire su per le finestre del secondo piano, dove sapeva che c’era il signor Micawber. In questi momenti, il signor Micawber era trasportato dal dolore e dalla mortificazione, fino al punto (come una volta mi resi conto da un urlo di sua moglie) di fare gesti verso se stesso con un rasoio; ma entro mezz’ora dopo, lucidava le sue scarpe con straordinaria cura, e usciva, canticchiando un motivetto con un’aria di gentilezza più grande che mai. La signora Micawber era altrettanto elastica. L’ho vista gettarsi in svenimenti per le tasse del re alle tre del pomeriggio, e mangiare costolette d’agnello, impanate, e bere birra calda (pagata con due cucchiaini da tè che erano andati dal pegno) alle quattro. In un’occasione, quando era stata appena messa un’eccezione, tornando a casa per caso già alle sei del pomeriggio, l’ho vista sdraiata (ovviamente con un bambino) sotto la grata in un svenimento, con i capelli tutti scompigliati sul viso; ma non l’ho mai vista più allegra di quanto fosse, quella stessa sera, su una costoletta di vitello davanti al fuoco della cucina, raccontandomi storie su suo papà e sua mamma, e la compagnia che usavano tenere.
In this house, and with this family, I passed my leisure time. My own exclusive breakfast of a penny loaf and a pennyworth of milk, I provided myself. I kept another small loaf, and a modicum of cheese, on a particular shelf of a particular cupboard, to make my supper on when I came back at night. This made a hole in the six or seven shillings, I know well; and I was out at the warehouse all day, and had to support myself on that money all the week. From Monday morning until Saturday night, I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven!
I was so young and childish, and so little qualified—how could I be otherwise?—to undertake the whole charge of my own existence, that often, in going to Murdstone and Grinby’s, of a morning, I could not resist the stale pastry put out for sale at half-price at the pastrycooks’ doors, and spent in that the money I should have kept for my dinner. Then, I went without my dinner, or bought a roll or a slice of pudding. I remember two pudding shops, between which I was divided, according to my finances. One was in a court close to St. Martin’s Church—at the back of the church,—which is now removed altogether. The pudding at that shop was made of currants, and was rather a special pudding, but was dear, twopennyworth not being larger than a pennyworth of more ordinary pudding. A good shop for the latter was in the Strand—somewhere in that part which has been rebuilt since. It was a stout pale pudding, heavy and flabby, and with great flat raisins in it, stuck in whole at wide distances apart. It came up hot at about my time every day, and many a day did I dine off it. When I dined regularly and handsomely, I had a saveloy and a penny loaf, or a fourpenny plate of red beef from a cook’s shop; or a plate of bread and cheese and a glass of beer, from a miserable old public-house opposite our place of business, called the Lion, or the Lion and something else that I have forgotten. Once, I remember carrying my own bread (which I had brought from home in the morning) under my arm, wrapped in a piece of paper, like a book, and going to a famous alamode beef-house near Drury Lane, and ordering a ‘small plate’ of that delicacy to eat with it. What the waiter thought of such a strange little apparition coming in all alone, I don’t know; but I can see him now, staring at me as I ate my dinner, and bringing up the other waiter to look. I gave him a halfpenny for himself, and I wish he hadn’t taken it.
We had half-an-hour, I think, for tea. When I had money enough, I used to get half-a-pint of ready-made coffee and a slice of bread and butter. When I had none, I used to look at a venison shop in Fleet Street; or I have strolled, at such a time, as far as Covent Garden Market, and stared at the pineapples. I was fond of wandering about the Adelphi, because it was a mysterious place, with those dark arches. I see myself emerging one evening from some of these arches, on a little public-house close to the river, with an open space before it, where some coal-heavers were dancing; to look at whom I sat down upon a bench. I wonder what they thought of me!
I was such a child, and so little, that frequently when I went into the bar of a strange public-house for a glass of ale or porter, to moisten what I had had for dinner, they were afraid to give it me. I remember one hot evening I went into the bar of a public-house, and said to the landlord: ‘What is your best—your very best—ale a glass?’ For it was a special occasion. I don’t know what. It may have been my birthday.
‘Twopence-halfpenny,’ says the landlord, ‘is the price of the Genuine Stunning ale.’
‘Then,’ says I, producing the money, ‘just draw me a glass of the Genuine Stunning, if you please, with a good head to it.’
The landlord looked at me in return over the bar, from head to foot, with a strange smile on his face; and instead of drawing the beer, looked round the screen and said something to his wife. She came out from behind it, with her work in her hand, and joined him in surveying me. Here we stand, all three, before me now. The landlord in his shirt-sleeves, leaning against the bar window-frame; his wife looking over the little half-door; and I, in some confusion, looking up at them from outside the partition. They asked me a good many questions; as, what my name was, how old I was, where I lived, how I was employed, and how I came there. To all of which, that I might commit nobody, I invented, I am afraid, appropriate answers. They served me with the ale, though I suspect it was not the Genuine Stunning; and the landlord’s wife, opening the little half-door of the bar, and bending down, gave me my money back, and gave me a kiss that was half admiring and half compassionate, but all womanly and good, I am sure.
I know I do not exaggerate, unconsciously and unintentionally, the scantiness of my resources or the difficulties of my life. I know that if a shilling were given me by Mr. Quinion at any time, I spent it in a dinner or a tea. I know that I worked, from morning until night, with common men and boys, a shabby child. I know that I lounged about the streets, insufficiently and unsatisfactorily fed. I know that, but for the mercy of God, I might easily have been, for any care that was taken of me, a little robber or a little vagabond.
Yet I held some station at Murdstone and Grinby’s too. Besides that Mr. Quinion did what a careless man so occupied, and dealing with a thing so anomalous, could, to treat me as one upon a different footing from the rest, I never said, to man or boy, how it was that I came to be there, or gave the least indication of being sorry that I was there. That I suffered in secret, and that I suffered exquisitely, no one ever knew but I. How much I suffered, it is, as I have said already, utterly beyond my power to tell. But I kept my own counsel, and I did my work. I knew from the first, that, if I could not do my work as well as any of the rest, I could not hold myself above slight and contempt. I soon became at least as expeditious and as skilful as either of the other boys. Though perfectly familiar with them, my conduct and manner were different enough from theirs to place a space between us. They and the men generally spoke of me as ‘the little gent’, or ‘the young Suffolker.’ A certain man named Gregory, who was foreman of the packers, and another named Tipp, who was the carman, and wore a red jacket, used to address me sometimes as ‘David’: but I think it was mostly when we were very confidential, and when I had made some efforts to entertain them, over our work, with some results of the old readings; which were fast perishing out of my remembrance. Mealy Potatoes uprose once, and rebelled against my being so distinguished; but Mick Walker settled him in no time.
In questa casa, e con questa famiglia, trascorrevo il mio tempo libero. La mia colazione esclusiva, composta da un pane da un penny e un penny di latte, la preparavo da solo. Tenevo un altro piccolo pane e un po’ di formaggio su uno scaffale particolare di un armadio particolare, per prepararmi la cena quando tornavo la sera. Questo faceva un buco nei miei sei o sette scellini, lo so bene; e io ero fuori tutto il giorno al magazzino, e dovevo mantenermi con quei soldi tutta la settimana. Dal lunedì mattina fino al sabato sera, non ricevevo consigli, suggerimenti, incoraggiamenti, consolazioni, assistenza, sostegno, di alcun tipo, da nessuno, che io possa ricordare, come spero di andare in paradiso!
Ero così giovane e infantile, e così poco qualificato - come avrei potuto essere diversamente? - per assumere l’intera responsabilità della mia esistenza, che spesso, andando da Murdstone e Grinby al mattino, non potevo resistere ai dolci stantii messi in vendita a metà prezzo davanti ai negozi di pasticceria, e spendevo in quelli i soldi che avrei dovuto tenere per la mia cena. Poi, non prendevo la mia cena, o compravo una rosetta o una fetta di budino. Ricordo due negozi di budini, tra i quali ero diviso, secondo le mie finanze. Uno era in un vicolo vicino alla chiesa di St. Martin - sul retro della chiesa - che ora è stato completamente abbattuto. Il budino di quel negozio era fatto con l’uvetta, ed era un budino piuttosto speciale, ma costoso, due pence non erano più grandi di un penny di budino più comune. Un buon negozio per quest’ultimo era nella Strand - da qualche parte in quella parte che è stata ricostruita da allora. Era un budino robusto e pallido, pesante e flaccido, con grandi uvetta piatte dentro, infilate intere a grandi distanze l’una dall’altra. Veniva servito caldo intorno al mio orario ogni giorno, e molti giorni ho cenato con quello. Quando cenavo regolarmente e abbondantemente, avevo un salsicciotto e un pane da un penny, o un piatto da quattro penny di manzo rosso da un negozio di cucina; o un piatto di pane e formaggio e un bicchiere di birra, da un vecchio e miserabile pub di fronte al nostro posto di lavoro, chiamato il Leone, o il Leone e qualcos’altro che ho dimenticato. Una volta, ricordo di aver portato il mio pane (che avevo portato da casa al mattino) sotto il braccio, avvolto in un pezzo di carta, come un libro, e di essere andato in un famoso ristorante di manzo alla moda vicino a Drury Lane, e di aver ordinato un ‘piccolo piatto’ di quella prelibatezza da mangiare con esso. Non so cosa pensasse il cameriere di una strana piccola apparizione che entrava tutta sola, ma posso vederlo ora, che mi fissava mentre mangiavo la mia cena, e portava l’altro cameriere a guardare. Gli ho dato un mezzo penny per lui, e vorrei che non l’avesse preso.
Avevamo mezz’ora, credo, per il tè. Quando avevo abbastanza soldi, prendevo mezzo boccale di caffè già preparato e una fetta di pane burro. Quando non ne avevo, mi fermavo a guardare una macelleria di selvaggina in Fleet Street; o mi sono spesso aggirato, a quell’ora, fino al mercato di Covent Garden, e fissavo le ananas. Mi piaceva vagabondare per l’Adelphi, perché era un posto misterioso, con quegli archi scuri. Mi vedo uscire una sera da uno di questi archi, in un piccolo pub vicino al fiume, con uno spazio aperto davanti, dove alcuni scaricatori di carbone stavano ballando; per guardarli mi sono seduto su una panchina. Mi domando cosa pensassero di me!
Ero così bambino e così piccolo che spesso, quando entravo al bar di una locanda sconosciuta per un bicchiere di birra o di porter, per inumidire ciò che avevo mangiato a pranzo, avevano paura di darmelo. Ricordo una calda serata in cui entrai al bar di una locanda e dissi al locandiere: «Qual è la sua migliore birra, la sua migliore birra, per bicchiere?» Perché era un’occasione speciale. Non so quale. Forse era il mio compleanno.
“Due pence e mezzo”, dice il locandiere, “è il prezzo della vera birra Stunning.
«Allora», dissi, tirando fuori i soldi, «mi faccia il favore di versarmi un bicchiere di Genuine Stunning, con una bella schiuma in cima.»
Il padrone dell’osteria mi guardò a mia volta da dietro il bancone, dalla testa ai piedi, con un sorriso strano sul viso; e invece di versarmi la birra, guardò dietro lo schermo e disse qualcosa a sua moglie. Lei uscì da dietro, con il suo lavoro in mano, e si unì a lui nel scrutarmi. Eccoli qui, tutti e tre, davanti a me. Il padrone dell’osteria con le maniche arrotolate, appoggiato al finestrino del bancone; sua moglie che sbircia dalla piccola porta a metà altezza; e io, un po’ confuso, che li guardo dall’altra parte della partizione. Mi fecero molte domande; come, come mi chiamavo, quanti anni avevo, dove vivevo, come ero impiegato, e come ero arrivato lì. A tutte queste, per non compromettere nessuno, temo di aver inventato risposte adeguate. Mi servirono la birra, anche se sospetto che non fosse la Vera Stupenda; e la moglie del padrone dell’osteria, aprendo la piccola porta a metà altezza del bancone e chinandosi, mi restituì i soldi e mi diede un bacio che era metà ammirato e metà compassionevole, ma tutto femminile e buono, ne sono sicuro.
So che non esagero, inconsapevolmente e involontariamente, la scarsità delle mie risorse o le difficoltà della mia vita. So che se mi fosse stato dato uno scellino da Mr. Quinion in qualsiasi momento, lo spendevo in una cena o un tè. So che lavoravo, dal mattino fino a notte, con uomini comuni e ragazzi, un bambino trasandato. So che girovagavo per le strade, nutrita in modo insufficiente e insoddisfacente. So che, se non fosse stato per la misericordia di Dio, avrei potuto facilmente essere, per qualsiasi cura che fosse stata presa di me, un piccolo ladro o un piccolo vagabondo.
Eppure avevo una certa posizione anche da Murdstone e Grinby. Oltre al fatto che il signor Quinion faceva quanto poteva, uomo distratto com’era, così occupato e alle prese con una situazione così anomala, per trattarmi come uno che si trovava in una condizione diversa da quella degli altri, non dissi mai a nessuno, né a un uomo né a un ragazzo, come mai fossi finito lì, né diedi il minimo indizio di essere dispiaciuto di esserci. Che soffrissi in segreto, e che soffrissi in modo intenso, non lo seppe mai nessuno tranne me. Quanto soffrissi, come ho già detto, è del tutto al di là della mia capacità di raccontarlo. Ma tenni per me i miei pensieri e feci il mio lavoro. Fin dall’inizio sapevo che, se non fossi riuscito a fare il mio lavoro almeno bene quanto chiunque altro, non avrei potuto considerarmi superiore al disprezzo e al disdegno. Ben presto diventai almeno altrettanto svelto e abile quanto gli altri ragazzi. Anche se ero in perfetta familiarità con loro, il mio comportamento e il mio modo di fare erano abbastanza diversi dai loro da creare una distanza tra noi. In generale, loro e gli uomini mi chiamavano “il piccolo gentiluomo” o “il giovane suffolco”. Un certo Gregory, che era il capo degli imballatori, e un altro di nome Tipp, che era il carrettiere e indossava una giacca rossa, a volte mi chiamavano “David”, ma credo fosse soprattutto quando eravamo molto confidenziali e quando avevo fatto qualche sforzo per intrattenerli, mentre lavoravamo, con qualche risultato delle vecchie letture, che si stavano rapidamente perdendo nella mia memoria. Mealy Patate si ribellò una volta contro il fatto che fossi così distinto, ma Mick Walker lo sistemò in un attimo.
My rescue from this kind of existence I considered quite hopeless, and abandoned, as such, altogether. I am solemnly convinced that I never for one hour was reconciled to it, or was otherwise than miserably unhappy; but I bore it; and even to Peggotty, partly for the love of her and partly for shame, never in any letter (though many passed between us) revealed the truth.
Mr. Micawber’s difficulties were an addition to the distressed state of my mind. In my forlorn state I became quite attached to the family, and used to walk about, busy with Mrs. Micawber’s calculations of ways and means, and heavy with the weight of Mr. Micawber’s debts. On a Saturday night, which was my grand treat,—partly because it was a great thing to walk home with six or seven shillings in my pocket, looking into the shops and thinking what such a sum would buy, and partly because I went home early,—Mrs. Micawber would make the most heart-rending confidences to me; also on a Sunday morning, when I mixed the portion of tea or coffee I had bought over-night, in a little shaving-pot, and sat late at my breakfast. It was nothing at all unusual for Mr. Micawber to sob violently at the beginning of one of these Saturday night conversations, and sing about Jack’s delight being his lovely Nan, towards the end of it. I have known him come home to supper with a flood of tears, and a declaration that nothing was now left but a jail; and go to bed making a calculation of the expense of putting bow-windows to the house, ‘in case anything turned up’, which was his favourite expression. And Mrs. Micawber was just the same.
A curious equality of friendship, originating, I suppose, in our respective circumstances, sprung up between me and these people, notwithstanding the ludicrous disparity in our years. But I never allowed myself to be prevailed upon to accept any invitation to eat and drink with them out of their stock (knowing that they got on badly with the butcher and baker, and had often not too much for themselves), until Mrs. Micawber took me into her entire confidence. This she did one evening as follows:
‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I make no stranger of you, and therefore do not hesitate to say that Mr. Micawber’s difficulties are coming to a crisis.’
It made me very miserable to hear it, and I looked at Mrs. Micawber’s red eyes with the utmost sympathy.
‘With the exception of the heel of a Dutch cheese—which is not adapted to the wants of a young family’—said Mrs. Micawber, ‘there is really not a scrap of anything in the larder. I was accustomed to speak of the larder when I lived with papa and mama, and I use the word almost unconsciously. What I mean to express is, that there is nothing to eat in the house.’
‘Dear me!’ I said, in great concern.
I had two or three shillings of my week’s money in my pocket—from which I presume that it must have been on a Wednesday night when we held this conversation—and I hastily produced them, and with heartfelt emotion begged Mrs. Micawber to accept of them as a loan. But that lady, kissing me, and making me put them back in my pocket, replied that she couldn’t think of it.
‘No, my dear Master Copperfield,’ said she, ‘far be it from my thoughts! But you have a discretion beyond your years, and can render me another kind of service, if you will; and a service I will thankfully accept of.’
I begged Mrs. Micawber to name it.
‘I have parted with the plate myself,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Six tea, two salt, and a pair of sugars, I have at different times borrowed money on, in secret, with my own hands. But the twins are a great tie; and to me, with my recollections, of papa and mama, these transactions are very painful. There are still a few trifles that we could part with. Mr. Micawber’s feelings would never allow him to dispose of them; and Clickett’—this was the girl from the workhouse—‘being of a vulgar mind, would take painful liberties if so much confidence was reposed in her. Master Copperfield, if I might ask you—’
I understood Mrs. Micawber now, and begged her to make use of me to any extent. I began to dispose of the more portable articles of property that very evening; and went out on a similar expedition almost every morning, before I went to Murdstone and Grinby’s.
Mr. Micawber had a few books on a little chiffonier, which he called the library; and those went first. I carried them, one after another, to a bookstall in the City Road—one part of which, near our house, was almost all bookstalls and bird shops then—and sold them for whatever they would bring. The keeper of this bookstall, who lived in a little house behind it, used to get tipsy every night, and to be violently scolded by his wife every morning. More than once, when I went there early, I had audience of him in a turn-up bedstead, with a cut in his forehead or a black eye, bearing witness to his excesses over-night (I am afraid he was quarrelsome in his drink), and he, with a shaking hand, endeavouring to find the needful shillings in one or other of the pockets of his clothes, which lay upon the floor, while his wife, with a baby in her arms and her shoes down at heel, never left off rating him. Sometimes he had lost his money, and then he would ask me to call again; but his wife had always got some—had taken his, I dare say, while he was drunk—and secretly completed the bargain on the stairs, as we went down together. At the pawnbroker’s shop, too, I began to be very well known. The principal gentleman who officiated behind the counter, took a good deal of notice of me; and often got me, I recollect, to decline a Latin noun or adjective, or to conjugate a Latin verb, in his ear, while he transacted my business. After all these occasions Mrs. Micawber made a little treat, which was generally a supper; and there was a peculiar relish in these meals which I well remember.
Il mio salvataggio da questo tipo di esistenza lo consideravo del tutto disperato, e abbandonato, come tale, del tutto. Sono solennemente convinto che non mi sono mai per un’ora riconciliato con esso, o che non fossi altrimenti che miseramente infelice; ma lo sopportavo; e anche a Peggotty, in parte per amore di lei e in parte per vergogna, mai in nessuna lettera (anche se molte passarono tra noi) rivelai la verità.
Le difficoltà del signor Micawber aggiungevano al mio stato di angoscia. Nel mio stato di abbandono mi ero affezionato alla famiglia, e mi aggiravo occupato con i calcoli della signora Micawber sui modi e i mezzi, e gravato dal peso dei debiti del signor Micawber. In una sera di sabato, che era il mio grande divertimento,—in parte perché era una gran cosa camminare a casa con sei o sette scellini in tasca, guardando nei negozi e pensando a cosa avrebbe potuto comprare una tale somma, e in parte perché andavo a casa presto,—la signora Micawber mi faceva le confessioni più strazianti; anche in una domenica mattina, quando mescolavo la porzione di tè o caffè che avevo comprato la sera prima, in un piccolo barattolo per la rasatura, e facevo colazione tardi. Non era affatto insolito che il signor Micawber piangesse violentemente all’inizio di una di queste conversazioni di sabato sera, e cantasse di come il piacere di Jack fosse la sua adorabile Nan, verso la fine. L’ho visto arrivare a casa per la cena con un fiume di lacrime, e una dichiarazione che non gli restava altro che una prigione; e andare a letto facendo un calcolo della spesa per mettere finestre a bovindo alla casa, “nel caso che qualcosa si presentasse”, che era la sua espressione preferita. E la signora Micawber era proprio la stessa.
Una curiosa uguaglianza di amicizia, nata, immagino, dalle nostre rispettive circostanze, fiorì tra me e queste persone, nonostante la ridicola disparità di età. Ma non mi lasciai mai convincere ad accettare inviti a mangiare e bere con loro con le loro provviste (sapendo che andavano male d’accordo con il macellaio e il fornaio, e spesso non avevano abbastanza nemmeno per loro stessi), finché la signora Micawber non mi prese completamente in confidenza. Lo fece una sera in questo modo:
«Signor Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, «non la considero uno sconosciuto, e quindi non esito a dirle che le difficoltà del signor Micawber stanno raggiungendo il culmine.»
Mi sentii molto infelice nel sentire ciò, e guardai gli occhi rossi della signora Micawber con la massima compassione.
«Con l’eccezione del tallone di un formaggio olandese — che non è adatto ai bisogni di una giovane famiglia» — disse la signora Micawber, «non c’è davvero nemmeno un brandello di qualcosa nella dispensa. Ero abituata a parlare della dispensa quando vivevo con papà e mamma, e uso la parola quasi inconsapevolmente. Quello che voglio dire è che non c’è niente da mangiare in casa.»
«Oh, mio Dio!» dissi, molto preoccupato.
Avevo in tasca due o tre scellini del mio stipendio settimanale — da cui presumo che la nostra conversazione debba essere avvenuta di mercoledì sera — e li estrassi in tutta fretta, pregando con sincera emozione la signora Micawber di accettarli come prestito. Ma la signora, baciandomi e facendomi rimettere i soldi in tasca, rispose che non poteva nemmeno pensarci.
«No, mio caro Maestro Copperfield», disse lei, «l’idea è ben lontana dai miei pensieri! Ma tu hai una discrezione al di là dei tuoi anni, e puoi rendermi un altro tipo di servizio, se vuoi; e un servizio che accetterò con gratitudine.»
Pregai la signora Micawber di dirmi il nome.
«Ho venduto io stessa l’argenteria», disse la signora Micawber. «Sei cucchiaini da tè, due da sale e un paio di zuccheriere, ho preso in prestito denaro su di loro, in segreto, con le mie stesse mani. Ma i gemelli sono un grande vincolo; e per me, con i miei ricordi di papà e mamma, queste transazioni sono molto dolorose. Ci sono ancora alcuni piccoli oggetti che potremmo vendere. I sentimenti del signor Micawber non gli permetterebbero mai di disfarsene; e Clickett» — questa era la ragazza del ricovero — «avendo una mentalità volgare, si prenderebbe libertà dolorose se le venisse riposta tanta fiducia. Master Copperfield, se potessi chiedervi, »
Ora capivo la signora Micawber e le chiesi di servirsi di me in ogni modo. Quella stessa sera cominciai a vendere gli oggetti più trasportabili che avevamo; e quasi ogni mattina, prima di andare da Murdstone e Grinby, mi mettevo in viaggio per una spedizione simile.
Il signor Micawber aveva alcuni libri su un piccolo chiffonier, che chiamava la biblioteca; e quelli furono i primi a partire. Li portai, uno dopo l’altro, a una bancarella di libri nella City Road—di cui una parte, vicino alla nostra casa, era allora quasi tutta bancarelle di libri e negozi di uccelli—e li vendetti per quello che riuscivo a ricavare. Il custode di questa bancarella, che viveva in una piccola casa dietro di essa, si ubriacava ogni notte, e veniva sgridato violentemente da sua moglie ogni mattina. Più di una volta, quando andavo lì di buon’ora, lo trovavo in un letto a scomparsa, con un taglio sulla fronte o un occhio nero, a testimoniare i suoi eccessi della sera prima (temo che fosse litigioso quando beveva), e lui, con mano tremante, cercava di trovare i necessari scellini in una o nell’altra delle tasche dei suoi vestiti, che erano sul pavimento, mentre sua moglie, con un bambino in braccio e le scarpe consumate ai talloni, non smetteva di rimproverarlo. A volte aveva perso i soldi, e allora mi chiedeva di tornare; ma sua moglie ne aveva sempre qualcuno—aveva preso i suoi, immagino, mentre era ubriaco—e completava segretamente l’affare sulle scale, mentre scendevamo insieme. Anche al banco dei pegni, cominciai a essere molto conosciuto. Il principale gentiluomo che officiava dietro il banco, mi prestava molta attenzione; e spesso mi faceva, ricordo, declinare un nome o aggettivo latino, o coniugare un verbo latino, al suo orecchio, mentre faceva i miei affari. Dopo tutte queste occasioni la signora Micawber preparava un piccolo trattamento, che era generalmente una cena; e c’era un particolare sapore in questi pasti che ricordo bene.
At last Mr. Micawber’s difficulties came to a crisis, and he was arrested early one morning, and carried over to the King’s Bench Prison in the Borough. He told me, as he went out of the house, that the God of day had now gone down upon him—and I really thought his heart was broken and mine too. But I heard, afterwards, that he was seen to play a lively game at skittles, before noon.
On the first Sunday after he was taken there, I was to go and see him, and have dinner with him. I was to ask my way to such a place, and just short of that place I should see such another place, and just short of that I should see a yard, which I was to cross, and keep straight on until I saw a turnkey. All this I did; and when at last I did see a turnkey (poor little fellow that I was!), and thought how, when Roderick Random was in a debtors’ prison, there was a man there with nothing on him but an old rug, the turnkey swam before my dimmed eyes and my beating heart.
Mr. Micawber was waiting for me within the gate, and we went up to his room (top story but one), and cried very much. He solemnly conjured me, I remember, to take warning by his fate; and to observe that if a man had twenty pounds a-year for his income, and spent nineteen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence, he would be happy, but that if he spent twenty pounds one he would be miserable. After which he borrowed a shilling of me for porter, gave me a written order on Mrs. Micawber for the amount, and put away his pocket-handkerchief, and cheered up.
We sat before a little fire, with two bricks put within the rusted grate, one on each side, to prevent its burning too many coals; until another debtor, who shared the room with Mr. Micawber, came in from the bakehouse with the loin of mutton which was our joint-stock repast. Then I was sent up to ‘Captain Hopkins’ in the room overhead, with Mr. Micawber’s compliments, and I was his young friend, and would Captain Hopkins lend me a knife and fork.
Captain Hopkins lent me the knife and fork, with his compliments to Mr. Micawber. There was a very dirty lady in his little room, and two wan girls, his daughters, with shock heads of hair. I thought it was better to borrow Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork, than Captain Hopkins’s comb. The Captain himself was in the last extremity of shabbiness, with large whiskers, and an old, old brown great-coat with no other coat below it. I saw his bed rolled up in a corner; and what plates and dishes and pots he had, on a shelf; and I divined (God knows how) that though the two girls with the shock heads of hair were Captain Hopkins’s children, the dirty lady was not married to Captain Hopkins. My timid station on his threshold was not occupied more than a couple of minutes at most; but I came down again with all this in my knowledge, as surely as the knife and fork were in my hand.
There was something gipsy-like and agreeable in the dinner, after all. I took back Captain Hopkins’s knife and fork early in the afternoon, and went home to comfort Mrs. Micawber with an account of my visit. She fainted when she saw me return, and made a little jug of egg-hot afterwards to console us while we talked it over.
I don’t know how the household furniture came to be sold for the family benefit, or who sold it, except that I did not. Sold it was, however, and carried away in a van; except the bed, a few chairs, and the kitchen table. With these possessions we encamped, as it were, in the two parlours of the emptied house in Windsor Terrace; Mrs. Micawber, the children, the Orfling, and myself; and lived in those rooms night and day. I have no idea for how long, though it seems to me for a long time. At last Mrs. Micawber resolved to move into the prison, where Mr. Micawber had now secured a room to himself. So I took the key of the house to the landlord, who was very glad to get it; and the beds were sent over to the King’s Bench, except mine, for which a little room was hired outside the walls in the neighbourhood of that Institution, very much to my satisfaction, since the Micawbers and I had become too used to one another, in our troubles, to part. The Orfling was likewise accommodated with an inexpensive lodging in the same neighbourhood. Mine was a quiet back-garret with a sloping roof, commanding a pleasant prospect of a timberyard; and when I took possession of it, with the reflection that Mr. Micawber’s troubles had come to a crisis at last, I thought it quite a paradise.
All this time I was working at Murdstone and Grinby’s in the same common way, and with the same common companions, and with the same sense of unmerited degradation as at first. But I never, happily for me no doubt, made a single acquaintance, or spoke to any of the many boys whom I saw daily in going to the warehouse, in coming from it, and in prowling about the streets at meal-times. I led the same secretly unhappy life; but I led it in the same lonely, self-reliant manner. The only changes I am conscious of are, firstly, that I had grown more shabby, and secondly, that I was now relieved of much of the weight of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber’s cares; for some relatives or friends had engaged to help them at their present pass, and they lived more comfortably in the prison than they had lived for a long while out of it. I used to breakfast with them now, in virtue of some arrangement, of which I have forgotten the details. I forget, too, at what hour the gates were opened in the morning, admitting of my going in; but I know that I was often up at six o’clock, and that my favourite lounging-place in the interval was old London Bridge, where I was wont to sit in one of the stone recesses, watching the people going by, or to look over the balustrades at the sun shining in the water, and lighting up the golden flame on the top of the Monument. The Orfling met me here sometimes, to be told some astonishing fictions respecting the wharves and the Tower; of which I can say no more than that I hope I believed them myself. In the evening I used to go back to the prison, and walk up and down the parade with Mr. Micawber; or play casino with Mrs. Micawber, and hear reminiscences of her papa and mama. Whether Mr. Murdstone knew where I was, I am unable to say. I never told them at Murdstone and Grinby’s.
Alla fine le difficoltà del signor Micawber raggiunsero il culmine, e fu arrestato una mattina presto, e portato al Re’s Bench Prigione nel Borough. Mi disse, mentre usciva di casa, che il Dio del giorno era ora tramontato su di lui — e pensai davvero che il suo cuore fosse spezzato, e anche il mio. Ma appresi in seguito che lo avevano visto giocare a birilli in modo vivace, prima di mezzogiorno.
La domenica successiva al suo trasferimento là, dovevo andare a trovarlo e pranzare con lui. Dovevo chiedere la strada per un certo posto, e poco prima di quel posto avrei visto un altro posto, e poco prima di quello avrei visto un cortile, che avrei dovuto attraversare, e continuare dritto fino a quando non avessi visto un secondino. Tutto questo ho fatto; e quando finalmente ho visto un secondino (povero piccolo che ero!), e ho pensato a come, quando Roderick Random era in prigione per debiti, c’era un uomo lì con addosso solo una vecchia coperta, il secondino nuotava davanti ai miei occhi annebbiati e al mio cuore che batteva forte.
Il signor Micawber mi aspettava dentro il cancello, e salimmo nella sua stanza (penultimo piano), e piangemmo molto. Ricordo che mi esortò solennemente a prendere esempio dalla sua sorte; e a osservare che se un uomo avesse venti sterline l’anno di reddito, e ne spendesse diciannove sterline, diciannove scellini e sei pence, sarebbe felice, ma che se ne spendesse venti sterline e uno, sarebbe infelice. Dopo di che mi chiese in prestito uno scellino per il birrificio, mi diede un ordine scritto per la signora Micawber per l’importo, e ripose il fazzoletto, e si rallegrò.
Ci sedemmo davanti a un piccolo fuoco, con due mattoni messi all’interno della griglia arrugginita, uno su ciascun lato, per evitare che bruciasse troppa carbonella; finché un altro debitore, che divideva la stanza con il signor Micawber, entrò dal forno con la lombata di montone che era il nostro pasto comune. Poi fui mandato su dal “Capitano Hopkins” nella stanza sopra, con i saluti del signor Micawber, e io ero il suo giovane amico, e il Capitano Hopkins mi avrebbe prestato un coltello e una forchetta.
Il capitano Hopkins mi prestò il coltello e la forchetta, con i suoi saluti al signor Micawber. C’era una signora molto sporca nella sua stanzetta, e due ragazze smunte, le sue figlie, con i capelli arruffati. Pensai che fosse meglio prendere in prestito il coltello e la forchetta del capitano Hopkins, piuttosto che il pettine. Il capitano stesso era nell’estremo limite della trascuratezza, con grandi baffi, e un vecchissimo cappotto marrone senza altro indumento sotto. Vidi il suo letto arrotolato in un angolo; e le poche stoviglie e pentole che aveva, su uno scaffale; e intuii (Dio sa come) che sebbene le due ragazze dai capelli arruffati fossero le figlie del capitano Hopkins, la signora sporca non era sposata con il capitano Hopkins. La mia timida posizione sulla sua soglia non fu occupata per più di un paio di minuti al massimo; ma scesi di nuovo con tutta questa conoscenza, tanto quanto sicuramente il coltello e la forchetta erano nella mia mano.
C’era qualcosa di zingaresco e piacevole in quella cena, dopotutto. Riportai il coltello e la forchetta del capitano Hopkins all’inizio del pomeriggio, e andai a casa a confortare la signora Micawber con un resoconto della mia visita. Svenne quando mi vide tornare, e preparò una piccola brocca di egg-hot dopo, per consolarci mentre ne parlavamo.
Non so come i mobili della casa siano stati venduti per il beneficio della famiglia, né chi li abbia venduti, tranne che non sono stato io. Furono venduti, però, e portati via su un furgone; tranne il letto, alcune sedie e il tavolo della cucina. Con questi averi ci accampammo, per così dire, nei due salotti della casa svuotata in Windsor Terrace; la signora Micawber, i bambini, l’Orfling e io; e vivemmo in quelle stanze notte e giorno. Non ho idea per quanto tempo, anche se mi sembra sia stato per un lungo periodo. Alla fine la signora Micawber decise di trasferirsi nella prigione, dove il signor Micawber aveva ormai ottenuto una stanza tutta per sé. Così portai la chiave della casa al proprietario, che fu molto contento di riceverla; e i letti furono inviati al King’s Bench, tranne il mio, per il quale fu affittata una piccola stanza fuori dalle mura nei pressi di quell’Istituzione, molto a mio agio, dato che i Micawber ed io ci eravamo abituati troppo l’uno all’altro, nei nostri guai, per separarci. L’Orfling fu ugualmente sistemato in un alloggio economico nello stesso quartiere. La mia era una tranquilla soffitta sul retro con un tetto inclinato, che dominava una piacevole vista su un deposito di legname; e quando mi ci trasferii, riflettendo che i guai del signor Micawber erano finalmente giunti a una crisi, pensai che fosse un vero paradiso.
Tutto questo tempo lavoravo presso Murdstone e Grinby nello stesso modo comune, con gli stessi compagni comuni, e con lo stesso senso di degradazione non meritata come all’inizio. Ma non ho mai, fortunatamente per me senza dubbio, fatto una sola conoscenza, né ho parlato con nessuno dei molti ragazzi che vedevo ogni giorno andando al magazzino, tornando da esso, e vagabondando per le strade all’ora dei pasti. Conducevo la stessa vita segretamente infelice; ma la conducevo nello stesso modo solitario e auto-sufficiente. Gli unici cambiamenti che sono consapevole sono, in primo luogo, che ero diventato più trasandato, e in secondo luogo, che ora ero sollevato da gran parte del peso delle preoccupazioni del signor e della signora Micawber; poiché alcuni parenti o amici si erano offerti di aiutarli nella loro attuale situazione, e vivevano più comodamente in prigione di quanto avessero vissuto per molto tempo fuori di essa. Ora facevo colazione con loro, in virtù di un accordo di cui ho dimenticato i dettagli. Ho dimenticato anche a che ora si aprivano le porte al mattino, permettendomi di entrare; ma so che spesso mi alzavo alle sei del m attino, e che il mio posto preferito per trascorrere il tempo in attesa era il vecchio ponte di Londra, dove ero solito sedermi in una delle nicchie di pietra, osservando la gente che passava, o guardare oltre i parapetti il sole che brillava nell’acqua, e illuminava la fiamma dorata sulla cima del Monumento. L’Orfling a volte mi incontrava qui, per raccontarmi alcune incredibili invenzioni riguardanti i magazzini e la Torre; di cui non posso dire altro che spero di averle credute anch’io. La sera tornavo alla prigione, e facevo su e giù per il viale con il signor Micawber; o giocavo a casino con la signora Micawber, e ascoltavo i ricordi di suo papà e sua mamma. Se il signor Murdstone sapeva dove fossi, non sono in grado di dirlo. Non gliel’ho mai detto a Murdstone e Grinby.
Mr. Micawber’s affairs, although past their crisis, were very much involved by reason of a certain ‘Deed’, of which I used to hear a great deal, and which I suppose, now, to have been some former composition with his creditors, though I was so far from being clear about it then, that I am conscious of having confounded it with those demoniacal parchments which are held to have, once upon a time, obtained to a great extent in Germany. At last this document appeared to be got out of the way, somehow; at all events it ceased to be the rock-ahead it had been; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that ‘her family’ had decided that Mr. Micawber should apply for his release under the Insolvent Debtors Act, which would set him free, she expected, in about six weeks.
‘And then,’ said Mr. Micawber, who was present, ‘I have no doubt I shall, please Heaven, begin to be beforehand with the world, and to live in a perfectly new manner, if—in short, if anything turns up.’
By way of going in for anything that might be on the cards, I call to mind that Mr. Micawber, about this time, composed a petition to the House of Commons, praying for an alteration in the law of imprisonment for debt. I set down this remembrance here, because it is an instance to myself of the manner in which I fitted my old books to my altered life, and made stories for myself, out of the streets, and out of men and women; and how some main points in the character I shall unconsciously develop, I suppose, in writing my life, were gradually forming all this while.
There was a club in the prison, in which Mr. Micawber, as a gentleman, was a great authority. Mr. Micawber had stated his idea of this petition to the club, and the club had strongly approved of the same. Wherefore Mr. Micawber (who was a thoroughly good-natured man, and as active a creature about everything but his own affairs as ever existed, and never so happy as when he was busy about something that could never be of any profit to him) set to work at the petition, invented it, engrossed it on an immense sheet of paper, spread it out on a table, and appointed a time for all the club, and all within the walls if they chose, to come up to his room and sign it.
When I heard of this approaching ceremony, I was so anxious to see them all come in, one after another, though I knew the greater part of them already, and they me, that I got an hour’s leave of absence from Murdstone and Grinby’s, and established myself in a corner for that purpose. As many of the principal members of the club as could be got into the small room without filling it, supported Mr. Micawber in front of the petition, while my old friend Captain Hopkins (who had washed himself, to do honour to so solemn an occasion) stationed himself close to it, to read it to all who were unacquainted with its contents. The door was then thrown open, and the general population began to come in, in a long file: several waiting outside, while one entered, affixed his signature, and went out. To everybody in succession, Captain Hopkins said: ‘Have you read it?’—‘No.’---‘Would you like to hear it read?’ If he weakly showed the least disposition to hear it, Captain Hopkins, in a loud sonorous voice, gave him every word of it. The Captain would have read it twenty thousand times, if twenty thousand people would have heard him, one by one. I remember a certain luscious roll he gave to such phrases as ‘The people’s representatives in Parliament assembled,’ ‘Your petitioners therefore humbly approach your honourable house,’ ‘His gracious Majesty’s unfortunate subjects,’ as if the words were something real in his mouth, and delicious to taste; Mr. Micawber, meanwhile, listening with a little of an author’s vanity, and contemplating (not severely) the spikes on the opposite wall.
As I walked to and fro daily between Southwark and Blackfriars, and lounged about at meal-times in obscure streets, the stones of which may, for anything I know, be worn at this moment by my childish feet, I wonder how many of these people were wanting in the crowd that used to come filing before me in review again, to the echo of Captain Hopkins’s voice! When my thoughts go back, now, to that slow agony of my youth, I wonder how much of the histories I invented for such people hangs like a mist of fancy over well-remembered facts! When I tread the old ground, I do not wonder that I seem to see and pity, going on before me, an innocent romantic boy, making his imaginative world out of such strange experiences and sordid things!
Gli affari del signor Micawber, sebbene superata la crisi, erano ancora molto complicati a causa di un certo “atto” di cui sentivo spesso parlare e che ora suppongo fosse una precedente conciliazione con i suoi creditori, anche se all’epoca ero così lontano dal capirlo che ricordo di averlo confuso con quei demoniaci documenti che si dice fossero stati molto diffusi un tempo in Germania. Alla fine questo documento sembrò essere stato risolto in qualche modo; in ogni caso cessò di essere l’ostacolo che era stato; e la signora Micawber mi informò che “la sua famiglia” aveva deciso che il signor Micawber avrebbe dovuto chiedere la liberazione ai sensi della legge sui debitori insolventi, che lo avrebbe messo in libertà, si aspettava, in circa sei settimane.
«E poi», disse il signor Micawber, che era presente, «non ho dubbio alcuno che, con la grazia di Dio, comincerò a stare al passo col mondo e a vivere in un modo completamente nuovo, se—in breve, se succede qualcosa».
Per non lasciar passare nulla di quanto potesse accadere, rammento che il signor Micawber, circa in questo periodo, compose una petizione alla Camera dei Comuni, chiedendo una modifica della legge sull’arresto per debiti. Trascrivo questo ricordo qui perché è un esempio per me del modo in cui adattavo i miei vecchi libri alla mia vita cambiata, e creavo storie per me, dalle strade, e dagli uomini e dalle donne; e come alcuni punti principali del carattere che svilupperò inconsapevolmente, credo, scrivendo la mia vita, si stavano gradualmente formando in tutto questo tempo.
C’era un club nel carcere, nel quale il signor Micawber, in quanto gentiluomo, era una grande autorità. Il signor Micawber aveva esposto al club la sua idea sulla petizione, e il club l’aveva approvata con grande entusiasmo. Pertanto il signor Micawber (che era un uomo di natura estremamente buona, e una creatura attivissima in tutto tranne che nelle proprie faccende, e mai così felice come quando era occupato in qualcosa che non poteva mai portargli alcun vantaggio) si mise al lavoro sulla petizione, la inventò, la trascrisse su un enorme foglio di carta, lo stese su un tavolo e fissò un orario perché tutto il club, e tutti coloro che lo desideravano all’interno delle mura, salissero nella sua stanza e la firmassero.
Quando seppi di questa cerimonia imminente, ero così ansioso di vederli arrivare tutti, uno dopo l’altro, sebbene ne conoscessi già la maggior parte, e loro conoscevano me, che ottenni un’ora di permesso da Murdstone e Grinby, e mi sistemai in un angolo per questo scopo. Molti dei principali membri del club che si poterono far entrare nella piccola stanza senza riempirla, sostenevano il signor Micawber davanti alla petizione, mentre il mio vecchio amico capitano Hopkins (che si era lavato per rendere onore a un’occasione così solenne) si mise vicino a essa, per leggerla a tutti coloro che non ne conoscevano il contenuto. La porta fu poi spalancata, e la popolazione generale iniziò ad entrare in fila indiana: diversi aspettavano fuori, mentre uno entrava, apponeva la sua firma, e usciva. A tutti, uno dopo l’altro, il capitano Hopkins diceva: ‘L’ha letta?’—‘No.’---‘Vuole sentirla?’ Se mostrava anche solo la minima debolezza di volerla sentire, il capitano Hopkins, con una voce forte e sonora, gliela leggeva parola per parola. Il capitano l’avrebbe letta ventimila volte, se ventimila persone l’avessero ascoltato, una per una. Ricordo un certo gusto succulento che dava a frasi come ‘I rappresentanti del popolo nel Parlamento riunito,’ ‘I petentanti si avvicinano quindi umilmente al vostro onorevole assemblea,’ ‘Gli sfortunati sudditi del nostro grazioso Sovrano,’ come se le parole fossero qualcosa di reale nella sua bocca, e delizioso al gusto; il signor Micawber, nel frattempo, ascoltava con un po’ della vanità di un autore, e contemplava (non severamente) le punte sul muro di fronte.
Mentre camminavo avanti e indietro ogni giorno tra Southwark e Blackfriars, e me ne stavo in giro ai pasti in strade oscure, le cui pietre potrebbero, per quel che ne so, essere calpestate in questo momento dai miei piedi infantili, mi domando quanti di queste persone mancassero nella folla che era solita passare in rivista davanti a me, al suono della voce del Capitano Hopkins! Quando i miei pensieri tornano, ora, a quella lenta agonia della mia giovinezza, mi domando quanto delle storie che ho inventato per queste persone aleggi come una nebbia di fantasia su fatti ben ricordati! Quando pongo piede sul vecchio terreno, non mi domando perché mi sembra di vedere e compatire, che va avanti a me, un ragazzo romantico e innocente, che costruisce il suo mondo immaginativo da esperienze così strane e cose sordide!
CHAPTER 12. LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO BETTER, I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION
In due time, Mr. Micawber’s petition was ripe for hearing; and that gentleman was ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great joy. His creditors were not implacable; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore him no malice, but that when money was owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human nature.
Mr. Micawber returned to the King’s Bench when his case was over, as some fees were to be settled, and some formalities observed, before he could be actually released. The club received him with transport, and held an harmonic meeting that evening in his honour; while Mrs. Micawber and I had a lamb’s fry in private, surrounded by the sleeping family.
‘On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘in a little more flip,’ for we had been having some already, ‘the memory of my papa and mama.’
‘Are they dead, ma’am?’ I inquired, after drinking the toast in a wine-glass.
‘My mama departed this life,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘before Mr. Micawber’s difficulties commenced, or at least before they became pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr. Micawber several times, and then expired, regretted by a numerous circle.’
Mrs. Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the twin who happened to be in hand.
As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:
‘May I ask, ma’am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that Mr. Micawber is out of his difficulties, and at liberty? Have you settled yet?’
‘My family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words with an air, though I never could discover who came under the denomination, ‘my family are of opinion that Mr. Micawber should quit London, and exert his talents in the country. Mr. Micawber is a man of great talent, Master Copperfield.’
I said I was sure of that.
‘Of great talent,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber. ‘My family are of opinion, that, with a little interest, something might be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House. The influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr. Micawber should go down to Plymouth. They think it indispensable that he should be upon the spot.’
‘That he may be ready?’ I suggested.
‘Exactly,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘That he may be ready—in case of anything turning up.’
‘And do you go too, ma’am?’
The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with the flip, had made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she replied:
‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect that he would overcome them. The pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited from mama, have been disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of coral, which was the wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. No!’ cried Mrs. Micawber, more affected than before, ‘I never will do it! It’s of no use asking me!’
I felt quite uncomfortable—as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had asked her to do anything of the sort!—and sat looking at her in alarm.
‘Mr. Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,’ she went on, looking at the wall; ‘but I never will desert Mr. Micawber!’
Mrs. Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, I was so frightened that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr. Micawber in the act of presiding at a long table, and leading the chorus of
Gee up, Dobbin, Gee ho, Dobbin, Gee up, Dobbin, Gee up, and gee ho—o—o!
—with the tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with his waistcoat full of the heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been partaking.
‘Emma, my angel!’ cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; ‘what is the matter?’
‘I never will desert you, Micawber!’ she exclaimed.
‘My life!’ said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms. ‘I am perfectly aware of it.’
‘He is the parent of my children! He is the father of my twins! He is the husband of my affections,’ cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling; ‘and I ne—ver—will—desert Mr. Micawber!’
Mr. Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion (as to me, I was dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a passionate manner, imploring her to look up, and to be calm. But the more he asked Mrs. Micawber to look up, the more she fixed her eyes on nothing; and the more he asked her to compose herself, the more she wouldn’t. Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome, that he mingled his tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to do him the favour of taking a chair on the staircase, while he got her into bed. I would have taken my leave for the night, but he would not hear of my doing that until the strangers’ bell should ring. So I sat at the staircase window, until he came out with another chair and joined me.
‘How is Mrs. Micawber now, sir?’ I said.
‘Very low,’ said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; ‘reaction. Ah, this has been a dreadful day! We stand alone now—everything is gone from us!’
Mr. Micawber pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed tears. I was greatly touched, and disappointed too, for I had expected that we should be quite gay on this happy and long-looked-for occasion. But Mr. and Mrs. Micawber were so used to their old difficulties, I think, that they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were released from them. All their elasticity was departed, and I never saw them half so wretched as on this night; insomuch that when the bell rang, and Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he was so profoundly miserable.
CAPITOLO 12. NON AMANDO LA VITA PER CONTO MIO DI PIù, PRENDO UNA GRANDE RISOLUZIONE
In due tempo, la petizione del signor Micawber era pronta per essere esaminata; e a grande gioia mia, a quell’illustre signore fu ordinato di essere scarcerato ai sensi della legge. I suoi creditori non erano implacabili; e la signora Micawber mi informò che anche il vendicativo calzolaio aveva dichiarato in aperto tribunale che non gli serbava rancore, ma che quando gli era dovuto del denaro gli piaceva essere pagato. Disse che pensava fosse la natura umana.
Il signor Micawber tornò al Re’s Bench quando il suo caso fu concluso, poiché alcuni onorari dovevano essere regolati e alcune formalità osservate, prima che potesse essere effettivamente rilasciato. Il club lo accolse con entusiasmo e tenne una riunione armonica quella sera in suo onore; mentre la signora Micawber e io avevamo una agnello’s fry in privato, circondati dalla famiglia addormentata.
«In un’occasione come questa vi darò, Master Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, «in un po’ più di flip», perché ne avevamo già preso un po’, «il ricordo di mio padre e di mia madre.»
«Sono morti, signora?» chiesi, dopo aver brindato in un bicchiere di vino.
«Mia madre è passata a miglior vita», disse la signora Micawber, «prima che le difficoltà del signor Micawber avessero inizio, o almeno prima che diventassero pressanti. Mio padre visse abbastanza a lungo da tirar fuori il signor Micawber di galera parecchie volte, e poi morì, deplorato da un vasto circolo di persone.»
La signora Micawber scosse la testa e lasciò cadere una lacrima pia sul gemello che le capitò tra le mani.
Poiché non potevo sperare in un’occasione più favorevole per porre una domanda che mi stava molto a cuore, dissi alla signora Micawber:
«Posso chiedere, signora, che cosa intendete fare voi e il signor Micawber, ora che il signor Micawber è fuori dai suoi guai e libero? Avete già deciso?»
«La mia famiglia», disse la signora Micawber, che pronunciava sempre quelle due parole con un certo tono, sebbene io non fossi mai riuscito a capire chi fosse compreso in tale denominazione, «la mia famiglia è dell’opinione che il signor Micawber dovrebbe lasciare Londra e mettere a frutto le sue doti in campagna. Il signor Micawber è un uomo di grande talento, piccolo Copperfield.»
Io dissi che ne ero certo.
«Di grande talento», ripeté la signora Micawber. «La mia famiglia è dell’opinione che, con un po’ di interesse, si potrebbe fare qualcosa per un uomo della sua abilità nella dogana. L’influenza della mia famiglia essendo locale, è il loro desiderio che il signor Micawber vada a Plymouth. Pensano che sia indispensabile che egli sia sul posto.»
«Che sia pronto?» suggerii.
‘Esattamente,’ rispose la signora Micawber. ‘Così sarà pronto, nel caso che si presentasse qualcosa.’
‘Anche lei se ne va, signora?’
Gli eventi della giornata, in combinazione con i gemelli, se non con il capovolgimento, avevano reso isterica la signora Micawber, e lei versò lacrime mentre rispondeva:
«Non abbandonerò mai il signor Micawber. Il signor Micawber potrebbe avermi nascosto le sue difficoltà in un primo momento, ma il suo temperamento ottimista potrebbe averlo portato a credere di poterle superare. La collana di perle e i braccialetti che ho ereditato da mamma sono stati venduti per meno della metà del loro valore; e il corallo, che era il regalo di nozze di mio padre, è stato buttato via per nulla. Ma non abbandonerò mai il signor Micawber. No!» esclamò la signora Micawber, più commossa che mai, «non lo farò mai! Non serve chiedermelo!»
Mi sentivo piuttosto a disagio, come se la signora Micawber pensasse che le avessi chiesto di fare qualcosa del genere, e la guardavo con apprensione.
«Il signor Micawber ha i suoi difetti. Non nego che sia spericolato. Non nego che mi abbia tenuta all’oscuro delle sue risorse e dei suoi debiti», continuò, guardando il muro; «ma non abbandonerò mai il signor Micawber!»
La signora Micawber avendo ora alzato la voce fino a un urlo perfetto, ero così spaventato che corsi via nella sala del club, e disturbai il signor Micawber mentre presiedeva a un lungo tavolo, e dirigeva il coro di
Avanti, Dobbin, Avanti, Dobbin, Avanti, Dobbin, Avanti, e avanti—o—o!
—con la notizia che la signora Micawber era in uno stato allarmante, al che lui scoppiò immediatamente a piangere, e venne via con me con il suo panciotto pieno di teste e code di gamberetti, di cui si era cibato.
«Emma, mio angelo!» gridò il signor Micawber, entrando di corsa nella stanza; «che succede?»
«Non ti abbandonerò mai, Micawber!» esclamò.
‘La mia vita!’ disse il signor Micawber, stringendola tra le braccia. ‘Ne sono perfettamente consapevole.’
«È il padre dei miei figli! È il padre dei miei gemelli! È il marito del mio affetto», gridò la signora Micawber, lottando; «e io ne—ver—rà—abbandonerò il signor Micawber!»
Il signor Micawber era così profondamente commosso da questa prova della sua devozione (per quanto mi riguarda, ero sciolto in lacrime), che si chinò su di lei in modo appassionato, implorandola di guardarlo e di calmarsi. Ma più lui chiedeva alla signora Micawber di guardarlo, più lei fissava gli occhi nel vuoto; e più lui le chiedeva di calmarsi, più lei non lo faceva. Di conseguenza il signor Micawber fu presto così sopraffatto, che mescolò le sue lacrime con le sue e con le mie; finché non mi pregò di fargli il favore di prendere una sedia sulle scale, mentre lui la metteva a letto. Avrei voluto congedarmi per la notte, ma lui non voleva sentire ragioni finché non avesse suonato la campana degli estranei. Così mi sedetti alla finestra delle scale, finché non uscì con un’altra sedia e si unì a me.
«Come sta ora la signora Micawber, signore?» dissi.
«Molto basso», disse il signor Micawber, scuotendo la testa; «reazione. Ah, che terribile giornata! Ora siamo soli — tutto è perduto per noi!»
Il signor Micawber mi strinse la mano, gemette, e poi versò lacrime. Ero molto commosso, e anche deluso, perché mi aspettavo che saremmo stati tutti allegri in questa felice e tanto attesa occasione. Ma il signor e la signora Micawber erano così abituati alle loro vecchie difficoltà, credo, che si sentivano come naufraghi quando pensarono di essere liberati da esse. Tutta la loro elasticità era scomparsa, e non li ho mai visti così infelici come in questa sera; tanto che quando suonò la campana, e il signor Micawber mi accompagnò alla portineria, e mi salutò con una benedizione, ebbi paura di lasciarlo da solo, era così profondamente infelice.
But through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we had been, so unexpectedly to me, involved, I plainly discerned that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and their family were going away from London, and that a parting between us was near at hand. It was in my walk home that night, and in the sleepless hours which followed when I lay in bed, that the thought first occurred to me—though I don’t know how it came into my head—which afterwards shaped itself into a settled resolution.
I had grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and had been so intimate with them in their distresses, and was so utterly friendless without them, that the prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for a lodging, and going once more among unknown people, was like being that moment turned adrift into my present life, with such a knowledge of it ready made as experience had given me. All the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept alive within my breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I determined that the life was unendurable.
That there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my own act, I knew quite well. I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never from Mr. Murdstone: but two or three parcels of made or mended clothes had come up for me, consigned to Mr. Quinion, and in each there was a scrap of paper to the effect that J. M. trusted D. C. was applying himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties—not the least hint of my ever being anything else than the common drudge into which I was fast settling down.
The very next day showed me, while my mind was in the first agitation of what it had conceived, that Mrs. Micawber had not spoken of their going away without warrant. They took a lodging in the house where I lived, for a week; at the expiration of which time they were to start for Plymouth. Mr. Micawber himself came down to the counting-house, in the afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion that he must relinquish me on the day of his departure, and to give me a high character, which I am sure I deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling in Tipp the carman, who was a married man, and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him—by our mutual consent, as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing, though my resolution was now taken.
I passed my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the remaining term of our residence under the same roof; and I think we became fonder of one another as the time went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. I had bought a spotted wooden horse over-night as a parting gift to little Wilkins Micawber—that was the boy—and a doll for little Emma. I had also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded.
We had a very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about our approaching separation.
‘I shall never, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘revert to the period when Mr. Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of you. Your conduct has always been of the most delicate and obliging description. You have never been a lodger. You have been a friend.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘Copperfield,’ for so he had been accustomed to call me, of late, ‘has a heart to feel for the distresses of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to plan, and a hand to—in short, a general ability to dispose of such available property as could be made away with.’
I expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very sorry we were going to lose one another.
‘My dear young friend,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and—and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that—in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am the’—here Mr. Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned—‘the miserable wretch you behold.’
‘My dear Micawber!’ urged his wife.
‘I say,’ returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, ‘the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!’
‘My poor papa’s maxim,’ Mrs. Micawber observed.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your papa was very well in his way, and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall—in short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.’ Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added: ‘Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.’ After which, he was grave for a minute or so.
‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!’
To make his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe.
I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they affected me visibly. Next morning I met the whole family at the coach office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back.
Ma attraverso tutta la confusione e il depresso stato d’animo in cui ci eravamo trovati, così inaspettatamente per me, riuscivo a capire chiaramente che il signor e la signora Micawber e la loro famiglia stavano per andarsene da Londra, e che un addio tra noi era vicino. Fu durante la mia passeggiata a casa quella notte, e nelle ore insonni che seguirono mentre ero a letto, che mi venne per la prima volta in mente il pensiero — anche se non so come mi sia venuto in mente — che in seguito si trasformò in una risoluzione ferma.
Ero ormai così abituato ai Micawber, avevo condiviso così intimamente le loro disgrazie, e senza di loro ero così completamente senza amici, che la prospettiva di dovermi arrangiare in qualche nuovo modo per trovare alloggio, e di dovermi ancora una volta mescolare tra gente sconosciuta, era come se in quel momento fossi stato abbandonato alla mia attuale vita, con una conoscenza di essa già pronta come l’esperienza me l’aveva data. Tutti i sentimenti sensibili che essa feriva così crudelmente, tutta la vergogna e la miseria che essa manteneva vive nel mio petto, divenivano più acuti mentre pensavo a questo; e decisi che quella vita era insopportabile.
Sapevo che non c’era speranza di sfuggirgli, a meno che la fuga non fosse opera mia, lo sapevo benissimo. Di rado ricevevo notizie da Miss Murdstone, e mai da Mr. Murdstone: ma due o tre pacchetti di vestiti fatti o riparati erano arrivati per me, indirizzati a Mr. Quinion, e in ciascuno c’era un biglietto in cui J. M. si diceva fiducioso che D. C. si applicasse al lavoro e si dedicasse interamente ai suoi doveri, senza il minimo accenno al fatto che potessi mai essere altro che il comune servo in cui stavo rapidamente trasformandomi.
Il giorno dopo mi mostrò, mentre la mia mente era ancora in preda alla prima agitazione per ciò che aveva concepito, che la signora Micawber non aveva parlato del loro trasferimento senza motivo. Presero alloggio nella casa dove vivevo, per una settimana; al termine di tale periodo avrebbero dovuto partire per Plymouth. Lo stesso signor Micawber venne al ufficio contabile, nel pomeriggio, per dire a Quinion che avrebbe dovuto rinunciare a me il giorno della sua partenza, e per darmi un’ottima referenza, che sono sicuro di meritare. E Quinion, chiamando il carrettiere Tipp, che era sposato e aveva una stanza da affittare, mi sistemò presso di lui in prospettiva — con il nostro reciproco consenso, come aveva ogni motivo di credere; perché non dissi nulla, anche se la mia decisione era ormai presa.
Passavo le mie serate con il signor e la signora Micawber, durante il resto del periodo in cui abitavamo sotto lo stesso tetto; e credo che ci affezionassimo sempre più l’uno all’altra man mano che il tempo passava. L’ultimo domenica, mi invitarono a cena; e avevamo un lombo di maiale con salsa di mele e un budino. Avevo comprato un cavallo di legno maculato la notte prima come regalo d’addio al piccolo Wilkins Micawber—era il ragazzo—e una bambola per la piccola Emma. Avevo anche dato uno scellino all’Orfling, che stava per essere sciolto.
Passammo una giornata molto piacevole, sebbene fossimo tutti commossi al pensiero della nostra imminente separazione.
«Non tornerò mai, Master Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, «al periodo in cui il signor Micawber era in difficoltà, senza pensare a lei. Il suo comportamento è sempre stato di una delicatezza e cortesia esemplari. Lei non è mai stato un inquilino. Lei è stato un amico.»
«Mia cara», disse il signor Micawber, «Copperfield», così mi chiamava ultimamente, «ha un cuore che sente le sofferenze dei suoi simili quando sono in difficoltà, e una testa per fare piani, e una mano per, insomma, una generale capacità di disporre di quella proprietà disponibile che si può liquidare.»
Espressi la mia gratitudine per questo elogio e dissi che mi dispiaceva molto che ci saremmo persi di vista.
«Mio caro giovane amico», disse il signor Micawber, «sono più vecchio di voi; un uomo con una certa esperienza nella vita, e—e con una certa esperienza, in breve, nelle difficoltà, in generale. Al momento, e fino a che non succeda qualcosa (il che, posso dire, aspetto di ora in ora), non ho nulla da offrire se non consigli. Eppure i miei consigli valgono la pena di essere seguiti, in quanto—in breve, in quanto non li ho mai seguiti io stesso, e sono il»—a questo punto il signor Micawber, che fino a quel momento aveva irradiato allegria e sorrisi da ogni parte della testa e del viso, si trattenne e aggrottò la fronte—«il miserabile disgraziato che vedete».
«Mio caro Micawber!» lo esortò sua moglie.
«Dico», rispose il signor Micawber, dimenticandosi completamente di sé e sorridendo di nuovo, «la misera creatura che vedete. Il mio consiglio è: non rimandare a domani ciò che puoi fare oggi. La procrastinazione è il ladro del tempo. Catturatelo!»
«Il motto di mio povero papà», osservò la signora Micawber.
«Mia cara», disse il signor Micawber, «tuo padre era molto benestante nel suo genere, e che Dio mi fulmini se dovessi sminuirlo. Prendendolo per quello che era, noi non riusciremo mai—in breve, a fare la conoscenza, probabilmente, di nessun altro che possieda, alla sua età, le stesse gambe per i polsini, e che sia capace di leggere lo stesso tipo di carattere, senza occhiali. Ma lui ha applicato quel massimo al nostro matrimonio, mia cara; e questo è stato così prematuramente contratto, di conseguenza, che non ho mai recuperato la spesa». Il signor Micawber guardò di lato la signora Micawber, e aggiunse: «Non che io ne sia pentito. Tutt’altro, mia cara». Dopo di che, fu serio per un minuto o giù di lì.
«Il mio altro consiglio, Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, «lo sai. Ricavo annuo venti sterline, spese annue diciannove sterline, diciannove scellini e sei pence, risultato felicità. Ricavo annuo venti sterline, spese annue venti sterline e sei pence, risultato miseria. Il fiore è appassito, la foglia è secca, il dio del giorno tramonta sulla scena desolata, e—e in breve sei per sempre a terra. Come lo sono io!»
Per rendere il suo esempio ancora più convincente, il signor Micawber bevve un bicchiere di punch con aria di grande godimento e soddisfazione, e fischiò la College Hornpipe.
Non mancai di assicurargli che avrei conservato questi precetti nella mia mente, sebbene in realtà non avessi bisogno di farlo, perché, al tempo, mi avevano colpito visibilmente. La mattina seguente incontrai tutta la famiglia all’ufficio della diligenza e li vidi, con un cuore desolato, prendere posto all’esterno, sul retro.
‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘God bless you! I never can forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.’
‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘farewell! Every happiness and prosperity! If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you, I should feel that I had not occupied another man’s place in existence altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your prospects.’
I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, and she saw what a little creature I really was. I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy. I had barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute. The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to St. Luke’s workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and Grinby’s.
But with no intention of passing many more weary days there. No. I had resolved to run away.---To go, by some means or other, down into the country, to the only relation I had in the world, and tell my story to my aunt, Miss Betsey. I have already observed that I don’t know how this desperate idea came into my brain. But, once there, it remained there; and hardened into a purpose than which I have never entertained a more determined purpose in my life. I am far from sure that I believed there was anything hopeful in it, but my mind was thoroughly made up that it must be carried into execution.
Again, and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when the thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone over that old story of my poor mother’s about my birth, which it had been one of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell, and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it might have been altogether my mother’s fancy, and might have had no foundation whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very possible that it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually engendered my determination.
As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long letter to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered; pretending that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place I named at random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the same. In the course of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum until I could repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell her afterwards what I had wanted it for.
Peggotty’s answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate devotion. She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have had a world of trouble to get it out of Mr. Barkis’s box), and told me that Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. One of our men, however, informing me on my asking him about these places, that they were all close together, I deemed this enough for my object, and resolved to set out at the end of that week.
Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby’s, I considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and, as I had been paid a week’s wages in advance when I first came there, not to present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to receive my stipend. For this express reason, I had borrowed the half-guinea, that I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses. Accordingly, when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him, when it came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had gone to move my box to Tipp’s; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy Potatoes, ran away.
My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed on the casks: ‘Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach Office, Dover.’ This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I should have got it out of the house; and as I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the booking-office.
There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who, addressing me as ‘Sixpenn’orth of bad ha’pence,’ hoped ‘I should know him agin to swear to’—in allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped to assure him that I had not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he might or might not like a job.
‘Wot job?’ said the long-legged young man.
‘To move a box,’ I answered.
‘Wot box?’ said the long-legged young man.
«Signor Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, «Dio la benedica! Non potrò mai dimenticare tutto questo, lo sa, e non lo farei neanche se potessi.»
«Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, «addio! Tutta la felicità e la prosperità! Se, col passare degli anni, potessi convincermi che il mio destino avverso vi sia stato di monito, sentirei di non aver occupato il posto di un altro in questo mondo del tutto invano. Se dovesse capitarmi qualcosa (e sono piuttosto fiducioso), sarò estremamente felice se potrò migliorare le vostre prospettive».
Penso che, mentre la signora Micawber sedeva sul retro del calesse con i bambini, e io stavo in strada a guardarli con malinconia, una nebbia si sia diradata dai suoi occhi, e abbia visto quale piccola creatura fossi in realtà. Penso questo perché mi fece cenno di salire, con un’espressione nuova e materna sul viso, e mi mise il braccio intorno al collo, e mi diede proprio il genere di bacio che avrebbe potuto dare a suo figlio. Non ebbi quasi tempo di scendere di nuovo prima che il calesse partisse, e a malapena potevo vedere la famiglia per i fazzoletti che agitavano. Scomparve in un attimo. L’Orfling e io restammo a guardarci vacuamente in mezzo alla strada, e poi ci stringemmo la mano e ci dicemmo addio; lei tornando, immagino, al ricovero di San Luca, mentre io andavo a iniziare la mia stancante giornata da Murdstone e Grinby.
Ma senza alcuna intenzione di passare molti altri giorni stancanti lì. No. Avevo deciso di scappare.---Di andare, in un modo o nell’altro, in campagna, dalla sola parente che avevo al mondo, e raccontare la mia storia a mia zia, Miss Betsey. Ho già osservato che non so come questa idea disperata mi sia venuta in mente. Ma, una volta lì, è rimasta lì; e si è indurita in un proposito rispetto al quale non ho mai intrattenuto un proposito più determinato nella mia vita. Sono ben lontano dall’essere sicuro che credessi che ci fosse qualcosa di speranzoso in essa, ma la mia mente era completamente decisa che doveva essere portata a compimento.
Ancora, e ancora, e cento volte ancora, dalla notte in cui quell’idea mi era venuta per la prima volta e aveva scacciato il sonno, avevo ripercorso quella vecchia storia di mia madre sulla mia nascita, che era stata una delle mie grandi delizie nei vecchi tempi ascoltare da lei, e che conoscevo a memoria. Mia zia entrava in quella storia ed usciva da essa, come una figura spaventosa e terribile; ma c’era un piccolo tratto del suo comportamento su cui mi piaceva soffermarmi, e che mi dava un debole barlume di incoraggiamento. Non potevo dimenticare come mia madre avesse pensato di sentire il suo tocco sui suoi bei capelli con una mano non poco gentile; e sebbene potesse essere stata tutta una fantasia di mia madre, e potesse non avere alcun fondamento di fatto, ne avevo fatto un piccolo quadro, di mia zia terribile che si addolciva verso la bellezza giovanile che ricordavo così bene e amavo tanto, che addolciva tutta la narrazione. È molto possibile che fosse nella mia mente da un lungo periodo, e avesse gradualmente generato la mia determinazione.
Poiché non sapevo nemmeno dove abitasse la signorina Betsey, scrissi una lunga lettera a Peggotty, e le chiesi, incidentalmente, se lo ricordava; fingendo che avevo sentito parlare di una tale signora che viveva in un certo posto che nominai a caso, e avevo curiosità di sapere se fosse la stessa. Nel corso di quella lettera, dissi a Peggotty che avevo un motivo particolare per chiedere mezza ghinea; e che se poteva prestarmi quella somma fino a quando non potessi restituirla, le sarei stato molto obbligato, e le avrei poi spiegato a cosa mi serviva.
La risposta di Peggotty arrivò presto e, come al solito, era piena di affettuosa devozione. Inclusa la mezza ghinea (temevo che dovesse aver avuto un mondo di guai per tirarla fuori dalla scatola del signor Barkis), mi diceva che Miss Betsey viveva vicino a Dover, ma se a Dover stessa, a Hythe, Sandgate o Folkestone, non poteva dirlo. Uno dei nostri uomini, tuttavia, informandomi quando gli chiesi di questi posti, che erano tutti vicini, ritenni che questo fosse sufficiente per il mio scopo e decisi di partire alla fine di quella settimana.
Essendo una creatura molto onesta e non volendo disonorare la memoria che avrei lasciato dietro di me presso Murdstone e Grinby, mi sentivo obbligato a rimanere fino alla sera di sabato; e, dato che mi avevano pagato una settimana di stipendio in anticipo quando ero arrivato, non presentarmi nella contabilità all’ora solita per ricevere il mio compenso. Per questo motivo specifico, avevo preso in prestito la mezza ghinea, in modo da non rimanere senza fondi per le mie spese di viaggio. Di conseguenza, quando arrivò la sera di sabato e tutti noi eravamo in attesa nel magazzino per essere pagati, e Tipp, il carrettiere, che aveva sempre la precedenza, entrò per primo a ritirare il suo denaro, strinsi la mano a Mick Walker; gli chiesi, quando sarebbe stato il suo turno di essere pagato, di dire al signor Quinion che ero andato a spostare la mia scatola da Tipp; e, salutando con un ultimo buon sera Mealy Potatoes, scappai via.
La mia scatola era nel mio vecchio alloggio, oltre il fiume, e avevo scritto un’indicazione per essa sul retro di una delle nostre schede di indirizzo che abbiamo inchiodato sui barili: “Master David, da lasciare fino a quando non verrà richiesto, presso l’ufficio corrieri, Dover”. Questo lo avevo in tasca pronto per metterlo sulla scatola, dopo che l’avrei tirata fuori dalla casa; e mentre mi dirigevo verso il mio alloggio, guardavo intorno a me per trovare qualcuno che mi aiutasse a portarla all’ufficio prenotazioni.
C’era un giovane alto e magro con un piccolo carretto vuoto per asini, fermo vicino all’Obelisco, nella strada di Blackfriars, il cui sguardo ho catturato mentre passavo, e che, rivolgendosi a me come “sei pence di cattivi soldi”, sperava che “lo avrei riconosciuto per giurare” — alludendo, non ho alcun dubbio, al mio fissarlo. Mi sono fermato per assicurargli che non l’avevo fatto in malo modo, ma incerto se gli sarebbe piaciuto o no un lavoro.
«Che lavoro?» disse il giovane dalle lunghe gambe.
«Per spostare una scatola», risposi.
«Che scatola?» disse il giovane dalle lunghe gambe.
I told him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.
‘Done with you for a tanner!’ said the long-legged young man, and directly got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on wheels, and rattled away at such a rate, that it was as much as I could do to keep pace with the donkey.
There was a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much like; as the bargain was made, however, I took him upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart. Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there, lest any of my landlord’s family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me; so I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King’s Bench prison. The words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the place appointed.
Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my pocket in pulling the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the chin by the long-legged young man, and saw my half-guinea fly out of my mouth into his hand.
‘Wot!’ said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a frightful grin. ‘This is a pollis case, is it? You’re a-going to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!’
‘You give me my money back, if you please,’ said I, very much frightened; ‘and leave me alone.’
‘Come to the pollis!’ said the young man. ‘You shall prove it yourn to the pollis.’
‘Give me my box and money, will you,’ I cried, bursting into tears.
The young man still replied: ‘Come to the pollis!’ and was dragging me against the donkey in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.
I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him, now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.
Gli dissi la mia, che era in quella strada lì, e che volevo che portasse all’ufficio corrieri per Dover per sei pence.
«Ho finito con te per sei pence!» disse il giovane dalle lunghe gambe, e subito salì sul suo carretto, che non era altro che un grande vassoio di legno su ruote, e si allontanò a una tale velocità, che faceva già abbastanza da tenere il passo con l’asino.
C’era un’aria di sfida in questo giovane, e in particolare nel modo in cui masticava paglia mentre mi parlava, che non mi piaceva molto; dato però che l’accordo era fatto, lo portai al piano di sopra nella stanza che stavo lasciando, e portammo giù la scatola, e la mettemmo sul suo carretto. Ora, non volevo mettere l’etichetta con l’indirizzo lì sopra, per timore che qualcuno della famiglia del mio padrone di casa capisse cosa stavo facendo e mi trattenesse; così dissi al giovane che sarei stato felice se avesse potuto fermarsi per un minuto, quando fosse arrivato al muro cieco del Re’s Bench prigione. Le parole non erano ancora uscite dalla mia bocca, che lui partì a razzo come se lui, la mia scatola, il carretto e il asino fossero tutti ugualmente pazzi; e io ero completamente senza fiato per aver corso e chiamato dietro di lui, quando lo raggiunsi al luogo stabilito.
Essendo molto arrossito ed eccitato, feci cadere la mia mezza sovrana dal taschino mentre tiravo fuori il biglietto. Me la misi in bocca per sicurezza, e anche se le mie mani tremavano parecchio, ero riuscito a legare il biglietto con grande soddisfazione, quando sentii che il giovane dalle lunghe gambe mi dava una violenta pacca sotto il mento, e vidi la mia mezza sovrana volare fuori dalla mia bocca nella sua mano.
«Che cosa!» disse il giovane, afferrandomi per il colletto della giacca, con un ghigno spaventoso. «Questo è un caso per la polizia, eh? Stai per scappare, vero? Vieni con la polizia, giovane mascalzone, vieni con la polizia!»
«Mi restituisca i miei soldi, per favore», dissi, molto spaventato; «e mi lasci solo.»
“Vieni dai poliziotti!” disse il giovane. “Dimostrerai che è tuo ai poliziotti.”
«Datemi la mia scatola e i miei soldi, per favore», gridai, scoppiando in lacrime.
Il giovane continuava a rispondere: «Vieni al pollis!» e mi stava trascinando contro l’asino in modo violento, come se ci fosse qualche affinità tra quell’animale e un magistrato, quando cambiò idea, saltò sul carro, si sedette sulla mia valigia e, esclamando che avrebbe guidato direttamente al pollis, partì a razzo più forte che mai.
Lo rincorsi più veloce che potevo, ma non avevo fiato per chiamarlo, e non avrei osato chiamarlo, ora, anche se l’avessi avuto. Sfiorai la morte per essere investito, almeno venti volte, in mezzo miglio. Ora lo perdevo di vista, ora lo vedevo, ora lo perdevo di vista, ora ero colpito con una frusta, ora mi veniva gridato contro, ora ero a terra nel fango, ora di nuovo in piedi, ora correvo tra le braccia di qualcuno, ora mi lanciavo a capofitto contro un palo. Alla fine, confuso dalla paura e dal calore, e dubitando che forse metà di Londra potesse ormai essersi mobilitata per il mio arresto, lasciai che il giovane andasse dove voleva con la mia scatola e i miei soldi; e, ansimando e piangendo, ma senza mai fermarmi, mi voltai verso Greenwich, che avevo capito fosse sulla strada per Dover: portando via dal mondo verso il rifugio di mia zia, Miss Betsey, ben poco più di quanto non ne avessi portato dentro, nella notte in cui il mio arrivo le aveva dato tanto fastidio.
CHAPTER 13. THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION
For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon collected as to that point, if I had; for I came to a stop in the Kent Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it, and a great foolish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a doorstep, quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made, and with hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea.
It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat resting. But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When I had recovered my breath, and had got rid of a stifling sensation in my throat, I rose up and went on. In the midst of my distress, I had no notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any, though there had been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.
But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday night!) troubled me none the less because I went on. I began to picture to myself, as a scrap of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in a day or two, under some hedge; and I trudged on miserably, though as fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop, where it was written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s wardrobes were bought, and that the best price was given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff. The master of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking; and as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from the low ceiling, and only two feeble candles burning inside to show what they were, I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.
My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while. I went up the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my arm, and came back to the shop door.
‘If you please, sir,’ I said, ‘I am to sell this for a fair price.’
Mr. Dolloby—Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least—took the waistcoat, stood his pipe on its head, against the door-post, went into the shop, followed by me, snuffed the two candles with his fingers, spread the waistcoat on the counter, and looked at it there, held it up against the light, and looked at it there, and ultimately said:
‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?’
‘Oh! you know best, sir,’ I returned modestly.
‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. ‘Put a price on this here little weskit.’
‘Would eighteenpence be?’—I hinted, after some hesitation.
Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. ‘I should rob my family,’ he said, ‘if I was to offer ninepence for it.’
This was a disagreeable way of putting the business; because it imposed upon me, a perfect stranger, the unpleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby to rob his family on my account. My circumstances being so very pressing, however, I said I would take ninepence for it, if he pleased. Mr. Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished him good night, and walked out of the shop the richer by that sum, and the poorer by a waistcoat. But when I buttoned my jacket, that was not much. Indeed, I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next, and that I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair of trousers, and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that trim. But my mind did not run so much on this as might be supposed. Beyond a general impression of the distance before me, and of the young man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly, I think I had no very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with my ninepence in my pocket.
A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I was going to carry into execution. This was, to lie behind the wall at the back of my old school, in a corner where there used to be a haystack. I imagined it would be a kind of company to have the boys, and the bedroom where I used to tell the stories, so near me: although the boys would know nothing of my being there, and the bedroom would yield me no shelter.
I had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well jaded when I came climbing out, at last, upon the level of Blackheath. It cost me some trouble to find out Salem House; but I found it, and I found a haystack in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked round the wall, and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent within. Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down, without a roof above my head!
Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom house-doors were locked, and house-dogs barked, that night—and I dreamed of lying on my old school-bed, talking to the boys in my room; and found myself sitting upright, with Steerforth’s name upon my lips, looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above me. When I remembered where I was at that untimely hour, a feeling stole upon me that made me get up, afraid of I don’t know what, and walk about. But the fainter glimmering of the stars, and the pale light in the sky where the day was coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very heavy, I lay down again and slept—though with a knowledge in my sleep that it was cold—until the warm beams of the sun, and the ringing of the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me. If I could have hoped that Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came out alone; but I knew he must have left long since. Traddles still remained, perhaps, but it was very doubtful; and I had not sufficient confidence in his discretion or good luck, however strong my reliance was on his good nature, to wish to trust him with my situation. So I crept away from the wall as Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up, and struck into the long dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road when I was one of them, and when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me the wayfarer I was now, upon it.
CAPITOLO 13. LE CONSEGUENZE DELLA MIA DECISIONE
Per quanto ne so, potrei aver avuto l’idea folle di correre fino a Dover, quando rinunciai a inseguire il giovane con il carretto trainato da un asino e mi misi in marcia verso Greenwich. I miei sensi dispersi si raccoglievano presto su quel punto, se lo avevo fatto; perché mi fermai nella Kent Road, davanti a una terrazza con un pezzo di acqua davanti, e una grande immagine sciocca al centro, che soffiava in una conchiglia secca. Qui mi sedetti su uno zerbino, completamente esausto e sfinito dagli sforzi che avevo già fatto, e con a malapena fiato sufficiente per piangere la perdita della mia valigia e della mezza ghinea.
Era ormai buio; sentii le campane battere le dieci, mentre ero seduto a riposarmi. Ma era una notte d’estate, per fortuna, e il tempo era bello. Quando ebbi ripreso fiato e mi fui liberato di una sensazione di soffocamento in gola, mi alzai e proseguii. In mezzo al mio dolore, non avevo la minima intenzione di tornare indietro. Dubito che l’avrei avuta, anche se ci fosse stata una valanga di neve svizzera sulla strada di Kent.
Ma il mio stato di possesso di soli tre pence e mezzo al mondo (e sono sicuro che mi chiedo come siano finiti in tasca una sera di sabato!) non mi turbava di meno perché continuavo. Cominciai a immaginare, come un frammento di notizia di giornale, di essere trovato morto tra un giorno o due, sotto qualche siepe; e continuavo a trascinarmi miseramente, anche se il più velocemente possibile, finché non mi capitò di passare davanti a un piccolo negozio, dove era scritto che si acquistavano guardaroba di signore e signori, e che si dava il miglior prezzo per stracci, ossa e roba da cucina. Il padrone di questo negozio era seduto sulla porta con le maniche rimboccate, fumando; e dato che c’erano molti cappotti e pantaloni appesi al soffitto basso, e solo due deboli candele accese all’interno per mostrare cosa fossero, immaginai che avesse l’aria di un uomo dal carattere vendicativo, che aveva impiccato tutti i suoi nemici e si stava divertendo.
Le mie recenti esperienze con il signor e la signora Micawber mi suggerirono che forse questo poteva essere un modo per tener lontano il lupo per un po’. Svoltai nella stradina successiva, mi tolsi il gilet, lo arrotolai con cura sotto il braccio e tornai all’ingresso del negozio.
‘Con il suo permesso, signore,’ dissi, ‘devo vendere questo a un prezzo giusto.’
Il signor Dolloby - almeno questo era il nome sopra la porta del negozio - prese il panciotto, appoggiò la pipa capovolta contro il montante della porta, entrò nel negozio seguito da me, spense le due candele con le dita, distese il panciotto sul banco, lo guardò lì, lo sollevò contro la luce e lo guardò lì, e infine disse:
‘Come chiamereste un prezzo, ora, per questo piccolo panciotto?’
«Oh! lo sapete meglio di me, signore», risposi modestamente.
«Non posso essere compratore e venditore allo stesso tempo», disse il signor Dolloby. «Mettete un prezzo a questo qui piccolo panciotto.»
«E diciotto pence?» — suggerii, dopo un po’ di esitazione.
Il signor Dolloby lo arrotolò di nuovo e me lo ridiede. «Deruberei la mia famiglia», disse, «se osassi offrire nove pence per questo.»
Questo era un modo spiacevole di trattare la faccenda; perché mi imponeva, a me che ero un perfetto sconosciuto, la spiacevolezza di chiedere a Mr. Dolloby di derubare la sua famiglia per mio conto. Tuttavia, dato che le mie circostanze erano così pressanti, dissi che avrei preso nove pence, se gli andava bene. Mr. Dolloby, non senza qualche brontolio, diede nove pence. Lo salutai con un buon sera e uscii dal negozio più ricco di quella somma e più povero di un panciotto. Ma quando abbottonai la mia giacca, non era molto. Infatti, prevedevo abbastanza chiaramente che la mia giacca sarebbe andata via dopo, e che avrei dovuto fare del mio meglio per arrivare a Dover con una camicia e un paio di pantaloni, e mi sarei considerato fortunato se fossi arrivato lì anche in quel modo. Ma la mia mente non si soffermava su questo tanto quanto si potrebbe supporre. Oltre a un’impressione generale della distanza davanti a me, e del giovane con il carretto trainato da asino che mi aveva trattato crudelmente, penso di non aver avuto un senso molto urgente delle mie difficoltà quando mi rimisi in cammino con i miei nove pence in tasca.
Mi era venuto in mente un piano per passare la notte, che stavo per mettere in atto. Consisteva nel nascondermi dietro il muro sul retro della mia vecchia scuola, in un angolo dove c’era solitamente un mucchio di fieno. Immaginavo che sarebbe stato un po’ come avere compagnia, avere i ragazzi e la camera da letto dove ero solito raccontare le storie così vicini a me: anche se i ragazzi non avrebbero saputo nulla della mia presenza, e la camera da letto non mi avrebbe offerto alcun riparo.
Avevo lavorato sodo tutto il giorno e mi sentivo piuttosto stanco quando finalmente riuscii a salire fino alla pianura di Blackheath. Mi costò un po’ di fatica trovare Salem House; ma la trovai, e trovai anche un mucchio di fieno nell’angolo, e mi sdraiai accanto; dopo aver prima camminato intorno al muro, guardato in su dalle finestre, e visto che tutto era buio e silenzioso dentro. Mai dimenticherò la sensazione di solitudine di quando mi sdraiai per la prima volta, senza un tetto sopra la testa!
Il sonno mi venne addosso come venne ad altri tanti emarginati, contro i quali le porte delle case erano sbarrate e i cani delle case abbaiavano, quella notte—e io sognavo di giacere sul mio vecchio letto scolastico, parlando con i ragazzi della mia stanza; e mi ritrovai seduto, con il nome di Steerforth sulle labbra, a guardare selvaggiamente le stelle che brillavano e scintillavano sopra di me. Quando mi ricordai dove mi trovavo a quell’ora inopportuna, un sentimento mi pervase che mi fece alzare, spaventato di non so che cosa, e camminare in giro. Ma il più debole scintillio delle stelle, e la luce pallida nel cielo dove stava sorgendo il giorno, mi rassicurarono: e i miei occhi essendo molto pesanti, mi sdraiai di nuovo e dormii—anche se con la consapevolezza nel mio sonno che faceva freddo—fino a che i caldi raggi del sole, e il suono della campana del risveglio a Salem House, mi svegliarono. Se avessi potuto sperare che Steerforth fosse lì, mi sarei nascosto in attesa che uscisse solo; ma sapevo che doveva essere andato via da tempo. Traddles era ancora lì, forse, ma era molto dubbio; e non avevo sufficiente fiducia nella sua discrezione o fortuna, per quanto forte fosse la mia fiducia nella sua buona natura, per voler confidare loro la mia situazione. Così mi allontanai dal muro mentre i ragazzi del signor Creakle si stavano alzando, e mi misi sulla lunga polverosa strada che avevo prima conosciuto come la strada per Dover quando ero uno di loro, e quando non mi aspettavo affatto che nessun occhio mi avrebbe mai visto il viandante che ero ora, su di essa.
What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at Yarmouth! In due time I heard the church-bells ringing, as I plodded on; and I met people who were going to church; and I passed a church or two where the congregation were inside, and the sound of singing came out into the sunshine, while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree, with his hand to his forehead, glowering at me going by. But the peace and rest of the old Sunday morning were on everything, except me. That was the difference. I felt quite wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair. But for the quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her youth and beauty, weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her, I hardly think I should have had the courage to go on until next day. But it always went before me, and I followed.
I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight road, though not very easily, for I was new to that kind of toil. I see myself, as evening closes in, coming over the bridge at Rochester, footsore and tired, and eating bread that I had bought for supper. One or two little houses, with the notice, ‘Lodgings for Travellers’, hanging out, had tempted me; but I was afraid of spending the few pence I had, and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I had met or overtaken. I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,—which, in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges, and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah’s arks,—crept, at last, upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro. Here I lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry’s footsteps, though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until morning.
Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning, and quite dazed by the beating of drums and marching of troops, which seemed to hem me in on every side when I went down towards the long narrow street. Feeling that I could go but a very little way that day, if I were to reserve any strength for getting to my journey’s end, I resolved to make the sale of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly, I took the jacket off, that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm, began a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.
It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in second-hand clothes were numerous, and were, generally speaking, on the look-out for customers at their shop doors. But as most of them had, hanging up among their stock, an officer’s coat or two, epaulettes and all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings, and walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.
This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops, and such shops as Mr. Dolloby’s, in preference to the regular dealers. At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a dirty lane, ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles, against the palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes, that seemed to have overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns, and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the world.
Into this shop, which was low and small, and which was darkened rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes, and was descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart; which was not relieved when an ugly old man, with the lower part of his face all covered with a stubbly grey beard, rushed out of a dirty den behind it, and seized me by the hair of my head. He was a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum. His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork, was in the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous whine. ‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo, goroo!’
I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the repetition of the last unknown one, which was a kind of rattle in his throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man, still holding me by the hair, repeated:
‘Oh, what do you want? Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want? Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want? Oh, goroo!’—which he screwed out of himself, with an energy that made his eyes start in his head.
‘I wanted to know,’ I said, trembling, ‘if you would buy a jacket.’
‘Oh, let’s see the jacket!’ cried the old man. ‘Oh, my heart on fire, show the jacket to us! Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the jacket out!’
With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a great bird, out of my hair; and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all ornamental to his inflamed eyes.
‘Oh, how much for the jacket?’ cried the old man, after examining it. ‘Oh—goroo!—how much for the jacket?’
‘Half-a-crown,’ I answered, recovering myself.
‘Oh, my lungs and liver,’ cried the old man, ‘no! Oh, my eyes, no! Oh, my limbs, no! Eighteenpence. Goroo!’
Every time he uttered this ejaculation, his eyes seemed to be in danger of starting out; and every sentence he spoke, he delivered in a sort of tune, always exactly the same, and more like a gust of wind, which begins low, mounts up high, and falls again, than any other comparison I can find for it.
‘Well,’ said I, glad to have closed the bargain, ‘I’ll take eighteenpence.’
Che diversa domenica mattina rispetto alla vecchia domenica mattina a Yarmouth! In breve tempo sentii le campane della chiesa suonare, mentre camminavo; e incontrai persone che andavano in chiesa; e passai davanti a una o due chiese dove la congregazione era all’interno, e il suono del canto usciva all’aperto, mentre l’usciere sedeva e si rinfrescava all’ombra del portico, o stava in piedi sotto il tasso, con la mano sulla fronte, fissandomi con sguardo torvo mentre passavo. Ma la pace e il riposo della vecchia domenica mattina erano su ogni cosa, tranne che su di me. Questa era la differenza. Mi sentivo del tutto malvagio nel mio sporco e polvere, con i capelli arruffati. Ma per la quiete dell’immagine che avevo evocato, di mia madre nella sua giovinezza e bellezza, piangente accanto al fuoco, e mia zia che si pentiva di lei, non credo che avrei avuto il coraggio di continuare fino al giorno dopo. Ma essa mi accompagnava sempre, e io la seguivo.
Quel domenica percorsi ventitré miglia sulla strada rettilinea, anche se non senza fatica, perché non ero abituato a quel tipo di lavoro. Mi vedo, mentre cala la sera, arrivare sul ponte di Rochester, con i piedi doloranti e stanco, e mangiare il pane che avevo comprato per cena. Una o due casette, con l’insegna “Alloggio per viaggiatori” appesa fuori, mi avevano tentato; ma avevo paura di spendere i pochi spiccioli che avevo, e ancora più paura degli sguardi cattivi dei vagabondi che avevo incontrato o superato. Non cercai quindi altro riparo se non il cielo; e dopo aver faticosamente raggiunto Chatham,—che, nella luce di quella notte, è solo un sogno di gesso, ponti levatoi e navi senza alberi su un fiume fangoso, con tetti come arche di Noè,—mi arrampicai, alla fine, su una specie di batteria ricoperta d’erba che sovrasta un vicolo, dove un sentinella camminava avanti e indietro. Qui mi sdraiai, vicino a un cannone; e, felice della compagnia dei passi del sentinella, anche se lui non sapeva più della mia presenza sopra di lui di quanto i ragazzi di Salem House sapessero che io giacevo accanto al muro, dormii profondamente fino al mattino.
La mattina mi svegliai con i piedi molto rigidi e doloranti, e completamente stordito dal battito dei tamburi e dallo sfoggio delle truppe, che sembravano circondarmi da ogni lato mentre scendevo verso la lunga strada stretta. Sentivo che non potevo percorrere molta strada quel giorno, se volevo conservare un po’ di forza per raggiungere la fine del mio viaggio, e decisi di fare della vendita della mia giacca la mia principale occupazione. Di conseguenza, mi tolsi la giacca, per abituarmi a farne a meno; e portandola sotto il braccio, iniziai un giro di ispezione dei vari negozi di abbigliamento usato.
Era un luogo adatto per vendere una giacca, poiché i commercianti di abiti usati erano numerosi e, in generale, cercavano clienti davanti ai loro negozi. Ma poiché la maggior parte di loro aveva appeso tra le loro merci un paio di uniformi da ufficiale, con le spalline e tutto, la costosa natura dei loro affari mi rendeva timido, e camminai a lungo senza offrire la mia merce a nessuno.
Questa mia modestia mi indirizzò verso i negozi di rottami marittimi e quelli come quello del signor Dolloby, preferendoli ai commercianti regolari. Alla fine ne trovai uno che mi parve promettente, all’angolo di un vicolo sporco, che terminava in un recinto pieno di ortiche, contro le staccionate del quale alcuni vestiti usati di marinai, che sembravano essersi riversati dal negozio, sventolavano tra alcune culle, e armi arrugginite, e cappelli di tela cerata, e certi vassoi pieni di tante vecchie chiavi arrugginite di tante dimensioni che sembravano abbastanza varie da aprire tutte le porte del mondo.
Entrai in questo negozio, che era basso e piccolo, e che era più oscurato che illuminato da un piccolo finestra, sovrastato da vestiti, e al quale si accedeva scendendo alcuni gradini, con il cuore che mi batteva forte; e non mi sentii meglio quando un vecchio brutto, con la parte inferiore del viso tutta coperta da una barba grigia e ispida, uscì di corsa da un lurido buco dietro di esso e mi afferrò per i capelli. Era un vecchio spaventoso da vedere, in un lurido gilet di flanella, e puzzava terribilmente di rum. Il suo letto, coperto da un pezzo di trapunta sgualcito e strappato, era nel buco da cui era uscito, dove un altro piccolo finestra mostrava una vista di più ortiche e di un asino zoppo.
«Oh, che cosa volete?» ghignò questo vecchio, con un lamento feroce e monotono. «Oh, i miei occhi e le mie membra, che cosa volete? Oh, i miei polmoni e il mio fegato, che cosa volete? Oh, goroo, goroo!»
Fui così turbato da queste parole, e in particolare dalla ripetizione dell’ultima parola sconosciuta, che era una specie di crepitio nella sua gola, che non riuscii a rispondere; allora il vecchio, continuando a tenermi per i capelli, ripeté:
«Oh, che cosa volete? Oh, i miei occhi e le mie membra, che cosa volete? Oh, i miei polmoni e il mio fegato, che cosa volete? Oh, goroo!»—che egli strappò da sé con un’energia che fece sporgere i suoi occhi dalla testa.
‘Volevo sapere’, dissi tremando, ‘se volete comprare una giacca’.
«Oh, fatemi vedere la giacca!» gridò il vecchio. «Oh, cuore mio in fiamme, mostrateci la giacca! Oh, occhi e membra miei, portate fuori la giacca!»
Con ciò, tolse le sue mani tremanti, che erano come gli artigli di un grande uccello, dai miei capelli; e si mise un paio di occhiali, che non erano affatto ornamentali per i suoi occhi infiammati.
«Oh, quanto costa la giacca?» esclamò il vecchio, dopo averla esaminata. «Oh, goroo, quanto costa la giacca?»
«Mezza corona», risposi, riprendendomi.
«Oh, i miei polmoni e il mio fegato», gridò il vecchio, «no! Oh, i miei occhi, no! Oh, le mie membra, no! Diciotto pence. Goroo!»
Ogni volta che pronunciava questa esclamazione, i suoi occhi sembravano in pericolo di schizzare fuori; e ogni frase che diceva, la pronunciava in una specie di melodia, sempre esattamente la stessa, e più simile a una folata di vento, che comincia bassa, sale in alto e ricade, che a qualsiasi altra analogia io possa trovare.
«Bene,» dissi, contento di aver concluso l’affare, «accetto diciotto pence.»
‘Oh, my liver!’ cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. ‘Get out of the shop! Oh, my lungs, get out of the shop! Oh, my eyes and limbs—goroo!—don’t ask for money; make it an exchange.’ I never was so frightened in my life, before or since; but I told him humbly that I wanted money, and that nothing else was of any use to me, but that I would wait for it, as he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry him. So I went outside, and sat down in the shade in a corner. And I sat there so many hours, that the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight became shade again, and still I sat there waiting for the money.
There never was such another drunken madman in that line of business, I hope. That he was well known in the neighbourhood, and enjoyed the reputation of having sold himself to the devil, I soon understood from the visits he received from the boys, who continually came skirmishing about the shop, shouting that legend, and calling to him to bring out his gold. ‘You ain’t poor, you know, Charley, as you pretend. Bring out your gold. Bring out some of the gold you sold yourself to the devil for. Come! It’s in the lining of the mattress, Charley. Rip it open and let’s have some!’ This, and many offers to lend him a knife for the purpose, exasperated him to such a degree, that the whole day was a succession of rushes on his part, and flights on the part of the boys. Sometimes in his rage he would take me for one of them, and come at me, mouthing as if he were going to tear me in pieces; then, remembering me, just in time, would dive into the shop, and lie upon his bed, as I thought from the sound of his voice, yelling in a frantic way, to his own windy tune, the ‘Death of Nelson’; with an Oh! before every line, and innumerable Goroos interspersed. As if this were not bad enough for me, the boys, connecting me with the establishment, on account of the patience and perseverance with which I sat outside, half-dressed, pelted me, and used me very ill all day.
He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an exchange; at one time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another with a cocked hat, at another with a flute. But I resisted all these overtures, and sat there in desperation; each time asking him, with tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket. At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time; and was full two hours getting by easy stages to a shilling.
‘Oh, my eyes and limbs!’ he then cried, peeping hideously out of the shop, after a long pause, ‘will you go for twopence more?’
‘I can’t,’ I said; ‘I shall be starved.’
‘Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?’
‘I would go for nothing, if I could,’ I said, ‘but I want the money badly.’
‘Oh, go-roo!’ (it is really impossible to express how he twisted this ejaculation out of himself, as he peeped round the door-post at me, showing nothing but his crafty old head); ‘will you go for fourpence?’
I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and taking the money out of his claw, not without trembling, went away more hungry and thirsty than I had ever been, a little before sunset. But at an expense of threepence I soon refreshed myself completely; and, being in better spirits then, limped seven miles upon my road.
My bed at night was under another haystack, where I rested comfortably, after having washed my blistered feet in a stream, and dressed them as well as I was able, with some cool leaves. When I took the road again next morning, I found that it lay through a succession of hop-grounds and orchards. It was sufficiently late in the year for the orchards to be ruddy with ripe apples; and in a few places the hop-pickers were already at work. I thought it all extremely beautiful, and made up my mind to sleep among the hops that night: imagining some cheerful companionship in the long perspectives of poles, with the graceful leaves twining round them.
The trampers were worse than ever that day, and inspired me with a dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind. Some of them were most ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by; and stopped, perhaps, and called after me to come back and speak to them, and when I took to my heels, stoned me. I recollect one young fellow—a tinker, I suppose, from his wallet and brazier—who had a woman with him, and who faced about and stared at me thus; and then roared to me in such a tremendous voice to come back, that I halted and looked round.
‘Come here, when you’re called,’ said the tinker, ‘or I’ll rip your young body open.’
I thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, trying to propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that the woman had a black eye.
‘Where are you going?’ said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my shirt with his blackened hand.
‘I am going to Dover,’ I said.
‘Where do you come from?’ asked the tinker, giving his hand another turn in my shirt, to hold me more securely.
‘I come from London,’ I said.
‘What lay are you upon?’ asked the tinker. ‘Are you a prig?’
‘N-no,’ I said.
‘Ain’t you, by G—? If you make a brag of your honesty to me,’ said the tinker, ‘I’ll knock your brains out.’
With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then looked at me from head to foot.
‘Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?’ said the tinker. ‘If you have, out with it, afore I take it away!’
I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman’s look, and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form ‘No!’ with her lips.
‘I am very poor,’ I said, attempting to smile, ‘and have got no money.’
‘Why, what do you mean?’ said the tinker, looking so sternly at me, that I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.
‘Sir!’ I stammered.
‘What do you mean,’ said the tinker, ‘by wearing my brother’s silk handkerchief! Give it over here!’ And he had mine off my neck in a moment, and tossed it to the woman.
«Oh, il mio fegato!» gridò il vecchio, buttando la giacca su uno scaffale. «Esci dal negozio! Oh, i miei polmoni, esci dal negozio! Oh, i miei occhi e le mie membra —goroo!— non chiedere soldi; fai uno scambio.» Mai in vita mia ero stato così spaventato, prima o poi; ma gli dissi umilmente che volevo dei soldi, e che nient’altro mi era utile, ma che avrei aspettato, come desiderava lui, fuori, e non avevo nessuna voglia di affrettarlo. Così uscii, e mi sedetti all’ombra in un angolo. E lì rimasi seduto per tante ore, che l’ombra divenne luce del sole, e la luce del sole divenne ombra di nuovo, e ancora lì rimasi seduto ad aspettare i soldi.
Non c’era mai stato un altro ubriacone pazzo come lui in quel ramo d’affari, spero. Che fosse ben noto nel quartiere e godesse della reputazione di essersi venduto al diavolo, lo capii presto dalle visite che riceveva dai ragazzi, che continuavano a venire a ronzare intorno al negozio, gridando quella leggenda e chiamandolo per fargli portare fuori il suo oro. «Non sei povero, lo sai, Charley, come fai credere. Porta fuori il tuo oro. Porta fuori un po’ dell’oro per cui ti sei venduto al diavolo. Vieni! È nel fodero del materasso, Charley. Strappalo e fammene avere un po’!» Questo, e molte offerte di prestargli un coltello per farlo, lo esasperavano a tal punto, che l’intera giornata era una successione di cariche da parte sua e fughe da parte dei ragazzi. A volte, nella sua rabbia, mi scambiava per uno di loro e veniva verso di me, facendo boccacce come se volesse sbranarmi; poi, ricordandosi di me, appena in tempo, si tuffava nel negozio e si sdraiava sul suo letto, come pensavo dal suono della sua voce, urlando in modo frenetico, con la sua melodia ventosa, la «Morte di Nelson»; con un Oh! prima di ogni verso, e innumerevoli Goroos intercalati. Come se questo non fosse abbastanza brutto per me, i ragazzi, associandomi all’attività, a causa della pazienza e perseveranza con cui sedevo fuori, mezzi vestito, mi bombardavano e mi trattavano molto male tutto il giorno.
Fece molti tentativi per indurmi a consentire a uno scambio; una volta tirò fuori una canna da pesca, un’altra una viola, un’altra un cappello a tricorno, un’altra un flauto. Ma resistetti a tutte queste avances, e rimasi lì disperato; ogni volta chiedendogli, con le lacrime agli occhi, i miei soldi o la mia giacca. Alla fine iniziò a pagarmi a mezzo penny alla volta; e ci vollero ben due ore per arrivare, a tappe, a uno scellino.
«Oh, i miei occhi e le mie membra!» gridò poi, sbirciando in modo orribile fuori dal negozio, dopo una lunga pausa, «vuoi andare per due pence in più?»
‘Non posso’, dissi; ‘morirò di fame’.
“Oh, miei polmoni e fegato, andreste per tre penny?”
‘Non darei importanza a nulla, se potessi,’ dissi, ‘ma ho davvero bisogno di quei soldi.’
«Oh, go-roo!» (è davvero impossibile esprimere come contorse questa esclamazione fuori di sé, mentre sbirciava da dietro il montante della porta verso di me, mostrando solo la sua vecchia testa astuta); «vuoi andare per quattro pence?»
Ero così debole e stanco che accettai l’offerta; e presi i soldi dalla sua zampa, non senza tremare, e me ne andai più affamato e assetato che mai, poco prima del tramonto. Ma a costo di tre pence mi ristorai presto completamente; e, essendo di umore migliore, zoppicai per sette miglia lungo la mia strada.
Il mio letto di notte era sotto un altro mucchio di fieno, dove riposavo comodamente, dopo aver lavato i piedi piagati in un ruscello e medicati come meglio potevo, con delle fresche foglie. Quando ripresi la strada la mattina seguente, scoprii che passava attraverso una serie di campi di luppolo e frutteti. Era abbastanza tardi nell’anno perché i frutteti fossero rossi di mele mature; e in alcuni punti i raccoglitori di luppolo erano già al lavoro. Pensavo che tutto fosse estremamente bello e decisi di dormire tra i luppoli quella notte: immaginando una compagnia allegra nelle lunghe prospettive di pali, con le graziose foglie che si avvolgevano intorno a loro.
Quel giorno i vagabondi erano peggio che mai e mi ispirarono una paura che ancora oggi è viva nella mia mente. Alcuni di loro erano ruffiani dall’aspetto feroce, che mi fissavano mentre passavo; e si fermavano, forse, e mi chiamavano dietro di loro per tornare e parlare con loro, e quando scappavo, mi lapidavano. Ricordo un giovane - un calzolaio, immagino, dal suo zaino e dal suo fornello - che aveva con sé una donna, e che si voltò e mi fissò così; e poi mi urlò di tornare indietro con una voce così tremenda che mi fermai e mi guardai intorno.
«Vieni qui, quando sei chiamato», disse il maniscalco, «o ti squarterò il giovane corpo.»
Pensai fosse meglio tornare indietro. Mentre mi avvicinavo a loro, cercando di propiziarmi il maniscalco con lo sguardo, notai che la donna aveva un occhio nero.
«Dove stai andando?» disse il maniscalco, afferrandomi il petto della camicia con la sua mano annerita.
«Vado a Dover», dissi.
«Da dove vieni?» chiese il rammendatore, girando di nuovo la mano nella mia camicia per trattenermi più saldamente.
«Vengo da Londra», dissi.
“Su quale strada ti trovi?” chiese il maniscalco. “Sei un ladro?”
«N-no», dissi.
«Non lo sei, per Dio? Se mi fai una fanfaronata della tua onestà», disse il rammendatore, «ti spacco il cranio.»
Con la mano libera fece finta di volermi colpire, e poi mi squadrò da capo a piedi.
«Avete il prezzo di una pinta di birra con voi?» disse il maniscalco. «Se ce l’avete, tiratela fuori, prima che ve la tolga io!»
Avrei certamente prodotto il documento, se non avessi incrociato lo sguardo della donna e visto che scuoteva leggermente la testa e formava con le labbra un “No!”.
“Sono molto povero,” dissi, cercando di sorridere, “e non ho soldi.”
«Ebbene, che intendete dire?» disse il maniscalco, guardandomi così severamente che temetti quasi che vedesse il denaro nella mia tasca.
«Signore!» balbettai.
«Che cosa intendete», disse il maniscalco, «indossando il fazzoletto di seta di mio fratello! Datemelo!» E me lo tolse dal collo in un attimo, e lo lanciò alla donna.
The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a joke, and tossed it back to me, nodded once, as slightly as before, and made the word ‘Go!’ with her lips. Before I could obey, however, the tinker seized the handkerchief out of my hand with a roughness that threw me away like a feather, and putting it loosely round his own neck, turned upon the woman with an oath, and knocked her down. I never shall forget seeing her fall backward on the hard road, and lie there with her bonnet tumbled off, and her hair all whitened in the dust; nor, when I looked back from a distance, seeing her sitting on the pathway, which was a bank by the roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner of her shawl, while he went on ahead.
This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any of these people coming, I turned back until I could find a hiding-place, where I remained until they had gone out of sight; which happened so often, that I was very seriously delayed. But under this difficulty, as under all the other difficulties of my journey, I seemed to be sustained and led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth, before I came into the world. It always kept me company. It was there, among the hops, when I lay down to sleep; it was with me on my waking in the morning; it went before me all day. I have associated it, ever since, with the sunny street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light; and with the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately, grey Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. When I came, at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary aspect of the scene with hope; and not until I reached that first great aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the town itself, on the sixth day of my flight, did it desert me. But then, strange to say, when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream, and to leave me helpless and dispirited.
I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received various answers. One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so; another, that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide; a third, that she was locked up in Maidstone jail for child-stealing; a fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and make direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next, were equally jocose and equally disrespectful; and the shopkeepers, not liking my appearance, generally replied, without hearing what I had to say, that they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and worn out; and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in London.
The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place, deliberating upon wandering towards those other places which had been mentioned, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a horsecloth. Something good-natured in the man’s face, as I handed it up, encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived; though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my lips.
‘Trotwood,’ said he. ‘Let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘rather.’
‘Pretty stiff in the back?’ said he, making himself upright.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should think it very likely.’
‘Carries a bag?’ said he—‘bag with a good deal of room in it—is gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?’
My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this description.
‘Why then, I tell you what,’ said he. ‘If you go up there,’ pointing with his whip towards the heights, ‘and keep right on till you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you’ll hear of her. My opinion is she won’t stand anything, so here’s a penny for you.’
I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. Dispatching this refreshment by the way, I went in the direction my friend had indicated, and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses he had mentioned. At length I saw some before me; and approaching them, went into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop, at home), and inquired if they could have the goodness to tell me where Miss Trotwood lived. I addressed myself to a man behind the counter, who was weighing some rice for a young woman; but the latter, taking the inquiry to herself, turned round quickly.
‘My mistress?’ she said. ‘What do you want with her, boy?’
‘I want,’ I replied, ‘to speak to her, if you please.’
‘To beg of her, you mean,’ retorted the damsel.
‘No,’ I said, ‘indeed.’ But suddenly remembering that in truth I came for no other purpose, I held my peace in confusion, and felt my face burn.
My aunt’s handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said, put her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop; telling me that I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I needed no second permission; though I was by this time in such a state of consternation and agitation, that my legs shook under me. I followed the young woman, and we soon came to a very neat little cottage with cheerful bow-windows: in front of it, a small square gravelled court or garden full of flowers, carefully tended, and smelling deliciously.
‘This is Miss Trotwood’s,’ said the young woman. ‘Now you know; and that’s all I have got to say.’ With which words she hurried into the house, as if to shake off the responsibility of my appearance; and left me standing at the garden-gate, looking disconsolately over the top of it towards the parlour window, where a muslin curtain partly undrawn in the middle, a large round green screen or fan fastened on to the windowsill, a small table, and a great chair, suggested to me that my aunt might be at that moment seated in awful state.
La donna scoppiò in una risata, come se pensasse che fosse uno scherzo, e me lo ributtò indietro, annuì una volta, con lo stesso leggero cenno di prima, e disse la parola “Vai!” con le labbra. Prima che potessi obbedire, però, il maniscalco mi strappò il fazzoletto di mano con una violenza che mi fece volare via come una piuma, e dopo averlo avvolto con disinvoltura attorno al proprio collo, si voltò verso la donna con un giuramento e la colpì. Non dimenticherò mai di averla vista cadere all’indietro sulla dura strada, e rimanere lì con il cappello caduto e i capelli tutti imbiancati nella polvere; né, quando guardai indietro da lontano, di averla vista seduta sul sentiero, che era un terrapieno lungo la strada, mentre si asciugava il sangue dal viso con un lembo del suo scialle, mentre lui proseguiva avanti.
Questa avventura mi spaventò così tanto che, in seguito, quando vedevo arrivare qualcuno di questa gente, tornavo indietro finché non trovavo un nascondiglio, dove rimanevo finché non li avevo persi di vista; e questo accadeva così spesso che fui seriamente ritardato. Ma in questa difficoltà, come in tutte le altre difficoltà del mio viaggio, sembravo essere sostenuto e guidato dall’immagine fantastica di mia madre nella sua giovinezza, prima che io venissi al mondo. Mi teneva sempre compagnia. Era lì, tra i luppoli, quando mi coricavo per dormire; era con me quando mi svegliavo la mattina; mi precedeva tutto il giorno. Da allora l’ho sempre associata alla soleggiata strada di Canterbury, che sembrava assopirsi nella calda luce; e alla vista delle sue vecchie case e porte, e della maestosa, grigia Cattedrale, con i corvi che volteggiavano intorno alle torri. Quando arrivai, alla fine, sulle nude, vaste alture vicino a Dover, alleviava l’aspetto solitario della scena con speranza; e non mi abbandonò fino a quando non raggiunsi quel primo grande obiettivo del mio viaggio, e non misi effettivamente piede nella città stessa, al sesto giorno della mia fuga, che non mi abbandonò. Ma poi, strano a dirsi, quando mi trovai con le mie scarpe strappate, e la mia figura polverosa, scottata dal sole, mezza vestita, nel luogo tanto desiderato, sembrò svanire come un sogno, e lasciarmi impotente e scoraggiato.
Chiesi notizie di mia zia prima tra i barcaioli, e ricevetti varie risposte. Uno disse che viveva nel faro di South Foreland, e si era bruciacchiato i baffi facendolo; un altro, che era legata al grande galleggiante fuori dal porto, e poteva essere visitata solo a mezza marea; un terzo, che era rinchiusa nel carcere di Maidstone per rapimento di bambino; un quarto, che l’avevano vista salire su una scopa nell’ultimo forte vento, e dirigersi dritta verso Calais. I cocchieri, tra cui mi informai dopo, erano altrettanto scherzosi e altrettanto irrispettosi; e i commercianti, non gradendo il mio aspetto, generalmente rispondevano, senza ascoltare cosa avevo da dire, che non avevano nulla per me. Mi sentivo più miserabile e abbandonato di quanto fossi stato in qualsiasi momento della mia fuga. I miei soldi erano finiti, non avevo più nulla da vendere; avevo fame, sete, e ero sfinito; e sembravo lontano dal mio obiettivo quanto se fossi rimasto a Londra.
La mattina era trascorsa in queste ricerche, e io ero seduto sul gradino di un negozio vuoto all’angolo di una strada, vicino al mercato, deliberando di vagare verso quei luoghi che erano stati menzionati, quando un cocchiere, passando con la sua carrozza, lasciò cadere una coperta per cavalli. Qualcosa di cordiale nel volto dell’uomo, mentre gliela porgevo, mi incoraggiò a chiedergli se poteva dirmi dove abitava Miss Trotwood; anche se avevo fatto la domanda così spesso, che quasi mi moriva sulle labbra.
‘Trotwood’, disse lui. ‘Fammi pensare. Conosco anche il nome. Vecchia signora?’
‘Sì’, dissi, ‘piuttosto’.
«Ha il mal di schiena?» disse lui, raddrizzandosi.
‘Sì’, dissi. ‘Penso che sia molto probabile.’
«Porta una borsa?» disse lui — «una borsa con un bel po’ di spazio dentro — è un po’ burbero e ti piomba addosso, di botto?»
Il mio cuore affondò mentre riconoscevo l’indiscutibile esattezza di questa descrizione.
«Ebbene, ti dirò una cosa», disse lui. «Se vai lassù», indicando con la frusta le alture, «e continui dritto finché non arrivi a delle case che danno sul mare, credo che avrai sue notizie. Secondo me non sopporta niente, quindi ecco un penny per te.»
Accettai il dono con gratitudine e comprai un pane con quei soldi. Consumando questo spuntino lungo il cammino, mi diressi nella direzione indicata dal mio amico e camminai per un bel tratto senza incontrare le case di cui aveva parlato. Alla fine ne vidi alcune davanti a me; mi avvicinai e entrai in un piccolo negozio (era quello che chiamavamo un negozio generale, a casa), e chiesi se potevano avere la gentilezza di dirmi dove abitasse Miss Trotwood. Mi rivolsi a un uomo dietro il bancone, che stava pesando del riso per una giovane donna; ma quest’ultima, prendendo la domanda come rivolta a sé, si voltò rapidamente.
“La mia padrona?” disse. “Cosa vuoi da lei, ragazzo?”
‘Voglio’, risposi, ‘parlare con lei, per favore.’
«Intendi dire chiedere la carità a lei», ribatté la donna.
«No», dissi, «davvero». Ma ricordando improvvisamente che in realtà non ero venuto per altro, mi zittii confuso e sentii il viso bruciare.
La cameriera di mia zia, come supponevo fosse da quanto aveva detto, mise il suo riso in un piccolo cesto e uscì dal negozio; dicendomi che potevo seguirla, se volevo sapere dove abitava Miss Trotwood. Non avevo bisogno di un secondo permesso; anche se ero in quel momento in uno stato tale di costernazione e agitazione, che le mie gambe tremavano sotto di me. Seguii la giovane donna, e presto arrivammo a una molto ordinata piccola casetta con allegre finestre a bovindo: davanti ad essa, un piccolo quadrato di cortile o giardino ghiaiato pieno di fiori, curato con attenzione, e che profumava deliziosamente.
«Questa è la casa della signorina Trotwood», disse la giovane donna. «Ora lo sapete, e questo è tutto ciò che ho da dire.» Con queste parole si affrettò a entrare in casa, come se volesse scrollarsi di dosso la responsabilità della mia comparsa; e mi lasciò in piedi al cancello del giardino, a guardare con aria sconsolata oltre la cima di esso verso la finestra del salotto, dove una tenda di mussola parzialmente scostata al centro, un grande schermo o ventaglio verde rotondo fissato al davanzale, un piccolo tavolo e una grande poltrona, mi suggerivano che mia zia potesse essere in quel momento seduta in imponente stato.
My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent, that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and the Kentish soil on which I had slept—and torn besides—might have frightened the birds from my aunt’s garden, as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and dust, as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable aunt.
The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer, after a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head, who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner, nodded his head at me several times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away.
I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came out of the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap, and a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a toll-man’s apron, and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house exactly as my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden at Blunderstone Rookery.
‘Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop in the air with her knife. ‘Go along! No boys here!’
I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner of her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there. Then, without a scrap of courage, but with a great deal of desperation, I went softly in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.
‘If you please, ma’am,’ I began.
She started and looked up.
‘If you please, aunt.’
‘EH?’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never heard approached.
‘If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.
‘I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk—where you came, on the night when I was born, and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’ Here my self-support gave way all at once; and with a movement of my hands, intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had suffered something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose had been pent up within me all the week.
My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry; when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me into the parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had administered these restoratives, as I was still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa, with a shawl under my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I should sully the cover; and then, sitting herself down behind the green fan or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her face, ejaculated at intervals, ‘Mercy on us!’ letting those exclamations off like minute guns.
After a time she rang the bell. ‘Janet,’ said my aunt, when her servant came in. ‘Go upstairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish to speak to him.’
Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa (I was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt), but went on her errand. My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked up and down the room, until the gentleman who had squinted at me from the upper window came in laughing.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘don’t be a fool, because nobody can be more discreet than you can, when you choose. We all know that. So don’t be a fool, whatever you are.’
The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought, as if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘you have heard me mention David Copperfield? Now don’t pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better.’
‘David Copperfield?’ said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to remember much about it. ‘David Copperfield? Oh yes, to be sure. David, certainly.’
‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘this is his boy—his son. He would be as like his father as it’s possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too.’
‘His son?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son? Indeed!’
‘Yes,’ pursued my aunt, ‘and he has done a pretty piece of business. He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run away.’ My aunt shook her head firmly, confident in the character and behaviour of the girl who never was born.
‘Oh! you think she wouldn’t have run away?’ said Mr. Dick.
Le mie scarpe erano ormai in pessime condizioni. Le suole si erano staccate pezzo per pezzo, e la parte superiore si era rotta e lacerata fino a perdere completamente la forma e il contorno di una scarpa. Il mio cappello (che aveva anche fatto da berretto da notte) era così schiacciato e piegato che nessuna vecchia pentola senza manico in un mucchio di letame avrebbe dovuto vergognarsi di competere con esso. La mia camicia e i miei pantaloni, macchiati dal calore, dalla rugiada, dall’erba e dal terreno del Kent su cui avevo dormito – e strappati per giunta – avrebbero potuto spaventare gli uccelli del giardino di mia zia, mentre stavo in piedi al cancello. I miei capelli non avevano conosciuto pettine o spazzola da quando avevo lasciato Londra. Il mio viso, il collo e le mani, per l’insolita esposizione all’aria e al sole, erano bruciati di un marrone scuro. Dalla testa ai piedi ero polverizzato quasi di bianco con gesso e polvere, come se fossi uscito da un forno a calce. In questo stato, e con una forte consapevolezza di esso, aspettavo di presentarmi e di fare la mia prima impressione sulla mia formidabile zia.
La immutata immobilità della finestra del salotto mi portò a dedurre, dopo un po’, che lei non c’era, così alzai gli occhi alla finestra sopra di essa, dove vidi un signore florido e dall’aspetto piacevole, con i capelli grigi, che chiuse un occhio in modo grottesco, mi fece cenno col capo più volte, scosse la testa altrettante volte, rise e se ne andò.
Ero già abbastanza turbato prima; ma fui ancora più turbato da questo comportamento inaspettato, al punto da essere sul punto di sgattaiolare via, per riflettere su come procedere al meglio, quando uscì dalla casa una signora con il fazzoletto legato sulla cuffia e un paio di guanti da giardinaggio sulle mani, indossando una tasca da giardinaggio come un grembiule da raccoglitore e portando un grande coltello. La riconobbi immediatamente come Miss Betsey, perché uscì dalla casa esattamente come mia povera madre l’aveva spesso descritta mentre si aggirava per il nostro giardino a Blunderstone Rookery.
«Vattene!» disse Miss Betsey, scuotendo la testa e facendo un gesto di scaccio nell’aria con il coltello. «Vattene! Qui non ci sono bambini!»
La osservavo, con il cuore in gola, mentre si dirigeva verso un angolo del suo giardino e si chinava per scavare una piccola radice. Poi, senza un briciolo di coraggio, ma con molta disperazione, entrai silenziosamente e mi fermai accanto a lei, toccandola con un dito.
«Se le fa piacere, signora», cominciai.
Sussultò e alzò lo sguardo.
‘Per favore, zia.’
«EH?», esclamò Miss Betsey, in un tono di stupore che non ho mai sentito eguagliare.
‘Con il suo permesso, zia, sono suo nipote.’
«Oh, Signore!» disse mia zia. E si sedette di colpo sul sentiero del giardino.
«Sono David Copperfield, di Blunderstone, nel Suffolk, dove lei venne, la notte in cui nacqui, e vide la mia cara mamma. Sono stato molto infelice da quando è morta. Mi hanno trascurato, non mi hanno insegnato nulla, mi hanno lasciato solo e costretto a fare lavori non adatti a me. Questo mi ha spinto a scappare da lei. Sono stato derubato all’inizio del viaggio e ho camminato tutto il tempo, non ho mai dormito in un letto da quando ho iniziato il viaggio.» Qui il mio autocontrollo cedette improvvisamente; e con un gesto delle mani, volto a mostrarle il mio stato di straccioni e a farle notare che avevo sofferto, scoppiavo in un pianto disperato, che immagino fosse rimasto represso in me per tutta la settimana.
Mia zia, con ogni sorta di espressione tranne lo stupore cancellato dal suo volto, sedeva sul ghiaieto fissandomi, finché non cominciai a piangere; allora si alzò in gran fretta, mi afferrò per il collo e mi portò nel salotto. La sua prima mossa fu quella di aprire un alto armadio, tirar fuori diverse bottiglie e versare un po’ del contenuto di ciascuna nella mia bocca. Credo che le abbia prese a caso, perché sono sicuro di aver assaggiato acqua all’anice, salsa di acciughe e condimento per insalata. Dopo avermi somministrato questi rimedi, dato che ero ancora in preda all’isteria e non riuscivo a controllare i singhiozzi, mi mise sul divano, con uno scialle sotto la testa e il fazzoletto che aveva in testa sotto i piedi, per timore che sporcaassi la fodera; poi, sedendosi dietro il ventaglio verde o lo schermo che ho già menzionato, in modo che non potessi vedere il suo viso, esclamava a intervalli: «Gesù!», sparando quelle esclamazioni come cannonate a salve.
Dopo un po’ suonò il campanello. «Janet», disse mia zia quando la domestica entrò. «Salga di sopra, trasmetta i miei saluti al signor Dick e dica che desidero parlargli.»
Janet parve un po’ sorpresa nel vedermi disteso rigido sul divano (avevo paura di muovermi per timore di dispiacere a mia zia), ma proseguì la sua commissione. Mia zia, con le mani dietro la schiena, camminava su e giù per la stanza, finché l’finestra superiore non entrò ridendo il signore che mi aveva squintato.
«Signor Dick», disse mia zia, «non faccia lo sciocco, perché nessuno può essere più discreto di lei, quando lo desidera. Lo sappiamo tutti. Quindi non faccia lo sciocco, qualunque cosa sia.»
Il signore divenne subito serio e mi guardò, pensai, come se volesse pregarmi di non dire nulla riguardo alla finestra.
«Signor Dick», disse mia zia, «avete sentito me menzionare David Copperfield? Ora non fate finta di non avere una memoria, perché voi e io sappiamo che non è così.»
«David Copperfield?» disse il signor Dick, che non mi sembrava ricordasse molto al riguardo. «David Copperfield? Oh sì, certo. David, sicuramente.»
«Bene,» disse mia zia, «questo è il suo ragazzo, suo figlio. Sarebbe identico a suo padre, se non fosse così somigliante a sua madre.»
“Su figlio?” disse Mr. Dick. “Il figlio di David? Davvero!”
«Sì», continuò mia zia, «e ha fatto una bella figura. È scappato. Ah! Sua sorella, Betsey Trotwood, non sarebbe mai scappata.» Mia zia scosse la testa con fermezza, fiduciosa nel carattere e nel comportamento della ragazza che non è mai nata.
«Oh! Lei pensa che non sarebbe scappata?» disse il signor Dick.
‘Bless and save the man,’ exclaimed my aunt, sharply, ‘how he talks! Don’t I know she wouldn’t? She would have lived with her god-mother, and we should have been devoted to one another. Where, in the name of wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?’
‘Nowhere,’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Well then,’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, ‘how can you pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?’
‘What shall you do with him?’ said Mr. Dick, feebly, scratching his head. ‘Oh! do with him?’
‘Yes,’ said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up. ‘Come! I want some very sound advice.’
‘Why, if I was you,’ said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly at me, ‘I should—’ The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a sudden idea, and he added, briskly, ‘I should wash him!’
‘Janet,’ said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I did not then understand, ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. Heat the bath!’
Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it was in progress, and completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the room.
My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother; but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat; but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else. She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands.
Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously bowed—not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle’s boys’ heads after a beating—and his grey eyes prominent and large, with a strange kind of watery brightness in them that made me, in combination with his vacant manner, his submission to my aunt, and his childish delight when she praised him, suspect him of being a little mad; though, if he were mad, how he came to be there puzzled me extremely. He was dressed like any other ordinary gentleman, in a loose grey morning coat and waistcoat, and white trousers; and had his watch in his fob, and his money in his pockets: which he rattled as if he were very proud of it.
Janet was a pretty blooming girl, of about nineteen or twenty, and a perfect picture of neatness. Though I made no further observation of her at the moment, I may mention here what I did not discover until afterwards, namely, that she was one of a series of protegees whom my aunt had taken into her service expressly to educate in a renouncement of mankind, and who had generally completed their abjuration by marrying the baker.
The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt. As I laid down my pen, a moment since, to think of it, the air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers; and I saw the old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt’s inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old china, the punchbowl full of dried rose-leaves, the tall press guarding all sorts of bottles and pots, and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything.
Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my aunt, to my great alarm, became in one moment rigid with indignation, and had hardly voice to cry out, ‘Janet! Donkeys!’
Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the house were in flames, darted out on a little piece of green in front, and warned off two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had presumed to set hoof upon it; while my aunt, rushing out of the house, seized the bridle of a third animal laden with a bestriding child, turned him, led him forth from those sacred precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky urchin in attendance who had dared to profane that hallowed ground.
To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were of the more ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ and go out to the assault.
«Benedetto e salvato sia l’uomo», esclamò mia zia, con asprezza, «come parla! Non so forse che lei non l’avrebbe fatto? Avrebbe vissuto con la sua madrina, e noi saremmo state devote l’una all’altra. Dove, per curiosità, sua sorella, Betsey Trotwood, sarebbe dovuta scappare da, o a?»
«Niente luogo», disse il signor Dick.
«Bene allora», rispose mia zia, ammorbidita dalla risposta, «come puoi fingere di essere con la testa tra le nuvole, Dick, quando sei tagliente come un bisturi da chirurgo? Ecco, qui vedi il giovane David Copperfield, e la domanda che ti pongo è: che cosa ne faccio di lui?»
«Che cosa ne farete di lui?» disse il signor Dick, debolmente, grattandosi la testa. «Oh! fare di lui?»
«Sì», disse la zia, con uno sguardo grave e il dito indice alzato. «Vieni! Voglio dei consigli molto saggi.»
«Perbacco, se fossi in voi», disse il signor Dick, riflettendo e guardandomi con aria assente, «io, » La contemplazione di me sembrò ispirargli un’improvvisa idea, e aggiunse, con vivacità: «Io lo laverei!»
«Janet», disse mia zia, voltandosi con un tranquillo trionfo che allora non compresi, «Mr. Dick ci mette a posto. Riscalda il bagno!»
Anche se ero profondamente interessato a questo dialogo, non potevo fare a meno di osservare mia zia, il signor Dick e Janet mentre esso era in corso, e completare un’ispezione a cui mi ero già dedicato nella stanza.
Mia zia era una donna alta e dall’aspetto severo, ma non per questo poco attraente. C’era una rigidità nel suo viso, nella sua voce, nel suo passo e nel suo portamento, ampiamente sufficiente a spiegare l’effetto che aveva avuto su una creatura gentile come mia madre; ma i suoi tratti erano piuttosto belli che brutti, anche se inamidati e austeri. Notai in particolare che aveva un occhio molto vivace e brillante. I suoi capelli, che erano grigi, erano divisi in due semplici ciocche, sotto quello che credo si chiamasse un berretto da notte; intendo un copricapo, molto più comune allora che ora, con le ali laterali che si assicuravano sotto il mento. Il suo abito era di un colore lavanda, e perfettamente ordinato; ma fatto con poca stoffa, come se desiderasse essere il meno possibile ingombrante. Ricordo che pensai che, per forma, assomigliasse più a un abito da equitazione con la gonna superflua tagliata, che a qualsiasi altra cosa. Portava al fianco un orologio d’oro da uomo, se posso giudicare dalle sue dimensioni e dalla sua fattura, con una catena e dei sigilli appropriati; aveva un po’ di biancheria alla gola non dissimile da un colletto di camicia, e cose ai polsi simili a piccoli polsini di camicia.
Come ho già detto, il signor Dick aveva i capelli grigi e un colorito acceso: avrei detto tutto di lui, dicendo questo, se la sua testa non fosse stata curiosamente china, non per l’età; mi ricordava la testa di uno dei ragazzi del signor Creakle dopo una bastonatura, e i suoi occhi grigi erano prominenti e grandi, con una strana specie di lucentezza acquosa che, insieme al suo comportamento distratto, alla sua sottomissione a mia zia e al suo piacere infantile quando lei lo lodava, mi faceva sospettare che fosse un po’ pazzo; anche se, se fosse stato pazzo, come fosse finito lì mi lasciava molto perplesso. Era vestito come qualsiasi altro gentiluomo, con un largo soprabito grigio e un gilet, e pantaloni bianchi; aveva l’orologio nel taschino e i soldi nelle tasche: che faceva tintinnare come se ne fosse molto orgoglioso.
Janet era una ragazza carina e florida, di circa diciannove o vent’anni, e un perfetto esempio di pulizia. Anche se in quel momento non feci ulteriori osservazioni su di lei, posso menzionare qui ciò che scoprii solo in seguito, cioè che faceva parte di una serie di protette che mia zia aveva assunto espressamente per educarle al rifiuto dell’uomo, e che generalmente completavano la loro abiura sposando il fornaio.
La stanza era ordinata come Janet o mia zia. Mentre appoggiavo la penna, un attimo fa, per pensarci, l’aria dal mare entrava di nuovo, mescolata con il profumo dei fiori; e vedevo i mobili d’epoca lucidati e levigati, la inviolabile sedia e il tavolo di mia zia vicino al ventaglio verde rotondo nella finestra a bovindo, la moquette coperta di drappo, il gatto, il supporto per il bollitore, i due canarini, la vecchia porcellana, la coppa per il punch piena di rose secche-foglie, l’alto armadio che custodiva ogni sorta di bottiglie e vasetti, e, stranamente in contrasto con il resto, il mio io polveroso sul divano, che prendeva nota di tutto.
Janet era andata a preparare il bagno, quando mia zia, con mio grande allarme, divenne in un attimo rigida d’indignazione, e riuscì a malapena a gridare: «Janet! Asini!»
A questo punto, Janet salì correndo le scale come se la casa fosse in fiamme, si lanciò su un piccolo spiazzo verde davanti e scacciò due asini da sella, montati da signore, che avevano osato mettervi zoccolo; mentre mia zia, uscendo di corsa dalla casa, afferrò la briglia di un terzo animale carico di un bambino a cavalcioni, lo voltò, lo condusse fuori da quei sacri recinti e diede una sberla al disgraziato ragazzino che aveva osato profanare quel terreno consacrato.
A quest’ora non so se mia zia avesse un diritto di passaggio legittimo su quel lembo di verde; ma l’aveva risolto nella sua mente che ce l’aveva, e per lei era la stessa cosa. L’unico grande oltraggio della sua vita, che chiedeva di essere costantemente vendicato, era il passaggio di un asino su quel luogo immacolato. In qualsiasi occupazione fosse impegnata, per quanto interessante per lei la conversazione in cui stava partecipando, un asino cambiava il corso delle sue idee in un attimo, e lei era subito su di lui. Brocche di acqua e annaffiatoi erano tenuti in luoghi segreti pronti a essere scaricati sui ragazzi colpevoli; bastoni erano nascosti dietro la porta; si facevano sortite a tutte le ore; e prevaleva una guerra incessante. Forse questo era un’emozione piacevole per i ragazzi asini; o forse i più sagaci degli asini, capendo come stava la situazione, si deliziavano con ostinazione costituzionale a venire da quella parte. So solo che ci furono tre allarmi prima che il bagno fosse pronto; e che in occasione dell’ultimo e più disperato di tutti, vidi mia zia impegnarsi, da sola, con un ragazzo di quindici anni dai capelli sabbiosi, e sbattere la sua testa sabbiosa contro il suo stesso cancello, prima che sembrasse comprendere cosa stesse succedendo. Queste interruzioni erano per me ancora più ridicole perché mi stava dando brodo con un cucchiaino da tavola al momento (avendo fermamente convinto se stessa che in realtà stavo morendo di fame, e dovevo ricevere nutrimento all’inizio in quantità molto piccole), e, mentre la mia bocca era ancora aperta per ricevere il cucchiaio, lo rimetteva nel bacino, gridava “Janet! Asini!” e usciva all’assalto.
The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible of acute pains in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and was now so tired and low that I could hardly keep myself awake for five minutes together. When I had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a pair of trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, and tied me up in two or three great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, I don’t know, but I felt a very hot one. Feeling also very faint and drowsy, I soon lay down on the sofa again and fell asleep.
It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my head more comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words, ‘Pretty fellow,’ or ‘Poor fellow,’ seemed to be in my ears, too; but certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to lead me to believe that they had been uttered by my aunt, who sat in the bow-window gazing at the sea from behind the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of swivel, and turned any way.
We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I sitting at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with considerable difficulty. But as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no complaint of being inconvenienced. All this time I was deeply anxious to know what she was going to do with me; but she took her dinner in profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me sitting opposite, and said, ‘Mercy upon us!’ which did not by any means relieve my anxiety.
The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us, and looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story, which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought would have gone to sleep but for that, and who, whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was checked by a frown from my aunt.
‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go and be married again,’ said my aunt, when I had finished, ‘I can’t conceive.’
‘Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’ Mr. Dick suggested.
‘Fell in love!’ repeated my aunt. ‘What do you mean? What business had she to do it?’
‘Perhaps,’ Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, ‘she did it for pleasure.’
‘Pleasure, indeed!’ replied my aunt. ‘A mighty pleasure for the poor Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain to ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself, I should like to know! She had had one husband. She had seen David Copperfield out of the world, who was always running after wax dolls from his cradle. She had got a baby—oh, there were a pair of babies when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night!—and what more did she want?’
Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no getting over this.
‘She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,’ said my aunt. ‘Where was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood? Not forthcoming. Don’t tell me!’
Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.
‘That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,’ said my aunt, ‘Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do, was to say to me, like a robin redbreast—as he is—“It’s a boy.” A boy! Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of ‘em!’
The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly; and me, too, if I am to tell the truth.
‘And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently in the light of this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, ‘she marries a second time—goes and marries a Murderer—or a man with a name like it—and stands in THIS child’s light! And the natural consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can be.’
Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.
‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,’ said my aunt, ‘that Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married next, as the child relates. I only hope,’ said my aunt, shaking her head, ‘that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the newspapers, and will beat her well with one.’
I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both, choking me, I broke down as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on her—I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in my hands upon the table.
‘Well, well!’ said my aunt, ‘the child is right to stand by those who have stood by him—Janet! Donkeys!’
I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkeys, we should have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her hand on my shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her and beseech her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all softer ideas for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her country, and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.
Il bagno fu una grande consolazione. Infatti cominciavo a sentire dolori acuti ai miei arti per essere rimasto disteso nei campi, e ora ero così stanco e abbattuto che a malapena riuscivo a rimanere sveglio per cinque minuti di fila. Dopo il bagno, loro (intendo mia zia e Janet) mi rivestirono con una camicia e un paio di pantaloni del signor Dick, e mi avvolsero in due o tre grandi scialli. Non so che tipo di fagotto avessi l’aria di essere, ma mi sentivo molto caldo. Sentendomi anche molto debole e assonnato, presto mi sdraiai di nuovo sul divano e mi addormentai.
Potrebbe essere stato un sogno, nato dalla fantasia che aveva occupato la mia mente per tanto tempo, ma mi svegliai con l’impressione che mia zia fosse venuta e si fosse chinata su di me, e mi avesse spostato i capelli dal viso, e mi avesse messo la testa più comodamente, e poi fosse rimasta a guardarmi. Le parole, “Bravo ragazzo” o “Povero ragazzo”, sembravano essere anche nelle mie orecchie; ma certamente non c’era nulla altro, quando mi svegliai, che mi portasse a credere che fossero state pronunciate da mia zia, che sedeva nella finestra a bovindo guardando il mare da dietro il ventaglio verde, che era montato su una specie di perno, e si poteva girare in qualsiasi direzione.
Poco dopo essermi svegliato, cenammo con un pollo arrosto e un budino; io seduto a tavola, non diverso da un uccello legato, e muovevo le braccia con notevole difficoltà. Ma poiché mia zia mi aveva avvolto, non mi lamentai di essere a disagio. Tutto questo tempo ero profondamente ansioso di sapere cosa avrebbe fatto di me; ma lei fece la sua cena in profondo silenzio, tranne quando di tanto in tanto fissava i suoi occhi su di me seduto di fronte, e diceva: «Gesù ci scampi!», il che non alleviava affatto la mia ansia.
Tolta la tovaglia e messo un po’ di sherry sul tavolo (di cui ne presi un bicchiere), mia zia mandò a chiamare di nuovo il signor Dick, che si unì a noi e assunse un’aria il più saggia possibile quando lei gli chiese di prestare attenzione alla mia storia, che lei mi estorse gradualmente con una serie di domande. Durante il mio racconto, lei teneva gli occhi fissi sul signor Dick, che credo si sarebbe addormentato se non fosse stato per quello sguardo, e che, ogni volta che cadeva in un sorriso, veniva richiamato all’ordine da una smorfia di mia zia.
«Non riesco a capire», disse mia zia quando ebbi finito, «che cosa abbia preso quella povera disgraziata di Baby, che debba andare a sposarsi di nuovo».
«Forse si è innamorata del suo secondo marito», suggerì il signor Dick.
«Si è innamorata!» ripeté mia zia. «Cosa intendi? Che diritto aveva di farlo?»
“Forse”, disse timidamente Mr. Dick dopo averci pensato un po’, “l’ha fatto per piacere”.
«Piacere, davvero!» rispose mia zia. «Un gran piacere per la povera bambina affidare la sua semplice fede a un cane di un tipo, sicuro di maltrattarla in un modo o nell’altro. Cosa si proponeva, vorrei proprio saperlo! Aveva avuto un marito. Aveva visto David Copperfield uscire dal mondo, che era sempre dietro le bambole di cera fin dalla culla. Aveva un bambino - oh, c’erano due bambini quando partorì questo bambino seduto qui, quella sera di venerdì! - e cosa voleva di più?»
Mr. Dick scuoteva la testa verso di me in segreto, come se pensasse che non c’era modo di superare questo.
«Non poteva nemmeno avere un bambino come tutti gli altri», disse mia zia. «Dov’era la sorella di questo bambino, Betsey Trotwood? Non si faceva vedere. Non dirmelo!»
Mr. Dick sembrava proprio spaventato.
«Quel piccolo dottore, con la testa da un lato», disse mia zia, «Jellips, o comunque si chiamasse, che cosa sapeva fare? Tutto quello che riusciva a dire, era di dirmi, come un pettirosso—che è—«È un maschio». Un maschio! Ah, l’imbecillità di tutta la banda!»
La cordialità dell’esclamazione spaventò Mr. Dick enormemente; e anche me, se devo dire la verità.
«E poi, come se tutto ciò non bastasse, e non si fosse già messa abbastanza in mostra alla luce della sorella di questo bambino, Betsey Trotwood,» disse mia zia, «si risposa una seconda volta—va e sposa un Assassino—o un uomo con un nome del genere—e si mette in questa luce di questo bambino! E la naturale conseguenza è, come chiunque tranne un bambino avrebbe potuto prevedere, che lui gira e vaga. È simile a Caino prima che crescesse, quanto può esserlo.»
Mr. Dick mi guardò attentamente, come se volesse identificarmi in questo ruolo.
«E poi c’è quella donna col nome pagano», disse mia zia, «quella Peggotty, che si sposa subito dopo. Perché non ha visto abbastanza il male che ne deriva, si sposa subito dopo, come racconta il bambino. Io spero solo», disse mia zia, scuotendo la testa, «che suo marito sia uno di quei mariti Poker che abbondano sui giornali, e la batterà bene con uno di quelli».
Non potevo sopportare di sentire la mia vecchia balia così denigrata e fatta oggetto di un tale desiderio. Dissi a mia zia che si sbagliava. Che Peggotty era l’amica e la serva migliore, più vera, più fedele, più devota e più disinteressata del mondo; che mi aveva sempre amato teneramente, che aveva sempre amato teneramente mia madre; che aveva tenuto la testa morente di mia madre sul suo braccio, sul cui volto mia madre aveva impresso il suo ultimo bacio grato. E il mio ricordo di entrambe, soffocandomi, mi fece crollare mentre stavo cercando di dire che la sua casa era la mia casa, e che tutto ciò che aveva era mio, e che sarei andato da lei per rifugiarmi, se non fosse stato per la sua umile condizione, che mi faceva temere di poterle portare qualche guaio - crollai, dico, mentre cercavo di dirlo, e appoggiai il viso sulle mani sul tavolo.
«Bene, bene!» disse mia zia, «il bambino ha ragione a stare dalla parte di coloro che hanno sempre sostenuto lui — Janet! Asini!»
Sono fermamente convinto che, se non fosse stato per quegli sfortunati asini, ci saremmo intesi benissimo; infatti mia zia mi aveva posato la mano sulla spalla, e io, incoraggiato da quel gesto, ero spinto ad abbraccarla e a supplicarla di proteggermi. Ma l’interruzione e il disordine causato dalla rissa all’esterno misero fine a ogni idea tenera, almeno per il momento, e mia zia continuò a declamare indignata a Mr. Dick della sua ferma intenzione di fare appello alle leggi del suo paese per ottenere giustizia, e di intentare cause per violazione di proprietà contro tutti i proprietari di asini di Dover, fino all’ora del tè.
After tea, we sat at the window—on the look-out, as I imagined, from my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for more invaders—until dusk, when Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down the blinds.
‘Now, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger up as before, ‘I am going to ask you another question. Look at this child.’
‘David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.
‘Exactly so,’ returned my aunt. ‘What would you do with him, now?’
‘Do with David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Ay,’ replied my aunt, ‘with David’s son.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Yes. Do with—I should put him to bed.’
‘Janet!’ cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had remarked before. ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we’ll take him up to it.’
Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly, but in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there; and janet’s replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took precautions, on that account, to have me in safe keeping.
The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to look upon me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed—and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets!—inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.
Dopo il tè, ci sedemmo alla finestra - in attesa, come immaginavo dalla espressione acuta di mia zia, di altri invasori - fino al crepuscolo, quando Janet mise le candele e un tavoliere da trictrac sul tavolo, e abbassò le tapparelle.
«Ora, signor Dick», disse mia zia con il suo sguardo serio e il dito indice alzato come prima, «le farò un’altra domanda. Guardi questo bambino.»
«Il figlio di David?» disse il signor Dick, con un’aria attenta e perplessa.
‘Esattamente così’, rispose mia zia. ‘Cosa vorresti fare con lui, ora?’
«Cosa fare con il figlio di David?» disse il signor Dick.
«Sì», rispose mia zia, «con il figlio di David.»
“Ah!” disse Mr. Dick. “Sì. Faccia, dovrebbe metterlo a letto.”
«Janet!» esclamò mia zia, con lo stesso trionfo compiaciuto che avevo notato prima. «Il signor Dick ci mette tutti a posto. Se il letto è pronto, lo porteremo lassù.»
Janet avendo riferito che era tutto pronto, fui condotto lassù; con gentilezza, ma in qualche modo come un prigioniero; mia zia che andava avanti e Janet che chiudeva la fila. L’unica circostanza che mi diede qualche nuova speranza, fu quando mia zia si fermò sulle scale per chiedere di un odore di fuoco che era prevalente lì; e Janet rispose che aveva fatto della miccia in cucina, con la mia vecchia camicia. Ma non c’erano altri vestiti nella mia stanza se non il mucchio disordinato di cose che indossavo; e quando fui lasciato lì, con una piccola candela che mia zia mi aveva avvertito sarebbe bruciata esattamente per cinque minuti, li sentii chiudere a chiave la mia porta dall’esterno. Ruminando queste cose nella mia mente, mi parve possibile che mia zia, che non poteva sapere nulla di me, potesse sospettare che avessi l’abitudine di scappare, e prendesse precauzioni, per quel motivo, per avermi in custodia sicura.
La stanza era piacevole, in cima alla casa, con vista sul mare, sul quale la luna brillava intensamente. Dopo aver recitato le mie preghiere e che la candela si era consumata, ricordo di essere rimasto seduto a guardare la luce della luna sull’acqua, come se potessi sperare di leggere la mia sorte in essa, come in un libro luminoso; o di vedere mia madre con il suo bambino, che veniva dal Cielo, lungo quel sentiero luminoso, per guardarmi come mi aveva guardato l’ultima volta che avevo visto il suo dolce volto. Ricordo come il sentimento solenne con cui alla fine distolsi gli occhi, cedette alla sensazione di gratitudine e riposo che la vista del letto con le tende bianche—e quanto di più il dolce distendersi su di esso, accoccolandomi nelle lenzuola bianco-neve!—ispirò. Ricordo come pensai a tutti i luoghi solitari sotto il cielo della notte dove avevo dormito, e come pregai di non essere mai più senza casa, e di non dimenticare mai i senzatetto. Ricordo come sembravo galleggiare, allora, lungo la malinconica gloria di quella traccia sul mare, lontano nel mondo dei sogni.
CHAPTER 14. MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME
On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly over the breakfast table, with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight. I felt sure that I had been the subject of her reflections, and was more than ever anxious to know her intentions towards me. Yet I dared not express my anxiety, lest it should give her offence.
My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue, were attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast. I never could look at her for a few moments together but I found her looking at me—in an odd thoughtful manner, as if I were an immense way off, instead of being on the other side of the small round table. When she had finished her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair, knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure, with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by embarrassment. Not having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted to hide my confusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing under my aunt’s close scrutiny.
‘Hallo!’ said my aunt, after a long time.
I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.
‘I have written to him,’ said my aunt.
‘To—?’
‘To your father-in-law,’ said my aunt. ‘I have sent him a letter that I’ll trouble him to attend to, or he and I will fall out, I can tell him!’
‘Does he know where I am, aunt?’ I inquired, alarmed.
‘I have told him,’ said my aunt, with a nod.
‘Shall I—be—given up to him?’ I faltered.
‘I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We shall see.’
‘Oh! I can’t think what I shall do,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I have to go back to Mr. Murdstone!’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said my aunt, shaking her head. ‘I can’t say, I am sure. We shall see.’
My spirits sank under these words, and I became very downcast and heavy of heart. My aunt, without appearing to take much heed of me, put on a coarse apron with a bib, which she took out of the press; washed up the teacups with her own hands; and, when everything was washed and set in the tray again, and the cloth folded and put on the top of the whole, rang for Janet to remove it. She next swept up the crumbs with a little broom (putting on a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear to be one microscopic speck left on the carpet; next dusted and arranged the room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair’s breadth already. When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took off the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the particular corner of the press from which they had been taken, brought out her work-box to her own table in the open window, and sat down, with the green fan between her and the light, to work.
‘I wish you’d go upstairs,’ said my aunt, as she threaded her needle, ‘and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I’ll be glad to know how he gets on with his Memorial.’
I rose with all alacrity, to acquit myself of this commission.
‘I suppose,’ said my aunt, eyeing me as narrowly as she had eyed the needle in threading it, ‘you think Mr. Dick a short name, eh?’
‘I thought it was rather a short name, yesterday,’ I confessed.
‘You are not to suppose that he hasn’t got a longer name, if he chose to use it,’ said my aunt, with a loftier air. ‘Babley—Mr. Richard Babley—that’s the gentleman’s true name.’
I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give him the full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say:
‘But don’t you call him by it, whatever you do. He can’t bear his name. That’s a peculiarity of his. Though I don’t know that it’s much of a peculiarity, either; for he has been ill-used enough, by some that bear it, to have a mortal antipathy for it, Heaven knows. Mr. Dick is his name here, and everywhere else, now—if he ever went anywhere else, which he don’t. So take care, child, you don’t call him anything BUT Mr. Dick.’
I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message; thinking, as I went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at his Memorial long, at the same rate as I had seen him working at it, through the open door, when I came down, he was probably getting on very well indeed. I found him still driving at it with a long pen, and his head almost laid upon the paper. He was so intent upon it, that I had ample leisure to observe the large paper kite in a corner, the confusion of bundles of manuscript, the number of pens, and, above all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed to have in, in half-gallon jars by the dozen), before he observed my being present.
‘Ha! Phoebus!’ said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. ‘How does the world go? I’ll tell you what,’ he added, in a lower tone, ‘I shouldn’t wish it to be mentioned, but it’s a—’ here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close to my ear—‘it’s a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!’ said Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a round box on the table, and laughing heartily.
Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my message.
‘Well,’ said Mr. Dick, in answer, ‘my compliments to her, and I—I believe I have made a start. I think I have made a start,’ said Mr. Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and casting anything but a confident look at his manuscript. ‘You have been to school?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I answered; ‘for a short time.’
‘Do you recollect the date,’ said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, ‘when King Charles the First had his head cut off?’ I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine.
CAPITOLO 14. MIA ZIA SI FA UNA RAGIONE DI ME
Al mattino, sceso di sotto, trovai mia zia così profondamente assorta in meditazioni a tavola da colazione, con il gomito sul vassoio, che il contenuto dell’urna aveva straripato dalla teiera e stava inzuppando l’intero tovagliolo sotto acqua, quando il mio ingresso mise in fuga le sue riflessioni. Ero sicuro di essere stato oggetto dei suoi pensieri, e desideravo più che mai conoscere le sue intenzioni nei miei confronti. Eppure non osavo esprimere la mia ansia, per timore di offenderla.
I miei occhi, tuttavia, non essendo sotto controllo quanto la mia lingua, furono spesso attratti verso mia zia durante la colazione. Non riuscivo a guardarla per pochi istanti senza trovarla che mi fissava, in un modo strano e pensieroso, come se fossi lontanissimo, invece di essere dall’altra parte del piccolo tavolo rotondo. Quando ebbe finito la colazione, mia zia si appoggiò molto deliberatamente allo schienale della sedia, aggrottò le sopracciglia, incrociò le braccia e mi contemplò a suo agio, con una fissità di attenzione tale da farmi sentire completamente sopraffatto dall’imbarazzo. Non avendo ancora finito la mia colazione, cercai di nascondere la mia confusione continuando a mangiare; ma il mio coltello cadde sulla forchetta, la forchetta inciampò sul coltello, feci volare pezzi di pancetta a una sorprendente altezza in aria invece di tagliarli per mangiarli, e mi soffocai con il tè, che insisteva a scendere per il verso sbagliato invece che per quello giusto, finché non cedetti del tutto e rimasi seduto arrossendo sotto lo sguardo attento di mia zia.
«Ciao!» disse mia zia, dopo un lungo periodo.
Alzai lo sguardo e incroiai il suo sguardo vivace e penetrante con rispetto.
«Gli ho scritto», disse mia zia.
‘To—?’
«Al tuo suocero», disse mia zia. «Gli ho mandato una lettera che lo pregherò di prendere in considerazione, altrimenti lui e io ci scontreremo, glielo posso assicurare!»
«Sa dove mi trovo, zia?» chiesi, allarmato.
«Gliel’ho detto», disse la zia, con un cenno.
«Sarò, consegnata a lui?» balbettai.
‘Non lo so’, disse mia zia. ‘Vedremo’.
“Oh! Non riesco a pensare a cosa farò,” esclamai, “se dovrò tornare da Mr. Murdstone!”
«Non ne so nulla», disse mia zia, scuotendo la testa. «Non posso dire, sono sicura. Vedremo.»
Il mio morale crollò sotto quelle parole, e mi sentii molto abbattuto e con il cuore pesante. Mia zia, senza sembrare di prestarmi molta attenzione, indossò un grembiule ruvido con un risvolto, che tirò fuori dall’armadio; lavò le tazze del tè con le sue stesse mani; e, quando tutto fu lavato e rimesso nel vassoio, e la tovaglia ripiegata e messa sopra il tutto, suonò per chiamare Janet per rimuoverlo. Poi spazzò le briciole con una piccola scopa (indossando prima un paio di guanti), finché non sembrò rimanere nemmeno un minuscolo granello sul tappeto; poi spolverò e riordinò la stanza, che era già stata spolverata e riordinata al millimetro. Quando tutti questi compiti furono eseguiti a suo completo soddisfacimento, si tolse i guanti e il grembiule, li ripiegò, li mise nell’angolo particolare dell’armadio da cui erano stati presi, tirò fuori la sua scatola da lavoro e la portò al suo tavolo vicino alla finestra aperta, e si sedette, con il ventaglio verde tra lei e la luce, per lavorare.
«Vorrei che andaste di sopra», disse mia zia, mentre infilava l’ago, «e presentaste i miei omaggi al signor Dick, e mi farebbe piacere sapere come procede con il suo Memoriale.»
Mi alzai con grande alacrità per adempiere a questa commissione.
«Suppongo», disse mia zia, scrutandomi con la stessa attenzione con cui aveva scrutato l’ago mentre lo infilava, «che pensiate che il signor Dick sia un nome troppo breve, eh?»
«Pensavo che fosse un nome piuttosto breve, ieri», confessai.
«Non dovete pensare che non abbia un nome più lungo, se volesse usarlo», disse mia zia, con un’aria più altezzosa. «Babley—il signor Richard Babley—questo è il vero nome del gentiluomo.»
Stavo per suggerire, con un modesto senso della mia giovinezza e della familiarità di cui mi ero già reso colpevole, che sarebbe stato meglio concedergli tutti i vantaggi di quel nome, quando mia zia continuò a dire:
«Ma non chiamarlo mai così, qualunque cosa tu faccia. Non sopporta il suo nome. È una sua stranezza. Anche se non so se sia una stranezza poi così grande; perché è stato maltrattato abbastanza, da alcuni che lo portano, da averne una antipatia mortale, Dio sa. Qui il suo nome è Mr. Dick, e ovunque altro, ora—se mai è andato da qualche altra parte, il che non ha fatto. Quindi fai attenzione, bambino, a non chiamarlo altro che Mr. Dick.»
Promisi di obbedire e salii al piano di sopra con il mio messaggio; pensando, mentre salivo, che se il signor Dick avesse lavorato al suo memoriale a lungo, allo stesso ritmo con cui l’avevo visto lavorare, attraverso la porta aperta, quando ero sceso, probabilmente stava facendo davvero molti progressi. Lo trovai ancora intento a lavorarci con una penna lunga, e la testa quasi appoggiata sulla carta. Era così assorto che ebbi tutto il tempo di osservare l’enorme aquilone di carta in un angolo, la confusione di fascicoli di manoscritti, il numero di penne, e, soprattutto, la quantità di inchiostro (che sembrava avere in barattoli da mezzo gallone a dozzine), prima che si accorgesse della mia presenza.
«Ah! Fobos!» disse il signor Dick, posando la penna. «Come va il mondo? Vi dirò una cosa,» aggiunse, a voce più bassa, «non vorrei che si sapesse, ma è una—» qui mi fece cenno di avvicinarmi e mi si accostò le labbra all’orecchio—«è un mondo pazzo. Pazzo come Bedlam, ragazzo!» disse il signor Dick, prendendo tabacco da una scatola rotonda sul tavolo e ridendo di gusto.
Senza presumere di esprimere la mia opinione su questo argomento, ho consegnato il mio messaggio.
«Beh,» disse Mr. Dick in risposta, «le faccio i miei complimenti, e io, io credo di aver fatto un inizio. Penso di aver fatto un inizio,» disse Mr. Dick, passandosi la mano tra i suoi capelli grigi e lanciando un’occhiata tutt’altro che fiduciosa al suo manoscritto. «Siete stato a scuola?»
«Sì, signore», risposi; «per un breve periodo.»
«Ricordate la data», disse il signor Dick, guardandomi con serietà e prendendo la penna per annotarla, «in cui il re Carlo Primo ebbe la testa tagliata?» Dissi che credevo fosse accaduto nell’anno milleseicentoquarantanove.
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me. ‘So the books say; but I don’t see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?’
I was very much surprised by the inquiry; but could give no information on this point.
‘It’s very strange,’ said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his papers, and with his hand among his hair again, ‘that I never can get that quite right. I never can make that perfectly clear. But no matter, no matter!’ he said cheerfully, and rousing himself, ‘there’s time enough! My compliments to Miss Trotwood, I am getting on very well indeed.’
I was going away, when he directed my attention to the kite.
‘What do you think of that for a kite?’ he said.
I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been as much as seven feet high.
‘I made it. We’ll go and fly it, you and I,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Do you see this?’
He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and laboriously written; but so plainly, that as I looked along the lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First’s head again, in one or two places.
‘There’s plenty of string,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long way. That’s my manner of diffusing ‘em. I don’t know where they may come down. It’s according to circumstances, and the wind, and so forth; but I take my chance of that.’
His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something so reverend in it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure but that he was having a good-humoured jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and we parted the best friends possible.
‘Well, child,’ said my aunt, when I went downstairs. ‘And what of Mr. Dick, this morning?’
I informed her that he sent his compliments, and was getting on very well indeed.
‘What do you think of him?’ said my aunt.
I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question, by replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman; but my aunt was not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and said, folding her hands upon it:
‘Come! Your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me what she thought of anyone, directly. Be as like your sister as you can, and speak out!’
‘Is he—is Mr. Dick—I ask because I don’t know, aunt—is he at all out of his mind, then?’ I stammered; for I felt I was on dangerous ground.
‘Not a morsel,’ said my aunt.
‘Oh, indeed!’ I observed faintly.
‘If there is anything in the world,’ said my aunt, with great decision and force of manner, ‘that Mr. Dick is not, it’s that.’
I had nothing better to offer, than another timid, ‘Oh, indeed!’
‘He has been CALLED mad,’ said my aunt. ‘I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards—in fact, ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me.’
‘So long as that?’ I said.
‘And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,’ pursued my aunt. ‘Mr. Dick is a sort of distant connexion of mine—it doesn’t matter how; I needn’t enter into that. If it hadn’t been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. That’s all.’
I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.
‘A proud fool!’ said my aunt. ‘Because his brother was a little eccentric—though he is not half so eccentric as a good many people—he didn’t like to have him visible about his house, and sent him away to some private asylum-place: though he had been left to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a wise man he must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt.’
Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite convinced also.
‘So I stepped in,’ said my aunt, ‘and made him an offer. I said, “Your brother’s sane—a great deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it is to be hoped. Let him have his little income, and come and live with me. I am not afraid of him, I am not proud, I am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill-treat him as some people (besides the asylum-folks) have done.” After a good deal of squabbling,’ said my aunt, ‘I got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the most friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!—But nobody knows what that man’s mind is, except myself.’
My aunt smoothed her dress and shook her head, as if she smoothed defiance of the whole world out of the one, and shook it out of the other.
‘He had a favourite sister,’ said my aunt, ‘a good creature, and very kind to him. But she did what they all do—took a husband. And HE did what they all do—made her wretched. It had such an effect upon the mind of Mr. Dick (that’s not madness, I hope!) that, combined with his fear of his brother, and his sense of his unkindness, it threw him into a fever. That was before he came to me, but the recollection of it is oppressive to him even now. Did he say anything to you about King Charles the First, child?’
‘Yes, aunt.’
‘Ah!’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose as if she were a little vexed. ‘That’s his allegorical way of expressing it. He connects his illness with great disturbance and agitation, naturally, and that’s the figure, or the simile, or whatever it’s called, which he chooses to use. And why shouldn’t he, if he thinks proper!’
I said: ‘Certainly, aunt.’
‘It’s not a business-like way of speaking,’ said my aunt, ‘nor a worldly way. I am aware of that; and that’s the reason why I insist upon it, that there shan’t be a word about it in his Memorial.’
‘Is it a Memorial about his own history that he is writing, aunt?’
«Beh,» rispose Mr. Dick, grattandosi l’orecchio con la penna e guardandomi con aria dubbiosa. «Così dicono i libri; ma non capisco come possa essere. Perché, se è successo tanto tempo fa, come hanno potuto le persone intorno a lui fare l’errore di mettere parte dei suoi problemi, dopo che erano stati tolti dalla sua testa, nella mia?»
Fui molto sorpreso dalla domanda; ma non potei fornire alcuna informazione al riguardo.
«È molto strano», disse il signor Dick, con un’aria scoraggiata sui suoi fogli, e con la mano tra i capelli, «che non riesca mai a farlo bene. Non riesco mai a renderlo perfettamente chiaro. Ma non importa, non importa!», disse allegramente, riscuotendosi, «c’è tempo a sufficienza! I miei complimenti alla signorina Trotwood, sto andando davvero molto bene.»
Stavo per andarmene, quando attirò la mia attenzione all’ aquilone.
«Che ne pensate di questo aquilone?» disse.
Risposi che era davvero bella. Avrà avuto, credo, almeno due metri di altezza.
“L’ho fatta. Andremo a farla volare, tu e io”, disse il signor Dick. “Vedi questo?”
Mi mostrò che era ricoperto di manoscritto, scritto molto fittamente e con grande fatica; ma così chiaramente che, mentre osservavo le righe, pensai di vedere qualche accenno alla testa del Re Carlo Primo in uno o due punti.
‘C’è un sacco di spago,’ disse Mr. Dick, ‘e quando vola in alto, porta i fatti lontano. È il mio modo di diffonderli. Non so dove potrebbero cadere. Dipende dalle circostanze, e dal vento, e così via; ma mi prendo la responsabilità di questo.’
Il suo volto era così mite e piacevole, e aveva qualcosa di così venerabile, sebbene fosse sano e robusto, che non ero sicuro che non stesse prendendomi in giro in modo amichevole. Così risi, e lui rise, e ci separammo essendo i migliori amici possibili.
«Bene, bambino», disse mia zia, quando scesi al piano di sotto. «E che ne è stato del signor Dick, questa mattina?»
Le comunicai che lui le mandava i suoi saluti e stava andando molto bene.
«Che ne pensate di lui?» disse mia zia.
Avevo un’idea vaga di cercare di eludere la domanda rispondendo che lo trovavo un gentiluomo davvero squisito; ma mia zia non era da mettere a tacere così facilmente, perché posò il lavoro in grembo e disse, incrociando le mani sopra:
«Come! La tua sorella Betsey Trotwood mi avrebbe detto direttamente cosa pensava di chiunque. Sii il più simile possibile a tua sorella e parla chiaro!»
«È lui, è il signor Dick, chiedo perché non lo so, zia, è un po’ fuori di testa, allora?» balbettai; perché sentivo di trovarmi su un terreno pericoloso.
«Nemmeno un boccone», disse mia zia.
«Oh, davvero!» osservai debolmente.
«Se c’è qualcosa al mondo», disse mia zia con grande decisione e fermezza, «che il signor Dick non è, è proprio quello.»
Non avevo altro da offrire se non un altro timido “Oh, davvero!”
«È stato DEFINITO pazzo», disse mia zia, «e provo un egoistico piacere nel dire che è stato definito pazzo, altrimenti non avrei avuto il beneficio della sua compagnia e dei suoi consigli per gli ultimi dieci anni e più, in effetti da quando tua sorella, Betsey Trotwood, mi ha delusa.»
«Finché a tanto?» dissi.
«E che brave persone erano, che avevano l’audacia di chiamarlo pazzo», continuò mia zia. «Mr. Dick è una specie di lontano parente di mio—non importa come; non c’è bisogno che entri nei dettagli. Se non fosse stato per me, suo fratello lo avrebbe rinchiuso per tutta la vita. Questo è tutto.»
Temo di essere stato ipocrita, ma dato che mia zia era molto appassionata sull’argomento, ho cercato di sembrare appassionato anch’io.
«Un orgoglioso stolto!» disse mia zia. «Perché suo fratello era un po’ eccentrico — sebbene non fosse la metà di quanto lo siano molte altre persone — non gli piaceva averlo in vista in giro per la sua casa, e lo mandò via in un qualche manicomio privato: sebbene gli fosse stato affidato in particolare cura dal loro defunto padre, che lo riteneva quasi un naturale. E un uomo saggio doveva essere per pensare così! Matto lui stesso, senza dubbio.»
Anche questa volta, poiché mia zia sembrava del tutto convinta, cercai di sembrare del tutto convinto anch’io.
«Così sono intervenuta» disse mia zia «e gli ho fatto un’offerta. Gli ho detto: “Vostro fratello è sano di mente, molto più sano di quanto lo siate voi, o mai sarete, si spera. Lasciate che abbia il suo piccolo reddito e venga a vivere con me. Non ho paura di lui, non sono orgogliosa, sono pronta a prendermi cura di lui e non lo maltratterò come hanno fatto alcuni (oltre alla gente del manicomio)”. Dopo un bel po’ di discussioni» disse mia zia «l’ho avuto; ed è stato qui da allora. È la creatura più amichevole e docile in esistenza; e per quanto riguarda i consigli! — Ma nessuno sa cosa c’è nella mente di quell’uomo, tranne me.»
Mia zia lisciò il suo vestito e scosse la testa, come se lisciasse la sfida di tutto il mondo fuori dall’uno e la scuotesse fuori dall’altro.
«Aveva una sorella prediletta», disse mia zia, «una brava persona, e molto affettuosa con lui. Ma fece come fanno tutti loro: si prese un marito. E LUI fece come fanno tutti loro: la rese infelice. Questo ebbe un tale effetto sulla mente del signor Dick (non è pazzia, spero!) che, unito alla sua paura del fratello e al senso di averlo trattato male, lo fece cadere in delirio. Questo accadde prima che venisse da me, ma il ricordo lo opprime ancora oggi. Ha detto qualcosa a te riguardo a Re Carlo Primo, ragazzo?»
‘Sì, zia.’
«Ah!» disse mia zia, strofinandosi il naso come se fosse un po’ contrariata. «Questo è il suo modo allegorico di esprimersi. Collega la sua malattia a grande turbamento e agitazione, naturalmente, ed ecco la figura, o la similitudine, o comunque si chiami, che lui sceglie di usare. E perché non dovrebbe, se lo ritiene opportuno!»
Ho risposto: “Certamente, zia.”
«Non è un modo di parlare da commerciante», disse mia zia, «né da persona del mondo. Ne sono consapevole; ed è proprio per questo che insisto, che non ci sia una parola al riguardo nel suo Memoriale.»
«È un Memoriale sulla sua stessa storia che sta scrivendo, zia?»
‘Yes, child,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose again. ‘He is memorializing the Lord Chancellor, or the Lord Somebody or other—one of those people, at all events, who are paid to be memorialized—about his affairs. I suppose it will go in, one of these days. He hasn’t been able to draw it up yet, without introducing that mode of expressing himself; but it don’t signify; it keeps him employed.’
In fact, I found out afterwards that Mr. Dick had been for upwards of ten years endeavouring to keep King Charles the First out of the Memorial; but he had been constantly getting into it, and was there now.
‘I say again,’ said my aunt, ‘nobody knows what that man’s mind is except myself; and he’s the most amenable and friendly creature in existence. If he likes to fly a kite sometimes, what of that! Franklin used to fly a kite. He was a Quaker, or something of that sort, if I am not mistaken. And a Quaker flying a kite is a much more ridiculous object than anybody else.’
If I could have supposed that my aunt had recounted these particulars for my especial behoof, and as a piece of confidence in me, I should have felt very much distinguished, and should have augured favourably from such a mark of her good opinion. But I could hardly help observing that she had launched into them, chiefly because the question was raised in her own mind, and with very little reference to me, though she had addressed herself to me in the absence of anybody else.
At the same time, I must say that the generosity of her championship of poor harmless Mr. Dick, not only inspired my young breast with some selfish hope for myself, but warmed it unselfishly towards her. I believe that I began to know that there was something about my aunt, notwithstanding her many eccentricities and odd humours, to be honoured and trusted in. Though she was just as sharp that day as on the day before, and was in and out about the donkeys just as often, and was thrown into a tremendous state of indignation, when a young man, going by, ogled Janet at a window (which was one of the gravest misdemeanours that could be committed against my aunt’s dignity), she seemed to me to command more of my respect, if not less of my fear.
The anxiety I underwent, in the interval which necessarily elapsed before a reply could be received to her letter to Mr. Murdstone, was extreme; but I made an endeavour to suppress it, and to be as agreeable as I could in a quiet way, both to my aunt and Mr. Dick. The latter and I would have gone out to fly the great kite; but that I had still no other clothes than the anything but ornamental garments with which I had been decorated on the first day, and which confined me to the house, except for an hour after dark, when my aunt, for my health’s sake, paraded me up and down on the cliff outside, before going to bed. At length the reply from Mr. Murdstone came, and my aunt informed me, to my infinite terror, that he was coming to speak to her herself on the next day. On the next day, still bundled up in my curious habiliments, I sat counting the time, flushed and heated by the conflict of sinking hopes and rising fears within me; and waiting to be startled by the sight of the gloomy face, whose non-arrival startled me every minute.
My aunt was a little more imperious and stern than usual, but I observed no other token of her preparing herself to receive the visitor so much dreaded by me. She sat at work in the window, and I sat by, with my thoughts running astray on all possible and impossible results of Mr. Murdstone’s visit, until pretty late in the afternoon. Our dinner had been indefinitely postponed; but it was growing so late, that my aunt had ordered it to be got ready, when she gave a sudden alarm of donkeys, and to my consternation and amazement, I beheld Miss Murdstone, on a side-saddle, ride deliberately over the sacred piece of green, and stop in front of the house, looking about her.
‘Go along with you!’ cried my aunt, shaking her head and her fist at the window. ‘You have no business there. How dare you trespass? Go along! Oh! you bold-faced thing!’
My aunt was so exasperated by the coolness with which Miss Murdstone looked about her, that I really believe she was motionless, and unable for the moment to dart out according to custom. I seized the opportunity to inform her who it was; and that the gentleman now coming near the offender (for the way up was very steep, and he had dropped behind), was Mr. Murdstone himself.
‘I don’t care who it is!’ cried my aunt, still shaking her head and gesticulating anything but welcome from the bow-window. ‘I won’t be trespassed upon. I won’t allow it. Go away! Janet, turn him round. Lead him off!’ and I saw, from behind my aunt, a sort of hurried battle-piece, in which the donkey stood resisting everybody, with all his four legs planted different ways, while Janet tried to pull him round by the bridle, Mr. Murdstone tried to lead him on, Miss Murdstone struck at Janet with a parasol, and several boys, who had come to see the engagement, shouted vigorously. But my aunt, suddenly descrying among them the young malefactor who was the donkey’s guardian, and who was one of the most inveterate offenders against her, though hardly in his teens, rushed out to the scene of action, pounced upon him, captured him, dragged him, with his jacket over his head, and his heels grinding the ground, into the garden, and, calling upon Janet to fetch the constables and justices, that he might be taken, tried, and executed on the spot, held him at bay there. This part of the business, however, did not last long; for the young rascal, being expert at a variety of feints and dodges, of which my aunt had no conception, soon went whooping away, leaving some deep impressions of his nailed boots in the flower-beds, and taking his donkey in triumph with him.
Miss Murdstone, during the latter portion of the contest, had dismounted, and was now waiting with her brother at the bottom of the steps, until my aunt should be at leisure to receive them. My aunt, a little ruffled by the combat, marched past them into the house, with great dignity, and took no notice of their presence, until they were announced by Janet.
«Sì, bambino», disse mia zia, strofinandosi di nuovo il naso. «Sta scrivendo una memoria al Lord Cancelliere, o al Lord Chissachissà - insomma, a uno di quei personaggi che vengono pagati per essere ricordati - riguardo ai suoi affari. Immagino che prima o poi la presenterà. Non è ancora riuscito a redigerla senza usare quel suo modo di esprimersi; ma non importa, almeno lo tiene occupato.»
Infatti, scoprii in seguito che il signor Dick aveva cercato per oltre dieci anni di tenere fuori dal Memoriale re Carlo Primo; ma questi era continuamente riuscito a entrare, e vi era ora.
«Lo ripeto» disse mia zia «nessuno sa come sia fatto quel pover’uomo tranne me; ed è la creatura più docile e amichevole che esista. Se gli piace far volare un aquilone a volte, che importa! Franklin faceva volare un aquilone. Era un quacchero, o qualcosa del genere, se non sbaglio. E un quacchero che fa volare un aquilone è un oggetto molto più ridicolo di chiunque altro.»
Se avessi potuto supporre che mia zia avesse raccontato questi particolari per il mio speciale beneficio, e come un segno di fiducia in me, mi sarei sentito molto distinto, e avrei presagito favorevolmente da un tale segno della sua buona opinione. Ma non potevo fare a meno di notare che si era lanciata in essi, principalmente perché la questione era sorta nella sua stessa mente, e con ben poca riferimento a me, sebbene si fosse rivolta a me in assenza di chiunque altro.
Nello stesso tempo, devo dire che la generosità con cui si batteva per il povero innocuo Mr. Dick, non solo ispirò al mio giovane cuore un po’ di egoistico speranza per me stesso, ma lo riscaldò disinteressatamente verso di lei. Credo che cominciai a capire che c’era qualcosa in mia zia, nonostante le sue molte eccentricità e stranezze, che meritava rispetto e fiducia. Anche se quel giorno era stata altrettanto pungente di quello precedente, e si era mossa tra i pony con la stessa frequenza, e si era gettata in uno stato tremendo di indignazione, quando un giovane, passando, aveva sbirciato Janet a una finestra (che era uno dei più gravi reati che si potessero commettere contro la dignità di mia zia), mi sembrò di comandare più del mio rispetto, se non meno della mia paura.
L’ansia che provai durante l’intervallo che necessariamente trascorse prima che una risposta potesse essere ricevuta alla lettera che lei aveva scritto a Mr. Murdstone, fu estrema; ma cercai di reprimerla, e di essere il più piacevole possibile in modo tranquillo, sia con mia zia che con Mr. Dick. Quest’ultimo e io saremmo andati fuori a far volare il grande aquilone; ma non avevo ancora altri vestiti che gli indumenti tutto fuorché ornamentali con cui ero stato adornato il primo giorno, e che mi confinavano in casa, salvo per un’ora dopo il buio, quando mia zia, per il mio benessere, mi portava a passeggio su e giù per la scogliera fuori, prima di andare a letto. Alla fine arrivò la risposta di Mr. Murdstone, e mia zia mi informò, con mio infinito terrore, che sarebbe venuto a parlare con lei il giorno successivo. Il giorno successivo, ancora avvolto nei miei curiosi abiti, sedevo contando il tempo, arrossato e accaldato dal conflitto di speranze che affondavano e paure che crescevano dentro di me; e aspettavo di essere spaventato dalla vista del volto cupo, la cui mancata comparsa mi spaventava ogni minuto.
Mia zia era un po’ più imperiosa e severa del solito, ma non notai altro segno che si stesse preparando a ricevere la visitatrice che io temevo così tanto. Sedeva al lavoro alla finestra, e io stavo lì accanto, con i pensieri che vagavano su tutti i possibili e impossibili risultati della visita del signor Murdstone, fino a tarda sera. La nostra cena era stata rimandata a tempo indeterminato; ma era ormai così tardi che mia zia aveva ordinato di prepararla, quando lanciò un’improvvisa esclamazione di asini, e con mio sgomento e stupore, vidi la signorina Murdstone, in sella laterale, cavalcare deliberatamente sul sacro pezzo di verde, e fermarsi davanti alla casa, guardandosi intorno.
«Andatevene!» gridò mia zia, scuotendo la testa e il pugno verso la finestra. «Non avete nulla da fare lì. Come osate violare il mio spazio? Andatevene! Oh! Sfrontato!»
Mia zia era così esasperata dalla freddezza con cui la signorina Murdstone si guardava intorno, che credo davvero fosse immobile e incapace, al momento, di scattare come era sua abitudine. Approfittai dell’occasione per informarla di chi si trattasse; e che il signore che si stava avvicinando all’offensore (perché la salita era molto ripida, e lui era rimasto indietro), era lo stesso signor Murdstone.
«Non mi interessa chi sia!» gridò mia zia, continuando a scuotere la testa e a gesticolare in modo tutt’altro che accogliente dalla finestra a bovindo. «Non tollererò intrusioni. Non lo permetterò. Vada via! Janet, fagli fare dietrofront. Portalo via!» e vidi, dietro mia zia, una specie di affannosa scena di battaglia, in cui il asino resisteva a tutti, con le quattro zampe piantate in direzioni diverse, mentre Janet cercava di girarlo per le briglie, il signor Murdstone cercava di condurlo avanti, la signorina Murdstone colpiva Janet con un ombrello, e diversi ragazzi, venuti a vedere lo spettacolo, urlavano vigorosamente. Ma mia zia, scorgendo improvvisamente tra loro il giovane malfattore che era il guardiano del asino e che era uno dei più accaniti trasgressori delle sue regole, sebbene avesse a malapena raggiunto la pubertà, si precipitò sulla scena dell’azione, gli si avventò addosso, lo catturò, lo trascinò, con la giacca sulla testa e i talloni che strusciavano a terra, nel giardino, e, chiedendo a Janet di chiamare i poliziotti e i giudici, affinché potesse essere arrestato, processato ed eseguito sul posto, lo tenne lì in stato di arresto. Questa parte della faccenda, tuttavia, non durò a lungo; perché il giovane furfante, esperto in una varietà di finti e schivate, di cui mia zia non aveva la minima idea, ben presto se ne andò urlando, lasciando alcune profonde impronte dei suoi stivali chiodati ai bordi dei fiori, e portando via trionfalmente il suo asino.
La signorina Murdstone, durante la parte finale della disputa, era smontata e ora stava aspettando con suo fratello in fondo alle scale, finché mia zia non avesse avuto tempo di riceverli. Mia zia, un po’ scompigliata dal combattimento, passò oltre loro entrando in casa, con grande dignità, e non fece caso alla loro presenza, finché non furono annunciati da Janet.
‘Shall I go away, aunt?’ I asked, trembling.
‘No, sir,’ said my aunt. ‘Certainly not!’ With which she pushed me into a corner near her, and fenced Me in with a chair, as if it were a prison or a bar of justice. This position I continued to occupy during the whole interview, and from it I now saw Mr. and Miss Murdstone enter the room.
‘Oh!’ said my aunt, ‘I was not aware at first to whom I had the pleasure of objecting. But I don’t allow anybody to ride over that turf. I make no exceptions. I don’t allow anybody to do it.’
‘Your regulation is rather awkward to strangers,’ said Miss Murdstone.
‘Is it!’ said my aunt.
Mr. Murdstone seemed afraid of a renewal of hostilities, and interposing began:
‘Miss Trotwood!’
‘I beg your pardon,’ observed my aunt with a keen look. ‘You are the Mr. Murdstone who married the widow of my late nephew, David Copperfield, of Blunderstone Rookery!—Though why Rookery, I don’t know!’
‘I am,’ said Mr. Murdstone.
‘You’ll excuse my saying, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘that I think it would have been a much better and happier thing if you had left that poor child alone.’
‘I so far agree with what Miss Trotwood has remarked,’ observed Miss Murdstone, bridling, ‘that I consider our lamented Clara to have been, in all essential respects, a mere child.’
‘It is a comfort to you and me, ma’am,’ said my aunt, ‘who are getting on in life, and are not likely to be made unhappy by our personal attractions, that nobody can say the same of us.’
‘No doubt!’ returned Miss Murdstone, though, I thought, not with a very ready or gracious assent. ‘And it certainly might have been, as you say, a better and happier thing for my brother if he had never entered into such a marriage. I have always been of that opinion.’
‘I have no doubt you have,’ said my aunt. ‘Janet,’ ringing the bell, ‘my compliments to Mr. Dick, and beg him to come down.’
Until he came, my aunt sat perfectly upright and stiff, frowning at the wall. When he came, my aunt performed the ceremony of introduction.
‘Mr. Dick. An old and intimate friend. On whose judgement,’ said my aunt, with emphasis, as an admonition to Mr. Dick, who was biting his forefinger and looking rather foolish, ‘I rely.’
Mr. Dick took his finger out of his mouth, on this hint, and stood among the group, with a grave and attentive expression of face.
My aunt inclined her head to Mr. Murdstone, who went on:
‘Miss Trotwood: on the receipt of your letter, I considered it an act of greater justice to myself, and perhaps of more respect to you—’
‘Thank you,’ said my aunt, still eyeing him keenly. ‘You needn’t mind me.’
‘To answer it in person, however inconvenient the journey,’ pursued Mr. Murdstone, ‘rather than by letter. This unhappy boy who has run away from his friends and his occupation—’
‘And whose appearance,’ interposed his sister, directing general attention to me in my indefinable costume, ‘is perfectly scandalous and disgraceful.’
‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘have the goodness not to interrupt me. This unhappy boy, Miss Trotwood, has been the occasion of much domestic trouble and uneasiness; both during the lifetime of my late dear wife, and since. He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition. Both my sister and myself have endeavoured to correct his vices, but ineffectually. And I have felt—we both have felt, I may say; my sister being fully in my confidence—that it is right you should receive this grave and dispassionate assurance from our lips.’
‘It can hardly be necessary for me to confirm anything stated by my brother,’ said Miss Murdstone; ‘but I beg to observe, that, of all the boys in the world, I believe this is the worst boy.’
‘Strong!’ said my aunt, shortly.
‘But not at all too strong for the facts,’ returned Miss Murdstone.
‘Ha!’ said my aunt. ‘Well, sir?’
‘I have my own opinions,’ resumed Mr. Murdstone, whose face darkened more and more, the more he and my aunt observed each other, which they did very narrowly, ‘as to the best mode of bringing him up; they are founded, in part, on my knowledge of him, and in part on my knowledge of my own means and resources. I am responsible for them to myself, I act upon them, and I say no more about them. It is enough that I place this boy under the eye of a friend of my own, in a respectable business; that it does not please him; that he runs away from it; makes himself a common vagabond about the country; and comes here, in rags, to appeal to you, Miss Trotwood. I wish to set before you, honourably, the exact consequences—so far as they are within my knowledge—of your abetting him in this appeal.’
‘But about the respectable business first,’ said my aunt. ‘If he had been your own boy, you would have put him to it, just the same, I suppose?’
‘If he had been my brother’s own boy,’ returned Miss Murdstone, striking in, ‘his character, I trust, would have been altogether different.’
‘Or if the poor child, his mother, had been alive, he would still have gone into the respectable business, would he?’ said my aunt.
‘I believe,’ said Mr. Murdstone, with an inclination of his head, ‘that Clara would have disputed nothing which myself and my sister Jane Murdstone were agreed was for the best.’
Miss Murdstone confirmed this with an audible murmur.
‘Humph!’ said my aunt. ‘Unfortunate baby!’
Mr. Dick, who had been rattling his money all this time, was rattling it so loudly now, that my aunt felt it necessary to check him with a look, before saying:
‘The poor child’s annuity died with her?’
‘Died with her,’ replied Mr. Murdstone.
‘And there was no settlement of the little property—the house and garden—the what’s-its-name Rookery without any rooks in it—upon her boy?’
‘It had been left to her, unconditionally, by her first husband,’ Mr. Murdstone began, when my aunt caught him up with the greatest irascibility and impatience.
«Devo andarmene, zia?» chiesi, tremando.
«No, signore», disse mia zia. «Certo che no!» Con ciò mi spinse in un angolo vicino a lei e mi circondò con una sedia, come se fosse una prigione o un banco di giustizia. Continuai a occupare questa posizione durante l’intero colloquio, e da lì vidi entrare nella stanza il signor e la signorina Murdstone.
«Oh!» disse mia zia «non sapevo a chi avessi il piacere di obiettare. Ma non permetto a nessuno di calpestare quel prato. Non faccio eccezioni. Non permetto a nessuno di farlo.»
«La vostra regolamentazione è piuttosto scomoda per gli estranei», disse Miss Murdstone.
«È così!» disse mia zia.
Mr. Murdstone sembrava temere una ripresa delle ostilità e intervenendo iniziò:
“Signorina Trotwood!”
«Vi prego di scusarmi», osservò mia zia con uno sguardo acuto. «Siete il signor Murdstone che ha sposato la vedova del mio defunto nipote, David Copperfield, di Blunderstone Rookery!—Anche se non so perché Rookery!»
«Lo sono», disse il signor Murdstone.
«Mi scuserete se lo dico, signore», rispose mia zia, «ma penso che sarebbe stato molto meglio e più felice se aveste lasciato quella povera bambina sola.»
«Sono d’accordo fino a un certo punto con quanto ha osservato Miss Trotwood», osservò Miss Murdstone, inorgoglendosi, «nel senso che considero la nostra povera Clara, in tutti gli aspetti essenziali, una mera bambina.»
«È un conforto per voi e per me, signora», disse mia zia, «che siamo invecchiate e non siamo più soggette a essere infelici per le nostre attrattive personali, che nessuno può dire lo stesso di noi.»
«Nessun dubbio!» rispose Miss Murdstone, anche se, a mio avviso, non con un assenso molto pronto o gentile. «E certamente sarebbe stato, come dici tu, un fatto migliore e più felice per mio fratello se non avesse mai contratto un tale matrimonio. Ho sempre avuto questa opinione.»
«Non ho dubbio che tu l’abbia», disse mia zia. «Janet», suonando il campanello, «i miei complimenti al signor Dick, e pregalo di scendere».
Fino al suo arrivo, mia zia era seduta perfettamente dritta e rigida, con lo sguardo corrucciato rivolto al muro. Quando arrivò, mia zia compì la cerimonia delle presentazioni.
«Mr. Dick. Un vecchio e intimo amico. Sul cui giudizio», disse mia zia, con enfasi, come ammonizione a Mr. Dick, che si stava mordendo il pollice e aveva un’aria piuttosto sciocca, «faccio affidamento».
Mr. Dick tolse il dito dalla bocca, su questo suggerimento, e si fermò in mezzo al gruppo, con un’espressione del viso grave e attenta.
Mia zia chinò la testa verso il signor Murdstone, che continuò:
«Signorina Trotwood: alla ricezione della sua lettera, ho ritenuto che fosse un atto di maggiore giustizia nei miei confronti, e forse di più rispetto nei suoi, »
“Non preoccuparti per me”, disse mia zia, continuando a osservarlo attentamente.
«Per rispondere di persona, per quanto scomoda possa essere la viaggio,» continuò il signor Murdstone, «piuttosto che per lettera. Questo povero ragazzo che è scappato dai suoi amici e dal suo lavoro—»
«E il cui aspetto», intervenne sua sorella, attirando l’attenzione generale su di me nel mio costume indefinibile, «è perfettamente scandaloso e vergognoso.»
«Jane Murdstone», disse suo fratello, «abbiate la bontà di non interrompermi. Questo disgraziato ragazzo, Miss Trotwood, è stato la causa di molti problemi e inquietudini familiari; sia durante la vita della mia cara defunta moglie, che dopo. Ha uno spirito ostinato e ribelle; un carattere violento; e una disposizione ostinata e intrattabile. Sia mia sorella che io abbiamo cercato di correggere i suoi vizi, ma senza successo. E ho sentito - possiamo dire che l’abbiamo sentito entrambi; mia sorella è pienamente al corrente - che è giusto che voi riceviate questa grave e impassibile assicurazione dalle nostre labbra.»
«Non credo sia necessario che io confermi quanto affermato da mio fratello», disse la signorina Murdstone, «ma desidero osservare che, di tutti i ragazzi del mondo, credo che questo sia il peggior ragazzo».
«Robusta!» disse mia zia, in breve.
«Ma non troppo forte per i fatti», rispose la signorina Murdstone.
«Ah!» disse mia zia. «Ebbene, signore?»
«Ho le mie opinioni» riprese il signor Murdstone, il cui volto si faceva sempre più scuro, più lui e mia zia si osservavano, cosa che facevano con grande attenzione, «sul miglior modo di educarlo; sono fondate, in parte, sulla mia conoscenza di lui, e in parte sulla mia conoscenza dei miei mezzi e risorse. Ne rispondo io stesso, le metto in pratica, e non ne parlo più. Basti dire che metto questo ragazzo sotto gli occhi di un mio amico, in un’attività rispettabile; che a lui non piace; che scappa da lì; si fa un comune vagabondo per il paese; e viene qui, in cenci, a fare appello a voi, signorina Trotwood. Desidero esporvi, onestamente, le esatte conseguenze - per quanto ne so - del fatto che voi lo aiutiate in questo appello.»
«Ma prima di tutto, riguardo all’affare rispettabile», disse mia zia. «Se fosse stato il vostro ragazzo, lo avreste messo a farlo, esattamente nello stesso modo, immagino?»
«Se fosse stato il figlio di mio fratello» replicò la signorina Murdstone, interrompendo, «spero che il suo carattere sarebbe stato del tutto diverso.»
«O se il povero bambino, sua madre, fosse stata viva, lui sarebbe comunque andato in quell’affare rispettabile, vero?» disse mia zia.
«Credo», disse il signor Murdstone, con un inchino del capo, «che Clara non avrebbe contestato nulla di ciò che io e mia sorella Jane Murdstone fossimo concordi fosse per il meglio».
La signorina Murdstone confermò ciò con un mormorio udibile.
‘Humph!’ disse mia zia. ‘Povero bambino!’
Il signor Dick, che aveva continuato a scuotere il suo denaro per tutto questo tempo, lo stava scuotendo così rumorosamente ora, che mia zia ritenne necessario ammonirlo con uno sguardo, prima di dire:
«La rendita della povera bambina è morta con lei?»
«È morta con lei», rispose il signor Murdstone.
«E non c’era nessuna sistemazione della piccola proprietà—la casa e il giardino—il coso che si chiama Rookery senza corvi al suo interno—per il suo ragazzo?»
«Le era stato lasciato incondizionatamente dal suo primo marito», iniziò il signor Murdstone, quando mia zia lo interruppe con la massima irritabilità e impazienza.
‘Good Lord, man, there’s no occasion to say that. Left to her unconditionally! I think I see David Copperfield looking forward to any condition of any sort or kind, though it stared him point-blank in the face! Of course it was left to her unconditionally. But when she married again—when she took that most disastrous step of marrying you, in short,’ said my aunt, ‘to be plain—did no one put in a word for the boy at that time?’
‘My late wife loved her second husband, ma’am,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘and trusted implicitly in him.’
‘Your late wife, sir, was a most unworldly, most unhappy, most unfortunate baby,’ returned my aunt, shaking her head at him. ‘That’s what she was. And now, what have you got to say next?’
‘Merely this, Miss Trotwood,’ he returned. ‘I am here to take David back—to take him back unconditionally, to dispose of him as I think proper, and to deal with him as I think right. I am not here to make any promise, or give any pledge to anybody. You may possibly have some idea, Miss Trotwood, of abetting him in his running away, and in his complaints to you. Your manner, which I must say does not seem intended to propitiate, induces me to think it possible. Now I must caution you that if you abet him once, you abet him for good and all; if you step in between him and me, now, you must step in, Miss Trotwood, for ever. I cannot trifle, or be trifled with. I am here, for the first and last time, to take him away. Is he ready to go? If he is not—and you tell me he is not; on any pretence; it is indifferent to me what—my doors are shut against him henceforth, and yours, I take it for granted, are open to him.’
To this address, my aunt had listened with the closest attention, sitting perfectly upright, with her hands folded on one knee, and looking grimly on the speaker. When he had finished, she turned her eyes so as to command Miss Murdstone, without otherwise disturbing her attitude, and said:
‘Well, ma’am, have YOU got anything to remark?’
‘Indeed, Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘all that I could say has been so well said by my brother, and all that I know to be the fact has been so plainly stated by him, that I have nothing to add except my thanks for your politeness. For your very great politeness, I am sure,’ said Miss Murdstone; with an irony which no more affected my aunt, than it discomposed the cannon I had slept by at Chatham.
‘And what does the boy say?’ said my aunt. ‘Are you ready to go, David?’
I answered no, and entreated her not to let me go. I said that neither Mr. nor Miss Murdstone had ever liked me, or had ever been kind to me. That they had made my mama, who always loved me dearly, unhappy about me, and that I knew it well, and that Peggotty knew it. I said that I had been more miserable than I thought anybody could believe, who only knew how young I was. And I begged and prayed my aunt—I forget in what terms now, but I remember that they affected me very much then—to befriend and protect me, for my father’s sake.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘what shall I do with this child?’
Mr. Dick considered, hesitated, brightened, and rejoined, ‘Have him measured for a suit of clothes directly.’
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt triumphantly, ‘give me your hand, for your common sense is invaluable.’ Having shaken it with great cordiality, she pulled me towards her and said to Mr. Murdstone:
‘You can go when you like; I’ll take my chance with the boy. If he’s all you say he is, at least I can do as much for him then, as you have done. But I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘Miss Trotwood,’ rejoined Mr. Murdstone, shrugging his shoulders, as he rose, ‘if you were a gentleman—’
‘Bah! Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt. ‘Don’t talk to me!’
‘How exquisitely polite!’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone, rising. ‘Overpowering, really!’
‘Do you think I don’t know,’ said my aunt, turning a deaf ear to the sister, and continuing to address the brother, and to shake her head at him with infinite expression, ‘what kind of life you must have led that poor, unhappy, misdirected baby? Do you think I don’t know what a woeful day it was for the soft little creature when you first came in her way—smirking and making great eyes at her, I’ll be bound, as if you couldn’t say boh! to a goose!’
‘I never heard anything so elegant!’ said Miss Murdstone.
‘Do you think I can’t understand you as well as if I had seen you,’ pursued my aunt, ‘now that I DO see and hear you—which, I tell you candidly, is anything but a pleasure to me? Oh yes, bless us! who so smooth and silky as Mr. Murdstone at first! The poor, benighted innocent had never seen such a man. He was made of sweetness. He worshipped her. He doted on her boy—tenderly doted on him! He was to be another father to him, and they were all to live together in a garden of roses, weren’t they? Ugh! Get along with you, do!’ said my aunt.
‘I never heard anything like this person in my life!’ exclaimed Miss Murdstone.
‘And when you had made sure of the poor little fool,’ said my aunt—‘God forgive me that I should call her so, and she gone where YOU won’t go in a hurry—because you had not done wrong enough to her and hers, you must begin to train her, must you? begin to break her, like a poor caged bird, and wear her deluded life away, in teaching her to sing YOUR notes?’
‘This is either insanity or intoxication,’ said Miss Murdstone, in a perfect agony at not being able to turn the current of my aunt’s address towards herself; ‘and my suspicion is that it’s intoxication.’
Miss Betsey, without taking the least notice of the interruption, continued to address herself to Mr. Murdstone as if there had been no such thing.
‘Mr. Murdstone,’ she said, shaking her finger at him, ‘you were a tyrant to the simple baby, and you broke her heart. She was a loving baby—I know that; I knew it, years before you ever saw her—and through the best part of her weakness you gave her the wounds she died of. There is the truth for your comfort, however you like it. And you and your instruments may make the most of it.’
«Buon Dio, uomo, non c’è motivo di dirlo. Lasciata a lei incondizionatamente! Credo di vedere David Copperfield che guarda avanti a qualsiasi condizione di qualsiasi tipo o genere, anche se gli si presentasse in faccia a bruciapelo! Naturalmente fu lasciata a lei incondizionatamente. Ma quando si risposò - quando fece quel passo più disastroso di sposare te, in breve», disse mia zia, «per essere chiara - non c’era nessuno che parlasse per il ragazzo in quel periodo?»
«La mia defunta moglie amava suo marito, signora», disse il signor Murdstone, «e si fidava di lui ciecamente.»
«La sua defunta moglie, signore, era un bambino davvero poco mondano, molto infelice, molto sfortunato», rispose mia zia, scuotendo la testa verso di lui. «Ecco com’era. E ora, cosa ha da dire dopo?»
«Nient’altro, Miss Trotwood», rispose. «Sono qui per riportare David indietro, per riportarlo indietro incondizionatamente, per disporre di lui come ritengo opportuno, e per trattarlo come ritengo giusto. Non sono qui per fare alcuna promessa, o dare alcuna garanzia a chicchessia. Potreste avere qualche idea, Miss Trotwood, di aiutarlo nella sua fuga, e nelle sue lamentele a voi. Il vostro modo di fare, che devo dire non sembra inteso a propiziarsi, mi induce a pensare che sia possibile. Ora devo avvertirvi che se lo aiutate una volta, lo aiutate per sempre e per tutto; se vi mettete in mezzo tra lui e me, ora, dovete mettervi, Miss Trotwood, per sempre. Non posso scherzare, né essere preso in giro. Sono qui, per la prima e ultima volta, per portarlo via. È pronto a partire? Se non lo è—e voi mi dite che non lo è; per qualsiasi pretesto; mi è indifferente cosa—le mie porte sono chiuse a lui d’ora in poi, e le vostre, presumo, sono aperte a lui.»
A questo discorso, mia zia aveva ascoltato con la più grande attenzione, seduta perfettamente dritta, con le mani incrociate su un ginocchio, e guardando con aria severa l’oratore. Quando ebbe finito, girò gli occhi in modo da poter controllare la signorina Murdstone, senza altrimenti cambiare la sua posizione, e disse:
«Bene, signora, ha qualcosa da osservare?»
«In effetti, Miss Trotwood», disse Miss Murdstone, «tutto ciò che avrei potuto dire è stato detto così bene da mio fratello, e tutto ciò che so essere vero è stato da lui esposto così chiaramente, che non ho nulla da aggiungere se non i miei ringraziamenti per la sua cortesia. Per la sua grande cortesia, ne sono certa», disse Miss Murdstone; con un’ironia che non influenzò minimamente mia zia, così come non avrebbe turbato il cannone accanto al quale avevo dormito a Chatham.
E cosa dice il ragazzo? disse mia zia. Sei pronto a partire, David?
Risposi di no e la supplicai di non lasciarmi andare. Dissi che né il signor Murdstone né la signorina Murdstone mi avevano mai voluto bene, né erano mai stati gentili con me. Che avevano reso infelice mia madre, che mi aveva sempre amato teneramente, a causa mia, e che lo sapevo benissimo, e che anche Peggotty lo sapeva. Dissi che ero stato più infelice di quanto credessi che qualcuno potesse credere, che sapeva solo quanto fossi giovane. E supplicai e pregai mia zia - dimentico ora con quali parole, ma ricordo che allora mi commossero molto - di volermi bene e di proteggermi, per amore di mio padre.
«Mr. Dick», disse mia zia, «che cosa farò di questo bambino?»
Mr. Dick rifletté, esitò, si illuminò e replicò: «Fatelo misurare subito per un completo.»
«Signor Dick», disse mia zia trionfalmente, «datemi la mano, perché il vostro buon senso è inestimabile». Dopo averla stretta con grande cordialità, mi tirò verso di sé e disse al signor Murdstone:
«Potete andarvene quando volete; io mi prenderò la responsabilità del ragazzo. Se è davvero come dite, almeno potrò fare per lui quanto avete fatto voi. Ma non ci credo neanche per un momento.»
«Signorina Trotwood», riprese il signor Murdstone, alzandosi e stringendosi nelle spalle, «se lei fosse un gentiluomo, »
“Ah! Sciocchezze!” disse mia zia. “Non parlarmi!”
“Che squisita cortesia!” esclamò Miss Murdstone, alzandosi. “Opprimente, davvero!”
«Pensate che io non sappia», disse mia zia, voltando le spalle alla sorella e continuando a rivolgersi al fratello, scuotendo la testa verso di lui con infinita espressione, «che genere di vita abbiate condotto quella povera, infelice, sfortunata creatura? Pensate che io non sappia che giorno di dolore fu per quella tenera creatura quando per la prima volta vi trovaste sulla sua strada - facendole smorfie e facendole grandi occhi, ne scommetto, come se non foste capace di dire boh! a un’oca!»
«Non ho mai sentito niente di così elegante!» disse la signorina Murdstone.
«Pensi che non possa capirti bene come se ti avessi visto», continuò mia zia, «ora che ti vedo e ti sento - il che, te lo dico francamente, è tutt’altro che un piacere per me? Oh sì, benedetti noi! chi era così liscio e setoso come il signor Murdstone all’inizio! La povera, ingenua innocente non aveva mai visto un uomo del genere. Era fatto di dolcezza. La adorava. Era affezionato al suo ragazzo - teneramente affezionato a lui! Doveva essere un altro padre per lui, e tutti dovevano vivere insieme in un giardino di rose, non è vero? Ugh! Vattene, per favore!» disse mia zia.
«Non ho mai sentito niente di simile a questa persona in tutta la mia vita!» esclamò Miss Murdstone.
«E quando avete avuto la certezza della povera piccola sciocca», disse mia zia, «Dio mi perdoni di chiamarla così, e lei che se n’è andata dove VOI non andrete di fretta — perché non le avete fatto abbastanza male a lei e ai suoi, dovete cominciare a educarla, vero? cominciare a domarla, come un povero uccello in gabbia, e consumare la sua illusa vita, insegnandole a cantare LE VOSTRE note?»
«Questo è o follia o ebbrezza», disse la signorina Murdstone, in preda a una perfetta agonia per non riuscire a deviare il corso del discorso di mia zia verso di sé; «e il mio sospetto è che sia ebbrezza.»
La signorina Betsey, senza fare il minimo caso all’interruzione, continuò a rivolgersi al signor Murdstone come se nulla fosse accaduto.
«Signor Murdstone», disse, agitando il dito verso di lui, «è stato un tiranno con la povera bambina, e le ha spezzato il cuore. Era una bambina affettuosa - lo so, lo sapevo da anni prima che lei l’avesse mai vista - e per gran parte della sua debolezza le ha inflitto le ferite di cui è morta. Ecco la verità per il suo conforto, qualunque cosa ne pensi. E lei e i suoi strumenti potete farne il massimo.»
‘Allow me to inquire, Miss Trotwood,’ interposed Miss Murdstone, ‘whom you are pleased to call, in a choice of words in which I am not experienced, my brother’s instruments?’
‘It was clear enough, as I have told you, years before YOU ever saw her—and why, in the mysterious dispensations of Providence, you ever did see her, is more than humanity can comprehend—it was clear enough that the poor soft little thing would marry somebody, at some time or other; but I did hope it wouldn’t have been as bad as it has turned out. That was the time, Mr. Murdstone, when she gave birth to her boy here,’ said my aunt; ‘to the poor child you sometimes tormented her through afterwards, which is a disagreeable remembrance and makes the sight of him odious now. Aye, aye! you needn’t wince!’ said my aunt. ‘I know it’s true without that.’
He had stood by the door, all this while, observant of her with a smile upon his face, though his black eyebrows were heavily contracted. I remarked now, that, though the smile was on his face still, his colour had gone in a moment, and he seemed to breathe as if he had been running.
‘Good day, sir,’ said my aunt, ‘and good-bye! Good day to you, too, ma’am,’ said my aunt, turning suddenly upon his sister. ‘Let me see you ride a donkey over my green again, and as sure as you have a head upon your shoulders, I’ll knock your bonnet off, and tread upon it!’
It would require a painter, and no common painter too, to depict my aunt’s face as she delivered herself of this very unexpected sentiment, and Miss Murdstone’s face as she heard it. But the manner of the speech, no less than the matter, was so fiery, that Miss Murdstone, without a word in answer, discreetly put her arm through her brother’s, and walked haughtily out of the cottage; my aunt remaining in the window looking after them; prepared, I have no doubt, in case of the donkey’s reappearance, to carry her threat into instant execution.
No attempt at defiance being made, however, her face gradually relaxed, and became so pleasant, that I was emboldened to kiss and thank her; which I did with great heartiness, and with both my arms clasped round her neck. I then shook hands with Mr. Dick, who shook hands with me a great many times, and hailed this happy close of the proceedings with repeated bursts of laughter.
‘You’ll consider yourself guardian, jointly with me, of this child, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt.
‘I shall be delighted,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘to be the guardian of David’s son.’
‘Very good,’ returned my aunt, ‘that’s settled. I have been thinking, do you know, Mr. Dick, that I might call him Trotwood?’
‘Certainly, certainly. Call him Trotwood, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son’s Trotwood.’
‘Trotwood Copperfield, you mean,’ returned my aunt.
‘Yes, to be sure. Yes. Trotwood Copperfield,’ said Mr. Dick, a little abashed.
My aunt took so kindly to the notion, that some ready-made clothes, which were purchased for me that afternoon, were marked ‘Trotwood Copperfield’, in her own handwriting, and in indelible marking-ink, before I put them on; and it was settled that all the other clothes which were ordered to be made for me (a complete outfit was bespoke that afternoon) should be marked in the same way.
Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me. Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt, for many days, like one in a dream. I never thought that I had a curious couple of guardians, in my aunt and Mr. Dick. I never thought of anything about myself, distinctly. The two things clearest in my mind were, that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life—which seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby’s. No one has ever raised that curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.
«Mi permetta di chiedere, Miss Trotwood», intervenne Miss Murdstone, «chi lei si compiace di chiamare, con un’espressione che non mi è familiare, gli strumenti di mio fratello?»
«Era abbastanza chiaro, come vi ho detto, anni prima che VOI l’aveste mai vista - e perché, nelle misteriose disposizioni della Provvidenza, voi l’aveste mai vista, è più di quanto l’umanità possa comprendere - era abbastanza chiaro che la povera piccola cosa tenera avrebbe sposato qualcuno, a un tempo o l’altro; ma speravo speravo che non sarebbe stato così brutto come è risultato. Quello era il tempo, signor Murdstone, quando partorì il suo bambino qui», disse mia zia; «al povero bambino che talvolta tormentavate dopo, il che è un ricordo spiacevole e rende la vista di lui odiosa ora. Sì, sì! non c’è bisogno che vi ritraggiate!» disse mia zia. «So che è vero senza bisogno di questo.»
Egli era rimasto in piedi accanto alla porta, tutto quel tempo, osservandola con un sorriso sul volto, sebbene le sue sopracciglia nere fossero fortemente aggrottate. Ora notai che, sebbene il sorriso fosse ancora sul suo volto, il suo colorito era scomparso in un attimo, e sembrava respirare come se avesse corso.
«Buon giorno, signore», disse mia zia, «e arrivederci! Buon giorno anche a lei, signora», disse mia zia, voltandosi improvvisamente verso sua sorella. «Se mi capita di vederti cavalcare un asino sul mio prato, e tanto sicuro quanto hai una testa sulle spalle, ti strapperò il cappello e lo calpesterò!»
Avrebbe bisogno di un pittore, e non di un pittore qualunque, per ritrarre il volto di mia zia mentre pronunciava questo sentimento così inaspettato, e il volto della signorina Murdstone mentre lo ascoltava. Ma il modo in cui fu detto, non meno che il contenuto, fu così infuocato che la signorina Murdstone, senza una parola in risposta, mise discretamente il suo braccio in quello di suo fratello e uscì con aria altezzosa dalla casetta; mia zia rimase alla finestra a guardarli andar via; pronta, ne sono senza dubbio, nel caso della ricomparsa del asino, a portare la sua minaccia a immediata esecuzione.
Non essendo stata fatta alcuna tentativo di resistenza, però, il suo viso si rilassò gradualmente e divenne così piacevole che mi sentii incoraggiato a baciarla e ringraziarla; cosa che feci con grande cordialità, stringendo entrambe le mie braccia attorno al suo collo. Poi strinsi la mano a Mr. Dick, che mi strinse la mano molte volte, e salutò questa felice conclusione della faccenda con ripetuti scoppi di risa.
«Vi considererete il tutore, insieme a me, di questo bambino, Mr. Dick», disse mia zia.
“Sarò felice”, disse Mr. Dick, “di essere il tutore del figlio di David.”
«Molto bene», rispose mia zia, «è deciso. Ho pensato, sa, signor Dick, che potrei chiamarlo Trotwood?»
«Certamente, certamente. Chiamatelo Trotwood, certamente», disse il signor Dick. «Trotwood è il figlio di David.»
«Trotwood Copperfield, volete dire», rispose mia zia.
«Sì, certo. Sì. Trotwood Copperfield», disse il signor Dick, un po’ imbarazzato.
Mia zia accolse così bene l’idea che alcuni vestiti pronti, che furono acquistati per me quel pomeriggio, furono contrassegnati con “Trotwood Copperfield”, di suo pugno, e con inchiostro indelebile, prima che li indossassi; e fu deciso che tutti gli altri vestiti che furono ordinati per me (un completo guardaroba fu commissionato quel pomeriggio) sarebbero stati contrassegnati allo stesso modo.
Così ho iniziato la mia nuova vita, con un nuovo nome e tutto nuovo intorno a me. Ora che lo stato di dubbio era finito, mi sentivo, per molti giorni, come se fossi in sogno. Non pensavo mai di avere una coppia di tutori curiosa, in mia zia e Mr. Dick. Non pensavo mai a nulla di me stesso, distintamente. Le due cose più chiare nella mia mente erano che una lontananza era calata sulla vecchia vita di Blunderstone, che sembrava giacere nella foschia di una distanza immensa, e che una tenda era caduta per sempre sulla mia vita a Murdstone e Grinby. Da allora nessuno ha mai sollevato quella tenda. L’ho alzata io stesso per un momento, anche in questo racconto, con una mano riluttante, e l’ho lasciata cadere volentieri. Il ricordo di quella vita è carico di tanta sofferenza per me, di tanta sofferenza mentale e mancanza di speranza, che non ho mai avuto il coraggio di esaminare quanto tempo fossi stato condannato a viverla. Non so se sia durata un anno, di più o di meno. So solo che è stata, e ha smesso di essere; e che l’ho scritta, e lì la lascio.
CHAPTER 15. I MAKE ANOTHER BEGINNING
Mr. Dick and I soon became the best of friends, and very often, when his day’s work was done, went out together to fly the great kite. Every day of his life he had a long sitting at the Memorial, which never made the least progress, however hard he laboured, for King Charles the First always strayed into it, sooner or later, and then it was thrown aside, and another one begun. The patience and hope with which he bore these perpetual disappointments, the mild perception he had that there was something wrong about King Charles the First, the feeble efforts he made to keep him out, and the certainty with which he came in, and tumbled the Memorial out of all shape, made a deep impression on me. What Mr. Dick supposed would come of the Memorial, if it were completed; where he thought it was to go, or what he thought it was to do; he knew no more than anybody else, I believe. Nor was it at all necessary that he should trouble himself with such questions, for if anything were certain under the sun, it was certain that the Memorial never would be finished. It was quite an affecting sight, I used to think, to see him with the kite when it was up a great height in the air. What he had told me, in his room, about his belief in its disseminating the statements pasted on it, which were nothing but old leaves of abortive Memorials, might have been a fancy with him sometimes; but not when he was out, looking up at the kite in the sky, and feeling it pull and tug at his hand. He never looked so serene as he did then. I used to fancy, as I sat by him of an evening, on a green slope, and saw him watch the kite high in the quiet air, that it lifted his mind out of its confusion, and bore it (such was my boyish thought) into the skies. As he wound the string in and it came lower and lower down out of the beautiful light, until it fluttered to the ground, and lay there like a dead thing, he seemed to wake gradually out of a dream; and I remember to have seen him take it up, and look about him in a lost way, as if they had both come down together, so that I pitied him with all my heart.
While I advanced in friendship and intimacy with Mr. Dick, I did not go backward in the favour of his staunch friend, my aunt. She took so kindly to me, that, in the course of a few weeks, she shortened my adopted name of Trotwood into Trot; and even encouraged me to hope, that if I went on as I had begun, I might take equal rank in her affections with my sister Betsey Trotwood.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt one evening, when the backgammon-board was placed as usual for herself and Mr. Dick, ‘we must not forget your education.’
This was my only subject of anxiety, and I felt quite delighted by her referring to it.
‘Should you like to go to school at Canterbury?’ said my aunt.
I replied that I should like it very much, as it was so near her.
‘Good,’ said my aunt. ‘Should you like to go tomorrow?’
Being already no stranger to the general rapidity of my aunt’s evolutions, I was not surprised by the suddenness of the proposal, and said: ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ said my aunt again. ‘Janet, hire the grey pony and chaise tomorrow morning at ten o’clock, and pack up Master Trotwood’s clothes tonight.’
I was greatly elated by these orders; but my heart smote me for my selfishness, when I witnessed their effect on Mr. Dick, who was so low-spirited at the prospect of our separation, and played so ill in consequence, that my aunt, after giving him several admonitory raps on the knuckles with her dice-box, shut up the board, and declined to play with him any more. But, on hearing from my aunt that I should sometimes come over on a Saturday, and that he could sometimes come and see me on a Wednesday, he revived; and vowed to make another kite for those occasions, of proportions greatly surpassing the present one. In the morning he was downhearted again, and would have sustained himself by giving me all the money he had in his possession, gold and silver too, if my aunt had not interposed, and limited the gift to five shillings, which, at his earnest petition, were afterwards increased to ten. We parted at the garden-gate in a most affectionate manner, and Mr. Dick did not go into the house until my aunt had driven me out of sight of it.
My aunt, who was perfectly indifferent to public opinion, drove the grey pony through Dover in a masterly manner; sitting high and stiff like a state coachman, keeping a steady eye upon him wherever he went, and making a point of not letting him have his own way in any respect. When we came into the country road, she permitted him to relax a little, however; and looking at me down in a valley of cushion by her side, asked me whether I was happy?
‘Very happy indeed, thank you, aunt,’ I said.
She was much gratified; and both her hands being occupied, patted me on the head with her whip.
‘Is it a large school, aunt?’ I asked.
‘Why, I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We are going to Mr. Wickfield’s first.’
‘Does he keep a school?’ I asked.
‘No, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He keeps an office.’
I asked for no more information about Mr. Wickfield, as she offered none, and we conversed on other subjects until we came to Canterbury, where, as it was market-day, my aunt had a great opportunity of insinuating the grey pony among carts, baskets, vegetables, and huckster’s goods. The hair-breadth turns and twists we made, drew down upon us a variety of speeches from the people standing about, which were not always complimentary; but my aunt drove on with perfect indifference, and I dare say would have taken her own way with as much coolness through an enemy’s country.
At length we stopped before a very old house bulging out over the road; a house with long low lattice-windows bulging out still farther, and beams with carved heads on the ends bulging out too, so that I fancied the whole house was leaning forward, trying to see who was passing on the narrow pavement below. It was quite spotless in its cleanliness. The old-fashioned brass knocker on the low arched door, ornamented with carved garlands of fruit and flowers, twinkled like a star; the two stone steps descending to the door were as white as if they had been covered with fair linen; and all the angles and corners, and carvings and mouldings, and quaint little panes of glass, and quainter little windows, though as old as the hills, were as pure as any snow that ever fell upon the hills.
CAPITOLO 15. FACCIO UN ALTRO INIZIO
Io e il signor Dick diventammo presto i migliori amici, e spesso, quando aveva finito il suo lavoro giornaliero, uscivamo insieme a far volare l’enorme aquilone. Ogni giorno della sua vita passava lunghe ore a lavorare al memoriale, che non faceva mai il minimo progresso, per quanto si affannasse, perché re Carlo Primo vi si insinuava sempre, prima o poi, e allora il memoriale veniva messo da parte e se ne iniziava un altro. La pazienza e la speranza con cui sopportava queste delusioni continue, la vaga consapevolezza che c’era qualcosa di sbagliato in re Carlo Primo, i deboli tentativi che faceva per tenerlo fuori e la certezza che poi entrava sempre, scompigliando il memoriale, mi fecero una profonda impressione. Cosa il signor Dick pensasse che sarebbe successo al memoriale, se mai fosse stato completato; dove pensasse che sarebbe andato a finire, o cosa pensasse che avrebbe fatto; non lo sapeva più di chiunque altro, credo. E nemmeno era affatto necessario che si preoccupasse di tali questioni, perché se c’era una cosa certa sotto il sole, era che il memoriale non sarebbe mai stato finito. Era una vista davvero commovente, mi pareva, vederlo con l’aquilone quando era già molto in alto. Quello che mi aveva raccontato nella sua stanza, sulla sua convinzione che diffondesse le dichiarazioni incollate su di esso, che non erano altro che vecchie foglie di memorie abortite, poteva essere stato un suo capriccio, a volte; ma non quando era fuori, a guardare l’aquilone in cielo, sentendolo tirare e strattonare la sua mano. Non aveva mai un’aria così serena come in quei momenti. Mi piaceva immaginare, mentre sedevo accanto a lui la sera, su un pendio erboso, e lo vedevo osservare l’aquilone alto nel cielo tranquillo, che sollevasse la sua mente dalla confusione e la portasse (così pensavo da ragazzo) in cielo. Mentre avvolgeva la corda e l’aquilone scendeva sempre più in basso dalla luce splendente, finché non sbatteva a terra e giaceva lì come una cosa morta, sembrava svegliarsi gradualmente da un sogno; e ricordo di averlo visto raccoglierlo e guardarsi intorno con aria smarrita, come se fossero scesi insieme, tanto che mi dispiaceva per lui con tutto il cuore.
Mentre avanzavo nell’amicizia e nell’intimità con il signor Dick, non perdevo terreno nei riguardi della sua fedele amica, mia zia. Si mostrò così affettuosa con me che, nel giro di poche settimane, accorciò il mio nome adottivo di Trotwood in Trot; e mi incoraggiò persino a sperare che se fossi andato avanti come avevo iniziato, avrei potuto raggiungere lo stesso rango nei suoi affetti di mia sorella Betsey Trotwood.
«Trot», disse mia zia una sera, quando il tabellone da trictrac era stato preparato come al solito per lei e per il signor Dick, «non dobbiamo dimenticare la tua educazione.»
Questo era l’unico motivo di preoccupazione per me, e mi sentii davvero felice che lei ne parlasse.
«Ti piacerebbe andare a scuola a Canterbury?» disse mia zia.
Risposi che mi sarebbe piaciuto molto, dato che era così vicino a lei.
‘Va bene’, disse mia zia. ‘Ti piacerebbe andare domani?’
Avendo già familiarità con la generale rapidità delle evoluzioni di mia zia, non fui sorpreso dalla repentina proposta e dissi: «Sì».
«Bene», disse di nuovo mia zia. «Janet, noleggia il pony grigio e la carrozza domani mattina alle dieci in punto, e prepara i vestiti del piccolo Trotwood stasera».
Ero grandemente esaltato da questi ordini; ma il mio cuore mi rimproverò per il mio egoismo, quando vidi l’effetto che avevano su Mr. Dick, che era così abbattuto alla prospettiva della nostra separazione, e giocava così male di conseguenza, che mia zia, dopo avergli dato diversi colpetti ammonitivi sulle nocche con la sua scatola dei dadi, chiuse il tabellone e rifiutò di giocare con lui ancora. Ma, sentendo da mia zia che sarei venuto qualche volta di sabato, e che lui poteva venire a trovarmi qualche volta di mercoledì, si rianimò; e promise di fare un altro aquilone per quelle occasioni, di proporzioni molto superiori a quello attuale. La mattina era di nuovo abbattuto, e avrebbe voluto sostenersi regalandomi tutti i soldi che aveva in suo possesso, oro e argento, se mia zia non si fosse interposta, e avesse limitato il regalo a cinque scellini, che, su sua vivace richiesta, furono poi aumentati a dieci. Ci separammo al cancello del giardino nel modo più affettuoso, e Mr. Dick non entrò in casa finché mia zia non mi ebbe portato fuori dalla sua vista.
Mia zia, che era perfettamente indifferente all’opinione pubblica, guidò il pony grigio attraverso Dover in modo magistrale; seduta in alto e rigida come un cocchiere di stato, tenendo d’occhio costantemente il pony ovunque andasse, e facendo un punto d’onore di non lasciargli fare a modo suo in alcun aspetto. Quando arrivammo sulla strada di campagna, tuttavia, gli permise di rilassarsi un po’; e guardandomi giù in una valle di cuscini al suo fianco, mi chiese se fossi felice.
«Molto felice, grazie, zia», dissi.
Era molto compiaciuta; e dato che aveva entrambe le mani occupate, mi diede una pacca sulla testa con la frusta.
«È una scuola grande, zia?» chiesi.
“Non lo so”, disse mia zia, “andremo prima da Mr. Wickfield.
«Tiene una scuola?» chiesi.
‘No, Trot’, disse mia zia, ‘ha uno studio’.
Non chiesi altre informazioni su Mr. Wickfield, dato che non ne offriva, e conversammo di altri argomenti fino a quando non arrivammo a Canterbury, dove, essendo giorno di mercato, mia zia ebbe un’ottima opportunità di insinuare il pony grigio tra carri, cesti, verdure e merci da bancarella. Le svolte e le curve a pelo d’acqua che facemmo, ci attirarono una varietà di commenti da parte delle persone che stavano in giro, che non erano sempre lusinghieri; ma mia zia continuò a guidare con perfetta indifferenza, e sono sicuro che avrebbe preso la sua strada con altrettanta calma anche attraverso il territorio del nemico.
Alla fine ci fermammo davanti a una casa molto vecchia che si protendeva sulla strada; una casa con lunghe finestre basse a graticcio che si protendevano ancora più in là, e travi con teste scolpite alle estremità che si protendevano anch’esse, tanto che mi sembrava che l’intera casa si inclinasse in avanti, cercando di vedere chi stava passando sul pavimento stretto sottostante. Era assolutamente immacolata nella sua pulizia. Il pomello in ottone di vecchio stile sulla bassa porta ad arco, ornato con ghirlande scolpite di frutta e fiori, brillava come una stella; i due gradini di pietra che scendevano alla porta erano bianchi come se fossero stati coperti di biancheria fine; e tutti gli angoli e i cantoni, e le sculture e le modanature, e i piccoli vetri strani, e le finestre più strane ancora, sebbene vecchi come le colline, erano puri come qualsiasi neve che sia mai caduta sulle colline.
When the pony-chaise stopped at the door, and my eyes were intent upon the house, I saw a cadaverous face appear at a small window on the ground floor (in a little round tower that formed one side of the house), and quickly disappear. The low arched door then opened, and the face came out. It was quite as cadaverous as it had looked in the window, though in the grain of it there was that tinge of red which is sometimes to be observed in the skins of red-haired people. It belonged to a red-haired person—a youth of fifteen, as I take it now, but looking much older—whose hair was cropped as close as the closest stubble; who had hardly any eyebrows, and no eyelashes, and eyes of a red-brown, so unsheltered and unshaded, that I remember wondering how he went to sleep. He was high-shouldered and bony; dressed in decent black, with a white wisp of a neckcloth; buttoned up to the throat; and had a long, lank, skeleton hand, which particularly attracted my attention, as he stood at the pony’s head, rubbing his chin with it, and looking up at us in the chaise.
‘Is Mr. Wickfield at home, Uriah Heep?’ said my aunt.
‘Mr. Wickfield’s at home, ma’am,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘if you’ll please to walk in there’—pointing with his long hand to the room he meant.
We got out; and leaving him to hold the pony, went into a long low parlour looking towards the street, from the window of which I caught a glimpse, as I went in, of Uriah Heep breathing into the pony’s nostrils, and immediately covering them with his hand, as if he were putting some spell upon him. Opposite to the tall old chimney-piece were two portraits: one of a gentleman with grey hair (though not by any means an old man) and black eyebrows, who was looking over some papers tied together with red tape; the other, of a lady, with a very placid and sweet expression of face, who was looking at me.
I believe I was turning about in search of Uriah’s picture, when, a door at the farther end of the room opening, a gentleman entered, at sight of whom I turned to the first-mentioned portrait again, to make quite sure that it had not come out of its frame. But it was stationary; and as the gentleman advanced into the light, I saw that he was some years older than when he had had his picture painted.
‘Miss Betsey Trotwood,’ said the gentleman, ‘pray walk in. I was engaged for a moment, but you’ll excuse my being busy. You know my motive. I have but one in life.’
Miss Betsey thanked him, and we went into his room, which was furnished as an office, with books, papers, tin boxes, and so forth. It looked into a garden, and had an iron safe let into the wall; so immediately over the mantelshelf, that I wondered, as I sat down, how the sweeps got round it when they swept the chimney.
‘Well, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield; for I soon found that it was he, and that he was a lawyer, and steward of the estates of a rich gentleman of the county; ‘what wind blows you here? Not an ill wind, I hope?’
‘No,’ replied my aunt. ‘I have not come for any law.’
‘That’s right, ma’am,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘You had better come for anything else.’ His hair was quite white now, though his eyebrows were still black. He had a very agreeable face, and, I thought, was handsome. There was a certain richness in his complexion, which I had been long accustomed, under Peggotty’s tuition, to connect with port wine; and I fancied it was in his voice too, and referred his growing corpulency to the same cause. He was very cleanly dressed, in a blue coat, striped waistcoat, and nankeen trousers; and his fine frilled shirt and cambric neckcloth looked unusually soft and white, reminding my strolling fancy (I call to mind) of the plumage on the breast of a swan.
‘This is my nephew,’ said my aunt.
‘Wasn’t aware you had one, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘My grand-nephew, that is to say,’ observed my aunt.
‘Wasn’t aware you had a grand-nephew, I give you my word,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘I have adopted him,’ said my aunt, with a wave of her hand, importing that his knowledge and his ignorance were all one to her, ‘and I have brought him here, to put to a school where he may be thoroughly well taught, and well treated. Now tell me where that school is, and what it is, and all about it.’
‘Before I can advise you properly,’ said Mr. Wickfield—‘the old question, you know. What’s your motive in this?’
‘Deuce take the man!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘Always fishing for motives, when they’re on the surface! Why, to make the child happy and useful.’
‘It must be a mixed motive, I think,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his head and smiling incredulously.
‘A mixed fiddlestick,’ returned my aunt. ‘You claim to have one plain motive in all you do yourself. You don’t suppose, I hope, that you are the only plain dealer in the world?’
‘Ay, but I have only one motive in life, Miss Trotwood,’ he rejoined, smiling. ‘Other people have dozens, scores, hundreds. I have only one. There’s the difference. However, that’s beside the question. The best school? Whatever the motive, you want the best?’
My aunt nodded assent.
‘At the best we have,’ said Mr. Wickfield, considering, ‘your nephew couldn’t board just now.’
‘But he could board somewhere else, I suppose?’ suggested my aunt.
Mr. Wickfield thought I could. After a little discussion, he proposed to take my aunt to the school, that she might see it and judge for herself; also, to take her, with the same object, to two or three houses where he thought I could be boarded. My aunt embracing the proposal, we were all three going out together, when he stopped and said:
‘Our little friend here might have some motive, perhaps, for objecting to the arrangements. I think we had better leave him behind?’
My aunt seemed disposed to contest the point; but to facilitate matters I said I would gladly remain behind, if they pleased; and returned into Mr. Wickfield’s office, where I sat down again, in the chair I had first occupied, to await their return.
Quando la carrozza a cavalli si fermò davanti alla porta e i miei occhi erano fissi sulla casa, vidi un volto cadaverico apparire a una piccola finestra al piano terra (in una piccola torre rotonda che formava un lato della casa) e scomparire rapidamente. La bassa porta ad arco si aprì allora, e il volto uscì. Era altrettanto cadaverico come appariva nella finestra, sebbene in esso vi fosse quella sfumatura di rosso che si può talvolta osservare nelle pelli delle persone dai capelli rossi. Apparteneva a una persona dai capelli rossi - un ragazzo di quindici anni, come ora mi sembra, ma dall’aspetto molto più vecchio - i cui capelli erano tagliati cortissimi, quasi a zero; che aveva a malapena le sopracciglia, e nessuna ciglia, e occhi di un rosso-marrone, così esposti e privi di protezione, che ricordo di avermi chiesto come facesse ad addormentarsi. Era spalluto e ossuto; vestito di decente nero, con un bianco panno al collo; abbottonato fino al collo; e aveva una lunga, magra, scheletrica mano, che attirava particolarmente la mia attenzione, mentre stava accanto alla testa del pony, strofinandosi il mento con essa e guardandoci in su nella carrozza.
«È il signor Wickfield a casa, Uriah Heep?» disse mia zia.
«Il signor Wickfield è a casa, signora», disse Uriah Heep, «se vuole avere la gentilezza di entrare lì»—indicando con la sua lunga mano la stanza che intendeva.
Scesimo; e lasciandolo a tenere il pony, entrammo in un lungo salotto basso che dava sulla strada, e dalla finestra del quale, mentre entravo, intravidi Uriah Heep che soffiava nelle narici del pony, e subito le copriva con la mano, come se stesse mettendo un incantesimo su di lui. Di fronte al grande vecchio camino c’erano due ritratti: uno di un gentiluomo dai capelli grigi (anche se per nulla un uomo anziano) e sopracciglia nere, che stava esaminando alcuni documenti legati con un nastro rosso; l’altro, di una signora, con un’espressione del viso molto placida e dolce, che mi stava guardando.
Credo che stessi girando per cercare il ritratto di Uriah, quando, aprendosi una porta all’estremità opposta della stanza, entrò un signore, alla vista del quale mi voltai di nuovo verso il primo ritratto, per assicurarmi che non fosse uscito dalla cornice. Ma era fermo; e mentre il signore si avvicinava alla luce, vidi che era invecchiato di qualche anno da quando si era fatto fare il ritratto.
«Signorina Betsey Trotwood,» disse il signore, «la prego, entri. Ero occupato per un momento, ma mi scuserà per essere stato impegnato. Conosce il mio motivo. Ne ho solo uno nella vita.»
La signorina Betsey lo ringraziò, e noi entrammo nella sua stanza, che era arredata come uno studio, con libri, carte, scatole di latta, e così via. Dava su un giardino, e aveva una cassaforte di ferro incastonata nel muro; così immediatamente sopra il caminetto, che mi chiesi, mentre mi sedevo, come facessero i spazzacamini a girarci intorno quando spazzavano il camino.
«Bene, Miss Trotwood», disse il signor Wickfield; perché presto scoprii che era lui, e che era un avvocato, e amministratore delle proprietà di un ricco gentiluomo della contea; «che vento ti porta qui? Non un vento cattivo, spero?»
‘No’, rispose mia zia, ‘non sono venuta per questioni legali’.
«Esatto, signora», disse il signor Wickfield. «È meglio che venga lei per qualsiasi altra cosa.» I suoi capelli erano ormai completamente bianchi, sebbene le sopracciglia fossero ancora nere. Aveva un viso molto piacevole e, secondo me, era bello. C’era una certa ricchezza nel suo colorito, che ero abituato da tempo, grazie all’insegnamento di Peggotty, a collegare al vino da Porto; e immaginavo che fosse anche nella sua voce, e attribuivo la sua crescente corpulenza alla stessa causa. Era vestito con grande pulizia, con un abito blu, un gilet a righe e pantaloni di nankeen; e la sua camicia con pizzi e il fazzoletto da collo di batista sembravano insolitamente morbidi e bianchi, ricordandomi, con la mia fantasia vagabonda (me lo ricordo), il piumaggio sul petto di un cigno.
«Questo è mio nipote», disse mia zia.
«Non sapevo che ne avesse una, Miss Trotwood», disse il signor Wickfield.
«Mio pronipote, voglio dire», osservò mia zia.
«Non sapevo che avesse un pronipote, glielo assicuro», disse il signor Wickfield.
«L’ho adottato», disse mia zia, con un gesto della mano che significava che la sua conoscenza e la sua ignoranza erano per lei la stessa cosa, «e l’ho portato qui per mandarlo a una scuola dove possa essere istruito a fondo e ben trattato. Ora ditemi dove si trova questa scuola, com’è e tutto il resto.»
«Prima di poterla consigliare adeguatamente», disse il signor Wickfield, «la vecchia domanda, lo sa. Qual è il suo movente in tutto questo?»
«Dannazione all’uomo!» esclamò mia zia. «Sempre a cercare motivi, quando sono in superficie! Per esempio, per rendere il bambino felice e utile.»
«Deve essere un motivo misto, credo», disse il signor Wickfield, scuotendo la testa e sorridendo incredulo.
«Una bacchetta magica mista», rispose mia zia. «Tu pretendi di avere un unico motivo chiaro in tutto ciò che fai. Non suppongo, spero, che tu sia l’unico commerciante onesto del mondo?»
«Sì, ma ho un solo motivo nella vita, Miss Trotwood», replicò, sorridendo. «Altri ne hanno a dozzine, a decine, a centinaia. Io ne ho uno solo. Ecco la differenza. Comunque, questo è fuori questione. La migliore scuola? Qualunque sia il motivo, vuole la migliore?»
Mia zia annuì in segno di assenso.
«Al massimo abbiamo», disse il signor Wickfield, riflettendo, «il suo nipote non potrebbe alloggiare proprio ora».
«Ma potrebbe alloggiare da qualche altra parte, immagino?» suggerì mia zia.
Il signor Wickfield pensava che potessi. Dopo una breve discussione, propose di portare mia zia a scuola, affinché potesse vederla e giudicare da sé; inoltre, di portarla, con lo stesso scopo, in due o tre case dove pensava che potessi essere alloggiato. Mia zia accettò la proposta, e tutti e tre stavamo uscendo insieme, quando si fermò e disse:
«Il nostro piccolo amico qui potrebbe avere qualche motivo, forse, per obiettare agli accordi. Penso che sia meglio lasciarlo indietro?»
La mia zia sembrava intenzionata a contestare il punto; ma per facilitare le cose dissi che sarei stato ben felice di rimanere indietro, se lo desideravano; e tornai nell’ufficio del signor Wickfield, dove mi sedetti di nuovo, sulla sedia che avevo occupato per la prima volta, in attesa del loro ritorno.
It so happened that this chair was opposite a narrow passage, which ended in the little circular room where I had seen Uriah Heep’s pale face looking out of the window. Uriah, having taken the pony to a neighbouring stable, was at work at a desk in this room, which had a brass frame on the top to hang paper upon, and on which the writing he was making a copy of was then hanging. Though his face was towards me, I thought, for some time, the writing being between us, that he could not see me; but looking that way more attentively, it made me uncomfortable to observe that, every now and then, his sleepless eyes would come below the writing, like two red suns, and stealthily stare at me for I dare say a whole minute at a time, during which his pen went, or pretended to go, as cleverly as ever. I made several attempts to get out of their way—such as standing on a chair to look at a map on the other side of the room, and poring over the columns of a Kentish newspaper—but they always attracted me back again; and whenever I looked towards those two red suns, I was sure to find them, either just rising or just setting.
At length, much to my relief, my aunt and Mr. Wickfield came back, after a pretty long absence. They were not so successful as I could have wished; for though the advantages of the school were undeniable, my aunt had not approved of any of the boarding-houses proposed for me.
‘It’s very unfortunate,’ said my aunt. ‘I don’t know what to do, Trot.’
‘It does happen unfortunately,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘But I’ll tell you what you can do, Miss Trotwood.’
‘What’s that?’ inquired my aunt.
‘Leave your nephew here, for the present. He’s a quiet fellow. He won’t disturb me at all. It’s a capital house for study. As quiet as a monastery, and almost as roomy. Leave him here.’
My aunt evidently liked the offer, though she was delicate of accepting it. So did I. ‘Come, Miss Trotwood,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘This is the way out of the difficulty. It’s only a temporary arrangement, you know. If it don’t act well, or don’t quite accord with our mutual convenience, he can easily go to the right-about. There will be time to find some better place for him in the meanwhile. You had better determine to leave him here for the present!’
‘I am very much obliged to you,’ said my aunt; ‘and so is he, I see; but—’
‘Come! I know what you mean,’ cried Mr. Wickfield. ‘You shall not be oppressed by the receipt of favours, Miss Trotwood. You may pay for him, if you like. We won’t be hard about terms, but you shall pay if you will.’
‘On that understanding,’ said my aunt, ‘though it doesn’t lessen the real obligation, I shall be very glad to leave him.’
‘Then come and see my little housekeeper,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
We accordingly went up a wonderful old staircase; with a balustrade so broad that we might have gone up that, almost as easily; and into a shady old drawing-room, lighted by some three or four of the quaint windows I had looked up at from the street: which had old oak seats in them, that seemed to have come of the same trees as the shining oak floor, and the great beams in the ceiling. It was a prettily furnished room, with a piano and some lively furniture in red and green, and some flowers. It seemed to be all old nooks and corners; and in every nook and corner there was some queer little table, or cupboard, or bookcase, or seat, or something or other, that made me think there was not such another good corner in the room; until I looked at the next one, and found it equal to it, if not better. On everything there was the same air of retirement and cleanliness that marked the house outside.
Mr. Wickfield tapped at a door in a corner of the panelled wall, and a girl of about my own age came quickly out and kissed him. On her face, I saw immediately the placid and sweet expression of the lady whose picture had looked at me downstairs. It seemed to my imagination as if the portrait had grown womanly, and the original remained a child. Although her face was quite bright and happy, there was a tranquillity about it, and about her—a quiet, good, calm spirit—that I never have forgotten; that I shall never forget. This was his little housekeeper, his daughter Agnes, Mr. Wickfield said. When I heard how he said it, and saw how he held her hand, I guessed what the one motive of his life was.
She had a little basket-trifle hanging at her side, with keys in it; and she looked as staid and as discreet a housekeeper as the old house could have. She listened to her father as he told her about me, with a pleasant face; and when he had concluded, proposed to my aunt that we should go upstairs and see my room. We all went together, she before us: and a glorious old room it was, with more oak beams, and diamond panes; and the broad balustrade going all the way up to it.
I cannot call to mind where or when, in my childhood, I had seen a stained glass window in a church. Nor do I recollect its subject. But I know that when I saw her turn round, in the grave light of the old staircase, and wait for us, above, I thought of that window; and I associated something of its tranquil brightness with Agnes Wickfield ever afterwards.
My aunt was as happy as I was, in the arrangement made for me; and we went down to the drawing-room again, well pleased and gratified. As she would not hear of staying to dinner, lest she should by any chance fail to arrive at home with the grey pony before dark; and as I apprehend Mr. Wickfield knew her too well to argue any point with her; some lunch was provided for her there, and Agnes went back to her governess, and Mr. Wickfield to his office. So we were left to take leave of one another without any restraint.
She told me that everything would be arranged for me by Mr. Wickfield, and that I should want for nothing, and gave me the kindest words and the best advice.
Per un caso, questa sedia era di fronte a un passaggio stretto, che terminava nella piccola stanza circolare dove avevo visto il pallido viso di Uriah Heep che sbucava dalla finestra. Uriah, dopo aver portato il pony in una scuderia vicina, stava lavorando a una scrivania in questa stanza, che aveva un telaio di ottone in cima per appendere la carta, e su cui era appesa la scrittura di cui stava facendo una copia. Anche se il suo viso era rivolto verso di me, pensavo, per qualche tempo, che la scrittura fosse tra noi, che non potesse vedermi; ma guardando in quella direzione più attentamente, mi sentivo a disagio nell’osservare che, di tanto in tanto, i suoi occhi insonni scendevano sotto la scrittura, come due soli rossi, e mi fissavano furtivamente per oserei dire un intero minuto alla volta, durante il quale la sua penna andava, o fingeva di andare, abilmente come sempre. Feci diversi tentativi per uscire dal loro cammino—come stare su una sedia per guardare una mappa dall’altra parte della stanza, e studiare le colonne di un giornale del Kent—ma mi attiravano sempre di nuovo; e ogni volta che guardavo verso quei due sol rossi, ero sicuro di trovarli, o appena sorgenti o appena tramontanti.
Finalmente, con mio grande sollievo, mia zia e il signor Wickfield tornarono, dopo un’assenza piuttosto lunga. Non avevano avuto il successo che avrei desiderato; poiché, sebbene i vantaggi della scuola fossero innegabili, mia zia non aveva approvato nessuna delle pensioni che le erano state proposte per me.
“È molto spiacevole”, disse mia zia. “Non so cosa fare, Trot.”
«Purtroppo succede», disse il signor Wickfield. «Ma le dirò cosa può fare, signorina Trotwood.»
«Che cos’è?» domandò la zia.
«Lasci suo nipote qui, per il momento. È un ragazzo tranquillo. Non mi disturberà affatto. È una casa ideale per lo studio. Tranquilla come un monastero, e quasi altrettanto spaziosa. Lasci che resti qui.»
Mia zia evidentemente apprezzava l’offerta, anche se era riluttante ad accettarla. Anche io la trovavo interessante. «Su, Miss Trotwood», disse il signor Wickfield. «Questa è la soluzione al problema. È solo un accordo temporaneo, sapete. Se non funziona bene, o non si adatta perfettamente alla nostra reciproca convenienza, lui può facilmente cambiare idea. Ci sarà tempo per trovare un posto migliore per lui nel frattempo. È meglio decidere di lasciarlo qui per il momento!»
«Sono molto obbligata», disse mia zia; «e lo è anche lui, vedo; ma, »
«Ebbene! So cosa intendete», esclamò il signor Wickfield. «Non lascerò che sia oppressa dal ricevere favori, Miss Trotwood. Potete pagare per lui, se volete. Non saremo duri sulle condizioni, ma pagherete se lo desiderate.»
«Con questo accordo», disse mia zia, «anche se ciò non riduce l’obbligo reale, sarò molto felice di lasciarlo andare.»
«Allora venga a vedere la mia piccola governante», disse il signor Wickfield.
Salimmo quindi su una meravigliosa vecchia scala; con una balaustra così larga che avremmo potuto salire su quella, quasi con la stessa facilità; e in un ombroso vecchio salotto, illuminato da tre o quattro delle strane finestre che avevo guardato dalla strada: che avevano vecchi sedili in quercia, che sembravano essere venuti dagli stessi alberi come il lucido pavimento in quercia, e i grandi travetti nel soffitto. Era una stanza arredata con gusto, con un pianoforte e alcuni mobili vivaci in rosso e verde, e alcuni fiori. Sembrava essere tutta vecchi angoli e recessi; e in ogni angolo e recesso c’era qualche strano tavolino, o armadio, o libreria, o sedile, o qualcos’altro, che mi faceva pensare che non ci fosse un altro angolo così buono nella stanza; finché non guardavo il successivo, e trovavo che era uguale a quello, se non migliore. Su tutto c’era lo stesso aspetto di ritiro e pulizia che contraddistingueva la casa all’esterno.
Il signor Wickfield bussò a una porta in un angolo della parete a pannelli, e una ragazza della mia età circa uscì rapidamente e lo baciò. Sul suo viso, vidi immediatamente l’espressione placida e dolce della signora il cui ritratto mi aveva guardato al piano di sotto. Alla mia immaginazione sembrò come se il ritratto fosse diventato femminile, e l’originale fosse rimasta una bambina. Anche se il suo viso era del tutto luminoso e felice, c’era una tranquillità in esso, e in lei—uno spirito calmo, buono, tranquillo—che non ho mai dimenticato; che non dimenticherò mai. Questa era la sua piccola governante, sua figlia Agnes, disse il signor Wickfield. Quando sentii come lo disse, e vidi come le teneva la mano, indovinai qual era l’unico motivo della sua vita.
Aveva un piccolo cestino appeso al fianco, con delle chiavi dentro; e sembrava una governante così seria e discreta come poteva esserlo la vecchia casa. Ascoltò suo padre mentre le parlava di me, con un’espressione piacevole; e quando ebbe finito, propose a mia zia che salissimo di sopra a vedere la mia stanza. Andammo tutti insieme, lei davanti a noi: e era una stanza vecchia gloriosa, con più travi di quercia e vetri a rombo; e la larga balaustra che saliva fino a essa.
Non riesco a ricordare dove o quando, nella mia infanzia, avessi visto una finestra di vetro colorato in una chiesa. Non ricordo nemmeno di che cosa fosse l’immagine. Ma so che quando la vidi voltarsi, nella grave luce della vecchia scala, e aspettarci lassù, pensai a quella finestra; e associavo qualcosa della sua tranquilla luminosità a Agnes Wickfield per sempre dopo.
Mia zia era felice quanto me dell’accordo raggiunto per me; e noi tornammo di nuovo nel salotto, ben contenti e soddisfatti. Poiché lei non voleva sentir parlare di restare a cena, per timore di non riuscire ad arrivare a casa con il pony grigio prima che facesse buio; e poiché temo che il signor Wickfield la conoscesse troppo bene per discutere con lei su qualsiasi punto; le fu preparato un po’ di pranzo lì, e Agnes tornò dalla sua governante, e il signor Wickfield al suo ufficio. Così fummo lasciati a salutarci senza alcun ritegno.
Mi disse che tutto sarebbe stato sistemato per me dal signor Wickfield, e che non avrei avuto bisogno di nulla, e mi rivolse le parole più gentili e mi diede i migliori consigli.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt in conclusion, ‘be a credit to yourself, to me, and Mr. Dick, and Heaven be with you!’
I was greatly overcome, and could only thank her, again and again, and send my love to Mr. Dick.
‘Never,’ said my aunt, ‘be mean in anything; never be false; never be cruel. Avoid those three vices, Trot, and I can always be hopeful of you.’
I promised, as well as I could, that I would not abuse her kindness or forget her admonition.
‘The pony’s at the door,’ said my aunt, ‘and I am off! Stay here.’ With these words she embraced me hastily, and went out of the room, shutting the door after her. At first I was startled by so abrupt a departure, and almost feared I had displeased her; but when I looked into the street, and saw how dejectedly she got into the chaise, and drove away without looking up, I understood her better and did not do her that injustice.
By five o’clock, which was Mr. Wickfield’s dinner-hour, I had mustered up my spirits again, and was ready for my knife and fork. The cloth was only laid for us two; but Agnes was waiting in the drawing-room before dinner, went down with her father, and sat opposite to him at table. I doubted whether he could have dined without her.
We did not stay there, after dinner, but came upstairs into the drawing-room again: in one snug corner of which, Agnes set glasses for her father, and a decanter of port wine. I thought he would have missed its usual flavour, if it had been put there for him by any other hands.
There he sat, taking his wine, and taking a good deal of it, for two hours; while Agnes played on the piano, worked, and talked to him and me. He was, for the most part, gay and cheerful with us; but sometimes his eyes rested on her, and he fell into a brooding state, and was silent. She always observed this quickly, I thought, and always roused him with a question or caress. Then he came out of his meditation, and drank more wine.
Agnes made the tea, and presided over it; and the time passed away after it, as after dinner, until she went to bed; when her father took her in his arms and kissed her, and, she being gone, ordered candles in his office. Then I went to bed too.
But in the course of the evening I had rambled down to the door, and a little way along the street, that I might have another peep at the old houses, and the grey Cathedral; and might think of my coming through that old city on my journey, and of my passing the very house I lived in, without knowing it. As I came back, I saw Uriah Heep shutting up the office; and feeling friendly towards everybody, went in and spoke to him, and at parting, gave him my hand. But oh, what a clammy hand his was! as ghostly to the touch as to the sight! I rubbed mine afterwards, to warm it, AND TO RUB HIS OFF.
It was such an uncomfortable hand, that, when I went to my room, it was still cold and wet upon my memory. Leaning out of the window, and seeing one of the faces on the beam-ends looking at me sideways, I fancied it was Uriah Heep got up there somehow, and shut him out in a hurry.
«Trot», concluse la zia, «fatti onore a te stesso, a me e a Mr. Dick, e che il Cielo sia con te!»
Ero molto sopraffatto e potevo solo ringraziarla, ancora e ancora, e mandare i miei saluti al signor Dick.
«Non essere mai» disse mia zia «meschino in nulla; non essere mai falso; non essere mai crudele. Evita questi tre vizi, Trot, e potrò sempre avere speranza in te.»
Promisi, per quanto potevo, che non avrei abusato della sua gentilezza o dimenticato il suo monito.
«Il pony è alla porta», disse mia zia, «e io parto! Resta qui.» Con queste parole mi abbracciò frettolosamente e uscì dalla stanza, chiudendo la porta dietro di sé. All’inizio fui sorpreso da una partenza così brusca e temetti quasi di averla contrariata; ma quando guardai in strada e vidi con quale aria abbattuta salì sul calesse e se ne andò senza alzare gli occhi, la compresi meglio e non le feci più questa ingiustizia.
Per le cinque, che era l’ora di pranzo del signor Wickfield, avevo di nuovo riacquistato il mio coraggio e mi sentivo pronto per il mio coltello e forchetta. La tavola era apparecchiata solo per noi due; ma Agnes era in attesa nel salotto prima di cena, scese con suo padre e si sedette di fronte a lui a tavola. Dubitavo che avrebbe potuto cenare senza di lei.
Non restammo lì dopo cena, ma salimmo di nuovo nel salotto: in un angolo accogliente del quale Agnes preparò i bicchieri per suo padre e una caraffa di vino di Porto. Pensai che avrebbe notato la mancanza del suo sapore abituale, se fossero state altre mani a metterli lì per lui.
E lì sedeva, bevendo il suo vino, e ne beveva parecchio, per due ore; mentre Agnes suonava il pianoforte, lavorava e parlava con lui e con me. Per la maggior parte del tempo, era allegro e di buon umore con noi; ma a volte i suoi occhi si posavano su di lei, e cadeva in uno stato di meditazione, e taceva. Lei, pensavo, lo notava sempre rapidamente, e lo risvegliava sempre con una domanda o un’affettuosità. Allora usciva dalla sua meditazione, e beveva più vino.
Agnes preparò il tè e lo servì; e il tempo passò dopo, come dopo cena, fino a quando andò a letto; quando suo padre la prese tra le braccia e la baciò, e, una volta che se ne fu andata, ordinò delle candele nel suo ufficio. Poi andai a letto anch’io.
Ma nel corso della serata ero andato a spasso fino alla porta e un po’ lungo la strada, per dare un’altra occhiata alle vecchie case e alla grigia Cattedrale; e per pensare al mio arrivo in quella vecchia città durante il mio viaggio, e al mio passaggio davanti alla stessa casa in cui vivevo, senza saperlo. Mentre tornavo indietro, vidi Uriah Heep che chiudeva l’ufficio; e sentendomi amichevole verso tutti, entrai e gli parlai, e al momento di separarci, gli porsi la mano. Ma oh, che mano viscida aveva! fredda al tatto quanto alla vista! Dopo, mi strofinai la mano per riscaldarla, E PER STROFINAR VIA LA SUA.
Era una mano così sgradevole che, quando andai nella mia stanza, era ancora fredda e umida nella mia memoria. Sporgendomi dalla finestra e vedendo uno dei volti sulle estremità delle travi che mi guardava di sottecchi, mi immaginai che fosse Uriah Heep che era riuscito a salire lassù in qualche modo, e lo cacciai fuori in fretta.
CHAPTER 16. I AM A NEW BOY IN MORE SENSES THAN ONE
Next morning, after breakfast, I entered on school life again. I went, accompanied by Mr. Wickfield, to the scene of my future studies—a grave building in a courtyard, with a learned air about it that seemed very well suited to the stray rooks and jackdaws who came down from the Cathedral towers to walk with a clerkly bearing on the grass-plot—and was introduced to my new master, Doctor Strong.
Doctor Strong looked almost as rusty, to my thinking, as the tall iron rails and gates outside the house; and almost as stiff and heavy as the great stone urns that flanked them, and were set up, on the top of the red-brick wall, at regular distances all round the court, like sublimated skittles, for Time to play at. He was in his library (I mean Doctor Strong was), with his clothes not particularly well brushed, and his hair not particularly well combed; his knee-smalls unbraced; his long black gaiters unbuttoned; and his shoes yawning like two caverns on the hearth-rug. Turning upon me a lustreless eye, that reminded me of a long-forgotten blind old horse who once used to crop the grass, and tumble over the graves, in Blunderstone churchyard, he said he was glad to see me: and then he gave me his hand; which I didn’t know what to do with, as it did nothing for itself.
But, sitting at work, not far from Doctor Strong, was a very pretty young lady—whom he called Annie, and who was his daughter, I supposed—who got me out of my difficulty by kneeling down to put Doctor Strong’s shoes on, and button his gaiters, which she did with great cheerfulness and quickness. When she had finished, and we were going out to the schoolroom, I was much surprised to hear Mr. Wickfield, in bidding her good morning, address her as ‘Mrs. Strong’; and I was wondering could she be Doctor Strong’s son’s wife, or could she be Mrs. Doctor Strong, when Doctor Strong himself unconsciously enlightened me.
‘By the by, Wickfield,’ he said, stopping in a passage with his hand on my shoulder; ‘you have not found any suitable provision for my wife’s cousin yet?’
‘No,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘No. Not yet.’
‘I could wish it done as soon as it can be done, Wickfield,’ said Doctor Strong, ‘for Jack Maldon is needy, and idle; and of those two bad things, worse things sometimes come. What does Doctor Watts say,’ he added, looking at me, and moving his head to the time of his quotation, ‘“Satan finds some mischief still, for idle hands to do.”’
‘Egad, Doctor,’ returned Mr. Wickfield, ‘if Doctor Watts knew mankind, he might have written, with as much truth, “Satan finds some mischief still, for busy hands to do.” The busy people achieve their full share of mischief in the world, you may rely upon it. What have the people been about, who have been the busiest in getting money, and in getting power, this century or two? No mischief?’
‘Jack Maldon will never be very busy in getting either, I expect,’ said Doctor Strong, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘and you bring me back to the question, with an apology for digressing. No, I have not been able to dispose of Mr. Jack Maldon yet. I believe,’ he said this with some hesitation, ‘I penetrate your motive, and it makes the thing more difficult.’
‘My motive,’ returned Doctor Strong, ‘is to make some suitable provision for a cousin, and an old playfellow, of Annie’s.’
‘Yes, I know,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘at home or abroad.’
‘Aye!’ replied the Doctor, apparently wondering why he emphasized those words so much. ‘At home or abroad.’
‘Your own expression, you know,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Or abroad.’
‘Surely,’ the Doctor answered. ‘Surely. One or other.’
‘One or other? Have you no choice?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
‘No?’ with astonishment.
‘Not the least.’
‘No motive,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘for meaning abroad, and not at home?’
‘No,’ returned the Doctor.
‘I am bound to believe you, and of course I do believe you,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘It might have simplified my office very much, if I had known it before. But I confess I entertained another impression.’
Doctor Strong regarded him with a puzzled and doubting look, which almost immediately subsided into a smile that gave me great encouragement; for it was full of amiability and sweetness, and there was a simplicity in it, and indeed in his whole manner, when the studious, pondering frost upon it was got through, very attractive and hopeful to a young scholar like me. Repeating ‘no’, and ‘not the least’, and other short assurances to the same purport, Doctor Strong jogged on before us, at a queer, uneven pace; and we followed: Mr. Wickfield, looking grave, I observed, and shaking his head to himself, without knowing that I saw him.
The schoolroom was a pretty large hall, on the quietest side of the house, confronted by the stately stare of some half-dozen of the great urns, and commanding a peep of an old secluded garden belonging to the Doctor, where the peaches were ripening on the sunny south wall. There were two great aloes, in tubs, on the turf outside the windows; the broad hard leaves of which plant (looking as if they were made of painted tin) have ever since, by association, been symbolical to me of silence and retirement. About five-and-twenty boys were studiously engaged at their books when we went in, but they rose to give the Doctor good morning, and remained standing when they saw Mr. Wickfield and me.
‘A new boy, young gentlemen,’ said the Doctor; ‘Trotwood Copperfield.’
One Adams, who was the head-boy, then stepped out of his place and welcomed me. He looked like a young clergyman, in his white cravat, but he was very affable and good-humoured; and he showed me my place, and presented me to the masters, in a gentlemanly way that would have put me at my ease, if anything could.
CAPITOLO 16. SONO UN RAGAZZO NUOVO IN PIÙ SENSI DI QUANTI NE POSSA IMMAGINARE
La mattina seguente, dopo colazione, ripresi la vita scolastica. Andai, accompagnato dal signor Wickfield, al luogo dei miei futuri studi — un edificio maestoso in un cortile, con un’aria colta che sembrava molto adatta ai corvi e alle cornacchie che venivano dalle torri della Cattedrale per passeggiare con aria dotta sul prato — e fui presentato al mio nuovo maestro, il dottor Strong.
Il dottor Strong mi sembrava quasi altrettanto arrugginito, a mio parere, delle alte sbarre di ferro e dei cancelli fuori dalla casa; e quasi altrettanto rigido e pesante delle grandi urne di pietra che le fiancheggiavano, e che erano poste, sulla cima del muro di mattoni rossi, a distanze regolari tutto intorno al cortile, come birilli sublimati, per farne un gioco del Tempo. Era nella sua biblioteca (intendo dire che il dottor Strong era lì), con i vestiti non particolarmente bene spazzolati, e i capelli non particolarmente bene pettinati; le bretelle delle gambe non allacciate; i lunghi stivali neri slacciati; e le scarpe che sbadigliavano come due caverne sul tappeto del caminetto. Girandosi verso di me con un occhio opaco, che mi ricordava un vecchio cavallo cieco, dimenticato da tempo, che una volta pascolava l’erba e cadeva sulle tombe nel cimitero di Blunderstone, disse che era contento di vedermi: e poi mi porse la mano; non sapevo cosa farne, dato che non faceva nulla da sola.
Ma seduta al lavoro, non lontano dal dottor Strong, c’era una giovane signorina molto graziosa, che lui chiamava Annie e che supponevo essere sua figlia, la quale mi tolse d’impaccio inginocchiandosi per mettere le scarpe al dottor Strong e abbottonargli i polsini, cosa che fece con grande allegria e rapidità. Quando ebbe finito e stavamo uscendo per andare in aula, rimasi molto sorpreso nel sentire il signor Wickfield, nel salutarla, chiamarla “signora Strong”; e stavo chiedendomi se potesse essere la moglie del figlio del dottor Strong, o se potesse essere la signora dottor Strong, quando il dottor Strong stesso mi illuminò inconsapevolmente.
«A proposito, Wickfield», disse, fermandosi in un corridoio con la mano sulla mia spalla, «non hai ancora trovato un’occupazione adatta per la cugina di mia moglie?»
‘No’, disse il signor Wickfield. ‘No. Non ancora.’
«Potrei desiderare che fosse fatto appena possibile, Wickfield», disse il dottor Strong, «perché Jack Maldon è bisognoso e ozioso; e di queste due cose negative, a volte ne derivano di peggiori. Cosa dice il dottor Watts», aggiunse, guardandomi e muovendo la testa al ritmo della sua citazione, «“Satana trova sempre qualche male che le mani oziose possono compiere.”»
«Dio mio, dottore», rispose il signor Wickfield, «se il dottor Watts conoscesse l’umanità, avrebbe potuto scrivere, con altrettanta verità, “Satana trova sempre qualche male che fare, anche per le mani occupate”. Le persone occupate compiono la loro piena parte di male nel mondo, ci si può fidare. Cosa hanno fatto le persone che sono state le più occupate a guadagnare denaro e a ottenere potere, in questo secolo o due? Niente male?»
«Jack Maldon non sarà mai molto impegnato a procurarsi l’una o l’altra, credo», disse il dottor Strong, strofinandosi il mento pensieroso.
«Forse no», disse il signor Wickfield; «e mi riportate alla domanda, scusandomi per l’escursione. No, non sono ancora riuscito a sistemare il signor Jack Maldon. Credo», disse questo con qualche esitazione, «di aver compreso il vostro motivo, e ciò rende la cosa più difficile.»
«Il mio motivo», rispose il dottor Strong, «è quello di fare un’adeguata provvidenza per un cugino e un vecchio compagno di giochi di Annie.»
«Sì, lo so», disse il signor Wickfield; «in patria o all’estero».
«Sì!» rispose il dottore, apparentemente chiedendosi perché avesse enfatizzato così tanto quelle parole. «In patria o all’estero.»
“La tua stessa espressione, sai”, disse il signor Wickfield. “O all’estero”.
‘Certamente,’ rispose il dottore. ‘Certamente. Uno o l’altro.’
«Uno o l’altro? Non avete scelta?» chiese il signor Wickfield.
«No», rispose il dottore.
«No?» con stupore.
‘Niente affatto.’
«Nessun motivo», disse il signor Wickfield, «per voler andare all’estero, e non rimanere a casa?»
«No», rispose il dottore.
«Sono obbligato a credervi, e naturalmente vi credo», disse il signor Wickfield. «Avrebbe potuto semplificare molto il mio lavoro, se lo avessi saputo prima. Ma confesso di aver avuto un’impressione diversa.»
Il dottor Strong lo guardò con aria perplessa e dubbiosa, che quasi subito si trasformò in un sorriso che mi diede grande incoraggiamento; perché era pieno di amabilità e dolcezza, e c’era una semplicità in esso, e infatti in tutto il suo comportamento, quando il gelido studio e la riflessione su di esso erano superati, molto attraente e promettente per un giovane studioso come me. Ripetendo “no” e “neanche un po’”, e altre brevi rassicurazioni dello stesso tenore, il dottor Strong proseguì davanti a noi, a un passo strano e irregolare; e noi lo seguimmo: il signor Wickfield, notai, aveva un’aria seria e scuoteva la testa tra sé, senza sapere che lo stavo osservando.
La sala di lezione era un’ampia aula, sul lato più tranquillo della casa, di fronte allo sguardo maestoso di una mezza dozzina di grandi urne, e con vista su un angolo di un vecchio giardino appartato del giardino del Dottore, dove i peschi stavano maturando sulla soleggiata parete sud. C’erano due grandi aloe, in vasi, sull’erba fuori dalle finestre; le ampie e dure foglie di questa pianta (che sembravano fatte di latta dipinta) sono state da allora, per associazione, simbolo per me di silenzio e ritiro. Quando entrammo, circa venticinque ragazzi erano intenti allo studio sui loro libri, ma si alzarono per dare il buongiorno al Dottore e rimasero in piedi quando videro il signor Wickfield e me.
“Un nuovo ragazzo, giovani signori”, disse il Dottore; “Trotwood Copperfield”.
Un certo Adams, che era il capoclasse, si alzò dal suo posto e mi diede il benvenuto. Sembrava un giovane ecclesiastico, con il suo cravattino bianco, ma era molto affabile e di buon umore; e mi mostrò il mio posto, e mi presentò ai maestri, in modo così gentile che mi avrebbe messo a mio agio, se qualcosa lo avesse potuto fare.
It seemed to me so long, however, since I had been among such boys, or among any companions of my own age, except Mick Walker and Mealy Potatoes, that I felt as strange as ever I have done in my life. I was so conscious of having passed through scenes of which they could have no knowledge, and of having acquired experiences foreign to my age, appearance, and condition as one of them, that I half believed it was an imposture to come there as an ordinary little schoolboy. I had become, in the Murdstone and Grinby time, however short or long it may have been, so unused to the sports and games of boys, that I knew I was awkward and inexperienced in the commonest things belonging to them. Whatever I had learnt, had so slipped away from me in the sordid cares of my life from day to night, that now, when I was examined about what I knew, I knew nothing, and was put into the lowest form of the school. But, troubled as I was, by my want of boyish skill, and of book-learning too, I was made infinitely more uncomfortable by the consideration, that, in what I did know, I was much farther removed from my companions than in what I did not. My mind ran upon what they would think, if they knew of my familiar acquaintance with the King’s Bench Prison? Was there anything about me which would reveal my proceedings in connexion with the Micawber family—all those pawnings, and sellings, and suppers—in spite of myself? Suppose some of the boys had seen me coming through Canterbury, wayworn and ragged, and should find me out? What would they say, who made so light of money, if they could know how I had scraped my halfpence together, for the purchase of my daily saveloy and beer, or my slices of pudding? How would it affect them, who were so innocent of London life, and London streets, to discover how knowing I was (and was ashamed to be) in some of the meanest phases of both? All this ran in my head so much, on that first day at Doctor Strong’s, that I felt distrustful of my slightest look and gesture; shrunk within myself whensoever I was approached by one of my new schoolfellows; and hurried off the minute school was over, afraid of committing myself in my response to any friendly notice or advance.
But there was such an influence in Mr. Wickfield’s old house, that when I knocked at it, with my new school-books under my arm, I began to feel my uneasiness softening away. As I went up to my airy old room, the grave shadow of the staircase seemed to fall upon my doubts and fears, and to make the past more indistinct. I sat there, sturdily conning my books, until dinner-time (we were out of school for good at three); and went down, hopeful of becoming a passable sort of boy yet.
Agnes was in the drawing-room, waiting for her father, who was detained by someone in his office. She met me with her pleasant smile, and asked me how I liked the school. I told her I should like it very much, I hoped; but I was a little strange to it at first.
‘You have never been to school,’ I said, ‘have you?’ ‘Oh yes! Every day.’
‘Ah, but you mean here, at your own home?’
‘Papa couldn’t spare me to go anywhere else,’ she answered, smiling and shaking her head. ‘His housekeeper must be in his house, you know.’
‘He is very fond of you, I am sure,’ I said.
She nodded ‘Yes,’ and went to the door to listen for his coming up, that she might meet him on the stairs. But, as he was not there, she came back again.
‘Mama has been dead ever since I was born,’ she said, in her quiet way. ‘I only know her picture, downstairs. I saw you looking at it yesterday. Did you think whose it was?’
I told her yes, because it was so like herself.
‘Papa says so, too,’ said Agnes, pleased. ‘Hark! That’s papa now!’
Her bright calm face lighted up with pleasure as she went to meet him, and as they came in, hand in hand. He greeted me cordially; and told me I should certainly be happy under Doctor Strong, who was one of the gentlest of men.
‘There may be some, perhaps—I don’t know that there are—who abuse his kindness,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Never be one of those, Trotwood, in anything. He is the least suspicious of mankind; and whether that’s a merit, or whether it’s a blemish, it deserves consideration in all dealings with the Doctor, great or small.’
He spoke, I thought, as if he were weary, or dissatisfied with something; but I did not pursue the question in my mind, for dinner was just then announced, and we went down and took the same seats as before.
We had scarcely done so, when Uriah Heep put in his red head and his lank hand at the door, and said:
‘Here’s Mr. Maldon begs the favour of a word, sir.’
‘I am but this moment quit of Mr. Maldon,’ said his master.
‘Yes, sir,’ returned Uriah; ‘but Mr. Maldon has come back, and he begs the favour of a word.’
As he held the door open with his hand, Uriah looked at me, and looked at Agnes, and looked at the dishes, and looked at the plates, and looked at every object in the room, I thought,—yet seemed to look at nothing; he made such an appearance all the while of keeping his red eyes dutifully on his master. ‘I beg your pardon. It’s only to say, on reflection,’ observed a voice behind Uriah, as Uriah’s head was pushed away, and the speaker’s substituted—‘pray excuse me for this intrusion—that as it seems I have no choice in the matter, the sooner I go abroad the better. My cousin Annie did say, when we talked of it, that she liked to have her friends within reach rather than to have them banished, and the old Doctor—’
‘Doctor Strong, was that?’ Mr. Wickfield interposed, gravely.
‘Doctor Strong, of course,’ returned the other; ‘I call him the old Doctor; it’s all the same, you know.’
‘I don’t know,’ returned Mr. Wickfield.
‘Well, Doctor Strong,’ said the other—‘Doctor Strong was of the same mind, I believed. But as it appears from the course you take with me he has changed his mind, why there’s no more to be said, except that the sooner I am off, the better. Therefore, I thought I’d come back and say, that the sooner I am off the better. When a plunge is to be made into the water, it’s of no use lingering on the bank.’
Mi sembrava però che fosse passato tanto tempo da quando ero stato in mezzo a ragazzi del genere, o tra compagni della mia età, a parte Mick Walker e Mealy Potatoes, che mi sentivo più straniero che mai. Ero così consapevole di aver attraversato scene di cui loro non potevano avere alcuna conoscenza, e di aver acquisito esperienze estranee alla mia età, aspetto e condizione di uno di loro, che ero quasi convinto che fosse un inganno presentarmi lì come un semplice scolaretto. Durante il periodo di Murdstone e Grinby, per quanto breve o lungo fosse stato, ero diventato così inabituato ai giochi e agli sport dei ragazzi, che sapevo di essere maldestro e inesperto nelle cose più comuni che li riguardavano. Tutto ciò che avevo imparato, era svanito in me a causa delle sordide preoccupazioni della mia vita da giorno a giorno, e ora, quando fui interrogato su ciò che sapevo, non sapevo nulla, e fui messo nella classe più bassa della scuola. Ma, sebbene fossi turbato dalla mia mancanza di abilità giovanile e anche di cultura, ero reso infinitamente più a disagio dal pensiero che, in ciò che sapevo, ero molto più lontano dai miei compagni che in ciò che non sapevo. Non facevo che pensare a cosa avrebbero pensato, se avessero saputo della mia familiarità con la King’s Bench Prison? C’era qualcosa in me che avrebbe rivelato le mie attività in connessione con la famiglia Micawber—tutti quei pegni, e vendite, e cene—contro la mia volontà? Supponiamo che alcuni dei ragazzi mi avessero visto arrivare a Canterbury, stanco e stracciato, e mi avessero scoperto? Cosa avrebbero detto, loro che facevano così poco caso al denaro, se avessero saputo come avevo racimolato i miei spiccioli, per comprare il mio salsicciotto e la mia birra quotidiani, o le mie fette di budino? Come avrebbe colpito loro, così innocenti della vita e delle strade di London, scoprire quanto fossi (e mi vergognavo di esserlo) esperto in alcune delle fasi più meschine di entrambe? Tutti questi pensieri mi assillavano così tanto, quel primo giorno a casa del dottor Strong, che ero diffidente anche del mio sguardo e dei miei gesti più insignificanti; mi ritraevo in me stesso ogni volta che uno dei miei nuovi compagni di scuola si avvicinava; e me ne andavo via di corsa non appena la scuola finiva, per paura di compromettermi rispondendo a qualche gentile attenzione o avance.
Ma c’era una tale influenza nella vecchia casa del signor Wickfield che, quando bussai alla porta, con i miei nuovi libri di scuola sotto il braccio, cominciai a sentire la mia inquietudine attenuarsi. Mentre salivo nella mia ariosa vecchia stanza, la grave ombra della scala sembrava cadere sui miei dubbi e timori, rendendo il passato più indistinto. Mi sedetti lì, studiando con impegno i miei libri, fino all’ora di pranzo (eravamo fuori scuola per bene alle tre); e scesi, sperando di diventare ancora un ragazzo accettabile.
Agnes era nel salotto, in attesa di suo padre, che era trattenuto da qualcuno nel suo studio. Mi accolse con il suo piacevole sorriso e mi chiese se mi piacesse la scuola. Le dissi che speravo di piacermi molto, ma che all’inizio mi sentivo un po’ straniero.
“Non sei mai andato a scuola”, dissi, “vero?” “Oh sì! Ogni giorno.”
«Ah, ma intendete qui, nella vostra casa?»
«Papa non poteva permettersi di lasciarmi andare da nessun’altra parte», rispose, sorridendo e scuotendo la testa. «La governante di lui deve essere in casa sua, sapete.»
«È molto affezionato a voi, ne sono sicuro», dissi.
Annuì con un «Sì», e andò alla porta per ascoltare se stava salendo, in modo da incontrarlo sulle scale. Ma, poiché non c’era, tornò indietro.
«Mamma è morta poco dopo la mia nascita», disse, nel suo modo tranquillo. «Conosco solo la sua fotografia, al piano di sotto. Ti ho visto guardarla ieri. Hai capito di chi era?»
Le dissi di sì, perché era proprio da lei.
‘Anche papà lo dice’, disse Agnes, contenta. ‘Ascolta! È papà ora!’
Il suo viso sereno e luminoso si illuminò di piacere mentre andava a incontrarlo, e mentre entrarono mano nella mano. Mi salutò calorosamente; e mi disse che sarei stato certamente felice sotto la guida del dottor Strong, che era uno degli uomini più gentili.
«Può darsi che ci siano alcuni, forse — non so se ci siano — che approfittano della sua bontà», disse il signor Wickfield. «Non essere mai uno di questi, Trotwood, in nulla. È l’essere meno sospettoso dell’umanità; e che ciò sia un merito o un difetto, merita considerazione in ogni rapporto col Dottore, grande o piccolo.»
Parlò, mi sembrò, come se fosse stanco o insoddisfatto di qualcosa; ma non approfondii la questione nella mia mente, perché in quel momento fu annunciata la cena, e scendemmo e prendemmo gli stessi posti di prima.
Appena fatto ciò, Uriah Heep infilò la sua testa rossa e la sua mano magra nella porta e disse:
‘Ecco il signor Maldon che chiede il favore di una parola, signore.’
«Sono appena uscito da un incontro con il signor Maldon», disse il suo padrone.
«Sì, signore», rispose Uriah; «ma il signor Maldon è tornato e chiede il favore di una parola».
Mentre teneva la porta aperta con la mano, Uriah guardò me, guardò Agnes, guardò i piatti, guardò i piatti, guardò ogni oggetto nella stanza, pensai, eppure sembrava non guardare nulla; tutto il tempo dava l’impressione di tenere i suoi occhi rossi diligentemente sul suo padrone. «Chiedo scusa. Volevo solo dire, dopo averci riflettuto», osservò una voce dietro Uriah, mentre la testa di Uriah veniva spinta via e quella del parlante sostituita, «prego di scusarmi per questa intrusione, ma poiché sembra che non abbia scelta in proposito, tanto vale che io parta per l’estero il prima possibile. Mia cugina Annie disse, quando ne parlammo, che preferiva avere i suoi amici a portata di mano piuttosto che bandirli, e il vecchio Dottore, »
«Dottor Strong, era quello?» intervenne gravemente il signor Wickfield.
«Naturalmente il dottor Strong», rispose l’altro; «lo chiamo il vecchio dottore; è la stessa cosa, sapete.»
«Non lo so», rispose il signor Wickfield.
«Bene, dottor Strong», disse l’altro, «credevo che il dottor Strong fosse dello stesso parere. Ma poiché sembra che, dal modo in cui si comporta con me, abbia cambiato idea, non c’è altro da dire, se non che prima me ne vado, meglio è. Perciò ho pensato di tornare indietro e dire che prima me ne vado, meglio è. Quando si deve fare un tuffo nell’acqua, non serve stare a esitare sulla riva».
‘There shall be as little lingering as possible, in your case, Mr. Maldon, you may depend upon it,’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘Thank’ee,’ said the other. ‘Much obliged. I don’t want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, which is not a gracious thing to do; otherwise, I dare say, my cousin Annie could easily arrange it in her own way. I suppose Annie would only have to say to the old Doctor—’
‘Meaning that Mrs. Strong would only have to say to her husband—do I follow you?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘Quite so,’ returned the other, ‘—would only have to say, that she wanted such and such a thing to be so and so; and it would be so and so, as a matter of course.’
‘And why as a matter of course, Mr. Maldon?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, sedately eating his dinner.
‘Why, because Annie’s a charming young girl, and the old Doctor—Doctor Strong, I mean—is not quite a charming young boy,’ said Mr. Jack Maldon, laughing. ‘No offence to anybody, Mr. Wickfield. I only mean that I suppose some compensation is fair and reasonable in that sort of marriage.’
‘Compensation to the lady, sir?’ asked Mr. Wickfield gravely.
‘To the lady, sir,’ Mr. Jack Maldon answered, laughing. But appearing to remark that Mr. Wickfield went on with his dinner in the same sedate, immovable manner, and that there was no hope of making him relax a muscle of his face, he added: ‘However, I have said what I came to say, and, with another apology for this intrusion, I may take myself off. Of course I shall observe your directions, in considering the matter as one to be arranged between you and me solely, and not to be referred to, up at the Doctor’s.’
‘Have you dined?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, with a motion of his hand towards the table.
‘Thank’ee. I am going to dine,’ said Mr. Maldon, ‘with my cousin Annie. Good-bye!’
Mr. Wickfield, without rising, looked after him thoughtfully as he went out. He was rather a shallow sort of young gentleman, I thought, with a handsome face, a rapid utterance, and a confident, bold air. And this was the first I ever saw of Mr. Jack Maldon; whom I had not expected to see so soon, when I heard the Doctor speak of him that morning.
When we had dined, we went upstairs again, where everything went on exactly as on the previous day. Agnes set the glasses and decanters in the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield sat down to drink, and drank a good deal. Agnes played the piano to him, sat by him, and worked and talked, and played some games at dominoes with me. In good time she made tea; and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them. I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon my breast. I love little Em’ly, and I don’t love Agnes—no, not at all in that way—but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the coloured window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and on everything around.
The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, and she having left us, I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, preparatory to going away myself. But he checked me and said: ‘Should you like to stay with us, Trotwood, or to go elsewhere?’
‘To stay,’ I answered, quickly.
‘You are sure?’
‘If you please. If I may!’
‘Why, it’s but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I am afraid,’ he said.
‘Not more dull for me than Agnes, sir. Not dull at all!’
‘Than Agnes,’ he repeated, walking slowly to the great chimney-piece, and leaning against it. ‘Than Agnes!’
He had drank wine that evening (or I fancied it), until his eyes were bloodshot. Not that I could see them now, for they were cast down, and shaded by his hand; but I had noticed them a little while before.
‘Now I wonder,’ he muttered, ‘whether my Agnes tires of me. When should I ever tire of her! But that’s different, that’s quite different.’
He was musing, not speaking to me; so I remained quiet.
‘A dull old house,’ he said, ‘and a monotonous life; but I must have her near me. I must keep her near me. If the thought that I may die and leave my darling, or that my darling may die and leave me, comes like a spectre, to distress my happiest hours, and is only to be drowned in—’
He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place where he had sat, and mechanically going through the action of pouring wine from the empty decanter, set it down and paced back again.
‘If it is miserable to bear, when she is here,’ he said, ‘what would it be, and she away? No, no, no. I cannot try that.’
He leaned against the chimney-piece, brooding so long that I could not decide whether to run the risk of disturbing him by going, or to remain quietly where I was, until he should come out of his reverie. At length he aroused himself, and looked about the room until his eyes encountered mine.
‘Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?’ he said in his usual manner, and as if he were answering something I had just said. ‘I am glad of it. You are company to us both. It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me, wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us.’
‘I am sure it is for me, sir,’ I said. ‘I am so glad to be here.’
‘That’s a fine fellow!’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘As long as you are glad to be here, you shall stay here.’ He shook hands with me upon it, and clapped me on the back; and told me that when I had anything to do at night after Agnes had left us, or when I wished to read for my own pleasure, I was free to come down to his room, if he were there and if I desired it for company’s sake, and to sit with him. I thanked him for his consideration; and, as he went down soon afterwards, and I was not tired, went down too, with a book in my hand, to avail myself, for half-an-hour, of his permission.
«Non ci sarà il più piccolo indugio nel suo caso, signor Maldon, può starne certo», disse il signor Wickfield.
«Grazie», disse l’altro. «Molte grazie. Non voglio esaminare i denti a un cavallo di regalo, che non è una cosa gentile da fare; altrimenti, oserei dire, che la mia cugina Annie potrebbe facilmente sistemare le cose a modo suo. Immagino che Annie dovrebbe solo dire al vecchio Dottore—»
«Volete dire che la signora Strong avrebbe dovuto dire al marito - vi seguo bene?» disse il signor Wickfield.
«Esattamente», rispose l’altro, «—avrebbe solo dovuto dire che voleva che una cosa fosse in un certo modo; e sarebbe stata così, naturalmente.»
«E perché, come cosa ovvia, signor Maldon?» chiese il signor Wickfield, mangiando tranquillamente la sua cena.
«Perché Annie è una ragazza incantevole, e il vecchio dottore — il dottor Strong, intendo — non è esattamente un giovane ragazzo incantevole», disse il signor Jack Maldon ridendo. «Nessuna offesa a nessuno, signor Wickfield. Volevo solo dire che suppongo che qualche compensazione sia giusta e ragionevole in quel tipo di matrimonio.»
«Indennizzo alla signora, signore?» chiese gravemente il signor Wickfield.
«Alla signora, signore», rispose ridendo il signor Jack Maldon. Ma, notando che il signor Wickfield continuava il suo pasto con la stessa calma, immutabile, e che non c’era speranza di fargli rilassare un muscolo del viso, aggiunse: «Comunque, ho detto ciò per cui sono venuto, e, con un altro scusa per questa intrusione, posso andarmene. Naturalmente osserverò le sue istruzioni, considerando la questione come una da risolvere esclusivamente tra me e lei, e non da menzionare, lassù dal Dottore».
«Avete già cenato?» chiese il signor Wickfield con un gesto della mano verso il tavolo.
“Grazie. Vado a cena,” disse il signor Maldon, “con mia cugina Annie. Arrivederci!”
Il signor Wickfield, senza alzarsi, lo guardò pensieroso mentre usciva. Era un giovane signore piuttosto superficiale, pensai, con un bel viso, un eloquio rapido e un’aria sicura e audace. E questo fu il primo incontro che ebbi con il signor Jack Maldon; che non mi aspettavo di vedere così presto, quando sentii il Dottore parlare di lui quella mattina.
Quando ebbimo finito di cenare, salimmo di nuovo al piano di sopra, dove tutto andava esattamente come il giorno precedente. Agnes dispose i bicchieri e i decantatori nello stesso angolo, e il signor Wickfield si sedette a bere, e bevve parecchio. Agnes suonò il pianoforte per lui, si sedette accanto a lui, lavorò e parlò, e giocò a qualche partita a domino con me. In buon tempo preparò il tè; e in seguito, quando portai giù i miei libri, li esaminò e mi mostrò ciò che ne sapeva (che non era poco, anche se diceva il contrario), e qual era il modo migliore per impararli e comprenderli. La vedo, con il suo modesto, ordinato e placido modo di fare, e la sento con la sua bella voce calma, mentre scrivo queste parole. L’influenza per tutto il bene, che in seguito esercitò su di me in un successivo tempo, inizia già a scendere sul mio petto. Amo la piccola Emily, e non amo Agnes — no, per niente in quel modo — ma sento che ci sono bontà, pace e verità, ovunque Agnes sia; e che la luce soffusa della finestra colorata nella chiesa, vista tanto tempo fa, cade sempre su di lei, e su di me quando sono vicino a lei, e su tutto ciò che la circonda.
Essendo giunto il momento per lei di ritirarsi per la notte, e avendoci lasciati, porsi la mano a Mr. Wickfield, preparandomi ad andarmene anch’io. Ma lui mi fermò e disse: «Vorresti restare con noi, Trotwood, o andare altrove?»
«Restare», risposi, in fretta.
‘Ne sei sicuro?’
‘Per favore. Se posso!’
«Eh, è una vita piuttosto noiosa quella che conduciamo qui, ragazzo, temo», disse.
“Non più noioso per me di Agnes, signore. Affatto noioso!”
«Più di Agnes», ripeté, camminando lentamente verso il grande caminetto, e appoggiandosi ad esso. «Più di Agnes!»
Quella sera aveva bevuto vino (o almeno così mi sembrava) fino a quando i suoi occhi non erano diventati iniettati di sangue. Non che potessi vederli ora, perché erano abbassati e nascosti dalla sua mano; ma li avevo notati poco prima.
«Ora mi domando,» borbottò, «se la mia Agnes si stanca di me. Quando mai io potrei stancarmi di lei! Ma è diverso, è completamente diverso.»
Era assorto in meditazione, non stava parlando con me; così rimasi in silenzio.
«Una vecchia casa triste», disse, «e una vita monotona; ma devo averla vicino a me. Devo tenerla vicino a me. Se il pensiero che io possa morire e lasciare la mia cara, o che la mia cara possa morire e lasciarmi, viene come uno spettro, a turbare le mie ore più felici, e può essere solo annegato in—»
Non pronunciò la parola; ma camminando lentamente fino al posto dove era stato seduto, e compiendo meccanicamente il gesto di versare vino dal decanter vuoto, lo posò e tornò indietro.
«Se è una cosa miserabile da sopportare quando lei è qui», disse, «che cosa sarebbe se lei fosse lontana? No, no, no. Non posso provarci».
Si appoggiò al caminetto, rimuginando così a lungo che non riuscivo a decidere se rischiare di disturbarlo andandomene, o rimanere tranquillamente dov’ero, finché non fosse uscito dalla sua meditazione. Alla fine si risvegliò e guardò in giro per la stanza finché i suoi occhi non incontrarono i miei.
«Resta con noi, Trotwood, eh?» disse nel suo solito modo, come se stesse rispondendo a qualcosa che avevo appena detto. «Ne sono felice. Sei compagnia per entrambi. È sano averti qui. Sano per me, sano per Agnes, sano forse per tutti noi.»
«Sono sicuro che è per me, signore», dissi. «Sono così felice di essere qui.»
«Che bravo ragazzo!» disse il signor Wickfield. «Finché sarai felice di essere qui, potrai restare qui.» Mi strinse la mano e mi diede una pacca sulla spalla; e mi disse che quando avessi avuto qualcosa da fare di notte dopo che Agnes ci aveva lasciati, o quando avessi voluto leggere per mio piacere, ero libero di scendere nella sua stanza, se lui c’era e se lo desideravo per compagnia, e di stare con lui. Lo ringraziai per la sua attenzione; e, poiché scese poco dopo, e io non ero stanco, scesi anch’io, con un libro in mano, per approfittare, per mezz’ora, del suo permesso.
But, seeing a light in the little round office, and immediately feeling myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of fascination for me, I went in there instead. I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.
‘You are working late tonight, Uriah,’ says I.
‘Yes, Master Copperfield,’ says Uriah.
As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a smile about him, and that he could only widen his mouth and make two hard creases down his cheeks, one on each side, to stand for one.
‘I am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
‘What work, then?’ I asked.
‘I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘I am going through Tidd’s Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master Copperfield!’
My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable way of expanding and contracting themselves—that they seemed to twinkle instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
‘I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?’ I said, after looking at him for some time.
‘Me, Master Copperfield?’ said Uriah. ‘Oh, no! I’m a very umble person.’
It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief.
‘I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,’ said Uriah Heep, modestly; ‘let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was umble. He was a sexton.’
‘What is he now?’ I asked.
‘He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah Heep. ‘But we have much to be thankful for. How much have I to be thankful for in living with Mr. Wickfield!’
I asked Uriah if he had been with Mr. Wickfield long?
‘I have been with him, going on four year, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah; shutting up his book, after carefully marking the place where he had left off. ‘Since a year after my father’s death. How much have I to be thankful for, in that! How much have I to be thankful for, in Mr. Wickfield’s kind intention to give me my articles, which would otherwise not lay within the umble means of mother and self!’
‘Then, when your articled time is over, you’ll be a regular lawyer, I suppose?’ said I.
‘With the blessing of Providence, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah.
‘Perhaps you’ll be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business, one of these days,’ I said, to make myself agreeable; ‘and it will be Wickfield and Heep, or Heep late Wickfield.’
‘Oh no, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, shaking his head, ‘I am much too umble for that!’
He certainly did look uncommonly like the carved face on the beam outside my window, as he sat, in his humility, eyeing me sideways, with his mouth widened, and the creases in his cheeks.
‘Mr. Wickfield is a most excellent man, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘If you have known him long, you know it, I am sure, much better than I can inform you.’
I replied that I was certain he was; but that I had not known him long myself, though he was a friend of my aunt’s.
‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘Your aunt is a sweet lady, Master Copperfield!’
He had a way of writhing when he wanted to express enthusiasm, which was very ugly; and which diverted my attention from the compliment he had paid my relation, to the snaky twistings of his throat and body.
‘A sweet lady, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah Heep. ‘She has a great admiration for Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, I believe?’
I said, ‘Yes,’ boldly; not that I knew anything about it, Heaven forgive me!
‘I hope you have, too, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘But I am sure you must have.’
‘Everybody must have,’ I returned.
‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah Heep, ‘for that remark! It is so true! Umble as I am, I know it is so true! Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield!’ He writhed himself quite off his stool in the excitement of his feelings, and, being off, began to make arrangements for going home.
‘Mother will be expecting me,’ he said, referring to a pale, inexpressive-faced watch in his pocket, ‘and getting uneasy; for though we are very umble, Master Copperfield, we are much attached to one another. If you would come and see us, any afternoon, and take a cup of tea at our lowly dwelling, mother would be as proud of your company as I should be.’
I said I should be glad to come.
‘Thank you, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, putting his book away upon the shelf—‘I suppose you stop here, some time, Master Copperfield?’
I said I was going to be brought up there, I believed, as long as I remained at school.
‘Oh, indeed!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘I should think YOU would come into the business at last, Master Copperfield!’
I protested that I had no views of that sort, and that no such scheme was entertained in my behalf by anybody; but Uriah insisted on blandly replying to all my assurances, ‘Oh, yes, Master Copperfield, I should think you would, indeed!’ and, ‘Oh, indeed, Master Copperfield, I should think you would, certainly!’ over and over again. Being, at last, ready to leave the office for the night, he asked me if it would suit my convenience to have the light put out; and on my answering ‘Yes,’ instantly extinguished it. After shaking hands with me—his hand felt like a fish, in the dark—he opened the door into the street a very little, and crept out, and shut it, leaving me to grope my way back into the house: which cost me some trouble and a fall over his stool. This was the proximate cause, I suppose, of my dreaming about him, for what appeared to me to be half the night; and dreaming, among other things, that he had launched Mr. Peggotty’s house on a piratical expedition, with a black flag at the masthead, bearing the inscription ‘Tidd’s Practice’, under which diabolical ensign he was carrying me and little Em’ly to the Spanish Main, to be drowned.
Ma, vedendo una luce nel piccolo ufficio rotondo, e sentendomi subito attratto da Uriah Heep, che esercitava su di me una sorta di fascino, entrai lì invece. Trovai Uriah che leggeva un enorme libro spesso, con un’attenzione così dimostrativa che il suo lungo dito indice seguiva ogni riga mentre leggeva, lasciando tracce umide lungo la pagina (o almeno così credevo fermamente), come una lumaca.
«Stai lavorando fino a tardi stasera, Uriah», dico io.
«Sì, signor Copperfield», dice Uriah.
Mentre mi arrampicavo sullo sgabello di fronte per parlare con lui più comodamente, notai che non aveva nemmeno l’ombra di un sorriso, e che poteva solo allargare la bocca e fare due dure pieghe lungo le guance, una per lato, per sostituirlo.
«Non sto facendo lavoro d’ufficio, signor Copperfield», disse Uriah.
«Che lavoro, allora?» chiesi.
«Sto approfondendo le mie conoscenze giuridiche, Maestro Copperfield», disse Uriah. «Sto studiando il Tidd’s Practice. Oh, che scrittore è il signor Tidd, Maestro Copperfield!»
La mia sedia era una torre d’osservazione tale che, mentre lo guardavo riprendere a leggere dopo quell’esclamazione estasiata, seguendo le righe con l’indice, notai che le sue narici, sottili e appuntite, con piccole fossette, avevano un modo singolare e davvero sgradevole di espandersi e contrarsi, quasi a brillare al posto dei suoi occhi, che raramente brillavano.
«Suppongo che sia un avvocato di grande fama?» dissi, dopo averlo guardato per un po’ di tempo.
“Io, signor Copperfield?” disse Uriah. “Oh, no! Sono una persona molto umile.”
Non era una mia fantasia riguardo alle sue mani, osservai; perché le strofinava spesso l’una contro l’altra come per strizzarle e riscaldarle, oltre a pulirle spesso, in modo furtivo, col suo fazzoletto.
«Sono ben consapevole di essere la persona più umile che esista», disse Uriah Heep, modestamente; «chiunque sia l’altro. Anche mia madre è una persona molto umile. Viviamo in un’abitazione modesta, ma abbiamo molto per cui essere grati. La professione di mio padre era umile. Era un sagrestano.»
«Che cosa fa ora?» chiesi.
«Attualmente partecipa alla gloria, Maestro Copperfield», disse Uriah Heep. «Ma abbiamo molto per cui essere grati. Quanto ho da ringraziare per vivere con il signor Wickfield!»
Chiesi a Uriah se era da molto tempo con il signor Wickfield.
«Sono con lui da quasi quattro anni, Master Copperfield», disse Uriah; chiudendo il suo libro, dopo aver segnato con cura il punto in cui si era fermato. «Da un anno dopo la morte di mio padre. Quanto ho da ringraziare per questo! Quanto ho da ringraziare per l’intenzione gentile del signor Wickfield di darmi i miei articoli, che altrimenti non sarebbero alla portata dei modesti mezzi di mia madre e del sottoscritto!»
«Allora, quando il tuo periodo di apprendistato sarà finito, sarai un avvocato vero, immagino?» dissi io.
«Con la benedizione della Provvidenza, Master Copperfield», rispose Uriah.
«Forse un giorno diventerai socio nell’impresa del signor Wickfield», dissi, per essere gentile; «e allora sarà Wickfield e Heep, o Heep ex Wickfield.»
«Oh no, signor Copperfield», rispose Uriah, scuotendo la testa, «sono troppo umile per questo!»
Egli aveva davvero un’aria straordinariamente simile al volto scolpito sul trave fuori dalla mia finestra, mentre sedeva, nella sua umiltà, guardandomi di sottecchi, con la bocca spalancata e le grinze sulle guance.
«Il signor Wickfield è un uomo davvero eccellente, Master Copperfield», disse Uriah. «Se lo conosce da tempo, ne è sicuramente al corrente molto meglio di quanto io possa dirle».
Risposi che ero certo che lo fosse; ma che non lo conoscevo da molto anch’io, sebbene fosse un amico di mia zia.
«Oh, davvero, signorino Copperfield», disse Uriah. «Sua zia è una signora dolcissima, signorino Copperfield!»
Aveva un modo di contorcersi quando voleva esprimere entusiasmo, che era molto brutto; e che distoglieva la mia attenzione dal complimento che aveva fatto al mio parente, per concentrarla sulle contorsioni serpentine della sua gola e del suo corpo.
«Una signora gentile, Master Copperfield!» disse Uriah Heep. «Ha una grande ammirazione per Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, credo?»
Risposi con decisione: «Sì», anche se non ne sapevo nulla, e che il cielo mi perdoni!
«Spero che anche voi lo abbiate, Master Copperfield», disse Uriah. «Ma sono sicuro che lo dovete avere.»
«Tutti devono avere», replicai.
«Oh, grazie, Maestro Copperfield», disse Uriah Heep, «per quella osservazione! È così vero! Umile come sono, so che è così vero! Oh, grazie, Maestro Copperfield!» Si contorse fino a cadere dallo sgabello per l’agitazione dei suoi sentimenti, e, una volta caduto, iniziò a fare i preparativi per andare a casa.
«Mamma mi starà aspettando», disse, guardando l’orologio che aveva in tasca, un orologio dal quadrante pallido e poco espressivo, «e si starà preoccupando; perché, sebbene siamo molto umili, Master Copperfield, siamo molto affezionati l’uno all’altra. Se venisse a trovarci un pomeriggio qualsiasi, e a prendere una tazza di tè nella nostra umile dimora, mamma sarebbe orgogliosa della sua compagnia, come lo sarei io.»
Dissi che sarei stato felice di venire.
«Grazie, Master Copperfield», rispose Uriah, riponendo il suo libro sullo scaffale — «Suppongo che tu ti fermi qui, per un po’ di tempo, Master Copperfield?»
Dissi che sarei stato educato lì, credo, finché sarei rimasto a scuola.
«Oh, davvero!» esclamò Uriah. «Pensavo proprio che PRIMA O POI sarebbe ENTRATO nell’affare, signorino Copperfield!»
Protestai che non avevo progetti di quel genere, e che nessuno aveva in mente un piano del genere per me; ma Uriah insisteva a rispondere blandamente a tutte le mie rassicurazioni: «Oh, sì, Master Copperfield, credo proprio di sì!» e «Oh, certo, Master Copperfield, credo proprio di sì!» continuamente. Alla fine, quando fu pronto a lasciare l’ufficio per la serata, mi chiese se mi andava bene che spegnesse la luce; e dato che risposi «Sì», la spense immediatamente. Dopo essersi stretto la mano con me - la sua mano era fredda e scivolosa come un pesce al buio - aprì la porta che dava sulla strada solo un pochino, e uscì furtivamente, chiudendola, lasciandomi a cercare a tentoni la strada per tornare in casa: il che mi costò un po’ di fatica e una caduta sulla sua sedia. Questo fu, immagino, il motivo per cui sognai di lui per quello che mi sembrò metà della notte; e sognai, tra le altre cose, che aveva trasformato la casa del signor Peggotty in una nave pirata, con una bandiera nera all’albero maestro, che portava la iscrizione «Tidd’s Practice», sotto la quale diabolica insegna mi stava portando, insieme alla piccola Em’ly, alla costa spagnola, per annegarci.
I got a little the better of my uneasiness when I went to school next day, and a good deal the better next day, and so shook it off by degrees, that in less than a fortnight I was quite at home, and happy, among my new companions. I was awkward enough in their games, and backward enough in their studies; but custom would improve me in the first respect, I hoped, and hard work in the second. Accordingly, I went to work very hard, both in play and in earnest, and gained great commendation. And, in a very little while, the Murdstone and Grinby life became so strange to me that I hardly believed in it, while my present life grew so familiar, that I seemed to have been leading it a long time.
Doctor Strong’s was an excellent school; as different from Mr. Creakle’s as good is from evil. It was very gravely and decorously ordered, and on a sound system; with an appeal, in everything, to the honour and good faith of the boys, and an avowed intention to rely on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy of it, which worked wonders. We all felt that we had a part in the management of the place, and in sustaining its character and dignity. Hence, we soon became warmly attached to it—I am sure I did for one, and I never knew, in all my time, of any other boy being otherwise—and learnt with a good will, desiring to do it credit. We had noble games out of hours, and plenty of liberty; but even then, as I remember, we were well spoken of in the town, and rarely did any disgrace, by our appearance or manner, to the reputation of Doctor Strong and Doctor Strong’s boys.
Some of the higher scholars boarded in the Doctor’s house, and through them I learned, at second hand, some particulars of the Doctor’s history—as, how he had not yet been married twelve months to the beautiful young lady I had seen in the study, whom he had married for love; for she had not a sixpence, and had a world of poor relations (so our fellows said) ready to swarm the Doctor out of house and home. Also, how the Doctor’s cogitating manner was attributable to his being always engaged in looking out for Greek roots; which, in my innocence and ignorance, I supposed to be a botanical furor on the Doctor’s part, especially as he always looked at the ground when he walked about, until I understood that they were roots of words, with a view to a new Dictionary which he had in contemplation. Adams, our head-boy, who had a turn for mathematics, had made a calculation, I was informed, of the time this Dictionary would take in completing, on the Doctor’s plan, and at the Doctor’s rate of going. He considered that it might be done in one thousand six hundred and forty-nine years, counting from the Doctor’s last, or sixty-second, birthday.
But the Doctor himself was the idol of the whole school: and it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men; with a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall. As he walked up and down that part of the courtyard which was at the side of the house, with the stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their heads cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing they were in worldly affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get near enough to his creaking shoes to attract his attention to one sentence of a tale of distress, that vagabond was made for the next two days. It was so notorious in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut these marauders off at angles, and to get out of windows, and turn them out of the courtyard, before they could make the Doctor aware of their presence; which was sometimes happily effected within a few yards of him, without his knowing anything of the matter, as he jogged to and fro. Outside his own domain, and unprotected, he was a very sheep for the shearers. He would have taken his gaiters off his legs, to give away. In fact, there was a story current among us (I have no idea, and never had, on what authority, but I have believed it for so many years that I feel quite certain it is true), that on a frosty day, one winter-time, he actually did bestow his gaiters on a beggar-woman, who occasioned some scandal in the neighbourhood by exhibiting a fine infant from door to door, wrapped in those garments, which were universally recognized, being as well known in the vicinity as the Cathedral. The legend added that the only person who did not identify them was the Doctor himself, who, when they were shortly afterwards displayed at the door of a little second-hand shop of no very good repute, where such things were taken in exchange for gin, was more than once observed to handle them approvingly, as if admiring some curious novelty in the pattern, and considering them an improvement on his own.
It was very pleasant to see the Doctor with his pretty young wife. He had a fatherly, benignant way of showing his fondness for her, which seemed in itself to express a good man. I often saw them walking in the garden where the peaches were, and I sometimes had a nearer observation of them in the study or the parlour. She appeared to me to take great care of the Doctor, and to like him very much, though I never thought her vitally interested in the Dictionary: some cumbrous fragments of which work the Doctor always carried in his pockets, and in the lining of his hat, and generally seemed to be expounding to her as they walked about.
I saw a good deal of Mrs. Strong, both because she had taken a liking for me on the morning of my introduction to the Doctor, and was always afterwards kind to me, and interested in me; and because she was very fond of Agnes, and was often backwards and forwards at our house. There was a curious constraint between her and Mr. Wickfield, I thought (of whom she seemed to be afraid), that never wore off. When she came there of an evening, she always shrunk from accepting his escort home, and ran away with me instead. And sometimes, as we were running gaily across the Cathedral yard together, expecting to meet nobody, we would meet Mr. Jack Maldon, who was always surprised to see us.
Mi sentii un po’ meglio quando andai a scuola il giorno dopo, e ancora meglio il giorno successivo, e così, a poco a poco, mi liberai della mia inquietudine, tanto che in meno di due settimane mi sentii completamente a casa e felice tra i miei nuovi compagni. Ero abbastanza goffo nei loro giochi e piuttosto indietro negli studi; ma speravo che l’abitudine mi avrebbe migliorato sotto il primo aspetto, e il duro lavoro sotto il secondo. Di conseguenza, mi misi a lavorare molto sodo, sia nel gioco che nello studio, e ottenni grandi elogi. E, in un attimo, la vita con i Murdstone e Grinby mi divenne così estranea che a malapena ci credevo, mentre la mia vita attuale divenne così familiare che mi sembrava di condurla da un lungo tempo.
La scuola del dottor Strong era un’ottima scuola; tanto diversa da quella del signor Creakle quanto il bene lo è dal male. Era gestita con grande gravità e decoro, e su un sistema solido; con un appello, in ogni cosa, all’onore e alla buona fede dei ragazzi, e con l’intenzione dichiarata di fare affidamento sul possesso di queste qualità da parte loro, a meno che non si dimostrassero indegni di tale fiducia, il che faceva miracoli. Tutti noi sentivamo di avere una parte nella gestione del luogo, e nel sostenere il suo carattere e la sua dignità. Di conseguenza, ci affezionammo presto a esso - io per primo, e non ho mai saputo, in tutto il mio tempo, che qualche altro ragazzo fosse diverso - e imparammo con buona volontà, desiderando di rendergli onore. Avevamo nobili giochi fuori dagli orari, e molta libertà; ma anche allora, come ricordo, eravamo ben visti in città, e raramente disonoravamo, con il nostro aspetto o il nostro comportamento, la reputazione del dottor Strong e dei ragazzi del dottor Strong.
Alcuni degli studenti più grandi vivevano in casa del Dottore, e tramite loro appresi, di seconda mano, alcuni particolari della storia del Dottore, come ad esempio che non era ancora passato un anno da quando aveva sposato la bella giovane signora che avevo visto nello studio, e che l’aveva sposata per amore, perché non aveva un soldo e aveva un mondo di parenti poveri (così dicevano i nostri compagni) pronti a invadere la casa e la vita del Dottore. Inoltre, appresi che il modo di ragionare del Dottore era attribuibile al fatto che era sempre impegnato a cercare radici greche; che, nella mia innocenza e ignoranza, supponevo essere una passione botanica del Dottore, specialmente perché guardava sempre a terra quando camminava, finché non capii che si trattava di radici di parole, con l’obiettivo di un nuovo Dizionario che aveva in progetto. Adams, il nostro capoclasse, che aveva una predisposizione per la matematica, aveva fatto un calcolo, mi fu detto, del tempo che questo Dizionario avrebbe richiesto per essere completato, secondo il piano del Dottore e al ritmo del Dottore. Riteneva che potesse essere fatto in milleseicentoquarantanove anni, contando dall’ultimo compleanno del Dottore, o sessantaduesimo.
Ma il Dottore stesso era l’idolo di tutta la scuola: e sarebbe stata una scuola mal composta se fosse stato diverso, perché era l’uomo più gentile che si potesse immaginare; con una semplice fede in lui che avrebbe potuto toccare i cuori di pietra delle stesse urne sul muro. Mentre camminava su e giù per quella parte del cortile che era a lato della casa, con i corvi e le cornacchie che lo seguivano con la testa inclinata di lato, come se sapessero quanto erano più astuti di lui nelle faccende mondane, se un qualsiasi vagabondo riusciva ad avvicinarsi abbastanza ai suoi scarponi cigolanti per attirare la sua attenzione su una frase di una storia di miseria, quel vagabondo era sistemato per i due giorni successivi. Era così noto in casa che i maestri e i ragazzi più grandi si davano da fare per tagliare fuori questi predoni da angoli remoti, e per uscire dalle finestre e cacciarli fuori dal cortile, prima che potessero far notare al Dottore la loro presenza; il che a volte veniva fatto con successo a pochi metri da lui, senza che lui ne sapesse nulla, mentre andava avanti e indietro. Fuori dal suo dominio, e senza protezione, era una vera pecora per i tosatori. Si sarebbe tolto i calzoni dalle gambe per regalarli. Infatti, c’era una storia in corso tra noi (non ho idea, e non l’ho mai avuta, su quale autorità, ma l’ho creduta per così tanti anni che mi sento abbastanza sicuro che sia vera), che in un giorno gelido, una inverno-volta, aveva effettivamente donato i suoi calzoni a una mendicante, che aveva causato uno scandalo nel quartiere mostrando un bel bambino da porta in porta, avvolto in quei vestiti, che erano universalmente riconosciuti, essendo noti nella zona quanto la Cattedrale. La leggenda aggiungeva che l’unica persona che non li identificava era il Dottore stesso, che, quando furono esposti poco dopo alla porta di un piccolo negozio di seconda mano di scarsa reputazione, dove tali cose venivano prese in cambio di gin, fu più di una volta osservato mentre li maneggiava con approvazione, come se ammirasse qualche curiosa novità nel modello, e li considerasse un miglioramento rispetto ai suoi.
Fu molto piacevole vedere il Dottore con la sua giovane e graziosa moglie. Aveva un modo paterno e benevolo di mostrare il suo affetto per lei, che di per sé sembrava esprimere un uomo buono. Spesso li vedevo passeggiare nel giardino dove c’erano i peschi, e talvolta li osservavo più da vicino nello studio o nel salotto. Mi sembrava che lei si prendesse grande cura del Dottore e che lo amasse molto, anche se non ho mai pensato che fosse profondamente interessata al Dizionario: alcuni ingombranti frammenti di quest’opera il Dottore portava sempre in tasca e nella fodera del cappello, e generalmente sembrava spiegarli a lei mentre passeggiavano.
Vidi spesso la signora Strong, sia perché aveva preso in simpatia me la mattina in cui fui presentato al Dottore, e fu sempre dopo gentile con me e interessata a me; sia perché era molto affezionata ad Agnes, e spesso andava avanti e indietro alla nostra casa. C’era una curiosa costrizione tra lei e il signor Wickfield, pensavo (di cui sembrava aver paura), che non si attenuava mai. Quando veniva lì la sera, si ritraeva sempre dall’accettare la sua scorta a casa, e scappava con me invece. E a volte, mentre correvamo allegramente attraverso il cortile della Cattedrale insieme, aspettandoci di non incontrare nessuno, incontravamo il signor Jack Maldon, che era sempre sorpreso di vederci.
Mrs. Strong’s mama was a lady I took great delight in. Her name was Mrs. Markleham; but our boys used to call her the Old Soldier, on account of her generalship, and the skill with which she marshalled great forces of relations against the Doctor. She was a little, sharp-eyed woman, who used to wear, when she was dressed, one unchangeable cap, ornamented with some artificial flowers, and two artificial butterflies supposed to be hovering above the flowers. There was a superstition among us that this cap had come from France, and could only originate in the workmanship of that ingenious nation: but all I certainly know about it, is, that it always made its appearance of an evening, wheresoever Mrs. Markleham made HER appearance; that it was carried about to friendly meetings in a Hindoo basket; that the butterflies had the gift of trembling constantly; and that they improved the shining hours at Doctor Strong’s expense, like busy bees.
I observed the Old Soldier—not to adopt the name disrespectfully—to pretty good advantage, on a night which is made memorable to me by something else I shall relate. It was the night of a little party at the Doctor’s, which was given on the occasion of Mr. Jack Maldon’s departure for India, whither he was going as a cadet, or something of that kind: Mr. Wickfield having at length arranged the business. It happened to be the Doctor’s birthday, too. We had had a holiday, had made presents to him in the morning, had made a speech to him through the head-boy, and had cheered him until we were hoarse, and until he had shed tears. And now, in the evening, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I, went to have tea with him in his private capacity.
Mr. Jack Maldon was there, before us. Mrs. Strong, dressed in white, with cherry-coloured ribbons, was playing the piano, when we went in; and he was leaning over her to turn the leaves. The clear red and white of her complexion was not so blooming and flower-like as usual, I thought, when she turned round; but she looked very pretty, Wonderfully pretty.
‘I have forgotten, Doctor,’ said Mrs. Strong’s mama, when we were seated, ‘to pay you the compliments of the day—though they are, as you may suppose, very far from being mere compliments in my case. Allow me to wish you many happy returns.’
‘I thank you, ma’am,’ replied the Doctor.
‘Many, many, many, happy returns,’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Not only for your own sake, but for Annie’s, and John Maldon’s, and many other people’s. It seems but yesterday to me, John, when you were a little creature, a head shorter than Master Copperfield, making baby love to Annie behind the gooseberry bushes in the back-garden.’
‘My dear mama,’ said Mrs. Strong, ‘never mind that now.’
‘Annie, don’t be absurd,’ returned her mother. ‘If you are to blush to hear of such things now you are an old married woman, when are you not to blush to hear of them?’
‘Old?’ exclaimed Mr. Jack Maldon. ‘Annie? Come!’
‘Yes, John,’ returned the Soldier. ‘Virtually, an old married woman. Although not old by years—for when did you ever hear me say, or who has ever heard me say, that a girl of twenty was old by years!—your cousin is the wife of the Doctor, and, as such, what I have described her. It is well for you, John, that your cousin is the wife of the Doctor. You have found in him an influential and kind friend, who will be kinder yet, I venture to predict, if you deserve it. I have no false pride. I never hesitate to admit, frankly, that there are some members of our family who want a friend. You were one yourself, before your cousin’s influence raised up one for you.’
The Doctor, in the goodness of his heart, waved his hand as if to make light of it, and save Mr. Jack Maldon from any further reminder. But Mrs. Markleham changed her chair for one next the Doctor’s, and putting her fan on his coat-sleeve, said:
‘No, really, my dear Doctor, you must excuse me if I appear to dwell on this rather, because I feel so very strongly. I call it quite my monomania, it is such a subject of mine. You are a blessing to us. You really are a Boon, you know.’
‘Nonsense, nonsense,’ said the Doctor.
‘No, no, I beg your pardon,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘With nobody present, but our dear and confidential friend Mr. Wickfield, I cannot consent to be put down. I shall begin to assert the privileges of a mother-in-law, if you go on like that, and scold you. I am perfectly honest and outspoken. What I am saying, is what I said when you first overpowered me with surprise—you remember how surprised I was?—by proposing for Annie. Not that there was anything so very much out of the way, in the mere fact of the proposal—it would be ridiculous to say that!—but because, you having known her poor father, and having known her from a baby six months old, I hadn’t thought of you in such a light at all, or indeed as a marrying man in any way,—simply that, you know.’
‘Aye, aye,’ returned the Doctor, good-humouredly. ‘Never mind.’
‘But I DO mind,’ said the Old Soldier, laying her fan upon his lips. ‘I mind very much. I recall these things that I may be contradicted if I am wrong. Well! Then I spoke to Annie, and I told her what had happened. I said, “My dear, here’s Doctor Strong has positively been and made you the subject of a handsome declaration and an offer.” Did I press it in the least? No. I said, “Now, Annie, tell me the truth this moment; is your heart free?” “Mama,” she said crying, “I am extremely young”—which was perfectly true—“and I hardly know if I have a heart at all.” “Then, my dear,” I said, “you may rely upon it, it’s free. At all events, my love,” said I, “Doctor Strong is in an agitated state of mind, and must be answered. He cannot be kept in his present state of suspense.” “Mama,” said Annie, still crying, “would he be unhappy without me? If he would, I honour and respect him so much, that I think I will have him.” So it was settled. And then, and not till then, I said to Annie, “Annie, Doctor Strong will not only be your husband, but he will represent your late father: he will represent the head of our family, he will represent the wisdom and station, and I may say the means, of our family; and will be, in short, a Boon to it.” I used the word at the time, and I have used it again, today. If I have any merit it is consistency.’
La mamma della signora Strong era una signora che mi dava grande piacere. Il suo nome era signora Markleham; ma i nostri ragazzi la chiamavano la Vecchia Soldatessa, a causa del suo genio militaresco e della maestria con cui disponeva grandi forze di parenti contro il Dottore. Era una donna piccola, con gli occhi acuti, che quando si vestiva indossava sempre lo stesso copricapo immutabile, ornato con alcuni fiori artificiali e due farfalle artificiali che si supponeva stessero volteggiando sopra i fiori. Tra noi c’era una superstizione secondo cui quel copricapo proveniva dalla Francia, e poteva essere stato creato solo dalla maestria di quella ingegnosa nazione; ma tutto ciò che so con certezza è che faceva sempre la sua comparsa la sera, ovunque la signora Markleham facesse la SUA comparsa; che veniva portato ai convegni amichevoli in un cesto indù; che le farfalle avevano il dono di tremare in continuazione; e che trascorrevano le ore di luce a spese del Dottor Strong, come laboriose api.
Osservai il Vecchio Soldato — non intendo adottare il nome in modo irrispettoso — con grande attenzione, in una notte che mi è rimasta memorabile per un altro motivo che racconterò. Era la notte di una piccola festa dal Dottore, organizzata in occasione della partenza per l’India di Mr. Jack Maldon, che vi si recava come cadetto, o qualcosa del genere: Mr. Wickfield aveva finalmente sistemato la faccenda. Era anche il compleanno del Dottore. Avevamo avuto un giorno di vacanza, gli avevamo fatto dei regali al mattino, gli avevamo fatto un discorso tramite il capoclasse, e lo avevamo applaudito fino a rimanere rauchi, e fino a quando lui non aveva versato lacrime. E ora, la sera, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes ed io, andammo a prendere il tè con lui in veste privata.
Il signor Jack Maldon era già lì, prima di noi. La signora Strong, vestita di bianco, con nastri color ciliegia, stava suonando il pianoforte, quando siamo entrati; e lui si era chinato su di lei per girare le pagine. Il chiaro rosso e bianco del suo colorito non era così fiorente e fiorito come al solito, ho pensato, quando si è voltata; ma lei aveva un aspetto molto grazioso, meravigliosamente grazioso.
«Ho dimenticato, dottore», disse la mamma della signora Strong, quando ci fummo seduti, «di porgervi i miei auguri del giorno, anche se, come potete immaginare, non sono per me semplici frasi di circostanza. Permettetemi di augurarvi un felice ritorno».
«Vi ringrazio, signora», rispose il dottore.
«Molti, molti, molti felici ritorni», disse il Vecchio Soldato. «Non solo per il tuo bene, ma per Annie, e per John Maldon, e per molte altre persone. Mi sembra ieri, John, quando eri un piccolo bambino, più basso di un capo rispetto al piccolo Copperfield, che facevi corteggiamento ad Annie dietro i cespugli di more nel retro-giardino.»
‘Carissima mamma,’ disse la signora Strong, ‘non importa ora.’
«Annie, non essere assurda», rispose sua madre. «Se arrossisci a sentir parlare di queste cose ora che sei una donna sposata, quando non arrossirai a sentirle?»
“Vecchia?” esclamò il signor Jack Maldon. “Annie? Ma dai!”
«Sì, John», rispose il soldato. «Praticamente, una vecchia donna sposata. Anche se non vecchia per anni - perché quando mi avete mai sentito dire, o chi mi ha mai sentito dire, che una ragazza di vent’anni fosse vecchia per anni? - tua cugina è la moglie del Dottore, e, come tale, è ciò che l’ho descritta. È bene per te, John, che tua cugina sia la moglie del Dottore. Hai trovato in lui un amico influente e gentile, che sarà ancora più gentile, mi permetto di prevedere, se te lo meriti. Non ho un falso orgoglio. Non esito mai ad ammettere, francamente, che ci sono alcuni membri della nostra famiglia che hanno bisogno di un amico. Tu stesso ne eri uno, prima che l’influenza di tua cugina ne facesse sorgere uno per te.»
Il dottore, nella sua bontà d’animo, fece un gesto con la mano come per minimizzare la cosa e risparmiare al signor Jack Maldon ulteriori rimproveri. Ma la signora Markleham cambiò sedia e si mise accanto al dottore, appoggiando il ventaglio sulla sua manica e dicendo:
«No, davvero, mio caro Dottore, dovete scusarmi se sembro soffermarmi su questo argomento, perché ci tengo molto. Lo chiamo la mia monomania, è un tema che mi sta molto a cuore. Siete una benedizione per noi. Siete davvero una manna, sapete.»
«Nonsense, nonsense», disse il Dottore.
«No, no, vi prego di scusarmi», ribatté il Vecchio Soldato. «Con nessuno presente, tranne il nostro caro e fidato amico signor Wickfield, non posso consentire di essere messa a tacere. Se continuate così, comincerò a rivendicare i privilegi di una suocera e vi rimprovererò. Sono perfettamente onesta e schietta. Quello che sto dicendo è quello che ho detto quando per la prima volta mi avete sopraffatta di sorpresa - vi ricordate quanto fossi sorpresa? - proponendovi per Annie. Non che ci fosse qualcosa di così straordinario nel semplice fatto della proposta - sarebbe ridicolo dirlo! - ma perché, conoscendo suo padre e avendola conosciuta da quando aveva sei mesi, non vi avevo mai considerato in quella luce, né come un uomo da sposarsi in alcun modo, - semplicemente questo, sapete».
‘Sì, sì’, rispose il dottore, di buon umore. ‘Non importa.’
«Ma a me dà fastidio», disse la Vecchia Soldatessa, posando il suo ventaglio sulle sue labbra. «Mi dà molto fastidio. Ricordo queste cose per poter essere contraddetta se sbaglio. Bene! Poi parlai con Annie, e le dissi cosa era successo. Le dissi: “Mia cara, il dottor Strong è venuto qui e ti ha fatto una dichiarazione e un’offerta molto generose”. Ho insistito anche solo un po’? No. Le dissi: “Ora, Annie, dimmi la verità in questo momento; il tuo cuore è libero?”. “Mamma”, disse lei piangendo, “sono estremamente giovane”—il che era perfettamente vero—“e non so neanche se ho un cuore”. “Allora, mia cara”, le dissi, “puoi starne certa, è libero. In ogni caso, mia cara”, le dissi, “il dottor Strong è in uno stato d’animo agitato, e deve ricevere una risposta. Non può essere tenuto in questo stato di sospensione”. “Mamma”, disse Annie, ancora piangendo, “sarebbe infelice senza di me? Se lo fosse, lo onoro e lo rispetto così tanto, che credo che lo sposerò”. Così fu deciso. E poi, e non prima, dissi ad Annie: “Annie, il dottor Strong non sarà solo tuo marito, ma rappresenterà tuo padre defunto: rappresenterà la testa della nostra famiglia, rappresenterà la saggezza e la posizione, e posso dire i mezzi, della nostra famiglia; e sarà, in breve, una Benedizione per essa”. Usai la parola al momento, e l’ho usata di nuovo oggi. Se ho qualche merito è la coerenza».
The daughter had sat quite silent and still during this speech, with her eyes fixed on the ground; her cousin standing near her, and looking on the ground too. She now said very softly, in a trembling voice:
‘Mama, I hope you have finished?’ ‘No, my dear Annie,’ returned the Old Soldier, ‘I have not quite finished. Since you ask me, my love, I reply that I have not. I complain that you really are a little unnatural towards your own family; and, as it is of no use complaining to you. I mean to complain to your husband. Now, my dear Doctor, do look at that silly wife of yours.’
As the Doctor turned his kind face, with its smile of simplicity and gentleness, towards her, she drooped her head more. I noticed that Mr. Wickfield looked at her steadily.
‘When I happened to say to that naughty thing, the other day,’ pursued her mother, shaking her head and her fan at her, playfully, ‘that there was a family circumstance she might mention to you—indeed, I think, was bound to mention—she said, that to mention it was to ask a favour; and that, as you were too generous, and as for her to ask was always to have, she wouldn’t.’
‘Annie, my dear,’ said the Doctor. ‘That was wrong. It robbed me of a pleasure.’
‘Almost the very words I said to her!’ exclaimed her mother. ‘Now really, another time, when I know what she would tell you but for this reason, and won’t, I have a great mind, my dear Doctor, to tell you myself.’
‘I shall be glad if you will,’ returned the Doctor.
‘Shall I?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Well, then, I will!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘That’s a bargain.’ And having, I suppose, carried her point, she tapped the Doctor’s hand several times with her fan (which she kissed first), and returned triumphantly to her former station.
Some more company coming in, among whom were the two masters and Adams, the talk became general; and it naturally turned on Mr. Jack Maldon, and his voyage, and the country he was going to, and his various plans and prospects. He was to leave that night, after supper, in a post-chaise, for Gravesend; where the ship, in which he was to make the voyage, lay; and was to be gone—unless he came home on leave, or for his health—I don’t know how many years. I recollect it was settled by general consent that India was quite a misrepresented country, and had nothing objectionable in it, but a tiger or two, and a little heat in the warm part of the day. For my own part, I looked on Mr. Jack Maldon as a modern Sindbad, and pictured him the bosom friend of all the Rajahs in the East, sitting under canopies, smoking curly golden pipes—a mile long, if they could be straightened out.
Mrs. Strong was a very pretty singer: as I knew, who often heard her singing by herself. But, whether she was afraid of singing before people, or was out of voice that evening, it was certain that she couldn’t sing at all. She tried a duet, once, with her cousin Maldon, but could not so much as begin; and afterwards, when she tried to sing by herself, although she began sweetly, her voice died away on a sudden, and left her quite distressed, with her head hanging down over the keys. The good Doctor said she was nervous, and, to relieve her, proposed a round game at cards; of which he knew as much as of the art of playing the trombone. But I remarked that the Old Soldier took him into custody directly, for her partner; and instructed him, as the first preliminary of initiation, to give her all the silver he had in his pocket.
We had a merry game, not made the less merry by the Doctor’s mistakes, of which he committed an innumerable quantity, in spite of the watchfulness of the butterflies, and to their great aggravation. Mrs. Strong had declined to play, on the ground of not feeling very well; and her cousin Maldon had excused himself because he had some packing to do. When he had done it, however, he returned, and they sat together, talking, on the sofa. From time to time she came and looked over the Doctor’s hand, and told him what to play. She was very pale, as she bent over him, and I thought her finger trembled as she pointed out the cards; but the Doctor was quite happy in her attention, and took no notice of this, if it were so.
At supper, we were hardly so gay. Everyone appeared to feel that a parting of that sort was an awkward thing, and that the nearer it approached, the more awkward it was. Mr. Jack Maldon tried to be very talkative, but was not at his ease, and made matters worse. And they were not improved, as it appeared to me, by the Old Soldier: who continually recalled passages of Mr. Jack Maldon’s youth.
The Doctor, however, who felt, I am sure, that he was making everybody happy, was well pleased, and had no suspicion but that we were all at the utmost height of enjoyment.
‘Annie, my dear,’ said he, looking at his watch, and filling his glass, ‘it is past your cousin Jack’s time, and we must not detain him, since time and tide—both concerned in this case—wait for no man. Mr. Jack Maldon, you have a long voyage, and a strange country, before you; but many men have had both, and many men will have both, to the end of time. The winds you are going to tempt, have wafted thousands upon thousands to fortune, and brought thousands upon thousands happily back.’
‘It’s an affecting thing,’ said Mrs. Markleham—‘however it’s viewed, it’s affecting, to see a fine young man one has known from an infant, going away to the other end of the world, leaving all he knows behind, and not knowing what’s before him. A young man really well deserves constant support and patronage,’ looking at the Doctor, ‘who makes such sacrifices.’
‘Time will go fast with you, Mr. Jack Maldon,’ pursued the Doctor, ‘and fast with all of us. Some of us can hardly expect, perhaps, in the natural course of things, to greet you on your return. The next best thing is to hope to do it, and that’s my case. I shall not weary you with good advice. You have long had a good model before you, in your cousin Annie. Imitate her virtues as nearly as you can.’
La figlia era rimasta in silenzio e immobile durante questo discorso, con gli occhi fissi a terra; il cugino in piedi vicino a lei, guardava anche lui a terra. Ora disse molto dolcemente, con voce tremante:
«Mamma, spero che tu abbia finito?» «No, mia cara Annie», rispose il Vecchio Soldato, «non ho ancora finito. Poiché me lo chiedi, mia cara, ti rispondo che non ho finito. Mi lamento che tu sia davvero un po’ innaturale nei confronti della tua stessa famiglia; e, poiché lamentarmi con te non serve a nulla, intendo lamentarmi con tuo marito. Ora, mio caro Dottore, guarda quella tua sciocca moglie.»
Quando il dottore rivolse verso di lei il suo gentile volto, con il suo sorriso di semplicità e dolcezza, lei abbassò ancora di più la testa. Notai che il signor Wickfield la guardava con insistenza.
«Quando l’altro giorno ho detto a quella piccola monella», continuò la madre, scuotendo la testa e il ventaglio in direzione della figlia, in tono scherzoso, «che c’era una circostanza familiare che avrebbe potuto menzionare a te – anzi, credo che fosse proprio tenuta a menzionarla – lei ha risposto che menzionarla equivaleva a chiedere un favore; e che, dato che tu eri troppo generoso, e che per lei chiedere equivaleva sempre ad avere, non lo avrebbe fatto.»
‘Annie, mia cara,’ disse il Dottore. ‘Questo è stato sbagliato. Mi ha privato di un piacere.’
«Quasi le stesse parole che le ho detto io!» esclamò la madre. «Ora, davvero, un’altra volta, quando saprò cosa vi direbbe se non fosse per questo motivo, e non lo farà, ho una gran voglia, mio caro Dottore, di dirvelo io stessa.»
«Ne sarò lieto se lo farà», rispose il dottore.
‘Lo faccio?’
‘Senz’altro.’
«Bene, allora lo farò!» disse la Vecchia Soldatessa. «È un patto.» E avendo, immagino, ottenuto ciò che voleva, batté più volte la mano del Dottore con il suo ventaglio (che prima baciò), e tornò trionfalmente al suo posto di prima.
Altri ospiti entrarono, tra cui i due maestri e Adams, e la conversazione divenne generale; e naturalmente si concentrò su Mr. Jack Maldon, e il suo viaggio, e il paese in cui si sarebbe recato, e i suoi vari piani e prospettive. Doveva partire quella sera, dopo cena, in una carrozza postale, per Gravesend; dove la nave, su cui avrebbe compiuto il viaggio, era ancorata; e sarebbe stato via—a meno che non fosse tornato a casa in licenza, o per la sua salute—non so per quanti anni. Ricordo che fu stabilito di comune accordo che l’India era un paese completamente frainteso, e non aveva nulla di riprovevole, se non una tigre o due, e un po’ di caldo nella parte più calda della giornata. Per quanto mi riguarda, consideravo Mr. Jack Maldon un Sindbad moderno, e lo immaginavo amico fraterno di tutti i Rajah dell’Est, seduto sotto baldacchini, fumando pipe dorate e ricurve—lunghe un miglio, se potessero essere raddrizzate.
La signora Strong era una cantante molto graziosa: lo sapevo, perché spesso l’avevo sentita cantare da sola. Ma, o aveva paura di cantare davanti alla gente, o quella sera aveva la voce rauca, certo è che non riusciva a cantare affatto. Provò una volta un duetto con il cugino Maldon, ma non riuscì nemmeno a iniziare; e poi, quando provò a cantare da sola, sebbene avesse iniziato dolcemente, la sua voce si spense all’improvviso, e la lasciò tutta angosciata, con la testa china sulle tastiere. Il buon Dottore disse che era nervosa, e, per alleviarla, propose un gioco di carte; di cui sapeva quanto dell’arte di suonare il trombone. Ma notai che il Vecchio Soldato lo prese subito in custodia, come suo partner; e gli insegnò, come prima regola di iniziazione, a darle tutto l’argento che aveva in tasca.
Facemmo una partita allegra, resa ancora più allegra dagli errori del Dottore, che ne commise un numero innumerevole, nonostante la vigilanza delle farfalle, e con loro grande irritazione. La signora Strong aveva rifiutato di giocare, adducendo di non sentirsi molto bene; e il suo cugino Maldon si era scusato perché aveva da fare un po’ di imballaggi. Quando ebbe finito, però, tornò, e si sedettero insieme, parlando, sul divano. Di tanto in tanto lei veniva a guardare la mano del Dottore, e gli diceva cosa giocare. Era molto pallida, mentre si chinava su di lui, e mi parve che il suo dito tremasse mentre indicava le carte; ma il Dottore era felice della sua attenzione, e non se ne accorse, se così era.
A cena, non eravamo così allegri. Tutti sembravano sentire che una separazione di quel genere era una cosa scomoda, e che più si avvicinava, più era scomoda. Il signor Jack Maldon cercò di essere molto loquace, ma non era a suo agio, e peggiorò le cose. E non furono migliorate, come mi parve, dal Vecchio Soldato: che continuamente richiamava alla memoria passaggi della giovinezza del signor Jack Maldon.
Il Dottore, tuttavia, che sentiva, ne sono sicuro, di rendere tutti felici, era ben contento e non aveva alcun sospetto che non fossimo tutti al culmine del divertimento.
«Annie, mia cara», disse lui, guardando l’orologio e riempiendo il bicchiere, «è passato l’ora del tuo cugino Jack, e non dobbiamo trattenerlo, poiché l’ora e la marea — entrambe coinvolte in questo caso — non aspettano nessuno. Signor Jack Maldon, avete davanti a voi un lungo viaggio e un paese straniero; ma molti uomini hanno avuto entrambi, e molti uomini avranno entrambi, fino alla fine del tempo. I venti che andrete a sfidare, hanno portato innumerevoli persone alla fortuna, e ne hanno riportate innumerevoli felicemente indietro.»
«È una cosa commuovente», disse la signora Markleham, «è commuovente, in qualunque modo la si guardi, vedere un giovane di bell’aspetto che si conosceva da quando era un bambino, partire per l’altra estremità del mondo, lasciandosi alle spalle tutto ciò che conosce, e non sapendo cosa lo attende. Un giovane che si sacrifica davvero bene merita un sostegno e un patrocinio costanti», guardando il Dottore.
«Il tempo volerà per te, signor Jack Maldon», continuò il dottore, «e volerà per tutti noi. Forse alcuni di noi non potranno, nel normale corso delle cose, salutarti al tuo ritorno. La cosa migliore è sperare di farlo, ed è il mio caso. Non ti annoierò con buoni consigli. Hai avuto a lungo un buon modello davanti a te, in tua cugina Annie. Imita le sue virtù il più possibile.»
Mrs. Markleham fanned herself, and shook her head.
‘Farewell, Mr. Jack,’ said the Doctor, standing up; on which we all stood up. ‘A prosperous voyage out, a thriving career abroad, and a happy return home!’
We all drank the toast, and all shook hands with Mr. Jack Maldon; after which he hastily took leave of the ladies who were there, and hurried to the door, where he was received, as he got into the chaise, with a tremendous broadside of cheers discharged by our boys, who had assembled on the lawn for the purpose. Running in among them to swell the ranks, I was very near the chaise when it rolled away; and I had a lively impression made upon me, in the midst of the noise and dust, of having seen Mr. Jack Maldon rattle past with an agitated face, and something cherry-coloured in his hand.
After another broadside for the Doctor, and another for the Doctor’s wife, the boys dispersed, and I went back into the house, where I found the guests all standing in a group about the Doctor, discussing how Mr. Jack Maldon had gone away, and how he had borne it, and how he had felt it, and all the rest of it. In the midst of these remarks, Mrs. Markleham cried: ‘Where’s Annie?’
No Annie was there; and when they called to her, no Annie replied. But all pressing out of the room, in a crowd, to see what was the matter, we found her lying on the hall floor. There was great alarm at first, until it was found that she was in a swoon, and that the swoon was yielding to the usual means of recovery; when the Doctor, who had lifted her head upon his knee, put her curls aside with his hand, and said, looking around:
‘Poor Annie! She’s so faithful and tender-hearted! It’s the parting from her old playfellow and friend—her favourite cousin—that has done this. Ah! It’s a pity! I am very sorry!’
When she opened her eyes, and saw where she was, and that we were all standing about her, she arose with assistance: turning her head, as she did so, to lay it on the Doctor’s shoulder—or to hide it, I don’t know which. We went into the drawing-room, to leave her with the Doctor and her mother; but she said, it seemed, that she was better than she had been since morning, and that she would rather be brought among us; so they brought her in, looking very white and weak, I thought, and sat her on a sofa.
‘Annie, my dear,’ said her mother, doing something to her dress. ‘See here! You have lost a bow. Will anybody be so good as find a ribbon; a cherry-coloured ribbon?’
It was the one she had worn at her bosom. We all looked for it; I myself looked everywhere, I am certain—but nobody could find it.
‘Do you recollect where you had it last, Annie?’ said her mother.
I wondered how I could have thought she looked white, or anything but burning red, when she answered that she had had it safe, a little while ago, she thought, but it was not worth looking for.
Nevertheless, it was looked for again, and still not found. She entreated that there might be no more searching; but it was still sought for, in a desultory way, until she was quite well, and the company took their departure.
We walked very slowly home, Mr. Wickfield, Agnes, and I—Agnes and I admiring the moonlight, and Mr. Wickfield scarcely raising his eyes from the ground. When we, at last, reached our own door, Agnes discovered that she had left her little reticule behind. Delighted to be of any service to her, I ran back to fetch it.
I went into the supper-room where it had been left, which was deserted and dark. But a door of communication between that and the Doctor’s study, where there was a light, being open, I passed on there, to say what I wanted, and to get a candle.
The Doctor was sitting in his easy-chair by the fireside, and his young wife was on a stool at his feet. The Doctor, with a complacent smile, was reading aloud some manuscript explanation or statement of a theory out of that interminable Dictionary, and she was looking up at him. But with such a face as I never saw. It was so beautiful in its form, it was so ashy pale, it was so fixed in its abstraction, it was so full of a wild, sleep-walking, dreamy horror of I don’t know what. The eyes were wide open, and her brown hair fell in two rich clusters on her shoulders, and on her white dress, disordered by the want of the lost ribbon. Distinctly as I recollect her look, I cannot say of what it was expressive, I cannot even say of what it is expressive to me now, rising again before my older judgement. Penitence, humiliation, shame, pride, love, and trustfulness—I see them all; and in them all, I see that horror of I don’t know what.
My entrance, and my saying what I wanted, roused her. It disturbed the Doctor too, for when I went back to replace the candle I had taken from the table, he was patting her head, in his fatherly way, and saying he was a merciless drone to let her tempt him into reading on; and he would have her go to bed.
But she asked him, in a rapid, urgent manner, to let her stay—to let her feel assured (I heard her murmur some broken words to this effect) that she was in his confidence that night. And, as she turned again towards him, after glancing at me as I left the room and went out at the door, I saw her cross her hands upon his knee, and look up at him with the same face, something quieted, as he resumed his reading.
It made a great impression on me, and I remembered it a long time afterwards; as I shall have occasion to narrate when the time comes.
La signora Markleham si ventagliava e scuoteva la testa.
«Addio, signor Jack», disse il Dottore, alzandosi; e noi tutti ci alzammo. «Un viaggio di andata prospero, una carriera all’estero fiorente, e un felice ritorno a casa!»
Tutti bevemmo il brindisi e stringemmo la mano a Mr. Jack Maldon; dopo di che egli si congedò in fretta dalle signore presenti e si diresse alla porta, dove fu accolto, mentre saliva sulla carrozza, con una tremenda bordata di evviva sparata dai nostri ragazzi, che si erano radunati sul prato per l’occasione. Correndo tra loro per ingrossare le file, ero molto vicino alla carrozza quando si allontanò; e in mezzo al rumore e alla polvere, ebbi la vivida impressione di aver visto Mr. Jack Maldon sfrecciare via con un viso agitato e qualcosa di colore ciliegia in mano.
Dopo un altro brindisi per il Dottore e un altro per la moglie del Dottore, i ragazzi si dispersero e io rientrai nella casa, dove trovai tutti gli ospiti radunati intorno al Dottore, a discutere di come fosse andato via il signor Jack Maldon, di come l’avesse presa, di come se la fosse sentita, e di tutto il resto. In mezzo a queste osservazioni, la signora Markleham esclamò: «Dov’è Annie?»
Annie non c’era; e quando la chiamarono, nessuna Annie rispose. Ma tutti, spingendosi fuori dalla stanza in folla, per vedere che cosa fosse successo, la trovammo distesa sul pavimento dell’atrio. All’inizio ci fu grande allarme, finché non si scoprì che era svenuta, e che lo svenimento cedeva ai soliti mezzi per il recupero; quando il Dottore, che le aveva sollevato la testa sulle sue ginocchia, le mise da parte i riccioli con la mano, e disse, guardandosi intorno:
«Povera Annie! È così fedele e tenera! È la separazione dal suo vecchio compagno di giochi e amico, il suo cugino prediletto, che ha causato tutto questo. Ah! È un peccato! Mi dispiace molto!»
Quando aprì gli occhi e vide dove si trovava e che eravamo tutti in piedi intorno a lei, si alzò con l’aiuto di qualcuno: mentre lo faceva, girò la testa per appoggiarla sulla spalla del dottore, o per nasconderla, non so quale delle due. Andammo nel salotto per lasciarla con il dottore e sua madre; ma lei disse, a quanto pareva, che si sentiva meglio di quanto fosse stata da quella mattina, e che preferiva essere portata tra noi; così la portarono dentro, e mi parve che avesse un aspetto molto pallido e debole, e la fecero sedere su un divano.
«Annie, mia cara», disse sua madre, sistemando qualcosa sul suo vestito, «guarda qui! Hai perso un fiocco. Qualcuno potrebbe avere la gentilezza di trovarmi un nastro? Un nastro color ciliegia?»
Era quello che aveva portato sul petto. Tutti lo cercammo; io stesso ho guardato dappertutto, ne sono sicuro — ma nessuno riuscì a trovarlo.
«Ti ricordi dove l’hai avuta l’ultima volta, Annie?» disse sua madre.
Mi chiedevo come avessi potuto pensare che avesse un colorito pallido, o che non fosse rossa di rabbia, quando rispose che l’aveva tenuto al sicuro, un po’ di tempo fa, pensava, ma non valeva la pena cercarlo.
Tuttavia, si cercò di nuovo, e ancora non si trovò. Ella implorò che non si cercasse più; ma si continuò a cercare, in modo disordinato, finché non fu del tutto guarita, e la compagnia se ne andò.
Camminavamo molto lentamente verso casa, io, Agnes e il signor Wickfield: Agnes e io ammiravamo la luce della luna, mentre il signor Wickfield quasi non alzava gli occhi da terra. Quando, finalmente, raggiungemmo la nostra porta, Agnes si accorse di aver dimenticato il suo piccolo reticolo. Felice di poterle essere d’aiuto, tornai indietro a prenderlo.
Entrai nella sala da pranzo dove era stato lasciato, che era deserta e buia. Ma una porta di comunicazione tra quella e lo studio del Dottore, dove c’era luce, essendo aperta, passai lì, per dire quello che volevo, e per prendere una candela.
Il dottore era seduto nella sua poltrona accanto al caminetto, e la sua giovane moglie era su uno sgabello ai suoi piedi. Il dottore, con un sorriso compiaciuto, stava leggendo ad alta voce qualche spiegazione manoscritta o enunciato di una teoria tratto da quel dizionario interminabile, e lei lo guardava. Ma con una faccia che non ho mai visto. Era così bella nella sua forma, era così pallida, era così immobile nella sua astrazione, era così piena di un orrore selvaggio, dormiente, onirico di non so che cosa. Gli occhi erano spalancati, e i suoi capelli castani cadevano in due ricchi ciuffi sulle spalle, e sul suo vestito bianco, disordinato per la mancanza del nastro perduto. Distintamente come ricordo il suo sguardo, non posso dire di cosa fosse espressivo, non posso nemmeno dire di cosa sia espressivo per me ora, riaffiorando di nuovo davanti al mio giudizio più maturo. Pentimento, umiliazione, vergogna, orgoglio, amore, e fiducia—li vedo tutti; e in tutti loro, vedo quell’orrore di non so che cosa.
Il mio ingresso e il mio dire ciò che volevo la risvegliarono. Disturbò anche il Dottore, perché quando tornai a riporre la candela che avevo preso dal tavolo, lui le stava accarezzando la testa, nel suo modo paterno, e diceva di essere un crudele pigro a lasciarsi tentare da lei a continuare a leggere; e che doveva andare a letto.
Ma lo pregò, in modo rapido e insistente, di lasciarla rimanere, di farle sentire la certezza (la sentii mormorare alcune parole frammentarie in tal senso) che quella notte era al corrente dei suoi segreti. E, mentre si voltava di nuovo verso di lui, dopo avermi dato un’occhiata mentre lasciavo la stanza e uscivo dalla porta, la vidi incrociare le mani sul suo ginocchio e guardarlo con lo stesso volto, un po’ più tranquillo, mentre lui riprendeva la lettura.
Mi fece una grande impressione, e me lo ricordai a lungo dopo; come avrò occasione di raccontare quando verrà il momento.
CHAPTER 17. SOMEBODY TURNS UP
It has not occurred to me to mention Peggotty since I ran away; but, of course, I wrote her a letter almost as soon as I was housed at Dover, and another, and a longer letter, containing all particulars fully related, when my aunt took me formally under her protection. On my being settled at Doctor Strong’s I wrote to her again, detailing my happy condition and prospects. I never could have derived anything like the pleasure from spending the money Mr. Dick had given me, that I felt in sending a gold half-guinea to Peggotty, per post, enclosed in this last letter, to discharge the sum I had borrowed of her: in which epistle, not before, I mentioned about the young man with the donkey-cart.
To these communications Peggotty replied as promptly, if not as concisely, as a merchant’s clerk. Her utmost powers of expression (which were certainly not great in ink) were exhausted in the attempt to write what she felt on the subject of my journey. Four sides of incoherent and interjectional beginnings of sentences, that had no end, except blots, were inadequate to afford her any relief. But the blots were more expressive to me than the best composition; for they showed me that Peggotty had been crying all over the paper, and what could I have desired more?
I made out, without much difficulty, that she could not take quite kindly to my aunt yet. The notice was too short after so long a prepossession the other way. We never knew a person, she wrote; but to think that Miss Betsey should seem to be so different from what she had been thought to be, was a Moral!—that was her word. She was evidently still afraid of Miss Betsey, for she sent her grateful duty to her but timidly; and she was evidently afraid of me, too, and entertained the probability of my running away again soon: if I might judge from the repeated hints she threw out, that the coach-fare to Yarmouth was always to be had of her for the asking.
She gave me one piece of intelligence which affected me very much, namely, that there had been a sale of the furniture at our old home, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone were gone away, and the house was shut up, to be let or sold. God knows I had no part in it while they remained there, but it pained me to think of the dear old place as altogether abandoned; of the weeds growing tall in the garden, and the fallen leaves lying thick and wet upon the paths. I imagined how the winds of winter would howl round it, how the cold rain would beat upon the window-glass, how the moon would make ghosts on the walls of the empty rooms, watching their solitude all night. I thought afresh of the grave in the churchyard, underneath the tree: and it seemed as if the house were dead too, now, and all connected with my father and mother were faded away.
There was no other news in Peggotty’s letters. Mr. Barkis was an excellent husband, she said, though still a little near; but we all had our faults, and she had plenty (though I am sure I don’t know what they were); and he sent his duty, and my little bedroom was always ready for me. Mr. Peggotty was well, and Ham was well, and Mrs. Gummidge was but poorly, and little Em’ly wouldn’t send her love, but said that Peggotty might send it, if she liked.
All this intelligence I dutifully imparted to my aunt, only reserving to myself the mention of little Em’ly, to whom I instinctively felt that she would not very tenderly incline. While I was yet new at Doctor Strong’s, she made several excursions over to Canterbury to see me, and always at unseasonable hours: with the view, I suppose, of taking me by surprise. But, finding me well employed, and bearing a good character, and hearing on all hands that I rose fast in the school, she soon discontinued these visits. I saw her on a Saturday, every third or fourth week, when I went over to Dover for a treat; and I saw Mr. Dick every alternate Wednesday, when he arrived by stage-coach at noon, to stay until next morning.
On these occasions Mr. Dick never travelled without a leathern writing-desk, containing a supply of stationery and the Memorial; in relation to which document he had a notion that time was beginning to press now, and that it really must be got out of hand.
Mr. Dick was very partial to gingerbread. To render his visits the more agreeable, my aunt had instructed me to open a credit for him at a cake shop, which was hampered with the stipulation that he should not be served with more than one shilling’s-worth in the course of any one day. This, and the reference of all his little bills at the county inn where he slept, to my aunt, before they were paid, induced me to suspect that he was only allowed to rattle his money, and not to spend it. I found on further investigation that this was so, or at least there was an agreement between him and my aunt that he should account to her for all his disbursements. As he had no idea of deceiving her, and always desired to please her, he was thus made chary of launching into expense. On this point, as well as on all other possible points, Mr. Dick was convinced that my aunt was the wisest and most wonderful of women; as he repeatedly told me with infinite secrecy, and always in a whisper.
‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, with an air of mystery, after imparting this confidence to me, one Wednesday; ‘who’s the man that hides near our house and frightens her?’
‘Frightens my aunt, sir?’
Mr. Dick nodded. ‘I thought nothing would have frightened her,’ he said, ‘for she’s—’ here he whispered softly, ‘don’t mention it—the wisest and most wonderful of women.’ Having said which, he drew back, to observe the effect which this description of her made upon me.
‘The first time he came,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘was—let me see—sixteen hundred and forty-nine was the date of King Charles’s execution. I think you said sixteen hundred and forty-nine?’
CAPITOLO 17. COMPARSA INATTESA
Non mi era venuto in mente di parlare di Peggotty da quando ero scappato; ma, naturalmente, le scrissi una lettera quasi subito dopo essermi sistemato a Dover, e un’altra, e una lettera più lunga, contenente tutti i particolari raccontati per esteso, quando mia zia mi prese formalmente sotto la sua protezione. Quando mi stabilii presso il dottor Strong le scrissi di nuovo, descrivendo la mia felice condizione e le mie prospettive. Non avrei mai potuto trarre un piacere simile dal spendere i soldi che mi aveva dato il signor Dick, come quello che provai nel mandare a Peggotty, per posta, una mezza sovrana d’oro, inclusa in quest’ultima lettera, per saldare la somma che le avevo chiesto in prestito: in quella lettera, e non prima, parlai del giovane con il carretto trainato da asino.
A queste comunicazioni Peggotty rispondeva con la stessa prontezza, se non la stessa concisione, di un impiegato di commercio. I suoi massimi poteri di espressione (che certamente non erano grandi sulla carta) erano esauriti nel tentativo di scrivere ciò che provava riguardo al mio viaggio. Quattro pagine di incoerenti e interrettionali inizi di frasi, che non avevano fine, se non macchie, erano inadeguate a darle alcun sollievo. Ma le macchie erano più espressive per me della migliore composizione; perché mi mostravano che Peggotty aveva pianto su tutto il foglio, e cosa avrei potuto desiderare di più?
Ho capito senza molta difficoltà che non poteva ancora prendere molto simpatia per mia zia. L’avviso era troppo breve dopo un pregiudizio così lungo in senso opposto. Non abbiamo mai conosciuto una persona, scriveva; ma pensare che la signorina Betsey potesse sembrare così diversa da quello che si credeva fosse, era un Morale! - questa era la sua parola. Era evidentemente ancora spaventata dalla signorina Betsey, perché le mandava i suoi ossequiosi saluti, ma timidamente; ed era evidentemente spaventata anche di me, e riteneva probabile che sarei scappato di nuovo presto: se posso giudicare dai ripetuti accenni che faceva, che il biglietto del pullman per Yarmouth era sempre disponibile da lei per la richiesta.
Mi diede una notizia che mi colpì profondamente: la vendita dei mobili della nostra vecchia casa, la partenza di Mr. e Miss Murdstone e la chiusura della casa in attesa di essere affittata o venduta. Dio sa che non avevo nulla a che fare con tutto ciò mentre erano ancora lì, ma mi addolorava pensare al caro vecchio posto completamente abbandonato, con le erbacce che crescevano alte nel giardino e le foglie cadute che giacevano spesse e bagnate sui sentieri. Immaginavo come i venti dell’inverno avrebbero ululato intorno a essa, come la fredda pioggia avrebbe battuto sui vetri delle finestre, come la luna avrebbe proiettato fantasmi sulle pareti delle stanze vuote, vegliando sulla loro solitudine per tutta la notte. Ripensai alla tomba nel cimitero, sotto l’albero: e sembrava che anche la casa fosse morta, ora, e che tutto ciò che era legato a mio padre e a mia madre fosse svanito.
Nelle lettere di Peggotty non c’erano altre novità. Mr. Barkis era un marito eccellente, diceva, anche se ancora un po’ avaro; ma tutti avevamo i nostri difetti, e lei ne aveva in abbondanza (anche se non so proprio quali fossero); e lui mandava i suoi saluti, e la mia cameretta era sempre pronta per me. Mr. Peggotty stava bene, e Ham stava bene, e Mrs. Gummidge stava male, e la piccola Em’ly non voleva mandare il suo affetto, ma diceva che Peggotty poteva mandarlo lei, se voleva.
Comunicai tutto questo con diligenza a mia zia, riservandomi solo di non menzionare la piccola Em’ly, verso la quale sentivo istintivamente che non avrebbe nutrito un grande affetto. Mentre ero ancora nuovo a scuola del dottor Strong, lei fece diverse escursioni fino a Canterbury per venirmi a trovare, sempre a ore inopportune: credo con l’intento di cogliermi di sorpresa. Ma, trovandomi ben occupato, con una buona reputazione, e sentendo da ogni parte che io salivo rapidamente nella scuola, presto cessò queste visite. La vedevo di sabato, ogni tre o quattro settimane, quando andavo a Dover per un premio; e vedevo il signor Dick ogni mercoledì alternato, quando arrivava in carrozza di linea a mezzogiorno, per rimanere fino al mattino seguente.
In queste occasioni, il signor Dick non viaggiava mai senza uno scrittoio di cuoio, contenente una scorta di cancelleria e il Memoriale; a proposito di questo documento, aveva l’idea che tempo stesse iniziando a stringere ora, e che dovesse davvero essere portato a termine.
Il signor Dick era molto goloso di pan di zenzero. Per rendere le sue visite più piacevoli, mia zia mi aveva incaricato di aprire un credito per lui in una pasticceria, con la clausola che non gli si doveva servire più di un scellino di merce in un solo giorno. Questo, e il fatto che tutti i suoi piccoli conti all’osteria del circondario, dove dormiva, venissero sottoposti a mia zia prima di essere pagati, mi portarono a sospettare che gli fosse permesso solo di far tintinnare i suoi soldi, ma non di spenderli. Scoprii, con ulteriori indagini, che era proprio così, o almeno che c’era un accordo tra lui e mia zia per cui doveva renderle conto di tutte le sue spese. Poiché non aveva alcuna intenzione di ingannarla e desiderava sempre compiacerla, era così indotto a fare attenzione a non spendere troppo. Su questo punto, così come su tutti gli altri, il signor Dick era convinto che mia zia fosse la donna più saggia e meravigliosa del mondo; come mi ripeteva spesso con infinita segretezza e sempre sussurrando.
«Trotwood», disse il signor Dick, con aria misteriosa, dopo avermi confidato questo segreto, un mercoledì, «chi è l’uomo che si nasconde vicino alla nostra casa e la spaventa?»
‘Farei paura a mia zia, signore?’
Mr. Dick annuì. «Pensavo che nulla l’avrebbe spaventata», disse, «perché lei è, » qui sussurrò dolcemente, «non dica nulla, la più saggia e meravigliosa delle donne.» Detto ciò, si ritrasse per osservare l’effetto che questa descrizione di lei avrebbe avuto su di me.
«La prima volta che venne», disse Mr. Dick, «fu, vediamo, milleseicentoquarantanove fu l’anno dell’esecuzione del Re Carlo. Mi pare che lei abbia detto milleseicentoquarantanove?»
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I don’t know how it can be,’ said Mr. Dick, sorely puzzled and shaking his head. ‘I don’t think I am as old as that.’
‘Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?’ I asked.
‘Why, really’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I don’t see how it can have been in that year, Trotwood. Did you get that date out of history?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I suppose history never lies, does it?’ said Mr. Dick, with a gleam of hope.
‘Oh dear, no, sir!’ I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous and young, and I thought so.
‘I can’t make it out,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. ‘There’s something wrong, somewhere. However, it was very soon after the mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King Charles’s head into my head, that the man first came. I was walking out with Miss Trotwood after tea, just at dark, and there he was, close to our house.’
‘Walking about?’ I inquired.
‘Walking about?’ repeated Mr. Dick. ‘Let me see, I must recollect a bit. N-no, no; he was not walking about.’
I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he WAS doing.
‘Well, he wasn’t there at all,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘until he came up behind her, and whispered. Then she turned round and fainted, and I stood still and looked at him, and he walked away; but that he should have been hiding ever since (in the ground or somewhere), is the most extraordinary thing!’
‘HAS he been hiding ever since?’ I asked.
‘To be sure he has,’ retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his head gravely. ‘Never came out, till last night! We were walking last night, and he came up behind her again, and I knew him again.’
‘And did he frighten my aunt again?’
‘All of a shiver,’ said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that affection and making his teeth chatter. ‘Held by the palings. Cried. But, Trotwood, come here,’ getting me close to him, that he might whisper very softly; ‘why did she give him money, boy, in the moonlight?’
‘He was a beggar, perhaps.’
Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion; and having replied a great many times, and with great confidence, ‘No beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’ went on to say, that from his window he had afterwards, and late at night, seen my aunt give this person money outside the garden rails in the moonlight, who then slunk away—into the ground again, as he thought probable—and was seen no more: while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly back into the house, and had, even that morning, been quite different from her usual self; which preyed on Mr. Dick’s mind.
I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that the unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and one of the line of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so much difficulty; but after some reflection I began to entertain the question whether an attempt, or threat of an attempt, might have been twice made to take poor Mr. Dick himself from under my aunt’s protection, and whether my aunt, the strength of whose kind feeling towards him I knew from herself, might have been induced to pay a price for his peace and quiet. As I was already much attached to Mr. Dick, and very solicitous for his welfare, my fears favoured this supposition; and for a long time his Wednesday hardly ever came round, without my entertaining a misgiving that he would not be on the coach-box as usual. There he always appeared, however, grey-headed, laughing, and happy; and he never had anything more to tell of the man who could frighten my aunt.
These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick’s life; they were far from being the least happy of mine. He soon became known to every boy in the school; and though he never took an active part in any game but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in all our sports as anyone among us. How often have I seen him, intent upon a match at marbles or pegtop, looking on with a face of unutterable interest, and hardly breathing at the critical times! How often, at hare and hounds, have I seen him mounted on a little knoll, cheering the whole field on to action, and waving his hat above his grey head, oblivious of King Charles the Martyr’s head, and all belonging to it! How many a summer hour have I known to be but blissful minutes to him in the cricket-field! How many winter days have I seen him, standing blue-nosed, in the snow and east wind, looking at the boys going down the long slide, and clapping his worsted gloves in rapture!
He was an universal favourite, and his ingenuity in little things was transcendent. He could cut oranges into such devices as none of us had an idea of. He could make a boat out of anything, from a skewer upwards. He could turn cramp-bones into chessmen; fashion Roman chariots from old court cards; make spoked wheels out of cotton reels, and bird-cages of old wire. But he was greatest of all, perhaps, in the articles of string and straw; with which we were all persuaded he could do anything that could be done by hands.
Mr. Dick’s renown was not long confined to us. After a few Wednesdays, Doctor Strong himself made some inquiries of me about him, and I told him all my aunt had told me; which interested the Doctor so much that he requested, on the occasion of his next visit, to be presented to him. This ceremony I performed; and the Doctor begging Mr. Dick, whensoever he should not find me at the coach office, to come on there, and rest himself until our morning’s work was over, it soon passed into a custom for Mr. Dick to come on as a matter of course, and, if we were a little late, as often happened on a Wednesday, to walk about the courtyard, waiting for me. Here he made the acquaintance of the Doctor’s beautiful young wife (paler than formerly, all this time; more rarely seen by me or anyone, I think; and not so gay, but not less beautiful), and so became more and more familiar by degrees, until, at last, he would come into the school and wait. He always sat in a particular corner, on a particular stool, which was called ‘Dick’, after him; here he would sit, with his grey head bent forward, attentively listening to whatever might be going on, with a profound veneration for the learning he had never been able to acquire.
“Sì, signore.”
«Non capisco come sia possibile», disse il signor Dick, molto perplesso e scuotendo la testa. «Non credo di essere così vecchio.»
«Fu in quell’anno che apparve l’uomo, signore?» chiesi.
«Davvero», disse il signor Dick, «non capisco come possa essere stato in quell’anno, Trotwood. Hai preso quella data dalla storia?»
“Sì, signore.”
«Suppongo che la storia non menta mai, vero?» disse il signor Dick, con un barlume di speranza.
«Oh, no, signore!» risposi, con la massima decisione. Ero ingenuo e giovane, e pensavo così.
«Non riesco a capirlo», disse il signor Dick, scuotendo la testa. «C’è qualcosa che non va, da qualche parte. Comunque, fu poco dopo che fu commesso l’errore di mettere un po’ dei problemi della testa del re Carlo nella mia testa, che l’uomo venne per la prima volta. Stavo passeggiando con la signorina Trotwood dopo il tè, proprio al calar della sera, ed eccolo lì, vicino alla nostra casa.»
«Camminare in giro?» chiesi.
«Camminava?» ripeté il signor Dick. «Fammi pensare, devo ricordare un po’. N-no, no; lui non camminava.»
Chiesi, come modo più diretto per arrivare al dunque, cosa stesse FACCENDO.
«Beh, non c’era affatto», disse Mr. Dick, «finché non le si avvicinò alle spalle e le sussurrò qualcosa. Allora lei si voltò e svenne, e io rimasi fermo a guardarlo, e lui se ne andò; ma che da allora si sia nascosto (sotto terra o chissà dove) è la cosa più straordinaria!»
«È rimasto nascosto da allora?» chiesi.
«Certo che l’ha fatto», ribatté il signor Dick, annuendo gravemente. «Non è mai uscito, fino a ieri sera! Eravamo a passeggio ieri sera, e lui è tornato a seguirla, e l’ho riconosciuto di nuovo.»
‘Ha spaventato di nuovo mia zia?’
«Tutto tremante», disse il signor Dick, fingendo quella condizione e facendo battere i denti. «Teneva aggrappato ai pali. Piangeva. Ma, Trotwood, viene qui», avvicinandomi a sé, per poter sussurrare molto piano; «perché gli ha dato dei soldi, ragazzo, alla luce della luna?»
‘Forse era un mendicante.’
Mr. Dick scosse la testa, rifiutando categoricamente il suggerimento; e dopo aver risposto molte volte, e con grande sicurezza, «Nessun mendicante, nessun mendicante, nessun mendicante, signore!», continuò a dire che dal suo finestra aveva visto in seguito, e tardi a notte, mia zia dare a questa persona del denaro fuori dai cancelli del giardino alla luce della luna, che poi si allontanò di nascosto —sprofondando di nuovo nel terreno, come lui riteneva probabile—e non fu più visto: mentre mia zia tornò in tutta fretta e in segreto nella casa, e era stata, anche quella mattina, completamente diversa dal suo solito sé; il che preoccupava molto Mr. Dick.
All’inizio di questa storia, non avevo la minima convinzione che l’ignoto fosse altro che una delusione di Mr. Dick, e uno dei discendenti di quel Principe sfortunato che gli aveva causato tanti problemi; ma dopo averci riflettuto un po’, ho iniziato a chiedermi se un tentativo, o la minaccia di un tentativo, potesse essere stato fatto due volte per portare via il povero Mr. Dick stesso dalla protezione di mia zia, e se mia zia, la cui forza del sentimento gentile verso di lui conoscevo da lei stessa, potesse essere stata indotta a pagare un prezzo per la sua pace e tranquillità. Poiché ero già molto affezionato a Mr. Dick, e molto sollecito per il suo benessere, le mie paure favorivano questa supposizione; e per un lungo periodo la sua mercoledì non passava quasi mai senza che io nutrissi il timore che non sarebbe stato sul tetto del carro come al solito. Lì appariva sempre, comunque, con i capelli grigi, ridendo e felice; e non aveva mai niente di più da raccontare dell’uomo che poteva spaventare mia zia.
Questi mercoledì erano i giorni più felici della vita di Mr. Dick; erano lontani dall’essere i meno felici della mia. Egli divenne presto noto a ogni ragazzo della scuola; e sebbene non partecipasse mai attivamente a nessun gioco se non al volo di aquiloni, era interessato a tutti i nostri sport quanto chiunque di noi. Quante volte l’ho visto, intento a una partita a biglie o a una gara di trottini, guardare con un’espressione di interesse inesprimibile, e a malapena respirare nei momenti critici! Quante volte, a lepri e cani, l’ho visto in groppa a una piccola collina, incitando tutto il campo all’azione, e agitando il cappello sopra la sua testa grigia, dimentico della testa del Re Carlo il Martire, e di tutto ciò che le apparteneva! Quante ore di estate ho saputo essere per lui solo minuti beati nel campo da cricket! Quanti giorni di inverno l’ho visto, in piedi con il naso blu, nella neve e nel vento di levante, guardare i ragazzi che scendevano lungo la lunga scivola, e battere le mani guantate di lana in estasi!
Era il preferito di tutti, e la sua ingegnosità nelle piccole cose era straordinaria. Sapeva tagliare le arance in forme che a nessuno di noi sarebbe mai venute in mente. Sapeva fare una barca con qualsiasi cosa, da uno stuzzicadenti in su. Sapeva trasformare le ossa contorte in pedine da scacchi; costruire carri romani con vecchie carte da gioco; fare ruote cerchiate con bobine di cotone e gabbie per uccelli con filo di ferro. Ma forse era più grande di tutti negli articoli di spago e paglia; con i quali eravamo tutti convinti che potesse fare qualsiasi cosa che potesse essere fatta con le mani.
La fama di Mr. Dick non rimase a lungo confinata a noi. Dopo qualche mercoledì, lo stesso dottor Strong fece alcune domande su di lui, e io gli raccontai tutto quello che mia zia mi aveva detto; il che interessò il dottore così tanto che gli chiese, in occasione della sua prossima visita, di essere presentato a lui. Eseguii questa cerimonia; e il dottore, pregando Mr. Dick, quando non mi avesse trovato all’ufficio corrieri, di venire lì e riposarsi fino a quando non avessimo finito il nostro lavoro mattutino, presto divenne una consuetudine per Mr. Dick venire come da scontato, e, se fossimo stati un po’ in ritardo, come spesso accadeva di mercoledì, passeggiare per il cortile, aspettandomi. Qui fece la conoscenza della giovane e bella moglie del dottore (più pallida di prima, in tutto questo tempo; più raramente vista da me o da chiunque altro, credo; e non così allegra, ma non meno bella), e così divenne sempre più familiare a poco a poco, fino a quando, alla fine, veniva a scuola e aspettava. Si sedeva sempre in un angolo particolare, su uno sgabello particolare, che era chiamato ‘Dick’, dopo di lui; qui si sedeva, con la sua testa grigia piegata in avanti, ascoltando attentamente tutto ciò che potesse stare accadendo, con una profonda venerazione per l’apprendimento che non era mai stato in grado di acquisire.
This veneration Mr. Dick extended to the Doctor, whom he thought the most subtle and accomplished philosopher of any age. It was long before Mr. Dick ever spoke to him otherwise than bareheaded; and even when he and the Doctor had struck up quite a friendship, and would walk together by the hour, on that side of the courtyard which was known among us as The Doctor’s Walk, Mr. Dick would pull off his hat at intervals to show his respect for wisdom and knowledge. How it ever came about that the Doctor began to read out scraps of the famous Dictionary, in these walks, I never knew; perhaps he felt it all the same, at first, as reading to himself. However, it passed into a custom too; and Mr. Dick, listening with a face shining with pride and pleasure, in his heart of hearts believed the Dictionary to be the most delightful book in the world.
As I think of them going up and down before those schoolroom windows—the Doctor reading with his complacent smile, an occasional flourish of the manuscript, or grave motion of his head; and Mr. Dick listening, enchained by interest, with his poor wits calmly wandering God knows where, upon the wings of hard words—I think of it as one of the pleasantest things, in a quiet way, that I have ever seen. I feel as if they might go walking to and fro for ever, and the world might somehow be the better for it—as if a thousand things it makes a noise about, were not one half so good for it, or me.
Agnes was one of Mr. Dick’s friends, very soon; and in often coming to the house, he made acquaintance with Uriah. The friendship between himself and me increased continually, and it was maintained on this odd footing: that, while Mr. Dick came professedly to look after me as my guardian, he always consulted me in any little matter of doubt that arose, and invariably guided himself by my advice; not only having a high respect for my native sagacity, but considering that I inherited a good deal from my aunt.
One Thursday morning, when I was about to walk with Mr. Dick from the hotel to the coach office before going back to school (for we had an hour’s school before breakfast), I met Uriah in the street, who reminded me of the promise I had made to take tea with himself and his mother: adding, with a writhe, ‘But I didn’t expect you to keep it, Master Copperfield, we’re so very umble.’
I really had not yet been able to make up my mind whether I liked Uriah or detested him; and I was very doubtful about it still, as I stood looking him in the face in the street. But I felt it quite an affront to be supposed proud, and said I only wanted to be asked.
‘Oh, if that’s all, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘and it really isn’t our umbleness that prevents you, will you come this evening? But if it is our umbleness, I hope you won’t mind owning to it, Master Copperfield; for we are well aware of our condition.’
I said I would mention it to Mr. Wickfield, and if he approved, as I had no doubt he would, I would come with pleasure. So, at six o’clock that evening, which was one of the early office evenings, I announced myself as ready, to Uriah.
‘Mother will be proud, indeed,’ he said, as we walked away together. ‘Or she would be proud, if it wasn’t sinful, Master Copperfield.’
‘Yet you didn’t mind supposing I was proud this morning,’ I returned.
‘Oh dear, no, Master Copperfield!’ returned Uriah. ‘Oh, believe me, no! Such a thought never came into my head! I shouldn’t have deemed it at all proud if you had thought US too umble for you. Because we are so very umble.’
‘Have you been studying much law lately?’ I asked, to change the subject.
‘Oh, Master Copperfield,’ he said, with an air of self-denial, ‘my reading is hardly to be called study. I have passed an hour or two in the evening, sometimes, with Mr. Tidd.’
‘Rather hard, I suppose?’ said I. ‘He is hard to me sometimes,’ returned Uriah. ‘But I don’t know what he might be to a gifted person.’
After beating a little tune on his chin as he walked on, with the two forefingers of his skeleton right hand, he added:
‘There are expressions, you see, Master Copperfield—Latin words and terms—in Mr. Tidd, that are trying to a reader of my umble attainments.’
‘Would you like to be taught Latin?’ I said briskly. ‘I will teach it you with pleasure, as I learn it.’
‘Oh, thank you, Master Copperfield,’ he answered, shaking his head. ‘I am sure it’s very kind of you to make the offer, but I am much too umble to accept it.’
‘What nonsense, Uriah!’
‘Oh, indeed you must excuse me, Master Copperfield! I am greatly obliged, and I should like it of all things, I assure you; but I am far too umble. There are people enough to tread upon me in my lowly state, without my doing outrage to their feelings by possessing learning. Learning ain’t for me. A person like myself had better not aspire. If he is to get on in life, he must get on umbly, Master Copperfield!’
I never saw his mouth so wide, or the creases in his cheeks so deep, as when he delivered himself of these sentiments: shaking his head all the time, and writhing modestly.
‘I think you are wrong, Uriah,’ I said. ‘I dare say there are several things that I could teach you, if you would like to learn them.’
‘Oh, I don’t doubt that, Master Copperfield,’ he answered; ‘not in the least. But not being umble yourself, you don’t judge well, perhaps, for them that are. I won’t provoke my betters with knowledge, thank you. I’m much too umble. Here is my umble dwelling, Master Copperfield!’
We entered a low, old-fashioned room, walked straight into from the street, and found there Mrs. Heep, who was the dead image of Uriah, only short. She received me with the utmost humility, and apologized to me for giving her son a kiss, observing that, lowly as they were, they had their natural affections, which they hoped would give no offence to anyone. It was a perfectly decent room, half parlour and half kitchen, but not at all a snug room. The tea-things were set upon the table, and the kettle was boiling on the hob. There was a chest of drawers with an escritoire top, for Uriah to read or write at of an evening; there was Uriah’s blue bag lying down and vomiting papers; there was a company of Uriah’s books commanded by Mr. Tidd; there was a corner cupboard: and there were the usual articles of furniture. I don’t remember that any individual object had a bare, pinched, spare look; but I do remember that the whole place had.
Questa venerazione Mr. Dick la estese al Dottore, che riteneva il più sottile e completo filosofo di ogni epoca. Passò molto tempo prima che Mr. Dick gli parlasse mai senza togliersi il cappello; e anche quando lui e il Dottore avevano stretto una vera amicizia, e passeggiavano insieme per ore, su quel lato del cortile che tra noi era conosciuto come Il Viale del Dottore, Mr. Dick si toglieva il cappello a intervalli per mostrare il suo rispetto per la saggezza e la conoscenza. Come mai il Dottore iniziò a leggere brani del famoso Dizionario, in queste passeggiate, non lo seppi mai; forse lo sentiva allo stesso modo, all’inizio, come leggere per sé. Comunque, anche questo divenne un’abitudine; e Mr. Dick, ascoltando con un volto che brillava di orgoglio e piacere, nel profondo del cuore credeva che il Dizionario fosse il libro più delizioso del mondo.
Mentre li penso che vanno su e giù davanti alle finestre della scuola, il Dottore che legge con il suo sorriso compiaciuto, con qualche gesto enfatico del manoscritto o un movimento grave del capo; e il signor Dick che ascolta, incatenato dall’interesse, con la sua povera mente che vagava tranquillamente chissà dove, sulle ali di parole difficili, li penso come una delle cose più piacevoli, in modo tranquillo, che io abbia mai visto. Mi sento come se potessero andare a passeggio avanti e indietro per sempre, e il mondo potesse in qualche modo essere migliore per questo, come se mille cose di cui fa tanto rumore non fossero neanche la metà di così buone per lui, o per me.
Agnes divenne presto una delle amiche di Mr. Dick, e venendo spesso alla casa, fece la conoscenza di Uriah. L’amicizia tra lui e me crebbe continuamente, e fu mantenuta su questa strana base: che, mentre Mr. Dick veniva dichiaratamente a occuparsi di me come mio tutore, mi consultava sempre in ogni piccola questione di dubbio che sorgesse, e si guidava invariabilmente col mio consiglio; non solo avendo un grande rispetto per la mia sagacia innata, ma considerando che ne avevo ereditata una buona dose da mia zia.
Una mattina di giovedì, quando stavo per fare una passeggiata con il signor Dick dall’albergo all’ufficio della diligenza prima di tornare a scuola (perché avevamo un’ora di lezione prima della colazione), incontrai Uriah in strada, che mi ricordò la promessa che gli avevo fatto di prendere il tè con lui e sua madre: aggiungendo, con un contorcimento, «Ma non mi aspettavo che la teneste, Master Copperfield, siamo così molto umili.»
Non ero ancora riuscito a decidermi se mi piacesse Uriah o lo detestassi; e ne dubitavo ancora, mentre ero lì in piedi a guardarlo in faccia per strada. Ma mi parve un’offesa essere considerato orgoglioso, e dissi che volevo solo essere invitato.
«Oh, se è tutto qui, Master Copperfield», disse Uriah, «e se davvero non è la nostra umiltà a impedirvi di venire, verràte questa sera? Ma se è la nostra umiltà, spero che non vi dispiacerà ammetterlo, Master Copperfield; perché siamo ben consapevoli della nostra condizione.»
Dissi che ne avrei parlato con il signor Wickfield, e se lui avesse approvato, come non avevo dubbio che avrebbe fatto, sarei venuto con piacere. Così, alle sei di quel pomeriggio, che era uno dei primi pomeriggi in ufficio, mi dichiarai pronto, a Uriah.
«La mamma sarà davvero orgogliosa», disse mentre ci allontanavamo insieme, «o lo sarebbe, se non fosse peccato, signorino Copperfield».
«Eppure non ti è dispiaciuto supporre che fossi orgoglioso questa mattina», replicai.
«Oh, no, no, signor Copperfield!» rispose Uriah. «Oh, credetemi, no! Un pensiero del genere non mi è mai passato per la testa! Non avrei ritenuto affatto orgoglioso se aveste pensato che NOI siamo troppo umili per voi. Perché siamo così molto umili.»
«Avete studiato molto diritto ultimamente?» chiesi, per cambiare argomento.
«Oh, Maestro Copperfield», disse, con un’aria di abnegazione, «la mia lettura difficilmente può essere chiamata studio. Ho trascorso un’ora o due la sera, a volte, con il signor Tidd.»
«Suppongo che sia piuttosto duro?», dissi io. «A volte è duro con me», rispose Uriah, «ma non so come potrebbe essere con una persona di talento».
Dopo aver battuto un ritmo sul mento mentre camminava, con le due dita indici della sua scheletrica mano destra, aggiunse:
«Ci sono espressioni, vede, Master Copperfield, parole e termini latini, in Mr. Tidd, che sono difficili per un lettore delle mie umili capacità.»
«Vorresti imparare il latino?» dissi con vivacità. «Ti insegnerò con piacere, mentre lo studio io.»
«Oh, grazie, Master Copperfield», rispose, scuotendo la testa. «Sono sicuro che è molto gentile da parte sua fare l’offerta, ma sono troppo umile per accettarla».
‘Che sciocchezza, Uriah!’
«Oh, davvero devo chiedervi scusa, signor Copperfield! Sono davvero riconoscente, e mi piacerebbe più di ogni altra cosa, ve lo assicuro; ma sono troppo umile. Ci sono già abbastanza persone che calpestano la mia umiltà senza che io offenda i loro sentimenti possedendo conoscenze. Le conoscenze non sono per me. Una persona come me è meglio che non aspiri a nulla. Se deve andare avanti nella vita, deve farlo in modo umile, signor Copperfield!»
Non l’avevo mai visto con la bocca così aperta, né con le grinze delle guance così profonde, come quando si espresse con questi sentimenti: scuotendo la testa tutto il tempo e contorcendosi modestamente.
«Penso che tu abbia torto, Uriah», dissi. «Sono sicuro che ci sono diverse cose che potrei insegnarti, se volessi impararle».
«Oh, non dubito di questo, Master Copperfield», rispose; «per niente. Ma non essendo umile lei stesso, forse non giudica bene per coloro che lo sono. Non voglio provocare i miei superiori con la conoscenza, grazie. Sono troppo umile. Ecco la mia umile dimora, Master Copperfield!»
Entrammo in una stanza bassa e vecchio stile, che si apriva direttamente sulla strada, e trovammo lì la signora Heep, che era l’immagine sputata di Uriah, solo più bassa. Mi accolse con la massima umiltà e si scusò con me per aver dato un bacio a suo figlio, osservando che, per quanto umili fossero, avevano i loro affetti naturali, che speravano non offendessero nessuno. Era una stanza perfettamente decorosa, metà salotto e metà cucina, ma per nulla accogliente. Le cose per il tè erano disposte sul tavolo e il bollitore bolliva sul focolare. C’era un cassettone con un coperchio da scrittoio, per Uriah che leggeva o scriveva la sera; c’era la borsa blu di Uriah che giaceva riversa e vomitava carte; c’era una compagnia di libri di Uriah comandata dal signor Tidd; c’era un armadietto angolare: e c’erano gli articoli di arredamento consueti. Non ricordo che qualche oggetto in particolare avesse un aspetto spoglio, angusto, avaro; ma ricordo bene che tutto il posto lo aveva.
It was perhaps a part of Mrs. Heep’s humility, that she still wore weeds. Notwithstanding the lapse of time that had occurred since Mr. Heep’s decease, she still wore weeds. I think there was some compromise in the cap; but otherwise she was as weedy as in the early days of her mourning.
‘This is a day to be remembered, my Uriah, I am sure,’ said Mrs. Heep, making the tea, ‘when Master Copperfield pays us a visit.’
‘I said you’d think so, mother,’ said Uriah.
‘If I could have wished father to remain among us for any reason,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘it would have been, that he might have known his company this afternoon.’
I felt embarrassed by these compliments; but I was sensible, too, of being entertained as an honoured guest, and I thought Mrs. Heep an agreeable woman.
‘My Uriah,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘has looked forward to this, sir, a long while. He had his fears that our umbleness stood in the way, and I joined in them myself. Umble we are, umble we have been, umble we shall ever be,’ said Mrs. Heep.
‘I am sure you have no occasion to be so, ma’am,’ I said, ‘unless you like.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ retorted Mrs. Heep. ‘We know our station and are thankful in it.’
I found that Mrs. Heep gradually got nearer to me, and that Uriah gradually got opposite to me, and that they respectfully plied me with the choicest of the eatables on the table. There was nothing particularly choice there, to be sure; but I took the will for the deed, and felt that they were very attentive. Presently they began to talk about aunts, and then I told them about mine; and about fathers and mothers, and then I told them about mine; and then Mrs. Heep began to talk about fathers-in-law, and then I began to tell her about mine—but stopped, because my aunt had advised me to observe a silence on that subject. A tender young cork, however, would have had no more chance against a pair of corkscrews, or a tender young tooth against a pair of dentists, or a little shuttlecock against two battledores, than I had against Uriah and Mrs. Heep. They did just what they liked with me; and wormed things out of me that I had no desire to tell, with a certainty I blush to think of, the more especially, as in my juvenile frankness, I took some credit to myself for being so confidential and felt that I was quite the patron of my two respectful entertainers.
They were very fond of one another: that was certain. I take it, that had its effect upon me, as a touch of nature; but the skill with which the one followed up whatever the other said, was a touch of art which I was still less proof against. When there was nothing more to be got out of me about myself (for on the Murdstone and Grinby life, and on my journey, I was dumb), they began about Mr. Wickfield and Agnes. Uriah threw the ball to Mrs. Heep, Mrs. Heep caught it and threw it back to Uriah, Uriah kept it up a little while, then sent it back to Mrs. Heep, and so they went on tossing it about until I had no idea who had got it, and was quite bewildered. The ball itself was always changing too. Now it was Mr. Wickfield, now Agnes, now the excellence of Mr. Wickfield, now my admiration of Agnes; now the extent of Mr. Wickfield’s business and resources, now our domestic life after dinner; now, the wine that Mr. Wickfield took, the reason why he took it, and the pity that it was he took so much; now one thing, now another, then everything at once; and all the time, without appearing to speak very often, or to do anything but sometimes encourage them a little, for fear they should be overcome by their humility and the honour of my company, I found myself perpetually letting out something or other that I had no business to let out and seeing the effect of it in the twinkling of Uriah’s dinted nostrils.
I had begun to be a little uncomfortable, and to wish myself well out of the visit, when a figure coming down the street passed the door—it stood open to air the room, which was warm, the weather being close for the time of year—came back again, looked in, and walked in, exclaiming loudly, ‘Copperfield! Is it possible?’
It was Mr. Micawber! It was Mr. Micawber, with his eye-glass, and his walking-stick, and his shirt-collar, and his genteel air, and the condescending roll in his voice, all complete!
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, putting out his hand, ‘this is indeed a meeting which is calculated to impress the mind with a sense of the instability and uncertainty of all human—in short, it is a most extraordinary meeting. Walking along the street, reflecting upon the probability of something turning up (of which I am at present rather sanguine), I find a young but valued friend turn up, who is connected with the most eventful period of my life; I may say, with the turning-point of my existence. Copperfield, my dear fellow, how do you do?’
I cannot say—I really cannot say—that I was glad to see Mr. Micawber there; but I was glad to see him too, and shook hands with him, heartily, inquiring how Mrs. Micawber was.
‘Thank you,’ said Mr. Micawber, waving his hand as of old, and settling his chin in his shirt-collar. ‘She is tolerably convalescent. The twins no longer derive their sustenance from Nature’s founts—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in one of his bursts of confidence, ‘they are weaned—and Mrs. Micawber is, at present, my travelling companion. She will be rejoiced, Copperfield, to renew her acquaintance with one who has proved himself in all respects a worthy minister at the sacred altar of friendship.’
I said I should be delighted to see her.
‘You are very good,’ said Mr. Micawber.
Mr. Micawber then smiled, settled his chin again, and looked about him.
‘I have discovered my friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber genteelly, and without addressing himself particularly to anyone, ‘not in solitude, but partaking of a social meal in company with a widow lady, and one who is apparently her offspring—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, in another of his bursts of confidence, ‘her son. I shall esteem it an honour to be presented.’
Forse faceva parte dell’umiltà della signora Heep il fatto che indossasse ancora il lutto. Nonostante il trascorrere del tempo da quando il signor Heep era deceduto, lei continuava a indossare il lutto. Penso che ci fosse qualche compromesso riguardo al copricapo; ma altrimenti era altrettanto vestita a lutto come nei primi giorni del suo lutto.
«Questo è un giorno da ricordare, mio Uriah, ne sono sicura», disse la signora Heep, mentre preparava il tè, «quando il signorino Copperfield ci fa visita.»
«Ho detto che lo avreste pensato, madre», disse Uriah.
«Se avessi potuto desiderare che mio padre rimanesse tra noi per qualche motivo», disse la signora Heep, «sarebbe stato perché potesse conoscere la compagnia di questa sera».
Mi sentivo imbarazzato per questi complimenti; ma ero anche consapevole di essere trattato come un ospite d’onore, e pensavo che la signora Heep fosse una donna piacevole.
«Il mio Uriah», disse la signora Heep, «ha atteso questo momento, signore, da molto tempo. Aveva paura che la nostra umiltà ci mettesse i bastoni tra le ruote, e io stessa ho condiviso le sue paure. Umili siamo, umili siamo stati, umili saremo sempre», disse la signora Heep.
“Sono sicuro che non ha motivo di esserlo, signora”, dissi, “a meno che non lo voglia”.
‘Grazie, signore’, rispose la signora Heep. ‘Conosciamo il nostro posto e ne siamo grati.’
Scoprii che la signora Heep si avvicinava gradualmente a me, e che Uriah si metteva gradualmente di fronte a me, e che mi offrivano rispettosamente le prelibatezze del tavolo. Non c’era nulla di particolarmente pregiato, è vero; ma presi la buona volontà per la realtà, e sentii che erano molto attenti. Ben presto iniziarono a parlare di zie, e allora raccontai loro della mia; e di padri e madri, e allora raccontai loro della mia; e poi la signora Heep iniziò a parlare di suoceri, e allora iniziai a raccontarle della mia — ma mi fermai, perché mia zia mi aveva consigliato di osservare un silenzio su quell’argomento. Un tenero tappo di sughero, tuttavia, non avrebbe avuto più possibilità contro un paio di cavatappi, o un tenero dente contro un paio di dentisti, o una piccola navetta contro due racchette, di quante ne avessi io contro Uriah e la signora Heep. Facevano con me tutto quello che volevano; e mi estorcevano cose che non avevo alcun desiderio di raccontare, con una certezza che mi fa arrossire al solo pensiero, tanto più che nella mia giovane franchezza, mi attribuivo il merito di essere così confidenziale e sentivo di essere il vero patrono dei miei due rispettosi ospiti.
Erano molto affezionati l’uno all’altra: questo era certo. Penso che questo abbia avuto un effetto su di me, come un tocco di natura; ma l’abilità con cui l’uno riprendeva ciò che l’altro diceva, era un tocco di arte a cui ero ancora meno resistente. Quando non c’era più nulla da tirar fuori da me su di me stesso (per quanto riguarda la vita alla Murdstone e Grinby e il mio viaggio, ero muto), iniziarono a parlare del signor Wickfield e Agnes. Uriah lanciava la palla alla signora Heep, la signora Heep la prendeva e la lanciava indietro a Uriah, Uriah la teneva un po’, poi la rimandava alla signora Heep, e così continuavano a passarsela avanti e indietro finché non avevo più idea di chi l’avesse, e ne ero completamente confuso. Anche la palla stessa cambiava continuamente. Ora era il signor Wickfield, ora Agnes, ora l’eccellenza del signor Wickfield, ora la mia ammirazione per Agnes; ora l’ampiezza degli affari e delle risorse del signor Wickfield, ora la nostra vita domestica dopo cena; ora, il vino che il signor Wickfield beveva, il motivo per cui lo beveva, e il peccato che fosse che ne bevesse così tanto; ora una cosa, ora un’altra, poi tutto insieme; e tutto il tempo, senza sembrare di parlare molto spesso, o di fare altro che incoraggiarli un po’ a volte, per paura che fossero sopraffatti dalla loro umiltà e dall’onore della mia compagnia, mi trovavo perpetuamente a rivelare qualcosa che non avrei dovuto rivelare e a vedere l’effetto di ciò nel lampeggiare delle narici scavate di Uriah.
Ero iniziato a sentirmi un po’ a disagio e a desiderare di essere ben lontano da quella visita, quando una figura che scendeva per la strada passò davanti alla porta - era aperta per arieggiare la stanza, che era calda, il tempo essendo opprimente per la stagione - tornò indietro, guardò dentro e entrò, esclamando ad alta voce: «Copperfield! È possibile?»
Era il signor Micawber! Era il signor Micawber, con il suo monocolo, e il suo bastone da passeggio, e il suo colletto, e il suo contegno distinto, e il tono condiscendente della sua voce, tutto completo!
«Mio caro Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, tendendomi la mano, «questo è davvero un incontro che tende a impressionare la mente con un senso di instabilità e incertezza di tutto ciò che è umano, insomma, è un incontro davvero straordinario. Camminando per la strada, riflettendo sulla probabilità che qualcosa si presentasse (di cui al momento sono piuttosto ottimista), mi trovo di fronte un giovane ma stimato amico che è legato al periodo più avventuroso della mia vita; posso dire, al punto di svolta della mia esistenza. Copperfield, mio caro ragazzo, come stai?»
Non posso dire - davvero non posso dire - di essere stato felice di vedere il signor Micawber lì; ma ero anche felice di vederlo e gli strinsi la mano con calore, chiedendogli come stava la signora Micawber.
«Grazie», disse il signor Micawber, agitando la mano come faceva un tempo e sistemando il mento nel colletto della camicia. «È abbastanza convalescente. I gemelli non traggono più il loro sostentamento dalle fonti della Natura - in breve», disse il signor Micawber, in uno dei suoi momenti di confidenza, «sono svezzati - e la signora Micawber è, al momento, la mia compagna di viaggio. Sarà felice, Copperfield, di rinnovare la sua conoscenza con uno che si è dimostrato in tutti i sensi un degno ministro presso l’altare sacro della amicizia.»
Dissi che sarei stato felice di vederla.
«Siete molto gentile», disse il signor Micawber.
Il signor Micawber sorrise quindi, si sistemò di nuovo il mento e guardò intorno a sé.
«Ho scoperto il mio amico Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber con eleganza, e senza rivolgersi particolarmente a nessuno, «non in solitudine, ma partecipando a un pasto sociale in compagnia di una signora vedova e di una persona che è apparentemente sua figlia — in breve», disse il signor Micawber, in un’altra delle sue esplosioni di confidenza, «suo figlio. Lo considererò un onore essere presentato.»
I could do no less, under these circumstances, than make Mr. Micawber known to Uriah Heep and his mother; which I accordingly did. As they abased themselves before him, Mr. Micawber took a seat, and waved his hand in his most courtly manner.
‘Any friend of my friend Copperfield’s,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘has a personal claim upon myself.’
‘We are too umble, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, ‘my son and me, to be the friends of Master Copperfield. He has been so good as take his tea with us, and we are thankful to him for his company, also to you, sir, for your notice.’
‘Ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, with a bow, ‘you are very obliging: and what are you doing, Copperfield? Still in the wine trade?’
I was excessively anxious to get Mr. Micawber away; and replied, with my hat in my hand, and a very red face, I have no doubt, that I was a pupil at Doctor Strong’s.
‘A pupil?’ said Mr. Micawber, raising his eyebrows. ‘I am extremely happy to hear it. Although a mind like my friend Copperfield’s’—to Uriah and Mrs. Heep—‘does not require that cultivation which, without his knowledge of men and things, it would require, still it is a rich soil teeming with latent vegetation—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, smiling, in another burst of confidence, ‘it is an intellect capable of getting up the classics to any extent.’
Uriah, with his long hands slowly twining over one another, made a ghastly writhe from the waist upwards, to express his concurrence in this estimation of me.
‘Shall we go and see Mrs. Micawber, sir?’ I said, to get Mr. Micawber away.
‘If you will do her that favour, Copperfield,’ replied Mr. Micawber, rising. ‘I have no scruple in saying, in the presence of our friends here, that I am a man who has, for some years, contended against the pressure of pecuniary difficulties.’ I knew he was certain to say something of this kind; he always would be so boastful about his difficulties. ‘Sometimes I have risen superior to my difficulties. Sometimes my difficulties have—in short, have floored me. There have been times when I have administered a succession of facers to them; there have been times when they have been too many for me, and I have given in, and said to Mrs. Micawber, in the words of Cato, “Plato, thou reasonest well. It’s all up now. I can show fight no more.” But at no time of my life,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘have I enjoyed a higher degree of satisfaction than in pouring my griefs (if I may describe difficulties, chiefly arising out of warrants of attorney and promissory notes at two and four months, by that word) into the bosom of my friend Copperfield.’
Mr. Micawber closed this handsome tribute by saying, ‘Mr. Heep! Good evening. Mrs. Heep! Your servant,’ and then walking out with me in his most fashionable manner, making a good deal of noise on the pavement with his shoes, and humming a tune as we went.
It was a little inn where Mr. Micawber put up, and he occupied a little room in it, partitioned off from the commercial room, and strongly flavoured with tobacco-smoke. I think it was over the kitchen, because a warm greasy smell appeared to come up through the chinks in the floor, and there was a flabby perspiration on the walls. I know it was near the bar, on account of the smell of spirits and jingling of glasses. Here, recumbent on a small sofa, underneath a picture of a race-horse, with her head close to the fire, and her feet pushing the mustard off the dumb-waiter at the other end of the room, was Mrs. Micawber, to whom Mr. Micawber entered first, saying, ‘My dear, allow me to introduce to you a pupil of Doctor Strong’s.’
I noticed, by the by, that although Mr. Micawber was just as much confused as ever about my age and standing, he always remembered, as a genteel thing, that I was a pupil of Doctor Strong’s.
Mrs. Micawber was amazed, but very glad to see me. I was very glad to see her too, and, after an affectionate greeting on both sides, sat down on the small sofa near her.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if you will mention to Copperfield what our present position is, which I have no doubt he will like to know, I will go and look at the paper the while, and see whether anything turns up among the advertisements.’
‘I thought you were at Plymouth, ma’am,’ I said to Mrs. Micawber, as he went out.
‘My dear Master Copperfield,’ she replied, ‘we went to Plymouth.’
‘To be on the spot,’ I hinted.
‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To be on the spot. But, the truth is, talent is not wanted in the Custom House. The local influence of my family was quite unavailing to obtain any employment in that department, for a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. They would rather NOT have a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities. He would only show the deficiency of the others. Apart from which,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I will not disguise from you, my dear Master Copperfield, that when that branch of my family which is settled in Plymouth, became aware that Mr. Micawber was accompanied by myself, and by little Wilkins and his sister, and by the twins, they did not receive him with that ardour which he might have expected, being so newly released from captivity. In fact,’ said Mrs. Micawber, lowering her voice,—‘this is between ourselves—our reception was cool.’
‘Dear me!’ I said.
‘Yes,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘It is truly painful to contemplate mankind in such an aspect, Master Copperfield, but our reception was, decidedly, cool. There is no doubt about it. In fact, that branch of my family which is settled in Plymouth became quite personal to Mr. Micawber, before we had been there a week.’
I said, and thought, that they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
‘Still, so it was,’ continued Mrs. Micawber. ‘Under such circumstances, what could a man of Mr. Micawber’s spirit do? But one obvious course was left. To borrow, of that branch of my family, the money to return to London, and to return at any sacrifice.’
‘Then you all came back again, ma’am?’ I said.
Non potevo fare meno, in queste circostanze, che presentare il signor Micawber a Uriah Heep e a sua madre; e così feci. Mentre si prostravano davanti a lui, il signor Micawber prese posto e fece un cenno con la mano nel suo modo più cortese.
«Qualsiasi amico del mio amico Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, «ha un diritto personale su di me».
«Siamo troppo umili, signore», disse la signora Heep, «io e mio figlio, per essere gli amici del signorino Copperfield. Ha avuto la bontà di prendere il tè con noi, e gli siamo grati per la sua compagnia, così come siamo grati a lei, signore, per la sua attenzione».
«Signora», rispose il signor Micawber con un inchino, «è molto gentile: e lei cosa fa, Copperfield? Ancora nel commercio del vino?»
Ero estremamente ansioso di allontanare il signor Micawber e risposi, con il cappello in mano e il viso molto arrossato, che non avevo dubbi di essere stato allievo del dottor Strong.
«Un allievo?», disse il signor Micawber, alzando le sopracciglia. «Sono estremamente felice di saperlo. Anche se una mente come quella del mio amico Copperfield» — rivolto a Uriah e alla signora Heep — «non ha bisogno di quella coltivazione che, senza la sua conoscenza degli uomini e delle cose, sarebbe necessaria, tuttavia è un terreno fertile, ricco di vegetazione latente — insomma», disse il signor Micawber, sorridendo, in un altro slancio di confidenza, «è un intelletto capace di studiare i classici in qualsiasi misura.»
Uriah, con le sue lunghe mani che si intrecciavano lentamente l’una sull’altra, fece una contorsione spaventosa dalla vita in su, per esprimere la sua concordanza in questa valutazione di me.
«Andremo a trovare la signora Micawber, signore?» dissi, per allontanare il signor Micawber.
«Se vorrà farle questo favore, Copperfield», rispose il signor Micawber, alzandosi. «Non ho scrupoli a dire, in presenza dei nostri amici qui, che sono un uomo che, per alcuni anni, ha lottato contro la pressione di difficoltà finanziarie.» Sapevo che era certo di dire qualcosa di questo genere; era sempre così vanaglorioso riguardo alle sue difficoltà. «A volte sono riuscito a superare le mie difficoltà. A volte le mie difficoltà hanno—in breve, mi hanno messo al tappeto. Ci sono stati momenti in cui ho somministrato una serie di colpi a loro; ci sono stati momenti in cui erano troppi per me, e ho ceduto, e ho detto alla signora Micawber, con le parole di Catone, “Platone, tu ragionerai bene. È finita. Non posso più combattere.” Ma in nessun momento della mia vita», disse il signor Micawber, «ho provato un grado di soddisfazione più alto di quello che provo nel versare i miei dolori (se posso descrivere le difficoltà, principalmente derivanti da mandati di avvocato e cambiali a due e quattro mesi, con quella parola) nel cuore del mio amico Copperfield.»
Il signor Micawber concluse questo generoso tributo dicendo: «Signor Heep! Buona sera. Signora Heep! Il vostro servo», e poi, uscendo con me nel suo modo più alla moda, facendo parecchio rumore sul marciapiede con le sue scarpe e canticchiando una melodia mentre andavamo.
Era una piccola locanda dove il signor Micawber alloggiava, e lui occupava una piccola stanza, separata dalla sala commerciale, e fortemente impregnata di fumo di tabacco. Penso che fosse sopra la cucina, perché un caldo odore grasso sembrava salire dalle fessure del pavimento, e c’era una flaccida sudorazione sulle pareti. So che era vicino al bar, a causa dell’odore di alcol e del tintinnio dei bicchieri. Qui, distesa su un piccolo divano, sotto un quadro di un cavallo da corsa, con la testa vicina al fuoco, e i piedi che spingevano la senape fuori dal servizio in camera all’altra estremità della stanza, c’era la signora Micawber, a cui il signor Micawber si presentò per primo, dicendo: «Mia cara, permettimi di presentarti un allievo del dottor Strong».
Notai, tra l’altro, che sebbene il signor Micawber fosse sempre altrettanto confuso riguardo alla mia età e alla mia posizione sociale, ricordava sempre, come cosa gentile, che ero un allievo del dottor Strong.
La signora Micawber era stupita, ma molto contenta di vedermi. Anche io ero molto contento di vederla, e dopo un caloroso benvenuto da entrambe le parti, mi sedetti sul piccolo divano vicino a lei.
«Mia cara», disse il signor Micawber, «se vorrai dire a Copperfield qual è la nostra attuale situazione, di cui non ho dubbio che gli piacerebbe conoscere, io andrò a dare un’occhiata al giornale nel frattempo, e vedrò se c’è qualcosa tra gli annunci.»
«Pensavo che foste a Plymouth, signora», dissi alla signora Micawber, mentre lui usciva.
‘Caro Maestro Copperfield,’ rispose, ‘siamo andati a Plymouth.’
«Per essere sul posto», suggerii.
«Proprio così», disse la signora Micawber. «Per essere sul posto. Ma, la verità è che il talento non è richiesto alla Dogana. L’influenza locale della mia famiglia non è servita a nulla per ottenere un impiego in quel dipartimento, per un uomo delle capacità del signor Micawber. Preferiscono di gran lunga non avere un uomo delle capacità del signor Micawber. Egli metterebbe in luce la mediocrità degli altri. A parte questo», disse la signora Micawber, «non vi nascondo, mio caro padroncino Copperfield, che quando quel ramo della mia famiglia che si è stabilito a Plymouth, venne a sapere che il signor Micawber era accompagnato da me, e da piccolo Wilkins e sua sorella, e dai gemelli, non lo accolsero con quell’entusiasmo che egli si sarebbe potuto aspettare, essendo stato appena rilasciato dalla prigionia. In effetti», disse la signora Micawber, abbassando la voce,—«questo rimane tra noi—il nostro accogliemnto è stato freddo.»
«Dio mio!» dissi.
«Sì», disse la signora Micawber. «È davvero penoso contemplare l’umanità in tale aspetto, Master Copperfield, ma il nostro accogliemento è stato, decisamente, freddo. Non c’è dubbio al riguardo. Infatti, quel ramo della mia famiglia che si è stabilito a Plymouth è diventato piuttosto personale per il signor Micawber, prima che fossimo lì da una settimana.»
Dissi, e pensai, che avrebbero dovuto vergognarsi.
«Tuttavia, così è stato», continuò la signora Micawber. «In tali circostanze, che cosa poteva fare un uomo dal carattere del signor Micawber? Ma c’era una via ovvia da seguire. Chiedere in prestito, a quel ramo della mia famiglia, i soldi per tornare a Londra, e tornare a qualsiasi costo.»
«Allora siete tutti tornati, signora?» dissi.
‘We all came back again,’ replied Mrs. Micawber. ‘Since then, I have consulted other branches of my family on the course which it is most expedient for Mr. Micawber to take—for I maintain that he must take some course, Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, argumentatively. ‘It is clear that a family of six, not including a domestic, cannot live upon air.’
‘Certainly, ma’am,’ said I.
‘The opinion of those other branches of my family,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘is, that Mr. Micawber should immediately turn his attention to coals.’
‘To what, ma’am?’
‘To coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘To the coal trade. Mr. Micawber was induced to think, on inquiry, that there might be an opening for a man of his talent in the Medway Coal Trade. Then, as Mr. Micawber very properly said, the first step to be taken clearly was, to come and see the Medway. Which we came and saw. I say “we”, Master Copperfield; for I never will,’ said Mrs. Micawber with emotion, ‘I never will desert Mr. Micawber.’
I murmured my admiration and approbation.
‘We came,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, ‘and saw the Medway. My opinion of the coal trade on that river is, that it may require talent, but that it certainly requires capital. Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not. We saw, I think, the greater part of the Medway; and that is my individual conclusion. Being so near here, Mr. Micawber was of opinion that it would be rash not to come on, and see the Cathedral. Firstly, on account of its being so well worth seeing, and our never having seen it; and secondly, on account of the great probability of something turning up in a cathedral town. We have been here,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘three days. Nothing has, as yet, turned up; and it may not surprise you, my dear Master Copperfield, so much as it would a stranger, to know that we are at present waiting for a remittance from London, to discharge our pecuniary obligations at this hotel. Until the arrival of that remittance,’ said Mrs. Micawber with much feeling, ‘I am cut off from my home (I allude to lodgings in Pentonville), from my boy and girl, and from my twins.’
I felt the utmost sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in this anxious extremity, and said as much to Mr. Micawber, who now returned: adding that I only wished I had money enough, to lend them the amount they needed. Mr. Micawber’s answer expressed the disturbance of his mind. He said, shaking hands with me, ‘Copperfield, you are a true friend; but when the worst comes to the worst, no man is without a friend who is possessed of shaving materials.’ At this dreadful hint Mrs. Micawber threw her arms round Mr. Micawber’s neck and entreated him to be calm. He wept; but so far recovered, almost immediately, as to ring the bell for the waiter, and bespeak a hot kidney pudding and a plate of shrimps for breakfast in the morning.
When I took my leave of them, they both pressed me so much to come and dine before they went away, that I could not refuse. But, as I knew I could not come next day, when I should have a good deal to prepare in the evening, Mr. Micawber arranged that he would call at Doctor Strong’s in the course of the morning (having a presentiment that the remittance would arrive by that post), and propose the day after, if it would suit me better. Accordingly I was called out of school next forenoon, and found Mr. Micawber in the parlour; who had called to say that the dinner would take place as proposed. When I asked him if the remittance had come, he pressed my hand and departed.
As I was looking out of window that same evening, it surprised me, and made me rather uneasy, to see Mr. Micawber and Uriah Heep walk past, arm in arm: Uriah humbly sensible of the honour that was done him, and Mr. Micawber taking a bland delight in extending his patronage to Uriah. But I was still more surprised, when I went to the little hotel next day at the appointed dinner-hour, which was four o’clock, to find, from what Mr. Micawber said, that he had gone home with Uriah, and had drunk brandy-and-water at Mrs. Heep’s.
‘And I’ll tell you what, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your friend Heep is a young fellow who might be attorney-general. If I had known that young man, at the period when my difficulties came to a crisis, all I can say is, that I believe my creditors would have been a great deal better managed than they were.’
I hardly understood how this could have been, seeing that Mr. Micawber had paid them nothing at all as it was; but I did not like to ask. Neither did I like to say, that I hoped he had not been too communicative to Uriah; or to inquire if they had talked much about me. I was afraid of hurting Mr. Micawber’s feelings, or, at all events, Mrs. Micawber’s, she being very sensitive; but I was uncomfortable about it, too, and often thought about it afterwards.
We had a beautiful little dinner. Quite an elegant dish of fish; the kidney-end of a loin of veal, roasted; fried sausage-meat; a partridge, and a pudding. There was wine, and there was strong ale; and after dinner Mrs. Micawber made us a bowl of hot punch with her own hands.
Mr. Micawber was uncommonly convivial. I never saw him such good company. He made his face shine with the punch, so that it looked as if it had been varnished all over. He got cheerfully sentimental about the town, and proposed success to it; observing that Mrs. Micawber and himself had been made extremely snug and comfortable there and that he never should forget the agreeable hours they had passed in Canterbury. He proposed me afterwards; and he, and Mrs. Micawber, and I, took a review of our past acquaintance, in the course of which we sold the property all over again. Then I proposed Mrs. Micawber: or, at least, said, modestly, ‘If you’ll allow me, Mrs. Micawber, I shall now have the pleasure of drinking your health, ma’am.’ On which Mr. Micawber delivered an eulogium on Mrs. Micawber’s character, and said she had ever been his guide, philosopher, and friend, and that he would recommend me, when I came to a marrying time of life, to marry such another woman, if such another woman could be found.
«Siamo tutti tornati», rispose la signora Micawber. «Da allora ho consultato altri rami della mia famiglia sul comportamento che sarebbe più opportuno che il signor Micawber adottasse — perché sostengo che deve adottare qualche comportamento, piccolo Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, in tono polemico. «È chiaro che una famiglia di sei persone, senza contare una domestica, non può vivere dell’aria».
«Certamente, signora», dissi io.
«L’opinione di quegli altri rami della mia famiglia», continuò la signora Micawber, «è che il signor Micawber dovrebbe rivolgere immediatamente la sua attenzione al commercio del carbone.»
‘A cosa, signora?’
«Ai carboni», disse la signora Micawber. «Al commercio del carbone. Il signor Micawber, dopo aver fatto delle indagini, era stato indotto a pensare che ci potesse essere un’opportunità per un uomo delle sue capacità nel commercio del carbone di Medway. Poi, come aveva giustamente osservato il signor Micawber, il primo passo da compiere era venire a vedere il Medway. E così siamo venuti e l’abbiamo visto. Dico “siamo” perché, piccolo Copperfield,» disse la signora Micawber con emozione, «perché non lo lascerò mai, mai abbandonerò il signor Micawber.»
Mormorai la mia ammirazione e approvazione.
«Siamo venuti», ripeté la signora Micawber, «e abbiamo visto il Medway. La mia opinione sul commercio del carbone su quel fiume è che possa richiedere talento, ma che certamente richiede capitale. Il talento, il signor Micawber ce l’ha; il capitale, il signor Micawber non ce l’ha. Abbiamo visto, credo, la maggior parte del Medway; e questa è la mia conclusione personale. Essendo così vicini, il signor Micawber era dell’opinione che sarebbe stato avventato non proseguire e non vedere la Cattedrale. In primo luogo, perché è così bene degna di essere vista, e noi non l’abbiamo mai vista; in secondo luogo, perché è molto probabile che qualcosa si presenti in una città con una cattedrale. Siamo qui», disse la signora Micawber, «da tre giorni. Non è ancora successo nulla; e forse non vi sorprenderà, mio caro Master Copperfield, tanto quanto sorprenderebbe uno sconosciuto, sapere che al momento stiamo aspettando un bonifico da Londra per saldare i nostri debiti in questo albergo. Fino all’arrivo di quel bonifico», disse la signora Micawber con grande sentimento, «sono separata dalla mia casa (mi riferisco a un alloggio a Pentonville), dal mio ragazzo e dalla mia bambina, e dai miei gemelli».
Provavo la più profonda simpatia per il signor e la signora Micawber in questa estrema ansia, e lo dissi al signor Micawber, che ora tornava, aggiungendo che avrei solo desiderato avere abbastanza denaro da prestargli la somma di cui avevano bisogno. La risposta del signor Micawber rivelò il turbamento della sua mente. Mi strinse la mano e disse: «Copperfield, sei un vero amico; ma quando il peggio arriva al peggio, nessun uomo è senza un amico che possieda i materiali per la barba». A questo terribile accenno la signora Micawber gli gettò le braccia al collo e lo pregò di calmarsi. Lui pianse; ma si riprese quasi subito al punto da suonare il campanello per il cameriere e ordinare una torta di rene calda e un piatto di gamberetti per la colazione del mattino.
Quando presi congedo da loro, mi invitarono entrambi così calorosamente a pranzo prima che partissero, che non potei rifiutare. Ma, dato che sapevo di non poter venire il giorno dopo, quando avrei avuto molto da preparare la sera, il signor Micawber si accordò per chiamare dal dottor Strong nel corso della mattinata (avendo il presentimento che il bonifico sarebbe arrivato con quella posta) e proporre il giorno dopo, se mi fosse andato meglio. Di conseguenza, la mattina seguente fui chiamato fuori dalla scuola e trovai il signor Micawber nel salotto; era venuto a dire che il pranzo si sarebbe svolto come proposto. Quando gli chiesi se il bonifico fosse arrivato, mi strinse la mano e se ne andò.
Quella stessa sera, mentre guardavo fuori dalla finestra, mi sorprese e mi mise un po’ a disagio vedere il signor Micawber e Uriah Heep passare a braccetto: Uriah era umilmente consapevole dell’onore che gli veniva tributato, e il signor Micawber provava un sereno piacere nell’estendere la sua protezione a Uriah. Ma fui ancora più sorpreso quando, il giorno dopo, andai al piccolo albergo all’ora stabilita per la cena, che era le quattro del pomeriggio, e scoprii, da quanto disse il signor Micawber, che era andato a casa con Uriah e aveva bevuto brandy e acqua a casa della signora Heep.
«E le dirò una cosa, mio caro Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, «il suo amico Heep è un giovane che potrebbe essere procuratore generale. Se avessi conosciuto quel giovane, nel periodo in cui le mie difficoltà raggiunsero il culmine, tutto quello che posso dire è che credo che i miei creditori sarebbero stati gestiti molto meglio di quanto non lo siano stati.»
A malapena capivo come ciò potesse essere, dato che il signor Micawber non aveva pagato loro nulla; ma non mi piaceva chiedere. Non mi piaceva nemmeno dire che speravo non fosse stato troppo comunicativo con Uriah; o chiedere se avessero parlato molto di me. Avevo paura di ferire i sentimenti del signor Micawber, o, in ogni caso, quelli della signora Micawber, che era molto sensibile; ma mi sentivo a disagio al riguardo, e ci pensavo spesso dopo.
Abbiamo fatto una bella cenetta. Un piatto di pesce davvero elegante; la parte del rene di una lonza di vitello, arrosto; salsiccia fritta; una pernice e un budino. C’era vino e c’era birra forte; e dopo cena la signora Micawber ci ha preparato con le sue mani una ciotola di punch caldo.
Il signor Micawber era insolitamente conviviale. Non l’avevo mai visto così in forma. Si era fatto brillare il viso con il punch, tanto che sembrava fosse stato verniciato tutto. Si era messo allegramente sentimentale per la città, e propose il successo per essa; osservando che la signora Micawber e lui stesso si erano trovati estremamente al caldo e comodi lì e che non avrebbe mai dimenticato le ore piacevoli che avevano trascorso a Canterbury. Poi propose me; e lui, e la signora Micawber, e io, facemmo un ripasso della nostra conoscenza passata, nel corso del quale rivendemmo di nuovo la proprietà. Poi proposi la signora Micawber: o, almeno, dissi, modestamente, ‘Se me lo permette, signora Micawber, ora avrò il piacere di brindare alla sua salute, signora.’ Su ciò il signor Micawber pronunciò un elogio del carattere della signora Micawber, e disse che era sempre stata la sua guida, filosofa e amica, e che mi avrebbe consigliato, quando fossi arrivato a un’età da matrimonio, di sposare una donna simile, se una donna simile potesse essere trovata.
As the punch disappeared, Mr. Micawber became still more friendly and convivial. Mrs. Micawber’s spirits becoming elevated, too, we sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’. When we came to ‘Here’s a hand, my trusty frere’, we all joined hands round the table; and when we declared we would ‘take a right gude Willie Waught’, and hadn’t the least idea what it meant, we were really affected.
In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty farewell of himself and his amiable wife. Consequently, I was not prepared, at seven o’clock next morning, to receive the following communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour after I had left him:—
‘My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND,
‘The die is cast—all is over. Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that there is no hope of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humiliating to endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate, I have discharged the pecuniary liability contracted at this establishment, by giving a note of hand, made payable fourteen days after date, at my residence, Pentonville, London. When it becomes due, it will not be taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree must fall.
‘Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence—though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical.
‘This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever receive
‘From
‘The
‘Beggared Outcast,
I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking it on my way to Doctor Strong’s, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber’s conversation, eating walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they did not see me, I thought it best, all things considered, not to see them. So, with a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a by-street that was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole, relieved that they were gone; though I still liked them very much, nevertheless.
Quando il punch sparì, il signor Micawber divenne ancora più amichevole e festoso. Anche gli spiriti della signora Micawber si alzarono, e cantammo «Auld Lang Syne». Quando arrivammo a «Here’s a hand, my trusty frere», ci prendemmo tutti per mano intorno al tavolo; e quando dichiarammo che avremmo «preso un buon goccetto», e non avevamo la minima idea di cosa volesse dire, fummo davvero commossi.
In una parola, non ho mai visto nessuno così profondamente gioviale come lo era il signor Micawber, fino all’ultimo momento della serata, quando ho preso un caloroso congedo da lui e dalla sua amabile moglie. Di conseguenza, non ero preparato, alle sette del mattino successivo, a ricevere la seguente comunicazione, datata le nove e mezza di sera; un quarto d’ora dopo che l’avevo lasciato:
‘MIO CARISSIMO GIOVANE AMICO,
«Il dado è tratto, tutto è finito. Nascondendo le devastazioni della preoccupazione con una maschera malaticcia di allegria, non vi ho informato questa sera che non c’è speranza di ricevere il pagamento! In queste circostanze, ugualmente umilianti da sopportare, umilianti da contemplare e umilianti da raccontare, ho saldato l’obbligo pecuniario contratto in questo stabilimento, dando una cambiale pagabile quattordici giorni dopo la data, presso la mia residenza a Pentonville, Londra. Quando scadrà, non verrà rimborsata. Il risultato è la distruzione. Il fulmine è imminente e l’albero deve cadere.»
«Che l’uomo infelice che ora vi parla, mio caro Copperfield, sia per voi un farò nel corso della vita. Egli scrive con tale intenzione, e con tale speranza. Se potesse considerarsi così utile, un barlume di luce potrebbe, forse, penetrare nella tetra prigione del suo esistenza rimanente—sebbene la sua longevità sia, al momento (per dirlo con la massima cautela), estremamente problematica.
Questa è l’ultima comunicazione, mio caro Copperfield, che riceverai mai
‘Da, davvero
‘Il, davvero
‘Emarginato Senza Nulla
Ero così sconvolto dal contenuto di questa lettera straziante, che mi precipitai subito verso il piccolo albergo con l’intenzione di portarla con me sulla strada per la casa del dottor Strong, e di cercare di consolare il signor Micawber con una parola di conforto. Ma, a metà strada, incontrai il diligenza per Londra con il signor e la signora Micawber a bordo; il signor Micawber, l’immagine stessa del godimento tranquillo, sorrideva alla conversazione della signora Micawber, mangiando noci da un sacchetto di carta, con una bottiglia che spuntava dal taschino della giacca. Poiché non mi videro, pensai fosse meglio, tutto considerato, non vederli nemmeno io. Così, con un grande peso tolto dalla mia mente, svoltai in una stradina laterale che era la via più vicina per la scuola, e mi sentii, tutto sommato, sollevato che se ne fossero andati; anche se mi piacevano ancora molto, nonostante tutto.
CHAPTER 18. A RETROSPECT
My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence—the unseen, unfelt progress of my life—from childhood up to youth! Let me think, as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can remember how it ran.
A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went together, every Sunday morning, assembling first at school for that purpose. The earthy smell, the sunless air, the sensation of the world being shut out, the resounding of the organ through the black and white arched galleries and aisles, are wings that take me back, and hold me hovering above those days, in a half-sleeping and half-waking dream.
I am not the last boy in the school. I have risen in a few months, over several heads. But the first boy seems to me a mighty creature, dwelling afar off, whose giddy height is unattainable. Agnes says ‘No,’ but I say ‘Yes,’ and tell her that she little thinks what stores of knowledge have been mastered by the wonderful Being, at whose place she thinks I, even I, weak aspirant, may arrive in time. He is not my private friend and public patron, as Steerforth was, but I hold him in a reverential respect. I chiefly wonder what he’ll be, when he leaves Doctor Strong’s, and what mankind will do to maintain any place against him.
But who is this that breaks upon me? This is Miss Shepherd, whom I love.
Miss Shepherd is a boarder at the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment. I adore Miss Shepherd. She is a little girl, in a spencer, with a round face and curly flaxen hair. The Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies come to the Cathedral too. I cannot look upon my book, for I must look upon Miss Shepherd. When the choristers chaunt, I hear Miss Shepherd. In the service I mentally insert Miss Shepherd’s name—I put her in among the Royal Family. At home, in my own room, I am sometimes moved to cry out, ‘Oh, Miss Shepherd!’ in a transport of love.
For some time, I am doubtful of Miss Shepherd’s feelings, but, at length, Fate being propitious, we meet at the dancing-school. I have Miss Shepherd for my partner. I touch Miss Shepherd’s glove, and feel a thrill go up the right arm of my jacket, and come out at my hair. I say nothing to Miss Shepherd, but we understand each other. Miss Shepherd and myself live but to be united.
Why do I secretly give Miss Shepherd twelve Brazil nuts for a present, I wonder? They are not expressive of affection, they are difficult to pack into a parcel of any regular shape, they are hard to crack, even in room doors, and they are oily when cracked; yet I feel that they are appropriate to Miss Shepherd. Soft, seedy biscuits, also, I bestow upon Miss Shepherd; and oranges innumerable. Once, I kiss Miss Shepherd in the cloak-room. Ecstasy! What are my agony and indignation next day, when I hear a flying rumour that the Misses Nettingall have stood Miss Shepherd in the stocks for turning in her toes!
Miss Shepherd being the one pervading theme and vision of my life, how do I ever come to break with her? I can’t conceive. And yet a coolness grows between Miss Shepherd and myself. Whispers reach me of Miss Shepherd having said she wished I wouldn’t stare so, and having avowed a preference for Master Jones—for Jones! a boy of no merit whatever! The gulf between me and Miss Shepherd widens. At last, one day, I meet the Misses Nettingalls’ establishment out walking. Miss Shepherd makes a face as she goes by, and laughs to her companion. All is over. The devotion of a life—it seems a life, it is all the same—is at an end; Miss Shepherd comes out of the morning service, and the Royal Family know her no more.
I am higher in the school, and no one breaks my peace. I am not at all polite, now, to the Misses Nettingalls’ young ladies, and shouldn’t dote on any of them, if they were twice as many and twenty times as beautiful. I think the dancing-school a tiresome affair, and wonder why the girls can’t dance by themselves and leave us alone. I am growing great in Latin verses, and neglect the laces of my boots. Doctor Strong refers to me in public as a promising young scholar. Mr. Dick is wild with joy, and my aunt remits me a guinea by the next post.
The shade of a young butcher rises, like the apparition of an armed head in Macbeth. Who is this young butcher? He is the terror of the youth of Canterbury. There is a vague belief abroad, that the beef suet with which he anoints his hair gives him unnatural strength, and that he is a match for a man. He is a broad-faced, bull-necked, young butcher, with rough red cheeks, an ill-conditioned mind, and an injurious tongue. His main use of this tongue, is, to disparage Doctor Strong’s young gentlemen. He says, publicly, that if they want anything he’ll give it ‘em. He names individuals among them (myself included), whom he could undertake to settle with one hand, and the other tied behind him. He waylays the smaller boys to punch their unprotected heads, and calls challenges after me in the open streets. For these sufficient reasons I resolve to fight the butcher.
It is a summer evening, down in a green hollow, at the corner of a wall. I meet the butcher by appointment. I am attended by a select body of our boys; the butcher, by two other butchers, a young publican, and a sweep. The preliminaries are adjusted, and the butcher and myself stand face to face. In a moment the butcher lights ten thousand candles out of my left eyebrow. In another moment, I don’t know where the wall is, or where I am, or where anybody is. I hardly know which is myself and which the butcher, we are always in such a tangle and tussle, knocking about upon the trodden grass. Sometimes I see the butcher, bloody but confident; sometimes I see nothing, and sit gasping on my second’s knee; sometimes I go in at the butcher madly, and cut my knuckles open against his face, without appearing to discompose him at all. At last I awake, very queer about the head, as from a giddy sleep, and see the butcher walking off, congratulated by the two other butchers and the sweep and publican, and putting on his coat as he goes; from which I augur, justly, that the victory is his.
CAPITOLO 18. UNA RICAPITOLAZIONE
I miei giorni di scuola! Il silenzioso scorrere della mia esistenza, il progresso invisibile e impercettibile della mia vita, dall’infanzia fino alla giovinezza! Mentre guardo indietro a quell’acqua che scorre, ora un canale asciutto ricoperto di foglie, lasciatemi pensare se ci sono dei segni lungo il suo corso che mi permettano di ricordare come scorreva.
Un momento, e occupo il mio posto nella Cattedrale, dove andavamo tutti insieme ogni domenica mattina, riunendoci prima a scuola per questo scopo. L’odore terroso, l’aria senza sole, la sensazione che il mondo fosse escluso, il rimbombo dell’organo attraverso le gallerie e le navate a volta bianche e nere, sono ali che mi riportano indietro e mi tengono sospeso sopra quei giorni, in un sogno a metà dormiente e a metà sveglio.
Non sono l’ultimo ragazzo della scuola. In pochi mesi sono salito sopra diverse teste. Ma il primo ragazzo mi sembra una creatura potente, che dimora lontano, la cui vertiginosa altezza è inaccessibile. Agnes dice “No”, ma io dico “Sì”, e le dico che non si rende conto quali enormi quantità di conoscenza sono state assimilate da quell’essere meraviglioso, al posto del quale lei pensa che io, proprio io, debole aspirante, potrò arrivare in tempo. Non è mio amico personale e protettore pubblico, come lo era Steerforth, ma lo considero con un rispetto reverenziale. Mi chiedo soprattutto cosa diventerà, quando lascerà la scuola del dottor Strong, e cosa farà l’umanità per mantenere un posto contro di lui.
Ma chi è questa che si scaglia contro di me? È la signorina Shepherd, che io amo.
La signorina Shepherd è una pensionante presso l’istituto delle signorine Nettingall. Io adoro la signorina Shepherd. È una bambina, con uno spencer, un viso rotondo e capelli biondi ricci. Anche le giovani signore delle signorine Nettingall vengono alla Cattedrale. Non riesco a guardare il mio libro, perché devo guardare la signorina Shepherd. Quando i cantori intonano il canto, sento la signorina Shepherd. Durante la funzione inserisco mentalmente il nome della signorina Shepherd — la metto in mezzo alla Famiglia Reale. A casa, nella mia stanza, a volte sono spinto a gridare: «Oh, signorina Shepherd!» in un trasporto di amore.
Per qualche tempo, ho dei dubbi sui sentimenti della signorina Shepherd, ma, alla fine, la Fortuna essendo propizia, ci incontriamo alla scuola di ballo. Ho la signorina Shepherd come mia partner. Tocco il guanto della signorina Shepherd, e sento un brivido salire lungo il braccio destro del mio giaccone, e uscire dai miei capelli. Non dico nulla alla signorina Shepherd, ma ci intendiamo. La signorina Shepherd e io viviamo solo per essere uniti.
Mi chiedo perché io regali segretamente alla signorina Shepherd dodici noci del Brasile. Mi chiedo? Non sono un’espressione di affetto, sono difficili da imballare in un pacco di forma regolare, sono dure da rompere, anche con le porte delle stanze, e sono oleose quando sono rotte; eppure sento che sono adatti alla signorina Shepherd. Le dono anche biscotti morbidi e pieni di semi, e innumerevoli arance. Una volta, bacio la signorina Shepherd nella guardaroba. Estasi! Quali sono la mia agonia e la mia indignazione il giorno dopo, quando sento una voce che corre che le signorine Nettingall hanno messo la signorina Shepherd nel ceppo per aver girato i piedi verso l’interno!
Essendo Miss Shepherd il tema e la visione dominanti della mia vita, come faccio a rompere con lei? Non riesco a immaginarlo. Eppure tra me e Miss Shepherd cresce un raffreddamento. Mi giungono voci che Miss Shepherd avrebbe detto che desidera che io non la fissi così tanto, e avrebbe dichiarato la sua preferenza per il piccolo Jones—per Jones! un ragazzo senza alcun merito! Il divario tra me e Miss Shepherd si allarga. Infine, un giorno, incontro le ragazze dell’istituto delle sorelle Nettingall durante una passeggiata. Miss Shepherd fa una smorfia mentre passa, e ride con la sua compagna. È finita. La devozione di una vita—sembra una vita, è la stessa cosa—è finita; Miss Shepherd esce dal servizio mattutino, e la Famiglia Reale non la conosce più.
Sono più in alto nella scuola, e nessuno disturba la mia pace. Non sono per niente educato, ora, con le giovani signorine delle signorine Nettingalls, e non vorrei bene a nessuna di loro, anche se fossero il doppio e venti volte più belle. Penso che la scuola di ballo sia una faccenda noiosa, e mi chiedo perché le ragazze non possono ballare da sole e lasciarci in pace. Sto diventando grande con le poesie in latino, e trascurare le fibbie dei miei stivali. Il dottor Strong si riferisce a me in pubblico come a un giovane studioso promettente. Il signor Dick è selvaggio di gioia, e mia zia mi invia una ghinea con la posta successiva.
L’ombra di un giovane macellaio si alza, come l’apparizione di una testa armata in Macbeth. Chi è questo giovane macellaio? È il terrore dei giovani di Canterbury. Corre una vaga credenza che il sego di manzo con cui si unge i capelli gli conferisca una forza sovrumana, e che sia alla pari di un uomo. È un giovane macellaio dal viso largo, collo robusto, gote rosse e ruvide, mente mal disposta e lingua pungente. Il suo principale uso di questa lingua è quello di screditare i giovani signori del Dottor Strong. Dice pubblicamente che se vogliono qualcosa, lui gliela darà. Nomi individui tra loro (incluso me stesso), che potrebbe prendersi in carico di sistemare con una mano, e l’altra legata dietro di lui. Aggredisce i ragazzi più piccoli per picchiarli sulle loro teste indifese, e mi lancia sfide nelle strade aperte. Per queste ragioni sufficienti, decido di combattere il macellaio.
È una sera d’estate, in una conca verde, all’angolo di un muro. Incontro il macellaio come d’accordo. Sono accompagnato da un’esigua schiera dei nostri ragazzi; il macellaio, da altri due macellai, un giovane osteriaio e un spazzacamino. Si sistemano i preliminari, e il macellaio e io ci troviamo faccia a faccia. In un attimo il macellaio accende diecimila candele dalla mia sopracciglio sinistro. In un altro attimo, non so più dove sia il muro, o dove sono io, o dove sia chiunque altro. A malapena so chi sono io e chi è il macellaio, siamo sempre così intrecciati e aggrovigliati, che ci sbattiamo sull’erba calpestata. A volte vedo il macellaio, insanguinato ma fiducioso; a volte non vedo nulla, e rimango lì a boccheggiare sulle ginocchia del mio secondo; a volte mi scaglio furiosamente contro il macellaio, e mi taglio i polsi contro il suo viso, senza che sembri minimamente turbato. Alla fine mi sveglio, con la testa che gira come dopo un girovago sogno, e vedo il macellaio che se ne va, congratulato dagli altri due macellai e dallo spazzacamino e dall’osteriaio, e che si infila il cappotto mentre se ne va; da cui arguisco, a ragione, che la vittoria è sua.
I am taken home in a sad plight, and I have beef-steaks put to my eyes, and am rubbed with vinegar and brandy, and find a great puffy place bursting out on my upper lip, which swells immoderately. For three or four days I remain at home, a very ill-looking subject, with a green shade over my eyes; and I should be very dull, but that Agnes is a sister to me, and condoles with me, and reads to me, and makes the time light and happy. Agnes has my confidence completely, always; I tell her all about the butcher, and the wrongs he has heaped upon me; she thinks I couldn’t have done otherwise than fight the butcher, while she shrinks and trembles at my having fought him.
Time has stolen on unobserved, for Adams is not the head-boy in the days that are come now, nor has he been this many and many a day. Adams has left the school so long, that when he comes back, on a visit to Doctor Strong, there are not many there, besides myself, who know him. Adams is going to be called to the bar almost directly, and is to be an advocate, and to wear a wig. I am surprised to find him a meeker man than I had thought, and less imposing in appearance. He has not staggered the world yet, either; for it goes on (as well as I can make out) pretty much the same as if he had never joined it.
A blank, through which the warriors of poetry and history march on in stately hosts that seem to have no end—and what comes next! I am the head-boy, now! I look down on the line of boys below me, with a condescending interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself, when I first came there. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I remember him as something left behind upon the road of life—as something I have passed, rather than have actually been—and almost think of him as of someone else.
And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield’s, where is she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture, a child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes—my sweet sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend, the better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good, self-denying influence—is quite a woman.
What other changes have come upon me, besides the changes in my growth and looks, and in the knowledge I have garnered all this while? I wear a gold watch and chain, a ring upon my little finger, and a long-tailed coat; and I use a great deal of bear’s grease—which, taken in conjunction with the ring, looks bad. Am I in love again? I am. I worship the eldest Miss Larkins.
The eldest Miss Larkins is not a little girl. She is a tall, dark, black-eyed, fine figure of a woman. The eldest Miss Larkins is not a chicken; for the youngest Miss Larkins is not that, and the eldest must be three or four years older. Perhaps the eldest Miss Larkins may be about thirty. My passion for her is beyond all bounds.
The eldest Miss Larkins knows officers. It is an awful thing to bear. I see them speaking to her in the street. I see them cross the way to meet her, when her bonnet (she has a bright taste in bonnets) is seen coming down the pavement, accompanied by her sister’s bonnet. She laughs and talks, and seems to like it. I spend a good deal of my own spare time in walking up and down to meet her. If I can bow to her once in the day (I know her to bow to, knowing Mr. Larkins), I am happier. I deserve a bow now and then. The raging agonies I suffer on the night of the Race Ball, where I know the eldest Miss Larkins will be dancing with the military, ought to have some compensation, if there be even-handed justice in the world.
My passion takes away my appetite, and makes me wear my newest silk neckerchief continually. I have no relief but in putting on my best clothes, and having my boots cleaned over and over again. I seem, then, to be worthier of the eldest Miss Larkins. Everything that belongs to her, or is connected with her, is precious to me. Mr. Larkins (a gruff old gentleman with a double chin, and one of his eyes immovable in his head) is fraught with interest to me. When I can’t meet his daughter, I go where I am likely to meet him. To say ‘How do you do, Mr. Larkins? Are the young ladies and all the family quite well?’ seems so pointed, that I blush.
I think continually about my age. Say I am seventeen, and say that seventeen is young for the eldest Miss Larkins, what of that? Besides, I shall be one-and-twenty in no time almost. I regularly take walks outside Mr. Larkins’s house in the evening, though it cuts me to the heart to see the officers go in, or to hear them up in the drawing-room, where the eldest Miss Larkins plays the harp. I even walk, on two or three occasions, in a sickly, spoony manner, round and round the house after the family are gone to bed, wondering which is the eldest Miss Larkins’s chamber (and pitching, I dare say now, on Mr. Larkins’s instead); wishing that a fire would burst out; that the assembled crowd would stand appalled; that I, dashing through them with a ladder, might rear it against her window, save her in my arms, go back for something she had left behind, and perish in the flames. For I am generally disinterested in my love, and think I could be content to make a figure before Miss Larkins, and expire.
Generally, but not always. Sometimes brighter visions rise before me. When I dress (the occupation of two hours), for a great ball given at the Larkins’s (the anticipation of three weeks), I indulge my fancy with pleasing images. I picture myself taking courage to make a declaration to Miss Larkins. I picture Miss Larkins sinking her head upon my shoulder, and saying, ‘Oh, Mr. Copperfield, can I believe my ears!’ I picture Mr. Larkins waiting on me next morning, and saying, ‘My dear Copperfield, my daughter has told me all. Youth is no objection. Here are twenty thousand pounds. Be happy!’ I picture my aunt relenting, and blessing us; and Mr. Dick and Doctor Strong being present at the marriage ceremony. I am a sensible fellow, I believe—I believe, on looking back, I mean—and modest I am sure; but all this goes on notwithstanding. I repair to the enchanted house, where there are lights, chattering, music, flowers, officers (I am sorry to see), and the eldest Miss Larkins, a blaze of beauty. She is dressed in blue, with blue flowers in her hair—forget-me-nots—as if SHE had any need to wear forget-me-nots. It is the first really grown-up party that I have ever been invited to, and I am a little uncomfortable; for I appear not to belong to anybody, and nobody appears to have anything to say to me, except Mr. Larkins, who asks me how my schoolfellows are, which he needn’t do, as I have not come there to be insulted.
Vengo portato a casa in pessime condizioni, e mi mettono degli spezzoni di bistecca sugli occhi, e mi strofinano con aceto e acquavite, e scopro che mi è spuntata una grande protuberanza sul labbro superiore, che si gonfia in modo spropositato. Per tre o quattro giorni rimango a casa, con un aspetto davvero poco attraente, con una protezione verde sugli occhi; e sarei molto triste, se Agnes non fosse come una sorella per me, e non mi compatisse, e non mi leggesse, e non rendesse il tempo leggero e felice. Agnes ha sempre tutta la mia fiducia; le racconto tutto del macellaio e delle ingiustizie che mi ha inflitto; lei pensa che non avrei potuto fare diversamente che combattere il macellaio, mentre rabbrividisce e trema al pensiero che io l’abbia affrontato.
Il tempo è passato inosservato, perché Adams non è più il capoclasse nei giorni che sono venuti, né lo è stato da molti e molti giorni. Adams ha lasciato la scuola da così tanto tempo, che quando torna, per una visita al Dottor Strong, non ci sono molti lì, oltre a me, che lo conoscono. Adams sta per essere chiamato alla barra quasi direttamente, e dovrà essere un avvocato, e indossare una parrucca. Sono sorpreso di trovarlo un uomo più mite di quanto pensassi, e meno imponente nell’aspetto. Non ha ancora sconvolto il mondo; perché va avanti (per quanto bene riesco a capire) più o meno lo stesso come se non ci fosse mai entrato.
Un vuoto, attraverso il quale i guerrieri della poesia e della storia marciavano in maestose schiere che sembravano non avere fine—e che cosa veniva dopo! Ora sono il capoclasse! Guardo dall’alto la fila dei ragazzi sotto di me, con un interesse condiscendente per quelli che mi ricordano il ragazzo che ero io stesso, quando ci andai per la prima volta. Quel piccolo sembra non essere una parte di me; lo ricordo come qualcosa che è rimasto indietro sulla strada della vita—come qualcosa che ho superato, piuttosto che essere stato realmente—e quasi lo considero come un’altra persona.
E la piccola ragazza che vidi quel primo giorno a casa del signor Wickfield, dov’è? Anche lei è sparita. Al suo posto, la perfetta immagine del ritratto, non più l’immagine di una bambina, si muove per la casa; e Agnes—mia dolce sorella, come la chiamo nei miei pensieri, mia consigliera e amica, l’angelo buono della vita di tutti coloro che entrano nella sua calma, buona, disinteressata influenza—è ormai una donna.
Quali altri cambiamenti sono avvenuti in me, oltre ai cambiamenti nella mia crescita e nell’aspetto, e nella conoscenza che ho accumulato in tutto questo tempo? Indosso un orologio d’oro e una catena, un anello sul mignolo e un lungo cappotto; e uso un sacco di grasso di orso, che, preso in considerazione insieme all’anello, non fa una buona impressione. Sono di nuovo innamorato? Sì. Adoro la maggiore delle signorine Larkins.
La maggiore delle signorine Larkins non è una bambina. È una donna alta, bruna, dagli occhi neri, di bell’aspetto. La maggiore delle signorine Larkins non è una ragazzina; perché la più giovane delle signorine Larkins non lo è, e la maggiore deve essere di tre o quattro anni più vecchia. Forse la maggiore delle signorine Larkins avrà circa trent’anni. La mia passione per lei è senza limiti.
La maggiore delle Miss Larkins conosce gli ufficiali. È una cosa terribile da sopportare. Li vedo parlarle in strada. La vedo attraversare la strada per incontrarli, quando il suo cappello (ha un gusto brillante per i cappelli) si vede arrivare lungo il marciapiede, accompagnato dal cappello della sorella. Lei ride e parla, e sembra che le piaccia. Passo molto del mio tempo libero a camminare su e giù per incontrarla. Se posso inchinarmi a lei una volta al giorno (la conosco abbastanza da saperlo, conoscendo il signor Larkins), sono più felice. Merito un inchino di tanto in tanto. Le furiose agonie che patisco la notte del Ballo delle Corse, dove so che la maggiore delle Miss Larkins ballerà con i militari, dovrebbero avere qualche compensazione, se esiste una giustizia equa nel mondo.
La mia passione mi toglie l’appetito e mi fa indossare continuamente la mia più nuova cravatta di seta. Non ho sollievo se non nel mettermi i miei vestiti migliori e nel farmi lucidare gli stivali più e più volte. Allora sembra che io sia più degno della maggiore delle signorine Larkins. Tutto ciò che le appartiene, o è in qualche modo connesso a lei, è prezioso per me. Il signor Larkins (un vecchio signore burbero con un mento doppio e uno dei suoi occhi immobile nella testa) è per me di grande interesse. Quando non posso incontrare sua figlia, vado dove è probabile che io incontri lui. Dire “Come state, signor Larkins? Le giovani signore e tutta la famiglia stanno bene?” sembra così diretto, che arrossisco.
Penso continuamente alla mia età. Diciamo che ho diciassette anni, e diciamo che diciassette anni sono pochi per la maggiore delle Miss Larkins, che importa? Inoltre, avrò ventuno anni in quasi nessun momento. Faccio regolarmente passeggiate fuori dalla casa del signor Larkins la sera, anche se mi lacera il cuore vedere gli ufficiali entrare, o sentirli al piano di sopra nel salotto, dove la maggiore delle Miss Larkins suona l’arpa. Cammino persino, in due o tre occasioni, in un modo malaticcio e sentimentale, intorno e intorno alla casa dopo che la famiglia è andata a letto, chiedendomi quale sia la camera della maggiore delle Miss Larkins (e puntando, ora lo ammetto, su quella del signor Larkins invece); desiderando che scoppiasse un incendio; che la folla radunata restasse atterrita; che io, facendomi strada tra loro con una scala, potessi appoggiarla contro la sua finestra, salvarla tra le mie braccia, tornare indietro per qualcosa che aveva lasciato indietro, e perire nelle fiamme. Perché in genere sono disinteressato nel mio amore, e penso che potrei essere contento di fare bella figura davanti alla Miss Larkins, e spirare.
In generale, ma non sempre. A volte mi appaiono visioni più luminose. Quando mi vesto (un’operazione che richiede due ore), per un grande ballo dato a casa dei Larkins (un’anticipazione di tre settimane), mi concedo il lusso di fantasticare con immagini piacevoli. Mi immagino di prendere coraggio per fare una dichiarazione a Miss Larkins. Mi immagino Miss Larkins che appoggia la testa sulla mia spalla e dice: «Oh, Mr. Copperfield, posso credere alle mie orecchie?» Mi immagino Mr. Larkins che mi aspetta la mattina dopo e dice: «Mio caro Copperfield, mia figlia mi ha raccontato tutto. La giovinezza non è un ostacolo. Ecco ventimila sterline. Siate felici!» Mi immagino mia zia che si riconcilia e ci benedice; e Mr. Dick e il Dottor Strong presenti alla cerimonia di matrimonio. Credo di essere un ragazzo sensato—voglio dire, a ripensarci—e sicuramente modesto; ma tutto questo accade nonostante tutto. Mi reco nella casa incantata, dove ci sono luci, chiacchiere, musica, fiori, ufficiali (mi dispiace vederli), e la maggiore delle Miss Larkins, un fulgore di bellezza. È vestita di blu, con fiori blu tra i capelli—non-ti-scordar-di-me—come se LE servissero dei non-ti-scordar-di-me. È la prima festa veramente da grandi a cui sia mai stato invitato, e sono un po’ a disagio; perché sembra che io non appartenga a nessuno, e nessuno sembra avere nulla da dirmi, eccetto Mr. Larkins, che mi chiede come stanno i miei compagni di scuola, cosa che non dovrebbe fare, dato che non sono venuto lì per essere insultato.
But after I have stood in the doorway for some time, and feasted my eyes upon the goddess of my heart, she approaches me—she, the eldest Miss Larkins!—and asks me pleasantly, if I dance?
I stammer, with a bow, ‘With you, Miss Larkins.’
‘With no one else?’ inquires Miss Larkins.
‘I should have no pleasure in dancing with anyone else.’
Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says, ‘Next time but one, I shall be very glad.’
The time arrives. ‘It is a waltz, I think,’ Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. ‘Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey—’
But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it her, and say:
‘I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.’
‘Indeed! What is that?’ returns Miss Larkins.
‘A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.’
‘You’re a bold boy,’ says Miss Larkins. ‘There.’
She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my arm, and says, ‘Now take me back to Captain Bailey.’
I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman who has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says:
‘Oh! here is my bold friend! Mr. Chestle wants to know you, Mr. Copperfield.’
I feel at once that he is a friend of the family, and am much gratified.
‘I admire your taste, sir,’ says Mr. Chestle. ‘It does you credit. I suppose you don’t take much interest in hops; but I am a pretty large grower myself; and if you ever like to come over to our neighbourhood—neighbourhood of Ashford—and take a run about our place,—we shall be glad for you to stop as long as you like.’
I thank Mr. Chestle warmly, and shake hands. I think I am in a happy dream. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins once again. She says I waltz so well! I go home in a state of unspeakable bliss, and waltz in imagination, all night long, with my arm round the blue waist of my dear divinity. For some days afterwards, I am lost in rapturous reflections; but I neither see her in the street, nor when I call. I am imperfectly consoled for this disappointment by the sacred pledge, the perished flower.
‘Trotwood,’ says Agnes, one day after dinner. ‘Who do you think is going to be married tomorrow? Someone you admire.’
‘Not you, I suppose, Agnes?’
‘Not me!’ raising her cheerful face from the music she is copying. ‘Do you hear him, Papa?—The eldest Miss Larkins.’
‘To—to Captain Bailey?’ I have just enough power to ask.
‘No; to no Captain. To Mr. Chestle, a hop-grower.’
I am terribly dejected for about a week or two. I take off my ring, I wear my worst clothes, I use no bear’s grease, and I frequently lament over the late Miss Larkins’s faded flower. Being, by that time, rather tired of this kind of life, and having received new provocation from the butcher, I throw the flower away, go out with the butcher, and gloriously defeat him.
This, and the resumption of my ring, as well as of the bear’s grease in moderation, are the last marks I can discern, now, in my progress to seventeen.
Ma dopo essere rimasto sulla porta per un po’ di tempo, e aver saziato i miei occhi della dea del mio cuore, lei si avvicina a me — lei, la maggiore delle signorine Larkins! — e mi chiede gentilmente se danzo?
Mi fermo, inchinandomi, “Con voi, Miss Larkins.”
«Con nessun altro?» chiede la signorina Larkins.
‘Non avrei piacere a ballare con nessun altro.’
La signorina Larkins ride e arrossisce (o almeno credo che arrossisca) e dice: «La prossima volta, sarò molto felice».
Arriva il momento. «È una valzer, credo», osserva dubbiosamente Miss Larkins, quando mi presento. «Sa ballare il valzer? Se no, capitano Bailey, »
Ma io ballo il valzer (e anche piuttosto bene, per la verità), e invito la signorina Larkins. La porto via con fermezza dal fianco del capitano Bailey. Lui è infelice, non ho dubbio; ma non è nulla per me. Anche io sono stato infelice. Ballo il valzer con la maggiore delle signorine Larkins! Non so dove, tra chi, o per quanto tempo. So solo che nuoto nello spazio, con un angelo blu, in uno stato di delirio beato, finché mi ritrovo solo con lei in una piccola stanza, riposando su un divano. Lei ammira un fiore (camelia japonica rosa, prezzo mezza corona), nel mio sparato. Glielo do e dico:
‘Ne chiedo un prezzo inestimabile, Miss Larkins.’
«Davvero! Che cos’è?» risponde Miss Larkins.
‘Un fiore tuo, che io possa custodirlo come un avaro fa con l’oro.’
“Sei un ragazzo coraggioso”, dice la signorina Larkins. “Ecco.”
Me lo dà, non dispiaciuta; e io lo porto alle labbra, e poi al petto. Miss Larkins, ridendo, mi passa la mano sul braccio e dice: «Ora riportami dal capitano Bailey».
Sono perso nei ricordi di questo delizioso colloquio e del valzer, quando lei torna da me, con un semplice signore anziano che ha giocato a whist tutta la notte, a braccetto, e dice:
“Oh! Ecco il mio coraggioso amico! Mr. Chestle desidera conoscerti, Mr. Copperfield.”
Mi rendo conto subito che è un amico della famiglia, e ne sono molto lieto.
«Ammiro il suo gusto, signore», dice il signor Chestle. «Le fa onore. Immagino che non si interessi molto di luppolo; ma io ne coltivo in quantità; e se mai le venisse voglia di venire nella nostra zona — nei dintorni di Ashford — e di dare un’occhiata alla nostra proprietà, — saremo lieti di ospitarla per tutto il tempo che desidera.»
Ringrazio calorosamente il signor Chestle e gli stringo la mano. Penso di essere in un felice sogno. Ballo di nuovo il valzer con la maggiore delle signorine Larkins. Dice che ballo così bene! Torno a casa in uno stato di ineffabile beatitudine e ballo in immaginazione, tutta la notte lunga, con il braccio intorno alla vita azzurra della mia cara divinità. Per alcuni giorni dopo, sono perso in riflessioni estatiche; ma non la vedo né in strada né quando vado a farle visita. Sono imperfettamente consolato per questa delusione dal sacro pegno, il fiore appassito.
«Trotwood», dice Agnes un giorno dopo pranzo, «indovina chi si sposerà domani? Qualcuno che ammiri.»
‘Non sarai tu, Agnes, immagino?’
«Non sono io!» alzando il suo viso allegra dalla musica che sta copiando. «Lo senti, papà? — La maggiore delle signorine Larkins.»
«A—al capitano Bailey?» riesco a chiedere con l’ultima forza che mi rimane.
‘No, a nessun capitano. Al signor Chestle, un coltivatore di luppolo.’
Sono terribilmente abbattuto per circa una o due settimane. Mi tolgo l’anello, indosso i miei vestiti peggiori, non uso il grasso di orso e piango spesso sulla fioritura appassita della defunta Miss Larkins. Essendo, a quel punto, piuttosto stanco di questo tipo di vita, e avendo ricevuto una nuova provocazione dal macellaio, butto via il fiore, esco con il macellaio e lo sconfiggo gloriosamente.
Questo, e il riprendere il mio anello, così come il grasso dell’orso in quantità moderate, sono gli ultimi segni che riesco a distinguere, ora, nel mio cammino verso i diciassette anni.
CHAPTER 19. I LOOK ABOUT ME, AND MAKE A DISCOVERY
I am doubtful whether I was at heart glad or sorry, when my school-days drew to an end, and the time came for my leaving Doctor Strong’s. I had been very happy there, I had a great attachment for the Doctor, and I was eminent and distinguished in that little world. For these reasons I was sorry to go; but for other reasons, unsubstantial enough, I was glad. Misty ideas of being a young man at my own disposal, of the importance attaching to a young man at his own disposal, of the wonderful things to be seen and done by that magnificent animal, and the wonderful effects he could not fail to make upon society, lured me away. So powerful were these visionary considerations in my boyish mind, that I seem, according to my present way of thinking, to have left school without natural regret. The separation has not made the impression on me, that other separations have. I try in vain to recall how I felt about it, and what its circumstances were; but it is not momentous in my recollection. I suppose the opening prospect confused me. I know that my juvenile experiences went for little or nothing then; and that life was more like a great fairy story, which I was just about to begin to read, than anything else.
My aunt and I had held many grave deliberations on the calling to which I should be devoted. For a year or more I had endeavoured to find a satisfactory answer to her often-repeated question, ‘What I would like to be?’ But I had no particular liking, that I could discover, for anything. If I could have been inspired with a knowledge of the science of navigation, taken the command of a fast-sailing expedition, and gone round the world on a triumphant voyage of discovery, I think I might have considered myself completely suited. But, in the absence of any such miraculous provision, my desire was to apply myself to some pursuit that would not lie too heavily upon her purse; and to do my duty in it, whatever it might be.
Mr. Dick had regularly assisted at our councils, with a meditative and sage demeanour. He never made a suggestion but once; and on that occasion (I don’t know what put it in his head), he suddenly proposed that I should be ‘a Brazier’. My aunt received this proposal so very ungraciously, that he never ventured on a second; but ever afterwards confined himself to looking watchfully at her for her suggestions, and rattling his money.
‘Trot, I tell you what, my dear,’ said my aunt, one morning in the Christmas season when I left school: ‘as this knotty point is still unsettled, and as we must not make a mistake in our decision if we can help it, I think we had better take a little breathing-time. In the meanwhile, you must try to look at it from a new point of view, and not as a schoolboy.’
‘I will, aunt.’
‘It has occurred to me,’ pursued my aunt, ‘that a little change, and a glimpse of life out of doors, may be useful in helping you to know your own mind, and form a cooler judgement. Suppose you were to go down into the old part of the country again, for instance, and see that—that out-of-the-way woman with the savagest of names,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose, for she could never thoroughly forgive Peggotty for being so called.
‘Of all things in the world, aunt, I should like it best!’
‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘that’s lucky, for I should like it too. But it’s natural and rational that you should like it. And I am very well persuaded that whatever you do, Trot, will always be natural and rational.’
‘I hope so, aunt.’
‘Your sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, ‘would have been as natural and rational a girl as ever breathed. You’ll be worthy of her, won’t you?’
‘I hope I shall be worthy of YOU, aunt. That will be enough for me.’
‘It’s a mercy that poor dear baby of a mother of yours didn’t live,’ said my aunt, looking at me approvingly, ‘or she’d have been so vain of her boy by this time, that her soft little head would have been completely turned, if there was anything of it left to turn.’ (My aunt always excused any weakness of her own in my behalf, by transferring it in this way to my poor mother.) ‘Bless me, Trotwood, how you do remind me of her!’
‘Pleasantly, I hope, aunt?’ said I.
‘He’s as like her, Dick,’ said my aunt, emphatically, ‘he’s as like her, as she was that afternoon before she began to fret—bless my heart, he’s as like her, as he can look at me out of his two eyes!’
‘Is he indeed?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘And he’s like David, too,’ said my aunt, decisively.
‘He is very like David!’ said Mr. Dick.
‘But what I want you to be, Trot,’ resumed my aunt, ‘—I don’t mean physically, but morally; you are very well physically—is, a firm fellow. A fine firm fellow, with a will of your own. With resolution,’ said my aunt, shaking her cap at me, and clenching her hand. ‘With determination. With character, Trot—with strength of character that is not to be influenced, except on good reason, by anybody, or by anything. That’s what I want you to be. That’s what your father and mother might both have been, Heaven knows, and been the better for it.’
I intimated that I hoped I should be what she described.
‘That you may begin, in a small way, to have a reliance upon yourself, and to act for yourself,’ said my aunt, ‘I shall send you upon your trip, alone. I did think, once, of Mr. Dick’s going with you; but, on second thoughts, I shall keep him to take care of me.’
Mr. Dick, for a moment, looked a little disappointed; until the honour and dignity of having to take care of the most wonderful woman in the world, restored the sunshine to his face.
‘Besides,’ said my aunt, ‘there’s the Memorial—’
‘Oh, certainly,’ said Mr. Dick, in a hurry, ‘I intend, Trotwood, to get that done immediately—it really must be done immediately! And then it will go in, you know—and then—’ said Mr. Dick, after checking himself, and pausing a long time, ‘there’ll be a pretty kettle of fish!’
CAPITOLO 19. DO UNA RICONOSCITA E FACCIO UNA SCOPERTA
Dubito di essere stato, nel profondo, contento o dispiaciuto quando i miei giorni di scuola volgevano al termine e giunse il momento di lasciare il dottor Strong. Ero stato molto felice lì, avevo un grande affetto per il dottore, e in quel piccolo mondo ero eminente e distinto. Per questi motivi mi dispiaceva andarmene; ma per altri motivi, abbastanza inconsistenti, ero contento. Idee confuse di essere un giovane uomo libero di fare ciò che voleva, dell’importanza che aveva un giovane uomo libero di fare ciò che voleva, delle meraviglie che si potevano vedere e fare con quell’animale magnifico, e degli effetti meravigliosi che non poteva non avere sulla società, mi attiravano. Queste considerazioni visionarie erano così potenti nella mia mente da ragazzo, che sembra, secondo il mio modo di pensare attuale, che io abbia lasciato la scuola senza un naturale rammarico. La separazione non ha lasciato in me l’impressione che hanno lasciato altre separazioni. Cerco invano di ricordare come mi sentivo al riguardo, e quali fossero le circostanze; ma non è un ricordo importante. Suppongo che la prospettiva che si apriva davanti a me mi abbia confuso. So che le mie esperienze giovanili non contavano nulla allora; e che la vita era più simile a una grande fiaba, che stavo per iniziare a leggere, che a qualsiasi altra cosa.
Mia zia ed io avevamo tenuto molte gravi deliberazioni sulla vocazione a cui avrei dovuto dedicarmi. Per un anno o più avevo cercato di trovare una risposta soddisfacente alla sua domanda spesso ripetuta: «Cosa vorrei diventare?». Ma non avevo una particolare predilezione, che potessi scoprire, per nulla. Se avessi potuto essere ispirato con la conoscenza della scienza della navigazione, preso il comando di una spedizione veloce, e fatto il giro del mondo in un trionfante viaggio di scoperta, penso che avrei potuto considerarmi completamente adatto. Ma, in assenza di una tale provvidenza miracolosa, il mio desiderio era di dedicarmi a qualche attività che non gravasse troppo sulla sua borsa; e di fare il mio dovere in essa, qualunque essa fosse.
Il signor Dick aveva regolarmente partecipato ai nostri consigli, con un comportamento meditativo e saggio. Non fece mai una proposta se non una volta; e in quell’occasione (non so cosa glielo abbia fatto venire in mente), improvvisamente propose che io diventassi «un fabbricante di bracieri». Mia zia accolse questa proposta con così poca grazia, che non osò mai più farne una seconda; ma da allora in poi si limitò a guardarla attentamente in attesa delle sue proposte, e a far tintinnare i suoi soldi.
«Trot, ti dirò, mia cara», disse mia zia, una mattina durante le vacanze di Natale quando lasciai la scuola: «poiché questo punto così intricato è ancora irrisolto, e poiché non dobbiamo sbagliare nella nostra decisione se possiamo evitarlo, penso che faremmo meglio a concederci un po’ di respiro. Nel frattempo, dovrai cercare di guardare alla cosa da un punto di vista nuovo, e non come uno scolaretto».
‘Lo farò, zia.’
«Mi è venuto in mente», continuò mia zia, «che un piccolo cambiamento e un assaggio di vita all’aria aperta potrebbero esserti utili per conoscere meglio te stesso e formarti un giudizio più equilibrato. Supponiamo, per esempio, che tu tornassi nella vecchia parte del paese e vedessi quella, quella donna fuori dal comune col nome più selvaggio», disse mia zia strofinandosi il naso, perché non aveva mai potuto perdonare a Peggotty di essere chiamata così.
‘Di tutte le cose al mondo, zia, questa è quella che preferirei!’
«Bene,» disse mia zia, «è una fortuna, perché anche a me piacerebbe. Ma è naturale e ragionevole che ti piaccia. E sono molto bene persuasa che qualunque cosa tu faccia, Trot, sarà sempre naturale e ragionevole.»
«Lo spero, zia.»
«Tua sorella, Betsey Trotwood,» disse mia zia, «sarebbe stata una ragazza naturale e ragionevole come non mai. Sarai degna di lei, vero?»
«Spero di essere degno di VOI, zia. Questo sarà sufficiente per me.»
«È una benedizione che la povera cara bambina di tua madre non sia vissuta», disse mia zia, guardandomi con approvazione, «altrimenti sarebbe stata così orgogliosa di suo figlio a quest’ora, che la sua tenera testolina sarebbe stata completamente sconvolta, se ci fosse stato qualcosa di essa da sconvolgere.» (Mia zia scusava sempre qualsiasi debolezza propria a mio favore, trasferendola in questo modo a mia povera madre.) «Perbacco, Trotwood, come mi ricordi lei!»
«Spero che sia piacevole, zia?», dissi.
«È così simile a lei, Dick», disse mia zia, con enfasi, «è così simile a lei, come lei era quel pomeriggio prima che cominciasse a preoccuparsi—benedetto il mio cuore, è così simile a lei, come può guardarmi con i suoi due occhi!»
«È davvero così?» disse il signor Dick.
«E lui è come Davide, anche lui», disse mia zia, con decisione.
«È molto simile a David!» disse il signor Dick.
«Ma quello che voglio che tu sia, Trot», riprese mia zia, «—non intendo fisicamente, ma moralmente; tu sei molto bene fisicamente—è, un ragazzo deciso. Un ragazzo in gamba e deciso, con una volontà propria. Con risolutezza», disse mia zia, scuotendo il suo cappello verso di me e stringendo il pugno. «Con determinazione. Con carattere, Trot—con una forza di carattere che non si lascia influenzare, se non per buone ragioni, da nessuno, né da nulla. Questo è quello che voglio che tu sia. Questo è quello che tuo padre e tua madre avrebbero potuto essere, Dio sa, e ne sarebbero stati migliori.»
Feci capire che speravo di essere come lei mi aveva descritto.
«Affinché tu possa iniziare, in piccolo, a fare affidamento su te stesso, e a prendere le tue decisioni», disse mia zia, «ti manderò in viaggio, da solo. Una volta ho pensato che il signor Dick potesse accompagnarti; ma, ci ripensando, lo terrò con me per prendersi cura di me.»
Mr. Dick, per un momento, sembrò un po’ deluso; finché l’onore e la dignità di dover prendersi cura della donna più meravigliosa del mondo restituirono la luce al suo volto.
“Inoltre,” disse mia zia, “c’è il memoriale, ”
«Oh, certo», disse Mr. Dick, in fretta, «intendo, Trotwood, farlo fare immediatamente — deve proprio essere fatto immediatamente! E poi entrerà, sapete — e poi —», disse Mr. Dick, dopo essersi trattenuto, e aver fatto una lunga pausa, «ci sarà un bel guaio!»
In pursuance of my aunt’s kind scheme, I was shortly afterwards fitted out with a handsome purse of money, and a portmanteau, and tenderly dismissed upon my expedition. At parting, my aunt gave me some good advice, and a good many kisses; and said that as her object was that I should look about me, and should think a little, she would recommend me to stay a few days in London, if I liked it, either on my way down into Suffolk, or in coming back. In a word, I was at liberty to do what I would, for three weeks or a month; and no other conditions were imposed upon my freedom than the before-mentioned thinking and looking about me, and a pledge to write three times a week and faithfully report myself.
I went to Canterbury first, that I might take leave of Agnes and Mr. Wickfield (my old room in whose house I had not yet relinquished), and also of the good Doctor. Agnes was very glad to see me, and told me that the house had not been like itself since I had left it.
‘I am sure I am not like myself when I am away,’ said I. ‘I seem to want my right hand, when I miss you. Though that’s not saying much; for there’s no head in my right hand, and no heart. Everyone who knows you, consults with you, and is guided by you, Agnes.’
‘Everyone who knows me, spoils me, I believe,’ she answered, smiling.
‘No. It’s because you are like no one else. You are so good, and so sweet-tempered. You have such a gentle nature, and you are always right.’
‘You talk,’ said Agnes, breaking into a pleasant laugh, as she sat at work, ‘as if I were the late Miss Larkins.’
‘Come! It’s not fair to abuse my confidence,’ I answered, reddening at the recollection of my blue enslaver. ‘But I shall confide in you, just the same, Agnes. I can never grow out of that. Whenever I fall into trouble, or fall in love, I shall always tell you, if you’ll let me—even when I come to fall in love in earnest.’
‘Why, you have always been in earnest!’ said Agnes, laughing again.
‘Oh! that was as a child, or a schoolboy,’ said I, laughing in my turn, not without being a little shame-faced. ‘Times are altering now, and I suppose I shall be in a terrible state of earnestness one day or other. My wonder is, that you are not in earnest yourself, by this time, Agnes.’
Agnes laughed again, and shook her head.
‘Oh, I know you are not!’ said I, ‘because if you had been you would have told me. Or at least’—for I saw a faint blush in her face, ‘you would have let me find it out for myself. But there is no one that I know of, who deserves to love you, Agnes. Someone of a nobler character, and more worthy altogether than anyone I have ever seen here, must rise up, before I give my consent. In the time to come, I shall have a wary eye on all admirers; and shall exact a great deal from the successful one, I assure you.’
We had gone on, so far, in a mixture of confidential jest and earnest, that had long grown naturally out of our familiar relations, begun as mere children. But Agnes, now suddenly lifting up her eyes to mine, and speaking in a different manner, said:
‘Trotwood, there is something that I want to ask you, and that I may not have another opportunity of asking for a long time, perhaps—something I would ask, I think, of no one else. Have you observed any gradual alteration in Papa?’
I had observed it, and had often wondered whether she had too. I must have shown as much, now, in my face; for her eyes were in a moment cast down, and I saw tears in them.
‘Tell me what it is,’ she said, in a low voice.
‘I think—shall I be quite plain, Agnes, liking him so much?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘I think he does himself no good by the habit that has increased upon him since I first came here. He is often very nervous—or I fancy so.’
‘It is not fancy,’ said Agnes, shaking her head.
‘His hand trembles, his speech is not plain, and his eyes look wild. I have remarked that at those times, and when he is least like himself, he is most certain to be wanted on some business.’
‘By Uriah,’ said Agnes.
‘Yes; and the sense of being unfit for it, or of not having understood it, or of having shown his condition in spite of himself, seems to make him so uneasy, that next day he is worse, and next day worse, and so he becomes jaded and haggard. Do not be alarmed by what I say, Agnes, but in this state I saw him, only the other evening, lay down his head upon his desk, and shed tears like a child.’
Her hand passed softly before my lips while I was yet speaking, and in a moment she had met her father at the door of the room, and was hanging on his shoulder. The expression of her face, as they both looked towards me, I felt to be very touching. There was such deep fondness for him, and gratitude to him for all his love and care, in her beautiful look; and there was such a fervent appeal to me to deal tenderly by him, even in my inmost thoughts, and to let no harsh construction find any place against him; she was, at once, so proud of him and devoted to him, yet so compassionate and sorry, and so reliant upon me to be so, too; that nothing she could have said would have expressed more to me, or moved me more.
We were to drink tea at the Doctor’s. We went there at the usual hour; and round the study fireside found the Doctor, and his young wife, and her mother. The Doctor, who made as much of my going away as if I were going to China, received me as an honoured guest; and called for a log of wood to be thrown on the fire, that he might see the face of his old pupil reddening in the blaze.
‘I shall not see many more new faces in Trotwood’s stead, Wickfield,’ said the Doctor, warming his hands; ‘I am getting lazy, and want ease. I shall relinquish all my young people in another six months, and lead a quieter life.’
‘You have said so, any time these ten years, Doctor,’ Mr. Wickfield answered.
‘But now I mean to do it,’ returned the Doctor. ‘My first master will succeed me—I am in earnest at last—so you’ll soon have to arrange our contracts, and to bind us firmly to them, like a couple of knaves.’
In conformità al gentile progetto di mia zia, poco dopo fui attrezzato con una bella borsa di denaro e un portamantelli, e teneramente congedato per la mia spedizione. Al momento di separarci, mia zia mi diede alcuni buoni consigli e molti baci; e disse che poiché il suo scopo era che io osservassi intorno a me e riflettessi un po’, mi avrebbe consigliato di fermarmi alcuni giorni a Londra, se mi fosse piaciuta, sia andando in Suffolk, sia al ritorno. In breve, ero libero di fare ciò che volevo, per tre settimane o un mese; e non furono imposte alla mia libertà altre condizioni se non il già menzionato pensare e guardarmi intorno, e un impegno a scrivere tre volte a settimana e a riferire fedelmente di me.
Andai prima a Canterbury, per poter salutare Agnes e il signor Wickfield (la mia vecchia stanza nella casa di cui non avevo ancora rinunciato), e anche il buon Dottore. Agnes fu molto contenta di vedermi e mi disse che la casa non era stata più la stessa da quando l’avevo lasciata.
«Sono sicuro di non essere me stesso quando non ci sei», dissi. «Mi sembra di perdere la mia mano destra, quando non ci sei. Anche se questo non vuol dire molto; perché nella mia mano destra non c’è testa né cuore. Tutti coloro che ti conoscono, si consultano con te e si lasciano guidare da te, Agnes.»
«Tutti quelli che mi conoscono, mi viziano, credo», rispose lei, sorridendo.
‘No. È perché non sei come nessun altro. Sei così buono, e così di buon carattere. Hai una natura così gentile, e hai sempre ragione.’
«Parlate» disse Agnes, scoppiando in una piacevole risata mentre sedeva al lavoro «come se fossi la defunta Miss Larkins.»
«Come! Non è giusto abusare della mia fiducia», risposi, arrossendo al ricordo della mia schiavizzatrice in blu. «Ma mi confiderò con te, lo stesso, Agnes. Non potrò mai superare questo. Ogni volta che mi trovo in difficoltà, o mi innamoro, ti dirò sempre tutto, se me lo permetterai — anche quando verrò a innamorarmi sul serio.»
«Ma siete sempre stato serio!» disse Agnes, ridendo di nuovo.
«Oh! era quando ero un bambino, o un ragazzino», dissi io, ridendo a mia volta, non senza un po’ di vergogna. «I tempi stanno cambiando ora, e immagino che un giorno o l’altro sarò in uno stato terribile di serietà. La meraviglia è che tu non sia seria tu stessa, a questa ora, Agnes.»
Agnes rise di nuovo e scosse la testa.
«Oh, so che non lo sei!» dissi io, «perché se lo fossi me lo avresti detto. O almeno» — perché vidi un leggero rossore sul suo viso, «mi avresti lasciato scoprirlo da solo. Ma non c’è nessuno che io conosca, che meriti di amarti, Agnes. Qualcuno di carattere più nobile, e più degno in assoluto di chiunque io abbia mai visto qui, dovrà sorgere, prima che io dia il mio consenso. Nel futuro, avrò un occhio attento su tutti gli ammiratori; e pretenderò molto dal fortunato, te lo assicuro.»
Eravamo andati avanti, fino a quel momento, in una mescolanza di scherzi confidenziali e di serietà, che era nata naturalmente dalle nostre relazioni familiari, iniziate quando eravamo solo dei bambini. Ma Agnes, alzando ora improvvisamente gli occhi verso i miei, e parlando in modo diverso, disse:
«Trotwood, c’è qualcosa che voglio chiederti e che forse non avrò un’altra occasione di chiedere per un lungo periodo, qualcosa che credo non chiederei a nessun altro. Hai notato qualche cambiamento graduale in papà?»
L’avevo notato, e spesso mi ero chiesto se l’avesse notato anche lei. Ora, però, la mia faccia doveva averlo rivelato, perché i suoi occhi si sono abbassati in un attimo, e ho visto delle lacrime in essi.
«Dimmi di che si tratta», disse con voce bassa.
Penso. Devo essere del tutto sincera, Agnes, piacendomi così tanto?
«Sì», disse.
«Penso che non faccia bene a se stesso con l’abitudine che si è accentuata in lui da quando sono arrivato qui. Spesso è molto nervoso, o almeno così mi sembra.»
«Non è fantasia», disse Agnes, scuotendo la testa.
«La sua mano trema, la sua voce non è chiara, e i suoi occhi hanno un’aria selvaggia. Ho notato che in quei momenti, e quando è meno simile a se stesso, è più probabile che sia necessario per qualche faccenda.»
«Per Uriah», disse Agnes.
«Sì; e il senso di non essere all’altezza, o di non aver capito, o di aver rivelato la sua condizione suo malgrado, sembra renderlo così inquieto, che il giorno dopo è peggio, e il giorno dopo ancora peggio, e così diventa stanco e smunto. Non allarmarti per quello che dico, Agnes, ma in questo stato l’ho visto, solo l’altra sera, appoggiare la testa sulla scrivania e versare lacrime come un bambino.»
La sua mano passò dolcemente davanti alle mie labbra mentre stavo ancora parlando, e in un attimo si era incontrata con suo padre sulla porta della stanza, e si era aggrappata alla sua spalla. L’espressione del suo viso, mentre entrambi mi guardavano, mi parve molto commovente. C’era un tale profondo affetto per lui, e gratitudine per tutto il suo amore e la sua cura, nel suo sguardo bellissimo; e c’era un tale appello fervente a me di trattarlo con tenerezza, anche nei miei pensieri più intimi, e di non lasciare che alcuna interpretazione severa trovasse posto contro di lui; era, allo stesso tempo, così orgogliosa di lui e devota a lui, eppure così compassionevole e dispiaciuta, e così fiduciosa che io lo fossi anch’io; che nulla di ciò che avrebbe potuto dire mi avrebbe espresso di più, o commosso di più.
Dovevamo prendere il tè dal Dottore. Andammo lì all’ora solita; e intorno al caminetto dello studio trovammo il Dottore, sua moglie giovane e la madre di lei. Il Dottore, che fece tanto della mia partenza come se stessi andando in Cina, mi accolse come un ospite d’onore; e chiese che venisse gettato un ceppo di legno sul fuoco, per poter vedere il volto del suo vecchio allievo arrossire nella fiamma.
«Non vedrò molti altri nuovi volti al posto di Trotwood, Wickfield», disse il Dottore, riscaldandosi le mani; «Sto diventando pigro e voglio agio. Abbandonerò tutti i miei giovani entro altri sei mesi e condurrò una vita più tranquilla.»
«L’avete detto, in qualsiasi momento di questi dieci anni, dottore», rispose il signor Wickfield.
«Ma ora intendo farlo», rispose il dottore. «Il mio primo allievo mi succederà — finalmente sono serio — così presto dovrete sistemare i nostri contratti, e vincolarci saldamente ad essi, come due furfanti.»
‘And to take care,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you’re not imposed on, eh? As you certainly would be, in any contract you should make for yourself. Well! I am ready. There are worse tasks than that, in my calling.’
‘I shall have nothing to think of then,’ said the Doctor, with a smile, ‘but my Dictionary; and this other contract-bargain—Annie.’
As Mr. Wickfield glanced towards her, sitting at the tea table by Agnes, she seemed to me to avoid his look with such unwonted hesitation and timidity, that his attention became fixed upon her, as if something were suggested to his thoughts.
‘There is a post come in from India, I observe,’ he said, after a short silence.
‘By the by! and letters from Mr. Jack Maldon!’ said the Doctor.
‘Indeed!’ ‘Poor dear Jack!’ said Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head. ‘That trying climate!—like living, they tell me, on a sand-heap, underneath a burning-glass! He looked strong, but he wasn’t. My dear Doctor, it was his spirit, not his constitution, that he ventured on so boldly. Annie, my dear, I am sure you must perfectly recollect that your cousin never was strong—not what can be called ROBUST, you know,’ said Mrs. Markleham, with emphasis, and looking round upon us generally, ‘—from the time when my daughter and himself were children together, and walking about, arm-in-arm, the livelong day.’
Annie, thus addressed, made no reply.
‘Do I gather from what you say, ma’am, that Mr. Maldon is ill?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
‘Ill!’ replied the Old Soldier. ‘My dear sir, he’s all sorts of things.’
‘Except well?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘Except well, indeed!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘He has had dreadful strokes of the sun, no doubt, and jungle fevers and agues, and every kind of thing you can mention. As to his liver,’ said the Old Soldier resignedly, ‘that, of course, he gave up altogether, when he first went out!’
‘Does he say all this?’ asked Mr. Wickfield.
‘Say? My dear sir,’ returned Mrs. Markleham, shaking her head and her fan, ‘you little know my poor Jack Maldon when you ask that question. Say? Not he. You might drag him at the heels of four wild horses first.’
‘Mama!’ said Mrs. Strong.
‘Annie, my dear,’ returned her mother, ‘once for all, I must really beg that you will not interfere with me, unless it is to confirm what I say. You know as well as I do that your cousin Maldon would be dragged at the heels of any number of wild horses—why should I confine myself to four! I WON’T confine myself to four—eight, sixteen, two-and-thirty, rather than say anything calculated to overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
‘Wickfield’s plans,’ said the Doctor, stroking his face, and looking penitently at his adviser. ‘That is to say, our joint plans for him. I said myself, abroad or at home.’
‘And I said’ added Mr. Wickfield gravely, ‘abroad. I was the means of sending him abroad. It’s my responsibility.’
‘Oh! Responsibility!’ said the Old Soldier. ‘Everything was done for the best, my dear Mr. Wickfield; everything was done for the kindest and best, we know. But if the dear fellow can’t live there, he can’t live there. And if he can’t live there, he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll overturn the Doctor’s plans. I know him,’ said the Old Soldier, fanning herself, in a sort of calm prophetic agony, ‘and I know he’ll die there, sooner than he’ll overturn the Doctor’s plans.’
‘Well, well, ma’am,’ said the Doctor cheerfully, ‘I am not bigoted to my plans, and I can overturn them myself. I can substitute some other plans. If Mr. Jack Maldon comes home on account of ill health, he must not be allowed to go back, and we must endeavour to make some more suitable and fortunate provision for him in this country.’
Mrs. Markleham was so overcome by this generous speech—which, I need not say, she had not at all expected or led up to—that she could only tell the Doctor it was like himself, and go several times through that operation of kissing the sticks of her fan, and then tapping his hand with it. After which she gently chid her daughter Annie, for not being more demonstrative when such kindnesses were showered, for her sake, on her old playfellow; and entertained us with some particulars concerning other deserving members of her family, whom it was desirable to set on their deserving legs.
All this time, her daughter Annie never once spoke, or lifted up her eyes. All this time, Mr. Wickfield had his glance upon her as she sat by his own daughter’s side. It appeared to me that he never thought of being observed by anyone; but was so intent upon her, and upon his own thoughts in connexion with her, as to be quite absorbed. He now asked what Mr. Jack Maldon had actually written in reference to himself, and to whom he had written?
‘Why, here,’ said Mrs. Markleham, taking a letter from the chimney-piece above the Doctor’s head, ‘the dear fellow says to the Doctor himself—where is it? Oh!—“I am sorry to inform you that my health is suffering severely, and that I fear I may be reduced to the necessity of returning home for a time, as the only hope of restoration.” That’s pretty plain, poor fellow! His only hope of restoration! But Annie’s letter is plainer still. Annie, show me that letter again.’
‘Not now, mama,’ she pleaded in a low tone.
‘My dear, you absolutely are, on some subjects, one of the most ridiculous persons in the world,’ returned her mother, ‘and perhaps the most unnatural to the claims of your own family. We never should have heard of the letter at all, I believe, unless I had asked for it myself. Do you call that confidence, my love, towards Doctor Strong? I am surprised. You ought to know better.’
The letter was reluctantly produced; and as I handed it to the old lady, I saw how the unwilling hand from which I took it, trembled.
‘Now let us see,’ said Mrs. Markleham, putting her glass to her eye, ‘where the passage is. “The remembrance of old times, my dearest Annie”—and so forth—it’s not there. “The amiable old Proctor”—who’s he? Dear me, Annie, how illegibly your cousin Maldon writes, and how stupid I am! “Doctor,” of course. Ah! amiable indeed!’ Here she left off, to kiss her fan again, and shake it at the Doctor, who was looking at us in a state of placid satisfaction. ‘Now I have found it. “You may not be surprised to hear, Annie,”—no, to be sure, knowing that he never was really strong; what did I say just now?—“that I have undergone so much in this distant place, as to have decided to leave it at all hazards; on sick leave, if I can; on total resignation, if that is not to be obtained. What I have endured, and do endure here, is insupportable.” And but for the promptitude of that best of creatures,’ said Mrs. Markleham, telegraphing the Doctor as before, and refolding the letter, ‘it would be insupportable to me to think of.’
«E di fare attenzione», disse il signor Wickfield, «che non ti si imponga, eh? Come certamente accadrebbe, in qualsiasi contratto tu dovessi stipulare per te stesso. Bene! Sono pronto. Ci sono compiti peggiori di quello, nella mia professione.»
«Non avrò altro a cui pensare», disse il dottore con un sorriso, «che il mio Dizionario; e questo altro contratto. Annie.»
Quando il signor Wickfield le lanciò un’occhiata mentre sedeva al tavolo del tè accanto ad Agnes, mi parve che evitasse il suo sguardo con un’insolita esitazione e timidezza, tanto che la sua attenzione si fissò su di lei, come se qualcosa gli fosse venuto in mente.
«Osservo che è arrivata posta dall’India», disse, dopo un breve silenzio.
«A proposito! E lettere dal signor Jack Maldon!» disse il dottore.
«Davvero!» «Povero caro Jack!» disse la signora Markleham, scuotendo la testa. «Quel clima insopportabile! — come vivere, mi dicono, su un mucchio di sabbia, sotto una lente d’ingrandimento! Sembrava forte, ma non lo era. Mio caro dottore, era il suo spirito, non la sua costituzione, che osava così audacemente. Annie, mia cara, sono sicura che tu debba ricordare perfettamente che tuo cugino non era mai stato forte — non quello che si può chiamare ROBUSTO, sai,» disse la signora Markleham, con enfasi, e guardandosi intorno su di noi in generale, «— fin dal tempo in cui mia figlia e lui erano bambini insieme, e passeggiavano, braccio a braccio, tutto il giorno.»
Annie, così apostrofata, non rispose.
«Dalle sue parole, signora, deduco che il signor Maldon sia malato?» chiese il signor Wickfield.
‘Malato!’ rispose il Vecchio Soldato. ‘Mio caro signore, è di tutti i tipi.’
«Tranne bene?» disse il signor Wickfield.
«Tranne che bene, davvero!» disse il Vecchio Soldato. «Ha avuto terribili colpi di sole, senza dubbio, e febbri della giungla e malaria, e ogni genere di cosa che si possa menzionare. Per quanto riguarda il suo fegato,» disse il Vecchio Soldato rassegnato, «be’, naturalmente, l’ha abbandonato del tutto, quando è partito!»
«Dice tutto questo?» chiese il signor Wickfield.
«Dire? Mio caro signore», rispose la signora Markleham, scuotendo la testa e il ventaglio, «voi non conoscete affatto il mio povero Jack Maldon quando fate questa domanda. Dire? Mai. Potreste trascinarlo dietro a quattro cavalli selvaggi prima.»
«Mamma!» disse la signora Strong.
«Annie, mia cara», rispose sua madre, «per l’ultima volta, ti prego davvero di non intrometterti, a meno che non sia per confermare ciò che dico. Lo sai bene quanto me che tuo cugino Maldon sarebbe trascinato al seguito di qualsiasi numero di cavalli selvaggi — perché dovrei limitarmi a quattro! NON mi limiterò a quattro — otto, sedici, trentadue, piuttosto che dire qualcosa che possa rovesciare i piani del Dottore.»
«I piani di Wickfield», disse il Dottore, accarezzandosi il viso e guardando con aria pentita il suo consigliere. «Voglio dire, i nostri piani comuni per lui. Io stesso ho detto, all’estero o in patria.»
«E ho detto» aggiunse gravemente il signor Wickfield «all’estero. Sono stato io a mandarlo all’estero. È mia responsabilità.»
«Oh! La responsabilità!» disse la Vecchia Soldatessa. «Tutto è stato fatto per il meglio, mio caro signor Wickfield; tutto è stato fatto per il più grande bene, lo sappiamo. Ma se il caro ragazzo non può vivere lì, non può vivere lì. E se non può vivere lì, morirà lì, prima che possa rovesciare i piani del Dottore. Lo conosco», disse la Vecchia Soldatessa, agitando il ventaglio, in una specie di calma agonia profetica, «e so che morirà lì, prima che possa rovesciare i piani del Dottore.»
«Bene, bene, signora», disse il Dottore allegramente, «non sono bigotto dei miei piani, e posso rovesciarli io stesso. Posso sostituirli con altri piani. Se il signor Jack Maldon torna a casa per motivi di salute, non dobbiamo permettergli di tornare indietro, e dobbiamo cercare di fare una disposizione più adatta e fortunata per lui in questo paese.»
La signora Markleham fu così sopraffatta da questo generoso discorso — che, non c’è bisogno che lo dica, non si aspettava affatto né aveva preparato — che poté solo dire al dottore che era proprio da lui, e ripetere più volte quell’operazione di baciare le stecche del suo ventaglio e poi batterlo sulla mano con quello. Dopo di che rimproverò dolcemente sua figlia Annie per non essere più espansiva quando tali gentilezze venivano riversate, per il suo bene, sulla sua vecchia compagna di giochi; e ci intrattenne con alcuni particolari riguardanti altri meritevoli membri della sua famiglia, che era desiderabile mettere in condizione di vivere secondo i loro meriti.
Tutto questo tempo, la figlia Annie non parlò mai una volta, né alzò gli occhi. Tutto questo tempo, il signor Wickfield aveva lo sguardo fisso su di lei mentre sedeva accanto alla figlia. Mi sembrò che non pensasse mai di essere osservato da qualcuno; ma era così intento su di lei, e sui propri pensieri in connessione con lei, da essere completamente assorbito. Ora chiese cosa avesse effettivamente scritto il signor Jack Maldon a proposito di se stesso, e a chi avesse scritto?
«Perché, ecco», disse la signora Markleham, prendendo una lettera dal camino sopra la testa del Dottore, «il caro ragazzo dice al Dottore stesso — dove l’ha messa? Oh! — “Mi dispiace informarla che la mia salute sta soffrendo gravemente, e che temo di essere costretto a tornare a casa per un po’ di tempo]], come unica speranza di guarigione.” È abbastanza chiaro, povero ragazzo! La sua unica speranza di guarigione! Ma la lettera di Annie è ancora più chiara. Annie, fammi rivedere quella lettera.»
«Non ora, mamma», implorò con voce bassa.
«Mia cara, su certi argomenti sei assolutamente una delle persone più ridicole del mondo», rispose sua madre, «e forse la più insensibile alle pretese della tua stessa famiglia. Non avremmo mai sentito parlare della lettera, credo, se non l’avessi chiesta io stessa. Chiami questo confidenza, mia cara, verso il Dottor Strong? Sono sorpreso. Dovresti saper fare di meglio.»
La lettera fu estratta a malincuore; e mentre la porgevo alla vecchia signora, vidi come la mano riluttante da cui la prendevo, tremava.
«Ora vediamo», disse la signora Markleham, portandosi il cannocchiale all’occhio, «dove sia il passaggio. “Il ricordo dei vecchi tempi, mia cara Annie” — e così via — non c’è. “Il simpatico vecchio Proctor” — chi è? Cara Annie, come scrive in modo illeggibile tuo cugino Maldon, e come sono stupida! “Dottore”, naturalmente. Ah! davvero simpatico!» Qui si fermò per baciare di nuovo il ventaglio e agitarlo in direzione del Dottore, che ci stava guardando con un’espressione di placida soddisfazione. «Ora l’ho trovato. “Non ti sorprenderai, Annie,” — no, infatti, sapendo che non è mai stato davvero in salute; cosa ho detto poco fa? — “di sapere che ho sopportato così tanto in questo luogo remoto da aver deciso di lasciarlo a tutti i costi; in congedo per malattia, se posso; con una totale dimissione, se non riesco a ottenerlo. Quello che ho sopportato, e che sopporto qui, è insopportabile.” E se non fosse per la prontezza di quella creatura così buona», disse la signora Markleham, facendo segni al Dottore come prima e ripiegando la lettera, «sarebbe insopportabile anche per me pensarci.»
Mr. Wickfield said not one word, though the old lady looked to him as if for his commentary on this intelligence; but sat severely silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground. Long after the subject was dismissed, and other topics occupied us, he remained so; seldom raising his eyes, unless to rest them for a moment, with a thoughtful frown, upon the Doctor, or his wife, or both.
The Doctor was very fond of music. Agnes sang with great sweetness and expression, and so did Mrs. Strong. They sang together, and played duets together, and we had quite a little concert. But I remarked two things: first, that though Annie soon recovered her composure, and was quite herself, there was a blank between her and Mr. Wickfield which separated them wholly from each other; secondly, that Mr. Wickfield seemed to dislike the intimacy between her and Agnes, and to watch it with uneasiness. And now, I must confess, the recollection of what I had seen on that night when Mr. Maldon went away, first began to return upon me with a meaning it had never had, and to trouble me. The innocent beauty of her face was not as innocent to me as it had been; I mistrusted the natural grace and charm of her manner; and when I looked at Agnes by her side, and thought how good and true Agnes was, suspicions arose within me that it was an ill-assorted friendship.
She was so happy in it herself, however, and the other was so happy too, that they made the evening fly away as if it were but an hour. It closed in an incident which I well remember. They were taking leave of each other, and Agnes was going to embrace her and kiss her, when Mr. Wickfield stepped between them, as if by accident, and drew Agnes quickly away. Then I saw, as though all the intervening time had been cancelled, and I were still standing in the doorway on the night of the departure, the expression of that night in the face of Mrs. Strong, as it confronted his.
I cannot say what an impression this made upon me, or how impossible I found it, when I thought of her afterwards, to separate her from this look, and remember her face in its innocent loveliness again. It haunted me when I got home. I seemed to have left the Doctor’s roof with a dark cloud lowering on it. The reverence that I had for his grey head, was mingled with commiseration for his faith in those who were treacherous to him, and with resentment against those who injured him. The impending shadow of a great affliction, and a great disgrace that had no distinct form in it yet, fell like a stain upon the quiet place where I had worked and played as a boy, and did it a cruel wrong. I had no pleasure in thinking, any more, of the grave old broad-leaved aloe-trees, which remained shut up in themselves a hundred years together, and of the trim smooth grass-plot, and the stone urns, and the Doctor’s walk, and the congenial sound of the Cathedral bell hovering above them all. It was as if the tranquil sanctuary of my boyhood had been sacked before my face, and its peace and honour given to the winds.
But morning brought with it my parting from the old house, which Agnes had filled with her influence; and that occupied my mind sufficiently. I should be there again soon, no doubt; I might sleep again—perhaps often—in my old room; but the days of my inhabiting there were gone, and the old time was past. I was heavier at heart when I packed up such of my books and clothes as still remained there to be sent to Dover, than I cared to show to Uriah Heep; who was so officious to help me, that I uncharitably thought him mighty glad that I was going.
I got away from Agnes and her father, somehow, with an indifferent show of being very manly, and took my seat upon the box of the London coach. I was so softened and forgiving, going through the town, that I had half a mind to nod to my old enemy the butcher, and throw him five shillings to drink. But he looked such a very obdurate butcher as he stood scraping the great block in the shop, and moreover, his appearance was so little improved by the loss of a front tooth which I had knocked out, that I thought it best to make no advances.
The main object on my mind, I remember, when we got fairly on the road, was to appear as old as possible to the coachman, and to speak extremely gruff. The latter point I achieved at great personal inconvenience; but I stuck to it, because I felt it was a grown-up sort of thing.
‘You are going through, sir?’ said the coachman.
‘Yes, William,’ I said, condescendingly (I knew him); ‘I am going to London. I shall go down into Suffolk afterwards.’
‘Shooting, sir?’ said the coachman.
He knew as well as I did that it was just as likely, at that time of year, I was going down there whaling; but I felt complimented, too.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, pretending to be undecided, ‘whether I shall take a shot or not.’ ‘Birds is got wery shy, I’m told,’ said William.
‘So I understand,’ said I.
‘Is Suffolk your county, sir?’ asked William.
‘Yes,’ I said, with some importance. ‘Suffolk’s my county.’
‘I’m told the dumplings is uncommon fine down there,’ said William.
I was not aware of it myself, but I felt it necessary to uphold the institutions of my county, and to evince a familiarity with them; so I shook my head, as much as to say, ‘I believe you!’
‘And the Punches,’ said William. ‘There’s cattle! A Suffolk Punch, when he’s a good un, is worth his weight in gold. Did you ever breed any Suffolk Punches yourself, sir?’
‘N-no,’ I said, ‘not exactly.’
‘Here’s a gen’lm’n behind me, I’ll pound it,’ said William, ‘as has bred ‘em by wholesale.’
The gentleman spoken of was a gentleman with a very unpromising squint, and a prominent chin, who had a tall white hat on with a narrow flat brim, and whose close-fitting drab trousers seemed to button all the way up outside his legs from his boots to his hips. His chin was cocked over the coachman’s shoulder, so near to me, that his breath quite tickled the back of my head; and as I looked at him, he leered at the leaders with the eye with which he didn’t squint, in a very knowing manner.
Il signor Wickfield non disse una parola, benché la vecchia signora lo guardasse come se si aspettasse un suo commento su quella notizia; ma rimase severamente in silenzio, con gli occhi fissi a terra. Anche molto tempo dopo che l’argomento fu abbandonato e altri discorsi ci occuparono, lui rimase così; raramente alzava gli occhi, se non per posarli per un momento, con una ruga pensosa sulla fronte, sul Dottore, o su sua moglie, o su entrambi.
Il dottore era molto appassionato di musica. Agnes cantava con grande dolcezza ed espressione, e così faceva la signora Strong. Cantavano insieme, suonavano insieme dei pezzi per due, e abbiamo fatto un piccolo concerto. Ma ho notato due cose: prima, che sebbene Annie si riprendesse presto e fosse di nuovo la solita, c’era un vuoto tra lei e il signor Wickfield che li separava completamente l’uno dall’altra; in secondo luogo, che il signor Wickfield sembrava non gradire l’intimità tra lei e Agnes, e osservarla con inquietudine. E ora, devo confessare, il ricordo di ciò che avevo visto quella notte quando il signor Maldon se ne andò, iniziò a tornarmi alla mente con un significato che non aveva mai avuto, e a turbarmi. La innocente bellezza del suo viso non era più per me così innocente come era stata; diffidavo della naturale grazia e fascino del suo modo di fare; e quando guardavo Agnes al suo fianco, e pensavo a quanto Agnes fosse buona e sincera, sorgevano in me dei sospetti che fosse un’amicizia mal assortita.
Era così felice lei stessa, e l’altra era così felice anche lei, che fecero passare la serata come se fosse stata solo un’ora. Si concluse con un episodio che ricordo bene. Si stavano salutando, e Agnes stava per abbracciarla e baciarla, quando il signor Wickfield si mise tra loro, come per caso, e allontanò rapidamente Agnes. Allora vidi, come se tutto il tempo intercorso fosse stato cancellato e io fossi ancora in piedi sulla porta nella notte della partenza, l’espressione di quella notte sul volto della signora Strong, mentre si confrontava con il suo.
Non posso dire quale impressione ciò abbia avuto su di me, o quanto mi sembrasse impossibile, quando pensavo a lei in seguito, separarla da questo sguardo e ricordare il suo volto nella sua innocente bellezza. Mi perseguitava quando tornai a casa. Mi sembrava di aver lasciato il tetto del Dottore con una nube scura che si addensava su di esso. Il rispetto che nutrivo per la sua testa grigia si mescolava alla compassione per la sua fede in coloro che gli erano stati infedeli, e al risentimento contro coloro che lo avevano offeso. L’impendinge ombra di una grande afflizione e di un grande disonore che ancora non aveva una forma distinta, cadde come una macchia sul luogo tranquillo dove avevo lavorato e giocato da ragazzo, facendogli un crudele torto. Non provavo più piacere nel pensare agli antichi alberi di aloe a larghe foglie, che rimanevano chiusi in se stessi per cento anni, al prato ben curato, alle urne di pietra, al viale del Dottore e al suono congeniale della campana della Cattedrale che aleggiava su tutto. Era come se il tranquillo santuario della mia infanzia fosse stato saccheggiato davanti ai miei occhi, e la sua pace e il suo onore dati al vento.
Ma il mattino portò con sé la mia partenza dalla vecchia casa, che Agnes aveva riempito della sua influenza; e questo mi occupò abbastanza la mente. Sarei tornato lì presto, senza dubbio; avrei potuto dormire di nuovo—forse spesso—nella mia vecchia stanza; ma i giorni in cui vi abitavo erano finiti, e il vecchio tempo era passato. Ero più pesante nel cuore quando feci i bagagli con i miei libri e vestiti che ancora vi erano rimasti per essere mandati a Dover, di quanto volessi mostrare a Uriah Heep; che era così solerte nell’aiutarmi, che pensai, senza carità, che fosse molto contento che me ne andassi.
Riuscii a staccarmi da Agnes e da suo padre, in qualche modo, con un’ostentazione indifferente di grande virilità, e presi posto sul sedile del conducente della diligenza per Londra. Ero così commosso e magnanimo mentre attraversavo la città che avrei voluto salutare con un cenno il mio vecchio nemico, il macellaio, e gli avrei lanciato cinque scellini da bere. Ma lui aveva un’aria così ostinatamente da macellaio mentre stava raschiando il grande tagliere nel negozio, e inoltre la sua figura non era affatto migliorata dalla perdita di un dente davanti che gli avevo fatto saltare, che pensai fosse meglio non fare avances.
L’obiettivo principale che avevo in mente, ricordo, quando ci mettemmo finalmente sulla strada, era di apparire il più vecchio possibile al cocchiere e di parlare in modo estremamente burbero. Quest’ultimo punto lo raggiunsi a grande disagio personale; ma ci tenni, perché sentivo che era una cosa da grandi.
«State per passare, signore?» disse il cocchiere.
«Sì, William», dissi, con condiscendenza (lo conoscevo); «sto andando a Londra. Poi scenderò nel Suffolk.»
«Sparare, signore?» disse il cocchiere.
Sapeva, altrettanto bene quanto me, che era altrettanto probabile che in quel periodo dell’anno io fossi lì per la caccia alle balene; ma mi sentivo anche lusingato.
«Non so», dissi, fingendo di essere indeciso, «se farò un tiro o no.» «Mi hanno detto che gli uccelli sono diventati molto schivi», disse William.
«E così io capisco», dissi.
«È Suffolk il suo distretto, signore?» chiese William.
‘Sì’, dissi con un certo tono di importanza. ‘Suffolk è la mia contea.’
«Mi hanno detto che i gnocchi sono particolarmente buoni laggiù», disse William.
Non me ne rendevo conto, ma sentivo il bisogno di sostenere le istituzioni del mio paese e di dimostrare di conoscerle; così scossi la testa, come per dire: «Ci credo!»
«E i Suffolk Punch», disse William. «Che bestie! Un Suffolk Punch, quando è un buon esemplare, vale il suo peso in oro. Ha mai allevato Suffolk Punch lei stesso, signore?»
‘N-no’, dissi, ‘non esattamente’.
«C’è un signore dietro di me, lo giuro» disse William, «che li ha allevati in massa.»
Il signore in questione era un signore con uno sguardo molto poco promettente, e un mento sporgente, che aveva un alto cappello bianco con un bordo stretto e piatto, e i cui calzoni color topo aderenti sembravano abbottonati lungo tutto il percorso all’esterno delle sue gambe, dalle scarpe ai fianchi. Il suo mento era inclinato sulla spalla del cocchiere, così vicino a me, che il suo respiro mi solleticava la nuca; e mentre lo guardavo, lui strizzava l’occhio con cui non strabiciava ai cavalli di testa, in un modo molto esperto.
‘Ain’t you?’ asked William.
‘Ain’t I what?’ said the gentleman behind.
‘Bred them Suffolk Punches by wholesale?’
‘I should think so,’ said the gentleman. ‘There ain’t no sort of orse that I ain’t bred, and no sort of dorg. Orses and dorgs is some men’s fancy. They’re wittles and drink to me—lodging, wife, and children—reading, writing, and Arithmetic—snuff, tobacker, and sleep.’
‘That ain’t a sort of man to see sitting behind a coach-box, is it though?’ said William in my ear, as he handled the reins.
I construed this remark into an indication of a wish that he should have my place, so I blushingly offered to resign it.
‘Well, if you don’t mind, sir,’ said William, ‘I think it would be more correct.’
I have always considered this as the first fall I had in life. When I booked my place at the coach office I had had ‘Box Seat’ written against the entry, and had given the book-keeper half-a-crown. I was got up in a special great-coat and shawl, expressly to do honour to that distinguished eminence; had glorified myself upon it a good deal; and had felt that I was a credit to the coach. And here, in the very first stage, I was supplanted by a shabby man with a squint, who had no other merit than smelling like a livery-stables, and being able to walk across me, more like a fly than a human being, while the horses were at a canter!
A distrust of myself, which has often beset me in life on small occasions, when it would have been better away, was assuredly not stopped in its growth by this little incident outside the Canterbury coach. It was in vain to take refuge in gruffness of speech. I spoke from the pit of my stomach for the rest of the journey, but I felt completely extinguished, and dreadfully young.
It was curious and interesting, nevertheless, to be sitting up there behind four horses: well educated, well dressed, and with plenty of money in my pocket; and to look out for the places where I had slept on my weary journey. I had abundant occupation for my thoughts, in every conspicuous landmark on the road. When I looked down at the trampers whom we passed, and saw that well-remembered style of face turned up, I felt as if the tinker’s blackened hand were in the bosom of my shirt again. When we clattered through the narrow street of Chatham, and I caught a glimpse, in passing, of the lane where the old monster lived who had bought my jacket, I stretched my neck eagerly to look for the place where I had sat, in the sun and in the shade, waiting for my money. When we came, at last, within a stage of London, and passed the veritable Salem House where Mr. Creakle had laid about him with a heavy hand, I would have given all I had, for lawful permission to get down and thrash him, and let all the boys out like so many caged sparrows.
We went to the Golden Cross at Charing Cross, then a mouldy sort of establishment in a close neighbourhood. A waiter showed me into the coffee-room; and a chambermaid introduced me to my small bedchamber, which smelt like a hackney-coach, and was shut up like a family vault. I was still painfully conscious of my youth, for nobody stood in any awe of me at all: the chambermaid being utterly indifferent to my opinions on any subject, and the waiter being familiar with me, and offering advice to my inexperience.
‘Well now,’ said the waiter, in a tone of confidence, ‘what would you like for dinner? Young gentlemen likes poultry in general: have a fowl!’
I told him, as majestically as I could, that I wasn’t in the humour for a fowl.
‘Ain’t you?’ said the waiter. ‘Young gentlemen is generally tired of beef and mutton: have a weal cutlet!’
I assented to this proposal, in default of being able to suggest anything else.
‘Do you care for taters?’ said the waiter, with an insinuating smile, and his head on one side. ‘Young gentlemen generally has been overdosed with taters.’
I commanded him, in my deepest voice, to order a veal cutlet and potatoes, and all things fitting; and to inquire at the bar if there were any letters for Trotwood Copperfield, Esquire—which I knew there were not, and couldn’t be, but thought it manly to appear to expect.
He soon came back to say that there were none (at which I was much surprised) and began to lay the cloth for my dinner in a box by the fire. While he was so engaged, he asked me what I would take with it; and on my replying ‘Half a pint of sherry,’ thought it a favourable opportunity, I am afraid, to extract that measure of wine from the stale leavings at the bottoms of several small decanters. I am of this opinion, because, while I was reading the newspaper, I observed him behind a low wooden partition, which was his private apartment, very busy pouring out of a number of those vessels into one, like a chemist and druggist making up a prescription. When the wine came, too, I thought it flat; and it certainly had more English crumbs in it, than were to be expected in a foreign wine in anything like a pure state, but I was bashful enough to drink it, and say nothing.
Being then in a pleasant frame of mind (from which I infer that poisoning is not always disagreeable in some stages of the process), I resolved to go to the play. It was Covent Garden Theatre that I chose; and there, from the back of a centre box, I saw Julius Caesar and the new Pantomime. To have all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern taskmasters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of the whole show, the influence upon me of the poetry, the lights, the music, the company, the smooth stupendous changes of glittering and brilliant scenery, were so dazzling, and opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I came out into the rainy street, at twelve o’clock at night, I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach-jostling, patten-clinking, muddy, miserable world.
«Non lo sei?» chiese William.
«Che cosa non sei?», disse il signore dietro.
‘Allevava cavalli Suffolk Punch in massa?’
«Certo che sì», disse il signore. «Non c’è cavallo che io non abbia allevato, né cane. I cavalli e i cani sono la passione di alcuni uomini. Per me sono cibo e bevande, casa, moglie e figli, lettura, scrittura e aritmetica, tabacco da fiuto, tabacco da masticare e sonno.»
«Non è il tipo d’uomo che si vede seduto dietro a una carrozza, vero?» mi disse William all’orecchio, mentre maneggiava le redini.
Interpretai questa osservazione come un segno del desiderio che egli avesse il mio posto, così arrossendo proposi di dimettermi.
«Beh, se non le dispiace, signore», disse William, «credo che sarebbe più corretto.»
Ho sempre considerato questo come la prima caduta che ho avuto nella vita. Quando ho prenotato il mio posto all’ufficio corriere avevo fatto scrivere “Sedile del Box” accanto all’iscrizione, e avevo dato al contabile mezzo-scellino. Ero vestito con un grande cappotto speciale e uno scialle, espressamente per rendere onore a quell’eminente distinzione; mi ero molto glorificato di questo; e avevo sentito che ero un credito per il corriere. E qui, nella prima tappa, fui soppiantato da un uomo squallido con uno strabismo, che non aveva altro merito se non quello di puzzare come una scuderia, e di essere in grado di camminare su di me, più come una mosca che come un essere umano, mentre i cavalli erano al galoppo!
Un sospetto verso me stesso, che spesso mi ha assalito nella vita in piccole occasioni, quando sarebbe stato meglio non averlo, non fu certamente fermato nel suo crescere da questo piccolo incidente fuori dalla carrozza di Canterbury. Fu inutile rifugiarmi nella ruvidità del linguaggio. Parlai dal fondo del mio stomaco per il resto del viaggio, ma mi sentivo completamente estinto, e terribilmente giovane.
Era curioso e interessante, nondimeno, trovarmi seduto lassù dietro quattro cavalli: bene educato, bene vestito, e con un bel po’ di soldi in tasca; e cercare i luoghi dove avevo dormito durante il mio stancante viaggio. Avevo abbondante occupazione per i miei pensieri, in ogni punto di riferimento vistoso sulla strada. Quando guardavo in basso verso i viandanti che superavamo, e vedevo quel ben noto stile di volto rivolto su, mi sentivo come se la mano annerita del maniscalco fosse di nuovo nel petto della mia camicia. Quando sferragliavamo per la stretta strada di Chatham, e coglievo un’occhiata, passando, del vicolo dove viveva il vecchio mostro che aveva comprato la mia giacca, allungavo il collo con impazienza per cercare il posto dove ero seduto, al sole e all’ombra, aspettando i miei soldi. Quando arrivammo, alla fine, a un tiro di schioppo da Londra, e passammo davanti alla vera e propria Salem House dove il signor Creakle aveva fatto strage con mano pesante, avrei dato tutto ciò che avevo, per il permesso legale di scendere e picchiarlo, e lasciar uscire tutti i ragazzi come tanti passeri in gabbia.
Andammo alla Croce d’Oro a Charing Croce, un posto muffoso in un quartiere chiuso. Un cameriere mi fece entrare nella sala da pranzo; e una cameriera mi accompagnò nella mia piccola cameretta, che puzzava come una carrozza pubblica e era chiusa come una cripta di famiglia. Ero ancora dolorosamente consapevole della mia giovinezza, perché nessuno aveva alcun timore di me: la cameriera era completamente indifferente alle mie opinioni su qualsiasi argomento, e il cameriere era confidenziale con me, offrendo consigli alla mia inesperienza.
«Bene ora», disse il cameriere, con tono confidenziale, «cosa vorreste per cena? I giovani signori in genere gradiscono il pollame: prendete un pollo!»
Gli dissi, con la massima maestosità possibile, che non ero dell’umore per un pollo.
«Non è così?» disse il cameriere. «I giovani signori di solito si stancano del manzo e dell’agnello: provi una costoletta di agnello!»
Accettai questa proposta, non avendo nulla di meglio da proporre.
«Le piacciono le patate?» disse il cameriere con un sorriso insinuante, inclinando la testa di lato. «I giovani signori di solito ne hanno troppo spesso a pranzo.»
Gli ordinai, con la mia voce più profonda, di chiedere una cotoletta di vitello e patate, e tutto ciò che era adatto; e di chiedere al bar se c’erano lettere per Trotwood Copperfield, Esquire — cosa che sapevo non ci fosse, e non poteva esserci, ma pensavo che fosse da uomo apparire in attesa.
Tornò presto indietro per dirmi che non ce n’erano (cosa che mi sorprese molto) e cominciò a apparecchiare per la mia cena in una scatola accanto al fuoco. Mentre era così occupato, mi chiese cosa avrei voluto prenderci insieme; e quando risposi “Mezzo boccale di sherry”, temo che pensò fosse un’occasione favorevole per estrarre quella misura di vino dai residui rancidi sul fondo di diversi piccoli decantatori. Sono di questo parere perché, mentre leggevo il giornale, lo vidi dietro una bassa partizione di legno, che era il suo appartamento privato, molto occupato a versare da un certo numero di quei contenitori in uno solo, come un chimico e farmacista che prepara una prescrizione. Quando arrivò il vino, inoltre, mi sembrò piatto; e certamente conteneva più briciole inglesi di quante ci si potesse aspettare in un vino straniero in uno stato anche lontanamente puro, ma ero abbastanza timido da berlo e non dire nulla.
Essendo dunque in uno stato d’animo piacevole (da cui deduco che l’avvelenamento non è sempre sgradevole in alcune fasi del processo), ho deciso di andare a teatro. Ho scelto il Covent Garden Theatre; e lì, dalla parte posteriore di una loggia centrale, ho visto Giulio Cesare e la nuova pantomima. Aver tutti quei nobili Romani vivi davanti a me, e camminare dentro e fuori per il mio divertimento, invece di essere i severi maestri che erano stati a scuola, era un effetto del tutto nuovo e delizioso. Ma la realtà e il mistero mescolati di tutto lo spettacolo, l’influenza su di me della poesia, delle luci, della musica, della compagnia, le smisurate e stupende trasformazioni di scenografie scintillanti e brillanti, erano così abbaglianti, e aprivano regioni di delizia così illimitate, che quando sono uscito nella strada piovosa, alle dodici in punto di notte, mi sentivo come se fossi venuto dalle nuvole, dove avevo condotto una vita romantica per secoli, a un mondo rumoroso, schizzinoso, illuminato da lanterne, con ombrelli che si scontrano, carrozze di piazza che si spintonano, pattini che tintinnano, fangoso, miserabile.
I had emerged by another door, and stood in the street for a little while, as if I really were a stranger upon earth: but the unceremonious pushing and hustling that I received, soon recalled me to myself, and put me in the road back to the hotel; whither I went, revolving the glorious vision all the way; and where, after some porter and oysters, I sat revolving it still, at past one o’clock, with my eyes on the coffee-room fire.
I was so filled with the play, and with the past—for it was, in a manner, like a shining transparency, through which I saw my earlier life moving along—that I don’t know when the figure of a handsome well-formed young man dressed with a tasteful easy negligence which I have reason to remember very well, became a real presence to me. But I recollect being conscious of his company without having noticed his coming in—and my still sitting, musing, over the coffee-room fire.
At last I rose to go to bed, much to the relief of the sleepy waiter, who had got the fidgets in his legs, and was twisting them, and hitting them, and putting them through all kinds of contortions in his small pantry. In going towards the door, I passed the person who had come in, and saw him plainly. I turned directly, came back, and looked again. He did not know me, but I knew him in a moment.
At another time I might have wanted the confidence or the decision to speak to him, and might have put it off until next day, and might have lost him. But, in the then condition of my mind, where the play was still running high, his former protection of me appeared so deserving of my gratitude, and my old love for him overflowed my breast so freshly and spontaneously, that I went up to him at once, with a fast-beating heart, and said:
‘Steerforth! won’t you speak to me?’
He looked at me—just as he used to look, sometimes—but I saw no recognition in his face.
‘You don’t remember me, I am afraid,’ said I.
‘My God!’ he suddenly exclaimed. ‘It’s little Copperfield!’
I grasped him by both hands, and could not let them go. But for very shame, and the fear that it might displease him, I could have held him round the neck and cried.
‘I never, never, never was so glad! My dear Steerforth, I am so overjoyed to see you!’
‘And I am rejoiced to see you, too!’ he said, shaking my hands heartily. ‘Why, Copperfield, old boy, don’t be overpowered!’ And yet he was glad, too, I thought, to see how the delight I had in meeting him affected me.
I brushed away the tears that my utmost resolution had not been able to keep back, and I made a clumsy laugh of it, and we sat down together, side by side.
‘Why, how do you come to be here?’ said Steerforth, clapping me on the shoulder.
‘I came here by the Canterbury coach, today. I have been adopted by an aunt down in that part of the country, and have just finished my education there. How do YOU come to be here, Steerforth?’
‘Well, I am what they call an Oxford man,’ he returned; ‘that is to say, I get bored to death down there, periodically—and I am on my way now to my mother’s. You’re a devilish amiable-looking fellow, Copperfield. Just what you used to be, now I look at you! Not altered in the least!’
‘I knew you immediately,’ I said; ‘but you are more easily remembered.’
He laughed as he ran his hand through the clustering curls of his hair, and said gaily:
‘Yes, I am on an expedition of duty. My mother lives a little way out of town; and the roads being in a beastly condition, and our house tedious enough, I remained here tonight instead of going on. I have not been in town half-a-dozen hours, and those I have been dozing and grumbling away at the play.’
‘I have been at the play, too,’ said I. ‘At Covent Garden. What a delightful and magnificent entertainment, Steerforth!’
Steerforth laughed heartily.
‘My dear young Davy,’ he said, clapping me on the shoulder again, ‘you are a very Daisy. The daisy of the field, at sunrise, is not fresher than you are. I have been at Covent Garden, too, and there never was a more miserable business. Holloa, you sir!’
This was addressed to the waiter, who had been very attentive to our recognition, at a distance, and now came forward deferentially.
‘Where have you put my friend, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Steerforth.
‘Beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Where does he sleep? What’s his number? You know what I mean,’ said Steerforth.
‘Well, sir,’ said the waiter, with an apologetic air. ‘Mr. Copperfield is at present in forty-four, sir.’
‘And what the devil do you mean,’ retorted Steerforth, ‘by putting Mr. Copperfield into a little loft over a stable?’
‘Why, you see we wasn’t aware, sir,’ returned the waiter, still apologetically, ‘as Mr. Copperfield was anyways particular. We can give Mr. Copperfield seventy-two, sir, if it would be preferred. Next you, sir.’
‘Of course it would be preferred,’ said Steerforth. ‘And do it at once.’ The waiter immediately withdrew to make the exchange. Steerforth, very much amused at my having been put into forty-four, laughed again, and clapped me on the shoulder again, and invited me to breakfast with him next morning at ten o’clock—an invitation I was only too proud and happy to accept. It being now pretty late, we took our candles and went upstairs, where we parted with friendly heartiness at his door, and where I found my new room a great improvement on my old one, it not being at all musty, and having an immense four-post bedstead in it, which was quite a little landed estate. Here, among pillows enough for six, I soon fell asleep in a blissful condition, and dreamed of ancient Rome, Steerforth, and friendship, until the early morning coaches, rumbling out of the archway underneath, made me dream of thunder and the gods.
Ero uscito da un’altra porta e rimasi in strada per un po’, come se fossi davvero uno straniero sulla terra: ma le spintonate e le gomitate che ricevetti presto mi riportarono in me e mi rimisero in strada verso l’hotel; dove andai, rimuginando sulla visione gloriosa per tutto il tragitto; e dove, dopo un po’ di porto e ostriche, rimasi a rimuginarci ancora, dopo l’una di notte, con gli occhi sul fuoco della caffetteria.
Ero così immerso nella rappresentazione e nel passato - perché era, in un certo senso, come una trasparenza luminosa attraverso la quale vedevo la mia vita precedente scorrere - che non so quando la figura di un giovane bello e ben fatto, vestito con una trascuratezza elegante e di buon gusto che ho motivo di ricordare molto bene, divenne una presenza reale per me. Ma ricordo di essere stato consapevole della sua compagnia senza aver notato il suo ingresso - e di essere ancora seduto, assorto, davanti al fuoco del salone.
Alla fine mi alzai per andare a letto, con grande sollievo del cameriere assonnato, che aveva i crampi alle gambe e le torceva, le picchiava e le sottoponeva a ogni sorta di contorsione nella sua piccola dispensa. Mentre mi dirigevo verso la porta, passai accanto alla persona che era entrata e la vidi chiaramente. Mi voltai subito, tornai indietro e la guardai di nuovo. Lui non mi riconobbe, ma io lo riconobbi immediatamente.
In un altro momento avrei potuto desiderare la fiducia o la decisione di parlargli, e avrei potuto rimandare al giorno dopo, e avrei potuto perderlo. Ma, nella condizione in cui mi trovavo allora, con la commedia ancora in corso, la sua precedente protezione nei miei confronti mi sembrava così degna di gratitudine, e il mio vecchio amore per lui traboccava dal mio petto così fresco e spontaneamente, che mi avvicinai a lui subito, con il cuore che batteva forte, e dissi:
“Steerforth! Non vuoi parlarmi?”
Mi guardò — proprio come faceva, a volte — ma non vidi alcun riconoscimento nel suo volto.
«Non vi ricordate di me, temo», dissi.
«Mio Dio!» esclamò improvvisamente. «È il piccolo Copperfield!»
Lo afferrai per entrambe le mani, e non riuscivo a lasciarle andare. Ma per puro imbarazzo, e per la paura che potesse dispiacergli, avrei voluto stringerlo al collo e piangere.
‘Non sono mai stato così felice! Mio caro Steerforth, sono così felice di vederti!’
«E sono felice di rivederti anche io!» disse, stringendomi calorosamente la mano. «Ma, Copperfield, vecchio mio, non lasciarti sopraffare!» Eppure, pensai, anche lui era felice di vedere quanto il piacere di rivederlo mi avesse emozionato.
Mi asciugai le lacrime che la mia massima risolutezza non era riuscita a trattenere, e ne feci una goffa risata, e ci sedemmo insieme, fianco a fianco.
«Ma come mai sei qui?» disse Steerforth, dandomi una pacca sulla spalla.
«Sono arrivato qui con il carrozzone di Canterbury, oggi. Sono stato adottato da una zia che vive in quella zona del paese, e ho appena terminato la mia istruzione lì. Come mai SEI qui, Steerforth?»
«Beh, sono quello che chiamano un uomo di Oxford», rispose; «cioè, mi annoio a morte laggiù, periodicamente, e ora sto andando da mia madre. Sei un diavolo di ragazzo amabile, Copperfield. Proprio come eri una volta, ora che ti guardo! Non sei cambiato per niente!»
“Ti ho riconosciuto subito,” dissi; “ma tu sei più facile da ricordare.”
Rise una risata mentre passava la mano tra i riccioli dei suoi capelli, e disse allegramente:
«Sì, sono in missione di dovere. Mia madre vive a una certa distanza dalla città; e poiché le strade sono in condizioni pietose e la nostra casa è abbastanza noiosa, sono rimasto qui stasera invece di proseguire. Non sono in città da neanche sei ore, e quelle poche le ho passate a sonnecchiare e a borbottare guardando la commedia.»
«Sono stato anche io al teatro», dissi. «A Covent Garden. Che spettacolo delizioso e magnifico, Steerforth!»
Steerforth rise di cuore.
«Mio caro giovane Davy», disse, dandomi di nuovo una pacca sulla spalla, «sei proprio un Daisy. La margherita dei campi, all’alba, non è più fresca di te. Sono stato anche a Covent Garden, e non c’è mai stato un affare più miserabile. Ehi, lei, signore!»
Questo fu rivolto al cameriere, che si era mostrato molto attento al nostro riconoscimento da lontano, e ora si fece avanti con deferenza.
«Dov’è che avete messo il mio amico, Mr. Copperfield?» disse Steerforth.
‘Chiedo scusa, signore?’
«Dove dorme? Qual è il suo numero? Sapete cosa voglio dire», disse Steerforth.
«Beh, signore», disse il cameriere, con aria di scuse. «Il signor Copperfield è al momento nella camera 44, signore».
«E che diavolo intendete», ribatté Steerforth, «mettendo il signor Copperfield in un piccolo sottotetto sopra una scuderia?»
«Vede, non sapevamo, signore», rispose il cameriere, sempre con tono scusante, «che il signor Copperfield fosse così esigente. Possiamo servire al signor Copperfield settantadue, se lo preferisce. E ora lei, signore.»
«Naturalmente sarebbe preferibile», disse Steerforth. «E fatelo subito.» Il cameriere si ritirò immediatamente per fare lo scambio. Steerforth, molto divertito dal fatto che fossi stato messo in quarantaquattro, rise di nuovo, mi diede di nuovo una pacca sulla spalla e mi invitò a fare colazione con lui la mattina seguente alle dieci in punto — un invito che io ero solo troppo orgoglioso e felice di accettare. Essendo ormai piuttosto tardi, prendemmo le nostre candele e salimmo le scale, dove ci separammo con cordialità amichevole alla sua porta, e dove trovai la mia nuova stanza un grande miglioramento rispetto alla mia vecchia, non essendo affatto muffosa e avendo un immenso letto a baldacchino, che era quasi una piccola proprietà terriera. Qui, tra cuscini sufficienti per sei, presto mi addormentai in una condizione di beatitudine, e sognai l’antica Roma, Steerforth e l’amicizia, fino a quando i primi carri della mattina, rombando fuori dal portone sottostante, mi fecero sognare tuoni e dei.
CHAPTER 20. STEERFORTH’S HOME
When the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o’clock, and informed me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the having no occasion for it, and blushed in my bed. The suspicion that she laughed too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the time I was dressing; and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and guilty air when I passed her on the staircase, as I was going down to breakfast. I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.
It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me, but in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted, where the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of the room, the fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little round mirror over the sideboard. I was rather bashful at first, Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant, and superior to me in all respects (age included); but his easy patronage soon put that to rights, and made me quite at home. I could not enough admire the change he had wrought in the Golden Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state I had held yesterday, with this morning’s comfort and this morning’s entertainment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.
‘Now, Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, when we were alone, ‘I should like to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all about you. I feel as if you were my property.’ Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended.
‘As you are in no hurry, then,’ said Steerforth, ‘come home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother—she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her—and she will be pleased with you.’
‘I should like to be as sure of that, as you are kind enough to say you are,’ I answered, smiling.
‘Oh!’ said Steerforth, ‘everyone who likes me, has a claim on her that is sure to be acknowledged.’
‘Then I think I shall be a favourite,’ said I.
‘Good!’ said Steerforth. ‘Come and prove it. We will go and see the lions for an hour or two—it’s something to have a fresh fellow like you to show them to, Copperfield—and then we’ll journey out to Highgate by the coach.’
I could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that I should wake presently in number forty-four, to the solitary box in the coffee-room and the familiar waiter again. After I had written to my aunt and told her of my fortunate meeting with my admired old schoolfellow, and my acceptance of his invitation, we went out in a hackney-chariot, and saw a Panorama and some other sights, and took a walk through the Museum, where I could not help observing how much Steerforth knew, on an infinite variety of subjects, and of how little account he seemed to make his knowledge.
‘You’ll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if you have not done so already; and they will have good reason to be proud of you.’
‘I take a degree!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Not I! my dear Daisy—will you mind my calling you Daisy?’
‘Not at all!’ said I.
‘That’s a good fellow! My dear Daisy,’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘I have not the least desire or intention to distinguish myself in that way. I have done quite sufficient for my purpose. I find that I am heavy company enough for myself as I am.’
‘But the fame—’ I was beginning.
‘You romantic Daisy!’ said Steerforth, laughing still more heartily: ‘why should I trouble myself, that a parcel of heavy-headed fellows may gape and hold up their hands? Let them do it at some other man. There’s fame for him, and he’s welcome to it.’
I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was glad to change the subject. Fortunately it was not difficult to do, for Steerforth could always pass from one subject to another with a carelessness and lightness that were his own.
Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter day wore away so fast, that it was dusk when the stage-coach stopped with us at an old brick house at Highgate on the summit of the hill. An elderly lady, though not very far advanced in years, with a proud carriage and a handsome face, was in the doorway as we alighted; and greeting Steerforth as ‘My dearest James,’ folded him in her arms. To this lady he presented me as his mother, and she gave me a stately welcome.
It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly. From the windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it. I had only time, in dressing, to glance at the solid furniture, the framed pieces of work (done, I supposed, by Steerforth’s mother when she was a girl), and some pictures in crayons of ladies with powdered hair and bodices, coming and going on the walls, as the newly-kindled fire crackled and sputtered, when I was called to dinner.
There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short figure, dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some appearance of good looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps because I had not expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her lip. It was an old scar—I should rather call it seam, for it was not discoloured, and had healed years ago—which had once cut through her mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across the table, except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had altered. I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years of age, and that she wished to be married. She was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.
CAPITOLO 20. LA CASA DI STEERFORTH
Quando la cameriera bussò alla mia porta alle otto e punti, e mi informò che l’acqua per la rasatura era fuori, sentii fortemente di non averne bisogno, e arrossii nel mio letto. Il sospetto che anche lei ridesse quando lo disse, mi tormentò per tutto il tempo che mi vestivo; e mi diede, ne ero consapevole, un’aria furtiva e colpevole quando la superai sulle scale, mentre scendevo a fare colazione. Ero così sensibilmente consapevole di essere più giovane di quanto avrei potuto desiderare, che per qualche tempo non riuscivo a decidermi a superarla del tutto, sotto le ignobili circostanze del caso; ma, sentendola lì con una scopa, rimasi a sbirciare fuori dalla finestra il Re Carlo a cavallo, circondato da un labirinto di carrozze pubbliche, e che aveva un aspetto tutt’altro che regale sotto una pioggerella e una fitta nebbia marrone scuro, finché non fui ammonito dal cameriere che il signore mi stava aspettando.
Non era nella sala da caffè che trovai Steerforth ad aspettarmi, ma in un accogliente appartamento privato, con tende rosse e tappeti di Turchia, dove il fuoco ardeva vivido, e una squisita colazione calda era apparecchiata su un tavolo coperto da una tovaglia pulita; e una vivace miniatura della stanza, il fuoco, la colazione, Steerforth, e tutto il resto, brillava nel piccolo rotondo specchio sopra il buffet. All’inizio ero piuttosto timido, Steerforth essendo così padrone di sé, elegante e superiore a me in tutti gli aspetti (età inclusa); ma la sua facile protezione presto mise a posto tutto, e mi fece sentire completamente a casa. Non potevo ammirare abbastanza il cambiamento che aveva operato nella Golden Cross; o paragonare lo stato triste e desolato in cui mi ero trovato ieri, con il comfort e l’intrattenimento di questa mattina. Per quanto riguarda la familiarità del cameriere, era stata spenta come se non fosse mai esistita. Ci serviva, come posso dire, in sacco di cenere.
«Ora, Copperfield», disse Steerforth, quando fummo soli, «mi piacerebbe sentire cosa stai facendo, dove stai andando, e tutto di te. Mi sento come se tu fossi di mia proprietà». Ardeva di piacere nel trovare che aveva ancora questo interesse per me, gli raccontai come mia zia avesse proposto la piccola spedizione che avevo davanti, e dove tendesse.
«Poiché non hai fretta, allora», disse Steerforth, «vieni a casa con me a Highgate e resta un giorno o due. Ti piacerà mia madre - è un po’ vanitosa e noiosa riguardo a me, ma tu puoi perdonarla - e lei sarà contenta di te».
«Mi piacerebbe essere altrettanto sicuro di questo, come lei è così gentile da dire di essere», risposi sorridendo.
«Oh!» disse Steerforth «chiunque mi voglia bene ha un diritto su di lei che è sicuro verrà riconosciuto.»
«Allora credo che sarò il preferito», dissi.
«Bene!» disse Steerforth. «Vieni a dimostrarlo. Andremo a vedere i leoni per un’ora o due - è qualcosa avere un nuovo amico come te a cui mostrarli, Copperfield - e poi viaggeremo fino a Highgate in carrozza.»
A malapena potevo credere di non essere in un sogno, e che avrei fatto in breve la mia comparsa al numero quarantaquattro, nella solitaria sala del caffè e con il solito cameriere. Dopo aver scritto a mia zia e averle raccontato del mio fortunato incontro con il mio ammirato vecchio compagno di scuola, e del mio aver accettato il suo invito, uscimmo in un calesse pubblico, vedemmo un panorama e altri spettacoli, e facemmo una passeggiata al Museo, dove non potei fare a meno di notare quanto Steerforth sapesse, su un’infinità di argomenti, e quanto poco sembrasse fare del suo sapere.
«Prenderai una laurea di alto livello al college, Steerforth», dissi, «se non l’hai già fatto; e avranno buone ragioni per essere orgogliosi di te.»
«Io prendo una laurea!» esclamò Steerforth. «Niente affatto! mia cara Daisy—ti dispiace se ti chiamo Daisy?»
«Niente affatto!» dissi io.
«Che bravo ragazzo! Mia cara Daisy», disse Steerforth ridendo, «non ho la minima voglia o intenzione di distinguermi in quel modo. Ho fatto più che sufficiente per il mio scopo. Scopro che sono già abbastanza pesante da solo così com’è.»
«Ma la fama, » stavo cominciando.
«Che romantica, Daisy!» disse Steerforth, ridendo ancora più di gusto: «perché dovrei preoccuparmi, che un gruppo di tizi con la testa di legno sbadigli e alzi le mani? Che lo facciano per qualche altro. C’è la fama per lui, e lui è il benvenuto.»
Mi sentii mortificato per aver commesso un errore così grave e fui felice di cambiare argomento. Per fortuna non fu difficile, perché Steerforth era sempre capace di passare da un argomento all’altro con una disinvoltura e leggerezza che erano sue proprie.
Il pranzo seguì alla nostra visita turistica, e il breve giorno invernale passò così in fretta che era già crepuscolo quando il carrozzone si fermò con noi presso una vecchia casa in mattoni a Highgate, sulla cima della collina. Una signora anziana, ma non molto avanti negli anni, con un portamento orgoglioso e un bel viso, era sulla porta mentre scendevamo; e salutando Steerforth come “Mio caro James”, lo avvolse tra le sue braccia. A questa signora lui mi presentò come sua madre, e lei mi diede un benvenuto solenne.
Era una vecchia casa di buon gusto, molto tranquilla e ordinata. Dalle finestre della mia stanza vedevo tutta Londra distendersi in lontananza come una grande nuvola di vapore, con qua e là qualche luce che brillava attraverso di essa. Avevo solo il tempo, mentre mi vestivo, di dare un’occhiata ai mobili solidi, ai lavori incorniciati (fatti, immaginavo, dalla madre di Steerforth quando era una ragazza) e ad alcuni ritratti a carboncino di dame con capelli incipriati e corsetti, che apparivano e scomparivano sulle pareti, mentre il fuoco appena acceso crepitava e scoppiettava, quando fui chiamato a cena.
C’era una seconda signora nella sala da pranzo, di figura snella e bassa, scura e poco piacevole da guardare, ma con qualche traccia di bellezza, che attirò la mia attenzione: forse perché non mi aspettavo di vederla; forse perché mi trovai seduto di fronte a lei; forse per qualcosa di veramente notevole in lei. Aveva capelli neri e occhi neri ardenti, era magra e aveva una cicatrice sul labbro. Era una vecchia cicatrice — la chiamerei piuttosto una cucitura, perché non era decolorata e si era rimarginata anni fa — che una volta le aveva attraversato la bocca, verso il basso, in direzione del mento, ma che ora era appena visibile attraverso il tavolo, tranne sopra e sul labbro superiore, la cui forma aveva alterato. Conclusi tra me e me che aveva circa trent’anni e che desiderava sposarsi. Era un po’ in rovina — come una casa — per essere stata a lungo in affitto; eppure, come ho detto, aveva un aspetto di bellezza. La sua magrezza sembrava essere l’effetto di un fuoco consumante dentro di lei, che trovava sfogo nei suoi occhi scavati.
She was introduced as Miss Dartle, and both Steerforth and his mother called her Rosa. I found that she lived there, and had been for a long time Mrs. Steerforth’s companion. It appeared to me that she never said anything she wanted to say, outright; but hinted it, and made a great deal more of it by this practice. For example, when Mrs. Steerforth observed, more in jest than earnest, that she feared her son led but a wild life at college, Miss Dartle put in thus:
‘Oh, really? You know how ignorant I am, and that I only ask for information, but isn’t it always so? I thought that kind of life was on all hands understood to be—eh?’ ‘It is education for a very grave profession, if you mean that, Rosa,’ Mrs. Steerforth answered with some coldness.
‘Oh! Yes! That’s very true,’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘But isn’t it, though?—I want to be put right, if I am wrong—isn’t it, really?’
‘Really what?’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
‘Oh! You mean it’s not!’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I’m very glad to hear it! Now, I know what to do! That’s the advantage of asking. I shall never allow people to talk before me about wastefulness and profligacy, and so forth, in connexion with that life, any more.’
‘And you will be right,’ said Mrs. Steerforth. ‘My son’s tutor is a conscientious gentleman; and if I had not implicit reliance on my son, I should have reliance on him.’
‘Should you?’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Dear me! Conscientious, is he? Really conscientious, now?’
‘Yes, I am convinced of it,’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
‘How very nice!’ exclaimed Miss Dartle. ‘What a comfort! Really conscientious? Then he’s not—but of course he can’t be, if he’s really conscientious. Well, I shall be quite happy in my opinion of him, from this time. You can’t think how it elevates him in my opinion, to know for certain that he’s really conscientious!’
Her own views of every question, and her correction of everything that was said to which she was opposed, Miss Dartle insinuated in the same way: sometimes, I could not conceal from myself, with great power, though in contradiction even of Steerforth. An instance happened before dinner was done. Mrs. Steerforth speaking to me about my intention of going down into Suffolk, I said at hazard how glad I should be, if Steerforth would only go there with me; and explaining to him that I was going to see my old nurse, and Mr. Peggotty’s family, I reminded him of the boatman whom he had seen at school.
‘Oh! That bluff fellow!’ said Steerforth. ‘He had a son with him, hadn’t he?’
‘No. That was his nephew,’ I replied; ‘whom he adopted, though, as a son. He has a very pretty little niece too, whom he adopted as a daughter. In short, his house—or rather his boat, for he lives in one, on dry land—is full of people who are objects of his generosity and kindness. You would be delighted to see that household.’
‘Should I?’ said Steerforth. ‘Well, I think I should. I must see what can be done. It would be worth a journey (not to mention the pleasure of a journey with you, Daisy), to see that sort of people together, and to make one of ‘em.’
My heart leaped with a new hope of pleasure. But it was in reference to the tone in which he had spoken of ‘that sort of people’, that Miss Dartle, whose sparkling eyes had been watchful of us, now broke in again.
‘Oh, but, really? Do tell me. Are they, though?’ she said.
‘Are they what? And are who what?’ said Steerforth.
‘That sort of people.---Are they really animals and clods, and beings of another order? I want to know SO much.’
‘Why, there’s a pretty wide separation between them and us,’ said Steerforth, with indifference. ‘They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked, or hurt easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say—some people contend for that, at least; and I am sure I don’t want to contradict them—but they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like their coarse rough skins, they are not easily wounded.’
‘Really!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Well, I don’t know, now, when I have been better pleased than to hear that. It’s so consoling! It’s such a delight to know that, when they suffer, they don’t feel! Sometimes I have been quite uneasy for that sort of people; but now I shall just dismiss the idea of them, altogether. Live and learn. I had my doubts, I confess, but now they’re cleared up. I didn’t know, and now I do know, and that shows the advantage of asking—don’t it?’
I believed that Steerforth had said what he had, in jest, or to draw Miss Dartle out; and I expected him to say as much when she was gone, and we two were sitting before the fire. But he merely asked me what I thought of her.
‘She is very clever, is she not?’ I asked.
‘Clever! She brings everything to a grindstone,’ said Steerforth, and sharpens it, as she has sharpened her own face and figure these years past. She has worn herself away by constant sharpening. She is all edge.’
‘What a remarkable scar that is upon her lip!’ I said.
Steerforth’s face fell, and he paused a moment.
‘Why, the fact is,’ he returned, ‘I did that.’
‘By an unfortunate accident!’
‘No. I was a young boy, and she exasperated me, and I threw a hammer at her. A promising young angel I must have been!’ I was deeply sorry to have touched on such a painful theme, but that was useless now.
‘She has borne the mark ever since, as you see,’ said Steerforth; ‘and she’ll bear it to her grave, if she ever rests in one—though I can hardly believe she will ever rest anywhere. She was the motherless child of a sort of cousin of my father’s. He died one day. My mother, who was then a widow, brought her here to be company to her. She has a couple of thousand pounds of her own, and saves the interest of it every year, to add to the principal. There’s the history of Miss Rosa Dartle for you.’
‘And I have no doubt she loves you like a brother?’ said I.
Fu presentata come Miss Dartle, e sia Steerforth che sua madre la chiamavano Rosa. Scoprii che viveva lì, e che era stata per un lungo periodo la compagna di Mrs. Steerforth. Mi parve che non dicesse mai apertamente ciò che voleva dire, ma lo accennasse, e ne facesse molto di più con questa pratica. Per esempio, quando Mrs. Steerforth osservò, più per scherzo che per serietà, che temeva che suo figlio conducesse una vita piuttosto selvaggia al college, Miss Dartle intervenne così:
«Oh, davvero? Sai quanto sono ignorante, e che chiedo solo informazioni, ma non è sempre così? Pensavo che quel tipo di vita fosse da tutti considerata—eh?» «È educazione per una professione molto grave, se è questo che intendi, Rosa», rispose la signora Steerforth con un certo freddo.
«Oh! Sì! È proprio vero», rispose Miss Dartle. «Ma non è così, però? — Voglio essere corretta, se sbaglio — non è così, davvero?»
«Davvero cosa?» disse la signora Steerforth.
«Oh! Volete dire che non lo è!» rispose Miss Dartle. «Beh, sono molto contenta di sentirlo! Ora so cosa fare! Questo è il vantaggio di chiedere. Non permetterò mai più alle persone di parlare davanti a me di sprechi e dissolutezza, e così via, in connessione con quella vita.»
«E avrete ragione», disse la signora Steerforth. «Il tutore di mio figlio è un gentiluomo coscienzioso; e se non avessi fiducia assoluta in mio figlio, avrei fiducia in lui.»
«Dovrebbe?» disse Miss Dartle. «Davvero! Coscienzioso, eh? Davvero coscienzioso, ora?»
«Sì, ne sono convinta», disse la signora Steerforth.
«Com’è molto bello!» esclamò Miss Dartle. «Che conforto! Davvero coscienzioso? Allora non è—ma naturalmente non può essere, se è davvero coscienzioso. Bene, sarò del tutto felice del mio parere su di lui, da questo momento. Non potete immaginare quanto lo elevi nel mio parere, sapere con certezza che è davvero coscienzioso!»
Le sue opinioni su ogni questione e le sue correzioni di tutto ciò che veniva detto e a cui si opponeva, la signorina Dartle le insinuava nello stesso modo: a volte, non potevo nascondere a me stesso, con grande forza, anche se in contraddizione con Steerforth. Un esempio accadde prima che la cena fosse finita. La signora Steerforth, parlando con me della mia intenzione di andare in Suffolk, dissi a caso quanto sarei stato felice se Steerforth fosse venuto con me; e spiegandogli che stavo andando a trovare la mia vecchia balia e la famiglia del signor Peggotty, gli ricordai il barcaiolo che aveva visto a scuola.
“Oh! Quel tipo spavaldo!” disse Steerforth. “Aveva con sé un figlio, vero?”
«No. Quello era suo nipote», risposi; «che ha adottato, però, come figlio. Ha anche una nipotina molto carina, che ha adottato come figlia. Insomma, la sua casa—o meglio, la sua barca, perché vive in una, sulla terraferma—è piena di persone che sono oggetto della sua generosità e bontà. Sareste incantato di vedere quella famiglia.»
«Dovrei?» disse Steerforth. «Beh, credo di sì. Devo vedere cosa si può fare. Varrebbe una giornata (per non parlare del piacere di una giornata con te, Daisy), per vedere quella gente insieme e per farne parte.»
Il mio cuore balzò in preda a una nuova speranza di piacere. Ma fu in riferimento al tono in cui aveva parlato di “quel genere di persone” che Miss Dartle, i cui occhi scintillanti ci avevano osservato, intervenne di nuovo.
«Oh, ma davvero? Ditemelo. Sono così?» disse.
«Sono cosa? E chi è cosa?» disse Steerforth.
«Quel tipo di persone.---Sono davvero animali e blocchi di terra, e creature di un altro ordine? Voglio sapere TANTO.»
«Ebbene, c’è una separazione piuttosto ampia tra loro e noi», disse Steerforth, con indifferenza. «Non si può aspettarsi che siano sensibili come noi. La loro delicatezza non è facilmente offesa o ferita. Sono meravigliosamente virtuosi, ne sono certo - almeno alcune persone sostengono questo; e sono sicuro di non volerle contraddire - ma non hanno nature molto raffinate, e possono essere grati che, come le loro pelli ruvide e grezze, non sono facilmente ferite.»
«Davvero!» disse Miss Dartle. «Beh, non so, ora, quando sono stata più contenta di sentirlo. È così consolante! È un tale piacere sapere che, quando soffrono, non sentono! A volte ero davvero in ansia per quel tipo di persone; ma ora mi libererò completamente di loro. Si impara sempre. Ammetto di aver avuto dei dubbi, ma ora sono stati dissipati. Non lo sapevo, e ora lo so, e questo dimostra il vantaggio di chiedere, no?»
Credetti che Steerforth avesse detto ciò che aveva detto per scherzo, o per far uscire Miss Dartle dai gangheri; e mi aspettavo che lo dicesse quando se ne fosse andata, e noi due fossimo seduti davanti al fuoco. Ma lui si limitò a chiedermi cosa ne pensassi di lei.
«È molto intelligente, non è vero?» chiesi.
«Astuta! Porta tutto sulla mola» disse Steerforth, «e lo affila, come ha fatto col suo viso e la sua figura in tutti questi anni. Si è consumata con questo continuo affilare. È tutta tagliente.»
«Che cicatrice straordinaria ha sul labbro!» dissi.
Il volto di Steerforth si rabbuiò e fece una pausa.
‘Il fatto è,’ rispose, ‘che l’ho fatto io.’
‘Per un disgraziato incidente!’
«No. Ero un ragazzo, e lei mi esasperava, e le ho tirato addosso un martello. Un promettente giovane angelo che ero!» Mi dispiaceva profondamente di aver toccato un tema così doloroso, ma ormai era inutile.
«Ha portato il segno da allora, come vedete», disse Steerforth, «e lo porterà nella sua tomba, se mai riposerà in una, anche se non riesco a credere che riposerà mai da nessuna parte. Era la bambina senza madre di una specie di cugino di mio padre. Morì un giorno. Mia madre, che allora era vedova, la portò qui per compagnia. Ha un paio di migliaia di sterline sue, e ogni anno risparmia gli interessi per aggiungerli al capitale. Ecco la storia della signorina Rosa Dartle per voi.»
«E non ho alcun dubbio che lei ti ami come un fratello?» dissi io.
‘Humph!’ retorted Steerforth, looking at the fire. ‘Some brothers are not loved over much; and some love—but help yourself, Copperfield! We’ll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment to me—the more shame for me!’ A moody smile that had overspread his features cleared off as he said this merrily, and he was his own frank, winning self again.
I could not help glancing at the scar with a painful interest when we went in to tea. It was not long before I observed that it was the most susceptible part of her face, and that, when she turned pale, that mark altered first, and became a dull, lead-coloured streak, lengthening out to its full extent, like a mark in invisible ink brought to the fire. There was a little altercation between her and Steerforth about a cast of the dice at backgammon—when I thought her, for one moment, in a storm of rage; and then I saw it start forth like the old writing on the wall.
It was no matter of wonder to me to find Mrs. Steerforth devoted to her son. She seemed to be able to speak or think about nothing else. She showed me his picture as an infant, in a locket, with some of his baby-hair in it; she showed me his picture as he had been when I first knew him; and she wore at her breast his picture as he was now. All the letters he had ever written to her, she kept in a cabinet near her own chair by the fire; and she would have read me some of them, and I should have been very glad to hear them too, if he had not interposed, and coaxed her out of the design.
‘It was at Mr. Creakle’s, my son tells me, that you first became acquainted,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as she and I were talking at one table, while they played backgammon at another. ‘Indeed, I recollect his speaking, at that time, of a pupil younger than himself who had taken his fancy there; but your name, as you may suppose, has not lived in my memory.’
‘He was very generous and noble to me in those days, I assure you, ma’am,’ said I, ‘and I stood in need of such a friend. I should have been quite crushed without him.’
‘He is always generous and noble,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, proudly.
I subscribed to this with all my heart, God knows. She knew I did; for the stateliness of her manner already abated towards me, except when she spoke in praise of him, and then her air was always lofty.
‘It was not a fit school generally for my son,’ said she; ‘far from it; but there were particular circumstances to be considered at the time, of more importance even than that selection. My son’s high spirit made it desirable that he should be placed with some man who felt its superiority, and would be content to bow himself before it; and we found such a man there.’
I knew that, knowing the fellow. And yet I did not despise him the more for it, but thought it a redeeming quality in him if he could be allowed any grace for not resisting one so irresistible as Steerforth.
‘My son’s great capacity was tempted on, there, by a feeling of voluntary emulation and conscious pride,’ the fond lady went on to say. ‘He would have risen against all constraint; but he found himself the monarch of the place, and he haughtily determined to be worthy of his station. It was like himself.’
I echoed, with all my heart and soul, that it was like himself.
‘So my son took, of his own will, and on no compulsion, to the course in which he can always, when it is his pleasure, outstrip every competitor,’ she pursued. ‘My son informs me, Mr. Copperfield, that you were quite devoted to him, and that when you met yesterday you made yourself known to him with tears of joy. I should be an affected woman if I made any pretence of being surprised by my son’s inspiring such emotions; but I cannot be indifferent to anyone who is so sensible of his merit, and I am very glad to see you here, and can assure you that he feels an unusual friendship for you, and that you may rely on his protection.’
Miss Dartle played backgammon as eagerly as she did everything else. If I had seen her, first, at the board, I should have fancied that her figure had got thin, and her eyes had got large, over that pursuit, and no other in the world. But I am very much mistaken if she missed a word of this, or lost a look of mine as I received it with the utmost pleasure, and honoured by Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, felt older than I had done since I left Canterbury.
When the evening was pretty far spent, and a tray of glasses and decanters came in, Steerforth promised, over the fire, that he would seriously think of going down into the country with me. There was no hurry, he said; a week hence would do; and his mother hospitably said the same. While we were talking, he more than once called me Daisy; which brought Miss Dartle out again.
‘But really, Mr. Copperfield,’ she asked, ‘is it a nickname? And why does he give it you? Is it—eh?—because he thinks you young and innocent? I am so stupid in these things.’
I coloured in replying that I believed it was.
‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle. ‘Now I am glad to know that! I ask for information, and I am glad to know it. He thinks you young and innocent; and so you are his friend. Well, that’s quite delightful!’
She went to bed soon after this, and Mrs. Steerforth retired too. Steerforth and I, after lingering for half-an-hour over the fire, talking about Traddles and all the rest of them at old Salem House, went upstairs together. Steerforth’s room was next to mine, and I went in to look at it. It was a picture of comfort, full of easy-chairs, cushions and footstools, worked by his mother’s hand, and with no sort of thing omitted that could help to render it complete. Finally, her handsome features looked down on her darling from a portrait on the wall, as if it were even something to her that her likeness should watch him while he slept.
I found the fire burning clear enough in my room by this time, and the curtains drawn before the windows and round the bed, giving it a very snug appearance. I sat down in a great chair upon the hearth to meditate on my happiness; and had enjoyed the contemplation of it for some time, when I found a likeness of Miss Dartle looking eagerly at me from above the chimney-piece.
It was a startling likeness, and necessarily had a startling look. The painter hadn’t made the scar, but I made it; and there it was, coming and going; now confined to the upper lip as I had seen it at dinner, and now showing the whole extent of the wound inflicted by the hammer, as I had seen it when she was passionate.
I wondered peevishly why they couldn’t put her anywhere else instead of quartering her on me. To get rid of her, I undressed quickly, extinguished my light, and went to bed. But, as I fell asleep, I could not forget that she was still there looking, ‘Is it really, though? I want to know’; and when I awoke in the night, I found that I was uneasily asking all sorts of people in my dreams whether it really was or not—without knowing what I meant.
‘Humph!’ ribatté Steerforth, guardando il fuoco. ‘Alcuni fratelli non sono molto amati; e alcuni amano—ma serviti, Copperfield! Beviamo ai fiori dei campi, in omaggio a te; e ai giaggioli che non faticano né filano, in omaggio a me—tanto peggio per me!’ Un sorriso malinconico che aveva coperto il suo viso si dileguò mentre diceva questo allegramente, e lui fu di nuovo il suo franco, simpatico sé.
Non potevo fare a meno di guardare la cicatrice con un interesse doloroso quando andammo a prendere il tè. Non passò molto tempo prima che notassi che era la parte più sensibile del suo viso, e che, quando impallidiva, quel segno cambiava per primo, diventando una striscia opaca e grigia, che si allungava fino a raggiungere la sua massima estensione, come una macchia di inchiostro invisibile portata al fuoco. Ci fu una piccola altercazione tra lei e Steerforth riguardo a un lancio dei dadi a backgammon, quando per un momento la vidi in una tempesta di rabbia; e allora vidi quel segno emergere come la vecchia scritta sulla parete.
Non fu per me motivo di meraviglia trovare la signora Steerforth devota a suo figlio. Sembrava che non fosse in grado di parlare o pensare ad altro. Mi mostrò la sua fotografia da bambino, in un medaglione, con alcuni dei suoi capelli da neonato; mi mostrò la sua fotografia com’era quando lo conobbi per la prima volta; e portava al collo la sua fotografia com’era ora. Tutte le lettere che le aveva mai scritto, le conservava in un armadio vicino alla sua poltrona accanto al fuoco; e mi avrebbe letto alcune di esse, e sarei stato molto felice di ascoltarle, se lui non si fosse intromesso e l’avesse persuasa a desistere dall’idea.
«Fu a casa del signor Creakle, mi ha detto mio figlio, che vi siete conosciuti per la prima volta», disse la signora Steerforth, mentre io e lei parlavamo a un tavolo, mentre loro giocavano a trictrac a un altro. «In effetti, ricordo che in quel periodo parlava di un allievo più giovane di lui che gli era piaciuto lì; ma il tuo nome, come puoi immaginare, non è rimasto nella mia memoria.»
«Fu molto generoso e nobile con me in quei giorni, glielo assicuro, signora», dissi io, «e avevo bisogno di un amico come lui. Senza di lui sarei stato completamente schiacciato.»
«È sempre generoso e nobile», disse la signora Steerforth, con orgoglio.
Io mi sottoposi a tutto ciò con tutto il cuore, Dio lo sa. Lei lo sapeva; perché la maestosità del suo comportamento nei miei confronti si attenuò, tranne quando parlava in suo elogio, e allora il suo atteggiamento era sempre altezzoso.
«Non era una scuola adatta in generale per mio figlio», disse; «tutt’altro; ma c’erano circostanze particolari da considerare in quel periodo, di importanza maggiore anche di quella scelta. Lo spirito elevato di mio figlio rendeva desiderabile che fosse collocato con un uomo che ne sentisse la superiorità e sarebbe stato contento di inchinarsisi davanti; e abbiamo trovato un tale uomo lì».
Lo sapevo, conoscendo il tipo. Eppure non lo disprezzavo di più per questo, ma pensavo che fosse una qualità che lo redimeva se gli si poteva riconoscere il merito di non aver resistito a uno così irresistibile come Steerforth.
«La grande capacità di mio figlio fu stimolata lì da un senso di emulazione volontaria e orgoglio consapevole», continuò a dire la tenera signora. «Si sarebbe ribellato a ogni costrizione; ma si trovò a essere il sovrano del luogo, e decise con arroganza di essere degno della sua posizione. Era proprio da lui.»
Ho fatto eco, con tutto il mio cuore e la mia anima, che era proprio come lui.
«Così mio figlio ha scelto, di sua spontanea volontà e senza costrizioni, la strada in cui può sempre, quando gli piace, superare ogni concorrente», proseguì. «Mio figlio mi informa, signor Copperfield, che lei era molto devoto a lui e che quando vi siete incontrati ieri, vi siete presentato a lui con lacrime di gioia. Sarei una donna affettata se fingessi di essere sorpresa che mio figlio ispiri tali emozioni; ma non posso essere indifferente a chiunque sia così sensibile al suo merito, e sono molto felice di vederla qui, e posso assicurarle che lui prova per lei un’amicizia insolita, e che può contare sulla sua protezione».
Miss Dartle giocava a trictrac con la stessa vivacità con cui faceva tutto il resto. Se l’avessi vista per prima cosa al tavolo da gioco, avrei pensato che la sua figura si fosse fatta magra e i suoi occhi grandi, per questo gioco, e per nient’altro al mondo. Ma mi sbaglio di grosso se ha perso una parola di questo, o uno sguardo mio mentre lo ricevevo con il massimo piacere, e onorato dalla fiducia della signora Steerforth, mi sentivo più vecchio di quanto mi fossi sentito da quando avevo lasciato Canterbury.
Quando la serata era ormai ben avanzata e un vassoio con bicchieri e caraffe fu portato dentro, Steerforth promise, seduto accanto al fuoco, che avrebbe pensato seriamente di venire con me in campagna. Non c’era fretta, disse; andava bene anche tra una settimana; e sua madre, ospitale, disse la stessa cosa. Mentre parlavamo, più di una volta mi chiamò Daisy; e questo fece uscire di nuovo Miss Dartle.
«Ma davvero, signor Copperfield», chiese, «è un soprannome? E perché te lo dà? È—eh?—perché ti considera giovane e ingenuo? Sono così ignorante in queste cose.»
Colorii la mia risposta dicendo che credevo lo fosse.
«Oh!» disse Miss Dartle. «Ora sono felice di saperlo! Chiedo informazioni, e sono felice di conoscerle. Lui vi considera giovane e innocente; e così siete la sua amica. Bene, questo è davvero delizioso!»
Andò a letto poco dopo, e anche la signora Steerforth si ritirò. Steerforth e io, dopo essere rimasti per mezz’ora accanto al fuoco, parlando di Traddles e di tutti gli altri della vecchia Scuola di Salem, salimmo insieme di sopra. La stanza di Steerforth era accanto alla mia, e io entrai per dare un’occhiata. Era un quadro di comfort, piena di poltrone, cuscini e poggiapiedi, lavorati a mano da sua madre, e senza alcuna cosa che potesse contribuire a renderla completa. Infine, i suoi bei tratti guardavano il suo tesoro da un ritratto sulla parete, come se fosse qualcosa per lei che la sua immagine lo sorvegliasse mentre dormiva.
Trovai il fuoco che ardeva abbastanza chiaro nella mia stanza a quell’ora, e le tende tirate davanti alle finestre e intorno al letto, conferendole un aspetto molto accogliente. Mi sedetti in una grande poltrona sul focolare per meditare sulla mia felicità; e avevo goduto della contemplazione per qualche tempo, quando scoprii una somiglianza della signorina Dartle che mi guardava con insistenza da sopra il caminetto.
Era una somiglianza sorprendente, e necessariamente aveva un aspetto sorprendente. L’artista non aveva fatto la cicatrice, ma l’avevo fatta io; ed eccola lì, che appariva e scompariva; ora confinata al labbro superiore come l’avevo vista a cena, e ora mostrando tutta l’estensione della ferita inflitta dal martello, come l’avevo vista quando lei era in preda alla passione.
Mi chiedevo con irritazione perché non potevano sistemarla da qualche altra parte invece di sistemarla da me. Per liberarmi di lei, mi spogliai in fretta, spensi la luce e andai a letto. Ma, mentre mi addormentavo, non potevo dimenticare che lei era ancora lì a guardare, “È davvero così, però? Voglio saperlo”; e quando mi svegliai nel notte, scoprii che stavo chiedendo inquieto a tutti i tipi di persone nei miei sogni se davvero lo fosse o no—senza sapere cosa intendevo.
CHAPTER 21. LITTLE EM’LY
There was a servant in that house, a man who, I understood, was usually with Steerforth, and had come into his service at the University, who was in appearance a pattern of respectability. I believe there never existed in his station a more respectable-looking man. He was taciturn, soft-footed, very quiet in his manner, deferential, observant, always at hand when wanted, and never near when not wanted; but his great claim to consideration was his respectability. He had not a pliant face, he had rather a stiff neck, rather a tight smooth head with short hair clinging to it at the sides, a soft way of speaking, with a peculiar habit of whispering the letter S so distinctly, that he seemed to use it oftener than any other man; but every peculiarity that he had he made respectable. If his nose had been upside-down, he would have made that respectable. He surrounded himself with an atmosphere of respectability, and walked secure in it. It would have been next to impossible to suspect him of anything wrong, he was so thoroughly respectable. Nobody could have thought of putting him in a livery, he was so highly respectable. To have imposed any derogatory work upon him, would have been to inflict a wanton insult on the feelings of a most respectable man. And of this, I noticed—the women-servants in the household were so intuitively conscious, that they always did such work themselves, and generally while he read the paper by the pantry fire.
Such a self-contained man I never saw. But in that quality, as in every other he possessed, he only seemed to be the more respectable. Even the fact that no one knew his Christian name, seemed to form a part of his respectability. Nothing could be objected against his surname, Littimer, by which he was known. Peter might have been hanged, or Tom transported; but Littimer was perfectly respectable.
It was occasioned, I suppose, by the reverend nature of respectability in the abstract, but I felt particularly young in this man’s presence. How old he was himself, I could not guess—and that again went to his credit on the same score; for in the calmness of respectability he might have numbered fifty years as well as thirty.
Littimer was in my room in the morning before I was up, to bring me that reproachful shaving-water, and to put out my clothes. When I undrew the curtains and looked out of bed, I saw him, in an equable temperature of respectability, unaffected by the east wind of January, and not even breathing frostily, standing my boots right and left in the first dancing position, and blowing specks of dust off my coat as he laid it down like a baby.
I gave him good morning, and asked him what o’clock it was. He took out of his pocket the most respectable hunting-watch I ever saw, and preventing the spring with his thumb from opening far, looked in at the face as if he were consulting an oracular oyster, shut it up again, and said, if I pleased, it was half past eight.
‘Mr. Steerforth will be glad to hear how you have rested, sir.’
‘Thank you,’ said I, ‘very well indeed. Is Mr. Steerforth quite well?’
‘Thank you, sir, Mr. Steerforth is tolerably well.’ Another of his characteristics—no use of superlatives. A cool calm medium always.
‘Is there anything more I can have the honour of doing for you, sir? The warning-bell will ring at nine; the family take breakfast at half past nine.’
‘Nothing, I thank you.’
‘I thank YOU, sir, if you please’; and with that, and with a little inclination of his head when he passed the bed-side, as an apology for correcting me, he went out, shutting the door as delicately as if I had just fallen into a sweet sleep on which my life depended.
Every morning we held exactly this conversation: never any more, and never any less: and yet, invariably, however far I might have been lifted out of myself over-night, and advanced towards maturer years, by Steerforth’s companionship, or Mrs. Steerforth’s confidence, or Miss Dartle’s conversation, in the presence of this most respectable man I became, as our smaller poets sing, ‘a boy again’.
He got horses for us; and Steerforth, who knew everything, gave me lessons in riding. He provided foils for us, and Steerforth gave me lessons in fencing—gloves, and I began, of the same master, to improve in boxing. It gave me no manner of concern that Steerforth should find me a novice in these sciences, but I never could bear to show my want of skill before the respectable Littimer. I had no reason to believe that Littimer understood such arts himself; he never led me to suppose anything of the kind, by so much as the vibration of one of his respectable eyelashes; yet whenever he was by, while we were practising, I felt myself the greenest and most inexperienced of mortals.
I am particular about this man, because he made a particular effect on me at that time, and because of what took place thereafter.
The week passed away in a most delightful manner. It passed rapidly, as may be supposed, to one entranced as I was; and yet it gave me so many occasions for knowing Steerforth better, and admiring him more in a thousand respects, that at its close I seemed to have been with him for a much longer time. A dashing way he had of treating me like a plaything, was more agreeable to me than any behaviour he could have adopted. It reminded me of our old acquaintance; it seemed the natural sequel of it; it showed me that he was unchanged; it relieved me of any uneasiness I might have felt, in comparing my merits with his, and measuring my claims upon his friendship by any equal standard; above all, it was a familiar, unrestrained, affectionate demeanour that he used towards no one else. As he had treated me at school differently from all the rest, I joyfully believed that he treated me in life unlike any other friend he had. I believed that I was nearer to his heart than any other friend, and my own heart warmed with attachment to him. He made up his mind to go with me into the country, and the day arrived for our departure. He had been doubtful at first whether to take Littimer or not, but decided to leave him at home. The respectable creature, satisfied with his lot whatever it was, arranged our portmanteaux on the little carriage that was to take us into London, as if they were intended to defy the shocks of ages, and received my modestly proffered donation with perfect tranquillity.
CAPITOLO 21. LA PICCOLA EM’LY
C’era un domestico in quella casa, un uomo che, come avevo capito, era solitamente con Steerforth, ed era entrato al suo servizio all’Università, che era all’apparenza un modello di rispettabilità. Credo che non sia mai esistito nella sua posizione un uomo dall’aspetto più rispettabile. Era taciturno, con passo leggero, molto tranquillo nei modi, deferente, attento, sempre a portata di mano quando serviva, e mai vicino quando non serviva; ma la sua grande pretesa di considerazione era la sua rispettabilità. Non aveva un volto flessibile, aveva piuttosto un collo rigido, una testa piuttosto stretta e liscia con capelli corti che vi si attaccavano ai lati, un modo di parlare morbido, con una particolare abitudine di sussurrare la lettera S così distintamente, che sembrava usarla più spesso di qualsiasi altro uomo; ma ogni peculiarità che aveva la rendeva rispettabile. Se il suo naso fosse stato al contrario, l’avrebbe reso rispettabile. Si circondava di un’atmosfera di rispettabilità, e camminava sicuro in essa. Sarebbe stato quasi impossibile sospettarlo di qualcosa di sbagliato, era così profondamente rispettabile. Nessuno avrebbe potuto pensare di metterlo in livrea, era così altamente rispettabile. Imporre su di lui qualsiasi lavoro degradante, sarebbe stato infliggere un insulto gratuito ai sentimenti di un uomo molto rispettabile. E di questo, notai—le domestiche della casa erano così intuitivamente consapevoli, che facevano sempre quel lavoro da sole, e generalmente mentre lui leggeva il giornale accanto al fuoco della dispensa.
Un uomo così riservato non l’avevo mai visto. Ma in questa qualità, come in ogni altra che possedeva, sembrava solo più rispettabile. Anche il fatto che nessuno conoscesse il suo nome di battesimo, sembrava far parte della sua rispettabilità. Non si poteva obiettare nulla contro il suo cognome, Littimer, con cui era conosciuto. Pietro poteva essere stato impiccato, o Tom deportato; ma Littimer era perfettamente rispettabile.
Fu causato, immagino, dalla natura reverenda dell’astratta rispettabilità, ma mi sentivo particolarmente giovane in presenza di quell’uomo. Non riuscivo a indovinare quanti anni avesse lui stesso, e questo a sua volta andava a suo credito per lo stesso motivo; perché nella calma della rispettabilità poteva avere ben cinquant’anni come trenta.
Littimer era nella mia stanza la mattina, prima che mi alzassi, per portarmi quell’acqua da barba accusatoria e per prepararmi i vestiti. Quando scostai le tende e guardai fuori dal letto, lo vidi, in una temperatura equabile di rispettabilità, non influenzata dal vento di est di gennaio, e nemmeno con il fiato che si condensava, sistemare i miei stivali a destra e a sinistra nella prima posizione di danza, e soffiare via particelle di polvere dal mio cappotto mentre lo deponeva come se fosse un bambino.
Gli augurai il buongiorno e gli chiesi che ora fosse. Egli estrasse dalla tasca l’orologio da taschino più rispettabile che avessi mai visto, e impedendo alla molla con il pollice di aprirsi troppo, guardò il quadrante come se stesse consultando un’ostrica oracolare, lo richiuse e disse che, se volevo saperlo, erano le otto e mezza.
‘Il signor Steerforth sarà felice di sapere come ha riposato, signore.’
«Grazie», dissi, «molto bene davvero. Il signor Steerforth sta bene?»
«Grazie, signore, il signor Steerforth sta abbastanza bene.» Un’altra delle sue caratteristiche: nessun uso di superlativi. Sempre un tono calmo e moderato.
«C’è qualcos’altro che posso avere l’onore di fare per lei, signore? La campana di avviso suonerà alle nove; la famiglia fa colazione alle nove e mezza.»
‘Nulla, grazie.’
«Vi ringrazio, signore, se non vi dispiace»; e con ciò, e con un leggero inchino del capo mentre passava accanto al letto, come scusa per avermi rimproverato, uscì, chiudendo la porta con delicatezza come se fossi appena caduto in un dolce sonno su cui dipendeva la mia vita.
Ogni mattina avevamo esattamente questa conversazione: mai più, e mai meno: eppure, invariabilmente, per quanto lontano potessi essere stato sollevato da me stesso durante la notte, e avvicinato a anni più maturi, per la compagnia di Steerforth, o la fiducia della signora Steerforth, o la conversazione della signorina Dartle, in presenza di quest’uomo così rispettabile diventavo, come cantano i nostri poeti minori, ‘un ragazzo di nuovo’.
Ci procurò dei cavalli; e Steerforth, che sapeva tutto, mi diede lezioni di equitazione. Ci procurò delle spade di legno, e Steerforth mi diede lezioni di scherma, guanti, e iniziai, dallo stesso maestro, a migliorare nella boxe. Non mi preoccupava minimamente che Steerforth mi trovasse un novellino in queste discipline, ma non sopportavo di mostrare la mia mancanza di abilità davanti al rispettabile Littimer. Non avevo motivo di credere che Littimer conoscesse queste arti; non mi aveva mai fatto pensare niente del genere, neanche con il minimo fremito delle sue rispettabili palpebre; eppure ogni volta che era lì, mentre ci esercitavamo, mi sentivo il più acerbo e inesperto dei mortali.
Mi interesso particolarmente a quest’uomo, perché ebbe un effetto particolare su di me in quel periodo, e per ciò che accadde in seguito.
La settimana trascorse in modo delizioso. Passò rapidamente, come si può immaginare, per uno che era incantato come me; eppure mi offrì così tante occasioni di conoscere meglio Steerforth e di ammirarlo ancora di più sotto mille aspetti, che alla fine mi sembrava di essere con lui da molto più tempo. Un modo spavaldo che aveva di trattarmi come un giocattolo mi piaceva più di qualsiasi altro comportamento avrebbe potuto adottare. Mi ricordava la nostra vecchia amicizia; sembrava il naturale proseguimento di essa; mi mostrava che lui non era cambiato; mi liberava da qualsiasi inquietudine potessi provare nel confrontare i miei meriti con i suoi, e nel misurare le mie pretese sulla sua amicizia con un criterio di parità; soprattutto, era un comportamento familiare, disinvolto, affettuoso che usava verso nessun altro. Come mi aveva trattato a scuola diversamente da tutti gli altri, credevo con gioia che mi trattasse nella vita diversamente da qualsiasi altro amico avesse. Credavo di essere più vicino al suo cuore di qualsiasi altro amico, e il mio cuore si riscaldava di attaccamento per lui. Decise di venire con me in campagna, e arrivò il giorno della nostra partenza. All’inizio aveva avuto dei dubbi se portare Littimer o meno, ma decise di lasciarlo a casa. La rispettabile creatura, soddisfatta del suo destino qualunque esso fosse, sistemò le nostre valigie sulla piccola carrozza che doveva portarci a Londra, come se fossero destinate a sfidare gli urti dei secoli, e accettò la mia modesta offerta con perfetta tranquillità.
We bade adieu to Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle, with many thanks on my part, and much kindness on the devoted mother’s. The last thing I saw was Littimer’s unruffled eye; fraught, as I fancied, with the silent conviction that I was very young indeed.
What I felt, in returning so auspiciously to the old familiar places, I shall not endeavour to describe. We went down by the Mail. I was so concerned, I recollect, even for the honour of Yarmouth, that when Steerforth said, as we drove through its dark streets to the inn, that, as well as he could make out, it was a good, queer, out-of-the-way kind of hole, I was highly pleased. We went to bed on our arrival (I observed a pair of dirty shoes and gaiters in connexion with my old friend the Dolphin as we passed that door), and breakfasted late in the morning. Steerforth, who was in great spirits, had been strolling about the beach before I was up, and had made acquaintance, he said, with half the boatmen in the place. Moreover, he had seen, in the distance, what he was sure must be the identical house of Mr. Peggotty, with smoke coming out of the chimney; and had had a great mind, he told me, to walk in and swear he was myself grown out of knowledge.
‘When do you propose to introduce me there, Daisy?’ he said. ‘I am at your disposal. Make your own arrangements.’
‘Why, I was thinking that this evening would be a good time, Steerforth, when they are all sitting round the fire. I should like you to see it when it’s snug, it’s such a curious place.’
‘So be it!’ returned Steerforth. ‘This evening.’
‘I shall not give them any notice that we are here, you know,’ said I, delighted. ‘We must take them by surprise.’
‘Oh, of course! It’s no fun,’ said Steerforth, ‘unless we take them by surprise. Let us see the natives in their aboriginal condition.’
‘Though they ARE that sort of people that you mentioned,’ I returned.
‘Aha! What! you recollect my skirmishes with Rosa, do you?’ he exclaimed with a quick look. ‘Confound the girl, I am half afraid of her. She’s like a goblin to me. But never mind her. Now what are you going to do? You are going to see your nurse, I suppose?’
‘Why, yes,’ I said, ‘I must see Peggotty first of all.’
‘Well,’ replied Steerforth, looking at his watch. ‘Suppose I deliver you up to be cried over for a couple of hours. Is that long enough?’
I answered, laughing, that I thought we might get through it in that time, but that he must come also; for he would find that his renown had preceded him, and that he was almost as great a personage as I was.
‘I’ll come anywhere you like,’ said Steerforth, ‘or do anything you like. Tell me where to come to; and in two hours I’ll produce myself in any state you please, sentimental or comical.’
I gave him minute directions for finding the residence of Mr. Barkis, carrier to Blunderstone and elsewhere; and, on this understanding, went out alone. There was a sharp bracing air; the ground was dry; the sea was crisp and clear; the sun was diffusing abundance of light, if not much warmth; and everything was fresh and lively. I was so fresh and lively myself, in the pleasure of being there, that I could have stopped the people in the streets and shaken hands with them.
The streets looked small, of course. The streets that we have only seen as children always do, I believe, when we go back to them. But I had forgotten nothing in them, and found nothing changed, until I came to Mr. Omer’s shop. OMER AND Joram was now written up, where OMER used to be; but the inscription, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c., remained as it was.
My footsteps seemed to tend so naturally to the shop door, after I had read these words from over the way, that I went across the road and looked in. There was a pretty woman at the back of the shop, dancing a little child in her arms, while another little fellow clung to her apron. I had no difficulty in recognizing either Minnie or Minnie’s children. The glass door of the parlour was not open; but in the workshop across the yard I could faintly hear the old tune playing, as if it had never left off.
‘Is Mr. Omer at home?’ said I, entering. ‘I should like to see him, for a moment, if he is.’
‘Oh yes, sir, he is at home,’ said Minnie; ‘the weather don’t suit his asthma out of doors. Joe, call your grandfather!’
The little fellow, who was holding her apron, gave such a lusty shout, that the sound of it made him bashful, and he buried his face in her skirts, to her great admiration. I heard a heavy puffing and blowing coming towards us, and soon Mr. Omer, shorter-winded than of yore, but not much older-looking, stood before me.
‘Servant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’ ‘You can shake hands with me, Mr. Omer, if you please,’ said I, putting out my own. ‘You were very good-natured to me once, when I am afraid I didn’t show that I thought so.’
‘Was I though?’ returned the old man. ‘I’m glad to hear it, but I don’t remember when. Are you sure it was me?’
‘Quite.’
‘I think my memory has got as short as my breath,’ said Mr. Omer, looking at me and shaking his head; ‘for I don’t remember you.’
‘Don’t you remember your coming to the coach to meet me, and my having breakfast here, and our riding out to Blunderstone together: you, and I, and Mrs. Joram, and Mr. Joram too—who wasn’t her husband then?’
‘Why, Lord bless my soul!’ exclaimed Mr. Omer, after being thrown by his surprise into a fit of coughing, ‘you don’t say so! Minnie, my dear, you recollect? Dear me, yes; the party was a lady, I think?’
‘My mother,’ I rejoined.
‘To—be—sure,’ said Mr. Omer, touching my waistcoat with his forefinger, ‘and there was a little child too! There was two parties. The little party was laid along with the other party. Over at Blunderstone it was, of course. Dear me! And how have you been since?’
Ci congedammo da Mrs. Steerforth e da Miss Dartle, con i miei molti ringraziamenti e molta gentilezza da parte della devota madre. L’ultima cosa che vidi fu l’occhio imperturbabile di Littimer, carico, come mi parve, della silenziosa convinzione che fossi davvero molto giovane.
Quello che provavo, tornando così felicemente nei vecchi luoghi familiari, non cercherò di descrivere. Abbiamo fatto il viaggio in diligenza postale. Ero così preoccupato, ricordo, anche per l’onore di Yarmouth, che quando Steerforth disse, mentre passavamo in carrozza per le sue strade buie fino alla locanda, che, per quanto bene riusciva a capire, era un buco strano, fuori mano, di un genere particolare, fui molto contento. Andammo a letto al nostro arrivo (notai un paio di scarpe e gambali sporchi in relazione al mio vecchio amico il Delfino mentre passavamo davanti a quella porta), e facemmo colazione la mattina tardi. Steerforth, che era di ottimo umore, si era aggirato per la spiaggia prima che mi alzassi, e aveva fatto amicizia, diceva, con metà dei barcaioli del posto. Inoltre, aveva visto, in lontananza, quello che era sicuro fosse l’identico casa del signor Peggotty, con il fumo che usciva dal camino; e aveva avuto una gran voglia, mi disse, di entrare e giurare che era me stesso cresciuto al di là di ogni conoscenza.
«Quando pensi di presentarmi lì, Daisy?» disse. «Sono a tua disposizione. Fai i tuoi programmi.»
«Ebbene, pensavo che questa sera sarebbe stato un buon momento, Steerforth, quando sono tutti seduti intorno al fuoco. Mi piacerebbe che lo vedeste quando è accogliente, è un posto così curioso.»
‘Sia come vuoi!’, rispose Steerforth. ‘Questa sera.’
«Non li avvertirò che siamo qui, sapete», dissi, deliziato. «Dobbiamo prenderli di sorpresa.»
«Oh, naturalmente! Non è divertente», disse Steerforth, «a meno che non li prendiamo di sorpresa. Vediamo i nativi nelle loro condizioni aborigene.»
«Anche se sono proprio quel tipo di persone che hai menzionato», replicai.
«Ah! Cosa! ricordi le mie schermaglie con Rosa, vero?» esclamò con un’occhiata rapida. «Maledetta ragazza, ne ho mezza paura. È come uno spirito maligno per me. Ma non importa lei. Ora cosa stai per fare? Stai per vedere la tua balia, immagino?»
‘Beh, sì’, dissi, ‘devo vedere Peggotty per prima cosa’.
«Bene,» rispose Steerforth, guardando l’orologio. «Supponiamo che vi consegnerò per essere pianto per un paio d’ore. È abbastanza lungo?»
Risposi ridendo che pensavo che avremmo potuto farcela in quel tempo, ma che doveva venire anche lui; perché avrebbe scoperto che la sua fama lo aveva preceduto, e che era quasi una persona importante quanto me.
«Verrò dove vuoi» disse Steerforth «o farò qualsiasi cosa tu voglia. Dimmi dove devo venire; e in due ore mi presenterò in qualsiasi stato tu voglia, sentimentale o comico.»
Gli diedi istruzioni precise per trovare la residenza del signor Barkis, corriere per Blunderstone e altre località; e, su questa base, uscii da solo. C’era un’aria vivificante e pungente; il terreno era asciutto; il mare era frizzante e limpido; il sole diffondeva abbondanza di luce, se non molta calore; e tutto era fresco e vivace. Ero così fresco e vivace io stesso, nel piacere di essere lì, che avrei potuto fermare le persone per le strade e stringere loro la mano.
Le strade sembravano piccole, naturalmente. Le strade che abbiamo visto solo da bambini appaiono sempre così, credo, quando ci si ritorna. Ma non avevo dimenticato nulla di loro, e non trovai nulla cambiato, finché non arrivai al negozio del signor Omer. Ora c’era scritto OMER E Joram, dove prima c’era solo OMER; ma la scritta, DRAPPERO, SARTORIA, ABBIGLIAMENTO, ARREDAMENTO FUNERARIO, ecc., era rimasta com’era.
I miei passi sembravano portarmi così naturalmente verso la porta del negozio, dopo aver letto quelle parole dall’altra parte della strada, che attraversai la strada e guardai dentro. C’era una bella donna sul retro del negozio, che ballava con un piccolo bambino tra le braccia, mentre un altro piccolo si aggrappava al suo grembiule. Non ebbi difficoltà a riconoscere né Minnie né i figli di Minnie. La porta di vetro del salotto non era aperta; ma nella bottega dall’altra parte del cortile potevo sentire debolmente la vecchia melodia che suonava, come se non si fosse mai interrotta.
«È il signor Omer a casa?» dissi, entrando. «Mi piacerebbe vederlo, per un momento, se c’è.»
«Oh sì, signore, è a casa», disse Minnie; «il tempo non gli conviene per l’asma, all’aperto. Joe, chiama tuo nonno!»
Il piccolo, che le teneva il grembiule, diede un grido così vigoroso che il suono lo fece arrossire, e si nascose il viso tra le sue gonne, con grande ammirazione di lei. Sentii un pesante ansimare avvicinarsi a noi, e presto il signor Omer, meno soffioso di un tempo, ma non molto più vecchio d’aspetto, si trovò davanti a me.
«Servitore, signore», disse il signor Omer. «Cosa posso fare per lei, signore?» «Può stringermi la mano, signor Omer, se non le dispiace», dissi, porgendogli la mia. «Una volta fu molto gentile con me, quando temo di non averlo dimostrato.»
«Ero io?» rispose il vecchio. «Mi fa piacere sentirlo, ma non ricordo quando. Sei sicuro che fossi io?»
“Proprio così.”
«Penso che la mia memoria sia diventata corta quanto il mio respiro», disse il signor Omer, guardandomi e scuotendo la testa; «perché non mi ricordo di te».
«Non ti ricordi di quando venisti alla carrozza per venirmi incontro, e io feci colazione qui, e andammo a cavallo a Blunderstone insieme: tu, io, la signora Joram e anche il signor Joram — che non era ancora suo marito?»
«Perbacco!» esclamò il signor Omer, dopo essere stato gettato dalla sua sorpresa in un attacco di tosse, «non dirmi che è vero! Minnie, mia cara, te ne ricordi? Santo cielo, sì; la persona era una signora, credo?»
«Mia madre», replicai.
«Certo», disse il signor Omer, toccandomi il panciotto con l’indice, «e c’era anche un piccolo bambino! Erano due gruppi. Il piccolo gruppo fu sepolto insieme all’altro gruppo. A Blunderstone, naturalmente. Santo cielo! E come sei stato da allora?»
Very well, I thanked him, as I hoped he had been too.
‘Oh! nothing to grumble at, you know,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I find my breath gets short, but it seldom gets longer as a man gets older. I take it as it comes, and make the most of it. That’s the best way, ain’t it?’
Mr. Omer coughed again, in consequence of laughing, and was assisted out of his fit by his daughter, who now stood close beside us, dancing her smallest child on the counter.
‘Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes, to be sure. Two parties! Why, in that very ride, if you’ll believe me, the day was named for my Minnie to marry Joram. “Do name it, sir,” says Joram. “Yes, do, father,” says Minnie. And now he’s come into the business. And look here! The youngest!’
Minnie laughed, and stroked her banded hair upon her temples, as her father put one of his fat fingers into the hand of the child she was dancing on the counter.
‘Two parties, of course!’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head retrospectively. ‘Ex-actly so! And Joram’s at work, at this minute, on a grey one with silver nails, not this measurement’—the measurement of the dancing child upon the counter—‘by a good two inches.---Will you take something?’
I thanked him, but declined.
‘Let me see,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Barkis’s the carrier’s wife—Peggotty’s the boatman’s sister—she had something to do with your family? She was in service there, sure?’
My answering in the affirmative gave him great satisfaction.
‘I believe my breath will get long next, my memory’s getting so much so,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, we’ve got a young relation of hers here, under articles to us, that has as elegant a taste in the dress-making business—I assure you I don’t believe there’s a Duchess in England can touch her.’
‘Not little Em’ly?’ said I, involuntarily.
‘Em’ly’s her name,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and she’s little too. But if you’ll believe me, she has such a face of her own that half the women in this town are mad against her.’
‘Nonsense, father!’ cried Minnie.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘I don’t say it’s the case with you,’ winking at me, ‘but I say that half the women in Yarmouth—ah! and in five mile round—are mad against that girl.’
‘Then she should have kept to her own station in life, father,’ said Minnie, ‘and not have given them any hold to talk about her, and then they couldn’t have done it.’
‘Couldn’t have done it, my dear!’ retorted Mr. Omer. ‘Couldn’t have done it! Is that YOUR knowledge of life? What is there that any woman couldn’t do, that she shouldn’t do—especially on the subject of another woman’s good looks?’
I really thought it was all over with Mr. Omer, after he had uttered this libellous pleasantry. He coughed to that extent, and his breath eluded all his attempts to recover it with that obstinacy, that I fully expected to see his head go down behind the counter, and his little black breeches, with the rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees, come quivering up in a last ineffectual struggle. At length, however, he got better, though he still panted hard, and was so exhausted that he was obliged to sit on the stool of the shop-desk.
‘You see,’ he said, wiping his head, and breathing with difficulty, ‘she hasn’t taken much to any companions here; she hasn’t taken kindly to any particular acquaintances and friends, not to mention sweethearts. In consequence, an ill-natured story got about, that Em’ly wanted to be a lady. Now my opinion is, that it came into circulation principally on account of her sometimes saying, at the school, that if she was a lady she would like to do so-and-so for her uncle—don’t you see?—and buy him such-and-such fine things.’
‘I assure you, Mr. Omer, she has said so to me,’ I returned eagerly, ‘when we were both children.’
Mr. Omer nodded his head and rubbed his chin. ‘Just so. Then out of a very little, she could dress herself, you see, better than most others could out of a deal, and that made things unpleasant. Moreover, she was rather what might be called wayward—I’ll go so far as to say what I should call wayward myself,’ said Mr. Omer; ‘didn’t know her own mind quite—a little spoiled—and couldn’t, at first, exactly bind herself down. No more than that was ever said against her, Minnie?’
‘No, father,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘That’s the worst, I believe.’
‘So when she got a situation,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘to keep a fractious old lady company, they didn’t very well agree, and she didn’t stop. At last she came here, apprenticed for three years. Nearly two of ‘em are over, and she has been as good a girl as ever was. Worth any six! Minnie, is she worth any six, now?’
‘Yes, father,’ replied Minnie. ‘Never say I detracted from her!’
‘Very good,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘That’s right. And so, young gentleman,’ he added, after a few moments’ further rubbing of his chin, ‘that you may not consider me long-winded as well as short-breathed, I believe that’s all about it.’
As they had spoken in a subdued tone, while speaking of Em’ly, I had no doubt that she was near. On my asking now, if that were not so, Mr. Omer nodded yes, and nodded towards the door of the parlour. My hurried inquiry if I might peep in, was answered with a free permission; and, looking through the glass, I saw her sitting at her work. I saw her, a most beautiful little creature, with the cloudless blue eyes, that had looked into my childish heart, turned laughingly upon another child of Minnie’s who was playing near her; with enough of wilfulness in her bright face to justify what I had heard; with much of the old capricious coyness lurking in it; but with nothing in her pretty looks, I am sure, but what was meant for goodness and for happiness, and what was on a good and happy course.
The tune across the yard that seemed as if it never had left off—alas! it was the tune that never DOES leave off—was beating, softly, all the while.
‘Wouldn’t you like to step in,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘and speak to her? Walk in and speak to her, sir! Make yourself at home!’
Molto bene, lo ringraziai, sperando che lo fosse stato anche lui.
«Oh! non c’è nulla di cui lamentarsi, sapete», disse il signor Omer. «Scopro che il mio respiro si accorcia, ma di rado si allunga man mano che un uomo invecchia. Lo prendo come viene e ne faccio il massimo. È il modo migliore, no?»
Il signor Omer tossì di nuovo, per aver riso, e fu aiutato a uscire dalla tosse da sua figlia, che ora stava vicino a noi, facendo ballare il suo più piccolo bambino sul bancone.
«Dio mio!» disse il signor Omer. «Sì, proprio così. Due coppie! Ebbene, in quella stessa carrozza, se mi credete, il giorno fu scelto per il matrimonio di Minnie con Joram. «Fate scegliere il giorno, signore», disse Joram. «Sì, fate, papà», disse Minnie. E ora lui è entrato in affari. E guardate qui! Il più giovane!»
Minnie rise, e si lisciò i capelli raccolti sui lati della testa, mentre suo padre metteva uno dei suoi diti grassocci nella mano del bambino con cui danzava sul bancone.
«Due parti, naturalmente!» disse il signor Omer, annuendo con la testa in modo retrospettivo. «Esattamente così! E Joram sta lavorando in questo momento su una grigia con chiodi d’argento, non di questa misura» — la misura del bambino danzante sul bancone — «di almeno due pollici. — Vuole prendere qualcosa?»
Lo ringraziai, ma rifiutai.
«Fammi pensare», disse il signor Omer. «Barkis è la moglie del facchino — Peggotty è la sorella del barcaiolo — aveva qualcosa a che fare con la vostra famiglia? Era al servizio di voi, vero?»
La mia risposta affermativa gli diede grande soddisfazione.
«Credo che il mio respiro si allungherà presto, la mia memoria sta diventando così buona», disse il signor Omer. «Beh, signore, abbiamo qui una giovane parente di lei, che sta svolgendo il suo tirocinio con noi, che ha un gusto così raffinato nel settore della sartoria che - glielo assicuro - non credo che ci sia una Duchessa in Inghilterra che possa eguagliarla».
«Non la piccola Emily?», dissi, involontariamente.
«Il suo nome è Em’ly», disse il signor Omer, «e anche lei è piccola. Ma se mi credete, ha una faccia così tutta sua che metà delle donne di questa città sono furiose con lei.»
«Nonsense, padre!» esclamò Minnie.
«Mia cara», disse il signor Omer, «non dico che sia il tuo caso», facendomi l’occhiolino, «ma dico che metà delle donne di Yarmouth — ah! e nei cinque miglia intorno — sono furiose contro quella ragazza.»
«Allora avrebbe dovuto rimanere nel suo stesso ceto sociale, padre», disse Minnie, «e non avrebbe dato loro alcun pretesto per parlare di lei, e allora non avrebbero potuto farlo.»
«Non avrei potuto farlo, mia cara!» ribatté il signor Omer. «Non avrei potuto farlo! È questa la vostra conoscenza della vita? C’è qualcosa che una donna non potrebbe fare, che non dovrebbe fare, specialmente riguardo alla bellezza di un’altra donna?»
Pensavo davvero che fosse finita per il signor Omer, dopo che aveva pronunciato quella libellante battuta. Tossì a tal punto, e il suo respiro eludeva tutti i suoi tentativi di riprenderlo con tale ostinazione, che mi aspettavo davvero di vederlo afflosciare dietro il bancone, e i suoi piccoli pantaloni neri, con i piccoli mucchietti arrugginiti di nastri sulle ginocchia, sollevarsi tremolanti in un ultimo inutile sforzo. Alla fine, però, si riprese, anche se continuava a ansimare forte, e era così esausto che fu costretto a sedersi sullo sgabello del banco del negozio.
«Vedete», disse, asciugandosi la fronte e respirando a fatica, «non si è molto legata a nessuna compagna qui; non ha preso particolarmente confidenza con nessuna amica o conoscente, per non parlare di innamorati. Di conseguenza, si è diffusa una storia maligna, secondo cui Emily voleva fare la signora. Ora, secondo me, questa storia è stata messa in giro soprattutto perché a volte, a scuola, diceva che se fosse stata una signora le sarebbe piaciuto fare questo o quello per suo zio, capite?, e comprargli tali e tali cose belle.»
«Le assicuro, signor Omer, che me lo ha detto lei,» replicai con vivacità, «quando eravamo entrambi bambini.»
Il signor Omer annuì e si strofinò il mento. «Proprio così. E poi, con pochissimo, lei riusciva a vestirsi meglio di tante altre che avevano molto di più, e questo rendeva le cose spiacevoli. Inoltre, era piuttosto, come dire, capricciosa - vado fino a dire che la chiamerei io stesso capricciosa», disse il signor Omer; «non sapeva bene cosa volesse - un po’ viziata - e all’inizio non riusciva a impegnarsi esattamente. Non fu mai detto niente di peggio contro di lei, Minnie?»
‘No, padre’, disse la signora Joram. ‘Questo è il peggio, credo’.
«Quando trovò un posto», disse il signor Omer, «per ten compagnia a una vecchia signora difficile, non andarono molto d’accordo, e lei non rimase. Alla fine venne qui, in apprendistato per tre anni. Ne sono passati quasi due, ed è stata una brava ragazza come non ne esistono. Vale sei di quelle altre! Minnie, non è vero che vale sei di quelle altre?»
“Sì, padre”, rispose Minnie. “Non dire mai che l’ho sminuita!”
«Molto bene», disse il signor Omer. «Esatto. E così, giovane signore», aggiunse, dopo aver continuato a strofinarsi il mento per qualche istante, «per non farvi pensare che io sia prolisso oltre che affannoso, credo che sia tutto qui».
Poiché avevano parlato a bassa voce, mentre parlavano di Em’ly, non avevo alcun dubbio che fosse vicina. Ora che chiedevo se non fosse così, il signor Omer annuì affermativamente e fece un cenno verso la porta del salotto. La mia fretta di chiedere se potevo dare un’occhiata fu risposta con un permesso generoso; e, guardando attraverso il vetro, la vidi seduta al suo lavoro. La vidi, una creatura piccola e bellissima, con gli occhi azzurri sereni, che avevano guardato nel mio cuore infantile, rivolti ridendo verso un altro bambino di Minnie che giocava vicino a lei; con abbastanza caparbietà nel suo viso luminoso da giustificare ciò che avevo sentito; con molto del vecchio capriccioso imbarazzo che si nascondeva in esso; ma con nulla nei suoi begli sguardi, ne sono sicuro, se non ciò che era destinato alla bontà e alla felicità, e ciò che era su un buon e felice percorso.
La melodia che veniva dal cortile, che sembrava non fosse mai cessata – ahimè, era la melodia che non cessa mai – continuava a suonare, sommessa, tutto il tempo.
«Non vorreste entrare», disse il signor Omer, «e parlarle? Entrate e parlatele, signore! Mettetevi a vostro agio!»
I was too bashful to do so then—I was afraid of confusing her, and I was no less afraid of confusing myself.—but I informed myself of the hour at which she left of an evening, in order that our visit might be timed accordingly; and taking leave of Mr. Omer, and his pretty daughter, and her little children, went away to my dear old Peggotty’s.
Here she was, in the tiled kitchen, cooking dinner! The moment I knocked at the door she opened it, and asked me what I pleased to want. I looked at her with a smile, but she gave me no smile in return. I had never ceased to write to her, but it must have been seven years since we had met.
‘Is Mr. Barkis at home, ma’am?’ I said, feigning to speak roughly to her.
‘He’s at home, sir,’ returned Peggotty, ‘but he’s bad abed with the rheumatics.’
‘Don’t he go over to Blunderstone now?’ I asked.
‘When he’s well he do,’ she answered.
‘Do YOU ever go there, Mrs. Barkis?’
She looked at me more attentively, and I noticed a quick movement of her hands towards each other.
‘Because I want to ask a question about a house there, that they call the—what is it?—the Rookery,’ said I.
She took a step backward, and put out her hands in an undecided frightened way, as if to keep me off.
‘Peggotty!’ I cried to her.
She cried, ‘My darling boy!’ and we both burst into tears, and were locked in one another’s arms.
What extravagances she committed; what laughing and crying over me; what pride she showed, what joy, what sorrow that she whose pride and joy I might have been, could never hold me in a fond embrace; I have not the heart to tell. I was troubled with no misgiving that it was young in me to respond to her emotions. I had never laughed and cried in all my life, I dare say—not even to her—more freely than I did that morning.
‘Barkis will be so glad,’ said Peggotty, wiping her eyes with her apron, ‘that it’ll do him more good than pints of liniment. May I go and tell him you are here? Will you come up and see him, my dear?’
Of course I would. But Peggotty could not get out of the room as easily as she meant to, for as often as she got to the door and looked round at me, she came back again to have another laugh and another cry upon my shoulder. At last, to make the matter easier, I went upstairs with her; and having waited outside for a minute, while she said a word of preparation to Mr. Barkis, presented myself before that invalid.
He received me with absolute enthusiasm. He was too rheumatic to be shaken hands with, but he begged me to shake the tassel on the top of his nightcap, which I did most cordially. When I sat down by the side of the bed, he said that it did him a world of good to feel as if he was driving me on the Blunderstone road again. As he lay in bed, face upward, and so covered, with that exception, that he seemed to be nothing but a face—like a conventional cherubim—he looked the queerest object I ever beheld.
‘What name was it, as I wrote up in the cart, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis, with a slow rheumatic smile.
‘Ah! Mr. Barkis, we had some grave talks about that matter, hadn’t we?’
‘I was willin’ a long time, sir?’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘A long time,’ said I.
‘And I don’t regret it,’ said Mr. Barkis. ‘Do you remember what you told me once, about her making all the apple parsties and doing all the cooking?’
‘Yes, very well,’ I returned.
‘It was as true,’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘as turnips is. It was as true,’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding his nightcap, which was his only means of emphasis, ‘as taxes is. And nothing’s truer than them.’
Mr. Barkis turned his eyes upon me, as if for my assent to this result of his reflections in bed; and I gave it.
‘Nothing’s truer than them,’ repeated Mr. Barkis; ‘a man as poor as I am, finds that out in his mind when he’s laid up. I’m a very poor man, sir!’
‘I am sorry to hear it, Mr. Barkis.’
‘A very poor man, indeed I am,’ said Mr. Barkis.
Here his right hand came slowly and feebly from under the bedclothes, and with a purposeless uncertain grasp took hold of a stick which was loosely tied to the side of the bed. After some poking about with this instrument, in the course of which his face assumed a variety of distracted expressions, Mr. Barkis poked it against a box, an end of which had been visible to me all the time. Then his face became composed.
‘Old clothes,’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘Oh!’ said I.
‘I wish it was Money, sir,’ said Mr. Barkis.
‘I wish it was, indeed,’ said I.
‘But it AIN’T,’ said Mr. Barkis, opening both his eyes as wide as he possibly could.
I expressed myself quite sure of that, and Mr. Barkis, turning his eyes more gently to his wife, said:
‘She’s the usefullest and best of women, C. P. Barkis. All the praise that anyone can give to C. P. Barkis, she deserves, and more! My dear, you’ll get a dinner today, for company; something good to eat and drink, will you?’
I should have protested against this unnecessary demonstration in my honour, but that I saw Peggotty, on the opposite side of the bed, extremely anxious I should not. So I held my peace.
‘I have got a trifle of money somewhere about me, my dear,’ said Mr. Barkis, ‘but I’m a little tired. If you and Mr. David will leave me for a short nap, I’ll try and find it when I wake.’
We left the room, in compliance with this request. When we got outside the door, Peggotty informed me that Mr. Barkis, being now ‘a little nearer’ than he used to be, always resorted to this same device before producing a single coin from his store; and that he endured unheard-of agonies in crawling out of bed alone, and taking it from that unlucky box. In effect, we presently heard him uttering suppressed groans of the most dismal nature, as this magpie proceeding racked him in every joint; but while Peggotty’s eyes were full of compassion for him, she said his generous impulse would do him good, and it was better not to check it. So he groaned on, until he had got into bed again, suffering, I have no doubt, a martyrdom; and then called us in, pretending to have just woke up from a refreshing sleep, and to produce a guinea from under his pillow. His satisfaction in which happy imposition on us, and in having preserved the impenetrable secret of the box, appeared to be a sufficient compensation to him for all his tortures.
Ero troppo timido per farlo allora: temevo di confonderla, e non temevo meno di confondermi io stesso; ma mi informai dell’ora in cui lei partiva la sera, in modo che la nostra visita potesse essere programmata di conseguenza; e presi congedo dal signor Omer, dalla sua graziosa figlia e dai suoi piccoli bambini, e me ne andai dalla mia cara vecchia Peggotty.
Eccola lì, nella cucina piastrellata, a preparare la cena! Nel momento in cui bussai alla porta, lei l’aprì e mi chiese cosa volessi. La guardai con un sorriso, ma lei non mi restituì il sorriso. Non avevo mai smesso di scrivere a lei, ma dovevano essere passati sette anni da quando ci eravamo visti.
«È il signor Barkis a casa, signora?» dissi, fingendo di parlare in modo brusco con lei.
«È a casa, signore», rispose Peggotty, «ma è a letto con i reumatismi.»
«Non va più a Blunderstone?» chiesi.
«Quando è bene lo fa», rispose.
‘Va mai là, signora Barkis?’
Mi guardò più attentamente, e notai un rapido movimento delle sue mani l’una verso l’altra.
«Perché voglio fare una domanda su una casa lì, che chiamano la—come si chiama?—la Rookery», dissi io.
Fece un passo indietro e tese le mani in un gesto incerto e spaventato, come per tenermi a distanza.
«Peggotty!» le gridai.
Ella esclamò: «Mio caro ragazzo!», e noi scoppiammo entrambi in lacrime e ci stringemmo l’uno nelle braccia dell’altro.
Che stravaganze commetteva; che risate e pianti per me; che orgoglio mostrava, che gioia, che dolore che lei, il cui orgoglio e gioia avrei potuto essere, non avrebbe mai potuto tenermi in un tenero abbraccio; non ho il coraggio di raccontarlo. Non ero turbato da alcun dubbio che fosse giovane in me rispondere alle sue emozioni. Non avevo mai riso e pianto in tutta la mia vita, oserei dire—neanche con lei—più liberamente di quanto non facessi quella mattina.
«Barkis sarà così contento», disse Peggotty, asciugandosi gli occhi con il grembiule, «che gli farà più bene di litri di linimento. Posso andare a dirgli che sei qui? Vuoi salire a vederlo, tesoro?»
Certo che lo avrei fatto. Ma Peggotty non riusciva a uscire dalla stanza così facilmente come aveva intenzione, perché ogni volta che arrivava alla porta e si voltava a guardarmi, tornava indietro per ridere ancora e piangere ancora sulla mia spalla. Alla fine, per rendere la cosa più facile, salii al piano di sopra con lei; e dopo aver aspettato fuori per un minuto, mentre diceva una parola di preparazione a Mr. Barkis, mi presentai davanti a quell’invalido.
Mi accolse con entusiasmo assoluto. Era troppo reumatico per stringermi la mano, ma mi pregò di stringere il pompon sulla cima del suo berretto da notte, cosa che feci con grande cordialità. Quando mi sedetti accanto al letto, disse che gli faceva un gran bene sentirsi come se mi stesse portando di nuovo sulla strada di Blunderstone strada. Mentre giaceva a letto, con il viso rivolto verso l’alto e coperto, a parte quella eccezione, sembrava di non essere altro che un viso, come un cherubino convenzionale, appariva l’oggetto più strano che avessi mai visto.
«Che nome era, quando l’ho scritto sul carro, signore?» disse il signor Barkis, con un lento sorriso reumatico.
«Ah! Signor Barkis, abbiamo avuto alcuni discorsi seri su quella faccenda, non è vero?»
‘Ero disposto a lungo tempo, signore?’ disse il signor Barkis.
«Un lungo periodo,» dissi io.
«E non me ne pento», disse il signor Barkis. «Ti ricordi cosa mi dicesti una volta, che faceva tutti i pasticci di mele e cucinava tutto lei?»
‘Sì, molto bene,’ risposi.
«Era vero», disse il signor Barkis, «come i cavoli. Era vero», disse il signor Barkis, annuendo col berretto da notte, che era il suo unico mezzo di enfasi, «come le tasse. E niente è più vero di quelle.»
Mr. Barkis volse i suoi occhi su di me, come se cercasse il mio assenso a questo risultato delle sue riflessioni a letto; e io glielo diedi.
«Non c’è niente di più vero di questo», ripeté il signor Barkis; «un uomo povero come me, lo scopre quando è costretto a letto. Sono un uomo molto povero, signore!»
Mi spiace saperlo, signor Barkis.
«Un uomo molto povero, in effetti lo sono», disse il signor Barkis.
Qui la sua mano destra uscì lentamente e debolmente da sotto le coperte, e con una presa incerta e senza scopo afferrò un bastone che era legato in modo lento al lato del letto. Dopo aver frugato un po’ con questo strumento, nel corso del quale il suo viso assunse una varietà di espressioni distratte, il signor Barkis lo spinse contro una scatola, una parte della quale era stata visibile a me tutto il tempo. Poi il suo viso divenne composto.
«Abiti vecchi», disse il signor Barkis.
«Oh!» dissi io.
«Vorrei che fossero soldi, signore», disse il signor Barkis.
«Lo desidero davvero», dissi.
«Ma non è così», disse il signor Barkis, aprendo entrambi gli occhi quanto più poteva.
Mi espressi con assoluta certezza, e il signor Barkis, rivolgendo uno sguardo più dolce alla moglie, disse:
«È la donna più utile e migliore che ci sia, C. P. Barkis. Merita tutto il bene che si può dire di C. P. Barkis, e anche di più! Mia cara, oggi preparerai una cena per gli ospiti; qualcosa di buono da mangiare e da bere, vero?»
Avrei dovuto protestare contro questa inutile dimostrazione in mio onore, ma vidi che Peggotty, dall’altra parte del letto, era estremamente ansiosa che non lo facessi. Così tenni la bocca chiusa.
«Ho un po’ di soldi da qualche parte su di me, mia cara», disse il signor Barkis, «ma sono un po’ stanco. Se voi e il signor David mi lasciate fare un breve pisolino, cercherò di trovarli quando mi sveglierò.»
Uscimmo dalla stanza, accondiscendendo a questa richiesta. Quando fummo fuori dalla porta, Peggotty mi disse che il signor Barkis, essendo ora “un po’ più vicino” di quanto fosse solito, ricorreva sempre a questo stesso stratagemma prima di estrarre una sola moneta dal suo tesoro; e che sopportava agonia inaudita nel trascinarsi fuori dal letto da solo, e nel prendere la moneta da quella sfortunata scatola. Infatti, poco dopo lo sentimmo emettere gemiti soffocati della più triste natura, mentre questa procedura da gazza ladra lo faceva soffrire in ogni articolazione; ma mentre gli occhi di Peggotty erano pieni di compassione per lui, disse che il suo generoso impulso gli avrebbe fatto bene, e che era meglio non reprimerlo. Così continuò a gemere, finché non fu di nuovo a letto, soffrendo, ne sono senza dubbio, un martirio; e poi ci chiamò dentro, fingendo di essersi appena svegliato da un ristoratore sonno, e di estrarre una ghinea da sotto il cuscino. La sua soddisfazione per questa felice imposizione su di noi, e per aver preservato l’inaccessibile segreto della scatola, sembrava essere una compensazione sufficiente per lui per tutti i suoi tormenti.
I prepared Peggotty for Steerforth’s arrival and it was not long before he came. I am persuaded she knew no difference between his having been a personal benefactor of hers, and a kind friend to me, and that she would have received him with the utmost gratitude and devotion in any case. But his easy, spirited good humour; his genial manner, his handsome looks, his natural gift of adapting himself to whomsoever he pleased, and making direct, when he cared to do it, to the main point of interest in anybody’s heart; bound her to him wholly in five minutes. His manner to me, alone, would have won her. But, through all these causes combined, I sincerely believe she had a kind of adoration for him before he left the house that night.
He stayed there with me to dinner—if I were to say willingly, I should not half express how readily and gaily. He went into Mr. Barkis’s room like light and air, brightening and refreshing it as if he were healthy weather. There was no noise, no effort, no consciousness, in anything he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even now, in the remembrance.
We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs, unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth, hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘You’ll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall sleep at the hotel.’
‘But to bring you so far,’ I returned, ‘and to separate, seems bad companionship, Steerforth.’
‘Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?’ he said. ‘What is “seems”, compared to that?’ It was settled at once.
He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started forth, at eight o’clock, for Mr. Peggotty’s boat. Indeed, they were more and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception, and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me, then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was worthless to him, and next minute thrown away—I say, if anyone had told me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty’s door.
‘This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?’
‘Dismal enough in the dark,’ he said: ‘and the sea roars as if it were hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?’ ‘That’s the boat,’ said I.
‘And it’s the same I saw this morning,’ he returned. ‘I came straight to it, by instinct, I suppose.’
We said no more as we approached the light, but made softly for the door. I laid my hand upon the latch; and whispering Steerforth to keep close to me, went in.
A murmur of voices had been audible on the outside, and, at the moment of our entrance, a clapping of hands: which latter noise, I was surprised to see, proceeded from the generally disconsolate Mrs. Gummidge. But Mrs. Gummidge was not the only person there who was unusually excited. Mr. Peggotty, his face lighted up with uncommon satisfaction, and laughing with all his might, held his rough arms wide open, as if for little Em’ly to run into them; Ham, with a mixed expression in his face of admiration, exultation, and a lumbering sort of bashfulness that sat upon him very well, held little Em’ly by the hand, as if he were presenting her to Mr. Peggotty; little Em’ly herself, blushing and shy, but delighted with Mr. Peggotty’s delight, as her joyous eyes expressed, was stopped by our entrance (for she saw us first) in the very act of springing from Ham to nestle in Mr. Peggotty’s embrace. In the first glimpse we had of them all, and at the moment of our passing from the dark cold night into the warm light room, this was the way in which they were all employed: Mrs. Gummidge in the background, clapping her hands like a madwoman.
The little picture was so instantaneously dissolved by our going in, that one might have doubted whether it had ever been. I was in the midst of the astonished family, face to face with Mr. Peggotty, and holding out my hand to him, when Ham shouted:
‘Mas’r Davy! It’s Mas’r Davy!’
In a moment we were all shaking hands with one another, and asking one another how we did, and telling one another how glad we were to meet, and all talking at once. Mr. Peggotty was so proud and overjoyed to see us, that he did not know what to say or do, but kept over and over again shaking hands with me, and then with Steerforth, and then with me, and then ruffling his shaggy hair all over his head, and laughing with such glee and triumph, that it was a treat to see him.
‘Why, that you two gent’lmen—gent’lmen growed—should come to this here roof tonight, of all nights in my life,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is such a thing as never happened afore, I do rightly believe! Em’ly, my darling, come here! Come here, my little witch! There’s Mas’r Davy’s friend, my dear! There’s the gent’lman as you’ve heerd on, Em’ly. He comes to see you, along with Mas’r Davy, on the brightest night of your uncle’s life as ever was or will be, Gorm the t’other one, and horroar for it!’
Ho preparato Peggotty all’arrivo di Steerforth e non passò molto tempo prima che arrivasse. Sono convinto che non facesse distinzione tra il fatto che fosse stato un benefattore personale per lei o un amico gentile nei miei confronti, e che lo avrebbe ricevuto con la massima gratitudine e devozione in ogni caso. Ma il suo umore facile, spiritoso e buono umore; il suo modo cordiale, il suo aspetto attraente, il suo dono naturale di adattarsi a chiunque gli piacesse, e di andare dritto, quando gli interessava, al punto centrale di interesse nel cuore di chiunque; la legarono completamente a lui in cinque minuti. Il suo comportamento nei miei confronti, solo, l’avrebbe conquistata. Ma, per tutte queste ragioni combinati, credo sinceramente che provasse una specie di adorazione per lui prima che lasciasse la casa quella sera.
Restò lì con me a cena: se dicessi che lo fece volentieri, non esprimerei neanche la metà di quanto lo fece prontamente e allegramente. Entrò nella stanza del signor Barkis come luce e aria, illuminandola e rinfrescandola come se fosse un clima salubre. Non c’era rumore, né sforzo, né consapevolezza in nulla di ciò che faceva; ma in tutto c’era un’indescrivibile leggerezza, una apparente impossibilità di fare qualcos’altro, o di fare qualcosa di meglio, che era così elegante, così naturale e piacevole, che mi sopraffà, anche ora, al ricordo.
Ci divertimmo nel piccolo salotto, dove il Libro dei Martiri, non sfogliato da quando era il mio tempo, era disposto sulla scrivania come un tempo, e dove io ora sfogliavo le sue terrificanti immagini, ricordando le vecchie sensazioni che avevano suscitato, ma senza provarle. Quando Peggotty parlò di quella che chiamava la mia stanza, e di come fosse pronta per me alla notte, e di come sperasse che la occupassi, prima che io potessi anche solo guardare Steerforth, esitante, lui aveva già capito tutto.
«Naturalmente», disse. «Voi dormirete qui, mentre noi restiamo, e io dormirò all’hotel.»
«Ma portarti fin qui», replicai, «e poi separarci, mi sembra una brutta compagnia, Steerforth.»
«Ma, a nome del Cielo, a quale classe sociale appartieni naturalmente?» disse. «Cosa sono le “apparenze” in confronto a questo?» La questione fu subito risolta.
Conservò tutte le sue deliziose qualità fino all’ultimo, fino a quando non partimmo, alle otto e mezza, per la barca del signor Peggotty. Anzi, si manifestavano sempre più luminosamente man mano che le ore passavano; perché pensavo già allora, e non ho alcun dubbio ora, che la consapevolezza del successo nella sua determinazione di piacere, lo ispirava con una nuova delicatezza di percezione, e lo rendeva, sottile com’era, più facile. Se qualcuno mi avesse detto allora che tutto ciò era un brillante gioco, giocato per l’emozione del momento, per l’impiego di alti spiriti, nell’amore inconsapevole della superiorità, in un semplice e dispendioso corso di conquista di ciò che per lui non aveva valore, e gettato via il minuto dopo — dico, se qualcuno mi avesse detto una tale menzogna quella sera, mi domando in che modo la mia indignazione avrebbe trovato sfogo! Probabilmente solo in un aumento, se possibile, dei sentimenti romantici di fedeltà e amicizia con cui camminavo al suo fianco, sopra le oscure sabbie invernali verso la vecchia barca; il vento sospirava intorno a noi ancora più tristemente, di quanto avesse sospirato e gemuto nella notte in cui per la prima volta oscurai la porta del signor Peggotty.
‘Questo è un posto selvaggio, Steerforth, non è vero?’
«Abbastanza tetra al buio», disse: «e il mare ruggisce come se avesse fame di noi. È la barca quella che vedo laggiù con una luce?» «Sì, è la barca», dissi io.
«Ed è la stessa che ho visto questa mattina», rispose. «Sono venuto dritto qui, per istinto, immagino.»
Non dicemmo altro mentre ci avvicinavamo alla luce, ma ci dirigemmo silenziosamente verso la porta. Posai la mano sul pomello; e sussurrando a Steerforth di rimanere vicino a me, entrai.
Un mormorio di voci era stato udibile all’esterno, e, nel momento del nostro ingresso, un battito di mani: rumore quest’ultimo che, con mia sorpresa, proveniva dalla generalmente disperata Mrs. Gummidge. Ma Mrs. Gummidge non era l’unica persona lì presente ad essere insolitamente eccitata. Mr. Peggotty, il volto illuminato da un’insolita soddisfazione e ridendo a crepapelle, teneva le sue ruvide braccia spalancate, come se aspettasse che la piccola Em’ly vi corresse dentro; Ham, con un’espressione mista di ammirazione, esultanza e una sorta di goffa timidezza che gli stava molto bene, teneva la piccola Em’ly per mano, come se la stesse presentando a Mr. Peggotty; la piccola Em’ly stessa, arrossendo e timorosa, ma deliziata dalla gioia di Mr. Peggotty, come esprimevano i suoi occhi gioiosi, fu fermata dal nostro ingresso (perché fu la prima a vederci) proprio mentre stava per saltare da Ham per accoccolarsi tra le braccia di Mr. Peggotty. Al primo sguardo che gettammo su tutti loro, e nel momento in cui passammo dalla fredda e buia notte alla calda e luminosa stanza, questo era il modo in cui erano tutti impegnati: Mrs. Gummidge sullo sfondo, battendo le mani come una pazza.
Il piccolo quadro si dissolse così istantaneamente quando entrammo, che si sarebbe potuto dubitare che fosse mai esistito. Ero in mezzo alla famiglia attonita, faccia a faccia con il signor Peggotty, e gli tendendo la mano, quando Ham gridò:
‘Signor Davy! È il signor Davy!’
In un attimo ci stringevamo tutti la mano a vicenda, chiedendoci come stessimo, dicendoci quanto fossimo felici di rivederci, e parlando tutti insieme. Il signor Peggotty era così orgoglioso e felice di vederci che non sapeva cosa dire o fare, ma continuava a stringermi la mano, poi a Steerforth, poi a me, poi si arruffava i capelli arruffati su tutta la testa, e rideva con tale allegria e trionfo, che era un piacere vederlo.
«Ma che, che voi due gentiluomini — gentiluomini adulti — siate venuti su questo tetto stasera, di tutte le sere della mia vita», disse il signor Peggotty, «è una cosa che non è mai successa prima, ne sono certo! Emily, tesoro mio, vieni qui! Vieni qui, mia piccola strega! Ecco il compagno del signorino Davy, mia cara! Ecco il gentiluomo di cui hai sentito parlare, Emily. È venuto a trovarti insieme al signorino Davy, nella più luminosa notte della vita di tuo zio che sia mai stata o che mai sarà, Gorm l’altro, e orrore per questo!»
After delivering this speech all in a breath, and with extraordinary animation and pleasure, Mr. Peggotty put one of his large hands rapturously on each side of his niece’s face, and kissing it a dozen times, laid it with a gentle pride and love upon his broad chest, and patted it as if his hand had been a lady’s. Then he let her go; and as she ran into the little chamber where I used to sleep, looked round upon us, quite hot and out of breath with his uncommon satisfaction.
‘If you two gent’lmen—gent’lmen growed now, and such gent’lmen—’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘So th’ are, so th’ are!’ cried Ham. ‘Well said! So th’ are. Mas’r Davy bor’—gent’lmen growed—so th’ are!’
‘If you two gent’lmen, gent’lmen growed,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘don’t ex-cuse me for being in a state of mind, when you understand matters, I’ll arks your pardon. Em’ly, my dear!—She knows I’m a going to tell,’ here his delight broke out again, ‘and has made off. Would you be so good as look arter her, Mawther, for a minute?’
Mrs. Gummidge nodded and disappeared.
‘If this ain’t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, sitting down among us by the fire, ‘the brightest night o’ my life, I’m a shellfish—biled too—and more I can’t say. This here little Em’ly, sir,’ in a low voice to Steerforth, ‘—her as you see a blushing here just now—’
Steerforth only nodded; but with such a pleased expression of interest, and of participation in Mr. Peggotty’s feelings, that the latter answered him as if he had spoken.
‘To be sure,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘That’s her, and so she is. Thankee, sir.’
Ham nodded to me several times, as if he would have said so too.
‘This here little Em’ly of ours,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘has been, in our house, what I suppose (I’m a ignorant man, but that’s my belief) no one but a little bright-eyed creetur can be in a house. She ain’t my child; I never had one; but I couldn’t love her more. You understand! I couldn’t do it!’
‘I quite understand,’ said Steerforth.
‘I know you do, sir,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘and thankee again. Mas’r Davy, he can remember what she was; you may judge for your own self what she is; but neither of you can’t fully know what she has been, is, and will be, to my loving art. I am rough, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I am as rough as a Sea Porkypine; but no one, unless, mayhap, it is a woman, can know, I think, what our little Em’ly is to me. And betwixt ourselves,’ sinking his voice lower yet, ‘that woman’s name ain’t Missis Gummidge neither, though she has a world of merits.’ Mr. Peggotty ruffled his hair again, with both hands, as a further preparation for what he was going to say, and went on, with a hand upon each of his knees:
‘There was a certain person as had know’d our Em’ly, from the time when her father was drownded; as had seen her constant; when a babby, when a young gal, when a woman. Not much of a person to look at, he warn’t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘something o’ my own build—rough—a good deal o’ the sou’-wester in him—wery salt—but, on the whole, a honest sort of a chap, with his art in the right place.’
I thought I had never seen Ham grin to anything like the extent to which he sat grinning at us now.
‘What does this here blessed tarpaulin go and do,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with his face one high noon of enjoyment, ‘but he loses that there art of his to our little Em’ly. He follers her about, he makes hisself a sort o’ servant to her, he loses in a great measure his relish for his wittles, and in the long-run he makes it clear to me wot’s amiss. Now I could wish myself, you see, that our little Em’ly was in a fair way of being married. I could wish to see her, at all ewents, under articles to a honest man as had a right to defend her. I don’t know how long I may live, or how soon I may die; but I know that if I was capsized, any night, in a gale of wind in Yarmouth Roads here, and was to see the town-lights shining for the last time over the rollers as I couldn’t make no head against, I could go down quieter for thinking “There’s a man ashore there, iron-true to my little Em’ly, God bless her, and no wrong can touch my Em’ly while so be as that man lives.”’
Mr. Peggotty, in simple earnestness, waved his right arm, as if he were waving it at the town-lights for the last time, and then, exchanging a nod with Ham, whose eye he caught, proceeded as before.
‘Well! I counsels him to speak to Em’ly. He’s big enough, but he’s bashfuller than a little un, and he don’t like. So I speak. “What! Him!” says Em’ly. “Him that I’ve know’d so intimate so many years, and like so much. Oh, Uncle! I never can have him. He’s such a good fellow!” I gives her a kiss, and I says no more to her than, “My dear, you’re right to speak out, you’re to choose for yourself, you’re as free as a little bird.” Then I aways to him, and I says, “I wish it could have been so, but it can’t. But you can both be as you was, and wot I say to you is, Be as you was with her, like a man.” He says to me, a-shaking of my hand, “I will!” he says. And he was—honourable and manful—for two year going on, and we was just the same at home here as afore.’
Mr. Peggotty’s face, which had varied in its expression with the various stages of his narrative, now resumed all its former triumphant delight, as he laid a hand upon my knee and a hand upon Steerforth’s (previously wetting them both, for the greater emphasis of the action), and divided the following speech between us:
‘All of a sudden, one evening—as it might be tonight—comes little Em’ly from her work, and him with her! There ain’t so much in that, you’ll say. No, because he takes care on her, like a brother, arter dark, and indeed afore dark, and at all times. But this tarpaulin chap, he takes hold of her hand, and he cries out to me, joyful, “Look here! This is to be my little wife!” And she says, half bold and half shy, and half a laughing and half a crying, “Yes, Uncle! If you please.”—If I please!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, rolling his head in an ecstasy at the idea; ‘Lord, as if I should do anythink else!—“If you please, I am steadier now, and I have thought better of it, and I’ll be as good a little wife as I can to him, for he’s a dear, good fellow!” Then Missis Gummidge, she claps her hands like a play, and you come in. Theer! the murder’s out!’ said Mr. Peggotty—‘You come in! It took place this here present hour; and here’s the man that’ll marry her, the minute she’s out of her time.’
Dopo aver pronunciato questo discorso tutto d’un fiato, e con straordinaria animazione e piacere, il signor Peggotty mise una delle sue grandi mani raptamente su ciascun lato del viso della nipote, e baciandola una dozzina di volte, lo posò con un dolce orgoglio e amore sul suo ampio petto, e lo accarezzò come se la sua mano fosse stata quella di una signora. Poi la lasciò andare; e mentre lei correva nella piccola camera dove ero solito dormire, si guardò intorno su di noi, tutto rosso e senza fiato per la sua insoddisfazione insolita.
«Se voi due gentiluomini — gentiluomini ormai adulti, e tali gentiluomini —» disse il signor Peggotty.
«Ecco cosa siete, ecco cosa siete!» gridò Ham. «Bene detto! Ecco cosa siete. Il piccolo Davy è diventato—i gentiluomini sono cresciuti—ecco cosa siete!»
«Se voi due gentiluomini, gentiluomini cresciuti», disse il signor Peggotty, «non mi scusate per essere in uno stato d’animo, quando avrete capito la faccenda, vi chiederò scusa. Emily, mia cara! — Lei sa che sto per raccontare», qui la sua gioia esplose di nuovo, «e se n’è andata. Volete avere la bontà di guardarla, Mawther, per un minuto?»
La signora Gummidge annuì e sparì.
«Se questa non è», disse il signor Peggotty, sedendosi tra noi accanto al fuoco, «la più luminosa notte della mia vita, sono un mollusco — bollito pure — e altro non posso dire. Questa qui piccola Emily, signore», a bassa voce a Steerforth, «— quella che avete visto arrossire qui poco fa —»
Steerforth si limitò ad annuire; ma con un’espressione così compiaciuta di interesse e di partecipazione ai sentimenti di Mr. Peggotty, che quest’ultimo gli rispose come se avesse parlato.
“Certamente,” disse il signor Peggotty. “È lei, e così è. Grazie, signore.”
Ham mi fece cenno col capo parecchie volte, come se anche lui avesse voluto dire la stessa cosa.
«Questa qui, la piccola Em’ly», disse il signor Peggotty, «è stata, nella nostra casa, quello che suppongo (sono un uomo ignorante, ma questa è la mia convinzione) che nessuno, tranne una piccola creatura dagli occhi luminosi, possa essere in una casa. Non è mia figlia; non ne ho mai avuta una; ma non potrei amare di più. Mi capite! Non potrei farlo!»
«Capisco perfettamente», disse Steerforth.
«So che lo fate, signore», rispose il signor Peggotty, «e vi ringrazio ancora. Il piccolo Davy può ricordare com’era; voi potete giudicare per voi stesso com’è; ma nessuno di voi può conoscere appieno ciò che è stata, è e sarà per la mia amata arte. Sono un uomo rude, signore», disse il signor Peggotty, «sono rude come un riccio di mare; ma nessuno, a meno che non sia una donna, può sapere, credo, ciò che la nostra piccola Emily rappresenta per me. E tra noi», abbassando ancora di più la voce, «il nome di quella donna non è né più né meno quello di Missis Gummidge, anche se ha un mondo di meriti». Il signor Peggotty si arruffò di nuovo i capelli con entrambe le mani, come ulteriore preparazione per ciò che stava per dire, e continuò, con una mano su ciascun ginocchio:
«C’era una certa persona che aveva conosciuto la nostra Emily fin dal tempo in cui suo padre era annegato; che l’aveva vista costante; quando era un bebè, quando era una giovane ragazza, quando era una donna. Non era una persona molto attraente,» disse Mr. Peggotty, «qualcosa di simile alla mia corporatura — ruvido — con molto vento da sud-ovest in lui — molto salato — ma, nel complesso, un tipo onesto, con il suo talento nel posto giusto.»
Pensavo di non aver mai visto Ham sorridere a tal punto come stava facendo ora, seduto a ghignare verso di noi.
«Che cosa fa questo benedetto telone», disse il signor Peggotty, con il volto illuminato da un mezzogiorno di gioia, «se non perdere quell’arte che ha per la nostra piccola Emily. La segue dappertutto, si fa una sorta di servo per lei, perde in gran parte il gusto per il cibo, e alla fine mi fa capire che cosa non va. Ora io potrei desiderare, sapete, che la nostra piccola Emily fosse sulla buona strada per sposarsi. Mi piacerebbe vederla, in ogni caso, fidanzata con un uomo onesto che avesse il diritto di difenderla. Non so per quanto tempo potrò vivere, o quando potrei morire; ma so che se affondassi, una notte qualsiasi, in una tempesta di vento nelle acque di Yarmouth, e dovessi vedere le luci della città brillare per l’ultima volta sopra le onde contro cui non potrei resistere, potrei andare più tranquillo pensando “C’è un uomo a riva, fedele come l’acciaio alla mia piccola Emily, Dio la benedica, e nessun male può toccare la mia Emily finché quell’uomo vive.”»
Il signor Peggotty, con semplice sincerità, agitò il braccio destro, come se lo stesse agitando verso le luci della città per l’ultima volta, e poi, scambiando un cenno con Ham, il cui sguardo aveva incrociato, proseguì come prima.
‘Ebbene! Io gli consiglio di parlare con Em’ly. È abbastanza grande, ma è più timido di un bambino, e non gli piace. Allora parlo io. “Cosa! Lui!” dice Em’ly. “Lui che ho conosciuto così intimamente per tanti anni, e che mi è tanto caro. Oh, zio! Non potrei mai averlo. È un ragazzo così buono!” Le do un bacio, e non le dico altro se non: “Mia cara, hai ragione a parlare, devi scegliere per te stessa, sei libera come un uccellino.” Poi mi rivolgo a lui, e dico: “Avrei voluto che fosse diverso, ma non può essere. Ma potete entrambi essere come siete stati, e quello che ti dico è: Sii con lei come sei stato, da uomo.” Lui mi dice, stringendomi la mano: “Lo sarò!” dice. E lo è stato, onorevole e coraggioso, per quasi due anni, e qui a casa siamo stati proprio come prima.’
Il volto di Mr. Peggotty, che aveva variato la sua espressione nei diversi stadi del suo racconto, ora riprendeva tutto il suo precedente trionfante piacere, mentre posava una mano sul mio ginocchio e una mano su quella di Steerforth (dopo averle bagnate entrambe, per dare maggiore enfasi all’azione), e divideva il seguente discorso tra noi:
«All’improvviso, una sera - come potrebbe essere questa sera - arriva la piccola Em’ly dal suo lavoro, e lui con lei! Non c’è nulla di strano in questo, direte voi. No, perché lui si prende cura di lei, come un fratello, dopo il tramonto, e anzi anche prima del tramonto, e in ogni momento. Ma questo tizio con il cappotto di tela cerata, le prende la mano, e mi grida gioioso: “Guarda qui! Questa sarà la mia piccola moglie!” E lei dice, mezza audace e mezza timida, e mezza ridendo e mezza piangendo: “Sì, zio! Se per te va bene.” - Se per me va bene!» esclamò il signor Peggotty, agitando la testa in estasi all’idea; «Signore, come se facessi altro! - “Se per te va bene, ora sono più stabile, e ho riflettuto meglio, e sarò la migliore piccola moglie possibile per lui, perché è un caro, bravo ragazzo!” Allora la signora Gummidge, si batte le mani come in un gioco, e tu entri. Ecco! il segreto è svelato!» disse il signor Peggotty - «Tu entri! È successo proprio in questo momento; ed ecco l’uomo che la sposerà, il minuto in cui avrà finito il suo apprendistato.»
Ham staggered, as well he might, under the blow Mr. Peggotty dealt him in his unbounded joy, as a mark of confidence and friendship; but feeling called upon to say something to us, he said, with much faltering and great difficulty:
‘She warn’t no higher than you was, Mas’r Davy—when you first come—when I thought what she’d grow up to be. I see her grown up—gent’lmen—like a flower. I’d lay down my life for her—Mas’r Davy—Oh! most content and cheerful! She’s more to me—gent’lmen—than—she’s all to me that ever I can want, and more than ever I—than ever I could say. I—I love her true. There ain’t a gent’lman in all the land—nor yet sailing upon all the sea—that can love his lady more than I love her, though there’s many a common man—would say better—what he meant.’
I thought it affecting to see such a sturdy fellow as Ham was now, trembling in the strength of what he felt for the pretty little creature who had won his heart. I thought the simple confidence reposed in us by Mr. Peggotty and by himself, was, in itself, affecting. I was affected by the story altogether. How far my emotions were influenced by the recollections of my childhood, I don’t know. Whether I had come there with any lingering fancy that I was still to love little Em’ly, I don’t know. I know that I was filled with pleasure by all this; but, at first, with an indescribably sensitive pleasure, that a very little would have changed to pain.
Therefore, if it had depended upon me to touch the prevailing chord among them with any skill, I should have made a poor hand of it. But it depended upon Steerforth; and he did it with such address, that in a few minutes we were all as easy and as happy as it was possible to be.
‘Mr. Peggotty,’ he said, ‘you are a thoroughly good fellow, and deserve to be as happy as you are tonight. My hand upon it! Ham, I give you joy, my boy. My hand upon that, too! Daisy, stir the fire, and make it a brisk one! and Mr. Peggotty, unless you can induce your gentle niece to come back (for whom I vacate this seat in the corner), I shall go. Any gap at your fireside on such a night—such a gap least of all—I wouldn’t make, for the wealth of the Indies!’
So Mr. Peggotty went into my old room to fetch little Em’ly. At first little Em’ly didn’t like to come, and then Ham went. Presently they brought her to the fireside, very much confused, and very shy,—but she soon became more assured when she found how gently and respectfully Steerforth spoke to her; how skilfully he avoided anything that would embarrass her; how he talked to Mr. Peggotty of boats, and ships, and tides, and fish; how he referred to me about the time when he had seen Mr. Peggotty at Salem House; how delighted he was with the boat and all belonging to it; how lightly and easily he carried on, until he brought us, by degrees, into a charmed circle, and we were all talking away without any reserve.
Em’ly, indeed, said little all the evening; but she looked, and listened, and her face got animated, and she was charming. Steerforth told a story of a dismal shipwreck (which arose out of his talk with Mr. Peggotty), as if he saw it all before him—and little Em’ly’s eyes were fastened on him all the time, as if she saw it too. He told us a merry adventure of his own, as a relief to that, with as much gaiety as if the narrative were as fresh to him as it was to us—and little Em’ly laughed until the boat rang with the musical sounds, and we all laughed (Steerforth too), in irresistible sympathy with what was so pleasant and light-hearted. He got Mr. Peggotty to sing, or rather to roar, ‘When the stormy winds do blow, do blow, do blow’; and he sang a sailor’s song himself, so pathetically and beautifully, that I could have almost fancied that the real wind creeping sorrowfully round the house, and murmuring low through our unbroken silence, was there to listen.
As to Mrs. Gummidge, he roused that victim of despondency with a success never attained by anyone else (so Mr. Peggotty informed me), since the decease of the old one. He left her so little leisure for being miserable, that she said next day she thought she must have been bewitched.
But he set up no monopoly of the general attention, or the conversation. When little Em’ly grew more courageous, and talked (but still bashfully) across the fire to me, of our old wanderings upon the beach, to pick up shells and pebbles; and when I asked her if she recollected how I used to be devoted to her; and when we both laughed and reddened, casting these looks back on the pleasant old times, so unreal to look at now; he was silent and attentive, and observed us thoughtfully. She sat, at this time, and all the evening, on the old locker in her old little corner by the fire—Ham beside her, where I used to sit. I could not satisfy myself whether it was in her own little tormenting way, or in a maidenly reserve before us, that she kept quite close to the wall, and away from him; but I observed that she did so, all the evening.
As I remember, it was almost midnight when we took our leave. We had had some biscuit and dried fish for supper, and Steerforth had produced from his pocket a full flask of Hollands, which we men (I may say we men, now, without a blush) had emptied. We parted merrily; and as they all stood crowded round the door to light us as far as they could upon our road, I saw the sweet blue eyes of little Em’ly peeping after us, from behind Ham, and heard her soft voice calling to us to be careful how we went.
‘A most engaging little Beauty!’ said Steerforth, taking my arm. ‘Well! It’s a quaint place, and they are quaint company, and it’s quite a new sensation to mix with them.’
‘How fortunate we are, too,’ I returned, ‘to have arrived to witness their happiness in that intended marriage! I never saw people so happy. How delightful to see it, and to be made the sharers in their honest joy, as we have been!’
‘That’s rather a chuckle-headed fellow for the girl; isn’t he?’ said Steerforth.
He had been so hearty with him, and with them all, that I felt a shock in this unexpected and cold reply. But turning quickly upon him, and seeing a laugh in his eyes, I answered, much relieved:
‘Ah, Steerforth! It’s well for you to joke about the poor! You may skirmish with Miss Dartle, or try to hide your sympathies in jest from me, but I know better. When I see how perfectly you understand them, how exquisitely you can enter into happiness like this plain fisherman’s, or humour a love like my old nurse’s, I know that there is not a joy or sorrow, not an emotion, of such people, that can be indifferent to you. And I admire and love you for it, Steerforth, twenty times the more!’
He stopped, and, looking in my face, said, ‘Daisy, I believe you are in earnest, and are good. I wish we all were!’ Next moment he was gaily singing Mr. Peggotty’s song, as we walked at a round pace back to Yarmouth.
Ham vacillò, come bene poteva, sotto il colpo che il signor Peggotty gli aveva assestato nella sua gioia senza limiti, come segno di fiducia e amicizia; ma sentendosi chiamato a dire qualcosa a noi, disse, con molta esitazione e grande difficoltà:
«Non era più alta di te, padroncino Davy, quando sei arrivato, quando pensavo a come sarebbe cresciuta. L’ho vista crescere, signori, come un fiore. Darei la vita per lei, padroncino Davy, oh, con la massima contentezza e allegria! Lei è più di tutto per me, signori, è tutto ciò che potrei mai desiderare e più di quanto potrei mai, più di quanto potrei mai dire. Io, io amo lei veramente. Non c’è un gentiluomo in tutto il paese, né che naviga su tutti i mari, che possa amare la sua dama più di quanto io ami lei, anche se ci sono molti uomini comuni che, lo direbbero meglio, ciò che intendono».
Pensavo fosse commovente vedere un uomo robusto come Ham tremare per l’intensità dei sentimenti che provava per quella graziosa creatura che gli aveva rubato il cuore. Pensavo che la semplice fiducia riposta in noi da Mr. Peggotty e da lui stesso fosse, di per sé, commovente. Ero commosso dalla storia nel suo insieme. Non so fino a che punto le mie emozioni fossero influenzate dai ricordi della mia infanzia. Non so se fossi arrivato lì con l’idea persistente di dover ancora amare la piccola Emily. So che tutto questo mi ha riempito di piacere; ma, all’inizio, di un piacere indescrivibilmente sensibile, che un nonnulla avrebbe potuto trasformare in dolore.
Pertanto, se fosse dipeso da me toccare la corda dominante tra loro con qualche abilità, avrei fatto una pessima figura. Ma dipendeva da Steerforth; e lui lo fece con tale abilità, che in pochi minuti eravamo tutti a nostro agio e felici quanto era possibile esserlo.
«Signor Peggotty», disse, «siete un brav’uomo in tutto e per tutto, e meritate di essere felice come lo siete stasera. Lo giuro sulla mia mano! Ham, ti auguro ogni bene, ragazzo mio. Lo giuro anche su questo! Daisy, ravviva il fuoco e fai in modo che sia vivace! E signor Peggotty, a meno che non possiate convincere la vostra gentile nipote a tornare (per la quale ho lasciato questo posto nell’angolo), me ne andrò. Non vorrei lasciare un vuoto presso il vostro caminetto in una serata del genere, e tanto meno in questo vuoto, nemmeno per la ricchezza delle Indie!»
Così il signor Peggotty andò nella mia vecchia stanza a prendere la piccola Emily. All’inizio la piccola Emily non voleva venire, e allora andò Ham. Poco dopo la portarono al focolare, molto confusa e timida, ma presto si sentì più sicura quando vide quanto gentilmente e rispettosamente Steerforth le parlava; quanto abilmente evitava qualsiasi cosa che potesse metterla in imbarazzo; come parlava al signor Peggotty di barche, navi, maree e pesci; come si riferiva a me riguardo al tempo in cui aveva visto il signor Peggotty a Salem House; quanto fosse entusiasta della barca e di tutto ciò che le apparteneva; come conduceva la conversazione in modo leggero e disinvolto, fino a portarci, gradualmente, in un cerchio incantato, e noi tutti parlavamo senza alcuna riserva.
Em’ly, infatti, parlò poco per tutta la sera; ma guardava, e ascoltava, e il suo viso si animò, ed era incantevole. Steerforth raccontò una storia di un naufragio desolante (che era nata dal suo discorso con il signor Peggotty), come se lo vedesse tutto davanti a sé—e gli occhi di Em’ly erano fissi su di lui per tutto il tempo, come se lo vedesse anche lei. Ci raccontò una allegra avventura sua, come sollievo a quella, con tanta gaiezza come se il racconto fosse per lui fresco quanto lo era per noi—e la piccola Em’ly rideva finché la barca risuonava dei suoni musicali, e ridevamo tutti (anche Steerforth), in irresistibile simpatia con ciò che era così piacevole e allegro. Fece cantare, o piuttosto ruggire, al signor Peggotty ‘Quando soffiano i venti burrascosi, soffiano, soffiano’; e lui stesso cantò una canzone da marinaio, così pateticamente e bellamente, che avrei quasi potuto immaginare che il vero vento che strisciava tristemente intorno alla casa, e mormorava basso attraverso il nostro ininterrotto silenzio, fosse lì ad ascoltare.
Per quanto riguarda la signora Gummidge, la risollevò da quella condizione di disperazione con un successo mai raggiunto da nessun altro (così mi informò il signor Peggotty) da quando era morta la vecchia. Le lasciò così poco tempo libero per essere infelice che il giorno dopo disse che pensava di essere stata stregata.
Ma non si arrogò il monopolio dell’attenzione generale o della conversazione. Quando la piccola Emily divenne più coraggiosa e parlò (ma ancora timidamente) attraverso il fuoco con me, dei nostri vecchi vagabondaggi sulla spiaggia, per raccogliere conchiglie e sassolini; e quando le chiesi se ricordava come ero solito essere devoto a lei; e quando entrambi ridemmo e arrossimmo, gettando questi sguardi indietro sui vecchi tempi piacevoli, così irreali da guardare ora; lui era silenzioso e attento, e ci osservava pensieroso. Lei sedeva, in questo momento, e per tutta la sera, sul vecchio cassettone nel suo vecchio piccolo angolo accanto al fuoco—Ham accanto a lei, dove ero solito sedere. Non riuscivo a capire se fosse nel suo piccolo modo tormentoso, o in una riserva da fanciulla davanti a noi, che rimase piuttosto vicina al muro, e lontana da lui; ma notai che lo fece, per tutta la sera.
Come ricordo, era quasi mezzanotte quando ci congedammo. Avevamo mangiato qualche biscotto e pesce secco per cena, e Steerforth aveva tirato fuori dalla tasca una fiasca piena di gin olandese, che noi uomini (ora posso dire noi uomini, senza arrossire) avevamo svuotato. Ci separammo allegramente; e mentre tutti erano ammassati intorno alla porta per illuminarci fin dove potevano lungo la nostra strada, vidi i dolci occhi azzurri della piccola Emily che ci spiavano dietro Ham, e sentii la sua voce soave che ci chiamava per dirci di stare attenti a come andavamo.
«Una piccola bellezza davvero affascinante!» disse Steerforth, prendendomi a braccio. «Beh! È un posto strano, e sono compagni strani, e mescolarsi con loro è una sensazione del tutto nuova.»
«Come siamo fortunati anche noi», replicai, «ad essere arrivati per assistere alla loro felicità in quel progettato matrimonio! Non ho mai visto persone così felici. Che delizia vederlo, e di essere resi partecipi della loro onesta gioia, come siamo stati!»
«È un tipo piuttosto scemo per la ragazza, non è vero?» disse Steerforth.
Egli era stato così cordiale con lui, e con tutti loro, che provai una scossa in questa risposta inaspettata e fredda. Ma voltandomi rapidamente verso di lui, e vedendo una risata nei suoi occhi, risposi, molto sollevato:
«Ah, Steerforth! È bene per te scherzare sui poveri! Puoi batterti con Miss Dartle, o cercare di nascondere le tue simpatie in scherzo a me, ma io so di meglio. Quando vedo quanto perfettamente li comprendi, quanto delicatamente tu possa entrare in una felicità come quella di questo semplice pescatore, o umorizzare un amore come quello della mia vecchia balia, so che non c’è una gioia o un dolore, non un’emozione, di tali persone, che possa essere indifferente a te. E ti ammiro e ti amo per questo, Steerforth, venti volte di più!»
Si fermò, e guardandomi in faccia disse: «Daisy, credo che tu sia sincera e che tu sia buona. Vorrei che lo fossimo tutti!». Un attimo dopo stava già cantando allegramente la canzone del signor Peggotty, mentre camminavamo a passo svelto verso Yarmouth.
CHAPTER 22. SOME OLD SCENES, AND SOME NEW PEOPLE
Steerforth and I stayed for more than a fortnight in that part of the country. We were very much together, I need not say; but occasionally we were asunder for some hours at a time. He was a good sailor, and I was but an indifferent one; and when he went out boating with Mr. Peggotty, which was a favourite amusement of his, I generally remained ashore. My occupation of Peggotty’s spare-room put a constraint upon me, from which he was free: for, knowing how assiduously she attended on Mr. Barkis all day, I did not like to remain out late at night; whereas Steerforth, lying at the Inn, had nothing to consult but his own humour. Thus it came about, that I heard of his making little treats for the fishermen at Mr. Peggotty’s house of call, ‘The Willing Mind’, after I was in bed, and of his being afloat, wrapped in fishermen’s clothes, whole moonlight nights, and coming back when the morning tide was at flood. By this time, however, I knew that his restless nature and bold spirits delighted to find a vent in rough toil and hard weather, as in any other means of excitement that presented itself freshly to him; so none of his proceedings surprised me.
Another cause of our being sometimes apart, was, that I had naturally an interest in going over to Blunderstone, and revisiting the old familiar scenes of my childhood; while Steerforth, after being there once, had naturally no great interest in going there again. Hence, on three or four days that I can at once recall, we went our several ways after an early breakfast, and met again at a late dinner. I had no idea how he employed his time in the interval, beyond a general knowledge that he was very popular in the place, and had twenty means of actively diverting himself where another man might not have found one.
For my own part, my occupation in my solitary pilgrimages was to recall every yard of the old road as I went along it, and to haunt the old spots, of which I never tired. I haunted them, as my memory had often done, and lingered among them as my younger thoughts had lingered when I was far away. The grave beneath the tree, where both my parents lay—on which I had looked out, when it was my father’s only, with such curious feelings of compassion, and by which I had stood, so desolate, when it was opened to receive my pretty mother and her baby—the grave which Peggotty’s own faithful care had ever since kept neat, and made a garden of, I walked near, by the hour. It lay a little off the churchyard path, in a quiet corner, not so far removed but I could read the names upon the stone as I walked to and fro, startled by the sound of the church-bell when it struck the hour, for it was like a departed voice to me. My reflections at these times were always associated with the figure I was to make in life, and the distinguished things I was to do. My echoing footsteps went to no other tune, but were as constant to that as if I had come home to build my castles in the air at a living mother’s side.
There were great changes in my old home. The ragged nests, so long deserted by the rooks, were gone; and the trees were lopped and topped out of their remembered shapes. The garden had run wild, and half the windows of the house were shut up. It was occupied, but only by a poor lunatic gentleman, and the people who took care of him. He was always sitting at my little window, looking out into the churchyard; and I wondered whether his rambling thoughts ever went upon any of the fancies that used to occupy mine, on the rosy mornings when I peeped out of that same little window in my night-clothes, and saw the sheep quietly feeding in the light of the rising sun.
Our old neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Grayper, were gone to South America, and the rain had made its way through the roof of their empty house, and stained the outer walls. Mr. Chillip was married again to a tall, raw-boned, high-nosed wife; and they had a weazen little baby, with a heavy head that it couldn’t hold up, and two weak staring eyes, with which it seemed to be always wondering why it had ever been born.
It was with a singular jumble of sadness and pleasure that I used to linger about my native place, until the reddening winter sun admonished me that it was time to start on my returning walk. But, when the place was left behind, and especially when Steerforth and I were happily seated over our dinner by a blazing fire, it was delicious to think of having been there. So it was, though in a softened degree, when I went to my neat room at night; and, turning over the leaves of the crocodile-book (which was always there, upon a little table), remembered with a grateful heart how blest I was in having such a friend as Steerforth, such a friend as Peggotty, and such a substitute for what I had lost as my excellent and generous aunt.
My nearest way to Yarmouth, in coming back from these long walks, was by a ferry. It landed me on the flat between the town and the sea, which I could make straight across, and so save myself a considerable circuit by the high road. Mr. Peggotty’s house being on that waste-place, and not a hundred yards out of my track, I always looked in as I went by. Steerforth was pretty sure to be there expecting me, and we went on together through the frosty air and gathering fog towards the twinkling lights of the town.
One dark evening, when I was later than usual—for I had, that day, been making my parting visit to Blunderstone, as we were now about to return home—I found him alone in Mr. Peggotty’s house, sitting thoughtfully before the fire. He was so intent upon his own reflections that he was quite unconscious of my approach. This, indeed, he might easily have been if he had been less absorbed, for footsteps fell noiselessly on the sandy ground outside; but even my entrance failed to rouse him. I was standing close to him, looking at him; and still, with a heavy brow, he was lost in his meditations.
CAPITOLO 22. ALTRI LUOGHI, ALTRI VOLTI
Steerforth e io rimanemmo per più di due settimane in quella parte del paese. Eravamo molto insieme, non c’è bisogno che lo dica; ma occasionalmente eravamo separati per alcune ore alla volta. Era un buon marinaio, e io ero solo un marinaio mediocre; e quando usciva in barca con il signor Peggotty, che era un passatempo preferito da lui, io generalmente rimanevo a riva. La mia occupazione della stanza libera di Peggotty mi imponeva un vincolo, da cui lui era libero: perché, sapendo quanto assiduamente lei assisteva il signor Barkis tutto il giorno, non mi piaceva rimanere fuori fino a tardi la notte; mentre Steerforth, alloggiando all’osteria, non aveva altro da consultare che il suo proprio umore. Così accadde che sentii parlare dei suoi piccoli trattamenti per i pescatori nella casa di ritrovo del signor Peggotty, “La Mente Disposta”, dopo che ero a letto, e di come lui fosse in mare, avvolto nei vestiti dei pescatori, per intere notti di luna, e tornasse quando la marea del mattino era al suo apice. A questo punto, tuttavia, sapevo che il suo irrequieto carattere e i suoi audaci spiriti si deliziavano a trovare una via di sfogo nel duro lavoro e nel maltempo, come in qualsiasi altro mezzo di eccitazione che si presentasse fresco a lui; così nessuna delle sue azioni mi sorprese.
Un’altra ragione per cui a volte ci separavamo era che io avevo naturalmente interesse a recarmi a Blunderstone e a rivisitare i vecchi luoghi familiari della mia infanzia; mentre Steerforth, dopo esserci stato una volta, non aveva naturalmente grande interesse a tornarci. Pertanto, in tre o quattro giorni che ricordo subito, ci separammo dopo una prima colazione e ci ritrovammo a una cena tardiva. Non avevo idea di come impiegasse il suo tempo nel frattempo, oltre a una conoscenza generale che era molto popolare in quel luogo e aveva venti modi di divertirsi attivamente dove un altro uomo non ne avrebbe trovato uno.
Per quanto mi riguarda, il mio passatempo durante le mie solitarie peregrinazioni era quello di ricordare ogni tratto della vecchia strada mentre la percorrevo, e di frequentare i vecchi luoghi, di cui non mi stancavo mai. Li frequentavo, come spesso aveva fatto la mia memoria, e mi soffermavo tra loro come i miei pensieri più giovani si erano soffermati quando ero lontano. La tomba sotto l’albero, dove giacevano entrambi i miei genitori, su cui avevo spesso guardato, quando era solo di mio padre, con sentimenti così curiosi di compassione, e presso la quale mi ero fermato, così desolato, quando fu aperta per ricevere la mia bella madre e il suo bambino, la tomba che la fedele cura di Peggotty aveva sempre mantenuto ordinata, trasformandola in un giardino, camminavo vicino per ore. Si trovava un po’ fuori dal sentiero del cimitero, in un angolo tranquillo, non così lontano che non potessi leggere i nomi sulla pietra mentre camminavo avanti e indietro, spaventato dal suono della campana della chiesa quando batteva l’ora, perché per me era come una voce scomparsa. Le mie riflessioni in quei momenti erano sempre associate alla figura che avrei dovuto fare nella vita e alle cose distinte che avrei dovuto fare. I miei passi riecheggiavano in nessun’altra melodia, ma erano costanti come se fossi tornato a casa a costruire i miei castelli in aria accanto a una madre vivente.
C’erano grandi cambiamenti nella mia vecchia casa. I nidi stracciati, così a lungo abbandonati dai corvi, erano scomparsi; e gli alberi erano potati e privati delle loro forme ricordate. Il giardino era diventato selvaggio e metà delle finestre della casa erano chiuse. Era occupata, ma solo da un povero signore pazzo e dalle persone che si prendevano cura di lui. Era sempre seduto alla mia piccola finestra, guardando fuori verso il cimitero; e mi chiedevo se i suoi pensieri vaganti andassero mai su alcuna delle fantasie che solitamente occupavano i miei, nelle mattine rosa quando sbirciavo fuori da quella stessa piccola finestra in pigiama, e vedevo le pecore pascolare tranquillamente alla luce del sole nascente.
I nostri vecchi vicini, il signor e la signora Grayper, erano partiti per il Sud America, e la pioggia aveva trovato la via attraverso il tetto della loro vuota casa, e aveva macchiato le pareti esterne. Il signor Chillip si era risposato con una moglie alta, ossuta e dal naso prominente; e avevano un bambino gracile, con una testa pesante che non riusciva a tenere sollevata, e due deboli occhi spalancati, con i quali sembrava essere sempre a chiedersi perché mai fosse nato.
Era con un singolare miscuglio di tristezza e piacere che mi soffermavo nei dintorni del mio paese natale, finché il sole invernale che arrossava mi ammoniva che era tempo di iniziare la mia passeggiata di ritorno. Ma, quando il luogo era alle mie spalle, e specialmente quando Steerforth ed io eravamo felicemente seduti a cena davanti a un focolare crepitante, era delizioso pensare di essere stati lì. Così era, sebbene in misura attenuata, quando andavo nella mia ordinata stanza di notte; e, sfogliando le pagine del libro del coccodrillo (che era sempre lì, su un piccolo tavolo), ricordavo con un cuore grato quanto fossi benedetto ad avere un amico come Steerforth, un’amica come Peggotty, e una sostituta di ciò che avevo perso come la mia eccellente e generosa zia.
La via più breve per raggiungere Yarmouth, al ritorno di queste lunghe passeggiate, era una traghettatrice. Mi sbarcava sulla pianura tra la città e il mare, che potevo attraversare dritto, e così risparmiarmi un notevole giro in più per la strada alta. La casa del signor Peggotty essendo in quel luogo desolato, e non a cento metri fuori dalla mia strada, ci passavo sempre davanti. Steerforth era quasi sempre lì ad aspettarmi, e insieme proseguivamo attraverso l’aria gelida e la nebbia che si addensava verso le luci scintillanti della città.
Una sera buia, quando ero più tardi del solito - poiché quel giorno avevo fatto la mia visita di congedo a Blunderstone, dato che stavamo per tornare a casa - lo trovai solo nella casa del signor Peggotty, seduto pensieroso davanti al fuoco. Era così assorto nei suoi pensieri che non si accorse affatto del mio arrivo. In realtà, anche se fosse stato meno assorbito, avrebbe potuto facilmente non accorgersene, perché i passi cadevano silenziosamente sul terreno sabbioso all’esterno; ma anche il mio ingresso non riuscì a svegliarlo. Ero in piedi vicino a lui, a guardarlo; e ancora, con la fronte corrugata, era perso nelle sue meditazioni.
He gave such a start when I put my hand upon his shoulder, that he made me start too.
‘You come upon me,’ he said, almost angrily, ‘like a reproachful ghost!’
‘I was obliged to announce myself, somehow,’ I replied. ‘Have I called you down from the stars?’
‘No,’ he answered. ‘No.’
‘Up from anywhere, then?’ said I, taking my seat near him.
‘I was looking at the pictures in the fire,’ he returned.
‘But you are spoiling them for me,’ said I, as he stirred it quickly with a piece of burning wood, striking out of it a train of red-hot sparks that went careering up the little chimney, and roaring out into the air.
‘You would not have seen them,’ he returned. ‘I detest this mongrel time, neither day nor night. How late you are! Where have you been?’
‘I have been taking leave of my usual walk,’ said I.
‘And I have been sitting here,’ said Steerforth, glancing round the room, ‘thinking that all the people we found so glad on the night of our coming down, might—to judge from the present wasted air of the place—be dispersed, or dead, or come to I don’t know what harm. David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!’
‘My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?’
‘I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!’
There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
‘It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew,’ he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney-piece, with his face towards the fire, ‘than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser, and be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil’s bark of a boat, within the last half-hour!’
I was so confounded by the alteration in him, that at first I could only observe him in silence, as he stood leaning his head upon his hand, and looking gloomily down at the fire. At length I begged him, with all the earnestness I felt, to tell me what had occurred to cross him so unusually, and to let me sympathize with him, if I could not hope to advise him. Before I had well concluded, he began to laugh—fretfully at first, but soon with returning gaiety.
‘Tut, it’s nothing, Daisy! nothing!’ he replied. ‘I told you at the inn in London, I am heavy company for myself, sometimes. I have been a nightmare to myself, just now—must have had one, I think. At odd dull times, nursery tales come up into the memory, unrecognized for what they are. I believe I have been confounding myself with the bad boy who “didn’t care”, and became food for lions—a grander kind of going to the dogs, I suppose. What old women call the horrors, have been creeping over me from head to foot. I have been afraid of myself.’
‘You are afraid of nothing else, I think,’ said I.
‘Perhaps not, and yet may have enough to be afraid of too,’ he answered. ‘Well! So it goes by! I am not about to be hipped again, David; but I tell you, my good fellow, once more, that it would have been well for me (and for more than me) if I had had a steadfast and judicious father!’
His face was always full of expression, but I never saw it express such a dark kind of earnestness as when he said these words, with his glance bent on the fire.
‘So much for that!’ he said, making as if he tossed something light into the air, with his hand. “‘Why, being gone, I am a man again,” like Macbeth. And now for dinner! If I have not (Macbeth-like) broken up the feast with most admired disorder, Daisy.’
‘But where are they all, I wonder!’ said I.
‘God knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘After strolling to the ferry looking for you, I strolled in here and found the place deserted. That set me thinking, and you found me thinking.’
The advent of Mrs. Gummidge with a basket, explained how the house had happened to be empty. She had hurried out to buy something that was needed, against Mr. Peggotty’s return with the tide; and had left the door open in the meanwhile, lest Ham and little Em’ly, with whom it was an early night, should come home while she was gone. Steerforth, after very much improving Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits by a cheerful salutation and a jocose embrace, took my arm, and hurried me away.
He had improved his own spirits, no less than Mrs. Gummidge’s, for they were again at their usual flow, and he was full of vivacious conversation as we went along.
‘And so,’ he said, gaily, ‘we abandon this buccaneer life tomorrow, do we?’
‘So we agreed,’ I returned. ‘And our places by the coach are taken, you know.’
‘Ay! there’s no help for it, I suppose,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have almost forgotten that there is anything to do in the world but to go out tossing on the sea here. I wish there was not.’
‘As long as the novelty should last,’ said I, laughing.
‘Like enough,’ he returned; ‘though there’s a sarcastic meaning in that observation for an amiable piece of innocence like my young friend. Well! I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David. I know I am; but while the iron is hot, I can strike it vigorously too. I could pass a reasonably good examination already, as a pilot in these waters, I think.’
‘Mr. Peggotty says you are a wonder,’ I returned.
‘A nautical phenomenon, eh?’ laughed Steerforth.
‘Indeed he does, and you know how truly; I know how ardent you are in any pursuit you follow, and how easily you can master it. And that amazes me most in you, Steerforth—that you should be contented with such fitful uses of your powers.’
‘Contented?’ he answered, merrily. ‘I am never contented, except with your freshness, my gentle Daisy. As to fitfulness, I have never learnt the art of binding myself to any of the wheels on which the Ixions of these days are turning round and round. I missed it somehow in a bad apprenticeship, and now don’t care about it.---You know I have bought a boat down here?’
Quando gli posai la mano sulla spalla, ebbe un tale sussulto che fece sussultare anche me.
«Mi sorprendete», disse, quasi con rabbia, «come un fantasma accusatore!»
«Ero costretto a farmi conoscere in qualche modo», risposi. «Ti ho forse chiamato giù dalle stelle?»
‘No’, rispose. ‘No’.
«Dunque, si può salire da qualsiasi posto?», dissi, accomodandomi vicino a lui.
«Stavo guardando le immagini nel fuoco», rispose.
«Ma li sta rovinando per me», dissi, mentre lo mescolava rapidamente con un pezzo di legno ardente, facendo schizzare fuori una scia di scintille incandescenti che salivano a razzo su per il piccolo camino, e ruggivano fuori nell’aria.
«Non li avreste visti», rispose. «Detesto questo tempo ibrido, né giorno né notte. Come siete in ritardo! Dove siete stato?»
«Mi sono congedato dal mio solito percorso», dissi.
«E sono stato seduto qui», disse Steerforth, guardandosi intorno nella stanza, «pensando che tutte le persone che abbiamo trovato così felici la sera del nostro arrivo, potrebbero - a giudicare dall’aspetto attuale di abbandono del luogo - essere disperse, o morte, o venute a chissà quale male. David, vorrei che avessi avuto un padre saggio negli ultimi vent’anni!»
‘Caro Steerforth, che succede?’
«Vorrei con tutta la mia anima essere stato meglio guidato!» esclamò. «Vorrei con tutta la mia anima poter guidare me stesso meglio!»
C’era in lui una disperazione appassionata che mi lasciò davvero stupito. Era più diverso da se stesso di quanto avrei mai potuto credere possibile.
«Sarebbe meglio essere questo povero Peggotty, o quel suo goffo nipote», disse, alzandosi e appoggiandosi malinconicamente al caminetto, con il viso rivolto verso la fiamma, «che essere io stesso, venti volte più ricco e venti volte più saggio, e essere il tormento per me stesso che sono stato, in questa barca del diavolo, nell’ultima mezz’ora!»
Ero così sconcertato dal cambiamento in lui, che all’inizio potevo solo osservarlo in silenzio, mentre stava appoggiato con la testa sulla mano e guardava cupamente il fuoco. Alla fine lo pregai, con tutta l’earnestness che provavo, di dirmi cosa fosse accaduto per attraversargli così inusitato, e di lasciarmi simpatizzare con lui, se non potevo sperare di consigliarlo. Prima che avessi bene concluso, lui iniziò a ridere—all’inizio con irritazione, ma presto con ritornante allegria.
‘Tut, non è nulla, Daisy! nulla!’ rispose. ‘Te l’ho detto all’ osteria a Londra, a volte sono un peso anche per me stesso. Sono stato un incubo per me stesso, proprio ora — devo averne fatto uno, credo. A volte strane volte, le favole della memoria risalgono, irriconosciute per quello che sono. Credo di essermi confuso con il cattivo ragazzo che “non gli importava”, e divenne cibo per i leoni — una specie di andare ai cani, suppongo. Quel che le vecchie chiamano orrore, mi ha invaso dalla testa ai piedi. Ho avuto paura di me stesso.’
«Non credo che tu abbia paura di nient’altro», dissi io.
«Forse no, eppure potrebbe avere abbastanza ragioni per aver paura», rispose. «Bene! E così va! Non sono sul punto di essere ingannato di nuovo, David; ma ti dico ancora una volta, mio buon amico, che sarebbe stato bene per me (e per più di me) se avessi avuto un padre costante e giudizioso!»
Il suo volto era sempre pieno di espressione, ma non l’avevo mai visto esprimere un’aria così seria e cupa come quando pronunciò queste parole, con lo sguardo fisso sul fuoco.
«E questo è quanto!» disse, come se avesse lanciato qualcosa di leggero in aria con la mano. «“Ebbene, essendo scomparso, sono di nuovo un uomo”», come Macbeth. E ora a cena! Se non ho (Macbeth-like) interrotto il banchetto con un disordine ammirato, Daisy.
«Ma dove sono tutti, mi domando!» dissi io.
«Dio lo sa», disse Steerforth. «Dopo aver passeggiato fino al traghetto cercandoti, sono entrato qui e ho trovato il posto deserto. Questo mi ha fatto riflettere, e tu mi hai trovato mentre riflettevo.»
L’arrivo della signora Gummidge con un cesto spiegò come mai la casa fosse rimasta vuota. Era uscita di corsa per comprare qualcosa di necessario prima del ritorno di Peggotty con la marea; e nel frattempo aveva lasciato la porta aperta, nel caso che Ham e la piccola Emily, per i quali era una serata sera presto, tornassero a casa mentre lei era fuori. Steerforth, dopo aver molto risollevato il morale della signora Gummidge con un saluto allegro e un abbraccio scherzoso, mi prese a braccetto e mi trascinò via.
Aveva risollevato il proprio morale, non meno di quello della signora Gummidge, perché erano di nuovo al loro solito livello, e lui era pieno di vivace conversazione mentre procedevamo.
‘E così,’ disse allegramente, ‘abbandoniamo questa vita da pirati domani, vero?’
‘Così abbiamo deciso’, risposi. ‘E i nostri posti sul calesse sono prenotati, lo sai.’
«Ah! Non c’è rimedio, immagino», disse Steerforth. «Ho quasi dimenticato che c’è qualcosa da fare al mondo oltre a uscire a navigare su questo mare. Vorrei che non ci fosse».
«Finché la novità durerà», dissi ridendo.
«Probabilmente», rispose; «anche se c’è un significato sarcastico in quell’osservazione per un amabile esempio di innocenza come il mio giovane amico. Bene! Oso dire che sono un tipo capriccioso, David. Lo so che lo sono; ma finché il ferro è caldo, posso colpirlo con vigore. Penso che potrei sostenere un esame abbastanza buono già, come pilota in queste acque.»
«Il signor Peggotty dice che siete una meraviglia», replicai.
«Un fenomeno nautico, eh?» rise Steerforth.
«In effetti lo fa, e tu sai quanto sia vero; so quanto sei appassionato in qualsiasi impresa tu intraprenda, e quanto facilmente tu possa padroneggiarla. E ciò che più mi stupisce in te, Steerforth, è che tu possa accontentarti di un uso così intermittente delle tue capacità.»
«Contento?» rispose, allegramente. «Non sono mai contento, tranne che della tua freschezza, mia dolce Daisy. Per quanto riguarda l’irrequietezza, non ho mai imparato l’arte di legarmi a nessuna delle ruote su cui gli Ixioni di questi tempi girano e rigirano. Mi è sfuggito in qualche modo durante un brutto apprendistato, e ora non me ne importa.---Sai che ho comprato una barca qui?»
‘What an extraordinary fellow you are, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed, stopping—for this was the first I had heard of it. ‘When you may never care to come near the place again!’
‘I don’t know that,’ he returned. ‘I have taken a fancy to the place. At all events,’ walking me briskly on, ‘I have bought a boat that was for sale—a clipper, Mr. Peggotty says; and so she is—and Mr. Peggotty will be master of her in my absence.’
‘Now I understand you, Steerforth!’ said I, exultingly. ‘You pretend to have bought it for yourself, but you have really done so to confer a benefit on him. I might have known as much at first, knowing you. My dear kind Steerforth, how can I tell you what I think of your generosity?’
‘Tush!’ he answered, turning red. ‘The less said, the better.’
‘Didn’t I know?’ cried I, ‘didn’t I say that there was not a joy, or sorrow, or any emotion of such honest hearts that was indifferent to you?’
‘Aye, aye,’ he answered, ‘you told me all that. There let it rest. We have said enough!’
Afraid of offending him by pursuing the subject when he made so light of it, I only pursued it in my thoughts as we went on at even a quicker pace than before.
‘She must be newly rigged,’ said Steerforth, ‘and I shall leave Littimer behind to see it done, that I may know she is quite complete. Did I tell you Littimer had come down?’
‘No.’
‘Oh yes! came down this morning, with a letter from my mother.’
As our looks met, I observed that he was pale even to his lips, though he looked very steadily at me. I feared that some difference between him and his mother might have led to his being in the frame of mind in which I had found him at the solitary fireside. I hinted so.
‘Oh no!’ he said, shaking his head, and giving a slight laugh. ‘Nothing of the sort! Yes. He is come down, that man of mine.’
‘The same as ever?’ said I.
‘The same as ever,’ said Steerforth. ‘Distant and quiet as the North Pole. He shall see to the boat being fresh named. She’s the “Stormy Petrel” now. What does Mr. Peggotty care for Stormy Petrels! I’ll have her christened again.’
‘By what name?’ I asked.
‘The “Little Em’ly”.’
As he had continued to look steadily at me, I took it as a reminder that he objected to being extolled for his consideration. I could not help showing in my face how much it pleased me, but I said little, and he resumed his usual smile, and seemed relieved.
‘But see here,’ he said, looking before us, ‘where the original little Em’ly comes! And that fellow with her, eh? Upon my soul, he’s a true knight. He never leaves her!’
Ham was a boat-builder in these days, having improved a natural ingenuity in that handicraft, until he had become a skilled workman. He was in his working-dress, and looked rugged enough, but manly withal, and a very fit protector for the blooming little creature at his side. Indeed, there was a frankness in his face, an honesty, and an undisguised show of his pride in her, and his love for her, which were, to me, the best of good looks. I thought, as they came towards us, that they were well matched even in that particular.
She withdrew her hand timidly from his arm as we stopped to speak to them, and blushed as she gave it to Steerforth and to me. When they passed on, after we had exchanged a few words, she did not like to replace that hand, but, still appearing timid and constrained, walked by herself. I thought all this very pretty and engaging, and Steerforth seemed to think so too, as we looked after them fading away in the light of a young moon.
Suddenly there passed us—evidently following them—a young woman whose approach we had not observed, but whose face I saw as she went by, and thought I had a faint remembrance of. She was lightly dressed; looked bold, and haggard, and flaunting, and poor; but seemed, for the time, to have given all that to the wind which was blowing, and to have nothing in her mind but going after them. As the dark distant level, absorbing their figures into itself, left but itself visible between us and the sea and clouds, her figure disappeared in like manner, still no nearer to them than before.
‘That is a black shadow to be following the girl,’ said Steerforth, standing still; ‘what does it mean?’
He spoke in a low voice that sounded almost strange to Me.
‘She must have it in her mind to beg of them, I think,’ said I.
‘A beggar would be no novelty,’ said Steerforth; ‘but it is a strange thing that the beggar should take that shape tonight.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘For no better reason, truly, than because I was thinking,’ he said, after a pause, ‘of something like it, when it came by. Where the Devil did it come from, I wonder!’
‘From the shadow of this wall, I think,’ said I, as we emerged upon a road on which a wall abutted.
‘It’s gone!’ he returned, looking over his shoulder. ‘And all ill go with it. Now for our dinner!’
But he looked again over his shoulder towards the sea-line glimmering afar off, and yet again. And he wondered about it, in some broken expressions, several times, in the short remainder of our walk; and only seemed to forget it when the light of fire and candle shone upon us, seated warm and merry, at table.
Littimer was there, and had his usual effect upon me. When I said to him that I hoped Mrs. Steerforth and Miss Dartle were well, he answered respectfully (and of course respectably), that they were tolerably well, he thanked me, and had sent their compliments. This was all, and yet he seemed to me to say as plainly as a man could say: ‘You are very young, sir; you are exceedingly young.’
We had almost finished dinner, when taking a step or two towards the table, from the corner where he kept watch upon us, or rather upon me, as I felt, he said to his master:
‘I beg your pardon, sir. Miss Mowcher is down here.’
‘Who?’ cried Steerforth, much astonished.
‘Miss Mowcher, sir.’
«Che tipo straordinario sei, Steerforth!» esclamai, fermandomi, perché era la prima volta che ne sentivo parlare. «Quando forse non vorrai più avvicinarti a quel posto!»
«Non lo so», rispose. «Mi è venuta una gran voglia di questo posto. Comunque sia», e mi fece camminare svelto, «ho comprato una barca che era in vendita: un clipper, dice il signor Peggotty, ed è proprio così, e il signor Peggotty sarà il suo capitano in mia assenza.»
«Ora ti capisco, Steerforth!» esclamai trionfalmente. «Fingi di averlo comprato per te stesso, ma in realtà l’hai fatto per conferirgli un beneficio. Avrei potuto capirlo fin dall’inizio, conoscendoti. Mio caro, gentile Steerforth, come posso dirti cosa penso della tua generosità?»
‘Via!’ rispose, arrossendo. ‘Men che meno.’
«Non lo sapevo?» gridai. «Non ho forse detto che non c’era gioia, né dolore, né alcuna emozione di quei cuori onesti che fosse indifferente a voi?»
“Sì, sì,” rispose, “mi hai detto tutto questo. Lascia che riposi. Abbiamo detto abbastanza!
Avevo paura di offenderlo insistendo sull’argomento, dato che lui lo prendeva così alla leggera, e quindi lo feci solo con il pensiero, mentre proseguivamo a un ritmo ancora più svelto di prima.
«Deve essere rinnovata», disse Steerforth, «e lascerò Littimer indietro per assicurarmi che sia fatto, così saprò che è perfettamente a posto. Vi ho detto che Littimer era venuto?»
‘No.’
“Esatto! Sono sceso questa mattina con una lettera di mia madre.”
Quando i nostri sguardi si incontrarono, notai che era pallido fino alle labbra, sebbene mi fissasse con grande determinazione. Temevo che qualche diverbio tra lui e sua madre potesse averlo portato a trovarsi nello stato d’animo in cui l’avevo scoperto accanto al focolare solitario. Lo feci capire.
«Oh no!» disse, scuotendo la testa e ridendo leggermente. «Nulla del genere! Sì. È sceso, quel mio uomo.»
«Lo stesso di sempre?» dissi io.
«Come sempre», disse Steerforth. «Distanziato e tranquillo come il Polo Nord. Si occuperà lui di far cambiare nome alla barca. Ora si chiama “Uccello Tempestoso”. Che importa a Mr. Peggotty degli Uccelli Tempestosi! La battezerò di nuovo.»
«Con quale nome?» chiesi.
‘La “Piccola Emily”.’
Poiché continuava a fissarmi, lo interpretai come un monito che non gradiva essere lodato per la sua premura. Non potevo fare a meno di mostrare in volto quanto ciò mi facesse piacere, ma dissi poco, e lui riprese il suo solito sorriso, e sembrò sollevato.
«Ma guarda qui», disse, guardando davanti a noi, «arriva la vera piccola Em’ly! E quel tizio con lei, eh? Per la mia anima, è un vero cavaliere. Non la lascia mai!»
Ham era un costruttore di barche in quei giorni, avendo perfezionato una naturale ingegnosità in quel mestiere, fino a diventare un operaio esperto. Era in abiti da lavoro, e aveva un aspetto robusto, ma al tempo stesso virile, e un protettore molto adatto per la fiorita creaturina al suo fianco. Infatti, c’era una franchezza nel suo volto, una onestà, e una mostrazione non dissimulata del suo orgoglio in lei, e del suo amore per lei, che erano, per me, il meglio dell’aspetto. Pensavo, mentre si avvicinavano a noi, che erano ben assortiti anche in quel particolare.
Lei ritirò timidamente la mano dal suo braccio mentre ci fermavamo per parlare con loro, e arrossì mentre la porgeva a Steerforth e a me. Quando proseguirono, dopo che avevamo scambiato qualche parola, non le andava di rimettere quella mano, ma, continuando a sembrare timida e inibita, camminò da sola. Pensai che tutto ciò fosse molto grazioso e affascinante, e Steerforth sembrava pensarla allo stesso modo, mentre li guardavamo svanire nella luce di una giovane luna.
All’improvviso ci passò accanto - evidentemente seguendoli - una giovane donna la cui presenza non avevamo notato, ma il cui volto vidi mentre passava, e mi parve di averne un vago ricordo. Era leggermente vestita; aveva un’aria audace, trascurata, sfacciata e povera; ma sembrava, per il momento, di aver dato tutto ciò al vento che soffiava, e di non avere in mente altro che seguirli. Mentre il livello scuro e lontano, assorbendo le loro figure in sé, lasciava visibile solo se stesso tra noi e il mare e le nuvole, la sua figura scomparve allo stesso modo, ancora non più vicina a loro di prima.
«È un’ombra nera che segue la ragazza», disse Steerforth, fermandosi; «che cosa significa?»
Parlò a bassa voce, che suonava quasi strana alle mie orecchie.
«Deve aver in mente di chiedere loro qualcosa, credo», dissi io.
«Un mendicante non sarebbe una novità», disse Steerforth, «ma è strano che il mendicante assuma questa forma stasera.»
«Perché?» chiesi.
«Per nessun motivo migliore, davvero, se non perché stavo pensando», disse, dopo una pausa, «a qualcosa di simile, quando è passato. Da dove diavolo è venuto, mi domando!»
«Dal ombra di questo muro, credo», dissi, mentre uscivamo su una strada su cui si affacciava un muro.
«È sparito!» rispose, guardandosi alle spalle. «E tutto il male sparirà con esso. Ora, alla nostra cena!»
Ma guardò di nuovo oltre la sua spalla verso la linea del mare che brillava in lontananza, e ancora una volta. E si chiedeva a riguardo, in alcune espressioni frammentarie, più volte, nel breve resto della nostra passeggiata; e sembrava dimenticarsene solo quando la luce del fuoco e della candela brillava su di noi, seduti caldi e allegri, a tavola.
Littimer era lì, e aveva su di me il suo solito effetto. Quando gli dissi che speravo che la signora Steerforth e la signorina Dartle stessero bene, rispose rispettosamente (e ovviamente in modo rispettabile) che stavano abbastanza bene, mi ringraziò e disse che mi avevano mandato i loro saluti. Questo era tutto, eppure mi sembrò di dire con la massima chiarezza: «Siete molto giovane, signore; siete estremamente giovane».
Avevamo quasi finito di cenare, quando facendo un passo o due verso il tavolo, dall’angolo dove ci teneva d’occhio, o meglio, me, come sentivo, disse al suo padrone:
“Mi scusi, signore. La signorina Mowcher è qui sotto.”
«Chi?», esclamò Steerforth, molto stupito.
“La signorina Mowcher, signore.”
‘Why, what on earth does she do here?’ said Steerforth.
‘It appears to be her native part of the country, sir. She informs me that she makes one of her professional visits here, every year, sir. I met her in the street this afternoon, and she wished to know if she might have the honour of waiting on you after dinner, sir.’
‘Do you know the Giantess in question, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth.
I was obliged to confess—I felt ashamed, even of being at this disadvantage before Littimer—that Miss Mowcher and I were wholly unacquainted.
‘Then you shall know her,’ said Steerforth, ‘for she is one of the seven wonders of the world. When Miss Mowcher comes, show her in.’
I felt some curiosity and excitement about this lady, especially as Steerforth burst into a fit of laughing when I referred to her, and positively refused to answer any question of which I made her the subject. I remained, therefore, in a state of considerable expectation until the cloth had been removed some half an hour, and we were sitting over our decanter of wine before the fire, when the door opened, and Littimer, with his habitual serenity quite undisturbed, announced:
‘Miss Mowcher!’
I looked at the doorway and saw nothing. I was still looking at the doorway, thinking that Miss Mowcher was a long while making her appearance, when, to my infinite astonishment, there came waddling round a sofa which stood between me and it, a pursy dwarf, of about forty or forty-five, with a very large head and face, a pair of roguish grey eyes, and such extremely little arms, that, to enable herself to lay a finger archly against her snub nose, as she ogled Steerforth, she was obliged to meet the finger half-way, and lay her nose against it. Her chin, which was what is called a double chin, was so fat that it entirely swallowed up the strings of her bonnet, bow and all. Throat she had none; waist she had none; legs she had none, worth mentioning; for though she was more than full-sized down to where her waist would have been, if she had had any, and though she terminated, as human beings generally do, in a pair of feet, she was so short that she stood at a common-sized chair as at a table, resting a bag she carried on the seat. This lady—dressed in an off-hand, easy style; bringing her nose and her forefinger together, with the difficulty I have described; standing with her head necessarily on one side, and, with one of her sharp eyes shut up, making an uncommonly knowing face—after ogling Steerforth for a few moments, broke into a torrent of words.
‘What! My flower!’ she pleasantly began, shaking her large head at him. ‘You’re there, are you! Oh, you naughty boy, fie for shame, what do you do so far away from home? Up to mischief, I’ll be bound. Oh, you’re a downy fellow, Steerforth, so you are, and I’m another, ain’t I? Ha, ha, ha! You’d have betted a hundred pound to five, now, that you wouldn’t have seen me here, wouldn’t you? Bless you, man alive, I’m everywhere. I’m here and there, and where not, like the conjurer’s half-crown in the lady’s handkercher. Talking of handkerchers—and talking of ladies—what a comfort you are to your blessed mother, ain’t you, my dear boy, over one of my shoulders, and I don’t say which!’
Miss Mowcher untied her bonnet, at this passage of her discourse, threw back the strings, and sat down, panting, on a footstool in front of the fire—making a kind of arbour of the dining table, which spread its mahogany shelter above her head.
‘Oh my stars and what’s-their-names!’ she went on, clapping a hand on each of her little knees, and glancing shrewdly at me, ‘I’m of too full a habit, that’s the fact, Steerforth. After a flight of stairs, it gives me as much trouble to draw every breath I want, as if it was a bucket of water. If you saw me looking out of an upper window, you’d think I was a fine woman, wouldn’t you?’
‘I should think that, wherever I saw you,’ replied Steerforth.
‘Go along, you dog, do!’ cried the little creature, making a whisk at him with the handkerchief with which she was wiping her face, ‘and don’t be impudent! But I give you my word and honour I was at Lady Mithers’s last week—THERE’S a woman! How SHE wears!—and Mithers himself came into the room where I was waiting for her—THERE’S a man! How HE wears! and his wig too, for he’s had it these ten years—and he went on at that rate in the complimentary line, that I began to think I should be obliged to ring the bell. Ha! ha! ha! He’s a pleasant wretch, but he wants principle.’
‘What were you doing for Lady Mithers?’ asked Steerforth.
‘That’s tellings, my blessed infant,’ she retorted, tapping her nose again, screwing up her face, and twinkling her eyes like an imp of supernatural intelligence. ‘Never YOU mind! You’d like to know whether I stop her hair from falling off, or dye it, or touch up her complexion, or improve her eyebrows, wouldn’t you? And so you shall, my darling—when I tell you! Do you know what my great grandfather’s name was?’
‘No,’ said Steerforth.
‘It was Walker, my sweet pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and he came of a long line of Walkers, that I inherit all the Hookey estates from.’
I never beheld anything approaching to Miss Mowcher’s wink except Miss Mowcher’s self-possession. She had a wonderful way too, when listening to what was said to her, or when waiting for an answer to what she had said herself, of pausing with her head cunningly on one side, and one eye turned up like a magpie’s. Altogether I was lost in amazement, and sat staring at her, quite oblivious, I am afraid, of the laws of politeness.
She had by this time drawn the chair to her side, and was busily engaged in producing from the bag (plunging in her short arm to the shoulder, at every dive) a number of small bottles, sponges, combs, brushes, bits of flannel, little pairs of curling-irons, and other instruments, which she tumbled in a heap upon the chair. From this employment she suddenly desisted, and said to Steerforth, much to my confusion:
«Ma che diavolo ci fa qui?» disse Steerforth.
«Sembra essere la sua zona natale, signore. Mi ha informato che fa una delle sue visite professionali qui ogni anno, signore. L’ho incontrata in strada questa sera e desiderava sapere se potesse avere l’onore di aspettare su di lei dopo cena, signore.»
«Conosci la gigantessa in questione, Daisy?» chiese Steerforth.
Dovetti confessare — mi vergognavo, anche di trovarmi in questa situazione di svantaggio davanti a Littimer — che Miss Mowcher e io eravamo del tutto sconosciuti.
«Allora la conoscerete» disse Steerforth «perché è una delle sette meraviglie del mondo. Quando arriverà Miss Mowcher, fatela entrare.»
Provavo una certa curiosità ed eccitazione per questa signora, specialmente quando Steerforth scoppiò in una risata quando mi riferii a lei e rifiutò categoricamente di rispondere a qualsiasi domanda che le riguardasse. Rimasi quindi in uno stato di notevole attesa fino a quando la tovaglia non fu rimossa dopo circa mezz’ora e ci trovavamo seduti davanti al nostro decanter di vino davanti al fuoco, quando la porta si aprì e Littimer, con la sua abituale serenità del tutto imperturbata, annunciò:
‘La signorina Mowcher!’
Guardai l’ingresso e non vidi nulla. Ero ancora lì a guardare l’ingresso, pensando che Miss Mowcher ci mettesse un bel po’ a farsi vedere, quando, con mio infinito stupore, apparve barcollando da dietro un divano che si trovava tra me e l’ingresso, un nanerottolo paffuto di circa quaranta o quarantacinque anni, con una testa e un viso molto grandi, un paio di furbe occhi grigi e braccia così corte che, per poter appoggiare un dito con fare malizioso sul suo naso schiacciato, mentre civettava con Steerforth, fu costretta a portare il dito a metà strada e ad appoggiarvi il naso contro. Il suo mento, che era un cosiddetto mento doppio, era così grasso che inghiottiva completamente le stringhe del suo cappello, nodo compreso. Non aveva collo, non aveva vita, non aveva gambe, degne di nota; perché sebbene fosse più che di corporatura normale fino a dove avrebbe dovuto trovarsi la sua vita, se ne avesse avuta una, e sebbene terminasse, come generalmente fanno gli esseri umani, con un paio di piedi, era così bassa che stava davanti a una sedia di dimensioni normali come se fosse un tavolo, appoggiando sulla seduta la borsa che portava con sé. Questa signora, vestita in modo disinvolto e comodo, che univa il naso e l’indice con la difficoltà che ho descritto, che stava con la testa necessariamente piegata da un lato e, con uno dei suoi occhi acuti chiuso, faceva una faccia straordinariamente furba, dopo aver civettato con Steerforth per qualche istante, si lanciò in un torrente di parole.
«Che cosa! Il mio fiore!» esordì piacevolmente, scuotendo la sua grande testa verso di lui. «Sei qui, eh! Oh, birbante, vergognati, che cosa fai così lontano da casa? Ti scommetto che stai combinando qualche guaio. Oh, sei un tipo in gamba, Steerforth, e lo sei davvero, e lo sono anch’io, vero? Ha, ha, ha! Avresti scommesso cento sterline contro cinque, ora, che non mi avresti vista qui, vero? Benedetto te, uomo di buona vita, sono ovunque. Sono qui e là, e dove non sono, come la mezza corona del prestigiatore nel fazzoletto della signora. Parlando di fazzoletti, e parlando di signore, che conforto sei per la tua benedetta madre, vero, mio caro ragazzo, sopra una delle mie spalle, e non dico quale!»
Miss Mowcher si tolse il cappello a questo punto del suo discorso, scostò le stringhe e si sedette, ansimante, su uno sgabello davanti al fuoco — formando una specie di pergolato con il tavolo da pranzo, che spandeva il suo riparo in mogano sopra la sua testa.
«Oh, stelle e non so chi altro!» continuò, battendo una mano su ciascun ginocchio e guardandomi con aria furba, «ho una corporatura troppo robusta, è la verità, Steerforth. Dopo aver salito una scala, mi costa tanto fatica respirare a pieni polmoni, come se dovessi sollevare un secchio d’acqua. Se mi vedeste affacciata a una finestra al piano di sopra, pensereste che sono una bella donna, vero?»
«Penso che, dovunque vi vedessi», rispose Steerforth.
«Vattene, cane, vattene!» gridò la piccola creatura, facendo un gesto verso di lui con il fazzoletto con cui si stava asciugando il viso, «e non fare lo sfrontato! Ma ti do la mia parola e il mio onore che la settimana scorsa ero a casa della Lady Mithers — CHE donna! Come si veste!— e Mithers in persona è entrato nella stanza dove stavo aspettando lei — CHE uomo! Come si veste! e anche la parrucca, perché l’ha da dieci anni — e ha continuato a quel ritmo con i complimenti, che ho cominciato a pensare che avrei dovuto suonare il campanello. Ha! ha! ha! È un tipo simpatico, ma gli manca il principio.»
«Cosa faceva per Lady Mithers?» chiese Steerforth.
«Questo è un indizio, mio dolce bambino», ribatté, toccandosi di nuovo il naso, facendo una smorfia e ammiccando con gli occhi come un diavoletto di intelligenza soprannaturale. «Non ti riguarda! Ti piacerebbe sapere se le impedisco di perdere i capelli, o li tingo, o ritocco il suo colorito, o le miglioro le sopracciglia, vero? E lo saprai, mio caro, quando te lo dirò! Sai come si chiamava mio bisnonno?»
«No», disse Steerforth.
«Era Walker, mio dolce tesoro», rispose Miss Mowcher, «e lui discendeva da una lunga stirpe di Walker, da cui ho ereditato tutti i possedimenti Hookey.»
Non ho mai visto nulla che si avvicinasse all’occhiata di Miss Mowcher, tranne la sua autocontrollo. Aveva anche un modo straordinario di ascoltare ciò che le veniva detto, o di aspettare una risposta a ciò che aveva detto lei stessa, di fermarsi con la testa astutamente piegata da un lato e un occhio rivolto verso l’alto come quello di una gazza. Nel complesso ero perso nell’ammirazione e sedevo fissandola, completamente dimentico, temo, delle leggi della cortesia.
A quell’ora aveva già tirato la sedia accanto a sé e si era messa industriosamente a estrarre dalla borsa (immergendo il suo braccio corto fino alla spalla, ad ogni immersione) una serie di piccole bottiglie, spugne, pettini, spazzole, pezzi di flanella, piccole pinze per arricciare e altri strumenti, che rovesciava in un mucchio sulla sedia. Da questo compito si interruppe improvvisamente e disse a Steerforth, con mio grande imbarazzo:
‘Who’s your friend?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Steerforth; ‘he wants to know you.’
‘Well, then, he shall! I thought he looked as if he did!’ returned Miss Mowcher, waddling up to me, bag in hand, and laughing on me as she came. ‘Face like a peach!’ standing on tiptoe to pinch my cheek as I sat. ‘Quite tempting! I’m very fond of peaches. Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Copperfield, I’m sure.’
I said that I congratulated myself on having the honour to make hers, and that the happiness was mutual.
‘Oh, my goodness, how polite we are!’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, making a preposterous attempt to cover her large face with her morsel of a hand. ‘What a world of gammon and spinnage it is, though, ain’t it!’
This was addressed confidentially to both of us, as the morsel of a hand came away from the face, and buried itself, arm and all, in the bag again.
‘What do you mean, Miss Mowcher?’ said Steerforth.
‘Ha! ha! ha! What a refreshing set of humbugs we are, to be sure, ain’t we, my sweet child?’ replied that morsel of a woman, feeling in the bag with her head on one side and her eye in the air. ‘Look here!’ taking something out. ‘Scraps of the Russian Prince’s nails. Prince Alphabet turned topsy-turvy, I call him, for his name’s got all the letters in it, higgledy-piggledy.’
‘The Russian Prince is a client of yours, is he?’ said Steerforth.
‘I believe you, my pet,’ replied Miss Mowcher. ‘I keep his nails in order for him. Twice a week! Fingers and toes.’
‘He pays well, I hope?’ said Steerforth.
‘Pays, as he speaks, my dear child—through the nose,’ replied Miss Mowcher. ‘None of your close shavers the Prince ain’t. You’d say so, if you saw his moustachios. Red by nature, black by art.’
‘By your art, of course,’ said Steerforth.
Miss Mowcher winked assent. ‘Forced to send for me. Couldn’t help it. The climate affected his dye; it did very well in Russia, but it was no go here. You never saw such a rusty Prince in all your born days as he was. Like old iron!’ ‘Is that why you called him a humbug, just now?’ inquired Steerforth.
‘Oh, you’re a broth of a boy, ain’t you?’ returned Miss Mowcher, shaking her head violently. ‘I said, what a set of humbugs we were in general, and I showed you the scraps of the Prince’s nails to prove it. The Prince’s nails do more for me in private families of the genteel sort, than all my talents put together. I always carry ‘em about. They’re the best introduction. If Miss Mowcher cuts the Prince’s nails, she must be all right. I give ‘em away to the young ladies. They put ‘em in albums, I believe. Ha! ha! ha! Upon my life, “the whole social system” (as the men call it when they make speeches in Parliament) is a system of Prince’s nails!’ said this least of women, trying to fold her short arms, and nodding her large head.
Steerforth laughed heartily, and I laughed too. Miss Mowcher continuing all the time to shake her head (which was very much on one side), and to look into the air with one eye, and to wink with the other.
‘Well, well!’ she said, smiting her small knees, and rising, ‘this is not business. Come, Steerforth, let’s explore the polar regions, and have it over.’
She then selected two or three of the little instruments, and a little bottle, and asked (to my surprise) if the table would bear. On Steerforth’s replying in the affirmative, she pushed a chair against it, and begging the assistance of my hand, mounted up, pretty nimbly, to the top, as if it were a stage.
‘If either of you saw my ankles,’ she said, when she was safely elevated, ‘say so, and I’ll go home and destroy myself!’
‘I did not,’ said Steerforth.
‘I did not,’ said I.
‘Well then,’ cried Miss Mowcher, ‘I’ll consent to live. Now, ducky, ducky, ducky, come to Mrs. Bond and be killed.’
This was an invitation to Steerforth to place himself under her hands; who, accordingly, sat himself down, with his back to the table, and his laughing face towards me, and submitted his head to her inspection, evidently for no other purpose than our entertainment. To see Miss Mowcher standing over him, looking at his rich profusion of brown hair through a large round magnifying glass, which she took out of her pocket, was a most amazing spectacle.
‘You’re a pretty fellow!’ said Miss Mowcher, after a brief inspection. ‘You’d be as bald as a friar on the top of your head in twelve months, but for me. Just half a minute, my young friend, and we’ll give you a polishing that shall keep your curls on for the next ten years!’
With this, she tilted some of the contents of the little bottle on to one of the little bits of flannel, and, again imparting some of the virtues of that preparation to one of the little brushes, began rubbing and scraping away with both on the crown of Steerforth’s head in the busiest manner I ever witnessed, talking all the time.
‘There’s Charley Pyegrave, the duke’s son,’ she said. ‘You know Charley?’ peeping round into his face.
‘A little,’ said Steerforth.
‘What a man HE is! THERE’S a whisker! As to Charley’s legs, if they were only a pair (which they ain’t), they’d defy competition. Would you believe he tried to do without me—in the Life-Guards, too?’
‘Mad!’ said Steerforth.
‘It looks like it. However, mad or sane, he tried,’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘What does he do, but, lo and behold you, he goes into a perfumer’s shop, and wants to buy a bottle of the Madagascar Liquid.’
‘Charley does?’ said Steerforth.
‘Charley does. But they haven’t got any of the Madagascar Liquid.’
‘What is it? Something to drink?’ asked Steerforth.
‘To drink?’ returned Miss Mowcher, stopping to slap his cheek. ‘To doctor his own moustachios with, you know. There was a woman in the shop—elderly female—quite a Griffin—who had never even heard of it by name. “Begging pardon, sir,” said the Griffin to Charley, “it’s not—not—not ROUGE, is it?” “Rouge,” said Charley to the Griffin. “What the unmentionable to ears polite, do you think I want with rouge?” “No offence, sir,” said the Griffin; “we have it asked for by so many names, I thought it might be.” Now that, my child,’ continued Miss Mowcher, rubbing all the time as busily as ever, ‘is another instance of the refreshing humbug I was speaking of. I do something in that way myself—perhaps a good deal—perhaps a little—sharp’s the word, my dear boy—never mind!’
‘Chi è il tuo amico?’
“Signor Copperfield”, disse Steerforth; “vuole conoscerla”.
«Bene, allora lo farà! Ho pensato che avesse un’aria come se lo facesse!», rispose Miss Mowcher, avvicinandosi a me con la borsa in mano e ridendo di me mentre veniva. «Faccia come un pesco!», in punta di piedi per pizzicarmi la guancia mentre ero seduto. «Tutto sommato allettante! Mi piacciono molto i peschi. Felice di fare la sua conoscenza, signor Copperfield, ne sono sicura.»
Dissi che mi congratulavo per avere l’onore di stringere la sua conoscenza, e che la felicità era reciproca.
«Oh, mio Dio, che educati siamo!» esclamò Miss Mowcher, facendo un tentativo assurdo di coprire il suo grande viso con il suo minuscolo pezzo di mano. «Che mondo di fandonie è, però, vero?»
Questo ci fu comunicato confidenzialmente, a entrambi, mentre un pezzetto di mano si staccava dal viso e si infilava di nuovo, braccio e tutto, nella borsa.
«Che cosa vuol dire, Miss Mowcher?» disse Steerforth.
«Ah! ah! ah! Che deliziosa compagnia di imbroglioni siamo, davvero, non è così, mia dolce bambina?» rispose quel pezzetto di donna, frugando nella borsa con la testa piegata da un lato e l’occhio in aria. «Guarda qui!» tirando fuori qualcosa. «Frammenti delle unghie del Principe Russo. Lo chiamo Principe Alfabeto sottosopra, perché il suo nome ha tutte le lettere, in disordine.»
«Il principe russo è un vostro cliente, vero?» disse Steerforth.
«Le credo, mia cara», rispose Miss Mowcher. «Gli tengo le unghie in ordine. Due volte alla settimana! Dita e piedi.»
«Paga bene, spero?» disse Steerforth.
«Paga, mentre parla, mia cara bambina - attraverso il naso», rispose Miss Mowcher. «Il Principe non è certo uno di quei tipi che si fanno la barba stretta. Lo direste anche voi, se vedeste i suoi baffi. Rossi per natura, neri per arte».
«Con la vostra arte, naturalmente», disse Steerforth.
La signorina Mowcher ammiccò in segno di assenso. «Costretto a mandare a chiamarmi. Non poteva farne a meno. Il clima gli ha rovinato la tintura; funzionava benissimo in Russia, ma qui non ha retto. Non avete mai visto un Principe così arrugginito in tutta la vostra vita come era lui. Proprio come il ferro vecchio!» «È per questo che l’avete chiamato impostore, poco fa?» chiese Steerforth.
«Oh, sei proprio un birbante, vero?» rispose Miss Mowcher, scuotendo la testa con violenza. «Ho detto che in generale siamo tutti degli imbroglioni, e ti ho mostrato i pezzetti delle unghie del Principe per dimostrarlo. Le unghie del Principe fanno più per me nelle famiglie private di buona società che tutti i miei talenti messi insieme. Le porto sempre con me. Sono la migliore presentazione. Se Miss Mowcher taglia le unghie del Principe, deve essere a posto. Le regalo alle giovani signore. Le mettono negli album, credo. Ha! ha! ha! Sulla mia vita, “l’intero sistema sociale” (come lo chiamano gli uomini quando fanno discorsi al Parlamento) è un sistema di unghie del Principe!» disse questa donna più piccola, cercando di incrociare le braccia corte e annuendo con la sua grande testa.
Steerforth rise di cuore, e io risi anch’io. Miss Mowcher continuava tutto il tempo a scuotere la testa (che era molto inclinata da un lato), e a guardare nel vuoto con un occhio, e a strizzare l’altro.
«Bene, bene!» disse, battendo le sue piccole ginocchia e alzandosi, «questo non è affar serio. Vieni, Steerforth, esploriamo le regioni polari e facciamola finita.»
Lei poi selezionò due o tre dei piccoli strumenti, e una bottiglietta, e chiese (con mia sorpresa) se il tavolo reggesse. All’affermativa di Steerforth, spinse una sedia contro di esso, e chiedendo l’assistenza della mia mano, salì in cima, abbastanza agilmente, come se fosse un palcoscenico.
«Se uno di voi due ha visto le mie caviglie», disse, quando fu al sicuro elevata, «ditecelo, e tornerò a casa e mi ucciderò!»
«Non l’ho fatto», disse Steerforth.
«Non l’ho fatto», dissi.
«Bene allora», gridò Miss Mowcher, «acconsento a vivere. Ora, piccina, piccina, piccina, vieni da Mrs. Bond e fatti ammazzare».
Questo era un invito a Steerforth a mettersi nelle sue mani; e così, egli si sedette, con la schiena al tavolo e il viso sorridente rivolto verso di me, e si sottomise alla sua ispezione, evidentemente con nessun altro scopo che il nostro divertimento. Vedere la signorina Mowcher in piedi sopra di lui, che guardava la sua ricca abbondanza di capelli castani attraverso un grande vetro d’ingrandimento rotondo, che tirò fuori dalla tasca, era uno spettacolo davvero incredibile.
«Sei un bel ragazzo!» disse Miss Mowcher, dopo un breve esame. «Sarebbe calvo come un frate sulla cima della testa in dodici mesi, se non ci fossi io. Solo mezzo minuto, mio giovane amico, e gli daremo una lucidatura che terrà i suoi riccioli per i prossimi dieci anni!»
Con ciò, rovesciò parte del contenuto del piccolo flacone su uno dei pezzetti di flanella, e, trasferendo nuovamente alcune delle virtù di quella preparazione su uno dei piccoli pennelli, iniziò a strofinare e raschiare con entrambi sulla testa di Steerforth nel modo più frenetico che io abbia mai visto, parlando tutto il tempo.
«C’è Charley Pyegrave, il figlio del duca», disse. «Conosci Charley?», sbirciando il suo viso.
«Un po’», disse Steerforth.
«Che uomo è! Che baffi! Per quanto riguarda le gambe di Charley, se fossero solo un paio (ma non lo sono), sfiderebbero la concorrenza. Credete che abbia provato a cavarsela senza di me, e addirittura nei Life Guards?»
«Pazzo!» disse Steerforth.
«Sembra proprio di sì. Comunque, pazzo o sano di mente, ci ha provato», rispose Miss Mowcher. «E cosa fa, ma guarda un po’, che entra in un negozio di profumiere e vuole comprare una bottiglia del Liquido di Madagascar.»
«Charley lo fa?» disse Steerforth.
‘Charley lo fa. Ma non hanno il Liquido di Madagascar.’
«Che cos’è? Qualcosa da bere?» chiese Steerforth.
«Bere?» rispose Miss Mowcher, fermandosi per dargli una pacca sulla guancia. «Per truccarsi i suoi baffetti, sapete. C’era una donna nel negozio, una donna anziana, proprio una grifagna, che non ne aveva mai sentito parlare neanche di nome. “Chiedo scusa, signore,” disse la grifagna a Charley, “non è—non è—non è ROUGE, vero?” “Rouge,” disse Charley alla grifagna. “Che cosa indescrivibile all’udito delicato, pensate che io voglia fare con il rouge?” “Nessuna offesa, signore,” disse la grifagna; “ce lo chiedono con così tanti nomi, che ho pensato potesse essere quello.” Ecco, mio bambino,» continuò Miss Mowcher, strofinando tutto il tempo con la stessa solerzia, «un altro esempio dell’invigoriente impostura di cui parlavo. Io stessa faccio qualcosa in quel senso forse molto, forse poco, “sharp” è la parola, mio caro ragazzo, non importa!»
‘In what way do you mean? In the rouge way?’ said Steerforth.
‘Put this and that together, my tender pupil,’ returned the wary Mowcher, touching her nose, ‘work it by the rule of Secrets in all trades, and the product will give you the desired result. I say I do a little in that way myself. One Dowager, SHE calls it lip-salve. Another, SHE calls it gloves. Another, SHE calls it tucker-edging. Another, SHE calls it a fan. I call it whatever THEY call it. I supply it for ‘em, but we keep up the trick so, to one another, and make believe with such a face, that they’d as soon think of laying it on, before a whole drawing-room, as before me. And when I wait upon ‘em, they’ll say to me sometimes—WITH IT ON—thick, and no mistake—“How am I looking, Mowcher? Am I pale?” Ha! ha! ha! ha! Isn’t THAT refreshing, my young friend!’
I never did in my days behold anything like Mowcher as she stood upon the dining table, intensely enjoying this refreshment, rubbing busily at Steerforth’s head, and winking at me over it.
‘Ah!’ she said. ‘Such things are not much in demand hereabouts. That sets me off again! I haven’t seen a pretty woman since I’ve been here, jemmy.’
‘No?’ said Steerforth.
‘Not the ghost of one,’ replied Miss Mowcher.
‘We could show her the substance of one, I think?’ said Steerforth, addressing his eyes to mine. ‘Eh, Daisy?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said I.
‘Aha?’ cried the little creature, glancing sharply at my face, and then peeping round at Steerforth’s. ‘Umph?’
The first exclamation sounded like a question put to both of us, and the second like a question put to Steerforth only. She seemed to have found no answer to either, but continued to rub, with her head on one side and her eye turned up, as if she were looking for an answer in the air and were confident of its appearing presently.
‘A sister of yours, Mr. Copperfield?’ she cried, after a pause, and still keeping the same look-out. ‘Aye, aye?’
‘No,’ said Steerforth, before I could reply. ‘Nothing of the sort. On the contrary, Mr. Copperfield used—or I am much mistaken—to have a great admiration for her.’
‘Why, hasn’t he now?’ returned Miss Mowcher. ‘Is he fickle? Oh, for shame! Did he sip every flower, and change every hour, until Polly his passion requited?—Is her name Polly?’
The Elfin suddenness with which she pounced upon me with this question, and a searching look, quite disconcerted me for a moment.
‘No, Miss Mowcher,’ I replied. ‘Her name is Emily.’
‘Aha?’ she cried exactly as before. ‘Umph? What a rattle I am! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’
Her tone and look implied something that was not agreeable to me in connexion with the subject. So I said, in a graver manner than any of us had yet assumed: ‘She is as virtuous as she is pretty. She is engaged to be married to a most worthy and deserving man in her own station of life. I esteem her for her good sense, as much as I admire her for her good looks.’
‘Well said!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Hear, hear, hear! Now I’ll quench the curiosity of this little Fatima, my dear Daisy, by leaving her nothing to guess at. She is at present apprenticed, Miss Mowcher, or articled, or whatever it may be, to Omer and Joram, Haberdashers, Milliners, and so forth, in this town. Do you observe? Omer and Joram. The promise of which my friend has spoken, is made and entered into with her cousin; Christian name, Ham; surname, Peggotty; occupation, boat-builder; also of this town. She lives with a relative; Christian name, unknown; surname, Peggotty; occupation, seafaring; also of this town. She is the prettiest and most engaging little fairy in the world. I admire her—as my friend does—exceedingly. If it were not that I might appear to disparage her Intended, which I know my friend would not like, I would add, that to me she seems to be throwing herself away; that I am sure she might do better; and that I swear she was born to be a lady.’
Miss Mowcher listened to these words, which were very slowly and distinctly spoken, with her head on one side, and her eye in the air as if she were still looking for that answer. When he ceased she became brisk again in an instant, and rattled away with surprising volubility.
‘Oh! And that’s all about it, is it?’ she exclaimed, trimming his whiskers with a little restless pair of scissors, that went glancing round his head in all directions. ‘Very well: very well! Quite a long story. Ought to end “and they lived happy ever afterwards”; oughtn’t it? Ah! What’s that game at forfeits? I love my love with an E, because she’s enticing; I hate her with an E, because she’s engaged. I took her to the sign of the exquisite, and treated her with an elopement, her name’s Emily, and she lives in the east? Ha! ha! ha! Mr. Copperfield, ain’t I volatile?’
Merely looking at me with extravagant slyness, and not waiting for any reply, she continued, without drawing breath:
‘There! If ever any scapegrace was trimmed and touched up to perfection, you are, Steerforth. If I understand any noddle in the world, I understand yours. Do you hear me when I tell you that, my darling? I understand yours,’ peeping down into his face. ‘Now you may mizzle, jemmy (as we say at Court), and if Mr. Copperfield will take the chair I’ll operate on him.’
‘What do you say, Daisy?’ inquired Steerforth, laughing, and resigning his seat. ‘Will you be improved?’
‘Thank you, Miss Mowcher, not this evening.’
‘Don’t say no,’ returned the little woman, looking at me with the aspect of a connoisseur; ‘a little bit more eyebrow?’
‘Thank you,’ I returned, ‘some other time.’
‘Have it carried half a quarter of an inch towards the temple,’ said Miss Mowcher. ‘We can do it in a fortnight.’
‘No, I thank you. Not at present.’
‘Go in for a tip,’ she urged. ‘No? Let’s get the scaffolding up, then, for a pair of whiskers. Come!’
I could not help blushing as I declined, for I felt we were on my weak point, now. But Miss Mowcher, finding that I was not at present disposed for any decoration within the range of her art, and that I was, for the time being, proof against the blandishments of the small bottle which she held up before one eye to enforce her persuasions, said we would make a beginning on an early day, and requested the aid of my hand to descend from her elevated station. Thus assisted, she skipped down with much agility, and began to tie her double chin into her bonnet.
«In che senso intendete? Nel senso del rossetto?» disse Steerforth.
«Mettete insieme questo e quello, mia tenera allieva», rispose il cauto Mowcher, toccandole il naso, «applicate la regola dei segreti in tutte le professioni, e il risultato vi darà l’esito desiderato. Dico che io stesso faccio un po’ di cose in quel modo. Una dama, LEI lo chiama balsamo per le labbra. Un’altra, LEI lo chiama guanti. Un’altra, LEI lo chiama bordo per il grembiule. Un’altra, LEI lo chiama ventaglio. Io lo chiamo come lo chiamano LORO. Lo fornisco a loro, ma ci teniamo il gioco così, l’uno con l’altro, e facciamo finta con un’espressione tale, che penserebbero tanto presto di applicarselo davanti a un’intera sala da ricevimento, quanto davanti a me. E quando vado a trovarle, a volte mi dicono—CON QUELLO ADDOSSO—spesso, e senza dubbio—«Come sto, Mowcher? Sono pallida?» Ah! ah! ah! ah! Non è DIVERTENTE, mia giovane amica?»
Non ho mai visto in vita mia niente di simile a Mowcher mentre stava in piedi sul tavolo da pranzo, godendosi intensamente questo rinfresco, strofinando con solerzia la testa di Steerforth e facendomi l’occhiolino al di sopra di essa.
«Ah!» disse. «Queste cose non sono molto richieste da queste parti. Questo mi fa ripartire! Non ho visto una donna carina da quando sono qui, jemmy.»
«No?», disse Steerforth.
«Non il fantasma di uno», rispose Miss Mowcher.
«Potremmo mostrarle il contenuto di uno, credo», disse Steerforth, rivolgendo i suoi occhi ai miei. «Eh, Daisy?»
«Sì, davvero», dissi io.
«Ah!» esclamò la piccola creatura, scrutando attentamente il mio viso e poi quello di Steerforth. «Mmm?»
La prima esclamazione suonava come una domanda rivolta a entrambi, e la seconda come una domanda rivolta solo a Steerforth. Sembrava non aver trovato risposta a nessuna delle due, ma continuava a strofinare, con la testa piegata di lato e l’occhio rivolto in su, come se stesse cercando una risposta nell’aria e fosse sicura che sarebbe apparsa da un momento all’altro.
«Una sorella di voi, signor Copperfield?» esclamò, dopo una pausa, e continuando a scrutare con la stessa attenzione. «Sì, sì?»
«No», disse Steerforth, prima che potessi rispondere. «Nulla del genere. Al contrario, il signor Copperfield aveva - o mi sbaglio di grosso - una grande ammirazione per lei.»
«E perché non l’avrebbe fatto?» ribatté Miss Mowcher. «È forse volubile? Oh, che vergogna! Ha forse corteggiato ogni fioraia e cambiato idea ogni ora, finché Polly non ha corrisposto al suo amore? — Si chiama Polly?»
La improvvisa rapidità con cui mi saltò addosso con questa domanda e uno sguardo scrutatore mi disorientò per un momento.
‘No, signorina Mowcher,’ risposi. ‘Si chiama Emily.’
«Ah!» esclamò esattamente come prima. «Eh? Che chiacchierona che sono! Signor Copperfield, non sono forse volubile?»
Il suo tono e il suo sguardo implicavano qualcosa che non mi piaceva in relazione all’argomento. Così dissi, in tono più grave di quanto avessimo fatto finora: «È virtuosa quanto è bella. È fidanzata con un uomo davvero meritevole e degno della sua stessa condizione sociale. La stimo per la sua intelligenza quanto l’ammiro per la sua bellezza.»
«Bene detto!» esclamò Steerforth. «Hear, hear, hear! Ora io sazierò la curiosità di questa piccola Fatima, mia cara Daisy, lasciandole nulla da indovinare. Al momento è apprendista, signorina Mowcher, o tirocinante, o comunque sia, presso Omer e Joram, mercanti di cianfrusaglie, modiste, e così via, in questa città. Mi seguite? Omer e Joram. La promessa di cui ha parlato il mio amico, è fatta e stipulata con suo cugino; nome di battesimo, Ham; cognome, Peggotty; mestiere, costruttore di barche; anch’egli di questa città. Vive con un parente; nome di battesimo, ignoto; cognome, Peggotty; mestiere, uomo di mare; anch’egli di questa città. È la più graziosa e affascinante piccola fata del mondo. La ammiro—come fa il mio amico—enormemente. Se non temessi di sminuire il suo Fidanzato, cosa che so che al mio amico non piacerebbe, aggiungerei che a me sembra che si stia buttando via; che sono sicuro che potrebbe fare di meglio; e che giuro che è nata per essere una signora.»
La signorina Mowcher ascoltò queste parole, pronunciate molto lentamente e distintamente, con la testa piegata di lato e l’occhio rivolto al cielo, come se stesse ancora cercando quella risposta. Quando lui smise, lei tornò subito vivace e riprese a parlare con sorprendente loquacità.
«Oh! E questo è tutto, vero?» esclamò, mentre gli sistemava i baffi con un paio di forbicine agitate che gli giravano intorno alla testa in tutte le direzioni. «Molto bene: molto bene! Una storia piuttosto lunga. Dovrebbe finire con “e vissero felici e contenti”; non è così? Ah! Qual è quel gioco dei pegni? Amo il mio amore con una E, perché è allettante; lo odio con una E, perché è fidanzata. La portai al segno dell’eccellente e la trattai con una fuga, il suo nome è Emily e vive a est? Ha! ha! ha! Signor Copperfield, non sono forse volubile?»
Mi guardò con un’astuzia stravagante, senza aspettare alcuna risposta, e continuò senza prendere fiato:
«Ecco! Se mai un birichino è stato rifinito e ritoccato alla perfezione, sei tu, Steerforth. Se capisco qualche cervellone al mondo, capisco il tuo. Mi senti quando ti dico questo, mio caro? Ti capisco,» sbirciando giù nel suo viso. «Ora puoi svignartela, jemmy (come diciamo a Corte), e se il signor Copperfield vuole prendere la sedia opererò su di lui.»
«Che ne pensi, Daisy?» chiese Steerforth ridendo, cedendo il suo posto. «Vuoi migliorare?»
‘Grazie, signorina Mowcher, non questa sera.’
«Non dica di no», replicò la piccola donna, guardandomi con aria da intenditrice, «un po’ più di sopracciglio?»
«Grazie», risposi, «un’altra volta.»
«Fatela spostare di un quarto di pollice verso il tempio», disse Miss Mowcher. «Possiamo farlo in due settimane.»
‘No, grazie. Non per ora.’
«Faccia una puntata», lo esortò. «No? Allora prepariamo l’impalcatura per un paio di baffi. Avanti!»
Non potei fare a meno di arrossire mentre rifiutavo, perché sentivo che stavamo toccando il mio punto debole, ora. Ma Miss Mowcher, vedendo che al momento non ero disposto a ricevere alcuna decorazione all’interno del raggio della sua arte, e che per il momento ero immune alle blandizie della piccola bottiglia che teneva davanti a un occhio per rafforzare le sue persuasione, disse che avremmo iniziato presto e chiese l’aiuto della mia mano per scendere dalla sua posizione elevata. Così assistita, saltò giù con molta agilità e iniziò ad annodare il suo doppio mento nel cappello.
‘The fee,’ said Steerforth, ‘is—’
‘Five bob,’ replied Miss Mowcher, ‘and dirt cheap, my chicken. Ain’t I volatile, Mr. Copperfield?’
I replied politely: ‘Not at all.’ But I thought she was rather so, when she tossed up his two half-crowns like a goblin pieman, caught them, dropped them in her pocket, and gave it a loud slap.
‘That’s the Till!’ observed Miss Mowcher, standing at the chair again, and replacing in the bag a miscellaneous collection of little objects she had emptied out of it. ‘Have I got all my traps? It seems so. It won’t do to be like long Ned Beadwood, when they took him to church “to marry him to somebody”, as he says, and left the bride behind. Ha! ha! ha! A wicked rascal, Ned, but droll! Now, I know I’m going to break your hearts, but I am forced to leave you. You must call up all your fortitude, and try to bear it. Good-bye, Mr. Copperfield! Take care of yourself, jockey of Norfolk! How I have been rattling on! It’s all the fault of you two wretches. I forgive you! “Bob swore!”—as the Englishman said for “Good night”, when he first learnt French, and thought it so like English. “Bob swore,” my ducks!’
With the bag slung over her arm, and rattling as she waddled away, she waddled to the door, where she stopped to inquire if she should leave us a lock of her hair. ‘Ain’t I volatile?’ she added, as a commentary on this offer, and, with her finger on her nose, departed.
Steerforth laughed to that degree, that it was impossible for me to help laughing too; though I am not sure I should have done so, but for this inducement. When we had had our laugh quite out, which was after some time, he told me that Miss Mowcher had quite an extensive connexion, and made herself useful to a variety of people in a variety of ways. Some people trifled with her as a mere oddity, he said; but she was as shrewdly and sharply observant as anyone he knew, and as long-headed as she was short-armed. He told me that what she had said of being here, and there, and everywhere, was true enough; for she made little darts into the provinces, and seemed to pick up customers everywhere, and to know everybody. I asked him what her disposition was: whether it was at all mischievous, and if her sympathies were generally on the right side of things: but, not succeeding in attracting his attention to these questions after two or three attempts, I forbore or forgot to repeat them. He told me instead, with much rapidity, a good deal about her skill, and her profits; and about her being a scientific cupper, if I should ever have occasion for her service in that capacity.
She was the principal theme of our conversation during the evening: and when we parted for the night Steerforth called after me over the banisters, ‘Bob swore!’ as I went downstairs.
I was surprised, when I came to Mr. Barkis’s house, to find Ham walking up and down in front of it, and still more surprised to learn from him that little Em’ly was inside. I naturally inquired why he was not there too, instead of pacing the streets by himself?
‘Why, you see, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, in a hesitating manner, ‘Em’ly, she’s talking to some ‘un in here.’
‘I should have thought,’ said I, smiling, ‘that that was a reason for your being in here too, Ham.’
‘Well, Mas’r Davy, in a general way, so ‘t would be,’ he returned; ‘but look’ee here, Mas’r Davy,’ lowering his voice, and speaking very gravely. ‘It’s a young woman, sir—a young woman, that Em’ly knowed once, and doen’t ought to know no more.’
When I heard these words, a light began to fall upon the figure I had seen following them, some hours ago.
‘It’s a poor wurem, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, ‘as is trod under foot by all the town. Up street and down street. The mowld o’ the churchyard don’t hold any that the folk shrink away from, more.’
‘Did I see her tonight, Ham, on the sand, after we met you?’
‘Keeping us in sight?’ said Ham. ‘It’s like you did, Mas’r Davy. Not that I know’d then, she was theer, sir, but along of her creeping soon arterwards under Em’ly’s little winder, when she see the light come, and whispering “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart towards me. I was once like you!” Those was solemn words, Mas’r Davy, fur to hear!’
‘They were indeed, Ham. What did Em’ly do?’ ‘Says Em’ly, “Martha, is it you? Oh, Martha, can it be you?”—for they had sat at work together, many a day, at Mr. Omer’s.’
‘I recollect her now!’ cried I, recalling one of the two girls I had seen when I first went there. ‘I recollect her quite well!’
‘Martha Endell,’ said Ham. ‘Two or three year older than Em’ly, but was at the school with her.’
‘I never heard her name,’ said I. ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’
‘For the matter o’ that, Mas’r Davy,’ replied Ham, ‘all’s told a’most in them words, “Em’ly, Em’ly, for Christ’s sake, have a woman’s heart towards me. I was once like you!” She wanted to speak to Em’ly. Em’ly couldn’t speak to her theer, for her loving uncle was come home, and he wouldn’t—no, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, with great earnestness, ‘he couldn’t, kind-natur’d, tender-hearted as he is, see them two together, side by side, for all the treasures that’s wrecked in the sea.’
I felt how true this was. I knew it, on the instant, quite as well as Ham.
‘So Em’ly writes in pencil on a bit of paper,’ he pursued, ‘and gives it to her out o’ winder to bring here. “Show that,” she says, “to my aunt, Mrs. Barkis, and she’ll set you down by her fire, for the love of me, till uncle is gone out, and I can come.” By and by she tells me what I tell you, Mas’r Davy, and asks me to bring her. What can I do? She doen’t ought to know any such, but I can’t deny her, when the tears is on her face.’
He put his hand into the breast of his shaggy jacket, and took out with great care a pretty little purse.
‘And if I could deny her when the tears was on her face, Mas’r Davy,’ said Ham, tenderly adjusting it on the rough palm of his hand, ‘how could I deny her when she give me this to carry for her—knowing what she brought it for? Such a toy as it is!’ said Ham, thoughtfully looking on it. ‘With such a little money in it, Em’ly my dear.’
“La retta”, disse Steerforth, “è—”
«Cinque scellini», rispose la signorina Mowcher, «e un vero affare, mia piccola gallina. Non sono vivace, signor Copperfield?»
Risposi cortesemente: «Per niente». Ma pensavo che lo fosse, quando lanciò in aria i suoi due mezzicoroni come un fornaio di goblin, li acchiappò, li infilò in tasca e se la diede una sonora pacca.
«Questo è il Till!» osservò Miss Mowcher, rimettendosi in piedi accanto alla sedia e riponendo nella borsa una variegata collezione di piccoli oggetti che ne aveva svuotato. «Ho tutto il mio corredo? Sembra di sì. Non bisogna essere come il lungo Ned Beadwood, quando lo portarono in chiesa “per sposarlo a qualcuno”, come dice lui, e lasciarono la sposa indietro. Ha! ha! ha! Un furfante malvagio, Ned, ma buffo! Ora, so che sto per spezzare il vostro cuore, ma sono costretta ad andarmene. Dovete raccogliere tutta la vostra forza, e cercare di sopportarlo. Addio, signor Copperfield! Badate a voi, fantino del Norfolk! Come ho chiacchierato! È tutta colpa vostra, voi due disgraziati. Vi perdono! “Bob ha giurato!”—come disse l’inglese per “Buona notte”, quando imparò il francese, e pensò che fosse così simile all’inglese. “Bob ha giurato”, miei piccioni!»
Con la borsa a tracolla che tintinnava mentre si allontanava a passo pesante, raggiunse la porta, dove si fermò per chiedere se non volevamo conservare un ricciolo dei suoi capelli. «Non sono forse volubile?», aggiunse, come commento a questa proposta, e, con un dito sul naso, se ne andò.
Steerforth rise al punto che non potei fare a meno di ridere anch’io; anche se non sono sicuro che l’avrei fatto senza questo incentivo. Quando ci fummo sfogati completamente, e ci volle un po’ di tempo, mi disse che la signorina Mowcher aveva una clientela molto ampia e si rendeva utile a molte persone in molti modi diversi. Alcuni la trattavano come una semplice stravaganza, disse; ma era perspicace e acuta quanto chiunque conoscesse, e aveva una lungimiranza pari alla sua brachiazia. Mi disse che quello che aveva detto di essere qui, lì e dappertutto era vero; perché faceva piccole incursioni nelle province, sembrava raccogliere clienti ovunque e conoscere tutti. Gli chiesi qual era il suo carattere: se fosse per nulla maligno e se le sue simpatie fossero generalmente dalla parte giusta delle cose; ma, non riuscendo ad attirare la sua attenzione su queste domande dopo due o tre tentativi, desistetti o dimenticai di ripeterle. Mi raccontò invece, con molta rapidità, parecchie cose sulla sua abilità e sui suoi guadagni; e sul fatto che fosse un’esperta salassatrice, nel caso avessi mai bisogno dei suoi servigi in quella veste.
Fu il principale argomento della nostra conversazione durante la serata: e quando ci separammo per la notte Steerforth mi gridò dietro, sopra le ringhiere, «Bob ha giurato!» mentre scendevo le scale.
Fui sorpreso, quando arrivai alla casa del signor Barkis, di trovare Ham che camminava su e giù davanti ad essa, e ancora più sorpreso di apprendere da lui che la piccola Em’ly era dentro. Naturalmente chiesi perché non ci fosse anche lui, invece di passeggiare per le strade da solo?
«Vede, signor Davy», rispose, esitante, «Emily sta parlando con qualcuno qui dentro.»
«Avrei pensato», dissi sorridendo, «che fosse un motivo per cui anche tu dovresti essere qui dentro, Ham.»
«Beh, padron Davy, in generale, così sarebbe», rispose; «ma guardi qui, padron Davy», abbassando la voce e parlando molto seriamente. «È una giovane donna, signore, una giovane donna che Emily conosceva una volta, e non dovrebbe più conoscere.»
Quando udii queste parole, una luce cominciò a diffondersi sulla figura che avevo visto seguirli alcune ore prima.
«È un povero verme, signor Davy», disse Ham, «che è calpestato da tutti i cittadini. In su e in giù per le strade. La terra del cimitero non contiene nessuno da cui la gente si allontani di più.»
«L’ho vista stasera, Ham, sulla spiaggia, dopo che ci siamo incontrati?»
«Ci teneva d’occhio?» disse Ham. «Proprio come ha fatto lei, signor Davy. Non sapevo che fosse lì, signore, ma poi, poco dopo, si è intrufolata sotto la finestra di Emily, quando ha visto la luce accendersi, e ha sussurrato: «Emily, Emily, per l’amor di Dio, abbia un cuore di donna per me. Anch’io un tempo ero come lei!». Erano parole solenni, signor Davy, davvero solenni!»
«Erano proprio loro, Ham. Cosa ha fatto Emily?» «Emily dice: “Martha, sei tu? Oh, Martha, è possibile che tu sia tu?” — perché avevano lavorato insieme, sedute, per molti giorni, da Mr. Omer.»
«Mi ricordo di lei!» esclamai, ricordando una delle due ragazze che avevo visto quando ci ero andato per la prima volta. «Mi ricordo di lei benissimo!»
«Martha Endell», disse Ham. «Due o tre anni più grande di Emily, ma era a scuola con lei.»
«Non ho mai sentito il suo nome», dissi. «Non volevo interromperti.»
«Per quel che riguarda la cosa, Mas’r Davy», rispose Ham, «tutto è stato detto quasi con queste parole: “Em’ly, Em’ly, per l’amor di Cristo, abbiate un cuore di donna verso di me. Una volta ero come voi!” Voleva parlare con Em’ly. Em’ly non poteva parlarle lì, perché suo zio amorevole era tornato a casa, e lui non voleva, no, Mas’r Davy», disse Ham con grande serietà, «non poteva, per quanto buono e tenero di cuore fosse, vedere quei due insieme, fianco a fianco, per tutti i tesori che sono affondati nel mare.»
Sentivo quanto fosse vero. Lo sapevo, in quell’istante, altrettanto bene di Ham.
«Così Emily scrive a matita su un pezzetto di carta», continuò, «e lo dà a lei fuori dalla finestra perché lo porti qui. “Mostra questo”, dice, “a mia zia, la signora Barkis, e ti farà accomodare accanto al suo fuoco, per amore di me, finché lo zio non esce e io posso venire”. Dopo un po’ mi dice quello che vi ho detto, signor Davy, e mi chiede di portarla qui. Cosa posso fare? Non dovrebbe conoscere gente del genere, ma non posso rifiutarmi, quando ha le lacrime agli occhi».
Mise la mano nel taschino della giacca pelosa e tirò fuori con grande cura una graziosa borsetta.
«E se potessi rifiutare a lei quando le lacrime le rigavano il viso, padron Davy», disse Ham, sistemando con tenerezza il portamonete sul palmo ruvido della sua mano, «come potrei rifiutarle quando mi ha dato questo da portare per lei, sapendo per quale motivo lo ha portato? Un giocattolo così insignificante!» disse Ham, guardandolo pensieroso. «Con così poco denaro dentro, mia cara Em’ly.»
I shook him warmly by the hand when he had put it away again—for that was more satisfactory to me than saying anything—and we walked up and down, for a minute or two, in silence. The door opened then, and Peggotty appeared, beckoning to Ham to come in. I would have kept away, but she came after me, entreating me to come in too. Even then, I would have avoided the room where they all were, but for its being the neat-tiled kitchen I have mentioned more than once. The door opening immediately into it, I found myself among them before I considered whither I was going.
The girl—the same I had seen upon the sands—was near the fire. She was sitting on the ground, with her head and one arm lying on a chair. I fancied, from the disposition of her figure, that Em’ly had but newly risen from the chair, and that the forlorn head might perhaps have been lying on her lap. I saw but little of the girl’s face, over which her hair fell loose and scattered, as if she had been disordering it with her own hands; but I saw that she was young, and of a fair complexion. Peggotty had been crying. So had little Em’ly. Not a word was spoken when we first went in; and the Dutch clock by the dresser seemed, in the silence, to tick twice as loud as usual. Em’ly spoke first.
‘Martha wants,’ she said to Ham, ‘to go to London.’
‘Why to London?’ returned Ham.
He stood between them, looking on the prostrate girl with a mixture of compassion for her, and of jealousy of her holding any companionship with her whom he loved so well, which I have always remembered distinctly. They both spoke as if she were ill; in a soft, suppressed tone that was plainly heard, although it hardly rose above a whisper.
‘Better there than here,’ said a third voice aloud—Martha’s, though she did not move. ‘No one knows me there. Everybody knows me here.’
‘What will she do there?’ inquired Ham.
She lifted up her head, and looked darkly round at him for a moment; then laid it down again, and curved her right arm about her neck, as a woman in a fever, or in an agony of pain from a shot, might twist herself.
‘She will try to do well,’ said little Em’ly. ‘You don’t know what she has said to us. Does he—do they—aunt?’
Peggotty shook her head compassionately.
‘I’ll try,’ said Martha, ‘if you’ll help me away. I never can do worse than I have done here. I may do better. Oh!’ with a dreadful shiver, ‘take me out of these streets, where the whole town knows me from a child!’
As Em’ly held out her hand to Ham, I saw him put in it a little canvas bag. She took it, as if she thought it were her purse, and made a step or two forward; but finding her mistake, came back to where he had retired near me, and showed it to him.
‘It’s all yourn, Em’ly,’ I could hear him say. ‘I haven’t nowt in all the wureld that ain’t yourn, my dear. It ain’t of no delight to me, except for you!’
The tears rose freshly in her eyes, but she turned away and went to Martha. What she gave her, I don’t know. I saw her stooping over her, and putting money in her bosom. She whispered something, as she asked was that enough? ‘More than enough,’ the other said, and took her hand and kissed it.
Then Martha arose, and gathering her shawl about her, covering her face with it, and weeping aloud, went slowly to the door. She stopped a moment before going out, as if she would have uttered something or turned back; but no word passed her lips. Making the same low, dreary, wretched moaning in her shawl, she went away.
As the door closed, little Em’ly looked at us three in a hurried manner and then hid her face in her hands, and fell to sobbing.
‘Doen’t, Em’ly!’ said Ham, tapping her gently on the shoulder. ‘Doen’t, my dear! You doen’t ought to cry so, pretty!’
‘Oh, Ham!’ she exclaimed, still weeping pitifully, ‘I am not so good a girl as I ought to be! I know I have not the thankful heart, sometimes, I ought to have!’
‘Yes, yes, you have, I’m sure,’ said Ham.
‘No! no! no!’ cried little Em’ly, sobbing, and shaking her head. ‘I am not as good a girl as I ought to be. Not near! not near!’ And still she cried, as if her heart would break.
‘I try your love too much. I know I do!’ she sobbed. ‘I’m often cross to you, and changeable with you, when I ought to be far different. You are never so to me. Why am I ever so to you, when I should think of nothing but how to be grateful, and to make you happy!’
‘You always make me so,’ said Ham, ‘my dear! I am happy in the sight of you. I am happy, all day long, in the thoughts of you.’
‘Ah! that’s not enough!’ she cried. ‘That is because you are good; not because I am! Oh, my dear, it might have been a better fortune for you, if you had been fond of someone else—of someone steadier and much worthier than me, who was all bound up in you, and never vain and changeable like me!’
‘Poor little tender-heart,’ said Ham, in a low voice. ‘Martha has overset her, altogether.’
‘Please, aunt,’ sobbed Em’ly, ‘come here, and let me lay my head upon you. Oh, I am very miserable tonight, aunt! Oh, I am not as good a girl as I ought to be. I am not, I know!’
Peggotty had hastened to the chair before the fire. Em’ly, with her arms around her neck, kneeled by her, looking up most earnestly into her face.
‘Oh, pray, aunt, try to help me! Ham, dear, try to help me! Mr. David, for the sake of old times, do, please, try to help me! I want to be a better girl than I am. I want to feel a hundred times more thankful than I do. I want to feel more, what a blessed thing it is to be the wife of a good man, and to lead a peaceful life. Oh me, oh me! Oh my heart, my heart!’
She dropped her face on my old nurse’s breast, and, ceasing this supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman’s, half a child’s, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and better suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner could have been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant.
She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her; now talking encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began to raise her head and speak to us. So we got on, until she was able to smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half ashamed; while Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his darling had been crying.
I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before. I saw her innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep close to his bluff form as if it were her best support. When they went away together, in the waning moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their departure in my mind with Martha’s, I saw that she held his arm with both her hands, and still kept close to him.
Lo strinsi calorosamente la mano quando l’ebbe riposta - perché questo mi sembrava più soddisfacente che dire qualcosa - e camminammo avanti e indietro, per un minuto o due, nel silenzio. La porta si aprì allora, e Peggotty apparve, facendo cenno a Ham di entrare. Io avrei voluto tenere le distanze, ma lei mi seguì, pregandomi di entrare anch’io. Anche allora, avrei voluto evitare la stanza dove erano tutti, se non fosse stata la cucina con i piastrelle ben lucidate che ho menzionato più di una volta. La porta si apriva direttamente su di essa, e mi trovai tra loro prima di considerare dove stavo andando.
La ragazza — la stessa che avevo visto sulla spiaggia — era vicino al fuoco. Era seduta a terra, con la testa e un braccio appoggiati su una sedia. Immaginavo, dalla posizione del suo corpo, che Emily fosse appena scesa dalla sedia, e che la testa abbandonata potesse forse essere stata sul suo grembo. Vedevo poco del volto della ragazza, sui cui i capelli cadevano sciolti e sparsi, come se li avesse disordinati con le sue stesse mani; ma vedevo che era giovane e di carnagione chiara. Peggotty aveva pianto. Anche la piccola Emily aveva pianto. Non una parola fu pronunciata quando entrammo; e l’orologio olandese sveglia vicino al mobile sembrava, nel silenzio, ticchettare il doppio del solito. Emily parlò per prima.
«Martha vuole», disse a Ham, «andare a Londra.»
«Perché a Londra?» rispose Ham.
Egli si fermò tra loro, guardando la ragazza prostrata con un misto di compassione per lei e di gelosia per il fatto che lei avesse una compagna con lei, quella che lui amava così tanto, cosa che ho sempre ricordato chiaramente. Entrambi parlavano come se fosse malata; con un tono dolce e soffocato che si sentiva chiaramente, anche se non saliva quasi oltre un sussurro.
«Meglio là che qui», disse una terza voce ad alta voce, quella di Martha, benché lei non si muovesse. «Là nessuno mi conosce. Qui tutti mi conoscono.»
«Che cosa farà là?» domandò Ham.
Levò la testa e lo guardò torva per un momento; poi la riabbassò e si avvolse il braccio destro intorno al collo, come potrebbe fare una donna in preda alla febbre o in agonia per il dolore di un colpo di arma da fuoco.
«Tenterà di comportarsi bene», disse la piccola Emily, «non sapete cosa ci ha detto. Lui, loro, zia?»
Peggotty scosse la testa con compassione.
«Proverò», disse Martha, «se mi aiuterete a partire. Non potrò mai fare peggio di quanto ho fatto qui. Potrei fare meglio. Oh!», con un brivido terribile, «portatemi via da queste strade, dove tutta la città mi conosce da quando ero una bambina!»
Quando Emily porse la mano a Ham, lo vidi mettervi dentro una piccola borsa di tela. Lei la prese, come se pensasse che fosse la sua borsetta, e fece un passo o due in avanti; ma, accorgendosi dell’errore, tornò indietro dove lui si era ritirato vicino a me, e gliela mostrò.
«È tutto tuo, Emily», lo sentivo dire. «Non ho niente in tutto il mondo che non sia tuo, mia cara. Non mi dà nessuna gioia, se non per te!»
Le lacrime salirono fresche ai suoi occhi, ma si voltò e andò da Martha. Non so cosa le diede. La vidi chinarsi su di lei, e metterle dei soldi in seno. Le sussurrò qualcosa, mentre le chiedeva se fosse sufficiente? «Più che sufficiente», disse l’altra, e le prese la mano e la baciò.
Allora Marta si alzò, si avvolse nello scialle, se lo portò sul viso e, piangendo a voce alta, si diresse lentamente verso la porta. Si fermò un attimo prima di uscire, come se volesse dire qualcosa o tornare indietro; ma nessuna parola le uscì dalle labbra. Con lo stesso lamento basso, triste e miserevole, coperta dallo scialle, se ne andò.
Quando la porta si chiuse, la piccola Emily ci guardò in fretta tutti e tre, poi si nascose il viso tra le mani e scoppiò in singhiozzi.
«Non farlo, Emily!» disse Ham, toccandole delicatamente la spalla. «Non farlo, mia cara! Non dovresti piangere così, piccola!»
«Oh, Ham!» esclamò, continuando a piangere pietosamente, «non sono una brava ragazza come dovrei essere! So di non avere, a volte, il cuore grato che dovrei avere!»
«Sì, sì, l’avete fatto, ne sono sicuro», disse Ham.
«No! no! no!» gridò la piccola Emily, singhiozzando e scuotendo la testa. «Non sono una brava bambina come dovrei essere. Neanche lontanamente! Neanche lontanamente!» E continuò a piangere, come se il suo cuore stesse per spezzarsi.
«Provo il tuo amore troppo. So che è così!» singhiozzò. «Sono spesso irritabile con te, e inconstante, quando dovrei essere ben diversa. Tu non lo sei mai con me. Perché mai lo sono con te, quando non dovrei pensare ad altro che a come essere grata, e a come renderti felice!»
«Mi rendete sempre così», disse Ham, «mia cara! Sono felice nel vedervi. Sono felice, tutto il giorno, nei pensieri di voi.»
«Ah! non è abbastanza!» esclamò. «È perché voi siete buona; non perché lo sono io! Oh, mia cara, sarebbe stata una fortuna migliore per voi se foste stata innamorata di qualcun altro, di qualcuno più stabile e molto più degno di me, che fosse tutto preso da voi, e mai vanitoso e mutevole come me!»
«Povera piccola tenera creatura», disse Ham a bassa voce. «Martha l’ha sconvolta completamente.»
«Per favore, zia», singhiozzò Emily, «vieni qui e lascia che appoggi la testa su di te. Oh, questa sera sono molto infelice, zia! Oh, non sono una brava ragazza come dovrei essere. Non lo sono, lo so!»
Peggotty si era affrettata verso la sedia davanti al fuoco. Emily, con le braccia al collo, le stava inginocchiata accanto, guardandola con grande serietà in viso.
«Oh, vi prego, zia, cercate di aiutarmi! Ham, caro, cercate di aiutarmi! Signor David, per il ricordo dei vecchi tempi, vi prego, cercate di aiutarmi! Voglio essere una ragazza migliore di quanto sia. Voglio sentirmi cento volte più grata di quanto mi senta. Voglio sentire di più quanto sia una benedizione essere la moglie di un uomo buono e condurre una vita tranquilla. Oh me, oh me! Oh mio cuore, mio cuore!»
Lei appoggiò il viso sul petto della mia vecchia balia, e, cessando questa supplica, che nella sua agonia e nel suo dolore era in parte quella di una donna, in parte quella di un bambino, come era tutto il suo comportamento (essendo, in questo, più naturale e più adatto alla sua bellezza, come pensavo, di quanto avrebbe potuto essere qualsiasi altro comportamento), pianse in silenzio, mentre la mia vecchia balia la calmava come un neonato.
Si calmò gradualmente, e poi la tranquillizzammo; ora parlando con tono incoraggiante, ora scherzando un po’ con lei, finché non iniziò a rialzare la testa e a parlare con noi. Così andò avanti, finché non fu in grado di sorridere, e poi di ridere, e poi di alzarsi, mezza imbarazzata; mentre Peggotty le sistemava i riccioli sparsi, si asciugava gli occhi e la rimetteva in ordine perché suo zio non dovesse stupirsi, quando fosse tornata a casa, perché la sua adorata avesse pianto.
La vidi fare, quella notte, qualcosa che non l’avevo mai vista fare prima. La vidi baciare innocente il suo sposo eletto sulla guancia, e accoccolarsi vicino alla sua robusta figura come se fosse il suo migliore sostegno. Quando se ne andarono insieme, nella luce della luna calante, e li guardai allontanarsi, paragonando la loro partenza con quella di Martha, vidi che lei gli teneva il braccio con entrambe le mani, e continuava a restare vicina a lui.
CHAPTER 23. I CORROBORATE Mr. DICK, AND CHOOSE A PROFESSION
When I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em’ly, and her emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears—even to Steerforth’s—of what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw encircling her head. I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast; and there it gave her image a new grace.
While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt. As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home. For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends. Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at our departure; and I believe would even have opened the box again, and sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good-bye; and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth, when our portmanteaux went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it. In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned, and left a great many people very sorry behind US.
‘Do you stay long here, Littimer?’ said I, as he stood waiting to see the coach start.
‘No, sir,’ he replied; ‘probably not very long, sir.’
‘He can hardly say, just now,’ observed Steerforth, carelessly. ‘He knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.’
‘That I am sure he will,’ said I.
Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgement of my good opinion, and I felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.
For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself, when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at any moment, pulled me by the arm:
‘Find a voice, David. What about that letter you were speaking of at breakfast?’
‘Oh!’ said I, taking it out of my pocket. ‘It’s from my aunt.’
‘And what does she say, requiring consideration?’
‘Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘that I came out on this expedition to look about me, and to think a little.’
‘Which, of course, you have done?’
‘Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am afraid I have forgotten it.’
‘Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence,’ said Steerforth. ‘Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same. Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear, and there it is still.’ I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.
‘What says our aunt on the subject?’ inquired Steerforth, glancing at the letter in my hand. ‘Does she suggest anything?’
‘Why, yes,’ said I. ‘She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a proctor? What do you think of it?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ replied Steerforth, coolly. ‘You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose?’
I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and professions so equally; and I told him so.
‘What is a proctor, Steerforth?’ said I.
‘Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,’ replied Steerforth. ‘He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons,—a lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard—what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity. He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.’
‘Nonsense, Steerforth!’ I exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean to say that there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?’
‘I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,’ he returned; ‘but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary, apropos of the “Nancy” having run down the “Sarah Jane”, or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the “Nelson” Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman’s case, or contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant, profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audience.’
CAPITOLO 23. CONFERMO LE PAROLE DEL SIG. DICK E SCEGLIO UNA PROFESSIONE
Quando mi svegliai la mattina pensai molto alla piccola Emily e alla sua emozione la scorsa notte, dopo che Martha se n’era andata. Sentivo di aver avuto accesso a quelle debolezze e tenerezze domestiche in un contesto di sacra fiducia, e che rivelarle, anche a Steerforth, sarebbe stato sbagliato. Non provavo sentimenti più teneri per nessuno che per la graziosa creatura che era stata mia compagna di giochi, e di cui sono sempre stato convinto, e lo sarò sempre, fino al giorno della mia morte, di averla allora amata devotamente. Ripetere a chiunque, anche a Steerforth, ciò che lei non era riuscita a trattenere quando il suo cuore si era aperto a me per caso, mi sembrava un atto brutale, indegno di me, indegno della luce del nostro puro infanzia, che vedevo sempre circondare la sua testa. Presi quindi la decisione di tenerlo per me; e ciò diede alla sua immagine una nuova grazia.
Mentre stavamo facendo colazione, mi fu consegnata una lettera da parte di mia zia. Poiché conteneva questioni su cui pensavo che Steerforth potesse consigliarmi bene quanto chiunque altro, e su cui sapevo che mi sarebbe piaciuto consultarmi con lui, decisi di farne oggetto di discussione durante il nostro viaggio a casa. Per il momento avevamo abbastanza da fare, nel salutare tutti i nostri amici. Il signor Barkis era lontano dall’essere l’ultimo tra loro nel rimpiangere la nostra partenza; e credo che avrebbe persino riaperto la scatola e sacrificato un’altra ghinea, se ciò avesse potuto tenerci a Yarmouth per altre quarantotto ore. Peggotty e tutta la sua famiglia erano pieni di dolore per la nostra partenza. Tutta la casa di Omer e Joram si presentò per salutarci; e c’erano così tanti volontari marinai in attesa di Steerforth, quando le nostre valigie furono portate alla diligenza, che se avessimo avuto il bagaglio di un reggimento con noi, non avremmo avuto bisogno di facchini per trasportarlo. In una parola, partimmo con il rammarico e l’ammirazione di tutti i presenti, e lasciammo molte persone molto dispiaciute dietro di NOI.
«Resterà a lungo qui, Littimer?» dissi, mentre stava in attesa di vedere partire la diligenza.
‘No, signore’, rispose; ‘probabilmente non molto a lungo, signore’.
«Non può certo dirlo in questo momento», osservò Steerforth, con noncuranza. «Sa cosa deve fare, e lo farà.»
«Ne sono certo», dissi.
Littimer si toccò il cappello in segno di riconoscimento della mia buona opinione, e io mi sentii come se avessi circa otto anni. Si toccò il cappello ancora una volta, augurandoci un buon viaggio; e lo lasciammo in piedi sul marciapiede, un mistero rispettabile quanto qualsiasi piramide in Egitto.
Per qualche tempo non parlammo, Steerforth era insolitamente silenzioso e io ero sufficientemente impegnato a chiedermi, tra me e me, quando avrei rivisto i vecchi luoghi e quali nuove trasformazioni sarebbero potute accadere a me o a loro nel frattempo. Alla fine Steerforth, diventando allegro e loquace in un attimo, come poteva diventare tutto ciò che voleva in qualsiasi momento, mi tirò per il braccio:
“Trova una voce, David. E quella lettera di cui parlavi a colazione?”
“Ah!” dissi, tirandolo fuori dalla tasca. “È di mia zia.”
‘E cosa dice, che richiede considerazione?’
«Ma, mi ricorda, Steerforth», dissi, «che sono uscito in questa escursione per guardarmi intorno e riflettere un po’.»
‘Che, naturalmente, hai fatto?’
«In effetti non posso dire di averlo fatto, in particolare. Per dirle la verità, temo di averlo dimenticato.»
«Ebbene! guardatevi intorno ora, e colmate la vostra negligenza», disse Steerforth. «Guardate a destra, e vedrete una pianura, con un bel po’ di palude; guardate a sinistra, e vedrete la stessa cosa. Guardate davanti, e non troverete differenza; guardate indietro, e sarà ancora lì.» Risei, e risposi che non vedevo alcuna professione adatta in tutta la prospettiva; il che forse era da attribuire alla sua piattezza.
«Che cosa dice nostra zia al riguardo?» chiese Steerforth, lanciando un’occhiata alla lettera che avevo in mano. «Ha qualche suggerimento?»
«Ebbene, sì», dissi io. «Mi chiede, qui, se penso che mi piacerebbe fare il proctore. Che ne pensate?»
«Beh, non lo so», rispose Steerforth, con calma. «Suppongo che possiate farlo altrettanto bene come qualsiasi altra cosa?»
Non potei fare a meno di ridere di nuovo, vedendolo bilanciare tutte le professioni e le chiamate in modo così equo; e glielo dissi.
«Che cos’è un proctore, Steerforth?» dissi io.
«Ebbene, è una specie di avvocato monacale», rispose Steerforth. «È per alcuni tribunali decaduti che si tengono ai Doctors’ Commons, un vecchio angolo desolato vicino al sagrato di San Paolo, ciò che gli avvocati sono per i tribunali di legge e di equità. È un funzionario la cui esistenza, nel naturale corso delle cose, sarebbe terminata circa duecento anni fa. Posso dirvi meglio che cosa è, dicendovi che cosa sono i Doctors’ Commons. È un piccolo posto fuori mano, dove amministrano ciò che si chiama legge ecclesiastica e fanno ogni sorta di trucchi con vecchi mostri obsoleti di atti parlamentari, dei quali tre quarti del mondo non sanno nulla e l’altro quarto suppone siano stati dissotterrati, in stato fossile, ai tempi degli Edwards. È un posto che ha un antico monopolio nelle cause riguardanti le volontà delle persone e i matrimoni, e nelle dispute tra navi e barche.»
«Nonsense, Steerforth!» esclamai. «Non vorrai dire che esiste qualche affinità tra le questioni nautiche e quelle ecclesiastiche?»
«No, davvero, mio caro ragazzo», rispose; «ma voglio dire che sono gestite e decise dalla stessa serie di persone, giù in quel stesso Doctors’ Commons. Un giorno ci andrai, e li troverai inciampare su metà dei termini nautici del Dizionario di Young, a proposito della “Nancy” che ha investito la “Sarah Jane”, o del signor Peggotty e dei barcaioli di Yarmouth che sono usciti in una tempesta di vento con un’ancora e una cima per la nave indiana “Nelson” in difficoltà; e ci andrai un altro giorno, e li troverai immersi nelle prove, pro e contro, riguardanti un ecclesiastico che si è comportato male; e troverai il giudice nel caso nautico, l’avvocato nel caso dell’ecclesiastico, o viceversa. Sono come attori: ora un uomo è un giudice, e ora non lo è; ora è una cosa, ora è un’altra; ora è qualcos’altro, cambiando e cambiando; ma è sempre una faccenda molto piacevole e redditizia di teatrali privati, presentata a un pubblico straordinariamente selezionato.»
‘But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?’ said I, a little puzzled. ‘Are they?’
‘No,’ returned Steerforth, ‘the advocates are civilians—men who have taken a doctor’s degree at college—which is the first reason of my knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.’
I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that ‘lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard’, did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’ Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.
‘That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,’ said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; ‘and one deserving of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’ Commons.’
I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel at Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.
We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.
If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.
‘So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?’ said I. ‘I am sorry for that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?’
As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage lengthen very much.
‘I am sorry for it, too,’ said my aunt, rubbing her nose. ‘I have had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.’ Before I could ask why, she told me.
‘I am convinced,’ said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness on the table, ‘that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green,’ said my aunt, with emphasis, ‘there was one this afternoon at four o’clock. A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a donkey!’
I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.
‘It was a donkey,’ said my aunt; ‘and it was the one with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my house.’ This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. ‘If there is any Donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another’s, that,’ said my aunt, striking the table, ‘is the animal!’
Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.
Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very high up—whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know—and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but little.
‘I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,’ said my aunt, ‘and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.’
‘Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?’ I hinted.
‘Certainly not,’ returned my aunt. ‘It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.’
I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which was of a smarter construction than usual (‘in case of fire’, my aunt said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her, according to certain established regulations from which no deviation, however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot wine and water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting opposite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me, from among the borders of her nightcap.
‘Well, Trot,’ she began, ‘what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have you not begun to think about it yet?’
‘I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like it exceedingly.’
«Ma avvocati e proctor non sono la stessa cosa?», dissi, un po’ confuso. «Sono la stessa cosa?»
«No», rispose Steerforth, «gli avvocati sono civili, uomini che hanno preso il dottorato all’università, il che è la prima ragione per cui ne so qualcosa. I proctor impiegano gli avvocati. Entrambi ricevono onorari molto comodi, e insieme formano un gruppo molto accogliente. Nel complesso, ti consiglierei di prendere bene i Doctors’ Commons, David. Si vantano della loro gentilezza lì, posso dirtelo, se questo ti dà qualche soddisfazione.»
Tenni conto del modo frivolo con cui Steerforth trattava l’argomento, e, considerandolo in relazione all’aria austera di gravità e antichità che associavo a quel «vecchio angolo pigro vicino al sagrato di San Paolo», non mi sentii indisposto verso la proposta di mia zia; che lasciò alla mia libera decisione, senza fare scrupoli a dirmi che le era venuta in mente quando aveva recentemente visitato il suo procuratore ai Doctors’ Commons allo scopo di sistemare il suo testamento a mio favore.
«È un’azione lodevole da parte di nostra zia, in ogni caso», disse Steerforth, quando glielo menzionai; «e merita tutto l’incoraggiamento. Daisy, il mio consiglio è che tu prenda bene i Doctors’ Commons».
Mi ero ben deciso a farlo. Poi dissi a Steerforth che mia zia era in città ad aspettarmi (come appresi dalla sua lettera), e che aveva preso alloggio per una settimana in una specie di albergo privato a Lincoln’s Inn Fields, dove c’era una scala di pietra e una porta comoda sul tetto; mia zia era fermamente persuasa che ogni casa a Londra sarebbe stata bruciata ogni notte.
Raggiungemmo il resto del nostro viaggio piacevolmente, ricorrendo talvolta ai Doctors’ Commons, e anticipando i giorni lontani in cui sarei stato un proctore lì, che Steerforth dipinse in una varietà di luci umoristiche e capricciose, che ci fecero entrambi allegri. Quando giungemmo alla fine del nostro viaggio, lui andò a casa, impegnandosi a farmi visita il giorno dopo il successivo; e io mi diressi a Lincoln’s Inn Fields, dove trovai mia zia alzata, in attesa della cena.
Se fossi stato dall’altra parte del mondo da quando ci siamo separati, non avremmo potuto essere più felici di rivederci. Mia zia pianse apertamente mentre mi abbracciava; e disse, fingendo di ridere, che se mia madre fosse stata viva, quella sciocca creaturina avrebbe versato lacrime, non aveva dubbio.
«Dunque ha lasciato dietro di sé il signor Dick, zia?» dissi io. «Mi dispiace. Ah, Janet, come sta?»
Mentre Janet faceva una riverenza, sperando che stessi bene, notai che il viso di mia zia si allungava parecchio.
«Mi dispiace anche a me», disse mia zia, strofinandosi il naso. «Non ho avuto un attimo di pace, Trot, da quando sono qui.» Prima che potessi chiedere perché, me lo disse.
«Sono convinta», disse mia zia, posando la mano con malinconica fermezza sul tavolo, «che il carattere di Dick non sia un carattere adatto a tenere lontani gli asini. Sono sicura che gli manca la forza di volontà. Avrei dovuto lasciare Janet a casa, invece, e forse la mia mente sarebbe stata in pace. Se mai c’è stato un asino che calpestava il mio prato», disse mia zia, con enfasi, «c’era uno questo pomeriggio alle quattro in punto. Un brivido freddo mi ha attraversato da capo a piedi, e so che era un asino!»
Cercai di consolarla su questo punto, ma lei rifiutò il conforto.
«Era un asino», disse mia zia; «e quello con la coda corta che cavalcava quella sorella assassina di una donna quando venne alla mia casa.» Questo era stato, da allora in poi, l’unico nome che mia zia conosceva per Miss Murdstone. «Se c’è un asino a Dovero la cui audacia è più difficile da sopportare di quella di un altro, quello», disse mia zia, battendo sul tavolo, «è l’animale!»
Janet si permise di suggerire che mia zia si stava disturbando inutilmente, e che credeva che l’asino in questione fosse allora occupato nel settore della sabbia e del ghiaione, e non disponibile per scopi di invasione. Ma mia zia non volle sentir ragioni.
La cena fu servita comodamente e calda, sebbene le stanze di mia zia fossero molto in alto - se ciò fosse dovuto al fatto che poteva avere più scale di pietra per i suoi soldi, o che potesse essere più vicina alla porta sul tetto, non lo so - e consisteva in un pollo arrosto, una bistecca e alcune verdure, a tutte le quali resi piena giustizia, e che erano tutte eccellenti. Ma mia zia aveva le sue idee riguardo alle provviste di Londra, e mangiò poco.
«Suppongo che questo disgraziato volatile sia nato e cresciuto in cantina», disse mia zia, «e non abbia mai preso aria se non su un marciapiede di carrozza pubblica. Spero che lo spezzatino sia di manzo, ma non ci credo. Secondo me, in questo posto non c’è niente di genuino, tranne lo sporco.»
«Non pensa che il pollame possa essere venuto dal paese, zia?» suggerii.
«Certamente no», rispose mia zia. «Non sarebbe un piacere per un commerciante di Londra vendere qualcosa che fosse davvero ciò che pretendeva di essere.»
Non mi azzardai a contraddire questa opinione, ma feci una buona cena, che la soddisfece molto vedermi fare. Quando la tavola fu sparecchiata, Janet l’aiutò ad acconciarsi i capelli, a mettersi il suo berretto da notte, che era di una costruzione più elegante del solito («in caso di fuoco», disse mia zia), e a ripiegare la sua veste sui ginocchi, queste erano le sue solite preparazioni per riscaldarsi prima di andare a letto. Poi le preparai, secondo certe regole stabilite dalle quali non si poteva mai permettere alcuna deviazione, per quanto lieve, un bicchiere di vino caldo e acqua, e una fetta di pane tostato tagliata a lunghe strisce sottili. Con questi accompagnamenti fummo lasciati soli a finire la serata, mia zia seduta di fronte a me che beveva il suo vino e acqua; intingendo le sue strisce di pane tostato una per una, prima di mangiarle; e guardandomi benignamente, da tra i bordi del suo berretto da notte.
«Bene, Trot», cominciò, «che ne pensi del piano del prorettore? O non hai ancora iniziato a pensarci?»
«Ci ho pensato molto, cara zia, e ne ho parlato a lungo con Steerforth. Mi piace davvero molto. Mi piace in modo straordinario.»
‘Come!’ said my aunt. ‘That’s cheering!’
‘I have only one difficulty, aunt.’
‘Say what it is, Trot,’ she returned.
‘Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very expensive?’
‘It will cost,’ returned my aunt, ‘to article you, just a thousand pounds.’
‘Now, my dear aunt,’ said I, drawing my chair nearer, ‘I am uneasy in my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all things as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course? Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second mother, to consider. Are you certain?’
My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded skirts, replied as follows:
‘Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it—so is Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s conversation on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!’
She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:
‘It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn, perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means; at least’—here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused—‘no, I have no other claim upon my means—and you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my whims and fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you.’
It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if anything could.
‘All is agreed and understood between us, now, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll go to the Commons after breakfast tomorrow.’
We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and inquiring, ‘if I heard the engines?’ But towards morning she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.
At about mid-day, we set out for the office of Messrs Spenlow and Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who had this other general opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some silver.
We made a pause at the toy shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants of Saint Dunstan’s strike upon the bells—we had timed our going, so as to catch them at it, at twelve o’clock—and then went on towards Ludgate Hill, and St. Paul’s Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place, when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed, and looked frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering ill-dressed man who had stopped and stared at us in passing, a little before, was coming so close after us as to brush against her.
‘Trot! My dear Trot!’ cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and pressing my arm. ‘I don’t know what I am to do.’
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ said I. ‘There’s nothing to be afraid of. Step into a shop, and I’ll soon get rid of this fellow.’
‘No, no, child!’ she returned. ‘Don’t speak to him for the world. I entreat, I order you!’
‘Good Heaven, aunt!’ said I. ‘He is nothing but a sturdy beggar.’
‘You don’t know what he is!’ replied my aunt. ‘You don’t know who he is! You don’t know what you say!’
We had stopped in an empty door-way, while this was passing, and he had stopped too.
‘Don’t look at him!’ said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly, ‘but get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul’s Churchyard.’
‘Wait for you?’ I replied.
‘Yes,’ rejoined my aunt. ‘I must go alone. I must go with him.’
‘With him, aunt? This man?’
‘I am in my senses,’ she replied, ‘and I tell you I must. Get me a coach!’
However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no right to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command. I hurried away a few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was passing empty. Almost before I could let down the steps, my aunt sprang in, I don’t know how, and the man followed. She waved her hand to me to go away, so earnestly, that, all confounded as I was, I turned from them at once. In doing so, I heard her say to the coachman, ‘Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!’ and presently the chariot passed me, going up the hill.
What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion of his, now came into my mind. I could not doubt that this person was the person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though what the nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was quite unable to imagine. After half an hour’s cooling in the churchyard, I saw the chariot coming back. The driver stopped beside me, and my aunt was sitting in it alone.
“Avanti!” disse mia zia. “Questo è incoraggiante!”
‘Ho solo una difficoltà, zia.’
«Di’ che cosa si tratta, Trot», replicò.
«Voglio chiedere, zia, poiché sembra, da quel che capisco, che sia una professione ristretta, se il mio ingresso in essa non sarebbe molto costoso?»
‘Costerà’ rispose mia zia, ‘per stipulare il tuo contratto, esattamente mille sterline.’
«Ora, mia cara zia», dissi, avvicinando la mia sedia, «sono inquieto per questo. È una grossa somma di denaro. Avete speso molto per la mia educazione, e siete sempre stata con me generosa in tutto quanto era possibile. Siete stata l’anima della generosità. Di certo ci sono modi in cui potrei iniziare la vita con pochissime spese, eppure iniziare con una buona speranza di riuscire con determinazione e impegno. Siete sicura che non sarebbe meglio provare quella strada? Siete certa di potervi permettere di separarvi da così tanto denaro, e che sia giusto spenderlo così? Vi chiedo solo, mia seconda madre, di riflettere. Siete certa?»
Mia zia finì di mangiare il pezzo di pane tostato su cui era impegnata, guardandomi tutto il tempo dritto in faccia; e poi, appoggiando il suo bicchiere sul camino e incrociando le mani sulle gonne ripiegate, rispose così:
«Trot, mio bambino, se ho un obiettivo nella vita, è quello di assicurarmi che tu diventi un uomo buono, sensato e felice. Sono deciso a farlo, e lo è anche Dick. Mi piacerebbe che certe persone che conosco potessero ascoltare le opinioni di Dick su questo argomento. La sua perspicacia è straordinaria. Ma nessuno conosce le risorse dell’intelletto di quell’uomo, tranne me!»
Si fermò un momento per prendere la mia mano tra le sue, e continuò:
«È inutile, Trot, evocare il passato, a meno che non abbia qualche influenza sul presente. Forse avrei potuto essere un’amica migliore per tuo padre. Forse avrei potuto essere un’amica migliore per quel povero bambino che era tua madre, anche dopo che tua sorella Betsey Trotwood mi aveva delusa. Quando sei venuto da me, un piccolo ragazzo scappato di casa, tutto polveroso e stanco, forse ho pensato così. Da quel tempo fino ad ora, Trot, sei sempre stato per me un motivo di orgoglio e di orgoglio e di piacere. Non ho altre pretese sul mio patrimonio; almeno» — qui, con mia sorpresa, esitò e si confuse — «no, non ho altre pretese sul mio patrimonio — e tu sei il mio figlio adottivo. Sii solo un figlio affettuoso per me nella mia vecchiaia, e sopporta i miei capricci e le mie fantasie; e farai più per una vecchia la cui giovinezza non è stata così felice o conciliante come avrebbe potuto essere, di quanto quella vecchia abbia mai fatto per te.»
Fu la prima volta in cui sentii mia zia accennare alla sua passata storia. C’era una magnanimità nel suo modo tranquillo di farlo, e di liquidarla, che l’avrebbe esaltata nel mio rispetto e affetto, se qualcosa avrebbe potuto.
«Ora tutto è chiaro e concordato tra noi, Trot», disse mia zia, «e non abbiamo più bisogno di parlarne. Dammi un bacio, e domani dopo colazione andremo al Commons.»
Abbiamo chiacchierato a lungo accanto al fuoco prima di andare a letto. Dormivo in una stanza sullo stesso piano di quella di mia zia, e fui un po’ disturbato nel corso della notte dal suo bussare alla mia porta ogni volta che era agitata da un suono lontano di carrozze pubbliche o carri del mercato, e chiedendo: «Sei sicuro di non sentire i motori?». Ma verso il mattino dormì meglio, e mi permise di fare altrettanto.
Verso mezzogiorno, ci dirigemmo verso l’ufficio dei signori Spenlow e Jorkins, nei Doctors’ Commons. La mia zia, che aveva questa altra opinione generale riguardo a Londra, che ogni uomo che vedeva era un borseggiatore, mi diede la sua borsa da portare, che conteneva dieci ghinee e un po’ d’argento.
Facemmo una pausa nel negozio di giocattoli di Fleet Street, per vedere i giganti di San Dunstano battere su le campane — avevamo calcolato il nostro arrivo in modo da coglierli in flagrante, a mezzanotte — e poi proseguimmo verso Ludgate Hill e il sagrato di San Paolo. Stavamo attraversando verso il primo luogo, quando notai che mia zia accelerava notevolmente la sua andatura e appariva spaventata. Nello stesso momento, notai che un uomo dall’aria minacciosa e mal vestito che si era fermato e ci aveva fissato mentre passavamo, poco prima, ci stava seguendo così da vicino da sfiorarla.
«Trott! Mio caro Trott!» esclamò mia zia in un sussurro spaventato, stringendomi il braccio. «Non so cosa fare.»
«Non allarmatevi», dissi. «Non c’è nulla di cui aver paura. Entrate in un negozio, e mi libererò presto di questo tizio.»
«No, no, bambino!» rispose. «Non parlargli per nessuna ragione. Ti prego, ti ordino!»
‘Per l’amor del cielo, zia!’ dissi. ‘Non è altro che un mendicante robusto.’
«Non sapete chi è!» rispose la zia. «Non sapete chi sia! Non sapete quel che dite!»
Eravamo fermi in un portone vuoto mentre tutto ciò accadeva, e lui si era fermato pure lui.
«Non guardarlo!» disse mia zia, mentre giravo la testa indignato, «ma trovami una carrozza, mia cara, e aspettami nel sagrato di San Paolo».
«Aspettare per te?» risposi.
«Sì», replicò mia zia. «Devo andare da sola. Devo andare con lui.»
‘Con lui, zia? Quest’uomo?’
‘Sono in me stessa’, rispose, ‘e ti dico che devo. Trovami una carrozza!’
Per quanto fossi stupito, ero consapevole di non avere il diritto di rifiutare di obbedire a un ordine così perentorio. Mi allontanai di qualche passo e chiamai una carrozza pubblica che passava vuota. Prima ancora che potessi abbassare i gradini, mia zia saltò dentro, non so come, e l’uomo la seguì. Mi fece un cenno con la mano di andarmene, con tale insistenza che, per quanto confuso fossi, mi allontanai subito da loro. Facendo ciò, la sentii dire al cocchiere: «Vai da qualsiasi parte! Vai dritto!» e poco dopo la carrozza mi superò, salendo la collina.
Quello che il signor Dick mi aveva detto, e che avevo supposto essere una sua allucinazione, ora mi tornava in mente. Non potevo dubitare che questa persona fosse quella di cui aveva fatto menzione così misteriosa, anche se non riuscivo proprio a immaginare quale potesse essere la natura del suo potere su mia zia. Dopo mezz’ora di raffreddamento nel cimitero, vidi il carrozzone che tornava. L’autista si fermò accanto a me, e mia zia era seduta al suo interno da sola.
She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be quite prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get into the chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and down a little while. She said no more, except, ‘My dear child, never ask me what it was, and don’t refer to it,’ until she had perfectly regained her composure, when she told me she was quite herself now, and we might get out. On her giving me her purse to pay the driver, I found that all the guineas were gone, and only the loose silver remained.
Doctors’ Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we had taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the city seemed to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A few dull courts and narrow ways brought us to the sky-lighted offices of Spenlow and Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple, accessible to pilgrims without the ceremony of knocking, three or four clerks were at work as copyists. One of these, a little dry man, sitting by himself, who wore a stiff brown wig that looked as if it were made of gingerbread, rose to receive my aunt, and show us into Mr. Spenlow’s room.
‘Mr. Spenlow’s in Court, ma’am,’ said the dry man; ‘it’s an Arches day; but it’s close by, and I’ll send for him directly.’
As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture of the room was old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale as an old pauper. There were a great many bundles of papers on it, some endorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels, and some as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches Court, and some in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty Court, and some in the Delegates’ Court; giving me occasion to wonder much, how many Courts there might be in the gross, and how long it would take to understand them all. Besides these, there were sundry immense manuscript Books of Evidence taken on affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in massive sets, a set to each cause, as if every cause were a history in ten or twenty volumes. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought, and gave me an agreeable notion of a proctor’s business. I was casting my eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar objects, when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and Mr. Spenlow, in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying in, taking off his hat as he came.
He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and the stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. He was buttoned up, mighty trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of pains with his whiskers, which were accurately curled. His gold watch-chain was so massive, that a fancy came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which are put up over the goldbeaters’ shops. He was got up with such care, and was so stiff, that he could hardly bend himself; being obliged, when he glanced at some papers on his desk, after sitting down in his chair, to move his whole body, from the bottom of his spine, like Punch.
I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been courteously received. He now said:
‘And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our profession? I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the pleasure of an interview with her the other day,’—with another inclination of his body—Punch again—‘that there was a vacancy here. Miss Trotwood was good enough to mention that she had a nephew who was her peculiar care, and for whom she was seeking to provide genteelly in life. That nephew, I believe, I have now the pleasure of’—Punch again. I bowed my acknowledgements, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me that there was that opening, and that I believed I should like it very much. That I was strongly inclined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal. That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I knew something more about it. That although it was little else than a matter of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked it, before I bound myself to it irrevocably.
‘Oh surely! surely!’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘We always, in this house, propose a month—an initiatory month. I should be happy, myself, to propose two months—three—an indefinite period, in fact—but I have a partner. Mr. Jorkins.’
‘And the premium, sir,’ I returned, ‘is a thousand pounds?’
‘And the premium, Stamp included, is a thousand pounds,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by no mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but Mr. Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to respect Mr. Jorkins’s opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand pounds too little, in short.’
‘I suppose, sir,’ said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, ‘that it is not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly useful, and made himself a perfect master of his profession’—I could not help blushing, this looked so like praising myself—‘I suppose it is not the custom, in the later years of his time, to allow him any—’
Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out of his cravat to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word ‘salary’:
‘No. I will not say what consideration I might give to that point myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. Mr. Jorkins is immovable.’
I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. But I found out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament, whose place in the business was to keep himself in the background, and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men. If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such a proposition. If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however painful these things might be (and always were) to the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would have his bond. The heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would have been always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have grown older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!
Non si era ancora sufficientemente ripresa dalla sua agitazione per essere del tutto pronta alla visita che dovevamo fare. Mi chiese di salire sul carro e di dire al cocchiere di guidare lentamente su e giù per un po’. Non disse altro, tranne: «Mia cara bambina, non chiedermi mai cosa fosse e non farne cenno», finché non ebbe perfettamente riacquistato la sua compostezza, quando mi disse che ora stava benissimo e potevamo scendere. Quando mi diede il suo portafoglio per pagare l’autista, scoprii che tutte le ghinee erano sparite e rimaneva solo il resto in monete.
Il Doctors’ Commons si accedeva attraverso un piccolo arco basso. Prima che avessimo fatto molti passi lungo la strada oltre di esso, il rumore della città sembrava dissolversi, come per magia, in una distanza attenuata. Alcuni cortili scialbi e viuzze strette ci portarono agli uffici illuminati a giorno di Spenlow e Jorkins; nel vestibolo di questo tempio, accessibile ai pellegrini senza la formalità di bussare, tre o quattro impiegati lavoravano come copisti. Uno di questi, un uomo piccolo e secco, seduto da solo, che portava una rigida parrucca marrone che sembrava fatta di pan di zenzero, si alzò per ricevere mia zia e mostrarci la stanza del signor Spenlow.
«Il signor Spenlow è in tribunale, signora», disse l’uomo asciutto; «è un giorno di Arches; ma è vicino, e lo manderò a chiamare immediatamente.»
Mentre aspettavamo che il signor Spenlow arrivasse, ci fu dato il tempo di guardarcisi intorno, e io approfittai dell’occasione. I mobili della stanza erano vecchi e polverosi; e il feltro verde sulla scrivania aveva perso tutto il suo colore, ed era così avvizzito e pallido come un vecchio mendicante. C’erano molti fascicoli di documenti, alcuni etichettati come Allegazioni, e alcuni (con mia sorpresa) come Libelle, e alcuni come appartenenti al Tribunale del Consistoro, e alcuni al Tribunale delle Arci e alcuni al Tribunale della Prerogativa, e alcuni al Tribunale dell’Ammiragliato, e alcuni al Tribunale dei Delegati; il che mi fece meravigliare molto di quante corti potessero esserci in totale, e quanto tempo ci sarebbe voluto per conoscerle tutte. Oltre a questi, c’erano diversi enormi libri manoscritti di prove raccolte con giuramento, robustamente rilegati e legati insieme in massicci insiemi, un insieme per ogni causa, come se ogni causa fosse una storia in dieci o venti volumi. Tutto questo sembrava abbastanza costoso, pensai, e mi diede un’idea piacevole del lavoro di un procuratore. Stavo passando gli occhi con crescente compiacimento su questi e molti altri oggetti simili, quando sentii dei passi affrettati nella stanza accanto, e il signor Spenlow, in un abito nero bordato di pelliccia bianca, entrò di corsa, togliendosi il cappello mentre entrava.
Era un ometto biondino, con stivali indiscutibili, e il più rigido dei cravattini bianchi e dei colletti di camicia. Era abbottonato, molto ben curato e stretto, e doveva essersi dato un gran da fare con i suoi baffetti, che erano accuratamente arricciati. La sua catena dell’orologio d’oro era così massiccia, che mi venne in mente che avrebbe dovuto avere un braccio d’oro muscoloso, per tirarla fuori, come quelli che sono esposti sopra i negozi di battitori d’oro. Era vestito con tanta cura, e così rigido, che a malapena poteva piegarsi; essendo costretto, quando dava un’occhiata ad alcuni documenti sulla sua scrivania, dopo essersi seduto sulla sua sedia, a muovere tutto il suo corpo, dalla base della sua colonna vertebrale, come Pulcinella.
Ero stato presentato in precedenza da mia zia e avevo ricevuto un’accoglienza cortese. Ora egli disse:
«E così, signor Copperfield, pensa di entrare nella nostra professione? Ho accennato casualmente a Miss Trotwood, quando ho avuto il piacere di incontrarla l’altro giorno,»—con un altro inchino del suo corpo—Punch ancora—«che c’era una vacanza qui. Miss Trotwood ha avuto la gentilezza di menzionare che aveva un nipote di cui si prendeva particolare cura, e per il quale cercava di provvedere in modo distinto nella vita. Quel nipote, credo, ho ora il piacere di»—Punch ancora. Mi inchinai in segno di ringraziamento e dissi che mia zia mi aveva accennato che c’era quell’opportunità, e che credevo di piacermi molto. Che ero fortemente incline a piacermi, e avevo aderito immediatamente alla proposta. Che non potevo impegnarmi assolutamente a piacermi, finché non ne sapessi qualcosa di più. Che, sebbene fosse poco più che una questione di forma, presumevo che avrei avuto l’opportunità di provare quanto mi piacesse, prima di legarmi ad essa irrevocabilmente.
«Oh, certamente! certamente!» disse il signor Spenlow. «In questa casa proponiamo sempre un mese di prova, un mese iniziale. Io stesso sarei felice di proporre due mesi, tre, un periodo indefinito, in effetti, ma ho un socio, il signor Jorkins.»
«E il premio, signore», replicai, «è di mille sterline?»
«E il premio, Stamp incluso, è di mille sterline», disse il signor Spenlow. «Come ho già detto alla signorina Trotwood, non sono mosso da considerazioni mercenarie; credo che pochi uomini lo siano; ma il signor Jorkins ha le sue opinioni su questi argomenti, e sono tenuto a rispettare le opinioni del signor Jorkins. Il signor Jorkins ritiene che mille sterline siano troppo poche, in breve.»
«Suppongo, signore», dissi, desiderando ancora risparmiare mia zia, «che non sia usanza qui, se un praticante fosse particolarmente utile, e si rendesse perfettamente padrone della sua professione»—non potevo fare a meno di arrossire, questo sembrava così simile a lodarmi—«suppongo che non sia usanza, negli ultimi anni del suo periodo, permettergli alcun—»
Il signor Spenlow, con uno sforzo enorme, riuscì a sollevare appena la testa dal suo fazzoletto da collo per scuoterla e rispose, anticipando la parola “stipendio”:
«No. Non dirò quale considerazione potrei dare a questo punto io stesso, signor Copperfield, se fossi libero. Il signor Jorkins è inamovibile.»
Ero davvero sconvolto dall’idea di questo terribile Jorkins. Ma scoprii in seguito che era un uomo mite, di temperamento pesante, il cui ruolo nell’impresa era quello di tenersi in disparte e di essere costantemente presentato, per nome, come l’uomo più ostinato e spietato che fosse. Se un impiegato chiedeva un aumento di stipendio, il signor Jorkins non avrebbe ascoltato una simile proposta. Se un cliente tardava a saldare il conto, il signor Jorkins era deciso a farsi pagare; e per quanto queste cose potessero essere (e lo erano sempre) dolorose per i sentimenti del signor Spenlow, il signor Jorkins avrebbe avuto la sua cauzione. Il cuore e la mano del buon angelo Spenlow sarebbero sempre stati aperti, se non fosse stato per il demone frenatore Jorkins. Crescendo, credo di aver avuto esperienza di altre case che facevano affari secondo il principio di Spenlow e Jorkins!
It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation as soon as I pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return at its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to be the subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her signature. When we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and there, and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing enough to know, we went out with this object, leaving my aunt behind; who would trust herself, she said, in no such place, and who, I think, regarded all Courts of Law as a sort of powder-mills that might blow up at any time.
Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave brick houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors’ names upon the doors, to be the official abiding-places of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth had told me; and into a large dull room, not unlike a chapel to my thinking, on the left hand. The upper part of this room was fenced off from the rest; and there, on the two sides of a raised platform of the horse-shoe form, sitting on easy old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry gentlemen in red gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the Doctors aforesaid. Blinking over a little desk like a pulpit-desk, in the curve of the horse-shoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen him in an aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who, I learned, was the presiding judge. In the space within the horse-shoe, lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of the floor, were sundry other gentlemen, of Mr. Spenlow’s rank, and dressed like him in black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting at a long green table. Their cravats were in general stiff, I thought, and their looks haughty; but in this last respect I presently conceived I had done them an injustice, for when two or three of them had to rise and answer a question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish. The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself at a stove in the centre of the Court. The languid stillness of the place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the voice of one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a perfect library of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to time, at little roadside inns of argument on the journey. Altogether, I have never, on any occasion, made one at such a cosey, dosey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life; and I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate to belong to it in any character—except perhaps as a suitor.
Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I informed Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we rejoined my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from the Commons, feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and Jorkins’s, on account of the clerks poking one another with their pens to point me out.
We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested painful associations to my aunt. We had another long talk about my plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she was anxious to get home, and, between fire, food, and pickpockets, could never be considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London, I urged her not to be uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me to take care of myself.
‘I have not been here a week tomorrow, without considering that too, my dear,’ she returned. ‘There is a furnished little set of chambers to be let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to a marvel.’
With this brief introduction, she produced from her pocket an advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, setting forth that in Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there was to be let furnished, with a view of the river, a singularly desirable, and compact set of chambers, forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman, a member of one of the Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate possession. Terms moderate, and could be taken for a month only, if required.
‘Why, this is the very thing, aunt!’ said I, flushed with the possible dignity of living in chambers.
‘Then come,’ replied my aunt, immediately resuming the bonnet she had a minute before laid aside. ‘We’ll go and look at ‘em.’
Away we went. The advertisement directed us to apply to Mrs. Crupp on the premises, and we rung the area bell, which we supposed to communicate with Mrs. Crupp. It was not until we had rung three or four times that we could prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with us, but at last she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of flannel petticoat below a nankeen gown.
‘Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, ma’am,’ said my aunt.
‘For this gentleman?’ said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her pocket for her keys.
‘Yes, for my nephew,’ said my aunt.
‘And a sweet set they is for sich!’ said Mrs. Crupp.
So we went upstairs.
They were on the top of the house—a great point with my aunt, being near the fire-escape—and consisted of a little half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the river was outside the windows.
As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. Crupp withdrew into the pantry to discuss the terms, while I remained on the sitting-room sofa, hardly daring to think it possible that I could be destined to live in such a noble residence. After a single combat of some duration they returned, and I saw, to my joy, both in Mrs. Crupp’s countenance and in my aunt’s, that the deed was done.
‘Is it the last occupant’s furniture?’ inquired my aunt.
‘Yes, it is, ma’am,’ said Mrs. Crupp.
‘What’s become of him?’ asked my aunt.
Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the midst of which she articulated with much difficulty. ‘He was took ill here, ma’am, and—ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!—and he died!’
‘Hey! What did he die of?’ asked my aunt.
‘Well, ma’am, he died of drink,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in confidence. ‘And smoke.’
‘Smoke? You don’t mean chimneys?’ said my aunt.
‘No, ma’am,’ returned Mrs. Crupp. ‘Cigars and pipes.’
‘That’s not catching, Trot, at any rate,’ remarked my aunt, turning to me.
‘No, indeed,’ said I.
In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises, took them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when that time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook; every other necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that she should always yearn towards me as a son. I was to take possession the day after tomorrow, and Mrs. Crupp said, thank Heaven she had now found summun she could care for!
On our way back, my aunt informed me how she confidently trusted that the life I was now to lead would make me firm and self-reliant, which was all I wanted. She repeated this several times next day, in the intervals of our arranging for the transmission of my clothes and books from Mr. Wickfield’s; relative to which, and to all my late holiday, I wrote a long letter to Agnes, of which my aunt took charge, as she was to leave on the succeeding day. Not to lengthen these particulars, I need only add, that she made a handsome provision for all my possible wants during my month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great disappointment and hers too, did not make his appearance before she went away; that I saw her safely seated in the Dover coach, exulting in the coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, with Janet at her side; and that when the coach was gone, I turned my face to the Adelphi, pondering on the old days when I used to roam about its subterranean arches, and on the happy changes which had brought me to the surface.
Fu deciso che avrei iniziato il mio mese di prova quando avessi voluto, e che mia zia non avrebbe dovuto né rimanere in città né tornarvi al termine del periodo, poiché i documenti di accordo, di cui sarei stato l’oggetto, potevano facilmente essere inviati a lei a casa per la sua firma. Quando fummo arrivati a questo punto, il signor Spenlow si offrì di portarmi in tribunale lì e subito, e mostrarmi che tipo di posto fosse. Poiché ero abbastanza desideroso di saperlo, uscimmo con questo obiettivo, lasciando mia zia indietro; che non si sarebbe fidata, disse, in un posto del genere, e che, credo, considerava tutti i tribunali come una sorta di mulini da polvere che potevano esplodere in qualsiasi momento.
Il signor Spenlow mi condusse attraverso un cortile lastricato formato da case di mattoni gravi, dalle quali, dai nomi dei Dottori sulle porte, dedussi che fossero le residenze ufficiali degli avvocati dotti di cui mi aveva parlato Steerforth; e in una grande stanza scialba, non dissimile da una cappella secondo me, sulla sinistra. La parte superiore di questa stanza era recintata dal resto; e lì, ai due lati di una piattaforma rialzata a forma di ferro di cavallo, seduti su vecchie sedie da sala da pranzo di vecchio stile, c’erano vari signori in toghe rosse e parrucche grigie, che scoprii essere i Dottori suddetti. A sbirciare oltre un piccolo banco come un pulpito, nella curva del ferro di cavallo, c’era un vecchio signore, che, se l’avessi visto in un voliera, avrei certamente scambiato per un gufo, ma che, appresi, era il giudice presiedente. Nello spazio all’interno del ferro di cavallo, più in basso di questi, cioè, all’incirca al livello del pavimento, c’erano vari altri signori, del rango del signor Spenlow, e vestiti come lui in toghe nere con pelliccia bianca, seduti a un lungo tavolo verde. I loro cravattini erano in generale rigidi, pensai, e i loro sguardi alteri; ma sotto quest’ultimo aspetto concepii subito di aver loro fatto un torto, perché quando due o tre di loro dovettero alzarsi e rispondere a una domanda del dignitario presiedente, non vidi mai nulla di più timoroso. Il pubblico, rappresentato da un ragazzo con un foulard, e un uomo trasandato che mangiava di nascosto briciole dalle tasche del suo cappotto, si stava riscaldando a una stufa al centro della Corte. La languida immobilità del luogo era rotta solo dal canto di questo fuoco e dalla voce di uno dei Dottori, che vagava lentamente attraverso una vera e propria biblioteca di prove, e si fermava a mettere su, di tempo in tempo, in piccoli alberghi di argomenti sulla strada. Nel complesso, non ho mai, in nessun’altra occasione, partecipato a una così accogliente, sonnacchiosa, antiquata, dimenticata dal tempo, pigra festa di famiglia in tutta la mia vita; e sentivo che sarebbe stato un vero e proprio opio calmante farne parte in qualsiasi ruolo—tranne forse come querelante.
Molto soddisfatto della calma atmosfera di questo rifugio, informai il signor Spenlow che avevo visto abbastanza per quel momento, e ci riunimmo a mia zia; in compagnia della quale mi allontanai presto dai Commons, sentendomi molto giovane quando uscii da Spenlow e Jorkins, a causa degli impiegati che si punzecchiavano con le loro penne per indicarmi.
Siamo arrivati a Lincoln’s Inn Fields senza nuove avventure, tranne l’incontro con un disgraziato asino in un carretto di venditore ambulante, che suscitò dolorosi ricordi in mia zia. Abbiamo avuto un altro lungo discorso sui miei piani, una volta al sicuro in casa; e dato che sapevo che era ansiosa di tornare a casa, e che tra il fuoco, il cibo e i borseggiatori, non si sarebbe mai potuta sentire a suo agio per mezz’ora a Londra, l’ho esortata a non sentirsi a disagio per colpa mia, ma a lasciarmi fare da solo.
«Non sarò qui da una settimana domani, senza considerare anche questo, mio caro», replicò. «C’è un piccolo appartamento ammobiliato da affittare all’Adelphi, Trot, che dovrebbe adattarsi a te alla perfezione.»
Con questa breve introduzione, ella estrasse dalla tasca un annuncio, accuratamente ritagliato da un giornale, che annunciava che in Buckingham Street all’Adelphi si affittavano arredati, con vista sul fiume, un insieme di stanze singolarmente desiderabili e compatte, che formavano una residenza di buon gusto per un giovane gentiluomo, membro di uno degli Inns of Court, o altro, con consegna immediata. Termini moderati, e potevano essere presi per un mese solo, se necessario.
«Ma questa è proprio la cosa, zia!» esclamai, arrossendo per la possibile dignità di vivere in un appartamento.
«Allora vieni», rispose mia zia, riprendendo subito il cappello che aveva appena deposto. «Andremo a dare un’occhiata.»
Via al galoppo. L’annuncio ci indicava di chiedere di Mrs. Crupp in loco, e suonammo il campanello del seminterrato, che supponevamo mettesse in comunicazione con Mrs. Crupp. Non fu che dopo aver suonato tre o quattro volte che riuscimmo a convincere Mrs. Crupp a comunicare con noi, ma alla fine apparve, essendo una signora robusta con una balza di sottana di flanella sotto un vestito di nankeen.
«Vorremmo vedere le sue stanze, se non le dispiace, signora», disse mia zia.
«Per questo signore?» disse la signora Crupp, frugando nelle tasche per le chiavi.
«Sì, per mio nipote», disse mia zia.
«E che dolce coppia sono per se stessi!» disse la signora Crupp.
Così salimmo al piano di sopra.
Erano in cima alla casa — un grande vantaggio per mia zia, essendo vicino alla scala antincendio — e consistevano in un piccolo ingresso mezzo cieco dove non si poteva vedere quasi nulla, una piccola dispensa di pietra cieca dove non si poteva vedere nulla, un salotto e una camera da letto. I mobili erano piuttosto sbiaditi, ma abbastanza buoni per me; e, come previsto, il fiume era fuori dalle finestre.
Poiché ero entusiasta del posto, mia zia e la signora Crupp si ritirarono nella dispensa per discutere le condizioni, mentre io rimasi sul divano del salotto, a malapena osando credere possibile che potessi essere destinato a vivere in una dimora così nobile. Dopo un combattimento singolo di una certa durata tornarono, e vidi, con mia gioia, sia nel volto della signora Crupp che in quello di mia zia, che l’affare era concluso.
«È il mobilio dell’ultimo inquilino?» chiese mia zia.
«Sì, lo è, signora», disse la signora Crupp.
«Che ne è stato di lui?» chiese mia zia.
La signora Crupp fu colta da una tosse molesta, nel bel mezzo della quale articolò con molta difficoltà: «Qui si ammalò, signora, e—ugh! ugh! ugh! mio Dio!—e qui morì!»
«Ehi! Di che cosa è morto?» chiese mia zia.
«Beh, signora, è morto per il bere», disse la signora Crupp, confidenzialmente. «E per il fumo.»
«Fumo? Non vorrete dire camini?» disse mia zia.
“No, signora,” rispose la signora Crupp. “Sigari e pipe.”
«Questo non è contagioso, Trot, almeno per quanto ne sappiamo», osservò la zia, rivolgendosi a me.
«No, davvero», dissi io.
Insomma, mia zia, vedendo quanto fossi entusiasta di quell’abitazione, la prese in affitto per un mese, con la facoltà di rimanervi per altri dodici mesi dopo quel periodo. La signora Crupp avrebbe provveduto alla biancheria e alla cucina; ogni altro comfort era già disponibile; e la signora Crupp mi fece esplicitamente intendere che mi avrebbe sempre considerato come un figlio. Avrei preso possesso dell’abitazione dopodomani, e la signora Crupp disse che, grazie al cielo, aveva finalmente trovato qualcuno di cui prendersi cura!
Sulla via del ritorno, mia zia mi informò di quanto confidasse che la vita che ora avrei condotto mi avrebbe reso saldo e autonomo, che era tutto ciò che desideravo. Ripeté questo più volte il giorno dopo, nei momenti in cui organizzavamo il trasferimento dei miei vestiti e libri dalla casa del signor Wickfield; a proposito di ciò, e di tutte le mie recenti vacanze, scrissi una lunga lettera ad Agnes, della quale mia zia si occupò, poiché doveva partire il giorno successivo. Per non dilungarmi su questi particolari, devo solo aggiungere che fece un’ampia provvista per tutti i miei possibili bisogni durante il mio mese di prova; che Steerforth, a mio grande dispiacere e anche suo, non si fece vedere prima che se ne andasse; che la vidi seduta in sicurezza sul calesse per Dover, esultante per la prossima disfatta degli asini vagabondi, con Janet al suo fianco; e che quando il calesse se ne fu andato, mi voltai verso l’Adelphi, riflettendo sui vecchi giorni in cui ero solito vagare per le sue arcate sotterranee, e sui felici cambiamenti che mi avevano portato in superficie.
CHAPTER 24. MY FIRST DISSIPATION
It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robinson Crusoe, when he had got into his fortification, and pulled his ladder up after him. It was a wonderfully fine thing to walk about town with the key of my house in my pocket, and to know that I could ask any fellow to come home, and make quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody, if it were not so to me. It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out, and to come and go without a word to anyone, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping, from the depths of the earth, when I wanted her—and when she was disposed to come. All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I must say, too, that there were times when it was very dreary.
It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings. It looked a very fresh, free life, by daylight: still fresher, and more free, by sunlight. But as the day declined, the life seemed to go down too. I don’t know how it was; it seldom looked well by candle-light. I wanted somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank, in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother me with his decease.
After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year, and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever.
Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he must be ill, I left the Commons early on the third day, and walked out to Highgate. Mrs. Steerforth was very glad to see me, and said that he had gone away with one of his Oxford friends to see another who lived near St. Albans, but that she expected him to return tomorrow. I was so fond of him, that I felt quite jealous of his Oxford friends.
As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I believe we talked about nothing but him all day. I told her how much the people liked him at Yarmouth, and what a delightful companion he had been. Miss Dartle was full of hints and mysterious questions, but took a great interest in all our proceedings there, and said, ‘Was it really though?’ and so forth, so often, that she got everything out of me she wanted to know. Her appearance was exactly what I have described it, when I first saw her; but the society of the two ladies was so agreeable, and came so natural to me, that I felt myself falling a little in love with her. I could not help thinking, several times in the course of the evening, and particularly when I walked home at night, what delightful company she would be in Buckingham Street.
I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning, before going to the Commons—and I may observe in this place that it is surprising how much coffee Mrs. Crupp used, and how weak it was, considering—when Steerforth himself walked in, to my unbounded joy.
‘My dear Steerforth,’ cried I, ‘I began to think I should never see you again!’
‘I was carried off, by force of arms,’ said Steerforth, ‘the very next morning after I got home. Why, Daisy, what a rare old bachelor you are here!’
I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the pantry, with no little pride, and he commended it highly. ‘I tell you what, old boy,’ he added, ‘I shall make quite a town-house of this place, unless you give me notice to quit.’
This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited for that, he would have to wait till doomsday.
‘But you shall have some breakfast!’ said I, with my hand on the bell-rope, ‘and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and I’ll toast you some bacon in a bachelor’s Dutch-oven, that I have got here.’
‘No, no!’ said Steerforth. ‘Don’t ring! I can’t! I am going to breakfast with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden.’
‘But you’ll come back to dinner?’ said I.
‘I can’t, upon my life. There’s nothing I should like better, but I must remain with these two fellows. We are all three off together tomorrow morning.’
‘Then bring them here to dinner,’ I returned. ‘Do you think they would come?’
‘Oh! they would come fast enough,’ said Steerforth; ‘but we should inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere.’
I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I really ought to have a little house-warming, and that there never could be a better opportunity. I had a new pride in my rooms after his approval of them, and burned with a desire to develop their utmost resources. I therefore made him promise positively in the names of his two friends, and we appointed six o’clock as the dinner-hour.
When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted her with my desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course it was well known she couldn’t be expected to wait, but she knew a handy young man, who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms would be five shillings, and what I pleased. I said, certainly we would have him. Next Mrs. Crupp said it was clear she couldn’t be in two places at once (which I felt to be reasonable), and that ‘a young gal’ stationed in the pantry with a bedroom candle, there never to desist from washing plates, would be indispensable. I said, what would be the expense of this young female? and Mrs. Crupp said she supposed eighteenpence would neither make me nor break me. I said I supposed not; and THAT was settled. Then Mrs. Crupp said, Now about the dinner.
It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the part of the ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp’s kitchen fireplace, that it was capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes. As to a fish-kittle, Mrs. Crupp said, well! would I only come and look at the range? She couldn’t say fairer than that. Would I come and look at it? As I should not have been much the wiser if I HAD looked at it, I declined, and said, ‘Never mind fish.’ But Mrs. Crupp said, Don’t say that; oysters was in, why not them? So THAT was settled. Mrs. Crupp then said what she would recommend would be this. A pair of hot roast fowls—from the pastry-cook’s; a dish of stewed beef, with vegetables—from the pastry-cook’s; two little corner things, as a raised pie and a dish of kidneys—from the pastrycook’s; a tart, and (if I liked) a shape of jelly—from the pastrycook’s. This, Mrs. Crupp said, would leave her at full liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes, and to serve up the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done.
CAPITOLO 24. LA MIA PRIMA DEBOLEZZA
Fu una cosa meravigliosamente bella avere quel maestoso castello per me solo, e sentirmi, quando chiudevo la mia porta esterna, come Robinson Crusoe, quando era entrato nella sua fortezza e aveva tirato su la scala dietro di sé. Fu una cosa meravigliosamente bella passeggiare per la città con la chiave della mia casa in tasca, e sapere che potevo invitare chiunque a venire a casa, e essere del tutto sicuro che non sarebbe stato un disturbo per nessuno, se non lo fosse stato per me. Fu una cosa meravigliosamente bella entrare ed uscire da solo, e venire e andare senza dire una parola a nessuno, e chiamare su, ansimante, dalle profondità della terra, la signora Crupp, quando la volevo—e quando era disposta a venire. Tutto questo, dico, era meravigliosamente bello; ma devo dire, anche, che c’erano momenti in cui era molto triste.
La mattina era bella, specialmente nelle belle mattine. Di giorno sembrava una vita molto fresca e libera: ancora più fresca e più libera sotto il sole. Ma man mano che il giorno declinava, anche la vita sembrava declinare. Non so come mai; raramente sembrava bene alla luce delle candele. Allora volevo parlare con qualcuno. Mi mancava Agnes. Trovavo un enorme vuoto al posto di quel sereno deposito della mia fiducia. La signora Crupp sembrava essere lontana. Pensavo al mio predecessore, che era morto per il bere e il fumo; e avrei potuto desiderare che fosse stato così buono da vivere, e non disturbarmi con la sua morte.
Dopo due giorni e due notti, mi sentivo come se avessi vissuto lì per un anno, eppure non ero più vecchio di un’ora, ma ero tormentato dalla mia giovinezza come sempre.
Non vedendo comparire Steerforth, temetti che fosse ammalato, così il terzo giorno lasciai il refettorio presto e mi diressi a Highgate. La signora Steerforth fu molto contenta di vedermi e mi disse che lui era partito con uno dei suoi amici di Oxford per andare a trovare un altro che viveva vicino a St. Albans, ma che si aspettava il suo ritorno il giorno dopo. Ero così affezionato a lui che provavo una certa gelosia nei confronti dei suoi amici di Oxford.
Poiché mi invitò a restare a cena, rimasi, e credo che abbiamo parlato di nient’altro che di lui tutto il giorno. Le raccontai quanto la gente lo amasse a Yarmouth, e che compagno delizioso fosse stato. Miss Dartle era piena di allusioni e domande misteriose, ma si interessava molto a tutto ciò che facevamo là, e diceva: «Ma è proprio vero?» e così via, così spesso, che mi fece dire tutto ciò che voleva sapere. Il suo aspetto era esattamente come l’ho descritto, quando la vidi per la prima volta; ma la compagnia delle due signore era così piacevole, e mi risultava così naturale, che mi sentii un po’ innamorato di lei. Non potevo fare a meno di pensare, più volte nel corso della serata, e soprattutto quando tornai a casa a notte, che compagnia deliziosa sarebbe stata in Buckingham Street.
Stavo prendendo il caffè e la brioche al mattino, prima di andare alla Camera dei Comuni — e posso osservare in questo luogo che è sorprendente quanto caffè usasse la signora Crupp, e quanto fosse debole, considerando — quando entrò in persona Steerforth, per la mia gioia senza limiti.
‘Caro Steerforth,’ esclamai, ‘cominciavo a pensare che non ti avrei più rivisto!’
«Sono stato portato via, con la forza delle armi», disse Steerforth, «la mattina dopo che sono arrivato a casa. Ma, Daisy, che raro vecchio scapolo sei qui!»
Gli feci visitare la casa, non tralasciando la dispensa, con non poca fierezza, e lui la lodò molto. «Sai che ti dico, vecchio mio», aggiunse, «ne farò una vera casa di città, a meno che tu non mi dia un preavviso di sfratto.»
Fu un udienza deliziosa. Gli dissi che se aspettava quello, avrebbe dovuto aspettare fino al Giorno del Giudizio.
«Ma lei avrà comunque la sua colazione!» dissi, con la mano sulla corda del campanello, «e la signora Crupp le preparerà del caffè fresco, e io le farò tostare del pancetta in un forno olandese da scapolo che ho qui.»
«No, no!» disse Steerforth. «Non suonare! Non posso! Sto andando a fare colazione con uno di questi tizi che è al Piazza Hotel, a Covent Garden.»
«Ma tornerai per la cena?» dissi io.
«Non posso, sulla mia vita. Non c’è nulla che desidererei di più, ma devo rimanere con questi due tizi. Partiamo tutti e tre insieme domani mattina.»
“Portali qui a cena”, risposi. “Pensi che accetterebbero?”
«Oh! verrebbero abbastanza in fretta», disse Steerforth; «ma vi daremmo disturbo. È meglio che veniate a cenare con noi da qualche parte.»
Non avrei in alcun modo acconsentito a questo, perché mi era venuto in mente che avrei davvero dovuto fare una piccola festa di inaugurazione della casa, e che non ci sarebbe mai stata un’occasione migliore. Avevo un nuovo orgoglio per le mie stanze dopo la sua approvazione, e ardevo dal desiderio di sfruttare al massimo le loro potenzialità. Così lo feci promettere positivamente a nome dei suoi due amici, e fissammo le sei in punto come ora di cena.
Quando se ne fu andato, chiamai la signora Crupp e le comunicai il mio disperato progetto. La signora Crupp disse, in primo luogo, che naturalmente era noto che non si poteva pretendere che lei aspettasse, ma conosceva un giovane pratico, che pensava si potesse convincere a farlo, e le cui tariffe sarebbero state di cinque scellini, e quello che mi piaceva. Dissi, certo che lo avremmo avuto. Poi la signora Crupp disse che era chiaro che non poteva essere in due posti contemporaneamente (cosa che mi sembrò ragionevole), e che una ‘giovane ragazza’ di stanza in dispensa con una candela da camera da letto, che non avrebbe mai smesso di lavare i piatti, sarebbe stata indispensabile. Dissi, qual sarebbe stata la spesa per questa giovane? e la signora Crupp disse che supponeva che diciotto pence non mi avrebbero né arricchito né rovinato. Dissi che supponevo di no; e QUESTO fu deciso. Poi la signora Crupp disse, Ora riguardo alla cena.
Fu un caso notevole di mancanza di preveggenza da parte del fabbroferraio che aveva costruito il caminetto della cucina della signora Crupp, che era in grado di cucinare solo bistecca e purè di patate. Per quanto riguarda un bollitore per il pesce, la signora Crupp disse, beh! non volevo venire a dare un’occhiata al fornello? Non poteva dire di più. Volevo venire a dare un’occhiata? Poiché non sarei stato molto più saggio se avessi dato un’occhiata, rifiutai e dissi: “Non importa il pesce”. Ma la signora Crupp disse: “Non dire così; le ostriche erano in, perché no?”. Così fu deciso. La signora Crupp disse poi che cosa avrebbe consigliato. Un paio di polli arrosto caldi — dal pasticciere; un piatto di manzo stufato, con verdure — dal pasticciere; due piccole cose agli angoli, come una torta salata e un piatto di reni — dal pasticciere; una torta e (se mi piaceva) una forma di gelatina — dal pasticciere. Questo, disse la signora Crupp, le avrebbe lasciato piena libertà di concentrarsi sulle patate e di servire il formaggio e il sedano come avrebbe voluto vederlo fatto.
I acted on Mrs. Crupp’s opinion, and gave the order at the pastry-cook’s myself. Walking along the Strand, afterwards, and observing a hard mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef shop, which resembled marble, but was labelled ‘Mock Turtle’, I went in and bought a slab of it, which I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed for fifteen people. This preparation, Mrs. Crupp, after some difficulty, consented to warm up; and it shrunk so much in a liquid state, that we found it what Steerforth called ‘rather a tight fit’ for four.
These preparations happily completed, I bought a little dessert in Covent Garden Market, and gave a rather extensive order at a retail wine-merchant’s in that vicinity. When I came home in the afternoon, and saw the bottles drawn up in a square on the pantry floor, they looked so numerous (though there were two missing, which made Mrs. Crupp very uncomfortable), that I was absolutely frightened at them.
One of Steerforth’s friends was named Grainger, and the other Markham. They were both very gay and lively fellows; Grainger, something older than Steerforth; Markham, youthful-looking, and I should say not more than twenty. I observed that the latter always spoke of himself indefinitely, as ‘a man’, and seldom or never in the first person singular.
‘A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Markham—meaning himself.
‘It’s not a bad situation,’ said I, ‘and the rooms are really commodious.’
‘I hope you have both brought appetites with you?’ said Steerforth.
‘Upon my honour,’ returned Markham, ‘town seems to sharpen a man’s appetite. A man is hungry all day long. A man is perpetually eating.’
Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was announced, and seated myself opposite to him. Everything was very good; we did not spare the wine; and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make the thing pass off well, that there was no pause in our festivity. I was not quite such good company during dinner as I could have wished to be, for my chair was opposite the door, and my attention was distracted by observing that the handy young man went out of the room very often, and that his shadow always presented itself, immediately afterwards, on the wall of the entry, with a bottle at its mouth. The ‘young gal’ likewise occasioned me some uneasiness: not so much by neglecting to wash the plates, as by breaking them. For being of an inquisitive disposition, and unable to confine herself (as her positive instructions were) to the pantry, she was constantly peering in at us, and constantly imagining herself detected; in which belief, she several times retired upon the plates (with which she had carefully paved the floor), and did a great deal of destruction.
These, however, were small drawbacks, and easily forgotten when the cloth was cleared, and the dessert put on the table; at which period of the entertainment the handy young man was discovered to be speechless. Giving him private directions to seek the society of Mrs. Crupp, and to remove the ‘young gal’ to the basement also, I abandoned myself to enjoyment.
I began, by being singularly cheerful and light-hearted; all sorts of half-forgotten things to talk about, came rushing into my mind, and made me hold forth in a most unwonted manner. I laughed heartily at my own jokes, and everybody else’s; called Steerforth to order for not passing the wine; made several engagements to go to Oxford; announced that I meant to have a dinner-party exactly like that, once a week, until further notice; and madly took so much snuff out of Grainger’s box, that I was obliged to go into the pantry, and have a private fit of sneezing ten minutes long.
I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was needed. I proposed Steerforth’s health. I said he was my dearest friend, the protector of my boyhood, and the companion of my prime. I said I was delighted to propose his health. I said I owed him more obligations than I could ever repay, and held him in a higher admiration than I could ever express. I finished by saying, ‘I’ll give you Steerforth! God bless him! Hurrah!’ We gave him three times three, and another, and a good one to finish with. I broke my glass in going round the table to shake hands with him, and I said (in two words)
‘Steerforth—you’retheguidingstarofmyexistence.’
I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a song. Markham was the singer, and he sang ‘When the heart of a man is depressed with care’. He said, when he had sung it, he would give us ‘Woman!’ I took objection to that, and I couldn’t allow it. I said it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as ‘The Ladies!’ I was very high with him, mainly I think because I saw Steerforth and Grainger laughing at me—or at him—or at both of us. He said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man was not to be insulted, then. I said he was right there—never under my roof, where the Lares were sacred, and the laws of hospitality paramount. He said it was no derogation from a man’s dignity to confess that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health.
Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. Steerforth had made a speech about me, in the course of which I had been affected almost to tears. I returned thanks, and hoped the present company would dine with me tomorrow, and the day after—each day at five o’clock, that we might enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through a long evening. I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt. Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!
Agii secondo l’opinione della signora Crupp e diedi l’ordine al pasticcere di persona. Camminando lungo il Strand, dopo, e notando una sostanza dura marmorizzata nella vitrina di un negozio di prosciutti e carni, che assomigliava al marmo, ma era etichettata “Tartaruga Finta”, entrai e ne comprai un pezzo, che da allora ho avuto ragione di credere sarebbe bastato per quindici persone. Questo preparato, la signora Crupp, dopo qualche difficoltà, acconsentì a riscaldare; e si rimpicciolì così tanto in stato liquido, che scoprimmo che era, come Steerforth chiamava, “un po’ stretto” per quattro.
Questi preparativi felicemente completati, comprai un piccolo dessert al mercato di Covent Garden, e feci un ordine piuttosto ampio presso un venditore al dettaglio di vini in quella zona. Quando tornai a casa nel pomeriggio, e vidi le bottiglie allineate in un quadrato sul pavimento della dispensa, sembravano così numerose (anche se ne mancavano due, il che mise la signora Crupp molto a disagio), che ne fui assolutamente spaventato.
Uno degli amici di Steerforth si chiamava Grainger, e l’altro Markham. Erano entrambi gioviali e vivaci compagni; Grainger, un po’ più anziano di Steerforth; Markham, dall’aspetto giovanile, e direi non più di vent’anni. Notai che quest’ultimo parlava sempre di sé in modo indefinito, come «un uomo», e raramente o mai in prima persona singolare.
«Un uomo potrebbe cavarsela molto bene qui, signor Copperfield», disse Markham, riferendosi a se stesso.
‘Non è una brutta situazione’, dissi, ‘e le stanze sono davvero comode.’
«Spero che abbiate portato con voi l’appetito?», disse Steerforth.
«Per la mia parola d’onore», rispose Markham, «la città sembra acuire l’appetito di un uomo. Un uomo ha fame tutto il giorno. Un uomo mangia in continuazione.»
Essendo un po’ imbarazzato all’inizio, e sentendomi troppo giovane per presiedere, feci sedere Steerforth a capotavola quando fu annunciata la cena, e mi accomodai di fronte a lui. Tutto era molto buono; non risparmiammo il vino; e lui si impegnò così brillantemente per far sì che tutto andasse a gonfie vele, che non ci fu alcuna pausa nella nostra festa. Non fui proprio la migliore compagnia durante la cena come avrei potuto desiderare, perché la mia sedia era di fronte alla porta, e la mia attenzione era distratta dal notare che il giovane uomo di servizio usciva dalla stanza molto spesso, e che la sua ombra si presentava sempre subito dopo, sulla parete dell’ingresso, con una bottiglia in bocca. Anche la ‘giovane ragazza’ mi causò un po’ di inquietudine: non tanto per il fatto di trascurare di lavare i piatti, quanto per romperli. Essendo di indole curiosa, e incapace di limitarsi (come le era stato esplicitamente ordinato) alla dispensa, era costantemente intenta a sbirciarci, e costantemente immaginava di essere scoperta; in questa convinzione, più volte si ritirò sui piatti (con i quali aveva accuratamente lastricato il pavimento), e fece un gran danno.
Tuttavia, si trattava di piccoli inconvenienti, e facilmente dimenticati quando la tovaglia fu tolta e il dessert messo in tavola; a quel punto dell’intrattenimento si scoprì che il giovane uomo abile era muto. Dandogli istruzioni private di cercare la compagnia della signora Crupp, e di portare la “giovane ragazza” in cantina anche lei, mi abbandonai al godimento.
Cominciai con un’insolita allegria e leggerezza d’animo; mi vennero in mente un sacco di cose a cui non pensavo più da tempo, e mi misi a parlare in un modo davvero insolito. Risero di gusto le mie battute e quelle degli altri; feci osservare a Steerforth che non passava il vino; presi diversi impegni per andare a Oxford; annunciai che avrei dato una cena esattamente come quella, una volta a settimana, fino a nuovo avviso; e presi così tanto tabacco da fiuto dalla scatola di Grainger che fui costretto a rifugiarmi nella dispensa per starnutire in santa pace per dieci minuti.
Continuai, passando il vino sempre più velocemente, e alzandomi continuamente con un cavatappi per aprire più vino, molto prima che ce ne fosse bisogno. Proposi la salute di Steerforth. Dissi che era il mio caro amico, il protettore della mia giovinezza, e il compagno della mia età adulta. Dissi che ero felice di proporre la sua salute. Dissi che gli dovevo più obblighi di quanti avrei mai potuto ripagare, e lo tenevo in un’ammirazione più alta di quanto avrei mai potuto esprimere. Conclusi dicendo: «Vi darò Steerforth! Dio lo benedica! Evviva!» Gli demmo tre volte tre, e un’altra, e una buona per finire. Rompei il mio bicchiere mentre giravo attorno al tavolo per stringergli la mano, e dissi (in due parole)
‘Steerforth, tu sei la stella polare della mia vita.’
Proseguii, scoprendo all’improvviso che qualcuno era nel bel mezzo di una canzone. Markham era il cantante, e cantava “Quando il cuore di un uomo è oppresso dalle preoccupazioni”. Disse che, dopo averla cantata, ci avrebbe proposto “La donna!”. Obiettai a questo, e non potevo permetterlo. Dissi che non era un modo rispettoso di proporre il brindisi, e non avrei mai permesso che quel brindisi fosse fatto nella mia casa se non come “Le signore!”. Ero molto altero con lui, soprattutto, credo, perché vedevo Steerforth e Grainger ridere di me—o di lui—o di entrambi. Disse che a un uomo non si deve comandare. Dissi che invece sì. Disse che a un uomo non si deve insultare, allora. Dissi che aveva ragione—mai sotto il mio tetto, dove i Lari erano sacri e le leggi dell’ospitalità primarie. Disse che non era una deroga alla dignità di un uomo ammettere che ero un diavolo di un tipo. Proposi subito la sua salute.
Qualcuno stava fumando. Eravamo tutti a fumare. Io stavo fumando, e cercavo di reprimere una crescente tendenza a rabbrividire. Steerforth aveva fatto un discorso su di me, nel corso del quale ero stato quasi commosso fino alle lacrime. Ho ringraziato e speravo che la compagnia presente avrebbe cenato con me domani, e il giorno dopo, ogni giorno alle cinque in punto, così avremmo potuto godere dei piaceri della conversazione e della società per una lunga serata. Mi sentivo chiamato a proporre una persona. Avrei dato loro mia zia, la signorina Betsey Trotwood, la migliore del suo sesso!
Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as ‘Copperfield’, and saying, ‘Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t do it.’ Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair—only my hair, nothing else—looked drunk.
Somebody said to me, ‘Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!’ There was no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with glasses; the lamp; Grainger on my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth opposite—all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The theatre? To be sure. The very thing. Come along! But they must excuse me if I saw everybody out first, and turned the lamp off—in case of fire.
Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it.
A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for I hadn’t had it on before. Steerforth then said, ‘You are all right, Copperfield, are you not?’ and I told him, ‘Neverberrer.’
A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole-place, looked out of the fog, and took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember in the glimpse I had of him) whether to take the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards, we were very high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a large pit, that seemed to me to smoke; the people with whom it was crammed were so indistinct. There was a great stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after the streets; and there were people upon it, talking about something or other, but not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance of bright lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in the boxes, and I don’t know what more. The whole building looked to me as if it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unaccountable manner, when I tried to steady it.
On somebody’s motion, we resolved to go downstairs to the dress-boxes, where the ladies were. A gentleman lounging, full dressed, on a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, passed before my view, and also my own figure at full length in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of these boxes, and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people about me crying ‘Silence!’ to somebody, and ladies casting indignant glances at me, and—what! yes!—Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside her, whom I didn’t know. I see her face now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its indelible look of regret and wonder turned upon me.
‘Agnes!’ I said, thickly, ‘Lorblessmer! Agnes!’
‘Hush! Pray!’ she answered, I could not conceive why. ‘You disturb the company. Look at the stage!’
I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something of what was going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at her again by and by, and saw her shrink into her corner, and put her gloved hand to her forehead.
‘Agnes!’ I said. ‘I’mafraidyou’renorwell.’
‘Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Listen! Are you going away soon?’
‘Amigoarawaysoo?’ I repeated.
‘Yes.’
I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait, to hand her downstairs. I suppose I expressed it, somehow; for after she had looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared to understand, and replied in a low tone:
‘I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest in it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you home.’
She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I was angry with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short ‘Goori!’ (which I intended for ‘Good night!’) got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the box-door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling him that Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine.
How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over again, at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night—the bed a rocking sea that was never still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!
But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt when I became conscious next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate—my recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me—the torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, Beast that I was, how she came to be in London, or where she stayed—my disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been held—my racking head—the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of going out, or even getting up! Oh, what a day it was!
Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story as well as to his chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal all! What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire remains of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen breast and say, in heartfelt penitence, ‘Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp, never mind the broken meats! I am very miserable!’—only that I doubted, even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide in!
Qualcuno si affacciava alla finestra della mia camera da letto, rinfrescandosi la fronte contro la pietra fredda del parapetto e sentendo l’aria sul viso. Ero io. Mi stavo rivolgendo a me stesso come “Copperfield” e dicendo: “Perché hai cercato di fumare? Avresti potuto sapere che non potevi farlo”. Ora, qualcuno stava contemplando instabilmente i suoi tratti nello specchio. Ero io anche in questo caso. Ero molto pallido nello specchio; i miei occhi avevano un’aria vacua; e i miei capelli, solo i miei capelli, nulla altro, sembravano ubriachi.
Qualcuno mi disse: «Andiamo al teatro, Copperfield!». Non c’era una camera da letto davanti a me, ma ancora il tavolo tintinnante coperto di bicchieri; la lampada; Grainger alla mia destra, Markham alla mia sinistra e Steerforth di fronte, tutti seduti in una nebbia, e molto lontani. Il teatro? Certo. Proprio quello che ci vuole. Andiamo! Ma dovete scusarmi se faccio uscire tutti prima e spengo la lampada, nel caso ci fosse un incendio.
A causa di una certa confusione al buio, la porta era scomparsa. La stavo cercando dietro le tende della finestra quando Steerforth, ridendo, mi prese per il braccio e mi condusse fuori. Scendemmo le scale, uno dietro l’altro. Vicino al basso, qualcuno cadde e rotolò giù. Qualcun altro disse che era Copperfield. Mi arrabbiai per quella falsa notizia, finché, trovandomi supino nel corridoio, cominciai a pensare che potesse esserci qualche fondamento.
Una notte molto nebbiosa, con grandi cerchi intorno ai lampioni nelle strade! Si parlava in modo confuso del fatto che era umido. Io la trovavo gelida. Steerforth mi ha spolverato sotto un lampione e mi ha sistemato il cappello, che qualcuno ha tirato fuori da chissà dove in un modo davvero straordinario, perché prima non l’avevo addosso. Poi Steerforth ha detto: «Sei a posto, Copperfield, vero?» e io gli ho risposto: «Mai stato meglio».
Un uomo, seduto in un buco della posta, guardava fuori dalla nebbia e prendeva del denaro da qualcuno, chiedendo se fossi uno dei signori pagati, e sembrava piuttosto dubbioso (come ricordo nel breve sguardo che ho avuto di lui) se prendere o no il denaro per me. Poco dopo, eravamo molto in alto in un teatro molto caldo, guardando giù in un grande fosso, che mi sembrava fumare; le persone con cui era stipato erano così indistinte. C’era anche un grande palcoscenico, che sembrava molto pulito e liscio dopo le strade; e c’erano persone sopra di esso, che parlavano di qualcosa, ma non affatto in modo comprensibile. C’era un’abbondanza di luci brillanti, e c’era musica, e c’erano signore nelle poltrone, e non so cosa altro. L’intero edificio mi sembrava di imparare a nuotare; si comportava in modo così inspiegabile, quando cercavo di stabilizzarlo.
Su proposta di qualcuno, decidemmo di scendere al piano terra, dove le signore si trovavano nelle logge. Un signore, in abito da sera, che se ne stava disteso su un divano con un binocolo in mano, passò davanti ai miei occhi, e anche la mia figura intera riflessa in uno specchio. Poi fui introdotto in una di queste logge, e mi trovai a dire qualcosa mentre mi sedevo, e le persone intorno a me gridavano ‘Silenzio!’ a qualcuno, e le signore mi lanciavano sguardi indignati, e—che cosa! sì!—Agnes, seduta sul sedile davanti a me, nella stessa loggia, con una signora e un signore accanto a lei, che non conoscevo. Ora vedo il suo viso meglio di allora, oserei dire, con il suo sguardo indelebile di rimpianto e meraviglia rivolto a me.
‘Agnes!’ dissi con voce tremante, ‘Lorblessmer! Agnes!’
«Sst! Per favore!» rispose, senza che io potessi capire il perché. «Disturbi la compagnia. Guardi il palcoscenico!»
Su suo ordine, cercai di fissarlo e di sentire qualcosa di ciò che stava accadendo lì, ma tutto fu inutile. La guardai di nuovo dopo un po’, e la vidi ritrarsi nel suo angolo, e portare la sua mano guantata alla fronte.
‘Agnes!’, dissi. ‘Temo che non ti senta bene.’
‘Sì, sì. Non badare a me, Trotwood,’ rispose. ‘Ascolta! Stai per partire presto?’
«Amigoarawaysoo?» ripetei.
“Sì, davvero.”
Avevo la stupida intenzione di rispondere che stavo aspettando di accompagnarla al piano di sotto. Suppongo di averlo espresso in qualche modo, perché dopo avermi guardato attentamente per un po’, sembrò capire e rispose a bassa voce:
«So che farai come ti chiedo, se ti dico che ci tengo molto. Vattene ora, Trotwood, per amor mio, e chiedi ai tuoi amici di portarti a casa.»
Mi aveva così migliorato, per la prima volta, che sebbene fossi arrabbiato con lei, mi sentivo in imbarazzo, e con un breve “Goori!” (che intendevo per “Buona notte!”) mi alzai e me ne andai. Mi seguirono, e io uscii subito dalla porta della stanza nel mio dormitorio, dove c’era solo Steerforth con me, che mi aiutava a spogliarmi, e dove gli dicevo a turno che Agnes era mia sorella, e lo pregavo di portare il cavatappi, così da aprire un’altra bottiglia di vino.
Come qualcuno, sdraiato nel mio letto, ripeteva tutto questo, parlando e agendo, in un sogno febbrile, tutta la notte — il letto era un mare in tempesta che non si placava mai! Come, mentre quella persona si trasformava lentamente in me, cominciai ad arrostire, sentendomi come se il mio strato esterno di pelle fosse una tavola di legno dura; la mia lingua il fondo di un bollitore vuoto, ricoperto di incrostazioni dovute a un lungo uso, e che bruciava su un lento fuoco; le palme delle mie mani, piastre di metallo roventi che nessun ghiaccio avrebbe potuto raffreddare!
Ma l’agonia mentale, il rimorso e la vergogna che provai quando tornai in me il giorno dopo! Il mio orrore per aver commesso mille crimini che avevo dimenticato e che nulla avrebbe mai potuto espiare, il ricordo di quello sguardo indelebile che Agnes mi aveva rivolto, l’atroce impossibilità di comunicare con lei, non sapendo, bestia che ero, come fosse arrivata a Londra o dove alloggiava, il disgusto solo al pensiero della stanza in cui si era svolta la baldoria, il mio mal di testa lancinante, l’odore di fumo, la vista dei bicchieri, l’impossibilità di uscire, o anche solo di alzarmi! Oh, che giornata fu quella!
Oh, che serata, quando mi sedetti accanto al mio fuoco davanti a una ciotola di brodo di montone, tutto cosparso di grasso, e pensavo di seguire le orme del mio predecessore, e di ereditare la sua tetra storia tanto quanto i suoi alloggi, e avevo mezza voglia di correre a Dover e rivelare tutto! Che serata, quando la signora Crupp, entrando per portar via la ciotola del brodo, mi presentò un rene su un vassoio da formaggio come tutto ciò che restava del banchetto di ieri, e io ero davvero propenso a gettarmi sul suo seno di nankeen e a dire, con sincero pentimento: «Oh, signora Crupp, signora Crupp, non importa la carne avanzata! Sono molto infelice!»—solo che dubitavo, anche in quel frangente, che la signora Crupp fosse proprio il tipo di donna in cui confidarsi!
CHAPTER 25. GOOD AND BAD ANGELS
I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in his hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; but when he saw me on the top of the staircase, looking at him over the banisters, he swung into a trot, and came up panting as if he had run himself into a state of exhaustion.
‘T. Copperfield, Esquire,’ said the ticket-porter, touching his hat with his little cane.
I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the conviction that the letter came from Agnes. However, I told him I was T. Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the letter, which he said required an answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for the answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous state that I was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast table, and familiarize myself with the outside of it a little, before I could resolve to break the seal.
I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note, containing no reference to my condition at the theatre. All it said was, ‘My dear Trotwood. I am staying at the house of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in Ely Place, Holborn. Will you come and see me today, at any time you like to appoint? Ever yours affectionately, AGNES.’
It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written half-a-dozen answers at least. I began one, ‘How can I ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting impression’—there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up. I began another, ‘Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is that a man should put an enemy into his mouth’—that reminded me of Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note, in a six-syllable line, ‘Oh, do not remember’—but that associated itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many attempts, I wrote, ‘My dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what could I say of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come at four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T.C.’ With this missive (which I was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon as it was out of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.
If the day were half as tremendous to any other professional gentleman in Doctors’ Commons as it was to me, I sincerely believe he made some expiation for his share in that rotten old ecclesiastical cheese. Although I left the office at half past three, and was prowling about the place of appointment within a few minutes afterwards, the appointed time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, according to the clock of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient desperation to pull the private bell-handle let into the left-hand door-post of Mr. Waterbrook’s house.
The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook’s establishment was done on the ground-floor, and the genteel business (of which there was a good deal) in the upper part of the building. I was shown into a pretty but rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse.
She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my airy fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid wretch I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my self-reproach and shame, and—in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous.
‘If it had been anyone but you, Agnes,’ said I, turning away my head, ‘I should not have minded it half so much. But that it should have been you who saw me! I almost wish I had been dead, first.’
She put her hand—its touch was like no other hand—upon my arm for a moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.
‘Sit down,’ said Agnes, cheerfully. ‘Don’t be unhappy, Trotwood. If you cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?’
‘Ah, Agnes!’ I returned. ‘You are my good Angel!’
She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.
‘Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!’
‘If I were, indeed, Trotwood,’ she returned, ‘there is one thing that I should set my heart on very much.’
I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of her meaning.
‘On warning you,’ said Agnes, with a steady glance, ‘against your bad Angel.’
‘My dear Agnes,’ I began, ‘if you mean Steerforth—’
‘I do, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much. He my bad Angel, or anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, and a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to judge him from what you saw of me the other night?’
‘I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,’ she quietly replied.
‘From what, then?’
‘From many things—trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over you.’
There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a chord within me, answering to that sound alone. It was always earnest; but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a thrill in it that quite subdued me. I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on her work; I sat seeming still to listen to her; and Steerforth, in spite of all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone.
CAPITOLO 25. ANGELI BUONI E CATTIVI
Stavo uscendo di casa la mattina dopo quel deprecabile giorno di mal di testa, nausea e pentimento, con una strana confusione nella mente riguardo alla data della mia cena, come se un corpo di Titani avesse preso una leva enorme e spinto il giorno prima di ieri indietro di alcuni mesi, quando vidi un fattorino salire le scale con una lettera in mano. Allora stava prendendosi il suo tempo per la sua commissione; ma quando mi vide in cima alle scale, che lo guardavo sopra i corrimano, si mise a trotterellare e salì ansimando come se si fosse messo a correre fino a esaurire le forze.
«Signor T. Copperfield», disse il facchino, toccandosi il cappello con il suo bastoncino.
A malapena potevo rivendicare il nome: ero così turbato dalla convinzione che la lettera fosse di Agnes. Tuttavia, gli dissi che ero T. Copperfield, Esquire, e lui mi credette, e mi consegnò la lettera, che, disse, richiedeva una risposta. Lo feci aspettare fuori, sul pianerottolo, mentre io, in uno stato di nervosismo tale che fui costretto a posare la lettera sul tavolo della colazione e a familiarizzare un po’ con l’esterno, prima di poter decidere di rompere il sigillo.
Quando lo aprii, scoprii che era un biglietto molto gentile, che non faceva alcun riferimento al mio stato al teatro. Diceva semplicemente: «Mio caro Trotwood. Sono ospite nella casa dell’agente di papà, il signor Waterbrook, in Ely Place, Holborn. Verrai a trovarmi oggi, a qualsiasi ora tu voglia fissare? Sempre affettuosamente tua, AGNES».
Mi ci volle un tempo così lungo per scrivere una risposta che mi soddisfacesse, che non so cosa avrà pensato il fattorino, a meno che non abbia pensato che stavo imparando a scrivere. Devo aver scritto almeno mezza dozzina di risposte. Ne ho iniziata una, “Come potrò mai sperare, mia cara Agnes, di cancellare dalla tua memoria l’impressione disgustosa”—lì non mi è piaciuta, e l’ho strappata. Ne ho iniziata un’altra, “Shakespeare ha osservato, mia cara Agnes, quanto sia strano che un uomo metta un nemico in bocca”—questo mi ha ricordato Markham, e non è andata oltre. Ho anche provato con la poesia. Ho iniziato un biglietto, in una riga di sei sillabe, “Oh, non ricordare”—ma questo si è associato al cinque novembre, ed è diventato un’assurdità. Dopo molti tentativi, ho scritto, “Mia cara Agnes. La tua lettera è come te, e cosa potrei dire di essa che sarebbe un elogio più grande di questo? Verrò alle quattro e mezza. Affettuosamente e con rammarico, T.C.” Con questo messaggio (che ero in venti menti contemporaneamente sul richiamare, non appena era uscito dalle mie mani), il fattorino se ne andò finalmente.
Se la giornata fosse stata anche solo la metà di quanto tremenda fosse per me per qualche altro gentiluomo professionista dei Doctors’ Commons, credo sinceramente che avrebbe fatto qualche espiatione per la sua parte in quel vecchio e marcio formaggio ecclesiastico formaggio. Anche se lasciai l’ufficio alle tre e mezza e mi aggiravo nei pressi del luogo dell’appuntamento pochi minuti dopo, il tempo stabilito fu superato di un quarto d’ora, secondo l’ora della chiesa di San Andrea, Holborn, prima che potessi raccogliere abbastanza disperazione da tirare la maniglia della campanella privata incastonata nel montante sinistro della porta di casa del signor Waterbrook casa.
L’attività professionale dell’istituto del signor Waterbrook si svolgeva al piano terra, mentre l’attività gentilizia (che era piuttosto fiorente) nella parte superiore dell’edificio. Mi fecero entrare in un salotto grazioso ma piuttosto angusto, e lì sedeva Agnes, intrecciando una borsetta.
Aveva un’aria così tranquilla e buona, e mi ricordava così vivamente i miei giorni di scuola a Canterbury, così ariosi e freschi, e il disgraziato, smunto, sudicio e stupido che ero stato l’altra notte, che, non essendoci nessuno nei paraggi, cedetti al mio autorimprovero e al mio senso di vergogna, e, in breve, feci la figura del pazzo. Non posso negare di aver versato lacrime. Ancora oggi non so se, tutto sommato, sia stata la cosa più saggia che potessi fare, o la più ridicola.
«Se non fossi stata tu, Agnes», dissi, voltando la testa dall’altra parte, «non me ne sarei preoccupato la metà. Ma che tu fossi stata proprio tu a vedermi! Vorrei quasi essere morto prima».
Lei mise la sua mano — il suo tocco era come nessun’altra mano — sul mio braccio per un momento; e mi sentii così amico e confortato, che non potei fare a meno di portarla alle mie labbra, e baciarla con gratitudine.
«Siediti», disse Agnes, allegra. «Non essere infelice, Trotwood. Se non puoi fidarti di me con sicurezza, di chi ti fiderai?»
‘Ah, Agnes!’ risposi. ‘Sei il mio buon angelo!’
Sorrise piuttosto tristemente, mi parve, e scosse la testa.
‘Sì, Agnes, il mio buon angelo! Sempre il mio buon angelo!’
«Se fossi davvero Trotwood», replicò, «c’è una cosa che vorrei tanto.»
La guardai con aria interrogativa; ma già con un presentimento del suo significato.
«Ti ho messo in guardia», disse Agnes con uno sguardo fermo, «contro il tuo cattivo angelo.»
‘Agnes cara,’ iniziai, ‘se intendi Steerforth—’
«Lo faccio, Trotwood», rispose. «Allora, Agnes, lo tratti molto ingiustamente. Lui il mio cattivo angelo, o quello di chiunque altro! Lui, tutto fuorché una guida, un sostegno e un amico per me! Mia cara Agnes! Ora, non è ingiusto e non è da te giudicarlo per quello che hai visto di me l’altra sera?»
«Non lo giudico per quello che ho visto di te l’altra sera», rispose tranquillamente.
‘Allora, da cosa?’
«Da molte cose, che in sé sono bagattelle, ma che a me non sembrano tali quando le si mettono insieme. Lo giudico in parte dal tuo racconto su di lui, Trotwood, e dal tuo carattere, e dall’influenza che ha su di te.»
C’era sempre qualcosa nella sua modesta voce che sembrava toccare una corda dentro di me, rispondendo a quel suono solo. Era sempre sincera; ma quando era molto sincera, come lo era ora, c’era un brivido in essa che mi sottometteva completamente. Ero seduto a guardarla mentre abbassava gli occhi sul suo lavoro; ero seduto apparentemente ancora ad ascoltarla; e Steerforth, nonostante tutto il mio affetto per lui, si offuscava in quel tono.
‘It is very bold in me,’ said Agnes, looking up again, ‘who have lived in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to give you my advice so confidently, or even to have this strong opinion. But I know in what it is engendered, Trotwood,—in how true a remembrance of our having grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relating to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am certain that what I say is right. I am quite sure it is. I feel as if it were someone else speaking to you, and not I, when I caution you that you have made a dangerous friend.’
Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was silent, and again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened.
‘I am not so unreasonable as to expect,’ said Agnes, resuming her usual tone, after a little while, ‘that you will, or that you can, at once, change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting disposition. You ought not hastily to do that. I only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me—I mean,’ with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her, and she knew why, ‘as often as you think of me—to think of what I have said. Do you forgive me for all this?’
‘I will forgive you, Agnes,’ I replied, ‘when you come to do Steerforth justice, and to like him as well as I do.’
‘Not until then?’ said Agnes.
I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this mention of him, but she returned my smile, and we were again as unreserved in our mutual confidence as of old.
‘And when, Agnes,’ said I, ‘will you forgive me the other night?’
‘When I recall it,’ said Agnes.
She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it to allow that, and insisted on telling her how it happened that I had disgraced myself, and what chain of accidental circumstances had had the theatre for its final link. It was a great relief to me to do this, and to enlarge on the obligation that I owed to Steerforth for his care of me when I was unable to take care of myself.
‘You must not forget,’ said Agnes, calmly changing the conversation as soon as I had concluded, ‘that you are always to tell me, not only when you fall into trouble, but when you fall in love. Who has succeeded to Miss Larkins, Trotwood?’
‘No one, Agnes.’
‘Someone, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, laughing, and holding up her finger.
‘No, Agnes, upon my word! There is a lady, certainly, at Mrs. Steerforth’s house, who is very clever, and whom I like to talk to—Miss Dartle—but I don’t adore her.’
Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me that if I were faithful to her in my confidence she thought she should keep a little register of my violent attachments, with the date, duration, and termination of each, like the table of the reigns of the kings and queens, in the History of England. Then she asked me if I had seen Uriah.
‘Uriah Heep?’ said I. ‘No. Is he in London?’
‘He comes to the office downstairs, every day,’ returned Agnes. ‘He was in London a week before me. I am afraid on disagreeable business, Trotwood.’
‘On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,’ said I. ‘What can that be?’
Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of hers:
‘I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.’
‘What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such promotion!’ I cried, indignantly. ‘Have you made no remonstrance about it, Agnes? Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak out. You must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You must prevent it, Agnes, while there’s time.’
Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking, with a faint smile at my warmth: and then replied:
‘You remember our last conversation about papa? It was not long after that—not more than two or three days—when he gave me the first intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him struggling between his desire to represent it to me as a matter of choice on his part, and his inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt very sorry.’
‘Forced upon him, Agnes! Who forces it upon him?’
‘Uriah,’ she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘has made himself indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has mastered papa’s weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until—to say all that I mean in a word, Trotwood,—until papa is afraid of him.’
There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or that she suspected; I clearly saw. I could not give her pain by asking what it was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father. It had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but feel, on the least reflection, that it had been going on to this for a long time. I remained silent.
‘His ascendancy over papa,’ said Agnes, ‘is very great. He professes humility and gratitude—with truth, perhaps: I hope so—but his position is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.’
I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to me.
‘At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,’ pursued Agnes, ‘he had told papa that he was going away; that he was very sorry, and unwilling to leave, but that he had better prospects. Papa was very much depressed then, and more bowed down by care than ever you or I have seen him; but he seemed relieved by this expedient of the partnership, though at the same time he seemed hurt by it and ashamed of it.’
‘And how did you receive it, Agnes?’
‘I did, Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to make it. I said it would lighten the load of his life—I hope it will!—and that it would give me increased opportunities of being his companion. Oh, Trotwood!’ cried Agnes, putting her hands before her face, as her tears started on it, ‘I almost feel as if I had been papa’s enemy, instead of his loving child. For I know how he has altered, in his devotion to me. I know how he has narrowed the circle of his sympathies and duties, in the concentration of his whole mind upon me. I know what a multitude of things he has shut out for my sake, and how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his life, and weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always upon one idea. If I could ever set this right! If I could ever work out his restoration, as I have so innocently been the cause of his decline!’
«È molto audace da parte mia», disse Agnes, alzando di nuovo lo sguardo, «che ho vissuto in tale isolamento e posso sapere così poco del mondo, darvi i miei consigli con tanta sicurezza, o anche avere questa forte opinione. Ma so da cosa nasce, Trotwood, - da quanto vero ricordo del fatto che siamo cresciuti insieme, e da quanto vero interesse in tutto ciò che vi riguarda. È questo che mi rende audace. Sono certa che ciò che dico è giusto. Ne sono sicura. Mi sento come se fosse qualcun altro a parlarvi, e non io, quando vi metto in guardia che avete fatto un amico pericoloso.»
La guardai di nuovo, la ascoltai di nuovo dopo che fu silenziosa, e di nuovo la sua immagine, sebbene fosse ancora fissata nel mio cuore, si oscurò.
«Non sono così irragionevole da aspettarmi», disse Agnes, riprendendo il suo tono abituale dopo un po’, «che tu possa, o che tu voglia, cambiare subito un sentimento che è diventato una convinzione per te; meno che mai un sentimento che ha radici nella tua fiduciosa indole. Non dovresti farlo in fretta. Ti chiedo solo, Trotwood, se pensi a me - voglio dire», con un sorriso tranquillo, perché stavo per interromperla e lei sapeva perché, «ogni volta che pensi a me - di pensare a quello che ho detto. Mi perdoni per tutto questo?»
«Ti perdonerò, Agnes», risposi, «quando verrai a rendere giustizia a Steerforth, e a volergli bene quanto ne voglio io.»
«Non fino ad allora?» disse Agnes.
Vidi passare un’ombra sul suo viso quando feci questo accenno a lui, ma mi restituì il sorriso e tornammo a confidarci con la stessa sincerità di un tempo.
«E quando, Agnes», dissi, «mi perdonerai per l’altra sera?»
«Quando ci ripenso», disse Agnes.
Avrebbe voluto liquidare l’argomento così, ma io ero troppo preso da esso per permetterlo, e insistetti nel raccontarle come fosse accaduto che mi fossi disonorato, e quale catena di circostanze casuali avesse avuto il teatro come suo anello finale. Fu per me un grande sollievo farlo, e dilungarmi sull’obbligo che avevo nei confronti di Steerforth per la sua cura nei miei riguardi quando non ero in grado di prendermi cura di me stesso.
«Non devi dimenticare», disse Agnes, cambiando tranquillamente argomento non appena ebbi concluso, «che dovrai sempre dirmelo, non solo quando ti trovi nei guai, ma anche quando ti innamori. Chi ha preso il posto di Miss Larkins, Trotwood?»
‘Nessuno, Agnes.’
«Qualcuno, Trotwood», disse Agnes ridendo e alzando un dito.
«No, Agnes, sulla mia parola! C’è una signora, certamente, nella casa della signora Steerforth, che è molto intelligente e con cui mi piace parlare - la signorina Dartle - ma non la adoro.»
Agnes rise di nuovo della sua perspicacia e mi disse che se le fossi stato fedele nel mio racconto, pensava di tenere un piccolo registro dei miei violenti attaccamenti, con la data, la durata e la fine di ciascuno, come la tabella dei regni dei re e delle regine, nella storia d’Inghilterra. Poi mi chiese se avevo visto Uriah.
«Uriah Heep?» dissi. «No. È a Londra?»
«Viene nell’ufficio al piano di sotto ogni giorno», rispose Agnes. «Era a Londra una settimana prima di me. Temo per affari spiacevoli, Trotwood.»
‘Su qualche affare che ti rende inquieta, Agnes, vedo,’ dissi. ‘Che cosa può essere?’
Agnes mise da parte il suo lavoro e rispose, intrecciando le mani l’una sull’altra e guardandomi pensierosa con quei suoi begli occhi dolci:
‘Credo che stia per entrare in società con papà.’
«Che cosa? Uriah? Quel meschino, servile individuo, riuscire a insinuarsi in una tale promozione!» esclamai indignato. «Non hai fatto alcuna protesta al riguardo, Agnes? Considera quale connessione potrebbe essere. Devi parlare chiaro. Non puoi permettere a tuo padre di compiere un passo così folle. Devi impedirlo, Agnes, finché c’è ancora tempo.»
Agnes, continuando a guardarmi, scosse il capo mentre parlavo, con un debole sorriso per il mio entusiasmo, e poi rispose:
«Ti ricordi la nostra ultima conversazione su papà? Non molto tempo dopo
- non più di due o tre giorni - mi diede la prima indicazione di ciò che ti dico. Era triste vederlo lottare tra il suo desiderio di rappresentarmelo come una questione di scelta da parte sua, e la sua incapacità di nascondere che gli era stato imposto. Mi dispiaceva molto.»
“Imposta a lui, Agnes! Chi gliela impone?”
«Uriah», rispose lei dopo un momento di esitazione, «si è reso indispensabile per papà. È sottile e vigile. Ha scoperto le debolezze di papà, le ha coltivate e sfruttate, fino a che - per dire tutto ciò che voglio dire in una parola, Trotwood - fino a che papà ne ha paura.»
C’era altro che avrebbe potuto dire; altro che sapeva, o che sospettava; lo vedevo chiaramente. Non potevo darle dolore chiedendole di cosa si trattasse, perché sapevo che me lo nascondeva per risparmiare suo padre. Era da tempo che andava avanti così, ne ero consapevole: sì, non potevo fare a meno di sentire, anche solo riflettendo un po’, che era andata avanti così per un lungo periodo. Rimasi in silenzio.
«Il suo ascendente su papà», disse Agnes, «è molto grande. Professa umiltà e gratitudine — con verità, forse: lo spero — ma la sua posizione è in realtà una di potere, e io temo che faccia un uso duro del suo potere.»
Dissi che era un cane, il che, in quel momento, mi diede una grande soddisfazione.
«Al tempo di cui parlo, come il tempo in cui papà mi parlò», continuò Agnes, «aveva detto a papà che se ne andava; che gli dispiaceva molto, e non voleva partire, ma che aveva prospettive migliori. Papà era molto abbattuto allora, e più piegato dalle preoccupazioni di quanto tu o io l’abbiamo mai visto; ma sembrava sollevato da questo espediente della società, sebbene allo stesso tempo sembrasse ferito e vergognoso di questo.»
‘E come l’hai ricevuto, Agnes?’
«L’ho fatto, Trotwood», rispose, «quello che spero fosse giusto. Sentivo che era necessario per la tranquillità di papà che quel sacrificio venisse fatto, e l’ho pregato di farlo. Gli ho detto che avrebbe alleggerito il peso della sua vita — spero che lo faccia! — e che mi avrebbe dato maggiori opportunità di essere la sua compagna. Oh, Trotwood!», esclamò Agnes, portando le mani davanti al viso mentre le lacrime le sgorgavano, «mi sento quasi come se fossi stata l’avversaria di papà, invece della sua amata figlia. Perché so quanto è cambiato, nella sua devozione per me. So quanto ha restringito il cerchio delle sue simpatie e dei suoi doveri, concentrando tutta la sua mente su di me. So quante cose ha escluso per il mio bene, e come i suoi pensieri ansiosi per me hanno oscurato la sua vita, indebolendo la sua forza e la sua energia, rivolgendole sempre su un’unica idea. Se potessi mai rimediare! Se potessi mai realizzare la sua guarigione, come sono stata così innocente causa del suo declino!»
I had never before seen Agnes cry. I had seen tears in her eyes when I had brought new honours home from school, and I had seen them there when we last spoke about her father, and I had seen her turn her gentle head aside when we took leave of one another; but I had never seen her grieve like this. It made me so sorry that I could only say, in a foolish, helpless manner, ‘Pray, Agnes, don’t! Don’t, my dear sister!’
But Agnes was too superior to me in character and purpose, as I know well now, whatever I might know or not know then, to be long in need of my entreaties. The beautiful, calm manner, which makes her so different in my remembrance from everybody else, came back again, as if a cloud had passed from a serene sky.
‘We are not likely to remain alone much longer,’ said Agnes, ‘and while I have an opportunity, let me earnestly entreat you, Trotwood, to be friendly to Uriah. Don’t repel him. Don’t resent (as I think you have a general disposition to do) what may be uncongenial to you in him. He may not deserve it, for we know no certain ill of him. In any case, think first of papa and me!’
Agnes had no time to say more, for the room door opened, and Mrs. Waterbrook, who was a large lady—or who wore a large dress: I don’t exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was lady—came sailing in. I had a dim recollection of having seen her at the theatre, as if I had seen her in a pale magic lantern; but she appeared to remember me perfectly, and still to suspect me of being in a state of intoxication.
Finding by degrees, however, that I was sober, and (I hope) that I was a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Waterbrook softened towards me considerably, and inquired, firstly, if I went much into the parks, and secondly, if I went much into society. On my replying to both these questions in the negative, it occurred to me that I fell again in her good opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully, and invited me to dinner next day. I accepted the invitation, and took my leave, making a call on Uriah in the office as I went out, and leaving a card for him in his absence.
When I went to dinner next day, and on the street door being opened, plunged into a vapour-bath of haunch of mutton, I divined that I was not the only guest, for I immediately identified the ticket-porter in disguise, assisting the family servant, and waiting at the foot of the stairs to carry up my name. He looked, to the best of his ability, when he asked me for it confidentially, as if he had never seen me before; but well did I know him, and well did he know me. Conscience made cowards of us both.
I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of shirt-collar, who only wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs. Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s—say his aunt.
Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense deference was shown to the Henry Spikers, male and female; which Agnes told me was on account of Mr. Henry Spiker being solicitor to something or to somebody, I forget what or which, remotely connected with the Treasury.
I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a suit of black, and in deep humility. He told me, when I shook hands with him, that he was proud to be noticed by me, and that he really felt obliged to me for my condescension. I could have wished he had been less obliged to me, for he hovered about me in his gratitude all the rest of the evening; and whenever I said a word to Agnes, was sure, with his shadowless eyes and cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly down upon us from behind.
There were other guests—all iced for the occasion, as it struck me, like the wine. But there was one who attracted my attention before he came in, on account of my hearing him announced as Mr. Traddles! My mind flew back to Salem House; and could it be Tommy, I thought, who used to draw the skeletons!
I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual interest. He was a sober, steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair, and eyes that were rather wide open; and he got into an obscure corner so soon, that I had some difficulty in making him out. At length I had a good view of him, and either my vision deceived me, or it was the old unfortunate Tommy.
I made my way to Mr. Waterbrook, and said, that I believed I had the pleasure of seeing an old schoolfellow there.
‘Indeed!’ said Mr. Waterbrook, surprised. ‘You are too young to have been at school with Mr. Henry Spiker?’
‘Oh, I don’t mean him!’ I returned. ‘I mean the gentleman named Traddles.’
‘Oh! Aye, aye! Indeed!’ said my host, with much diminished interest. ‘Possibly.’
‘If it’s really the same person,’ said I, glancing towards him, ‘it was at a place called Salem House where we were together, and he was an excellent fellow.’
‘Oh yes. Traddles is a good fellow,’ returned my host nodding his head with an air of toleration. ‘Traddles is quite a good fellow.’
‘It’s a curious coincidence,’ said I.
‘It is really,’ returned my host, ‘quite a coincidence, that Traddles should be here at all: as Traddles was only invited this morning, when the place at table, intended to be occupied by Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, became vacant, in consequence of his indisposition. A very gentlemanly man, Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, Mr. Copperfield.’
I murmured an assent, which was full of feeling, considering that I knew nothing at all about him; and I inquired what Mr. Traddles was by profession.
Non avevo mai visto Agnes piangere. Avevo visto lacrime nei suoi occhi quando avevo portato a casa nuovi onori dalla scuola, e le avevo viste quando avevamo parlato l’ultima volta di suo padre, e l’avevo vista girare la sua dolce testa da un’altra parte quando ci eravamo salutati; ma non l’avevo mai vista addolorarsi così. Mi dispiaceva così tanto che potevo solo dire, in modo sciocco e impotente, “Ti prego, Agnes, non farlo! Non farlo, mia cara sorella!”
Ma Agnes era troppo superiore a me per carattere e propositi, come so bene ora, qualunque cosa sapessi o non sapessi allora, per aver bisogno a lungo delle mie suppliche. Il suo bel modo calmo, che la rende così diversa da tutti gli altri nei miei ricordi, tornò, come se una nuvola fosse passata da un cielo sereno.
«Non credo che resteremo sole ancora a lungo», disse Agnes, «e mentre ho l’opportunità, lascia che ti preghi con tutto il cuore, Trotwood, di essere amica di Uriah. Non respingerlo. Non risentirti (come penso tu abbia la tendenza a fare) di ciò che in lui potrebbe non piacerti. Potrebbe non meritarselo, perché non sappiamo nulla di male su di lui. In ogni caso, pensa prima a papà e a me!»
Agnes non aveva tempo di dire altro, perché la porta della stanza si aprì e la signora Waterbrook, che era una donna di grandi dimensioni — o che indossava un abito di grandi dimensioni: non so esattamente quale delle due, perché non so quale fosse l’abito e quale la donna — entrò veleggiando. Avevo un vago ricordo di averla vista al teatro, come se l’avessi vista in una lanterna magica pallida; ma lei sembrava ricordarsi di me perfettamente, e sospettava ancora che fossi in stato di ebbrezza.
Scoprendo però, a poco a poco, che ero sobrio e (lo spero) che ero un giovane signore modesto, la signora Waterbrook si ammorbidì notevolmente nei miei confronti e mi chiese, in primo luogo, se frequentavo molto i parchi e, in secondo luogo, se frequentavo molto la società. Rispondendo negativamente a entrambe le domande, mi parve di rientrare nelle sue grazie; ma lei nascose abilmente il fatto e mi invitò a cena il giorno dopo. Accettai l’invito e presi congedo, facendo una visita a Uriah in ufficio mentre uscivo e lasciandogli un biglietto da visita in sua assenza.
Quando andai a cena il giorno dopo, e aprendosi la porta di strada, mi immersi in un bagno di vapore di arrosto di montone, intuii che non ero l’unico ospite, perché identificai subito il fattorino dei biglietti in borghese, che assisteva il domestico di famiglia e aspettava in fondo alle scale per portare su il mio nome. Aveva l’aria, per quanto poteva, quando me lo chiese confidenzialmente, di non avermi mai visto prima; ma bene lo conoscevo io, e bene mi conosceva lui. La coscienza ci fece codardi entrambi.
Trovai il signor Waterbrook un gentiluomo di mezza età, con un collo corto e un gran colletto di camicia, che avrebbe avuto bisogno solo di un naso nero per essere il ritratto di un carlino. Mi disse di essere felice di avere l’onore di fare la mia conoscenza; e dopo che ebbi reso omaggio alla signora Waterbrook, mi presentò, con molta cerimonia, a una signora molto imponente in un abito di velluto nero e un grande cappello di velluto nero, che ricordo come se avesse l’aspetto di una parente stretta di Amleto - diciamo sua zia.
Il nome di questa signora era Mrs. Henry Spiker; e suo marito era lì anch’egli: un uomo così freddo, che la sua testa, anziché essere grigia, sembrava essere cosparso di brina. Immensa deferenza veniva mostrata ai Spiker, maschio e femmina; il che, come mi disse Agnes, era dovuto al fatto che Mr. Henry Spiker era avvocato di qualcosa o di qualcuno, non ricordo cosa o chi, remotamente connesso con il Tesoro.
Trovai Uriah Heep tra la compagnia, in un abito nero e in profonda umiltà. Mi disse, quando gli strinsi la mano, che era orgoglioso di essere notato da me, e che si sentiva davvero in dovere nei miei confronti per la mia condiscendenza. Avrei desiderato che fosse stato meno in dovere nei miei confronti, perché mi si aggirò intorno nella sua gratitudine per tutto il resto della serata; e ogni volta che dicevo una parola ad Agnes, era sicuro, con i suoi occhi senza ombra e il suo volto cadaverico, di guardare magro su di noi da dietro.
C’erano altri ospiti, tutti gelati per l’occasione, come mi parve, come il vino. Ma c’era uno che attirò la mia attenzione prima ancora che entrasse, perché lo sentii annunciare come signor Traddles! La mia mente tornò a Salem House; e poteva essere Tommy, pensai, quello che disegnava gli scheletri!
Cercavo il signor Traddles con un interesse insolito. Era un giovane dall’aspetto sobrio e serio, di modi riservati, con una chioma buffa e gli occhi piuttosto spalancati; e si era messo in un angolo così oscuro che ebbi qualche difficoltà a distinguerlo. Alla fine riuscii a vederlo bene, e o la mia vista mi ingannava, o era il vecchio sfortunato Tommy.
Mi feci strada fino a Mr. Waterbrook e gli dissi che, se non sbagliavo, avevo il piacere di rivedere un mio vecchio compagno di scuola.
«Davvero!» disse il signor Waterbrook, sorpreso. «Siete troppo giovane per essere stato a scuola con il signor Henry Spiker?»
“Oh, non intendo lui!” risposi. “Intendo il signore di nome Traddles.”
“Ah! Sì, sì! Davvero!” disse il mio ospite, con un interesse molto diminuito. “Possibilmente.”
«Se è davvero la stessa persona», dissi, guardandolo, «era in un posto chiamato Casa Salem dove eravamo insieme, ed era un bravissimo ragazzo.»
«Oh sì. Traddles è un bravo ragazzo», rispose il mio ospite annuendo con aria di tolleranza. «Traddles è proprio un bravo ragazzo.»
«È una coincidenza curiosa», dissi.
«È davvero,» rispose il mio ospite, «una coincidenza che Traddles sia qui: infatti Traddles è stato invitato solo questa mattina, quando il posto a tavola, destinato a essere occupato dal fratello della signora Henry Spiker, è rimasto vacante a causa del suo malore. Un uomo davvero distinto, il fratello della signora Henry Spiker, signor Copperfield.»
Mormorai un assenso pieno di sentimento, considerando che non sapevo nulla di lui; e chiesi quale fosse la professione del signor Traddles.
‘Traddles,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, ‘is a young man reading for the bar. Yes. He is quite a good fellow—nobody’s enemy but his own.’
‘Is he his own enemy?’ said I, sorry to hear this.
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Waterbrook, pursing up his mouth, and playing with his watch-chain, in a comfortable, prosperous sort of way. ‘I should say he was one of those men who stand in their own light. Yes, I should say he would never, for example, be worth five hundred pound. Traddles was recommended to me by a professional friend. Oh yes. Yes. He has a kind of talent for drawing briefs, and stating a case in writing, plainly. I am able to throw something in Traddles’s way, in the course of the year; something—for him—considerable. Oh yes. Yes.’
I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner in which Mr. Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word ‘Yes’, every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.
My reflections on this theme were still in progress when dinner was announced. Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet’s aunt. Mr. Henry Spiker took Mrs. Waterbrook. Agnes, whom I should have liked to take myself, was given to a simpering fellow with weak legs. Uriah, Traddles, and I, as the junior part of the company, went down last, how we could. I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters. Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the gloom of Hamlet’s aunt. The dinner was very long, and the conversation was about the Aristocracy—and Blood. Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was Blood.
It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better, if we had not been quite so genteel. We were so exceedingly genteel, that our scope was very limited. A Mr. and Mrs. Gulpidge were of the party, who had something to do at second-hand (at least, Mr. Gulpidge had) with the law business of the Bank; and what with the Bank, and what with the Treasury, we were as exclusive as the Court Circular. To mend the matter, Hamlet’s aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that was introduced. These were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell back upon Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her nephew himself.
We might have been a party of Ogres, the conversation assumed such a sanguine complexion.
‘I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,’ said Mr. Waterbrook, with his wine-glass at his eye. ‘Other things are all very well in their way, but give me Blood!’
‘Oh! There is nothing,’ observed Hamlet’s aunt, ‘so satisfactory to one! There is nothing that is so much one’s beau-ideal of—of all that sort of thing, speaking generally. There are some low minds (not many, I am happy to believe, but there are some) that would prefer to do what I should call bow down before idols. Positively Idols! Before service, intellect, and so on. But these are intangible points. Blood is not so. We see Blood in a nose, and we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and we say, “There it is! That’s Blood!” It is an actual matter of fact. We point it out. It admits of no doubt.’
The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down, stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.
‘Oh, you know, deuce take it,’ said this gentleman, looking round the board with an imbecile smile, ‘we can’t forego Blood, you know. We must have Blood, you know. Some young fellows, you know, may be a little behind their station, perhaps, in point of education and behaviour, and may go a little wrong, you know, and get themselves and other people into a variety of fixes—and all that—but deuce take it, it’s delightful to reflect that they’ve got Blood in ‘em! Myself, I’d rather at any time be knocked down by a man who had got Blood in him, than I’d be picked up by a man who hadn’t!’
This sentiment, as compressing the general question into a nutshell, gave the utmost satisfaction, and brought the gentleman into great notice until the ladies retired. After that, I observed that Mr. Gulpidge and Mr. Henry Spiker, who had hitherto been very distant, entered into a defensive alliance against us, the common enemy, and exchanged a mysterious dialogue across the table for our defeat and overthrow.
‘That affair of the first bond for four thousand five hundred pounds has not taken the course that was expected, Spiker,’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
‘Do you mean the D. of A.’s?’ said Mr. Spiker.
‘The C. of B.’s!’ said Mr. Gulpidge.
Mr. Spiker raised his eyebrows, and looked much concerned.
‘When the question was referred to Lord—I needn’t name him,’ said Mr. Gulpidge, checking himself—
‘I understand,’ said Mr. Spiker, ‘N.’
Mr. Gulpidge darkly nodded—‘was referred to him, his answer was, “Money, or no release.”’
‘Lord bless my soul!’ cried Mr. Spiker.
“‘Money, or no release,”’ repeated Mr. Gulpidge, firmly. ‘The next in reversion—you understand me?’
‘K.,’ said Mr. Spiker, with an ominous look.
‘—K. then positively refused to sign. He was attended at Newmarket for that purpose, and he point-blank refused to do it.’
Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite stony.
‘So the matter rests at this hour,’ said Mr. Gulpidge, throwing himself back in his chair. ‘Our friend Waterbrook will excuse me if I forbear to explain myself generally, on account of the magnitude of the interests involved.’
«Traddles», rispose il signor Waterbrook, «è un giovane che si sta preparando per la professione forense. Sì. È un ragazzo davvero in gamba, non è nemico di nessuno se non di se stesso.»
«È lui il suo nemico?» dissi, dispiaciuto di sentirlo.
«Beh,» rispose il signor Waterbrook, stringendo le labbra e giocherellando con la catena dell’orologio, in un modo confortevole e prospero. «Direi che è uno di quegli uomini che si mettono da parte la propria luce. Sì, direi che, per esempio, non varrà mai cinquecento sterline. Traddles mi è stato raccomandato da un collega. Oh sì. Sì. Ha una specie di talento per redigere incarichi e per esporre un caso per iscritto, in modo chiaro. Sono in grado di dare qualcosa a Traddles nel corso dell’anno; qualcosa—per lui—di considerevole. Oh sì. Sì.»
Ero molto colpito dal modo estremamente comodo e soddisfatto in cui il signor Waterbrook pronunciava di tanto in tanto questa parolina «Sì». C’era una meravigliosa espressione in essa. Trasmetteva perfettamente l’idea di un uomo che era nato, per così dire, non con un cucchiaio d’argento, ma con una scala a pioli, e aveva continuato a scalare tutte le vette della vita una dopo l’altra, fino a che ora guardava, dalla cima delle fortificazioni, con l’occhio di un filosofo e di un mecenate, sulla gente giù nelle trincee.
Le mie riflessioni su questo tema erano ancora in corso quando fu annunciata la cena. Il signor Waterbrook scese con la zia di Amleto. Il signor Henry Spiker accompagnò la signora Waterbrook. Agnes, che avrei voluto accompagnare io stesso, fu data a un tizio sdolcinato con le gambe deboli. Uriah, Traddles e io, come parte più giovane della compagnia, scendemmo per ultimi, come potevamo. Non ero così contrariato per aver perso Agnes come avrei potuto essere, dato che mi dava l’opportunità di farmi conoscere da Traddles sulle scale, che mi salutò con grande fervore; mentre Uriah si contorceva con una soddisfazione così invadente e autodenigrazione, che avrei volentieri gettato lui oltre i corrimano. Traddles e io fummo separati a tavola, essendo alloggiati in due angoli remoti: lui nella luce accecante di una signora in velluto rosso; io, nell’oscurità della zia di Amleto. La cena fu molto lunga, e la conversazione riguardava l’Aristocrazia—e il Sangue. La signora Waterbrook ci ripeté più volte che se aveva una debolezza, era il Sangue.
Mi venne in mente più volte che ci saremmo trovati meglio se non fossimo stati così raffinati. Eravamo così estremamente raffinati che il nostro ambito di conversazione era molto limitato. Un certo signor e signora Gulpidge facevano parte del gruppo e avevano qualcosa a che fare in modo indiretto (almeno, il signor Gulpidge) con gli affari legali della Banca; e tra la Banca e il Tesoro, eravamo esclusivi come il Corte Circolare. Per peggiorare la situazione, la zia di Amleto aveva la caratteristica familiare di indulgere nel monologo e si dilungava in modo disordinato, da sola, su ogni argomento che veniva introdotto. Questi erano pochi, è vero; ma dato che ci ritrovavamo sempre a parlare di Sangue, lei aveva un campo di speculazione astratta altrettanto ampio quanto suo nipote.
Avremmo potuto essere un gruppo di Ogre, tanto la conversazione assumeva un aspetto così sanguigno.
«Confesso di essere dello stesso avviso di mia moglie», disse il signor Waterbrook, con il bicchiere di vino davanti all’occhio. «Le altre cose sono tutte molto bene a modo loro, ma io preferisco il sangue!»
‘Oh! Non c’è niente’, osservò la zia di Amleto, ‘che sia così soddisfacente! Non c’è niente che sia così il nostro ideale di—di tutte quelle cose, parlando in generale. Ci sono menti inferiori (non molte, sono felice di credere, ma ce ne sono) che preferirebbero fare quello che io chiamerei inchinarsi davanti agli idoli. Positivamente Idoli! Davanti al servizio, all’intelletto, e così via. Ma questi sono punti intangibili. Il sangue non lo è. Vediamo il sangue in un naso, e lo riconosciamo. Lo troviamo in un mento, e diciamo: “Ecco! Questo è sangue!” È un fatto concreto. Lo indichiamo. Non ammette alcun dubbio.’
Il tizio sdolcinato dalle gambe deboli che aveva accompagnato Agnes giù, pose la questione in modo ancora più deciso, pensai.
«Oh, sapete, dannazione,» disse questo signore, guardandosi intorno con un sorriso imbecille, «non possiamo rinunciare al sangue, sapete. Dobbiamo avere del sangue, sapete. Alcuni giovani, sapete, potrebbero essere un po’ indietro rispetto al loro rango, forse, per quanto riguarda l’educazione e il comportamento, e potrebbero sbagliare un po’, sapete, e mettersi nei guai insieme ad altre persone in una varietà di situazioni—e tutto il resto—ma dannazione, è delizioso riflettere che hanno del sangue in loro! Io stesso, in qualsiasi momento, preferirei essere messo al tappeto da un uomo che ha del sangue in sé, piuttosto che essere rialzato da un uomo che non ne ha!»
Questo sentimento, che riassumeva la questione generale in poche parole, diede la massima soddisfazione e fece ottenere al signore grande attenzione fino a quando le signore si ritirarono. Dopo di che, notai che il signor Gulpidge e il signor Henry Spiker, che fino ad allora erano stati molto distanti, entrarono in un’alleanza difensiva contro di noi, il nemico comune, e scambiarono un dialogo misterioso attraverso il tavolo per la nostra sconfitta e rovina.
«Quell’affare del primo titolo per quattromilacinquecento sterline non ha preso la piega che ci si aspettava, Spiker», disse il signor Gulpidge.
«Vuol dire i D. di A.» disse il signor Spiker.
«La Banca d’Inghilterra!» disse il signor Gulpidge.
Mr. Spiker alzò le sopracciglia e parve molto preoccupato.
«Quando la questione fu riferita a Lord, non è necessario che io lo nomini», disse il signor Gulpidge, frenandosi.
“Capisco”, disse il signor Spiker, “N.”
Mr. Gulpidge annuì cupamente: «Se gli veniva chiesto, la sua risposta era: “Denaro, o niente libertà”».
«Dio benedica la mia anima!» esclamò il signor Spiker.
«“Denaro, o niente rilascio”,» ripeté il signor Gulpidge, con fermezza. «Il prossimo in linea di successione — mi capite?»
«K.», disse il signor Spiker, con uno sguardo minaccioso.
«K. rifiutò categoricamente di firmare. Era presente a Newmarket per questo scopo, e si rifiutò in modo assoluto di farlo.»
Il signor Spiker era così interessato che divenne del tutto immobile.
«Ecco come stanno le cose in questo momento», disse il signor Gulpidge, appoggiandosi allo schienale della sedia. «Il nostro amico Waterbrook mi scuserà se mi astengo dal fornire spiegazioni generali, a causa dell’importanza degli interessi in gioco.»
Mr. Waterbrook was only too happy, as it appeared to me, to have such interests, and such names, even hinted at, across his table. He assumed an expression of gloomy intelligence (though I am persuaded he knew no more about the discussion than I did), and highly approved of the discretion that had been observed. Mr. Spiker, after the receipt of such a confidence, naturally desired to favour his friend with a confidence of his own; therefore the foregoing dialogue was succeeded by another, in which it was Mr. Gulpidge’s turn to be surprised, and that by another in which the surprise came round to Mr. Spiker’s turn again, and so on, turn and turn about. All this time we, the outsiders, remained oppressed by the tremendous interests involved in the conversation; and our host regarded us with pride, as the victims of a salutary awe and astonishment. I was very glad indeed to get upstairs to Agnes, and to talk with her in a corner, and to introduce Traddles to her, who was shy, but agreeable, and the same good-natured creature still. As he was obliged to leave early, on account of going away next morning for a month, I had not nearly so much conversation with him as I could have wished; but we exchanged addresses, and promised ourselves the pleasure of another meeting when he should come back to town. He was greatly interested to hear that I knew Steerforth, and spoke of him with such warmth that I made him tell Agnes what he thought of him. But Agnes only looked at me the while, and very slightly shook her head when only I observed her.
As she was not among people with whom I believed she could be very much at home, I was almost glad to hear that she was going away within a few days, though I was sorry at the prospect of parting from her again so soon. This caused me to remain until all the company were gone. Conversing with her, and hearing her sing, was such a delightful reminder to me of my happy life in the grave old house she had made so beautiful, that I could have remained there half the night; but, having no excuse for staying any longer, when the lights of Mr. Waterbrook’s society were all snuffed out, I took my leave very much against my inclination. I felt then, more than ever, that she was my better Angel; and if I thought of her sweet face and placid smile, as though they had shone on me from some removed being, like an Angel, I hope I thought no harm.
I have said that the company were all gone; but I ought to have excepted Uriah, whom I don’t include in that denomination, and who had never ceased to hover near us. He was close behind me when I went downstairs. He was close beside me, when I walked away from the house, slowly fitting his long skeleton fingers into the still longer fingers of a great Guy Fawkes pair of gloves.
It was in no disposition for Uriah’s company, but in remembrance of the entreaty Agnes had made to me, that I asked him if he would come home to my rooms, and have some coffee.
‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,’ he rejoined—‘I beg your pardon, Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so natural, I don’t like that you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask a numble person like me to your ouse.’
‘There is no constraint in the case,’ said I. ‘Will you come?’
‘I should like to, very much,’ replied Uriah, with a writhe.
‘Well, then, come along!’ said I.
I could not help being rather short with him, but he appeared not to mind it. We went the nearest way, without conversing much upon the road; and he was so humble in respect of those scarecrow gloves, that he was still putting them on, and seemed to have made no advance in that labour, when we got to my place.
I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his head against anything, and really his damp cold hand felt so like a frog in mine, that I was tempted to drop it and run away. Agnes and hospitality prevailed, however, and I conducted him to my fireside. When I lighted my candles, he fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed to him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block-tin vessel in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because it was not intended for the purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because there was a patent invention of great price mouldering away in the pantry), he professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have scalded him.
‘Oh, really, Master Copperfield,—I mean Mister Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘to see you waiting upon me is what I never could have expected! But, one way and another, so many things happen to me which I never could have expected, I am sure, in my umble station, that it seems to rain blessings on my ed. You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister Copperfield?’
As he sat on my sofa, with his long knees drawn up under his coffee-cup, his hat and gloves upon the ground close to him, his spoon going softly round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which looked as if they had scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then, and unused to disguise what I so strongly felt.
‘You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister Copperfield?’ observed Uriah.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘something.’
‘Ah! I thought Miss Agnes would know of it!’ he quietly returned. ‘I’m glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it. Oh, thank you, Master—Mister Copperfield!’
I could have thrown my bootjack at him (it lay ready on the rug), for having entrapped me into the disclosure of anything concerning Agnes, however immaterial. But I only drank my coffee.
Il signor Waterbrook era più che felice, a quanto mi sembrava, di avere tali interessi e tali nomi, anche solo accennati, al suo tavolo. Assunse un’espressione di cupa intelligenza (anche se sono convinto che non sapesse nulla della discussione più di me) e approvò vivamente la discrezione che era stata osservata. Il signor Spiker, dopo aver ricevuto una tale confidenza, desiderava naturalmente di favorire il suo amico con una confidenza sua; quindi il dialogo precedente fu seguito da un altro, in cui toccava al signor Gulpidge essere sorpreso, e poi da un altro ancora in cui la sorpresa tornava al signor Spiker, e così via, a turno. Tutto questo tempo noi, gli estranei, rimanemmo oppressi dai tremendi interessi coinvolti nella conversazione; e il nostro ospite ci guardava con orgoglio, come vittime di un salutare timore e stupore. Ero davvero molto contento di salire di sopra da Agnes, di parlare con lei in un angolo e di presentarle Traddles, che era timido, ma piacevole, e sempre la stessa buona creatura. Poiché era costretto a partire presto, dovendo andarsene la mattina seguente per un mese, non ebbi quasi la metà della conversazione che avrei desiderato; ma ci scambiammo gli indirizzi e ci promettemmo il piacere di un altro incontro quando sarebbe tornato in città. Fu molto interessato nell’apprendere che conoscevo Steerforth e ne parlò con tale calore che lo feci raccontare ad Agnes cosa ne pensava. Ma Agnes mi guardò solo, e scosse leggermente la testa quando solo io la osservai.
Poiché non si trovava tra persone con cui credevo potesse sentirsi molto a suo agio, fui quasi contento di sapere che sarebbe partita entro pochi giorni, anche se mi dispiaceva l’idea di dovermi separare da lei di nuovo così presto. Questo mi fece rimanere fino a quando tutti gli ospiti se ne furono andati. Parlare con lei e ascoltarla cantare era un ricordo così delizioso della mia felice vita nella antica vecchia casa che aveva reso così bella, che avrei potuto rimanere lì per metà della notte; ma, non avendo scuse per rimanere più a lungo, quando le luci della società del signor Waterbrook furono tutte spente, mi congedai molto contro la mia volontà. Sentii allora, più che mai, che lei era il mio angelo custode; e se pensavo al suo dolce volto e al suo placido sorriso, come se mi avessero illuminato da qualche essere lontano, come un angelo, spero di non aver pensato nulla di male.
Ho detto che tutti gli ospiti se n’erano andati, ma avrei dovuto fare un’eccezione per Uriah, che non includo in questa categoria e che non aveva mai smesso di girare intorno a noi. Era subito dietro di me quando sono sceso al piano di sotto. Era subito accanto a me quando mi allontanavo dalla casa, infilando lentamente le sue lunghe dita ossute nelle dita ancora più lunghe di un paio di enormi guanti da Guy Fawkes.
Non ero affatto disposto a fare compagnia a Uriah, ma in ricordo della preghiera che Agnes mi aveva fatto, gli chiesi se voleva venire a casa nelle mie stanze e prendere un po’ di caffè.
«Oh, davvero, Master Copperfield», replicò lui, «le chiedo scusa, Mister Copperfield, ma l’altro mi viene così naturale, non mi piace che lei si senta in dovere di invitare una persona umile come me a casa sua.»
‘Non c’è alcun vincolo in questo caso’, dissi. ‘Vuoi venire?’
«Mi piacerebbe molto», rispose Uriah, contorcendosi.
«Bene, allora, vieni!» dissi io.
Non potevo fare a meno di essere piuttosto brusco con lui, ma sembrava non importargliene. Andammo per la strada più vicina, senza conversare molto sulla strada; e lui era così umile riguardo a quei guanti da spaventapasseri, che continuava a indossarli, e sembrava non aver fatto alcun progresso in quel lavoro, quando arrivammo al mio posto.
Lo guidai su per le scale buie, per evitare che si desse una botta in testa, e davvero la sua mano fredda e umida era così simile a quella di una rana nella mia, che fui tentato di lasciarla e scappare via. Agnes e l’ospitalità prevalse, tuttavia, e lo condussi al mio caminetto. Quando accesi le candele, cadde in timidi trasporti per la stanza che gli si rivelò; e quando riscaldai il caffè in un modesto recipiente di stagno in cui la signora Crupp amava prepararlo (soprattutto, credo, perché non era destinato a tale scopo, essendo un barattolo per la barba, e perché c’era un’invenzione brevettata di grande valore che marciva in dispensa), professò tanta emozione, che avrei potuto scottarlo con gioia.
«Oh, davvero, Master Copperfield,—voglio dire Mister Copperfield», disse Uriah, «vederla servirmi è una cosa che non avrei mai potuto aspettarmi! Ma, in un modo o nell’altro, mi succedono tante cose che non avrei mai potuto aspettarmi, ne sono sicuro, nella mia umile condizione, che sembra piova benedizioni sulla mia testa. Lei ha sentito qualcosa, immagino, di un cambiamento nelle mie aspettative, Master Copperfield,—dovrei dire, Mister Copperfield?»
Mentre sedeva sul mio divano, con le lunghe ginocchia rannicchiate sotto la sua tazza di caffè, il cappello e i guanti a terra vicino a lui, la sua cucchiaia che girava dolcemente in tondo, i suoi occhi rossi senza ombre, che sembravano aver bruciato le ciglia, si volgevano verso di me senza guardarmi, le spiacevoli fossette che ho descritto in precedenza nelle sue narici si gonfiavano e si ritraevano con il suo respiro, e un’ondulazione serpentina pervadeva il suo corpo dal mento agli stivali, decisi in cuor mio di non sopportarlo intensamente. Mi rendeva molto a disagio averlo come ospite, perché ero giovane allora, e non ero abituato a nascondere ciò che sentivo così fortemente.
«Avete sentito qualcosa, immagino, di un cambiamento nelle mie prospettive, Master Copperfield, — intendo dire, Mister Copperfield?» osservò Uriah.
‘Sì’, dissi, ‘qualcosa’.
«Ah! Pensavo che la signorina Agnes ne fosse al corrente!» rispose tranquillamente. «Sono felice di scoprire che la signorina Agnes ne è al corrente. Oh, grazie, Master—Mister Copperfield!»
Avrei potuto tirargli contro il cavaturaccioli (era lì pronto sul tappeto), per avermi indotto a rivelare qualcosa riguardo Agnes, per quanto irrilevante. Ma mi limitai a bere il mio caffè.
‘What a prophet you have shown yourself, Mister Copperfield!’ pursued Uriah. ‘Dear me, what a prophet you have proved yourself to be! Don’t you remember saying to me once, that perhaps I should be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business, and perhaps it might be Wickfield and Heep? You may not recollect it; but when a person is umble, Master Copperfield, a person treasures such things up!’
‘I recollect talking about it,’ said I, ‘though I certainly did not think it very likely then.’ ‘Oh! who would have thought it likely, Mister Copperfield!’ returned Uriah, enthusiastically. ‘I am sure I didn’t myself. I recollect saying with my own lips that I was much too umble. So I considered myself really and truly.’
He sat, with that carved grin on his face, looking at the fire, as I looked at him.
‘But the umblest persons, Master Copperfield,’ he presently resumed, ‘may be the instruments of good. I am glad to think I have been the instrument of good to Mr. Wickfield, and that I may be more so. Oh what a worthy man he is, Mister Copperfield, but how imprudent he has been!’
‘I am sorry to hear it,’ said I. I could not help adding, rather pointedly, ‘on all accounts.’
‘Decidedly so, Mister Copperfield,’ replied Uriah. ‘On all accounts. Miss Agnes’s above all! You don’t remember your own eloquent expressions, Master Copperfield; but I remember how you said one day that everybody must admire her, and how I thanked you for it! You have forgot that, I have no doubt, Master Copperfield?’
‘No,’ said I, drily.
‘Oh how glad I am you have not!’ exclaimed Uriah. ‘To think that you should be the first to kindle the sparks of ambition in my umble breast, and that you’ve not forgot it! Oh!—Would you excuse me asking for a cup more coffee?’
Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those sparks, and something in the glance he directed at me as he said it, had made me start as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze of light. Recalled by his request, preferred in quite another tone of voice, I did the honours of the shaving-pot; but I did them with an unsteadiness of hand, a sudden sense of being no match for him, and a perplexed suspicious anxiety as to what he might be going to say next, which I felt could not escape his observation.
He said nothing at all. He stirred his coffee round and round, he sipped it, he felt his chin softly with his grisly hand, he looked at the fire, he looked about the room, he gasped rather than smiled at me, he writhed and undulated about, in his deferential servility, he stirred and sipped again, but he left the renewal of the conversation to me.
‘So, Mr. Wickfield,’ said I, at last, ‘who is worth five hundred of you—or me’; for my life, I think, I could not have helped dividing that part of the sentence with an awkward jerk; ‘has been imprudent, has he, Mr. Heep?’
‘Oh, very imprudent indeed, Master Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, sighing modestly. ‘Oh, very much so! But I wish you’d call me Uriah, if you please. It’s like old times.’
‘Well! Uriah,’ said I, bolting it out with some difficulty.
‘Thank you,’ he returned, with fervour. ‘Thank you, Master Copperfield! It’s like the blowing of old breezes or the ringing of old bellses to hear YOU say Uriah. I beg your pardon. Was I making any observation?’
‘About Mr. Wickfield,’ I suggested.
‘Oh! Yes, truly,’ said Uriah. ‘Ah! Great imprudence, Master Copperfield. It’s a topic that I wouldn’t touch upon, to any soul but you. Even to you I can only touch upon it, and no more. If anyone else had been in my place during the last few years, by this time he would have had Mr. Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is, Master Copperfield, too!) under his thumb. Un—der—his thumb,’ said Uriah, very slowly, as he stretched out his cruel-looking hand above my table, and pressed his own thumb upon it, until it shook, and shook the room.
If I had been obliged to look at him with him splay foot on Mr. Wickfield’s head, I think I could scarcely have hated him more.
‘Oh, dear, yes, Master Copperfield,’ he proceeded, in a soft voice, most remarkably contrasting with the action of his thumb, which did not diminish its hard pressure in the least degree, ‘there’s no doubt of it. There would have been loss, disgrace, I don’t know what at all. Mr. Wickfield knows it. I am the umble instrument of umbly serving him, and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped to reach. How thankful should I be!’ With his face turned towards me, as he finished, but without looking at me, he took his crooked thumb off the spot where he had planted it, and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with it, as if he were shaving himself.
I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw his crafty face, with the appropriately red light of the fire upon it, preparing for something else.
‘Master Copperfield,’ he began—‘but am I keeping you up?’
‘You are not keeping me up. I generally go to bed late.’
‘Thank you, Master Copperfield! I have risen from my umble station since first you used to address me, it is true; but I am umble still. I hope I never shall be otherwise than umble. You will not think the worse of my umbleness, if I make a little confidence to you, Master Copperfield? Will you?’
‘Oh no,’ said I, with an effort.
‘Thank you!’ He took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began wiping the palms of his hands. ‘Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield—’ ‘Well, Uriah?’
‘Oh, how pleasant to be called Uriah, spontaneously!’ he cried; and gave himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish. ‘You thought her looking very beautiful tonight, Master Copperfield?’
‘I thought her looking as she always does: superior, in all respects, to everyone around her,’ I returned.
‘Oh, thank you! It’s so true!’ he cried. ‘Oh, thank you very much for that!’
‘Not at all,’ I said, loftily. ‘There is no reason why you should thank me.’
«Che profeta vi siete rivelato, signor Copperfield!» continuò Uriah. «Davvero, che profeta vi siete dimostrato! Non vi ricordate di avermi detto una volta che forse sarei diventato socio nell’affare del signor Wickfield, e forse si sarebbe chiamato Wickfield e Heep? Forse non ve ne ricordate; ma quando una persona è umile, signor Copperfield, una persona custodisce queste cose nel cuore!»
«Mi ricordo di averne parlato», dissi io, «anche se allora non lo trovavo molto probabile». «Oh! chi avrebbe mai pensato che fosse probabile, signor Copperfield!», esclamò Uriah, con entusiasmo. «Sono sicuro che io stesso non lo pensavo. Mi ricordo di aver detto con le mie stesse labbra che ero troppo umile. E così mi consideravo davvero».
Era seduto, con quel ghigno scolpito sul volto, a guardare il fuoco, mentre io lo guardavo.
«Ma anche le persone più umili, Master Copperfield», riprese dopo un momento, «possono essere strumenti di bene. Sono felice di pensare di essere stato uno strumento di bene per il signor Wickfield, e che potrei esserlo ancora di più. Oh, che uomo meritevole è, Mister Copperfield, ma quanto è stato imprudente!»
«Mi dispiace sentirlo», dissi. Non potei fare a meno di aggiungere, piuttosto enfaticamente, «per tutti i motivi».
«Decisamente sì, Mister Copperfield», rispose Uriah. «Per tutti i motivi. Soprattutto per Miss Agnes! Non ricordate le vostre stesse eloquenti espressioni, Maestro Copperfield; ma io ricordo come aveste detto un giorno che tutti dovevano ammirarla, e come io vi ringraziai per questo! Avete dimenticato, non ho dubbio, Maestro Copperfield?»
«No», dissi io, seccamente.
«Oh, come sono felice che non l’abbiate fatto!» esclamò Uriah. «Pensare che dovreste essere il primo a accendere le scintille di ambizione nel mio umile petto, e che non ve ne siate dimenticato! Oh!—Mi scusereste se chiedessi un’altra tazza di caffè?»
Qualcosa nell’insistenza con cui insisteva sull’accensione di quelle scintille, e qualcosa nello sguardo che mi rivolse mentre lo diceva, mi aveva fatto sussultare come se l’avessi visto illuminato da un bagliore di luce. Richiamato dalla sua richiesta, preferito in un tono di voce completamente diverso, ho fatto gli onori al barattolo della schiuma da barba; ma li ho fatti con una instabilità della mano, un’improvvisa sensazione di non essere all’altezza di lui, e un’ansia sospettosa e perplessa su ciò che avrebbe potuto dire dopo, che sentivo non poteva sfuggire alla sua osservazione.
Non disse nulla. Mescolò il caffè in tondo, lo sorseggiò, si toccò il mento con mano rugosa, guardò il fuoco, guardò in giro la stanza, si contorse piuttosto che sorridermi, si agitò e si contorse, nella sua servile deferenza, mescolò e sorseggiò di nuovo, ma lasciò a me il compito di riprendere la conversazione.
«Dunque, signor Wickfield», dissi alla fine, «chi vale cinquecento volte lei, o me»; per la mia vita, credo che non avrei potuto fare a meno di dividere quella parte della frase con un goffo scatto; «è stato imprudente, vero, signor Heep?»
«Oh, davvero molto imprudente, signor Copperfield», rispose Uriah, sospirando modestamente. «Oh, molto! Ma vorrei che mi chiamaste Uriah, se non vi dispiace. È come ai vecchi tempi.»
«Bene! Uriah», dissi, riuscendo a stento a farlo uscire.
«Grazie», rispose lui, con fervore. «Grazie, Maestro Copperfield! È come sentire il soffio di vecchie brezze o il suono di vecchi campani sentire LEI chiamarmi Uriah. Le chiedo scusa. Ho fatto qualche osservazione?»
«A proposito del signor Wickfield», suggerii.
«Oh! Sì, davvero», disse Uriah. «Ah! Grande imprudenza, Maestro Copperfield. È un argomento che non toccerei, a nessuna anima tranne che a voi. Anche a voi posso solo accennarvi, e non di più. Se qualcun altro fosse stato al mio posto negli ultimi anni, a quest’ora avrebbe avuto il signor Wickfield (oh, che uomo meritevole è, Maestro Copperfield, troppo!) sotto il suo controllo. Sotto—il—suo—controllo», disse Uriah, molto lentamente, mentre stendeva la sua mano dallo sguardo crudele sopra il mio tavolo, e premeva il suo stesso pollice sopra di esso, finché non tremava, e faceva tremare la stanza.
Se fossi stato costretto a guardarlo con il suo piede divaricato sulla testa del signor Wickfield, credo che non avrei potuto odiarlo di più.
«Oh, caro, sì, Master Copperfield», continuò, con voce dolce, in contrasto notevole con l’azione del suo pollice, che non diminuiva la sua forte pressione neanche un po’, «non c’è dubbio al riguardo. Ci sarebbero state perdite, disonore, non so che altro. Il signor Wickfield lo sa. Io sono lo strumento umile che serve lui con umiltà, e lui mi pone su un’altura che a malapena avrei potuto sperare di raggiungere. Quanto dovrei essere grato!» Con il viso rivolto verso di me, mentre finiva, ma senza guardarmi, tolse il suo pollice curvo dal punto dove l’aveva piantato e lentamente e pensierosamente si grattò la mascella magra con esso, come se si stesse radendo.
Ricordo bene come il mio cuore batteva indignato, mentre vedevo il suo volto astuto, illuminato dalla luce rossastra del fuoco, prepararsi per qualcos’altro.
«Signor Copperfield», cominciò, «ma la sto trattenendo?»
‘Non mi stai facendo restare sveglio. Di solito vado a letto tardi.’
«Grazie, Maestro Copperfield! È vero, da quando lei mi ha rivolto la prima parola, sono salito al di sopra della mia umile condizione; ma umile rimango. Spero di non smettere mai di esserlo. Non penserà male della mia umiltà, se le faccio una piccola confidenza, Maestro Copperfield? Me lo concede?»
«Oh no», dissi con uno sforzo.
«Grazie!» Estrasse il fazzoletto e si mise a strofinare le palme delle mani. «Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield, » «Ebbene, Uriah?»
«Oh, quanto è piacevole essere chiamato Uriah, spontaneamente!» esclamò, e si diede una scossa, come un pesce convulso. «Le è parsa molto bella stasera, signorino Copperfield?»
«Pensavo che avesse l’aspetto che ha sempre: superiore, in tutti i sensi, a tutti quelli che la circondano», risposi.
‘Oh, grazie! È così vero!’ esclamò. ‘Oh, grazie mille per questo!’
‘Niente affatto’, dissi in tono altezzoso. ‘Non c’è motivo per ringraziarmi’.
‘Why that, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘is, in fact, the confidence that I am going to take the liberty of reposing. Umble as I am,’ he wiped his hands harder, and looked at them and at the fire by turns, ‘umble as my mother is, and lowly as our poor but honest roof has ever been, the image of Miss Agnes (I don’t mind trusting you with my secret, Master Copperfield, for I have always overflowed towards you since the first moment I had the pleasure of beholding you in a pony-shay) has been in my breast for years. Oh, Master Copperfield, with what a pure affection do I love the ground my Agnes walks on!’
I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire, and running him through with it. It went from me with a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes, outraged by so much as a thought of this red-headed animal’s, remained in my mind when I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped his body, and made me giddy. He seemed to swell and grow before my eyes; the room seemed full of the echoes of his voice; and the strange feeling (to which, perhaps, no one is quite a stranger) that all this had occurred before, at some indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to say next, took possession of me.
A timely observation of the sense of power that there was in his face, did more to bring back to my remembrance the entreaty of Agnes, in its full force, than any effort I could have made. I asked him, with a better appearance of composure than I could have thought possible a minute before, whether he had made his feelings known to Agnes.
‘Oh no, Master Copperfield!’ he returned; ‘oh dear, no! Not to anyone but you. You see I am only just emerging from my lowly station. I rest a good deal of hope on her observing how useful I am to her father (for I trust to be very useful to him indeed, Master Copperfield), and how I smooth the way for him, and keep him straight. She’s so much attached to her father, Master Copperfield (oh, what a lovely thing it is in a daughter!), that I think she may come, on his account, to be kind to me.’
I fathomed the depth of the rascal’s whole scheme, and understood why he laid it bare.
‘If you’ll have the goodness to keep my secret, Master Copperfield,’ he pursued, ‘and not, in general, to go against me, I shall take it as a particular favour. You wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness. I know what a friendly heart you’ve got; but having only known me on my umble footing (on my umblest I should say, for I am very umble still), you might, unbeknown, go against me rather, with my Agnes. I call her mine, you see, Master Copperfield. There’s a song that says, “I’d crowns resign, to call her mine!” I hope to do it, one of these days.’
Dear Agnes! So much too loving and too good for anyone that I could think of, was it possible that she was reserved to be the wife of such a wretch as this!
‘There’s no hurry at present, you know, Master Copperfield,’ Uriah proceeded, in his slimy way, as I sat gazing at him, with this thought in my mind. ‘My Agnes is very young still; and mother and me will have to work our way upwards, and make a good many new arrangements, before it would be quite convenient. So I shall have time gradually to make her familiar with my hopes, as opportunities offer. Oh, I’m so much obliged to you for this confidence! Oh, it’s such a relief, you can’t think, to know that you understand our situation, and are certain (as you wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness in the family) not to go against me!’
He took the hand which I dared not withhold, and having given it a damp squeeze, referred to his pale-faced watch.
‘Dear me!’ he said, ‘it’s past one. The moments slip away so, in the confidence of old times, Master Copperfield, that it’s almost half past one!’
I answered that I had thought it was later. Not that I had really thought so, but because my conversational powers were effectually scattered.
‘Dear me!’ he said, considering. ‘The ouse that I am stopping at—a sort of a private hotel and boarding ouse, Master Copperfield, near the New River ed—will have gone to bed these two hours.’
‘I am sorry,’ I returned, ‘that there is only one bed here, and that I—’
‘Oh, don’t think of mentioning beds, Master Copperfield!’ he rejoined ecstatically, drawing up one leg. ‘But would you have any objections to my laying down before the fire?’
‘If it comes to that,’ I said, ‘pray take my bed, and I’ll lie down before the fire.’
His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in the excess of its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to the ears of Mrs. Crupp, then sleeping, I suppose, in a distant chamber, situated at about the level of low-water mark, soothed in her slumbers by the ticking of an incorrigible clock, to which she always referred me when we had any little difference on the score of punctuality, and which was never less than three-quarters of an hour too slow, and had always been put right in the morning by the best authorities. As no arguments I could urge, in my bewildered condition, had the least effect upon his modesty in inducing him to accept my bedroom, I was obliged to make the best arrangements I could, for his repose before the fire. The mattress of the sofa (which was a great deal too short for his lank figure), the sofa pillows, a blanket, the table-cover, a clean breakfast-cloth, and a great-coat, made him a bed and covering, for which he was more than thankful. Having lent him a night-cap, which he put on at once, and in which he made such an awful figure, that I have never worn one since, I left him to his rest.
I never shall forget that night. I never shall forget how I turned and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking about Agnes and this creature; how I considered what could I do, and what ought I to do; how I could come to no other conclusion than that the best course for her peace was to do nothing, and to keep to myself what I had heard. If I went to sleep for a few moments, the image of Agnes with her tender eyes, and of her father looking fondly on her, as I had so often seen him look, arose before me with appealing faces, and filled me with vague terrors. When I awoke, the recollection that Uriah was lying in the next room, sat heavy on me like a waking nightmare; and oppressed me with a leaden dread, as if I had had some meaner quality of devil for a lodger.
The poker got into my dozing thoughts besides, and wouldn’t come out. I thought, between sleeping and waking, that it was still red hot, and I had snatched it out of the fire, and run him through the body. I was so haunted at last by the idea, though I knew there was nothing in it, that I stole into the next room to look at him. There I saw him, lying on his back, with his legs extending to I don’t know where, gurglings taking place in his throat, stoppages in his nose, and his mouth open like a post-office. He was so much worse in reality than in my distempered fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking another look at him. Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and hopeless as ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky.
When I saw him going downstairs early in the morning (for, thank Heaven! he would not stay to breakfast), it appeared to me as if the night was going away in his person. When I went out to the Commons, I charged Mrs. Crupp with particular directions to leave the windows open, that my sitting-room might be aired, and purged of his presence.
CHAPTER 26. I FALL INTO CAPTIVITY
I saw no more of Uriah Heep, until the day when Agnes left town. I was at the coach office to take leave of her and see her go; and there was he, returning to Canterbury by the same conveyance. It was some small satisfaction to me to observe his spare, short-waisted, high-shouldered, mulberry-coloured great-coat perched up, in company with an umbrella like a small tent, on the edge of the back seat on the roof, while Agnes was, of course, inside; but what I underwent in my efforts to be friendly with him, while Agnes looked on, perhaps deserved that little recompense. At the coach window, as at the dinner-party, he hovered about us without a moment’s intermission, like a great vulture: gorging himself on every syllable that I said to Agnes, or Agnes said to me.
In the state of trouble into which his disclosure by my fire had thrown me, I had thought very much of the words Agnes had used in reference to the partnership. ‘I did what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to make it.’ A miserable foreboding that she would yield to, and sustain herself by, the same feeling in reference to any sacrifice for his sake, had oppressed me ever since. I knew how she loved him. I knew what the devotion of her nature was. I knew from her own lips that she regarded herself as the innocent cause of his errors, and as owing him a great debt she ardently desired to pay. I had no consolation in seeing how different she was from this detestable Rufus with the mulberry-coloured great-coat, for I felt that in the very difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul and the sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay. All this, doubtless, he knew thoroughly, and had, in his cunning, considered well.
Yet I was so certain that the prospect of such a sacrifice afar off, must destroy the happiness of Agnes; and I was so sure, from her manner, of its being unseen by her then, and having cast no shadow on her yet; that I could as soon have injured her, as given her any warning of what impended. Thus it was that we parted without explanation: she waving her hand and smiling farewell from the coach window; her evil genius writhing on the roof, as if he had her in his clutches and triumphed.
I could not get over this farewell glimpse of them for a long time. When Agnes wrote to tell me of her safe arrival, I was as miserable as when I saw her going away. Whenever I fell into a thoughtful state, this subject was sure to present itself, and all my uneasiness was sure to be redoubled. Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it. It became a part of my life, and as inseparable from my life as my own head.
I had ample leisure to refine upon my uneasiness: for Steerforth was at Oxford, as he wrote to me, and when I was not at the Commons, I was very much alone. I believe I had at this time some lurking distrust of Steerforth. I wrote to him most affectionately in reply to his, but I think I was glad, upon the whole, that he could not come to London just then. I suspect the truth to be, that the influence of Agnes was upon me, undisturbed by the sight of him; and that it was the more powerful with me, because she had so large a share in my thoughts and interest.
In the meantime, days and weeks slipped away. I was articled to Spenlow and Jorkins. I had ninety pounds a year (exclusive of my house-rent and sundry collateral matters) from my aunt. My rooms were engaged for twelve months certain: and though I still found them dreary of an evening, and the evenings long, I could settle down into a state of equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee; which I seem, on looking back, to have taken by the gallon at about this period of my existence. At about this time, too, I made three discoveries: first, that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to a curious disorder called ‘the spazzums’, which was generally accompanied with inflammation of the nose, and required to be constantly treated with peppermint; secondly, that something peculiar in the temperature of my pantry, made the brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that I was alone in the world, and much given to record that circumstance in fragments of English versification.
On the day when I was articled, no festivity took place, beyond my having sandwiches and sherry into the office for the clerks, and going alone to the theatre at night. I went to see The Stranger, as a Doctors’ Commons sort of play, and was so dreadfully cut up, that I hardly knew myself in my own glass when I got home. Mr. Spenlow remarked, on this occasion, when we concluded our business, that he should have been happy to have seen me at his house at Norwood to celebrate our becoming connected, but for his domestic arrangements being in some disorder, on account of the expected return of his daughter from finishing her education at Paris. But, he intimated that when she came home he should hope to have the pleasure of entertaining me. I knew that he was a widower with one daughter, and expressed my acknowledgements.
Mr. Spenlow was as good as his word. In a week or two, he referred to this engagement, and said, that if I would do him the favour to come down next Saturday, and stay till Monday, he would be extremely happy. Of course I said I would do him the favour; and he was to drive me down in his phaeton, and to bring me back.
When the day arrived, my very carpet-bag was an object of veneration to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at Norwood was a sacred mystery. One of them informed me that he had heard that Mr. Spenlow ate entirely off plate and china; and another hinted at champagne being constantly on draught, after the usual custom of table-beer. The old clerk with the wig, whose name was Mr. Tiffey, had been down on business several times in the course of his career, and had on each occasion penetrated to the breakfast-parlour. He described it as an apartment of the most sumptuous nature, and said that he had drunk brown East India sherry there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink. We had an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day—about excommunicating a baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate—and as the evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished. However, we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in no end of costs; and then the baker’s proctor, and the judge, and the advocates on both sides (who were all nearly related), went out of town together, and Mr. Spenlow and I drove away in the phaeton.
CAPITOLO 26. Vengo catturato
Non vidi più Uriah Heep fino al giorno in cui Agnes lasciò la città. Ero all’ufficio corrieri per salutarla e vederla partire; ed eccolo lì, che tornava a Canterbury con lo stesso mezzo. Fu per me una piccola consolazione vedere il suo lungo cappotto di colore viola scuro, stretto in vita, con le spalle alte, appollaiato, insieme a un ombrello che sembrava una piccola tenda, sul bordo del sedile posteriore sul tetto, mentre Agnes era, naturalmente, all’interno; ma ciò che sopportai nei miei sforzi per essere amichevole con lui, mentre Agnes ci osservava, forse meritava quella piccola ricompensa. Alla finestra del corriere, come alla cena, aleggiava intorno a noi senza un momento di tregua, come un grande avvoltoio: ingozzandosi di ogni sillaba che dicevo ad Agnes, o che Agnes diceva a me.
Nello stato di turbamento in cui la mia fiamma aveva gettato me con la sua rivelazione, avevo pensato molto alle parole che Agnes aveva usato a proposito della società. «Ho fatto ciò che speravo fosse giusto. Sentendomi sicura che fosse necessario per la pace di papà che il sacrificio venisse fatto, l’ho pregato di farlo.» Un triste presentimento che lei avrebbe ceduto, e si sarebbe sostenuta, con lo stesso sentimento in riferimento a qualsiasi sacrificio per il suo bene, mi aveva opprimuto da allora. Sapevo quanto lo amasse. Sapevo quale fosse la devozione della sua natura. Sapevo dalle sue stesse labbra che si considerava la innocente causa dei suoi errori, e che gli doveva un grande debito che desiderava ardentemente di pagare. Non avevo alcun conforto nel vedere quanto fosse diversa da questo detestabile Rufus con il soprabito color morello, perché sentivo che proprio nella differenza tra loro, nel sé-negarsi della sua pura anima e nella bassa meschinità di lui, risiedeva il più grande pericolo. Tutto questo, senza dubbio, lui lo sapeva perfettamente, e nella sua astuzia l’aveva considerato bene.
Eppure ero così certo che la prospettiva di un tale sacrificio lontano nel tempo avrebbe distrutto la felicità di Agnes; e ero così sicuro, dal suo comportamento, che non l’avesse ancora vista, e che non avesse ancora gettato alcuna ombra su di lei; che avrei potuto tanto facilmente ferirla, quanto darle un avvertimento di ciò che incombeva. Così ci separammo senza spiegazioni: lei agitava la mano e sorrideva addio dal finestrino della carrozza finestrino; il suo genio maligno si contorceva sul tetto, come se l’avesse tra le sue grinfie e trionfasse.
Per un lungo periodo non riuscii a dimenticare quell’ultimo sguardo. Quando Agnes mi scrisse per darmi notizia del suo arrivo sano e salvo, ero altrettanto infelice di quando l’avevo vista partire. Ogni volta che cadevo in uno stato di riflessione, questo argomento era sicuro di presentarsi, e tutta la mia inquietudine era sicura di essere raddoppiata. A malapena passava una notte senza che sognassi di questo. Divenne una parte della mia vita, e tanto inseparabile dalla mia vita quanto la mia stessa testa.
Avevo tutto il tempo di ruminare sulla mia inquietudine: Steerforth era a Oxford, come mi scrisse, e quando non ero al Commons, ero molto solo. Credo che in quel periodo nutrissi qualche sospetto nei confronti di Steerforth. Gli scrissi con grande affetto in risposta alla sua lettera, ma credo che, tutto sommato, fossi contento che non potesse venire a Londra proprio in quel momento. Sospetto che la verità sia che l’influenza di Agnes su di me fosse indisturbata dalla sua presenza; e che fosse più forte perché lei aveva una parte così grande nei miei pensieri e nei miei interessi.
Nel frattempo, giorni e settimane passavano. Ero stato assunto da Spenlow e Jorkins. Ricevevo novanta sterline all’anno (esclusi l’affitto della mia casa e altre spese accessorie) da mia zia. I miei alloggi erano stati prenotati per dodici mesi certi: e sebbene li trovassi ancora tristi la sera, e le sere lunghe, potevo rassegnarmi a uno stato di spirito uniformemente basso, e rassegnarmi al caffè; che sembra, a guardare indietro, di averne bevuto a gallone circa in questo periodo della mia esistenza. Circa in questo periodo, inoltre, feci tre scoperte: prima, che la signora Crupp era afflitta da un curioso disturbo chiamato “gli spazzumi”, che era generalmente accompagnato da infiammazione del naso, e richiedeva di essere costantemente trattato con menta piperita; in secondo luogo, che qualcosa di particolare nella temperatura della mia dispensa, faceva scoppiare le bottiglie di brandy; in terzo luogo, che ero solo al mondo, e molto incline a registrare quella circostanza in frammenti di versificazione inglese.
Il giorno in cui fui assunto come apprendista, non ci furono festeggiamenti, oltre al fatto che portai panini e sherry in ufficio per i dipendenti e andai da solo al teatro la sera. Andai a vedere Lo Straniero, una sorta di commedia da Doctors’ Commons, e rimasi così terribilmente scosso che a malapena mi riconobbi nello specchio quando tornai a casa. In tale occasione, quando concludemmo gli affari, il signor Spenlow osservò che sarebbe stato felice di vedermi alla sua casa a Norwood per festeggiare il nostro legame, ma che i suoi arrangiamenti domestici erano in qualche disordine, a causa del ritorno atteso di sua figlia che stava per finire la sua educazione a Parigi. Tuttavia, fece capire che quando lei fosse tornata a casa avrebbe sperato di avere il piacere di ospitarmi. Sapevo che era vedovo con una figlia, e gli espressi i miei ringraziamenti.
Il signor Spenlow mantenne la parola. Dopo una o due settimane, accennò a questo impegno e disse che se gli avessi fatto il favore di andare da lui il sabato successivo e di rimanere fino a lunedì, sarebbe stato estremamente felice. Naturalmente gli dissi che gli avrei fatto il favore; e lui mi avrebbe portato con il suo phaeton e mi avrebbe riportato indietro.
Quando arrivò il giorno, la mia stessa borsa da viaggio era un oggetto di venerazione per i dipendenti stipendiati, per i quali la casa a Norwood era un sacro mistero. Uno di loro mi informò che aveva sentito dire che il signor Spenlow mangiava esclusivamente da piatti e stoviglie; e un altro accennò al fatto che lo champagne fosse costantemente a disposizione, secondo l’usanza consueta della birra da tavola. Il vecchio impiegato con la parrucca, di nome signor Tiffey, era sceso per affari diverse volte nel corso della sua carriera, ed era riuscito ad ogni occasione a penetrare nel salotto da colazione. Lo descriveva come un appartamento di la più sontuosa natura, e diceva che aveva bevuto lì sherry marrone delle Indie Orientali, di una qualità così pregiata da far strizzare l’occhio a un uomo. Avevamo una causa rinviata al Consistoro quel giorno — riguardo all’escomunica di un panettiere che aveva sollevato obiezioni in un consiglio parrocchiale riguardo a una tassa per la pavimentazione — e poiché le prove erano esattamente il doppio della lunghezza di Robinson Crusoe, secondo un calcolo che avevo fatto, era piuttosto tardi nel giorno prima che finissimo. Tuttavia, siamo riusciti a farlo escomunicare per sei settimane, e condannato a pagare un’infinità di spese; e poi il procuratore del panettiere, e il giudice, e gli avvocati di entrambe le parti (che erano tutti parenti stretti), uscirono dalla città insieme, e il signor Spenlow e io partimmo in phaeton.
The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses arched their necks and lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to Doctors’ Commons. There was a good deal of competition in the Commons on all points of display, and it turned out some very choice equipages then; though I always have considered, and always shall consider, that in my time the great article of competition there was starch: which I think was worn among the proctors to as great an extent as it is in the nature of man to bear.
We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some hints in reference to my profession. He said it was the genteelest profession in the world, and must on no account be confounded with the profession of a solicitor: being quite another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive, less mechanical, and more profitable. We took things much more easily in the Commons than they could be taken anywhere else, he observed, and that set us, as a privileged class, apart. He said it was impossible to conceal the disagreeable fact, that we were chiefly employed by solicitors; but he gave me to understand that they were an inferior race of men, universally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions.
I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of professional business? He replied, that a good case of a disputed will, where there was a neat little estate of thirty or forty thousand pounds, was, perhaps, the best of all. In such a case, he said, not only were there very pretty pickings, in the way of arguments at every stage of the proceedings, and mountains upon mountains of evidence on interrogatory and counter-interrogatory (to say nothing of an appeal lying, first to the Delegates, and then to the Lords), but, the costs being pretty sure to come out of the estate at last, both sides went at it in a lively and spirited manner, and expense was no consideration. Then, he launched into a general eulogium on the Commons. What was to be particularly admired (he said) in the Commons, was its compactness. It was the most conveniently organized place in the world. It was the complete idea of snugness. It lay in a nutshell. For example: You brought a divorce case, or a restitution case, into the Consistory. Very good. You tried it in the Consistory. You made a quiet little round game of it, among a family group, and you played it out at leisure. Suppose you were not satisfied with the Consistory, what did you do then? Why, you went into the Arches. What was the Arches? The same court, in the same room, with the same bar, and the same practitioners, but another judge, for there the Consistory judge could plead any court-day as an advocate. Well, you played your round game out again. Still you were not satisfied. Very good. What did you do then? Why, you went to the Delegates. Who were the Delegates? Why, the Ecclesiastical Delegates were the advocates without any business, who had looked on at the round game when it was playing in both courts, and had seen the cards shuffled, and cut, and played, and had talked to all the players about it, and now came fresh, as judges, to settle the matter to the satisfaction of everybody! Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world,—‘Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!’
I listened to all this with attention; and though, I must say, I had my doubts whether the country was quite as much obliged to the Commons as Mr. Spenlow made out, I respectfully deferred to his opinion. That about the price of wheat per bushel, I modestly felt was too much for my strength, and quite settled the question. I have never, to this hour, got the better of that bushel of wheat. It has reappeared to annihilate me, all through my life, in connexion with all kinds of subjects. I don’t know now, exactly, what it has to do with me, or what right it has to crush me, on an infinite variety of occasions; but whenever I see my old friend the bushel brought in by the head and shoulders (as he always is, I observe), I give up a subject for lost.
This is a digression. I was not the man to touch the Commons, and bring down the country. I submissively expressed, by my silence, my acquiescence in all I had heard from my superior in years and knowledge; and we talked about The Stranger and the Drama, and the pairs of horses, until we came to Mr. Spenlow’s gate.
There was a lovely garden to Mr. Spenlow’s house; and though that was not the best time of the year for seeing a garden, it was so beautifully kept, that I was quite enchanted. There was a charming lawn, there were clusters of trees, and there were perspective walks that I could just distinguish in the dark, arched over with trellis-work, on which shrubs and flowers grew in the growing season. ‘Here Miss Spenlow walks by herself,’ I thought. ‘Dear me!’
We went into the house, which was cheerfully lighted up, and into a hall where there were all sorts of hats, caps, great-coats, plaids, gloves, whips, and walking-sticks. ‘Where is Miss Dora?’ said Mr. Spenlow to the servant. ‘Dora!’ I thought. ‘What a beautiful name!’
We turned into a room near at hand (I think it was the identical breakfast-room, made memorable by the brown East Indian sherry), and I heard a voice say, ‘Mr. Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my daughter Dora’s confidential friend!’ It was, no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice, but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!
She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was—anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.
Il phaeton era un veicolo davvero elegante; i cavalli arcuavano il collo e alzavano le zampe come se sapessero di appartenere ai Doctors’ Commons. C’era molta competizione nei Commons su tutti i punti di sfoggio, e allora si vedevano alcuni equipaggi davvero pregiati; anche se ho sempre considerato, e continuerò a considerare, che nel mio tempo l’articolo principale di competizione fosse l’amido: che ritengo fosse indossato tra i proctor fino a un’estensione tale da essere sopportabile dalla natura umana.
Scendendo, eravamo di ottimo umore, e il signor Spenlow mi diede alcuni consigli riguardo alla mia professione. Disse che era la professione più gentile del mondo, e che non doveva essere confusa, in nessun caso, con la professione di un avvocato: era una cosa completamente diversa, infinitamente più esclusiva, meno meccanica e più redditizia. Prendevamo le cose molto più facilmente in Curia che non si potesse fare da nessun’altra parte, osservò, e questo ci rendeva, come classe privilegiata, distinti. Disse che era impossibile nascondere il fatto spiacevole che eravamo principalmente impiegati da avvocati; ma mi fece capire che erano una razza inferiore di uomini, universalmente disprezzati da tutti i proctor di qualche pretesa.
Chiesi al signor Spenlow quale tipo di attività professionale considerasse la migliore. Rispose che un buon caso di testamento contestato, dove c’era un grazioso patrimonietto di trenta o quarantamila sterline, era forse il migliore di tutti. In un caso del genere, disse, non solo c’erano dei bei guadagni, sotto forma di argomentazioni a ogni fase del procedimento, e montagne su montagne di prove per interrogatorio e contro-interrogatorio (per non parlare di un ricorso in appello, prima ai Delegati e poi ai Lord), ma, siccome le spese erano quasi sicuramente a carico del patrimonio alla fine, entrambe le parti ci andavano dentro in modo vivace e combattivo, e la spesa non era una considerazione. Poi, si lanciò in un elogio generale dei Comuni. Ciò che era particolarmente ammirevole (disse) nei Comuni, era la loro compattezza. Era il luogo più comodamente organizzato del mondo. Era l’idea completa di accoglienza. Era racchiuso in un guscio di noce. Per esempio: si portava un caso di divorzio, o un caso di restituzione, al Consistoro. Benissimo. Lo si giudicava al Consistoro. Lo si faceva diventare un tranquillo piccolo gioco da tavolo, tra un gruppo familiare, e lo si giocava con calma. Supponiamo che non si fosse soddisfatti del Consistoro, cosa si faceva allora? Beh, si andava agli Archi. Cosa erano gli Archi? Lo stesso tribunale, nella stessa stanza, con la stessa barra, e gli stessi praticanti, ma un altro giudice, perché lì il giudice del Consistoro poteva difendere in qualsiasi giorno di tribunale come avvocato. Beh, si giocava di nuovo il proprio gioco da tavolo. Ancora non si era soddisfatti. Benissimo. Cosa si faceva allora? Beh, si andava dai Delegati. Chi erano i Delegati? Beh, i Delegati Ecclesiastici erano gli avvocati senza lavoro, che avevano osservato il gioco da tavolo mentre si svolgeva in entrambi i tribunali, e avevano visto le carte mescolate, tagliate e giocate, e avevano parlato con tutti i giocatori al riguardo, e ora arrivavano freschi, come giudici, per sistemare la faccenda a soddisfazione di tutti! Le persone malcontente potevano parlare di corruzione nei Comuni, di chiusura nei Comuni, e della necessità di riformare i Comuni, disse il signor Spenlow solennemente, in conclusione; ma quando il prezzo del grano al bushel era stato più alto, i Comuni erano stati più impegnati; e un uomo poteva mettere la mano sul cuore, e dire questo a tutto il mondo,—‘Tocca i Comuni, e il paese crolla!’
Ascoltai tutto ciò con attenzione; e sebbene, devo dire, nutrissi dei dubbi sul fatto che il paese fosse così profondamente in debito nei confronti dei Comuni come sosteneva il signor Spenlow, mi inchinai rispettosamente al suo parere. Quanto al prezzo del grano al bushel, sentivo modestamente che era troppo per le mie forze, e la questione era ormai chiusa. Non sono mai riuscito, fino a questo momento, a superare quel bushel di grano. Mi ha perseguitato per tutta la vita, annientandomi in relazione a ogni sorta di argomenti. Non so esattamente, ora, che cosa c’entri con me, o che diritto abbia di schiacciarmi in un’infinità di occasioni; ma ogni volta che vedo il mio vecchio amico il bushel comparire a testa e spalle (come fa sempre, ho notato), rinuncio a un argomento come perduto.
Questa è una digressione. Non ero l’uomo adatto a toccare la questione dei Commons e a far crollare il paese. Ho espressamente manifestato, con il mio silenzio, la mia accettazione di tutto ciò che avevo ascoltato dal mio superiore in anni e conoscenza; e abbiamo parlato dello Straniero e del Dramma, e delle coppie di cavalli, fino a quando non siamo arrivati al cancello di Mr. Spenlow.
C’era un delizioso giardino nella casa del signor Spenlow; e sebbene non fosse il miglior periodo dell’anno per vedere un giardino, era così ben curato che ne rimasi incantato. C’era un incantevole prato, ci erano gruppi di alberi, e c’erano viali prospettici che riuscivo appena a distinguere nel buio, coperti da archi di pergolato, su cui crescevano arbusti e fiori nella stagione della crescita. «Qui la signorina Spenlow passeggia da sola», pensai. «Che bello!»
Entrammo nella casa, che era allegra e illuminata, e in un atrio dove c’erano ogni sorta di cappelli, berretti, soprabiti, scialli, guanti, fruste e bastoni da passeggio. «Dov’è la signorina Dora?» chiese il signor Spenlow al domestico. «Dora!» pensai. «Che nome bellissimo!»
Entrammo in una stanza vicina (credo fosse la stessa sala da pranzo, resa memorabile dallo sherry marrone delle Indie Orientali), e sentii una voce dire: «Signor Copperfield, mia figlia Dora e l’amica confidente di mia figlia Dora!». Era, senza dubbio, la voce del signor Spenlow, ma io non la riconobbi e non mi interessava di chi fosse. Tutto fu finito in un attimo. Avevo compiuto il mio destino. Ero un prigioniero e uno schiavo. Amavo Dora Spenlow alla follia!
Era più che umana per me. Era una Fata, una Sylph, non so cosa fosse, qualcosa che nessuno aveva mai visto, e tutto ciò che tutti avevano sempre desiderato. Fui inghiottito in un abisso di amore in un istante. Non c’era pausa sul bordo; non c’era guardare giù, o guardare indietro; ero sparito, a capofitto, prima di avere il senso di dirle una parola.
‘I,’ observed a well-remembered voice, when I had bowed and murmured something, ‘have seen Mr. Copperfield before.’
The speaker was not Dora. No; the confidential friend, Miss Murdstone!
I don’t think I was much astonished. To the best of my judgement, no capacity of astonishment was left in me. There was nothing worth mentioning in the material world, but Dora Spenlow, to be astonished about. I said, ‘How do you do, Miss Murdstone? I hope you are well.’ She answered, ‘Very well.’ I said, ‘How is Mr. Murdstone?’ She replied, ‘My brother is robust, I am obliged to you.’
Mr. Spenlow, who, I suppose, had been surprised to see us recognize each other, then put in his word.
‘I am glad to find,’ he said, ‘Copperfield, that you and Miss Murdstone are already acquainted.’
‘Mr. Copperfield and myself,’ said Miss Murdstone, with severe composure, ‘are connexions. We were once slightly acquainted. It was in his childish days. Circumstances have separated us since. I should not have known him.’
I replied that I should have known her, anywhere. Which was true enough.
‘Miss Murdstone has had the goodness,’ said Mr. Spenlow to me, ‘to accept the office—if I may so describe it—of my daughter Dora’s confidential friend. My daughter Dora having, unhappily, no mother, Miss Murdstone is obliging enough to become her companion and protector.’
A passing thought occurred to me that Miss Murdstone, like the pocket instrument called a life-preserver, was not so much designed for purposes of protection as of assault. But as I had none but passing thoughts for any subject save Dora, I glanced at her, directly afterwards, and was thinking that I saw, in her prettily pettish manner, that she was not very much inclined to be particularly confidential to her companion and protector, when a bell rang, which Mr. Spenlow said was the first dinner-bell, and so carried me off to dress.
The idea of dressing one’s self, or doing anything in the way of action, in that state of love, was a little too ridiculous. I could only sit down before my fire, biting the key of my carpet-bag, and think of the captivating, girlish, bright-eyed lovely Dora. What a form she had, what a face she had, what a graceful, variable, enchanting manner!
The bell rang again so soon that I made a mere scramble of my dressing, instead of the careful operation I could have wished under the circumstances, and went downstairs. There was some company. Dora was talking to an old gentleman with a grey head. Grey as he was—and a great-grandfather into the bargain, for he said so—I was madly jealous of him.
What a state of mind I was in! I was jealous of everybody. I couldn’t bear the idea of anybody knowing Mr. Spenlow better than I did. It was torturing to me to hear them talk of occurrences in which I had had no share. When a most amiable person, with a highly polished bald head, asked me across the dinner table, if that were the first occasion of my seeing the grounds, I could have done anything to him that was savage and revengeful.
I don’t remember who was there, except Dora. I have not the least idea what we had for dinner, besides Dora. My impression is, that I dined off Dora, entirely, and sent away half-a-dozen plates untouched. I sat next to her. I talked to her. She had the most delightful little voice, the gayest little laugh, the pleasantest and most fascinating little ways, that ever led a lost youth into hopeless slavery. She was rather diminutive altogether. So much the more precious, I thought.
When she went out of the room with Miss Murdstone (no other ladies were of the party), I fell into a reverie, only disturbed by the cruel apprehension that Miss Murdstone would disparage me to her. The amiable creature with the polished head told me a long story, which I think was about gardening. I think I heard him say, ‘my gardener’, several times. I seemed to pay the deepest attention to him, but I was wandering in a garden of Eden all the while, with Dora.
My apprehensions of being disparaged to the object of my engrossing affection were revived when we went into the drawing-room, by the grim and distant aspect of Miss Murdstone. But I was relieved of them in an unexpected manner.
‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, beckoning me aside into a window. ‘A word.’
I confronted Miss Murdstone alone.
‘David Copperfield,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘I need not enlarge upon family circumstances. They are not a tempting subject.’ ‘Far from it, ma’am,’ I returned.
‘Far from it,’ assented Miss Murdstone. ‘I do not wish to revive the memory of past differences, or of past outrages. I have received outrages from a person—a female I am sorry to say, for the credit of my sex—who is not to be mentioned without scorn and disgust; and therefore I would rather not mention her.’
I felt very fiery on my aunt’s account; but I said it would certainly be better, if Miss Murdstone pleased, not to mention her. I could not hear her disrespectfully mentioned, I added, without expressing my opinion in a decided tone.
Miss Murdstone shut her eyes, and disdainfully inclined her head; then, slowly opening her eyes, resumed:
‘David Copperfield, I shall not attempt to disguise the fact, that I formed an unfavourable opinion of you in your childhood. It may have been a mistaken one, or you may have ceased to justify it. That is not in question between us now. I belong to a family remarkable, I believe, for some firmness; and I am not the creature of circumstance or change. I may have my opinion of you. You may have your opinion of me.’
I inclined my head, in my turn.
‘But it is not necessary,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘that these opinions should come into collision here. Under existing circumstances, it is as well on all accounts that they should not. As the chances of life have brought us together again, and may bring us together on other occasions, I would say, let us meet here as distant acquaintances. Family circumstances are a sufficient reason for our only meeting on that footing, and it is quite unnecessary that either of us should make the other the subject of remark. Do you approve of this?’
«Io», osservò una voce ben nota, quando mi ero inchinato e avevo mormorato qualcosa, «ho già visto il signor Copperfield.»
La parlante non era Dora. No, l’amica confidente, la signorina Murdstone!
Non credo di essere rimasto molto sorpreso. Per quanto ne sapessi, non mi era rimasta alcuna capacità di sorpresa. Non c’era nulla di notevole nel mondo materiale, se non la Dora Spenlow, per cui essere sorpresi. Dissi: «Come state, Miss Murdstone? Vi auguro di stare bene.» Lei rispose: «Sto molto bene.» Dissi: «Come sta il signor Murdstone?» Lei rispose: «Mio fratello sta bene, vi ringrazio.»
Il signor Spenlow, che, immagino, era rimasto sorpreso nel vederci riconoscere a vicenda, prese allora la parola.
«Mi rallegro di scoprire», disse, «Copperfield, che voi e la signorina Murdstone siete già conosciuti.»
«Il signor Copperfield e io», disse la signorina Murdstone con severa compostezza, «siamo conoscenti. Ci siamo conosciuti superficialmente una volta. Era quando lui era ancora un bambino. Da allora le circostanze ci hanno separati. Non l’avrei riconosciuto».
Risposi che l’avrei riconosciuta ovunque. E così era.
«La signorina Murdstone ha avuto la bontà», mi disse il signor Spenlow, «di accettare l’incarico - se posso chiamarlo così - di amica confidente di mia figlia Dora. Mia figlia Dora, purtroppo, non avendo una madre, la signorina Murdstone ha la gentilezza di diventare la sua compagna e protettrice.»
Mi venne in mente, per un attimo, che la signorina Murdstone, come lo strumento da taschino chiamato salvavita, non era tanto progettata per scopi di protezione quanto di aggressione. Ma dato che avevo solo pensieri fugaci per qualsiasi argomento tranne Dora, la guardai subito dopo, e stavo pensando che vedevo, nel suo modo graziosamente capriccioso, che non era molto incline a essere particolarmente confidenziale con la sua compagna e protettrice, quando suonò una campanella, che il signor Spenlow disse essere la prima campanella per la cena, e così mi portò via per vestirmi.
L’idea di vestirsi, o di fare qualsiasi cosa in termini di azione, in quello stato di amore, era un po’ troppo ridicola. Potevo solo sedermi davanti al mio fuoco, mordendo la chiave della mia valigetta, e pensare alla deliziosa, fanciullesca, brillante e adorabile Dora. Che forma aveva, che viso aveva, che modo di fare elegante, variabile, incantevole!
Il campanello suonò di nuovo così presto che mi accontentai di un abbigliamento frettoloso, anziché della cura che avrei desiderato in circostanze simili, e scesi al piano inferiore. C’era qualche ospite. Dora stava parlando con un vecchio signore dai capelli grigi. Grigio com’era - e addirittura bisnonno, dato che lo disse lui stesso - ne fui pazzamente geloso.
In quale stato d’animo mi trovassi! Ero geloso di tutti. Non potevo sopportare l’idea che qualcuno conoscesse il signor Spenlow meglio di me. Era una tortura per me sentirli parlare di avvenimenti ai quali non avevo partecipato. Quando una persona davvero amabile, con una testa calva molto lucidata, mi chiese attraverso il tavolo da pranzo se quella fosse la prima volta che vedevo i giardini, avrei potuto fare qualsiasi cosa a lui, selvaggia e vendicativa.
Non ricordo chi ci fosse, tranne Dora. Non ho la minima idea di cosa abbiamo mangiato a cena, a parte Dora. La mia impressione è che io abbia cenato solo di Dora, e abbia mandato via mezza dozzina di piatti intatti. Ero seduto accanto a lei. Le ho parlato. Aveva la vocina più deliziosa, la risatina più allegra, i modi più piacevoli e affascinanti che abbiano mai condotto un giovane smarrito in una schiavitù senza speranza. Era piuttosto minuscola in tutto. Tanto più preziosa, pensavo.
Quando uscì dalla stanza con la signorina Murdstone (non c’erano altre signore nel gruppo), caddi in una fantasticheria, turbata solo dalla crudele apprensione che la signorina Murdstone potesse screditarmi ai suoi occhi. La gentile creatura con la testa lucidata mi raccontò una lunga storia, che credo riguardasse il giardinaggio. Ricordo di averlo sentito dire “il mio giardiniere” diverse volte. Sembravo prestargli la massima attenzione, ma tutto il tempo stavo vagando in un giardino dell’Eden con Dora.
I miei timori di essere screditato agli occhi dell’oggetto del mio travolgente amore furono riaccesi quando entrammo nel salotto, dallo sguardo cupo e distante della signorina Murdstone. Ma ne fui sollevato in modo inaspettato.
«David Copperfield», disse Miss Murdstone, facendomi cenno di avvicinarmi a una finestra. «Una parola.»
Mi confrontai con la signorina Murdstone da solo.
«David Copperfield», disse Miss Murdstone, «non è necessario che io mi dilunghi sulle circostanze familiari. Non sono un argomento allettante.» «Tutt’altro, signora», replicai.
«L’idea non mi sfiora», assentì Miss Murdstone. «Non desidero rievocare il ricordo di antiche divergenze, o di antiche offese. Ho subito offese da una persona — una donna, mi rincresce dirlo, per il decoro del mio sesso — che non può essere nominata senza disprezzo e disgusto; e quindi preferisco non nominarla.»
Mi sentivo molto acceso per conto di mia zia; ma dissi che sarebbe stato certamente meglio, se Miss Murdstone lo avesse voluto, non menzionarla. Non potevo sentirla menzionata con dispetto, aggiunsi, senza esprimere la mia opinione in tono deciso.
La signorina Murdstone chiuse gli occhi e inclinò la testa con disprezzo; poi, riaprendo lentamente gli occhi, riprese:
«David Copperfield, non tenterò di nascondere il fatto che ho formato un’opinione negativa di te durante la tua infanzia. Potrebbe essere stata un’opinione errata, o forse tu hai smesso di giustificarla. Non è questo il punto tra noi ora. Appartengo a una famiglia che credo sia nota per una certa fermezza; e non sono una creatura delle circostanze o del cambiamento. Posso avere la mia opinione su di te. Tu puoi avere la tua opinione su di me.»
Io, a mia volta, inclinai il capo.
«Ma non è necessario», disse Miss Murdstone, «che queste opinioni entrino in conflitto qui. Date le circostanze attuali, è meglio in tutti i sensi che non lo facciano. Poiché le vicissitudini della vita ci hanno riuniti di nuovo, e potrebbero riunirci in altre occasioni, direi che ci incontreremo qui come conoscenti lontani. Le circostanze familiari sono una ragione sufficiente per incontrarci solo su quella base, e non è affatto necessario che uno di noi faccia dell’altro oggetto di commenti. Approvi questo?»
‘Miss Murdstone,’ I returned, ‘I think you and Mr. Murdstone used me very cruelly, and treated my mother with great unkindness. I shall always think so, as long as I live. But I quite agree in what you propose.’
Miss Murdstone shut her eyes again, and bent her head. Then, just touching the back of my hand with the tips of her cold, stiff fingers, she walked away, arranging the little fetters on her wrists and round her neck; which seemed to be the same set, in exactly the same state, as when I had seen her last. These reminded me, in reference to Miss Murdstone’s nature, of the fetters over a jail door; suggesting on the outside, to all beholders, what was to be expected within.
All I know of the rest of the evening is, that I heard the empress of my heart sing enchanted ballads in the French language, generally to the effect that, whatever was the matter, we ought always to dance, Ta ra la, Ta ra la! accompanying herself on a glorified instrument, resembling a guitar. That I was lost in blissful delirium. That I refused refreshment. That my soul recoiled from punch particularly. That when Miss Murdstone took her into custody and led her away, she smiled and gave me her delicious hand. That I caught a view of myself in a mirror, looking perfectly imbecile and idiotic. That I retired to bed in a most maudlin state of mind, and got up in a crisis of feeble infatuation.
It was a fine morning, and early, and I thought I would go and take a stroll down one of those wire-arched walks, and indulge my passion by dwelling on her image. On my way through the hall, I encountered her little dog, who was called Jip—short for Gipsy. I approached him tenderly, for I loved even him; but he showed his whole set of teeth, got under a chair expressly to snarl, and wouldn’t hear of the least familiarity.
The garden was cool and solitary. I walked about, wondering what my feelings of happiness would be, if I could ever become engaged to this dear wonder. As to marriage, and fortune, and all that, I believe I was almost as innocently undesigning then, as when I loved little Em’ly. To be allowed to call her ‘Dora’, to write to her, to dote upon and worship her, to have reason to think that when she was with other people she was yet mindful of me, seemed to me the summit of human ambition—I am sure it was the summit of mine. There is no doubt whatever that I was a lackadaisical young spooney; but there was a purity of heart in all this, that prevents my having quite a contemptuous recollection of it, let me laugh as I may.
I had not been walking long, when I turned a corner, and met her. I tingle again from head to foot as my recollection turns that corner, and my pen shakes in my hand.
‘You—are—out early, Miss Spenlow,’ said I.
‘It’s so stupid at home,’ she replied, ‘and Miss Murdstone is so absurd! She talks such nonsense about its being necessary for the day to be aired, before I come out. Aired!’ (She laughed, here, in the most melodious manner.) ‘On a Sunday morning, when I don’t practise, I must do something. So I told papa last night I must come out. Besides, it’s the brightest time of the whole day. Don’t you think so?’
I hazarded a bold flight, and said (not without stammering) that it was very bright to me then, though it had been very dark to me a minute before.
‘Do you mean a compliment?’ said Dora, ‘or that the weather has really changed?’
I stammered worse than before, in replying that I meant no compliment, but the plain truth; though I was not aware of any change having taken place in the weather. It was in the state of my own feelings, I added bashfully: to clench the explanation.
I never saw such curls—how could I, for there never were such curls!—as those she shook out to hide her blushes. As to the straw hat and blue ribbons which was on the top of the curls, if I could only have hung it up in my room in Buckingham Street, what a priceless possession it would have been!
‘You have just come home from Paris,’ said I.
‘Yes,’ said she. ‘Have you ever been there?’
‘No.’
‘Oh! I hope you’ll go soon! You would like it so much!’
Traces of deep-seated anguish appeared in my countenance. That she should hope I would go, that she should think it possible I could go, was insupportable. I depreciated Paris; I depreciated France. I said I wouldn’t leave England, under existing circumstances, for any earthly consideration. Nothing should induce me. In short, she was shaking the curls again, when the little dog came running along the walk to our relief.
He was mortally jealous of me, and persisted in barking at me. She took him up in her arms—oh my goodness!—and caressed him, but he persisted upon barking still. He wouldn’t let me touch him, when I tried; and then she beat him. It increased my sufferings greatly to see the pats she gave him for punishment on the bridge of his blunt nose, while he winked his eyes, and licked her hand, and still growled within himself like a little double-bass. At length he was quiet—well he might be with her dimpled chin upon his head!—and we walked away to look at a greenhouse.
‘You are not very intimate with Miss Murdstone, are you?’ said Dora. —‘My pet.’
(The two last words were to the dog. Oh, if they had only been to me!)
‘No,’ I replied. ‘Not at all so.’
‘She is a tiresome creature,’ said Dora, pouting. ‘I can’t think what papa can have been about, when he chose such a vexatious thing to be my companion. Who wants a protector? I am sure I don’t want a protector. Jip can protect me a great deal better than Miss Murdstone,—can’t you, Jip, dear?’
He only winked lazily, when she kissed his ball of a head.
‘Papa calls her my confidential friend, but I am sure she is no such thing—is she, Jip? We are not going to confide in any such cross people, Jip and I. We mean to bestow our confidence where we like, and to find out our own friends, instead of having them found out for us—don’t we, Jip?’
«Signorina Murdstone», replicai, «credo che lei e il signor Murdstone mi abbiate trattato con grande crudeltà e abbiate usato mia madre con grande cattiveria. Lo penserò sempre, finché vivrò. Ma sono perfettamente d’accordo con quanto lei propone.»
Miss Murdstone chiuse di nuovo gli occhi e chinò la testa. Poi, sfiorando appena il dorso della mia mano con le punte delle sue fredde e rigide dita, si allontanò, sistemando le piccole catene ai polsi e intorno al collo; che sembravano essere lo stesso insieme, nello stesso stato esatto, di quando l’avevo vista l’ultima volta. Queste mi ricordavano, in riferimento alla natura di Miss Murdstone, le catene sopra una porta di prigione; suggerendo all’esterno, a tutti gli osservatori, cosa ci si poteva aspettare all’interno.
Tutto ciò che so del resto della serata è che ho sentito l’imperatrice del mio cuore cantare ballate incantate in francese, generalmente con il ritornello che, qualunque cosa fosse successa, avremmo dovuto sempre danzare, Ta ra la, Ta ra la! accompagnandosi con uno strumento glorificato, simile a una chitarra. Che ero perso in un delirio beato. Che rifiutai il rinfresco. Che la mia anima si ritrasse particolarmente dal punch. Che quando la signorina Murdstone la prese in custodia e la portò via, lei sorrise e mi diede la sua deliziosa mano. Che mi vidi riflesso in uno specchio, con un’aria perfettamente imbecille e idiota. Che mi ritirai a letto in uno stato d’animo estremamente sentimentale, e mi alzai in un momento di debole infatuazione.
Era una bella mattina, presto, e pensai di andare a fare una passeggiata lungo uno di quei viali con archi di filo metallico, e di abbandonarmi alla mia passione soffermandomi sulla sua immagine. Mentre attraversavo il salone, incontrai il suo cagnolino, che si chiamava Jip, abbreviazione di Gipsy. Mi avvicinai a lui con tenerezza, perché lo amavo anche lui; ma lui mostrò tutti i suoi denti, si mise sotto una sedia apposta per ringhiare, e non volle saperne di alcuna confidenza.
Il giardino era fresco e solitario. Camminavo avanti e indietro, chiedendomi quali sarebbero state le mie sensazioni di felicità se fossi mai riuscito a fidanzarmi con questa cara meraviglia. Per quanto riguarda il matrimonio, la fortuna e tutto il resto, credo di essere stato allora quasi altrettanto innocente e privo di progetti come quando amavo la piccola Emily. Essere autorizzato a chiamarla “Dora”, a scrivere a lei, ad adorarla e adorarla, ad avere ragione di pensare che quando era con altre persone era ancora pensosa di me, mi sembrava il culmine dell’ambizione umana - sono sicuro che era il culmine della mia. Non c’è alcun dubbio che fossi un giovane innamorato sdolcinato; ma c’era una purezza di cuore in tutto questo, che impedisce che io ne abbia un ricordo del tutto sprezzante, per quanto io possa ridere.
Non avevo camminato a lungo, quando girai un angolo e la incontrai. Mi formicolano di nuovo la testa e i piedi mentre il mio ricordo gira quell’angolo, e la mia penna trema nella mia mano.
«Voi, siete uscita presto, Miss Spenlow», dissi.
«È così stupido a casa», rispose, «e la signorina Murdstone è così assurda! Parla di tali sciocchezze sul fatto che sia necessario che la giornata sia aerata, prima che io esca. Aerata!» (Qui rise, nel modo più melodioso.) «In una mattinata di domenica, quando non mi esercito, devo fare qualcosa. Così ho detto a papà ieri sera che dovevo uscire. Inoltre, è il momento più luminoso di tutta la giornata. Non credi?»
Mi azzardai a fare un volo audace e dissi (non senza balbettare) che era molto luminoso per me allora, anche se era stato molto buio per me un minuto prima.
“Vuoi fare un complimento?” disse Dora, “o è davvero cambiato il tempo?”
Balbettai peggio di prima, rispondendo che non intendevo fare un complimento, ma dire la semplice verità; anche se non mi ero accorto di alcun cambiamento avvenuto nel tempo atmosferico. Era nello stato dei miei sentimenti, aggiunsi timidamente: per confermare la spiegazione.
Non avevo mai visto riccioli simili - come avrei potuto, dato che non erano mai esistiti riccioli del genere! - come quelli che lei scuoteva per nascondere le sue guance arrossate. Per quanto riguarda il cappello di paglia e i nastri blu che erano sulla cima dei riccioli, se solo avessi potuto appendere quel cappello nella mia stanza in Buckingham Street, sarebbe stato un possesso inestimabile!
«Siete appena tornato a casa da Parigi,» dissi.
“Sì”, disse lei. “C’è mai stato?”
‘No.’
«Oh! Spero che tu vada presto! Ti piacerebbe così tanto!»
Tracce di angoscia profonda apparvero sul mio volto. Che lei potesse sperare che me ne andassi, che lei potesse pensare che fosse possibile che me ne andassi, era insopportabile. Svalutai Parigi; svalutai la Francia. Dissi che non avrei lasciato l’Inghilterra, nelle circostanze attuali, per nessuna considerazione terrena. Nulla avrebbe potuto indurmi. Insomma, lei stava di nuovo scuotendo i riccioli, quando il piccolo cane arrivò correndo lungo il viale in nostro soccorso.
Era geloso di me fino alla morte e insisteva nell’abbaiare contro di me. Lei lo prese tra le braccia —oh, mio Dio!— e lo accarezzò, ma lui continuò ad abbaiare. Non mi lasciava nemmeno toccarlo, quando ci provavo; e allora lei lo picchiò. Vedere i colpetti che gli dava come punizione sulla punta del suo muso tozzo, mentre lui strizzava gli occhi, leccava la sua mano e continuava a brontolare dentro di sé come un piccolo contrabbasso, aumentò enormemente le mie sofferenze. Alla fine si calmò —poteva essere altro che calmo con il suo mento incavato sulla sua testa!— e ci allontanammo per guardare una serra.
“Non sei molto intimo con la signorina Murdstone, vero?” disse Dora. — “Mio piccolo.”
(Gli ultimi due parole erano rivolte al cane. Oh, se solo fossero state rivolte a me!)
‘No’, risposi. ‘Niente affatto.’
«È una creatura insopportabile», disse Dora, facendo il broncio. «Non riesco a capire che cosa papà abbia avuto in mente quando ha scelto una cosa così irritante per farmi da compagna. Chi vuole un protettore? Io di sicuro non voglio un protettore. Jip può proteggermi molto meglio di Miss Murdstone,—non è vero, Jip, caro?»
Lui si limitò a strizzarle pigramente l’occhio quando lei baciò la sua testa tondeggiante.
«Papa la chiama la mia amica di fiducia, ma sono sicuro che non lo è affatto — non è così, Jip? Non confideremo mai in gente così antipatica, io e Jip. Vogliamo dare la nostra fiducia a chi ci pare e scegliere i nostri amici da soli, invece di farli scegliere per noi — non è così, Jip?»
Jip made a comfortable noise, in answer, a little like a tea-kettle when it sings. As for me, every word was a new heap of fetters, riveted above the last.
‘It is very hard, because we have not a kind Mama, that we are to have, instead, a sulky, gloomy old thing like Miss Murdstone, always following us about—isn’t it, Jip? Never mind, Jip. We won’t be confidential, and we’ll make ourselves as happy as we can in spite of her, and we’ll tease her, and not please her—won’t we, Jip?’
If it had lasted any longer, I think I must have gone down on my knees on the gravel, with the probability before me of grazing them, and of being presently ejected from the premises besides. But, by good fortune the greenhouse was not far off, and these words brought us to it.
It contained quite a show of beautiful geraniums. We loitered along in front of them, and Dora often stopped to admire this one or that one, and I stopped to admire the same one, and Dora, laughing, held the dog up childishly, to smell the flowers; and if we were not all three in Fairyland, certainly I was. The scent of a geranium leaf, at this day, strikes me with a half comical half serious wonder as to what change has come over me in a moment; and then I see a straw hat and blue ribbons, and a quantity of curls, and a little black dog being held up, in two slender arms, against a bank of blossoms and bright leaves.
Miss Murdstone had been looking for us. She found us here; and presented her uncongenial cheek, the little wrinkles in it filled with hair powder, to Dora to be kissed. Then she took Dora’s arm in hers, and marched us into breakfast as if it were a soldier’s funeral.
How many cups of tea I drank, because Dora made it, I don’t know. But, I perfectly remember that I sat swilling tea until my whole nervous system, if I had had any in those days, must have gone by the board. By and by we went to church. Miss Murdstone was between Dora and me in the pew; but I heard her sing, and the congregation vanished. A sermon was delivered—about Dora, of course—and I am afraid that is all I know of the service.
We had a quiet day. No company, a walk, a family dinner of four, and an evening of looking over books and pictures; Miss Murdstone with a homily before her, and her eye upon us, keeping guard vigilantly. Ah! little did Mr. Spenlow imagine, when he sat opposite to me after dinner that day, with his pocket-handkerchief over his head, how fervently I was embracing him, in my fancy, as his son-in-law! Little did he think, when I took leave of him at night, that he had just given his full consent to my being engaged to Dora, and that I was invoking blessings on his head!
We departed early in the morning, for we had a Salvage case coming on in the Admiralty Court, requiring a rather accurate knowledge of the whole science of navigation, in which (as we couldn’t be expected to know much about those matters in the Commons) the judge had entreated two old Trinity Masters, for charity’s sake, to come and help him out. Dora was at the breakfast-table to make the tea again, however; and I had the melancholy pleasure of taking off my hat to her in the phaeton, as she stood on the door-step with Jip in her arms.
What the Admiralty was to me that day; what nonsense I made of our case in my mind, as I listened to it; how I saw ‘DORA’ engraved upon the blade of the silver oar which they lay upon the table, as the emblem of that high jurisdiction; and how I felt when Mr. Spenlow went home without me (I had had an insane hope that he might take me back again), as if I were a mariner myself, and the ship to which I belonged had sailed away and left me on a desert island; I shall make no fruitless effort to describe. If that sleepy old court could rouse itself, and present in any visible form the daydreams I have had in it about Dora, it would reveal my truth.
I don’t mean the dreams that I dreamed on that day alone, but day after day, from week to week, and term to term. I went there, not to attend to what was going on, but to think about Dora. If ever I bestowed a thought upon the cases, as they dragged their slow length before me, it was only to wonder, in the matrimonial cases (remembering Dora), how it was that married people could ever be otherwise than happy; and, in the Prerogative cases, to consider, if the money in question had been left to me, what were the foremost steps I should immediately have taken in regard to Dora. Within the first week of my passion, I bought four sumptuous waistcoats—not for myself; I had no pride in them; for Dora—and took to wearing straw-coloured kid gloves in the streets, and laid the foundations of all the corns I have ever had. If the boots I wore at that period could only be produced and compared with the natural size of my feet, they would show what the state of my heart was, in a most affecting manner.
And yet, wretched cripple as I made myself by this act of homage to Dora, I walked miles upon miles daily in the hope of seeing her. Not only was I soon as well known on the Norwood Road as the postmen on that beat, but I pervaded London likewise. I walked about the streets where the best shops for ladies were, I haunted the Bazaar like an unquiet spirit, I fagged through the Park again and again, long after I was quite knocked up. Sometimes, at long intervals and on rare occasions, I saw her. Perhaps I saw her glove waved in a carriage window; perhaps I met her, walked with her and Miss Murdstone a little way, and spoke to her. In the latter case I was always very miserable afterwards, to think that I had said nothing to the purpose; or that she had no idea of the extent of my devotion, or that she cared nothing about me. I was always looking out, as may be supposed, for another invitation to Mr. Spenlow’s house. I was always being disappointed, for I got none.
Jip rispose con un suono confortante, un po’ come un bollitore che fischia. Per quanto mi riguarda, ogni parola era un nuovo mucchio di catene, saldate sopra le ultime.
«È molto difficile, perché non abbiamo una mamma gentile, e invece abbiamo una vecchia burbera e cupa come la signorina Murdstone, che ci segue sempre dappertutto — non è vero, Jip? Non importa, Jip. Non ci confideremo, e faremo di tutto per essere felici nonostante lei, e la prenderemo in giro, e non le faremo piacere — non è così, Jip?»
Se fosse durato più a lungo, credo che mi sarei messo in ginocchio sul ghiaieto, con la probabilità di sbucciarli e di essere poi cacciato via. Ma, per fortuna, la serra non era lontana, e queste parole ci portarono fino a lì.
Conteneva un bel po’ di begli gerani. Ci fermammo davanti a loro, e Dora si fermava spesso per ammirare questo o quel geranio, e io mi fermavo per ammirare lo stesso, e Dora, ridendo, teneva il cane in alto in modo infantile, per annusare i fiori; e se noi tre non eravamo nella Terra delle Fate, certamente io lo ero. Il profumo di una foglia di geranio, ancora oggi, mi colpisce con una meraviglia mezza comica e mezza seria su quale cambiamento sia avvenuto in me in un attimo; e poi vedo un cappello di paglia e nastri blu, e una quantità di riccioli, e un piccolo cane nero che viene tenuto in alto, in due braccia esili, contro un banco di fiori e foglie brillanti.
La signorina Murdstone ci aveva cercato. Ci trovò qui; e presentò la sua guancia poco accogliente, le piccole grinze della quale erano piene di polvere per capelli, a Dora per essere baciata. Poi prese il braccio di Dora col suo, e ci condusse a colazione come se fosse il funerale di un soldato.
Non so quanti bicchieri di tè ho bevuto, perché Dora lo preparava. Ma ricordo perfettamente di essere rimasto seduto a sorseggiare tè fino a quando tutto il mio sistema nervoso, se ne avessi avuto uno in quei giorni, sarebbe andato in frantumi. Poco dopo siamo andati in chiesa. La signorina Murdstone era tra Dora e me nella panca; ma l’ho sentita cantare, e la congregazione è svanita. È stato pronunciato un sermone —su Dora, ovviamente—e temo che sia tutto ciò che so del servizio.
Passammo una giornata tranquilla. Nessuna compagnia, una passeggiata, una cena in famiglia a quattro, e una serata passata a sfogliare libri e fotografie; la signorina Murdstone con un sermone davanti, e gli occhi puntati su di noi, vigilando attentamente. Ah! Poco poteva immaginare il signor Spenlow, quando sedeva di fronte a me dopo cena quel giorno, con il fazzoletto da taschino sulla testa, quanto ardentemente lo stavo abbracciando, nella mia fantasia, come suo genero! Poco poteva pensare, quando mi congedai da lui a notte, che aveva appena dato il suo pieno consenso al mio fidanzamento con Dora, e che stavo invocando benedizioni sulla sua testa!
Partimmo di buon’ora la mattina, perché avevamo un caso di Salvataggio in corso presso il Tribunale dell’Ammiragliato Tribunale, che richiedeva una conoscenza piuttosto accurata di tutta la scienza della navigazione, in cui (poiché non ci si poteva aspettare che sapessimo molto di queste cose al Parlamento) il giudice aveva pregato due vecchi Maestri della Trinity, per carità, di venire ad aiutarlo. Dora, tuttavia, era di nuovo a tavola per fare il tè; e io ebbi il malinconico piacere di togliermi il cappello davanti a lei nel phaeton, mentre stava sul gradino della porta con Jip tra le braccia.
Quello che l’Ammiragliato fu per me quel giorno; quale assurdità ne feci della nostra causa nella mia mente, mentre la ascoltavo; come vidi “DORA” inciso sulla lama del remo d’argento che posarono sul tavolo, come emblema di quella alta giurisdizione; e come mi sentii quando il signor Spenlow andò a casa senza di me (avevo avuto una speranza folle che potesse riportarmi indietro), come se io stesso fossi un marinaio, e la nave a cui appartenevo fosse salpata e mi avesse lasciato su un’isola deserta; non farò alcuno sforzo infruttuoso per descrivere. Se quel vecchio tribunale sonnolento potesse risvegliarsi, e presentare in qualche forma visibile i sogni a occhi aperti che ho fatto in esso su Dora, rivelerà la mia verità.
Non intendo i sogni che feci quel giorno da solo, ma giorno dopo giorno, settimana dopo settimana, e trimestre dopo trimestre. Andavo lì, non per seguire quanto stava accadendo, ma per pensare a Dora. Se mai dedicavo un pensiero ai casi, mentre si trascinavano lentamente davanti a me, era solo per chiedermi, nei casi matrimoniali (pensando a Dora), come mai le persone sposate non fossero sempre felici; e, nei casi di diritto reale, per considerare, se il denaro in questione fosse stato lasciato a me, quali sarebbero stati i primi passi che avrei immediatamente intrapreso riguardo a Dora. Nella prima settimana della mia passione, comprai quattro sontuosi panciotti — non per me; non avevo orgoglio in loro; per Dora — e iniziai a indossare guanti di pelle di capra color paglia per le strade, e gettai le basi di tutti i calli che ho mai avuto. Se gli stivali che indossavo in quel periodo potessero essere prodotti e confrontati con le dimensioni naturali dei miei piedi, mostrerebbero in che stato fosse il mio cuore, in modo davvero commovente.
Eppure, povero zoppo qual ero diventato con questo atto di omaggio a Dora, camminavo ogni giorno per miglia e miglia nella speranza di vederla. Non solo divenni presto noto come i postini sulla Norwood Road, ma pervasi anche Londra. Camminavo per le strade dove c’erano i migliori negozi per signore, frequentavo il Bazaar come uno spirito inquieto, mi trascinavo nel Parco più e più volte, molto tempo dopo essere stato completamente sfinito. A volte, a lunghi intervalli e in rare occasioni, la vedevo. Forse vedevo il suo guanto sventolato in una finestra di carrozza; forse la incontravo, camminavo un po’ con lei e con la signorina Murdstone, e le parlavo. In quest’ultimo caso ero sempre molto infelice dopo, al pensiero di non aver detto nulla di pertinente; o che lei non avesse idea dell’entità della mia devozione, o che non le importasse nulla di me. Come si può immaginare, ero sempre in attesa di un altro invito alla casa del signor Spenlow. Ero sempre deluso, perché non ne ricevevo.
Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration; for when this attachment was but a few weeks old, and I had not had the courage to write more explicitly even to Agnes, than that I had been to Mr. Spenlow’s house, ‘whose family,’ I added, ‘consists of one daughter’;—I say Mrs. Crupp must have been a woman of penetration, for, even in that early stage, she found it out. She came up to me one evening, when I was very low, to ask (she being then afflicted with the disorder I have mentioned) if I could oblige her with a little tincture of cardamums mixed with rhubarb, and flavoured with seven drops of the essence of cloves, which was the best remedy for her complaint;—or, if I had not such a thing by me, with a little brandy, which was the next best. It was not, she remarked, so palatable to her, but it was the next best. As I had never even heard of the first remedy, and always had the second in the closet, I gave Mrs. Crupp a glass of the second, which (that I might have no suspicion of its being devoted to any improper use) she began to take in my presence.
‘Cheer up, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘I can’t abear to see you so, sir: I’m a mother myself.’
I did not quite perceive the application of this fact to myself, but I smiled on Mrs. Crupp, as benignly as was in my power.
‘Come, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘Excuse me. I know what it is, sir. There’s a lady in the case.’
‘Mrs. Crupp?’ I returned, reddening.
‘Oh, bless you! Keep a good heart, sir!’ said Mrs. Crupp, nodding encouragement. ‘Never say die, sir! If She don’t smile upon you, there’s a many as will. You are a young gentleman to be smiled on, Mr. Copperfull, and you must learn your walue, sir.’
Mrs. Crupp always called me Mr. Copperfull: firstly, no doubt, because it was not my name; and secondly, I am inclined to think, in some indistinct association with a washing-day.
‘What makes you suppose there is any young lady in the case, Mrs. Crupp?’ said I.
‘Mr. Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, with a great deal of feeling, ‘I’m a mother myself.’
For some time Mrs. Crupp could only lay her hand upon her nankeen bosom, and fortify herself against returning pain with sips of her medicine. At length she spoke again.
‘When the present set were took for you by your dear aunt, Mr. Copperfull,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘my remark were, I had now found summun I could care for. “Thank Ev’in!” were the expression, “I have now found summun I can care for!”—You don’t eat enough, sir, nor yet drink.’
‘Is that what you found your supposition on, Mrs. Crupp?’ said I.
‘Sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, in a tone approaching to severity, ‘I’ve laundressed other young gentlemen besides yourself. A young gentleman may be over-careful of himself, or he may be under-careful of himself. He may brush his hair too regular, or too un-regular. He may wear his boots much too large for him, or much too small. That is according as the young gentleman has his original character formed. But let him go to which extreme he may, sir, there’s a young lady in both of ‘em.’
Mrs. Crupp shook her head in such a determined manner, that I had not an inch of vantage-ground left.
‘It was but the gentleman which died here before yourself,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘that fell in love—with a barmaid—and had his waistcoats took in directly, though much swelled by drinking.’
‘Mrs. Crupp,’ said I, ‘I must beg you not to connect the young lady in my case with a barmaid, or anything of that sort, if you please.’
‘Mr. Copperfull,’ returned Mrs. Crupp, ‘I’m a mother myself, and not likely. I ask your pardon, sir, if I intrude. I should never wish to intrude where I were not welcome. But you are a young gentleman, Mr. Copperfull, and my adwice to you is, to cheer up, sir, to keep a good heart, and to know your own walue. If you was to take to something, sir,’ said Mrs. Crupp, ‘if you was to take to skittles, now, which is healthy, you might find it divert your mind, and do you good.’
With these words, Mrs. Crupp, affecting to be very careful of the brandy—which was all gone—thanked me with a majestic curtsey, and retired. As her figure disappeared into the gloom of the entry, this counsel certainly presented itself to my mind in the light of a slight liberty on Mrs. Crupp’s part; but, at the same time, I was content to receive it, in another point of view, as a word to the wise, and a warning in future to keep my secret better.
La signora Crupp doveva essere una donna perspicace; infatti, quando questo attaccamento aveva solo poche settimane di vita, e io non avevo avuto il coraggio di scrivere più esplicitamente neppure ad Agnes, che ero stato a casa del signor Spenlow, «la cui famiglia», aggiungevo, «è composta da una figlia»;—dico che la signora Crupp doveva essere una donna perspicace, perché, anche in quella fase iniziale, lei lo aveva scoperto. Una sera, mentre mi sentivo molto giù, venne da me per chiedermi (essendo allora afflitta dal disturbo che ho menzionato) se potevo concederle un po’ di tintura di cardamomo mescolata con rabarbaro, e aromatizzata con sette gocce di essenza di chiodi di garofano, che era il rimedio migliore per il suo malanno;—o, se non avessi avuto una cosa del genere, con un po’ di brandy, che era il secondo migliore. Non era, osservò, così gradevole al suo palato, ma era il secondo migliore. Poiché non avevo mai neppure sentito parlare del primo rimedio, e avevo sempre il secondo in dispensa, diedi alla signora Crupp un bicchiere del secondo, che (acciò che non potessi nutrire sospetti che fosse destinato a un uso improprio) iniziò a prendere in mia presenza.
‘Faccia coraggio, signore’, disse la signora Crupp. ‘Non posso sopportare di vederla così, signore: sono una madre anch’io.’
Non compresi del tutto l’applicazione di questo fatto a me stesso, ma sorrisi alla signora Crupp, con la massima benignità di cui ero capace.
«Dai, signore», disse la signora Crupp. «Mi scusi. So di cosa si tratta, signore. C’è una signora in ballo.»
«Signora Crupp?» risposi, arrossendo.
«Oh, benedetto lei! Mantenga il coraggio, signore!» disse la signora Crupp, annuendo incoraggiante. «Non si arrenda, signore! Se Lei non le sorride, ce ne sono molte altre che lo faranno. Lei è un giovane signore che merita un sorriso, signor Copperfield, e deve imparare a conoscere il suo valore, signore.»
La signora Crupp mi chiamava sempre signor Copperfull: in primo luogo, senza dubbio, perché non era il mio nome; e in secondo luogo, sono portato a credere, per qualche vaga associazione con un giorno di bucato.
«Che cosa la induce a supporre che ci sia una giovane signora in ballo, signora Crupp?» dissi io.
“Signor Copperfield,” disse la signora Crupp con grande sentimento, “anch’io sono una madre.”
Per qualche tempo la signora Crupp poté solo posare la mano sul suo petto di nankeen e rafforzarsi contro il ritorno del dolore con sorsi della sua medicina. Alla fine riprese a parlare.
«Quando il corrente set fu scelto per voi dalla vostra cara zia, signor Copperfield», disse la signora Crupp, «il mio commento fu che avevo trovato finalmente qualcosa per cui potessi provare affetto. “Grazie a Dio!”, dissi, “ho finalmente trovato qualcosa per cui posso provare affetto!”—Non mangiate abbastanza, signore, né bevete.»
«È su questo che si basava la sua supposizione, signora Crupp?» dissi io.
«Signore», disse la signora Crupp, con un tono che rasentava la severità, «ho fatto da lavandaia a molti altri giovani signori oltre a lei. Un giovane signore può essere troppo attento a se stesso, o troppo trascurato. Può pettinarsi con troppa regolarità, o con troppa irregolarità. Può indossare stivali molto grandi per lui, o molto piccoli. Tutto dipende dal carattere originale del giovane signore. Ma, signore, qualunque estremo egli possa raggiungere, in entrambi i casi c’è una giovane signora.»
La signora Crupp scosse la testa in modo così deciso che non mi rimase un centimetro di terreno su cui avanzare.
«Non fu altro che il signore che morì qui prima di voi», disse la signora Crupp, «che si innamorò—di una cameriera—e si fece subito stringere i panciotti, sebbene molto gonfi per aver bevuto.»
«Signora Crupp», dissi, «le chiedo di non associare la giovane signora del mio caso a una cameriera di bar o a qualcosa del genere, se non le dispiace.»
«Signor Copperfield», rispose la signora Crupp, «anch’io sono madre, e non è probabile. Chiedo scusa, signore, se mi intrometto. Non vorrei mai intromettermi dove non sono gradita. Ma lei è un giovane signore, signor Copperfield, e il mio consiglio è di tirarsi su, signore, di tenere alto il morale e di conoscere il proprio valore. Se si mettesse a fare qualcosa, signore», disse la signora Crupp, «se si mettesse a giocare a birilli, per esempio, che è un gioco sano, potrebbe scoprire che distrae la mente e fa bene.»
Con queste parole, la signora Crupp, fingendo di fare molta attenzione al brandy — che era tutto finito — mi ringraziò con un inchino maestoso e si ritirò. Mentre la sua figura scompariva nell’oscurità del corridoio, questo consiglio mi apparve certamente come una piccola libertà presa dalla signora Crupp; ma, allo stesso tempo, fui contento di riceverlo, sotto un altro aspetto, come un consiglio per l’avenire, e un monito a custodire meglio il mio segreto in futuro.
CHAPTER 27. TOMMY TRADDLES
It may have been in consequence of Mrs. Crupp’s advice, and, perhaps, for no better reason than because there was a certain similarity in the sound of the word skittles and Traddles, that it came into my head, next day, to go and look after Traddles. The time he had mentioned was more than out, and he lived in a little street near the Veterinary College at Camden Town, which was principally tenanted, as one of our clerks who lived in that direction informed me, by gentlemen students, who bought live donkeys, and made experiments on those quadrupeds in their private apartments. Having obtained from this clerk a direction to the academic grove in question, I set out, the same afternoon, to visit my old schoolfellow.
I found that the street was not as desirable a one as I could have wished it to be, for the sake of Traddles. The inhabitants appeared to have a propensity to throw any little trifles they were not in want of, into the road: which not only made it rank and sloppy, but untidy too, on account of the cabbage-leaves. The refuse was not wholly vegetable either, for I myself saw a shoe, a doubled-up saucepan, a black bonnet, and an umbrella, in various stages of decomposition, as I was looking out for the number I wanted.
The general air of the place reminded me forcibly of the days when I lived with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. An indescribable character of faded gentility that attached to the house I sought, and made it unlike all the other houses in the street—though they were all built on one monotonous pattern, and looked like the early copies of a blundering boy who was learning to make houses, and had not yet got out of his cramped brick-and-mortar pothooks—reminded me still more of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Happening to arrive at the door as it was opened to the afternoon milkman, I was reminded of Mr. and Mrs. Micawber more forcibly yet.
‘Now,’ said the milkman to a very youthful servant girl. ‘Has that there little bill of mine been heerd on?’
‘Oh, master says he’ll attend to it immediate,’ was the reply.
‘Because,’ said the milkman, going on as if he had received no answer, and speaking, as I judged from his tone, rather for the edification of somebody within the house, than of the youthful servant—an impression which was strengthened by his manner of glaring down the passage—‘because that there little bill has been running so long, that I begin to believe it’s run away altogether, and never won’t be heerd of. Now, I’m not a going to stand it, you know!’ said the milkman, still throwing his voice into the house, and glaring down the passage.
As to his dealing in the mild article of milk, by the by, there never was a greater anomaly. His deportment would have been fierce in a butcher or a brandy-merchant.
The voice of the youthful servant became faint, but she seemed to me, from the action of her lips, again to murmur that it would be attended to immediate.
‘I tell you what,’ said the milkman, looking hard at her for the first time, and taking her by the chin, ‘are you fond of milk?’
‘Yes, I likes it,’ she replied. ‘Good,’ said the milkman. ‘Then you won’t have none tomorrow. D’ye hear? Not a fragment of milk you won’t have tomorrow.’
I thought she seemed, upon the whole, relieved by the prospect of having any today. The milkman, after shaking his head at her darkly, released her chin, and with anything rather than good-will opened his can, and deposited the usual quantity in the family jug. This done, he went away, muttering, and uttered the cry of his trade next door, in a vindictive shriek.
‘Does Mr. Traddles live here?’ I then inquired.
A mysterious voice from the end of the passage replied ‘Yes.’ Upon which the youthful servant replied ‘Yes.’
‘Is he at home?’ said I.
Again the mysterious voice replied in the affirmative, and again the servant echoed it. Upon this, I walked in, and in pursuance of the servant’s directions walked upstairs; conscious, as I passed the back parlour-door, that I was surveyed by a mysterious eye, probably belonging to the mysterious voice.
When I got to the top of the stairs—the house was only a story high above the ground floor—Traddles was on the landing to meet me. He was delighted to see me, and gave me welcome, with great heartiness, to his little room. It was in the front of the house, and extremely neat, though sparely furnished. It was his only room, I saw; for there was a sofa-bedstead in it, and his blacking-brushes and blacking were among his books—on the top shelf, behind a dictionary. His table was covered with papers, and he was hard at work in an old coat. I looked at nothing, that I know of, but I saw everything, even to the prospect of a church upon his china inkstand, as I sat down—and this, too, was a faculty confirmed in me in the old Micawber times. Various ingenious arrangements he had made, for the disguise of his chest of drawers, and the accommodation of his boots, his shaving-glass, and so forth, particularly impressed themselves upon me, as evidences of the same Traddles who used to make models of elephants’ dens in writing-paper to put flies in; and to comfort himself under ill usage, with the memorable works of art I have so often mentioned.
In a corner of the room was something neatly covered up with a large white cloth. I could not make out what that was.
‘Traddles,’ said I, shaking hands with him again, after I had sat down, ‘I am delighted to see you.’
‘I am delighted to see YOU, Copperfield,’ he returned. ‘I am very glad indeed to see you. It was because I was thoroughly glad to see you when we met in Ely Place, and was sure you were thoroughly glad to see me, that I gave you this address instead of my address at chambers.’ ‘Oh! You have chambers?’ said I.
‘Why, I have the fourth of a room and a passage, and the fourth of a clerk,’ returned Traddles. ‘Three others and myself unite to have a set of chambers—to look business-like—and we quarter the clerk too. Half-a-crown a week he costs me.’
CAPITOLO 27. TOMMY TRADDLES
Forse fu in conseguenza del consiglio della signora Crupp, e, forse, per la semplice ragione che c’era una certa somiglianza nel suono delle parole “skittles” e “Traddles”, che mi venne in mente, il giorno dopo, di andare a cercare Traddles. Il tempo che aveva menzionato era più che passato, e lui viveva in una piccola strada vicino al Collegio Veterinario di Camden Town, che era principalmente abitata, come mi informò uno dei nostri impiegati che viveva in quella direzione, da studenti gentiluomini, che compravano asini vivi e facevano esperimenti su quei quadrupedi nei loro appartamenti privati. Avendo ottenuto da questo impiegato le indicazioni per il grove accademico in questione, mi misi in viaggio, lo stesso pomeriggio, per visitare il mio vecchio compagno di scuola.
Scoprii che la strada non era così desiderabile come avrei potuto sperare che fosse, per il bene di Traddles. Gli abitanti sembravano avere la propensione a gettare in strada qualsiasi piccola cosa di cui non avevano bisogno: il che non solo la rendeva umida e fangosa, ma anche disordinata, a causa delle foglie di cavolo. I rifiuti non erano del tutto vegetali neanche, perché io stesso vidi una scarpa, una pentola ripiegata, un cappello nero, e un ombrello, in vari stadi di decomposizione, mentre cercavo il numero che volevo.
L’aria generale del luogo mi ricordava fortemente i giorni in cui vivevo con il signor e la signora Micawber. Un carattere indescrivibile di gentilezza sbiadita che si attaccava alla casa che cercavo, e la rendeva diversa da tutte le altre case della strada, anche se erano tutte costruite su un modello monotono e sembravano le prime copie di un ragazzo goffo che stava imparando a fare le case e non era ancora uscito dai suoi goffi ghirigori di mattoni e malta, mi ricordavano ancora di più il signor e la signora Micawber. Accadendo di arrivare alla porta mentre veniva aperta per il lattaio del pomeriggio, fui ricordato del signor e della signora Micawber ancora più fortemente.
«Ora», disse il latteiere a una cameriera molto giovane, «quella fatturina che vi ho dato è stata pagata?»
«Oh, il padrone dice che ci penserà immediatamente», fu la risposta.
«Perché», disse il latteiere, continuando come se non avesse ricevuto risposta, e parlando, come dedussi dal suo tono, piuttosto per l’edificazione di qualcuno all’interno della casa, che del giovane domestico—un’impressione che fu rafforzata dal suo modo di fissare il corridoio—«perché quel piccolo conto è stato in sospeso così a lungo, che comincio a credere che sia scappato del tutto, e non si sentirà mai più parlare di lui. Ora, io non intendo sopportarlo, sapete!», disse il latteiere, continuando a proiettare la sua voce nella casa, e fissando il corridoio.
Per quanto riguarda il suo commercio nell’articolo mite del latte, a proposito, non c’è mai stata un’anomalia maggiore. Il suo comportamento sarebbe stato feroce in un macellaio o in un commerciante di brandy.
La voce della giovane cameriera si fece flebile, ma mi parve che, dal movimento delle labbra, ripetesse che ci si sarebbe provveduto immediatamente.
«Le dico una cosa», disse il latteiere, guardandola attentamente per la prima volta e prendendola per il mento, «le piace il latte?»
«Sì, mi piace», rispose lei. «Bene», disse il latteiere. «Allora non ne avrete domani. Avete capito? Neanche un frammento di latte avrete domani.»
Pensavo che, nel complesso, sembrasse sollevata all’idea di averne un po’ quel giorno. Il latteiere, dopo aver scosso la testa in modo oscuro, le lasciò il mento e, con tutt’altro che buona volontà, aprì il suo secchio e versò la solita quantità nella brocca della famiglia. Fatto ciò, se ne andò borbottando e lanciò il grido della sua attività nella casa accanto, in un urlo vendicativo.
«Abita qui il signor Traddles?» domandai quindi.
Una voce misteriosa dall’estremità del passaggio rispose: «Sì». Al che il giovane domestico rispose: «Sì».
«È a casa?» dissi io.
La misteriosa voce rispose di nuovo affermativamente, e il domestico la ripeté. A questo punto, entrai e, seguendo le istruzioni del domestico, salii le scale; consapevole, mentre passavo davanti alla porta del retrobottega, di essere osservato da un occhio misterioso, probabilmente appartenente alla misteriosa voce.
Quando arrivai in cima alle scale — la casa aveva solo un piano sopra il pianterreno — Traddles era sul pianerottolo ad aspettarmi. Fu felice di vedermi e mi accolse con grande cordialità nella sua piccola stanza. Era all’ingresso della casa ed era estremamente ordinata, sebbene arredata con pochi mobili. Era l’unica stanza che aveva, notai; c’era infatti un divano letto e i suoi pennelli e la lucidatura per scarpe erano tra i suoi libri — sull’ultimo scaffale, dietro un dizionario. Il suo tavolo era coperto di carte e lui stava lavorando sodo con un vecchio cappotto. Non guardai nulla, che io sappia, ma vidi tutto, fino alla vista di una chiesa sul suo calamaio di porcellana, mentre mi sedevo — e anche questo era un talento che mi era stato confermato ai vecchi tempi di Micawber. Vari ingegnosi arrangiamenti che aveva fatto, per nascondere il suo cassettone e per sistemare i suoi stivali, lo specchio da barba e così via, mi colpirono particolarmente, come prove dello stesso Traddles che era solito fare modelli di tane di elefanti con la carta per scrivere per metterci dentro le mosche; e per consolarsi quando veniva maltrattato, con le memorabili opere d’arte che ho spesso menzionato.
In un angolo della stanza c’era qualcosa accuratamente coperto con un grande panno bianco. Non riuscivo a capire cosa fosse.
«Traddles», dissi, stringendogli di nuovo la mano dopo essermi seduto, «sono davvero felice di rivederti».
«Sono felice di rivederLA, Copperfield», rispose. «Sono davvero molto felice di rivederla. Fu perché ero davvero felice di rivederla quando ci incontrammo in Ely Place, e ero sicuro che lei fosse davvero felice di rivedere me, che le ho dato questo indirizzo invece del mio indirizzo agli uffici.» «Oh! Lei ha degli uffici?», dissi.
«Perché, ho un quarto di stanza e di corridoio, e un quarto di un impiegato», rispose Traddles. «Altri tre e io ci uniamo per avere un insieme di stanze — per sembrare più seri — e dividiamo anche l’impiegato. Mi costa mezza corona a settimana».
His old simple character and good temper, and something of his old unlucky fortune also, I thought, smiled at me in the smile with which he made this explanation.
‘It’s not because I have the least pride, Copperfield, you understand,’ said Traddles, ‘that I don’t usually give my address here. It’s only on account of those who come to me, who might not like to come here. For myself, I am fighting my way on in the world against difficulties, and it would be ridiculous if I made a pretence of doing anything else.’
‘You are reading for the bar, Mr. Waterbrook informed me?’ said I.
‘Why, yes,’ said Traddles, rubbing his hands slowly over one another. ‘I am reading for the bar. The fact is, I have just begun to keep my terms, after rather a long delay. It’s some time since I was articled, but the payment of that hundred pounds was a great pull. A great pull!’ said Traddles, with a wince, as if he had had a tooth out.
‘Do you know what I can’t help thinking of, Traddles, as I sit here looking at you?’ I asked him.
‘No,’ said he.
‘That sky-blue suit you used to wear.’
‘Lord, to be sure!’ cried Traddles, laughing. ‘Tight in the arms and legs, you know? Dear me! Well! Those were happy times, weren’t they?’
‘I think our schoolmaster might have made them happier, without doing any harm to any of us, I acknowledge,’ I returned.
‘Perhaps he might,’ said Traddles. ‘But dear me, there was a good deal of fun going on. Do you remember the nights in the bedroom? When we used to have the suppers? And when you used to tell the stories? Ha, ha, ha! And do you remember when I got caned for crying about Mr. Mell? Old Creakle! I should like to see him again, too!’
‘He was a brute to you, Traddles,’ said I, indignantly; for his good humour made me feel as if I had seen him beaten but yesterday.
‘Do you think so?’ returned Traddles. ‘Really? Perhaps he was rather. But it’s all over, a long while. Old Creakle!’
‘You were brought up by an uncle, then?’ said I.
‘Of course I was!’ said Traddles. ‘The one I was always going to write to. And always didn’t, eh! Ha, ha, ha! Yes, I had an uncle then. He died soon after I left school.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Yes. He was a retired—what do you call it!—draper—cloth-merchant—and had made me his heir. But he didn’t like me when I grew up.’
‘Do you really mean that?’ said I. He was so composed, that I fancied he must have some other meaning.
‘Oh dear, yes, Copperfield! I mean it,’ replied Traddles. ‘It was an unfortunate thing, but he didn’t like me at all. He said I wasn’t at all what he expected, and so he married his housekeeper.’
‘And what did you do?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t do anything in particular,’ said Traddles. ‘I lived with them, waiting to be put out in the world, until his gout unfortunately flew to his stomach—and so he died, and so she married a young man, and so I wasn’t provided for.’
‘Did you get nothing, Traddles, after all?’
‘Oh dear, yes!’ said Traddles. ‘I got fifty pounds. I had never been brought up to any profession, and at first I was at a loss what to do for myself. However, I began, with the assistance of the son of a professional man, who had been to Salem House—Yawler, with his nose on one side. Do you recollect him?’
No. He had not been there with me; all the noses were straight in my day.
‘It don’t matter,’ said Traddles. ‘I began, by means of his assistance, to copy law writings. That didn’t answer very well; and then I began to state cases for them, and make abstracts, and that sort of work. For I am a plodding kind of fellow, Copperfield, and had learnt the way of doing such things pithily. Well! That put it in my head to enter myself as a law student; and that ran away with all that was left of the fifty pounds. Yawler recommended me to one or two other offices, however—Mr. Waterbrook’s for one—and I got a good many jobs. I was fortunate enough, too, to become acquainted with a person in the publishing way, who was getting up an Encyclopaedia, and he set me to work; and, indeed’ (glancing at his table), ‘I am at work for him at this minute. I am not a bad compiler, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, preserving the same air of cheerful confidence in all he said, ‘but I have no invention at all; not a particle. I suppose there never was a young man with less originality than I have.’
As Traddles seemed to expect that I should assent to this as a matter of course, I nodded; and he went on, with the same sprightly patience—I can find no better expression—as before.
‘So, by little and little, and not living high, I managed to scrape up the hundred pounds at last,’ said Traddles; ‘and thank Heaven that’s paid—though it was—though it certainly was,’ said Traddles, wincing again as if he had had another tooth out, ‘a pull. I am living by the sort of work I have mentioned, still, and I hope, one of these days, to get connected with some newspaper: which would almost be the making of my fortune. Now, Copperfield, you are so exactly what you used to be, with that agreeable face, and it’s so pleasant to see you, that I sha’n’t conceal anything. Therefore you must know that I am engaged.’
Engaged! Oh, Dora!
‘She is a curate’s daughter,’ said Traddles; ‘one of ten, down in Devonshire. Yes!’ For he saw me glance, involuntarily, at the prospect on the inkstand. ‘That’s the church! You come round here to the left, out of this gate,’ tracing his finger along the inkstand, ‘and exactly where I hold this pen, there stands the house—facing, you understand, towards the church.’
The delight with which he entered into these particulars, did not fully present itself to me until afterwards; for my selfish thoughts were making a ground-plan of Mr. Spenlow’s house and garden at the same moment.
‘She is such a dear girl!’ said Traddles; ‘a little older than me, but the dearest girl! I told you I was going out of town? I have been down there. I walked there, and I walked back, and I had the most delightful time! I dare say ours is likely to be a rather long engagement, but our motto is “Wait and hope!” We always say that. “Wait and hope,” we always say. And she would wait, Copperfield, till she was sixty—any age you can mention—for me!’
Il suo vecchio carattere semplice e il suo buon umore, e qualcosa anche della sua vecchia sfortuna, mi parvero sorridere a me nel sorriso con cui fece questa spiegazione.
«Non è perché io abbia il minimo orgoglio, Copperfield, capisci», disse Traddles, «che di solito non do il mio indirizzo qui. È solo per quelli che vengono da me, che potrebbero non voler venire qui. Per quanto mi riguarda, sto lottando per farmi strada nel mondo contro le difficoltà, e sarebbe ridicolo se fingessi di fare qualcos’altro.»
«State studiando per diventare avvocato, mi ha informato il signor Waterbrook?» dissi.
«Perché, sì», disse Traddles, strofinandosi lentamente le mani l’una contro l’altra. «Sto studiando per diventare avvocato. Il fatto è che ho appena iniziato a frequentare il corso, dopo un ritardo piuttosto lungo. È passato un po’ di tempo da quando sono stato assunto come praticante, ma il pagamento di quelle cento sterline è stato un grande ostacolo. Un grande ostacolo!», disse Traddles, con una smorfia, come se gli avessero estratto un dente.
«Sai a cosa non posso fare a meno di pensare, Traddles, mentre sono qui seduto a guardarti?» gli chiesi.
«No», disse lui.
‘Quel completo celeste che portavi.’
«Lord, certo!» esclamò Traddles ridendo. «Stretti nelle braccia e nelle gambe, sapete? Caro me! Beh! Quei tempi erano felici, non è vero?»
«Penso che il nostro maestro avrebbe potuto renderli più felici, senza far del male a nessuno di noi, lo ammetto», replicai.
«Forse potrebbe», disse Traddles. «Ma cara me, c’era un sacco di divertimento. Ricordi le notti in camera da letto? Quando facevamo i banchetti? E quando raccontavi le storie? Ah, ah, ah! E ricordi quando fui frustato per aver pianto per il signor Mell? Vecchio Creakle! Mi piacerebbe rivederlo anche lui!»
«È stato un bruto con te, Traddles», dissi indignato, perché il suo buon umore mi faceva sentire come se l’avessi visto picchiare solo ieri.
«Pensi davvero?» rispose Traddles. «Forse lo era, in effetti. Ma è finita da un pezzo. Vecchio Creakle!»
«Siete stato allevato da uno zio, allora?» dissi io.
«Certo che lo ero!» disse Traddles. «Era l’unico a cui avrei sempre voluto scrivere. E non l’ho mai fatto, eh! Ha, ha, ha! Sì, avevo uno zio allora. Morì poco dopo che lasciai la scuola.»
‘Davvero!’
«Sì. Era un ex—come si dice?—drappiere—mercante di tessuti—e mi aveva fatto suo erede. Ma non gli piacevo quando sono cresciuto.»
«Dite sul serio?», dissi. Era così calmo che pensai che dovesse avere un altro significato.
«Oh, sì, Copperfield! Lo dico sul serio», rispose Traddles. «Fu una cosa spiacevole, ma lui non mi sopportava. Disse che non ero affatto quello che si aspettava, e così sposò la sua governante.»
«E cosa avete fatto?» chiesi.
«Non feci nulla di particolare», disse Traddles, «vivevo con loro, aspettando di essere mandato nel mondo, finché la sua gotta sfortunatamente gli salì allo stomaco, e così lui morì, e così lei sposò un giovane, e così io non fui provveduto».
“Non hai ottenuto nulla, Traddles, dopo tutto?”
«Oh, caro, sì!» disse Traddles. «Ho ricevuto cinquanta sterline. Non ero mai stato educato a una professione, e all’inizio non sapevo cosa fare. Comunque, ho iniziato, con l’aiuto del figlio di un professionista, che era stato a Salem House—Yawler, con il naso da una parte. Lo ricordi?»
No. Non era stato lì con me; tutti i nasi erano diritti ai miei tempi.
«Non importa», disse Traddles. «Grazie al suo aiuto, ho iniziato a copiare documenti legali. Non andava molto bene, e allora ho iniziato a preparare casi per loro, fare riassunti e quel genere di lavoro. Perché sono un tipo laborioso, Copperfield, e avevo imparato a fare queste cose in modo conciso. Bene! Questo mi ha dato l’idea di iscrivermi come studente di legge; e questo mi ha fatto spendere tutto ciò che rimaneva dei cinquanta sterline. Yawler mi ha comunque raccomandato presso uno o due altri studi legali, tra cui quello del signor Waterbrook, e ho ottenuto molti incarichi. Sono stato anche abbastanza fortunato da conoscere una persona nel settore editoriale, che stava preparando un’Enciclopedia, e mi ha messo al lavoro; e, infatti» (dando un’occhiata al suo tavolo), «sto lavorando per lui proprio in questo momento. Non sono un cattivo compilatore, Copperfield», disse Traddles, mantenendo lo stesso atteggiamento di fiduciosa allegria in tutto ciò che diceva, «ma non ho alcuna inventiva; neanche un po’. Suppongo che non ci sia mai stato un giovane con meno originalità di me».
Poiché Traddles sembrava aspettarsi che io assentissi a questo come a una cosa ovvia, annuii; e lui continuò, con la stessa pazienza vivace — non riesco a trovare un’espressione migliore — come prima.
«Così, poco a poco, e non vivendo in grande stile, sono riuscito a mettere insieme i cento sterline alla fine», disse Traddles; «e grazie al cielo sono state pagate — anche se è stato — anche se certamente è stato», disse Traddles, facendo una smorfia come se gli avessero tolto un altro dente, «un sacrificio. Vivo ancora del tipo di lavoro che ho menzionato, e spero, un di questi giorni, di entrare in contatto con qualche giornale: il che sarebbe quasi la realizzazione della mia fortuna. Ora, Copperfield, sei esattamente come eri, con quella faccia simpatica, ed è così piacevole vederti, che non ti nasconderò nulla. Quindi devi sapere che sono fidanzato.»
Fidanzata! Oh, Dora!
«È la figlia di un curato», disse Traddles; «una di dieci, giù nel Devonshire. Sì!» Perché mi vide lanciare uno sguardo, involontariamente, al panorama sull’inchiostiera. «Questa è la chiesa! Si gira qui a sinistra, fuori da questo cancello», facendo scorrere il dito lungo l’inchiostiera, «e esattamente dove tengo questa penna, sorge la casa—che guarda, capisce, verso la chiesa.»
Il piacere con cui si soffermava su questi particolari non mi apparve in tutta la sua pienezza che più tardi; perché i miei egoistici pensieri stavano disegnando un piano della casa e del giardino del signor Spenlow nello stesso momento.
«È una ragazza così cara!» disse Traddles; «un po’ più grande di me, ma la ragazza più cara! Vi ho detto che sarei uscito dalla città? Sono stato laggiù. Ci sono andato a piedi, e sono tornato a piedi, e ho passato il più delizioso tempo! Oso dire che il nostro sarà probabilmente un fidanzamento piuttosto lungo, ma il nostro motto è “Aspetta e spera!” Lo diciamo sempre. “Aspetta e spera,” lo diciamo sempre. E lei aspetterebbe, Copperfield, fino a quando avesse sessant’anni — qualsiasi età tu possa menzionare — per me!»
Traddles rose from his chair, and, with a triumphant smile, put his hand upon the white cloth I had observed.
‘However,’ he said, ‘it’s not that we haven’t made a beginning towards housekeeping. No, no; we have begun. We must get on by degrees, but we have begun. Here,’ drawing the cloth off with great pride and care, ‘are two pieces of furniture to commence with. This flower-pot and stand, she bought herself. You put that in a parlour window,’ said Traddles, falling a little back from it to survey it with the greater admiration, ‘with a plant in it, and—and there you are! This little round table with the marble top (it’s two feet ten in circumference), I bought. You want to lay a book down, you know, or somebody comes to see you or your wife, and wants a place to stand a cup of tea upon, and—and there you are again!’ said Traddles. ‘It’s an admirable piece of workmanship—firm as a rock!’ I praised them both, highly, and Traddles replaced the covering as carefully as he had removed it.
‘It’s not a great deal towards the furnishing,’ said Traddles, ‘but it’s something. The table-cloths, and pillow-cases, and articles of that kind, are what discourage me most, Copperfield. So does the ironmongery—candle-boxes, and gridirons, and that sort of necessaries—because those things tell, and mount up. However, “wait and hope!” And I assure you she’s the dearest girl!’
‘I am quite certain of it,’ said I.
‘In the meantime,’ said Traddles, coming back to his chair; ‘and this is the end of my prosing about myself, I get on as well as I can. I don’t make much, but I don’t spend much. In general, I board with the people downstairs, who are very agreeable people indeed. Both Mr. and Mrs. Micawber have seen a good deal of life, and are excellent company.’
‘My dear Traddles!’ I quickly exclaimed. ‘What are you talking about?’
Traddles looked at me, as if he wondered what I was talking about.
‘Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ I repeated. ‘Why, I am intimately acquainted with them!’
An opportune double knock at the door, which I knew well from old experience in Windsor Terrace, and which nobody but Mr. Micawber could ever have knocked at that door, resolved any doubt in my mind as to their being my old friends. I begged Traddles to ask his landlord to walk up. Traddles accordingly did so, over the banister; and Mr. Micawber, not a bit changed—his tights, his stick, his shirt-collar, and his eye-glass, all the same as ever—came into the room with a genteel and youthful air.
‘I beg your pardon, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, as he checked himself in humming a soft tune. ‘I was not aware that there was any individual, alien to this tenement, in your sanctum.’
Mr. Micawber slightly bowed to me, and pulled up his shirt-collar.
‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’ said I.
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you are exceedingly obliging. I am in statu quo.’
‘And Mrs. Micawber?’ I pursued.
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘she is also, thank God, in statu quo.’
‘And the children, Mr. Micawber?’
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I rejoice to reply that they are, likewise, in the enjoyment of salubrity.’
All this time, Mr. Micawber had not known me in the least, though he had stood face to face with me. But now, seeing me smile, he examined my features with more attention, fell back, cried, ‘Is it possible! Have I the pleasure of again beholding Copperfield!’ and shook me by both hands with the utmost fervour.
‘Good Heaven, Mr. Traddles!’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to think that I should find you acquainted with the friend of my youth, the companion of earlier days! My dear!’ calling over the banisters to Mrs. Micawber, while Traddles looked (with reason) not a little amazed at this description of me. ‘Here is a gentleman in Mr. Traddles’s apartment, whom he wishes to have the pleasure of presenting to you, my love!’
Mr. Micawber immediately reappeared, and shook hands with me again.
‘And how is our good friend the Doctor, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘and all the circle at Canterbury?’
‘I have none but good accounts of them,’ said I.
‘I am most delighted to hear it,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘It was at Canterbury where we last met. Within the shadow, I may figuratively say, of that religious edifice immortalized by Chaucer, which was anciently the resort of Pilgrims from the remotest corners of—in short,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘in the immediate neighbourhood of the Cathedral.’
I replied that it was. Mr. Micawber continued talking as volubly as he could; but not, I thought, without showing, by some marks of concern in his countenance, that he was sensible of sounds in the next room, as of Mrs. Micawber washing her hands, and hurriedly opening and shutting drawers that were uneasy in their action.
‘You find us, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, with one eye on Traddles, ‘at present established, on what may be designated as a small and unassuming scale; but, you are aware that I have, in the course of my career, surmounted difficulties, and conquered obstacles. You are no stranger to the fact, that there have been periods of my life, when it has been requisite that I should pause, until certain expected events should turn up; when it has been necessary that I should fall back, before making what I trust I shall not be accused of presumption in terming—a spring. The present is one of those momentous stages in the life of man. You find me, fallen back, FOR a spring; and I have every reason to believe that a vigorous leap will shortly be the result.’
I was expressing my satisfaction, when Mrs. Micawber came in; a little more slatternly than she used to be, or so she seemed now, to my unaccustomed eyes, but still with some preparation of herself for company, and with a pair of brown gloves on.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, leading her towards me, ‘here is a gentleman of the name of Copperfield, who wishes to renew his acquaintance with you.’
Traddles si alzò dalla sedia e, con un sorriso trionfante, posò la mano sul panno bianco che avevo notato.
«Tuttavia», disse, «non è che non abbiamo fatto un inizio verso la tenuta di casa. No, no; abbiamo iniziato. Dobbiamo procedere a poco a poco, ma abbiamo iniziato. Ecco», togliendo il panno con grande orgoglio e cura, «due pezzi di mobilio per iniziare. Questo vaso da fiori e il suo supporto, li ha comprati lei. Metti quello in una finestra del salotto», disse Traddles, facendo un passo indietro per ammirarlo meglio, «con una pianta dentro, e—e ci sei! Questo piccolo tavolino rotondo con il piano di marmo (ha due piedi e dieci di circonferenza), l’ho comprato io. Vuoi appoggiare un libro, sai, o qualcuno viene a trovarti o tua moglie, e vuole un posto per appoggiare una tazza di tè, e—e ci sei di nuovo!» disse Traddles. «È un pezzo di lavoro ammirevole—fermo come una roccia!» Li lodai entrambi, calorosamente, e Traddles ripose la copertura con la stessa cura con cui l’aveva tolta.
«Non è molto per l’arredamento», disse Traddles, «ma è qualcosa. Le tovaglie, i fedeli da cuscino e articoli di quel genere sono ciò che mi scoraggia di più, Copperfield. Lo stesso vale per la ferramenta: scatole per candele, griglie e quel tipo di oggetti necessari, perché queste cose si accumulano e fanno la differenza. Comunque, “aspetta e spera!” E vi assicuro che è la ragazza più cara che si possa immaginare!»
«Ne sono assolutamente certo», dissi.
«Nel frattempo», disse Traddles, tornando alla sua sedia, «e questo è il termine del mio parlare di me stesso, vado avanti come posso. Non guadagno molto, ma non spendo molto. In generale, mangio con la gente di sotto, che sono davvero persone molto piacevoli. Sia il signor che la signora Micawber hanno visto molto mondo e sono compagnia eccellente.»
‘Caro Traddles!’ esclamai in fretta. ‘Di cosa stai parlando?’
Traddles mi guardò come se si chiedesse di cosa stessi parlando.
“Signor e Signora Micawber!” ripetei. “Ma li conosco intimamente!”
Un’opportuna doppia bussata alla porta, che conoscevo bene per vecchia esperienza a Windsor Terrace, e che nessuno tranne il signor Micawber avrebbe mai potuto bussare a quella porta, risolse ogni dubbio nella mia mente riguardo al fatto che fossero i miei vecchi amici. Chiesi a Traddles di chiedere al suo padrone di casa di salire. Traddles fece di conseguenza, sopra la ringhiera; e il signor Micawber, non cambiato di una virgola - i suoi calzoni aderenti, il suo bastone, il suo colletto della camicia, e il suo monocolo, tutti gli stessi di sempre - entrò nella stanza con un aria gentile e giovanile.
«Chiedo scusa, signor Traddles», disse il signor Micawber, con il vecchio timbro nella voce, mentre si trattenne di canticchiare una melodia dolce. «Non sapevo che ci fosse qualche individuo, estraneo a questo appartamento, nel suo santuario.»
Il signor Micawber mi fece un leggero inchino e tirò su il colletto della camicia.
«Come state, signor Micawber?» dissi io.
“Signore,” disse il signor Micawber, “siete estremamente gentile. Sono in statu quo.
«E la signora Micawber?» insistetti.
“Signore,” disse il signor Micawber, “anche lei, grazie a Dio, è nello stesso stato di prima.”
‘E i bambini, signor Micawber?’
«Signore», disse il signor Micawber, «mi rallegro nel rispondere che anch’essi godono di buona salute.»
Tutto questo tempo, il signor Micawber non mi aveva riconosciuto per nulla, sebbene fosse rimasto faccia a faccia con me. Ma ora, vedendomi sorridere, esaminò le mie fattezze con più attenzione, indietreggiò, esclamò: «È possibile! Ho il piacere di rivedere Copperfield!» e mi strinse la mano con la massima effusione.
«Buon Dio, signor Traddles!» esclamò il signor Micawber «pensare che io vi trovi in compagnia dell’amico della mia giovinezza, del compagno dei giorni più lontani! Mia cara!» chiamò sopra la ringhiera la signora Micawber, mentre Traddles guardava (e con ragione) non poco stupito di questa descrizione di me. «C’è un signore nell’appartamento del signor Traddles, che desidera avere il piacere di presentarvi, mia cara!»
Il signor Micawber riapparve immediatamente e mi strinse di nuovo la mano.
«E come sta il nostro buon amico il Dottore, Copperfield?» disse il signor Micawber, «e tutto il circolo a Canterbury?»
«Non ho di loro che buone notizie», dissi io.
«Sono davvero felice di saperlo», disse il signor Micawber. «Ci siamo incontrati l’ultima volta a Canterbury. All’ombra, per così dire, di quel monumento religioso reso immortale da Chaucer, che un tempo era meta di pellegrini provenienti dai più remoti angoli di—in breve», disse il signor Micawber, «nei pressi della Cattedrale.»
Risposi che lo era. Il signor Micawber continuò a parlare con la massima volubilità di cui era capace; ma non, pensai, senza mostrare, con qualche segno di preoccupazione nel volto, di essere consapevole dei rumori nella stanza accanto, come se la signora Micawber si stesse lavando le mani e aprendo e chiudendo in fretta i cassetti che cigolavano.
«Mi trovate, Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, tenendo d’occhio Traddles, «attualmente stabilito, su una scala che potrebbe essere definita modesta e riservata; ma sapete che nel corso della mia carriera ho superato difficoltà e vinto ostacoli. Non ignora il fatto che ci sono stati periodi della mia vita in cui è stato necessario che io facessi una pausa, in attesa che si verificassero certi eventi attesi; in cui è stato necessario che io arretrassi, prima di compiere quello che spero non mi verrà rimproverata la presunzione di chiamare—un salto. Il presente è uno di quei momenti cruciali nella vita di un uomo. Mi trovate, arretrato, PER un salto; e ho ogni motivo di credere che a breve ne risulterà un vigoroso balzo».
Stavo esprimendo la mia soddisfazione, quando entrò la signora Micawber; un po’ più trascurata di quanto fosse solita, o almeno così mi parve, ai miei occhi non abituati, ma ancora con qualche preparazione per la compagnia, e con un paio di guanti marroni.
«Mia cara», disse il signor Micawber, conducendola verso di me, «questo è un signore di nome Copperfield, che desidera rinnovare la sua conoscenza con voi.»
It would have been better, as it turned out, to have led gently up to this announcement, for Mrs. Micawber, being in a delicate state of health, was overcome by it, and was taken so unwell, that Mr. Micawber was obliged, in great trepidation, to run down to the water-butt in the backyard, and draw a basinful to lave her brow with. She presently revived, however, and was really pleased to see me. We had half-an-hour’s talk, all together; and I asked her about the twins, who, she said, were ‘grown great creatures’; and after Master and Miss Micawber, whom she described as ‘absolute giants’, but they were not produced on that occasion.
Mr. Micawber was very anxious that I should stay to dinner. I should not have been averse to do so, but that I imagined I detected trouble, and calculation relative to the extent of the cold meat, in Mrs. Micawber’s eye. I therefore pleaded another engagement; and observing that Mrs. Micawber’s spirits were immediately lightened, I resisted all persuasion to forego it.
But I told Traddles, and Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, that before I could think of leaving, they must appoint a day when they would come and dine with me. The occupations to which Traddles stood pledged, rendered it necessary to fix a somewhat distant one; but an appointment was made for the purpose, that suited us all, and then I took my leave.
Mr. Micawber, under pretence of showing me a nearer way than that by which I had come, accompanied me to the corner of the street; being anxious (he explained to me) to say a few words to an old friend, in confidence.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I need hardly tell you that to have beneath our roof, under existing circumstances, a mind like that which gleams—if I may be allowed the expression—which gleams—in your friend Traddles, is an unspeakable comfort. With a washerwoman, who exposes hard-bake for sale in her parlour-window, dwelling next door, and a Bow-street officer residing over the way, you may imagine that his society is a source of consolation to myself and to Mrs. Micawber. I am at present, my dear Copperfield, engaged in the sale of corn upon commission. It is not an avocation of a remunerative description—in other words, it does not pay—and some temporary embarrassments of a pecuniary nature have been the consequence. I am, however, delighted to add that I have now an immediate prospect of something turning up (I am not at liberty to say in what direction), which I trust will enable me to provide, permanently, both for myself and for your friend Traddles, in whom I have an unaffected interest. You may, perhaps, be prepared to hear that Mrs. Micawber is in a state of health which renders it not wholly improbable that an addition may be ultimately made to those pledges of affection which—in short, to the infantine group. Mrs. Micawber’s family have been so good as to express their dissatisfaction at this state of things. I have merely to observe, that I am not aware that it is any business of theirs, and that I repel that exhibition of feeling with scorn, and with defiance!’
Mr. Micawber then shook hands with me again, and left me.
Sarebbe stato meglio, come poi risultò, preparare delicatamente il terreno per questo annuncio, perché la signora Micawber, trovandosi in uno stato delicato di salute, ne fu sopraffatta e si sentì così male che il signor Micawber fu costretto, in grande trepidazione, a correre fino alla botte-acqua nel cortile sul retro, e a riempire una ciotola per lavarle la fronte. Tuttavia, presto si riprese, e fu davvero contenta di vedermi. Parlammo per mezz’ora, tutti insieme; e le chiesi dei gemelli, che, disse, erano diventati ‘creature grandissime’; e dopo il piccolo Micawber e la piccola Micawber, che descrisse come ‘giganti assoluti’, ma non furono presentati in quell’occasione.
Il signor Micawber era molto desideroso che io restassi a cena. Non sarei stato contrario, ma avevo l’impressione di aver individuato un certo disagio e un calcolo relativo alla quantità di carne fredda negli occhi della signora Micawber. Mi scusai quindi adducendo un altro impegno; e notando che l’umore della signora Micawber si era immediatamente risollevato, resistetti a tutte le preghiere di rinunciarvi.
Ma dissi a Traddles e ai coniugi Micawber che prima di poter pensare di partire, dovevano fissare un giorno in cui sarebbero venuti a pranzo da me. Gli impegni a cui Traddles si era obbligato, resero necessario fissare una data piuttosto lontana; ma fu stabilito un appuntamento che andava bene a tutti, e poi mi congedai.
Il signor Micawber, con il pretesto di mostrarmi una strada più breve di quella da cui ero venuto, mi accompagnò fino all’angolo della strada; essendo desideroso (mi spiegò) di dire alcune parole a un vecchio amico, in confidenza.
«Mio caro Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, «a malapena ho bisogno di dirvi che avere sotto il nostro tetto, nelle attuali circostanze, una mente come quella che brilla — se mi è consentita l’espressione — che brilla — in vostro amico Traddles, è un conforto inesprimibile. Con una lavandaia, che esporre il pane duro in vendita nella vetrina del suo salotto, che abita accanto, e un agente di Bow Street che risiede di fronte, potete immaginare che la sua compagnia sia una fonte di consolazione per me e per la signora Micawber. Al momento, mio caro Copperfield, sono impegnato nella vendita di grano su commissione. Non è un’attività di tipo redditizio — in altre parole, non rende — e alcuni imprevisti temporanei di natura finanziaria ne sono stati la conseguenza. Sono tuttavia lieto di aggiungere che ora ho una prospettiva immediata che qualcosa si metta a posto (non sono in grado di dire in quale direzione), che spero mi permetterà di provvedere, in modo permanente, sia a me stesso che al vostro amico Traddles, in cui ho un interesse sincero. Forse sarete preparato a sentire che la signora Micawber è in uno stato di salute che rende non del tutto improbabile che possa essere infine aggiunto qualcosa a quei segni di affetto che — in breve, al gruppo infantile. La famiglia della signora Micawber si è dimostrata così gentile da esprimere il suo disappunto per questo stato di cose. Mi limito a osservare che non sono a conoscenza che sia una loro faccenda, e che respingo quell’espressione di sentimento con disprezzo, e con sfida!»
Il signor Micawber mi strinse di nuovo la mano e se ne andò.
CHAPTER 28. Mr. MICAWBER’S GAUNTLET
Until the day arrived on which I was to entertain my newly-found old friends, I lived principally on Dora and coffee. In my love-lorn condition, my appetite languished; and I was glad of it, for I felt as though it would have been an act of perfidy towards Dora to have a natural relish for my dinner. The quantity of walking exercise I took, was not in this respect attended with its usual consequence, as the disappointment counteracted the fresh air. I have my doubts, too, founded on the acute experience acquired at this period of my life, whether a sound enjoyment of animal food can develop itself freely in any human subject who is always in torment from tight boots. I think the extremities require to be at peace before the stomach will conduct itself with vigour.
On the occasion of this domestic little party, I did not repeat my former extensive preparations. I merely provided a pair of soles, a small leg of mutton, and a pigeon-pie. Mrs. Crupp broke out into rebellion on my first bashful hint in reference to the cooking of the fish and joint, and said, with a dignified sense of injury, ‘No! No, sir! You will not ask me sich a thing, for you are better acquainted with me than to suppose me capable of doing what I cannot do with ampial satisfaction to my own feelings!’ But, in the end, a compromise was effected; and Mrs. Crupp consented to achieve this feat, on condition that I dined from home for a fortnight afterwards.
And here I may remark, that what I underwent from Mrs. Crupp, in consequence of the tyranny she established over me, was dreadful. I never was so much afraid of anyone. We made a compromise of everything. If I hesitated, she was taken with that wonderful disorder which was always lying in ambush in her system, ready, at the shortest notice, to prey upon her vitals. If I rang the bell impatiently, after half-a-dozen unavailing modest pulls, and she appeared at last—which was not by any means to be relied upon—she would appear with a reproachful aspect, sink breathless on a chair near the door, lay her hand upon her nankeen bosom, and become so ill, that I was glad, at any sacrifice of brandy or anything else, to get rid of her. If I objected to having my bed made at five o’clock in the afternoon—which I do still think an uncomfortable arrangement—one motion of her hand towards the same nankeen region of wounded sensibility was enough to make me falter an apology. In short, I would have done anything in an honourable way rather than give Mrs. Crupp offence; and she was the terror of my life.
I bought a second-hand dumb-waiter for this dinner-party, in preference to re-engaging the handy young man; against whom I had conceived a prejudice, in consequence of meeting him in the Strand, one Sunday morning, in a waistcoat remarkably like one of mine, which had been missing since the former occasion. The ‘young gal’ was re-engaged; but on the stipulation that she should only bring in the dishes, and then withdraw to the landing-place, beyond the outer door; where a habit of sniffing she had contracted would be lost upon the guests, and where her retiring on the plates would be a physical impossibility.
Having laid in the materials for a bowl of punch, to be compounded by Mr. Micawber; having provided a bottle of lavender-water, two wax-candles, a paper of mixed pins, and a pincushion, to assist Mrs. Micawber in her toilette at my dressing-table; having also caused the fire in my bedroom to be lighted for Mrs. Micawber’s convenience; and having laid the cloth with my own hands, I awaited the result with composure.
At the appointed time, my three visitors arrived together. Mr. Micawber with more shirt-collar than usual, and a new ribbon to his eye-glass; Mrs. Micawber with her cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel; Traddles carrying the parcel, and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm. They were all delighted with my residence. When I conducted Mrs. Micawber to my dressing-table, and she saw the scale on which it was prepared for her, she was in such raptures, that she called Mr. Micawber to come in and look.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘this is luxurious. This is a way of life which reminds me of the period when I was myself in a state of celibacy, and Mrs. Micawber had not yet been solicited to plight her faith at the Hymeneal altar.’
‘He means, solicited by him, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, archly. ‘He cannot answer for others.’
‘My dear,’ returned Mr. Micawber with sudden seriousness, ‘I have no desire to answer for others. I am too well aware that when, in the inscrutable decrees of Fate, you were reserved for me, it is possible you may have been reserved for one, destined, after a protracted struggle, at length to fall a victim to pecuniary involvements of a complicated nature. I understand your allusion, my love. I regret it, but I can bear it.’
‘Micawber!’ exclaimed Mrs. Micawber, in tears. ‘Have I deserved this! I, who never have deserted you; who never WILL desert you, Micawber!’ ‘My love,’ said Mr. Micawber, much affected, ‘you will forgive, and our old and tried friend Copperfield will, I am sure, forgive, the momentary laceration of a wounded spirit, made sensitive by a recent collision with the Minion of Power—in other words, with a ribald Turncock attached to the water-works—and will pity, not condemn, its excesses.’
Mr. Micawber then embraced Mrs. Micawber, and pressed my hand; leaving me to infer from this broken allusion that his domestic supply of water had been cut off that afternoon, in consequence of default in the payment of the company’s rates.
To divert his thoughts from this melancholy subject, I informed Mr. Micawber that I relied upon him for a bowl of punch, and led him to the lemons. His recent despondency, not to say despair, was gone in a moment. I never saw a man so thoroughly enjoy himself amid the fragrance of lemon-peel and sugar, the odour of burning rum, and the steam of boiling water, as Mr. Micawber did that afternoon. It was wonderful to see his face shining at us out of a thin cloud of these delicate fumes, as he stirred, and mixed, and tasted, and looked as if he were making, instead of punch, a fortune for his family down to the latest posterity. As to Mrs. Micawber, I don’t know whether it was the effect of the cap, or the lavender-water, or the pins, or the fire, or the wax-candles, but she came out of my room, comparatively speaking, lovely. And the lark was never gayer than that excellent woman.
CAPITOLO 28. IL GUANTO DEL SIGNOR MICAWBER
Fino all’arrivo del giorno in cui avrei intrattenuto i miei vecchi amici appena ritrovati, vissi principalmente di Dora e caffè. Nella mia condizione di amore sventurato, il mio appetito languiva; e ne ero contento, perché sentivo che sarebbe stato un atto di tradimento nei confronti di Dora avere un naturale gusto per la mia cena. La quantità di esercizio campestre che facevo non aveva in questo aspetto le sue solite conseguenze, poiché la delusione contrastava l’aria fresca. Ho anche dei dubbi, fondati sull’esperienza acuta acquisita in questo periodo della mia vita, se un sano godimento del cibo animale possa svilupparsi liberamente in qualsiasi soggetto umano che sia sempre in tormento per gli stivali stretti. Penso che gli arti abbiano bisogno di essere in pace prima che lo stomaco si comporti con vigore.
In occasione di questa piccola festa domestica, non ripetei i miei precedenti ampi preparativi. Fornii semplicemente un paio di filetti, una piccola coscia di agnello e una torta di piccione. La signora Crupp scoppiò in una ribellione al mio primo timido accenno in riferimento alla cottura del pesce e della carne, e disse, con un dignitoso senso di offesa, «No! No, signore! Non mi chiederà una cosa simile, perché mi conosce meglio di così e sa che non sono capace di fare ciò che non posso fare con ampia soddisfazione dei miei sentimenti!» Ma, alla fine, si giunse a un compromesso; e la signora Crupp acconsentì a compiere questa impresa, a condizione che io pranzassi fuori da casa per due settimane dopo.
E qui posso osservare che ciò che ho subito da parte della signora Crupp, in conseguenza della tirannia che ha instaurato su di me, era terribile. Non ho mai avuto tanta paura di qualcuno. Abbiamo fatto un compromesso su tutto. Se esitavo, lei era colpita da quel meraviglioso disturbo che era sempre in agguato nel suo sistema, pronto, al minimo preavviso, a divorare le sue viscere. Se suonavo il campanello con impazienza, dopo una mezza dozzina di timide tirate inutili, e lei appariva finalmente - il che non era affatto certo - appariva con un aspetto di rimprovero, si lasciava cadere senza fiato su una sedia vicino alla porta, si posava la mano sul petto di nankeen e diventava così male che ero felice, a qualsiasi sacrificio di brandy o di qualsiasi altra cosa, di liberarmi di lei. Se obiettavo che il mio letto venisse rifatto alle cinque del pomeriggio - il che ritengo ancora un arrangiamento scomodo - un solo gesto della sua mano verso la stessa regione di sensibilità ferita del nankeen era sufficiente a farmi balbettare delle scuse. In breve, avrei fatto qualsiasi cosa in modo onorevole piuttosto che offendere la signora Crupp; ed era il terrore della mia vita.
Comprai un montacarichi usato per questa cena, preferendolo alla riassunzione del giovane uomo utile; contro il quale avevo concepito un pregiudizio, in conseguenza di averlo incontrato a Strand, una domenica mattina, in un panciotto notevolmente simile a uno dei miei, che era scomparso da quando era avvenuto il precedente episodio. La ‘giovane ragazza’ fu riassunta; ma con la condizione che avrebbe dovuto solo portare i piatti, e poi ritirarsi sul pianerottolo, oltre la porta esterna; dove l’abitudine di annusare che aveva contratto sarebbe passata inosservata agli ospiti, e dove il suo ritirarsi con i piatti sarebbe stato fisicamente impossibile.
Avendo preparato i materiali per una coppa di punch, da essere composta dal signor Micawber; avendo provveduto a una bottiglia di acqua di lavanda, due candele di cera, un foglio di spilli misti e un cuscino da spilla, per assistere la signora Micawber nel suo trucco al mio tavolo da toeletta; avendo inoltre fatto accendere il fuoco nella mia camera da letto per la comodità della signora Micawber; e avendo apparecchiato la tavola con le mie stesse mani, attesi il risultato con calma.
All’ora stabilita, i miei tre visitatori arrivarono insieme. Il signor Micawber con un colletto più alto del solito e un nuovo nastro per il monocolo; la signora Micawber con il suo copricapo in un pacchetto di carta bianco-marrone; Traddles portava il pacco e sosteneva la signora Micawber a braccetto. Erano tutti entusiasti della mia residenza. Quando accompagnai la signora Micawber al mio tavolo da toeletta, e lei vide la scala su cui era preparato per lei, fu in tali rapimenti, che chiamò il signor Micawber per entrare e guardare.
«Mio caro Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, «questo è lusso. Questo è uno stile di vita che mi ricorda il periodo in cui ero io stesso in stato di celiba, e la signora Micawber non era ancora stata sollecitata a impegnare la sua fede all’altare di Hymen.»
«Vuol dire, sollecitato da lui, signor Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, maliziosamente. «Non può rispondere per gli altri.»
«Mia cara», rispose il signor Micawber con improvvisa serietà, «non ho alcun desiderio di rispondere per gli altri. Sono troppo bene consapevole che quando, nei decreti insondabili del Fato, fosti riservata a me, è possibile che tu sia stata riservata a uno destinato, dopo una lunga lotta, a cadere infine vittima di implicazioni pecuniarie di natura complessa. Capisco la tua allusione, mia amore. Mi dispiace, ma posso sopportarla».
«Micawber!» esclamò la signora Micawber, in lacrime. «Ho meritato questo! Io, che non ti ho mai abbandonato; che non ti abbandonerò mai, Micawber!» «Mia cara,» disse il signor Micawber, molto commosso, «tu perdonerai, e il nostro vecchio e provato amico Copperfield, ne sono certo, perdonerà la momentanea lacerazione di uno spirito ferito, reso sensibile da un recente scontro con il Ministro del Potere—in altre parole, con un ribaldo Guardiano dei acqua-opera—e avrà pietà, non condannerà, i suoi eccessi.»
Il signor Micawber abbracciò quindi la signora Micawber e mi strinse la mano; lasciandomi dedurre da questa allusione frammentaria che il suo approvvigionamento domestico di acqua era stato interrotto quel pomeriggio, a causa del mancato pagamento delle tariffe della compagnia.
Per distogliere i suoi pensieri da questo argomento malinconico, informai il signor Micawber che contavo su di lui per una ciotola di punch, e lo condussi ai limoni. La sua recente disperazione, per non dire disperazione, svanì in un istante. Non ho mai visto un uomo godersi così tanto la fragranza di buccia di limone e zucchero, l’odore del rum bruciato e il vapore dell’acqua bollente, come fece il signor Micawber quel pomeriggio. Era straordinario vedere il suo viso che brillava tra una sottile nuvola di questi delicati fumi, mentre mescolava, assaggiava e sembrava che stesse preparando, invece di un punch, una fortuna per la sua famiglia fino all’ultima posterità. Per quanto riguarda la signora Micawber, non so se fosse l’effetto del copricapo, o dell’acqua di lavanda, o degli spilli, o del fuoco, o delle candele di cera, ma uscì dalla mia stanza, relativamente parlando, incantevole. E l’usignolo non fu mai più allegro di quella eccellente donna.
I suppose—I never ventured to inquire, but I suppose—that Mrs. Crupp, after frying the soles, was taken ill. Because we broke down at that point. The leg of mutton came up very red within, and very pale without: besides having a foreign substance of a gritty nature sprinkled over it, as if if had had a fall into the ashes of that remarkable kitchen fireplace. But we were not in condition to judge of this fact from the appearance of the gravy, forasmuch as the ‘young gal’ had dropped it all upon the stairs—where it remained, by the by, in a long train, until it was worn out. The pigeon-pie was not bad, but it was a delusive pie: the crust being like a disappointing head, phrenologically speaking: full of lumps and bumps, with nothing particular underneath. In short, the banquet was such a failure that I should have been quite unhappy—about the failure, I mean, for I was always unhappy about Dora—if I had not been relieved by the great good humour of my company, and by a bright suggestion from Mr. Micawber.
‘My dear friend Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘accidents will occur in the best-regulated families; and in families not regulated by that pervading influence which sanctifies while it enhances the—a—I would say, in short, by the influence of Woman, in the lofty character of Wife, they may be expected with confidence, and must be borne with philosophy. If you will allow me to take the liberty of remarking that there are few comestibles better, in their way, than a Devil, and that I believe, with a little division of labour, we could accomplish a good one if the young person in attendance could produce a gridiron, I would put it to you, that this little misfortune may be easily repaired.’
There was a gridiron in the pantry, on which my morning rasher of bacon was cooked. We had it in, in a twinkling, and immediately applied ourselves to carrying Mr. Micawber’s idea into effect. The division of labour to which he had referred was this:—Traddles cut the mutton into slices; Mr. Micawber (who could do anything of this sort to perfection) covered them with pepper, mustard, salt, and cayenne; I put them on the gridiron, turned them with a fork, and took them off, under Mr. Micawber’s direction; and Mrs. Micawber heated, and continually stirred, some mushroom ketchup in a little saucepan. When we had slices enough done to begin upon, we fell-to, with our sleeves still tucked up at the wrist, more slices sputtering and blazing on the fire, and our attention divided between the mutton on our plates, and the mutton then preparing.
What with the novelty of this cookery, the excellence of it, the bustle of it, the frequent starting up to look after it, the frequent sitting down to dispose of it as the crisp slices came off the gridiron hot and hot, the being so busy, so flushed with the fire, so amused, and in the midst of such a tempting noise and savour, we reduced the leg of mutton to the bone. My own appetite came back miraculously. I am ashamed to record it, but I really believe I forgot Dora for a little while. I am satisfied that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber could not have enjoyed the feast more, if they had sold a bed to provide it. Traddles laughed as heartily, almost the whole time, as he ate and worked. Indeed we all did, all at once; and I dare say there was never a greater success.
We were at the height of our enjoyment, and were all busily engaged, in our several departments, endeavouring to bring the last batch of slices to a state of perfection that should crown the feast, when I was aware of a strange presence in the room, and my eyes encountered those of the staid Littimer, standing hat in hand before me.
‘What’s the matter?’ I involuntarily asked.
‘I beg your pardon, sir, I was directed to come in. Is my master not here, sir?’
‘No.’
‘Have you not seen him, sir?’
‘No; don’t you come from him?’
‘Not immediately so, sir.’
‘Did he tell you you would find him here?’
‘Not exactly so, sir. But I should think he might be here tomorrow, as he has not been here today.’
‘Is he coming up from Oxford?’
‘I beg, sir,’ he returned respectfully, ‘that you will be seated, and allow me to do this.’ With which he took the fork from my unresisting hand, and bent over the gridiron, as if his whole attention were concentrated on it.
We should not have been much discomposed, I dare say, by the appearance of Steerforth himself, but we became in a moment the meekest of the meek before his respectable serving-man. Mr. Micawber, humming a tune, to show that he was quite at ease, subsided into his chair, with the handle of a hastily concealed fork sticking out of the bosom of his coat, as if he had stabbed himself. Mrs. Micawber put on her brown gloves, and assumed a genteel languor. Traddles ran his greasy hands through his hair, and stood it bolt upright, and stared in confusion on the table-cloth. As for me, I was a mere infant at the head of my own table; and hardly ventured to glance at the respectable phenomenon, who had come from Heaven knows where, to put my establishment to rights.
Meanwhile he took the mutton off the gridiron, and gravely handed it round. We all took some, but our appreciation of it was gone, and we merely made a show of eating it. As we severally pushed away our plates, he noiselessly removed them, and set on the cheese. He took that off, too, when it was done with; cleared the table; piled everything on the dumb-waiter; gave us our wine-glasses; and, of his own accord, wheeled the dumb-waiter into the pantry. All this was done in a perfect manner, and he never raised his eyes from what he was about. Yet his very elbows, when he had his back towards me, seemed to teem with the expression of his fixed opinion that I was extremely young.
‘Can I do anything more, sir?’
I thanked him and said, No; but would he take no dinner himself?
‘None, I am obliged to you, sir.’
‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
Suppongo — non ho mai osato chiedere, ma suppongo — che la signora Crupp, dopo aver fritto le sogliole, si sia sentita male. Perché a quel punto abbiamo avuto un guasto. La coscia d’agnello era molto rossa dentro, e molto pallida fuori: oltre a essere stata cosparso di una sostanza estranea di natura granulosa come se fosse caduto nelle ceneri di quel notevole caminetto da cucina. Ma non eravamo in grado di giudicare questo fatto dall’aspetto della salsa, in quanto la ‘giovane ragazza’ l’aveva fatta cadere tutta sulle scale — dove, tra l’altro, è rimasta, in una lunga scia, fino a quando non si è consumata. La torta di piccioni non era male, ma era una torta ingannevole: la crosta era come una testa deludente, parlando frenologicamente: piena di grumi e protuberanze, senza nulla di particolare sotto. In breve, il banchetto è stato tale un fallimento che sarei stato davvero infelice — per il fallimento, intendo, perché ero sempre infelice per Dora — se non fossi stato sollevato dal grande buon umore della mia compagnia, e da un’idea brillante del signor Micawber.
«Mio caro amico Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, «gli incidenti possono accadere nelle famiglie meglio regolate; e nelle famiglie non regolate da quell’influenza pervasiva che santifica mentre esalta il—a—voglio dire, in breve, dall’influenza della Donna, nel suo alto carattere di Moglie, possono essere attesi con fiducia e devono essere sopportati con filosofia. Se mi permette di osservare che ci sono pochi cibi migliori, nel loro genere, di un diavolo, e che credo, con un po’ di divisione del lavoro, potremmo realizzare un buon diavolo se la giovane persona di servizio potesse procurarci una griglia, le propongo che questa piccola disgrazia possa essere facilmente riparata».
C’era una griglia nella dispensa, su cui veniva cotto il mio pezzetto di pancetta del mattino. Lo consumammo in un batter d’occhio e ci mettemmo subito all’opera per mettere in pratica l’idea del signor Micawber. La divisione del lavoro a cui aveva accennato era la seguente: Traddles tagliava l’agnello a fette; il signor Micawber (che sapeva fare tutto questo alla perfezione) le ricopriva di pepe, senape, sale e peperoncino; io le mettevo sulla griglia, le giravo con una forchetta e le toglievo, sotto la direzione del signor Micawber; e la signora Micawber riscaldava e mescolava continuamente un po’ di salsa di funghi in una piccola pentola. Quando avevamo abbastanza fette cotte per iniziare, ci mettemmo a mangiare, con le maniche ancora rimboccate al polso, mentre altre fette sfrigolavano e arrostivano sul fuoco, e la nostra attenzione era divisa tra l’agnello nei nostri piatti e l’agnello che si stava preparando.
Tra la novità di questa cucina, la sua eccellenza, il trambusto, i frequenti alzarsi per controllarla, i frequenti sedersi per consumarla mentre le fette croccanti uscivano calde dal fuoco, il trovarci così occupati, così arrossati dal calore, così divertiti, e nel mezzo di un rumore e di un profumo così allettanti, riducemmo la coscia di agnello all’osso. Il mio appetito tornò miracolosamente. Mi vergogno a scriverlo, ma credo davvero di aver dimenticato Dora per un po’. Sono certo che il signor e la signora Micawber non avrebbero potuto godersi il banchetto di più, anche se avessero venduto un letto per procurarselo. Traddles rise di gusto, quasi per tutto il tempo, mentre mangiava e lavorava. Anzi, lo facemmo tutti insieme; e sono sicuro che non ci fu mai un successo maggiore.
Eravamo al culmine del nostro divertimento, e tutti eravamo impegnati, nei nostri rispettivi compiti, a cercare di portare l’ultimo lotto di fette a uno stato di perfezione che avrebbe coronato il banchetto, quando mi accorsi di una presenza strana nella stanza, e i miei occhi incontrarono quelli del composto Littimer, in piedi davanti a me con il cappello in mano.
«Che succede?» chiesi involontariamente.
“Mi scusi, signore, mi è stato detto di entrare. Il mio padrone non è qui, signore?”
‘No.’
‘Non l’ha visto, signore?’
‘No, non vieni da lui?’
‘Non immediatamente, signore.’
‘Le ha detto che lo avrebbe trovato qui?’
«Non esattamente, signore. Ma credo che potrebbe essere qui domani, dato che non è stato qui oggi.»
«Sta salendo da Oxford?»
«Le chiedo, signore», rispose rispettosamente, «di voler prendere posto e di lasciarmi fare questo.» E con ciò mi tolse la forchetta dalla mano inerme e si chinò sulla griglia, come se tutta la sua attenzione fosse concentrata su di essa.
Non saremmo stati molto turbati, oserei dire, dall’apparizione dello stesso Steerforth, ma in un attimo diventammo i più umili dei più umili davanti al suo rispettabile domestico. Il signor Micawber, canticchiando una melodia per dimostrare che era completamente a suo agio, si lasciò cadere sulla sedia, con il manico di un cucchiaio nascosto in fretta che spuntava dal taschino del suo panciotto, come se si fosse pugnalato. La signora Micawber si mise i guanti marroni e assunse un languore distinto. Traddles passò le sue mani unte tra i capelli, rizzandoseli a pera, e fissò confuso il tovagliolo. Quanto a me, ero un semplice bambino a capotavola; e a malapena osavo guardare il rispettabile fenomeno, che era venuto chissà da dove, per rimettere a posto la mia casa.
Nel frattempo, tolse l’agnello dalla griglia e lo distribuì con gravità. Noi tutti ne prendemmo un po’, ma il nostro apprezzamento era svanito e ci limitammo a far finta di mangiarlo. Mentre ognuno di noi allontanava il proprio piatto, lui li rimuoveva silenziosamente e metteva il formaggio. Anche quello lo tolse, quando fu consumato; sparecchiò la tavola; accumulò tutto sul servizio di sala; ci diede i calici di vino; e, di sua iniziativa, spinse il servizio di sala nella dispensa. Tutto ciò fu fatto in modo perfetto, e lui non alzò mai gli occhi da ciò che stava facendo. Eppure i suoi gomiti stessi, quando aveva le spalle rivolte verso di me, sembravano esprimere la sua opinione fissa che io fossi estremamente giovane.
‘Posso fare altro, signore?’
Lo ringraziai e dissi: No; ma non voleva prendere lui stesso un po’ di pranzo?
“Nessuno, la ringrazio, signore.”
«Il signor Steerforth viene da Oxford?»
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘Is Mr. Steerforth coming from Oxford?’
‘I should imagine that he might be here tomorrow, sir. I rather thought he might have been here today, sir. The mistake is mine, no doubt, sir.’
‘If you should see him first—’ said I.
‘If you’ll excuse me, sir, I don’t think I shall see him first.’
‘In case you do,’ said I, ‘pray say that I am sorry he was not here today, as an old schoolfellow of his was here.’
‘Indeed, sir!’ and he divided a bow between me and Traddles, with a glance at the latter.
He was moving softly to the door, when, in a forlorn hope of saying something naturally—which I never could, to this man—I said:
‘Oh! Littimer!’
‘Sir!’
‘Did you remain long at Yarmouth, that time?’
‘Not particularly so, sir.’
‘You saw the boat completed?’
‘Yes, sir. I remained behind on purpose to see the boat completed.’
‘I know!’ He raised his eyes to mine respectfully.
‘Mr. Steerforth has not seen it yet, I suppose?’
‘I really can’t say, sir. I think—but I really can’t say, sir. I wish you good night, sir.’
He comprehended everybody present, in the respectful bow with which he followed these words, and disappeared. My visitors seemed to breathe more freely when he was gone; but my own relief was very great, for besides the constraint, arising from that extraordinary sense of being at a disadvantage which I always had in this man’s presence, my conscience had embarrassed me with whispers that I had mistrusted his master, and I could not repress a vague uneasy dread that he might find it out. How was it, having so little in reality to conceal, that I always DID feel as if this man were finding me out?
Mr. Micawber roused me from this reflection, which was blended with a certain remorseful apprehension of seeing Steerforth himself, by bestowing many encomiums on the absent Littimer as a most respectable fellow, and a thoroughly admirable servant. Mr. Micawber, I may remark, had taken his full share of the general bow, and had received it with infinite condescension.
‘But punch, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, tasting it, ‘like time and tide, waits for no man. Ah! it is at the present moment in high flavour. My love, will you give me your opinion?’
Mrs. Micawber pronounced it excellent.
‘Then I will drink,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if my friend Copperfield will permit me to take that social liberty, to the days when my friend Copperfield and myself were younger, and fought our way in the world side by side. I may say, of myself and Copperfield, in words we have sung together before now, that
We twa hae run about the braes And pu’d the gowans’ fine
—in a figurative point of view—on several occasions. I am not exactly aware,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old roll in his voice, and the old indescribable air of saying something genteel, ‘what gowans may be, but I have no doubt that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken a pull at them, if it had been feasible.’
Mr. Micawber, at the then present moment, took a pull at his punch. So we all did: Traddles evidently lost in wondering at what distant time Mr. Micawber and I could have been comrades in the battle of the world.
‘Ahem!’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat, and warming with the punch and with the fire. ‘My dear, another glass?’
Mrs. Micawber said it must be very little; but we couldn’t allow that, so it was a glassful.
‘As we are quite confidential here, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, sipping her punch, ‘Mr. Traddles being a part of our domesticity, I should much like to have your opinion on Mr. Micawber’s prospects. For corn,’ said Mrs. Micawber argumentatively, ‘as I have repeatedly said to Mr. Micawber, may be gentlemanly, but it is not remunerative. Commission to the extent of two and ninepence in a fortnight cannot, however limited our ideas, be considered remunerative.’
We were all agreed upon that.
‘Then,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who prided herself on taking a clear view of things, and keeping Mr. Micawber straight by her woman’s wisdom, when he might otherwise go a little crooked, ‘then I ask myself this question. If corn is not to be relied upon, what is? Are coals to be relied upon? Not at all. We have turned our attention to that experiment, on the suggestion of my family, and we find it fallacious.’
Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair with his hands in his pockets, eyed us aside, and nodded his head, as much as to say that the case was very clearly put.
‘The articles of corn and coals,’ said Mrs. Micawber, still more argumentatively, ‘being equally out of the question, Mr. Copperfield, I naturally look round the world, and say, “What is there in which a person of Mr. Micawber’s talent is likely to succeed?” And I exclude the doing anything on commission, because commission is not a certainty. What is best suited to a person of Mr. Micawber’s peculiar temperament is, I am convinced, a certainty.’
Traddles and I both expressed, by a feeling murmur, that this great discovery was no doubt true of Mr. Micawber, and that it did him much credit.
‘I will not conceal from you, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I have long felt the Brewing business to be particularly adapted to Mr. Micawber. Look at Barclay and Perkins! Look at Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr. Micawber, I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to shine; and the profits, I am told, are e-NOR-MOUS! But if Mr. Micawber cannot get into those firms—which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his services even in an inferior capacity—what is the use of dwelling upon that idea? None. I may have a conviction that Mr. Micawber’s manners—’
‘Hem! Really, my dear,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
‘My love, be silent,’ said Mrs. Micawber, laying her brown glove on his hand. ‘I may have a conviction, Mr. Copperfield, that Mr. Micawber’s manners peculiarly qualify him for the Banking business. I may argue within myself, that if I had a deposit at a banking-house, the manners of Mr. Micawber, as representing that banking-house, would inspire confidence, and must extend the connexion. But if the various banking-houses refuse to avail themselves of Mr. Micawber’s abilities, or receive the offer of them with contumely, what is the use of dwelling upon THAT idea? None. As to originating a banking-business, I may know that there are members of my family who, if they chose to place their money in Mr. Micawber’s hands, might found an establishment of that description. But if they do NOT choose to place their money in Mr. Micawber’s hands—which they don’t—what is the use of that? Again I contend that we are no farther advanced than we were before.’
‘La prego, signore?’
«Il signor Steerforth viene da Oxford?»
«Immagino che potrebbe essere qui domani, signore. Pensavo piuttosto che potesse essere qui oggi, signore. L’errore è mio, senza dubbio, signore.»
«Se lo vedeste per primo —» dissi io.
‘Con il suo permesso, signore, non credo che lo vedrò per primo.’
«Nel caso lo faccia», dissi io, «la prego di dire che mi dispiace che non fosse qui oggi, dato che qui c’era un suo vecchio compagno di scuola.»
«Davvero, signore!» e divise un inchino tra me e Traddles, con uno sguardo rivolto a quest’ultimo.
Si stava muovendo dolcemente verso la porta, quando, in una speranza disperata di dire qualcosa in modo naturale — cosa che non riuscivo mai a fare con quest’uomo — dissi:
“Oh! Littimer!”
“Signore!”
«Siete rimasto a lungo a Yarmouth, quella volta?»
‘Non particolarmente, signore.’
‘Avete visto la barca finita?’
“Sì, signore. Sono rimasto apposta per vedere la barca finita.”
«Lo so!» Alzò i suoi occhi verso i miei, rispettosamente.
‘Immagino che il signor Steerforth non l’abbia ancora vista?’
«Non posso davvero dirlo, signore. Penso—ma non posso davvero dirlo, signore. Le auguro una buona notte, signore».
Comprese tutti i presenti nel rispettoso inchino con cui seguì queste parole e scomparve. I miei visitatori sembrarono respirare più liberamente quando se ne fu andato; ma il mio sollievo fu molto grande, perché oltre alla costrizione, derivante da quella straordinaria sensazione di essere in svantaggio che provavo sempre in presenza di quest’uomo, la mia coscienza mi aveva turbato con sussurri che avevo diffidato del suo padrone, e non potevo reprimere un vago timore inquieto che potesse scoprirlo. Come mai, avendo così poco da nascondere in realtà, sentivo sempre che quest’uomo mi stava smascherando?
Il signor Micawber mi distolse da questa riflessione, che era mescolata a un certo timoroso rimorso di rivedere lo stesso Steerforth, con l’elargire molti elogi al Littimer assente, come un individuo molto rispettabile e un servitore veramente ammirevole. Posso osservare che il signor Micawber aveva preso la sua piena parte del generale inchino, e lo aveva ricevuto con infinita condiscendenza.
«Ma il punch, mio caro Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, assaggiandolo, «come il tempo e la marea, non aspetta nessuno. Ah! in questo momento è in grande sapore. Mia cara, mi dai la tua opinione?»
La signora Micawber lo dichiarò eccellente.
«Allora brinderò», disse il signor Micawber, «se il mio amico Copperfield mi permetterà di prendere questa libertà sociale, ai giorni in cui il mio amico Copperfield ed io eravamo più giovani e ci facevamo strada nel mondo fianco a fianco. Posso dire, di me e di Copperfield, con parole che abbiamo cantato insieme più di una volta, che
Abbiamo corso sui colli e colto i bei gigli
—in senso figurato—in diverse occasioni. Non sono esattamente a conoscenza,’ disse il signor Micawber, con il vecchio tono di voce e il vecchio indescrivibile atteggiamento di chi dice qualcosa di gentile, ‘di cosa possano essere i gowans, ma non ho alcun dubbio che Copperfield e io avremmo spesso bevuto un sorso, se fosse stato fattibile.’
Il signor Micawber, in quel momento, bevve un sorso del suo punch. Così facemmo tutti: Traddles era evidentemente assorto nel chiedersi a quale lontano epoca il signor Micawber ed io potessimo essere stati compagni nella battaglia della vita.
«Ahem!» disse il signor Micawber, schiarendosi la gola e riscaldandosi con il punch e con la fiamma. «Mia cara, un altro bicchiere?»
La signora Micawber disse che doveva essere davvero poco; ma non potevamo permetterlo, così fu un bicchiere pieno.
«Poiché siamo qui in grande confidenza, signor Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, sorseggiando il suo punch, «e il signor Traddles fa parte della nostra famiglia, vorrei molto conoscere la sua opinione sulle prospettive del signor Micawber. Per quanto riguarda il grano», disse la signora Micawber in tono polemico, «come ho ripetutamente detto al signor Micawber, può essere un’attività da gentiluomini, ma non è redditizia. Una commissione di due sterline e nove pence in due settimane non può, per quanto limitate siano le nostre idee, essere considerata redditizia».
Eravamo tutti d’accordo su questo.
«Allora», disse la signora Micawber, che si vantava di avere una visione chiara delle cose e di mantenere dritto il signor Micawber con la sua saggezza femminile, altrimenti potrebbe andare un po’ storto, «allora mi pongo questa domanda. Se il grano non è affidabile, cosa lo è? Lo è il carbone? Per niente. Abbiamo rivolto la nostra attenzione a quell’esperimento, su suggerimento della mia famiglia, e lo troviamo fallace.»
Il signor Micawber, appoggiato allo schienale della sedia con le mani in tasca, ci guardò di sottecchi e annuì, come a dire che il caso era stato esposto con molta chiarezza.
«Gli articoli di grano e carbone», disse la signora Micawber, ancora più argomentativa, «essendo ugualmente fuori questione, signor Copperfield, io naturalmente guardo intorno al mondo e dico: “Cosa c’è in cui una persona con il talento del signor Micawber potrebbe avere successo?” E escludo di fare qualcosa per commissione, perché la commissione non è una certezza. Quello che è più adatto a una persona con il temperamento peculiare del signor Micawber è, ne sono convinta, una certezza.»
Traddles ed io esprimemmo entrambi, con un mormorio di comprensione, che questo grande ritrovamento era senza dubbio vero per il signor Micawber, e che gli faceva molto onore.
«Non le nasconderò, caro signor Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber, «che da tempo ritengo che l’industria della birra sia particolarmente adatta al signor Micawber. Guardi Barclay e Perkins! Guardi Truman, Hanbury e Buxton! È su quella vasta scala che il signor Micawber, lo so per mia personale conoscenza, è destinato a brillare; e i profitti, mi dicono, sono e-NOR-MI! Ma se il signor Micawber non riesce a entrare in quelle aziende — che rifiutano di rispondere alle sue lettere, anche quando offre i suoi servizi in una posizione subalterna — a che serve insistere su quell’idea? A nulla. Potrei avere la convinzione che i modi del signor Micawber, »
«Ehm! Davvero, mia cara», intervenne il signor Micawber.
«Mio amore, taci», disse la signora Micawber, posando il suo guanto marrone sulla sua mano. «Potrei avere la convinzione, signor Copperfield, che i modi di Mr. Micawber lo qualifichino in modo particolare per l’attività bancaria. Potrei ragionare tra me e me che se avessi un deposito in una banca, i modi di Mr. Micawber, in quanto rappresentante di quella banca, ispirerebbero fiducia e dovrebbero ampliare la clientela. Ma se le varie banche rifiutano di avvalersi delle capacità di Mr. Micawber, o ricevono l’offerta di queste con disprezzo, a che serve soffermarsi su QUELLA idea? A nulla. Per quanto riguarda l’apertura di un’attività bancaria, potrei sapere che ci sono membri della mia famiglia che, se volessero mettere i loro soldi nelle mani di Mr. Micawber, potrebbero fondare un’istituzione di quel tipo. Ma se NON vogliono mettere i loro soldi nelle mani di Mr. Micawber - e non lo fanno - a che serve? Ancora una volta sostengo che non siamo più avanti di prima».
I shook my head, and said, ‘Not a bit.’ Traddles also shook his head, and said, ‘Not a bit.’
‘What do I deduce from this?’ Mrs. Micawber went on to say, still with the same air of putting a case lucidly. ‘What is the conclusion, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to which I am irresistibly brought? Am I wrong in saying, it is clear that we must live?’
I answered ‘Not at all!’ and Traddles answered ‘Not at all!’ and I found myself afterwards sagely adding, alone, that a person must either live or die.
‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, ‘It is precisely that. And the fact is, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that we can not live without something widely different from existing circumstances shortly turning up. Now I am convinced, myself, and this I have pointed out to Mr. Micawber several times of late, that things cannot be expected to turn up of themselves. We must, in a measure, assist to turn them up. I may be wrong, but I have formed that opinion.’
Both Traddles and I applauded it highly.
‘Very well,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then what do I recommend? Here is Mr. Micawber with a variety of qualifications—with great talent—’
‘Really, my love,’ said Mr. Micawber.
‘Pray, my dear, allow me to conclude. Here is Mr. Micawber, with a variety of qualifications, with great talent—I should say, with genius, but that may be the partiality of a wife—’
Traddles and I both murmured ‘No.’
‘And here is Mr. Micawber without any suitable position or employment. Where does that responsibility rest? Clearly on society. Then I would make a fact so disgraceful known, and boldly challenge society to set it right. It appears to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, forcibly, ‘that what Mr. Micawber has to do, is to throw down the gauntlet to society, and say, in effect, “Show me who will take that up. Let the party immediately step forward.”’
I ventured to ask Mrs. Micawber how this was to be done.
‘By advertising,’ said Mrs. Micawber—‘in all the papers. It appears to me, that what Mr. Micawber has to do, in justice to himself, in justice to his family, and I will even go so far as to say in justice to society, by which he has been hitherto overlooked, is to advertise in all the papers; to describe himself plainly as so-and-so, with such and such qualifications and to put it thus: “Now employ me, on remunerative terms, and address, post-paid, to W. M., Post Office, Camden Town.”’
‘This idea of Mrs. Micawber’s, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, making his shirt-collar meet in front of his chin, and glancing at me sideways, ‘is, in fact, the Leap to which I alluded, when I last had the pleasure of seeing you.’
‘Advertising is rather expensive,’ I remarked, dubiously.
‘Exactly so!’ said Mrs. Micawber, preserving the same logical air. ‘Quite true, my dear Mr. Copperfield! I have made the identical observation to Mr. Micawber. It is for that reason especially, that I think Mr. Micawber ought (as I have already said, in justice to himself, in justice to his family, and in justice to society) to raise a certain sum of money—on a bill.’
Mr. Micawber, leaning back in his chair, trifled with his eye-glass and cast his eyes up at the ceiling; but I thought him observant of Traddles, too, who was looking at the fire.
‘If no member of my family,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘is possessed of sufficient natural feeling to negotiate that bill—I believe there is a better business-term to express what I mean—’
Mr. Micawber, with his eyes still cast up at the ceiling, suggested ‘Discount.’
‘To discount that bill,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘then my opinion is, that Mr. Micawber should go into the City, should take that bill into the Money Market, and should dispose of it for what he can get. If the individuals in the Money Market oblige Mr. Micawber to sustain a great sacrifice, that is between themselves and their consciences. I view it, steadily, as an investment. I recommend Mr. Micawber, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to do the same; to regard it as an investment which is sure of return, and to make up his mind to any sacrifice.’
I felt, but I am sure I don’t know why, that this was self-denying and devoted in Mrs. Micawber, and I uttered a murmur to that effect. Traddles, who took his tone from me, did likewise, still looking at the fire.
‘I will not,’ said Mrs. Micawber, finishing her punch, and gathering her scarf about her shoulders, preparatory to her withdrawal to my bedroom: ‘I will not protract these remarks on the subject of Mr. Micawber’s pecuniary affairs. At your fireside, my dear Mr. Copperfield, and in the presence of Mr. Traddles, who, though not so old a friend, is quite one of ourselves, I could not refrain from making you acquainted with the course I advise Mr. Micawber to take. I feel that the time is arrived when Mr. Micawber should exert himself and—I will add—assert himself, and it appears to me that these are the means. I am aware that I am merely a female, and that a masculine judgement is usually considered more competent to the discussion of such questions; still I must not forget that, when I lived at home with my papa and mama, my papa was in the habit of saying, “Emma’s form is fragile, but her grasp of a subject is inferior to none.” That my papa was too partial, I well know; but that he was an observer of character in some degree, my duty and my reason equally forbid me to doubt.’
With these words, and resisting our entreaties that she would grace the remaining circulation of the punch with her presence, Mrs. Micawber retired to my bedroom. And really I felt that she was a noble woman—the sort of woman who might have been a Roman matron, and done all manner of heroic things, in times of public trouble.
In the fervour of this impression, I congratulated Mr. Micawber on the treasure he possessed. So did Traddles. Mr. Micawber extended his hand to each of us in succession, and then covered his face with his pocket-handkerchief, which I think had more snuff upon it than he was aware of. He then returned to the punch, in the highest state of exhilaration.
Scossi la testa e dissi: «Niente affatto». Anche Traddles scosse la testa e disse: «Niente affatto».
«Che cosa deduco da tutto ciò?» continuò a dire la signora Micawber, sempre con lo stesso tono di chi espone un caso in modo chiaro. «Qual è la conclusione, mio caro signor Copperfield, a cui sono irresistibilmente portata? Mi sbaglio forse nel dire che è chiaro che dobbiamo vivere?»
Risposi “Niente affatto!” e Traddles rispose “Niente affatto!” e mi trovai dopo a aggiungere saggiamente, da solo, che una persona deve o vivere o morire.
«Proprio così», rispose la signora Micawber, «è esattamente questo. E il fatto è, mio caro signor Copperfield, che non possiamo vivere senza che qualcosa di molto diverso dalle circostanze attuali si presenti a breve. Ora io sono convinta, e questo l’ho fatto notare al signor Micawber più volte di recente, che non si può aspettare che le cose cambino da sole. Dobbiamo, in una certa misura, aiutare a farle cambiare. Potrei sbagliarmi, ma questa è la mia opinione.»
Sia Traddles che io l’abbiamo applaudita vivamente.
«Molto bene», disse la signora Micawber. «Allora cosa consiglio? Ecco il signor Micawber con una varietà di qualifiche — con grande talento —»
«Davvero, mia amore», disse il signor Micawber.
«Vi prego, mia cara, permettetemi di concludere. Ecco il signor Micawber, con una varietà di qualifiche, con grande talento — direi, con genio, ma forse è la parzialità di una moglie —»
Traddles ed io mormorammo entrambi “No”.
«E qui c’è il signor Micawber senza una posizione o un impiego adeguato. Su chi ricade questa responsabilità? Chiaramente sulla società. Allora io renderei noto un fatto così disonorevole e sfiderei apertamente la società a porvi rimedio. Mi sembra, mio caro signor Copperfield», disse la signora Micawber con forza, «che ciò che il signor Micawber deve fare è lanciare il guanto alla società e dire, in sostanza: “Mostratemi chi lo raccoglierà. Faccia pure un passo avanti la persona in questione.”»
Mi permisi di chiedere a Mrs. Micawber come si dovesse fare.
«Con un annuncio» disse la signora Micawber «su tutti i giornali. Mi sembra che ciò che il signor Micawber deve fare, per giustizia verso se stesso, per giustizia verso la sua famiglia, e oserei dire per giustizia verso la società, che finora lo ha ignorato, sia di pubblicare un annuncio su tutti i giornali; di descriversi con chiarezza come tale e talaltro, con tali e tali qualifiche, e di esprimersi così: “Ora assumetemi, a condizioni retributive, e scrivetemi, affrancatura pagata, a W. M., Ufficio Postale, Camden Town”.»
«Questa idea di mia moglie, mia cara Copperfield», disse il signor Micawber, facendo incontrare il colletto della camicia davanti al mento e guardandomi di sottecchi, «è, in effetti, il Salto al quale alludevo, quando ebbi l’ultima volta il piacere di vederla.»
«La pubblicità è piuttosto costosa», osservai, dubbiosamente.
«Esattamente!», disse la signora Micawber, mantenendo lo stesso tono logico. «Assolutamente vero, mio caro signor Copperfield! Ho fatto la stessa osservazione al signor Micawber. È per questo motivo in particolare che ritengo che il signor Micawber dovrebbe (come ho già detto, per giustizia verso se stesso, per giustizia verso la sua famiglia, e per giustizia verso la società) raccogliere una certa somma di denaro, con un assegno.»
Il signor Micawber, appoggiato allo schienale della sedia, giocherellava con il monocolo e alzava gli occhi verso il soffitto; ma mi parve che osservasse anche Traddles, che stava guardando il fuoco.
«Se nessun membro della mia famiglia», disse la signora Micawber, «è dotato di sufficiente sensibilità naturale per negoziare quella cambiale — credo che ci sia un termine commerciale più appropriato per esprimere ciò che intendo —»
Mr. Micawber, con gli occhi ancora rivolti al soffitto, suggerì: ‘Sconto’.
«Per scontare quella cambiale», disse la signora Micawber, «allora la mia opinione è che il signor Micawber dovrebbe recarsi nella City, portare quella cambiale al mercato monetario e venderla per quanto può ottenere. Se le persone del mercato monetario costringono il signor Micawber a fare un grande sacrificio, è un problema tra loro e la loro coscienza. Io la vedo, con fermezza, come un investimento. Raccomando al signor Micawber, mio caro signor Copperfield, di fare lo stesso; di considerarla come un investimento che sicuramente renderà e di rassegnarsi a qualsiasi sacrificio».
Sentivo, ma sono sicuro di non sapere perché, che questo era un atto di auto-negazione e dedizione da parte della signora Micawber, e pronunciai un mormorio in tal senso. Traddles, che prendeva il tono da me, fece altrettanto, continuando a guardare il fuoco.
«Non lo farò», disse la signora Micawber, finendo il suo punch e avvolgendosi lo scialle sulle spalle, in preparazione al suo ritiro nella mia camera da letto: «Non prolungherò questi discorsi sull’argomento degli affari finanziari del signor Micawber. Al tuo focolare, mio caro signor Copperfield, e in presenza del signor Traddles, che, sebbene non sia un amico così vecchio, è proprio uno di noi, non potevo astenermi dal mettervi a conoscenza del corso che consiglio al signor Micawber di intraprendere. Sento che è arrivato il tempo in cui il signor Micawber dovrebbe sforzarsi e—aggiungerò—affermarsi, e mi sembra che questi siano i mezzi. Sono consapevole di essere semplicemente una donna, e che un giudizio maschile è solitamente considerato più competente nella discussione di tali questioni; tuttavia non devo dimenticare che, quando vivevo a casa con mio padre e mia madre, mio padre era solito dire: “La forma di Emma è fragile, ma la sua comprensione di un argomento non è inferiore a quella di nessuno”. Che mio padre fosse troppo parziale, lo so benissimo; ma che fosse un osservatore del carattere in qualche misura, il mio dovere e la mia ragione mi vietano ugualmente di dubitare.»
Con queste parole, e resistendo alle nostre preghiere che avesse voluto onorare la circolazione residua del punch con la sua presenza, la signora Micawber si ritirò nella mia camera da letto. E davvero sentivo che era una donna nobile, il tipo di donna che sarebbe potuta essere una matrona romana e aver compiuto ogni sorta di gesta eroiche, nei tempi di pubblica sventura.
Nel fervore di questa impressione, congratulai il signor Micawber per il tesoro che possedeva. Lo stesso fece Traddles. Il signor Micawber ci porse la mano a uno a uno, e poi si coprì il viso col fazzoletto, che, credo, aveva più tabacco di quanto lui stesso sapesse. Poi tornò al punch, in uno stato di massima esaltazione.
He was full of eloquence. He gave us to understand that in our children we lived again, and that, under the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, any accession to their number was doubly welcome. He said that Mrs. Micawber had latterly had her doubts on this point, but that he had dispelled them, and reassured her. As to her family, they were totally unworthy of her, and their sentiments were utterly indifferent to him, and they might—I quote his own expression—go to the Devil.
Mr. Micawber then delivered a warm eulogy on Traddles. He said Traddles’s was a character, to the steady virtues of which he (Mr. Micawber) could lay no claim, but which, he thanked Heaven, he could admire. He feelingly alluded to the young lady, unknown, whom Traddles had honoured with his affection, and who had reciprocated that affection by honouring and blessing Traddles with her affection. Mr. Micawber pledged her. So did I. Traddles thanked us both, by saying, with a simplicity and honesty I had sense enough to be quite charmed with, ‘I am very much obliged to you indeed. And I do assure you, she’s the dearest girl!—’
Mr. Micawber took an early opportunity, after that, of hinting, with the utmost delicacy and ceremony, at the state of my affections. Nothing but the serious assurance of his friend Copperfield to the contrary, he observed, could deprive him of the impression that his friend Copperfield loved and was beloved. After feeling very hot and uncomfortable for some time, and after a good deal of blushing, stammering, and denying, I said, having my glass in my hand, ‘Well! I would give them D.!’ which so excited and gratified Mr. Micawber, that he ran with a glass of punch into my bedroom, in order that Mrs. Micawber might drink D., who drank it with enthusiasm, crying from within, in a shrill voice, ‘Hear, hear! My dear Mr. Copperfield, I am delighted. Hear!’ and tapping at the wall, by way of applause.
Our conversation, afterwards, took a more worldly turn; Mr. Micawber telling us that he found Camden Town inconvenient, and that the first thing he contemplated doing, when the advertisement should have been the cause of something satisfactory turning up, was to move. He mentioned a terrace at the western end of Oxford Street, fronting Hyde Park, on which he had always had his eye, but which he did not expect to attain immediately, as it would require a large establishment. There would probably be an interval, he explained, in which he should content himself with the upper part of a house, over some respectable place of business—say in Piccadilly,—which would be a cheerful situation for Mrs. Micawber; and where, by throwing out a bow-window, or carrying up the roof another story, or making some little alteration of that sort, they might live, comfortably and reputably, for a few years. Whatever was reserved for him, he expressly said, or wherever his abode might be, we might rely on this—there would always be a room for Traddles, and a knife and fork for me. We acknowledged his kindness; and he begged us to forgive his having launched into these practical and business-like details, and to excuse it as natural in one who was making entirely new arrangements in life.
Mrs. Micawber, tapping at the wall again to know if tea were ready, broke up this particular phase of our friendly conversation. She made tea for us in a most agreeable manner; and, whenever I went near her, in handing about the tea-cups and bread-and-butter, asked me, in a whisper, whether D. was fair, or dark, or whether she was short, or tall: or something of that kind; which I think I liked. After tea, we discussed a variety of topics before the fire; and Mrs. Micawber was good enough to sing us (in a small, thin, flat voice, which I remembered to have considered, when I first knew her, the very table-beer of acoustics) the favourite ballads of ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’, and ‘Little Tafflin’. For both of these songs Mrs. Micawber had been famous when she lived at home with her papa and mama. Mr. Micawber told us, that when he heard her sing the first one, on the first occasion of his seeing her beneath the parental roof, she had attracted his attention in an extraordinary degree; but that when it came to Little Tafflin, he had resolved to win that woman or perish in the attempt.
It was between ten and eleven o’clock when Mrs. Micawber rose to replace her cap in the whitey-brown paper parcel, and to put on her bonnet. Mr. Micawber took the opportunity of Traddles putting on his great-coat, to slip a letter into my hand, with a whispered request that I would read it at my leisure. I also took the opportunity of my holding a candle over the banisters to light them down, when Mr. Micawber was going first, leading Mrs. Micawber, and Traddles was following with the cap, to detain Traddles for a moment on the top of the stairs.
‘Traddles,’ said I, ‘Mr. Micawber don’t mean any harm, poor fellow: but, if I were you, I wouldn’t lend him anything.’
‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, smiling, ‘I haven’t got anything to lend.’
‘You have got a name, you know,’ said I.
‘Oh! You call THAT something to lend?’ returned Traddles, with a thoughtful look.
‘Certainly.’
‘Oh!’ said Traddles. ‘Yes, to be sure! I am very much obliged to you, Copperfield; but—I am afraid I have lent him that already.’
‘For the bill that is to be a certain investment?’ I inquired.
‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Not for that one. This is the first I have heard of that one. I have been thinking that he will most likely propose that one, on the way home. Mine’s another.’
‘I hope there will be nothing wrong about it,’ said I. ‘I hope not,’ said Traddles. ‘I should think not, though, because he told me, only the other day, that it was provided for. That was Mr. Micawber’s expression, “Provided for.”’
Mr. Micawber looking up at this juncture to where we were standing, I had only time to repeat my caution. Traddles thanked me, and descended. But I was much afraid, when I observed the good-natured manner in which he went down with the cap in his hand, and gave Mrs. Micawber his arm, that he would be carried into the Money Market neck and heels.
Era pieno di eloquenza. Ci fece capire che nei nostri figli rivivevamo, e che, sotto la pressione delle difficoltà finanziarie, ogni aumento del loro numero era doppiamente gradito. Disse che la signora Micawber ultimamente aveva avuto dei dubbi su questo punto, ma che li aveva dissipati e rassicurata. Per quanto riguarda la sua famiglia, erano del tutto indegni di lei, e i loro sentimenti erano del tutto indifferenti per lui, e potevano - cito le sue stesse parole - andare al diavolo.
Il signor Micawber pronunciò quindi un caloroso elogio di Traddles. Disse che Traddles aveva un carattere, le cui virtù costanti lui (il signor Micawber) non poteva rivendicare, ma che, ringraziava il cielo, poteva ammirare. Fece un commosso accenno alla giovane sconosciuta che Traddles aveva onorato del suo affetto, e che aveva ricambiato quell’affetto onorando e benedicendo Traddles con il suo. Il signor Micawber propose un brindisi a lei. E lo feci anch’io. Traddles ci ringraziò entrambi, dicendo, con una semplicità e onestà che ebbe il buon senso di farmi sentire del tutto incantato, «Vi ringrazio davvero molto. E vi assicuro che è la ragazza più cara!»
Il signor Micawber colse presto l’occasione, dopo di allora, di accennare, con la massima delicatezza e cerimonia, allo stato dei miei affetti. Nulla, osservò, se non la seria assicurazione del suo amico Copperfield in senso contrario, poteva privarlo dell’impressione che il suo amico Copperfield amasse e fosse amato. Dopo essermi sentito molto caldo e a disagio per qualche tempo, e dopo un bel po’ di arrossire, balbettare e negare, dissi, avendo il bicchiere in mano, ‘Bene! Gli darei D.!’, il che eccitò e gratificò così tanto il signor Micawber che corse con un bicchiere di punch nella mia camera da letto, affinché la signora Micawber potesse bere D., che lo bevve con entusiasmo, gridando dall’interno, con voce acuta, ‘Hear, hear! Mio caro signor Copperfield, sono deliziata. Hear!’ e battendo sul muro, a mo’ di applauso.
La nostra conversazione, in seguito, prese una piega più mondana; il signor Micawber ci disse che trovava Camden Town scomoda, e che la prima cosa che aveva in mente di fare, quando l’annuncio avesse portato a galla qualcosa di soddisfacente, era trasferirsi. Menzionò una fila di case all’estremità occidentale di Oxford Street, di fronte a Hyde Park, su cui aveva sempre avuto gli occhi, ma che non si aspettava di raggiungere immediatamente, poiché avrebbe richiesto un grande stabilimento. Ci sarebbe stato probabilmente un intervallo, spiegò, in cui si sarebbe accontentato della parte superiore di una casa, sopra un qualche rispettabile posto di affari—diciamo a Piccadilly,—che sarebbe stata una situazione allegra per la signora Micawber; e dove, facendo sporgere una finestra a bovindo, o portando su il tetto di un altro piano, o facendo qualche piccola modifica di quel tipo, avrebbero potuto vivere, comodamente e rispettabilmente, per alcuni anni. Qualunque cosa gli fosse riservata, disse espressamente, o qualunque fosse il suo alloggio, potevamo contare su questo—ci sarebbe sempre stata una stanza per Traddles, e un coltello e forchetta per me. Ringraziammo per la sua gentilezza; e lui ci pregò di perdonarlo per essersi lanciato in questi dettagli pratici e da uomo d’affari, e di scusarlo come naturale in uno che stava facendo interamente nuovi disposizioni nella vita.
Quando la signora Micawber, bussando di nuovo al muro per sapere se il tè era pronto, interrompeva questa particolare fase della nostra amichevole conversazione. Ci preparò il tè in modo delizioso; e, ogni volta che mi avvicinavo a lei, mentre distribuiva le tazze di tè e il pane burro, mi chiedeva sottovoce se D. era bionda o bruna, o se era bassa o alta: o qualcosa del genere; e credo che mi piacesse. Dopo il tè, discutemmo di una varietà di argomenti davanti al fuoco; e la signora Micawber ebbe la gentilezza di cantarci (con una voce piccola, sottile e piatta, che ricordavo di aver considerato, quando la conobbi, la birra da tavola dell’acustica) le ballate preferite di ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’ e ‘Little Tafflin’. Per entrambe queste canzoni la signora Micawber era stata famosa quando viveva a casa con suo padre e sua madre. Il signor Micawber ci raccontò che quando l’aveva sentita cantare la prima, la prima volta che l’aveva vista sotto il tetto paterno, aveva attirato la sua attenzione in modo straordinario; ma che quando si arrivò a Little Tafflin, aveva deciso di conquistare quella donna o di perire nel tentativo.
Erano tra le dieci e le undici quando la signora Micawber si alzò per sostituire il suo copricapo con quello contenuto nel pacchetto di carta bianco-marrone e per indossare il cappello. Il signor Micawber approfittò del momento in cui Traddles si stava infilando il suo cappotto per infilarmi in mano una lettera, accompagnata da un sussurro che mi pregava di leggerla quando avessi avuto tempo. Approfittai anch’io del fatto che stavo tenendo una candela sopra i corrimano per illuminare la loro discesa, mentre il signor Micawber stava andando per primo, accompagnando la signora Micawber, e Traddles li seguiva con il copricapo, per trattenere Traddles per un momento in cima alle scale.
«Traddles», dissi, «il povero Mr. Micawber non vuol male a nessuno, ma se fossi in te non gli presterei nulla.»
“Caro Copperfield,” rispose Traddles sorridendo, “non ho nulla da prestare.”
«Avete un nome, sapete», dissi io.
«Oh! Chiamate QUESTO qualcosa da prestare?» rispose Traddles, con un’aria pensierosa.
‘Senz’altro.’
«Oh!» disse Traddles. «Sì, certo! Sono molto obbligato, Copperfield; ma, temo di avergli già prestato quel denaro.»
«Per la cambiale che deve essere un certo investimento?» chiesi.
‘No,’ disse Traddles. ‘Non per quella. È la prima volta che sento parlare di quella. Ho pensato che probabilmente proporrà quella, sulla via del ritorno. La mia è un’altra.’
«Spero che non ci sarà nulla di male», dissi io. «Spero di no», disse Traddles. «Non credo, però, perché mi ha detto proprio l’altro giorno che era tutto previsto. Queste erano le parole del signor Micawber, «previsto».»
Mr. Micawber alzando lo sguardo in quel momento verso il punto dove ci trovavamo, io ebbi solo tempo di ripetere la mia raccomandazione. Traddles mi ringraziò e scese. Ma temevo molto, osservando il modo cordiale con cui scese con il cappello in mano e offrì il braccio a Mrs. Micawber, che sarebbe stato trascinato al mercato dei cambi a testa in giù.
I returned to my fireside, and was musing, half gravely and half laughing, on the character of Mr. Micawber and the old relations between us, when I heard a quick step ascending the stairs. At first, I thought it was Traddles coming back for something Mrs. Micawber had left behind; but as the step approached, I knew it, and felt my heart beat high, and the blood rush to my face, for it was Steerforth’s.
I was never unmindful of Agnes, and she never left that sanctuary in my thoughts—if I may call it so—where I had placed her from the first. But when he entered, and stood before me with his hand out, the darkness that had fallen on him changed to light, and I felt confounded and ashamed of having doubted one I loved so heartily. I loved her none the less; I thought of her as the same benignant, gentle angel in my life; I reproached myself, not her, with having done him an injury; and I would have made him any atonement if I had known what to make, and how to make it.
‘Why, Daisy, old boy, dumb-foundered!’ laughed Steerforth, shaking my hand heartily, and throwing it gaily away. ‘Have I detected you in another feast, you Sybarite! These Doctors’ Commons fellows are the gayest men in town, I believe, and beat us sober Oxford people all to nothing!’ His bright glance went merrily round the room, as he took the seat on the sofa opposite to me, which Mrs. Micawber had recently vacated, and stirred the fire into a blaze.
‘I was so surprised at first,’ said I, giving him welcome with all the cordiality I felt, ‘that I had hardly breath to greet you with, Steerforth.’
‘Well, the sight of me is good for sore eyes, as the Scotch say,’ replied Steerforth, ‘and so is the sight of you, Daisy, in full bloom. How are you, my Bacchanal?’
‘I am very well,’ said I; ‘and not at all Bacchanalian tonight, though I confess to another party of three.’
‘All of whom I met in the street, talking loud in your praise,’ returned Steerforth. ‘Who’s our friend in the tights?’
I gave him the best idea I could, in a few words, of Mr. Micawber. He laughed heartily at my feeble portrait of that gentleman, and said he was a man to know, and he must know him. ‘But who do you suppose our other friend is?’ said I, in my turn.
‘Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Not a bore, I hope? I thought he looked a little like one.’
‘Traddles!’ I replied, triumphantly.
‘Who’s he?’ asked Steerforth, in his careless way.
‘Don’t you remember Traddles? Traddles in our room at Salem House?’
‘Oh! That fellow!’ said Steerforth, beating a lump of coal on the top of the fire, with the poker. ‘Is he as soft as ever? And where the deuce did you pick him up?’
I extolled Traddles in reply, as highly as I could; for I felt that Steerforth rather slighted him. Steerforth, dismissing the subject with a light nod, and a smile, and the remark that he would be glad to see the old fellow too, for he had always been an odd fish, inquired if I could give him anything to eat? During most of this short dialogue, when he had not been speaking in a wild vivacious manner, he had sat idly beating on the lump of coal with the poker. I observed that he did the same thing while I was getting out the remains of the pigeon-pie, and so forth.
‘Why, Daisy, here’s a supper for a king!’ he exclaimed, starting out of his silence with a burst, and taking his seat at the table. ‘I shall do it justice, for I have come from Yarmouth.’
‘I thought you came from Oxford?’ I returned.
‘Not I,’ said Steerforth. ‘I have been seafaring—better employed.’
‘Littimer was here today, to inquire for you,’ I remarked, ‘and I understood him that you were at Oxford; though, now I think of it, he certainly did not say so.’
‘Littimer is a greater fool than I thought him, to have been inquiring for me at all,’ said Steerforth, jovially pouring out a glass of wine, and drinking to me. ‘As to understanding him, you are a cleverer fellow than most of us, Daisy, if you can do that.’
‘That’s true, indeed,’ said I, moving my chair to the table. ‘So you have been at Yarmouth, Steerforth!’ interested to know all about it. ‘Have you been there long?’
‘No,’ he returned. ‘An escapade of a week or so.’
‘And how are they all? Of course, little Emily is not married yet?’
‘Not yet. Going to be, I believe—in so many weeks, or months, or something or other. I have not seen much of ‘em. By the by’; he laid down his knife and fork, which he had been using with great diligence, and began feeling in his pockets; ‘I have a letter for you.’
‘From whom?’
‘Why, from your old nurse,’ he returned, taking some papers out of his breast pocket. “‘J. Steerforth, Esquire, debtor, to The Willing Mind”; that’s not it. Patience, and we’ll find it presently. Old what’s-his-name’s in a bad way, and it’s about that, I believe.’
‘Barkis, do you mean?’
‘Yes!’ still feeling in his pockets, and looking over their contents: ‘it’s all over with poor Barkis, I am afraid. I saw a little apothecary there—surgeon, or whatever he is—who brought your worship into the world. He was mighty learned about the case, to me; but the upshot of his opinion was, that the carrier was making his last journey rather fast.---Put your hand into the breast pocket of my great-coat on the chair yonder, and I think you’ll find the letter. Is it there?’
‘Here it is!’ said I.
‘That’s right!’
It was from Peggotty; something less legible than usual, and brief. It informed me of her husband’s hopeless state, and hinted at his being ‘a little nearer’ than heretofore, and consequently more difficult to manage for his own comfort. It said nothing of her weariness and watching, and praised him highly. It was written with a plain, unaffected, homely piety that I knew to be genuine, and ended with ‘my duty to my ever darling’—meaning myself.
While I deciphered it, Steerforth continued to eat and drink.
‘It’s a bad job,’ he said, when I had done; ‘but the sun sets every day, and people die every minute, and we mustn’t be scared by the common lot. If we failed to hold our own, because that equal foot at all men’s doors was heard knocking somewhere, every object in this world would slip from us. No! Ride on! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’
Ritornai al mio caminetto e stavo meditando, a metà tra il serio e il faceto, sul carattere del signor Micawber e sulle vecchie relazioni tra noi, quando udii un passo veloce salire le scale. All’inizio pensai che fosse Traddles che tornava per qualcosa che la signora Micawber aveva dimenticato; ma man mano che il passo si avvicinava, lo riconobbi e sentii il mio cuore battere forte e il sangue affluire al viso, perché era Steerforth.
Non dimenticai mai Agnes, e lei non lasciò mai quel santuario nei miei pensieri — se posso chiamarlo così — dove l’avevo collocata fin dall’inizio. Ma quando entrò, e si fermò davanti a me con la mano tesa, l’oscurità che era calata su di lui si trasformò in luce, e mi sentii confuso e vergognoso per aver dubitato di uno che amavo così profondamente. Non l’amavo di meno; la pensavo come lo stesso benigno, dolce angelo nella mia vita; mi rimproveravo, non lei, di avergli fatto un torto; e gli avrei reso qualsiasi ammenda se avessi saputo cosa fare, e come farla.
«Ma, Daisy, vecchio mio, sbalordito!» rise Steerforth, stringendomi la mano con calore e lasciandola andare con disinvoltura. «Ti ho scoperto in un altro banchetto, tu, Sybarita! Questi tipi dei Tribunali del Dottorato sono gli uomini più allegri della città, credo, e ci battono noi sobri Oxfordiani in tutto!» Il suo sguardo brillante fece il giro della stanza allegramente, mentre prendeva posto sul divano di fronte a me, che la signora Micawber aveva appena lasciato, e ravvivava il fuoco in una fiamma.
«All’inizio ero così sorpreso», dissi, dandogli il benvenuto con tutta la cordialità che provavo, «che a malapena avevo fiato per salutarla, Steerforth.»
«Beh, la vista di me è buona per gli occhi stanchi, come dicono gli scozzesi», rispose Steerforth, «e così è la vista di te, Daisy, in piena fioritura. Come stai, mia Bacchante?»
«Sto molto bene», dissi; «e non sono affatto bacchico questa sera, anche se confesso di aver partecipato a un’altra festa di tre persone.»
«Tutti i quali ho incontrato in strada, che parlavano a gran voce in tuo elogio», rispose Steerforth. «Chi è il nostro amico in calzamaglia?»
Gli diedi, in poche parole, la migliore descrizione che potevo del signor Micawber. Rise di gusto del mio debole ritratto di quell’uomo, e disse che era un uomo da conoscere, e che doveva conoscerlo. «Ma chi credi che sia il nostro altro amico?» dissi io a mia volta.
«Dio lo sa», disse Steerforth. «Non un noioso, spero? Mi è parso un po’ così.»
«Traddles!» risposi, trionfalmente.
«Chi è?» chiese Steerforth nel suo modo disinvolto.
«Non ti ricordi di Traddles? Traddles nella nostra stanza alla scuola di Salem?»
«Oh! Quel tizio!» disse Steerforth, battendo un pezzo di carbone sulla cima del fuoco con il pugnaletto. «È ancora così ingenuo? E dove diavolo l’hai trovato?»
In risposta, esaltai Traddles quanto potei, perché sentivo che Steerforth lo trattava con un certo disprezzo. Steerforth, liquidando l’argomento con un cenno della testa e un sorriso, e dicendo che sarebbe stato felice di rivedere anche il vecchio amico, perché era sempre stato un tipo strano, mi chiese se potevo dargli qualcosa da mangiare. Durante gran parte di questo breve dialogo, quando non parlava in modo vivace e disinvolto, era rimasto seduto a battere oziosamente con il pugnaletto sul pezzo di carbone. Notai che faceva la stessa cosa mentre preparavo i resti della torta di piccione e così via.
«Ma, Daisy, ecco una cena da re!», esclamò, uscendo dal suo silenzio con un’esclamazione improvvisa e sedendosi a tavola. «Gli renderò giustizia, perché vengo da Yarmouth.»
«Pensavo che veniste da Oxford?» risposi.
“Non io”, disse Steerforth. “Sono stato in mare, in un’occupazione migliore.”
«Littimer è stato qui oggi, per chiedere di te», osservai, «e ho capito che ti trovavi a Oxford; anche se, ora che ci penso, non l’ha detto esplicitamente.»
«Littimer è più stupido di quanto pensassi, a cercarmi» disse Steerforth, versando allegramente un bicchiere di vino e brindando a me. «Per quanto riguarda capirlo, sei più furbo di molti di noi, Daisy, se ci riesci.»
«È vero, davvero», dissi, spostando la mia sedia verso il tavolo. «Siete stato a Yarmouth, Steerforth!» ero interessato a sapere tutto. «Siete stato lì a lungo?»
‘No’, rispose. ‘Una scappata di una settimana o giù di lì’.
«E come stanno tutti? Naturalmente, la piccola Emily non è ancora sposata?»
«Non ancora. Sarà, credo, tra alcune settimane, o mesi, o qualcosa del genere. Non li ho visti molto. A proposito»; posò coltello e forchetta, che aveva usato con grande diligenza, e cominciò a frugare nelle tasche; «ho una lettera per voi.»
‘Da chi?’
«Perché, dalla tua vecchia balia», rispose, tirando fuori alcuni fogli dal taschino. «“J. Steerforth, Esquire, debitore, verso The Willing Mind”; no, non è quello. Pazienza, e lo troveremo tra poco. Il vecchio come-si-chiama è in cattive condizioni, e credo che si tratti di questo.»
‘Barkis, intende dire?’
«Sì!», continuando a frugare nelle tasche e a esaminarne il contenuto: «Temo che per il povero Barkis sia finita. Ho visto un piccolo farmacista là — chirurgo, o qualunque cosa sia — che ha portato in questo mondo la vostra riverenza. Era molto esperto riguardo al caso, con me; ma la conclusione del suo parere era che il carrettiere stava compiendo il suo ultimo viaggio piuttosto in fretta. --- Mettete la mano nella tasca interna del mio pastrone sulla sedia laggiù, e credo che troverete la lettera. È lì?»
«Ecco qui!» dissi io.
‘Esatto!’
Era di Peggotty; meno leggibile del solito e breve. Mi informava dello stato disperato di suo marito, e accennava al fatto che era “un po’ più vicino” di prima, e di conseguenza più difficile da gestire per il suo stesso benessere. Non diceva nulla della sua stanchezza e delle sue veglie, e lo lodava molto. Era scritto con una semplice, schietta e casalinga devozione che sapevo essere genuina, e terminava con “il mio dovere verso il mio caro per sempre” - intendendo me stesso.
Mentre lo decifravo, Steerforth continuò a mangiare e bere.
«È un brutto lavoro», disse, quando ebbi finito; «ma il sole tramonta ogni giorno, e la gente muore ogni minuto, e non dobbiamo spaventarci per la sorte comune. Se non riuscissimo a tener testa, perché quel passo uguale alla porta di tutti fosse sentito bussare da qualche parte, ogni oggetto di questo mondo ci sfuggirebbe. No! Andate avanti! Con gli zoccoli chiodati se necessario, lisci se funziona, ma andate avanti! Andate avanti su tutti gli ostacoli, e vincete la gara!»
‘And win what race?’ said I.
‘The race that one has started in,’ said he. ‘Ride on!’
I noticed, I remember, as he paused, looking at me with his handsome head a little thrown back, and his glass raised in his hand, that, though the freshness of the sea-wind was on his face, and it was ruddy, there were traces in it, made since I last saw it, as if he had applied himself to some habitual strain of the fervent energy which, when roused, was so passionately roused within him. I had it in my thoughts to remonstrate with him upon his desperate way of pursuing any fancy that he took—such as this buffeting of rough seas, and braving of hard weather, for example—when my mind glanced off to the immediate subject of our conversation again, and pursued that instead.
‘I tell you what, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if your high spirits will listen to me—’
‘They are potent spirits, and will do whatever you like,’ he answered, moving from the table to the fireside again.
‘Then I tell you what, Steerforth. I think I will go down and see my old nurse. It is not that I can do her any good, or render her any real service; but she is so attached to me that my visit will have as much effect on her, as if I could do both. She will take it so kindly that it will be a comfort and support to her. It is no great effort to make, I am sure, for such a friend as she has been to me. Wouldn’t you go a day’s journey, if you were in my place?’
His face was thoughtful, and he sat considering a little before he answered, in a low voice, ‘Well! Go. You can do no harm.’
‘You have just come back,’ said I, ‘and it would be in vain to ask you to go with me?’
‘Quite,’ he returned. ‘I am for Highgate tonight. I have not seen my mother this long time, and it lies upon my conscience, for it’s something to be loved as she loves her prodigal son.---Bah! Nonsense!—You mean to go tomorrow, I suppose?’ he said, holding me out at arm’s length, with a hand on each of my shoulders.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Well, then, don’t go till next day. I wanted you to come and stay a few days with us. Here I am, on purpose to bid you, and you fly off to Yarmouth!’
‘You are a nice fellow to talk of flying off, Steerforth, who are always running wild on some unknown expedition or other!’
He looked at me for a moment without speaking, and then rejoined, still holding me as before, and giving me a shake:
‘Come! Say the next day, and pass as much of tomorrow as you can with us! Who knows when we may meet again, else? Come! Say the next day! I want you to stand between Rosa Dartle and me, and keep us asunder.’
‘Would you love each other too much, without me?’
‘Yes; or hate,’ laughed Steerforth; ‘no matter which. Come! Say the next day!’
I said the next day; and he put on his great-coat and lighted his cigar, and set off to walk home. Finding him in this intention, I put on my own great-coat (but did not light my own cigar, having had enough of that for one while) and walked with him as far as the open road: a dull road, then, at night. He was in great spirits all the way; and when we parted, and I looked after him going so gallantly and airily homeward, I thought of his saying, ‘Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!’ and wished, for the first time, that he had some worthy race to run.
I was undressing in my own room, when Mr. Micawber’s letter tumbled on the floor. Thus reminded of it, I broke the seal and read as follows. It was dated an hour and a half before dinner. I am not sure whether I have mentioned that, when Mr. Micawber was at any particularly desperate crisis, he used a sort of legal phraseology, which he seemed to think equivalent to winding up his affairs.
‘SIR—for I dare not say my dear Copperfield,
‘It is expedient that I should inform you that the undersigned is Crushed. Some flickering efforts to spare you the premature knowledge of his calamitous position, you may observe in him this day; but hope has sunk beneath the horizon, and the undersigned is Crushed.
‘The present communication is penned within the personal range (I cannot call it the society) of an individual, in a state closely bordering on intoxication, employed by a broker. That individual is in legal possession of the premises, under a distress for rent. His inventory includes, not only the chattels and effects of every description belonging to the undersigned, as yearly tenant of this habitation, but also those appertaining to Mr. Thomas Traddles, lodger, a member of the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple.
‘If any drop of gloom were wanting in the overflowing cup, which is now “commended” (in the language of an immortal Writer) to the lips of the undersigned, it would be found in the fact, that a friendly acceptance granted to the undersigned, by the before-mentioned Mr. Thomas Traddles, for the sum Of 23l 4s 9 1/2d is over due, and is NOT provided for. Also, in the fact that the living responsibilities clinging to the undersigned will, in the course of nature, be increased by the sum of one more helpless victim; whose miserable appearance may be looked for—in round numbers—at the expiration of a period not exceeding six lunar months from the present date.
‘After premising thus much, it would be a work of supererogation to add, that dust and ashes are for ever scattered
‘On ‘The ‘Head ‘Of ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
Poor Traddles! I knew enough of Mr. Micawber by this time, to foresee that he might be expected to recover the blow; but my night’s rest was sorely distressed by thoughts of Traddles, and of the curate’s daughter, who was one of ten, down in Devonshire, and who was such a dear girl, and who would wait for Traddles (ominous praise!) until she was sixty, or any age that could be mentioned.
«E quale gara avrei vinto?» dissi io.
‘La corsa che si è iniziata’, disse lui. ‘Andiamo!’
Mi accorsi, ricordo, mentre faceva una pausa, guardandomi con la sua bella testa leggermente inclinata all’indietro e il bicchiere alzato in mano, che, sebbene la freschezza del vento marino fosse sul suo viso e lo rendesse rosso, vi erano tracce, apparse da quando l’avevo visto l’ultima volta, come se si fosse sottoposto a qualche tensione abituale di quell’energia fervente che, quando si risvegliava, si risvegliava così appassionatamente in lui. Pensavo di farlo riflettere sul suo modo disperato di inseguire ogni capriccio che gli veniva in mente, come per esempio questo di affrontare mari agitati e sfidare il maltempo, quando la mia mente tornò all’argomento immediato della nostra conversazione e continuò su quella linea.
‘Le dico una cosa, Steerforth’, dissi, ‘se i suoi alti spiriti vorranno ascoltarmi, ’
«Sono spiriti potenti e faranno tutto ciò che desideri», rispose, spostandosi di nuovo dal tavolo al caminetto.
«Allora ti dico una cosa, Steerforth. Penso che andrò a trovare la mia vecchia balia. Non è che io possa farle del bene, o renderle un vero servizio; ma è così affezionata a me che la mia visita avrà su di lei lo stesso effetto, come se potessi fare entrambe le cose. La prenderà così bene che sarà un conforto e un sostegno per lei. Non è uno sforzo grande da fare, ne sono sicuro, per un’amica come è stata lei per me. Non faresti un viaggio di un giorno, se fossi al mio posto?»
Il suo volto era pensieroso, e rimase seduto a riflettere un po’ prima di rispondere, a bassa voce, ‘Bene! Vai. Non puoi fare nulla di male.’
“Sei appena tornato”, dissi, “e sarebbe inutile chiederti di venire con me?”
«Certo», rispose. «Stasera vado a Highgate. Non vedo mia madre da tanto tempo, e questo mi pesa sulla coscienza, perché è una cosa essere amati come lei ama il suo figliol prodigo.---Bah! Sciocchezze!—Domani intendi andare, immagino?» disse, tenendomi a braccetto, con una mano su ciascuna delle mie spalle.
‘Sì, credo di sì.’
«Bene, allora, non andartene fino al giorno dopo. Volevo che tu venissi a stare con noi per qualche giorno. Ecco che sono qui apposta per invitarti, e tu te ne voli a Yarmouth!»
«Sei un bel tipo a parlare di fuga, Steerforth, tu che sei sempre in giro per chissà quali imprese!»
Mi guardò per un momento senza parlare, e poi riprese, continuando a tenermi come prima, e scuotendomi:
«Dai! Di’ che verrai il giorno dopo, e passa con noi tutto il tempo che puoi di domani! Chi sa quando ci rivedremo, altrimenti? Dai! Di’ che verrai il giorno dopo! Voglio che tu stia tra me e Rosa Dartle, e ci tenga separati.»
‘Vi amereste troppo l’uno l’altra, senza di me?’
‘Sì; o odio’, rise Steerforth; ‘non importa quale. Vieni! Di’ il giorno dopo!’
Glielo dissi il giorno dopo; e lui si mise il suo pastrone e si accese il sigaro, e si mise a camminare verso casa. Vedendolo in queste intenzioni, mi misi il mio pastrone (ma non mi accesi il mio sigaro, avendone avuto abbastanza per un po’) e camminai con lui fino alla strada aperta: una strada triste, allora, di notte. Era di grande umore per tutto il tragitto; e quando ci separammo, e lo guardai andare così coraggiosamente e con disinvoltura verso casa, pensai alle sue parole, ‘Superare tutti gli ostacoli e vincere la gara!’, e desiderai, per la prima volta, che avesse una gara degna da correre.
Mi stavo spogliando nella mia stanza, quando la lettera del signor Micawber cadde sul pavimento. Ricordandomene, la aprii e lessi quanto segue. Era datata un’ora e mezza prima di cena. Non sono sicuro di aver già detto che, quando il signor Micawber si trovava in una crisi particolarmente disperata, usava una specie di linguaggio legale, che sembrava considerare equivalente a liquidare i suoi affari.
‘SIR—perché non oso dire mio caro Copperfield,
«È opportuno che io vi informi che l’abbonato è Schiacciato. Alcuni deboli tentativi di risparmiarvi la prematura conoscenza della sua calamitosa situazione, potrete osservarli in lui oggi; ma la speranza è affondata sotto l’orizzonte, e l’abbonato è Schiacciato.
«La presente comunicazione è scritta all’interno dell’ambito personale (non posso chiamarlo società) di un individuo, in uno stato di quasi ebbrezza, impiegato da un agente di commercio. Questo individuo è in possesso legale dei locali, in seguito a un pignoramento per canoni di locazione. Il suo inventario include, non solo i beni mobili ed effetti di ogni descrizione appartenenti al sottoscritto, in qualità di locatario annuale di questa abitazione, ma anche quelli relativi al signor Thomas Traddles, inquilino, membro dell’Onorevole Società dell’Inner Temple.
«Se mancasse una goccia di malinconia nella coppa colma, che ora è “consigliata” (per dirla con le parole di un Autore immortale) alle labbra del sottoscritto, la si troverebbe nel fatto che un’accettazione amichevole concessa al sottoscritto dal già menzionato signor Thomas Traddles, per la somma di 23l 4s 9 1/2d è scaduta e NON è stata saldata. Inoltre, nel fatto che le responsabilità vitali che gravano sul sottoscritto verranno, nel corso della natura, aumentate della somma di un’altra vittima indifesa; la cui miserevole comparsa si può aspettare — in cifre tonde — alla scadenza di un periodo non superiore a sei mesi lunari dalla data odierna.
«Dopo aver premesso tanto, sarebbe un’opera di supererogazione aggiungere, che polvere e cenere sono per sempre sparse
‘Su ‘Il ‘Capo ‘Di ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
Povero Traddles! Conoscevo ormai abbastanza il signor Micawber da prevedere che avrebbe potuto riprendersi dal colpo; ma il mio riposo notturno fu gravemente turbato dai pensieri su Traddles e sulla figlia del curato, che era una di dieci, laggiù nel Devonshire, e che era una ragazza così cara, e che avrebbe aspettato Traddles (infausta lode!) fino a quando non avesse avuto sessant’anni, o qualsiasi età si potesse menzionare.
CHAPTER 29. I VISIT STEERFORTH AT HIS HOME, AGAIN
I mentioned to Mr. Spenlow in the morning, that I wanted leave of absence for a short time; and as I was not in the receipt of any salary, and consequently was not obnoxious to the implacable Jorkins, there was no difficulty about it. I took that opportunity, with my voice sticking in my throat, and my sight failing as I uttered the words, to express my hope that Miss Spenlow was quite well; to which Mr. Spenlow replied, with no more emotion than if he had been speaking of an ordinary human being, that he was much obliged to me, and she was very well.
We articled clerks, as germs of the patrician order of proctors, were treated with so much consideration, that I was almost my own master at all times. As I did not care, however, to get to Highgate before one or two o’clock in the day, and as we had another little excommunication case in court that morning, which was called The office of the judge promoted by Tipkins against Bullock for his soul’s correction, I passed an hour or two in attendance on it with Mr. Spenlow very agreeably. It arose out of a scuffle between two churchwardens, one of whom was alleged to have pushed the other against a pump; the handle of which pump projecting into a school-house, which school-house was under a gable of the church-roof, made the push an ecclesiastical offence. It was an amusing case; and sent me up to Highgate, on the box of the stage-coach, thinking about the Commons, and what Mr. Spenlow had said about touching the Commons and bringing down the country.
Mrs. Steerforth was pleased to see me, and so was Rosa Dartle. I was agreeably surprised to find that Littimer was not there, and that we were attended by a modest little parlour-maid, with blue ribbons in her cap, whose eye it was much more pleasant, and much less disconcerting, to catch by accident, than the eye of that respectable man. But what I particularly observed, before I had been half-an-hour in the house, was the close and attentive watch Miss Dartle kept upon me; and the lurking manner in which she seemed to compare my face with Steerforth’s, and Steerforth’s with mine, and to lie in wait for something to come out between the two. So surely as I looked towards her, did I see that eager visage, with its gaunt black eyes and searching brow, intent on mine; or passing suddenly from mine to Steerforth’s; or comprehending both of us at once. In this lynx-like scrutiny she was so far from faltering when she saw I observed it, that at such a time she only fixed her piercing look upon me with a more intent expression still. Blameless as I was, and knew that I was, in reference to any wrong she could possibly suspect me of, I shrunk before her strange eyes, quite unable to endure their hungry lustre.
All day, she seemed to pervade the whole house. If I talked to Steerforth in his room, I heard her dress rustle in the little gallery outside. When he and I engaged in some of our old exercises on the lawn behind the house, I saw her face pass from window to window, like a wandering light, until it fixed itself in one, and watched us. When we all four went out walking in the afternoon, she closed her thin hand on my arm like a spring, to keep me back, while Steerforth and his mother went on out of hearing: and then spoke to me.
‘You have been a long time,’ she said, ‘without coming here. Is your profession really so engaging and interesting as to absorb your whole attention? I ask because I always want to be informed, when I am ignorant. Is it really, though?’
I replied that I liked it well enough, but that I certainly could not claim so much for it.
‘Oh! I am glad to know that, because I always like to be put right when I am wrong,’ said Rosa Dartle. ‘You mean it is a little dry, perhaps?’
‘Well,’ I replied; ‘perhaps it was a little dry.’
‘Oh! and that’s a reason why you want relief and change—excitement and all that?’ said she. ‘Ah! very true! But isn’t it a little—Eh?—for him; I don’t mean you?’
A quick glance of her eye towards the spot where Steerforth was walking, with his mother leaning on his arm, showed me whom she meant; but beyond that, I was quite lost. And I looked so, I have no doubt.
‘Don’t it—I don’t say that it does, mind I want to know—don’t it rather engross him? Don’t it make him, perhaps, a little more remiss than usual in his visits to his blindly-doting—eh?’ With another quick glance at them, and such a glance at me as seemed to look into my innermost thoughts.
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘pray do not think—’
‘I don’t!’ she said. ‘Oh dear me, don’t suppose that I think anything! I am not suspicious. I only ask a question. I don’t state any opinion. I want to found an opinion on what you tell me. Then, it’s not so? Well! I am very glad to know it.’
‘It certainly is not the fact,’ said I, perplexed, ‘that I am accountable for Steerforth’s having been away from home longer than usual—if he has been: which I really don’t know at this moment, unless I understand it from you. I have not seen him this long while, until last night.’
‘No?’
‘Indeed, Miss Dartle, no!’
As she looked full at me, I saw her face grow sharper and paler, and the marks of the old wound lengthen out until it cut through the disfigured lip, and deep into the nether lip, and slanted down the face. There was something positively awful to me in this, and in the brightness of her eyes, as she said, looking fixedly at me:
‘What is he doing?’
I repeated the words, more to myself than her, being so amazed.
‘What is he doing?’ she said, with an eagerness that seemed enough to consume her like a fire. ‘In what is that man assisting him, who never looks at me without an inscrutable falsehood in his eyes? If you are honourable and faithful, I don’t ask you to betray your friend. I ask you only to tell me, is it anger, is it hatred, is it pride, is it restlessness, is it some wild fancy, is it love, what is it, that is leading him?’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘how shall I tell you, so that you will believe me, that I know of nothing in Steerforth different from what there was when I first came here? I can think of nothing. I firmly believe there is nothing. I hardly understand even what you mean.’
As she still stood looking fixedly at me, a twitching or throbbing, from which I could not dissociate the idea of pain, came into that cruel mark; and lifted up the corner of her lip as if with scorn, or with a pity that despised its object. She put her hand upon it hurriedly—a hand so thin and delicate, that when I had seen her hold it up before the fire to shade her face, I had compared it in my thoughts to fine porcelain—and saying, in a quick, fierce, passionate way, ‘I swear you to secrecy about this!’ said not a word more.
Mrs. Steerforth was particularly happy in her son’s society, and Steerforth was, on this occasion, particularly attentive and respectful to her. It was very interesting to me to see them together, not only on account of their mutual affection, but because of the strong personal resemblance between them, and the manner in which what was haughty or impetuous in him was softened by age and sex, in her, to a gracious dignity. I thought, more than once, that it was well no serious cause of division had ever come between them; or two such natures—I ought rather to express it, two such shades of the same nature—might have been harder to reconcile than the two extremest opposites in creation. The idea did not originate in my own discernment, I am bound to confess, but in a speech of Rosa Dartle’s.
She said at dinner:
‘Oh, but do tell me, though, somebody, because I have been thinking about it all day, and I want to know.’
‘You want to know what, Rosa?’ returned Mrs. Steerforth. ‘Pray, pray, Rosa, do not be mysterious.’
‘Mysterious!’ she cried. ‘Oh! really? Do you consider me so?’
‘Do I constantly entreat you,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘to speak plainly, in your own natural manner?’
‘Oh! then this is not my natural manner?’ she rejoined. ‘Now you must really bear with me, because I ask for information. We never know ourselves.’
‘It has become a second nature,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, without any displeasure; ‘but I remember,—and so must you, I think,—when your manner was different, Rosa; when it was not so guarded, and was more trustful.’
‘I am sure you are right,’ she returned; ‘and so it is that bad habits grow upon one! Really? Less guarded and more trustful? How can I, imperceptibly, have changed, I wonder! Well, that’s very odd! I must study to regain my former self.’
‘I wish you would,’ said Mrs. Steerforth, with a smile.
‘Oh! I really will, you know!’ she answered. ‘I will learn frankness from—let me see—from James.’
‘You cannot learn frankness, Rosa,’ said Mrs. Steerforth quickly—for there was always some effect of sarcasm in what Rosa Dartle said, though it was said, as this was, in the most unconscious manner in the world—‘in a better school.’
‘That I am sure of,’ she answered, with uncommon fervour. ‘If I am sure of anything, of course, you know, I am sure of that.’
Mrs. Steerforth appeared to me to regret having been a little nettled; for she presently said, in a kind tone:
‘Well, my dear Rosa, we have not heard what it is that you want to be satisfied about?’
‘That I want to be satisfied about?’ she replied, with provoking coldness. ‘Oh! It was only whether people, who are like each other in their moral constitution—is that the phrase?’
‘It’s as good a phrase as another,’ said Steerforth.
‘Thank you:—whether people, who are like each other in their moral constitution, are in greater danger than people not so circumstanced, supposing any serious cause of variance to arise between them, of being divided angrily and deeply?’
‘I should say yes,’ said Steerforth.
‘Should you?’ she retorted. ‘Dear me! Supposing then, for instance—any unlikely thing will do for a supposition—that you and your mother were to have a serious quarrel.’
‘My dear Rosa,’ interposed Mrs. Steerforth, laughing good-naturedly, ‘suggest some other supposition! James and I know our duty to each other better, I pray Heaven!’
‘Oh!’ said Miss Dartle, nodding her head thoughtfully. ‘To be sure. That would prevent it? Why, of course it would. Exactly. Now, I am glad I have been so foolish as to put the case, for it is so very good to know that your duty to each other would prevent it! Thank you very much.’
One other little circumstance connected with Miss Dartle I must not omit; for I had reason to remember it thereafter, when all the irremediable past was rendered plain. During the whole of this day, but especially from this period of it, Steerforth exerted himself with his utmost skill, and that was with his utmost ease, to charm this singular creature into a pleasant and pleased companion. That he should succeed, was no matter of surprise to me. That she should struggle against the fascinating influence of his delightful art—delightful nature I thought it then—did not surprise me either; for I knew that she was sometimes jaundiced and perverse. I saw her features and her manner slowly change; I saw her look at him with growing admiration; I saw her try, more and more faintly, but always angrily, as if she condemned a weakness in herself, to resist the captivating power that he possessed; and finally, I saw her sharp glance soften, and her smile become quite gentle, and I ceased to be afraid of her as I had really been all day, and we all sat about the fire, talking and laughing together, with as little reserve as if we had been children.
Whether it was because we had sat there so long, or because Steerforth was resolved not to lose the advantage he had gained, I do not know; but we did not remain in the dining-room more than five minutes after her departure. ‘She is playing her harp,’ said Steerforth, softly, at the drawing-room door, ‘and nobody but my mother has heard her do that, I believe, these three years.’ He said it with a curious smile, which was gone directly; and we went into the room and found her alone.
«Signorina Dartle», replicai, «come posso dirvelo in modo che mi crediate, che non so nulla di Steerforth diverso da quello che era quando sono venuto qui la prima volta? Non riesco a pensare a nulla. Sono fermamente convinto che non ci sia nulla. Non riesco nemmeno a capire cosa intendiate.»
Mentre continuava a fissarmi, un fremito o un pulsare, al quale non potevo non associare l’idea di dolore, si manifestò in quella crudele cicatrice; e sollevò l’angolo del suo labbro come se fosse per disprezzo, o per una pietà che disprezzava il suo oggetto. Si portò la mano su di essa in fretta, una mano così sottile e delicata che quando l’avevo vista alzare davanti al fuoco per proteggersi il viso, l’avevo paragonata, nei miei pensieri, a una fine porcellana, e dicendo, in modo rapido, feroce, appassionato: «Lei mi giura di mantenere il segreto su questo!», non disse più una parola.
La signora Steerforth era particolarmente felice in compagnia di suo figlio, e Steerforth, in questa occasione, era particolarmente attento e rispettoso nei suoi confronti. Era molto interessante per me vederli insieme, non solo per il loro affetto reciproco, ma anche per la forte somiglianza personale tra loro, e per il modo in cui ciò che era altero o impetuoso in lui era addolcito dall’età e dal sesso, in lei, a una dignità graziosa. Pensai, più di una volta, che era bene che nessuna seria causa di divisione fosse mai sorta tra loro; o due nature così - dovrei piuttosto esprimerlo, due sfumature della stessa natura - potrebbero essere state più difficili da conciliare dei due estremi opposti della creazione. L’idea non era nata dal mio acume, devo confessare, ma da un discorso di Rosa Dartle.
Disse a cena:
«Oh, ma ditemelo, per favore, qualcuno, perché ci ho pensato tutto il giorno e voglio saperlo.»
«Volete sapere che cosa, Rosa?» rispose la signora Steerforth. «Vi prego, vi prego, Rosa, non siate misteriosa.»
“Misteriosa!” esclamò. “Oh! davvero? Mi consideri tale?”
«Vi prego costantemente», disse la signora Steerforth, «di parlare in modo chiaro, nel vostro modo naturale?»
«Oh! allora questo non è il mio modo naturale?» replicò. «Ora dovete davvero sopportarmi, perché chiedo informazioni. Non ci conosciamo mai abbastanza.»
«È diventata una seconda natura», disse la signora Steerforth, senza alcun disappunto; «ma ricordo, — e credo che tu debba ricordare anche tu, — quando il tuo comportamento era diverso, Rosa; quando non era così riservato, e era più fiducioso.»
«Sono sicura che hai ragione», rispose; «e così è che le cattive abitudini si insinuano in uno! Davvero? Meno guardinga e più fiduciosa? Come ho potuto, senza accorgermene, cambiare, mi chiedo! Beh, è molto strano! Devo impegnarmi a ritrovare il mio vecchio io.»
«Spero che lo facciate», disse la signora Steerforth con un sorriso.
«Oh! Davvero lo farò, sapete!» rispose. «Imparerò la schiettezza da—lasciatemi pensare—da James.»
«Non si può imparare la schiettezza, Rosa», disse la signora Steerforth in fretta, perché c’era sempre un pizzico di sarcasmo in ciò che diceva Rosa Dartle, anche se lo diceva, come in questo caso, nel modo più inconsapevole del mondo, «in una scuola migliore».
«Ne sono sicura», rispose con insolita passione. «Se sono sicura di qualcosa, naturalmente, sapete, sono sicura di questo.»
La signora Steerforth sembrava pentirsi di essersi un po’ irritata; infatti poco dopo disse, con tono gentile:
«Bene, mia cara Rosa, non abbiamo ancora sentito di che cosa tu voglia essere soddisfatta?»
«Che io voglia essere soddisfatta?» rispose, con fredda provocazione. «Oh! Era solo se le persone, che sono simili tra loro nella loro costituzione morale — è questa la frase?»
«È una frase buona come un’altra», disse Steerforth.
«Grazie:—se le persone, che sono simili tra loro nella loro costituzione morale, sono in maggiore pericolo rispetto a persone non così accomunate, nel caso insorga tra loro una grave causa di discordia, di essere divise in modo rabbioso e profondo?»
«Direi di sì», disse Steerforth.
«Dovreste?» replicò. «Caro me! Supponiamo allora, per esempio — qualsiasi cosa improbabile va bene per un’ipotesi — che voi e vostra madre aveste una seria lite.»
«Mia cara Rosa», intervenne la signora Steerforth, ridendo con bonomia, «suggerisci qualche altra supposizione! James ed io conosciamo meglio il nostro dovere l’uno verso l’altro, lo prego il Cielo!»
«Oh!» disse Miss Dartle, annuendo pensierosa. «Certo. Questo lo impedirebbe? Beh, ovviamente sì. Esattamente. Ora, sono contenta di essere stata così sciocca da porre il caso, perché è così utile sapere che il vostro dovere reciproco lo impedirebbe! Grazie mille.»
Un’altra piccola circostanza relativa a Miss Dartle non devo omettere; perché avevo motivo di ricordarla in seguito, quando tutto il passato irrimediabile fu reso chiaro. Per tutta la durata di questa giornata, ma soprattutto da questo momento in poi, Steerforth si impegnò con la sua massima abilità, e ciò con la massima disinvoltura, per incantare questa singolare creature in una compagna piacevole e contenta. Che avesse successo, non era una sorpresa per me. Che lei lottasse contro l’influenza affascinante della sua deliziosa arte—deliziosa natura pensavo allora—non mi sorprese nemmeno; perché sapevo che a volte era maldisposta e perversa. Vidi le sue fattezze e il suo comportamento cambiare lentamente; la vidi guardarlo con crescente ammirazione; la vidi cercare, sempre più debolmente, ma sempre con rabbia, come se condannasse una debolezza in se stessa, di resistere al potere affascinante che possedeva; e infine, la vidi il suo sguardo acuto ammorbidirsi, e il suo sorriso diventare del tutto gentile, e io cessai di aver paura di lei come ero stato davvero tutto il giorno, e tutti noi sedevamo intorno al fuoco, parlando e ridendo insieme, con la stessa poca riserva come se fossimo stati bambini.
Non so se fosse perché eravamo rimasti seduti lì per tanto tempo, o perché Steerforth era deciso a non perdere il vantaggio che aveva guadagnato, ma non restammo nella sala da pranzo più di cinque minuti dopo la sua partenza. «Sta suonando il suo arpa», disse Steerforth, dolcemente, alla porta del salotto, «e credo che negli ultimi tre anni nessuno, tranne mia madre, l’abbia sentita fare questo.» Lo disse con un sorriso curioso, che scomparve subito; e andammo nella stanza e la trovammo sola.
‘Don’t get up,’ said Steerforth (which she had already done)’ my dear Rosa, don’t! Be kind for once, and sing us an Irish song.’
‘What do you care for an Irish song?’ she returned.
‘Much!’ said Steerforth. ‘Much more than for any other. Here is Daisy, too, loves music from his soul. Sing us an Irish song, Rosa! and let me sit and listen as I used to do.’
He did not touch her, or the chair from which she had risen, but sat himself near the harp. She stood beside it for some little while, in a curious way, going through the motion of playing it with her right hand, but not sounding it. At length she sat down, and drew it to her with one sudden action, and played and sang.
I don’t know what it was, in her touch or voice, that made that song the most unearthly I have ever heard in my life, or can imagine. There was something fearful in the reality of it. It was as if it had never been written, or set to music, but sprung out of passion within her; which found imperfect utterance in the low sounds of her voice, and crouched again when all was still. I was dumb when she leaned beside the harp again, playing it, but not sounding it, with her right hand.
A minute more, and this had roused me from my trance:—Steerforth had left his seat, and gone to her, and had put his arm laughingly about her, and had said, ‘Come, Rosa, for the future we will love each other very much!’ And she had struck him, and had thrown him off with the fury of a wild cat, and had burst out of the room.
‘What is the matter with Rosa?’ said Mrs. Steerforth, coming in.
‘She has been an angel, mother,’ returned Steerforth, ‘for a little while; and has run into the opposite extreme, since, by way of compensation.’
‘You should be careful not to irritate her, James. Her temper has been soured, remember, and ought not to be tried.’
Rosa did not come back; and no other mention was made of her, until I went with Steerforth into his room to say Good night. Then he laughed about her, and asked me if I had ever seen such a fierce little piece of incomprehensibility.
I expressed as much of my astonishment as was then capable of expression, and asked if he could guess what it was that she had taken so much amiss, so suddenly.
‘Oh, Heaven knows,’ said Steerforth. ‘Anything you like—or nothing! I told you she took everything, herself included, to a grindstone, and sharpened it. She is an edge-tool, and requires great care in dealing with. She is always dangerous. Good night!’
‘Good night!’ said I, ‘my dear Steerforth! I shall be gone before you wake in the morning. Good night!’
He was unwilling to let me go; and stood, holding me out, with a hand on each of my shoulders, as he had done in my own room.
‘Daisy,’ he said, with a smile—‘for though that’s not the name your godfathers and godmothers gave you, it’s the name I like best to call you by—and I wish, I wish, I wish, you could give it to me!’
‘Why so I can, if I choose,’ said I.
‘Daisy, if anything should ever separate us, you must think of me at my best, old boy. Come! Let us make that bargain. Think of me at my best, if circumstances should ever part us!’
‘You have no best to me, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘and no worst. You are always equally loved, and cherished in my heart.’
So much compunction for having ever wronged him, even by a shapeless thought, did I feel within me, that the confession of having done so was rising to my lips. But for the reluctance I had to betray the confidence of Agnes, but for my uncertainty how to approach the subject with no risk of doing so, it would have reached them before he said, ‘God bless you, Daisy, and good night!’ In my doubt, it did NOT reach them; and we shook hands, and we parted.
I was up with the dull dawn, and, having dressed as quietly as I could, looked into his room. He was fast asleep; lying, easily, with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
The time came in its season, and that was very soon, when I almost wondered that nothing troubled his repose, as I looked at him. But he slept—let me think of him so again—as I had often seen him sleep at school; and thus, in this silent hour, I left him. —Never more, oh God forgive you, Steerforth! to touch that passive hand in love and friendship. Never, never more!
«Non alzarti», disse Steerforth (cosa che lei aveva già fatto), «mia cara Rosa, no! Per una volta, sii gentile e cantaci una canzone irlandese.»
«Che cosa le importa di una canzone irlandese?» replicò.
«Molto!» disse Steerforth. «Molto più che per qualsiasi altro. E anche Daisy, qui, ama la musica con tutta la sua anima. Cantaci una canzone irlandese, Rosa! e lascia che mi sieda ad ascoltare come facevo una volta.»
Non la toccò, né la sedia da cui si era alzata, ma si sedette vicino all’arpa. Lei vi stette accanto per qualche istante, in modo strano, facendo il gesto di suonarla con la mano destra, ma senza produrre suono. Alla fine si sedette, la tirò a sé con un gesto improvviso, e suonò e cantò.
Non so cosa fosse, nel suo tocco o nella sua voce, che rendeva quella canzone la più sovrumana che avessi mai sentito in vita mia, o che potessi immaginare. C’era qualcosa di spaventoso nella sua realtà. Era come se non fosse mai stata scritta, o messa in musica, ma fosse nata dalla passione dentro di lei; che trovava un’espressione imperfetta nei suoni bassi della sua voce, e si rannicchiava di nuovo quando tutto era silenzio. Ero muto quando si chinò di nuovo accanto all’arpa, suonandola, ma senza farla risuonare, con la sua mano destra.
Un minuto dopo, e questo mi aveva risvegliato dal mio trance:—Steerforth aveva lasciato il suo posto, ed era andato da lei, e le aveva messo il braccio intorno alle spalle ridendo, e aveva detto, ‘Dai, Rosa, in futuro ci ameremo molto!’ E lei lo aveva colpito, e lo aveva respinto con la furia di un gatto selvatico, ed era esplosa fuori dalla stanza.
«Che cosa c’è che non va con Rosa?» disse la signora Steerforth, entrando.
«È stata un angelo, mamma», rispose Steerforth, «per un po’ di tempo; e da allora è passata all’estremo opposto, per compensazione.»
«Dovresti stare attento a non irritarla, James. Il suo carattere è diventato acido, ricorda, e non dovrebbe essere messo alla prova.»
Rosa non tornò; e non si fece più menzione di lei, finché io non andai con Steerforth nella sua stanza per dirgli buonanotte. Allora lui rise di lei, e mi chiese se avessi mai visto un pezzo così feroce di incomprensibilità.
Espressi tutta la mia sorpresa, per quanto fosse possibile esprimerla, e gli chiesi se poteva indovinare che cosa fosse che lei aveva preso tanto male, così all’improvviso.
«Oh, Dio sa», disse Steerforth. «Qualsiasi cosa tu voglia, o niente! Ti ho detto che lei prende tutto, se stessa compresa, e lo affila su una mola. È uno strumento affilato, e richiede grande attenzione nel trattarla. È sempre pericolosa. Buona notte!»
«Buona notte!» dissi, «mio caro Steerforth! Sarò già andato prima che ti svegli domattina. Buona notte!»
Non voleva lasciarmi andare; e rimase in piedi, tenendomi lontano da sé, con una mano su ciascuna delle mie spalle, come aveva fatto nella mia stanza.
«Daisy», disse con un sorriso, «perché, sebbene non sia il nome che ti hanno dato i tuoi padrini e madrine, è il nome con cui preferisco chiamarti, e vorrei, vorrei, vorrei che tu potessi darmelo!»
«Perché posso, se voglio», dissi io.
«Daisy, se mai qualcosa dovesse separarci, devi pensare a me al meglio delle mie possibilità, vecchio mio. Dai! Facciamo questo patto. Pensa a me al meglio delle mie possibilità, se mai le circostanze dovessero separarci!»
«Non hai un meglio per me, Steerforth», dissi, «né un peggio. Sei sempre ugualmente amato e custodito nel mio cuore.»
Provavo un tale rimorso per averlo mai offeso, anche solo con un pensiero informe, che la confessione di averlo fatto stava per salirmi alle labbra. Ma per la riluttanza che avevo a tradire la fiducia di Agnes, e per l’incertezza su come affrontare l’argomento senza correre il rischio di farlo, non l’avrei detta prima che lui dicesse: «Dio ti benedica, Daisy, e buona notte!». Nel mio dubbio, non la dissi; e ci stringemmo la mano, e ci separammo.
Mi alzai con l’opaco alba, e, dopo essermi vestito nel modo più silenzioso possibile, entrai nella sua stanza. Dormiva profondamente; disteso, rilassato, con la testa appoggiata sul braccio, come l’avevo spesso visto fare a scuola.
Il tempo venne a suo tempo, e questo avvenne molto presto, quando quasi mi chiedevo come nulla potesse turbare il suo riposo, mentre lo guardavo. Ma dormiva - lasciatemi pensare a lui così ancora una volta - come spesso l’avevo visto dormire a scuola; e così, in questa ora silenziosa, lo lasciai. — Mai più, o Dio ti perdoni, Steerforth! toccare quella mano passiva in amore e amicizia. Mai, mai più!
CHAPTER 30. A LOSS
I got down to Yarmouth in the evening, and went to the inn. I knew that Peggotty’s spare room—my room—was likely to have occupation enough in a little while, if that great Visitor, before whose presence all the living must give place, were not already in the house; so I betook myself to the inn, and dined there, and engaged my bed.
It was ten o’clock when I went out. Many of the shops were shut, and the town was dull. When I came to Omer and Joram’s, I found the shutters up, but the shop door standing open. As I could obtain a perspective view of Mr. Omer inside, smoking his pipe by the parlour door, I entered, and asked him how he was.
‘Why, bless my life and soul!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘how do you find yourself? Take a seat.---Smoke not disagreeable, I hope?’
‘By no means,’ said I. ‘I like it—in somebody else’s pipe.’
‘What, not in your own, eh?’ Mr. Omer returned, laughing. ‘All the better, sir. Bad habit for a young man. Take a seat. I smoke, myself, for the asthma.’
Mr. Omer had made room for me, and placed a chair. He now sat down again very much out of breath, gasping at his pipe as if it contained a supply of that necessary, without which he must perish.
‘I am sorry to have heard bad news of Mr. Barkis,’ said I.
Mr. Omer looked at me, with a steady countenance, and shook his head.
‘Do you know how he is tonight?’ I asked.
‘The very question I should have put to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Omer, ‘but on account of delicacy. It’s one of the drawbacks of our line of business. When a party’s ill, we can’t ask how the party is.’
The difficulty had not occurred to me; though I had had my apprehensions too, when I went in, of hearing the old tune. On its being mentioned, I recognized it, however, and said as much.
‘Yes, yes, you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, nodding his head. ‘We dursn’t do it. Bless you, it would be a shock that the generality of parties mightn’t recover, to say “Omer and Joram’s compliments, and how do you find yourself this morning?”—or this afternoon—as it may be.’
Mr. Omer and I nodded at each other, and Mr. Omer recruited his wind by the aid of his pipe.
‘It’s one of the things that cut the trade off from attentions they could often wish to show,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Take myself. If I have known Barkis a year, to move to as he went by, I have known him forty years. But I can’t go and say, “how is he?”’
I felt it was rather hard on Mr. Omer, and I told him so.
‘I’m not more self-interested, I hope, than another man,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Look at me! My wind may fail me at any moment, and it ain’t likely that, to my own knowledge, I’d be self-interested under such circumstances. I say it ain’t likely, in a man who knows his wind will go, when it DOES go, as if a pair of bellows was cut open; and that man a grandfather,’ said Mr. Omer.
I said, ‘Not at all.’
‘It ain’t that I complain of my line of business,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It ain’t that. Some good and some bad goes, no doubt, to all callings. What I wish is, that parties was brought up stronger-minded.’
Mr. Omer, with a very complacent and amiable face, took several puffs in silence; and then said, resuming his first point:
‘Accordingly we’re obleeged, in ascertaining how Barkis goes on, to limit ourselves to Em’ly. She knows what our real objects are, and she don’t have any more alarms or suspicions about us, than if we was so many lambs. Minnie and Joram have just stepped down to the house, in fact (she’s there, after hours, helping her aunt a bit), to ask her how he is tonight; and if you was to please to wait till they come back, they’d give you full partic’lers. Will you take something? A glass of srub and water, now? I smoke on srub and water, myself,’ said Mr. Omer, taking up his glass, ‘because it’s considered softening to the passages, by which this troublesome breath of mine gets into action. But, Lord bless you,’ said Mr. Omer, huskily, ‘it ain’t the passages that’s out of order! “Give me breath enough,” said I to my daughter Minnie, “and I’ll find passages, my dear.”’
He really had no breath to spare, and it was very alarming to see him laugh. When he was again in a condition to be talked to, I thanked him for the proffered refreshment, which I declined, as I had just had dinner; and, observing that I would wait, since he was so good as to invite me, until his daughter and his son-in-law came back, I inquired how little Emily was?
‘Well, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, removing his pipe, that he might rub his chin: ‘I tell you truly, I shall be glad when her marriage has taken place.’
‘Why so?’ I inquired.
‘Well, she’s unsettled at present,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘It ain’t that she’s not as pretty as ever, for she’s prettier—I do assure you, she is prettier. It ain’t that she don’t work as well as ever, for she does. She WAS worth any six, and she IS worth any six. But somehow she wants heart. If you understand,’ said Mr. Omer, after rubbing his chin again, and smoking a little, ‘what I mean in a general way by the expression, “A long pull, and a strong pull, and a pull altogether, my hearties, hurrah!” I should say to you, that that was—in a general way—what I miss in Em’ly.’
Mr. Omer’s face and manner went for so much, that I could conscientiously nod my head, as divining his meaning. My quickness of apprehension seemed to please him, and he went on: ‘Now I consider this is principally on account of her being in an unsettled state, you see. We have talked it over a good deal, her uncle and myself, and her sweetheart and myself, after business; and I consider it is principally on account of her being unsettled. You must always recollect of Em’ly,’ said Mr. Omer, shaking his head gently, ‘that she’s a most extraordinary affectionate little thing. The proverb says, “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Well, I don’t know about that. I rather think you may, if you begin early in life. She has made a home out of that old boat, sir, that stone and marble couldn’t beat.’
CAPITOLO 30. UNA PERDITA
Arrivai a Yarmouth la sera e andai all’osteria. Sapevo che la stanza di riserva di Peggotty, la mia stanza, avrebbe probabilmente avuto un occupante a breve, se quel grande Visitatore, davanti al quale tutti i viventi devono cedere il posto, non fosse già in casa; così mi rifugiai all’osteria, cenai lì e prenotai il mio letto.
Erano le dieci quando uscii. Molti negozi erano chiusi e la città era triste. Quando arrivai da Omer e Joram, trovai le serrande alzate, ma la porta del negozio aperta. Poiché potevo vedere il signor Omer all’interno, che fumava la pipa vicino alla porta del salotto, entrai e gli chiesi come stava.
«Ma, benedetta la mia anima!» disse il signor Omer, «come vi sentite? Sedetevi. --- Il fumo non vi disturba, spero?»
‘Per niente’, dissi. ‘Mi piace, nella pipa di qualcun altro’.
«Che, non nel vostro, eh?» rispose ridendo il signor Omer. «Tanto meglio, signore. Cattiva abitudine per un giovane. Si accomodi. Io fumo, per l’asma.»
Il signor Omer aveva fatto spazio per me e messo una sedia. Ora si sedette di nuovo, molto senza fiato, aspirando alla pipa come se contenesse una scorta di quell’essenziale, senza il quale sarebbe perito.
«Mi dispiace di aver appreso brutte notizie sul conto del signor Barkis», dissi.
Il signor Omer mi guardò con aria grave e scosse la testa.
«Sapete come sta stasera?» chiesi.
«Proprio la domanda che avrei dovuto porle, signore», rispose il signor Omer, «ma per delicatezza. È uno degli inconvenienti del nostro ramo d’affari. Quando una persona è malata, non possiamo chiedere come sta.»
La difficoltà non mi era venuta in mente, anche se avevo avuto anch’io le mie apprensioni quando ero entrato, di sentire la solita vecchia storia. Quando fu menzionata, la riconobbi però e lo dissi.
«Sì, sì, capite bene», disse il signor Omer, annuendo col capo. «Non osiamo farlo. Perbacco, sarebbe uno shock da cui la maggior parte delle persone non si riprenderebbe, se dovessimo dire: “I complimenti di Omer e Joram, e come vi sentite questa mattina?” — o questa sera — a seconda dei casi.»
Il signor Omer ed io ci salutammo con un cenno del capo, e il signor Omer si rinvigorì con l’aiuto della sua pipa.
«È una delle cose che impediscono al commercio di ricevere le attenzioni che spesso vorrebbe mostrare», disse il signor Omer. «Prendete me. Se ho conosciuto Barkis da un anno, per spostarmi quando passava, l’ho conosciuto per quarant’anni. Ma non posso andare a chiedere: “come sta?”»
Pensai che fosse piuttosto duro per il signor Omer, e glielo dissi.
«Non sono più egoista, spero, di un altro uomo», disse il signor Omer. «Guardatemi! Il mio fiato potrebbe mancarmi da un momento all’altro, e non è probabile che, a mia conoscenza, sarei egoista in tali circostanze. Dico che non è probabile, in un uomo che sa che il suo fiato se ne andrà, quando se ne ANDRÀ, come se si aprisse un paio di soffietti; e quell’uomo un nonno», disse il signor Omer.
Ho detto: “Niente affatto”.
«Non è che io mi lamenti del mio lavoro», disse il signor Omer. «Non è questo. Ogni mestiere ha i suoi lati buoni e quelli cattivi, senza dubbio. Quello che vorrei è che le persone fossero educate con più forza d’animo.»
Il signor Omer, con un volto molto compiaciuto e amabile, aspirò parecchie boccate in silenzio; e poi disse, riprendendo il suo primo punto:
«Di conseguenza, per scoprire come sta Barkis, siamo costretti a limitarci a Em’ly. Lei sa quali sono i nostri veri intenti, e non ha più allarmi o sospetti nei nostri confronti, come se fossimo tanti agnellini. Minnie e Joram sono appena scesi alla casa, infatti (lei è lì, dopo l’orario di lavoro, ad aiutare un po’ sua zia), per chiederle come sta stasera; e se volesse avere la gentilezza di aspettare fino al loro ritorno, le daranno tutti i particolari. Vuole prendere qualcosa? Un bicchiere di srub e acqua, per esempio? Io fumo su srub e acqua, di persona», disse il signor Omer, prendendo il suo bicchiere, «perché si ritiene che ammorbidisca le vie respiratorie, attraverso le quali questo mio respiro problematico si mette in azione. Ma, Signore ci benedica», disse il signor Omer, con voce rauca, «non sono le vie respiratorie a non funzionare! “Dammi abbastanza fiato”, ho detto a mia figlia Minnie, “e troverò le vie respiratorie, mia cara.”»
Non aveva davvero fiato da perdere, ed era davvero allarmante vederlo ridere. Quando fu di nuovo in grado di parlare, lo ringraziai per la bevanda offertami, che rifiutai, avendo appena cenato; e, osservando che avrei atteso, dato che era così gentile da invitarmi, fino al ritorno di sua figlia e del genero, chiesi come stava Emily?
«Beh, signore», disse il signor Omer, togliendosi la pipa per strofinarsi il mento, «le dico sinceramente che sarò felice quando il suo matrimonio sarà stato celebrato.»
«Perché?» chiesi.
«Beh, al momento è turbata», disse il signor Omer. «Non è che non sia bella come sempre, perché è più bella — ve lo assicuro, è più bella. Non è che non lavori come bene come sempre, perché lavora. ERA il massimo di sei, ed È il massimo di sei. Ma in qualche modo le manca il cuore. Se capite», disse il signor Omer, dopo essersi strofinato il mento di nuovo e aver fumato un po’, «cosa intendo in generale con l’espressione, “Una lunga tirata, e una forte tirata, e una tirata insieme, ragazzi, evviva!” direi che è — in generale — ciò che manca in Emily.»
Il volto e il comportamento del signor Omer avevano un tale peso che potevo annuire con convinzione, come se avessi intuito il suo pensiero. La mia prontezza di comprensione sembrò piacergli, e continuò: «Ora, ritengo che ciò sia principalmente dovuto al fatto che lei si trova in uno stato di incertezza, capisce. Ne abbiamo parlato a lungo, suo zio e io, e il suo fidanzato e io, dopo il lavoro; e ritengo che sia principalmente a causa del suo stato di incertezza. Devi sempre ricordare di Emily», disse il signor Omer, scuotendo dolcemente la testa, «che è una creatura straordinariamente affettuosa. Il proverbio dice: “Non puoi fare una borsa di seta dall’orecchio di una scrofa.” Beh, non so. Penso piuttosto che si possa, se si inizia presto nella vita. Ha fatto una casa di quella vecchia barca, signore, che pietra e marmo non potrebbero eguagliare.»
‘I am sure she has!’ said I.
‘To see the clinging of that pretty little thing to her uncle,’ said Mr. Omer; ‘to see the way she holds on to him, tighter and tighter, and closer and closer, every day, is to see a sight. Now, you know, there’s a struggle going on when that’s the case. Why should it be made a longer one than is needful?’
I listened attentively to the good old fellow, and acquiesced, with all my heart, in what he said.
‘Therefore, I mentioned to them,’ said Mr. Omer, in a comfortable, easy-going tone, ‘this. I said, “Now, don’t consider Em’ly nailed down in point of time, at all. Make it your own time. Her services have been more valuable than was supposed; her learning has been quicker than was supposed; Omer and Joram can run their pen through what remains; and she’s free when you wish. If she likes to make any little arrangement, afterwards, in the way of doing any little thing for us at home, very well. If she don’t, very well still. We’re no losers, anyhow.” For—don’t you see,’ said Mr. Omer, touching me with his pipe, ‘it ain’t likely that a man so short of breath as myself, and a grandfather too, would go and strain points with a little bit of a blue-eyed blossom, like her?’
‘Not at all, I am certain,’ said I.
‘Not at all! You’re right!’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir, her cousin—you know it’s a cousin she’s going to be married to?’
‘Oh yes,’ I replied. ‘I know him well.’
‘Of course you do,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Well, sir! Her cousin being, as it appears, in good work, and well to do, thanked me in a very manly sort of manner for this (conducting himself altogether, I must say, in a way that gives me a high opinion of him), and went and took as comfortable a little house as you or I could wish to clap eyes on. That little house is now furnished right through, as neat and complete as a doll’s parlour; and but for Barkis’s illness having taken this bad turn, poor fellow, they would have been man and wife—I dare say, by this time. As it is, there’s a postponement.’
‘And Emily, Mr. Omer?’ I inquired. ‘Has she become more settled?’
‘Why that, you know,’ he returned, rubbing his double chin again, ‘can’t naturally be expected. The prospect of the change and separation, and all that, is, as one may say, close to her and far away from her, both at once. Barkis’s death needn’t put it off much, but his lingering might. Anyway, it’s an uncertain state of matters, you see.’
‘I see,’ said I.
‘Consequently,’ pursued Mr. Omer, ‘Em’ly’s still a little down, and a little fluttered; perhaps, upon the whole, she’s more so than she was. Every day she seems to get fonder and fonder of her uncle, and more loth to part from all of us. A kind word from me brings the tears into her eyes; and if you was to see her with my daughter Minnie’s little girl, you’d never forget it. Bless my heart alive!’ said Mr. Omer, pondering, ‘how she loves that child!’
Having so favourable an opportunity, it occurred to me to ask Mr. Omer, before our conversation should be interrupted by the return of his daughter and her husband, whether he knew anything of Martha.
‘Ah!’ he rejoined, shaking his head, and looking very much dejected. ‘No good. A sad story, sir, however you come to know it. I never thought there was harm in the girl. I wouldn’t wish to mention it before my daughter Minnie—for she’d take me up directly—but I never did. None of us ever did.’
Mr. Omer, hearing his daughter’s footstep before I heard it, touched me with his pipe, and shut up one eye, as a caution. She and her husband came in immediately afterwards.
Their report was, that Mr. Barkis was ‘as bad as bad could be’; that he was quite unconscious; and that Mr. Chillip had mournfully said in the kitchen, on going away just now, that the College of Physicians, the College of Surgeons, and Apothecaries’ Hall, if they were all called in together, couldn’t help him. He was past both Colleges, Mr. Chillip said, and the Hall could only poison him.
Hearing this, and learning that Mr. Peggotty was there, I determined to go to the house at once. I bade good night to Mr. Omer, and to Mr. and Mrs. Joram; and directed my steps thither, with a solemn feeling, which made Mr. Barkis quite a new and different creature.
My low tap at the door was answered by Mr. Peggotty. He was not so much surprised to see me as I had expected. I remarked this in Peggotty, too, when she came down; and I have seen it since; and I think, in the expectation of that dread surprise, all other changes and surprises dwindle into nothing.
I shook hands with Mr. Peggotty, and passed into the kitchen, while he softly closed the door. Little Emily was sitting by the fire, with her hands before her face. Ham was standing near her.
We spoke in whispers; listening, between whiles, for any sound in the room above. I had not thought of it on the occasion of my last visit, but how strange it was to me, now, to miss Mr. Barkis out of the kitchen!
‘This is very kind of you, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘It’s oncommon kind,’ said Ham.
‘Em’ly, my dear,’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘See here! Here’s Mas’r Davy come! What, cheer up, pretty! Not a wured to Mas’r Davy?’
There was a trembling upon her, that I can see now. The coldness of her hand when I touched it, I can feel yet. Its only sign of animation was to shrink from mine; and then she glided from the chair, and creeping to the other side of her uncle, bowed herself, silently and trembling still, upon his breast.
‘It’s such a loving art,’ said Mr. Peggotty, smoothing her rich hair with his great hard hand, ‘that it can’t abear the sorrer of this. It’s nat’ral in young folk, Mas’r Davy, when they’re new to these here trials, and timid, like my little bird,—it’s nat’ral.’
She clung the closer to him, but neither lifted up her face, nor spoke a word.
‘It’s getting late, my dear,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and here’s Ham come fur to take you home. Theer! Go along with t’other loving art! What’ Em’ly? Eh, my pretty?’
«Sono sicuro che l’ha!» dissi io.
«Vedere come quella graziosa bambina si aggrappa allo zio», disse il signor Omer, «vedere come si attacca a lui, sempre più stretta e più vicina, ogni giorno, è una cosa che fa riflettere. Ora, sapete, quando succede questo, c’è una lotta in corso. Perché prolungarla più del necessario?»
Ascoltai attentamente il buon vecchio e acconsentii, con tutto il cuore, a quanto diceva.
«Perciò, ho detto loro», continuò il signor Omer con tono tranquillo e rilassato, «questo. Ho detto: “Ora, non considerate Emily vincolata da un termine preciso. Fate in modo che sia il suo termine. I suoi servigi sono stati più preziosi di quanto si pensasse; ha imparato più in fretta di quanto si pensasse; Omer e Joram possono cancellare quello che resta; e lei è libera quando lo desiderate. Se le piace fare qualche piccolo accordo, in seguito, per fare qualche piccola cosa per noi a casa, va benissimo. Se non le piace, va benissimo lo stesso. Comunque, non siamo perdenti”. Perché — non vedete?», disse il signor Omer, toccandomi con la pipa, «non è probabile che un uomo con il fiato corto come me, e anche nonno, vada a fare storie con un piccolo fiore dagli occhi azzurri come lei?»
«Niente affatto, ne sono certo», dissi io.
«Niente affatto! Avete ragione!» disse il signor Omer. «Beh, signore, suo cugino, sapete che è a un cugino che sta per sposarsi, vero?»
«Oh sì», risposi, «lo conosco bene.»
«Naturalmente sì», disse il signor Omer. «Bene, signore! Il suo cugino, essendo, come sembra, in buon lavoro e benestante, mi ha ringraziato in un modo molto virile (devo dire che si è comportato in un modo che mi dà un’alta opinione di lui) e si è andato a prendere una piccola casa comoda come potreste desiderare voi o io di vedere. Quella piccola casa è ora arredata completamente, ordinata e completa come il salotto di una bambola; e se non fosse stato per la malattia di Barkis che ha preso questa brutta piega, poveretto, sarebbero stati marito e moglie - oserei dire, a quest’ora. Come stanno le cose, c’è un rinvio.»
“E Emily, signor Omer?” chiesi. “Si è stabilita meglio?”
«Perché, sapete», rispose, strofinandosi di nuovo il doppio mento, «non si può naturalmente aspettare. La prospettiva del cambiamento e della separazione, e tutto il resto, è, come si suol dire, vicina a lei e lontana da lei, entrambe le cose insieme. La morte di Barkis non dovrebbe ritardarla molto, ma il suo protrarsi potrebbe. Comunque sia, è una situazione incerta, capite.»
«Capisco», dissi io.
«Di conseguenza», continuò il signor Omer, «Em’ly è ancora un po’ giù e un po’ turbata; forse, tutto sommato, lo è più di prima. Ogni giorno sembra che si affezioni sempre di più a suo zio e che abbia più difficoltà a separarsi da tutti noi. Una parola gentile da parte mia le porta le lacrime agli occhi; e se la vedeste con la bambina di mia figlia Minnie, non la dimentichereste mai. Dio mi perdoni!», disse il signor Omer, pensieroso, «come ama quel bambino!»
Avendo un’occasione così favorevole, mi venne in mente di chiedere al signor Omer, prima che la nostra conversazione fosse interrotta dal ritorno di sua figlia e del marito, se sapeva qualcosa di Martha.
«Ah!» rispose, scuotendo la testa e guardando molto abbattuto. «Niente di buono. Una triste storia, signore, qualunque sia il modo in cui la conoscete. Non avrei mai pensato che ci fosse del male in quella ragazza. Non vorrei menzionarlo davanti a mia figlia Minnie - perché mi prenderebbe subito in giro - ma non l’ho mai fatto. Nessuno di noi l’ha mai fatto.»
Il signor Omer, sentendo il passo di sua figlia prima che lo sentissi io, mi toccò con la pipa e chiuse un occhio, come avvertimento. Subito dopo entrarono lei e suo marito.
Il loro rapporto era che il signor Barkis era «il peggio che si possa immaginare»; che era completamente incosciente; e che il signor Chillip aveva detto con tristezza in cucina, andandosene poco fa, che il Collegio dei Medici, il Collegio dei Chirurghi e la Farmacia, se chiamati tutti insieme, non avrebbero potuto aiutarlo. Era oltre entrambi i Collegi, aveva detto il signor Chillip, e la Farmacia avrebbe potuto solo avvelenarlo.
Udito ciò, e saputo che il signor Peggotty era lì, decisi di andare subito alla casa. Dissi buona notte al signor Omer e ai signori Joram; e mi diressi lì con un sentimento solenne, che fece di Mr. Barkis una creatura nuova e diversa.
Il mio leggero bussare alla porta fu risposto dal signor Peggotty. Non era così sorpreso di vedermi come mi aspettavo. Notai la stessa cosa in Peggotty, quando scese; e l’ho notato anche in seguito; e penso che, nell’attesa di quella tremenda sorpresa, tutti gli altri cambiamenti e sorprese si riducano a nulla.
Strinsi la mano a Mr. Peggotty e passai in cucina, mentre lui chiudeva dolcemente la porta. La piccola Emily era seduta accanto al fuoco, con le mani davanti al viso. Ham era in piedi vicino a lei.
Parlavamo a bassa voce, ascoltando, di tanto in tanto, se si udiva qualche rumore nella stanza di sopra. Non ci avevo pensato l’ultima volta che ero venuto a trovarli, ma ora mi sembrava strano non trovare il signor Barkis in cucina!
«Questo è molto gentile da parte sua, Mas’r Davy», disse il signor Peggotty.
«È una gentilezza fuori dal comune», disse Ham.
«Emily, mia cara», esclamò il signor Peggotty, «guarda qui! È arrivato il piccolo Davy! Che cosa c’è, coraggio, piccina! Non hai una parolina per il piccolo Davy?»
C’era un tremito in lei, che posso vedere ancora. Il freddo della sua mano quando la toccai, posso ancora sentire. Il suo unico segno di vita era ritrarsi dalla mia; e poi scivolò via dalla sedia, e strisciando sull’altro lato dello zio, si chinò, in silenzio e ancora tremante, sul suo petto.
«È un’arte così amorevole», disse il signor Peggotty, lisciandole i ricci capelli con la sua grande mano ruvida, «che non può sopportare il dolore di questo. È naturale nei giovani, mastro Davy, quando sono nuovi a queste prove, e timidi, come il mio piccolo uccellino, — è naturale.»
Si strinse ancora più forte a lui, ma non alzò il viso né disse una parola.
«È tardi, mia cara», disse il signor Peggotty, «e Ham è venuto a prenderti per portarti a casa. Ecco! Vai con l’altro innamorato! Che c’è, Emily? Eh, mia piccola?»
The sound of her voice had not reached me, but he bent his head as if he listened to her, and then said:
‘Let you stay with your uncle? Why, you doen’t mean to ask me that! Stay with your uncle, Moppet? When your husband that’ll be so soon, is here fur to take you home? Now a person wouldn’t think it, fur to see this little thing alongside a rough-weather chap like me,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking round at both of us, with infinite pride; ‘but the sea ain’t more salt in it than she has fondness in her for her uncle—a foolish little Em’ly!’
‘Em’ly’s in the right in that, Mas’r Davy!’ said Ham. ‘Lookee here! As Em’ly wishes of it, and as she’s hurried and frightened, like, besides, I’ll leave her till morning. Let me stay too!’
‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘You doen’t ought—a married man like you—or what’s as good—to take and hull away a day’s work. And you doen’t ought to watch and work both. That won’t do. You go home and turn in. You ain’t afeerd of Em’ly not being took good care on, I know.’
Ham yielded to this persuasion, and took his hat to go. Even when he kissed her—and I never saw him approach her, but I felt that nature had given him the soul of a gentleman—she seemed to cling closer to her uncle, even to the avoidance of her chosen husband. I shut the door after him, that it might cause no disturbance of the quiet that prevailed; and when I turned back, I found Mr. Peggotty still talking to her.
‘Now, I’m a going upstairs to tell your aunt as Mas’r Davy’s here, and that’ll cheer her up a bit,’ he said. ‘Sit ye down by the fire, the while, my dear, and warm those mortal cold hands. You doen’t need to be so fearsome, and take on so much. What? You’ll go along with me?—Well! come along with me—come! If her uncle was turned out of house and home, and forced to lay down in a dyke, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with no less pride than before, ‘it’s my belief she’d go along with him, now! But there’ll be someone else, soon,—someone else, soon, Em’ly!’
Afterwards, when I went upstairs, as I passed the door of my little chamber, which was dark, I had an indistinct impression of her being within it, cast down upon the floor. But, whether it was really she, or whether it was a confusion of the shadows in the room, I don’t know now.
I had leisure to think, before the kitchen fire, of pretty little Emily’s dread of death—which, added to what Mr. Omer had told me, I took to be the cause of her being so unlike herself—and I had leisure, before Peggotty came down, even to think more leniently of the weakness of it: as I sat counting the ticking of the clock, and deepening my sense of the solemn hush around me. Peggotty took me in her arms, and blessed and thanked me over and over again for being such a comfort to her (that was what she said) in her distress. She then entreated me to come upstairs, sobbing that Mr. Barkis had always liked me and admired me; that he had often talked of me, before he fell into a stupor; and that she believed, in case of his coming to himself again, he would brighten up at sight of me, if he could brighten up at any earthly thing.
The probability of his ever doing so, appeared to me, when I saw him, to be very small. He was lying with his head and shoulders out of bed, in an uncomfortable attitude, half resting on the box which had cost him so much pain and trouble. I learned, that, when he was past creeping out of bed to open it, and past assuring himself of its safety by means of the divining rod I had seen him use, he had required to have it placed on the chair at the bed-side, where he had ever since embraced it, night and day. His arm lay on it now. Time and the world were slipping from beneath him, but the box was there; and the last words he had uttered were (in an explanatory tone) ‘Old clothes!’
‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty, almost cheerfully: bending over him, while her brother and I stood at the bed’s foot. ‘Here’s my dear boy—my dear boy, Master Davy, who brought us together, Barkis! That you sent messages by, you know! Won’t you speak to Master Davy?’
He was as mute and senseless as the box, from which his form derived the only expression it had.
‘He’s a going out with the tide,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, behind his hand.
My eyes were dim and so were Mr. Peggotty’s; but I repeated in a whisper, ‘With the tide?’
‘People can’t die, along the coast,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘except when the tide’s pretty nigh out. They can’t be born, unless it’s pretty nigh in—not properly born, till flood. He’s a going out with the tide. It’s ebb at half-arter three, slack water half an hour. If he lives till it turns, he’ll hold his own till past the flood, and go out with the next tide.’
We remained there, watching him, a long time—hours. What mysterious influence my presence had upon him in that state of his senses, I shall not pretend to say; but when he at last began to wander feebly, it is certain he was muttering about driving me to school.
‘He’s coming to himself,’ said Peggotty.
Mr. Peggotty touched me, and whispered with much awe and reverence. ‘They are both a-going out fast.’
‘Barkis, my dear!’ said Peggotty.
‘C. P. Barkis,’ he cried faintly. ‘No better woman anywhere!’
‘Look! Here’s Master Davy!’ said Peggotty. For he now opened his eyes.
I was on the point of asking him if he knew me, when he tried to stretch out his arm, and said to me, distinctly, with a pleasant smile:
‘Barkis is willin’!’
And, it being low water, he went out with the tide.
Non avevo udito la sua voce, ma egli chinò il capo come se l’ascoltasse, e poi disse:
«Lasciarla stare con suo zio? Ma come, non vorrete chiedermi una cosa del genere! Stare con suo zio, Moppet? Quando suo marito, che sarà presto, è qui apposta per portarla a casa? Ora una persona non lo crederebbe, apposta per vedere questa piccola accanto a un tipo di brutto tempo come me», disse il signor Peggotty, guardandoci entrambi con un orgoglio infinito; «ma il mare non è più salato di quanto lei non abbia affetto per suo zio — una piccola Emily sciocca!»
«Emily ha ragione in questo, padron Davy!» disse Ham. «Guardi qui! Poiché Emily lo desidera, e poiché è affrettata e spaventata, inoltre, la lascerò fino a domani mattina. Lasci che resti anch’io!»
«No, no», disse il signor Peggotty. «Un uomo sposato come te — o che ci tiene — non dovrebbe buttare via una giornata di lavoro. E non dovresti fare sia il guardiano che il lavoratore. Non va bene. Vai a casa e riposati. So che non hai paura che a Emily non si prenda cura.»
Ham cedette a questa persuasione e prese il cappello per andarsene. Anche quando la baciò - e non l’ho mai visto avvicinarsi a lei senza sentire che la natura gli aveva dato l’anima di un gentiluomo - lei sembrava attaccarsi più strettamente allo zio, quasi per evitare il marito scelto. Chiusi la porta dietro di lui, perché non disturbasse la quiete che regnava; e quando mi voltai, trovai il signor Peggotty che continuava a parlarle.
«Ora, vado di sopra a dire a vostra zia che il padron Davy è qui, e questo la rallegrerà un po’», disse. «Sedetevi vicino al fuoco, nel frattempo, mia cara, e riscaldare quelle mani gelide. Non dovete aver tanta paura e preoccuparvi così tanto. Che c’è? Volete venire con me? — Bene! venite con me — venite! Se suo zio fosse stato cacciato di casa e famiglia, e costretto a dormire in un fosso, padron Davy», disse il signor Peggotty, con non meno orgoglio di prima, «è mia convinzione che lei andrebbe con lui, ora! Ma presto ci sarà qualcun altro, — qualcun altro, presto, Emily!»
Dopo, quando salii al piano di sopra, mentre passavo davanti alla porta della mia piccola stanza, che era al buio, ebbi una vaga impressione che lei fosse dentro, prostrata sul pavimento. Ma se fosse stata davvero lei, o se fosse stata una confusione delle ombre nella stanza, non lo so adesso.
Avevo il tempo di pensare, davanti al fuoco della cucina, alla paura della morte della piccola Emily, che, sommata a quanto mi aveva detto il signor Omer, ritenevo la causa del suo comportamento così insolito, e avevo il tempo, prima che Peggotty scendesse, di giudicare con più indulgenza quella debolezza, mentre sedevo contando i rintocchi dell’orologio e approfondivo il senso del silenzio solenne che mi circondava. Peggotty mi prese tra le braccia e mi benedisse e ringraziò più volte per essere stato un tale conforto per lei (questo disse) nel suo dolore. Poi mi pregò di salire al piano di sopra, singhiozzando che il signor Barkis mi aveva sempre voluto bene e ammirato, che aveva spesso parlato di me prima di cadere in uno stato di torpore, e che credeva che, nel caso in cui si fosse ripreso, si sarebbe illuminato alla mia vista, se poteva illuminarsi a causa di qualcosa di terreno.
La probabilità che ciò accadesse, mi sembrò, quando lo vidi, molto remota. Era sdraiato con la testa e le spalle fuori dal letto, in una posizione scomoda, appoggiato in parte sulla scatola che gli aveva procurato tanta sofferenza e tanti problemi. Scoprii che, quando non riusciva più a uscire dal letto per aprirla, e non poteva più assicurarsi della sua sicurezza con l’aiuto della bacchetta da rabdomante che l’avevo visto usare, aveva chiesto che la scatola fosse posta sulla sedia accanto al letto, dove da allora l’aveva sempre abbracciata, notte e giorno. Ora il suo braccio era appoggiato su di essa. Il tempo e il mondo gli scivolavano via, ma la scatola era lì; e le ultime parole che aveva pronunciato erano (in tono spiegativo) ‘Vecchi vestiti!’
«Barkis, mio caro!», disse Peggotty, quasi allegra, chinandosi su di lui, mentre suo fratello ed io stavamo ai piedi del letto. «Ecco il mio caro ragazzo, il mio caro ragazzo, il piccolo Davy, che ci ha messo insieme, Barkis! Quello a cui hai inviato messaggi, sai! Non vuoi parlare al piccolo Davy?»
Era muto e insensibile come la scatola, dalla quale la sua forma derivava l’unica espressione che aveva.
«Se ne andrà con la marea», mi disse Mr. Peggotty, dietro la mano.
I miei occhi erano offuscati e così erano quelli di Mr. Peggotty; ma ripetei sottovoce: ‘Con la marea?’
«Le persone non possono morire, lungo la costa», disse il signor Peggotty, «se non quando la marea è quasi completamente uscita. Non possono nascere, a meno che non sia quasi completamente entrata - non nascono propriamente, fino all’alta marea. Sta uscendo con la marea. È bassa alle tre e mezza, acqua ferma mezz’ora. Se resiste fino a quando si gira, resisterà fino a dopo l’alta marea, e uscirà con la prossima marea.»
Rimanemmo lì, a osservarlo, per un lungo periodo — ore. Non prenderò la libertà di dire quale misteriosa influenza la mia presenza avesse su di lui in quello stato dei suoi sensi; ma quando alla fine cominciò a delirare debolmente, è certo che borbottava di portarmi a scuola.
«Sta tornando in sé», disse Peggotty.
Il signor Peggotty mi toccò e sussurrò con grande timore e riverenza: «Stanno entrambi per spegnersi in fretta.»
«Barkis, mia cara!» disse Peggotty.
“C. P. Barkis,” esclamò debolmente. “Non c’è donna migliore da nessuna parte!”
«Guarda! Ecco il piccolo Davy!» disse Peggotty, perché ora aprì gli occhi.
Stavo per chiedergli se mi conosceva, quando cercò di allungare il braccio e mi disse, distintamente, con un sorriso piacevole:
‘Barkis è d’accordo!’
E, essendo bassa la marea, uscì con la corrente.
CHAPTER 31. A GREATER LOSS
It was not difficult for me, on Peggotty’s solicitation, to resolve to stay where I was, until after the remains of the poor carrier should have made their last journey to Blunderstone. She had long ago bought, out of her own savings, a little piece of ground in our old churchyard near the grave of ‘her sweet girl’, as she always called my mother; and there they were to rest.
In keeping Peggotty company, and doing all I could for her (little enough at the utmost), I was as grateful, I rejoice to think, as even now I could wish myself to have been. But I am afraid I had a supreme satisfaction, of a personal and professional nature, in taking charge of Mr. Barkis’s will, and expounding its contents.
I may claim the merit of having originated the suggestion that the will should be looked for in the box. After some search, it was found in the box, at the bottom of a horse’s nose-bag; wherein (besides hay) there was discovered an old gold watch, with chain and seals, which Mr. Barkis had worn on his wedding-day, and which had never been seen before or since; a silver tobacco-stopper, in the form of a leg; an imitation lemon, full of minute cups and saucers, which I have some idea Mr. Barkis must have purchased to present to me when I was a child, and afterwards found himself unable to part with; eighty-seven guineas and a half, in guineas and half-guineas; two hundred and ten pounds, in perfectly clean Bank notes; certain receipts for Bank of England stock; an old horseshoe, a bad shilling, a piece of camphor, and an oyster-shell. From the circumstance of the latter article having been much polished, and displaying prismatic colours on the inside, I conclude that Mr. Barkis had some general ideas about pearls, which never resolved themselves into anything definite.
For years and years, Mr. Barkis had carried this box, on all his journeys, every day. That it might the better escape notice, he had invented a fiction that it belonged to ‘Mr. Blackboy’, and was ‘to be left with Barkis till called for’; a fable he had elaborately written on the lid, in characters now scarcely legible.
He had hoarded, all these years, I found, to good purpose. His property in money amounted to nearly three thousand pounds. Of this he bequeathed the interest of one thousand to Mr. Peggotty for his life; on his decease, the principal to be equally divided between Peggotty, little Emily, and me, or the survivor or survivors of us, share and share alike. All the rest he died possessed of, he bequeathed to Peggotty; whom he left residuary legatee, and sole executrix of that his last will and testament.
I felt myself quite a proctor when I read this document aloud with all possible ceremony, and set forth its provisions, any number of times, to those whom they concerned. I began to think there was more in the Commons than I had supposed. I examined the will with the deepest attention, pronounced it perfectly formal in all respects, made a pencil-mark or so in the margin, and thought it rather extraordinary that I knew so much.
In this abstruse pursuit; in making an account for Peggotty, of all the property into which she had come; in arranging all the affairs in an orderly manner; and in being her referee and adviser on every point, to our joint delight; I passed the week before the funeral. I did not see little Emily in that interval, but they told me she was to be quietly married in a fortnight.
I did not attend the funeral in character, if I may venture to say so. I mean I was not dressed up in a black coat and a streamer, to frighten the birds; but I walked over to Blunderstone early in the morning, and was in the churchyard when it came, attended only by Peggotty and her brother. The mad gentleman looked on, out of my little window; Mr. Chillip’s baby wagged its heavy head, and rolled its goggle eyes, at the clergyman, over its nurse’s shoulder; Mr. Omer breathed short in the background; no one else was there; and it was very quiet. We walked about the churchyard for an hour, after all was over; and pulled some young leaves from the tree above my mother’s grave.
A dread falls on me here. A cloud is lowering on the distant town, towards which I retraced my solitary steps. I fear to approach it. I cannot bear to think of what did come, upon that memorable night; of what must come again, if I go on.
It is no worse, because I write of it. It would be no better, if I stopped my most unwilling hand. It is done. Nothing can undo it; nothing can make it otherwise than as it was.
My old nurse was to go to London with me next day, on the business of the will. Little Emily was passing that day at Mr. Omer’s. We were all to meet in the old boathouse that night. Ham would bring Emily at the usual hour. I would walk back at my leisure. The brother and sister would return as they had come, and be expecting us, when the day closed in, at the fireside.
I parted from them at the wicket-gate, where visionary Strap had rested with Roderick Random’s knapsack in the days of yore; and, instead of going straight back, walked a little distance on the road to Lowestoft. Then I turned, and walked back towards Yarmouth. I stayed to dine at a decent alehouse, some mile or two from the Ferry I have mentioned before; and thus the day wore away, and it was evening when I reached it. Rain was falling heavily by that time, and it was a wild night; but there was a moon behind the clouds, and it was not dark.
I was soon within sight of Mr. Peggotty’s house, and of the light within it shining through the window. A little floundering across the sand, which was heavy, brought me to the door, and I went in.
It looked very comfortable indeed. Mr. Peggotty had smoked his evening pipe and there were preparations for some supper by and by. The fire was bright, the ashes were thrown up, the locker was ready for little Emily in her old place. In her own old place sat Peggotty, once more, looking (but for her dress) as if she had never left it. She had fallen back, already, on the society of the work-box with St. Paul’s upon the lid, the yard-measure in the cottage, and the bit of wax-candle; and there they all were, just as if they had never been disturbed. Mrs. Gummidge appeared to be fretting a little, in her old corner; and consequently looked quite natural, too.
CAPITOLO 31. UNA PERDITA PIU’ GRANDE
Non fu difficile per me, su sollecitazione di Peggotty, decidere di rimanere dove mi trovavo, fino a quando le spoglie del povero facchino non avessero compiuto il loro ultimo viaggio fino a Blunderstone. Lei aveva acquistato da tempo, con i suoi risparmi, un piccolo appezzamento nel nostro vecchio cimitero vicino alla tomba della “sua dolce bambina”, come chiamava sempre mia madre; ed era lì che avrebbero riposato.
Nel tenere compagnia a Peggotty e nel fare tutto il possibile per lei (poco, al massimo), ero, mi compiaccio di pensare, altrettanto grato, come lo sarei anche ora. Ma temo di aver provato una soddisfazione suprema, di natura personale e professionale, nel prendere in carico il testamento del signor Barkis e nel spiegare il suo contenuto.
Posso rivendicare il merito di aver suggerito che il testamento dovesse essere cercato nella scatola. Dopo una certa ricerca, fu trovato nella scatola, sul fondo di una cavalcata’s nose-bag; dove (oltre al fieno) si scoprì un vecchio orologio d’oro, con catena e sigilli, che il signor Barkis aveva indossato il giorno delle nozze, e che non era mai stato visto prima o dopo; un fermatutto per tabacco in argento, a forma di gamba; un imitazione di limone, pieno di tazzine e piattini, di cui ho l’idea che il signor Barkis dovesse aver acquistato per regalarmi quando ero un bambino, e in seguito si era trovato incapace di separarsene; ottantasette ghinee e mezza, in ghinee e mezze ghinee; duecentodieci sterline, in banconote perfettamente pulite; certi ricevute per azioni della Banca d’Inghilterra; un vecchio ferro di cavallo, un cattivo scellino, un pezzo di canfora, e una conchiglia d’ostrica. Dalla circostanza che quest’ultimo articolo era stato molto lucidato, e mostrava colori prismatica all’interno, concludo che il signor Barkis avesse qualche idea generale sulle perle, che non si risolse mai in nulla di definito.
Per anni e anni, il signor Barkis aveva trasportato questa scatola, in tutti i suoi viaggi, ogni giorno. Per farla sfuggire meglio all’attenzione, aveva inventato una storia secondo cui apparteneva a “Mr. Blackboy” e doveva essere “lasciata a Barkis fino a quando non fosse stata richiesta”; una favola che aveva elaboratamente scritto sul coperchio, in caratteri ormai appena leggibili.
Aveva accumulato, tutti questi anni, scoprii, a buon fine. La sua proprietà in denaro ammontava a quasi tremila sterline. Di queste, lasciò gli interessi di mille sterline al signor Peggotty per tutta la sua vita; alla sua morte, il capitale doveva essere diviso equamente tra Peggotty, la piccola Emily e me, o tra i sopravvissuti di noi, a parti uguali. Tutto il resto che possedeva al momento della morte, lo lasciò a Peggotty; che lasciò legataria residuale ed unica esecutrice testamentaria di quel suo ultimo testamento.
Mi sentivo proprio un notaio mentre leggevo questo documento ad alta voce con tutta la cerimonia possibile, e ne esporre le disposizioni, un numero qualsiasi di volte, a coloro che li riguardavano. Cominciai a pensare che ci fosse più del previsto nella Camera dei Comuni. Esaminai il testamento con la massima attenzione, lo dichiarai perfettamente formale in tutti i rispetti, feci un paio di segni a matita nel margine, e pensai che fosse piuttosto straordinario che ne sapessi così tanto.
In questo arduo compito; nel fare un resoconto per Peggotty di tutti i beni che le erano stati lasciati; nell’organizzare tutte le faccende in modo ordinato; e nel fare da suo referente e consigliere su ogni punto, a nostro comune piacere; passai la settimana prima del funerale. Non vidi Emily in quell’intervallo, ma mi dissero che sarebbe stata sposata in tutta tranquillità tra due settimane.
Non ho partecipato al funerale in costume, se posso permettermi di dirlo. Voglio dire che non ero vestito con un abito nero e una fascia, per spaventare gli uccelli; ma sono andato a Blunderstone presto la mattina, e ero nel cimitero quando è arrivato, accompagnato solo da Peggotty e suo fratello. Il pazzo signore osservava dalla mia piccola finestra; il bambino del signor Chillip agitava la sua testa pesante e faceva rotolare i suoi occhi sbarrati sul prete, sopra la spalla della sua balia; il signor Omer respirava affannosamente in fondo; non c’era nessun altro; ed era molto tranquillo. Abbiamo camminato per il cimitero per un’ora, dopo che tutto era finito; e abbiamo strappato alcune giovani foglie dall’albero sopra la tomba di mia madre.
Un terrore mi assale qui. Una nuvola si addensa sulla lontana città, verso la quale ho ripercorso i miei passi solitari. Ho paura di avvicinarmi. Non posso sopportare di pensare a ciò che accadde, in quella memorabile notte; a ciò che dovrà accadere di nuovo, se continuerò.
Non è peggio perché ne scrivo. Non sarebbe migliore se fermassi la mia mano, così riluttante. È fatto. Nulla può disfarlo; nulla può renderlo diverso da come è stato.
La mia vecchia balia doveva accompagnarmi a Londra il giorno dopo, per questioni legate al testamento. La piccola Emily passava quel giorno da Mr. Omer. Tutti ci saremmo riuniti nella vecchia rimessa delle barche quella sera. Ham avrebbe portato Emily all’ora solita. Io sarei tornato a piedi con calma. Il fratello e la sorella sarebbero tornati come erano venuti, e ci avrebbero atteso, quando il giorno volgeva al termine, accanto al caminetto.
Mi separai da loro al cancello, dove lo spettrale Strap si era riposato con lo zaino di Roderick Random ai vecchi tempi; e, invece di tornare dritto, camminai per un po’ sulla strada per Lowestoft. Poi mi voltai e tornai verso Yarmouth. Mi fermai a pranzare in una rispettabile birreria, a un miglio o due dal traghetto che ho menzionato prima; e così la giornata passò, ed era sera quando lo raggiunsi. Pioveva forte a quell’ora, ed era una notte selvaggia; ma c’era una luna dietro le nuvole, e non era buio.
Poco dopo, vidi la casa del signor Peggotty e la luce che ne usciva dalla finestra. Dopo un po’ di fatica a camminare sulla sabbia, che era pesante, arrivai alla porta e entrai.
Sembrava davvero molto accogliente. Il signor Peggotty aveva fumato la sua pipa serale e c’erano preparativi per una cena tra poco. Il fuoco era acceso, le ceneri erano state rastrellate, la dispensa era pronta per Emily nella sua vecchia postazione. Nella sua vecchia postazione sedeva Peggotty, ancora una volta, che sembrava (a parte il suo abito) di non averla mai lasciata. Era già tornata, infatti, alla compagnia della scatola da lavoro con San Paolo sul coperchio, al metro a nastro nella casa di campagna e al pezzetto di candela di cera; ed eccoli tutti lì, proprio come se non fossero mai stati disturbati. La signora Gummidge sembrava essere un po’ in ansia, nel suo vecchio angolo; e di conseguenza sembrava anche molto naturale.
‘You’re first of the lot, Mas’r Davy!’ said Mr. Peggotty with a happy face. ‘Doen’t keep in that coat, sir, if it’s wet.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, giving him my outer coat to hang up. ‘It’s quite dry.’
‘So ‘tis!’ said Mr. Peggotty, feeling my shoulders. ‘As a chip! Sit ye down, sir. It ain’t o’ no use saying welcome to you, but you’re welcome, kind and hearty.’
‘Thank you, Mr. Peggotty, I am sure of that. Well, Peggotty!’ said I, giving her a kiss. ‘And how are you, old woman?’
‘Ha, ha!’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, sitting down beside us, and rubbing his hands in his sense of relief from recent trouble, and in the genuine heartiness of his nature; ‘there’s not a woman in the wureld, sir—as I tell her—that need to feel more easy in her mind than her! She done her dooty by the departed, and the departed know’d it; and the departed done what was right by her, as she done what was right by the departed;—and—and—and it’s all right!’
Mrs. Gummidge groaned.
‘Cheer up, my pritty mawther!’ said Mr. Peggotty. (But he shook his head aside at us, evidently sensible of the tendency of the late occurrences to recall the memory of the old one.) ‘Doen’t be down! Cheer up, for your own self, on’y a little bit, and see if a good deal more doen’t come nat’ral!’
‘Not to me, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge. ‘Nothink’s nat’ral to me but to be lone and lorn.’
‘No, no,’ said Mr. Peggotty, soothing her sorrows.
‘Yes, yes, Dan’l!’ said Mrs. Gummidge. ‘I ain’t a person to live with them as has had money left. Things go too contrary with me. I had better be a riddance.’
‘Why, how should I ever spend it without you?’ said Mr. Peggotty, with an air of serious remonstrance. ‘What are you a talking on? Doen’t I want you more now, than ever I did?’
‘I know’d I was never wanted before!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, with a pitiable whimper, ‘and now I’m told so! How could I expect to be wanted, being so lone and lorn, and so contrary!’
Mr. Peggotty seemed very much shocked at himself for having made a speech capable of this unfeeling construction, but was prevented from replying, by Peggotty’s pulling his sleeve, and shaking her head. After looking at Mrs. Gummidge for some moments, in sore distress of mind, he glanced at the Dutch clock, rose, snuffed the candle, and put it in the window.
‘Theer!’ said Mr. Peggotty, cheerily. ‘Theer we are, Missis Gummidge!’ Mrs. Gummidge slightly groaned. ‘Lighted up, accordin’ to custom! You’re a wonderin’ what that’s fur, sir! Well, it’s fur our little Em’ly. You see, the path ain’t over light or cheerful arter dark; and when I’m here at the hour as she’s a comin’ home, I puts the light in the winder. That, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, bending over me with great glee, ‘meets two objects. She says, says Em’ly, “Theer’s home!” she says. And likewise, says Em’ly, “My uncle’s theer!” Fur if I ain’t theer, I never have no light showed.’
‘You’re a baby!’ said Peggotty; very fond of him for it, if she thought so.
‘Well,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, standing with his legs pretty wide apart, and rubbing his hands up and down them in his comfortable satisfaction, as he looked alternately at us and at the fire. ‘I doen’t know but I am. Not, you see, to look at.’
‘Not azackly,’ observed Peggotty.
‘No,’ laughed Mr. Peggotty, ‘not to look at, but to—to consider on, you know. I doen’t care, bless you! Now I tell you. When I go a looking and looking about that theer pritty house of our Em’ly’s, I’m—I’m Gormed,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with sudden emphasis—‘theer! I can’t say more—if I doen’t feel as if the littlest things was her, a’most. I takes ‘em up and I put ‘em down, and I touches of ‘em as delicate as if they was our Em’ly. So ‘tis with her little bonnets and that. I couldn’t see one on ‘em rough used a purpose—not fur the whole wureld. There’s a babby fur you, in the form of a great Sea Porkypine!’ said Mr. Peggotty, relieving his earnestness with a roar of laughter.
Peggotty and I both laughed, but not so loud.
‘It’s my opinion, you see,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a delighted face, after some further rubbing of his legs, ‘as this is along of my havin’ played with her so much, and made believe as we was Turks, and French, and sharks, and every wariety of forinners—bless you, yes; and lions and whales, and I doen’t know what all!—when she warn’t no higher than my knee. I’ve got into the way on it, you know. Why, this here candle, now!’ said Mr. Peggotty, gleefully holding out his hand towards it, ‘I know wery well that arter she’s married and gone, I shall put that candle theer, just the same as now. I know wery well that when I’m here o’ nights (and where else should I live, bless your arts, whatever fortun’ I come into!) and she ain’t here or I ain’t theer, I shall put the candle in the winder, and sit afore the fire, pretending I’m expecting of her, like I’m a doing now. THERE’S a babby for you,’ said Mr. Peggotty, with another roar, ‘in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Why, at the present minute, when I see the candle sparkle up, I says to myself, “She’s a looking at it! Em’ly’s a coming!” THERE’S a babby for you, in the form of a Sea Porkypine! Right for all that,’ said Mr. Peggotty, stopping in his roar, and smiting his hands together; ‘fur here she is!’
It was only Ham. The night should have turned more wet since I came in, for he had a large sou’wester hat on, slouched over his face.
‘Wheer’s Em’ly?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
Ham made a motion with his head, as if she were outside. Mr. Peggotty took the light from the window, trimmed it, put it on the table, and was busily stirring the fire, when Ham, who had not moved, said:
‘Mas’r Davy, will you come out a minute, and see what Em’ly and me has got to show you?’
We went out. As I passed him at the door, I saw, to my astonishment and fright, that he was deadly pale. He pushed me hastily into the open air, and closed the door upon us. Only upon us two.
«Sei il primo della banda, Mas’r Davy!» disse il signor Peggotty con un viso felice. «Non rimanere in quel cappotto, signore, se è bagnato.»
‘Grazie, signor Peggotty’, dissi, porgendogli il mio cappotto per appendere. ‘È completamente asciutto’.
«E così è!» disse il signor Peggotty, tastandomi le spalle. «Come un pezzetto di legno! Sedetevi, signore. Non serve a nulla dirvi “benvenuto”, ma siete il benvenuto, di cuore e con affetto.»
«Grazie, signor Peggotty, ne sono certo. Bene, Peggotty!» dissi, dandole un bacio. «E come stai, vecchia mia?»
«Ah, ah!» rise il signor Peggotty, sedendosi accanto a noi e strofinandosi le mani per il sollievo provato dopo le recenti difficoltà e per la genuinità del suo carattere; «non c’è una donna al mondo, signore - come le dico - che debba sentirsi più tranquilla di lei! Ha fatto il suo dovere verso il defunto, e il defunto lo sapeva; e il defunto ha fatto ciò che era giusto nei suoi confronti, così come lei ha fatto ciò che era giusto nei confronti del defunto; e - e - e tutto è a posto!»
La signora Gummidge gemette.
«Sorridi, mia bella mamma!» disse il signor Peggotty. (Ma scuoteva la testa verso di noi, evidentemente consapevole della tendenza degli ultimi avvenimenti a richiamare alla memoria il vecchio.) «Non abbatterti! Sorridi, per il tuo stesso bene, anche solo un pochino, e vedrai che molto di più verrà naturale!»
«Non a me, Dan’l», rispose la signora Gummidge. «Non c’è niente di naturale per me se non essere sola e abbandonata.»
«No, no», disse il signor Peggotty, consolandola.
«Sì, sì, Dan’l!» disse la signora Gummidge. «Non sono una persona che può vivere con chi ha ereditato dei soldi. Le cose vanno troppo male per me. Sarebbe meglio che me ne andassi.»
«Ma come potrei mai spenderlo senza di te?», disse il signor Peggotty, con aria di seria protesta. «Che cosa stai dicendo? Non ti voglio più bene ora, che mai?»
«Sapevo che non ero mai stata desiderata prima!» esclamò la signora Gummidge con un pietoso lamento «e ora me lo dicono! Come potevo aspettarmi di essere desiderata, essendo così sola e abbandonata, e così contraria!»
Il signor Peggotty sembrava molto turbato per aver fatto un discorso che poteva essere interpretato in modo così insensibile, ma fu impedito di rispondere da Peggotty che gli tirava la manica e scuoteva la testa. Dopo aver guardato la signora Gummidge per alcuni momenti, in grande angoscia, lanciò un’occhiata all’orologio olandese, si alzò, accese la candela e la mise nella finestra.
«Eccoci!» disse allegro il signor Peggotty. «Eccoci, signora Gummidge!» La signora Gummidge gemette leggermente. «Accesa, come al solito! Vi starete chiedendo a cosa serve, signore! Beh, è per la nostra piccola Emily. Vedete, il sentiero non è molto illuminato né allegro dopo il tramonto; e quando sono qui all’ora in cui lei sta tornando a casa, accendo la luce alla finestra. Questo, vedete,» disse il signor Peggotty, chinandosi su di me con grande gioia, «soddisfa due scopi. Lei dice, dice Emily, «Ecco casa!» dice. E allo stesso modo, dice Emily, «Mio zio è lì!» Perché se non ci sono, non accendo mai la luce.»
«Sei un bambino!», disse Peggotty, che lo amava molto per questo, se lo pensava.
«Beh,» rispose Mr. Peggotty, in piedi con le gambe piuttosto divaricate, e strofinandosi le mani su e giù lungo di esse nella sua soddisfazione confortevole, mentre guardava alternativamente noi e il fuoco. «Non so, ma forse lo sono. Non, sapete, a guardarla.»
«Non esattamente», osservò Peggotty.
‘No’, rise a ridere il signor Peggotty, ‘non per guardarla, ma per—per riflettere, sapete. Non me ne importa, vi benedica! Ora ve lo dico. Quando vado a guardare e riguardare quella graziosa casa della nostra Emily, sono—sono Gormed’, disse il signor Peggotty con improvvisa enfasi—‘ecco! Non posso dire altro—se non che non mi sento quasi come se le cose più piccole fossero lei. Le prendo e le rimetto giù, e le tocco con delicatezza come se fossero la nostra Emily. È così per i suoi cappellini e tutto il resto. Non potrei sopportare di vederne uno usato malamente apposta—nemmeno per tutto il mondo. Ecco un bambino per voi, nella forma di un grande riccio di mare!’ disse il signor Peggotty, alleggerendo la sua serietà con una risata fragorosa.
Peggotty e io ridemmo, ma non a voce alta.
«È la mia opinione, sapete», disse il signor Peggotty, con un viso raggiante, dopo aver strofinato ancora un po’ le gambe, «che questo sia dovuto al fatto che ho giocato tanto con lei, e abbiamo fatto finta di essere Turchi, e Francesi, e squali, e ogni varietà di stranieri — benedetto sì; e leoni e balene, e non so che altro! — quando non era più alta del mio ginocchio. Mi sono abituato a questo, sapete. Per esempio, questa candela, ora!» disse il signor Peggotty, tenendo allegro la mano verso di essa, «so benissimo che dopo che si sarà sposata e andata via, metterò quella candela lì, proprio come ora. So benissimo che quando sarò qui di notte (e dove altro dovrei vivere, benedetti i vostri occhi, qualunque fortuna mi capiti!) e lei non c’è o io non ci sono, metterò la candela alla finestra, e starò davanti al fuoco, fingendo di aspettarla, come sto facendo ora. Ecco un bambino per voi», disse il signor Peggotty, con un’altra risata, «in forma di riccio di mare! Per esempio, in questo momento, quando vedo la candela scintillare, mi dico: «La sta guardando! Emily sta arrivando!» Ecco un bambino per voi, in forma di riccio di mare! Giusto per tutto questo», disse il signor Peggotty, fermandosi nella sua risata, e battendo le mani insieme; «perché eccola qui!»
Era solo Ham. La notte doveva essersi fatta più umida da quando ero entrato, perché aveva un grande cappello impermeabile calato sulla faccia.
«Dov’è Emily?» disse il signor Peggotty.
Ham fece un cenno con la testa, come se lei fosse fuori. Il signor Peggotty prese la luce dalla finestra, la sistemò, la mise sul tavolo, e stava attivamente ravvivando il fuoco, quando Ham, che non si era mosso, disse:
“Signor Davy, vuole uscire un minuto per vedere cosa Emily e io abbiamo da mostrarle?”
Uscimmo. Mentre lo superavo sulla porta, vidi, con mio stupore e terrore, che era pallidissimo. Mi spinse in fretta all’aria aperta e chiuse la porta su di noi. Solo su noi due.
‘Ham! what’s the matter?’
‘Mas’r Davy!—’ Oh, for his broken heart, how dreadfully he wept!
I was paralysed by the sight of such grief. I don’t know what I thought, or what I dreaded. I could only look at him.
‘Ham! Poor good fellow! For Heaven’s sake, tell me what’s the matter!’
‘My love, Mas’r Davy—the pride and hope of my art—her that I’d have died for, and would die for now—she’s gone!’
‘Gone!’
‘Em’ly’s run away! Oh, Mas’r Davy, think HOW she’s run away, when I pray my good and gracious God to kill her (her that is so dear above all things) sooner than let her come to ruin and disgrace!’
The face he turned up to the troubled sky, the quivering of his clasped hands, the agony of his figure, remain associated with the lonely waste, in my remembrance, to this hour. It is always night there, and he is the only object in the scene.
‘You’re a scholar,’ he said, hurriedly, ‘and know what’s right and best. What am I to say, indoors? How am I ever to break it to him, Mas’r Davy?’
I saw the door move, and instinctively tried to hold the latch on the outside, to gain a moment’s time. It was too late. Mr. Peggotty thrust forth his face; and never could I forget the change that came upon it when he saw us, if I were to live five hundred years.
I remember a great wail and cry, and the women hanging about him, and we all standing in the room; I with a paper in my hand, which Ham had given me; Mr. Peggotty, with his vest torn open, his hair wild, his face and lips quite white, and blood trickling down his bosom (it had sprung from his mouth, I think), looking fixedly at me.
‘Read it, sir,’ he said, in a low shivering voice. ‘Slow, please. I doen’t know as I can understand.’
In the midst of the silence of death, I read thus, from a blotted letter:
‘“When you, who love me so much better than I ever have deserved, even when my mind was innocent, see this, I shall be far away.”’
‘I shall be fur away,’ he repeated slowly. ‘Stop! Em’ly fur away. Well!’
‘“When I leave my dear home—my dear home—oh, my dear home!—in the morning,”’
the letter bore date on the previous night:
‘“—it will be never to come back, unless he brings me back a lady. This will be found at night, many hours after, instead of me. Oh, if you knew how my heart is torn. If even you, that I have wronged so much, that never can forgive me, could only know what I suffer! I am too wicked to write about myself! Oh, take comfort in thinking that I am so bad. Oh, for mercy’s sake, tell uncle that I never loved him half so dear as now. Oh, don’t remember how affectionate and kind you have all been to me—don’t remember we were ever to be married—but try to think as if I died when I was little, and was buried somewhere. Pray Heaven that I am going away from, have compassion on my uncle! Tell him that I never loved him half so dear. Be his comfort. Love some good girl that will be what I was once to uncle, and be true to you, and worthy of you, and know no shame but me. God bless all! I’ll pray for all, often, on my knees. If he don’t bring me back a lady, and I don’t pray for my own self, I’ll pray for all. My parting love to uncle. My last tears, and my last thanks, for uncle!”’
That was all.
He stood, long after I had ceased to read, still looking at me. At length I ventured to take his hand, and to entreat him, as well as I could, to endeavour to get some command of himself. He replied, ‘I thankee, sir, I thankee!’ without moving.
Ham spoke to him. Mr. Peggotty was so far sensible of HIS affliction, that he wrung his hand; but, otherwise, he remained in the same state, and no one dared to disturb him.
Slowly, at last, he moved his eyes from my face, as if he were waking from a vision, and cast them round the room. Then he said, in a low voice:
‘Who’s the man? I want to know his name.’
Ham glanced at me, and suddenly I felt a shock that struck me back.
‘There’s a man suspected,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Who is it?’
‘Mas’r Davy!’ implored Ham. ‘Go out a bit, and let me tell him what I must. You doen’t ought to hear it, sir.’
I felt the shock again. I sank down in a chair, and tried to utter some reply; but my tongue was fettered, and my sight was weak.
‘I want to know his name!’ I heard said once more.
‘For some time past,’ Ham faltered, ‘there’s been a servant about here, at odd times. There’s been a gen’lm’n too. Both of ‘em belonged to one another.’
Mr. Peggotty stood fixed as before, but now looking at him.
‘The servant,’ pursued Ham, ‘was seen along with—our poor girl—last night. He’s been in hiding about here, this week or over. He was thought to have gone, but he was hiding. Doen’t stay, Mas’r Davy, doen’t!’
I felt Peggotty’s arm round my neck, but I could not have moved if the house had been about to fall upon me.
‘A strange chay and hosses was outside town, this morning, on the Norwich road, a’most afore the day broke,’ Ham went on. ‘The servant went to it, and come from it, and went to it again. When he went to it again, Em’ly was nigh him. The t’other was inside. He’s the man.’
‘For the Lord’s love,’ said Mr. Peggotty, falling back, and putting out his hand, as if to keep off what he dreaded. ‘Doen’t tell me his name’s Steerforth!’
‘Mas’r Davy,’ exclaimed Ham, in a broken voice, ‘it ain’t no fault of yourn—and I am far from laying of it to you—but his name is Steerforth, and he’s a damned villain!’
Mr. Peggotty uttered no cry, and shed no tear, and moved no more, until he seemed to wake again, all at once, and pulled down his rough coat from its peg in a corner.
‘Bear a hand with this! I’m struck of a heap, and can’t do it,’ he said, impatiently. ‘Bear a hand and help me. Well!’ when somebody had done so. ‘Now give me that theer hat!’
Ham asked him whither he was going.
‘I’m a going to seek my niece. I’m a going to seek my Em’ly. I’m a going, first, to stave in that theer boat, and sink it where I would have drownded him, as I’m a living soul, if I had had one thought of what was in him! As he sat afore me,’ he said, wildly, holding out his clenched right hand, ‘as he sat afore me, face to face, strike me down dead, but I’d have drownded him, and thought it right!—I’m a going to seek my niece.’
‘Where?’ cried Ham, interposing himself before the door.
‘Anywhere! I’m a going to seek my niece through the wureld. I’m a going to find my poor niece in her shame, and bring her back. No one stop me! I tell you I’m a going to seek my niece!’
‘No, no!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, coming between them, in a fit of crying. ‘No, no, Dan’l, not as you are now. Seek her in a little while, my lone lorn Dan’l, and that’ll be but right! but not as you are now. Sit ye down, and give me your forgiveness for having ever been a worrit to you, Dan’l—what have my contraries ever been to this!—and let us speak a word about them times when she was first an orphan, and when Ham was too, and when I was a poor widder woman, and you took me in. It’ll soften your poor heart, Dan’l,’ laying her head upon his shoulder, ‘and you’ll bear your sorrow better; for you know the promise, Dan’l, “As you have done it unto one of the least of these, you have done it unto me”,—and that can never fail under this roof, that’s been our shelter for so many, many year!’
He was quite passive now; and when I heard him crying, the impulse that had been upon me to go down upon my knees, and ask their pardon for the desolation I had caused, and curse Steerforth, yielded to a better feeling. My overcharged heart found the same relief, and I cried too.
‘Amleto! Cosa succede?’
«Signor Davy!» — Oh, per il suo cuore infranto, come piangeva terribilmente!
Ero paralizzato dalla vista di un dolore così profondo. Non so cosa pensassi, o cosa temessi. Potevo solo guardarlo.
‘Ham! Povero amico! Per l’amor del cielo, dimmi che succede!’
«La mia amata, Maestro Davy, il orgoglio e la speranza del mio talento, quella per cui sarei morto e per cui morirei ancora, se n’è andata!»
‘Sparita!’
«Emily è scappata! Oh, padron Davy, pensa COME è scappata, quando io prego il mio buono e benigno Dio di ucciderla (lei che è così cara più di ogni cosa) piuttosto che lasciarla cadere in rovina e disonore!»
Il volto che rivolse al cielo turbato, il tremito delle sue mani giunte, l’agonia della sua figura, rimangono associati al deserto solitario, nella mia memoria, fino a quest’ora. È sempre notte lì, ed egli è l’unico oggetto nella scena.
«Siete un uomo di studio», disse, in fretta, «e sapete cosa è giusto e migliore. Cosa dovrei dire, in casa? Come potrò mai dirglielo, padron Davy?»
Vidi la porta muoversi e istintivamente cercai di trattenere il chiavistello dall’esterno, per guadagnare un momento di tempo. Era troppo tardi. Il signor Peggotty sporse il viso; e mai potrei dimenticare il cambiamento che si dipinse sul suo volto quando ci vide, anche se dovessi vivere cinquecento anni.
Ricordo un grande pianto e lamento, e le donne che gli si stringevano attorno, e tutti noi in piedi nella stanza; io con un foglio in mano, che Ham mi aveva dato; il signor Peggotty, con il gilet strappato, i capelli in disordine, il viso e le labbra completamente bianchi, e il sangue che gli colava sul petto (credo che gli fosse uscito dalla bocca), che mi fissava con sguardo fisso.
«Leggetelo, signore», disse con voce bassa e tremante. «Lentamente, per favore. Non so se riesco a capire.»
In mezzo al silenzio della morte, ho letto così, da una lettera macchiata:
«“Quando tu, che mi ami molto più di quanto io abbia mai meritato, anche quando la mia mente era innocente, vedrai questo, sarò lontana.”»
«Sarò lontano», ripeté lentamente. «Fermati! Emily lontana. Bene!»
«“Quando lascerò la mia cara casa—la mia cara casa—oh, la mia cara casa!—la mattina,”»
la lettera era datata la sera precedente:
««—non tornerà mai, a meno che non mi riporti una signora. Questo sarà trovato di notte, molte ore dopo, al posto mio. Oh, se sapessi come il mio cuore è lacerato. Se anche tu, che ho offeso così tanto, che non potrai mai perdonarmi, potessi solo sapere quello che soffro! Sono troppo malvagio per parlare di me stesso! Oh, consolatevi pensando che sono così cattivo. Oh, per pietà, dite allo zio che non l’ho mai amato nemmeno la metà di quanto lo amo ora. Oh, non ricordate quanto affettuosi e gentili siete stati con me—non ricordate che dovevamo sposarci—ma cercate di pensare che sono morto quando ero piccolo, e che sono stato sepolto da qualche parte. Pregate il Cielo da cui sto andando via, abbia compassione del mio zio! Ditegli che non l’ho mai amato nemmeno la metà di quanto lo amo ora. Siate il suo conforto. Amate una brava ragazza che sarà per lo zio quello che ero una volta io, e che sarà fedele a voi, e degna di voi, e che non conoscerà altro disonore se non me. Dio benedica tutti! Preggerò per tutti, spesso, in ginocchio. Se non mi riporta una signora, e non prego per il mio stesso io, pregherò per tutti. Il mio amore d’addio allo zio. Le mie ultime lacrime, e i miei ultimi ringraziamenti, per lo zio!»»
Questo era tutto.
Rimase in piedi, molto tempo dopo che avevo smesso di leggere, continuando a guardarmi. Alla fine mi azzardai a prendere la sua mano e a supplicarlo, nel modo meglio possibile, di cercare di riprendere un po’ di controllo. Rispose: «Grazie, signore, grazie!», senza muoversi.
Ham gli parlò. Il signor Peggotty era così sensibile al SUO dolore che gli strinse la mano; ma, altrimenti, rimase nello stesso stato, e nessuno osò disturbarlo.
Lentamente, finalmente, distolse gli occhi dal mio viso, come se si stesse risvegliando da una visione, e li fece scorrere per la stanza. Poi disse, a bassa voce:
‘Chi è l’uomo? Voglio sapere il suo nome.’
Ham mi lanciò un’occhiata e, all’improvviso, provai uno shock che mi colpì come un fulmine.
“C’è un uomo sospettato”, disse Mr. Peggotty. “Chi è?”
«Signor Davy!» implorò Ham. «Vada fuori un momento, e lasci che gli dica quello che devo. Lei non dovrebbe sentirlo, signore.»
Sentii di nuovo lo shock. Mi lasciai cadere su una sedia e cercai di rispondere qualcosa; ma la lingua mi si paralizzò e la vista si offuscò.
«Voglio sapere il suo nome!» sentii ripetere ancora una volta.
«Da un po’ di tempo», balbettò Ham, «c’è stato un domestico che veniva qui di tanto in tanto. C’era anche un gentiluomo. Entrambi appartenevano l’uno all’altro.»
Il signor Peggotty rimase immobile come prima, ma ora lo guardava.
«Il domestico», continuò Ham, «è stato visto insieme a—la nostra povera ragazza—ieri notte. Si nascondeva da queste parti, questa settimana o prima. Si pensava che fosse andato via, ma si nascondeva. Non restare, Mas’ Davy, non restare!»
Sentii il braccio di Peggotty intorno al collo, ma non avrei potuto muovermi se la casa fosse stata sul punto di crollarmi addosso.
«C’era una strana carrozza e cavalli fuori città, questa mattina, sulla strada per Norwich, quasi prima che spuntasse il giorno», continuò Ham. «Il domestico si è avvicinato, poi è tornato indietro, e poi ci è andato di nuovo. Quando ci è andato di nuovo, Emily era vicino a lui. L’altro era dentro. È l’uomo.»
«Per l’amore del Signore», disse il signor Peggotty, arretrando e tendendo la mano, come se volesse tenere lontano ciò che temeva. «Non dirmi che il suo nome è Steerforth!»
«Signor Davy», esclamò Ham, con voce rotta, «non è colpa sua, e sono lontano dal rimproverarla, ma il suo nome è Steerforth, ed è un dannato canaglia!»
Il signor Peggotty non emise alcun grido, non versò lacrime, non si mosse più, finché non sembrò risvegliarsi di colpo e tirò giù il suo ruvido soprabito dal gancio in un angolo.
«Datevi una mossa con questo! Sono stanco morto e non ce la faccio», disse, con impazienza. «Datevi una mossa e aiutatemi. Bene!» quando qualcuno lo fece. «Ora datemi quel cappello lì!»
Ham gli chiese dove stesse andando.
«Sto per andare a cercare mia nipote. Sto per andare a cercare la mia Emily. Prima di tutto, intendo sfondare quella barca e affondarla dove l’avrei annegato, giuro sulla mia anima, se avessi avuto un solo pensiero di ciò che c’era in lui! Mentre sedeva davanti a me,» disse, in modo selvaggio, tendendo la mano destra stretta a pugno, «mentre sedeva davanti a me, faccia a faccia, che io cada fulminato, ma l’avrei annegato, e avrei pensato che fosse giusto!—Sto per andare a cercare mia nipote.»
«Dove?», gridò Ham, mettendosi davanti alla porta.
«Dovunque! Vado a cercare mia nipote in tutto il mondo. Vado a trovare mia nipote nella sua vergogna e la riporterò indietro. Nessuno mi fermi! Vi dico che vado a cercare mia nipote!»
‘No, no!’ gridò la signora Gummidge, mettendosi tra loro, in preda a un attacco di pianto. ‘No, no, Dan’l, non così come sei ora. Cercale tra un po’, il mio povero Dan’l, e sarà giusto così! ma non così come sei ora. Siediti, e dammi il tuo perdono per essere stata un peso per te, Dan’l—che cosa sono mai state le mie contrarietà rispetto a questa!—e parliamo un po’ di quei tempi quando lei era appena un orfana, e anche Ham lo era, e io ero una povera vedova, e tu mi hai presa con te. Ammorbidirà il tuo povero cuore, Dan’l,’ appoggiandogli la testa sulla spalla, ‘e sopporterai meglio il tuo dolore; perché conosci la promessa, Dan’l, “Quel che avete fatto al più piccolo di questi miei fratelli, l’avete fatto a me”,—e questo non potrà mai mancare sotto questo tetto, che è stato il nostro rifugio per tanti, tanti anni!’
Ora era del tutto passivo; e quando lo sentii piangere, l’impulso che mi aveva spinto a inginocchiarmi e chiedere perdono per la desolazione che avevo causato, e a maledire Steerforth, cedette a un sentimento migliore. Il mio cuore sovraccarico trovò la stessa consolazione, e piansi anch’io.
CHAPTER 32. THE BEGINNING OF A LONG JOURNEY
What is natural in me, is natural in many other men, I infer, and so I am not afraid to write that I never had loved Steerforth better than when the ties that bound me to him were broken. In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of all that was brilliant in him, I softened more towards all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him. Deeply as I felt my own unconscious part in his pollution of an honest home, I believed that if I had been brought face to face with him, I could not have uttered one reproach. I should have loved him so well still—though he fascinated me no longer—I should have held in so much tenderness the memory of my affection for him, that I think I should have been as weak as a spirit-wounded child, in all but the entertainment of a thought that we could ever be re-united. That thought I never had. I felt, as he had felt, that all was at an end between us. What his remembrances of me were, I have never known—they were light enough, perhaps, and easily dismissed—but mine of him were as the remembrances of a cherished friend, who was dead.
Yes, Steerforth, long removed from the scenes of this poor history! My sorrow may bear involuntary witness against you at the judgement Throne; but my angry thoughts or my reproaches never will, I know!
The news of what had happened soon spread through the town; insomuch that as I passed along the streets next morning, I overheard the people speaking of it at their doors. Many were hard upon her, some few were hard upon him, but towards her second father and her lover there was but one sentiment. Among all kinds of people a respect for them in their distress prevailed, which was full of gentleness and delicacy. The seafaring men kept apart, when those two were seen early, walking with slow steps on the beach; and stood in knots, talking compassionately among themselves.
It was on the beach, close down by the sea, that I found them. It would have been easy to perceive that they had not slept all last night, even if Peggotty had failed to tell me of their still sitting just as I left them, when it was broad day. They looked worn; and I thought Mr. Peggotty’s head was bowed in one night more than in all the years I had known him. But they were both as grave and steady as the sea itself, then lying beneath a dark sky, waveless—yet with a heavy roll upon it, as if it breathed in its rest—and touched, on the horizon, with a strip of silvery light from the unseen sun.
‘We have had a mort of talk, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty to me, when we had all three walked a little while in silence, ‘of what we ought and doen’t ought to do. But we see our course now.’
I happened to glance at Ham, then looking out to sea upon the distant light, and a frightful thought came into my mind—not that his face was angry, for it was not; I recall nothing but an expression of stern determination in it—that if ever he encountered Steerforth, he would kill him.
‘My dooty here, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘is done. I’m a going to seek my—’ he stopped, and went on in a firmer voice: ‘I’m a going to seek her. That’s my dooty evermore.’
He shook his head when I asked him where he would seek her, and inquired if I were going to London tomorrow? I told him I had not gone today, fearing to lose the chance of being of any service to him; but that I was ready to go when he would.
‘I’ll go along with you, sir,’ he rejoined, ‘if you’re agreeable, tomorrow.’
We walked again, for a while, in silence.
‘Ham,’ he presently resumed, ‘he’ll hold to his present work, and go and live along with my sister. The old boat yonder—’
‘Will you desert the old boat, Mr. Peggotty?’ I gently interposed.
‘My station, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, ‘ain’t there no longer; and if ever a boat foundered, since there was darkness on the face of the deep, that one’s gone down. But no, sir, no; I doen’t mean as it should be deserted. Fur from that.’
We walked again for a while, as before, until he explained:
‘My wishes is, sir, as it shall look, day and night, winter and summer, as it has always looked, since she fust know’d it. If ever she should come a wandering back, I wouldn’t have the old place seem to cast her off, you understand, but seem to tempt her to draw nigher to ‘t, and to peep in, maybe, like a ghost, out of the wind and rain, through the old winder, at the old seat by the fire. Then, maybe, Mas’r Davy, seein’ none but Missis Gummidge there, she might take heart to creep in, trembling; and might come to be laid down in her old bed, and rest her weary head where it was once so gay.’
I could not speak to him in reply, though I tried.
‘Every night,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as reg’lar as the night comes, the candle must be stood in its old pane of glass, that if ever she should see it, it may seem to say “Come back, my child, come back!” If ever there’s a knock, Ham (partic’ler a soft knock), arter dark, at your aunt’s door, doen’t you go nigh it. Let it be her—not you—that sees my fallen child!’
He walked a little in front of us, and kept before us for some minutes. During this interval, I glanced at Ham again, and observing the same expression on his face, and his eyes still directed to the distant light, I touched his arm.
Twice I called him by his name, in the tone in which I might have tried to rouse a sleeper, before he heeded me. When I at last inquired on what his thoughts were so bent, he replied:
‘On what’s afore me, Mas’r Davy; and over yon.’ ‘On the life before you, do you mean?’ He had pointed confusedly out to sea.
CAPITOLO 32. L’INIZIO DI UN LUNGO VIAGGIO
Ciò che è naturale in me, è naturale in molti altri uomini, deduco, e così non ho paura di scrivere che non ho mai amato Steerforth meglio di quando i legami che mi legavano a lui si sono spezzati. Nella profonda angoscia della scoperta della sua indegnità, ho pensato di più a tutto ciò che era brillante in lui, mi sono ammorbidito di più verso tutto ciò che era buono in lui, ho reso più giustizia alle qualità che avrebbero potuto renderlo un uomo di una nobile natura e un grande nome, più di quanto avessi mai fatto nella massima altezza della mia devozione per lui. Profondamente come sentivo la mia inconscia parte nella sua contaminazione di una onesta casa, credevo che se fossi stato messo faccia a faccia con lui, non avrei potuto pronunciare un rimprovero. Lo avrei ancora amato così bene — sebbene non mi affascinasse più — avrei avuto un così grande tenderezza per il ricordo del mio affetto per lui, che penso che sarei stato debole come un bambino ferito nello spirito, in tutto tranne che nel pensiero che potessimo mai riunirci. Quel pensiero non l’ho mai avuto. Sentivo, come aveva sentito lui, che tutto era finito tra noi. Quali fossero i suoi ricordi di me, non l’ho mai saputo — forse erano leggeri, e facilmente dimenticati — ma i miei di lui erano come i ricordi di un caro amico, che era morto.
Sì, Steerforth, da tempo lontano dalle scene di questa povera storia! La mia tristezza può testimoniare involontariamente contro di te al Trono del Giudizio; ma i miei pensieri rabbiosi o i miei rimproveri mai lo faranno, lo so!
La notizia di quanto era accaduto si sparse presto in città; tanto che mentre passavo per le strade la mattina seguente, sentii le persone parlarne alle loro porte. Molti erano severi con lei, alcuni pochi lo erano con lui, ma verso il suo secondo padre e il suo amante c’era un solo sentimento. Tra tutti i tipi di persone prevaleva un rispetto per loro nella loro angoscia, che era pieno di gentilezza e delicatezza. Gli uomini di mare si tenevano a distanza, quando si vedevano quei due camminare lentamente sulla spiaggia all’alba; e si riunivano in gruppetti, parlando compassionevolmente tra loro.
Li trovai sulla spiaggia, vicino al mare. Avrei potuto facilmente capire che non avevano dormito tutta l’ultima notte, anche se Peggotty non mi avesse detto che erano ancora seduti esattamente come li avevo lasciati, quando era già pieno giorno. Avevano un’aria stanca; e mi parve che la testa di Mr. Peggotty fosse china in una notte più di quanto lo fosse in tutti gli anni che lo conoscevo. Ma entrambi erano gravi e composti come il mare stesso, che giaceva allora sotto un cielo scuro, senza onde, ma con un pesante movimento, come se respirasse nel suo riposo, e toccato, all’orizzonte, da una striscia di luce argentea proveniente dal sole invisibile.
«Abbiamo parlato molto, signore», mi disse Mr. Peggotty, dopo che tutti e tre avevamo camminato per un po’ in silenzio, «di ciò che dovremmo e non dovremmo fare. Ma ora vediamo la nostra strada.»
Mi capitò di guardare Ham, che in quel momento stava guardando verso il mare, verso la luce lontana, e un pensiero spaventoso mi balenò nella mente: non che il suo volto fosse arrabbiato, perché non lo era; non ricordo altro che un’espressione di severa determinazione - che se mai si fosse trovato di fronte a Steerforth, lo avrebbe ucciso.
«Il mio dovere qui, signore», disse il signor Peggotty, «è compiuto. Sto per cercare la mia—» si fermò, e continuò con voce più ferma: «Sto per cercarla. Questo è il mio dovere da ora in poi.»
Scosse la testa quando gli chiesi dove l’avrebbe cercata, e mi domandò se sarei andato a Londra domani? Gli dissi che non ero andato oggi, temendo di perdere l’occasione di essergli utile; ma che ero pronto a partire quando lui avesse voluto.
‘Verrò con voi, signore,’ rispose, ‘se siete d’accordo, domani.’
Camminammo di nuovo, per un po’, nel silenzio.
«Ham», riprese dopo un momento, «continuerà il suo lavoro attuale e andrà a vivere con mia sorella. Quella vecchia barca laggiù, »
«Abbandonerete la vecchia barca, signor Peggotty?» interloquisi dolcemente.
«La mia stazione, signor Davy», rispose, «non c’è più; e se mai una barca è affondata, da quando c’è oscurità sulla faccia dell’abisso, quella è andata a fondo. Ma no, signore, no; non voglio dire che sia stata abbandonata. Lungi da questo.»
Camminammo ancora per un po’, come prima, finché non spiegò:
«Il mio desiderio, signore, è che sembri, giorno e notte, inverno e estate, come è sempre sembrato, da quando lei lo conobbe per la prima volta. Se mai dovesse tornare vagando, non vorrei che il vecchio posto sembri respingerla, capisce, ma sembri invitarla ad avvicinarsi, e forse a sbirciare, come un fantasma, fuori dal vento e dalla pioggia, attraverso la vecchia finestra, al vecchio posto accanto al fuoco. Allora, forse, Mas’r Davy, vedendo solo Missis Gummidge lì, potrebbe prendere coraggio per entrare in punta di piedi, tremante; e potrebbe venire a essere messa a letto nel suo vecchio letto, e riposare la sua testa stanca dove un tempo era così allegra.»
Non riuscivo a rispondergli, anche se ci provavo.
«Ogni sera», disse il signor Peggotty, «con la regolarità con cui arriva la sera, la candela deve essere messa nel suo vecchio vetro, così che se mai lei la vedesse, possa sembrarle di dire: “Torna, mia figlia, torna!” Se mai senti un colpo alla porta di tua zia, Ham (soprattutto se è un colpo leggero), dopo il buio, non avvicinarti. Che sia lei, non tu, a vedere la mia povera figlia!»
Camminava un po’ davanti a noi, e rimase davanti a noi per alcuni minuti. Durante questo intervallo, guardai di nuovo Ham, e osservando la stessa espressione sul suo viso, e i suoi occhi ancora rivolti alla luce lontana, gli toccai il braccio.
Lo chiamai due volte per nome, con il tono che avrei usato per svegliare un dormiente, prima che mi prestasse attenzione. Quando alla fine gli chiesi su cosa fossero così concentrati i suoi pensieri, egli rispose:
«Su ciò che ho davanti, signor Davy; e là oltre.» «Sulla vita che vi attende, volete dire?» Aveva indicato confusamente verso il mare.
‘Ay, Mas’r Davy. I doen’t rightly know how ‘tis, but from over yon there seemed to me to come—the end of it like,’ looking at me as if he were waking, but with the same determined face.
‘What end?’ I asked, possessed by my former fear.
‘I doen’t know,’ he said, thoughtfully; ‘I was calling to mind that the beginning of it all did take place here—and then the end come. But it’s gone! Mas’r Davy,’ he added; answering, as I think, my look; ‘you han’t no call to be afeerd of me: but I’m kiender muddled; I don’t fare to feel no matters,’—which was as much as to say that he was not himself, and quite confounded.
Mr. Peggotty stopping for us to join him: we did so, and said no more. The remembrance of this, in connexion with my former thought, however, haunted me at intervals, even until the inexorable end came at its appointed time.
We insensibly approached the old boat, and entered. Mrs. Gummidge, no longer moping in her especial corner, was busy preparing breakfast. She took Mr. Peggotty’s hat, and placed his seat for him, and spoke so comfortably and softly, that I hardly knew her.
‘Dan’l, my good man,’ said she, ‘you must eat and drink, and keep up your strength, for without it you’ll do nowt. Try, that’s a dear soul! An if I disturb you with my clicketten,’ she meant her chattering, ‘tell me so, Dan’l, and I won’t.’
When she had served us all, she withdrew to the window, where she sedulously employed herself in repairing some shirts and other clothes belonging to Mr. Peggotty, and neatly folding and packing them in an old oilskin bag, such as sailors carry. Meanwhile, she continued talking, in the same quiet manner:
‘All times and seasons, you know, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, ‘I shall be allus here, and everythink will look accordin’ to your wishes. I’m a poor scholar, but I shall write to you, odd times, when you’re away, and send my letters to Mas’r Davy. Maybe you’ll write to me too, Dan’l, odd times, and tell me how you fare to feel upon your lone lorn journies.’
‘You’ll be a solitary woman heer, I’m afeerd!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘No, no, Dan’l,’ she returned, ‘I shan’t be that. Doen’t you mind me. I shall have enough to do to keep a Beein for you’ (Mrs. Gummidge meant a home), ‘again you come back—to keep a Beein here for any that may hap to come back, Dan’l. In the fine time, I shall set outside the door as I used to do. If any should come nigh, they shall see the old widder woman true to ‘em, a long way off.’
What a change in Mrs. Gummidge in a little time! She was another woman. She was so devoted, she had such a quick perception of what it would be well to say, and what it would be well to leave unsaid; she was so forgetful of herself, and so regardful of the sorrow about her, that I held her in a sort of veneration. The work she did that day! There were many things to be brought up from the beach and stored in the outhouse—as oars, nets, sails, cordage, spars, lobster-pots, bags of ballast, and the like; and though there was abundance of assistance rendered, there being not a pair of working hands on all that shore but would have laboured hard for Mr. Peggotty, and been well paid in being asked to do it, yet she persisted, all day long, in toiling under weights that she was quite unequal to, and fagging to and fro on all sorts of unnecessary errands. As to deploring her misfortunes, she appeared to have entirely lost the recollection of ever having had any. She preserved an equable cheerfulness in the midst of her sympathy, which was not the least astonishing part of the change that had come over her. Querulousness was out of the question. I did not even observe her voice to falter, or a tear to escape from her eyes, the whole day through, until twilight; when she and I and Mr. Peggotty being alone together, and he having fallen asleep in perfect exhaustion, she broke into a half-suppressed fit of sobbing and crying, and taking me to the door, said, ‘Ever bless you, Mas’r Davy, be a friend to him, poor dear!’ Then, she immediately ran out of the house to wash her face, in order that she might sit quietly beside him, and be found at work there, when he should awake. In short I left her, when I went away at night, the prop and staff of Mr. Peggotty’s affliction; and I could not meditate enough upon the lesson that I read in Mrs. Gummidge, and the new experience she unfolded to me.
It was between nine and ten o’clock when, strolling in a melancholy manner through the town, I stopped at Mr. Omer’s door. Mr. Omer had taken it so much to heart, his daughter told me, that he had been very low and poorly all day, and had gone to bed without his pipe.
‘A deceitful, bad-hearted girl,’ said Mrs. Joram. ‘There was no good in her, ever!’
‘Don’t say so,’ I returned. ‘You don’t think so.’
‘Yes, I do!’ cried Mrs. Joram, angrily.
‘No, no,’ said I.
Mrs. Joram tossed her head, endeavouring to be very stern and cross; but she could not command her softer self, and began to cry. I was young, to be sure; but I thought much the better of her for this sympathy, and fancied it became her, as a virtuous wife and mother, very well indeed.
‘What will she ever do!’ sobbed Minnie. ‘Where will she go! What will become of her! Oh, how could she be so cruel, to herself and him!’
I remembered the time when Minnie was a young and pretty girl; and I was glad she remembered it too, so feelingly.
‘My little Minnie,’ said Mrs. Joram, ‘has only just now been got to sleep. Even in her sleep she is sobbing for Em’ly. All day long, little Minnie has cried for her, and asked me, over and over again, whether Em’ly was wicked? What can I say to her, when Em’ly tied a ribbon off her own neck round little Minnie’s the last night she was here, and laid her head down on the pillow beside her till she was fast asleep! The ribbon’s round my little Minnie’s neck now. It ought not to be, perhaps, but what can I do? Em’ly is very bad, but they were fond of one another. And the child knows nothing!’
«Sì, signor Davy. Non so esattamente come sia, ma da oltre quel punto mi è parso di sentire — la fine di qualcosa», guardandomi come se si stesse risvegliando, ma con la stessa faccia decisa.
«Che fine?» chiesi, posseduto dalla mia vecchia paura.
«Non lo so», disse pensieroso; «stavo ricordando che l’inizio di tutto è avvenuto qui, e poi è arrivata la fine. Ma è passato! Signor Davy», aggiunse, rispondendo, credo, al mio sguardo; «non avete motivo di aver paura di me: ma sono un po’ confuso; non mi sento bene», — il che voleva dire che non era se stesso, e completamente disorientato.
Mr. Peggotty si fermò perché lo raggiungessimo: lo facemmo, e non dicemmo altro. Il ricordo di questo, in connessione con il mio pensiero precedente, tuttavia, mi perseguitò a intervalli, anche fino a quando l’implacabile fine non giunse al suo momento stabilito.
Ci avvicinammo impercettibilmente alla vecchia barca e vi entrammo. La signora Gummidge, che non stava più rintanata nel suo angolo particolare, era indaffarata a preparare la colazione. Prese il cappello di Peggotty e gli preparò il posto, parlando con un tono così confortevole e dolce che a malapena la riconoscevo.
«Dan’l, mio buon uomo», disse lei, «devi mangiare e bere, e mantenere le tue forze, perché senza di esse non farai nulla. Prova, caro anima! E se ti disturbo con il mio clicketten», intendeva il suo chiacchiericcio, «dimmelo, Dan’l, e non lo farò più.»
Quando ci ebbe servito tutti, si ritirò alla finestra, dove si dedicò con zelo a riparare alcune camicie e altri indumenti del signor Peggotty, ripiegandoli e impacchettandoli con cura in una vecchia borsa impermeabile, di quelle che portano i marinai. Nel frattempo, continuava a parlare, nello stesso modo tranquillo:
«In tutti i tempi e in tutte le stagioni, sapete, Dan’l», disse la signora Gummidge, «sarò sempre qui, e tutto sarà come volete voi. Sono una povera scolara, ma vi scriverò, di tanto in tanto, quando sarete lontano, e manderò le mie lettere al piccolo Davy. Forse scriverete anche voi a me, Dan’l, di tanto in tanto, e mi direte come vi sentite in quei vostri viaggi solitari e tristi.»
«Sarà una donna solitaria qui, temo!» disse il signor Peggotty.
«No, no, Dan’l», rispose, «non lo sarò. Non ti preoccupare di me. Avrò abbastanza da fare a tenere un Beein per te» (la signora Gummidge intendeva un casa), «quando tornerai, a tenere un Beein qui per chiunque possa tornare, Dan’l. Nel bel tempo, mi metterò fuori dalla porta come facevo prima. Se qualcuno si avvicinerà, vedrà la vecchia vedova fedele a loro, da lontano.»
Che cambiamento in Mrs. Gummidge in poco tempo! Era un’altra donna. Era così devota, aveva una percezione così rapida di ciò che sarebbe stato bene dire e di ciò che sarebbe stato bene lasciare inespresso; era così dimentica di sé e così attenta al dolore che la circondava, che io la veneravo. Il lavoro che fece quel giorno! C’era molto da portare su dalla spiaggia e riporre nella rimessa: remi, reti, vele, corde, alberi, vasche per aragoste, sacchi di zavorra e simili; e sebbene non mancasse l’aiuto, dato che non c’era una mano capace di lavorare su tutta quella riva che non si sarebbe affaticata per Mr. Peggotty, e sarebbe stata bene pagata nel solo essere invitata a farlo, tuttavia lei insistette, per tutto il giorno, a faticare sotto pesi che non poteva sostenere, e a correre avanti e indietro per ogni sorta di commissioni inutili. Per quanto riguarda il deplorare le sue disgrazie, sembrava aver completamente perso il ricordo di averne mai avute. Conservò una serenità costante in mezzo alla sua compassione, che non era la parte meno sorprendente del cambiamento che era avvenuto in lei. La querulosità era fuori questione. Non notai nemmeno la sua voce vacillare, né una lacrima sfuggirle dagli occhi, per tutto il giorno, fino al crepuscolo; quando lei, io e Mr. Peggotty eravamo soli insieme, e lui, caduto in un sonno di perfetta prostrazione, lei scoppiò in un pianto soffocato, e prendendomi per mano mi disse: «Dio la benedica, Master Davy, sia un amico per lui, povero caro!» Poi, corse subito fuori dalla casa per lavarsi il viso, in modo da poter stare tranquillamente seduta accanto a lui, e essere trovata lavorare lì, quando si fosse svegliato. Insomma, quando me ne andai alla notte, la lasciai come il sostegno e il conforto dell’afflizione di Mr. Peggotty; e non potevo riflettere abbastanza sulla lezione che avevo imparato da Mrs. Gummidge, e sulla nuova esperienza che mi aveva rivelato.
Era tra le nove e le dieci quando, passeggiando in modo malinconico per la città, mi fermai alla porta del signor Omer. Il signor Omer se l’era presa così tanto a cuore, mi disse sua figlia, che era stato molto giù e malato tutto il giorno, ed era andato a letto senza la sua pipa.
“Una ragazza falsa e cattiva”, disse la signora Joram. “Non c’era niente di buono in lei, mai!”
“Non dirlo”, replicai. “Non lo pensi.”
«Sì, lo faccio!» esclamò la signora Joram, con rabbia.
“No, no,” dissi io.
La signora Joram scosse la testa, cercando di essere molto severa e irritata; ma non riuscì a controllare il suo più tenero io e cominciò a piangere. Ero giovane, è vero; ma pensai molto meglio di lei per questa simpatia, e immaginai che le si addicesse, come moglie e madre virtuosa, molto bene davvero.
«Che cosa farà mai!» singhiozzò Minnie. «Dove andrà! Che ne sarà di lei! Oh, come ha potuto essere così crudele, con se stessa e con lui!»
Ricordavo il tempo in cui Minnie era una ragazza giovane e carina; e fui felice che anche lei lo ricordasse, così sentitamente.
«La mia piccola Minnie», disse la signora Joram, «è riuscita ad addormentarsi solo adesso. Anche nel suo sonno piange per Em’ly. Per tutto il giorno, la piccola Minnie ha pianto per lei, e mi ha chiesto, più e più volte, se Em’ly fosse cattiva? Cosa posso dirle, quando Em’ly ha legato un nastro del suo stesso collo intorno a quello della piccola Minnie l’ultima notte che è stata qui, e ha posato la testa sul cuscino accanto a lei finché non si è addormentata! Il nastro è ancora intorno al collo della mia piccola Minnie. Forse non dovrebbe esserci, ma cosa posso fare? Em’ly è molto cattiva, ma erano affezionate l’una all’altra. E la bambina non sa nulla!»
Mrs. Joram was so unhappy that her husband came out to take care of her. Leaving them together, I went home to Peggotty’s; more melancholy myself, if possible, than I had been yet.
That good creature—I mean Peggotty—all untired by her late anxieties and sleepless nights, was at her brother’s, where she meant to stay till morning. An old woman, who had been employed about the house for some weeks past, while Peggotty had been unable to attend to it, was the house’s only other occupant besides myself. As I had no occasion for her services, I sent her to bed, by no means against her will, and sat down before the kitchen fire a little while, to think about all this.
I was blending it with the deathbed of the late Mr. Barkis, and was driving out with the tide towards the distance at which Ham had looked so singularly in the morning, when I was recalled from my wanderings by a knock at the door. There was a knocker upon the door, but it was not that which made the sound. The tap was from a hand, and low down upon the door, as if it were given by a child.
It made me start as much as if it had been the knock of a footman to a person of distinction. I opened the door; and at first looked down, to my amazement, on nothing but a great umbrella that appeared to be walking about of itself. But presently I discovered underneath it, Miss Mowcher.
I might not have been prepared to give the little creature a very kind reception, if, on her removing the umbrella, which her utmost efforts were unable to shut up, she had shown me the ‘volatile’ expression of face which had made so great an impression on me at our first and last meeting. But her face, as she turned it up to mine, was so earnest; and when I relieved her of the umbrella (which would have been an inconvenient one for the Irish Giant), she wrung her little hands in such an afflicted manner; that I rather inclined towards her.
‘Miss Mowcher!’ said I, after glancing up and down the empty street, without distinctly knowing what I expected to see besides; ‘how do you come here? What is the matter?’ She motioned to me with her short right arm, to shut the umbrella for her; and passing me hurriedly, went into the kitchen. When I had closed the door, and followed, with the umbrella in my hand, I found her sitting on the corner of the fender—it was a low iron one, with two flat bars at top to stand plates upon—in the shadow of the boiler, swaying herself backwards and forwards, and chafing her hands upon her knees like a person in pain.
Quite alarmed at being the only recipient of this untimely visit, and the only spectator of this portentous behaviour, I exclaimed again, ‘Pray tell me, Miss Mowcher, what is the matter! are you ill?’
‘My dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here, I am very ill. To think that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!’
Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro; while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.
‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and serious’—when she interrupted me.
‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that’s the way. The old way!’
‘It may be, with others,’ I returned, ‘but I do assure you it is not with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I thought.’
‘What can I do?’ returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out her arms to show herself. ‘See! What I am, my father was; and my sister is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many years—hard, Mr. Copperfield—all day. I must live. I do no harm. If there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?’
No. Not Miss Mowcher’s, I perceived.
‘If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,’ pursued the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness, ‘how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had? If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard? Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn’t do it. No. She might whistle for her bread and butter till she died of Air.’
Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.
‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you giants, be gentle with me.’
Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me with very intent expression all the while, and pursued:
‘I saw you in the street just now. You may suppose I am not able to walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I couldn’t overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after you. I have been here before, today, but the good woman wasn’t at home.’
La signora Joram era così infelice che suo marito uscì per prendersi cura di lei. Lasciandoli insieme, io andai a casa da Peggotty; più malinconico, se possibile, di quanto fossi stato finora.
Quella buona creatura — intendo Peggotty — tutta ristorata dalle sue recenti ansie e notti insonni, era da suo fratello, dove intendeva rimanere fino al mattino. Una vecchia donna, che era stata assunta per la casa da alcune settimane, mentre Peggotty non era stata in grado di occuparsene, era l’unica altra occupante della casa oltre a me. Poiché non avevo bisogno dei suoi servizi, la mandai a letto, tutt’altro che contro la sua volontà, e mi sedetti davanti al fuoco della cucina per un po’, per riflettere su tutto ciò.
Stavo mescolando questo pensiero con il letto di morte del defunto signor Barkis, e stavo andando alla deriva con la marea verso il punto in cui Ham aveva guardato così stranamente quella mattina, quando fui richiamato dai miei pensieri da un colpo alla porta. C’era un batacchio sulla porta, ma non era quello che aveva prodotto il suono. Il colpo era stato dato da una mano, e molto in basso sulla porta, come se fosse stato dato da un bambino.
Mi fece sobbalzare come se fosse stato il colpo di un valletto a una persona di riguardo. Aprii la porta; e dapprima, con mia grande sorpresa, vidi solo un enorme ombrello che sembrava camminare da solo. Ma presto scoprii che sotto c’era Miss Mowcher.
Forse non sarei stato disposto a dare alla piccola creatura un’accoglienza molto gentile, se, togliendosi l’ombrello, che i suoi massimi sforzi non riuscivano a chiudere, mi avesse mostrato l’espressione «volatile» del viso che aveva fatto una così grande impressione su di me al nostro primo e ultimo incontro. Ma il suo viso, mentre lo rivolgeva verso il mio, era così serio; e quando la sollevai dall’ombrello (che sarebbe stato un peso per il gigante irlandese), si strinse le mani in modo così afflitto; che mi inclinai piuttosto verso di lei.
«Miss Mowcher!» dissi, dopo aver dato un’occhiata su e giù per la strada vuota, senza sapere distintamente cosa mi aspettassi di vedere oltre; «come fa a venire qui? Che succede?» Mi fece cenno con il suo braccio destro corto di chiudere l’ombrello per lei; e passandomi accanto di corsa, entrò in cucina. Quando chiusi la porta e la seguii, con l’ombrello in mano, la trovai seduta sull’angolo del parafuoco—era un parafuoco basso di ferro, con due barre piatte in cima per appoggiare i piatti—nell’ombra del bollitore, dondolandosi avanti e indietro, e strofinandosi le mani sulle ginocchia come una persona in dolore.
Ero piuttosto allarmato per essere l’unico destinatario di questa visita inopportuna e l’unico spettatore di questo comportamento straordinario, e così esclamai di nuovo: «La prego, Miss Mowcher, mi dica che cosa succede! È malata?»
«Mia cara giovane anima», rispose Miss Mowcher, stringendosi le mani sul cuore l’una sull’altra. «Sono malata qui, sono molto malata. Pensare che sia arrivata a questo, quando avrei potuto saperlo e forse prevenirlo, se non fossi stata una sciocca senza pensieri!»
Ancora una volta il suo grande cappello (molto sproporzionato rispetto alla figura) oscillava avanti e indietro, mentre lei dondolava il suo piccolo corpo avanti e indietro; mentre un cappello gigantesco oscillava, in sincronia con esso, sul muro.
«Sono sorpreso» cominciai «di vedervi così turbata e seria» — quando lei mi interruppe.
«Sì, è sempre così!» disse. «Sono tutti sorpresi, questi giovani senza cuore, ormai adulti e maturi, nel vedere un sentimento naturale in una piccola cosa come me! Mi prendono in giro, mi usano per il loro divertimento, mi buttano via quando ne hanno abbastanza, e si stupiscono che io provi più sentimenti di un cavallo di giocattolo o di un soldatino di legno! Sì, sì, è così. È sempre stato così!»
«Può darsi che sia così per altri» risposi «ma vi assicuro che non è così per me. Forse non dovrei affatto sorprendermi di vedervi come siete ora: vi conosco così poco. Ho detto, senza riflettere, ciò che pensavo.»
«Che cosa posso fare?» rispose la piccola donna, alzandosi e tendendo le braccia per mostrarsi. «Vedete! Quello che sono, lo era mio padre; e lo è mia sorella; e lo è mio fratello. Ho lavorato per mia sorella e mio fratello per tanti anni - duramente, signor Copperfield - tutto il giorno. Devo vivere. Non faccio del male a nessuno. Se ci sono persone così sconsiderate o così crudeli da fare una battuta su di me, che cosa mi resta da fare se non fare una battuta su me stessa, su di loro e su tutto? Se lo faccio, per il momento, di chi è la colpa? Mia?»
No. Non la casa della signorina Mowcher, capii.
«Se mi fossi mostrata una nanerottola sensibile con il tuo falso amico», continuò la piccola donna, scuotendo la testa verso di me con un’aria di rimprovero, «quanto credi che avrei mai ottenuto del suo aiuto o della sua buona volontà? Se la piccola Mowcher (che non aveva avuto alcuna parte, giovane signore, nella creazione di se stessa) si fosse rivolta a lui, o a uno come lui, a causa delle sue disgrazie, quando credi che la sua piccola voce sarebbe stata ascoltata? La piccola Mowcher avrebbe avuto bisogno di vivere, anche se fosse stata la più amara e noiosa delle pigmee; ma non avrebbe potuto. No. Avrebbe potuto fischiare per il suo pane e burro fino a morire di fame.»
La signorina Mowcher si sedette di nuovo sul parafuoco, tirò fuori il fazzoletto e si asciugò gli occhi.
«Siate grata per me, se avete un cuore gentile, come credo abbiate», disse, «che mentre so bene chi sono, posso essere allegra e sopportare tutto. Sono grata a me stessa, in ogni caso, che posso trovare il mio piccolo cammino nel mondo, senza essere in debito con nessuno; e che in cambio di tutto ciò che mi viene lanciato, in follia o vanità, mentre vado avanti, posso lanciare bolle d’aria. Se non mi rattristo per tutto ciò che desidero, è meglio per me, e non peggio per nessuno. Se sono un giocattolo per voi giganti, siate gentili con me.»
La signorina Mowcher ripose il fazzoletto in tasca, guardandomi tutto il tempo con un’espressione molto attenta, e continuò:
«Vi ho visto in strada poco fa. Potete supporre che io non sia in grado di camminare veloce come voi, con le mie gambe corte e il respiro corto, e non potevo raggiungervi; ma ho indovinato dove siete andato, e vi ho seguito. Sono stato qui prima, oggi, ma la brava donna non era a casa.»
‘Do you know her?’ I demanded.
‘I know of her, and about her,’ she replied, ‘from Omer and Joram. I was there at seven o’clock this morning. Do you remember what Steerforth said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when I saw you both at the inn?’
The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher’s head, and the greater bonnet on the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked this question.
I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my thoughts many times that day. I told her so.
‘May the Father of all Evil confound him,’ said the little woman, holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, ‘and ten times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was YOU who had a boyish passion for her!’
‘I?’ I repeated.
‘Child, child! In the name of blind ill-fortune,’ cried Miss Mowcher, wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro again upon the fender, ‘why did you praise her so, and blush, and look disturbed?’
I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a reason very different from her supposition.
‘What did I know?’ said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief again, and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short intervals, she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once. ‘He was crossing you and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in his hands, I saw. Had I left the room a minute, when his man told me that “Young Innocence” (so he called you, and you may call him “Old Guilt” all the days of your life) had set his heart upon her, and she was giddy and liked him, but his master was resolved that no harm should come of it—more for your sake than for hers—and that that was their business here? How could I BUT believe him? I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once when I spoke to you of her. What could I think—what DID I think—but that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you (having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my finding out the truth,’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with her two short arms distressfully lifted up, ‘because I am a sharp little thing—I need be, to get through the world at all!—and they deceived me altogether, and I gave the poor unfortunate girl a letter, which I fully believe was the beginning of her ever speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on purpose!’
I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at Miss Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was out of breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her face with her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without otherwise moving, and without breaking silence.
‘My country rounds,’ she added at length, ‘brought me to Norwich, Mr. Copperfield, the night before last. What I happened to find there, about their secret way of coming and going, without you—which was strange—led to my suspecting something wrong. I got into the coach from London last night, as it came through Norwich, and was here this morning. Oh, oh, oh! too late!’
Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and fretting, that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor little wet feet in among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at the fire, like a large doll. I sat in a chair on the other side of the hearth, lost in unhappy reflections, and looking at the fire too, and sometimes at her.
‘I must go,’ she said at last, rising as she spoke. ‘It’s late. You don’t mistrust me?’
Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me, I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.
‘Come!’ said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, ‘you know you wouldn’t mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman!’
I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of myself.
‘You are a young man,’ she said, nodding. ‘Take a word of advice, even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.’
She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. I told her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself, and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands. She thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.
‘Now, mind!’ she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door, and looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger up again.—‘I have some reason to suspect, from what I have heard—my ears are always open; I can’t afford to spare what powers I have—that they are gone abroad. But if ever they return, if ever any one of them returns, while I am alive, I am more likely than another, going about as I do, to find it out soon. Whatever I know, you shall know. If ever I can do anything to serve the poor betrayed girl, I will do it faithfully, please Heaven! And Littimer had better have a bloodhound at his back, than little Mowcher!’
I placed implicit faith in this last statement, when I marked the look with which it was accompanied.
‘Trust me no more, but trust me no less, than you would trust a full-sized woman,’ said the little creature, touching me appealingly on the wrist. ‘If ever you see me again, unlike what I am now, and like what I was when you first saw me, observe what company I am in. Call to mind that I am a very helpless and defenceless little thing. Think of me at home with my brother like myself and sister like myself, when my day’s work is done. Perhaps you won’t, then, be very hard upon me, or surprised if I can be distressed and serious. Good night!’
«La conosci?» domandai.
«La conosco e ne so qualcosa», rispose, «grazie a Omer e Joram. Ero lì alle sette di ora questa mattina. Ricordi cosa disse Steerforth di questa povera ragazza, quella volta che vi vidi entrambi all’osteria?»
Il grande cappello sulla testa della signorina Mowcher e il cappello ancora più grande appeso al muro, ricominciarono a oscillare avanti e indietro quando lei fece questa domanda.
Ricordavo molto bene a cosa si riferiva, avendola avuta in mente molte volte quel giorno. Glielo dissi.
«Che il Padre di tutto il Male lo confonda», disse la piccola donna, alzando il dito indice tra me e i suoi occhi scintillanti, «e confonda dieci volte di più quel servitore malvagio; ma credevo che fosse TU a nutrire una passione giovanile per lei!»
«Io?» ripetei.
«Bambino, bambino! In nome di una cieca sfortuna», gridò Miss Mowcher, torcendosi le mani impazientemente mentre andava avanti e indietro davanti al caminetto, «perché l’avete lodata così tanto, arrossendo e mostrandovi turbato?»
Non potevo nascondere a me stesso che avevo fatto questo, sebbene per un motivo molto diverso da quello che lei supponeva.
«Cosa ne sapevo io?» disse Miss Mowcher, tirando fuori di nuovo il fazzoletto e dando un piccolo calcio a terra ogni volta che, a brevi intervalli, lo portava agli occhi con entrambe le mani. «Vedevo che lui vi stava ingannando e adulando, e che voi eravate cera molle tra le sue mani. Se fossi uscita dalla stanza un minuto, quando il suo uomo mi disse che “la giovane Innocenza” (così vi chiamava, e voi potete chiamarlo “il vecchio Colpevole” tutti i giorni della vostra vita) gli aveva messo gli occhi addosso, e che lei era capricciosa e lo trovava simpatico, ma che il suo padrone era deciso che non ne sarebbe derivato alcun danno, più per il vostro bene che per il suo, e che questo era il motivo della loro presenza qui? Come avrei potuto non credergli? Vedevo Steerforth blandirvi e lusingarvi lodando lei! Siete stata voi la prima a menzionare il suo nome. Ammettevate di averla ammirata da tempo. Eravate calda e fredda, e rossa e bianca, tutto insieme quando vi parlavo di lei. Cosa potevo pensare, cosa pensavo, se non che eravate un giovane libertino in tutto tranne che per esperienza, e che eravate caduto in mani che ne avevano abbastanza, e che potevano gestirvi (avendo la fantasia) per il vostro bene? Oh! oh! oh! Avevano paura che io scoprisse la verità», esclamò Miss Mowcher, alzandosi dal parafuoco e camminando avanti e indietro per la cucina con le sue due braccia corte sollevate in segno di disperazione, «perché sono una donnina perspicace, devo esserlo per sopravvivere in questo mondo, e mi hanno ingannata completamente, e ho dato alla povera ragazza sfortunata una lettera, che sono certa sia stata l’inizio di ogni suo discorso con Littimer, che era stato lasciato indietro apposta!»
Rimasi sbalordito dalla rivelazione di tutta questa perfidia, guardando Miss Mowcher mentre camminava su e giù per la cucina fino a rimanere senza fiato: quando si sedette di nuovo sul parafuoco e, asciugandosi il viso con il fazzoletto, scosse la testa per un lungo periodo, senza muoversi in altro modo e senza rompere il silenzio.
«I miei giri per il paese», aggiunse dopo un po’, «mi hanno portata a Norwich, signor Copperfield, la notte prima di quella scorsa. Quello che ho scoperto là, riguardo al loro modo segreto di andare e venire, senza di voi - il che era strano - mi ha fatto sospettare qualcosa di losco. Sono salita sul diligenza da Londra la scorsa notte, mentre passava per Norwich, e sono arrivata qui questa mattina. Oh, oh, oh! troppo tardi!»
La povera piccola Mowcher si era raffreddata così tanto dopo tutto quel pianto e quel nervosismo, che si era girata sul parafuoco, mettendo i suoi poveri piedini bagnati tra le ceneri per riscaldarli, e sedeva guardando il fuoco, come una grande bamola. Io sedevo su una sedia dall’altra parte del focolare, perso in riflessioni infelici, e guardavo anch’io il fuoco, e a volte lei.
‘Devo andare’, disse alla fine, alzandosi mentre parlava. ‘È tardi. Non mi sospetti?’
Incontrando il suo sguardo penetrante, che era sempre penetrante quando mi chiedeva, non potevo rispondere no a quella breve provocazione, del tutto francamente.
«Davvero!», disse, accettando l’offerta della mia mano per aiutarla a superare il parafuoco, e guardandomi con aria malinconica, «sai che non diffideresti di me, se fossi una donna adulta!»
Sentivo che c’era molta verità in questo; e mi sentivo piuttosto vergognoso di me stesso.
«Sei un giovane», disse, annuendo. «Accetta un consiglio, anche da una che non arriva a tre piedi. Cerca di non associare i difetti fisici a quelli mentali, mio caro amico, se non hai una ragione solida.»
Ora era passata davanti al parafuoco e io avevo superato il mio sospetto. Le dissi che credevo mi avesse dato un resoconto fedele di sé stessa, e che entrambi eravamo stati infelici strumenti in mani astute. Mi ringraziò e disse che ero un bravo ragazzo.
«Ora, bada!» esclamò, voltandosi mentre si dirigeva verso la porta e guardandomi con astuzia, con il dito indice alzato di nuovo. «Ho qualche motivo di sospettare, da quello che ho sentito - le mie orecchie sono sempre aperte; non posso permettermi di risparmiare le mie capacità - che siano andati all’estero. Ma se mai torneranno, se mai uno di loro tornerà, mentre sono in vita, sono più probabile di un altro, andando in giro come faccio, di scoprirlo presto. Qualunque cosa io sappia, tu la saprai. Se mai potrò fare qualcosa per servire la povera ragazza tradita, lo farò fedelmente, per favore del Cielo! E Littimer farebbe meglio ad avere un segugio alle calcagna, che la piccola Mowcher!»
Ho riposto una fiducia implicita in quest’ultima affermazione, quando ho notato lo sguardo con cui era accompagnata.
«Non confidarti in me più di quanto non confidaresti in una donna di statura normale, né meno», disse la piccola creatura, toccandomi con fare supplichevole il polso. «Se mai mi vedrai di nuovo, diversa da come sono ora, e simile a come ero quando mi vedesti per la prima volta, osserva in quale compagnia mi trovo. Ricorda che sono una creatura molto indifesa e bisognosa di aiuto. Pensami a casa con mio fratello, che è come me, e mia sorella, che è come me, quando la mia giornata di lavoro è finita. Forse allora non sarai troppo severo con me, né sorpreso se posso essere angosciata e seria. Buona notte!»
I gave Miss Mowcher my hand, with a very different opinion of her from that which I had hitherto entertained, and opened the door to let her out. It was not a trifling business to get the great umbrella up, and properly balanced in her grasp; but at last I successfully accomplished this, and saw it go bobbing down the street through the rain, without the least appearance of having anybody underneath it, except when a heavier fall than usual from some over-charged water-spout sent it toppling over, on one side, and discovered Miss Mowcher struggling violently to get it right. After making one or two sallies to her relief, which were rendered futile by the umbrella’s hopping on again, like an immense bird, before I could reach it, I came in, went to bed, and slept till morning.
In the morning I was joined by Mr. Peggotty and by my old nurse, and we went at an early hour to the coach office, where Mrs. Gummidge and Ham were waiting to take leave of us.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ Ham whispered, drawing me aside, while Mr. Peggotty was stowing his bag among the luggage, ‘his life is quite broke up. He doen’t know wheer he’s going; he doen’t know—what’s afore him; he’s bound upon a voyage that’ll last, on and off, all the rest of his days, take my wured for ‘t, unless he finds what he’s a seeking of. I am sure you’ll be a friend to him, Mas’r Davy?’
‘Trust me, I will indeed,’ said I, shaking hands with Ham earnestly.
‘Thankee. Thankee, very kind, sir. One thing furder. I’m in good employ, you know, Mas’r Davy, and I han’t no way now of spending what I gets. Money’s of no use to me no more, except to live. If you can lay it out for him, I shall do my work with a better art. Though as to that, sir,’ and he spoke very steadily and mildly, ‘you’re not to think but I shall work at all times, like a man, and act the best that lays in my power!’
I told him I was well convinced of it; and I hinted that I hoped the time might even come, when he would cease to lead the lonely life he naturally contemplated now.
‘No, sir,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘all that’s past and over with me, sir. No one can never fill the place that’s empty. But you’ll bear in mind about the money, as theer’s at all times some laying by for him?’
Reminding him of the fact, that Mr. Peggotty derived a steady, though certainly a very moderate income from the bequest of his late brother-in-law, I promised to do so. We then took leave of each other. I cannot leave him even now, without remembering with a pang, at once his modest fortitude and his great sorrow.
As to Mrs. Gummidge, if I were to endeavour to describe how she ran down the street by the side of the coach, seeing nothing but Mr. Peggotty on the roof, through the tears she tried to repress, and dashing herself against the people who were coming in the opposite direction, I should enter on a task of some difficulty. Therefore I had better leave her sitting on a baker’s door-step, out of breath, with no shape at all remaining in her bonnet, and one of her shoes off, lying on the pavement at a considerable distance.
When we got to our journey’s end, our first pursuit was to look about for a little lodging for Peggotty, where her brother could have a bed. We were so fortunate as to find one, of a very clean and cheap description, over a chandler’s shop, only two streets removed from me. When we had engaged this domicile, I bought some cold meat at an eating-house, and took my fellow-travellers home to tea; a proceeding, I regret to state, which did not meet with Mrs. Crupp’s approval, but quite the contrary. I ought to observe, however, in explanation of that lady’s state of mind, that she was much offended by Peggotty’s tucking up her widow’s gown before she had been ten minutes in the place, and setting to work to dust my bedroom. This Mrs. Crupp regarded in the light of a liberty, and a liberty, she said, was a thing she never allowed.
Mr. Peggotty had made a communication to me on the way to London for which I was not unprepared. It was, that he purposed first seeing Mrs. Steerforth. As I felt bound to assist him in this, and also to mediate between them; with the view of sparing the mother’s feelings as much as possible, I wrote to her that night. I told her as mildly as I could what his wrong was, and what my own share in his injury. I said he was a man in very common life, but of a most gentle and upright character; and that I ventured to express a hope that she would not refuse to see him in his heavy trouble. I mentioned two o’clock in the afternoon as the hour of our coming, and I sent the letter myself by the first coach in the morning.
At the appointed time, we stood at the door—the door of that house where I had been, a few days since, so happy: where my youthful confidence and warmth of heart had been yielded up so freely: which was closed against me henceforth: which was now a waste, a ruin.
No Littimer appeared. The pleasanter face which had replaced his, on the occasion of my last visit, answered to our summons, and went before us to the drawing-room. Mrs. Steerforth was sitting there. Rosa Dartle glided, as we went in, from another part of the room and stood behind her chair.
I saw, directly, in his mother’s face, that she knew from himself what he had done. It was very pale; and bore the traces of deeper emotion than my letter alone, weakened by the doubts her fondness would have raised upon it, would have been likely to create. I thought her more like him than ever I had thought her; and I felt, rather than saw, that the resemblance was not lost on my companion.
She sat upright in her arm-chair, with a stately, immovable, passionless air, that it seemed as if nothing could disturb. She looked very steadfastly at Mr. Peggotty when he stood before her; and he looked quite as steadfastly at her. Rosa Dartle’s keen glance comprehended all of us. For some moments not a word was spoken.
Le porsi la mano, con un’opinione di lei molto diversa da quella che avevo finora avuto, e aprii la porta per farla uscire. Non fu cosa da poco far aprire il grande ombrello e bilanciarlo bene nella sua presa; ma alla fine ci riuscii, e lo vidi oscillare lungo la strada sotto la pioggia, senza il minimo segno di avere qualcuno sotto, tranne quando una caduta più pesante del solito da qualche grondaia troppo piena lo faceva rovesciare da un lato, rivelando Miss Mowcher che lottava con tutte le sue forze per raddrizzarlo. Dopo uno o due tentativi di andarle in aiuto, resi vani dal fatto che l’ombrello riprendeva a saltellare, come un enorme volatile, prima che potessi raggiungerlo, rientrai, andai a letto e dormii fino al mattino.
La mattina mi raggiunsero il signor Peggotty e la mia vecchia balia, e andammo di buon’ora all’ufficio corrieri, dove la signora Gummidge e Ham aspettavano per salutarci.
«Signor Davy», sussurrò Ham, tirandomi da parte mentre il signor Peggotty riponeva la sua borsa tra i bagagli, «la sua vita è completamente distrutta. Non sa dove sta andando; non sa cosa lo aspetta; è in procinto di intraprendere un viaggio che durerà, a onda e a subbuglio, per tutto il resto dei suoi giorni, mi creda, a meno che non trovi ciò che cerca. Sono sicuro che lei sarà un amico per lui, signor Davy?»
«Credetemi, lo farò davvero», dissi, stringendo la mano a Ham con fervore.
«Grazie. Grazie, molto gentile, signore. Un’altra cosa. Sono in buon lavoro, lo sapete, Maestro Davy, e non ho modo di spendere quello che guadagno. Il denaro non mi serve più, tranne per vivere. Se potete spenderlo per lui, farò il mio lavoro con più impegno. Anche se, signore,» e parlò con grande fermezza e dolcezza, «non dovete pensare che non lavorerò sempre, come un uomo, e farò del mio meglio!»
Gli dissi che ne ero ben convinto; e lasciai capire che speravo che potesse anche arrivare il momento in cui avrebbe smesso di condurre la vita solitaria che naturalmente contemplava ora.
«No, signore», disse, scuotendo la testa, «per me tutto questo è passato e finito, signore. Nessuno potrà mai riempire il posto vuoto. Ma terrà presente la questione del denaro, dato che c’è sempre qualcosa da parte per lui?»
Gli ricordai che il signor Peggotty aveva un reddito costante, sebbene certamente molto modesto, derivante dall’eredità del suo defunto cognato, e gli promisi di farlo. Ci salutammo quindi. Non posso lasciarlo nemmeno ora senza ricordare con un senso di dolore la sua modesta forza d’animo e la sua grande tristezza.
Per quanto riguarda la signora Gummidge, se dovessi cercare di descrivere come correva lungo la strada accanto al calesse, vedendo solo il signor Peggotty sul tetto, attraverso le lacrime che cercava di reprimere, e lanciandosi contro le persone che venivano nella direzione opposta, mi troverei ad affrontare un compito piuttosto difficile. Pertanto è meglio che la lasci seduta sul gradino di un fornaio, senza fiato, con il cappello completamente sformato e una delle scarpe persa, che giace sul marciapiede a una certa distanza.
Quando giungemmo a destinazione, la nostra prima cura fu di cercare un piccolo alloggio per Peggotty, dove suo fratello potesse avere un letto. Abbiamo avuto la fortuna di trovarne uno, molto pulito e economico, sopra un negozio di candele, a soli due strade di distanza da me. Una volta preso in affitto questo alloggio, comprai un po’ di carne fredda in un ristorante e portai i miei compagni di viaggio a casa mia a prendere il tè; un gesto che, mi duole dirlo, non ottenne l’approvazione della signora Crupp, anzi, proprio il contrario. Tuttavia, per spiegare lo stato d’animo di quella signora, devo dire che era molto offesa dal fatto che Peggotty si fosse rimboccata l’abito da lutto prima di essere stata in casa da dieci minuti e si fosse messa subito a spolverare la mia camera da letto. La signora Crupp considerava questo un’impudenza, e un’impudenza, diceva, era una cosa che non sopportava.
Il signor Peggotty mi aveva fatto una comunicazione durante il viaggio per Londra a cui non ero del tutto impreparato. Era che intendeva prima di tutto vedere la signora Steerforth. Poiché mi sentivo in dovere di aiutarlo in questo, e anche di fare da mediatore tra loro, con l’intento di risparmiare il più possibile i sentimenti della madre, le scrissi quella notte. Le dissi, nel modo più mite possibile, qual era il suo torto e qual era la mia parte nella sua offesa. Dissi che era un uomo di condizione molto comune, ma di carattere estremamente gentile e retto; e che mi permettevo di esprimere una speranza che non si rifiutasse di vederlo nel suo grave dolore. Indicai le due del pomeriggio come l’ora del nostro arrivo, e inviai la lettera di persona con il primo diligenza del mattino.
All’ora stabilita, ci trovavamo alla porta — la porta di quella casa dove, pochi giorni prima, ero stato così felice: dove la mia fiducia giovanile e il calore del mio cuore erano stati offerti con tanta generosità: che da quel momento in poi mi era chiusa: che ora era un deserto, un rudere.
Non apparve Littimer. Il volto più piacevole che lo aveva sostituito, in occasione della mia ultima visita, rispose al nostro richiamo e ci precedette nel salotto. La signora Steerforth era seduta lì. Rosa Dartle, quando entrammo, scivolò da un’altra parte della stanza e si fermò dietro la sua sedia.
Vidi subito, dal viso di sua madre, che sapeva da lui stesso cosa avesse fatto. Era molto pallido; e portava i segni di un’emozione più profonda di quella che la mia lettera da sola, indebolita dai dubbi che la sua tenerezza avrebbe sollevato su di essa, avrebbe potuto creare. La trovai più simile a lui di quanto l’avessi mai trovata; e sentii, più che vedere, che la somiglianza non era sfuggita al mio compagno.
Ella sedeva dritta nella sua poltrona, con un’aria maestosa, immobile, impassibile, che sembrava nulla potesse turbare. Guardava con grande fermezza il signor Peggotty quando questi si trovava davanti a lei; e lui la guardava con altrettanta fermezza. L’occhiata penetrante di Rosa Dartle comprendeva tutti noi. Per alcuni momenti non una parola fu pronunciata.
She motioned to Mr. Peggotty to be seated. He said, in a low voice, ‘I shouldn’t feel it nat’ral, ma’am, to sit down in this house. I’d sooner stand.’ And this was succeeded by another silence, which she broke thus:
‘I know, with deep regret, what has brought you here. What do you want of me? What do you ask me to do?’
He put his hat under his arm, and feeling in his breast for Emily’s letter, took it out, unfolded it, and gave it to her. ‘Please to read that, ma’am. That’s my niece’s hand!’
She read it, in the same stately and impassive way,—untouched by its contents, as far as I could see,—and returned it to him.
‘“Unless he brings me back a lady,”’ said Mr. Peggotty, tracing out that part with his finger. ‘I come to know, ma’am, whether he will keep his wured?’
‘No,’ she returned.
‘Why not?’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘It is impossible. He would disgrace himself. You cannot fail to know that she is far below him.’
‘Raise her up!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘She is uneducated and ignorant.’
‘Maybe she’s not; maybe she is,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I think not, ma’am; but I’m no judge of them things. Teach her better!’
‘Since you oblige me to speak more plainly, which I am very unwilling to do, her humble connexions would render such a thing impossible, if nothing else did.’
‘Hark to this, ma’am,’ he returned, slowly and quietly. ‘You know what it is to love your child. So do I. If she was a hundred times my child, I couldn’t love her more. You doen’t know what it is to lose your child. I do. All the heaps of riches in the wureld would be nowt to me (if they was mine) to buy her back! But, save her from this disgrace, and she shall never be disgraced by us. Not one of us that she’s growed up among, not one of us that’s lived along with her and had her for their all in all, these many year, will ever look upon her pritty face again. We’ll be content to let her be; we’ll be content to think of her, far off, as if she was underneath another sun and sky; we’ll be content to trust her to her husband,—to her little children, p’raps,—and bide the time when all of us shall be alike in quality afore our God!’
The rugged eloquence with which he spoke, was not devoid of all effect. She still preserved her proud manner, but there was a touch of softness in her voice, as she answered:
‘I justify nothing. I make no counter-accusations. But I am sorry to repeat, it is impossible. Such a marriage would irretrievably blight my son’s career, and ruin his prospects. Nothing is more certain than that it never can take place, and never will. If there is any other compensation—’
‘I am looking at the likeness of the face,’ interrupted Mr. Peggotty, with a steady but a kindling eye, ‘that has looked at me, in my home, at my fireside, in my boat—wheer not?---smiling and friendly, when it was so treacherous, that I go half wild when I think of it. If the likeness of that face don’t turn to burning fire, at the thought of offering money to me for my child’s blight and ruin, it’s as bad. I doen’t know, being a lady’s, but what it’s worse.’
She changed now, in a moment. An angry flush overspread her features; and she said, in an intolerant manner, grasping the arm-chair tightly with her hands:
‘What compensation can you make to ME for opening such a pit between me and my son? What is your love to mine? What is your separation to ours?’
Miss Dartle softly touched her, and bent down her head to whisper, but she would not hear a word.
‘No, Rosa, not a word! Let the man listen to what I say! My son, who has been the object of my life, to whom its every thought has been devoted, whom I have gratified from a child in every wish, from whom I have had no separate existence since his birth,—to take up in a moment with a miserable girl, and avoid me! To repay my confidence with systematic deception, for her sake, and quit me for her! To set this wretched fancy, against his mother’s claims upon his duty, love, respect, gratitude—claims that every day and hour of his life should have strengthened into ties that nothing could be proof against! Is this no injury?’
Again Rosa Dartle tried to soothe her; again ineffectually.
‘I say, Rosa, not a word! If he can stake his all upon the lightest object, I can stake my all upon a greater purpose. Let him go where he will, with the means that my love has secured to him! Does he think to reduce me by long absence? He knows his mother very little if he does. Let him put away his whim now, and he is welcome back. Let him not put her away now, and he never shall come near me, living or dying, while I can raise my hand to make a sign against it, unless, being rid of her for ever, he comes humbly to me and begs for my forgiveness. This is my right. This is the acknowledgement I WILL HAVE. This is the separation that there is between us! And is this,’ she added, looking at her visitor with the proud intolerant air with which she had begun, ‘no injury?’
While I heard and saw the mother as she said these words, I seemed to hear and see the son, defying them. All that I had ever seen in him of an unyielding, wilful spirit, I saw in her. All the understanding that I had now of his misdirected energy, became an understanding of her character too, and a perception that it was, in its strongest springs, the same.
She now observed to me, aloud, resuming her former restraint, that it was useless to hear more, or to say more, and that she begged to put an end to the interview. She rose with an air of dignity to leave the room, when Mr. Peggotty signified that it was needless.
‘Doen’t fear me being any hindrance to you, I have no more to say, ma’am,’ he remarked, as he moved towards the door. ‘I come heer with no hope, and I take away no hope. I have done what I thowt should be done, but I never looked fur any good to come of my stan’ning where I do. This has been too evil a house fur me and mine, fur me to be in my right senses and expect it.’
Fece cenno a Mr. Peggotty di accomodarsi. Lui disse, a bassa voce, «Non mi sentirei a mio agio, signora, a sedermi in questa casa. Preferisco stare in piedi.» E questo fu seguito da un altro silenzio, che lei ruppe così:
«So, con profondo rammarico, ciò che vi ha portato qui. Cosa volete da me? Cosa mi chiedete di fare?»
Mise il cappello sotto il braccio, frugò nel petto in cerca della lettera di Emily, la tirò fuori, la dispiegò e gliela porse. «La prego di leggere questo, signora. È la scrittura di mia nipote!»
La lesse, con la stessa maestosa e impassibile espressione, — non toccata dal suo contenuto, per quanto potessi vedere, — e gliela restituì.
«“A meno che non mi porti indietro una signora”,» disse il signor Peggotty, indicando quel passaggio con il dito. «Vorrei sapere, signora, se terrà fede alla sua promessa?»
«No», rispose lei.
«Perché no?» disse il signor Peggotty.
«È impossibile. Si coprirebbe di vergogna. Non potete non sapere che lei è molto al di sotto di lui.»
«Rialzatela!» disse il signor Peggotty.
‘È ignorante e senza istruzione.’
«Forse no, forse sì», disse il signor Peggotty. «Io credo di no, signora, ma non sono un giudice di queste cose. Insegnategliela meglio!»
«Poiché mi costringete a parlare più apertamente, cosa che non voglio fare, i suoi umili legami renderebbero impossibile una cosa del genere, se non ci fossero altri ostacoli.»
«Ascolti questo, signora», rispose, lentamente e con calma. «Sa cosa vuol dire amare il suo figlio. Lo so anch’io. Se fosse cento volte mia figlia, non potrei amarla di più. Lei non sa cosa vuol dire perdere il suo figlio. Io sì. Tutti i tesori del mondo non varrebbero nulla per me (anche se fossero miei) per riaverla! Ma, salvatela da questo disonore, e non sarà mai disonorata da noi. Nessuno di noi tra cui è cresciuta, nessuno di noi che ha vissuto con lei e l’ha avuta per tutto, per tanti anni, la guarderà mai più sul suo bel viso. Ci accontenteremo di lasciarla stare; ci accontenteremo di pensare a lei, lontana, come se fosse sotto un altro sole e un altro cielo; ci accontenteremo di affidarla a suo marito, —ai suoi piccoli figli, forse,— e aspetteremo il tempo in cui saremo tutti uguali di fronte a Dio!»
L’eloquenza rude con cui parlava non era del tutto priva di effetto. Conservava ancora il suo portamento orgoglioso, ma c’era una nota di dolcezza nella sua voce mentre rispondeva:
«Non giustifico nulla. Non faccio controaccuse. Ma mi dispiace ripetere che è impossibile. Un matrimonio del genere comprometterebbe irrimediabilmente la carriera di mio figlio e ne rovinerebbe le prospettive. Non c’è nulla di più certo di questo: non potrà mai avvenire, e non avverrà mai. Se ci fosse un altro risarcimento, »
«Sto guardando il ritratto di quel volto», interruppe il signor Peggotty, con uno sguardo fermo ma acceso, «che mi ha guardato nella mia casa, al mio focolare, nella mia barca, dove non?---sorridente e amichevole, mentre era così traditore, che vado quasi fuori di me quando ci penso. Se il ritratto di quel volto non si trasforma in bruciante fuoco, al pensiero di offrirmi denaro per la disgrazia e la rovina della mia figlia, è altrettanto grave. Non lo so, essendo una donna, ma potrebbe essere peggio.»
Cambiò in un attimo. Un rossore di rabbia le si diffuse sul viso; e disse, in tono intollerante, stringendo saldamente lo schienale della poltrona:
«Che risarcimento potete darmi VOI per aver aperto un abisso tra me e mio figlio? Che cosa è il vostro amore rispetto al mio? Che cosa è la vostra separazione rispetto alla nostra?»
La signorina Dartle la toccò dolcemente e si chinò per sussurrarle qualcosa, ma lei non volle ascoltare una parola.
«No, Rosa, non una parola! Lascia che l’uomo ascolti ciò che dico! Mio figlio, che è stato l’oggetto della mia vita, a cui ogni suo pensiero è stato dedicato, che ho soddisfatto da bambino in ogni desiderio, da cui non ho avuto un’esistenza separata dalla sua nascita,—per prendere in un momento una miserabile ragazza, e evitarmi! Per ripagare la mia fiducia con un’inganno sistematico, per il suo bene, e abbandonarmi per lei! Per mettere questa miserabile follia, contro i diritti della madre sul suo dovere, amore, rispetto, gratitudine—diritti che ogni giorno e ogni ora della sua vita avrebbero dovuto rafforzare in legami che nulla avrebbe potuto resistere! Non è forse un’offesa?»
Rosa Dartle cercò di nuovo di calmarla; di nuovo senza successo.
«Dico, Rosa, non una parola! Se lui può mettere tutto in gioco per l’oggetto più insignificante, io posso mettere tutto in gioco per uno scopo più grande. Che vada dove vuole, con i mezzi che il mio amore gli ha procurato! Pensa forse di piegarmi con una lunga assenza? Conosce molto poco sua madre se lo pensa. Che rinunci ora a questa sua capricciosità, e sarà il benvenuto. Che non rinunci a lei ora, e non si avvicinerà mai a me, vivo o morto, finché potrò alzare la mano per far segno contro di lui, a meno che, liberatosi di lei per sempre, non venga umilmente da me e non mi chieda il mio perdono. Questo è mio diritto. Questo è il riconoscimento che VOGLIO AVERE. Questa è la separazione che c’è tra noi! E questa», aggiunse, guardando il suo visitatore con l’aria fiera e intollerante con cui aveva iniziato, «non è forse un’offesa?»
Mentre sentivo e vedevo la madre pronunciare queste parole, mi sembrava di sentire e vedere il figlio, che le sfidava. Tutto ciò che avevo mai visto in lui di uno spirito irremovibile e testardo, lo vedevo in lei. Tutta la comprensione che avevo ora della sua energia mal indirizzata, divenne una comprensione anche del suo carattere, e la percezione che fosse, nelle sue fonti più profonde, la stessa cosa.
Ora mi disse ad alta voce, riprendendo il suo precedente autocontrollo, che non serviva a nulla ascoltare altro o dire altro, e che chiedeva di porre fine all’interrogatorio. Si alzò con aria dignitosa per lasciare la stanza, quando il signor Peggotty fece capire che non era necessario.
«Non temere che io possa essere d’intralcio a te, non ho altro da dire, signora», osservò, mentre si avvicinava alla porta. «Non vengo qui con nessuna speranza, e non porto via nessuna speranza. Ho fatto ciò che pensavo dovesse essere fatto, ma non ho mai sperato che qualcosa di buono potesse derivare dal mio stare dove mi trovo. Questa è stata una casa troppo malvagia per me e i miei, perché io possa essere in me e aspettarmelo».
With this, we departed; leaving her standing by her elbow-chair, a picture of a noble presence and a handsome face.
We had, on our way out, to cross a paved hall, with glass sides and roof, over which a vine was trained. Its leaves and shoots were green then, and the day being sunny, a pair of glass doors leading to the garden were thrown open. Rosa Dartle, entering this way with a noiseless step, when we were close to them, addressed herself to me:
‘You do well,’ she said, ‘indeed, to bring this fellow here!’
Such a concentration of rage and scorn as darkened her face, and flashed in her jet-black eyes, I could not have thought compressible even into that face. The scar made by the hammer was, as usual in this excited state of her features, strongly marked. When the throbbing I had seen before, came into it as I looked at her, she absolutely lifted up her hand, and struck it.
‘This is a fellow,’ she said, ‘to champion and bring here, is he not? You are a true man!’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you are surely not so unjust as to condemn ME!’
‘Why do you bring division between these two mad creatures?’ she returned. ‘Don’t you know that they are both mad with their own self-will and pride?’
‘Is it my doing?’ I returned.
‘Is it your doing!’ she retorted. ‘Why do you bring this man here?’
‘He is a deeply-injured man, Miss Dartle,’ I replied. ‘You may not know it.’
‘I know that James Steerforth,’ she said, with her hand on her bosom, as if to prevent the storm that was raging there, from being loud, ‘has a false, corrupt heart, and is a traitor. But what need I know or care about this fellow, and his common niece?’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I returned, ‘you deepen the injury. It is sufficient already. I will only say, at parting, that you do him a great wrong.’
‘I do him no wrong,’ she returned. ‘They are a depraved, worthless set. I would have her whipped!’
Mr. Peggotty passed on, without a word, and went out at the door.
‘Oh, shame, Miss Dartle! shame!’ I said indignantly. ‘How can you bear to trample on his undeserved affliction!’
‘I would trample on them all,’ she answered. ‘I would have his house pulled down. I would have her branded on the face, dressed in rags, and cast out in the streets to starve. If I had the power to sit in judgement on her, I would see it done. See it done? I would do it! I detest her. If I ever could reproach her with her infamous condition, I would go anywhere to do so. If I could hunt her to her grave, I would. If there was any word of comfort that would be a solace to her in her dying hour, and only I possessed it, I wouldn’t part with it for Life itself.’
The mere vehemence of her words can convey, I am sensible, but a weak impression of the passion by which she was possessed, and which made itself articulate in her whole figure, though her voice, instead of being raised, was lower than usual. No description I could give of her would do justice to my recollection of her, or to her entire deliverance of herself to her anger. I have seen passion in many forms, but I have never seen it in such a form as that.
When I joined Mr. Peggotty, he was walking slowly and thoughtfully down the hill. He told me, as soon as I came up with him, that having now discharged his mind of what he had purposed doing in London, he meant ‘to set out on his travels’, that night. I asked him where he meant to go? He only answered, ‘I’m a going, sir, to seek my niece.’
We went back to the little lodging over the chandler’s shop, and there I found an opportunity of repeating to Peggotty what he had said to me. She informed me, in return, that he had said the same to her that morning. She knew no more than I did, where he was going, but she thought he had some project shaped out in his mind.
I did not like to leave him, under such circumstances, and we all three dined together off a beefsteak pie—which was one of the many good things for which Peggotty was famous—and which was curiously flavoured on this occasion, I recollect well, by a miscellaneous taste of tea, coffee, butter, bacon, cheese, new loaves, firewood, candles, and walnut ketchup, continually ascending from the shop. After dinner we sat for an hour or so near the window, without talking much; and then Mr. Peggotty got up, and brought his oilskin bag and his stout stick, and laid them on the table.
He accepted, from his sister’s stock of ready money, a small sum on account of his legacy; barely enough, I should have thought, to keep him for a month. He promised to communicate with me, when anything befell him; and he slung his bag about him, took his hat and stick, and bade us both ‘Good-bye!’
‘All good attend you, dear old woman,’ he said, embracing Peggotty, ‘and you too, Mas’r Davy!’ shaking hands with me. ‘I’m a-going to seek her, fur and wide. If she should come home while I’m away—but ah, that ain’t like to be!—or if I should bring her back, my meaning is, that she and me shall live and die where no one can’t reproach her. If any hurt should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
He said this solemnly, bare-headed; then, putting on his hat, he went down the stairs, and away. We followed to the door. It was a warm, dusty evening, just the time when, in the great main thoroughfare out of which that by-way turned, there was a temporary lull in the eternal tread of feet upon the pavement, and a strong red sunshine. He turned, alone, at the corner of our shady street, into a glow of light, in which we lost him.
Rarely did that hour of the evening come, rarely did I wake at night, rarely did I look up at the moon, or stars, or watch the falling rain, or hear the wind, but I thought of his solitary figure toiling on, poor pilgrim, and recalled the words:
‘I’m a going to seek her, fur and wide. If any hurt should come to me, remember that the last words I left for her was, “My unchanged love is with my darling child, and I forgive her!”’
Con questo, ce ne andammo; lasciandola in piedi accanto alla sua poltrona, un quadro di nobile presenza e di un bel viso.
Uscendo, dovemmo attraversare un atrio lastricato con pareti e soffitto di vetro, su cui era fatta arrampicare una vite. Le sue foglie e i suoi germogli erano verdi allora, e dato che il giorno era soleggiato, un paio di porte di vetro che davano sul giardino erano spalancate. Rosa Dartle, entrando in questo modo con un passo silenzioso, quando eravamo vicini a loro, si rivolse a me:
«Fai bene,» disse, «a portare qui questo tizio!»
Una tale concentrazione di rabbia e disprezzo che oscurava il suo viso e scintillava nei suoi occhi neri come l’ebano, non avrei mai pensato potesse essere contenuta anche in quel viso. La cicatrice lasciata dal martello era, come al solito in questo stato di agitazione dei suoi tratti, fortemente evidente. Quando il pulsare che avevo visto prima, si manifestò in essa mentre la guardavo, lei alzò la mano e la colpì.
“Questo è un uomo”, disse, “da sostenere e portare qui, non è vero? Sei un vero uomo!”
“Signorina Dartle,” replicai, “non potete essere così ingiusta da condannarmi!”
«Perché semezzi la discordia tra queste due creature folli?» replicò. «Non sai che sono entrambi pazzi per la loro propria volontà e la loro superbia?»
«È colpa mia?» replicai.
‘È opera tua!’ replicò. ‘Perché hai portato qui quest’uomo?’
‘È un uomo profondamente ferito, Miss Dartle,’ risposi. ‘Potreste non saperlo.’
«So che James Steerforth», disse, con la mano sul petto, come se volesse impedire alla tempesta che infuriava lì dentro di manifestarsi ad alta voce, «ha un cuore falso e corrotto, ed è un traditore. Ma perché dovrei sapere o preoccuparmi di questo tizio e della sua banale nipote?»
«Signorina Dartle», replicai, «aggravate il torto. È già sufficiente. Mi limiterò a dire, nel congedarmi, che gli fate un grande torto.»
«Non gli faccio alcun torto», replicò. «Sono un gruppo depravato e senza valore. Vorrei che la frustassero!»
Il signor Peggotty passò oltre senza dire una parola e uscì dalla porta.
«Oh, vergogna, Miss Dartle! vergogna!» dissi indignato. «Come può sopportare di calpestare la sua afflizione non meritata!»
«Li calpesterei tutti», rispose. «Farò abbattere la sua casa. La farò marchiare a fuoco in faccia, vestita di stracci, e la getterò nelle strade a morire di fame. Se avessi il potere di giudicarla, la vedrei fatta. Vedrei fatta? La farei io! La detesto. Se potessi rimproverarle la sua infame condizione, andrei ovunque per farlo. Se potessi perseguitarla fino alla sua tomba, lo farei. Se ci fosse una parola di conforto che le sarebbe di sollievo nel suo ultimo momento, e solo io la possedessi, non la cederei per la Vita stessa».
So che la semplice veemenza delle sue parole può trasmettere solo una debole impressione della passione che la possedeva, e che si manifestava in ogni parte del suo corpo, anche se la sua voce, anziché alzarsi, era più bassa del solito. Nessuna descrizione che potrei fare di lei renderebbe giustizia al mio ricordo di lei, o al modo in cui si abbandonava completamente alla sua ira. Ho visto la passione in molte forme, ma mai in una forma come quella.
Quando raggiunsi il signor Peggotty, stava scendendo lentamente e pensieroso lungo la collina. Mi disse, non appena lo raggiunsi, che avendo ora scaricato la sua mente di ciò che aveva inteso fare a Londra, intendeva ‘partire per i suoi viaggi’, quella sera. Gli chiesi dove intendesse andare? Rispose solo: ‘Sto andando, signore, a cercare mia nipote.’
Tornammo al piccolo alloggio sopra la bottega del droghiere, e lì trovai l’occasione di ripetere a Peggotty ciò che lui mi aveva detto. Mi informò, a sua volta, che lui le aveva detto la stessa cosa quella mattina. Non sapeva più di me dove stesse andando, ma pensava che avesse qualche progetto in mente.
Non mi piaceva lasciarlo in tali circostanze, e così tutti e tre cena insieme con una torta di bistecca — che era una delle tante cose buone per cui Peggotty era famosa — e che in questa occasione, ricordo bene, era curiosamente aromatizzata da un gusto vario di tè, caffè, burro, pancetta, formaggio, pagnotte fresche, legna da ardere, candele e ketchup di noce, che salivano continuamente dal negozio. Dopo cena, siamo rimasti seduti per un’ora circa vicino alla finestra, senza parlare molto; e poi il signor Peggotty si alzò, prese la sua borsa di tela cerata e il suo bastone robusto, e li mise sul tavolo.
Accettò, dal fondo di contanti della sorella, una piccola somma in conto eredità; a malapena, avrei pensato, sufficiente a mantenerlo per un mese. Promise di comunicare con me, se gli fosse successo qualcosa; e si mise a tracolla la borsa, prese il cappello e il bastone, e ci salutò con un «Addio!».
«Che ogni bene vi accompagni, cara vecchia signora», disse, abbracciando Peggotty, «e anche a te, mastro Davy!» stringendomi la mano. «Sto per andare a cercarla, dappertutto. Se dovesse tornare a casa mentre sono via — ma ah, è poco probabile! — o se dovessi riportarla indietro, voglio dire che lei e io vivremo e morremo dove nessuno potrà rimproverarla. Se mi dovesse capitare qualche male, ricordate che le ultime parole che le ho lasciato sono state: «Il mio amore immutato è con la mia adorata figlia, e le perdono!»»
Lo disse solennemente, a testa nuda; poi, mettendosi il cappello, scese le scale e se ne andò. Lo seguimmo fino alla porta. Era una calda, polverosa sera, proprio il momento in cui, nel grande viale principale da cui si diramava quel vicolo, c’era una temporanea pausa nel perpetuo calpestio di piedi sul marciapiede e una forte luce rossa del sole. Si voltò, solo, all’angolo della nostra ombrosa strada, in un bagliore di luce, in cui lo perdemmo di vista.
Raramente giungeva quell’ora della sera, raramente mi svegliavo di notte, raramente alzavo lo sguardo alla luna, o alle stelle, o osservavo la pioggia che cadeva, o ascoltavo il vento, senza pensare alla sua solitaria figura che si affannava, povero pellegrino, e senza ricordare le parole:
«Vado a cercarla, in lungo e in largo. Se mi dovesse capitare qualcosa, ricordate che le ultime parole che le ho lasciato sono state: “Il mio amore immutato è con la mia adorata figlia, e le perdono!”»
CHAPTER 33. BLISSFUL
All this time, I had gone on loving Dora, harder than ever. Her idea was my refuge in disappointment and distress, and made some amends to me, even for the loss of my friend. The more I pitied myself, or pitied others, the more I sought for consolation in the image of Dora. The greater the accumulation of deceit and trouble in the world, the brighter and the purer shone the star of Dora high above the world. I don’t think I had any definite idea where Dora came from, or in what degree she was related to a higher order of beings; but I am quite sure I should have scouted the notion of her being simply human, like any other young lady, with indignation and contempt.
If I may so express it, I was steeped in Dora. I was not merely over head and ears in love with her, but I was saturated through and through. Enough love might have been wrung out of me, metaphorically speaking, to drown anybody in; and yet there would have remained enough within me, and all over me, to pervade my entire existence.
The first thing I did, on my own account, when I came back, was to take a night-walk to Norwood, and, like the subject of a venerable riddle of my childhood, to go ‘round and round the house, without ever touching the house’, thinking about Dora. I believe the theme of this incomprehensible conundrum was the moon. No matter what it was, I, the moon-struck slave of Dora, perambulated round and round the house and garden for two hours, looking through crevices in the palings, getting my chin by dint of violent exertion above the rusty nails on the top, blowing kisses at the lights in the windows, and romantically calling on the night, at intervals, to shield my Dora—I don’t exactly know what from, I suppose from fire. Perhaps from mice, to which she had a great objection.
My love was so much in my mind and it was so natural to me to confide in Peggotty, when I found her again by my side of an evening with the old set of industrial implements, busily making the tour of my wardrobe, that I imparted to her, in a sufficiently roundabout way, my great secret. Peggotty was strongly interested, but I could not get her into my view of the case at all. She was audaciously prejudiced in my favour, and quite unable to understand why I should have any misgivings, or be low-spirited about it. ‘The young lady might think herself well off,’ she observed, ‘to have such a beau. And as to her Pa,’ she said, ‘what did the gentleman expect, for gracious sake!’
I observed, however, that Mr. Spenlow’s proctorial gown and stiff cravat took Peggotty down a little, and inspired her with a greater reverence for the man who was gradually becoming more and more etherealized in my eyes every day, and about whom a reflected radiance seemed to me to beam when he sat erect in Court among his papers, like a little lighthouse in a sea of stationery. And by the by, it used to be uncommonly strange to me to consider, I remember, as I sat in Court too, how those dim old judges and doctors wouldn’t have cared for Dora, if they had known her; how they wouldn’t have gone out of their senses with rapture, if marriage with Dora had been proposed to them; how Dora might have sung, and played upon that glorified guitar, until she led me to the verge of madness, yet not have tempted one of those slow-goers an inch out of his road!
I despised them, to a man. Frozen-out old gardeners in the flower-beds of the heart, I took a personal offence against them all. The Bench was nothing to me but an insensible blunderer. The Bar had no more tenderness or poetry in it, than the bar of a public-house.
Taking the management of Peggotty’s affairs into my own hands, with no little pride, I proved the will, and came to a settlement with the Legacy Duty-office, and took her to the Bank, and soon got everything into an orderly train. We varied the legal character of these proceedings by going to see some perspiring Wax-work, in Fleet Street (melted, I should hope, these twenty years); and by visiting Miss Linwood’s Exhibition, which I remember as a Mausoleum of needlework, favourable to self-examination and repentance; and by inspecting the Tower of London; and going to the top of St. Paul’s. All these wonders afforded Peggotty as much pleasure as she was able to enjoy, under existing circumstances: except, I think, St. Paul’s, which, from her long attachment to her work-box, became a rival of the picture on the lid, and was, in some particulars, vanquished, she considered, by that work of art.
Peggotty’s business, which was what we used to call ‘common-form business’ in the Commons (and very light and lucrative the common-form business was), being settled, I took her down to the office one morning to pay her bill. Mr. Spenlow had stepped out, old Tiffey said, to get a gentleman sworn for a marriage licence; but as I knew he would be back directly, our place lying close to the Surrogate’s, and to the Vicar-General’s office too, I told Peggotty to wait.
We were a little like undertakers, in the Commons, as regarded Probate transactions; generally making it a rule to look more or less cut up, when we had to deal with clients in mourning. In a similar feeling of delicacy, we were always blithe and light-hearted with the licence clients. Therefore I hinted to Peggotty that she would find Mr. Spenlow much recovered from the shock of Mr. Barkis’s decease; and indeed he came in like a bridegroom.
But neither Peggotty nor I had eyes for him, when we saw, in company with him, Mr. Murdstone. He was very little changed. His hair looked as thick, and was certainly as black, as ever; and his glance was as little to be trusted as of old.
‘Ah, Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘You know this gentleman, I believe?’
I made my gentleman a distant bow, and Peggotty barely recognized him. He was, at first, somewhat disconcerted to meet us two together; but quickly decided what to do, and came up to me.
CAPITOLO 33. FELICE
Tutto questo tempo, avevo continuato ad amare Dora, più che mai. La sua idea era il mio rifugio nella delusione e nella sofferenza, e mi ha fatto qualche ammenda, anche per la perdita del mio amico. Più mi compiangevo, o compiangevo altri, più cercavo consolazione nell’immagine di Dora. Più grande era l’accumulo di inganno e di guai nel mondo, più brillante e più pura brillava la stella di Dora alta sopra il mondo. Non credo di aver avuto un’idea definita da dove venisse Dora, o in che misura fosse legata a un ordine superiore di esseri; ma sono sicuro che avrei respinto con indignazione e disprezzo l’idea che fosse semplicemente umana, come qualsiasi altra giovane signora.
Se posso esprimermi così, ero immerso in Dora. Non ero semplicemente follemente innamorato di lei, ma ero completamente saturo. Avrei potuto versare fuori di me, per così dire, abbastanza amore da annegarci qualcuno; eppure ne sarebbe rimasto abbastanza dentro di me, e tutto intorno a me, da pervadere tutta la mia esistenza.
La prima cosa che feci, per conto mio, quando tornai, fu di fare una passeggiata notturna fino a Norwood, e, come il protagonista di un venerabile enigma della mia infanzia, di girare ‘intorno e intorno alla casa, senza mai toccare la casa’, pensando a Dora. Credo che il tema di questo incomprensibile indovinello fosse la luna. Non importa quale fosse, io, lo schiavo colpito dalla luna per Dora, per due ore ho girato intorno alla casa e al giardino e guardando attraverso le fessure delle palizzate, riuscendo a portare il mio mento, con grande sforzo, sopra i chiodi arrugginiti in cima, mandando baci alle luci nelle finestre, e chiamando romanticamente a intervalli la notte, per proteggere la mia Dora—non so esattamente da cosa suppongo dal fuoco. Forse dai topi, di cui aveva una grande antipatia.
Il mio amore era così presente nella mia mente e mi era così naturale confidarmi con Peggotty, quando la ritrovavo al mio fianco la sera con il solito assortimento di strumenti da lavoro, intenta a fare il giro del mio guardaroba, che le rivelai, in modo abbastanza circospetto, il mio grande segreto. Peggotty era molto interessata, ma non riuscivo a farle comprendere il mio punto di vista. Era audacemente prevenuta a mio favore e del tutto incapace di capire perché avessi dei dubbi o fossi giù di morale al riguardo. «La giovane signora potrebbe considerarsi ben fortunata», osservò, «ad avere un corteggiatore del genere. E per quanto riguarda suo padre», disse, «che cosa si aspettava il signore, per l’amor del cielo!»
Osservai tuttavia che la toga forense e la cravatta rigida del signor Spenlow abbassarono un po’ Peggotty e le ispirarono un maggiore rispetto per l’uomo che ai miei occhi si faceva sempre più etereo ogni giorno, e intorno al quale mi sembrava che si diffondesse un riflesso splendore quando sedeva eretto in tribunale tra i suoi documenti, come un piccolo faro in un mare di cancelleria. E a proposito, mi sembrava stranissimo ricordare, mentre sedevo anch’io in tribunale, come quei vecchi giudici e dottori non avrebbero dato peso a Dora, se l’avessero conosciuta; come non sarebbero andati fuori di senno dal raptus, se il matrimonio con Dora fosse stato proposto loro; come Dora avrebbe potuto cantare, e suonare quella chitarra glorificata, fino a portarmi al limite della pazzia, eppure non avrebbe tentato uno di quei lenti di un pollice fuori dalla strada!
Li disprezzavo, uno per uno. Vecchi giardinieri congelati nei letti di fiori del cuore, li prendevo tutti personalmente di mira. Il Tribunale non era per me altro che un insensibile incapace. La Magistratura non aveva più tenerezza o poesia di un bancone di un bar pubblico.
Prendendo in mano io stesso la gestione degli affari di Peggotty, con non poca fierezza, io provai il testamento e raggiunsi un accordo con l’ufficio delle tasse sulle eredità, e la portai in banca, e presto misi tutto in ordine. Variammo il carattere legale di queste procedure andando a vedere delle opere in cera sudate, in Fleet Street (fuse, spero, da vent’anni); e visitando la mostra della signorina Linwood, che ricordo come un mausoleo di lavori all’uncinetto, favorevole all’auto-esame e al pentimento; e ispezionando la Torre di Londra; e salendo sulla cima di San Paolo. Tutte queste meraviglie procurarono a Peggotty tanto piacere quanto era in grado di provare, date le circostanze: tranne, credo, San Paolo, che, a causa del suo lungo attaccamento alla sua scatola degli attrezzi, divenne un rivale del dipinto sul coperchio, e fu, in alcuni particolari, sconfitto, secondo lei, da quell’opera d’arte.
Gli affari di Peggotty, che erano quelli che noi chiamavamo “affari di forma comune” al Parlamento (e molto facili e redditizi erano gli affari di forma comune), essendo stati sistemati, la portai un mattino in ufficio per pagare il suo conto. Il signor Spenlow era uscito, disse il vecchio Tiffey, per far giurare un gentiluomo per una licenza di matrimonio; ma dato che sapevo che sarebbe tornato subito, il nostro posto essendo vicino a quello del Surrogate e anche all’ufficio del Vicario Generale, dissi a Peggotty di aspettare.
Eravamo un po’ come becchini, in cancelleria, per quanto riguardava le pratiche di concessione di testamenti; generalmente ci facevamo una regola di apparire più o meno sconvolti, quando dovevamo trattare con clienti in lutto. Per un sentimento di delicatezza simile, eravamo sempre allegri e spensierati con i clienti delle licenze. Perciò feci capire a Peggotty che avrebbe trovato il signor Spenlow molto ripreso dallo shock della morte del signor Barkis; e infatti entrò come uno sposo.
Ma né Peggotty né io avevamo occhi per lui, quando vedemmo, in sua compagnia, il signor Murdstone. Era cambiato ben poco. I suoi capelli sembravano altrettanto folti e certamente altrettanto neri di un tempo; e il suo sguardo era altrettanto poco da fidarsi come un tempo.
‘Ah, Copperfield?’ disse il signor Spenlow. ‘Credo che conosciate questo signore, vero?’
Feci al mio gentiluomo un inchino distante, e Peggotty a malapena lo riconobbe. All’inizio fu un po’ disorientato nel trovarci insieme; ma presto decise cosa fare e si avvicinò a me.
‘I hope,’ he said, ‘that you are doing well?’
‘It can hardly be interesting to you,’ said I. ‘Yes, if you wish to know.’
We looked at each other, and he addressed himself to Peggotty.
‘And you,’ said he. ‘I am sorry to observe that you have lost your husband.’
‘It’s not the first loss I have had in my life, Mr. Murdstone,’ replied Peggotty, trembling from head to foot. ‘I am glad to hope that there is nobody to blame for this one,—nobody to answer for it.’
‘Ha!’ said he; ‘that’s a comfortable reflection. You have done your duty?’
‘I have not worn anybody’s life away,’ said Peggotty, ‘I am thankful to think! No, Mr. Murdstone, I have not worrited and frightened any sweet creetur to an early grave!’
He eyed her gloomily—remorsefully I thought—for an instant; and said, turning his head towards me, but looking at my feet instead of my face:
‘We are not likely to encounter soon again;—a source of satisfaction to us both, no doubt, for such meetings as this can never be agreeable. I do not expect that you, who always rebelled against my just authority, exerted for your benefit and reformation, should owe me any good-will now. There is an antipathy between us—’
‘An old one, I believe?’ said I, interrupting him.
He smiled, and shot as evil a glance at me as could come from his dark eyes.
‘It rankled in your baby breast,’ he said. ‘It embittered the life of your poor mother. You are right. I hope you may do better, yet; I hope you may correct yourself.’
Here he ended the dialogue, which had been carried on in a low voice, in a corner of the outer office, by passing into Mr. Spenlow’s room, and saying aloud, in his smoothest manner:
‘Gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow’s profession are accustomed to family differences, and know how complicated and difficult they always are!’ With that, he paid the money for his licence; and, receiving it neatly folded from Mr. Spenlow, together with a shake of the hand, and a polite wish for his happiness and the lady’s, went out of the office.
I might have had more difficulty in constraining myself to be silent under his words, if I had had less difficulty in impressing upon Peggotty (who was only angry on my account, good creature!) that we were not in a place for recrimination, and that I besought her to hold her peace. She was so unusually roused, that I was glad to compound for an affectionate hug, elicited by this revival in her mind of our old injuries, and to make the best I could of it, before Mr. Spenlow and the clerks.
Mr. Spenlow did not appear to know what the connexion between Mr. Murdstone and myself was; which I was glad of, for I could not bear to acknowledge him, even in my own breast, remembering what I did of the history of my poor mother. Mr. Spenlow seemed to think, if he thought anything about the matter, that my aunt was the leader of the state party in our family, and that there was a rebel party commanded by somebody else—so I gathered at least from what he said, while we were waiting for Mr. Tiffey to make out Peggotty’s bill of costs.
‘Miss Trotwood,’ he remarked, ‘is very firm, no doubt, and not likely to give way to opposition. I have an admiration for her character, and I may congratulate you, Copperfield, on being on the right side. Differences between relations are much to be deplored—but they are extremely general—and the great thing is, to be on the right side’: meaning, I take it, on the side of the moneyed interest.
‘Rather a good marriage this, I believe?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
I explained that I knew nothing about it.
‘Indeed!’ he said. ‘Speaking from the few words Mr. Murdstone dropped—as a man frequently does on these occasions—and from what Miss Murdstone let fall, I should say it was rather a good marriage.’
‘Do you mean that there is money, sir?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I understand there’s money. Beauty too, I am told.’
‘Indeed! Is his new wife young?’
‘Just of age,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘So lately, that I should think they had been waiting for that.’
‘Lord deliver her!’ said Peggotty. So very emphatically and unexpectedly, that we were all three discomposed; until Tiffey came in with the bill.
Old Tiffey soon appeared, however, and handed it to Mr. Spenlow, to look over. Mr. Spenlow, settling his chin in his cravat and rubbing it softly, went over the items with a deprecatory air—as if it were all Jorkins’s doing—and handed it back to Tiffey with a bland sigh.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘That’s right. Quite right. I should have been extremely happy, Copperfield, to have limited these charges to the actual expenditure out of pocket, but it is an irksome incident in my professional life, that I am not at liberty to consult my own wishes. I have a partner—Mr. Jorkins.’
As he said this with a gentle melancholy, which was the next thing to making no charge at all, I expressed my acknowledgements on Peggotty’s behalf, and paid Tiffey in banknotes. Peggotty then retired to her lodging, and Mr. Spenlow and I went into Court, where we had a divorce-suit coming on, under an ingenious little statute (repealed now, I believe, but in virtue of which I have seen several marriages annulled), of which the merits were these. The husband, whose name was Thomas Benjamin, had taken out his marriage licence as Thomas only; suppressing the Benjamin, in case he should not find himself as comfortable as he expected. NOT finding himself as comfortable as he expected, or being a little fatigued with his wife, poor fellow, he now came forward, by a friend, after being married a year or two, and declared that his name was Thomas Benjamin, and therefore he was not married at all. Which the Court confirmed, to his great satisfaction.
I must say that I had my doubts about the strict justice of this, and was not even frightened out of them by the bushel of wheat which reconciles all anomalies. But Mr. Spenlow argued the matter with me. He said, Look at the world, there was good and evil in that; look at the ecclesiastical law, there was good and evil in THAT. It was all part of a system. Very good. There you were!
«Spero,» disse, «che vi troviate bene?»
“Non può essere molto interessante per te”, dissi. “Sì, se vuoi saperlo.”
Ci guardammo l’un l’altro, e lui si rivolse a Peggotty.
‘E lei’, disse lui, ‘mi dispiace constatare che ha perso suo marito.’
«Non è la prima perdita che ho avuto nella mia vita, signor Murdstone», rispose Peggotty, tremando dalla testa ai piedi. «Sono felice di sperare che non ci sia nessuno da incolpare per questa, —nessuno da chiamare a rispondere.»
“Ah!” disse lui; “questa è una riflessione confortante. Hai fatto il tuo dovere?”
«Non ho consumato la vita di nessuno», disse Peggotty, «e ne ringrazio il cielo! No, signor Murdstone, non ho tormentato e spaventato nessuna dolce creatura fino a farla morire prematuramente!»
La guardò con aria cupa - mi parve con rimorso - per un istante; e disse, girando la testa verso di me, ma guardando i miei piedi invece del mio viso:
«Non è probabile che ci incontreremo presto di nuovo;—una fonte di soddisfazione per entrambi, senza dubbio, poiché incontri come questo non possono mai essere piacevoli. Non mi aspetto che tu, che ti sei sempre ribellato alla mia giusta autorità, esercitata per il tuo bene e per la tua riabilitazione, mi debba alcuna buona volontà ora. Esiste un’antipatia tra noi—»
«Una vecchia, credo?» dissi, interrompendolo.
Sorrise e mi lanciò uno sguardo così malvagio quanto poteva uscire dai suoi occhi scuri.
«Ti ha tormentato nel tuo petto di bambino», disse, «ha amareggiato la vita della tua povera madre. Hai ragione. Spero che tu possa fare meglio, ancora; spero che tu possa correggerti.»
Qui pose fine al dialogo, che era stato condotto a bassa voce, in un angolo dell’ufficio esterno, entrando nella stanza del signor Spenlow e dicendo ad alta voce, nel modo più suadente:
«Gli uomini della professione del signor Spenlow sono abituati alle liti familiari e sanno quanto siano sempre complicate e difficili!» Detto ciò, pagò il denaro per la licenza; e, ricevutala ben ripiegata dal signor Spenlow, insieme a una stretta di mano e a un augurio di felicità per lui e per la signorina, uscì dall’ufficio.
Avrei potuto avere più difficoltà a costringermi a tacere dopo le sue parole, se avessi avuto meno difficoltà a far capire a Peggotty (che era arrabbiata solo per me, buona creatura!) che non eravamo in un luogo adatto alle recriminazioni, e che la supplicavo di stare zitta. Era così insolitamente agitata, che fui felice di accontentarmi di un affettuoso abbraccio, provocato da questo risveglio nella sua mente delle nostre vecchie offese, e di fare del mio meglio, davanti a Spenlow e agli impiegati.
Il signor Spenlow non sembrava sapere qual fosse il legame tra il signor Murdstone e me; e io ne ero contento, perché non potevo sopportare di riconoscerlo, anche solo nel mio intimo, ricordando quanto sapevo della storia della mia povera madre. Il signor Spenlow sembrava pensare, se pensava qualcosa al riguardo, che mia zia fosse la capofila del partito di stato nella nostra famiglia, e che ci fosse un partito ribelle guidato da qualcun altro — almeno così ho capito dalle sue parole, mentre aspettavamo che il signor Tiffey compilasse la nota spese di Peggotty.
«Miss Trotwood», osservò, «è molto decisa, senza dubbio, e non è il tipo da cedere di fronte all’opposizione. Ammiro il suo carattere, e posso congratularmi con te, Copperfield, per trovarti dalla parte giusta. Le divergenze tra parenti sono molto deplorevoli, ma sono estremamente comuni, e l’importante è stare dalla parte giusta»: intendendo, a quanto pare, la parte dei ricchi.
«Un matrimonio piuttosto buono, credo?» disse il signor Spenlow.
Spiegai che non ne sapevo nulla.
«Davvero!» disse. «Parlando delle poche parole che il signor Murdstone ha lasciato cadere - come un uomo fa spesso in queste occasioni - e da ciò che la signorina Murdstone ha lasciato intendere, direi che è stato un buon matrimonio.»
«Vuol dire che c’è del denaro, signore?» chiesi.
«Sì», disse il signor Spenlow, «ho capito che c’è del denaro. Anche della bellezza, mi hanno detto.»
‘Infatti! La sua nuova moglie è giovane?’
«Appena maggiorenne», disse il signor Spenlow. «Da così poco tempo che credo che abbiano aspettato proprio questo.»
«Signore, salvatela!», esclamò Peggotty. Lo disse con tanta enfasi e inaspettatamente, che tutti e tre rimanemmo sconcertati, finché Tiffey non entrò con il conto.
Ma ben presto apparve il vecchio Tiffey e lo consegnò a Mr. Spenlow per dare un’occhiata. Mr. Spenlow, sistemando il mento nel suo fazzoletto e strofinandolo dolcemente, passò in rassegna gli articoli con aria deprecatoria—come se fosse tutto opera di Jorkins—e lo restituì a Tiffey con un sospiro placido.
«Sì», disse. «Esatto. Proprio così. Sarei stato estremamente felice, Copperfield, di limitare queste spese alle sole uscite di denaro, ma è un incidente spiacevole nella mia vita professionale, che non ho la libertà di consultare i miei desideri. Ho un socio, il signor Jorkins.»
Mentre diceva questo con una dolce malinconia, che era quasi come non avanzare alcuna accusa, io espressi i miei ringraziamenti per conto di Peggotty e pagai Tiffey con delle banconote. Peggotty si ritirò quindi nella sua stanza, e il signor Spenlow ed io andammo in tribunale, dove avevamo un caso di divorzio in corso, basato su un piccolo e ingegnoso statuto (ora abrogato, credo, ma in virtù del quale ho visto annullare diversi matrimoni), i cui meriti erano i seguenti. Il marito, il cui nome era Thomas Benjamin, aveva ottenuto la licenza di matrimonio come Thomas soltanto; omettendo il Benjamin, nel caso in cui non si fosse trovato a suo agio come si aspettava. NON trovandosi a suo agio come si aspettava, o essendo un po’ stanco di sua moglie, poveretto, ora si presentò, tramite un amico, dopo essere stato sposato per un anno o due, e dichiarò che il suo nome era Thomas Benjamin, e quindi non era affatto sposato. Il che il tribunale confermò, a sua grande soddisfazione.
Devo dire che avevo i miei dubbi sulla giustizia di questa cosa, e non fui neanche spaventato fuori di essi dal bushel di grano che concilia tutte le anomalie. Ma il signor Spenlow discusse la questione con me. Disse, Guardate il mondo, c’era il bene e il male in quello; guardate la legge ecclesiastica, c’era il bene e il male IN QUELLA. Era tutto parte di un sistema. Molto bene. Ecco dove eravate!
I had not the hardihood to suggest to Dora’s father that possibly we might even improve the world a little, if we got up early in the morning, and took off our coats to the work; but I confessed that I thought we might improve the Commons. Mr. Spenlow replied that he would particularly advise me to dismiss that idea from my mind, as not being worthy of my gentlemanly character; but that he would be glad to hear from me of what improvement I thought the Commons susceptible?
Taking that part of the Commons which happened to be nearest to us—for our man was unmarried by this time, and we were out of Court, and strolling past the Prerogative Office—I submitted that I thought the Prerogative Office rather a queerly managed institution. Mr. Spenlow inquired in what respect? I replied, with all due deference to his experience (but with more deference, I am afraid, to his being Dora’s father), that perhaps it was a little nonsensical that the Registry of that Court, containing the original wills of all persons leaving effects within the immense province of Canterbury, for three whole centuries, should be an accidental building, never designed for the purpose, leased by the registrars for their Own private emolument, unsafe, not even ascertained to be fire-proof, choked with the important documents it held, and positively, from the roof to the basement, a mercenary speculation of the registrars, who took great fees from the public, and crammed the public’s wills away anyhow and anywhere, having no other object than to get rid of them cheaply. That, perhaps, it was a little unreasonable that these registrars in the receipt of profits amounting to eight or nine thousand pounds a year (to say nothing of the profits of the deputy registrars, and clerks of seats), should not be obliged to spend a little of that money, in finding a reasonably safe place for the important documents which all classes of people were compelled to hand over to them, whether they would or no. That, perhaps, it was a little unjust, that all the great offices in this great office should be magnificent sinecures, while the unfortunate working-clerks in the cold dark room upstairs were the worst rewarded, and the least considered men, doing important services, in London. That perhaps it was a little indecent that the principal registrar of all, whose duty it was to find the public, constantly resorting to this place, all needful accommodation, should be an enormous sinecurist in virtue of that post (and might be, besides, a clergyman, a pluralist, the holder of a staff in a cathedral, and what not),—while the public was put to the inconvenience of which we had a specimen every afternoon when the office was busy, and which we knew to be quite monstrous. That, perhaps, in short, this Prerogative Office of the diocese of Canterbury was altogether such a pestilent job, and such a pernicious absurdity, that but for its being squeezed away in a corner of St. Paul’s Churchyard, which few people knew, it must have been turned completely inside out, and upside down, long ago.
Mr. Spenlow smiled as I became modestly warm on the subject, and then argued this question with me as he had argued the other. He said, what was it after all? It was a question of feeling. If the public felt that their wills were in safe keeping, and took it for granted that the office was not to be made better, who was the worse for it? Nobody. Who was the better for it? All the Sinecurists. Very well. Then the good predominated. It might not be a perfect system; nothing was perfect; but what he objected to, was, the insertion of the wedge. Under the Prerogative Office, the country had been glorious. Insert the wedge into the Prerogative Office, and the country would cease to be glorious. He considered it the principle of a gentleman to take things as he found them; and he had no doubt the Prerogative Office would last our time. I deferred to his opinion, though I had great doubts of it myself. I find he was right, however; for it has not only lasted to the present moment, but has done so in the teeth of a great parliamentary report made (not too willingly) eighteen years ago, when all these objections of mine were set forth in detail, and when the existing stowage for wills was described as equal to the accumulation of only two years and a half more. What they have done with them since; whether they have lost many, or whether they sell any, now and then, to the butter shops; I don’t know. I am glad mine is not there, and I hope it may not go there, yet awhile.
I have set all this down, in my present blissful chapter, because here it comes into its natural place. Mr. Spenlow and I falling into this conversation, prolonged it and our saunter to and fro, until we diverged into general topics. And so it came about, in the end, that Mr. Spenlow told me this day week was Dora’s birthday, and he would be glad if I would come down and join a little picnic on the occasion. I went out of my senses immediately; became a mere driveller next day, on receipt of a little lace-edged sheet of note-paper, ‘Favoured by papa. To remind’; and passed the intervening period in a state of dotage.
I think I committed every possible absurdity in the way of preparation for this blessed event. I turn hot when I remember the cravat I bought. My boots might be placed in any collection of instruments of torture. I provided, and sent down by the Norwood coach the night before, a delicate little hamper, amounting in itself, I thought, almost to a declaration. There were crackers in it with the tenderest mottoes that could be got for money. At six in the morning, I was in Covent Garden Market, buying a bouquet for Dora. At ten I was on horseback (I hired a gallant grey, for the occasion), with the bouquet in my hat, to keep it fresh, trotting down to Norwood.
I suppose that when I saw Dora in the garden and pretended not to see her, and rode past the house pretending to be anxiously looking for it, I committed two small fooleries which other young gentlemen in my circumstances might have committed—because they came so very natural to me. But oh! when I DID find the house, and DID dismount at the garden-gate, and drag those stony-hearted boots across the lawn to Dora sitting on a garden-seat under a lilac tree, what a spectacle she was, upon that beautiful morning, among the butterflies, in a white chip bonnet and a dress of celestial blue! There was a young lady with her—comparatively stricken in years—almost twenty, I should say. Her name was Miss Mills. And Dora called her Julia. She was the bosom friend of Dora. Happy Miss Mills!
Non avevo il coraggio di suggerire al padre di Dora che forse avremmo potuto migliorare il mondo anche un po’, se ci fossimo alzati presto la mattina, e avessimo tolto la giacca per metterci al lavoro; ma confessai che pensavo che avremmo potuto migliorare i Commons. Il signor Spenlow rispose che mi avrebbe particolarmente consigliato di scacciare quell’idea dalla mia mente, in quanto non degna del mio carattere da gentiluomo; ma che sarebbe stato lieto di sentire da me quali miglioramenti pensavo che i Commons potessero tollerare?
Considerando quella parte del Palazzo di Giustizia che ci trovavamo più vicini — poiché il nostro uomo era ancora scapolo in quel periodo, e noi eravamo fuori dalla Corte, e ci stavamo aggirando nei pressi dell’Ufficio della Prerogativa — ho espresso il mio parere che l’Ufficio della Prerogativa fosse un’istituzione gestita in modo piuttosto strano. Il signor Spenlow ha chiesto in che senso? Ho risposto, con tutto il dovuto rispetto per la sua esperienza (ma con più rispetto, temo, per il fatto che era il padre di Dora), che forse era un po’ assurdo che il Registrazione di quella Corte, contenente i testamenti originali di tutte le persone che lasciavano beni all’interno dell’immensa provincia di Canterbury, per tre secoli interi, fosse un edificio casuale, mai progettato per tale scopo, affittato dai registri per il loro esclusivo guadagno privato, insicuro, non certificato come a prova di fuoco, intasato con i documenti importanti che custodiva, e, in effetti, dall’alto al basso, una speculazione mercenaria dei registri, che incassavano grandi tasse dal pubblico e stipavano i testamenti del pubblico in qualsiasi modo e in qualsiasi posto, avendo come unico obiettivo quello di liberarsene a buon mercato. Che, forse, era un po’ irragionevole che questi registri, che incassavano profitti pari a otto o nove mila sterline all’anno (per non parlare dei profitti dei registri sostituti e dei funzionari dei seggi), non fossero obbligati a spendere un po’ di quel denaro per trovare un luogo ragionevolmente sicuro per i documenti importanti che tutte le classi di persone erano costrette a consegnare loro, volenti o nolenti. Che, forse, era un po’ ingiusto che tutti i grandi uffici in questo grande ufficio fossero magnifiche sinecure, mentre gli sfortunati impiegati nella fredda e buia stanza al piano di sopra fossero i peggio retribuiti e i meno considerati, pur svolgendo servizi importanti, a Londra. Che forse era un po’ indecente che il principale registratore di tutti, il cui dovere era quello di fornire al pubblico, che costantemente si recava in questo luogo, tutte le necessarie comodità, fosse un enorme sinecurista in virtù di quella carica (e potesse essere, inoltre, un ecclesiastico, un pluralista, il titolare di un posto in una cattedrale, e chissà cos’altro), mentre il pubblico era sottoposto all’inconveniente di cui avevamo un esempio ogni pomeriggio quando l’ufficio era affollato, e che sapevamo essere del tutto mostruoso. Che, in breve, forse, questo Ufficio della Prerogativa della diocesi di Canterbury fosse nel complesso un lavoro così pestilenziale e un’assurdità così perniciosa che, se non fosse stato rinchiuso in un angolo del cortile di San Paolo, di cui poche persone erano a conoscenza, sarebbe stato completamente rivoluzionato e sconvolto molto tempo fa.
Il signor Spenlow sorrise mentre io mi scaldavo modestamente sull’argomento, e poi discusse con me questa questione come aveva discusso l’altra. Disse, che era dopo tutto? Era una questione di sentimento. Se il pubblico sentiva che i loro testamenti erano in custodia sicura, e dava per scontato che l’ ufficio non sarebbe stato migliorato, chi ne sarebbe stato peggio? Nessuno. Chi ne sarebbe stato meglio? Tutti i Sinecuristi. Benissimo. Allora il bene predominava. Forse non era un sistema perfetto; nulla era perfetto; ma ciò che lui obiettava, era, l’inserimento del cuneo. Sotto l’ Ufficio di Prerogativa, il paese era stato glorioso. Inserire il cuneo nell’ Ufficio di Prerogativa, e il paese avrebbe cessato di essere glorioso. Lui riteneva che fosse il principio di un gentiluomo prendere le cose come le trovava; e non aveva dubbio che l’Ufficio di Prerogativa sarebbe durato il nostro tempo. Io mi sottomisi alla sua opinione, sebbene io stesso ne avessi grandi dubbi. Scopro che aveva ragione, tuttavia; perché non solo è durato fino al momento presente, ma lo ha fatto in aperta contraddizione con un grande rapporto parlamentare fatto (non troppo volentieri) diciotto anni fa, quando tutte queste obiezioni mie erano state esposte in dettaglio, e quando l’attuale stoccaggio per i testamenti era stato descritto come equivalente all’accumulo di solo due anni e mezzo in più. Cosa ne hanno fatto da allora; se ne hanno persi molti, o se ne vendono qualcuno, di tanto in tanto, ai negozi di burro; Non lo so. Sono contento che il mio non ci sia, e spero che non ci vada, ancora per un po’.
Ho annotato tutto questo, nel mio attuale capitolo beato, perché qui trova il suo posto naturale. La conversazione con il signor Spenlow si è protratta, così come la nostra passeggiata avanti e indietro, fino a che non siamo passati a temi generali. E così è accaduto, alla fine, che il signor Spenlow mi ha detto che questo giorno della settimana era il compleanno di Dora, e sarebbe stato felice se fossi venuto a unirvi a un piccolo picnic in tale occasione. Sono uscito di senno immediatamente; sono diventato un semplice balbuziente il giorno dopo, alla ricezione di un piccolo foglio di carta da lettere con il bordo di pizzo, «Con la cortesia di papà. Per ricordare»; e ho trascorso il periodo intermedio in uno stato di pazzia.
Penso di aver commesso ogni possibile assurdità nel prepararmi per questo benedetto evento. Mi viene caldo al solo pensiero della cravatta che ho comprato. I miei stivali potrebbero essere esposti in qualsiasi collezione di strumenti di tortura. Ho preparato e spedito con il sera prima con la diligenza di Norwood un delicato cestino che, da solo, pensavo, equivalesse quasi a una dichiarazione. C’era dentro un cracker con i più teneri motti che si potessero comprare. Alle sei del mattino ero al mercato di Covent Garden, a comprare un mazzo di fiori per Dora. Alle dieci ero a cavallo (ho noleggiato un bel grigio per l’occasione), con il mazzo di fiori nel cappello per mantenerlo fresco, al trotto verso Norwood.
Suppongo che quando vidi Dora nel giardino e feci finta di non vederla, e passai a cavallo davanti alla casa fingendo di cercarla con ansia, commisi due piccole sciocchezze che altri giovani signori nelle mie circostanze avrebbero potuto commettere — perché mi venivano così naturali. Ma oh! quando TROVAI la casa, e SCENDO da cavallo al cancello del giardino, e trascino quei miei stivali di pietra attraverso il prato fino a Dora seduta su una panchina del giardino sotto un albero di sambuco, quale spettacolo era, in quella bella mattina, tra le farfalle, con un cappellino bianco di paglia e un abito di un azzurro celeste! C’era una giovane signora con lei — relativamente avanti negli anni — quasi vent’anni, direi. Si chiamava Miss Mills. E Dora la chiamava Giulia. Era l’amica intima di Dora. Felice Miss Mills!
Jip was there, and Jip WOULD bark at me again. When I presented my bouquet, he gnashed his teeth with jealousy. Well he might. If he had the least idea how I adored his mistress, well he might!
‘Oh, thank you, Mr. Copperfield! What dear flowers!’ said Dora.
I had had an intention of saying (and had been studying the best form of words for three miles) that I thought them beautiful before I saw them so near HER. But I couldn’t manage it. She was too bewildering. To see her lay the flowers against her little dimpled chin, was to lose all presence of mind and power of language in a feeble ecstasy. I wonder I didn’t say, ‘Kill me, if you have a heart, Miss Mills. Let me die here!’
Then Dora held my flowers to Jip to smell. Then Jip growled, and wouldn’t smell them. Then Dora laughed, and held them a little closer to Jip, to make him. Then Jip laid hold of a bit of geranium with his teeth, and worried imaginary cats in it. Then Dora beat him, and pouted, and said, ‘My poor beautiful flowers!’ as compassionately, I thought, as if Jip had laid hold of me. I wished he had!
‘You’ll be so glad to hear, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Dora, ‘that that cross Miss Murdstone is not here. She has gone to her brother’s marriage, and will be away at least three weeks. Isn’t that delightful?’
I said I was sure it must be delightful to her, and all that was delightful to her was delightful to me. Miss Mills, with an air of superior wisdom and benevolence, smiled upon us.
‘She is the most disagreeable thing I ever saw,’ said Dora. ‘You can’t believe how ill-tempered and shocking she is, Julia.’
‘Yes, I can, my dear!’ said Julia.
‘YOU can, perhaps, love,’ returned Dora, with her hand on Julia’s. ‘Forgive my not excepting you, my dear, at first.’
I learnt, from this, that Miss Mills had had her trials in the course of a chequered existence; and that to these, perhaps, I might refer that wise benignity of manner which I had already noticed. I found, in the course of the day, that this was the case: Miss Mills having been unhappy in a misplaced affection, and being understood to have retired from the world on her awful stock of experience, but still to take a calm interest in the unblighted hopes and loves of youth.
But now Mr. Spenlow came out of the house, and Dora went to him, saying, ‘Look, papa, what beautiful flowers!’ And Miss Mills smiled thoughtfully, as who should say, ‘Ye Mayflies, enjoy your brief existence in the bright morning of life!’ And we all walked from the lawn towards the carriage, which was getting ready.
I shall never have such a ride again. I have never had such another. There were only those three, their hamper, my hamper, and the guitar-case, in the phaeton; and, of course, the phaeton was open; and I rode behind it, and Dora sat with her back to the horses, looking towards me. She kept the bouquet close to her on the cushion, and wouldn’t allow Jip to sit on that side of her at all, for fear he should crush it. She often carried it in her hand, often refreshed herself with its fragrance. Our eyes at those times often met; and my great astonishment is that I didn’t go over the head of my gallant grey into the carriage.
There was dust, I believe. There was a good deal of dust, I believe. I have a faint impression that Mr. Spenlow remonstrated with me for riding in it; but I knew of none. I was sensible of a mist of love and beauty about Dora, but of nothing else. He stood up sometimes, and asked me what I thought of the prospect. I said it was delightful, and I dare say it was; but it was all Dora to me. The sun shone Dora, and the birds sang Dora. The south wind blew Dora, and the wild flowers in the hedges were all Doras, to a bud. My comfort is, Miss Mills understood me. Miss Mills alone could enter into my feelings thoroughly.
I don’t know how long we were going, and to this hour I know as little where we went. Perhaps it was near Guildford. Perhaps some Arabian-night magician, opened up the place for the day, and shut it up for ever when we came away. It was a green spot, on a hill, carpeted with soft turf. There were shady trees, and heather, and, as far as the eye could see, a rich landscape.
It was a trying thing to find people here, waiting for us; and my jealousy, even of the ladies, knew no bounds. But all of my own sex—especially one impostor, three or four years my elder, with a red whisker, on which he established an amount of presumption not to be endured—were my mortal foes.
We all unpacked our baskets, and employed ourselves in getting dinner ready. Red Whisker pretended he could make a salad (which I don’t believe), and obtruded himself on public notice. Some of the young ladies washed the lettuces for him, and sliced them under his directions. Dora was among these. I felt that fate had pitted me against this man, and one of us must fall.
Red Whisker made his salad (I wondered how they could eat it. Nothing should have induced ME to touch it!) and voted himself into the charge of the wine-cellar, which he constructed, being an ingenious beast, in the hollow trunk of a tree. By and by, I saw him, with the majority of a lobster on his plate, eating his dinner at the feet of Dora!
I have but an indistinct idea of what happened for some time after this baleful object presented itself to my view. I was very merry, I know; but it was hollow merriment. I attached myself to a young creature in pink, with little eyes, and flirted with her desperately. She received my attentions with favour; but whether on my account solely, or because she had any designs on Red Whisker, I can’t say. Dora’s health was drunk. When I drank it, I affected to interrupt my conversation for that purpose, and to resume it immediately afterwards. I caught Dora’s eye as I bowed to her, and I thought it looked appealing. But it looked at me over the head of Red Whisker, and I was adamant.
Jip era lì, e Jip ABBIAVA di nuovo contro di me. Quando presentai il mio mazzo di fiori, digrignò i denti per gelosia. Beh, poteva farlo. Se avesse avuto la minima idea di quanto adorassi la sua padrona, beh, poteva farlo!
«Oh, grazie, signor Copperfield! Che care fiori!», disse Dora.
Avevo intenzione di dire (e avevo studiato la forma migliore delle parole per tre miglia) che le trovavo bellissime prima di vederle così vicino a LEI. Ma non ci riuscivo. Era troppo sconcertante. Vedere lei appoggiare i fiori contro il suo piccolo mento incavato era perdere ogni presenza di spirito e capacità di linguaggio in un’ebbrezza debole. Mi chiedo come non abbia detto: “Uccidetemi, se avete un cuore, signorina Mills. Lasciatemi morire qui!”
Poi Dora tenne i miei fiori vicino a Jip perché li annusasse. Poi Jip ringhiò e non volle annusarli. Poi Dora rise e li avvicinò un po’ di più a Jip, per costringerlo. Poi Jip afferrò un pezzo di geranio con i denti e si mise a inseguire gatti immaginari. Poi Dora lo picchiò, fece il broncio e disse: «I miei poveri fiori belli!», con la stessa compassione, pensai, che avrebbe avuto se Jip avesse afferrato me. Avessi voluto che lo facesse!
«Sarà così contento di sapere, signor Copperfield», disse Dora, «che quella croce della signorina Murdstone non è qui. È andata al matrimonio di suo fratello e starà via almeno tre settimane. Non è delizioso?»
Dissi che ero sicuro che doveva essere delizioso per lei, e tutto ciò che era delizioso per lei era delizioso anche per me. La signorina Mills, con un’aria di superiorità saggia e benevola, ci sorrise.
«È la cosa più sgradevole che io abbia mai visto», disse Dora. «Non potete immaginare quanto sia di cattivo umore e quanto sia scioccante, Julia.»
«Sì, posso, mia cara!» disse Giulia.
«TU forse puoi amare», rispose Dora, con la mano su quella di Julia. «Perdonami se non ti ho esclusa, mia cara, all’inizio».
Da questo appresi che la signorina Mills aveva avuto le sue prove nel corso di un’esistenza varia; e che a queste, forse, potevo attribuire quella saggia benignità di modi che avevo già notato. Scoprii, nel corso della giornata, che era proprio così: la signorina Mills era stata infelice in un affetto mal riposto, e si diceva che si fosse ritirata dal mondo con il suo terribile bagaglio di esperienze, ma che tuttavia continuasse a interessarsi con calma alle speranze e agli amori intatti della gioventù.
Ma ora il signor Spenlow uscì dalla casa, e Dora andò da lui, dicendo: «Guarda, papà, che fiori meravigliosi!». E la signorina Mills sorrise pensierosa, come se volesse dire: «Oh Efemeridi, godetevi la vostra breve esistenza nella luminosa mattinata della vita!». E tutti insieme camminammo dal prato verso la carrozza, che si stava preparando.
Non avrò mai più una cavalcata come quella. Non ne ho mai avuta un’altra uguale. C’erano solo loro tre, il loro cestino, il mio cestino e la custodia della chitarra nel phaeton; e, naturalmente, il phaeton era aperto; e io cavalcavo dietro di esso, e Dora sedeva con la schiena rivolta ai cavalli, guardando verso di me. Teneva il mazzo di fiori vicino a sé sul cuscino, e non voleva assolutamente che Jip si sedesse da quella parte, per paura che lo schiacciasse. Spesso lo portava in mano, spesso si rinfrescava con il suo profumo. I nostri occhi si incontravano spesso in quei momenti; e la mia grande sorpresa è che non sono finito sopra la testa del mio grigio gallante nella carrozza.
C’era polvere, credo. C’era parecchia polvere, credo. Ho un vago ricordo che il signor Spenlow mi rimproverò per aver cavalcato in mezzo a quella polvere; ma io non ne avevo notato alcuna. Ero consapevole di una nebbia di amore e bellezza attorno a Dora, ma di nulla altro. A volte si alzava in piedi e mi chiedeva che cosa ne pensassi del panorama. Dicevo che era delizioso, e probabilmente lo era; ma per me era tutta Dora. Il sole splendeva Dora, e gli uccelli cantavano Dora. Il vento del sud soffiava Dora, e i fiori selvatici nei fossi erano tutti Doras, fino all’ultimo bocciolo. Il mio conforto è che la signorina Mills mi capiva. Solo la signorina Mills da sola poteva comprendere appieno i miei sentimenti.
Non so per quanto tempo abbiamo camminato, e a quest’ora so ancora poco di dove siamo andati. Forse era vicino a Guildford. Forse qualche mago delle notte araba, ha aperto il posto per il giorno, e lo ha chiuso per sempre quando siamo andati via. Era un posto verde, su una collina, ricoperto da un tappeto di morbido prato. C’erano alberi ombrosi, erica, e, fino a dove l’occhio poteva vedere, un ricco paesaggio.
Era una prova troppo dura trovare persone qui, in attesa di noi; e la mia gelosia, anche delle donne, non conosceva limiti. Ma tutti i miei coetanei del mio stesso sesso, in particolare un impostore, di tre o quattro anni più grande di me, con un baffo rosso, su cui si basava un’arroganza insopportabile, erano i miei nemici mortali.
Tutti abbiamo svuotato i nostri cestini e ci siamo messi al lavoro per preparare la cena. Red Whisker pretendeva di saper fare un’insalata (cosa che non credo), e si metteva in mostra. Alcune delle giovani signore lavavano le insalate per lui e le tagliavano seguendo le sue istruzioni. Dora era tra queste. Sentivo che il destino mi aveva messo contro quell’uomo, e uno di noi due doveva soccombere.
Red Whisker preparò la sua insalata (mi chiedevo come potessero mangiarla. Nulla avrebbe potuto indurre ME a toccarla!) e si nominò responsabile della cantina, che costruì, essendo un animale ingegnoso, nel tronco cavo di un albero. Dopo un po’, lo vidi, con la maggior parte di un gambero nel piatto, mangiare la sua cena ai piedi di Dora!
Ho solo un’idea confusa di ciò che accadde per qualche tempo dopo che questo oggetto funesto si presentò alla mia vista. Ero molto allegro, lo so; ma era un’allegria vuota. Mi attaccai a una giovane creatura in rosa, con occhi piccoli, e flirtai con lei disperatamente. Lei accolse le mie attenzioni con favore; ma se fosse stato solo per me, o se avesse avuto qualche progetto su Red Whisker, non posso dirlo. Alla salute di Dora fu brindato. Quando bevvi, finsi di interrompere la mia conversazione per quell’occasione, e di riprenderla subito dopo. Catturai lo sguardo di Dora mentre mi inchinavo a lei, e mi sembrò che fosse supplichevole. Ma mi guardava oltre la testa di Red Whisker, e io ero irremovibile.
The young creature in pink had a mother in green; and I rather think the latter separated us from motives of policy. Howbeit, there was a general breaking up of the party, while the remnants of the dinner were being put away; and I strolled off by myself among the trees, in a raging and remorseful state. I was debating whether I should pretend that I was not well, and fly—I don’t know where—upon my gallant grey, when Dora and Miss Mills met me.
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘you are dull.’
I begged her pardon. Not at all.
‘And Dora,’ said Miss Mills, ‘YOU are dull.’
Oh dear no! Not in the least.
‘Mr. Copperfield and Dora,’ said Miss Mills, with an almost venerable air. ‘Enough of this. Do not allow a trivial misunderstanding to wither the blossoms of spring, which, once put forth and blighted, cannot be renewed. I speak,’ said Miss Mills, ‘from experience of the past—the remote, irrevocable past. The gushing fountains which sparkle in the sun, must not be stopped in mere caprice; the oasis in the desert of Sahara must not be plucked up idly.’
I hardly knew what I did, I was burning all over to that extraordinary extent; but I took Dora’s little hand and kissed it—and she let me! I kissed Miss Mills’s hand; and we all seemed, to my thinking, to go straight up to the seventh heaven. We did not come down again. We stayed up there all the evening. At first we strayed to and fro among the trees: I with Dora’s shy arm drawn through mine: and Heaven knows, folly as it all was, it would have been a happy fate to have been struck immortal with those foolish feelings, and have stayed among the trees for ever!
But, much too soon, we heard the others laughing and talking, and calling ‘where’s Dora?’ So we went back, and they wanted Dora to sing. Red Whisker would have got the guitar-case out of the carriage, but Dora told him nobody knew where it was, but I. So Red Whisker was done for in a moment; and I got it, and I unlocked it, and I took the guitar out, and I sat by her, and I held her handkerchief and gloves, and I drank in every note of her dear voice, and she sang to ME who loved her, and all the others might applaud as much as they liked, but they had nothing to do with it!
I was intoxicated with joy. I was afraid it was too happy to be real, and that I should wake in Buckingham Street presently, and hear Mrs. Crupp clinking the teacups in getting breakfast ready. But Dora sang, and others sang, and Miss Mills sang—about the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory; as if she were a hundred years old—and the evening came on; and we had tea, with the kettle boiling gipsy-fashion; and I was still as happy as ever.
I was happier than ever when the party broke up, and the other people, defeated Red Whisker and all, went their several ways, and we went ours through the still evening and the dying light, with sweet scents rising up around us. Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the champagne—honour to the soil that grew the grape, to the grape that made the wine, to the sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who adulterated it!—and being fast asleep in a corner of the carriage, I rode by the side and talked to Dora. She admired my horse and patted him—oh, what a dear little hand it looked upon a horse!—and her shawl would not keep right, and now and then I drew it round her with my arm; and I even fancied that Jip began to see how it was, and to understand that he must make up his mind to be friends with me.
That sagacious Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up, recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who had done with the world, and mustn’t on any account have the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what a kind thing she did!
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘come to this side of the carriage a moment—if you can spare a moment. I want to speak to you.’
Behold me, on my gallant grey, bending at the side of Miss Mills, with my hand upon the carriage door!
‘Dora is coming to stay with me. She is coming home with me the day after tomorrow. If you would like to call, I am sure papa would be happy to see you.’ What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss Mills’s head, and store Miss Mills’s address in the securest corner of my memory! What could I do but tell Miss Mills, with grateful looks and fervent words, how much I appreciated her good offices, and what an inestimable value I set upon her friendship!
Then Miss Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, ‘Go back to Dora!’ and I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against it, and ‘took the bark off’, as his owner told me, ‘to the tune of three pun’ sivin’—which I paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses—and recalling, I suppose, the ancient days when she and earth had anything in common.
Norwood was many miles too near, and we reached it many hours too soon; but Mr. Spenlow came to himself a little short of it, and said, ‘You must come in, Copperfield, and rest!’ and I consenting, we had sandwiches and wine-and-water. In the light room, Dora blushing looked so lovely, that I could not tear myself away, but sat there staring, in a dream, until the snoring of Mr. Spenlow inspired me with sufficient consciousness to take my leave. So we parted; I riding all the way to London with the farewell touch of Dora’s hand still light on mine, recalling every incident and word ten thousand times; lying down in my own bed at last, as enraptured a young noodle as ever was carried out of his five wits by love.
When I awoke next morning, I was resolute to declare my passion to Dora, and know my fate. Happiness or misery was now the question. There was no other question that I knew of in the world, and only Dora could give the answer to it. I passed three days in a luxury of wretchedness, torturing myself by putting every conceivable variety of discouraging construction on all that ever had taken place between Dora and me. At last, arrayed for the purpose at a vast expense, I went to Miss Mills’s, fraught with a declaration.
La giovane creatura in rosa aveva una madre in verde; e penso piuttosto che quest’ultima ci abbia separati per motivi di politica. Comunque, ci fu una generale dissoluzione della festa, mentre i resti della cena venivano riposti; e io mi allontanai da solo tra gli alberi, in uno stato di rabbia e rimorso. Stavo discutendo se avrei dovuto fingere di non stare bene, e fuggire — non so dove — sul mio valoroso cavallo grigio, quando Dora e Miss Mills mi incontrarono.
“Signor Copperfield,” disse Miss Mills, “è noioso.”
Le chiesi scusa. Niente affatto.
“E Dora”, disse Miss Mills, “SEI noiosa.”
Oh, no davvero! Niente affatto.
«Signor Copperfield e Dora», disse Miss Mills con un’aria quasi venerabile, «basta così. Non permettete che un banale malinteso appassisse i fiori della primavera, che, una volta sbocciati e appassiti, non possono rinascere. Parlo», disse Miss Mills, «per esperienza del passato, del passato remoto e irrevocabile. Le fontane che sgorgano e scintillano al sole non devono essere fermate per un capriccio; l’oasi nel deserto del Sahara non deve essere distrutta senza motivo».
A malapena sapevo cosa stavo facendo, ero così infuocato in modo così straordinario; ma presi la piccola mano di Dora e la baciai - e lei mi lasciò fare! Baciai la mano della signorina Mills; e a mio avviso sembrava che fossimo tutti saliti dritti fino al settimo cielo. Non scendemmo più. Rimanemmo lassù tutta la sera. All’inizio vagammo avanti e indietro tra gli alberi: io con il timido braccio di Dora intrecciato al mio: e Dio sa, anche se tutto era follia, sarebbe stata una felice sorte essere resi immortali con quei sentimenti sciocchi, e rimanere tra gli alberi per sempre!
Ma ben presto sentimmo gli altri ridere e parlare, e chiamare: «Dov’è Dora?». Così tornammo indietro, e volevano che Dora cantasse. Red Whisker avrebbe preso la custodia della chitarra dalla carrozza, ma Dora gli disse che nessuno sapeva dove fosse, tranne me. Così Red Whisker fu messo fuori gioco in un attimo; e la presi io, e la aprii, e tirai fuori la chitarra, e mi sedetti accanto a lei, e le tenni il fazzoletto e i guanti, e ascoltai ogni nota della sua cara voce, e lei cantò a ME che l’amavo, e tutti gli altri potevano applaudire quanto volevano, ma non c’entravano niente!
Ero ebbro di gioia. Avevo paura che fosse troppo felice per essere reale, e che mi sarei svegliato presto in Buckingham Street, e avrei sentito la signora Crupp tintinnare le tazze da tè preparando la colazione. Ma Dora cantava, e altri cantavano, e la signorina Mills cantava — degli echi che dormivano nelle caverne della Memoria; come se avesse cent’anni — e la sera arrivò; e prendemmo il tè, con il bollitore che bolliva alla maniera zingara; e io ero ancora felice come sempre.
Ero più felice che mai quando la festa si sciolse e le altre persone, sconfitto il Rosso Baffo e tutti gli altri, se ne andarono per le loro strade, e noi per la nostra attraverso la sera tranquilla e la luce morente, con dolci profumi che si levavano intorno a noi. Il signor Spenlow, un po’ assonnato dopo lo champagne — onore al terreno che fece crescere l’uva, all’uva che fece il vino, al sole che la fece maturare, e al mercante che la adulterò! — e addormentato in un angolo della carrozza, io cavalcavo al suo fianco e parlavo con Dora. Lei ammirava il mio cavallo e lo accarezzava — oh, che manina carina sembrava su un cavallo! — e la sua sciarpa non stava mai bene, e di tanto in tanto la sistemavo con il mio braccio; e persino immaginavo che Jip cominciasse a capire come stavano le cose, e a rendersi conto che doveva farsi l’idea di fare amicizia con me.
Anche quella saggia Miss Mills; quella amabile, sebbene completamente esausta, reclusa; quel piccolo patriarca di qualcosa meno di vent’anni, che aveva chiuso i conti col mondo e non doveva assolutamente svegliare gli echi che dormivano nelle caverne della Memoria; che cosa gentile ha fatto!
«Signor Copperfield», disse la signorina Mills, «venga per un momento da questa parte del calesse, se può concedermi un momento. Desidero parlarle».
Ecco me, sul mio nobile cavallo grigio, che mi chino al fianco della signorina Mills, con la mano sulla portiera della carrozza!
«Dora verrà a stare con me. Verrà a casa con me dopodomani. Se vorrete venire a trovarci, sono sicuro che papà sarà felice di vedervi». Che cosa potevo fare se non invocare una silenziosa benedizione sulla testa della signorina Mills, e conservare l’indirizzo della signorina Mills nell’angolo più sicuro della mia memoria! Che cosa potevo fare se non dire alla signorina Mills, con sguardi grati e parole ferventi, quanto apprezzassi le sue buone azioni, e quale inestimabile valore attribuissi alla sua amicizia!
Poi la signorina Mills mi congedò benignamente, dicendo: «Torna da Dora!» e io tornai; e Dora si sporse dal carrozza per parlarmi, e parlammo per tutto il resto del viaggio; e io cavalcai il mio nobile grigio così vicino alla ruota che sfiorai la sua zampa anteriore contro di essa, e «gli tolsi la corteccia», come mi disse il suo proprietario, «per tre sterline e sei scellini» — che pagai, e che trovai estremamente a buon mercato per tanta gioia. Quanto tempo la signorina Mills passò a guardare la luna, mormorando versi — e ricordando, immagino, i giorni antichi quando lei e la terra avevano qualcosa in comune.
Norwood era troppo vicina, e noi l’abbiamo raggiunta troppo presto; ma il signor Spenlow si riprese poco prima di arrivarci, e disse: «Devi entrare, Copperfield, e riposarti!», e io acconsentendo, prendemmo panini e vino e acqua. Nella stanza illuminata, Dora arrossendo appariva così incantevole, che non riuscivo a staccarmi da lei, ma rimasi lì a fissarla, in un sogno, fino a quando il russare del signor Spenlow mi infuse una coscienza sufficiente per congedarmi. Così ci separammo; io cavalcavo per tutto il tragitto fino a Londra con il tocco d’addio della mano di Dora ancora leggero sulla mia, rievocando ogni incidente e parola diecimila volte; mi sdraiai infine nel mio letto, un giovane innamorato quanto mai fu portato fuori di senno dall’amore.
Quando mi svegliai la mattina seguente, ero deciso a dichiarare il mio amore a Dora e a conoscere il mio destino. La felicità o la miseria erano ora la questione. Non c’era altra questione che conoscessi al mondo, e solo Dora poteva dare la risposta. Passai tre giorni in un lusso di infelicità, torturandomi ponendo ogni concepibile varietà di costruzione scoraggiante su tutto ciò che era mai accaduto tra Dora e me. Alla fine, preparato allo scopo a un vasto costo, andai da Miss Mills, carico di una dichiarazione.
How many times I went up and down the street, and round the square—painfully aware of being a much better answer to the old riddle than the original one—before I could persuade myself to go up the steps and knock, is no matter now. Even when, at last, I had knocked, and was waiting at the door, I had some flurried thought of asking if that were Mr. Blackboy’s (in imitation of poor Barkis), begging pardon, and retreating. But I kept my ground.
Mr. Mills was not at home. I did not expect he would be. Nobody wanted HIM. Miss Mills was at home. Miss Mills would do.
I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. Jip was there. Miss Mills was copying music (I recollect, it was a new song, called ‘Affection’s Dirge’), and Dora was painting flowers. What were my feelings, when I recognized my own flowers; the identical Covent Garden Market purchase! I cannot say that they were very like, or that they particularly resembled any flowers that have ever come under my observation; but I knew from the paper round them which was accurately copied, what the composition was.
Miss Mills was very glad to see me, and very sorry her papa was not at home: though I thought we all bore that with fortitude. Miss Mills was conversational for a few minutes, and then, laying down her pen upon ‘Affection’s Dirge’, got up, and left the room.
I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
‘I hope your poor horse was not tired, when he got home at night,’ said Dora, lifting up her beautiful eyes. ‘It was a long way for him.’
I began to think I would do it today.
‘It was a long way for him,’ said I, ‘for he had nothing to uphold him on the journey.’
‘Wasn’t he fed, poor thing?’ asked Dora.
I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.
‘Ye-yes,’ I said, ‘he was well taken care of. I mean he had not the unutterable happiness that I had in being so near you.’
Dora bent her head over her drawing and said, after a little while—I had sat, in the interval, in a burning fever, and with my legs in a very rigid state—
‘You didn’t seem to be sensible of that happiness yourself, at one time of the day.’
I saw now that I was in for it, and it must be done on the spot.
‘You didn’t care for that happiness in the least,’ said Dora, slightly raising her eyebrows, and shaking her head, ‘when you were sitting by Miss Kitt.’
Kitt, I should observe, was the name of the creature in pink, with the little eyes.
‘Though certainly I don’t know why you should,’ said Dora, ‘or why you should call it a happiness at all. But of course you don’t mean what you say. And I am sure no one doubts your being at liberty to do whatever you like. Jip, you naughty boy, come here!’
I don’t know how I did it. I did it in a moment. I intercepted Jip. I had Dora in my arms. I was full of eloquence. I never stopped for a word. I told her how I loved her. I told her I should die without her. I told her that I idolized and worshipped her. Jip barked madly all the time.
When Dora hung her head and cried, and trembled, my eloquence increased so much the more. If she would like me to die for her, she had but to say the word, and I was ready. Life without Dora’s love was not a thing to have on any terms. I couldn’t bear it, and I wouldn’t. I had loved her every minute, day and night, since I first saw her. I loved her at that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute, to distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but no lover had loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved Dora. The more I raved, the more Jip barked. Each of us, in his own way, got more mad every moment.
Well, well! Dora and I were sitting on the sofa by and by, quiet enough, and Jip was lying in her lap, winking peacefully at me. It was off my mind. I was in a state of perfect rapture. Dora and I were engaged.
I suppose we had some notion that this was to end in marriage. We must have had some, because Dora stipulated that we were never to be married without her papa’s consent. But, in our youthful ecstasy, I don’t think that we really looked before us or behind us; or had any aspiration beyond the ignorant present. We were to keep our secret from Mr. Spenlow; but I am sure the idea never entered my head, then, that there was anything dishonourable in that.
Miss Mills was more than usually pensive when Dora, going to find her, brought her back;—I apprehend, because there was a tendency in what had passed to awaken the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory. But she gave us her blessing, and the assurance of her lasting friendship, and spoke to us, generally, as became a Voice from the Cloister.
What an idle time it was! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time it was!
When I measured Dora’s finger for a ring that was to be made of Forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure, found me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me anything he liked for the pretty little toy, with its blue stones—so associated in my remembrance with Dora’s hand, that yesterday, when I saw such another, by chance, on the finger of my own daughter, there was a momentary stirring in my heart, like pain!
When I walked about, exalted with my secret, and full of my own interest, and felt the dignity of loving Dora, and of being beloved, so much, that if I had walked the air, I could not have been more above the people not so situated, who were creeping on the earth!
When we had those meetings in the garden of the square, and sat within the dingy summer-house, so happy, that I love the London sparrows to this hour, for nothing else, and see the plumage of the tropics in their smoky feathers! When we had our first great quarrel (within a week of our betrothal), and when Dora sent me back the ring, enclosed in a despairing cocked-hat note, wherein she used the terrible expression that ‘our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!’ which dreadful words occasioned me to tear my hair, and cry that all was over!
When, under cover of the night, I flew to Miss Mills, whom I saw by stealth in a back kitchen where there was a mangle, and implored Miss Mills to interpose between us and avert insanity. When Miss Mills undertook the office and returned with Dora, exhorting us, from the pulpit of her own bitter youth, to mutual concession, and the avoidance of the Desert of Sahara!
When we cried, and made it up, and were so blest again, that the back kitchen, mangle and all, changed to Love’s own temple, where we arranged a plan of correspondence through Miss Mills, always to comprehend at least one letter on each side every day!
What an idle time! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly.
Quante volte andai su e giù per la strada, e intorno alla piazza, consapevole in modo penoso di essere una risposta molto migliore al vecchio indovinello rispetto a quella originale, prima di potermi persuadere a salire i gradini e bussare, ora non ha importanza. Anche quando, alla fine, avevo bussato e stavo aspettando alla porta, ebbi qualche pensiero confuso di chiedere se quello fosse il signor Blackboy (in imitazione del povero Barkis), chiedere scusa e ritirarmi. Ma tenni il mio posto.
Il signor Mills non era a casa. Non mi aspettavo che ci fosse. Nessuno lo voleva. La signorina Mills era a casa. La signorina Mills andava bene.
Mi fecero entrare in una stanza al piano di sopra, dove c’erano Miss Mills e Dora. Jip era lì. Miss Mills stava copiando della musica (ricordo che era una nuova canzone, intitolata “Il lamento dell’Affetto”), e Dora stava dipingendo fiori. Quali furono i miei sentimenti quando riconobbi i miei stessi fiori; l’identico acquisto al mercato di Covent Garden! Non posso dire che fossero molto simili, o che assomigliassero particolarmente a qualche fiore che mi sia mai capitato di vedere; ma riconobbi dalla carta che li avvolgeva, che era stata accuratamente riprodotta, di che cosa si trattava.
La signorina Mills fu molto contenta di vedermi, e molto dispiaciuta che suo padre non fosse a casa: anche se mi parve che tutti noi lo avessimo sopportato con forza d’animo. La signorina Mills conversò per qualche minuto, e poi, posando la penna su “Affection’s Dirge”, si alzò e lasciò la stanza.
Cominciai a pensare che avrei rimandato tutto a domani.
«Spero che il tuo povero cavallo non fosse stanco quando è arrivato a casa a notte», disse Dora, alzando i suoi begli occhi. «È stata una lunga strada per lui.»
Cominciai a pensare che l’avrei fatto oggi.
«Era un lungo cammino per lui», dissi, «perché non aveva nulla che lo sostenesse durante il viaggio.»
«Non gli davano da mangiare, poverino?» chiese Dora.
Cominciai a pensare che avrei rimandato tutto a domani.
«Sì-sì», dissi, «era ben curato. Intendo dire che non aveva la indescrivibile felicità che io avevo nel trovarmi così vicino a voi».
Dora si chinò sul suo disegno e, dopo un po’, disse — io, nel frattempo, ero rimasto seduto in preda a una febbre ardente, con le gambe in uno stato di rigida immobilità —
«Non sembrava che tu fossi consapevole di quella felicità, in un momento della giornata.»
Mi resi conto che ormai ero nei guai e che bisognava agire immediatamente.
«Non t’importava nulla di quella felicità», disse Dora, alzando leggermente le sopracciglia e scuotendo la testa, «quando eri seduto accanto alla signorina Kitt.»
Kitt, come noterò, era il nome della creatura in rosa, con gli occhi piccoli.
«Anche se non capisco perché dovrei», disse Dora, «o perché dovresti chiamarla felicità. Ma naturalmente non intendi quello che dici. E sono sicura che nessuno dubita che tu abbia la libertà di fare quello che vuoi. Jip, birbante, vieni qui!»
Non so come ho fatto. L’ho fatto in un attimo. Ho intercettato Jip. Avevo Dora tra le braccia. Ero pieno di eloquenza. Non mi sono fermato per una parola. Le ho detto quanto l’amavo. Le ho detto che sarei morto senza di lei. Le ho detto che la idolatravo e la adoravo. Jip abbaiava furiosamente tutto il tempo.
Quando Dora abbassava la testa e piangeva e tremava, la mia eloquenza aumentava tanto di più. Se avesse voluto che morissi per lei, avrebbe dovuto solo dirlo, e io ero pronto. La vita senza l’amore di Dora non era una cosa da avere a nessuna condizione. Non potevo sopportarlo, e non lo avrei fatto. L’avevo amata ogni minuto, giorno e notte, da quando l’avevo vista per la prima volta. L’amavo in quel momento fino alla distrazione. L’avrei sempre amata, ogni minuto, fino alla distrazione. Gli innamorati avevano amato prima, e gli innamorati avrebbero amato di nuovo; ma nessun innamorato aveva amato, potrebbe, potrebbe, vorrebbe, o dovrebbe mai amare, come io amavo Dora. Più mi esaltavo, più Jip abbaiava. Ognuno di noi, a modo suo, diventava più pazzo ogni momento.
Bene, bene! Dora ed io eravamo seduti sul divano, tranquilli, e Jip era sdraiato sulle sue ginocchia, ammiccando pacificamente verso di me. Era fuori dalla mia mente. Ero in uno stato di perfetto rapimento. Dora ed io eravamo fidanzati.
Suppongo che avessimo qualche idea che tutto ciò sarebbe finito in matrimonio. Dovevamo averne una, perché Dora stabilì che non avremmo mai dovuto sposarci senza il consenso di suo padre. Ma, nella nostra giovanile estasi, non credo che guardassimo davanti a noi o dietro di noi; o avessimo qualche aspirazione oltre il presente ignorante. Dovevamo mantenere il nostro segreto da Mr. Spenlow; ma sono sicuro che l’idea non mi era mai entrata in testa, allora, che ci fosse qualcosa di disonorevole in ciò.
La signorina Mills era più pensierosa del solito quando Dora, andata a cercarla, la riportò con sé; temo che ciò fosse dovuto al fatto che quanto era accaduto aveva suscitato gli echi addormentati nelle caverne della Memoria. Ma ci diede la sua benedizione, la garanzia della sua duratura amicizia e ci parlò, in generale, come si conveniva a una Voce proveniente dal Chiostro.
Che tempo ozioso era! Che tempo inconsistente, felice, sciocco era!
Quando misurai il dito di Dora per un anello che doveva essere fatto di non-ti-scordar-di-me, e quando il gioielliere, a cui portai la misura, mi smascherò, e rise sul suo libro degli ordini, e mi fece pagare quello che voleva per il grazioso piccolo giocattolo, con le sue pietre blu — così associate al mio ricordo della mano di Dora, che ieri, quando ne vidi uno simile, per caso, sul dito di mia figlia, ci fu un momentaneo sussulto nel mio cuore, come dolore!
Quando camminavo, esaltato dal mio segreto, pieno del mio interesse, e sentivo la dignità di amare Dora, e di essere amato, tanto che se avessi camminato sull’aria, non sarei stato più al di sopra delle persone non così situate, che strisciavano sulla terra!
Quando ci riunivamo nel giardino della piazza e sedevamo nella squallida casetta estiva, così felici, che ancora oggi amo gli spazzacamini di Londra per nient’altro, e vedo il piumaggio dei tropici nelle loro piume fumose! Quando abbiamo avuto il nostro primo grande litigio (entro una settimana dalle nostre promesse), e quando Dora mi ha restituito l’anello, racchiuso in una disperata nota a forma di tricorno, in cui usava la terribile espressione che ‘il nostro amore era iniziato in follia e finito in pazzia!’ che terribili parole mi hanno fatto strappare i capelli e gridare che tutto era finito!
Quando, al riparo della notte, volai da Miss Mills, che vidi di nascosto in una cucina sul retro dove c’era un torchio, e implorai Miss Mills di intercedere tra noi e di evitare la follia. Quando Miss Mills si assunse l’incarico e tornò con Dora, esortandoci, dal pulpito della sua stessa amara giovinezza, alla reciproca concessione e all’evitare il Deserto del Sahara!
Quando piangemmo, e ci riconciliammo, e fummo di nuovo così beati, che la cucina di dietro, con tutto il suo macchinario, si trasformò nel tempio stesso dell’Amore, dove organizzammo un piano di corrispondenza tramite Miss Mills, che doveva sempre comprendere almeno una lettera da ciascuna parte ogni giorno!
Che tempo ozioso! Che tempo inconsistente, felice, sciocco! Di tutti i miei tempi che il Tempo ha in suo potere, non ce n’è nessuno che, guardandolo indietro, posso sorridere anche a metà, e pensare anche a metà così teneramente.
CHAPTER 34. MY AUNT ASTONISHES ME
I wrote to Agnes as soon as Dora and I were engaged. I wrote her a long letter, in which I tried to make her comprehend how blest I was, and what a darling Dora was. I entreated Agnes not to regard this as a thoughtless passion which could ever yield to any other, or had the least resemblance to the boyish fancies that we used to joke about. I assured her that its profundity was quite unfathomable, and expressed my belief that nothing like it had ever been known.
Somehow, as I wrote to Agnes on a fine evening by my open window, and the remembrance of her clear calm eyes and gentle face came stealing over me, it shed such a peaceful influence upon the hurry and agitation in which I had been living lately, and of which my very happiness partook in some degree, that it soothed me into tears. I remember that I sat resting my head upon my hand, when the letter was half done, cherishing a general fancy as if Agnes were one of the elements of my natural home. As if, in the retirement of the house made almost sacred to me by her presence, Dora and I must be happier than anywhere. As if, in love, joy, sorrow, hope, or disappointment; in all emotions; my heart turned naturally there, and found its refuge and best friend.
Of Steerforth I said nothing. I only told her there had been sad grief at Yarmouth, on account of Emily’s flight; and that on me it made a double wound, by reason of the circumstances attending it. I knew how quick she always was to divine the truth, and that she would never be the first to breathe his name.
To this letter, I received an answer by return of post. As I read it, I seemed to hear Agnes speaking to me. It was like her cordial voice in my ears. What can I say more!
While I had been away from home lately, Traddles had called twice or thrice. Finding Peggotty within, and being informed by Peggotty (who always volunteered that information to whomsoever would receive it), that she was my old nurse, he had established a good-humoured acquaintance with her, and had stayed to have a little chat with her about me. So Peggotty said; but I am afraid the chat was all on her own side, and of immoderate length, as she was very difficult indeed to stop, God bless her! when she had me for her theme.
This reminds me, not only that I expected Traddles on a certain afternoon of his own appointing, which was now come, but that Mrs. Crupp had resigned everything appertaining to her office (the salary excepted) until Peggotty should cease to present herself. Mrs. Crupp, after holding divers conversations respecting Peggotty, in a very high-pitched voice, on the staircase—with some invisible Familiar it would appear, for corporeally speaking she was quite alone at those times—addressed a letter to me, developing her views. Beginning it with that statement of universal application, which fitted every occurrence of her life, namely, that she was a mother herself, she went on to inform me that she had once seen very different days, but that at all periods of her existence she had had a constitutional objection to spies, intruders, and informers. She named no names, she said; let them the cap fitted, wear it; but spies, intruders, and informers, especially in widders’ weeds (this clause was underlined), she had ever accustomed herself to look down upon. If a gentleman was the victim of spies, intruders, and informers (but still naming no names), that was his own pleasure. He had a right to please himself; so let him do. All that she, Mrs. Crupp, stipulated for, was, that she should not be ‘brought in contract’ with such persons. Therefore she begged to be excused from any further attendance on the top set, until things were as they formerly was, and as they could be wished to be; and further mentioned that her little book would be found upon the breakfast-table every Saturday morning, when she requested an immediate settlement of the same, with the benevolent view of saving trouble ‘and an ill-conwenience’ to all parties.
After this, Mrs. Crupp confined herself to making pitfalls on the stairs, principally with pitchers, and endeavouring to delude Peggotty into breaking her legs. I found it rather harassing to live in this state of siege, but was too much afraid of Mrs. Crupp to see any way out of it.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ cried Traddles, punctually appearing at my door, in spite of all these obstacles, ‘how do you do?’
‘My dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘I am delighted to see you at last, and very sorry I have not been at home before. But I have been so much engaged—’
‘Yes, yes, I know,’ said Traddles, ‘of course. Yours lives in London, I think.’
‘What did you say?’
‘She—excuse me—Miss D., you know,’ said Traddles, colouring in his great delicacy, ‘lives in London, I believe?’
‘Oh yes. Near London.’
‘Mine, perhaps you recollect,’ said Traddles, with a serious look, ‘lives down in Devonshire—one of ten. Consequently, I am not so much engaged as you—in that sense.’
‘I wonder you can bear,’ I returned, ‘to see her so seldom.’
‘Hah!’ said Traddles, thoughtfully. ‘It does seem a wonder. I suppose it is, Copperfield, because there is no help for it?’
‘I suppose so,’ I replied with a smile, and not without a blush. ‘And because you have so much constancy and patience, Traddles.’
‘Dear me!’ said Traddles, considering about it, ‘do I strike you in that way, Copperfield? Really I didn’t know that I had. But she is such an extraordinarily dear girl herself, that it’s possible she may have imparted something of those virtues to me. Now you mention it, Copperfield, I shouldn’t wonder at all. I assure you she is always forgetting herself, and taking care of the other nine.’
‘Is she the eldest?’ I inquired.
‘Oh dear, no,’ said Traddles. ‘The eldest is a Beauty.’
He saw, I suppose, that I could not help smiling at the simplicity of this reply; and added, with a smile upon his own ingenuous face:
CAPITOLO 34. MIA ZIA MI STUPEFACTIONA
Scrissi ad Agnese non appena Dora ed io ci fummo fidanzati. Le scrissi una lunga lettera, nella quale cercai di farle comprendere quanto fossi felice, e quale tesoro fosse Dora. Pregai Agnese di non considerare questo come una passione sconsiderata che potesse mai cedere a qualunque altra, o avere la minima somiglianza con le fantasie da ragazzo di cui eravamo soliti scherzare. La assicurai che la sua profondità era del tutto insondabile, ed espressi la mia credenza che nulla di simile fosse mai stato conosciuto.
In qualche modo, mentre scrivevo ad Agnes in una bella serata con la mia finestra aperta, e il ricordo dei suoi chiari occhi calmi e del suo dolce volto mi veniva in mente, questo gettò una così pacifica influenza sulla fretta e l’agitazione in cui avevo vissuto ultimamente, e di cui anche la mia felicità partecipava in qualche modo, che mi calmò fino alle lacrime. Ricordo che ero seduto appoggiando la testa sulla mano, quando la lettera era a metà, coltivando una generale fantasia come se Agnes fosse uno degli elementi della mia casa naturale. Come se, nel ritiro della casa resa quasi sacra per me dalla sua presenza, Dora ed io dovessimo essere più felici che altrove. Come se, nell’amore, gioia, dolore, speranza o delusione; in tutte le emozioni; il mio cuore si rivolgesse naturalmente lì, e trovasse il suo rifugio e il suo migliore amico.
Di Steerforth non dissi nulla. Le raccontai solo che a Yarmouth c’era stato un grande dolore a causa della fuga di Emily; e che per me era stata una ferita doppia, a causa delle circostanze che l’avevano accompagnata. Sapevo quanto fosse sempre pronta a intuire la verità, e che non sarebbe mai stata la prima a pronunciare il suo nome.
A questa lettera, ricevetti una risposta per ritorno di posta. Mentre la leggevo, mi sembrava di sentire Agnes che mi parlava. Era come la sua voce cordiale alle mie orecchie. Che altro posso dire!
Mentre ero stato lontano da casa ultimamente, Traddles era venuto a trovarmi due o tre volte. Trovando Peggotty in casa, e informato da Peggotty (che offriva sempre spontaneamente quella informazione a chiunque fosse disposto a riceverla) che era la mia vecchia balia, aveva stabilito una cordiale conoscenza con lei, e si era trattenuto per fare due chiacchiere con lei su di me. Così diceva Peggotty; ma temo che la chiacchierata fosse tutta da parte sua, e di lunghezza immoderata, dato che era davvero molto difficile fermarla, Dio la benedica!, quando aveva me come tema.
Questo mi ricorda non solo che mi aspettavo Traddles in un certo pomeriggio da lui stabilito, che era ormai arrivato, ma anche che la signora Crupp aveva rinunciato a tutto ciò che riguardava la sua carica (eccetto lo stipendio) fino a quando Peggotty non avesse smesso di presentarsi. La signora Crupp, dopo aver tenuto diversi discorsi riguardo a Peggotty, con una voce molto acuta, sulla scala—con qualche invisibile Familiare, a quanto pare, perché corporeamente parlando era del tutto sola in quei momenti—mi indirizzò una lettera in cui esponeva le sue vedute. Cominciandola con quella affermazione di applicazione universale, che si adattava a ogni evento della sua vita, cioè che era una madre lei stessa, continuò a informarmi che aveva visto giorni molto diversi, ma che in tutti i periodi della sua esistenza aveva avuto un’obiezione costituzionale contro spie, intrusi e delatori. Non nominò nessuno, disse; che se il cappello calzava, lo indossassero; ma spie, intrusi e delatori, specialmente in abiti da vedova (questa clausola era sottolineata), si era sempre abituata a guardarli dall’alto in basso. Se un gentiluomo era vittima di spie, intrusi e delatori (ma ancora senza nominare nomi), quello era il suo piacere. Aveva il diritto di accontentarsi; così facessero. Tutto ciò che lei, la signora Crupp, stipulava, era che non dovesse essere ‘messa in contatto’ con tali persone. Pertanto chiedeva di essere scusata da qualsiasi ulteriore presenza al piano superiore, fino a quando le cose non fossero come erano prima, e come si poteva desiderare che fossero; e inoltre menzionava che il suo libretto sarebbe stato trovato sul tavolo della colazione ogni sabato mattina, quando chiedeva un immediato regolamento dello stesso, con la benevola intenzione di evitare problemi ‘e un inconveniente’ a tutte le parti.
Dopo di ciò, la signora Crupp si limitò a creare insidie sulle scale, principalmente con brocche, e a cercare di ingannare Peggotty per farle rompere le gambe. Trovavo piuttosto logorante vivere in questo stato d’assedio, ma avevo troppa paura della signora Crupp per trovare una via d’uscita.
«Mio caro Copperfield», esclamò Traddles, puntualmente comparso alla mia porta nonostante tutti questi ostacoli, «come state?»
«Mio caro Traddles», dissi, «sono davvero felice di vederti finalmente, e mi dispiace molto di non essere stato a casa prima. Ma sono stato così occupato—»
«Sì, sì, lo so», disse Traddles, «è ovvio. Il tuo vive a Londra, credo.»
‘Che cosa hai detto?’
«Lei — scusatemi — Miss D., sapete», disse Traddles, arrossendo nella sua grande delicatezza, «vive a Londra, credo?»
«Oh sì. Vicino a Londra.»
«La mia, forse te la ricordi», disse Traddles con aria seria, «vive laggiù nel Devonshire - una di dieci. Di conseguenza, non sono così impegnato come te - in quel senso.»
«Mi meraviglio che tu possa sopportare», replicai, «di vederla così raramente.»
«Ah!» disse Traddles, pensieroso. «Sembra proprio un miracolo. Immagino che sia così, Copperfield, perché non c’è altro da fare?»
«Suppongo di sì», risposi con un sorriso, e non senza un rossore. «E perché tu hai tanta costanza e pazienza, Traddles.»
«Dio mio!» disse Traddles, riflettendo, «ti faccio quest’effetto, Copperfield? In verità non sapevo di farlo. Ma lei è una ragazza così straordinariamente cara, che è possibile che mi abbia trasmesso qualcosa di quelle virtù. Ora che lo dici, Copperfield, non ne sarei sorpreso per nulla. Ti assicuro che lei è sempre la prima a dimenticarsi di sé e a prendersi cura degli altri nove.»
«È la maggiore?» domandai.
«Oh, no», disse Traddles, «la maggiore è una bellezza.»
Suppongo che egli abbia visto che non potevo fare a meno di sorridere alla semplicità di questa risposta; e aggiunse, con un sorriso sul suo ingenuo volto:
‘Not, of course, but that my Sophy—pretty name, Copperfield, I always think?’
‘Very pretty!’ said I.
‘Not, of course, but that Sophy is beautiful too in my eyes, and would be one of the dearest girls that ever was, in anybody’s eyes (I should think). But when I say the eldest is a Beauty, I mean she really is a—’ he seemed to be describing clouds about himself, with both hands: ‘Splendid, you know,’ said Traddles, energetically. ‘Indeed!’ said I.
‘Oh, I assure you,’ said Traddles, ‘something very uncommon, indeed! Then, you know, being formed for society and admiration, and not being able to enjoy much of it in consequence of their limited means, she naturally gets a little irritable and exacting, sometimes. Sophy puts her in good humour!’
‘Is Sophy the youngest?’ I hazarded.
‘Oh dear, no!’ said Traddles, stroking his chin. ‘The two youngest are only nine and ten. Sophy educates ‘em.’
‘The second daughter, perhaps?’ I hazarded.
‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Sarah’s the second. Sarah has something the matter with her spine, poor girl. The malady will wear out by and by, the doctors say, but in the meantime she has to lie down for a twelvemonth. Sophy nurses her. Sophy’s the fourth.’
‘Is the mother living?’ I inquired.
‘Oh yes,’ said Traddles, ‘she is alive. She is a very superior woman indeed, but the damp country is not adapted to her constitution, and—in fact, she has lost the use of her limbs.’
‘Dear me!’ said I.
‘Very sad, is it not?’ returned Traddles. ‘But in a merely domestic view it is not so bad as it might be, because Sophy takes her place. She is quite as much a mother to her mother, as she is to the other nine.’
I felt the greatest admiration for the virtues of this young lady; and, honestly with the view of doing my best to prevent the good-nature of Traddles from being imposed upon, to the detriment of their joint prospects in life, inquired how Mr. Micawber was?
‘He is quite well, Copperfield, thank you,’ said Traddles. ‘I am not living with him at present.’
‘No?’
‘No. You see the truth is,’ said Traddles, in a whisper, ‘he had changed his name to Mortimer, in consequence of his temporary embarrassments; and he don’t come out till after dark—and then in spectacles. There was an execution put into our house, for rent. Mrs. Micawber was in such a dreadful state that I really couldn’t resist giving my name to that second bill we spoke of here. You may imagine how delightful it was to my feelings, Copperfield, to see the matter settled with it, and Mrs. Micawber recover her spirits.’
‘Hum!’ said I. ‘Not that her happiness was of long duration,’ pursued Traddles, ‘for, unfortunately, within a week another execution came in. It broke up the establishment. I have been living in a furnished apartment since then, and the Mortimers have been very private indeed. I hope you won’t think it selfish, Copperfield, if I mention that the broker carried off my little round table with the marble top, and Sophy’s flower-pot and stand?’
‘What a hard thing!’ I exclaimed indignantly.
‘It was a—it was a pull,’ said Traddles, with his usual wince at that expression. ‘I don’t mention it reproachfully, however, but with a motive. The fact is, Copperfield, I was unable to repurchase them at the time of their seizure; in the first place, because the broker, having an idea that I wanted them, ran the price up to an extravagant extent; and, in the second place, because I—hadn’t any money. Now, I have kept my eye since, upon the broker’s shop,’ said Traddles, with a great enjoyment of his mystery, ‘which is up at the top of Tottenham Court Road, and, at last, today I find them put out for sale. I have only noticed them from over the way, because if the broker saw me, bless you, he’d ask any price for them! What has occurred to me, having now the money, is, that perhaps you wouldn’t object to ask that good nurse of yours to come with me to the shop—I can show it her from round the corner of the next street—and make the best bargain for them, as if they were for herself, that she can!’
The delight with which Traddles propounded this plan to me, and the sense he had of its uncommon artfulness, are among the freshest things in my remembrance.
I told him that my old nurse would be delighted to assist him, and that we would all three take the field together, but on one condition. That condition was, that he should make a solemn resolution to grant no more loans of his name, or anything else, to Mr. Micawber.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, ‘I have already done so, because I begin to feel that I have not only been inconsiderate, but that I have been positively unjust to Sophy. My word being passed to myself, there is no longer any apprehension; but I pledge it to you, too, with the greatest readiness. That first unlucky obligation, I have paid. I have no doubt Mr. Micawber would have paid it if he could, but he could not. One thing I ought to mention, which I like very much in Mr. Micawber, Copperfield. It refers to the second obligation, which is not yet due. He don’t tell me that it is provided for, but he says it WILL BE. Now, I think there is something very fair and honest about that!’
I was unwilling to damp my good friend’s confidence, and therefore assented. After a little further conversation, we went round to the chandler’s shop, to enlist Peggotty; Traddles declining to pass the evening with me, both because he endured the liveliest apprehensions that his property would be bought by somebody else before he could re-purchase it, and because it was the evening he always devoted to writing to the dearest girl in the world.
I never shall forget him peeping round the corner of the street in Tottenham Court Road, while Peggotty was bargaining for the precious articles; or his agitation when she came slowly towards us after vainly offering a price, and was hailed by the relenting broker, and went back again. The end of the negotiation was, that she bought the property on tolerably easy terms, and Traddles was transported with pleasure.
“Non certo, ma la mia Sophy - nome grazioso, Copperfield, penso sempre?”
«Molto grazioso!» dissi io.
«Non che, naturalmente, Sophy non sia bella anche ai miei occhi, e non sarebbe una delle ragazze più care che mai esistesse, agli occhi di chiunque (penso io). Ma quando dico che la maggiore è una bellezza, voglio dire che lo è davvero» - sembrava descrivere nuvole intorno a sé con entrambe le mani: «Splendida, sapete», disse Traddles, con energia. «Davvero!», dissi io.
«Oh, ve lo assicuro», disse Traddles, «qualcosa di veramente fuori dal comune! Poi, sapete, essendo fatta per la società e l’ammirazione, e non potendo goderne molto a causa dei loro mezzi limitati, lei naturalmente diventa un po’ irritabile e esigente, a volte. Sophy la mette di buon umore!»
«Sophy è la più piccola?» azzardai.
«Oh, no!» disse Traddles, accarezzandosi il mento. «I due più piccoli hanno solo nove e dieci anni. Sophy li educa.»
«Forse la seconda figlia?» azzardai.
«No», disse Traddles. «Sarah è la seconda. A Sarah c’è qualcosa che non va alla colonna vertebrale, poverina. La malattia si risolverà col tempo, dicono i medici, ma nel frattempo dovrà rimanere a letto per un anno. Sophy la cura. Sophy è la quarta.»
«La madre è viva?» domandai.
«Oh sì», disse Traddles, «è viva. È una donna davvero superiore, ma il clima umido del luogo non le si addice, e, in effetti, ha perso l’uso degli arti.»
«Dio mio!» dissi io.
«È molto triste, non è vero?» rispose Traddles. «Ma, considerando la cosa da un punto di vista puramente domestico, non è così grave come potrebbe essere, perché Sophy si prende cura di tutto. È una vera madre per la sua mamma, così come lo è per gli altri nove figli.»
Provavo la più grande ammirazione per le virtù di questa giovane signora; e, con l’intenzione onesta di fare del mio meglio per evitare che la buona indole di Traddles venisse sfruttata, a scapito delle loro prospettive comuni nella vita, chiesi come stesse il signor Micawber?
«È perfettamente in salute, Copperfield, grazie», disse Traddles. «Non vivo con lui al momento».
‘No?’
«No. Vedi, la verità è», disse Traddles, sussurrando, «che aveva cambiato il suo nome in Mortimer, a causa dei suoi momentanei disagi; e non esce mai prima del buio — e poi con gli occhiali. C’è stata un’esecuzione ipotecaria sulla nostra casa, per l’affitto. La signora Micawber era in uno stato così terribile che non ho davvero potuto resistere a dare il mio nome a quel secondo conto di cui abbiamo parlato qui. Puoi immaginare quanto fosse delizioso per i miei sentimenti, Copperfield, vedere la questione risolta in questo modo, e la signora Micawber riprendere il suo buon umore.»
«Hum!» dissi io. «Non che la sua felicità durò a lungo,» continuò Traddles, «perché, sfortunatamente, una settimana dopo arrivò un’altra esecuzione. Questo mise fine all’impresa. Da allora vivo in un appartamento ammobiliato, e i Mortimer sono stati molto riservati. Spero che non penserai che sia egoista, Copperfield, se ti dico che il creditore ha portato via il mio piccolo tavolino rotondo con il piano di marmo e il vaso di fiori e il supporto di Sophy?»
«Che cosa dura!» esclamai indignato.
«Era una, era una forzata», disse Traddles, con la sua solita smorfia a quella espressione. «Non la menziono però con rimprovero, ma con uno scopo. Il fatto è, Copperfield, che non sono riuscito a riacquistarli al momento della loro sequestro; in primo luogo, perché il negoziante, avendo l’idea che li volessi, ha fatto salire il prezzo a un livello eccessivo; e, in secondo luogo, perché io, non avevo soldi. Da allora, ho tenuto d’occhio il negozio del negoziante», disse Traddles, con grande godimento del suo mistero, «che si trova in cima a Tottenham Court Road, e, finalmente, oggi li ho trovati messi in vendita. Li ho solo notati dall’altra parte della strada, perché se il negoziante mi avesse visto, vi prego, mi avrebbe chiesto qualsiasi prezzo per loro! Mi è venuto in mente, avendo ora i soldi, che forse non ti dispiacerebbe chiedere a quella brava infermiera di venire con me al negozio, posso mostrarle il posto da dietro l’angolo della strada successiva, e fare il miglior affare possibile per loro, come se fossero per lei, che può!»
Il piacere con cui Traddles mi propose questo piano, e la consapevolezza che aveva della sua straordinaria astuzia, sono tra le cose più vivide che ricordo.
Gli dissi che la mia vecchia balia sarebbe stata felice di aiutarlo, e che saremmo andati tutti e tre in scena insieme, ma a una condizione. La condizione era che lui avrebbe dovuto prendere una solenne decisione di non concedere più prestiti del suo nome, o di qualsiasi altra cosa, al signor Micawber.
«Mio caro Copperfield», disse Traddles, «ho già fatto così, perché comincio a sentire di non essere stato solo inconsiderato, ma addirittura ingiusto nei confronti di Sophy. Avendo dato la mia parola a me stesso, non c’è più alcuna preoccupazione; ma la do anche a te, con la massima prontezza. Quel primo sfortunato debito l’ho saldato. Non ho dubbio che il signor Micawber lo avrebbe pagato se avesse potuto, ma non poteva. Una cosa che dovrei menzionare, che mi piace molto nel signor Micawber, Copperfield. Si riferisce al secondo debito, che non è ancora scaduto. Non mi dice che è già provveduto, ma dice che LO SARÀ. Ora, penso che ci sia qualcosa di molto giusto e onesto in questo!»
Non volevo smorzare la fiducia del mio buon amico, e quindi acconsentii. Dopo un po’ di conversazione, andammo alla bottega del droghiere per arruolare Peggotty; Traddles rifiutò di passare la serata con me, sia perché nutriva le più vive apprensioni che la sua proprietà sarebbe stata acquistata da qualcun altro prima che potesse riacquistarla, sia perché era la sera che dedicava sempre a scrivere alla ragazza più cara del mondo.
Non dimenticherò mai come sbirciasse da dietro l’angolo della strada in Tottenham Court Road, mentre Peggotty stava contrattando per gli oggetti preziosi; né la sua agitazione quando lei si avvicinò lentamente a noi dopo aver offerto invano un prezzo, e fu richiamata dal rigattiere che si era intenerito, e tornò indietro. La trattativa si concluse con l’acquisto della proprietà a condizioni abbastanza agevoli, e Traddles fu colmo di gioia.
‘I am very much obliged to you, indeed,’ said Traddles, on hearing it was to be sent to where he lived, that night. ‘If I might ask one other favour, I hope you would not think it absurd, Copperfield?’
I said beforehand, certainly not.
‘Then if you WOULD be good enough,’ said Traddles to Peggotty, ‘to get the flower-pot now, I think I should like (it being Sophy’s, Copperfield) to carry it home myself!’
Peggotty was glad to get it for him, and he overwhelmed her with thanks, and went his way up Tottenham Court Road, carrying the flower-pot affectionately in his arms, with one of the most delighted expressions of countenance I ever saw.
We then turned back towards my chambers. As the shops had charms for Peggotty which I never knew them possess in the same degree for anybody else, I sauntered easily along, amused by her staring in at the windows, and waiting for her as often as she chose. We were thus a good while in getting to the Adelphi.
On our way upstairs, I called her attention to the sudden disappearance of Mrs. Crupp’s pitfalls, and also to the prints of recent footsteps. We were both very much surprised, coming higher up, to find my outer door standing open (which I had shut) and to hear voices inside.
We looked at one another, without knowing what to make of this, and went into the sitting-room. What was my amazement to find, of all people upon earth, my aunt there, and Mr. Dick! My aunt sitting on a quantity of luggage, with her two birds before her, and her cat on her knee, like a female Robinson Crusoe, drinking tea. Mr. Dick leaning thoughtfully on a great kite, such as we had often been out together to fly, with more luggage piled about him!
‘My dear aunt!’ cried I. ‘Why, what an unexpected pleasure!’
We cordially embraced; and Mr. Dick and I cordially shook hands; and Mrs. Crupp, who was busy making tea, and could not be too attentive, cordially said she had knowed well as Mr. Copperfull would have his heart in his mouth, when he see his dear relations.
‘Holloa!’ said my aunt to Peggotty, who quailed before her awful presence. ‘How are YOU?’
‘You remember my aunt, Peggotty?’ said I.
‘For the love of goodness, child,’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘don’t call the woman by that South Sea Island name! If she married and got rid of it, which was the best thing she could do, why don’t you give her the benefit of the change? What’s your name now,—P?’ said my aunt, as a compromise for the obnoxious appellation.
‘Barkis, ma’am,’ said Peggotty, with a curtsey.
‘Well! That’s human,’ said my aunt. ‘It sounds less as if you wanted a missionary. How d’ye do, Barkis? I hope you’re well?’
Encouraged by these gracious words, and by my aunt’s extending her hand, Barkis came forward, and took the hand, and curtseyed her acknowledgements.
‘We are older than we were, I see,’ said my aunt. ‘We have only met each other once before, you know. A nice business we made of it then! Trot, my dear, another cup.’
I handed it dutifully to my aunt, who was in her usual inflexible state of figure; and ventured a remonstrance with her on the subject of her sitting on a box.
‘Let me draw the sofa here, or the easy-chair, aunt,’ said I. ‘Why should you be so uncomfortable?’
‘Thank you, Trot,’ replied my aunt, ‘I prefer to sit upon my property.’ Here my aunt looked hard at Mrs. Crupp, and observed, ‘We needn’t trouble you to wait, ma’am.’
‘Shall I put a little more tea in the pot afore I go, ma’am?’ said Mrs. Crupp.
‘No, I thank you, ma’am,’ replied my aunt.
‘Would you let me fetch another pat of butter, ma’am?’ said Mrs. Crupp. ‘Or would you be persuaded to try a new-laid hegg? or should I brile a rasher? Ain’t there nothing I could do for your dear aunt, Mr. Copperfull?’
‘Nothing, ma’am,’ returned my aunt. ‘I shall do very well, I thank you.’
Mrs. Crupp, who had been incessantly smiling to express sweet temper, and incessantly holding her head on one side, to express a general feebleness of constitution, and incessantly rubbing her hands, to express a desire to be of service to all deserving objects, gradually smiled herself, one-sided herself, and rubbed herself, out of the room. ‘Dick!’ said my aunt. ‘You know what I told you about time-servers and wealth-worshippers?’
Mr. Dick—with rather a scared look, as if he had forgotten it—returned a hasty answer in the affirmative.
‘Mrs. Crupp is one of them,’ said my aunt. ‘Barkis, I’ll trouble you to look after the tea, and let me have another cup, for I don’t fancy that woman’s pouring-out!’
I knew my aunt sufficiently well to know that she had something of importance on her mind, and that there was far more matter in this arrival than a stranger might have supposed. I noticed how her eye lighted on me, when she thought my attention otherwise occupied; and what a curious process of hesitation appeared to be going on within her, while she preserved her outward stiffness and composure. I began to reflect whether I had done anything to offend her; and my conscience whispered me that I had not yet told her about Dora. Could it by any means be that, I wondered!
As I knew she would only speak in her own good time, I sat down near her, and spoke to the birds, and played with the cat, and was as easy as I could be. But I was very far from being really easy; and I should still have been so, even if Mr. Dick, leaning over the great kite behind my aunt, had not taken every secret opportunity of shaking his head darkly at me, and pointing at her.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt at last, when she had finished her tea, and carefully smoothed down her dress, and wiped her lips—‘you needn’t go, Barkis!—Trot, have you got to be firm and self-reliant?’
‘I hope so, aunt.’
‘What do you think?’ inquired Miss Betsey.
‘I think so, aunt.’
‘Then why, my love,’ said my aunt, looking earnestly at me, ‘why do you think I prefer to sit upon this property of mine tonight?’
I shook my head, unable to guess.
‘Because,’ said my aunt, ‘it’s all I have. Because I’m ruined, my dear!’
If the house, and every one of us, had tumbled out into the river together, I could hardly have received a greater shock.
‘Dick knows it,’ said my aunt, laying her hand calmly on my shoulder. ‘I am ruined, my dear Trot! All I have in the world is in this room, except the cottage; and that I have left Janet to let. Barkis, I want to get a bed for this gentleman tonight. To save expense, perhaps you can make up something here for myself. Anything will do. It’s only for tonight. We’ll talk about this, more, tomorrow.’
I was roused from my amazement, and concern for her—I am sure, for her—by her falling on my neck, for a moment, and crying that she only grieved for me. In another moment she suppressed this emotion; and said with an aspect more triumphant than dejected:
‘We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!’
«Sono davvero molto obbligato,» disse Traddles, sentendo che doveva essere spedito dove lui viveva, quella sera. «Se potessi chiedere un altro favore, spero che non lo considerereste assurdo, Copperfield?»
L’avevo detto prima, certamente no.
«Allora, se fosse così gentile», disse Traddles a Peggotty, «da prendere il vaso adesso, credo che vorrei (essendo di Sophy, Copperfield) portarlo a casa io stesso!»
Peggotty fu felice di procurarglielo, e lui la sommerse di ringraziamenti, e proseguì per la sua strada su Tottenham Court Road, portando il vaso affettuosamente tra le braccia, con una delle espressioni più delizie del volto che io abbia mai visto.
Poi ci dirigemmo verso il mio studio. Poiché i negozi avevano un fascino per Peggotty che non li avevo mai visti avere in egual misura per nessun altro, mi attardai piacevolmente lungo il percorso, divertito dal suo fissare le vetrine, e aspettandola tutte le volte che lo desiderava. Così impiegammo un bel po’ di tempo per arrivare all’Adelphi.
Mentre salivamo le scale, attirai la sua attenzione sulla scomparsa improvvisa delle trappole della signora Crupp, e anche sulle impronte di passi recenti. Entrambi rimanemmo molto sorpresi, salendo più in alto, nel trovare la mia porta esterna aperta (che avevo chiuso) e nel sentire delle voci all’interno.
Ci guardammo l’un l’altro, senza sapere cosa pensare di tutto ciò, e entrammo nel salotto. Qual non fu il mio stupore nel trovare, di tutte le persone al mondo, mia zia e il signor Dick! Mia zia seduta su una quantità di bagagli, con i suoi due uccelli davanti a sé e il suo gatto sulle ginocchia, come una Robinson Crusoe in versione femminile, che beveva il tè. Il signor Dick appoggiato pensieroso a un enorme aquilone, come quelli che spesso eravamo usciti insieme a far volare, con altri bagagli ammassati intorno a lui!
‘Carissima zia!’ esclamai. ‘Che piacere inaspettato!’
Ci abbracciammo calorosamente; e io e il signor Dick ci stringemmo calorosamente la mano; e la signora Crupp, che era occupata a fare il tè e non poteva essere più attenta, disse calorosamente che aveva ben presente che il signor Copperfield avrebbe avuto il cuore in gola, quando avesse visto i suoi cari parenti.
“Ehi!” disse mia zia a Peggotty, che si ritrasse davanti alla sua presenza imponente. “Come stai?”
«Ti ricordi di mia zia, Peggotty?» dissi io.
«Per l’amore del cielo, bambino», esclamò mia zia, «non chiamare la donna con quel nome delle isole del Pacifico! Se si è sposata e se ne è liberata, che era la cosa migliore che poteva fare, perché non le dai il beneficio del cambiamento? Come ti chiami ora,—P?», disse mia zia, come compromesso per la denominazione odiosa.
«Barkis, signora», disse Peggotty, con un inchino.
«Bene! Questo è umano», disse mia zia. «Sembra meno che tu voglia un missionario. Come state, Barkis? Spero che siate bene?»
Incoraggiato da queste graziose parole e dal gesto di mia zia che gli porgeva la mano, Barkis si fece avanti, la prese e le fece una riverenza in segno di riconoscenza.
«Siamo più vecchi di quanto fossimo, vedo», disse mia zia. «Ci siamo incontrati solo una volta, lo sapete. Che bella figura abbiamo fatto allora! Trot, mia cara, un’altra tazza.»
La porsi diligentemente a mia zia, che era nella sua solita inflessibile posizione; e mi permisi di farle una piccola osservazione sul fatto che sedesse su una cassa.
«Permettetemi di spostare il divano qui, o la poltrona, zia», dissi. «Perché dovreste stare così male?»
«Grazie, Trot», rispose mia zia, «preferisco sedermi sulla mia proprietà.» Qui mia zia lanciò un’occhiataccia a Mrs. Crupp e osservò: «Non c’è bisogno che ci aspetti, signora.»
«Devo mettere un po’ più di tè nella teiera prima di andarmene, signora?» disse la signora Crupp.
«No, la ringrazio, signora», rispose mia zia.
«Mi permetterebbe di prendere un altro pezzetto di burro, signora?» disse la signora Crupp. «O si lascerebbe convincere a provare una uova freschissima? O dovrei friggere una fetta di pancetta? Non c’è proprio nulla che io possa fare per la sua cara zia, signor Copperfield?»
«Nulla, signora», rispose mia zia. «Me la caverò molto bene, grazie.»
La signora Crupp, che aveva sorriso incessantemente per esprimere il suo buon umore, e aveva tenuto la testa inclinata da un lato per esprimere una generale debolezza costituzionale, e si era strofinata le mani incessantemente per esprimere il suo desiderio di essere utile a tutti i meritevoli, si sorrise, si inclinò e si strofinò fuori dalla stanza. «Dick!» disse mia zia. «Ti ricordi cosa ti ho detto riguardo ai tempo-servitori e ai cultori della ricchezza?»
Mr. Dick, con un’aria piuttosto spaventata, come se se ne fosse dimenticato, rispose in fretta affermativamente.
«La signora Crupp è una di loro», disse mia zia. «Barkis, la prego di occuparsi del tè e di portarmi un’altra tazza, perché non mi piace che quella donna lo versi!»
Conoscevo mia zia abbastanza bene da sapere che aveva qualcosa di importante in mente, e che c’era molto di più in questo arrivo di quanto uno sconosciuto avrebbe potuto supporre. Notai come il suo sguardo si posasse su di me, quando pensava che la mia attenzione fosse rivolta altrove; e quale curioso processo di esitazione sembrasse svolgersi in lei, mentre manteneva la sua rigidità e compostezza esteriori. Cominciai a riflettere se avessi fatto qualcosa per offenderla; e la mia coscienza mi sussurrò che non le avevo ancora parlato di Dora. Poteva essere quello il motivo, mi chiedevo!
Poiché sapevo che avrebbe parlato solo quando avesse ritenuto opportuno, mi sedetti vicino a lei, e parlai agli uccelli, e giocai con il gatto, e cercai di essere il più tranquillo possibile. Ma ero ben lontano dall’essere veramente tranquillo; e lo sarei stato ancora, anche se il signor Dick, appoggiandosi al grande aquilone dietro mia zia, non avesse colto ogni occasione segreta per scuotere la testa in modo minaccioso verso di me, e indicarla.
«Trot», disse alla fine la zia, quando ebbe finito il tè, si fu lisciata con cura il vestito e si fu asciugata le labbra, «non c’è bisogno che tu vada, Barkis! - Trot, devi essere risoluta e autonoma?»
«Lo spero, zia.»
«Che ne pensa?» chiese Miss Betsey.
‘Penso di sì, zia.’
«Allora, perché, mio amore», disse mia zia, guardandomi con insistenza, «perché pensi che preferisca sedermi su questa proprietà di mia questa sera?»
Scossi la testa, incapace di indovinare.
“Perché,” disse mia zia, “è tutto ciò che ho. Perché sono rovinata, mia cara!”
Se la casa e ognuno di noi fosse caduto insieme nel fiume, difficilmente avrei ricevuto uno shock più grande.
«Dick lo sa», disse mia zia, posandomi la mano sulla spalla con calma. «Sono rovinata, mio caro Trot! Tutto ciò che possiedo al mondo è in questa stanza, tranne la casetta; e quella l’ho lasciata a Janet per affittarla. Barkis, voglio procurare un letto per questo signore stasera. Per risparmiare, forse puoi sistemare qualcosa qui per me. Va bene qualsiasi cosa. È solo per stasera. Ne parleremo più a lungo domani.»
Mi riscossi dal mio stupore e dalla preoccupazione per lei - ne sono certo, per lei - quando lei cadde per un momento sul mio collo, piangendo che si disperava solo per me. Un attimo dopo rese il silenzio a quell’emozione; e disse con un aspetto più trionfante che abbattuto:
«Dobbiamo affrontare le avversità con coraggio, e non lasciarci spaventare, mia cara. Dobbiamo imparare a recitare fino in fondo la nostra parte. Dobbiamo superare la sfortuna, Trot!»
CHAPTER 35. DEPRESSION
As soon as I could recover my presence of mind, which quite deserted me in the first overpowering shock of my aunt’s intelligence, I proposed to Mr. Dick to come round to the chandler’s shop, and take possession of the bed which Mr. Peggotty had lately vacated. The chandler’s shop being in Hungerford Market, and Hungerford Market being a very different place in those days, there was a low wooden colonnade before the door (not very unlike that before the house where the little man and woman used to live, in the old weather-glass), which pleased Mr. Dick mightily. The glory of lodging over this structure would have compensated him, I dare say, for many inconveniences; but, as there were really few to bear, beyond the compound of flavours I have already mentioned, and perhaps the want of a little more elbow-room, he was perfectly charmed with his accommodation. Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, ‘You know, Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to ME!’
I tried to ascertain whether Mr. Dick had any understanding of the causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt’s affairs. As I might have expected, he had none at all. The only account he could give of it was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before yesterday, ‘Now, Dick, are you really and truly the philosopher I take you for?’ That then he had said, Yes, he hoped so. That then my aunt had said, ‘Dick, I am ruined.’ That then he had said, ‘Oh, indeed!’ That then my aunt had praised him highly, which he was glad of. And that then they had come to me, and had had bottled porter and sandwiches on the road.
Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine. I took infinitely greater pains to cheer him up again than I had taken to depress him; and I soon understood (as I ought to have known at first) that he had been so confident, merely because of his faith in the wisest and most wonderful of women, and his unbounded reliance on my intellectual resources. The latter, I believe, he considered a match for any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal.
‘What can we do, Trotwood?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘There’s the Memorial-’
‘To be sure there is,’ said I. ‘But all we can do just now, Mr. Dick, is to keep a cheerful countenance, and not let my aunt see that we are thinking about it.’
He assented to this in the most earnest manner; and implored me, if I should see him wandering an inch out of the right course, to recall him by some of those superior methods which were always at my command. But I regret to state that the fright I had given him proved too much for his best attempts at concealment. All the evening his eyes wandered to my aunt’s face, with an expression of the most dismal apprehension, as if he saw her growing thin on the spot. He was conscious of this, and put a constraint upon his head; but his keeping that immovable, and sitting rolling his eyes like a piece of machinery, did not mend the matter at all. I saw him look at the loaf at supper (which happened to be a small one), as if nothing else stood between us and famine; and when my aunt insisted on his making his customary repast, I detected him in the act of pocketing fragments of his bread and cheese; I have no doubt for the purpose of reviving us with those savings, when we should have reached an advanced stage of attenuation.
My aunt, on the other hand, was in a composed frame of mind, which was a lesson to all of us—to me, I am sure. She was extremely gracious to Peggotty, except when I inadvertently called her by that name; and, strange as I knew she felt in London, appeared quite at home. She was to have my bed, and I was to lie in the sitting-room, to keep guard over her. She made a great point of being so near the river, in case of a conflagration; and I suppose really did find some satisfaction in that circumstance.
‘Trot, my dear,’ said my aunt, when she saw me making preparations for compounding her usual night-draught, ‘No!’
‘Nothing, aunt?’
‘Not wine, my dear. Ale.’
‘But there is wine here, aunt. And you always have it made of wine.’
‘Keep that, in case of sickness,’ said my aunt. ‘We mustn’t use it carelessly, Trot. Ale for me. Half a pint.’
I thought Mr. Dick would have fallen, insensible. My aunt being resolute, I went out and got the ale myself. As it was growing late, Peggotty and Mr. Dick took that opportunity of repairing to the chandler’s shop together. I parted from him, poor fellow, at the corner of the street, with his great kite at his back, a very monument of human misery.
My aunt was walking up and down the room when I returned, crimping the borders of her nightcap with her fingers. I warmed the ale and made the toast on the usual infallible principles. When it was ready for her, she was ready for it, with her nightcap on, and the skirt of her gown turned back on her knees.
‘My dear,’ said my aunt, after taking a spoonful of it; ‘it’s a great deal better than wine. Not half so bilious.’
I suppose I looked doubtful, for she added:
‘Tut, tut, child. If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well off.’
‘I should think so myself, aunt, I am sure,’ said I.
‘Well, then, why DON’T you think so?’ said my aunt.
‘Because you and I are very different people,’ I returned.
CAPITOLO 35. TRISTEZZA
Non appena riuscii a riprendermi, il mio sangue freddo era completamente svanito nel primo travolgente shock dell’annuncio di mia zia, proposi a Mr. Dick di venire con me al negozio di candele e di prendere possesso del letto che Mr. Peggotty aveva appena lasciato libero. Il negozio di candele si trovava a Hungerford Market, e Hungerford Market era un posto molto diverso in quei tempi, c’era una bassa colonna di legno davanti alla porta (non molto diversa da quella davanti alla casa dove vivevano l’uomo e la donna, nel vecchio barometro a mercurio), che piacque molto a Mr. Dick. La gloria di alloggiare sopra questa struttura lo avrebbe compensato, ne sono sicuro, di molti disagi; ma, dato che ce n’erano davvero pochi da sopportare, oltre al composto di sapori che ho già menzionato, e forse alla mancanza di un po’ più di spazio, era perfettamente incantato della sua sistemazione. Mrs. Crupp gli aveva assicurato indignata che non c’era spazio per girare un gatto lì; ma, come Mr. Dick giustamente osservò con me, sedendosi ai piedi del letto, accarezzandosi la gamba, ‘Sai, Trotwood, non voglio girare un gatto. Non giro mai un gatto. Quindi, che importanza ha per ME!’
Ho cercato di capire se il signor Dick avesse qualche comprensione delle cause di questo improvviso e grande cambiamento nelle faccende di mia zia. Come avrei potuto aspettarmi, non ne aveva affatto. L’unico resoconto che poteva darmi era che mia zia gli aveva detto, il giorno prima di ieri, «Ora, Dick, sei davvero e veramente il filosofo che credo tu sia?» Che allora lui aveva detto, Sì, sperava di sì. Che allora mia zia aveva detto, «Dick, sono rovinata.» Che allora lui aveva detto, «Oh, davvero!» Che allora mia zia lo aveva elogiato molto, il che lo aveva fatto felice. E che allora erano venuti da me, e avevano bevuto birra in bottiglia e mangiato panini sulla strada.
Il signor Dick era così compiaciuto, seduto ai piedi del letto, con la gamba ripiegata, e raccontandomi tutto questo con gli occhi spalancati e un sorriso sorpreso, che mi dispiace dire che mi sentii provocato a spiegargli che la rovina significava miseria, fame e inedia; ma fui presto aspramente rimproverato per questa durezza, vedendo il suo viso impallidire e le lacrime scorrere lungo le sue guance scavate, mentre mi fissava con uno sguardo di tale inesprimibile dolore che avrebbe potuto ammorbidire un cuore ben più duro del mio. Mi presi infinitamente più cura di rallegrarlo di nuovo di quanta ne avessi presa per abbatterlo; e presto compresi (come avrei dovuto sapere fin dall’inizio) che era stato così fiducioso semplicemente per la sua fede nella più saggia e meravigliosa delle donne, e per la sua illimitata fiducia nelle mie risorse intellettuali. Queste ultime, credo, le considerava all’altezza di qualsiasi tipo di disastro non assolutamente mortale.
“Cosa possiamo fare, Trotwood?” disse Mr. Dick. “C’è il Memoriale, ”
«Certo che c’è», dissi io. «Ma tutto quello che possiamo fare adesso, signor Dick, è mantenere un contegno allegro e non far capire a mia zia che ci stiamo pensando.»
Egli assentì a ciò nel modo più solenne; e mi supplicò, se lo avessi visto deviare anche di un solo passo dal giusto cammino, di richiamarlo con quei metodi superiori che erano sempre a mia disposizione. Ma mi duole dover affermare che lo spavento che gli avevo dato si rivelò troppo forte per i suoi migliori tentativi di dissimulazione. Per tutta la sera i suoi occhi si posavano sul volto di mia zia, con un’espressione di cupa apprensione, come se la vedesse dimagrire sul posto. Ne era consapevole, e cercava di controllare la sua testa; ma il fatto di tenerla immobile, e di sedere rotando gli occhi come un meccanismo, non migliorava affatto la situazione. Lo vidi guardare il pane a cena (che per caso era piccolo), come se non ci fosse altro tra noi e la fame; e quando mia zia insistette perché facesse il suo solito pasto, lo sorpresi mentre metteva in tasca frammenti del suo pane e formaggio; non ho alcun dubbio che lo facesse allo scopo di rianimarci con quei risparmi, quando avessimo raggiunto uno stadio avanzato di emaciazione.
Mia zia, d’altra parte, era in uno stato d’animo composto, che era una lezione per tutti noi, per me, ne sono sicuro. Fu estremamente gentile con Peggotty, tranne quando la chiamai involontariamente con quel nome; e, strano come sapevo che si sentisse a Londra, sembrava proprio a suo agio. Avrebbe dormito nel mio letto, e io avrei dormito nel salotto, per fare la guardia a lei. Teneva molto a essere così vicino al fiume, nel caso di un incendio; e suppongo che in realtà trovasse qualche soddisfazione in quella circostanza.
«Trot, mia cara», disse mia zia, quando mi vide preparare gli ingredienti per comporre la sua solita pozione serale, «no!»
‘Niente, zia?’
‘Non vino, mia cara. Birra.’
‘Ma qui c’è del vino, zia. E lei lo fa sempre con il vino.’
«Tienilo da parte, nel caso ci fosse malattia», disse mia zia. «Non dobbiamo usarlo alla leggera, Trot. Una pinta di birra per me. Mezza pinta.»
Pensavo che il signor Dick sarebbe svenuto. Poiché mia zia era irremovibile, andai io stesso a prendere la birra. Poiché stava facendo tardi, Peggotty e il signor Dick approfittarono dell’occasione per recarsi insieme dal droghiere. Mi separai da lui, poveretto, all’angolo della strada, con il suo enorme aquilone sulla schiena, un vero e proprio monumento alla miseria umana.
Quando tornai, mia zia stava camminando su e giù per la stanza, lisciando con le dita i bordi del suo berretto da notte. Io riscaldai la birra e preparai il pane tostato secondo i soliti infallibili principi. Quando fu pronto per lei, lei era pronta per esso, con il suo berretto da notte in testa e la gonna rimboccata sulle ginocchia.
«Mia cara», disse mia zia, dopo averne preso un cucchiaio, «è molto meglio del vino. Non è nemmeno la metà così bilioso.»
Suppongo che il mio sguardo fosse dubbioso, perché aggiunse:
‘Tut, tut, bambino. Se non ci succede niente di peggio dell’Ale, siamo ben lontani dal male.’
«Lo penso anch’io, zia, ne sono sicuro», dissi.
«Bene, allora, perché NON pensi così?» disse mia zia.
«Perché voi e io siamo persone molto diverse», replicai.
‘Stuff and nonsense, Trot!’ replied my aunt.
My aunt went on with a quiet enjoyment, in which there was very little affectation, if any; drinking the warm ale with a tea-spoon, and soaking her strips of toast in it.
‘Trot,’ said she, ‘I don’t care for strange faces in general, but I rather like that Barkis of yours, do you know!’
‘It’s better than a hundred pounds to hear you say so!’ said I.
‘It’s a most extraordinary world,’ observed my aunt, rubbing her nose; ‘how that woman ever got into it with that name, is unaccountable to me. It would be much more easy to be born a Jackson, or something of that sort, one would think.’
‘Perhaps she thinks so, too; it’s not her fault,’ said I.
‘I suppose not,’ returned my aunt, rather grudging the admission; ‘but it’s very aggravating. However, she’s Barkis now. That’s some comfort. Barkis is uncommonly fond of you, Trot.’
‘There is nothing she would leave undone to prove it,’ said I.
‘Nothing, I believe,’ returned my aunt. ‘Here, the poor fool has been begging and praying about handing over some of her money—because she has got too much of it. A simpleton!’
My aunt’s tears of pleasure were positively trickling down into the warm ale.
‘She’s the most ridiculous creature that ever was born,’ said my aunt. ‘I knew, from the first moment when I saw her with that poor dear blessed baby of a mother of yours, that she was the most ridiculous of mortals. But there are good points in Barkis!’
Affecting to laugh, she got an opportunity of putting her hand to her eyes. Having availed herself of it, she resumed her toast and her discourse together.
‘Ah! Mercy upon us!’ sighed my aunt. ‘I know all about it, Trot! Barkis and myself had quite a gossip while you were out with Dick. I know all about it. I don’t know where these wretched girls expect to go to, for my part. I wonder they don’t knock out their brains against—against mantelpieces,’ said my aunt; an idea which was probably suggested to her by her contemplation of mine.
‘Poor Emily!’ said I.
‘Oh, don’t talk to me about poor,’ returned my aunt. ‘She should have thought of that, before she caused so much misery! Give me a kiss, Trot. I am sorry for your early experience.’
As I bent forward, she put her tumbler on my knee to detain me, and said:
‘Oh, Trot, Trot! And so you fancy yourself in love! Do you?’
‘Fancy, aunt!’ I exclaimed, as red as I could be. ‘I adore her with my whole soul!’
‘Dora, indeed!’ returned my aunt. ‘And you mean to say the little thing is very fascinating, I suppose?’
‘My dear aunt,’ I replied, ‘no one can form the least idea what she is!’
‘Ah! And not silly?’ said my aunt.
‘Silly, aunt!’
I seriously believe it had never once entered my head for a single moment, to consider whether she was or not. I resented the idea, of course; but I was in a manner struck by it, as a new one altogether.
‘Not light-headed?’ said my aunt.
‘Light-headed, aunt!’ I could only repeat this daring speculation with the same kind of feeling with which I had repeated the preceding question.
‘Well, well!’ said my aunt. ‘I only ask. I don’t depreciate her. Poor little couple! And so you think you were formed for one another, and are to go through a party-supper-table kind of life, like two pretty pieces of confectionery, do you, Trot?’
She asked me this so kindly, and with such a gentle air, half playful and half sorrowful, that I was quite touched.
‘We are young and inexperienced, aunt, I know,’ I replied; ‘and I dare say we say and think a good deal that is rather foolish. But we love one another truly, I am sure. If I thought Dora could ever love anybody else, or cease to love me; or that I could ever love anybody else, or cease to love her; I don’t know what I should do—go out of my mind, I think!’
‘Ah, Trot!’ said my aunt, shaking her head, and smiling gravely; ‘blind, blind, blind!’
‘Someone that I know, Trot,’ my aunt pursued, after a pause, ‘though of a very pliant disposition, has an earnestness of affection in him that reminds me of poor Baby. Earnestness is what that Somebody must look for, to sustain him and improve him, Trot. Deep, downright, faithful earnestness.’
‘If you only knew the earnestness of Dora, aunt!’ I cried.
‘Oh, Trot!’ she said again; ‘blind, blind!’ and without knowing why, I felt a vague unhappy loss or want of something overshadow me like a cloud.
‘However,’ said my aunt, ‘I don’t want to put two young creatures out of conceit with themselves, or to make them unhappy; so, though it is a girl and boy attachment, and girl and boy attachments very often—mind! I don’t say always!—come to nothing, still we’ll be serious about it, and hope for a prosperous issue one of these days. There’s time enough for it to come to anything!’
This was not upon the whole very comforting to a rapturous lover; but I was glad to have my aunt in my confidence, and I was mindful of her being fatigued. So I thanked her ardently for this mark of her affection, and for all her other kindnesses towards me; and after a tender good night, she took her nightcap into my bedroom.
How miserable I was, when I lay down! How I thought and thought about my being poor, in Mr. Spenlow’s eyes; about my not being what I thought I was, when I proposed to Dora; about the chivalrous necessity of telling Dora what my worldly condition was, and releasing her from her engagement if she thought fit; about how I should contrive to live, during the long term of my articles, when I was earning nothing; about doing something to assist my aunt, and seeing no way of doing anything; about coming down to have no money in my pocket, and to wear a shabby coat, and to be able to carry Dora no little presents, and to ride no gallant greys, and to show myself in no agreeable light! Sordid and selfish as I knew it was, and as I tortured myself by knowing that it was, to let my mind run on my own distress so much, I was so devoted to Dora that I could not help it. I knew that it was base in me not to think more of my aunt, and less of myself; but, so far, selfishness was inseparable from Dora, and I could not put Dora on one side for any mortal creature. How exceedingly miserable I was, that night!
«Storie e sciocchezze, Trot!» rispose mia zia.
Mia zia continuò con un piacere tranquillo, in cui c’era ben poca affettazione, se non addirittura nessuna; bevendo la birra calda con un cucchiaino da tè e facendovi ammorbidire le fette di pane tostato.
«Trot», disse lei, «in generale non mi piacciono le facce nuove, ma mi trovo piuttosto simpatico quel tuo Barkis, lo sai!»
«È meglio di cento sterline sentirti dire così!» dissi io.
«È un mondo davvero straordinario», osservò mia zia, strofinandosi il naso; «come mai quella donna sia riuscita a entrare in questo mondo con quel nome è per me incomprensibile. Sarebbe molto più facile nascere Jackson, o qualcosa del genere, si potrebbe pensare.»
«Forse lo pensa anche lei; non è colpa sua», dissi io.
«Suppongo di no», rispose mia zia, concedendo l’ammissione a malincuore; «ma è davvero irritante. Comunque, ora è Barkis. Questo è un certo conforto. Barkis è straordinariamente affezionato a te, Trot.»
«Non c’è nulla che non farebbe per dimostrarlo», dissi io.
«Nulla, credo», rispose mia zia. «Ecco, la povera sciocca ha pregato e supplicato di poter cedere parte dei suoi soldi, perché ne ha troppi. Una sempliciot!»
Le lacrime di piacere di mia zia scendevano a rivoletti nella birra calda.
«È la creatura più ridicola che sia mai nata», disse mia zia. «Lo seppi dal primo momento in cui la vidi con quella povera cara beata bambina di tua madre, che era la più ridicola delle creature. Ma ci sono dei lati buoni in Barkis!»
Fingendo di ridere, ebbe l’opportunità di portare la mano agli occhi. Dopo averne approfittato, riprese insieme il brindisi e il discorso.
«Ah! Misericordia su di noi!» sospirò mia zia. «So tutto, Trot! Barkis e io abbiamo avuto una bella chiacchierata mentre tu eri fuori con Dick. So tutto. Non so dove queste ragazze disgraziate si aspettino di andare, per quanto mi riguarda. Mi meraviglio che non si rompano il cervello contro—contro i caminetti», disse mia zia; un’idea che le era probabilmente venuta contemplando il mio.
«Povera Emily!» dissi io.
«Oh, non parlarmi di povera», rispose mia zia. «Avrebbe dovuto pensarci prima di causare tanta infelicità! Dammi un bacio, Trot. Mi dispiace per la tua precoce esperienza.»
Mentre mi chinavo in avanti, lei mise il suo bicchiere sulle mie ginocchia per trattenermi e disse:
«Oh, Trot, Trot! E così ti credi innamorato! È così?»
«Fantasia, zia!» esclamai, rosso come potevo. «La adoro con tutta la mia anima!»
«Dora, davvero!» replicò mia zia. «E suppongo che intendiate dire che la piccola è davvero affascinante?»
‘Carissima zia,’ risposi, ‘nessuno può immaginare chi sia!’
«Ah! E non sciocca?» disse mia zia.
‘Sciocca, zia!’
Sono seriamente convinto che non mi fosse mai passato per la mente, neanche per un solo istante, di chiedermi se lo fosse o no. Naturalmente, l’idea mi risentiva; ma ero quasi colpito da essa, come se fosse del tutto nuova.
«Non è svenuto?» disse mia zia.
«Testa leggera, zia!» potevo solo ripetere questa audace speculazione con lo stesso tipo di sentimento con cui avevo ripetuto la domanda precedente.
«Bene, bene!» disse mia zia. «Chiedo soltanto. Non la svaluto. Povera coppia! E così pensi che siate stati creati l’uno per l’altra, e che dovrete condurre una vita da tavola imbandita, come due graziosi dolcetti, eh, Trot?»
Me lo chiese con tanta gentilezza e con un’aria così dolce, metà giocosa e metà malinconica, che ne rimasi profondamente commosso.
«Siamo giovani e inesperti, zia, lo so», risposi; «e presumo che diciamo e pensiamo molte cose piuttosto sciocche. Ma ci amiamo veramente, ne sono sicuro. Se pensassi che Dora potrebbe mai amare qualcun altro, o smettere di amarmi; o che io potrei mai amare qualcun altro, o smettere di amarla; non so cosa farei, credo che impazzirei!»
‘Ah, Trot!’ disse mia zia, scuotendo la testa e sorridendo gravemente; ‘cieco, cieco, cieco!’
«Qualcuno che conosco, Trot», continuò mia zia, dopo una pausa, «sebbene di indole molto accomodante, ha in sé una profondità d’affetto che mi ricorda il povero Baby. È questa profondità che quel Qualcuno deve cercare, per sostenerlo e migliorarlo, Trot. Una profondità sincera, vera, fedele.»
«Se solo conosceste la serietà di Dora, zia!» esclamai.
«Oh, Trot!» disse ancora «cieca, cieca!» e senza sapere perché, sentii una vaga infelice perdita o mancanza di qualcosa che mi avvolse come una nuvola.
«Tuttavia», disse mia zia, «non voglio far perdere a due giovani creature la stima di sé, né renderli infelici; così, anche se si tratta di un legame tra una ragazza e un ragazzo, e i legami tra ragazze e ragazzi molto spesso - bada bene! non dico sempre! - non portano a nulla, continueremo a prenderlo sul serio, e spereremo in un lieto fine un giorno o l’altro. C’è tempo a sufficienza perché possa accadere qualcosa!»
Questo, nel complesso, non era molto confortante per un innamorato appassionato; ma ero felice di aver confidato a mia zia, e tenevo conto del suo affaticamento. Così la ringraziai calorosamente per questo segno del suo affetto, e per tutte le sue altre gentilezze nei miei confronti; e dopo un tenero arrivederci della buonanotte, si portò il suo berretto da notte nella mia camera da letto.
Ero così infelice quando mi coricai! Pensavo e ripensavo a quanto fossi povero agli occhi di Mr. Spenlow; a come non fossi ciò che credevo di essere quando proposi a Dora; alla cavalleresca necessità di rivelare a Dora la mia condizione economica e di liberarla dal suo impegno se lo avesse ritenuto opportuno; a come avrei fatto a vivere durante il lungo periodo del mio apprendistato, senza guadagnare nulla; a come avrei potuto aiutare mia zia, senza trovare alcun modo di farlo; a come sarei arrivato a non avere più soldi in tasca, a indossare un cappotto malandato, a non poter fare piccoli regali a Dora, a non poter cavalcare superbi cavalli grigi, a non poter mostrarmi sotto una luce piacevole! Sordido e egoista come sapevo di essere, e come mi torturavo nel saperlo, nel lasciare che la mia mente si soffermasse tanto sulla mia stessa sofferenza, ero così devoto a Dora che non potevo farne a meno. Sapevo che era vile da parte mia non pensare di più a mia zia e di meno a me stesso; ma, fino a quel punto, l’egoismo era inseparabile da Dora, e non potevo mettere Dora da parte per nessuna creatura al mondo. Ero così terribilmente infelice quella notte!
As to sleep, I had dreams of poverty in all sorts of shapes, but I seemed to dream without the previous ceremony of going to sleep. Now I was ragged, wanting to sell Dora matches, six bundles for a halfpenny; now I was at the office in a nightgown and boots, remonstrated with by Mr. Spenlow on appearing before the clients in that airy attire; now I was hungrily picking up the crumbs that fell from old Tiffey’s daily biscuit, regularly eaten when St. Paul’s struck one; now I was hopelessly endeavouring to get a licence to marry Dora, having nothing but one of Uriah Heep’s gloves to offer in exchange, which the whole Commons rejected; and still, more or less conscious of my own room, I was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a sea of bed-clothes.
My aunt was restless, too, for I frequently heard her walking to and fro. Two or three times in the course of the night, attired in a long flannel wrapper in which she looked seven feet high, she appeared, like a disturbed ghost, in my room, and came to the side of the sofa on which I lay. On the first occasion I started up in alarm, to learn that she inferred from a particular light in the sky, that Westminster Abbey was on fire; and to be consulted in reference to the probability of its igniting Buckingham Street, in case the wind changed. Lying still, after that, I found that she sat down near me, whispering to herself ‘Poor boy!’ And then it made me twenty times more wretched, to know how unselfishly mindful she was of me, and how selfishly mindful I was of myself.
It was difficult to believe that a night so long to me, could be short to anybody else. This consideration set me thinking and thinking of an imaginary party where people were dancing the hours away, until that became a dream too, and I heard the music incessantly playing one tune, and saw Dora incessantly dancing one dance, without taking the least notice of me. The man who had been playing the harp all night, was trying in vain to cover it with an ordinary-sized nightcap, when I awoke; or I should rather say, when I left off trying to go to sleep, and saw the sun shining in through the window at last.
There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of the streets out of the Strand—it may be there still—in which I have had many a cold plunge. Dressing myself as quietly as I could, and leaving Peggotty to look after my aunt, I tumbled head foremost into it, and then went for a walk to Hampstead. I had a hope that this brisk treatment might freshen my wits a little; and I think it did them good, for I soon came to the conclusion that the first step I ought to take was, to try if my articles could be cancelled and the premium recovered. I got some breakfast on the Heath, and walked back to Doctors’ Commons, along the watered roads and through a pleasant smell of summer flowers, growing in gardens and carried into town on hucksters’ heads, intent on this first effort to meet our altered circumstances.
I arrived at the office so soon, after all, that I had half an hour’s loitering about the Commons, before old Tiffey, who was always first, appeared with his key. Then I sat down in my shady corner, looking up at the sunlight on the opposite chimney-pots, and thinking about Dora; until Mr. Spenlow came in, crisp and curly.
‘How are you, Copperfield?’ said he. ‘Fine morning!’
‘Beautiful morning, sir,’ said I. ‘Could I say a word to you before you go into Court?’
‘By all means,’ said he. ‘Come into my room.’
I followed him into his room, and he began putting on his gown, and touching himself up before a little glass he had, hanging inside a closet door.
‘I am sorry to say,’ said I, ‘that I have some rather disheartening intelligence from my aunt.’
‘No!’ said he. ‘Dear me! Not paralysis, I hope?’
‘It has no reference to her health, sir,’ I replied. ‘She has met with some large losses. In fact, she has very little left, indeed.’
‘You as-tound me, Copperfield!’ cried Mr. Spenlow.
I shook my head. ‘Indeed, sir,’ said I, ‘her affairs are so changed, that I wished to ask you whether it would be possible—at a sacrifice on our part of some portion of the premium, of course,’ I put in this, on the spur of the moment, warned by the blank expression of his face—‘to cancel my articles?’
What it cost me to make this proposal, nobody knows. It was like asking, as a favour, to be sentenced to transportation from Dora.
‘To cancel your articles, Copperfield? Cancel?’
I explained with tolerable firmness, that I really did not know where my means of subsistence were to come from, unless I could earn them for myself. I had no fear for the future, I said—and I laid great emphasis on that, as if to imply that I should still be decidedly eligible for a son-in-law one of these days—but, for the present, I was thrown upon my own resources. ‘I am extremely sorry to hear this, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘Extremely sorry. It is not usual to cancel articles for any such reason. It is not a professional course of proceeding. It is not a convenient precedent at all. Far from it. At the same time—’
‘You are very good, sir,’ I murmured, anticipating a concession.
‘Not at all. Don’t mention it,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘At the same time, I was going to say, if it had been my lot to have my hands unfettered—if I had not a partner—Mr. Jorkins—’
My hopes were dashed in a moment, but I made another effort.
‘Do you think, sir,’ said I, ‘if I were to mention it to Mr. Jorkins—’
Mr. Spenlow shook his head discouragingly. ‘Heaven forbid, Copperfield,’ he replied, ‘that I should do any man an injustice: still less, Mr. Jorkins. But I know my partner, Copperfield. Mr. Jorkins is not a man to respond to a proposition of this peculiar nature. Mr. Jorkins is very difficult to move from the beaten track. You know what he is!’
Per quanto riguarda il sonno, avevo sogni di povertà in tutte le forme possibili, ma sembrava che sognassi senza la precedente cerimonia di andare a dormire. Ora ero stracciato, desideroso di vendere a Dora fiammiferi, sei mazzetti per un mezzo penny; ora ero in ufficio in una camicia da notte e stivali, rimproverato dal signor Spenlow per essermi presentato davanti ai clienti in quell’abbigliamento leggero; ora ero affamato, raccogliendo le briciole che cadevano dal biscotto quotidiano del vecchio Tiffey, regolarmente mangiato quando San Paolo suonava l’una; ora ero disperatamente impegnato a ottenere una licenza per sposare Dora, non avendo altro che uno dei guanti di Uriah Heep da offrire in cambio, che l’intera Camera dei Comuni rifiutò; e ancora, più o meno consapevole della mia stanza, ero sempre agitato come una nave in difficoltà in un mare di lenzuola.
Anche mia zia era irrequieta, perché la sentivo spesso camminare avanti e indietro. Due o tre volte nel corso della notte, vestita con un lungo accappatoio di flanella che la faceva sembrare alta sette piedi, apparve nella mia stanza come un fantasma inquieto, e venne al lato del divano su cui giacevo. La prima volta mi alzai spaventato, per scoprire che lei aveva dedotto da una particolare luce nel cielo che l’Abbazia di Westminster era in fiamme; e voleva consultarmi sulla probabilità che incendiasse la Buckingham Street, nel caso il vento cambiasse direzione. Dopo di che, rimanendo immobile, scoprii che si sedeva vicino a me, sussurrando tra sé “Povero ragazzo!”. E allora mi sentii venti volte più infelice, sapendo quanto lei fosse disinteressatamente attenta a me, e quanto io fossi egoisticamente attento a me stesso.
Era difficile credere che una notte così lunga per me, potesse essere breve per chiunque altro. Questa considerazione mi fece riflettere e pensare a una festa immaginaria dove le persone ballavano via le ore, finché questo divenne un sogno anche, e sentii la musica suonare incessantemente una melodia, e vidi Dora ballare incessantemente una danza, senza prestarmi la minima attenzione. L’uomo che aveva suonato l’arpa tutta notte, stava cercando invano di coprirla con un berretto da notte di dimensioni normali, quando mi svegliai; o meglio, quando smisi di cercare di andare a dormire, e vidi il sole che splendeva attraverso la finestra finalmente.
In quei giorni c’era un vecchio bagno romano in fondo a una delle strade che partono dal Strand — forse c’è ancora — in cui ho fatto molte nuotate fredde. Vestendomi il più silenziosamente possibile e lasciando Peggotty a prendersi cura di mia zia, ci sono caduto dentro a testa in giù, e poi sono andato a fare una passeggiata a Hampstead. Nutrivo una speranza che questo trattamento vivificante potesse rinfrescare un po’ le mie idee; e credo che gli abbia fatto bene, perché ben presto sono arrivato alla conclusione che il primo passo che avrei dovuto fare era provare se i miei articoli potevano essere annullati e il premio recuperato. Ho fatto colazione sulla brughiera, e sono tornato a piedi ai Doctors’ Commons, lungo le strade bagnate e attraverso un piacevole odore di fiori estivi, che crescevano nei giardini e venivano portati in città sulle teste dei venditori ambulanti, determinato a fare questo primo tentativo per affrontare le nostre mutate circostanze.
Arrivai in ufficio così presto, dopotutto, che mi restò mezz’ora da girare per i Comuni, prima che il vecchio Tiffey, che era sempre il primo, apparisse con la sua chiave. Poi mi sedetti nel mio angolo ombroso, guardando la luce del sole sulle tegole dei camini di fronte, e pensando a Dora; finché il signor Spenlow entrò, fresco e arricciato.
‘Come stai, Copperfield?’ disse lui. ‘Bella mattinata!’
«Bellissima mattina, signore», dissi io. «Potrei dirle una parola prima che vada in tribunale?»
“Per tutti i mezzi”, disse lui. “Entra nella mia stanza.”
Lo seguii nella sua stanza, e lui iniziò a indossare la sua veste e a rimettersi in ordine davanti a uno specchietto che aveva appeso all’interno di una porta dell’armadio.
«Mi dispiace dirlo», dissi, «ma ho ricevuto da mia zia alcune notizie piuttosto scoraggianti.»
‘No!’ disse lui. ‘Cara mia! Non paralisi, spero?’
«Non ha nulla a che fare con la sua salute, signore», risposi. «Ha subito delle grosse perdite. In effetti, le è rimasto ben poco, davvero.»
«Mi lascia a bocca aperta, Copperfield!» esclamò il signor Spenlow.
Scossi la testa. «In verità, signore», dissi, «le sue faccende sono così cambiate che desideravo chiederle se sarebbe possibile — sacrificando da parte nostra una parte della somma, naturalmente», aggiunsi questo, all’improvviso, avvertito dall’espressione vuota del suo volto — «di annullare i miei articoli?»
Nessuno sa quanto mi è costato fare questa proposta. Era come chiedere, come un favore, di essere condannato all’esilio da Dora.
‘Annullare i suoi articoli, Copperfield? Annullare?’
Spiegai con una fermezza tollerabile che in realtà non sapevo da dove sarebbero venuti i miei mezzi di sussistenza, a meno che non potessi guadagnarmeli da solo. Non avevo paura per il futuro, dissi - e ci tenni molto a sottolineare questo, come se volessi far capire che sarei stato comunque un pretendente molto gradito per un genero un giorno o l’altro - ma, per il momento, ero costretto a fare affidamento sulle mie sole risorse. «Mi dispiace molto sentirlo, Copperfield», disse il signor Spenlow. «Mi dispiace molto. Non è consueto annullare gli articoli per una ragione del genere. Non è una pratica professionale. Non è un precedente comodo per niente. Tutt’altro. Allo stesso tempo -»
«Siete molto gentile, signore», mormorai, anticipando una concessione.
«Niente affatto. Non ne parliamo più», disse il signor Spenlow. «Nello stesso tempo, stavo per dire, se mi fosse toccato in sorte di avere le mani libere — se non avessi un socio — il signor Jorkins —»
Le mie speranze furono distrutte in un attimo, ma feci un altro tentativo.
‘Pensa, signore,’ dissi, ‘che se ne parlassi al signor Jorkins, ’
Il signor Spenlow scosse la testa scoraggiato. «Che Dio me ne guardi, Copperfield», rispose, «di fare ingiustizia a qualcuno: figuriamoci al signor Jorkins. Ma conosco il mio socio, Copperfield. Il signor Jorkins non è un uomo che risponde a una proposta di natura così peculiare. Il signor Jorkins è molto difficile da smuovere dalla strada battuta. Sapete com’è!»
I am sure I knew nothing about him, except that he had originally been alone in the business, and now lived by himself in a house near Montagu Square, which was fearfully in want of painting; that he came very late of a day, and went away very early; that he never appeared to be consulted about anything; and that he had a dingy little black-hole of his own upstairs, where no business was ever done, and where there was a yellow old cartridge-paper pad upon his desk, unsoiled by ink, and reported to be twenty years of age.
‘Would you object to my mentioning it to him, sir?’ I asked.
‘By no means,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘But I have some experience of Mr. Jorkins, Copperfield. I wish it were otherwise, for I should be happy to meet your views in any respect. I cannot have the objection to your mentioning it to Mr. Jorkins, Copperfield, if you think it worth while.’
Availing myself of this permission, which was given with a warm shake of the hand, I sat thinking about Dora, and looking at the sunlight stealing from the chimney-pots down the wall of the opposite house, until Mr. Jorkins came. I then went up to Mr. Jorkins’s room, and evidently astonished Mr. Jorkins very much by making my appearance there.
‘Come in, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Come in!’
I went in, and sat down; and stated my case to Mr. Jorkins pretty much as I had stated it to Mr. Spenlow. Mr. Jorkins was not by any means the awful creature one might have expected, but a large, mild, smooth-faced man of sixty, who took so much snuff that there was a tradition in the Commons that he lived principally on that stimulant, having little room in his system for any other article of diet.
‘You have mentioned this to Mr. Spenlow, I suppose?’ said Mr. Jorkins; when he had heard me, very restlessly, to an end.
I answered Yes, and told him that Mr. Spenlow had introduced his name.
‘He said I should object?’ asked Mr. Jorkins.
I was obliged to admit that Mr. Spenlow had considered it probable.
‘I am sorry to say, Mr. Copperfield, I can’t advance your object,’ said Mr. Jorkins, nervously. ‘The fact is—but I have an appointment at the Bank, if you’ll have the goodness to excuse me.’
With that he rose in a great hurry, and was going out of the room, when I made bold to say that I feared, then, there was no way of arranging the matter?
‘No!’ said Mr. Jorkins, stopping at the door to shake his head. ‘Oh, no! I object, you know,’ which he said very rapidly, and went out. ‘You must be aware, Mr. Copperfield,’ he added, looking restlessly in at the door again, ‘if Mr. Spenlow objects—’
‘Personally, he does not object, sir,’ said I.
‘Oh! Personally!’ repeated Mr. Jorkins, in an impatient manner. ‘I assure you there’s an objection, Mr. Copperfield. Hopeless! What you wish to be done, can’t be done. I—I really have got an appointment at the Bank.’ With that he fairly ran away; and to the best of my knowledge, it was three days before he showed himself in the Commons again.
Being very anxious to leave no stone unturned, I waited until Mr. Spenlow came in, and then described what had passed; giving him to understand that I was not hopeless of his being able to soften the adamantine Jorkins, if he would undertake the task.
‘Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Spenlow, with a gracious smile, ‘you have not known my partner, Mr. Jorkins, as long as I have. Nothing is farther from my thoughts than to attribute any degree of artifice to Mr. Jorkins. But Mr. Jorkins has a way of stating his objections which often deceives people. No, Copperfield!’ shaking his head. ‘Mr. Jorkins is not to be moved, believe me!’
I was completely bewildered between Mr. Spenlow and Mr. Jorkins, as to which of them really was the objecting partner; but I saw with sufficient clearness that there was obduracy somewhere in the firm, and that the recovery of my aunt’s thousand pounds was out of the question. In a state of despondency, which I remember with anything but satisfaction, for I know it still had too much reference to myself (though always in connexion with Dora), I left the office, and went homeward.
I was trying to familiarize my mind with the worst, and to present to myself the arrangements we should have to make for the future in their sternest aspect, when a hackney-chariot coming after me, and stopping at my very feet, occasioned me to look up. A fair hand was stretched forth to me from the window; and the face I had never seen without a feeling of serenity and happiness, from the moment when it first turned back on the old oak staircase with the great broad balustrade, and when I associated its softened beauty with the stained-glass window in the church, was smiling on me.
‘Agnes!’ I joyfully exclaimed. ‘Oh, my dear Agnes, of all people in the world, what a pleasure to see you!’
‘Is it, indeed?’ she said, in her cordial voice.
‘I want to talk to you so much!’ said I. ‘It’s such a lightening of my heart, only to look at you! If I had had a conjuror’s cap, there is no one I should have wished for but you!’
‘What?’ returned Agnes.
‘Well! perhaps Dora first,’ I admitted, with a blush.
‘Certainly, Dora first, I hope,’ said Agnes, laughing.
‘But you next!’ said I. ‘Where are you going?’
She was going to my rooms to see my aunt. The day being very fine, she was glad to come out of the chariot, which smelt (I had my head in it all this time) like a stable put under a cucumber-frame. I dismissed the coachman, and she took my arm, and we walked on together. She was like Hope embodied, to me. How different I felt in one short minute, having Agnes at my side!
My aunt had written her one of the odd, abrupt notes—very little longer than a Bank note—to which her epistolary efforts were usually limited. She had stated therein that she had fallen into adversity, and was leaving Dover for good, but had quite made up her mind to it, and was so well that nobody need be uncomfortable about her. Agnes had come to London to see my aunt, between whom and herself there had been a mutual liking these many years: indeed, it dated from the time of my taking up my residence in Mr. Wickfield’s house. She was not alone, she said. Her papa was with her—and Uriah Heep.
Sono sicuro di non sapere nulla di lui, tranne che in origine era solo nell’impresa, e ora viveva da solo in una casa vicino a Montagu Square, che aveva un disperato bisogno di essere dipinta; che arrivava molto tardi e se ne andava molto presto; che non sembrava mai essere consultato su nulla; e che aveva una piccola e squallida tana tutta sua al piano di sopra, dove non si svolgeva mai alcun lavoro, e dove c’era un vecchio blocchetto di carta gialla per cartucce sulla sua scrivania, immacolato d’inchiostro, e che si diceva avesse vent’anni.
«Obietterebbe se glielo menzionassi, signore?» chiesi.
«Per niente», disse il signor Spenlow. «Ma ho una certa esperienza del signor Jorkins, Copperfield. Vorrei che fosse diversamente, perché sarei felice di accogliere le sue proposte in qualsiasi modo. Non ho nulla in contrario se lei ne parla col signor Jorkins, Copperfield, se lo ritiene utile.»
Avvalendomi di questo permesso, che mi fu concesso con una calorosa stretta di mano, mi sedetti pensando a Dora, e guardando la luce del sole che si insinuava dai comignoli lungo il muro della casa di fronte, fino all’arrivo del signor Jorkins. Poi salii nella stanza del signor Jorkins, e evidentemente lo sorpresi molto con la mia comparsa.
“Entri, signor Copperfield”, disse il signor Jorkins. “Entri!”
Entrai, mi sedetti, e esposi la mia situazione a Mr. Jorkins più o meno come l’avevo esposta a Mr. Spenlow. Mr. Jorkins non era affatto la terribile creatura che ci si sarebbe potuti aspettare, ma un uomo di sessant’anni, di corporatura robusta, dal viso liscio e placido, che prendeva tanto tabacco da fiuto che c’era una tradizione al Parlamento secondo cui viveva principalmente di quell’eccitante, avendo poco spazio nel suo organismo per qualsiasi altro alimento.
«Ne avrà parlato con il signor Spenlow, immagino», disse il signor Jorkins, dopo avermi ascoltato, molto irrequieto, fino alla fine.
Risposi di sì e gli dissi che il signor Spenlow aveva fatto il suo nome.
«Ha detto che avrei obiettato?» chiese il signor Jorkins.
Dovetti ammettere che il signor Spenlow l’aveva ritenuto probabile.
«Mi spiace dirlo, signor Copperfield, ma non posso favorire il suo intento», disse il signor Jorkins, nervosamente. «Il fatto è che, ma ho un appuntamento in banca, se ha la bontà di scusarmi».
Con ciò si alzò in gran fretta e stava per uscire dalla stanza, quando mi permisi di dire che temevo, dunque, che non ci fosse modo di sistemare la faccenda?
«No!» disse il signor Jorkins, fermandosi sulla porta per scuotere la testa. «Oh, no! Io mi oppongo, sapete», disse molto in fretta, e uscì. «Dovete sapere, signor Copperfield», aggiunse, guardando di nuovo dentro dalla porta con aria inquieta, «se il signor Spenlow si oppone, »
«Personalmente, non ha nulla in contrario, signore», dissi io.
«Oh! Personalmente!», ripeté il signor Jorkins, in tono impaziente. «Le assicuro che c’è un’obiezione, signor Copperfield. Speranze vane! Quello che lei desidera che sia fatto, non può essere fatto. Io, io ho davvero un appuntamento in banca.» E con ciò se ne andò di corsa; e per quanto ne so, furono tre giorni prima che si facesse di nuovo vedere in sala da pranzo.
Essendo molto ansioso di non lasciare nulla di intentato, aspettai che il signor Spenlow entrasse, e poi gli descrissi quanto era accaduto; facendogli capire che non ero senza speranza che potesse ammorbidire l’adamantino Jorkins, se si fosse assunto il compito.
«Copperfield», rispose il signor Spenlow con un sorriso benevolo, «non conoscete il mio socio, il signor Jorkins, da tanto tempo quanto me. L’ultima cosa che mi passerebbe per la mente sarebbe attribuire al signor Jorkins un qualsiasi grado di artificio. Ma il signor Jorkins ha un modo di esporre le sue obiezioni che spesso inganna la gente. No, Copperfield!», scuotendo la testa. «Il signor Jorkins non si lascia influenzare, credetemi!»
Ero completamente disorientato tra il signor Spenlow e il signor Jorkins, riguardo a quale dei due fosse veramente il socio che si opponeva; ma vidi con sufficiente chiarezza che c’era ostinazione da qualche parte nell’azienda, e che il recupero dei mille sterline di mia zia era fuori questione. In uno stato di disperazione, che ricordo con tutto fuorché soddisfazione, perché so che aveva ancora troppo riferimento a me stesso (anche se sempre in connessione con Dora), lasciai l’ufficio e tornai a casa.
Stavo cercando di abituare la mia mente al peggio, e di presentarmi le disposizioni che avremmo dovuto prendere per il futuro nel loro aspetto più severo, quando una carrozza pubblica che mi seguiva, e che si fermò ai miei piedi, mi fece alzare lo sguardo. Una mano candida mi fu tesa dallo finestrino; e il volto che non avevo mai visto senza un senso di serenità e felicità, dal momento in cui si era voltato per la prima volta sulla vecchia scala di quercia con la grande balaustra larga, e quando ne associavo la bellezza addolcita alla finestra di vetro colorato della chiesa, mi stava sorridendo.
«Agnes!» esclamai con gioia. «Oh, mia cara Agnes, di tutte le persone al mondo, che piacere rivederti!»
«È davvero così?», disse con la sua voce cordiale.
«Voglio parlarti tanto!» dissi. «È un tale sollievo per il mio cuore anche solo guardarti! Se avessi avuto un cappello da mago, non avrei desiderato altro che te!»
«Che cosa?» rispose Agnes.
«Beh! forse Dora per prima», ammisi, arrossendo.
«Certamente, prima Dora, lo spero,» disse Agnes ridendo.
‘Ma tu dopo!’ dissi io. ‘Dove stai andando?’
Stava andando nella mia stanza per vedere mia zia. Il giorno era molto bello, così era felice di uscire dalla carrozza, che puzzava (avevo la testa dentro tutto questo tempo) come una stalla messa sotto una serra per cetrioli. Ho congedato il cocchiere, e lei ha preso il mio braccio, e siamo andati avanti insieme. Era come la Speranza incarnata, per me. Che differenza sentivo in un minuto solo, avendo Agnes al mio fianco!
Mia zia le aveva scritto una di quelle strane, brusche lettere, poco più lunghe di una banconota, a cui di solito si limitavano i suoi sforzi epistolari. Aveva dichiarato in essa di essere caduta in disgrazia e di lasciare Dover per sempre, ma di essersi completamente rassegnata e di stare così bene che nessuno doveva preoccuparsi per lei. Agnes era venuta a Londra per vedere mia zia, tra loro e lei c’era stata una reciproca simpatia per molti anni: anzi, risaliva al tempo in cui avevo preso dimora nella casa del signor Wickfield. Non era sola, diceva. Suo padre era con lei, e Uriah Heep.
‘And now they are partners,’ said I. ‘Confound him!’
‘Yes,’ said Agnes. ‘They have some business here; and I took advantage of their coming, to come too. You must not think my visit all friendly and disinterested, Trotwood, for—I am afraid I may be cruelly prejudiced—I do not like to let papa go away alone, with him.’ ‘Does he exercise the same influence over Mr. Wickfield still, Agnes?’
Agnes shook her head. ‘There is such a change at home,’ said she, ‘that you would scarcely know the dear old house. They live with us now.’
‘They?’ said I.
‘Mr. Heep and his mother. He sleeps in your old room,’ said Agnes, looking up into my face.
‘I wish I had the ordering of his dreams,’ said I. ‘He wouldn’t sleep there long.’
‘I keep my own little room,’ said Agnes, ‘where I used to learn my lessons. How the time goes! You remember? The little panelled room that opens from the drawing-room?’
‘Remember, Agnes? When I saw you, for the first time, coming out at the door, with your quaint little basket of keys hanging at your side?’
‘It is just the same,’ said Agnes, smiling. ‘I am glad you think of it so pleasantly. We were very happy.’
‘We were, indeed,’ said I.
‘I keep that room to myself still; but I cannot always desert Mrs. Heep, you know. And so,’ said Agnes, quietly, ‘I feel obliged to bear her company, when I might prefer to be alone. But I have no other reason to complain of her. If she tires me, sometimes, by her praises of her son, it is only natural in a mother. He is a very good son to her.’
I looked at Agnes when she said these words, without detecting in her any consciousness of Uriah’s design. Her mild but earnest eyes met mine with their own beautiful frankness, and there was no change in her gentle face.
‘The chief evil of their presence in the house,’ said Agnes, ‘is that I cannot be as near papa as I could wish—Uriah Heep being so much between us—and cannot watch over him, if that is not too bold a thing to say, as closely as I would. But if any fraud or treachery is practising against him, I hope that simple love and truth will be strong in the end. I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.’
A certain bright smile, which I never saw on any other face, died away, even while I thought how good it was, and how familiar it had once been to me; and she asked me, with a quick change of expression (we were drawing very near my street), if I knew how the reverse in my aunt’s circumstances had been brought about. On my replying no, she had not told me yet, Agnes became thoughtful, and I fancied I felt her arm tremble in mine.
We found my aunt alone, in a state of some excitement. A difference of opinion had arisen between herself and Mrs. Crupp, on an abstract question (the propriety of chambers being inhabited by the gentler sex); and my aunt, utterly indifferent to spasms on the part of Mrs. Crupp, had cut the dispute short, by informing that lady that she smelt of my brandy, and that she would trouble her to walk out. Both of these expressions Mrs. Crupp considered actionable, and had expressed her intention of bringing before a ‘British Judy’—meaning, it was supposed, the bulwark of our national liberties.
My aunt, however, having had time to cool, while Peggotty was out showing Mr. Dick the soldiers at the Horse Guards—and being, besides, greatly pleased to see Agnes—rather plumed herself on the affair than otherwise, and received us with unimpaired good humour. When Agnes laid her bonnet on the table, and sat down beside her, I could not but think, looking on her mild eyes and her radiant forehead, how natural it seemed to have her there; how trustfully, although she was so young and inexperienced, my aunt confided in her; how strong she was, indeed, in simple love and truth.
We began to talk about my aunt’s losses, and I told them what I had tried to do that morning.
‘Which was injudicious, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘but well meant. You are a generous boy—I suppose I must say, young man, now—and I am proud of you, my dear. So far, so good. Now, Trot and Agnes, let us look the case of Betsey Trotwood in the face, and see how it stands.’
I observed Agnes turn pale, as she looked very attentively at my aunt. My aunt, patting her cat, looked very attentively at Agnes.
‘Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, who had always kept her money matters to herself. ‘—I don’t mean your sister, Trot, my dear, but myself—had a certain property. It don’t matter how much; enough to live on. More; for she had saved a little, and added to it. Betsey funded her property for some time, and then, by the advice of her man of business, laid it out on landed security. That did very well, and returned very good interest, till Betsey was paid off. I am talking of Betsey as if she was a man-of-war. Well! Then, Betsey had to look about her, for a new investment. She thought she was wiser, now, than her man of business, who was not such a good man of business by this time, as he used to be—I am alluding to your father, Agnes—and she took it into her head to lay it out for herself. So she took her pigs,’ said my aunt, ‘to a foreign market; and a very bad market it turned out to be. First, she lost in the mining way, and then she lost in the diving way—fishing up treasure, or some such Tom Tiddler nonsense,’ explained my aunt, rubbing her nose; ‘and then she lost in the mining way again, and, last of all, to set the thing entirely to rights, she lost in the banking way. I don’t know what the Bank shares were worth for a little while,’ said my aunt; ‘cent per cent was the lowest of it, I believe; but the Bank was at the other end of the world, and tumbled into space, for what I know; anyhow, it fell to pieces, and never will and never can pay sixpence; and Betsey’s sixpences were all there, and there’s an end of them. Least said, soonest mended!’
‘E ora sono soci’, dissi. ‘Maledizione a lui!’
«Sì», disse Agnes. «Hanno da sbrigare qui qualche affare; e io ho approfittato del loro arrivo per venire anch’io. Non devi pensare che la mia visita sia tutta amichevole e disinteressata, Trotwood, perché—temo di essere crudelmente pregiudicata—non mi piace lasciare che papà se ne vada da solo, con lui.» «Esercita ancora la stessa influenza su Mr. Wickfield, Agnes?»
Agnes scosse la testa. «C’è stato un tale cambiamento a casa,» disse, «che a malapena riconosceresti la cara vecchia casa. Ora vivono con noi.»
«Loro?» dissi io.
«Il signor Heep e sua madre. Dorme nella tua vecchia stanza», disse Agnes, guardandomi in faccia.
«Vorrei avere il controllo dei suoi sogni», dissi. «Non dormirebbe a lungo lì.»
«Conservo la mia stanzina», disse Agnes, «dove studiavo le lezioni. Come passa il tempo! Ti ricordi? La piccola stanza pannellata che si apre dal salotto?»
«Ti ricordi, Agnes? Quando ti vidi, per la prima volta, uscire dalla porta, con il tuo grazioso cestino di chiavi appeso al fianco?»
«È proprio la stessa cosa», disse Agnes sorridendo. «Sono contenta che tu ci pensi così piacevolmente. Eravamo molto felici.»
«Eravamo, infatti», dissi io.
«Continuo a tenere quella stanza per me; ma non posso sempre abbandonare la signora Heep, lo sapete. E così», disse Agnes, tranquillamente, «mi sento in dovere di farle compagnia, quando preferirei essere sola. Ma non ho altre ragioni per lamentarmi di lei. Se a volte mi stanca, con le sue lodi per suo figlio, è del tutto naturale in una madre. È un figlio davvero devoto.»
Guardai Agnes quando pronunciò queste parole, senza rilevare in lei alcuna consapevolezza del piano di Uriah. I suoi occhi miti ma seri incontrarono i miei con la loro solita bella sincerità, e non c’era alcun cambiamento nel suo viso gentile.
«Il principale male della loro presenza in casa,» disse Agnes, «è che non posso stare vicino a papa come vorrei, Uriah Heep essendo così spesso tra noi, e non posso vegliare su di lui, se non è troppo audace dirlo, con la stessa attenzione che vorrei. Ma se qualcuno sta tramando qualche frode o tradimento contro di lui, spero che semplice amore e verità alla fine saranno forti. Spero che vero amore e verità alla fine siano più forti di ogni male o disgrazia del mondo.»
Un certo sorriso luminoso, che non ho mai visto su nessun altro volto, svanì, anche mentre pensavo a quanto fosse bello e a quanto una volta mi fosse familiare; e lei mi chiese, con un rapido cambiamento di espressione (ci stavamo avvicinando molto alla mia strada), se sapevo come fosse avvenuto il cambiamento nelle circostanze di mia zia. Rispondendo di no, che non me lo aveva ancora detto, Agnes divenne pensierosa, e mi parve di sentire il braccio tremare nel mio.
Trovammo mia zia sola, in uno stato di notevole agitazione. Era sorto un disaccordo tra lei e la signora Crupp su una questione astratta (la convenienza che gli alloggi fossero abitati dal gentil sesso); e mia zia, del tutto indifferente agli spasmi della signora Crupp, aveva troncato la disputa, informando quella signora che puzzava del mio brandy, e che le sarebbe stato grato se se ne fosse andata. Entrambe queste espressioni la signora Crupp le considerava offensiva, e aveva espresso la sua intenzione di portarle davanti a una «British Judy» — intendendo, si supponeva, il baluardo delle nostre libertà nazionali.
Mia zia, tuttavia, avendo avuto tempo di calmarsi, mentre Peggotty era fuori a mostrare a Mr. Dick i soldati alla Cavalleria—e essendo, inoltre, molto contenta di vedere Agnes—si vantò piuttosto di quella faccenda e ci accolse con un buon umore intatto. Quando Agnes posò il suo cappello sul tavolo e si sedette accanto a lei, non potei fare a meno di pensare, guardando i suoi occhi miti e la sua fronte radiosa, quanto fosse naturale averla lì; quanto fiduciosamente, sebbene fosse così giovane e inesperta, mia zia si confidasse in lei; quanto fosse forte, in effetti, nell’amore semplice e nella verità.
Cominciammo a parlare delle perdite di mia zia, e raccontai loro ciò che avevo tentato di fare quella mattina.
«Fu un’azione imprudente, Trot», disse mia zia, «ma dettata da buone intenzioni. Sei un ragazzo generoso — immagino che ora dovrò dire un giovane — e ne sono orgogliosa, mio caro. Fin qui tutto bene. Ora, Trot e Agnes, guardiamo in faccia la situazione di Betsey Trotwood e vediamo come stanno le cose».
Notai che Agnes impallidiva mentre guardava con molta attenzione mia zia. Mia zia, accarezzando il suo gatto, guardava con molta attenzione Agnes.
«Betsey Trotwood,» disse mia zia, che aveva sempre tenuto per sé le sue questioni finanziarie. «—Non intendo tua sorella, Trot, mia cara, ma me stessa—aveva una certa proprietà. Non importa quanto; abbastanza per vivere. Di più; perché aveva messo da parte un po’ e aggiunto al resto. Betsey investì la sua proprietà per un certo periodo, e poi, su consiglio del suo uomo d’affari, la investì in un’ipoteca. Questo andò molto bene, e diede un ottimo interesse, finché Betsey non fu pagata. Sto parlando di Betsey come se fosse una nave da guerra. Bene! Poi, Betsey dovette guardarsi intorno, per un nuovo investimento. Pensava di essere più saggia, ora, del suo uomo d’affari, che non era più un buon uomo d’affari come lo era stato in quel periodo—alludo a tuo padre, Agnes—e le venne in mente di investire da sola. Così portò i suoi maiali a un mercato straniero; e si rivelò un mercato molto cattivo. Prima perse in modo minerario, e poi perse in modo subacqueo—recuperando tesori, o qualche altra sciocchezza del genere,» spiegò mia zia, strofinandosi il naso; «e poi perse di nuovo in modo minerario, e, per finire di sistemare le cose, perse in modo bancario. Non so quanto valessero le azioni della Banca per un po’,» disse mia zia; «il cento per cento era il minimo, credo; ma la Banca era dall’altra parte del mondo, e cadde nello spazio, per quel che ne so; comunque, andò in pezzi, e non pagherà mai e non potrà mai pagare sei pence; e i sei pence di Betsey erano tutti lì, e fine. Meno si dice, prima si rimedia!»
My aunt concluded this philosophical summary, by fixing her eyes with a kind of triumph on Agnes, whose colour was gradually returning.
‘Dear Miss Trotwood, is that all the history?’ said Agnes.
‘I hope it’s enough, child,’ said my aunt. ‘If there had been more money to lose, it wouldn’t have been all, I dare say. Betsey would have contrived to throw that after the rest, and make another chapter, I have little doubt. But there was no more money, and there’s no more story.’
Agnes had listened at first with suspended breath. Her colour still came and went, but she breathed more freely. I thought I knew why. I thought she had had some fear that her unhappy father might be in some way to blame for what had happened. My aunt took her hand in hers, and laughed.
‘Is that all?’ repeated my aunt. ‘Why, yes, that’s all, except, “And she lived happy ever afterwards.” Perhaps I may add that of Betsey yet, one of these days. Now, Agnes, you have a wise head. So have you, Trot, in some things, though I can’t compliment you always’; and here my aunt shook her own at me, with an energy peculiar to herself. ‘What’s to be done? Here’s the cottage, taking one time with another, will produce say seventy pounds a year. I think we may safely put it down at that. Well!—That’s all we’ve got,’ said my aunt; with whom it was an idiosyncrasy, as it is with some horses, to stop very short when she appeared to be in a fair way of going on for a long while.
‘Then,’ said my aunt, after a rest, ‘there’s Dick. He’s good for a hundred a-year, but of course that must be expended on himself. I would sooner send him away, though I know I am the only person who appreciates him, than have him, and not spend his money on himself. How can Trot and I do best, upon our means? What do you say, Agnes?’
‘I say, aunt,’ I interposed, ‘that I must do something!’
‘Go for a soldier, do you mean?’ returned my aunt, alarmed; ‘or go to sea? I won’t hear of it. You are to be a proctor. We’re not going to have any knockings on the head in THIS family, if you please, sir.’
I was about to explain that I was not desirous of introducing that mode of provision into the family, when Agnes inquired if my rooms were held for any long term?
‘You come to the point, my dear,’ said my aunt. ‘They are not to be got rid of, for six months at least, unless they could be underlet, and that I don’t believe. The last man died here. Five people out of six would die—of course—of that woman in nankeen with the flannel petticoat. I have a little ready money; and I agree with you, the best thing we can do, is, to live the term out here, and get a bedroom hard by.’
I thought it my duty to hint at the discomfort my aunt would sustain, from living in a continual state of guerilla warfare with Mrs. Crupp; but she disposed of that objection summarily by declaring that, on the first demonstration of hostilities, she was prepared to astonish Mrs. Crupp for the whole remainder of her natural life.
‘I have been thinking, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, diffidently, ‘that if you had time—’
‘I have a good deal of time, Agnes. I am always disengaged after four or five o’clock, and I have time early in the morning. In one way and another,’ said I, conscious of reddening a little as I thought of the hours and hours I had devoted to fagging about town, and to and fro upon the Norwood Road, ‘I have abundance of time.’
‘I know you would not mind,’ said Agnes, coming to me, and speaking in a low voice, so full of sweet and hopeful consideration that I hear it now, ‘the duties of a secretary.’
‘Mind, my dear Agnes?’
‘Because,’ continued Agnes, ‘Doctor Strong has acted on his intention of retiring, and has come to live in London; and he asked papa, I know, if he could recommend him one. Don’t you think he would rather have his favourite old pupil near him, than anybody else?’
‘Dear Agnes!’ said I. ‘What should I do without you! You are always my good angel. I told you so. I never think of you in any other light.’
Agnes answered with her pleasant laugh, that one good Angel (meaning Dora) was enough; and went on to remind me that the Doctor had been used to occupy himself in his study, early in the morning, and in the evening—and that probably my leisure would suit his requirements very well. I was scarcely more delighted with the prospect of earning my own bread, than with the hope of earning it under my old master; in short, acting on the advice of Agnes, I sat down and wrote a letter to the Doctor, stating my object, and appointing to call on him next day at ten in the forenoon. This I addressed to Highgate—for in that place, so memorable to me, he lived—and went and posted, myself, without losing a minute.
Wherever Agnes was, some agreeable token of her noiseless presence seemed inseparable from the place. When I came back, I found my aunt’s birds hanging, just as they had hung so long in the parlour window of the cottage; and my easy-chair imitating my aunt’s much easier chair in its position at the open window; and even the round green fan, which my aunt had brought away with her, screwed on to the window-sill. I knew who had done all this, by its seeming to have quietly done itself; and I should have known in a moment who had arranged my neglected books in the old order of my school days, even if I had supposed Agnes to be miles away, instead of seeing her busy with them, and smiling at the disorder into which they had fallen.
My aunt was quite gracious on the subject of the Thames (it really did look very well with the sun upon it, though not like the sea before the cottage), but she could not relent towards the London smoke, which, she said, ‘peppered everything’. A complete revolution, in which Peggotty bore a prominent part, was being effected in every corner of my rooms, in regard of this pepper; and I was looking on, thinking how little even Peggotty seemed to do with a good deal of bustle, and how much Agnes did without any bustle at all, when a knock came at the door.
Mia zia concluse questo riassunto filosofico fissando Agnes con aria di trionfo, mentre il suo colorito tornava gradualmente.
«Cara Miss Trotwood, è tutto il racconto?», disse Agnes.
«Spero che sia sufficiente, bambino», disse mia zia. «Se ci fossero stati più soldi da perdere, non sarebbe stato tutto, ne sono sicura. Betsey avrebbe escogitato di gettare anche quelli insieme al resto, e avrebbe fatto un altro capitolo, ne ho pochi dubbi. Ma non c’erano più soldi, e non c’è più storia.»
Agnes aveva ascoltato dapprima con il fiato sospeso. Il suo colorito continuava a cambiare, ma respirava più liberamente. Credo di sapere perché. Penso che avesse avuto qualche paura che suo padre, così infelice, potesse essere in qualche modo responsabile di quanto era accaduto. Mia zia le prese la mano nella sua e rise.
«È tutto?» ripeté mia zia. «Beh, sì, è tutto, tranne “E visse felice e contenta per sempre.” Forse un giorno potrò aggiungere anche questo di Betsey. Ora, Agnes, tu hai una testa saggia. Anche tu, Trot, in certe cose, anche se non posso complimentarmi sempre con te»; e qui mia zia scosse la sua testa in mia direzione, con un’energia tutta sua. «Cosa si può fare? Ecco la casetta, che prendendo un tempo con l’altro, produrrà diciamo settanta sterline all’anno. Penso che possiamo tranquillamente stimarla a quel livello. Bene!—Questo è tutto ciò che abbiamo», disse mia zia; per la quale era un’idiosincrasia, come per alcuni cavalli, fermarsi di colpo quando sembrava che stesse per andare avanti per un bel po’.
«Poi», disse mia zia, dopo un po’ di riposo, «c’è Dick. Ha un reddito di cento sterline l’anno, ma ovviamente deve spenderlo per sé. Preferirei mandarlo via, anche se so di essere l’unica persona che lo apprezza, piuttosto che tenerlo e non spendere i suoi soldi per lui. Come possiamo fare di meglio, con i nostri mezzi? Cosa ne pensi, Agnes?»
‘Dico, zia,’ intervenni, ‘che devo fare qualcosa!’
«Vuoi fare il soldato, intendi?» rispose mia zia, allarmata; «o andare in mare? Non ne voglio sentir parlare. Sarai un procuratore. Non avremo nessun colpo in testa IN questa famiglia, se non ti dispiace, signore.»
Stavo per spiegare che non avevo intenzione di introdurre quel sistema di provviste in famiglia, quando Agnes mi chiese se i miei alloggi erano affittati per un periodo lungo.
«Voi andate dritto al punto, mia cara», disse mia zia. «Non ci libereremo di loro per almeno sei mesi, a meno che non si possa affittare l’appartamento in subaffitto, e non credo che sia possibile. L’ultimo inquilino è morto qui. Cinque persone su sei morirebbero - è ovvio - per colpa di quella donna in nankeen con la sottana di flanella. Ho un po’ di denaro liquido; e sono d’accordo con voi, la cosa migliore che possiamo fare è di rimanere qui fino alla scadenza del contratto e di procurarci una camera da letto nelle vicinanze.»
Pensai che fosse mio dovere accennare al disagio che mia zia avrebbe provato vivendo in uno stato di guerra di guerriglia continua con la signora Crupp; ma lei liquidò quell’obiezione in modo perentorio dichiarando che, alla prima dimostrazione di ostilità, era pronta a stupire la signora Crupp per tutto il resto della sua vita naturale.
«Stavo pensando, Trotwood», disse Agnes, con timidezza, «che se tu avessi tempo—»
«Ho molto tempo, Agnes. Sono sempre libero dopo le quattro o le cinque del pomeriggio, e ho tempo la mattina presto. In un modo o nell’altro», dissi, consapevole di arrossire un po’ mentre pensavo alle ore e ore che avevo dedicato a vagabondare per la città, avanti e indietro sulla strada di Norwood, «ho abbondanza di tempo.»
«So che non ti dispiacerebbero», disse Agnes, avvicinandosi a me e parlando a bassa voce, con tanta dolcezza e speranza nella considerazione che ancora oggi la sento, «i doveri di un segretario».
‘Attenzione, mia cara Agnes?’
«Perché», continuò Agnes, «il dottor Strong ha messo in atto la sua intenzione di ritirarsi e si è stabilito a Londra; e ha chiesto a papà, lo so, se poteva consigliargliene uno. Non credi che preferirebbe avere vicino a sé il suo vecchio allievo preferito, piuttosto che chiunque altro?»
«Cara Agnes!» dissi io. «Cosa farei senza di te! Sei sempre il mio buon angelo. Te l’ho detto. Non ti penso mai in altro modo.»
Agnes rispose con la sua piacevole risata che un buon angelo (alludendo a Dora) era sufficiente; e continuò a ricordarmi che il Dottore era solito occuparsi nello studio, la mattina presto e la sera — e che probabilmente il mio tempo libero si adattava molto bene alle sue esigenze. Non ero quasi più entusiasta della prospettiva di guadagnarmi da vivere, che della speranza di guadagnarmelo sotto il mio vecchio maestro; in breve, seguendo il consiglio di Agnes, mi sedetti e scrissi una lettera al Dottore, esponendo il mio obiettivo e fissando di andare a trovarlo il giorno dopo alle dieci del mattino. Questa la indirizzai a Highgate — poiché in quel luogo, così memorabile per me, viveva — e andai a imbucarla di persona, senza perdere un minuto.
Ovunque Agnes fosse, qualche piacevole segno della sua presenza silenziosa sembrava inseparabile dal luogo. Quando tornai, trovai gli uccelli di mia zia appesi, proprio come erano stati appesi tanto a lungo nella finestra del salotto della casetta; e la mia poltrona che imitava la poltrona molto più comoda di mia zia nella sua posizione alla finestra aperta; e persino il ventaglio verde rotondo, che mia zia si era portata via con sé, avvitato al davanzale della finestra. Sapevo chi aveva fatto tutto questo, perché sembrava che si fosse fatto da solo in silenzio; e avrei capito subito chi aveva sistemato i miei libri trascurati nell’antico ordine dei miei giorni di scuola, anche se avessi supposto che Agnes fosse a miglia di distanza, invece di vederla impegnata con loro, e sorridente al disordine in cui erano caduti.
Mia zia fu molto gentile riguardo al Tamigi (che in effetti aveva un aspetto davvero bello al sole, anche se non come il mare davanti alla casetta), ma non poté perdonare il fumo di Londra, che, disse, “peperava tutto”. Una rivoluzione completa, nella quale Peggotty ebbe un ruolo di primo piano, stava avvenendo in ogni angolo delle mie stanze, per quanto riguarda questo pepe; e io stavo guardando, pensando a quanto poco anche Peggotty sembrasse fare con un bel po’ di trambusto, e a quanto invece facesse Agnes senza alcun trambusto, quando qualcuno bussò alla porta.
‘I think,’ said Agnes, turning pale, ‘it’s papa. He promised me that he would come.’
I opened the door, and admitted, not only Mr. Wickfield, but Uriah Heep. I had not seen Mr. Wickfield for some time. I was prepared for a great change in him, after what I had heard from Agnes, but his appearance shocked me.
It was not that he looked many years older, though still dressed with the old scrupulous cleanliness; or that there was an unwholesome ruddiness upon his face; or that his eyes were full and bloodshot; or that there was a nervous trembling in his hand, the cause of which I knew, and had for some years seen at work. It was not that he had lost his good looks, or his old bearing of a gentleman—for that he had not—but the thing that struck me most, was, that with the evidences of his native superiority still upon him, he should submit himself to that crawling impersonation of meanness, Uriah Heep. The reversal of the two natures, in their relative positions, Uriah’s of power and Mr. Wickfield’s of dependence, was a sight more painful to me than I can express. If I had seen an Ape taking command of a Man, I should hardly have thought it a more degrading spectacle.
He appeared to be only too conscious of it himself. When he came in, he stood still; and with his head bowed, as if he felt it. This was only for a moment; for Agnes softly said to him, ‘Papa! Here is Miss Trotwood—and Trotwood, whom you have not seen for a long while!’ and then he approached, and constrainedly gave my aunt his hand, and shook hands more cordially with me. In the moment’s pause I speak of, I saw Uriah’s countenance form itself into a most ill-favoured smile. Agnes saw it too, I think, for she shrank from him.
What my aunt saw, or did not see, I defy the science of physiognomy to have made out, without her own consent. I believe there never was anybody with such an imperturbable countenance when she chose. Her face might have been a dead-wall on the occasion in question, for any light it threw upon her thoughts; until she broke silence with her usual abruptness.
‘Well, Wickfield!’ said my aunt; and he looked up at her for the first time. ‘I have been telling your daughter how well I have been disposing of my money for myself, because I couldn’t trust it to you, as you were growing rusty in business matters. We have been taking counsel together, and getting on very well, all things considered. Agnes is worth the whole firm, in my opinion.’
‘If I may umbly make the remark,’ said Uriah Heep, with a writhe, ‘I fully agree with Miss Betsey Trotwood, and should be only too appy if Miss Agnes was a partner.’
‘You’re a partner yourself, you know,’ returned my aunt, ‘and that’s about enough for you, I expect. How do you find yourself, sir?’
In acknowledgement of this question, addressed to him with extraordinary curtness, Mr. Heep, uncomfortably clutching the blue bag he carried, replied that he was pretty well, he thanked my aunt, and hoped she was the same.
‘And you, Master—I should say, Mister Copperfield,’ pursued Uriah. ‘I hope I see you well! I am rejoiced to see you, Mister Copperfield, even under present circumstances.’ I believed that; for he seemed to relish them very much. ‘Present circumstances is not what your friends would wish for you, Mister Copperfield, but it isn’t money makes the man: it’s—I am really unequal with my umble powers to express what it is,’ said Uriah, with a fawning jerk, ‘but it isn’t money!’
Here he shook hands with me: not in the common way, but standing at a good distance from me, and lifting my hand up and down like a pump handle, that he was a little afraid of.
‘And how do you think we are looking, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister?’ fawned Uriah. ‘Don’t you find Mr. Wickfield blooming, sir? Years don’t tell much in our firm, Master Copperfield, except in raising up the umble, namely, mother and self—and in developing,’ he added, as an afterthought, ‘the beautiful, namely, Miss Agnes.’
He jerked himself about, after this compliment, in such an intolerable manner, that my aunt, who had sat looking straight at him, lost all patience.
‘Deuce take the man!’ said my aunt, sternly, ‘what’s he about? Don’t be galvanic, sir!’
‘I ask your pardon, Miss Trotwood,’ returned Uriah; ‘I’m aware you’re nervous.’
‘Go along with you, sir!’ said my aunt, anything but appeased. ‘Don’t presume to say so! I am nothing of the sort. If you’re an eel, sir, conduct yourself like one. If you’re a man, control your limbs, sir! Good God!’ said my aunt, with great indignation, ‘I am not going to be serpentined and corkscrewed out of my senses!’
Mr. Heep was rather abashed, as most people might have been, by this explosion; which derived great additional force from the indignant manner in which my aunt afterwards moved in her chair, and shook her head as if she were making snaps or bounces at him. But he said to me aside in a meek voice:
‘I am well aware, Master Copperfield, that Miss Trotwood, though an excellent lady, has a quick temper (indeed I think I had the pleasure of knowing her, when I was a numble clerk, before you did, Master Copperfield), and it’s only natural, I am sure, that it should be made quicker by present circumstances. The wonder is, that it isn’t much worse! I only called to say that if there was anything we could do, in present circumstances, mother or self, or Wickfield and Heep,—we should be really glad. I may go so far?’ said Uriah, with a sickly smile at his partner.
‘Uriah Heep,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in a monotonous forced way, ‘is active in the business, Trotwood. What he says, I quite concur in. You know I had an old interest in you. Apart from that, what Uriah says I quite concur in!’
‘Oh, what a reward it is,’ said Uriah, drawing up one leg, at the risk of bringing down upon himself another visitation from my aunt, ‘to be so trusted in! But I hope I am able to do something to relieve him from the fatigues of business, Master Copperfield!’
Penso che sia papà. Mi aveva promesso che sarebbe venuto.
Aprii la porta e feci entrare non solo il signor Wickfield, ma anche Uriah Heep. Non vedevo il signor Wickfield da qualche tempo. Ero preparato a un grande cambiamento in lui, dopo quello che avevo sentito da Agnes, ma il suo aspetto mi sconvolse.
Non era che sembrasse invecchiato di molti anni, anche se ancora vestito con la vecchia scrupolosa pulizia; o che ci fosse un rossore malsano sul suo viso; o che i suoi occhi fossero gonfi e arrossati; o che ci fosse un tremito nervoso nella sua mano, la causa del quale io conoscevo, e avevo visto all’opera per alcuni anni. Non era che avesse perso la sua bellezza, o il suo vecchio portamento da gentiluomo—perché non era così—ma la cosa che mi colpì di più, fu che con le prove della sua superiorità innata ancora su di lui, si sottomettesse a quella strisciante impersonificazione della meschinità, Uriah Heep. L’inversione delle due nature, nelle loro posizioni relative, quella di Uriah di potere e quella del signor Wickfield di dipendenza, era una vista più dolorosa per me di quanto possa esprimere. Se avessi visto uno Scimmia prendere il comando di un Uomo, a malapena avrei pensato che fosse uno spettacolo più degradante.
Sembrava essere solo troppo consapevole di esso lui stesso. Quando entrò, si fermò; e con la testa china, come se lo sentisse. Questo fu solo per un momento; perché Agnes gli disse dolcemente, ‘Papà! Ecco la signorina Trotwood—e Trotwood, che non hai visto da molto tempo!’ e poi si avvicinò, e diede a mia zia la sua mano in modo forzato, e strinse la mano più cordialmente con me. Nella pausa di un momento di cui parlo, vidi il volto di Uriah formarsi in un sorriso molto sgradevole. Anche Agnes lo vide, credo, perché si ritrasse da lui.
Quello che mia zia vedeva, o non vedeva, sfido la scienza della fisiognomica a scoprirlo, senza il suo consenso. Credo che non ci sia mai stato nessuno con un contegno così imperturbabile quando lo desiderava. Il suo viso avrebbe potuto essere un muro di pietra in quell’occasione, per la poca luce che gettava sui suoi pensieri; fino a quando non ruppe il silenzio con la sua solita bruschezza.
«Bene, Wickfield!» disse mia zia; e lui la guardò per la prima volta. «Ho raccontato a tua figlia come ho amministrato bene i miei soldi da solo, perché non potevo affidarli a te, dato che iniziavi a diventare un po’ arrugginito negli affari. Abbiamo preso insieme dei provvedimenti e stiamo andando molto bene, tutto considerato. Agnes vale l’intera ditta, secondo me.»
«Se posso permettermi di esprimere un’umile opinione», disse Uriah Heep, contorcendosi, «sono pienamente d’accordo con la signorina Betsey Trotwood e sarei più che felice se la signorina Agnes fosse una socia.»
«Anche lei è un socio, lo sa», replicò mia zia, «e questo le basta, immagino. Come si sente, signore?»
In risposta a questa domanda, rivolta a lui con straordinaria bruschezza, il signor Heep, stringendo a disagio la borsa blu che portava, rispose che stava abbastanza bene, ringraziò mia zia e sperava che anche lei stesse bene.
«E lei, Maestro, intendo dire, Signor Copperfield», continuò Uriah, «spero di vederla bene! Sono felice di vederla, Signor Copperfield, anche in queste circostanze». Ci credevo; perché sembrava gustarsela molto. «Le presenti circostanze non sono ciò che i suoi amici desidererebbero per lei, Signor Copperfield, ma non è il denaro a fare l’uomo: è, davvero non sono all’altezza con le mie umili capacità di esprimere cosa sia», disse Uriah con un movimento adulatore, «ma non è il denaro!»
Qui mi strinse la mano: non in modo comune, ma rimanendo a una certa distanza da me e sollevando la mia mano su e giù come fosse la maniglia di una pompa, come se ne avesse un po’ paura.
«E come pensate che stiamo, Maestro Copperfield,—dovrei dire, Signore?» si leccò i baffi Uriah. «Non trovate che il signor Wickfield stia bene, signore? Gli anni non contano molto nella nostra ditta, Maestro Copperfield, se non per elevare l’umile, cioè la madre e me stesso—e per sviluppare,» aggiunse, come un’idea successiva, «il bello, cioè la signorina Agnes.»
Dopo questo complimento, si contorse in modo così insopportabile che mia zia, che lo aveva fissato dritto negli occhi, perse completamente la pazienza.
“Che diavolo gli prende?” disse mia zia, severa, “Che sta facendo? Non faccia lo scemo, signore!”
“Chiedo scusa, signorina Trotwood,” rispose Uriah; “so che è nervosa.”
«Andatevene, signore!» disse mia zia, tutt’altro che placata. «Non presumete di dire una cosa del genere! Io non sono affatto così. Se siete un’anguilla, signore, comportatevi come tale. Se siete un uomo, controllatevi, signore! Buon Dio!» disse mia zia, con grande indignazione, «non intendo essere avvolta e contorta fino a perdere i sensi!»
Il signor Heep era piuttosto imbarazzato, come lo sarebbero stati la maggior parte delle persone, per questa esplosione; che trasse grande forza aggiuntiva dal modo indignato in cui mia zia si mosse poi sulla sua sedia e scosse la testa come se gli stesse facendo smorfie o gesti di disapprovazione. Ma lui mi disse da parte, con voce mansueta:
«Sono perfettamente consapevole, signorino Copperfield, che la signorina Trotwood, sebbene sia una donna eccellente, ha un carattere vivace (anzi, credo di aver avuto il piacere di conoscerla, quando ero un umile impiegato, prima ancora che lei, signorino Copperfield), e non c’è da stupirsi, ne sono certo, che le circostanze attuali lo rendano ancora più vivace. Il meraviglioso è che non sia peggiorato molto! Sono venuto solo per dire che se ci fosse qualcosa che potessimo fare, date le circostanze attuali, mia madre o io, o Wickfield e Heep, saremmo davvero felici di farlo. Posso spingermi fino a questo punto?» disse Uriah, con un sorriso malaticcio rivolto al suo socio.
«Uriah Heep», disse il signor Wickfield, in un modo monotono e forzato, «è attivo nell’impresa, Trotwood. Sono pienamente d’accordo con quello che dice. Sai che avevo un vecchio interesse per te. A parte questo, sono pienamente d’accordo con quello che Uriah dice!»
«Oh, che ricompensa è questa», disse Uriah, ritraendo una gamba, a rischio di attirare su di sé un’altra punizione da parte di mia zia, «essere così fidati! Ma spero di essere in grado di fare qualcosa per alleviare le fatiche del lavoro, Master Copperfield!»
‘Uriah Heep is a great relief to me,’ said Mr. Wickfield, in the same dull voice. ‘It’s a load off my mind, Trotwood, to have such a partner.’
The red fox made him say all this, I knew, to exhibit him to me in the light he had indicated on the night when he poisoned my rest. I saw the same ill-favoured smile upon his face again, and saw how he watched me.
‘You are not going, papa?’ said Agnes, anxiously. ‘Will you not walk back with Trotwood and me?’
He would have looked to Uriah, I believe, before replying, if that worthy had not anticipated him.
‘I am bespoke myself,’ said Uriah, ‘on business; otherwise I should have been appy to have kept with my friends. But I leave my partner to represent the firm. Miss Agnes, ever yours! I wish you good-day, Master Copperfield, and leave my umble respects for Miss Betsey Trotwood.’
With those words, he retired, kissing his great hand, and leering at us like a mask.
We sat there, talking about our pleasant old Canterbury days, an hour or two. Mr. Wickfield, left to Agnes, soon became more like his former self; though there was a settled depression upon him, which he never shook off. For all that, he brightened; and had an evident pleasure in hearing us recall the little incidents of our old life, many of which he remembered very well. He said it was like those times, to be alone with Agnes and me again; and he wished to Heaven they had never changed. I am sure there was an influence in the placid face of Agnes, and in the very touch of her hand upon his arm, that did wonders for him.
My aunt (who was busy nearly all this while with Peggotty, in the inner room) would not accompany us to the place where they were staying, but insisted on my going; and I went. We dined together. After dinner, Agnes sat beside him, as of old, and poured out his wine. He took what she gave him, and no more—like a child—and we all three sat together at a window as the evening gathered in. When it was almost dark, he lay down on a sofa, Agnes pillowing his head and bending over him a little while; and when she came back to the window, it was not so dark but I could see tears glittering in her eyes.
I pray Heaven that I never may forget the dear girl in her love and truth, at that time of my life; for if I should, I must be drawing near the end, and then I would desire to remember her best! She filled my heart with such good resolutions, strengthened my weakness so, by her example, so directed—I know not how, she was too modest and gentle to advise me in many words—the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose within me, that all the little good I have done, and all the harm I have forborne, I solemnly believe I may refer to her.
And how she spoke to me of Dora, sitting at the window in the dark; listened to my praises of her; praised again; and round the little fairy-figure shed some glimpses of her own pure light, that made it yet more precious and more innocent to me! Oh, Agnes, sister of my boyhood, if I had known then, what I knew long afterwards—!
There was a beggar in the street, when I went down; and as I turned my head towards the window, thinking of her calm seraphic eyes, he made me start by muttering, as if he were an echo of the morning: ‘Blind! Blind! Blind!’
“Uriah Heep è un grande sollievo per me,” disse il signor Wickfield, con la stessa voce monotona. “Avere un compagno del genere mi libera da un peso enorme, Trotwood.”
Era stata la volpe rossa a fargli dire tutte queste cose; lo sapevo bene. Voleva mostrarlo a me sotto quella luce che aveva indicato quella notte quando aveva avvelenato il mio riposo. Vidi di nuovo quel sorriso sgradevole sul suo viso e notai come mi osservava.
“Non vai davvero, papà?” disse Agnes, ansiosa. “Non tornerai indietro con Trotwood e me?”
Credo che avrebbe chiesto consiglio a Uriah prima di rispondere, se quell’uomo degno non gli fosse venuto in aiuto anticipatamente.
“Sono qui per un affare personale,” disse Uriah, “altrimenti sarei stato felice di trascorrere il tempo con i miei amici. Ma lascio che sia il mio socio a rappresentare l’azienda. Signorina Agnes, rimango sempre a vostra disposizione! Vi auguro buon giorno, signor Copperfield, e porgo i miei rispetti più umili alla signorina Betsey Trotwood.”
Con quelle parole, si ritirò, baciando la propria grande mano e guardandoci con un sorriso malizioso, come una maschera.
Rimasi lì seduto a parlare dei nostri bei tempi passati a Canterbury, per un’ora o due. Il signor Wickfield, lasciato da solo con Agnes, tornò presto ad essere se stesso; anche se continuava ad essere oppresso da una profonda tristezza che non riusciva mai a scacciare. Nonostante ciò, sembrava più sereno e provava chiaramente piacere nell’ascoltare noi ricordare quei piccoli episodi della nostra vecchia vita, molti dei quali ricordava molto bene. Disse che era come rivivere quei tempi, essere di nuovo da solo con Agnes e me; e sperava ardentemente che tutto non fosse mai cambiato. Sono sicuro che il volto sereno di Agnes, e anche il semplice tocco della sua mano sul suo braccio, avessero un effetto straordinario su di lui.
Mia zia (che per quasi tutto questo tempo era stata occupata con Peggotty, nella stanza interna) non volle accompagnarci nel luogo dove si trovavano, ma insistette affinché io andassi; e così feci. Mangiammo insieme. Dopo cena, Agnes sedette accanto a lui, come un tempo, e gli versò il vino. Lui prese quello che gli dava e basta, come un bambino. E noi tre rimanemmo insieme davanti alla finestra, mentre calava la sera. Quando fu quasi buio, si sdraiò su un divano; Agnes gli appoggiò la testa sul grembo e rimase lì per un po’. Quando tornò alla finestra, era ancora abbastanza chiaro da permettermi di vedere delle lacrime brillare nei suoi occhi.
Prego il Cielo affinché non dimentichi mai quella cara ragazza, con la sua amore e la sua verità, in quel periodo della mia vita; perché se lo facessi, significherebbe che mi sto avvicinando alla fine. E allora desidererei ricordarla ancora di più! Lei ha riempito il mio cuore di buone intenzioni, ha rafforzato la mia debolezza e mi ha guidato con il suo esempio. Non so come abbia fatto; era troppo umile e gentile per darmi consigli in modo esplicito. Quell’ardore incostante e quelle intenzioni instabili che avevo dentro di me. Tutto il bene che ho fatto, e tutto il male che ho evitato. Lo devo seriamente a lei.
E come mi parlò di Dora, seduta alla finestra nel buio; ascoltò le mie lodi su di lei; lodò ancora lei stessa; e intorno a quella piccola figura fatata sprigionò alcuni barlumi della sua pura luce, che la resero ancora più preziosa e ancora più innocente ai miei occhi! Oh, Agnes, sorella della mia infanzia. Se solo allora avessi saputo ciò che seppi molto tempo dopo,!
C’era un mendicante in strada quando sono sceso; e mentre giravo lo sguardo verso la finestra, pensando ai suoi occhi tranquilli e serafici, lui mi fece sobbalzare mormorando, come se fosse l’eco della mattina: “Cieco! Cieco! Cieco!”
CHAPTER 36. ENTHUSIASM
I began the next day with another dive into the Roman bath, and then started for Highgate. I was not dispirited now. I was not afraid of the shabby coat, and had no yearnings after gallant greys. My whole manner of thinking of our late misfortune was changed. What I had to do, was, to show my aunt that her past goodness to me had not been thrown away on an insensible, ungrateful object. What I had to do, was, to turn the painful discipline of my younger days to account, by going to work with a resolute and steady heart. What I had to do, was, to take my woodman’s axe in my hand, and clear my own way through the forest of difficulty, by cutting down the trees until I came to Dora. And I went on at a mighty rate, as if it could be done by walking.
When I found myself on the familiar Highgate road, pursuing such a different errand from that old one of pleasure, with which it was associated, it seemed as if a complete change had come on my whole life. But that did not discourage me. With the new life, came new purpose, new intention. Great was the labour; priceless the reward. Dora was the reward, and Dora must be won.
I got into such a transport, that I felt quite sorry my coat was not a little shabby already. I wanted to be cutting at those trees in the forest of difficulty, under circumstances that should prove my strength. I had a good mind to ask an old man, in wire spectacles, who was breaking stones upon the road, to lend me his hammer for a little while, and let me begin to beat a path to Dora out of granite. I stimulated myself into such a heat, and got so out of breath, that I felt as if I had been earning I don’t know how much.
In this state, I went into a cottage that I saw was to let, and examined it narrowly,—for I felt it necessary to be practical. It would do for me and Dora admirably: with a little front garden for Jip to run about in, and bark at the tradespeople through the railings, and a capital room upstairs for my aunt. I came out again, hotter and faster than ever, and dashed up to Highgate, at such a rate that I was there an hour too early; and, though I had not been, should have been obliged to stroll about to cool myself, before I was at all presentable.
My first care, after putting myself under this necessary course of preparation, was to find the Doctor’s house. It was not in that part of Highgate where Mrs. Steerforth lived, but quite on the opposite side of the little town. When I had made this discovery, I went back, in an attraction I could not resist, to a lane by Mrs. Steerforth’s, and looked over the corner of the garden wall. His room was shut up close. The conservatory doors were standing open, and Rosa Dartle was walking, bareheaded, with a quick, impetuous step, up and down a gravel walk on one side of the lawn. She gave me the idea of some fierce thing, that was dragging the length of its chain to and fro upon a beaten track, and wearing its heart out.
I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that part of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it, strolled about until it was ten o’clock. The church with the slender spire, that stands on the top of the hill now, was not there then to tell me the time. An old red-brick mansion, used as a school, was in its place; and a fine old house it must have been to go to school at, as I recollect it.
When I approached the Doctor’s cottage—a pretty old place, on which he seemed to have expended some money, if I might judge from the embellishments and repairs that had the look of being just completed—I saw him walking in the garden at the side, gaiters and all, as if he had never left off walking since the days of my pupilage. He had his old companions about him, too; for there were plenty of high trees in the neighbourhood, and two or three rooks were on the grass, looking after him, as if they had been written to about him by the Canterbury rooks, and were observing him closely in consequence.
Knowing the utter hopelessness of attracting his attention from that distance, I made bold to open the gate, and walk after him, so as to meet him when he should turn round. When he did, and came towards me, he looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, evidently without thinking about me at all; and then his benevolent face expressed extraordinary pleasure, and he took me by both hands.
‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said the Doctor, ‘you are a man! How do you do? I am delighted to see you. My dear Copperfield, how very much you have improved! You are quite—yes—dear me!’
I hoped he was well, and Mrs. Strong too.
‘Oh dear, yes!’ said the Doctor; ‘Annie’s quite well, and she’ll be delighted to see you. You were always her favourite. She said so, last night, when I showed her your letter. And—yes, to be sure—you recollect Mr. Jack Maldon, Copperfield?’
‘Perfectly, sir.’
‘Of course,’ said the Doctor. ‘To be sure. He’s pretty well, too.’
‘Has he come home, sir?’ I inquired.
‘From India?’ said the Doctor. ‘Yes. Mr. Jack Maldon couldn’t bear the climate, my dear. Mrs. Markleham—you have not forgotten Mrs. Markleham?’
Forgotten the Old Soldier! And in that short time!
‘Mrs. Markleham,’ said the Doctor, ‘was quite vexed about him, poor thing; so we have got him at home again; and we have bought him a little Patent place, which agrees with him much better.’ I knew enough of Mr. Jack Maldon to suspect from this account that it was a place where there was not much to do, and which was pretty well paid. The Doctor, walking up and down with his hand on my shoulder, and his kind face turned encouragingly to mine, went on:
‘Now, my dear Copperfield, in reference to this proposal of yours. It’s very gratifying and agreeable to me, I am sure; but don’t you think you could do better? You achieved distinction, you know, when you were with us. You are qualified for many good things. You have laid a foundation that any edifice may be raised upon; and is it not a pity that you should devote the spring-time of your life to such a poor pursuit as I can offer?’
CAPITOLO 36. ENTUSIASMO
Iniziai il giorno seguente con un altro tuffo nelle terme romane, poi partii per Highgate. Ora non ero più demoralizzato; non temevo più quel cappotto logoro, e non provavo alcun desiderio per quegli abiti eleganti e grigi. Il mio modo di pensare alla nostra recente sfortuna era completamente cambiato. Quello che dovevo fare era dimostrare a mia zia che la sua gentilezza verso di me in passato non era stata sprecata con un individuo insensibile e ingrato. Dovevo utilizzare l’esperienza dolorosa vissuta nei miei primi anni per lavorare con determinazione e costanza. Dovevo prendere il mio accettaio da boscaiolo e aprirmi la strada tra le difficoltà, tagliando via tutti gli ostacoli fino a raggiungere Dora. E proseguii a un ritmo veloce, come se tutto potesse essere realizzato semplicemente camminando.
Quando mi ritrovai sulla familiare strada di Highgate, impegnato in una missione completamente diversa da quella precedente, legata al piacere, sembrava che tutta la mia vita fosse cambiata radicalmente. Ma questo non mi scoraggiò. Con questa nuova vita arrivavano anche nuovi scopi, nuove intenzioni. Il lavoro era arduo, ma la ricompensa inestimabile: Dora, e Dora doveva essere conquistata.
Riuscii in una situazione tale che mi dispiacque davvero non avere un cappotto un po’ più logoro. Volevo tagliare quegli alberi nella “foresta delle difficoltà”, in circostanze che avrebbero dovuto dimostrare la mia forza. Pensai persino di chiedere a un vecchio, con gli occhiali da vista e che stava rompendo pietre sulla strada, se potesse prestarmi il suo martello per un po’, così da poter iniziare a creare un sentiero verso Dora attraverso il granito. Mi stimolai fino al punto di rimanere senza fiato, e mi sembrò davvero di aver guadagnato, chissà quanto.
In questo stato, entrai in una casetta che vidi essere in affitto e la esaminai attentamente: sentivo infatti di dover essere pragmatica. Sarebbe stata perfetta per me e Dora: con un piccolo giardino davanti dove Jip poteva correre e abbaiare ai commercianti attraverso le sbarre, e una stanza grande al piano di sopra per mia zia. Uscii di nuovo, ancora più accaldata del solito, e corsi verso Highgate a tale velocità che arrivai un’ora prima del previsto; e, anche se non ci fossi mai andata, avrei comunque dovuto passeggiare un po’ per rinfrescarmi, prima di poter presentarmi in modo decente.
Dopo essermi assicurato che tutto fosse pronto per questo necessario percorso di preparazione, la mia prima preoccupazione fu trovare la casa del Dottore. Non si trovava nella zona di Highgate dove abitava la signora Steerforth, ma proprio dall’altra parte della piccola città. Una volta fatto questo scoperto, non riuscii a resistere alla tentazione e tornai in quella stradina vicino alla casa della signora Steerforth, per guardare oltre l’angolo del muro del giardino. La sua stanza era completamente chiusa; le porte del serraio erano aperte, e Rosa Dartle camminava avanti e indietro su un sentiero di ghiaia, con passi veloci e impetuosi. Quell’immagine mi fece pensare a qualcosa di feroce che, trascinandosi lungo una strada battuta, si stesse logorando il cuore.
Me ne andai silenziosamente dal mio punto di osservazione, evitando quella parte del quartiere e desiderando di non esserci mai andato vicino; camminai avanti fino alle dieci in punto. La chiesa con la sua sottile guglia, che ora si trova sulla cima della collina, all’epoca non esisteva ancora per dirmi l’ora. Al suo posto c’era un vecchio edificio in mattoni rossi, utilizzato come scuola; doveva essere una bellissima casa antica, considerando com’è ora.
Quando mi avvicinai alla capanna del Dottore – un posto piuttosto vecchio, su cui sembrava aver speso del denaro, a giudicare dagli ornamenti e dai lavori di riparazione che sembravano appena terminati – lo vidi camminare nel giardino sul lato, con i gambali addosso, come se non avesse mai smesso di camminare dai tempi in cui ero suo allievo. Aveva anche i suoi vecchi compagni intorno a sé; c’erano infatti molti alberi alti nelle vicinanze, e due o tre corvi erano sul prato, a prendersi cura di lui, come se fossero stati inviati apposta da quei corvi di Canterbury per sorvegliarlo attentamente.
Consapevole dell’assoluta impossibilità di attirare la sua attenzione da quella distanza, decisi di aprire il cancello e seguirlo, così da incontrarlo quando si fosse girato. Quando lo fece e si avvicinò a me, mi guardò per alcuni momenti in modo pensieroso, evidentemente senza riconoscermi affatto; poi il suo volto gentile esprimeva una grande gioia, e mi prese entrambe le mani.
“Ma caro Copperfield,” disse il Dottore, “tu sei un uomo ormai! Come stai? Sono molto felice di rivederti. Caro Copperfield, quanto sei migliorato. Sei davvero, sì, mio caro!”
Speravo che stesse bene, e lo stesso valeva per la signora Strong.
“Oh, sì!” disse il Dottore; “Annie sta molto bene e sarà felice di vederti. Sei sempre stato il suo preferito. Lo ha detto proprio ieri sera, quando le ho mostrato la tua lettera. E, sì, sicuramente, ti ricordi del signor Jack Maldon, Copperfield?”
“Perfettamente, signore.”
“Certo,” disse il Dottore. “Assolutamente. È anche abbastanza in buona forma.”
“È già tornato a casa, signore?”, chiesi.
“Dall’India?” disse il Dottore. “Sì. Il signor Jack Maldon non riusciva a sopportare il clima, cara mia. La signora Markleham. Non avete dimenticato la signora Markleham, vero?”
Dimenticato il vecchio soldato. E in quel breve tempo!
“Signora Markleham,” disse il Dottore, “era davvero molto preoccupata per lui, povero ragazzo; quindi l’abbiamo riportato a >casa e gli abbiamo comprato un piccolo lavoro che gli si addice molto di più.” Conoscevo abbastanza bene il signor Jack Maldon da intuire, da questo racconto, che si trattava di un lavoro poco impegnativo ma ben retribuito. Il Dottore, camminando avanti e indietro con la mano sulla mia spalla e il suo volto gentile rivolto verso di me in modo incoraggiante, continuò:
“Ora, mio caro Copperfield, riguardo a questa tua proposta. È certamente molto lusinghiera e gradita per me; ma non pensi che potresti fare di meglio? Sai, hai raggiunto grandi successi quando eri con noi. Sei qualificato per molte cose positive. Hai gettato le basi su cui costruire qualsiasi futuro desideri. Non sarebbe un peccato che dedicassi la primavera della tua vita a una ricerca così meschina come quella che io posso offrirti?”
I became very glowing again, and, expressing myself in a rhapsodical style, I am afraid, urged my request strongly; reminding the Doctor that I had already a profession.
‘Well, well,’ said the Doctor, ‘that’s true. Certainly, your having a profession, and being actually engaged in studying it, makes a difference. But, my good young friend, what’s seventy pounds a year?’
‘It doubles our income, Doctor Strong,’ said I.
‘Dear me!’ replied the Doctor. ‘To think of that! Not that I mean to say it’s rigidly limited to seventy pounds a-year, because I have always contemplated making any young friend I might thus employ, a present too. Undoubtedly,’ said the Doctor, still walking me up and down with his hand on my shoulder. ‘I have always taken an annual present into account.’
‘My dear tutor,’ said I (now, really, without any nonsense), ‘to whom I owe more obligations already than I ever can acknowledge—’
‘No, no,’ interposed the Doctor. ‘Pardon me!’
‘If you will take such time as I have, and that is my mornings and evenings, and can think it worth seventy pounds a year, you will do me such a service as I cannot express.’
‘Dear me!’ said the Doctor, innocently. ‘To think that so little should go for so much! Dear, dear! And when you can do better, you will? On your word, now?’ said the Doctor,—which he had always made a very grave appeal to the honour of us boys.
‘On my word, sir!’ I returned, answering in our old school manner.
‘Then be it so,’ said the Doctor, clapping me on the shoulder, and still keeping his hand there, as we still walked up and down.
‘And I shall be twenty times happier, sir,’ said I, with a little—I hope innocent—flattery, ‘if my employment is to be on the Dictionary.’
The Doctor stopped, smilingly clapped me on the shoulder again, and exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had penetrated to the profoundest depths of mortal sagacity, ‘My dear young friend, you have hit it. It IS the Dictionary!’
How could it be anything else! His pockets were as full of it as his head. It was sticking out of him in all directions. He told me that since his retirement from scholastic life, he had been advancing with it wonderfully; and that nothing could suit him better than the proposed arrangements for morning and evening work, as it was his custom to walk about in the daytime with his considering cap on. His papers were in a little confusion, in consequence of Mr. Jack Maldon having lately proffered his occasional services as an amanuensis, and not being accustomed to that occupation; but we should soon put right what was amiss, and go on swimmingly. Afterwards, when we were fairly at our work, I found Mr. Jack Maldon’s efforts more troublesome to me than I had expected, as he had not confined himself to making numerous mistakes, but had sketched so many soldiers, and ladies’ heads, over the Doctor’s manuscript, that I often became involved in labyrinths of obscurity.
The Doctor was quite happy in the prospect of our going to work together on that wonderful performance, and we settled to begin next morning at seven o’clock. We were to work two hours every morning, and two or three hours every night, except on Saturdays, when I was to rest. On Sundays, of course, I was to rest also, and I considered these very easy terms.
Our plans being thus arranged to our mutual satisfaction, the Doctor took me into the house to present me to Mrs. Strong, whom we found in the Doctor’s new study, dusting his books,—a freedom which he never permitted anybody else to take with those sacred favourites.
They had postponed their breakfast on my account, and we sat down to table together. We had not been seated long, when I saw an approaching arrival in Mrs. Strong’s face, before I heard any sound of it. A gentleman on horseback came to the gate, and leading his horse into the little court, with the bridle over his arm, as if he were quite at home, tied him to a ring in the empty coach-house wall, and came into the breakfast parlour, whip in hand. It was Mr. Jack Maldon; and Mr. Jack Maldon was not at all improved by India, I thought. I was in a state of ferocious virtue, however, as to young men who were not cutting down trees in the forest of difficulty; and my impression must be received with due allowance.
‘Mr. Jack!’ said the Doctor. ‘Copperfield!’
Mr. Jack Maldon shook hands with me; but not very warmly, I believed; and with an air of languid patronage, at which I secretly took great umbrage. But his languor altogether was quite a wonderful sight; except when he addressed himself to his cousin Annie. ‘Have you breakfasted this morning, Mr. Jack?’ said the Doctor.
‘I hardly ever take breakfast, sir,’ he replied, with his head thrown back in an easy-chair. ‘I find it bores me.’
‘Is there any news today?’ inquired the Doctor.
‘Nothing at all, sir,’ replied Mr. Maldon. ‘There’s an account about the people being hungry and discontented down in the North, but they are always being hungry and discontented somewhere.’
The Doctor looked grave, and said, as though he wished to change the subject, ‘Then there’s no news at all; and no news, they say, is good news.’
‘There’s a long statement in the papers, sir, about a murder,’ observed Mr. Maldon. ‘But somebody is always being murdered, and I didn’t read it.’
A display of indifference to all the actions and passions of mankind was not supposed to be such a distinguished quality at that time, I think, as I have observed it to be considered since. I have known it very fashionable indeed. I have seen it displayed with such success, that I have encountered some fine ladies and gentlemen who might as well have been born caterpillars. Perhaps it impressed me the more then, because it was new to me, but it certainly did not tend to exalt my opinion of, or to strengthen my confidence in, Mr. Jack Maldon.
Rimasi di nuovo molto entusiasta e, esprimendomi in modo appassionato, temo di aver insistito con forza sulla mia richiesta; ricordando al Dottore che già avevo una professione.
“Beh, beh, ”, disse il Dottore, “è vero. Certo, avere una professione e dedicarsi davvero allo studio fa la differenza. Ma, mio caro giovane amico, cosa significano settanta sterline all’anno?”
“Raddoppia il nostro reddito, Dottor Strong,” dissi io.
“Mio Dio!”, rispose il Dottore. “Pensarci. Non che intenda dire che sia rigidamente limitato a settanta sterline all’anno, perché ho sempre pensato di regalare anche un dono annuale a ogni giovane che assumessi in questo modo. Senza dubbio”, continuò il Dottore, camminando avanti e indietro mentre teneva una mano sulla mia spalla, “ho sempre tenuto conto del dono annuale.”
“Mio caro tutore,” dissi io (ora, davvero, senza alcuna sciocchezza), “a cui devo già più di quanto possa mai ringraziare, ”
“No, no,” intervenne il Dottore. “Perdonatemi!”
“Se siete disposti a dedicare lo stesso tempo che dedico io, cioè le mie mattine e le mie serate, e ritenete che valga settanta sterline all’anno, mi fareste un favore di cui non so nemmeno come ringraziarvi.”
“Mio Dio!” disse il Dottore, in modo innocente. “Pensare che così poco possa valere così tanto. Caro, davvero! E quando potrai fare di meglio, lo farai? Me lo prometti, adesso?” disse il Dottore; un appello che aveva sempre rivolto con grande serietà all’onore di noi ragazzi.
“Per la mia parola, signore!” risposi, usando il nostro vecchio modo di dire scolastico.
“Allora sia così,” disse il Dottore, dandomi una pacca sulla spalla e tenendo ancora la sua mano lì, mentre continuavamo a camminare avanti e indietro.
“E sarò venti volte più felice, signore,” dissi, con un po’ di – una sincera – lusinga, “se il mio lavoro dovesse essere legato al dizionario.”
Il Dottore si fermò, mi diede di nuovo una pacca sulla spalla sorridendo e esclamò, con un trionfo davvero delizioso da vedere, come se avessi raggiunto le profondità più recondite della saggezza umana: “Mio caro giovane amico, hai indovinato! È proprio il Dizionario!”
Come avrebbe potuto essere qualcos’altro! Le sue tasche ne erano piene quanto la sua testa; spuntava da tutte le parti. Mi disse che, da quando si era ritirato dalla vita scolastica, i suoi progressi in questo campo erano stati straordinari; e che nulla avrebbe potuto soddisfarlo di più delle proposte riguardanti il lavoro mattutino e serale, poiché aveva l’abitudine di passeggiare durante il giorno con il suo cappello pensieroso in testa. I suoi documenti erano un po’ in disordine, a causa del fatto che il signor Jack Maldon gli aveva offerto recentemente i propri servizi come assistente, ma non essendo abituato a tale occupazione; tuttavia avremmo presto sistemato tutto e ripreso regolarmente il lavoro. In seguito, quando ci mettemmo seriamente all’opera, scoprii che gli sforzi del signor Jack Maldon mi causavano più problemi di quanto avessi previsto: non si era limitato a commettere numerosi errori, ma aveva anche disegnato tantissimi soldati e teste di donne sul manoscritto del dottore, al punto che spesso mi ritrovavo immerso in un labirinto di confusione.
Il Dottore era molto felice all’idea che avremmo lavorato insieme a quella meravigliosa produzione, e decidemmo di iniziare il giorno dopo alle sette ore del mattino. Avremmo lavorato due ore ogni mattina e due o tre ore ogni sera, tranne il sabato, quando avrei avuto il diritto di riposarmi. Naturalmente, anche la domenica avrei riposato, e ritenevo che queste condizioni fossero davvero molto favorevoli.
Poiché i nostri piani erano stati organizzati a reciproca soddisfazione, il Dottore mi portò nella >casa per presentarmi alla signora Strong, che trovammo nello studio nuovo del Dottore, mentre puliva i suoi libri. Una libertà che egli non permetteva mai a nessun altro di avere con quei suoi oggetti sacri e prediletti.
Avevano rinviato la colazione per causa mia, e ci sedemmo insieme a tavola. Non eravamo ancora seduti da molto quando notai un certo turbamento sul viso della signora Strong, prima ancora di sentire alcun rumore. Un gentiluomo a cavallo si avvicinò al cancello; condusse il suo cavallo nel piccolo cortile, tenendo le redini sul braccio, come se fosse a casa sua, lo legò a un anello fissato sulla parete dell’edificio vuoto e poi entrò nella sala da pranzo, con la frusta in mano. Era il signor Jack Maldon. E, a mio parere, l’India non lo aveva affatto migliorato. Tuttavia, riguardo ai giovani che non si sforzano di superare le difficoltà della vita, io mantenevo una ferma moralità. E bisogna prendere in considerazione le mie impressioni.
“Signor Jack!”, disse il Dottore. “Copperfield!”
Il signor Jack Maldon mi strinse la mano; ma non molto calorosamente, credo. E con un tono di distaccato paternalismo che, in segreto, mi offese profondamente. Tuttavia, quel suo atteggiamento distaccato era davvero curioso da osservare. Tranne quando si rivolgeva a sua cugina Annie. “Ha fatto colazione stamattina, signor Jack?”, chiese il Dottore.
“Raramente faccio colazione, signore,” rispose, appoggiando la testa all’indietro sulla poltrona. “Mi sembra noioso.”
“Ci sono novità oggi?” chiese il Dottore.
“Niente affatto, signore,” rispose il signor Maldon. “C’è un resoconto che parla di persone affamate e insoddisfatte nel Nord, ma in qualche parte ci sono sempre persone affamate e insoddisfatte.”
Il Dottore sembrava molto serio e, come se volesse cambiare argomento, disse: “Allora non ci sono affatto notizie. E, si dice, quando non ci sono notizie, significa che non ci sono buone notizie.”
“C’è un lungo articolo sui giornali, signore, riguardante un omicidio,” osservò il signor Maldon. “Ma qualcuno viene sempre assassinato, e io non l’ho letto.”
Un atteggiamento di indifferenza verso tutte le azioni e le passioni dell’umanità non doveva essere considerato una qualità così apprezzata a quell’epoca, credo, al contrario, da allora è stato sempre visto con favore. L’ho visto addirittura praticato con grande successo: ho incontrato signore e signorine che, in realtà, avrebbero potuto benissimo essere nati come bruchi. Forse questo atteggiamento mi ha colpito ancora di più perché era nuovo per me, ma certamente non ha aumentato la mia stima né rafforzato la mia fiducia in Mr. Jack Maldon.
‘I came out to inquire whether Annie would like to go to the opera tonight,’ said Mr. Maldon, turning to her. ‘It’s the last good night there will be, this season; and there’s a singer there, whom she really ought to hear. She is perfectly exquisite. Besides which, she is so charmingly ugly,’ relapsing into languor.
The Doctor, ever pleased with what was likely to please his young wife, turned to her and said:
‘You must go, Annie. You must go.’
‘I would rather not,’ she said to the Doctor. ‘I prefer to remain at home. I would much rather remain at home.’
Without looking at her cousin, she then addressed me, and asked me about Agnes, and whether she should see her, and whether she was not likely to come that day; and was so much disturbed, that I wondered how even the Doctor, buttering his toast, could be blind to what was so obvious.
But he saw nothing. He told her, good-naturedly, that she was young and ought to be amused and entertained, and must not allow herself to be made dull by a dull old fellow. Moreover, he said, he wanted to hear her sing all the new singer’s songs to him; and how could she do that well, unless she went? So the Doctor persisted in making the engagement for her, and Mr. Jack Maldon was to come back to dinner. This concluded, he went to his Patent place, I suppose; but at all events went away on his horse, looking very idle.
I was curious to find out next morning, whether she had been. She had not, but had sent into London to put her cousin off; and had gone out in the afternoon to see Agnes, and had prevailed upon the Doctor to go with her; and they had walked home by the fields, the Doctor told me, the evening being delightful. I wondered then, whether she would have gone if Agnes had not been in town, and whether Agnes had some good influence over her too!
She did not look very happy, I thought; but it was a good face, or a very false one. I often glanced at it, for she sat in the window all the time we were at work; and made our breakfast, which we took by snatches as we were employed. When I left, at nine o’clock, she was kneeling on the ground at the Doctor’s feet, putting on his shoes and gaiters for him. There was a softened shade upon her face, thrown from some green leaves overhanging the open window of the low room; and I thought all the way to Doctors’ Commons, of the night when I had seen it looking at him as he read.
I was pretty busy now; up at five in the morning, and home at nine or ten at night. But I had infinite satisfaction in being so closely engaged, and never walked slowly on any account, and felt enthusiastically that the more I tired myself, the more I was doing to deserve Dora. I had not revealed myself in my altered character to Dora yet, because she was coming to see Miss Mills in a few days, and I deferred all I had to tell her until then; merely informing her in my letters (all our communications were secretly forwarded through Miss Mills), that I had much to tell her. In the meantime, I put myself on a short allowance of bear’s grease, wholly abandoned scented soap and lavender water, and sold off three waistcoats at a prodigious sacrifice, as being too luxurious for my stern career.
Not satisfied with all these proceedings, but burning with impatience to do something more, I went to see Traddles, now lodging up behind the parapet of a house in Castle Street, Holborn. Mr. Dick, who had been with me to Highgate twice already, and had resumed his companionship with the Doctor, I took with me.
I took Mr. Dick with me, because, acutely sensitive to my aunt’s reverses, and sincerely believing that no galley-slave or convict worked as I did, he had begun to fret and worry himself out of spirits and appetite, as having nothing useful to do. In this condition, he felt more incapable of finishing the Memorial than ever; and the harder he worked at it, the oftener that unlucky head of King Charles the First got into it. Seriously apprehending that his malady would increase, unless we put some innocent deception upon him and caused him to believe that he was useful, or unless we could put him in the way of being really useful (which would be better), I made up my mind to try if Traddles could help us. Before we went, I wrote Traddles a full statement of all that had happened, and Traddles wrote me back a capital answer, expressive of his sympathy and friendship.
We found him hard at work with his inkstand and papers, refreshed by the sight of the flower-pot stand and the little round table in a corner of the small apartment. He received us cordially, and made friends with Mr. Dick in a moment. Mr. Dick professed an absolute certainty of having seen him before, and we both said, ‘Very likely.’
The first subject on which I had to consult Traddles was this,—I had heard that many men distinguished in various pursuits had begun life by reporting the debates in Parliament. Traddles having mentioned newspapers to me, as one of his hopes, I had put the two things together, and told Traddles in my letter that I wished to know how I could qualify myself for this pursuit. Traddles now informed me, as the result of his inquiries, that the mere mechanical acquisition necessary, except in rare cases, for thorough excellence in it, that is to say, a perfect and entire command of the mystery of short-hand writing and reading, was about equal in difficulty to the mastery of six languages; and that it might perhaps be attained, by dint of perseverance, in the course of a few years. Traddles reasonably supposed that this would settle the business; but I, only feeling that here indeed were a few tall trees to be hewn down, immediately resolved to work my way on to Dora through this thicket, axe in hand.
‘I am very much obliged to you, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘I’ll begin tomorrow.’
“Sono venuto per chiedere ad Annie se le piacerebbe andare all’opera stasera,” disse il signor Maldon rivolgendosi a lei. “È l’ultima buona serata di questa stagione; inoltre, c’è una cantante che davvero dovrebbe ascoltare. È davvero straordinaria. E poi, è così incantevolmente brutta,” aggiunse, ricadendo nel suo tono languido.
Il Dottore, sempre felice di ciò che avrebbe potuto piacere a sua giovane moglie, si rivolse a lei e disse:
“Devi andare, Annie. Devi proprio andare.”
“Preferirei di no,” disse alla Dottoressa. “Vorrei rimanere a >casa. Preferisco davvero molto restare a >casa.”
Senza guardare sua cugina, si rivolse poi a me e mi chiese di Agnes, se dovesse andarla a trovare e se fosse probabile che lei venisse quel giorno; era così turbata che mi chiesi come anche il Dottore, mentre spalmava il burro sul suo pane tostato, potesse non accorgersi di qualcosa di così ovvio.
Ma non vide nulla. Le disse, con buona volontà, che era giovane e doveva divertirsi, e non poteva permettersi di essere depressa da un vecchio noioso. Inoltre, le disse che voleva ascoltarla cantare tutte le canzoni del nuovo cantante; e come avrebbe potuto farlo bene, se non andava? Così il Dottore insistette nel fissare l’appuntamento per lei, e il signor Jack Maldon sarebbe tornato a cena. Una volta concluso questo, credo andò al suo negozio; comunque, se ne andò a cavallo, con un’aria molto svagata.
Ero curioso di scoprire la mattina seguente se ci fosse andata davvero. Non c’era andata, ma aveva inviato qualcuno a Londra per tenere lontano suo cugino; poi nel pomeriggio era uscita per vedere Agnes e aveva convinto il Dottore ad accompagnarla; insieme avevano camminato verso casa attraverso i campi, mi disse il Dottore, poiché la sera era davvero incantevole. Allora mi chiesi se sarebbe andata comunque se Agnes non fosse stata in città. E se anche Agnes avesse un certo ascendente su di lei!
Non sembrava molto felice, pensai; ma era un viso gentile, o forse molto falso. La guardavo spesso, perché sedeva alla finestra per tutto il tempo in cui lavoravamo; preparava anche la colazione, che mangiavamo di fretta mentre eravamo impegnati. Quando me ne andai, alle nove in punto, lei era in ginocchio ai piedi del dottore, che gli infilava le scarpe e i gambali. Sul suo viso c’era un’espressione più dolce, proiettata dalle foglie verdi che pendevano dalla finestra aperta di quella stanza bassa; e per tutto il tragitto verso Doctors’ Commons pensai a quella notte in cui l’avevo vista guardarlo mentre leggeva.
Ero piuttosto impegnata in quel periodo: mi alzavo alle cinque del mattino e tornavo a casa alle nove o dieci di sera. Tuttavia provavo una grande soddisfazione nel dedicarmi così intensamente ai miei compiti, e non mi concedevo mai il lusso di procedere con calma. Sentivo con entusiasmo che più mi sforzavo, più meritavo Dora. Non le avevo ancora rivelato il mio cambiamento, perché lei sarebbe venuta a trovare la signorina Mills tra pochi giorni, quindi ho rinviato tutto ciò che dovevo dirle fino ad allora; le scrivevo soltanto nelle mie lettere (tutte le nostre comunicazioni venivano segretamente inoltrate tramite la signorina Mills) che avevo molte cose da raccontarle. Nel frattempo, mi sono limitata a consumare una piccola quantità di grasso d’orso, ho completamente abbandonato il sapone profumato e l’acqua di lavanda, e ho venduto tre gilet a un prezzo molto basso, ritenendo che fossero troppo lussuosi per la mia “dura” missione.
Non soddisfatto di tutte queste procedure, ma bruciante d’impazienza di fare qualcosa di più, andai a trovare Traddles, che in quel momento soggiornava dietro il parapetto di una casa in Castle Street, a Holborn. Presi con me anche il signor Dick, che era già stato con me due volte a Highgate e aveva ripreso a frequentare il Dottore.
Portai con me il signor Dick, perché, estremamente sensibile alle difficoltà di mia zia e sinceramente convinto che nessun altro lavorasse più sodo di me, aveva iniziato a preoccuparsi così tanto da perdere energia e appetito, sentendosi completamente inutile. In quelle condizioni, riteneva ancora meno possibile portare a termine il “Memoriale”; e più ci provava, più quel maledetto ritratto di re Carlo I continuava ad apparire nei suoi pensieri. Temendo seriamente che la sua malattia peggiorasse, se non riuscivamo a ingannarlo facendogli credere di essere utile, o se non trovavamo il modo per far sì che diventasse davvero utile (il che sarebbe stato ancora meglio), decisi di provare se Traddles potesse aiutarci. Prima di partire, scrissi a Traddles una descrizione dettagliata di tutto ciò che era accaduto; lui mi rispose con una lettera molto affettuosa, piena di solidarietà e amicizia.
Lo trovammo impegnato nel suo lavoro, con il calamaio e i fogli davanti a sé; il vedere il vaso dei fiori e il piccolo tavolo rotondo nell’angolo di quell’appartamento minuscolo lo rinfrescava. Ci accolse cordialmente e in un attimo fece amicizia con il signor Dick. Il signor Dick affermò con assoluta certezza di averlo già visto prima, e entrambi rispondemmo: “Molto probabile.”
Il primo argomento su cui dovetti consultare Traddles era proprio questo: avevo sentito dire che molti uomini di spicco in varie discipline avevano iniziato la loro carriera scrivendo resoconti dei dibattiti parlamentari. Poiché Traddles mi aveva menzionato i giornali come una delle possibili strade per intraprendere questa attività, collegai le due informazioni e gli scrissi che volevo sapere come potermi preparare adeguatamente. Traddles, in seguito alle sue ricerche, mi comunicò che, ad eccezione di casi rari, l’acquisizione delle competenze necessarie per eccellere in questo campo – ovvero una padronanza perfetta della stenografia e della lettura velocistica – richiedeva uno sforzo paragonabile a quello necessario per imparare sei lingue; tuttavia, con perseveranza, si poteva probabilmente raggiungere l’obiettivo in pochi anni. Traddles riteneva che questo risolvesse il problema; io, invece, consapevole che si trattava di un compito arduo, decisi immediatamente di affrontarlo con determinazione, pronto a “tagliare via tutti gli ostacoli” per raggiungere Dora.
“Le sono davvero molto grato, mio caro Traddles! Inizierò domani,” dissi.
Traddles looked astonished, as he well might; but he had no notion as yet of my rapturous condition.
‘I’ll buy a book,’ said I, ‘with a good scheme of this art in it; I’ll work at it at the Commons, where I haven’t half enough to do; I’ll take down the speeches in our court for practice—Traddles, my dear fellow, I’ll master it!’
‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, opening his eyes, ‘I had no idea you were such a determined character, Copperfield!’
I don’t know how he should have had, for it was new enough to me. I passed that off, and brought Mr. Dick on the carpet.
‘You see,’ said Mr. Dick, wistfully, ‘if I could exert myself, Mr. Traddles—if I could beat a drum—or blow anything!’
Poor fellow! I have little doubt he would have preferred such an employment in his heart to all others. Traddles, who would not have smiled for the world, replied composedly:
‘But you are a very good penman, sir. You told me so, Copperfield?’ ‘Excellent!’ said I. And indeed he was. He wrote with extraordinary neatness.
‘Don’t you think,’ said Traddles, ‘you could copy writings, sir, if I got them for you?’
Mr. Dick looked doubtfully at me. ‘Eh, Trotwood?’
I shook my head. Mr. Dick shook his, and sighed. ‘Tell him about the Memorial,’ said Mr. Dick.
I explained to Traddles that there was a difficulty in keeping King Charles the First out of Mr. Dick’s manuscripts; Mr. Dick in the meanwhile looking very deferentially and seriously at Traddles, and sucking his thumb.
‘But these writings, you know, that I speak of, are already drawn up and finished,’ said Traddles after a little consideration. ‘Mr. Dick has nothing to do with them. Wouldn’t that make a difference, Copperfield? At all events, wouldn’t it be well to try?’
This gave us new hope. Traddles and I laying our heads together apart, while Mr. Dick anxiously watched us from his chair, we concocted a scheme in virtue of which we got him to work next day, with triumphant success.
On a table by the window in Buckingham Street, we set out the work Traddles procured for him—which was to make, I forget how many copies of a legal document about some right of way—and on another table we spread the last unfinished original of the great Memorial. Our instructions to Mr. Dick were that he should copy exactly what he had before him, without the least departure from the original; and that when he felt it necessary to make the slightest allusion to King Charles the First, he should fly to the Memorial. We exhorted him to be resolute in this, and left my aunt to observe him. My aunt reported to us, afterwards, that, at first, he was like a man playing the kettle-drums, and constantly divided his attentions between the two; but that, finding this confuse and fatigue him, and having his copy there, plainly before his eyes, he soon sat at it in an orderly business-like manner, and postponed the Memorial to a more convenient time. In a word, although we took great care that he should have no more to do than was good for him, and although he did not begin with the beginning of a week, he earned by the following Saturday night ten shillings and nine-pence; and never, while I live, shall I forget his going about to all the shops in the neighbourhood to change this treasure into sixpences, or his bringing them to my aunt arranged in the form of a heart upon a waiter, with tears of joy and pride in his eyes. He was like one under the propitious influence of a charm, from the moment of his being usefully employed; and if there were a happy man in the world, that Saturday night, it was the grateful creature who thought my aunt the most wonderful woman in existence, and me the most wonderful young man.
‘No starving now, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking hands with me in a corner. ‘I’ll provide for her, Sir!’ and he flourished his ten fingers in the air, as if they were ten banks.
I hardly know which was the better pleased, Traddles or I. ‘It really,’ said Traddles, suddenly, taking a letter out of his pocket, and giving it to me, ‘put Mr. Micawber quite out of my head!’
The letter (Mr. Micawber never missed any possible opportunity of writing a letter) was addressed to me, ‘By the kindness of T. Traddles, Esquire, of the Inner Temple.’ It ran thus:—
‘MY DEAR COPPERFIELD,
‘You may possibly not be unprepared to receive the intimation that something has turned up. I may have mentioned to you on a former occasion that I was in expectation of such an event.
‘I am about to establish myself in one of the provincial towns of our favoured island (where the society may be described as a happy admixture of the agricultural and the clerical), in immediate connexion with one of the learned professions. Mrs. Micawber and our offspring will accompany me. Our ashes, at a future period, will probably be found commingled in the cemetery attached to a venerable pile, for which the spot to which I refer has acquired a reputation, shall I say from China to Peru?
‘In bidding adieu to the modern Babylon, where we have undergone many vicissitudes, I trust not ignobly, Mrs. Micawber and myself cannot disguise from our minds that we part, it may be for years and it may be for ever, with an individual linked by strong associations to the altar of our domestic life. If, on the eve of such a departure, you will accompany our mutual friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles, to our present abode, and there reciprocate the wishes natural to the occasion, you will confer a Boon
‘On ‘One ‘Who ‘Is ‘Ever yours, ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.’
I was glad to find that Mr. Micawber had got rid of his dust and ashes, and that something really had turned up at last. Learning from Traddles that the invitation referred to the evening then wearing away, I expressed my readiness to do honour to it; and we went off together to the lodging which Mr. Micawber occupied as Mr. Mortimer, and which was situated near the top of the Gray’s Inn Road.
Traddles sembrava davvero sorpreso, come era naturale che fosse; ma ancora non aveva idea dello stato di estasi in cui mi trovavo.
“Comprerò un libro”, dissi, “in cui sia spiegato bene questo metodo; ci lavorerò al Parlamento, dove ho già abbastanza da fare; prenderò anche gli atti delle nostre udienze in tribunale per esercitarmi. Traddles, caro amico, ce la farò!”
“Mio Dio,” disse Traddles aprendo gli occhi, “non avevo idea che fossi una persona così decisa, Copperfield!”
Non so come avesse dovuto farlo, perché per me era qualcosa di completamente nuovo. Ho ignorato quella questione e ho invece messo in discussione il comportamento del signor Dick.
“Vede,” disse il signor Dick con malinconia, “se solo potessi sforzarmi di più, se solo potessi suonare un tamburo, o fare qualcosa!”
Povero ragazzo. Non ho alcun >dubbio che, nel profondo del suo cuore, avrebbe preferito quel tipo di lavoro a qualsiasi altro. Traddles, che non avrebbe mai sorriso per nulla al mondo, rispose con calma:
“Ma lei è davvero un ottimo calligrafo, signore. Me lo ha detto anche lei, vero, Copperfield?”
“Eccezionale!” dissi io. E infatti lo era: scriveva con una pulizia straordinaria.
“Non pensa che potrebbe copiare dei documenti, signore, se glieli procurassi io?” disse Traddles.
“Mr. Dick mi guardò con esitazione. ‘Eh, Trotwood?’”
Scossi la testa. Anche il signor Dick scosse la sua e sospirò. “Parlagli del Memorial,” disse il signor Dick.
Spiegai a Traddles che c’era difficoltà nel tenere il nome di -Re Carlo I fuori dai manoscritti di Mr. Dick; intanto, Mr. Dick lo guardava con grande rispetto e serietà, mentre si succhiava il pollice.
“Ma questi documenti, di cui parlo, sono già stati redatti e completati,” disse Traddles dopo un po’ di riflessione. “Il signor Dick non c’entra nulla con loro. Non crede che questo farebbe la differenza, Copperfield? Comunque, non sarebbe buono provare?”
Questo ci diede una nuova >speranza. Traddles ed io discutemmo insieme, mentre il signor Dick ci osservava ansiosamente dalla sua sedia; alla fine ideammo un piano grazie al quale riuscimmo a fargli lavorare il giorno dopo, con un successo trionfale.
Su un tavolo accanto alla finestra di >Buckingham Street, mettemmo i documenti che Traddles aveva procurato per lui: si trattava di realizzare, non ricordo esattamente quante copie, di un documento legale riguardante alcuni diritti di passaggio. Su un altro tavolo dispiegammo l’ultimo originale inedito del grande Memorial. Le nostre istruzioni a Mr. Dick erano che dovesse copiare esattamente ciò che aveva davanti agli occhi, senza deviare minimamente dall’originale; e che, qualora avesse ritenuto necessario fare anche la minima allusione al -Re Carlo I, dovesse immediatamente tornare al Memorial. Gli esortammo a essere deciso in questo senso e lasciammo mia zia a sorvegliarlo. In seguito, mia zia ci riferì che, all’inizio, lui si comportava come una persona che cercava di fare più cose contemporaneamente, dividendo continuamente la sua attenzione tra i due compiti; ma, rendendosi conto che questo lo confondeva e lo stancava, e avendo l’originale davanti ai suoi occhi, presto iniziò a lavorare con ordine e metodo, rimandando il lavoro sul Memorial a un momento più opportuno. In breve, sebbene ci fossimo assicurati che non facesse nulla di superfluo, e sebbene avesse iniziato solo dopo molto tempo, entro la sera di sabato aveva guadagnato dieci scellini e nove pence; e per tutta la vita non dimenticherò come andasse in tutte le botteghe del quartiere per cambiare quei soldi in monete da sei penny, né come li portasse a mia zia disposti a forma di cuore su un vassoio, con occhi pieni di gioia e orgoglio. Era come se fosse sotto l’influenza positiva di una sorta di incantesimo: dal momento in cui iniziò a lavorare seriamente, sembrava davvero una persona felice. Se esisteva qualcuno veramente felice al mondo, quella sera era proprio lui, e considerava mia zia la donna più meravigliosa dell’universo, mentre io il giovane più straordinario.
“Ora non morirà di fame, Trotwood,” disse il signor Dick stringendomi la mano in un angolo. “Me ne occuperò io, signore!” e agitò i suoi dieci dita in aria, come se fossero dieci banche.
A malapena so chi fosse più soddisfatto, se Traddles o io. “Davvero,” disse Traddles all’improvviso, tirando fuori una lettera dalla tasca e porgendomela, “questa lettera mi ha fatto dimenticare completamente il signor Micawber!”
La lettera (il signor Micawber non perdeva mai l’occasione di scrivere una lettera) era indirizzata a me e recitava quanto segue: “Per gentile concessione di T. Traddles, Esquire, dell’Inner Temple”.
“Mio caro Copperfield, ”
“Potresti non essere preparato ad affrontare la notizia che qualcosa è emerso. Forse ti ho già detto in precedenza di aspettarmi un evento del genere.”
“Sto per stabilirmi in una delle città provinciali della nostra amata isola (dove la società può essere descritta come un felice miscuglio di persone appartenenti al mondo agricolo e a quello clericale), in stretta connessione con una delle professioni intellettuali. La signora Micawber e i nostri figli mi accompagneranno. Un giorno, le nostre ceneri probabilmente verranno trovate mescolate nel cimitero annesso a un antico mausoleo. Perché il luogo di cui parlo ha acquisito una tale fama, che si potrebbe dire diffusa dalla Cina al Perù, ”
‘Nel dire addio alla moderna Babilonia, dove abbiamo vissuto molte avversità, spero che io e la signora Micawber non possiamo nascondere nel nostro cuore che ci stiamo separando, forse per anni, o forse per sempre, da una persona strettamente legata agli affetti della nostra vita domestica. Se, alla vigilia di questa partenza, vorrete accompagnare il nostro comune amico, il signor Thomas Traddles, presso la nostra attuale dimora e esprimere i vostri auguri in un’occasione del genere, farete davvero una grande gentilezza.’
“Colui che è sempre stato tuo,
WILKINS MICAWBER.”
Fui felice di scoprire che il signor Micawber si era liberato della sua polvere e delle sue ceneri, e che finalmente qualcosa fosse emerso. Dopo aver appreso da Traddles che l’invito riguardava quella stessa sera, espressi la mia disponibilità ad onorarlo; poi andammo insieme al luogo in cui il signor Micawber soggiornava sotto il nome di signor Mortimer, situato vicino alla fine di Gray’s Inn Road.
The resources of this lodging were so limited, that we found the twins, now some eight or nine years old, reposing in a turn-up bedstead in the family sitting-room, where Mr. Micawber had prepared, in a wash-hand-stand jug, what he called ‘a Brew’ of the agreeable beverage for which he was famous. I had the pleasure, on this occasion, of renewing the acquaintance of Master Micawber, whom I found a promising boy of about twelve or thirteen, very subject to that restlessness of limb which is not an unfrequent phenomenon in youths of his age. I also became once more known to his sister, Miss Micawber, in whom, as Mr. Micawber told us, ‘her mother renewed her youth, like the Phoenix’.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘yourself and Mr. Traddles find us on the brink of migration, and will excuse any little discomforts incidental to that position.’
Glancing round as I made a suitable reply, I observed that the family effects were already packed, and that the amount of luggage was by no means overwhelming. I congratulated Mrs. Micawber on the approaching change.
‘My dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘of your friendly interest in all our affairs, I am well assured. My family may consider it banishment, if they please; but I am a wife and mother, and I never will desert Mr. Micawber.’
Traddles, appealed to by Mrs. Micawber’s eye, feelingly acquiesced.
‘That,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that, at least, is my view, my dear Mr. Copperfield and Mr. Traddles, of the obligation which I took upon myself when I repeated the irrevocable words, “I, Emma, take thee, Wilkins.” I read the service over with a flat-candle on the previous night, and the conclusion I derived from it was, that I never could desert Mr. Micawber. And,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘though it is possible I may be mistaken in my view of the ceremony, I never will!’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, a little impatiently, ‘I am not conscious that you are expected to do anything of the sort.’
‘I am aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I am now about to cast my lot among strangers; and I am also aware that the various members of my family, to whom Mr. Micawber has written in the most gentlemanly terms, announcing that fact, have not taken the least notice of Mr. Micawber’s communication. Indeed I may be superstitious,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘but it appears to me that Mr. Micawber is destined never to receive any answers whatever to the great majority of the communications he writes. I may augur, from the silence of my family, that they object to the resolution I have taken; but I should not allow myself to be swerved from the path of duty, Mr. Copperfield, even by my papa and mama, were they still living.’
I expressed my opinion that this was going in the right direction. ‘It may be a sacrifice,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘to immure one’s-self in a Cathedral town; but surely, Mr. Copperfield, if it is a sacrifice in me, it is much more a sacrifice in a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities.’
‘Oh! You are going to a Cathedral town?’ said I.
Mr. Micawber, who had been helping us all, out of the wash-hand-stand jug, replied:
‘To Canterbury. In fact, my dear Copperfield, I have entered into arrangements, by virtue of which I stand pledged and contracted to our friend Heep, to assist and serve him in the capacity of—and to be—his confidential clerk.’
I stared at Mr. Micawber, who greatly enjoyed my surprise.
‘I am bound to state to you,’ he said, with an official air, ‘that the business habits, and the prudent suggestions, of Mrs. Micawber, have in a great measure conduced to this result. The gauntlet, to which Mrs. Micawber referred upon a former occasion, being thrown down in the form of an advertisement, was taken up by my friend Heep, and led to a mutual recognition. Of my friend Heep,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘who is a man of remarkable shrewdness, I desire to speak with all possible respect. My friend Heep has not fixed the positive remuneration at too high a figure, but he has made a great deal, in the way of extrication from the pressure of pecuniary difficulties, contingent on the value of my services; and on the value of those services I pin my faith. Such address and intelligence as I chance to possess,’ said Mr. Micawber, boastfully disparaging himself, with the old genteel air, ‘will be devoted to my friend Heep’s service. I have already some acquaintance with the law—as a defendant on civil process—and I shall immediately apply myself to the Commentaries of one of the most eminent and remarkable of our English jurists. I believe it is unnecessary to add that I allude to Mr. justice Blackstone.’
These observations, and indeed the greater part of the observations made that evening, were interrupted by Mrs. Micawber’s discovering that Master Micawber was sitting on his boots, or holding his head on with both arms as if he felt it loose, or accidentally kicking Traddles under the table, or shuffling his feet over one another, or producing them at distances from himself apparently outrageous to nature, or lying sideways with his hair among the wine-glasses, or developing his restlessness of limb in some other form incompatible with the general interests of society; and by Master Micawber’s receiving those discoveries in a resentful spirit. I sat all the while, amazed by Mr. Micawber’s disclosure, and wondering what it meant; until Mrs. Micawber resumed the thread of the discourse, and claimed my attention.
‘What I particularly request Mr. Micawber to be careful of, is,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that he does not, my dear Mr. Copperfield, in applying himself to this subordinate branch of the law, place it out of his power to rise, ultimately, to the top of the tree. I am convinced that Mr. Micawber, giving his mind to a profession so adapted to his fertile resources, and his flow of language, must distinguish himself. Now, for example, Mr. Traddles,’ said Mrs. Micawber, assuming a profound air, ‘a judge, or even say a Chancellor. Does an individual place himself beyond the pale of those preferments by entering on such an office as Mr. Micawber has accepted?’
Le risorse di questa sistemazione erano così limitate che trovammo i gemelli, ormai di circa otto o nove anni, sdraiati su un letto pieghevole nel salotto della famiglia. Il signor Micawber aveva preparato, in una brocca posizionata sul lavandino, quella che chiamava “una miscela” del delizioso liquido per cui era famoso. In quell’occasione ebbi il piacere di rinnovare la conoscenza con il giovane Micawber, un ragazzo promettente di circa dodici o tredici anni, molto soggetto a quella inquietudine fisica che non è affatto rara tra i giovani della sua età. Riconobbi anche nuovamente sua sorella, la signorina Micawber; il signor Micawber ci aveva detto che “sua madre le aveva restituito la gioventù, come il fenice”.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” disse il signor Micawber, “tu e il signor Traddles ci trovate sull’orlo di un trasferimento, e perdonerete sicuramente eventuali piccoli disagi che ne derivino.”
Guardandomi intorno mentre rispondevo adeguatamente, notai che i bagagli della famiglia erano già stati preparati e che la quantità di valigie non era affatto eccessiva. Congratulai la signora Micawber per il prossimo cambiamento nella sua vita.
“Mio caro signor Copperfield,” disse la signora Micawber, “so per certo della sua gentile attenzione verso tutte le nostre faccende. La mia famiglia potrebbe considerarlo un esilio, se vuole; ma io sono una moglie e una madre, e non abbandonerò mai il signor Micawber.”
Traddles, attratto dallo sguardo di Mrs. Micawber, acconsentì con emozione.
“Quello,” disse la signora Micawber, “quello, almeno, è il mio punto di vista, caro signor Copperfield e signor Traddles, riguardo all’impegno che ho assunto quando ho ripetuto quelle parole irrevocabili: ‘Io, Emma, ti prendo, Wilkins.’ Ho riletto tutto il rito la sera precedente, con una candela, e la conclusione a cui sono giunta è che non potrò mai abbandonare il signor Micawber. E,” aggiunse, “anche se fosse possibile che io mi sbagli riguardo al significato di questa cerimonia, non lo farò mai!”
“Mia cara,” disse il signor Micawber, con un po’ di impazienza, “non credo che ci si aspetti che tu faccia qualcosa del genere.”
“Sono consapevole, caro signor Copperfield,” proseguì la signora Micawber, “che ora sto per affidare il mio destino a degli estranei; so anche che i vari membri della mia famiglia, a cui il signor Micawber ha scritto in termini assai cortesi per comunicare questa notizia, non hanno prestato la minima attenzione alle sue lettere. Forse sono superstiziosa,” aggiunse, “ma mi sembra che il signor Micawber non riceverà mai risposta alla stragrande maggioranza delle lettere che scrive. Potrei interpretare il silenzio della mia famiglia come un segno del loro disaccordo con la decisione che ho preso; tuttavia, non permetterei mai che nulla mi distogliesse dal percorso del dovere, signor Copperfield, nemmeno se i miei genitori fossero ancora vivi.”
Espressi il mio parere che le cose stavano andando nella direzione giusta. “Può essere un sacrificio,” disse la signora Micawber, “immurare la propria identità in una città cattedrale; ma sicuramente, signor Copperfield, se per me è un sacrificio, per un uomo dalle capacità del signor Micawber deve essere ancora più grande.”
“Oh! Stai andando in una città con una cattedrale?” dissi io.
“Mr. Micawber, che ci aveva aiutato tutti, ”, rispose.
“Verso Canterbury. Infatti, mio caro Copperfield, ho preso accordi secondo cui mi sono impegnato e contratto con il nostro amico Heep ad aiutarlo e servirlo nel ruolo di, e a essere, il suo segretario personale.”
Guardavo fissamente il signor Micawber, che si divertiva molto alla mia sorpresa.
“Devo dirvi,” disse lui con un tono ufficiale, “che le abitudini commerciali e i saggi consigli della signora Micawber hanno contribuito in gran misura a questo risultato. La sfida, di cui la signora Micawber aveva parlato in precedenza, presentata sotto forma di un annuncio pubblicitario, è stata raccolta dal mio amico Heep, il che ha portato a una reciproca comprensione. Del mio amico Heep,” proseguì il signor Micawber, “uomo di notevole astuzia, desidero parlare con tutto il rispetto possibile. Il mio amico Heep non ha fissato un compenso eccessivamente alto, ma ha ottenuto grandi risultati nel superare le difficoltà finanziarie, in base al valore dei miei servizi; e sul valore di quei servizi ripongo tutta la mia fiducia. Le capacità e l’intelligenza che ho,” aggiunse il signor Micawber con un tono autoironico, “saranno dedicate al servizio del mio amico Heep. Ho già una certa conoscenza della legge – essendo stato imputato in cause civili – e mi dedicherò immediatamente allo studio dei commenti di uno dei più eminenti giuristi inglesi. Credo sia inutile aggiungere che mi riferisco al signor giudice Blackstone.”
Queste osservazioni, e infatti la maggior parte di quelle fatte quella sera, furono interrotte dal fatto che la signora Micawber si rese conto che il signor Micawber stava seduto sulle sue scarpe, o si teneva la testa con entrambe le braccia come se fosse molle, oppure calciava accidentalmente Traddles sotto il tavolo, o si muoveva a scatti con i piedi, o li allontanava da sé in modo palesemente assurdo per la >natura; inoltre, il signor Micawber reagiva a queste scoperte con un atteggiamento risentito. Io rimasi seduto tutto il tempo, stupito dalle azioni del signor Micawber e chiedendomi cosa significassero; fino a quando la signora Micawber non riprese il filo della conversazione, attirando di nuovo la mia attenzione.
“Quello di cui chiedo particolarmente attenzione al signor Micawber è,” disse la signora Micawber, “che, caro signor Copperfield, nel dedicarsi a questa branca secondaria del diritto, non si renda impossibile per lui raggiungere, in definitiva, la vetta della gerarchia. Sono convinta che il signor Micawber, impegnandosi in una professione così adatta alle sue doti e al suo eloquio, debba sicuramente distinguersi. Prendiamo ad esempio il signor Traddles,” proseguì la signora Micawber assumendo un tono solenne, “un giudice, o addirittura un cancelliere. Un individuo che intraprende una carriera del genere si colloca forse al di fuori delle possibilità di promozione che il signor Micawber ha ora a disposizione?”
‘My dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber—but glancing inquisitively at Traddles, too; ‘we have time enough before us, for the consideration of those questions.’
‘Micawber,’ she returned, ‘no! Your mistake in life is, that you do not look forward far enough. You are bound, in justice to your family, if not to yourself, to take in at a comprehensive glance the extremest point in the horizon to which your abilities may lead you.’
Mr. Micawber coughed, and drank his punch with an air of exceeding satisfaction—still glancing at Traddles, as if he desired to have his opinion.
‘Why, the plain state of the case, Mrs. Micawber,’ said Traddles, mildly breaking the truth to her. ‘I mean the real prosaic fact, you know—’
‘Just so,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘my dear Mr. Traddles, I wish to be as prosaic and literal as possible on a subject of so much importance.’
‘—Is,’ said Traddles, ‘that this branch of the law, even if Mr. Micawber were a regular solicitor—’
‘Exactly so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. (‘Wilkins, you are squinting, and will not be able to get your eyes back.’)
‘—Has nothing,’ pursued Traddles, ‘to do with that. Only a barrister is eligible for such preferments; and Mr. Micawber could not be a barrister, without being entered at an inn of court as a student, for five years.’
‘Do I follow you?’ said Mrs. Micawber, with her most affable air of business. ‘Do I understand, my dear Mr. Traddles, that, at the expiration of that period, Mr. Micawber would be eligible as a Judge or Chancellor?’
‘He would be ELIGIBLE,’ returned Traddles, with a strong emphasis on that word.
‘Thank you,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘That is quite sufficient. If such is the case, and Mr. Micawber forfeits no privilege by entering on these duties, my anxiety is set at rest. I speak,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘as a female, necessarily; but I have always been of opinion that Mr. Micawber possesses what I have heard my papa call, when I lived at home, the judicial mind; and I hope Mr. Micawber is now entering on a field where that mind will develop itself, and take a commanding station.’
I quite believe that Mr. Micawber saw himself, in his judicial mind’s eye, on the woolsack. He passed his hand complacently over his bald head, and said with ostentatious resignation:
‘My dear, we will not anticipate the decrees of fortune. If I am reserved to wear a wig, I am at least prepared, externally,’ in allusion to his baldness, ‘for that distinction. I do not,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘regret my hair, and I may have been deprived of it for a specific purpose. I cannot say. It is my intention, my dear Copperfield, to educate my son for the Church; I will not deny that I should be happy, on his account, to attain to eminence.’
‘For the Church?’ said I, still pondering, between whiles, on Uriah Heep.
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘He has a remarkable head-voice, and will commence as a chorister. Our residence at Canterbury, and our local connexion, will, no doubt, enable him to take advantage of any vacancy that may arise in the Cathedral corps.’
On looking at Master Micawber again, I saw that he had a certain expression of face, as if his voice were behind his eyebrows; where it presently appeared to be, on his singing us (as an alternative between that and bed) ‘The Wood-Pecker tapping’. After many compliments on this performance, we fell into some general conversation; and as I was too full of my desperate intentions to keep my altered circumstances to myself, I made them known to Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. I cannot express how extremely delighted they both were, by the idea of my aunt’s being in difficulties; and how comfortable and friendly it made them.
When we were nearly come to the last round of the punch, I addressed myself to Traddles, and reminded him that we must not separate, without wishing our friends health, happiness, and success in their new career. I begged Mr. Micawber to fill us bumpers, and proposed the toast in due form: shaking hands with him across the table, and kissing Mrs. Micawber, to commemorate that eventful occasion. Traddles imitated me in the first particular, but did not consider himself a sufficiently old friend to venture on the second.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, rising with one of his thumbs in each of his waistcoat pockets, ‘the companion of my youth: if I may be allowed the expression—and my esteemed friend Traddles: if I may be permitted to call him so—will allow me, on the part of Mrs. Micawber, myself, and our offspring, to thank them in the warmest and most uncompromising terms for their good wishes. It may be expected that on the eve of a migration which will consign us to a perfectly new existence,’ Mr. Micawber spoke as if they were going five hundred thousand miles, ‘I should offer a few valedictory remarks to two such friends as I see before me. But all that I have to say in this way, I have said. Whatever station in society I may attain, through the medium of the learned profession of which I am about to become an unworthy member, I shall endeavour not to disgrace, and Mrs. Micawber will be safe to adorn. Under the temporary pressure of pecuniary liabilities, contracted with a view to their immediate liquidation, but remaining unliquidated through a combination of circumstances, I have been under the necessity of assuming a garb from which my natural instincts recoil—I allude to spectacles—and possessing myself of a cognomen, to which I can establish no legitimate pretensions. All I have to say on that score is, that the cloud has passed from the dreary scene, and the God of Day is once more high upon the mountain tops. On Monday next, on the arrival of the four o’clock afternoon coach at Canterbury, my foot will be on my native heath—my name, Micawber!’
Mr. Micawber resumed his seat on the close of these remarks, and drank two glasses of punch in grave succession. He then said with much solemnity:
“Mia cara,” osservò il signor Micawber – ma guardando anche Traddles con aria indagatrice; “abbiamo ancora abbastanza tempo davanti a noi per riflettere su quelle questioni.”
“Micawber,” rispose lei, “no! Il tuo errore nella vita è che non guardi abbastanza lontano nel futuro. Se non per te stesso, almeno per la tua famiglia, sei obbligato a considerare in modo completo quale possa essere il punto più estremo verso cui le tue capacità possano portarti.”
Il signor Micawber tossì e bevve il suo punch con un’aria di estrema soddisfazione, continuando a lanciare occhiate a Traddles, come se desiderasse conoscere il suo parere.
“Beh, la semplice verità della situazione, signora Micawber,” disse Traddles, rivelandole dolcemente la verità. “Voglio dire, il fatto concreto e banale, capisce, ”
“Proprio così,” disse la signora Micawber, “caro signor Traddles, desidero essere il più prosaica e letterale possibile su un argomento di tale importanza.”
“–È così,” disse Traddles, “che questa branca del diritto, anche se il signor Micawber fosse un avvocato regolare, ”
“Esattamente,” rispose la signora Micawber. (“Wilkins, stai strizzando gli occhi e non riuscirai più a riaprirli normalmente.”)
“–Non ha nulla a che fare con quella questione,” continuò Traddles. “Solo un avvocato può essere idoneo a ricevere tali preferenze; e il signor Micawber non potrebbe diventare avvocato senza iscriversi per cinque anni come studente in uno studio legale.”
“Devo seguirvi?” disse la signora Micawber con il suo tono più affabile e professionale. “Ho capito bene, caro signor Traddles, che al termine di quel periodo il signor Micawber sarà idoneo a ricoprire la carica di giudice o cancelliere?”
“Sarebbe idoneo,” rispose Traddles, ponendo particolare enfasi su quella parola.
“Grazie,” disse la signora Micawber. “È più che sufficiente. Se le cose stanno così, e il signor Micawber non perde alcun privilegio assumendosi queste responsabilità, allora la mia ansia si placa. Parlo,” aggiunse, “in qualità di donna, naturalmente; ma ho sempre ritenuto che il signor Micawber possedesse quella che mio padre definiva, quando vivevo a casa, una mente giudiziosa; e spero che ora il signor Micawber entri in un ambito in cui tale capacità possa svilupparsi appieno e raggiungere posizioni di rilievo.”
Credo davvero che il signor Micawber si vedesse, con gli occhi della sua mente giudiziaria, seduto sul cuscino di peli. Si passò compiaciuto la mano sulla testa calva e disse con un’ostentata resignazione:
“Mia cara, non dobbiamo anticipare i decreti del destino. Se è destinato a portare una parrucca, almeno sono preparato, esteriormente”, disse, alludendo alla propria calvizie, “per questa eventualità. Non mi lamento della mia perdita di capelli; forse me li hanno tolti per un motivo specifico. Non posso dirlo con certezza. La mia intenzione, mia cara Copperfield, è educare mio figlio per la Chiesa; non nego che sarei felice se, grazie a lui, potessi raggiungere l’eccellenza.”
“Per la Chiesa?”, dissi, continuando intanto a riflettere su Uriah Heep.
“Sì,” disse il signor Micawber. “Ha una voce davvero notevole e inizierà come cantore del coro. La nostra residenza a Canterbury, nonché le nostre connessioni locali, gli permetteranno sicuramente di approfittare di eventuali opportunità che possano sorgere all’interno del coro della Cattedrale.”
Rivedendo il signor Micawber, notai che aveva un’espressione particolare sul viso, come se la sua voce provenisse dalle sopracciglia; infatti, mentre ci cantava (“The Wood-Pecker tapping” come alternativa al sonno), sembrava proprio che la sua voce nascesse da lì. Dopo molti complimenti per questa esibizione, iniziammo a chiacchierare di varie cose; e poiché ero troppo preso dalle mie disperate intenzioni per tenere per me le mie difficoltà, ne parlai al signor e alla signora Micawber. Non riesco a descrivere quanto fossero estremamente felici all’idea che mia zia si trovasse in difficoltà. E quanto questo li rendesse più rilassati e cordiali nei miei confronti.
Quando eravamo quasi giunti all’ultimo giro di brindisi, mi rivolsi a Traddles e gli ricordai che non dovevamo separarci senza augurare ai nostri amici salute, felicità e successo nella loro nuova carriera. Pregai il signor Micawber di riempirci i bicchieri e proposi di brindare in due modi: stringendogli la mano attraverso il tavolo e baciando la signora Micawber, per commemorare quell’importante occasione. Traddles mi imitò nel primo atto, ma non si considerò un amico abbastanza vecchio da osare compiere anche il secondo.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” disse il signor Micawber, alzandosi con entrambi i pollici infilati nelle tasche del gilet, “l’amico della mia giovinezza, se mi è permesso esprimermi così, e il mio stimato amico Traddles: se posso chiamarlo così, permettetemi di ringraziarli, a nome della signora Micawber, di me stesso e dei nostri figli, con le più sincere e sentite parole per i loro buoni desideri. Si può immaginare che, alla vigilia di un viaggio che ci porterà in un ambiente completamente nuovo,” proseguì il signor Micawber, come se stessero partendo per cinquecentomila miglia, “dovrei rivolgere alcune parole di addio a due amici così preziosi. Ma tutto ciò che ho da dire al riguardo l’ho già detto. Qualunque posizione sociale io raggiunga, attraverso la professione accademica della quale sto per diventare un membro indegno, farò del mio meglio per non disonorarla, e la signora Micawber sarà sempre al sicuro. A causa di pressioni finanziarie temporanee, sorte nel tentativo di liquidare immediatamente dei debiti, che tuttavia non sono stati saldati a causa di circostanze sfortunate, ho dovuto indossare abiti che i miei istinti naturali mi ripugnano, intendo parlare degli occhiali, e assumere un nome per il quale non posso vantare alcun legittimo diritto. Tutto ciò che ho da dire al riguardo è che questa nuvola oscura si è dissipata, e il Dio del Sole splende di nuovo sulle cime delle montagne. Lunedì prossimo, all’arrivo della diligenza alle quattro del pomeriggio a Canterbury, sarò di nuovo sulla mia terra natale, il mio nome sarà Micawber!”
Al termine di queste osservazioni, il signor Micawber tornò a sedersi e bevve due bicchieri di punch uno dopo l’altro con grande solennità. Poi disse:
‘One thing more I have to do, before this separation is complete, and that is to perform an act of justice. My friend Mr. Thomas Traddles has, on two several occasions, “put his name”, if I may use a common expression, to bills of exchange for my accommodation. On the first occasion Mr. Thomas Traddles was left—let me say, in short, in the lurch. The fulfilment of the second has not yet arrived. The amount of the first obligation,’ here Mr. Micawber carefully referred to papers, ‘was, I believe, twenty-three, four, nine and a half, of the second, according to my entry of that transaction, eighteen, six, two. These sums, united, make a total, if my calculation is correct, amounting to forty-one, ten, eleven and a half. My friend Copperfield will perhaps do me the favour to check that total?’
I did so and found it correct.
‘To leave this metropolis,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘and my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, without acquitting myself of the pecuniary part of this obligation, would weigh upon my mind to an insupportable extent. I have, therefore, prepared for my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles, and I now hold in my hand, a document, which accomplishes the desired object. I beg to hand to my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles my I.O.U. for forty-one, ten, eleven and a half, and I am happy to recover my moral dignity, and to know that I can once more walk erect before my fellow man!’
With this introduction (which greatly affected him), Mr. Micawber placed his I.O.U. in the hands of Traddles, and said he wished him well in every relation of life. I am persuaded, not only that this was quite the same to Mr. Micawber as paying the money, but that Traddles himself hardly knew the difference until he had had time to think about it. Mr. Micawber walked so erect before his fellow man, on the strength of this virtuous action, that his chest looked half as broad again when he lighted us downstairs. We parted with great heartiness on both sides; and when I had seen Traddles to his own door, and was going home alone, I thought, among the other odd and contradictory things I mused upon, that, slippery as Mr. Micawber was, I was probably indebted to some compassionate recollection he retained of me as his boy-lodger, for never having been asked by him for money. I certainly should not have had the moral courage to refuse it; and I have no doubt he knew that (to his credit be it written), quite as well as I did.
‘C’è ancora una cosa che devo fare, prima che questa separazione diventi definitiva, e cioè compiere un atto di giustizia. Mio amico il signor Thomas Traddles, in due diverse occasioni, ha “fatto da garante”, per così dire, per cambiali relative al mio soggiorno. La prima volta il signor Traddles si è trovato, diciamo, in difficoltà finanziarie. Il pagamento della seconda cambiale non è ancora avvenuto. L’importo della prima obbligazione,’ qui il signor Micawber consultò attentamente i documenti, ‘era, credo, di ventitré, quattro, nove e mezzo. Quello della seconda, secondo le mie registrazioni, diciotto, sei, due. Sommando questi importi, il totale, se i miei calcoli sono corretti, ammonta a quarantuno, dieci, undici e mezzo. Forse il mio amico Copperfield potrà gentilmente verificare questo totale per me?’
L’ho fatto e ho trovato che fosse corretto.
“Lasciare questa metropoli,” disse il signor Micawber, “e il mio amico il signor Thomas Traddles, senza onorare finanziariamente questo debito, mi peserebbe sul cuore in modo insopportabile. Pertanto, ho preparato per il mio amico il signor Thomas Traddles un documento che permette di adempiere a tale impegno. Vorrei ora consegnargli la mia cambiale da quarantuno, dieci, undici e mezzo sterline, e sono felice di poter riacquistare la mia dignità morale, di sapere finalmente di poter camminare dritto tra gli uomini!”
Con questa introduzione (che lo influenzò profondamente), il signor Micawber consegnò la sua cambiale a Traddles, augurandogli ogni bene in tutte le circostanze della vita. Sono convinto che per il signor Micawber questo fosse esattamente lo stesso che pagare i soldi in contanti; anzi, anche Traddles stesso non si rese conto della differenza fino a quando non ebbe avuto il tempo di rifletterci su. Il signor Micawber camminava con tale dignità, grazie a questo atto “virtuoso”, che il suo petto sembrava addirittura più largo quando ci accompagnò al piano di sotto. Ci separammo con grande cordialità da entrambe le parti; e quando vidi Traddles arrivare alla sua porta e me ne andai da solo verso casa, pensai, tra le altre cose strane e contraddittorie a cui riflettevo, che, nonostante la natura insidiosa del signor Micawber, probabilmente gli dovevo qualcosa, forse per il ricordo compassionevole che aveva di me come suo inquilino, poiché mai mi chiese dei soldi. Di certo io non avrei avuto il coraggio morale di rifiutarli; e non ho alcun dubbio che lui lo sapesse, proprio come lo sapevo io (a suo onore sia detto).
CHAPTER 37. A LITTLE COLD WATER
My new life had lasted for more than a week, and I was stronger than ever in those tremendous practical resolutions that I felt the crisis required. I continued to walk extremely fast, and to have a general idea that I was getting on. I made it a rule to take as much out of myself as I possibly could, in my way of doing everything to which I applied my energies. I made a perfect victim of myself. I even entertained some idea of putting myself on a vegetable diet, vaguely conceiving that, in becoming a graminivorous animal, I should sacrifice to Dora.
As yet, little Dora was quite unconscious of my desperate firmness, otherwise than as my letters darkly shadowed it forth. But another Saturday came, and on that Saturday evening she was to be at Miss Mills’s; and when Mr. Mills had gone to his whist-club (telegraphed to me in the street, by a bird-cage in the drawing-room middle window), I was to go there to tea.
By this time, we were quite settled down in Buckingham Street, where Mr. Dick continued his copying in a state of absolute felicity. My aunt had obtained a signal victory over Mrs. Crupp, by paying her off, throwing the first pitcher she planted on the stairs out of window, and protecting in person, up and down the staircase, a supernumerary whom she engaged from the outer world. These vigorous measures struck such terror to the breast of Mrs. Crupp, that she subsided into her own kitchen, under the impression that my aunt was mad. My aunt being supremely indifferent to Mrs. Crupp’s opinion and everybody else’s, and rather favouring than discouraging the idea, Mrs. Crupp, of late the bold, became within a few days so faint-hearted, that rather than encounter my aunt upon the staircase, she would endeavour to hide her portly form behind doors—leaving visible, however, a wide margin of flannel petticoat—or would shrink into dark corners. This gave my aunt such unspeakable satisfaction, that I believe she took a delight in prowling up and down, with her bonnet insanely perched on the top of her head, at times when Mrs. Crupp was likely to be in the way.
My aunt, being uncommonly neat and ingenious, made so many little improvements in our domestic arrangements, that I seemed to be richer instead of poorer. Among the rest, she converted the pantry into a dressing-room for me; and purchased and embellished a bedstead for my occupation, which looked as like a bookcase in the daytime as a bedstead could. I was the object of her constant solicitude; and my poor mother herself could not have loved me better, or studied more how to make me happy.
Peggotty had considered herself highly privileged in being allowed to participate in these labours; and, although she still retained something of her old sentiment of awe in reference to my aunt, had received so many marks of encouragement and confidence, that they were the best friends possible. But the time had now come (I am speaking of the Saturday when I was to take tea at Miss Mills’s) when it was necessary for her to return home, and enter on the discharge of the duties she had undertaken in behalf of Ham. ‘So good-bye, Barkis,’ said my aunt, ‘and take care of yourself! I am sure I never thought I could be sorry to lose you!’
I took Peggotty to the coach office and saw her off. She cried at parting, and confided her brother to my friendship as Ham had done. We had heard nothing of him since he went away, that sunny afternoon.
‘And now, my own dear Davy,’ said Peggotty, ‘if, while you’re a prentice, you should want any money to spend; or if, when you’re out of your time, my dear, you should want any to set you up (and you must do one or other, or both, my darling); who has such a good right to ask leave to lend it you, as my sweet girl’s own old stupid me!’
I was not so savagely independent as to say anything in reply, but that if ever I borrowed money of anyone, I would borrow it of her. Next to accepting a large sum on the spot, I believe this gave Peggotty more comfort than anything I could have done.
‘And, my dear!’ whispered Peggotty, ‘tell the pretty little angel that I should so have liked to see her, only for a minute! And tell her that before she marries my boy, I’ll come and make your house so beautiful for you, if you’ll let me!’
I declared that nobody else should touch it; and this gave Peggotty such delight that she went away in good spirits.
I fatigued myself as much as I possibly could in the Commons all day, by a variety of devices, and at the appointed time in the evening repaired to Mr. Mills’s street. Mr. Mills, who was a terrible fellow to fall asleep after dinner, had not yet gone out, and there was no bird-cage in the middle window.
He kept me waiting so long, that I fervently hoped the Club would fine him for being late. At last he came out; and then I saw my own Dora hang up the bird-cage, and peep into the balcony to look for me, and run in again when she saw I was there, while Jip remained behind, to bark injuriously at an immense butcher’s dog in the street, who could have taken him like a pill.
Dora came to the drawing-room door to meet me; and Jip came scrambling out, tumbling over his own growls, under the impression that I was a Bandit; and we all three went in, as happy and loving as could be. I soon carried desolation into the bosom of our joys—not that I meant to do it, but that I was so full of the subject—by asking Dora, without the smallest preparation, if she could love a beggar?
My pretty, little, startled Dora! Her only association with the word was a yellow face and a nightcap, or a pair of crutches, or a wooden leg, or a dog with a decanter-stand in his mouth, or something of that kind; and she stared at me with the most delightful wonder.
‘How can you ask me anything so foolish?’ pouted Dora. ‘Love a beggar!’
‘Dora, my own dearest!’ said I. ‘I am a beggar!’
CAPITOLO 37. UN PO’ DI acqua FREDDA
La mia nuova vita era già durata più di una settimana, e mi sentivo più forte che mai, grazie a quelle risoluzioni pratiche e decise che ritenevo necessarie per affrontare la crisi. Continuavo a camminare molto velocemente, e avevo l’impressione di stare facendo progressi. Mi imposi di dare il massimo in tutto ciò che facevo, sforzandomi al limite delle mie possibilità. Diventai praticamente una “vittima” di me stesso. Pensai persino di adottare una dieta a base esclusivamente di verdure, convinto che così facendo avrei potuto “sacrificarmi” per Dora.
Finora, la piccola Dora non aveva la minima idea della mia determinazione disperata, se non per via delle lettere che ne facevano vagamente intuire l’esistenza. Ma arrivò un altro sabato, e quella sera lei doveva andare da Miss Mills; quando il signor Mills andò al suo club di whist (mi lo comunicò telegraficamente in strada, attraverso una gabbia per uccelli posizionata davanti alla finestra del soggiorno), anch’io avrei dovuto andarci a prendere il tè.
A quell’ora, eravamo ormai ben sistemati in Buckingham Street, dove il signor Dick continuava la sua attività di copiatura in uno stato di assoluta felicità. Mia zia aveva ottenuto una vittoria decisiva su Mrs. Crupp: le aveva pagato i suoi debiti, gettato fuori dalla finestra il primo vaso che lei aveva posizionato sulle scale e, personalmente, vegliava giorno e notte su una domestica assunta dall’esterno. Queste misure decise suscitarono un tale terrore in Mrs. Crupp che lei si ritirò nella sua cucina, convinta che mia zia fosse pazza. Mia zia, però, era del tutto indifferente all’opinione di Mrs. Crupp e di chiunque altro; anzi, incoraggiava piuttosto che scoraggiare queste sue azioni. Così, Mrs. Crupp, un tempo così audace, divenne in pochi giorni così timida che preferiva nascondersi dietro le porte – lasciando comunque visibile una larga parte della sua sottoveste di flanella – o rintanarsi in angoli bui. Questo diede a mia zia un immenso piacere; credo che le facesse davvero divertimento aggirarsi su e giù per la casa, con il cappello posizionato in modo assurdo sulla testa, proprio nei momenti in cui Mrs. Crupp era probabile trovarsi sul suo cammino.
Mia zia, essendo insolitamente ordinata e ingegnosa, apportò così tante piccole migliorie alle nostre abitudini domestiche che sembravo diventare più ricco, anziché più povero. Tra le altre cose, trasformò la dispensa in un camerino da toeletta per me; inoltre acquistò e decorò un letto adatto alle mie esigenze, che di giorno sembrava proprio una libreria, e solo di notte assumeva l’aspetto di un vero letto. Ero l’oggetto delle sue continue attenzioni; e mia povera madre non avrebbe potuto amarmi di più, né si sarebbe impegnata di più per rendermi felice.
Peggotty si considerava davvero molto fortunata per essere stata invitata a partecipare a queste attività; e sebbene conservasse ancora un certo senso di timore nei confronti di mia zia, aveva ricevuto così tanti segni di incoraggiamento e fiducia da considerarla la sua migliore amica. Ma ora era arrivato il momento (parlo del sabato in cui avrei dovuto prendere il tè da Miss Mills) in cui doveva tornare a casa e assumersi le responsabilità che aveva assunto per conto di Ham. “Addio, Barkis,” disse mia zia, “stai attenta a te! Non avrei mai pensato che mi sarebbe dispiaciuto perderti, ”
Portai Peggotty all’ufficio delle diligenze e la salutai. Piangeva al momento dell’addio e affidò suo fratello alla mia amicizia, proprio come aveva fatto Ham. Da quando se n’era andato, in quel pomeriggio soleggiato, non avevamo più avuto notizie di lui.
“E ora, mio caro Davy,” disse Peggotty, “se, mentre sei ancora apprendista, avessi bisogno di qualche soldo da spendere; o se, una volta terminato il tuo periodo di apprendistato, avessi bisogno di denaro per starti su da solo (e sicuramente ne avrai bisogno, caro mio, forse entrambi i casi); chi ha più diritto di chiederti il permesso di prestarteli se non io, la tua vecchia e un po’ sciocca mamma?”
Non ero abbastanza testardo e indipendente da rispondere qualcosa, ma sapevo che, se mai avessi preso in prestito dei soldi da qualcuno, li avrei presi da lei. Oltre ad accettare una somma così grande sul momento stesso, credo che questo abbia dato a Peggotty più conforto di qualsiasi altra cosa potessi aver fatto.
“E poi, caro mio!” sussurrò Peggotty, “digli che avrei tanto voluto vederla, anche solo per un minuto! E digli che prima che sposi mio figlio, verrò a rendere la tua >casa così bella per te, se mi permetterai!”
Declarai che nessun altro dovesse toccarla; e questo rese Peggotty così felice che se ne andò di buon umore.
Mi stancai al massimo possibile durante tutto il giorno nel Commons, usando vari metodi; poi, all’ora stabilita la sera, mi diressi verso la strada del signor Mills. Il signor Mills, che era davvero un tipo terribile: si addormentava subito dopo cena, non era ancora uscito di casa, e nella finestra centrale non c’era alcuna gabbia per uccelli.
Mi ha fatto aspettare così a lungo che speravo ardentemente che il Club lo multasse per essere in ritardo. Finalmente è uscito; allora ho visto la mia stessa Dora appendere la gabbia degli uccelli, spiare dal balcone per cercarmi e rientrare di corsa quando si è accorta che ero lì, mentre Jip rimaneva indietro a ringhiare aggressivamente contro un enorme cane da macellaio in strada, quel cane avrebbe potuto ingoiarlo in un boccone.
Dora venne ad aprirmi la porta del salotto; Jip uscì di corsa, inciampando nei propri ringhi, convinto che io fossi un bandito; e noi tre entrammo insieme, felici e pieni d’affetto. Poco dopo, senza alcuna preparazione, chiesi a Dora se potesse amare un mendicante. Non volevo certo causare dolore, ma ero semplicemente troppo preso da quel pensiero.
La mia carina, piccola e sorpresa Dora! L’unica associazione che aveva con quella parola era un viso giallo, un berretto da notte, o una coppia di stampelle, o una gamba di legno, o un cane con un portacanne in bocca, qualcosa del genere; e mi fissava con uno stupore davvero incantevole.
“Come puoi chiedermi qualcosa di così stupido?” borbottò Dora. “L’amore, che assurdità!”
“Dora, la mia adorata!” dissi. “Sono un mendicante!”
‘How can you be such a silly thing,’ replied Dora, slapping my hand, ‘as to sit there, telling such stories? I’ll make Jip bite you!’
Her childish way was the most delicious way in the world to me, but it was necessary to be explicit, and I solemnly repeated:
‘Dora, my own life, I am your ruined David!’
‘I declare I’ll make Jip bite you!’ said Dora, shaking her curls, ‘if you are so ridiculous.’
But I looked so serious, that Dora left off shaking her curls, and laid her trembling little hand upon my shoulder, and first looked scared and anxious, then began to cry. That was dreadful. I fell upon my knees before the sofa, caressing her, and imploring her not to rend my heart; but, for some time, poor little Dora did nothing but exclaim Oh dear! Oh dear! And oh, she was so frightened! And where was Julia Mills! And oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! until I was almost beside myself.
At last, after an agony of supplication and protestation, I got Dora to look at me, with a horrified expression of face, which I gradually soothed until it was only loving, and her soft, pretty cheek was lying against mine. Then I told her, with my arms clasped round her, how I loved her, so dearly, and so dearly; how I felt it right to offer to release her from her engagement, because now I was poor; how I never could bear it, or recover it, if I lost her; how I had no fears of poverty, if she had none, my arm being nerved and my heart inspired by her; how I was already working with a courage such as none but lovers knew; how I had begun to be practical, and look into the future; how a crust well earned was sweeter far than a feast inherited; and much more to the same purpose, which I delivered in a burst of passionate eloquence quite surprising to myself, though I had been thinking about it, day and night, ever since my aunt had astonished me.
‘Is your heart mine still, dear Dora?’ said I, rapturously, for I knew by her clinging to me that it was.
‘Oh, yes!’ cried Dora. ‘Oh, yes, it’s all yours. Oh, don’t be dreadful!’
I dreadful! To Dora!
‘Don’t talk about being poor, and working hard!’ said Dora, nestling closer to me. ‘Oh, don’t, don’t!’
‘My dearest love,’ said I, ‘the crust well-earned—’
‘Oh, yes; but I don’t want to hear any more about crusts!’ said Dora. ‘And Jip must have a mutton-chop every day at twelve, or he’ll die.’
I was charmed with her childish, winning way. I fondly explained to Dora that Jip should have his mutton-chop with his accustomed regularity. I drew a picture of our frugal home, made independent by my labour—sketching in the little house I had seen at Highgate, and my aunt in her room upstairs.
‘I am not dreadful now, Dora?’ said I, tenderly.
‘Oh, no, no!’ cried Dora. ‘But I hope your aunt will keep in her own room a good deal. And I hope she’s not a scolding old thing!’
If it were possible for me to love Dora more than ever, I am sure I did. But I felt she was a little impracticable. It damped my new-born ardour, to find that ardour so difficult of communication to her. I made another trial. When she was quite herself again, and was curling Jip’s ears, as he lay upon her lap, I became grave, and said:
‘My own! May I mention something?’
‘Oh, please don’t be practical!’ said Dora, coaxingly. ‘Because it frightens me so!’
‘Sweetheart!’ I returned; ‘there is nothing to alarm you in all this. I want you to think of it quite differently. I want to make it nerve you, and inspire you, Dora!’
‘Oh, but that’s so shocking!’ cried Dora.
‘My love, no. Perseverance and strength of character will enable us to bear much worse things.’ ‘But I haven’t got any strength at all,’ said Dora, shaking her curls. ‘Have I, Jip? Oh, do kiss Jip, and be agreeable!’
It was impossible to resist kissing Jip, when she held him up to me for that purpose, putting her own bright, rosy little mouth into kissing form, as she directed the operation, which she insisted should be performed symmetrically, on the centre of his nose. I did as she bade me—rewarding myself afterwards for my obedience—and she charmed me out of my graver character for I don’t know how long.
‘But, Dora, my beloved!’ said I, at last resuming it; ‘I was going to mention something.’
The judge of the Prerogative Court might have fallen in love with her, to see her fold her little hands and hold them up, begging and praying me not to be dreadful any more.
‘Indeed I am not going to be, my darling!’ I assured her. ‘But, Dora, my love, if you will sometimes think,—not despondingly, you know; far from that!—but if you will sometimes think—just to encourage yourself—that you are engaged to a poor man—’
‘Don’t, don’t! Pray don’t!’ cried Dora. ‘It’s so very dreadful!’
‘My soul, not at all!’ said I, cheerfully. ‘If you will sometimes think of that, and look about now and then at your papa’s housekeeping, and endeavour to acquire a little habit—of accounts, for instance—’
Poor little Dora received this suggestion with something that was half a sob and half a scream.
‘—It would be so useful to us afterwards,’ I went on. ‘And if you would promise me to read a little—a little Cookery Book that I would send you, it would be so excellent for both of us. For our path in life, my Dora,’ said I, warming with the subject, ‘is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them!’
I was going on at a great rate, with a clenched hand, and a most enthusiastic countenance; but it was quite unnecessary to proceed. I had said enough. I had done it again. Oh, she was so frightened! Oh, where was Julia Mills! Oh, take her to Julia Mills, and go away, please! So that, in short, I was quite distracted, and raved about the drawing-room.
“Come puoi essere così sciocca,” rispose Dora, dandomi una pacca sulla mano, “da sederti lì e raccontare storie del genere? Farò sì che Jip ti morda!”
Il suo modo infantile era, per me, il modo più delizioso al mondo. Ma era necessario essere chiari, quindi ripetei solennemente:
“Dora, la mia stessa vita, io sono il tuo distrutto Davide!”
“Declaro che farò sì che Jip ti morda!” disse Dora, scuotendo i suoi riccioli, “se continui a comportarti in modo così ridicolo.”
Ma avevo un aspetto così serio che Dora smise di muovere i suoi riccioli e posò la sua piccola mano tremante sulla mia spalla; prima sembrava spaventata e ansiosa, poi iniziò a piangere. Fu terribile. Mi gettai in ginocchio davanti al divano, accarezzandola e supplicandola di non spezzarmi il cuore; ma per un po’, povera piccola Dora, non fece altro che esclamare “Oh mio Dio! Oh mio Dio, ”. E oh, quanto era spaventata. E dove era finita Julia Mills? Per favore, portatela da Julia Mills e andatevene. Fino a quando quasi non persi la ragione.
Finalmente, dopo un’agonia di suppliche e proteste, riuscii a far sì che Dora mi guardasse con un’espressione di terrore sul viso; gradualmente la rassicurai fino a quando quel suo sguardo non divenne pieno d’amore, e il suo morbido, bel viso si appoggiò al mio. Allora le dissi, tenendola stretta tra le braccia, quanto la amassi profondamente; come ritenevo giusto offrirle di sciogliere il loro fidanzamento, visto che ora ero povero; come non avrei mai potuto sopportare o superare la perdita di lei; come non temevo affatto la povertà, se anche lei non ne aveva paura, poiché il suo amore mi dava forza e coraggio; come stavo già lavorando con un coraggio che solo gli amanti possono conoscere; come avevo iniziato a essere pratico e a pensare al futuro; come un pane ben guadagnato fosse molto più prezioso di una festa ereditata. E molto altro ancora, tutto espresso con un impeto di passione e eloquenza che mi sorprese persino io stesso, anche se ci avevo riflettuto giorno e notte da quando mia zia mi aveva colpito profondamente.
“Il tuo cuore è ancora mio, cara Dora?”, dissi con passione, perché sapevo che lo era, dal modo in cui si aggrappava a me.
“Oh, sì!” esclamò Dora. “Oh, sì, è tutto tuo. Oh, per favore, non essere terribile!”
Terribile. Per Dora!
“Non parlare di povertà e di duro lavoro!” disse Dora, avvicinandosi di più a me. “Oh, per favore, no, ”
“Mia più cara amata”, dissi, “quella fetta di pane, guadagnata onestamente, ”
“Ah sì, ma non voglio sentire più parlare di croste!” disse Dora.
“E Jip deve assolutamente mangiare una cotoletta d’agnello tutte le volte alle dodici, altrimenti morirà.”
Fui incantato dal suo modo infantile e affascinante di comportarsi. Spiegai dolcemente a Dora che Jip doveva continuare ad avere il suo pasto regolare come al solito. Disegnai un ritratto della nostra umile casa, resa autonoma grazie al mio lavoro: raffigurai la piccola )casa che avevo visto a Highgate e mia zia nella sua stanza al piano di sopra.
“Ora non sono più terribile, vero, Dora?” dissi dolcemente.
“Oh, no, no!” gridò Dora. “Ma spero che tua zia stia nella sua stanza il più possibile. E spero anche che non sia una vecchia donna severa e punitiva!”
Se fosse possibile per me amare Dora più di quanto non abbia mai fatto prima, sono sicuro che lo farei.
Ma sentivo che lei fosse un po’ impraticabile. Questo attenuava il mio entusiasmo appena nato, visto che mi risultava così difficile condividere quel sentimento con lei. Provai ancora una volta: quando fu di nuovo se stessa e iniziò ad accarezzare le orecchie di Jip, mentre questo giaceva sulle sue ginocchia, diventai serio e dissi:
“Mio! Posso dire qualcosa?”
“Oh, per favore, non essere così pragmatica!” disse Dora con tono supplichevole. “Perché mi spaventa davvero molto, ”
“Tesoro mio!” tornai a dirle, “non c’è nulla di cui preoccuparsi in tutto questo. Voglio che tu consideri la situazione in modo completamente diverso. Voglio che ti emozioni e che ti ispiri, Dora!”
“Oh, ma è davvero scioccante!” esclamò Dora.
“Mio amore, no. La perseveranza e la forza di carattere ci permetteranno di sopportare cose molto peggiori.” “Ma io non ho affatto alcuna forza,” disse Dora, scuotendo i suoi riccioli. “Ce l’ho io, Jip? Oh, bacia Jip, per favore, ”
Era impossibile resistere al desiderio di baciare Jip quando lei me lo porse per farlo, posizionando la sua piccola bocca rossa e luminosa nel punto giusto, guidandomi nell’operazione che insisteva dovesse essere eseguita in modo simmetrico, proprio al centro del suo naso. Feci come mi disse, e dopo mi recompensai per la mia obbedienza. Lei riuscì a farmi dimenticare il mio solito carattere serio, per chissà quanto tempo.
“Ma, Dora, mia adorata!”, dissi finalmente riprendendo il discorso; “volevo menzionare qualcosa, ”
Il giudice della Corte delle Prerogative avrebbe potuto innamorarsi di lei, vedendola incrociare le manine e alzarle in preghiera, supplicandomi di non essere più terribile.
“Davvero non lo farò, mia cara!” le assicurai. “Ma, Dora, mio amore, se ogni tanto pensassi, non in modo disperato, capisci, anzi no, ma se ogni tanto pensassi, solo per incoraggiarti, che sei fidanzata con un uomo povero, ”
“Non fatelo, per favore! Non fatelo!” gridò Dora. “È davvero terribile!”
“La mia ‘anima, assolutamente no!” dissi allegramente. “Se ogni tanto ci penserai e controllerai un po’ come tuo padre gestisce le faccende domestiche, e cercherai di acquisire qualche buona abitudine, ad esempio, quella di tenere i conti, ”
Povera piccola Dora accolse questa proposta con qualcosa che sembrava metà singhiozzo e metà grido.
“Sarebbe davvero molto utile per noi in seguito,” proseguii. “E se mi prometterete di leggere, anche solo un po’, quel piccolo libro di cucina che vi manderò, sarebbe fantastico per entrambi. Perché il cammino della nostra vita, mia Dora,” dissi, animandomi sempre di più all’argomento, “è attualmente pieno di ostacoli e spigoli; spetta a noi renderlo più facile da percorrere. Dobbiamo lottare per andare avanti. Dobbiamo essere coraggiosi. Ci saranno difficoltà da superare, e dobbiamo affrontarle e superarle!”
Procedevo a grande velocità, con la mano stretta e un’espressione molto entusiasta; ma non era affatto necessario continuare. Avevo detto abbastanza. L’avevo fatto di nuovo. Oh, lei era così spaventata! Oh, dove si trovava Julia Mills? Oh, portatela da Julia Mills e andatevene, per favore! Insomma, ero completamente distratto e continuavo a parlare senza sosta della sala da pranzo.
I thought I had killed her, this time. I sprinkled water on her face. I went down on my knees. I plucked at my hair. I denounced myself as a remorseless brute and a ruthless beast. I implored her forgiveness. I besought her to look up. I ravaged Miss Mills’s work-box for a smelling-bottle, and in my agony of mind applied an ivory needle-case instead, and dropped all the needles over Dora. I shook my fists at Jip, who was as frantic as myself. I did every wild extravagance that could be done, and was a long way beyond the end of my wits when Miss Mills came into the room.
‘Who has done this?’ exclaimed Miss Mills, succouring her friend.
I replied, ‘I, Miss Mills! I have done it! Behold the destroyer!’—or words to that effect—and hid my face from the light, in the sofa cushion.
At first Miss Mills thought it was a quarrel, and that we were verging on the Desert of Sahara; but she soon found out how matters stood, for my dear affectionate little Dora, embracing her, began exclaiming that I was ‘a poor labourer’; and then cried for me, and embraced me, and asked me would I let her give me all her money to keep, and then fell on Miss Mills’s neck, sobbing as if her tender heart were broken.
Miss Mills must have been born to be a blessing to us. She ascertained from me in a few words what it was all about, comforted Dora, and gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer—from my manner of stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was a navigator, and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day with a wheelbarrow—and so brought us together in peace. When we were quite composed, and Dora had gone up-stairs to put some rose-water to her eyes, Miss Mills rang for tea. In the ensuing interval, I told Miss Mills that she was evermore my friend, and that my heart must cease to vibrate ere I could forget her sympathy.
I then expounded to Miss Mills what I had endeavoured, so very unsuccessfully, to expound to Dora. Miss Mills replied, on general principles, that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour, and that where love was, all was.
I said to Miss Mills that this was very true, and who should know it better than I, who loved Dora with a love that never mortal had experienced yet? But on Miss Mills observing, with despondency, that it were well indeed for some hearts if this were so, I explained that I begged leave to restrict the observation to mortals of the masculine gender.
I then put it to Miss Mills, to say whether she considered that there was or was not any practical merit in the suggestion I had been anxious to make, concerning the accounts, the housekeeping, and the Cookery Book?
Miss Mills, after some consideration, thus replied:
‘Mr. Copperfield, I will be plain with you. Mental suffering and trial supply, in some natures, the place of years, and I will be as plain with you as if I were a Lady Abbess. No. The suggestion is not appropriate to our Dora. Our dearest Dora is a favourite child of nature. She is a thing of light, and airiness, and joy. I am free to confess that if it could be done, it might be well, but—’ And Miss Mills shook her head.
I was encouraged by this closing admission on the part of Miss Mills to ask her, whether, for Dora’s sake, if she had any opportunity of luring her attention to such preparations for an earnest life, she would avail herself of it? Miss Mills replied in the affirmative so readily, that I further asked her if she would take charge of the Cookery Book; and, if she ever could insinuate it upon Dora’s acceptance, without frightening her, undertake to do me that crowning service. Miss Mills accepted this trust, too; but was not sanguine.
And Dora returned, looking such a lovely little creature, that I really doubted whether she ought to be troubled with anything so ordinary. And she loved me so much, and was so captivating (particularly when she made Jip stand on his hind legs for toast, and when she pretended to hold that nose of his against the hot teapot for punishment because he wouldn’t), that I felt like a sort of Monster who had got into a Fairy’s bower, when I thought of having frightened her, and made her cry.
After tea we had the guitar; and Dora sang those same dear old French songs about the impossibility of ever on any account leaving off dancing, La ra la, La ra la, until I felt a much greater Monster than before.
We had only one check to our pleasure, and that happened a little while before I took my leave, when, Miss Mills chancing to make some allusion to tomorrow morning, I unluckily let out that, being obliged to exert myself now, I got up at five o’clock. Whether Dora had any idea that I was a Private Watchman, I am unable to say; but it made a great impression on her, and she neither played nor sang any more.
It was still on her mind when I bade her adieu; and she said to me, in her pretty coaxing way—as if I were a doll, I used to think:
‘Now don’t get up at five o’clock, you naughty boy. It’s so nonsensical!’
‘My love,’ said I, ‘I have work to do.’
‘But don’t do it!’ returned Dora. ‘Why should you?’
It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face, otherwise than lightly and playfully, that we must work to live.
‘Oh! How ridiculous!’ cried Dora.
‘How shall we live without, Dora?’ said I.
‘How? Any how!’ said Dora.
She seemed to think she had quite settled the question, and gave me such a triumphant little kiss, direct from her innocent heart, that I would hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer, for a fortune.
Well! I loved her, and I went on loving her, most absorbingly, entirely, and completely. But going on, too, working pretty hard, and busily keeping red-hot all the irons I now had in the fire, I would sit sometimes of a night, opposite my aunt, thinking how I had frightened Dora that time, and how I could best make my way with a guitar-case through the forest of difficulty, until I used to fancy that my head was turning quite grey.
Pensavo di averla uccisa, questa volta. Le versai dell’acqua sul viso. Mi gettai in ginocchio, mi strappai i capelli, mi denunciai come un bruto senza cuore e una bestia spietata. La supplicai di perdonarmi, le chiesi di alzare lo sguardo verso di me. In preda alla disperazione, rovistai nella scatola da lavoro della signorina Mills in cerca di un flacone profumato; invece trovai una custodia per aghi d’avorio e ne versai tutti addosso a Dora. Piantai i pugni contro Jip, che era altrettanto folle di me. Feci ogni cosa possibile. Quando finalmente la signorina Mills entrò nella stanza, ero ormai al limite della mia ragione.
“Chi ha fatto questo?”, esclamò la signorina Mills, aiutando la sua amica.
Risposi: “Sono io, signorina Mills! L’ho fatto! Ecco il distruttore, ” o qualcosa del genere, e nascosi il viso dalla luce, riparandomi dietro il cuscino del divano.
All’inizio, la signorina Mills pensò che si trattasse di una lite e che stessimo per finire nel deserto del Sahara; ma presto capì come stavano le cose, perché la mia adorabile piccola Dora, abbracciandola, iniziò a esclamare che io ero “un povero lavoratore”; poi pianse per me, mi abbracciò di nuovo e mi chiese se le avrei permesso di darmi tutti i suoi soldi affinché li tenessi. Infine si gettò sul collo della signorina Mills, singhiozzando come se il suo tenero cuore fosse spezzato.
La signorina Mills doveva essere nata proprio per essere una benedizione per noi. In poche parole capì di cosa si trattasse, consolò Dora e gradualmente la convinse che non fossi un lavoratore. Dal modo in cui espresi le cose, credo che Dora abbia concluso che fossi un navigatore; passò tutto il giorno a bilanciarsi su una tavola mentre manovrava un carrello. E così ci riunì tutti in armonia. Quando ci fummo completamente calmati, e Dora andò di sopra per mettersi un po’ d’acqua di rose negli occhi, la signorina Mills chiamò per il tè. Nel corso di quella pausa, le dissi che da quel momento in poi sarebbe stata per sempre mia amica, e che il mio cuore non avrebbe mai potuto smettere di sentirle gratitudine.
Poi spiegai a Miss Mills ciò che avevo cercato, con molto scarso successo, di spiegare a Dora. Miss Mills rispose, basandosi su principi generali, che una casetta piena di felicità era meglio di un palazzo di freddo splendore, e che dove c’era amore, tutto era possibile.
Dissei a Miss Mills che questo era assolutamente vero; e chi potrebbe saperlo meglio di me, che amavo Dora con un amore che nessun essere umano aveva mai provato prima? Ma quando Miss Mills osservò, con delusione, che per alcuni cuori sarebbe davvero una fortuna se fosse così, spiegai che chiedevo il permesso di limitare questa affermazione esclusivamente ai maschi.
Poi l’ho mostrata a Miss Mills, per chiederle se riteneva che ci fosse o meno qualche valore pratico nella proposta che avevo voluto avanzare riguardo ai conti, alle faccende domestiche e al Libro di Cucina.
“Dopo averci pensato un po’, la signorina Mills rispose così:, ”
‘Signor Copperfield, sarò diretta con lei. Il dolore mentale e le prove difficili, in alcune persone, sostituiscono l’effetto degli anni. Sarò altrettanto schietta con lei come se fossi una badessa. No, questa proposta non è adatta a nostra Dora. La nostra adorata Dora è una bambina davvero unica. È piena di luce, leggerezza e gioia. Devo ammettere che, se fosse possibile, potrebbe essere la cosa migliore, ma, ’ E la signorina Mills scosse la testa.
Sono stato incoraggiato da questa ammissione finale da parte di Miss Mills, e così le ho chiesto se, per il bene di Dora, se avesse l’opportunità di attirare la sua attenzione su queste preparazioni per una vita seria, ne avrebbe approfittato. Miss Mills ha risposto affermativamente con tale prontezza che le ho chiesto anche se fosse disposta a occuparsi del libro di cucina; e se mai riuscisse a farlo accettare da Dora senza spaventarla, si impegnasse a compiere per me questo ultimo favore. Anche Miss Mills ha accettato questa fiducia, ma non era molto ottimista.
E Dora tornò, sembrando una così adorabile creaturina, che davvero dubitavo che dovesse essere turbata da qualcosa di così ordinario. Mi amava tantissimo, ed era così incantevole (soprattutto quando faceva mettere Jip in piedi sulle zampe posteriori per fargli prendere il pane tostato, o quando fingeva di premergli il naso contro la teiera bollente come punizione perché non voleva farlo), che mi sentivo quasi un qualche mostro entrato nel giardino incantato di una fata, quando pensavo di averla spaventata e fatta piangere.
Dopo il tè abbiamo suonato la chitarra; e Dora ha cantato quelle stesse vecchie canzoni francesi, quelle che parlano dell’impossibilità di smettere mai di ballare. La ra la, La ra la. Fino a quando non ho sentito dentro di me un “mostro” ancora più grande di prima.
Avevamo solo un controllo a nostro favore, e questo accadde poco prima che me ne andassi: quando la signorina Mills fece casualmente allusione alla mattina seguente, sfortunatamente rivelai che, essendo costretto ad impegnarmi in quel momento, mi alzavo alle cinque di ore. Non so se Dora avesse idea che fossi un guardiano notturno; ma la cosa le fece una grande impressione, e da allora non suonò più né cantò più.
Quel pensiero era ancora nella sua mente quando le dissi addio; e lei mi disse, con quel suo modo dolce e affettuoso, come se fossi una bambola, pensavo sempre.
“Ora non alzarti alle cinque in orario, piccolo monello. È assurdo!”
“Mia amata”, dissi, “devo svolgere del lavoro”.
“Ma non farlo!” rispose Dora. “Perché dovresti?”
Era impossibile dire a quel dolce, sorpreso volto, in modo diverso da quello leggero e giocoso, che dovevamo lavorare per vivere.
“Oh! Che assurdità!” esclamò Dora.
“Come faremo a vivere senza di essa, Dora?” dissi io.
“Come? Comunque sia!” disse Dora.
Sembra che pensasse di aver risolto completamente la questione, e mi diede un bacio così trionfale, proveniente direttamente dal suo innocente cuore, che non avrei mai voluto sminuire il suo orgoglio per quella risposta, nemmeno per una fortuna.
Beh! L’amavo, e continuai ad amarla con tutto il cuore, completamente e senza riserve. Ma nel frattempo, impegnato com’ero a mantenere “calde” tutte le “fiamme” delle mie attività, a volte, di notte, seduto di fronte a mia zia, riflettevo su come avessi spaventato Dora quella volta, e su come poter superare tutti gli ostacoli che mi si presentavano, anche con l’aiuto di una custodia per chitarra. A volte, mi sembrava persino che i miei capelli stessero iniziando a ingrigire.
CHAPTER 38. A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
I did not allow my resolution, with respect to the Parliamentary Debates, to cool. It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately, and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at, with a perseverance I may honestly admire. I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies’ legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; in short, it was almost heart-breaking.
It might have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora, who was the stay and anchor of my tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of difficulty, and I went on cutting them down, one after another, with such vigour, that in three or four months I was in a condition to make an experiment on one of our crack speakers in the Commons. Shall I ever forget how the crack speaker walked off from me before I began, and left my imbecile pencil staggering about the paper as if it were in a fit!
This would not do, it was quite clear. I was flying too high, and should never get on, so. I resorted to Traddles for advice; who suggested that he should dictate speeches to me, at a pace, and with occasional stoppages, adapted to my weakness. Very grateful for this friendly aid, I accepted the proposal; and night after night, almost every night, for a long time, we had a sort of Private Parliament in Buckingham Street, after I came home from the Doctor’s.
I should like to see such a Parliament anywhere else! My aunt and Mr. Dick represented the Government or the Opposition (as the case might be), and Traddles, with the assistance of Enfield’s Speakers, or a volume of parliamentary orations, thundered astonishing invectives against them. Standing by the table, with his finger in the page to keep the place, and his right arm flourishing above his head, Traddles, as Mr. Pitt, Mr. Fox, Mr. Sheridan, Mr. Burke, Lord Castlereagh, Viscount Sidmouth, or Mr. Canning, would work himself into the most violent heats, and deliver the most withering denunciations of the profligacy and corruption of my aunt and Mr. Dick; while I used to sit, at a little distance, with my notebook on my knee, fagging after him with all my might and main. The inconsistency and recklessness of Traddles were not to be exceeded by any real politician. He was for any description of policy, in the compass of a week; and nailed all sorts of colours to every denomination of mast. My aunt, looking very like an immovable Chancellor of the Exchequer, would occasionally throw in an interruption or two, as ‘Hear!’ or ‘No!’ or ‘Oh!’ when the text seemed to require it: which was always a signal to Mr. Dick (a perfect country gentleman) to follow lustily with the same cry. But Mr. Dick got taxed with such things in the course of his Parliamentary career, and was made responsible for such awful consequences, that he became uncomfortable in his mind sometimes. I believe he actually began to be afraid he really had been doing something, tending to the annihilation of the British constitution, and the ruin of the country.
Often and often we pursued these debates until the clock pointed to midnight, and the candles were burning down. The result of so much good practice was, that by and by I began to keep pace with Traddles pretty well, and should have been quite triumphant if I had had the least idea what my notes were about. But, as to reading them after I had got them, I might as well have copied the Chinese inscriptions of an immense collection of tea-chests, or the golden characters on all the great red and green bottles in the chemists’ shops!
There was nothing for it, but to turn back and begin all over again. It was very hard, but I turned back, though with a heavy heart, and began laboriously and methodically to plod over the same tedious ground at a snail’s pace; stopping to examine minutely every speck in the way, on all sides, and making the most desperate efforts to know these elusive characters by sight wherever I met them. I was always punctual at the office; at the Doctor’s too: and I really did work, as the common expression is, like a cart-horse. One day, when I went to the Commons as usual, I found Mr. Spenlow in the doorway looking extremely grave, and talking to himself. As he was in the habit of complaining of pains in his head—he had naturally a short throat, and I do seriously believe he over-starched himself—I was at first alarmed by the idea that he was not quite right in that direction; but he soon relieved my uneasiness.
Instead of returning my ‘Good morning’ with his usual affability, he looked at me in a distant, ceremonious manner, and coldly requested me to accompany him to a certain coffee-house, which, in those days, had a door opening into the Commons, just within the little archway in St. Paul’s Churchyard. I complied, in a very uncomfortable state, and with a warm shooting all over me, as if my apprehensions were breaking out into buds. When I allowed him to go on a little before, on account of the narrowness of the way, I observed that he carried his head with a lofty air that was particularly unpromising; and my mind misgave me that he had found out about my darling Dora.
CAPITOLO 38. LA SCISSIONE DELLA PARTENIA
Non ho permesso che la mia determinazione riguardo alle discussioni parlamentari si affievolisse. È stata una di quelle questioni su cui ho immediatamente iniziato a lavorare con impegno, e una di quelle che ho continuato a seguire con costanza e perseveranza, qualcosa che posso onestamente ammirare. Ho acquistato un manuale approvato sull’arte e il mistero della stenografia (che mi è costato dieci scellini e sei pence); e mi sono immerso in un mare di complicazioni che, in poche settimane, hanno portato me nel regno della confusione totale. I cambiamenti che avvenivano nei segni utilizzati per la stenografia – un punto in una certa posizione significava una cosa, in un’altra posizione qualcos’altro di completamente diverso; le strane variazioni che i cerchi potevano assumere; le conseguenze inspiegabili derivanti da segni apparentemente insignificanti. Tutto ciò non solo disturbava le mie ore di veglia, ma appariva anche nei miei sogni. Dopo aver cercato disperatamente di superare queste difficoltà e aver imparato l’alfabeto stenografico – che di per sé rappresentava un vero e proprio “tempio egizio” di complessità – sono stati introdotti nuovi elementi ancora più confusi, chiamati “caratteri arbitrari”. Erano i caratteri più dispotici che avessi mai incontrato: alcuni insistevano, ad esempio, nel far sì che una forma simile all’inizio di una ragnatela significasse “aspettativa”, mentre un’altra forma rappresentasse invece “svantaggio”. Una volta che avevo imparato a ricordare questi “caratteri arbitrari”, mi sono reso conto che avevano spinto via tutto il resto dalle mie riflessioni. Così, iniziando da capo, finivo per dimenticarmeli di nuovo; mentre cercavo di ricordarli, perdevo di vista gli altri elementi del sistema stenografico. In breve, era davvero una situazione disperata.
Avrebbe potuto essere davvero straziante, ma per Dora, che era l’ancora e il sostegno della mia barca travolta dalla tempesta. Ogni ostacolo rappresentava un grosso ramo di quercia nel bosco delle difficoltà; io continuavo a tagliarli via uno dopo l’altro, con tale vigore che in tre o quattro mesi fui finalmente in grado di provare il mio esperimento su uno dei nostri altoparlanti migliori. Come potrei mai dimenticare come quel fantastico altoparlante si allontanò da me prima ancora che iniziassi, e lasciò il mio stupido pennarello a barcollare sulla carta, come se fosse impazzito!
Questo non andava bene, era piuttosto evidente. Volavo troppo in alto e non avrei mai dovuto provarci. Così mi rivolsi a Traddles per chiedere consiglio; lui suggerì che potesse dictarmi i discorsi, ad un ritmo adeguato alle mie capacità e con pause occasionali. Molto grato per questo aiuto amichevole, accettai la proposta; e notte dopo notte, quasi ogni sera, per molto tempo, tenemmo una sorta di “riunione privata” in Buckingham Street, dopo che tornavo a casa dal dottore.
Vorrei davvero vedere un Parlamento del genere da qualche altra parte! Mia zia e il signor Dick rappresentavano il Governo o l’Opposizione (a seconda delle circostanze), mentre Traddles, con l’aiuto dei discorsi parlamentari o di un intero volume di orazioni, scagliava contro di loro invettive terribili. In piedi accanto al tavolo, con il dito che indicava la pagina giusta e il braccio destro che si muoveva freneticamente sopra la testa, Traddles, come se fosse il signor Pitt, il signor Fox, il signor Sheridan, il signor Burke, Lord Castlereagh, Visconte Sidmouth o il signor Canning, si scaldava fino al punto di lanciare le denunce più feroci contro la dissolutezza e la corruzione di mia zia e del signor Dick; mentre io sedevo a una certa distanza, con il mio taccuino sulle ginocchia, cercando di tenere il passo con lui con tutte le mie forze. L’incoerenza e la leggerezza di Traddles non potevano essere eguagliate da nessun vero politico: in una settimana cambiava completamente opinione su qualsiasi questione politica, attribuendo ogni tipo di caratteristica a persone o gruppi diversi. Mia zia, che sembrava davvero una risoluta Cancelliera dello Scacchiere, di tanto in tanto interrompeva con esclamazioni come “Ascolti!”, “No!” o “Oh!”, quando il testo lo richiedeva; e questo era sempre un segnale per il signor Dick (un vero gentiluomo di campagna) di ripetere allo stesso modo. Ma durante la sua carriera parlamentare, al signor Dick venivano attribuite cose del genere, e veniva ritenuto responsabile di conseguenze terribili; a volte questo lo metteva davvero a disagio. Credo che abbia iniziato persino a temere di aver realmente commesso qualcosa che potesse portare all’annientamento della costituzione britannica e alla rovina del paese.
Spesso e volentieri proseguivamo queste discussioni fino a quando l’orologio non indicava mezzanotte, e le candele erano ormai quasi consumate. Il risultato di tanta pratica costante fu che, col tempo, iniziai ad andare abbastanza d’accordo con Traddles. Avrei potuto anche considerarmi vincitore, se solo avessi avuto la minima idea di cosa trattassero le mie note! Ma quanto a leggerle davvero dopo averle scritte, beh, sarebbe stato come cercare di decifrare le iscrizioni cinesi presenti su un’enorme collezione di cassetti da tè, o i caratteri dorati incisi sulle grandi bottiglie rosse e verdi presenti nelle farmacie!
Non c’era altra scelta se non tornare indietro e ricominciare da capo. Era molto difficile, ma lo feci comunque, anche se con il cuore pesante, e iniziai a lavorare con diligenza e metodo, ripercorrendo sempre gli stessi passaggi noiosi, lentamente come un lumache; mi fermavo ad esaminare minuziosamente ogni dettaglio che si presentava sul mio cammino, da tutte le parti, e facevo di tutto per riconoscere quei caratteri elusivi non appena li incontravo. Ero sempre puntuale in ufficio, così come dal dottore; lavoravo davvero sodo, come si suol dire. Un giorno, quando andai come al solito alla Camera dei Comuni, trovai il signor Spenlow sulla soglia, con un’aria estremamente preoccupata e che parlava da solo. Poiché aveva l’abitudine di lamentarsi di dolori alla testa – naturalmente aveva la gola corta, e credo davvero che si imbottisse troppo di amido nei vestiti – all’inizio temetti che non stesse bene; ma presto mi rassicurò.
Invece di rispondere al mio “Buongiorno” con la sua solita affabilità, mi guardò in modo distaccato e formale, e mi chiese freddamente di accompagnarlo in una certa caffetteria che, a quei tempi, aveva un’uscita che dava sul Commons, proprio all’interno del piccolo arco nel cimitero della Chiesa di San Paolo. Obbedii, in uno stato di grande disagio, e con un calore improvviso che mi invase tutto il corpo, come se le mie apprensioni stessero iniziando a manifestarsi. Quando lo lasciai andare avanti per via della strettezza del passaggio, notai che teneva la testa alta in modo particolarmente arrogante; e ebbi il presentimento che avesse scoperto qualcosa riguardo alla mia adorata Dora.
If I had not guessed this, on the way to the coffee-house, I could hardly have failed to know what was the matter when I followed him into an upstairs room, and found Miss Murdstone there, supported by a background of sideboard, on which were several inverted tumblers sustaining lemons, and two of those extraordinary boxes, all corners and flutings, for sticking knives and forks in, which, happily for mankind, are now obsolete.
Miss Murdstone gave me her chilly finger-nails, and sat severely rigid. Mr. Spenlow shut the door, motioned me to a chair, and stood on the hearth-rug in front of the fireplace.
‘Have the goodness to show Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, what you have in your reticule, Miss Murdstone.’
I believe it was the old identical steel-clasped reticule of my childhood, that shut up like a bite. Compressing her lips, in sympathy with the snap, Miss Murdstone opened it—opening her mouth a little at the same time—and produced my last letter to Dora, teeming with expressions of devoted affection.
‘I believe that is your writing, Mr. Copperfield?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
I was very hot, and the voice I heard was very unlike mine, when I said, ‘It is, sir!’
‘If I am not mistaken,’ said Mr. Spenlow, as Miss Murdstone brought a parcel of letters out of her reticule, tied round with the dearest bit of blue ribbon, ‘those are also from your pen, Mr. Copperfield?’
I took them from her with a most desolate sensation; and, glancing at such phrases at the top, as ‘My ever dearest and own Dora,’ ‘My best beloved angel,’ ‘My blessed one for ever,’ and the like, blushed deeply, and inclined my head.
‘No, thank you!’ said Mr. Spenlow, coldly, as I mechanically offered them back to him. ‘I will not deprive you of them. Miss Murdstone, be so good as to proceed!’
That gentle creature, after a moment’s thoughtful survey of the carpet, delivered herself with much dry unction as follows.
‘I must confess to having entertained my suspicions of Miss Spenlow, in reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I observed Miss Spenlow and David Copperfield, when they first met; and the impression made upon me then was not agreeable. The depravity of the human heart is such—’
‘You will oblige me, ma’am,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, ‘by confining yourself to facts.’
Miss Murdstone cast down her eyes, shook her head as if protesting against this unseemly interruption, and with frowning dignity resumed:
‘Since I am to confine myself to facts, I will state them as dryly as I can. Perhaps that will be considered an acceptable course of proceeding. I have already said, sir, that I have had my suspicions of Miss Spenlow, in reference to David Copperfield, for some time. I have frequently endeavoured to find decisive corroboration of those suspicions, but without effect. I have therefore forborne to mention them to Miss Spenlow’s father’; looking severely at him—‘knowing how little disposition there usually is in such cases, to acknowledge the conscientious discharge of duty.’
Mr. Spenlow seemed quite cowed by the gentlemanly sternness of Miss Murdstone’s manner, and deprecated her severity with a conciliatory little wave of his hand.
‘On my return to Norwood, after the period of absence occasioned by my brother’s marriage,’ pursued Miss Murdstone in a disdainful voice, ‘and on the return of Miss Spenlow from her visit to her friend Miss Mills, I imagined that the manner of Miss Spenlow gave me greater occasion for suspicion than before. Therefore I watched Miss Spenlow closely.’
Dear, tender little Dora, so unconscious of this Dragon’s eye!
‘Still,’ resumed Miss Murdstone, ‘I found no proof until last night. It appeared to me that Miss Spenlow received too many letters from her friend Miss Mills; but Miss Mills being her friend with her father’s full concurrence,’ another telling blow at Mr. Spenlow, ‘it was not for me to interfere. If I may not be permitted to allude to the natural depravity of the human heart, at least I may—I must—be permitted, so far to refer to misplaced confidence.’
Mr. Spenlow apologetically murmured his assent.
‘Last evening after tea,’ pursued Miss Murdstone, ‘I observed the little dog starting, rolling, and growling about the drawing-room, worrying something. I said to Miss Spenlow, “Dora, what is that the dog has in his mouth? It’s paper.” Miss Spenlow immediately put her hand to her frock, gave a sudden cry, and ran to the dog. I interposed, and said, “Dora, my love, you must permit me.”’
Oh Jip, miserable Spaniel, this wretchedness, then, was your work!
‘Miss Spenlow endeavoured,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘to bribe me with kisses, work-boxes, and small articles of jewellery—that, of course, I pass over. The little dog retreated under the sofa on my approaching him, and was with great difficulty dislodged by the fire-irons. Even when dislodged, he still kept the letter in his mouth; and on my endeavouring to take it from him, at the imminent risk of being bitten, he kept it between his teeth so pertinaciously as to suffer himself to be held suspended in the air by means of the document. At length I obtained possession of it. After perusing it, I taxed Miss Spenlow with having many such letters in her possession; and ultimately obtained from her the packet which is now in David Copperfield’s hand.’
Here she ceased; and snapping her reticule again, and shutting her mouth, looked as if she might be broken, but could never be bent.
‘You have heard Miss Murdstone,’ said Mr. Spenlow, turning to me. ‘I beg to ask, Mr. Copperfield, if you have anything to say in reply?’
The picture I had before me, of the beautiful little treasure of my heart, sobbing and crying all night—of her being alone, frightened, and wretched, then—of her having so piteously begged and prayed that stony-hearted woman to forgive her—of her having vainly offered her those kisses, work-boxes, and trinkets—of her being in such grievous distress, and all for me—very much impaired the little dignity I had been able to muster. I am afraid I was in a tremulous state for a minute or so, though I did my best to disguise it.
Se non l’avessi indovinato, lungo la strada verso la caffetteria, sarebbe stato impossibile non capire cosa stesse succedendo quando lo seguii in una stanza al piano di sopra e trovai lì Miss Murdstone, sostenuta da un mobile laterale sul quale c’erano diversi bicchieri capovolti con dei limoni dentro, e due di quelle strane scatole piene di angoli e sporgenze, utilizzate per infilcare coltelli e forchette. Fortunatamente per l’umanità, ormai sono obsolete.
La signorina Murdstone mi mostrò le sue unghie fredde e rigide, poi sedette immobile e rigida. Il signor Spenlow chiuse la porta, mi fece segno di sedermi su una sedia e si fermò sul tappeto davanti al camino.
“Per favore, mostri al signor Copperfield ciò che hai nella tua rete, signorina Murdstone,” disse il signor Spenlow.
Credo che fosse quella vecchia rete di acciaio identica a quella della mia infanzia, che si chiuse con un “click”. Stringendo le labbra in segno di compassione per quel suono, la signorina Murdstone la aprì, aprendo anche leggermente la bocca nello stesso momento, e tirò fuori la mia ultima lettera a Dora, piena di espressioni di affetto devoto.
“Credo che sia la sua calligrafia, signor Copperfield”, disse il signor Spenlow.
“Ero molto caldo, e la voce che sentii non assomigliava affatto alla mia quando dissi: ‘Sì, signore!’”
“Se non mi sbaglio,” disse il signor Spenlow, mentre la signorina Murdstone tirava fuori un pacco di lettere dal suo reticolo, legate con il pezzo più prezioso di nastro blu, “quelle sono anche scritte da voi, signor Copperfield?”
Le presi da lei con un senso di profonda desolazione; e, leggendo frasi del tipo “La mia adorata e unica Dora”, “Il mio angelo più caro”, “La mia benedetta per sempre”, arrossii profondamente e abbassai la testa.
“No, grazie!” disse il signor Spenlow in tono freddo, mentre io glieli restituivo meccanicamente. “Non voglio privarvi di loro. Signorina Murdstone, per favore proceda.”
Quella dolce creatura, dopo aver osservato attentamente il tappeto per un momento, pronunciò le seguenti parole con grande serietà.
Devo confessare di aver nutrito dei sospetti su Miss Spenlow riguardo a David Copperfield per un certo periodo di tempo. Ho osservato Miss Spenlow e David Copperfield quando si sono incontrati per la prima volta; l’impressione che ne ho avuta allora non è stata affatto positiva. La corruzione del cuore umano può essere davvero così.
“La prego, signora, di attenersi ai fatti”, interruppe il signor Spenlow.
La signorina Murdstone abbassò lo sguardo, scosse la testa come per protestare contro questa inappropriata interruzione, e poi, con un’espressione seria e dignitosa, riprese a parlare.
“Poiché devo limitarmi ai fatti, li esporrò nel modo più sobrio possibile. Forse questo verrà considerato un approccio accettabile. Ho già detto, signore, che da qualche tempo ho dei sospetti riguardo a Miss Spenlow in relazione a David Copperfield. Ho spesso cercato di trovare prove decisive a sostegno di questi sospetti, ma senza successo. Per questo motivo ho evitato di menzionarli al padre di Miss Spenlow”; lo guardò severamente e proseguì: “Sapendo quanto raramente in casi del genere si sia disposti ad ammettere l’adempimento coscienzioso dei propri doveri, ”
Il signor Spenlow sembrava davvero intimidito dalla severità gentiluomina di Miss Murdstone; con un piccolo gesto conciliante della mano, deplorò la sua durezza.
“Al mio ritorno a Norwood, dopo il periodo di assenza causato dal matrimonio di mio fratello,” proseguì Miss Murdstone con voce sprezzante, “e quando anche Miss Spenlow tornò dal suo viaggio da sua amica Miss Mills, ebbi l’impressione che il comportamento di Miss Spenlow mi desse ancora più motivi per sospettare. Perciò la tenni d’occhio attentamente.”
Carissima, tenera piccola Dora, così ignara di questo “occhio del drago”!
“Comunque,” riprese la signorina Murdstone, “non ho trovato alcuna prova fino alla scorsa notte. Mi sembrava che la signorina Spenlow ricevesse troppe lettere dalla sua amica, la signorina Mills; ma poiché la signorina Mills era sua amica con il pieno consenso del padre di lei,” un altro colpo diretto al signor Spenlow, “non spettava a me intervenire. Se non mi è permesso alludere alla naturale depravazione del cuore umano, almeno mi deve essere permesso – devo poterlo fare – di parlare della fiducia mal riposta.”
Il signor Spenlow mormorò scusandosi in segno di assenso.
“Il sera scorsa, dopo il tè,” proseguì la signorina Murdstone, “notai che il cagnolino iniziò a rotolare e a ringhiare per tutta la sala da pranzo, come se stesse cercando qualcosa. Dissi alla signorina Spenlow: ‘Dora, cosa ha il cane in bocca? È carta.’ La signorina Spenlow si toccò immediatamente il vestito, gridò e corse verso il cagnolino. Intervenni io e dissi: ‘Dora, mio amore, devi permettermelo.’”
Oh Jip, povero spaniel. Quindi questa miseria è stata opera tua!
“Miss Spenlow cercò,” disse Miss Murdstone, “di corrompermi con baci, scatoline da lavoro e piccoli oggetti di gioielleria. Cose che, naturalmente, ignoro completamente. Il cucciolo, quando mi avvicinai, si nascose sotto il divano; fu necessario usare le tenaglie per riuscire a scacciarlo. Anche dopo essere stato spinto via, continuava a tenere la lettera in bocca; e quando cercai di prenderla, rischiando di essere morso, lui la strinse così ostinatamente tra i denti da permettermi di tenerlo sospeso in aria con quel documento. Alla fine riuscii ad ottenerlo. Dopo averlo letto, accusai Miss Spenlow di possedere molte altre lettere del genere; e alla fine ottenni il pacchetto che ora si trova nelle mani di David Copperfield.”
Qui si fermò; riprese a chiudere il suo reticolo e serrò la bocca, con un’espressione come se potesse spezzarsi, ma mai piegarsi.
“Avete sentito ciò che ha detto la signorina Murdstone,” disse il signor Spenlow rivolgendosi a me. “Vi chiedo, signor Copperfield, se avete qualcosa da dire in risposta.”
Quella immagine davanti ai miei occhi, di quel bellissimo “tesoro” del mio cuore che piangeva e singhiozzava per tutta la notte, di lei, sola, spaventata e disperata, di come avesse supplicato con tanta angoscia quella donna dal cuore di pietra di perdonarla, di come avesse invano offerto a lei quei baci, quelle scatoline da lavoro e quei piccoli oggetti, di quanto fosse in grave difficoltà, tutto questo, per colpa mia, danneggiò gravemente la piccola dignità che ero riuscito a mantenere. Temo di essere rimasto tremante per un minuto o due, anche se ho fatto del mio meglio per nasconderlo.
‘There is nothing I can say, sir,’ I returned, ‘except that all the blame is mine. Dora—’
‘Miss Spenlow, if you please,’ said her father, majestically.
‘—was induced and persuaded by me,’ I went on, swallowing that colder designation, ‘to consent to this concealment, and I bitterly regret it.’
‘You are very much to blame, sir,’ said Mr. Spenlow, walking to and fro upon the hearth-rug, and emphasizing what he said with his whole body instead of his head, on account of the stiffness of his cravat and spine. ‘You have done a stealthy and unbecoming action, Mr. Copperfield. When I take a gentleman to my house, no matter whether he is nineteen, twenty-nine, or ninety, I take him there in a spirit of confidence. If he abuses my confidence, he commits a dishonourable action, Mr. Copperfield.’
‘I feel it, sir, I assure you,’ I returned. ‘But I never thought so, before. Sincerely, honestly, indeed, Mr. Spenlow, I never thought so, before. I love Miss Spenlow to that extent—’
‘Pooh! nonsense!’ said Mr. Spenlow, reddening. ‘Pray don’t tell me to my face that you love my daughter, Mr. Copperfield!’
‘Could I defend my conduct if I did not, sir?’ I returned, with all humility.
‘Can you defend your conduct if you do, sir?’ said Mr. Spenlow, stopping short upon the hearth-rug. ‘Have you considered your years, and my daughter’s years, Mr. Copperfield? Have you considered what it is to undermine the confidence that should subsist between my daughter and myself? Have you considered my daughter’s station in life, the projects I may contemplate for her advancement, the testamentary intentions I may have with reference to her? Have you considered anything, Mr. Copperfield?’
‘Very little, sir, I am afraid;’ I answered, speaking to him as respectfully and sorrowfully as I felt; ‘but pray believe me, I have considered my own worldly position. When I explained it to you, we were already engaged—’
‘I BEG,’ said Mr. Spenlow, more like Punch than I had ever seen him, as he energetically struck one hand upon the other—I could not help noticing that even in my despair; ‘that YOU Will NOT talk to me of engagements, Mr. Copperfield!’
The otherwise immovable Miss Murdstone laughed contemptuously in one short syllable.
‘When I explained my altered position to you, sir,’ I began again, substituting a new form of expression for what was so unpalatable to him, ‘this concealment, into which I am so unhappy as to have led Miss Spenlow, had begun. Since I have been in that altered position, I have strained every nerve, I have exerted every energy, to improve it. I am sure I shall improve it in time. Will you grant me time—any length of time? We are both so young, sir,—’
‘You are right,’ interrupted Mr. Spenlow, nodding his head a great many times, and frowning very much, ‘you are both very young. It’s all nonsense. Let there be an end of the nonsense. Take away those letters, and throw them in the fire. Give me Miss Spenlow’s letters to throw in the fire; and although our future intercourse must, you are aware, be restricted to the Commons here, we will agree to make no further mention of the past. Come, Mr. Copperfield, you don’t want sense; and this is the sensible course.’
No. I couldn’t think of agreeing to it. I was very sorry, but there was a higher consideration than sense. Love was above all earthly considerations, and I loved Dora to idolatry, and Dora loved me. I didn’t exactly say so; I softened it down as much as I could; but I implied it, and I was resolute upon it. I don’t think I made myself very ridiculous, but I know I was resolute.
‘Very well, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘I must try my influence with my daughter.’
Miss Murdstone, by an expressive sound, a long drawn respiration, which was neither a sigh nor a moan, but was like both, gave it as her opinion that he should have done this at first.
‘I must try,’ said Mr. Spenlow, confirmed by this support, ‘my influence with my daughter. Do you decline to take those letters, Mr. Copperfield?’ For I had laid them on the table.
Yes. I told him I hoped he would not think it wrong, but I couldn’t possibly take them from Miss Murdstone.
‘Nor from me?’ said Mr. Spenlow.
No, I replied with the profoundest respect; nor from him.
‘Very well!’ said Mr. Spenlow.
A silence succeeding, I was undecided whether to go or stay. At length I was moving quietly towards the door, with the intention of saying that perhaps I should consult his feelings best by withdrawing: when he said, with his hands in his coat pockets, into which it was as much as he could do to get them; and with what I should call, upon the whole, a decidedly pious air:
‘You are probably aware, Mr. Copperfield, that I am not altogether destitute of worldly possessions, and that my daughter is my nearest and dearest relative?’
I hurriedly made him a reply to the effect, that I hoped the error into which I had been betrayed by the desperate nature of my love, did not induce him to think me mercenary too?
‘I don’t allude to the matter in that light,’ said Mr. Spenlow. ‘It would be better for yourself, and all of us, if you WERE mercenary, Mr. Copperfield—I mean, if you were more discreet and less influenced by all this youthful nonsense. No. I merely say, with quite another view, you are probably aware I have some property to bequeath to my child?’
I certainly supposed so.
‘And you can hardly think,’ said Mr. Spenlow, ‘having experience of what we see, in the Commons here, every day, of the various unaccountable and negligent proceedings of men, in respect of their testamentary arrangements—of all subjects, the one on which perhaps the strangest revelations of human inconsistency are to be met with—but that mine are made?’
I inclined my head in acquiescence.
‘I should not allow,’ said Mr. Spenlow, with an evident increase of pious sentiment, and slowly shaking his head as he poised himself upon his toes and heels alternately, ‘my suitable provision for my child to be influenced by a piece of youthful folly like the present. It is mere folly. Mere nonsense. In a little while, it will weigh lighter than any feather. But I might—I might—if this silly business were not completely relinquished altogether, be induced in some anxious moment to guard her from, and surround her with protections against, the consequences of any foolish step in the way of marriage. Now, Mr. Copperfield, I hope that you will not render it necessary for me to open, even for a quarter of an hour, that closed page in the book of life, and unsettle, even for a quarter of an hour, grave affairs long since composed.’
“Non ho nulla da dire, signore,” risposi, “se non che tutta la colpa è mia. Dora, ”
“Signorina Spenlow, per favore,” disse suo padre con aria maestosa.
“–È stato indotto e persuaso da me,” continuai, ingoiando quella definizione più fredda, “a acconsentire a questo nascondimento, e ne pento amaramente.”
“Siete voi la causa principale di tutto questo, signore,” disse il signor Spenlow, camminando avanti e indietro sul tappeto del camino e enfatizzando le sue parole con l’intero corpo, piuttosto che con la testa, a causa della rigidità della cravatta e della schiena. “Avete compiuto un atto sleale e indegno, signor Copperfield. Quando invito un gentiluomo a casa mia, non importa se abbia diciannove, ventinove o novant’anni, lo faccio con fiducia. Se lui tradisce questa fiducia, commette un atto disonorevole, signor Copperfield.”
“Lo sento, signore, glielo assicuro,” risposi. “Ma non l’avevo mai pensato prima. Onestamente, davvero, signor Spenlow, non l’avevo mai pensato prima. Amo la signorina Spenlow a tal punto, ”
“Puf! Sciocchezze!” disse il signor Spenlow, arrossendo. “Per favore, non ditemi in faccia che vi innamorate di mia figlia, signor Copperfield!”
“Potrei difendere il mio comportamento se non lo facessi, signore?” risposi con tutta la mia umiltà.
“Può difendere il proprio comportamento, se lo farà, signore?” disse il signor Spenlow, fermandosi davanti alla stufa. “Ha considerato la sua età, e l’età di mia figlia, signor Copperfield? Ha pensato a cosa significa minare la fiducia che dovrebbe esistere tra mia figlia e me? Ha preso in considerazione la posizione sociale di mia figlia, i progetti che potrei avere per il suo futuro, le intenzioni che potrei avere riguardo a lei nel testamento? Ha pensato a qualcosa, signor Copperfield?”
“Molto poco, signore, temo,” risposi, parlando con lui con tutto il rispetto e la tristezza che provavo; “ma per favore credetemi: ho attentamente considerato la mia situazione mondana. Quando ve l’ho spiegata, noi eravamo già fidanzati, ”
“La prego,” disse il signor Spenlow, con un tono molto simile a quello di Punch, come non l’avevo mai sentito prima; mentre batteva energicamente una mano sull’altra, non potei fare a meno di notare che anche nel mio dispero, “Che lei NON mi parli più di promesse, signor Copperfield!”
La solitamente impassibile signorina Murdstone rise con disprezzo, emettendo una sola sillaba breve.
“Quando vi spiegai la mia nuova situazione, signore,” ripresi, utilizzando un’espressione diversa da quella che gli risultava così sgradevole, “questo nascondimento, nel quale sono stato costretto a coinvolgere la signorina Spenlow, era già iniziato. Da quando mi trovo in questa nuova condizione, ho fatto di tutto per migliorarla. Sono certo che ci riuscirò con il tempo. Mi concederete qualche momento, qualsiasi periodo di tempo? Siamo entrambi ancora molto giovani, signore, ”
“Hai ragione,” interruppe il signor Spenlow, annuendo molte volte e aggrottando molto la fronte. “Siete entrambi troppo giovani. È tutto assurdo. Basta con queste sciocchezze. Togliete quelle lettere e gettatele nel fuoco. Datemi le lettere della signorina Spenlow, che le brucerò anch’esse. E anche se, come sapete, il nostro futuro rapporto dovrà limitarsi a queste riunioni qui, acconsentiremo a non menzionare più il passato. Vieni, signor Copperfield. Non vuoi certo comportarti in modo sensato? E questa è senz’altro la soluzione migliore.”
No. Non avrei potuto accettarlo. Mi dispiaceva molto, ma c’era una considerazione più importante della ragione. L’amore era al di sopra di ogni considerazione terrena; amavo Dora con un amore quasi idolatrico, e Dora mi amava a sua volta. Non l’ho detto esplicitamente; ho cercato di formulare le mie parole in modo più delicato possibile, ma l’ho comunque lasciato intendere. E ero assolutamente decisa. Non credo di essermi resa molto ridicola, ma so di essere stata irremovibile nella mia decisione.
“Molto bene, signor Copperfield,” disse il signor Spenlow, “devo provare a esercitare la mia influenza su mia figlia.”
Miss Murdstone, con un suono espressivo, un respiro lungo e tirato che non era né un sospiro né un lamento, ma sembrava entrambi, espresse il suo parere secondo cui avrebbe dovuto farlo fin dall’inizio.
“Devo provare,” disse il signor Spenlow, incoraggiato da questo sostegno, “a fare leva sulla mia influenza su mia figlia. Rifiuta forse di prendere quelle lettere, signor Copperfield? Le avevo messe sul tavolo.”
Sì. Gli ho detto che speravo non lo considerasse un errore, ma non avrei mai potuto prenderle dalla signorina Murdstone.
“Nemmeno da me?” disse il signor Spenlow.
No, ho risposto con il massimo rispetto; né lui lo ha fatto.
“Molto bene!”, disse il signor Spenlow.
Dopo un silenzio, non ero sicuro se andarmene o restare. Alla fine mi avvicinai silenziosamente alla porta, con l’intenzione di dire che forse sarebbe stato meglio prendere in considerazione i suoi sentimenti andandomene. Quando lui, con le mani nelle tasche del cappotto (e facendo del suo meglio per infilarle lì dentro), disse qualcosa con un tono, a mio parere, decisamente devoto.
“Probabilmente lei è a conoscenza, signor Copperfield, che non mi mancano affatto beni materiali, e che mia figlia è la mia parente più stretta e cara.”
Gli scrissi in fretta una risposta nel senso che speravo che quell’errore, causato dalla disperata >natura del mio amore, non lo portasse a pensare che fossi anche io motivata da interessi materiali.
“Non intendo affrontare la questione da quel punto di vista,” disse il signor Spenlow. “Sarebbe meglio per te, e per tutti noi, se fossi più interessato al denaro, signor Copperfield. Voglio dire, se fossi più discreto e meno influenzato da tutte queste sciocchezze giovanili. No. Intanto, so che probabilmente sei a conoscenza del fatto che ho qualche proprietà da lasciare in eredità a mio figlio, giusto?”
Certo che lo pensavo.
“E difficilmente si può pensare,” disse il signor Spenlow, “avendo esperienza di ciò che vediamo qui in Parlamento ogni giorno, delle varie azioni irresponsabili e negligenti compiute dalle persone riguardo ai loro accordi testamentari, di tutti gli argomenti, forse questo è quello in cui si incontrano le rivelazioni più strane sull’incostanza umana, che le mie dichiarazioni possano essere considerate credibili?”
Inclinai la testa in segno di assenso.
“Non dovrei permetterlo,” disse il signor Spenlow, con un evidente aumento di sentimenti devoti, scuotendo lentamente la testa mentre si appoggiava alternativamente sulle punte e sui tacchi dei piedi. “La provvista che ho preparato per mio figlio non dovrebbe essere influenzata da una sciocchezza giovanile del genere. È pura follia. Solo assurdità. Tra poco, tutto questo sembrerà meno importante di una piuma. Ma, se questa faccenda stupida non venisse completamente abbandonata, potrei, in un momento di preoccupazione, cercare di proteggerla dalle conseguenze di eventuali passi sciocchi legati al matrimonio. Ora, signor Copperfield, spero che lei non renderà necessario che io apra, anche solo per un quarto d’ora, quella ‘pagina chiusa’ nel libro della vita, e che non disturbi, nemmeno per un quarto d’ora, questioni serie che sono state risolte da molto tempo.”
There was a serenity, a tranquillity, a calm sunset air about him, which quite affected me. He was so peaceful and resigned—clearly had his affairs in such perfect train, and so systematically wound up—that he was a man to feel touched in the contemplation of. I really think I saw tears rise to his eyes, from the depth of his own feeling of all this.
But what could I do? I could not deny Dora and my own heart. When he told me I had better take a week to consider of what he had said, how could I say I wouldn’t take a week, yet how could I fail to know that no amount of weeks could influence such love as mine?
‘In the meantime, confer with Miss Trotwood, or with any person with any knowledge of life,’ said Mr. Spenlow, adjusting his cravat with both hands. ‘Take a week, Mr. Copperfield.’
I submitted; and, with a countenance as expressive as I was able to make it of dejected and despairing constancy, came out of the room. Miss Murdstone’s heavy eyebrows followed me to the door—I say her eyebrows rather than her eyes, because they were much more important in her face—and she looked so exactly as she used to look, at about that hour of the morning, in our parlour at Blunderstone, that I could have fancied I had been breaking down in my lessons again, and that the dead weight on my mind was that horrible old spelling-book, with oval woodcuts, shaped, to my youthful fancy, like the glasses out of spectacles.
When I got to the office, and, shutting out old Tiffey and the rest of them with my hands, sat at my desk, in my own particular nook, thinking of this earthquake that had taken place so unexpectedly, and in the bitterness of my spirit cursing Jip, I fell into such a state of torment about Dora, that I wonder I did not take up my hat and rush insanely to Norwood. The idea of their frightening her, and making her cry, and of my not being there to comfort her, was so excruciating, that it impelled me to write a wild letter to Mr. Spenlow, beseeching him not to visit upon her the consequences of my awful destiny. I implored him to spare her gentle nature—not to crush a fragile flower—and addressed him generally, to the best of my remembrance, as if, instead of being her father, he had been an Ogre, or the Dragon of Wantley. This letter I sealed and laid upon his desk before he returned; and when he came in, I saw him, through the half-opened door of his room, take it up and read it.
He said nothing about it all the morning; but before he went away in the afternoon he called me in, and told me that I need not make myself at all uneasy about his daughter’s happiness. He had assured her, he said, that it was all nonsense; and he had nothing more to say to her. He believed he was an indulgent father (as indeed he was), and I might spare myself any solicitude on her account.
‘You may make it necessary, if you are foolish or obstinate, Mr. Copperfield,’ he observed, ‘for me to send my daughter abroad again, for a term; but I have a better opinion of you. I hope you will be wiser than that, in a few days. As to Miss Murdstone,’ for I had alluded to her in the letter, ‘I respect that lady’s vigilance, and feel obliged to her; but she has strict charge to avoid the subject. All I desire, Mr. Copperfield, is, that it should be forgotten. All you have got to do, Mr. Copperfield, is to forget it.’
All! In the note I wrote to Miss Mills, I bitterly quoted this sentiment. All I had to do, I said, with gloomy sarcasm, was to forget Dora. That was all, and what was that! I entreated Miss Mills to see me, that evening. If it could not be done with Mr. Mills’s sanction and concurrence, I besought a clandestine interview in the back kitchen where the Mangle was. I informed her that my reason was tottering on its throne, and only she, Miss Mills, could prevent its being deposed. I signed myself, hers distractedly; and I couldn’t help feeling, while I read this composition over, before sending it by a porter, that it was something in the style of Mr. Micawber.
However, I sent it. At night I repaired to Miss Mills’s street, and walked up and down, until I was stealthily fetched in by Miss Mills’s maid, and taken the area way to the back kitchen. I have since seen reason to believe that there was nothing on earth to prevent my going in at the front door, and being shown up into the drawing-room, except Miss Mills’s love of the romantic and mysterious.
In the back kitchen, I raved as became me. I went there, I suppose, to make a fool of myself, and I am quite sure I did it. Miss Mills had received a hasty note from Dora, telling her that all was discovered, and saying. ‘Oh pray come to me, Julia, do, do!’ But Miss Mills, mistrusting the acceptability of her presence to the higher powers, had not yet gone; and we were all benighted in the Desert of Sahara.
Miss Mills had a wonderful flow of words, and liked to pour them out. I could not help feeling, though she mingled her tears with mine, that she had a dreadful luxury in our afflictions. She petted them, as I may say, and made the most of them. A deep gulf, she observed, had opened between Dora and me, and Love could only span it with its rainbow. Love must suffer in this stern world; it ever had been so, it ever would be so. No matter, Miss Mills remarked. Hearts confined by cobwebs would burst at last, and then Love was avenged.
This was small consolation, but Miss Mills wouldn’t encourage fallacious hopes. She made me much more wretched than I was before, and I felt (and told her with the deepest gratitude) that she was indeed a friend. We resolved that she should go to Dora the first thing in the morning, and find some means of assuring her, either by looks or words, of my devotion and misery. We parted, overwhelmed with grief; and I think Miss Mills enjoyed herself completely.
I confided all to my aunt when I got home; and in spite of all she could say to me, went to bed despairing. I got up despairing, and went out despairing. It was Saturday morning, and I went straight to the Commons.
C’era una serenità, una tranquillità, un’atmosfera di calma nel cielo al tramonto intorno a lui, che mi colpì profondamente. Era così pacifico e rassegnato, chiaramente le sue faccende erano in perfetto ordine, sistemate con estrema meticolosità, che era davvero un uomo che suscitava commozione nel semplice osservarlo. Credo davvero di aver visto delle lacrime salirgli agli occhi, scaturite dalla profondità dei suoi sentimenti.
Ma cosa avrei potuto fare? Non potevo negare né Dora né i miei sentimenti. Quando mi disse che avrei dovuto prendermi una settimana per riflettere su ciò che aveva detto, come avrei potuto rifiutare di farlo. Eppure, come potevo non capire che nessuna quantità di tempo avrebbe potuto influenzare un amore così profondo come il mio?
“Nel frattempo, consultate la signorina Trotwood o qualsiasi persona abbia un minimo di esperienza nella vita reale,” disse il signor Spenlow, sistemando il colletto con entrambe le mani. “Prendetevi una settimana, signor Copperfield.”
Ho presentato il mio lavoro; e, con un’espressione del viso che rifletteva al massimo possibile la mia sconfortata e disperata rassegnazione, sono uscito dalla stanza. Le folte sopracciglia di Miss Murdstone mi hanno seguito fino alla porta. Dico “le sue sopracciglia” piuttosto che i suoi occhi, perché erano molto più importanti nel suo viso. E il suo aspetto era esattamente lo stesso di allora, verso quell’ora della mattina, nella nostra sala da pranzo a Blunderstone. Avrei potuto pensare di aver di nuovo fallito nei miei compiti. E che il peso insopportabile sulla mia mente fosse quel terribile vecchio libro di ortografia, con quelle incisioni in legno ovali che, nella mia immaginazione infantile, assomigliavano ai telai degli occhiali.
Quando arrivai in ufficio, scacciai via Tiffey e gli altri con un gesto della mano, mi sedetti alla mia scrivania, nel mio angolino preferito, pensando a questo terremoto che era avvenuto così inaspettatamente. E, nella amarezza del mio animo, maledicevo Jip. Finii in uno stato di tormento così profondo per via di Dora, che mi chiesi perché non prendessi il cappello e non corressi pazzamente a Norwood. L’idea che potessero spaventarla, farla piangere, e che io non fossi lì ad consolarla, era insopportabile; per questo decisi di scrivere una lettera disperata al signor Spenlow, pregandolo di evitare che lei dovesse subire le conseguenze del mio terribile destino. Lo supplicai di risparmiare la sua dolce natura, di non distruggere una creatura fragile come lei. E lo trattai, per quanto ricordassi, come se non fosse suo padre, ma un mostro o il Drago di Wantley. Sigillai quella lettera e la lasciai sulla sua scrivania prima che tornasse; quando entrò, lo vidi prendere la lettera e leggerla.
Non disse nulla al riguardo per tutta la mattina; ma prima di andarsene nel pomeriggio mi chiamò dentro e mi disse che non dovevo assolutamente preoccuparmi per la felicità di sua figlia. Le aveva assicurato, disse, che tutto era solo una sciocchezza; e non aveva nulla altro da dirle. Credeva di essere un padre indulgente (e infatti lo era), quindi potevo tranquillamente smettere di preoccuparmi per lei.
“Se siete sciocchi o testardi, potreste costringermi, signor Copperfield, a mandare mia figlia all’estero di nuovo, per un certo periodo; ma ho una migliore opinione di voi. Spero che in pochi giorni siate più saggi. Per quanto riguarda la signorina Murdstone”, poiché avevo menzionato il suo nome nella lettera, “rispetto la sua attenzione e mi sento in debito con lei; ma le è stato severamente ordinato di evitare l’argomento. Tutto ciò che desidero, signor Copperfield, è che questo episodio venga dimenticato. Tutto ciò che dovete fare voi, signor Copperfield, è dimenticarlo.”
Ah! Nella nota che scrissi a Miss Mills, citavo amaramente questo sentimento. Tutto ciò che dovevo fare, dissi con cupo sarcasmo, era dimenticare Dora. Era tutto. E cosa significava davvero? Invocai Miss Mills perché mi incontrasse quella sera stessa. Se non fosse stato possibile farlo con il permesso e il consenso di Mr. Mills, le chiesi un incontro segreto nella cucina posteriore, dove si trovava il macinacarte. Le spiegai che la mia ragione era sul punto di crollare, e che solo lei, Miss Mills, poteva impedirlo. Firmai con mano tremante; e mentre rileggevo quel messaggio prima di inviarlo tramite un portiere, non potei fare a meno di pensare che assomigliasse molto al stile di Mr. Micawber.
Tuttavia, l’ho inviato lo stesso. Di notte sono tornato nella strada di Miss Mills e ho camminato avanti e indietro, finché la cameriera di Miss Mills mi ha portato via in segreto, conducendomi fino alla cucina sul retro della casa. Da allora ho avuto motivo di credere che non ci fosse assolutamente nulla che potesse impedirmi di entrare dalla porta principale e essere accompagnato nel salotto, se non l’amore di Miss Mills per tutto ciò che è romantico e misterioso.
Nella cucina sul retro, ho fatto la figura della sciocca, come al solito. Credo di essere andata lì proprio per mettermi in imbarazzo, e ne sono assolutamente certa. La signorina Mills aveva ricevuto una lettera affrettata da Dora, che le diceva che tutto era stato scoperto e che la pregava di venire subito da lei: “Oh, ti prego, vieni da me, Julia, per favore!” Ma la signorina Mills, diffidando del fatto che la sua presenza fosse accettabile dalle autorità superiori, non era ancora partita. E così ci trovavamo tutte nel deserto del Sahara, al buio.
La signorina Mills aveva un modo meraviglioso di esprimersi a parole; le piaceva riversarle fuori senza riserve. Non potevo fare a meno di pensare che, anche se mescolava le sue lacrime alle mie, lei godesse in qualche modo di questa nostra sofferenza. La considerava quasi un “lusso”, e ne approfittava al massimo. Secondo lei, si era aperta una profonda distanza tra Dora e me, e l’Amore poteva superarla soltanto attraverso il suo arcobaleno. L’Amore, in questo mondo crudele, deve sempre soffrire; è sempre stato così, ed è sempre così che sarà. “Nessun problema”, osservava la signorina Mills. I cuori intrappolati nelle ragnatele, alla fine, esploderanno. E allora l’Amore verrà vendicato.
Questo era un piccolo conforto, ma la signorina Mills non avrebbe mai incoraggiato speranze illusorie. Mi rese ancora più infelice di prima, e io sentii (e glielo dissi con la più profonda gratitudine) che lei era davvero una vera amica. Decidemmo che lei dovesse andare da Dora al primo momento del mattino, e trovare il modo di assicurarle, sia con lo sguardo che con le parole, della mia devozione e della mia sofferenza. Ci separammo, sopraffatte dal dolore; ma penso che la signorina Mills si sia divertita molto.
Gliel’ho confidato tutto a mia zia quando sono tornato a casa; e nonostante tutto quello che lei mi ha detto, sono andato a letto disperato. Sono svegliato disperato ed è uscito anch’io disperato. Era sabato mattina, quindi sono andato direttamente al Parlamento.
I was surprised, when I came within sight of our office-door, to see the ticket-porters standing outside talking together, and some half-dozen stragglers gazing at the windows which were shut up. I quickened my pace, and, passing among them, wondering at their looks, went hurriedly in.
The clerks were there, but nobody was doing anything. Old Tiffey, for the first time in his life I should think, was sitting on somebody else’s stool, and had not hung up his hat.
‘This is a dreadful calamity, Mr. Copperfield,’ said he, as I entered.
‘What is?’ I exclaimed. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Don’t you know?’ cried Tiffey, and all the rest of them, coming round me.
‘No!’ said I, looking from face to face.
‘Mr. Spenlow,’ said Tiffey.
‘What about him!’
‘Dead!’ I thought it was the office reeling, and not I, as one of the clerks caught hold of me. They sat me down in a chair, untied my neck-cloth, and brought me some water. I have no idea whether this took any time.
‘Dead?’ said I.
‘He dined in town yesterday, and drove down in the phaeton by himself,’ said Tiffey, ‘having sent his own groom home by the coach, as he sometimes did, you know—’
‘Well?’
‘The phaeton went home without him. The horses stopped at the stable-gate. The man went out with a lantern. Nobody in the carriage.’
‘Had they run away?’
‘They were not hot,’ said Tiffey, putting on his glasses; ‘no hotter, I understand, than they would have been, going down at the usual pace. The reins were broken, but they had been dragging on the ground. The house was roused up directly, and three of them went out along the road. They found him a mile off.’
‘More than a mile off, Mr. Tiffey,’ interposed a junior.
‘Was it? I believe you are right,’ said Tiffey,—‘more than a mile off—not far from the church—lying partly on the roadside, and partly on the path, upon his face. Whether he fell out in a fit, or got out, feeling ill before the fit came on—or even whether he was quite dead then, though there is no doubt he was quite insensible—no one appears to know. If he breathed, certainly he never spoke. Medical assistance was got as soon as possible, but it was quite useless.’
I cannot describe the state of mind into which I was thrown by this intelligence. The shock of such an event happening so suddenly, and happening to one with whom I had been in any respect at variance—the appalling vacancy in the room he had occupied so lately, where his chair and table seemed to wait for him, and his handwriting of yesterday was like a ghost—the indefinable impossibility of separating him from the place, and feeling, when the door opened, as if he might come in—the lazy hush and rest there was in the office, and the insatiable relish with which our people talked about it, and other people came in and out all day, and gorged themselves with the subject—this is easily intelligible to anyone. What I cannot describe is, how, in the innermost recesses of my own heart, I had a lurking jealousy even of Death. How I felt as if its might would push me from my ground in Dora’s thoughts. How I was, in a grudging way I have no words for, envious of her grief. How it made me restless to think of her weeping to others, or being consoled by others. How I had a grasping, avaricious wish to shut out everybody from her but myself, and to be all in all to her, at that unseasonable time of all times.
In the trouble of this state of mind—not exclusively my own, I hope, but known to others—I went down to Norwood that night; and finding from one of the servants, when I made my inquiries at the door, that Miss Mills was there, got my aunt to direct a letter to her, which I wrote. I deplored the untimely death of Mr. Spenlow, most sincerely, and shed tears in doing so. I entreated her to tell Dora, if Dora were in a state to hear it, that he had spoken to me with the utmost kindness and consideration; and had coupled nothing but tenderness, not a single or reproachful word, with her name. I know I did this selfishly, to have my name brought before her; but I tried to believe it was an act of justice to his memory. Perhaps I did believe it.
My aunt received a few lines next day in reply; addressed, outside, to her; within, to me. Dora was overcome by grief; and when her friend had asked her should she send her love to me, had only cried, as she was always crying, ‘Oh, dear papa! oh, poor papa!’ But she had not said No, and that I made the most of.
Mr. Jorkins, who had been at Norwood since the occurrence, came to the office a few days afterwards. He and Tiffey were closeted together for some few moments, and then Tiffey looked out at the door and beckoned me in.
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Jorkins. ‘Mr. Tiffey and myself, Mr. Copperfield, are about to examine the desks, the drawers, and other such repositories of the deceased, with the view of sealing up his private papers, and searching for a Will. There is no trace of any, elsewhere. It may be as well for you to assist us, if you please.’
I had been in agony to obtain some knowledge of the circumstances in which my Dora would be placed—as, in whose guardianship, and so forth—and this was something towards it. We began the search at once; Mr. Jorkins unlocking the drawers and desks, and we all taking out the papers. The office-papers we placed on one side, and the private papers (which were not numerous) on the other. We were very grave; and when we came to a stray seal, or pencil-case, or ring, or any little article of that kind which we associated personally with him, we spoke very low.
We had sealed up several packets; and were still going on dustily and quietly, when Mr. Jorkins said to us, applying exactly the same words to his late partner as his late partner had applied to him:
‘Mr. Spenlow was very difficult to move from the beaten track. You know what he was! I am disposed to think he had made no will.’
Fui sorpreso quando, avvicinandomi alla porta dell’ufficio, vidi i portieri in piedi fuori a chiacchierare tra loro, e alcuni altri che guardavano attraverso le finestre chiuse. Accelerai il passo, li superai, incuriosito dal loro comportamento, e entrai di fretta.
I impiegati c’erano, ma nessuno faceva nulla. Il vecchio Tiffey, per la prima volta nella sua vita, credo, stava seduto sulla sedia di qualcun altro e non aveva nemmeno appeso il cappello.
“Questa è una terribile calamità, signor Copperfield,” disse lui non appena entrai.
“Che cos’è?”, esclamai. “Che problema c’è?”
“Non lo sai?” gridò Tiffey, e tutti gli altri si raccolsero intorno a me.
“No!”, dissi, guardandolo negli occhi.
“Signor Spenlow,” disse Tiffey.
“E lui?”
“Morto!” Pensai che fosse l’ufficio a barcollare, non io, quando uno dei impiegati mi afferrò. Mi fecero sedere su una sedia, mi sciolsero il fazzoletto intorno al collo e mi portarono dell’acqua. Non ho idea di quanto tempo ci sia voluto per tutto questo.
“Morto?” dissi io.
“Ieri ha cenato in città e poi è tornato da solo in phaeton,” disse Tiffey, “avendo mandato a casa il proprio cocchiere con la carrozza, come faceva a volte, sai, ”
“‘Beh?’”
Il phaeton tornò a casa senza di lui. I cavalli si fermarono davanti al cancello dello stallo; l’uomo uscì con una lanterna. Nessuno era dentro la carrozza.
“Se fossero scappati?”
“Non erano caldi,” disse Tiffey mettendosi gli occhiali; “non più caldi, capisco, di quanto lo sarebbero stati se avessero continuato il loro normale percorso. Le redini erano rotte, ma erano rimaste trascinate per terra. La casa fu svegliata immediatamente e tre di loro uscirono lungo la strada. Lo trovarono a un miglio di distanza.”
“A più di un miglio di distanza, signor Tiffey,” intervenne uno studente più giovane.
“Davvero? Credo che tu abbia ragione,” disse Tiffey, “è più di un miglio lontano, non lontano dalla chiesa, giace in parte sul ciglio della strada e in parte sul sentiero, con il viso rivolto verso il basso. Non si sa se sia caduto durante un attacco, o se sia uscito di casa sentendosi male prima che l’attacco avvenisse. O addirittura se fosse già morto allora; comunque è certo che non era più cosciente. Nessuno sembra saperlo. Anche se respirasse, di certo non avrebbe mai parlato. È stata chiamata immediatamente l’assistenza medica, ma è risultata del tutto inutile.”
Non riesco a descrivere lo stato d’animo in cui mi trovavo a causa di questa notizia. Lo shock causato dall’evento improvviso, e dal fatto che fosse accaduto proprio a qualcuno con cui avevo avuto dei dissidi. Quel vuoto terribile nella stanza che lui aveva occupato fino a poco tempo prima, dove la sua sedia e il suo tavolo sembravano aspettarlo ancora. La sua calligrafia di ieri, come un fantasma. L’impossibilità di separarlo da quel luogo. Il pensiero che, quando si apriva la porta, potesse entrare da un momento all’altro. Il silenzio e la tranquillità che regnavano in quell’ufficio. E l’entusiasmo smisurato con cui la gente ne parlava. Tutto questo è facilmente comprensibile per chiunque. Quello che non riesco a descrivere, invece, è come, nel profondo del mio cuore, provassi persino una sorta di invidia verso la >Morte. Come sentissi che il suo potere avrebbe potuto spingermi via dai pensieri di Dora. Come fossi, in modo difficile da esprimere a parole, invidioso del suo dolore. Come mi rendesse irrequieto il pensiero che lei piangesse davanti ad altri o venisse consolata da loro. E come desiderassi disperatamente escludere tutti tranne me stesso dalla sua vita, diventare l’unico per lei in quel momento così inopportuno.
Nella condizione mentale in cui mi trovavo – e non solo la mia, spero – ma che è conosciuta anche da altri – quella notte andai a Norwood; e, dopo aver chiesto informazioni ai servitori all’ingresso, appresi che Miss Mills era lì. Feci quindi scrivere una lettera da mia zia per lei stessa. Condogliai con sincera tristezza la prematura morte di Mr. Spenlow e versai lacrime mentre lo facevo. Le chiesi di riferire a Dora, se fosse stata in grado di ascoltare, che lui aveva parlato con me con estrema gentilezza e considerazione; e che non aveva mai pronunciato una parola dura o di rimprovero riguardo a lei. So che lo feci per motivi egoistici, nel desiderio che il mio nome venisse menzionato davanti a lei; ma cercai di convincermi che fosse un atto di giustizia verso la sua memoria. Forse ci credevo davvero.
Il giorno dopo mia zia ricevette alcune righe in risposta; all’esterno erano indirizzate a lei, all’interno a me. Dora fu sopraffatta dal dolore; e quando la sua amica le chiese se volesse inviarmi il suo affetto, lei poté solo piangere, come faceva sempre: “Oh, caro papà, oh, povero papà!” Ma non disse di no, e io ne approfittai al massimo.
Il signor Jorkins, che si trovava a Norwood fin dal momento dell’incidente, venne in ufficio alcuni giorni dopo. Lui e Tiffey rimasero da soli per qualche istante, poi Tiffey guardò fuori dalla porta e mi fece segno di entrare.
“Oh!” disse il signor Jorkins. “Il signor Tiffey e io, insieme al signor Copperfield, stiamo per esaminare i banchi, le cassetti e altri oggetti appartenenti al defunto, al fine di sigillare i suoi documenti personali e cercare un testamento. Non ne esiste traccia da nessun’altra parte. Forse sarebbe meglio se ci aiutaste, se vi andasse bene.”
Ero in preda all’angoscia nel tentativo di ottenere informazioni sulle circostanze in cui mia figlia Dora sarebbe stata messa – in quale custodia, e così via – e questa era senz’altro un passo avanti. Iniziammo subito le ricerche: il signor Jorkins aprì cassetti e scrivanie, e tutti insieme esaminammo i documenti presenti. I documenti ufficiali li mettemmo da una parte, mentre quelli personali (che non erano molti) dall’altra. Eravamo molto seri; e quando trovavamo un sigillo, una scatola da matite, un anello, o qualsiasi altro oggetto che ci ricordasse di lui, parlavamo a voce molto bassa.
Avevamo sigillato diversi pacchetti; e continuavamo a lavorare in silenzio e senza fare rumore, quando il signor Jorkins ci disse, usando esattamente le stesse parole che il suo defunto socio aveva usato per lui:
‘Il signor Spenlow era davvero difficile convincere a cambiare abitudini. Sapete bene chi fosse! Credo che non abbia mai redatto un testamento.’
‘Oh, I know he had!’ said I.
They both stopped and looked at me. ‘On the very day when I last saw him,’ said I, ‘he told me that he had, and that his affairs were long since settled.’
Mr. Jorkins and old Tiffey shook their heads with one accord.
‘That looks unpromising,’ said Tiffey.
‘Very unpromising,’ said Mr. Jorkins.
‘Surely you don’t doubt—’ I began.
‘My good Mr. Copperfield!’ said Tiffey, laying his hand upon my arm, and shutting up both his eyes as he shook his head: ‘if you had been in the Commons as long as I have, you would know that there is no subject on which men are so inconsistent, and so little to be trusted.’
‘Why, bless my soul, he made that very remark!’ I replied persistently.
‘I should call that almost final,’ observed Tiffey. ‘My opinion is—no will.’
It appeared a wonderful thing to me, but it turned out that there was no will. He had never so much as thought of making one, so far as his papers afforded any evidence; for there was no kind of hint, sketch, or memorandum, of any testamentary intention whatever. What was scarcely less astonishing to me, was, that his affairs were in a most disordered state. It was extremely difficult, I heard, to make out what he owed, or what he had paid, or of what he died possessed. It was considered likely that for years he could have had no clear opinion on these subjects himself. By little and little it came out, that, in the competition on all points of appearance and gentility then running high in the Commons, he had spent more than his professional income, which was not a very large one, and had reduced his private means, if they ever had been great (which was exceedingly doubtful), to a very low ebb indeed. There was a sale of the furniture and lease, at Norwood; and Tiffey told me, little thinking how interested I was in the story, that, paying all the just debts of the deceased, and deducting his share of outstanding bad and doubtful debts due to the firm, he wouldn’t give a thousand pounds for all the assets remaining.
This was at the expiration of about six weeks. I had suffered tortures all the time; and thought I really must have laid violent hands upon myself, when Miss Mills still reported to me, that my broken-hearted little Dora would say nothing, when I was mentioned, but ‘Oh, poor papa! Oh, dear papa!’ Also, that she had no other relations than two aunts, maiden sisters of Mr. Spenlow, who lived at Putney, and who had not held any other than chance communication with their brother for many years. Not that they had ever quarrelled (Miss Mills informed me); but that having been, on the occasion of Dora’s christening, invited to tea, when they considered themselves privileged to be invited to dinner, they had expressed their opinion in writing, that it was ‘better for the happiness of all parties’ that they should stay away. Since which they had gone their road, and their brother had gone his.
These two ladies now emerged from their retirement, and proposed to take Dora to live at Putney. Dora, clinging to them both, and weeping, exclaimed, ‘O yes, aunts! Please take Julia Mills and me and Jip to Putney!’ So they went, very soon after the funeral.
How I found time to haunt Putney, I am sure I don’t know; but I contrived, by some means or other, to prowl about the neighbourhood pretty often. Miss Mills, for the more exact discharge of the duties of friendship, kept a journal; and she used to meet me sometimes, on the Common, and read it, or (if she had not time to do that) lend it to me. How I treasured up the entries, of which I subjoin a sample—!
‘Monday. My sweet D. still much depressed. Headache. Called attention to J. as being beautifully sleek. D. fondled J. Associations thus awakened, opened floodgates of sorrow. Rush of grief admitted. (Are tears the dewdrops of the heart? J. M.)
‘Tuesday. D. weak and nervous. Beautiful in pallor. (Do we not remark this in moon likewise? J. M.) D., J. M. and J. took airing in carriage. J. looking out of window, and barking violently at dustman, occasioned smile to overspread features of D. (Of such slight links is chain of life composed! J. M.)
‘Wednesday. D. comparatively cheerful. Sang to her, as congenial melody, “Evening Bells”. Effect not soothing, but reverse. D. inexpressibly affected. Found sobbing afterwards, in own room. Quoted verses respecting self and young Gazelle. Ineffectually. Also referred to Patience on Monument. (Qy. Why on monument? J. M.)
‘Thursday. D. certainly improved. Better night. Slight tinge of damask revisiting cheek. Resolved to mention name of D. C. Introduced same, cautiously, in course of airing. D. immediately overcome. “Oh, dear, dear Julia! Oh, I have been a naughty and undutiful child!” Soothed and caressed. Drew ideal picture of D. C. on verge of tomb. D. again overcome. “Oh, what shall I do, what shall I do? Oh, take me somewhere!” Much alarmed. Fainting of D. and glass of water from public-house. (Poetical affinity. Chequered sign on door-post; chequered human life. Alas! J. M.)
‘Friday. Day of incident. Man appears in kitchen, with blue bag, “for lady’s boots left out to heel”. Cook replies, “No such orders.” Man argues point. Cook withdraws to inquire, leaving man alone with J. On Cook’s return, man still argues point, but ultimately goes. J. missing. D. distracted. Information sent to police. Man to be identified by broad nose, and legs like balustrades of bridge. Search made in every direction. No J. D. weeping bitterly, and inconsolable. Renewed reference to young Gazelle. Appropriate, but unavailing. Towards evening, strange boy calls. Brought into parlour. Broad nose, but no balustrades. Says he wants a pound, and knows a dog. Declines to explain further, though much pressed. Pound being produced by D. takes Cook to little house, where J. alone tied up to leg of table. Joy of D. who dances round J. while he eats his supper. Emboldened by this happy change, mention D. C. upstairs. D. weeps afresh, cries piteously, “Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t! It is so wicked to think of anything but poor papa!”—embraces J. and sobs herself to sleep. (Must not D. C. confine himself to the broad pinions of Time? J. M.)’
Miss Mills and her journal were my sole consolation at this period. To see her, who had seen Dora but a little while before—to trace the initial letter of Dora’s name through her sympathetic pages—to be made more and more miserable by her—were my only comforts. I felt as if I had been living in a palace of cards, which had tumbled down, leaving only Miss Mills and me among the ruins; I felt as if some grim enchanter had drawn a magic circle round the innocent goddess of my heart, which nothing indeed but those same strong pinions, capable of carrying so many people over so much, would enable me to enter!
“Oh, so che l’aveva!” dissi io.
Si fermarono entrambi e mi guardarono. “Esattamente il giorno in cui l’ho visto l’ultima volta,” dissi, “mi ha detto che aveva sistemato tutte le sue questioni e che ormai tutto era a posto.”
Il signor Jorkins e la vecchia Tiffey scossero la testa all’unisono.
“Sembra poco promettente,” disse Tiffey.
“Molto poco promettente,” disse il signor Jorkins.
“Di certo non dubiti, ” iniziai a dire.
“Mio caro signor Copperfield!”, disse Tiffey, posandomi una mano sul braccio e chiudendo entrambi gli occhi mentre scuoteva la testa: “Se foste stato nel Parlamento per tutto il tempo che ci sono stata io, sapreste che non esiste argomento su cui le persone siano così contraddittorie e di cui si possa fidare così poco”.
“Perbene, per la mia ‘anima, è proprio quella osservazione che ha fatto!” rispondevo con insistenza.
“Direi che sia quasi finito”, osservò Tiffey. “Secondo me, no, nessuno lo vorrà”.
Mi sembrava una cosa meravigliosa, ma poi si scoprì che non esisteva alcuna volontà da parte sua di redigere un testamento. Non aveva mai nemmeno pensato di farlo, stando alle prove presenti nei suoi documenti; non c’era alcun accenno, schizzo o appunto che indicasse una simile intenzione. Ciò che trovai altrettanto sorprendente fu il fatto che le sue finanze fossero in uno stato di estrema disordine. Era estremamente difficile capire cosa dovesse, cosa avesse pagato e cosa possedesse al momento della morte. Si riteneva che, probabilmente, per anni non avesse mai avuto una chiara idea su queste questioni. Gradualmente emerse che, nella competizione per l’aspetto esteriore e la gentilezza che all’epoca era molto in voga tra i membri del Parlamento, aveva speso più del proprio reddito professionale, che non era certo elevato, riducendo così le sue risorse personali – se mai ne aveva avute – a un livello davvero molto basso. Fu venduta la mobilia e il contratto di affitto di Norwood; Tiffey mi raccontò, senza nemmeno immaginare quanto fossi interessato alla storia, che, dopo aver pagato tutti i debiti legittimi del defunto e detratto la sua parte dei debiti cattivi e dubbi che il negozio aveva nei suoi confronti, non avrebbe dato mille sterline per tutto ciò che rimaneva delle sue proprietà.
Questo accadde alla scadenza di circa sei settimane. Avevo sofferto torture per tutto quel tempo; pensavo davvero di essermi fatto del male, quando la signorina Mills mi riferì ancora che la mia povera Dora, ogni volta che venivo menzionato, diceva soltanto: “Oh, povero papà. Oh, caro papà!” Inoltre, aggiunse che Dora non aveva altre parenti se non due zie, sorelle single del signor Spenlow, che vivevano a Putney e che da molti anni non mantenevano alcun contatto con loro fratello. Non che avessero mai litigato (mi disse la signorina Mills); ma poiché, all’occasione del battesimo di Dora, erano state invitate a prendere il tè, mentre loro si consideravano fortunate ad essere invitate a cena, avevano espresso per iscritto il loro parere, ritenendo che fosse “meglio per la felicità di tutti” se non partecipassero. Da allora, ognuna aveva seguito la propria strada, e così anche loro fratello.
Queste due signore uscirono ora dalla loro ritirata e proposero di portare Dora a vivere a Putney. Dora, abbracciandole entrambe e piangendo, esclamò: “Oh sì, ziette! Per favore portate me, Julia Mills e Jip a Putney!” Così fecero, poco dopo il funerale.
Come abbia trovato il tempo per frequentare Putney, non lo so proprio; ma in qualche modo sono riuscito ad aggirarmi spesso in quella zona. La signorina Mills, nel rispetto più scrupoloso dei doveri della amicizia, teneva un diario; a volte ci incontravamo nel Common, lei lo leggeva per me, o, se non aveva il tempo di farlo, me lo prestava. Quanto ho apprezzato quelle annotazioni. Ecco qui un esempio!
“Lunedì. La mia cara D. è ancora molto depressa; ha mal di testa. Ho notato che J. appare davvero bellissimo e affascinante. Quando D. lo ha accarezzato, questi ricordi si sono risvegliati, aprendo le porte a un’ondata di tristezza. Le lacrime sono forse i goccioli dell’anima? (J.M.)”
“Martedì. D. debole e nervosa. Bellissima nel suo pallore. Non notiamo lo stesso anche nella luna? J. M.) D., J. M. e J. sono andate a fare una passeggiata in carrozza. J., guardando fuori dalla finestra, ha iniziato ad abbaiare violentemente contro lo spazzino, il che ha fatto sorridere D. (Della sorte di questi legami così sottili è fatta la catena della vita. J. M.)”
“Mercoledì. D. relativamente allegra. Cantava per sé una melodia piacevole, ‘Le campane della sera’. L’effetto non fu rilassante, anzi il contrario. D. si comportava in modo inesprimibilmente affettato. In seguito la trovarono in lacrime nella sua stanza. Citò versi che riguardavano se stessa e la giovane Gazelle. Invano. Menzionò anche ‘Patience’ sul Monumento. (Q.: Perché proprio sul Monumento? J.M.)”
‘Giovedì. D. è sicuramente migliorata. Miglior notte. Una leggera traccia di colore damasco riappare sulle guance. Ho deciso di menzionare il nome di D.C.; l’ho fatto con cautela, durante la conversazione. D. ne è rimasta immediatamente commossa: “Oh, cara, cara Julia! Oh, sono stata una bambina cattiva e ingrata, ” L’ho consolata e accarezzata. Ho immaginato l’immagine ideale di D.C. sull’orlo della tomba. D. si è commossa di nuovo: “Oh, cosa devo fare? Portami via da qui, per favore, ” Era molto spaventata. Ha quasi perso i sensi. Le ho dato un bicchiere d’acqua preso dal pub, (Affinità poetica. Un simbolo a scacchi sul palo della porta. La vita umana, piena di alti e bassi. Ahimè. J.M.)
Venerdì. Giorno dell’incidente. Un uomo appare in cucina, con un sacco blu, e dice: “Per le scarpe da donna lasciate fuori, ” La cuoca risponde: “Non ci sono tali ordini.” L’uomo insiste, così la cuoca va a controllare, lasciandolo da solo con J. Al suo ritorno, l’uomo continua a discutere, ma alla fine se ne va. J. è scomparsa. D. è distrutta; viene chiamata la polizia. L’uomo viene descritto come un uomo dal naso largo e dalle gambe simili alle balaustrate di un ponte. Si effettuano ricerche in tutte le direzioni. Nessuna traccia di J. D. piange disperatamente, inconsolabile. Si pensa di nuovo alla giovane Gazelle. Ma senza successo. Verso sera, arriva un ragazzo strano; viene portato nel salotto. Ha il naso largo, ma non le gambe simili alle balaustrate. Dice di volere una sterlina e che conosce un cane. Rifiuta di spiegare di più, nonostante le insistenze. D. gli dà la sterlina e lo porta in una piccola casa. Lì J. è legata a una gamba del tavolo. D. è felicissima; danza intorno a J., mentre lui mangia la sua cena. Incoraggiata da questa bella notizia, menziona D.C. al piano di sopra. D. ricomincia a piangere disperatamente: “Oh, no. È così malvagio pensare ad altro che a povero papà, ” Si abbraccia a J. e si addormenta, (Non dovrebbe forse D.C. lasciarlo libero, nel corso del tempo,? J.M.)
A quel tempo, la signorina Mills e il suo diario erano le mie uniche consolazioni. Vederla, lei che aveva conosciuto Dora solo poco tempo prima; leggere le prime lettere del nome di Dora nelle sue pagine piene di comprensione; sentirmi sempre più infelice a causa sua. Queste erano le uniche cose che mi davano conforto. Mi sembrava di vivere in un palazzo di carte fatto crollare, nel quale solo la signorina Mills ed io eravamo rimasti tra le rovine; mi sembrava che qualche malvagio stregone avesse tracciato un cerchio magico intorno alla “innocente” dea del mio cuore. E che solo quelle ali forti, capaci di portare tante persone attraverso tante difficoltà, potessero permettermi di entrare in quel cerchio!
CHAPTER 39. WICKFIELD AND HEEP
My aunt, beginning, I imagine, to be made seriously uncomfortable by my prolonged dejection, made a pretence of being anxious that I should go to Dover, to see that all was working well at the cottage, which was let; and to conclude an agreement, with the same tenant, for a longer term of occupation. Janet was drafted into the service of Mrs. Strong, where I saw her every day. She had been undecided, on leaving Dover, whether or no to give the finishing touch to that renunciation of mankind in which she had been educated, by marrying a pilot; but she decided against that venture. Not so much for the sake of principle, I believe, as because she happened not to like him.
Although it required an effort to leave Miss Mills, I fell rather willingly into my aunt’s pretence, as a means of enabling me to pass a few tranquil hours with Agnes. I consulted the good Doctor relative to an absence of three days; and the Doctor wishing me to take that relaxation,—he wished me to take more; but my energy could not bear that,—I made up my mind to go.
As to the Commons, I had no great occasion to be particular about my duties in that quarter. To say the truth, we were getting in no very good odour among the tip-top proctors, and were rapidly sliding down to but a doubtful position. The business had been indifferent under Mr. Jorkins, before Mr. Spenlow’s time; and although it had been quickened by the infusion of new blood, and by the display which Mr. Spenlow made, still it was not established on a sufficiently strong basis to bear, without being shaken, such a blow as the sudden loss of its active manager. It fell off very much. Mr. Jorkins, notwithstanding his reputation in the firm, was an easy-going, incapable sort of man, whose reputation out of doors was not calculated to back it up. I was turned over to him now, and when I saw him take his snuff and let the business go, I regretted my aunt’s thousand pounds more than ever.
But this was not the worst of it. There were a number of hangers-on and outsiders about the Commons, who, without being proctors themselves, dabbled in common-form business, and got it done by real proctors, who lent their names in consideration of a share in the spoil;—and there were a good many of these too. As our house now wanted business on any terms, we joined this noble band; and threw out lures to the hangers-on and outsiders, to bring their business to us. Marriage licences and small probates were what we all looked for, and what paid us best; and the competition for these ran very high indeed. Kidnappers and inveiglers were planted in all the avenues of entrance to the Commons, with instructions to do their utmost to cut off all persons in mourning, and all gentlemen with anything bashful in their appearance, and entice them to the offices in which their respective employers were interested; which instructions were so well observed, that I myself, before I was known by sight, was twice hustled into the premises of our principal opponent. The conflicting interests of these touting gentlemen being of a nature to irritate their feelings, personal collisions took place; and the Commons was even scandalized by our principal inveigler (who had formerly been in the wine trade, and afterwards in the sworn brokery line) walking about for some days with a black eye. Any one of these scouts used to think nothing of politely assisting an old lady in black out of a vehicle, killing any proctor whom she inquired for, representing his employer as the lawful successor and representative of that proctor, and bearing the old lady off (sometimes greatly affected) to his employer’s office. Many captives were brought to me in this way. As to marriage licences, the competition rose to such a pitch, that a shy gentleman in want of one, had nothing to do but submit himself to the first inveigler, or be fought for, and become the prey of the strongest. One of our clerks, who was an outsider, used, in the height of this contest, to sit with his hat on, that he might be ready to rush out and swear before a surrogate any victim who was brought in. The system of inveigling continues, I believe, to this day. The last time I was in the Commons, a civil able-bodied person in a white apron pounced out upon me from a doorway, and whispering the word ‘Marriage-licence’ in my ear, was with great difficulty prevented from taking me up in his arms and lifting me into a proctor’s. From this digression, let me proceed to Dover.
I found everything in a satisfactory state at the cottage; and was enabled to gratify my aunt exceedingly by reporting that the tenant inherited her feud, and waged incessant war against donkeys. Having settled the little business I had to transact there, and slept there one night, I walked on to Canterbury early in the morning. It was now winter again; and the fresh, cold windy day, and the sweeping downland, brightened up my hopes a little.
Coming into Canterbury, I loitered through the old streets with a sober pleasure that calmed my spirits, and eased my heart. There were the old signs, the old names over the shops, the old people serving in them. It appeared so long, since I had been a schoolboy there, that I wondered the place was so little changed, until I reflected how little I was changed myself. Strange to say, that quiet influence which was inseparable in my mind from Agnes, seemed to pervade even the city where she dwelt. The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and rooks whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence would have done; the battered gateways, one stuck full with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the ivied growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses, the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere—on everything—I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit.
CAPITOLO 39. WICKFIELD E HEEP
Mia zia, immagino, iniziò ad avvertire una seria disagio a causa della mia prolungata tristezza, e fece finta di essere preoccupata che io andassi a Dover per verificare che tutto procedesse benissimo nella casa in affitto; inoltre, concluse un accordo con lo stesso inquilino per un periodo più lungo di locazione. Janet fu messa al servizio della signora Strong, e io la vedevo ogni giorno. Al momento di lasciare Dover, non era ancora decisa se dare il “tocco finale” a quella rinuncia all’umanità che le era stata inculcata fin da piccola, sposando un pilota; ma alla fine scelse di non farlo. Non credo che fosse per motivi principiali, quanto perché semplicemente non le piaceva quell’uomo.
Anche se lasciare la signorina Mills richiedeva uno sforzo, accettai volentieri l’inganno di mia zia, come modo per trascorrere qualche ora tranquilla con Agnes. Consultai il bravo dottore riguardo a una possibile assenza di tre giorni; lui desiderava che mi prendessi quel riposo, anzi, che ne prendessi di più; ma le mie forze non ce la facevano, quindi decisi di andare.
Per quanto riguarda il settore commerciale, non ebbi molte occasioni di prestare particolare attenzione ai miei doveri in quel campo. A dire la verità, non stavamo ottenendo buoni risultati tra i principali responsabili aziendali, e il nostro status stava rapidamente peggiorando. Le cose erano andate piuttosto male sotto la guida del signor Jorkins, prima dell’arrivo del signor Spenlow; e anche se l’attività era stata ravvivata dall’ingresso di nuovi elementi e dallo slancio dimostrato dal signor Spenlow, non era ancora sufficientemente solida da resistere a un colpo così duro come la improvvisa perdita del suo manager principale. Le cose andarono davvero molto male. Il signor Jorkins, nonostante la sua reputazione all’interno dell’azienda, era una persona accomodante e inadeguata al ruolo che ricopriva; inoltre, la sua reputazione esterna non era certo tale da sostenerla. Ora ero stato affidato a lui, e quando lo vidi occuparsi solo delle sue abitudini personali trascurando gli affari, mi pentii ancora di più dei mille sterline investite da mia zia in quell’impresa.
Ma questo non era nemmeno il peggio. C’erano molti individui che, senza essere veri procuratori, si occupavano di affari legati alle pratiche comunali, facendoli svolgere da veri procuratori in cambio di una parte dei profitti; e questi individui erano davvero numerosi. Poiché la nostra casa aveva bisogno di ottenere clienti a tutti i costi, ci unimmo a questa “nobile banda” e offrimmo incentivi a questi individui per attirarli da noi. Le licenze matrimoniali e le piccole procedure legali erano ciò che cercavamo tutti, e ciò che ci rendeva di più; la concorrenza in questo settore era davvero feroce. Rapitori e ingannatori erano piazzati in tutte le entrate della sala delle pratiche comunali, con l’ordine di impedire l’ingresso a chiunque indossasse abiti da lutto o avesse un aspetto timido, attirandoli invece negli uffici dei rispettivi datori di lavoro. Queste istruzioni venivano seguite così fedelmente che io stesso, prima ancora di essere riconosciuto, fui due volte spinto all’interno degli uffici del nostro principale concorrente. A causa delle contraddizioni tra questi individui, si verificavano spesso scontri personali; e la sala delle pratiche comunali fu persino scandalizzata dal nostro principale ingannatore (che in passato aveva lavorato nel commercio del vino e successivamente nell’attività di intermediari legali), il quale per alcuni giorni girò in giro con un occhio nero. Questi individui non esitavano a aiutare gentilmente una signora anziana ad uscire da un veicolo, a uccidere qualsiasi procuratore chiedesse informazioni, a dichiararsi legali successori di quegli stessi procuratori e a portare le signore nei loro uffici. Molte persone venivano catturate in questo modo. Per quanto riguarda le licenze matrimoniali, la concorrenza raggiunse livelli estremi: un gentiluomo timido che ne aveva bisogno non aveva altra scelta se non quella di affidarsi al primo ingannatore che gli capitava, o di diventare preda del più forte. Uno dei nostri impiegati, che era un “esterno” a questo ambiente, durante il culmine della competizione si sedeva addirittura con il cappello in testa, pronto a correre fuori e giurare davanti a un funzionario qualsiasi vittima venisse portata lì. Credo che questo sistema di inganni continui ancora oggi. L’ultima volta che sono stato nella sala delle pratiche comunali, un uomo robusto con un grembiule bianco mi si avvicinò da una porta e, sussurrandomi “licenza matrimoniale” all’orecchio, riuscimmo a malapena a impedirgli di portarmi via tra le braccia. Tornando al discorso principale, lasciate che continui con la storia di Dover.
Trovai tutto in buone condizioni nella capanna; e fui in grado di rendere molto felice mia zia riferendole che l’inquilino aveva ereditato il suo “feudo” e continuava a combattere incessantemente contro i cavalli. Dopo aver sistemato le piccole faccende che dovevo sbrigare lì, dormii una notte nella capanna e poi proseguii il mio viaggio verso Canterbury all’alba. Era di nuovo inverno; quel giorno freddo, ventoso e caratterizzato da un paesaggio aperto e pianeggiante rinfrescò un po’ le mie speranze.
Entrando a Canterbury, mi aggirai per le vecchie strade con un piacere sobrio che placò il mio spirito e lenì il mio cuore. C’erano i vecchi cartelli, i vecchi nomi sopra i negozi, le persone anziane che li gestivano. Sembrava fosse passato così tanto tempo da quando ero stato uno studente lì, che mi chiesi come quel luogo fosse cambiato così poco, finché non riflettei su quanto anch’io fossi cambiato poco. Stranamente, quell’influenza tranquilla e inscindibile dalla mia mente legata ad Agnes sembrava pervadere persino la città in cui lei viveva. Le maestose torri della cattedrale, i vecchi corvi i cui richiami sonori creavano un’atmosfera di solitudine più profonda del silenzio perfetto; le porte logore, alcune piene di statue da tempo abbattute e in rovina, proprio come i pellegrini che un tempo le avevano ammirate con reverenza; gli angoli tranquilli, dove la vite secolare si arrampicava sui tetti a padiglione e sulle mura in rovina; le antiche case, il paesaggio pastorale di campi, orti e giardini. Dappertutto, su ogni cosa, percepivo lo stesso clima sereno, la stessa calma, lo stesso spirito riflessivo e gentile.
Arrived at Mr. Wickfield’s house, I found, in the little lower room on the ground floor, where Uriah Heep had been of old accustomed to sit, Mr. Micawber plying his pen with great assiduity. He was dressed in a legal-looking suit of black, and loomed, burly and large, in that small office.
Mr. Micawber was extremely glad to see me, but a little confused too. He would have conducted me immediately into the presence of Uriah, but I declined.
‘I know the house of old, you recollect,’ said I, ‘and will find my way upstairs. How do you like the law, Mr. Micawber?’
‘My dear Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘To a man possessed of the higher imaginative powers, the objection to legal studies is the amount of detail which they involve. Even in our professional correspondence,’ said Mr. Micawber, glancing at some letters he was writing, ‘the mind is not at liberty to soar to any exalted form of expression. Still, it is a great pursuit. A great pursuit!’
He then told me that he had become the tenant of Uriah Heep’s old house; and that Mrs. Micawber would be delighted to receive me, once more, under her own roof.
‘It is humble,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘—to quote a favourite expression of my friend Heep; but it may prove the stepping-stone to more ambitious domiciliary accommodation.’
I asked him whether he had reason, so far, to be satisfied with his friend Heep’s treatment of him? He got up to ascertain if the door were close shut, before he replied, in a lower voice:
‘My dear Copperfield, a man who labours under the pressure of pecuniary embarrassments, is, with the generality of people, at a disadvantage. That disadvantage is not diminished, when that pressure necessitates the drawing of stipendiary emoluments, before those emoluments are strictly due and payable. All I can say is, that my friend Heep has responded to appeals to which I need not more particularly refer, in a manner calculated to redound equally to the honour of his head, and of his heart.’
‘I should not have supposed him to be very free with his money either,’ I observed.
‘Pardon me!’ said Mr. Micawber, with an air of constraint, ‘I speak of my friend Heep as I have experience.’
‘I am glad your experience is so favourable,’ I returned.
‘You are very obliging, my dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber; and hummed a tune.
‘Do you see much of Mr. Wickfield?’ I asked, to change the subject.
‘Not much,’ said Mr. Micawber, slightingly. ‘Mr. Wickfield is, I dare say, a man of very excellent intentions; but he is—in short, he is obsolete.’
‘I am afraid his partner seeks to make him so,’ said I.
‘My dear Copperfield!’ returned Mr. Micawber, after some uneasy evolutions on his stool, ‘allow me to offer a remark! I am here, in a capacity of confidence. I am here, in a position of trust. The discussion of some topics, even with Mrs. Micawber herself (so long the partner of my various vicissitudes, and a woman of a remarkable lucidity of intellect), is, I am led to consider, incompatible with the functions now devolving on me. I would therefore take the liberty of suggesting that in our friendly intercourse—which I trust will never be disturbed!—we draw a line. On one side of this line,’ said Mr. Micawber, representing it on the desk with the office ruler, ‘is the whole range of the human intellect, with a trifling exception; on the other, IS that exception; that is to say, the affairs of Messrs Wickfield and Heep, with all belonging and appertaining thereunto. I trust I give no offence to the companion of my youth, in submitting this proposition to his cooler judgement?’
Though I saw an uneasy change in Mr. Micawber, which sat tightly on him, as if his new duties were a misfit, I felt I had no right to be offended. My telling him so, appeared to relieve him; and he shook hands with me.
‘I am charmed, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘let me assure you, with Miss Wickfield. She is a very superior young lady, of very remarkable attractions, graces, and virtues. Upon my honour,’ said Mr. Micawber, indefinitely kissing his hand and bowing with his genteelest air, ‘I do Homage to Miss Wickfield! Hem!’ ‘I am glad of that, at least,’ said I.
‘If you had not assured us, my dear Copperfield, on the occasion of that agreeable afternoon we had the happiness of passing with you, that D. was your favourite letter,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I should unquestionably have supposed that A. had been so.’
We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time—of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances—of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it! I never had this mysterious impression more strongly in my life, than before he uttered those words.
I took my leave of Mr. Micawber, for the time, charging him with my best remembrances to all at home. As I left him, resuming his stool and his pen, and rolling his head in his stock, to get it into easier writing order, I clearly perceived that there was something interposed between him and me, since he had come into his new functions, which prevented our getting at each other as we used to do, and quite altered the character of our intercourse.
There was no one in the quaint old drawing-room, though it presented tokens of Mrs. Heep’s whereabouts. I looked into the room still belonging to Agnes, and saw her sitting by the fire, at a pretty old-fashioned desk she had, writing.
My darkening the light made her look up. What a pleasure to be the cause of that bright change in her attentive face, and the object of that sweet regard and welcome!
‘Ah, Agnes!’ said I, when we were sitting together, side by side; ‘I have missed you so much, lately!’
‘Indeed?’ she replied. ‘Again! And so soon?’
I shook my head.
‘I don’t know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that I ought to have. You were so much in the habit of thinking for me, in the happy old days here, and I came so naturally to you for counsel and support, that I really think I have missed acquiring it.’
Arrivato alla casa del signor Wickfield, trovai, nella piccola stanza al piano terra dove un tempo Uriah Heep aveva l’abitudine di sedersi, il signor Micawber impegnato a scrivere con grande diligenza. Era vestito con un abito nero da avvocato e, nella sua stazza imponente, sembrava riempire interamente quella piccola stanza.
Il signor Micawber fu estremamente felice di vedermi, ma anche un po’ confuso. Avrebbe voluto portarmi immediatamente da Uriah, ma io rifiutai.
“Conosco quella vecchia >casa, ve ne ricordate,” dissi, “e so come arrivare al piano di sopra. Che ne pensate della legge, signor Micawber?”
“Mio caro Copperfield,” rispose. “Per un uomo dotato di forti capacità immaginative, l’unico ostacolo agli studi legali è la quantità di dettagli che essi richiedono. Anche nella nostra corrispondenza professionale,” aggiunse il signor Micawber, guardando alcune lettere che stava scrivendo, “la mente non ha la libertà di elevarsi a forme espressive più elevate. Tuttavia, si tratta comunque di un’attività molto importante. Una grande attività!”
Poi mi disse che era diventato inquilino dell’antica casa di Uriah Heep, e che la signora Micawber sarebbe stata molto felice di ricevermi ancora una volta, sotto il suo stesso tetto.
“È umile,” disse il signor Micawber, “per usare un’espressione preferita del mio amico Heep; ma potrebbe rivelarsi la pietra angolare per ottenere sistemazioni abitative più ambiziose.”
Gli chiesi se, finora, avesse motivo di essere soddisfatto del modo in cui il suo amico Heep si era comportato con lui. Si alzò per verificare che la porta fosse ben chiusa, prima di rispondere, a voce più bassa:
‘Mio caro Copperfield, un uomo che soffre sotto la pressione di difficoltà finanziarie si trova, come la maggior parte delle persone, in una posizione svantaggiosa. Questo svantaggio non diminuisce quando tale pressione costringe a ricevere stipendi prima ancora che siano effettivamente dovuti e pagabili. Tutto ciò che posso dire è che mio amico Heep ha risposto alle richieste che non ho bisogno di menzionare in modo più dettagliato, in un modo che contribuisce ugualmente all’‘onore della sua reputazione e del suo carattere.’
“Non avrei dovuto pensare che fosse così generoso con i suoi soldi,” osservai.
“Perdonatemi!”, disse il signor Micawber con un tono imbarazzato, “parlo del mio amico Heep perché ne ho esperienza.”
“Sono felice che la tua esperienza sia stata così positiva,” risposi.
“Sei davvero molto gentile, caro Copperfield,” disse il signor Micawber, e intonò una canzone.
“Vede spesso il signor Wickfield?”, chiesi per cambiare argomento.
“Non molto,” disse il signor Micawber con disprezzo. “Il signor Wickfield è, oserei dire, una persona dalle intenzioni molto eccellenti; ma, in breve, è superato.”
“Temo che la sua compagna voglia farlo diventare così”, dissi.
“Mio caro Copperfield!”, rispose il signor Micawber, dopo aver fatto alcuni movimenti incerti sulla sua sedia, “permettetemi di fare una osservazione. Sono qui in qualità di confidente, in una posizione di fiducia. Tuttavia, ritengo che l’argomentazione su certi argomenti, anche con la stessa signora Micawber (che è stata sempre al mio fianco nelle varie avversità della mia vita e possiede un’intelligenza particolarmente lucida), sia incompatibile con le funzioni che ora mi spettano. Per questo motivo, vorrei suggerire che, nel nostro rapporto amichevole – che spero non venga mai turbato – stabiliamo una linea di demarcazione. Da un lato di questa linea”, disse il signor Micawber tracciandola sulla scrivania con la riga da disegno, “si trova l’intero ambito dell’intelligenza umana, con una piccola eccezione; dall’altro lato, c’è proprio quell’eccezione: vale a dire, gli affari dei signori Wickfield e Heep, insieme a tutto ciò che ad essi è correlato. Spero di non offendere la compagna della mia giovinezza presentandole questa proposta, affinché possa valutarla con calma, ”
Anche se notai un cambiamento inquietante in Mr. Micawber, che sembrava opprimergli profondamente, come se le sue nuove responsabilità non fossero adatte a lui, sentii di non avere il diritto di offendermi. Quando glielo dissi, parve sollevato; e ci scambiammo una stretta di mano.
“Sono incantato, Copperfield,” disse il signor Micawber, “le assicuro che la signorina Wickfield è una giovane donna davvero eccezionale, dotata di attrazioni, grazie e virtù straordinarie. Per la mia onore,” aggiunse baciando la sua mano e inchinandosi con la massima cortesia, “rendo omaggio alla signorina Wickfield. Ehm!” “Almeno sono felice di questo,” dissi io.
“Se non ci aveste assicurato, caro Copperfield, durante quella piacevole giornata pomeridiana che abbiamo avuto la fortuna di trascorrere insieme a voi, che la lettera D fosse la vostra preferita,” disse il signor Micawber, “senza dubbio avrei pensato che fosse la lettera A.”
Tutti noi abbiamo avuto occasionalmente l’impressione che ciò che stiamo dicendo e facendo sia già stato detto e fatto in tempi lontani; che, in epoche remote, fossimo stati circondati dalle stesse persone, dagli stessi oggetti e nelle stesse circostanze; che sapessimo perfettamente cosa sarebbe successo dopo, come se lo ricordassimo all’improvviso. Mai questa sensazione misteriosa è stata così forte nella mia vita quanto prima che lui pronunciasse quelle parole.
Mi congedai dal signor Micawber, promettendogli di trasmettergli i miei migliori saluti a tutti a casa. Mentre lo lasciavo, riprendeva il suo posto e la sua penna, scuotendo leggermente la testa per mettersi in condizioni più favorevoli alla scrittura; notai chiaramente che qualcosa era cambiato tra noi da quando aveva assunto le sue nuove responsabilità: questo impediva che comunicassimo come facevamo prima, modificando completamente il carattere delle nostre relazioni.
Non c’era nessuno nella graziosa vecchia sala da pranzo, anche se vi si potevano notare tracce della presenza di Mrs. Heep. Entrai nella stanza che apparteneva ancora ad Agnes e la vidi seduta accanto al focolare, davanti a un bellissimo scrittoio vecchio stile, mentre scriveva.
Il fatto che avessi oscurato la luce la fece alzare lo sguardo. Che piacere essere la causa di quel cambiamento luminoso sul suo viso attento, e l’oggetto di quello sguardo dolce e di quell’accoglienza calorosa!
“Ah, Agnes!” dissi quando eravamo seduti uno accanto all’altro; “Mi sei mancata così tanto in questi ultimi tempi!”
“Davvero?” rispose lei. “Di nuovo. E così presto?”
Scossi la testa.
“Non so come sia. Sembra che io abbia bisogno di una certa capacità mentale che invece non possiedo. Nei bei tempi passati, eri così abituata a pensare al mio posto; per me era del tutto naturale rivolgermi a te per consigli e sostegno. E ora credo davvero di aver perso l’opportunità di svilupparla.”
‘And what is it?’ said Agnes, cheerfully.
‘I don’t know what to call it,’ I replied. ‘I think I am earnest and persevering?’
‘I am sure of it,’ said Agnes.
‘And patient, Agnes?’ I inquired, with a little hesitation.
‘Yes,’ returned Agnes, laughing. ‘Pretty well.’
‘And yet,’ said I, ‘I get so miserable and worried, and am so unsteady and irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know I must want—shall I call it—reliance, of some kind?’
‘Call it so, if you will,’ said Agnes.
‘Well!’ I returned. ‘See here! You come to London, I rely on you, and I have an object and a course at once. I am driven out of it, I come here, and in a moment I feel an altered person. The circumstances that distressed me are not changed, since I came into this room; but an influence comes over me in that short interval that alters me, oh, how much for the better! What is it? What is your secret, Agnes?’
Her head was bent down, looking at the fire.
‘It’s the old story,’ said I. ‘Don’t laugh, when I say it was always the same in little things as it is in greater ones. My old troubles were nonsense, and now they are serious; but whenever I have gone away from my adopted sister—’
Agnes looked up—with such a Heavenly face!—and gave me her hand, which I kissed.
‘Whenever I have not had you, Agnes, to advise and approve in the beginning, I have seemed to go wild, and to get into all sorts of difficulty. When I have come to you, at last (as I have always done), I have come to peace and happiness. I come home, now, like a tired traveller, and find such a blessed sense of rest!’
I felt so deeply what I said, it affected me so sincerely, that my voice failed, and I covered my face with my hand, and broke into tears. I write the truth. Whatever contradictions and inconsistencies there were within me, as there are within so many of us; whatever might have been so different, and so much better; whatever I had done, in which I had perversely wandered away from the voice of my own heart; I knew nothing of. I only knew that I was fervently in earnest, when I felt the rest and peace of having Agnes near me.
In her placid sisterly manner; with her beaming eyes; with her tender voice; and with that sweet composure, which had long ago made the house that held her quite a sacred place to me; she soon won me from this weakness, and led me on to tell all that had happened since our last meeting.
‘And there is not another word to tell, Agnes,’ said I, when I had made an end of my confidence. ‘Now, my reliance is on you.’
‘But it must not be on me, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, with a pleasant smile. ‘It must be on someone else.’
‘On Dora?’ said I.
‘Assuredly.’
‘Why, I have not mentioned, Agnes,’ said I, a little embarrassed, ‘that Dora is rather difficult to—I would not, for the world, say, to rely upon, because she is the soul of purity and truth—but rather difficult to—I hardly know how to express it, really, Agnes. She is a timid little thing, and easily disturbed and frightened. Some time ago, before her father’s death, when I thought it right to mention to her—but I’ll tell you, if you will bear with me, how it was.’
Accordingly, I told Agnes about my declaration of poverty, about the cookery-book, the housekeeping accounts, and all the rest of it.
‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she remonstrated, with a smile. ‘Just your old headlong way! You might have been in earnest in striving to get on in the world, without being so very sudden with a timid, loving, inexperienced girl. Poor Dora!’
I never heard such sweet forbearing kindness expressed in a voice, as she expressed in making this reply. It was as if I had seen her admiringly and tenderly embracing Dora, and tacitly reproving me, by her considerate protection, for my hot haste in fluttering that little heart. It was as if I had seen Dora, in all her fascinating artlessness, caressing Agnes, and thanking her, and coaxingly appealing against me, and loving me with all her childish innocence.
I felt so grateful to Agnes, and admired her so! I saw those two together, in a bright perspective, such well-associated friends, each adorning the other so much!
‘What ought I to do then, Agnes?’ I inquired, after looking at the fire a little while. ‘What would it be right to do?’
‘I think,’ said Agnes, ‘that the honourable course to take, would be to write to those two ladies. Don’t you think that any secret course is an unworthy one?’
‘Yes. If YOU think so,’ said I.
‘I am poorly qualified to judge of such matters,’ replied Agnes, with a modest hesitation, ‘but I certainly feel—in short, I feel that your being secret and clandestine, is not being like yourself.’
‘Like myself, in the too high opinion you have of me, Agnes, I am afraid,’ said I.
‘Like yourself, in the candour of your nature,’ she returned; ‘and therefore I would write to those two ladies. I would relate, as plainly and as openly as possible, all that has taken place; and I would ask their permission to visit sometimes, at their house. Considering that you are young, and striving for a place in life, I think it would be well to say that you would readily abide by any conditions they might impose upon you. I would entreat them not to dismiss your request, without a reference to Dora; and to discuss it with her when they should think the time suitable. I would not be too vehement,’ said Agnes, gently, ‘or propose too much. I would trust to my fidelity and perseverance—and to Dora.’
‘But if they were to frighten Dora again, Agnes, by speaking to her,’ said I. ‘And if Dora were to cry, and say nothing about me!’
‘Is that likely?’ inquired Agnes, with the same sweet consideration in her face.
‘God bless her, she is as easily scared as a bird,’ said I. ‘It might be! Or if the two Miss Spenlows (elderly ladies of that sort are odd characters sometimes) should not be likely persons to address in that way!’
“E di cosa si tratta?” chiese Agnes, con allegria.
“Non so proprio come chiamarlo. Penso di essere sincero e perseverante, sì.”
“Ne sono sicura,” disse Agnes.
“E paziente, Agnes?”, chiesi, con un po’ di esitazione.
“Sì,” rispose Agnes ridendo. “Abbastanza >bene, direi.”
“Eppure,” dissi, “mi sento così infelice e preoccupato, così incerto e indeciso nella mia capacità di prendere decisioni con sicurezza, che so di aver bisogno, chiamiamola pure, di un certo tipo di affidamento, o sostegno.”
“Chiamatelo così, se volete,” disse Agnes.
‘Beh!’ risposi. ‘Vedi un po’. Vieni a )Londra, mi affido a te, e ho subito un obiettivo preciso da perseguire. Vengo cacciato via da lì, arrivo qui. E in un attimo mi sento completamente cambiato. Le circostanze che prima mi angosciavano non sono cambiate, dal momento in cui sono entrato in questa stanza; ma in quel breve lasso di tempo qualcosa ha avuto su di me un effetto straordinario. Oh, quanto meglio! Che cos’è? Qual è il tuo segreto, Agnes?’
Aveva la testa china, fissando il fuoco.
“È sempre la stessa storia,” dissi. “Non ridete: nelle piccole cose è sempre stato lo stesso come nelle grandi. I miei vecchi problemi sembravano sciocchezze, ma ora sono diventati seri; e ogni volta che mi allontano da mia sorella adottiva, ”
Agnes alzò lo sguardo, con un viso così sereno e angelico, e mi porse la mano, che baciai.
“Ogni volta che non ho avuto te, Agnes, per consigliarmi e approvare le mie decisioni all’inizio, sembravo impazzire e finivo nei guai più vari. Quando finalmente ti rivolgevo (come facevo sempre), trovavo pace e felicità. Ora torno a >casa, come un viaggiatore stanco, e trovo una vera e propria sensazione di riposo, ”
Sentivo davvero profondamente ciò che avevo detto; quelle parole mi avevano colpito con sincerità tale che la mia voce mi tradì, coprii il viso con la mano e iniziai a piangere. Scrivo la verità. Qualsiasi contraddizione o incongruenza ci fosse in me, come ce ne sono in molti di noi; qualunque cosa avrei potuto fare diversamente, e meglio, qualsiasi errore avessi commesso allontanandomi dalla voce del mio cuore, non ne sapevo nulla. Sapevo soltanto che ero profondamente sincero quando sentivo la tranquillità e la pace di avere Agnes accanto a me.
Con il suo modo sereno e fraterno, con i suoi occhi sorridenti, con la sua voce dolce, e con quella tranquillità che da tempo aveva reso la >casa in cui viveva un luogo davvero sacro per me; lei riuscì presto a liberarmi da questa debolezza e mi spinse a raccontare tutto ciò che era accaduto dal nostro ultimo incontro.
“Non c’è altro da dire, Agnes,” dissi quando ebbi finito di confidarmi in lei. “Ora, la mia fiducia riposa su di te.”
“Ma non deve essere mia responsabilità, Trotwood,” rispose Agnes con un sorriso piacevole. “Deve essere qualcun altro ad assumersela.”
“Su Dora?”, dissi io.
“Certamente.”
“Perché, in realtà non l’ho ancora menzionato, Agnes,” dissi, un po’ imbarazzata, “che Dora è piuttosto, difficile da gestire. Non vorrei mai dire che si possa fare affidamento su di lei, perché lei rappresenta l’essenza della purezza e della verità. Ma è davvero difficile. Non so proprio come esprimermi, Agnes. È una ragazza timida, facilmente turbata e spaventata. Qualche tempo fa, prima della morte di suo padre, ho pensato fosse giusto parlargliene. Ma ti racconterò tutto, se mi permetti di farlo.”
Di conseguenza, raccontai ad Agnes della mia dichiarazione di povertà, del libro di cucina, dei conti domestici e di tutto il resto.
“Oh, Trotwood!” le disse lei sorridendo. “Sempre il tuo solito modo impulsivo. Avresti potuto davvero impegnarti seriamente per farti strada nel mondo, senza essere così brusco con una ragazza timida, amorevole e inesperta. Povera Dora, ”
Non avevo mai sentito una tale dolcezza e gentilezza esprimersi attraverso la voce, come quelle che lei utilizzò per rispondere. Era come se l’avessi vista abbracciare Dora con ammirazione e tenerezza, rimproverandomi in silenzio, con quella sua protezione premurosa, per la mia impulsività nel turbare quel piccolo cuore. Era come se avessi visto Dora, nella sua incantevole ingenuità, accarezzare Agnes, ringraziarla e supplicarmi dolcemente di smettere, amandomi con tutta la sua infantile innocenza.
Ero così grata ad Agnes e la ammiravo davvero molto! Vedevo quelle due persone insieme, in una luce positiva: amiche così ben assortite, che si ammiravano a vicenda tantissimo!
“Allora, cosa dovrei fare, Agnes?”, chiesi dopo aver osservato il fuoco per un po’. “Cosa sarebbe giusto fare?”
“Penso,” disse Agnes, “che l’azione più onorevole da compiere sia scrivere a quelle due signore. Non credi anche tu che qualsiasi comportamento segreto sia indegno?”
“Sì. Se TU lo pensi così,” dissi io.
“Non sono affatto qualificata per giudicare questioni del genere,” rispose Agnes, con un leggero esitare, “ma sono sicura, in breve, penso che il fatto che tu agisca in segreto e in modo clandestino non sia da te.”
“Proprio come me, Agnes, temo che nella tua opinione troppo alta su di me ci sia qualcosa di sbagliato,” dissi.
“Come te stesso, nella schiettezza della tua >natura,” rispose lei; “e per questo vorrei scrivere a quelle due signore. Racconterei, nel modo più chiaro e aperto possibile, tutto ciò che è accaduto; e chiederei il loro permesso di andare a trovarle, di tanto in tanto, a casa loro. Considerando che sei giovane e stai cercando di costruirti una vita, penso sia opportuno dire che saresti disposto ad accettare qualsiasi condizione possano imporre. Le pregherei di non respingere la tua richiesta senza menzionare Dora; e di discuterne con lei quando riterranno il momento appropriato. Non sarei troppo insistente,” aggiunse Agnes, dolcemente, “né chiederei troppo. Mi fiderei della mia fedeltà e perseveranza, e di quella di Dora.”
“Ma se dovessero spaventare di nuovo Dora, Agnes, parlandole, ” dissi. “E se Dora dovesse piangere e non dirmi nulla!”
“È davvero possibile?” chiese Agnes, con lo stesso dolce sorriso sul viso.
“Dio la benedica, è spaventata facilmente come un uccellino,” dissi. “Forse sì! E poi, quelle due signorine Spenlow, (le donne anziane di quel tipo a volte sono personaggi davvero strani, ) probabilmente non sarebbero le persone adatte per parlare in quel modo!”
‘I don’t think, Trotwood,’ returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes to mine, ‘I would consider that. Perhaps it would be better only to consider whether it is right to do this; and, if it is, to do it.’
I had no longer any doubt on the subject. With a lightened heart, though with a profound sense of the weighty importance of my task, I devoted the whole afternoon to the composition of the draft of this letter; for which great purpose, Agnes relinquished her desk to me. But first I went downstairs to see Mr. Wickfield and Uriah Heep.
I found Uriah in possession of a new, plaster-smelling office, built out in the garden; looking extraordinarily mean, in the midst of a quantity of books and papers. He received me in his usual fawning way, and pretended not to have heard of my arrival from Mr. Micawber; a pretence I took the liberty of disbelieving. He accompanied me into Mr. Wickfield’s room, which was the shadow of its former self—having been divested of a variety of conveniences, for the accommodation of the new partner—and stood before the fire, warming his back, and shaving his chin with his bony hand, while Mr. Wickfield and I exchanged greetings.
‘You stay with us, Trotwood, while you remain in Canterbury?’ said Mr. Wickfield, not without a glance at Uriah for his approval.
‘Is there room for me?’ said I.
‘I am sure, Master Copperfield—I should say Mister, but the other comes so natural,’ said Uriah,—‘I would turn out of your old room with pleasure, if it would be agreeable.’
‘No, no,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘Why should you be inconvenienced? There’s another room. There’s another room.’ ‘Oh, but you know,’ returned Uriah, with a grin, ‘I should really be delighted!’
To cut the matter short, I said I would have the other room or none at all; so it was settled that I should have the other room; and, taking my leave of the firm until dinner, I went upstairs again.
I had hoped to have no other companion than Agnes. But Mrs. Heep had asked permission to bring herself and her knitting near the fire, in that room; on pretence of its having an aspect more favourable for her rheumatics, as the wind then was, than the drawing-room or dining-parlour. Though I could almost have consigned her to the mercies of the wind on the topmost pinnacle of the Cathedral, without remorse, I made a virtue of necessity, and gave her a friendly salutation.
‘I’m umbly thankful to you, sir,’ said Mrs. Heep, in acknowledgement of my inquiries concerning her health, ‘but I’m only pretty well. I haven’t much to boast of. If I could see my Uriah well settled in life, I couldn’t expect much more I think. How do you think my Ury looking, sir?’
I thought him looking as villainous as ever, and I replied that I saw no change in him.
‘Oh, don’t you think he’s changed?’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘There I must umbly beg leave to differ from you. Don’t you see a thinness in him?’
‘Not more than usual,’ I replied.
‘Don’t you though!’ said Mrs. Heep. ‘But you don’t take notice of him with a mother’s eye!’
His mother’s eye was an evil eye to the rest of the world, I thought as it met mine, howsoever affectionate to him; and I believe she and her son were devoted to one another. It passed me, and went on to Agnes.
‘Don’t YOU see a wasting and a wearing in him, Miss Wickfield?’ inquired Mrs. Heep.
‘No,’ said Agnes, quietly pursuing the work on which she was engaged. ‘You are too solicitous about him. He is very well.’
Mrs. Heep, with a prodigious sniff, resumed her knitting.
She never left off, or left us for a moment. I had arrived early in the day, and we had still three or four hours before dinner; but she sat there, plying her knitting-needles as monotonously as an hour-glass might have poured out its sands. She sat on one side of the fire; I sat at the desk in front of it; a little beyond me, on the other side, sat Agnes. Whensoever, slowly pondering over my letter, I lifted up my eyes, and meeting the thoughtful face of Agnes, saw it clear, and beam encouragement upon me, with its own angelic expression, I was conscious presently of the evil eye passing me, and going on to her, and coming back to me again, and dropping furtively upon the knitting. What the knitting was, I don’t know, not being learned in that art; but it looked like a net; and as she worked away with those Chinese chopsticks of knitting-needles, she showed in the firelight like an ill-looking enchantress, baulked as yet by the radiant goodness opposite, but getting ready for a cast of her net by and by.
At dinner she maintained her watch, with the same unwinking eyes. After dinner, her son took his turn; and when Mr. Wickfield, himself, and I were left alone together, leered at me, and writhed until I could hardly bear it. In the drawing-room, there was the mother knitting and watching again. All the time that Agnes sang and played, the mother sat at the piano. Once she asked for a particular ballad, which she said her Ury (who was yawning in a great chair) doted on; and at intervals she looked round at him, and reported to Agnes that he was in raptures with the music. But she hardly ever spoke—I question if she ever did—without making some mention of him. It was evident to me that this was the duty assigned to her.
This lasted until bedtime. To have seen the mother and son, like two great bats hanging over the whole house, and darkening it with their ugly forms, made me so uncomfortable, that I would rather have remained downstairs, knitting and all, than gone to bed. I hardly got any sleep. Next day the knitting and watching began again, and lasted all day.
I had not an opportunity of speaking to Agnes, for ten minutes. I could barely show her my letter. I proposed to her to walk out with me; but Mrs. Heep repeatedly complaining that she was worse, Agnes charitably remained within, to bear her company. Towards the twilight I went out by myself, musing on what I ought to do, and whether I was justified in withholding from Agnes, any longer, what Uriah Heep had told me in London; for that began to trouble me again, very much.
“Non credo, Trotwood,” rispose Agnes, alzando i suoi dolci occhi verso i miei, “che io prenderei in considerazione questa possibilità. Forse sarebbe meglio pensare soltanto se sia giusto farlo; e, se lo è, allora farlo.”
Non avevo più alcun >dubbio al riguardo. Con il cuore sollevato, ma consapevole della grande importanza della mia missione, dedicai l’intera pomeriggia alla stesura del progetto di questa lettera; per questo scopo importante, Agnes mi lasciò libero uso del suo ufficio. Prima di tutto, però, scesi al piano di sotto per incontrare il signor Wickfield e Uriah Heep.
Trovai Uriah in possesso di un nuovo ufficio, ancora impregnato dell’odore del gesso, costruito nel >jardino; aveva un aspetto estremamente cupo, circondato da una quantità di libri e documenti. Mi accolse con il suo solito atteggiamento ossequioso, fingendo di non aver saputo della mia arrivata da parte del signor Micawber; una finzione che mi permisi di non credere. Mi accompagnò nella stanza del signor Wickfield, che ora era l’ombra di ciò che un tempo era stato: priva di tutte le comodità necessarie per ospitare il nuovo socio. Uriah stava davanti al >focolare, riscaldandosi la schiena e raschiandosi la barba con la sua mano ossuta, mentre io e il signor Wickfield ci scambiammo i saluti.
“Rimani con noi, Trotwood, finché sei a Canterbury”, disse il signor Wickfield, lanciando un’occhiata a Uriah per ottenere la sua approvazione.
“C’è posto per me?”, chiesi.
“Sono sicuro, Signor Copperfield. Dovrei dire ‘Mister’, ma mi sembra più naturale chiamarvi così,” disse Uriah. “Mi trasferirei volentieri nella vostra vecchia stanza, se fosse possibile.”
“No, no,” disse il signor Wickfield. “Perché dovresti avere delle difficoltà? C’è un’altra stanza. C’è davvero un’altra stanza.” “Oh, ma lei sa, ” rispose Uriah, con un sorriso, “io sarei davvero molto felice!”
Per farla breve, dissi che avrei preso l’altra stanza o niente affatto; così fu deciso che avrei ottenuto l’altra stanza. Dopo avermi congedato dall’ufficio fino a cena, tornai di sopra.
Speravo di non avere nessun altro compagno se non Agnes. Ma la signora Heep aveva chiesto il permesso di portare sé stessa e il suo lavoro a maglia vicino al focolare, in quella stanza; fingendo che l’ambiente fosse più adatto alle sue malattie reumatiche, data la forza del >vento in quel momento, rispetto al salotto o alla sala da pranzo. Anche se avrei potuto senza rimorsi abbandonarla ai capricci del >vento sulla cima più alta della >Cattedrale, ho fatto del necessario una virtù e le ho rivolto un saluto cordiale.
“Sono molto grata a voi, signore,” disse la signora Heep, in risposta alle mie domande riguardo alla sua salute, “ma sto solo abbastanza bene. Non ho molto di cui vantarmi. Se solo potessi vedere mio figlio Uriah sistemato nella vita, penso che non potrei desiderare di più. Come pensate che stia Uriah, signore?”
Lo trovavo ancora più malvagio del solito, e risposi che non notavo alcun cambiamento in lui.
“Oh, non pensate che sia cambiato?” disse la signora Heep. “In questo caso devo dissentire con voi. Non notate qualche segno di cambiamento in lui?”
“Non più del solito,” risposi.
“Ma non dovresti farlo!” disse la signora Heep. “Dopotutto, non lo osservi con gli occhi di una madre, ”
Lo sguardo di sua madre era uno “sguardo malvagio” per il resto del mondo. Pensai così quando i suoi occhi incrociarono i miei, nonostante fossero pieni d’affetto per lui; credo che lei e suo figlio fossero profondamente legati l’uno all’altro. Quel pensiero poi passò a Agnes.
“Non vi rendete conto che sta perdendo energia e forze, signorina Wickfield?” chiese la signora Heep.
“No,” disse Agnes, continuando tranquillamente il lavoro a cui era impegnata.
“Sei troppo premurosa nei suoi confronti. Lui sta molto bene.”
La signora Heep, con un profondo sospiro, riprese a lavorare a maglia.
Non smetteva mai, né ci lasciava nemmeno per un momento. Ero arrivato presto quella mattina, e mancavano ancora tre o quattro ore prima di cena; ma lei sedeva lì, lavorando alla maglia con la stessa monotonia con cui un’ora a cucchiolo avrebbe fatto scorrere le sue sabbie. Sedeva da un lato del focolare; io ero seduto alla scrivania di fronte ad esso; poco più in là, dall’altra parte, c’era Agnes. Ogni volta che alzavo lo sguardo mentre riflettevo lentamente sulla mia lettera, incrociavo il viso pensieroso di Agnes: quel suo sguardo mi trasmetteva incoraggiamento e una luce angelica. Allora mi rendevo conto che lo “sguardo malvagio” che prima era su di me si spostava verso di lei, per poi tornare nuovamente su di me, e infine posarsi furtivamente sulla sua maglia. Non so esattamente cosa fosse quella maglia, poiché non avevo alcuna dimestichezza con quell’arte; ma sembrava una rete. E mentre lei continuava a lavorare con quelle “forchette” cinesi usate per intrecciare i fili, sotto la luce del fuoco appariva come una strega di aspetto sinistro, ancora ostacolata dalla bontà radiosa che le stava di fronte, ma pronta a lanciare la sua rete da un momento all’altro.
A cena mantenne lo stesso sguardo fisso e immobile. Dopo cena, fu il turno di suo figlio; e quando Mr. Wickfield ed io rimanemmo soli, lui mi fissò con uno sguardo lascivo e si contorceva in modo tale che a malapena riuscivo a sopportarlo. Nella sala da pranzo, la madre continuava a fare il punto e a osservare tutto intorno. Per tutto il tempo in cui Agnes cantava e suonava il pianoforte, la madre sedeva lì ad ascoltare. Una volta chiese di ascoltare una particolare canzone, dicendo che a suo figlio Ury piaceva molto; di tanto in tanto lo guardava e riferiva ad Agnes che lui era completamente incantato dalla musica. Ma quasi mai parlava, dubito che parlasse affatto, senza menzionarlo. Era evidente per me che quella fosse la “dovere” assegnatale.
Questo andò avanti fino all’ora di andare a letto. Vedere madre e figlio, come due grandi pipistrelli sospesi sopra l’intera >casa, che la oscuravano con le loro forme orribili, mi metteva così a disagio che avrei preferito rimanere al piano di sotto, a lavorare a maglia o qualcos’altro, piuttosto che andare a letto. Dormii molto poco. Il giorno dopo, il lavoro a maglia e quelle osservazioni iniziarono di nuovo e continuarono per tutta la giornata.
Non ho avuto l’opportunità di parlare con Agnes per dieci minuti; a malapena sono riuscito a mostrarle la mia lettera. Le ho proposto di uscire con me, ma poiché la signora Heep si lamentava continuamente di stare peggio, Agnes è rimasta gentilmente dentro per tenerle compagnia. Verso il tramonto sono uscito da solo, riflettendo su ciò che dovevo fare e se fossi giustificato nel nascondere ad Agnes, ancora a lungo, quanto Uriah Heep mi aveva raccontato a Londra; perché questa questione iniziava di nuovo a tormentarmi molto.
I had not walked out far enough to be quite clear of the town, upon the Ramsgate road, where there was a good path, when I was hailed, through the dust, by somebody behind me. The shambling figure, and the scanty great-coat, were not to be mistaken. I stopped, and Uriah Heep came up.
‘Well?’ said I.
‘How fast you walk!’ said he. ‘My legs are pretty long, but you’ve given ‘em quite a job.’
‘Where are you going?’ said I.
‘I am going with you, Master Copperfield, if you’ll allow me the pleasure of a walk with an old acquaintance.’ Saying this, with a jerk of his body, which might have been either propitiatory or derisive, he fell into step beside me.
‘Uriah!’ said I, as civilly as I could, after a silence.
‘Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah.
‘To tell you the truth (at which you will not be offended), I came Out to walk alone, because I have had so much company.’
He looked at me sideways, and said with his hardest grin, ‘You mean mother.’
‘Why yes, I do,’ said I.
‘Ah! But you know we’re so very umble,’ he returned. ‘And having such a knowledge of our own umbleness, we must really take care that we’re not pushed to the wall by them as isn’t umble. All stratagems are fair in love, sir.’
Raising his great hands until they touched his chin, he rubbed them softly, and softly chuckled; looking as like a malevolent baboon, I thought, as anything human could look.
‘You see,’ he said, still hugging himself in that unpleasant way, and shaking his head at me, ‘you’re quite a dangerous rival, Master Copperfield. You always was, you know.’
‘Do you set a watch upon Miss Wickfield, and make her home no home, because of me?’ said I.
‘Oh! Master Copperfield! Those are very arsh words,’ he replied.
‘Put my meaning into any words you like,’ said I. ‘You know what it is, Uriah, as well as I do.’
‘Oh no! You must put it into words,’ he said. ‘Oh, really! I couldn’t myself.’
‘Do you suppose,’ said I, constraining myself to be very temperate and quiet with him, on account of Agnes, ‘that I regard Miss Wickfield otherwise than as a very dear sister?’
‘Well, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, ‘you perceive I am not bound to answer that question. You may not, you know. But then, you see, you may!’
Anything to equal the low cunning of his visage, and of his shadowless eyes without the ghost of an eyelash, I never saw.
‘Come then!’ said I. ‘For the sake of Miss Wickfield—’
‘My Agnes!’ he exclaimed, with a sickly, angular contortion of himself. ‘Would you be so good as call her Agnes, Master Copperfield!’
‘For the sake of Agnes Wickfield—Heaven bless her!’
‘Thank you for that blessing, Master Copperfield!’ he interposed.
‘I will tell you what I should, under any other circumstances, as soon have thought of telling to—Jack Ketch.’
‘To who, sir?’ said Uriah, stretching out his neck, and shading his ear with his hand.
‘To the hangman,’ I returned. ‘The most unlikely person I could think of,’—though his own face had suggested the allusion quite as a natural sequence. ‘I am engaged to another young lady. I hope that contents you.’
‘Upon your soul?’ said Uriah.
I was about indignantly to give my assertion the confirmation he required, when he caught hold of my hand, and gave it a squeeze.
‘Oh, Master Copperfield!’ he said. ‘If you had only had the condescension to return my confidence when I poured out the fulness of my art, the night I put you so much out of the way by sleeping before your sitting-room fire, I never should have doubted you. As it is, I’m sure I’ll take off mother directly, and only too appy. I know you’ll excuse the precautions of affection, won’t you? What a pity, Master Copperfield, that you didn’t condescend to return my confidence! I’m sure I gave you every opportunity. But you never have condescended to me, as much as I could have wished. I know you have never liked me, as I have liked you!’
All this time he was squeezing my hand with his damp fishy fingers, while I made every effort I decently could to get it away. But I was quite unsuccessful. He drew it under the sleeve of his mulberry-coloured great-coat, and I walked on, almost upon compulsion, arm-in-arm with him.
‘Shall we turn?’ said Uriah, by and by wheeling me face about towards the town, on which the early moon was now shining, silvering the distant windows.
‘Before we leave the subject, you ought to understand,’ said I, breaking a pretty long silence, ‘that I believe Agnes Wickfield to be as far above you, and as far removed from all your aspirations, as that moon herself!’
‘Peaceful! Ain’t she!’ said Uriah. ‘Very! Now confess, Master Copperfield, that you haven’t liked me quite as I have liked you. All along you’ve thought me too umble now, I shouldn’t wonder?’
‘I am not fond of professions of humility,’ I returned, ‘or professions of anything else.’ ‘There now!’ said Uriah, looking flabby and lead-coloured in the moonlight. ‘Didn’t I know it! But how little you think of the rightful umbleness of a person in my station, Master Copperfield! Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness—not much else that I know of, from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the monitor-medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man, that they were determined to bring him in. “Be umble, Uriah,” says father to me, “and you’ll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it’s what goes down best. Be umble,” says father, “and you’ll do!” And really it ain’t done bad!’
Non avevo camminato abbastanza lontano da allontanarmi completamente dalla città, lungo la strada di Ramsgate, dove c’era un sentiero ben battuto, quando qualcuno mi chiamò, attraverso la polvere, alle mie spalle. Quella figura incerta e quel cappotto logoro erano inconfondibili. Mi fermai, e Uriah Heep si avvicinò.
“‘Bene?’” dissi io.
“Quanto velocemente cammini!” disse lui. “Le mie gambe sono abbastanza lunghe, ma tu le hai messe davvero alla prova, ”
“Dove stai andando?” dissi io.
“Verrò con voi, Signor Copperfield, se mi permettete il piacere di fare una passeggiata con un vecchio conoscente.” Dicendo questo, con un movimento del suo corpo che poteva essere sia significativo di sottomissione che ironico, si mise al mio fianco.
“Uriah!”, dissi nel modo più cortese possibile, dopo un po’ di silenzio.
“Maestro Copperfield!”, disse Uriah.
“Per dirvi la verità (e non voglio che vi offendiate), sono uscito per camminare da solo, perché ho avuto troppa compagnia.”
Mi guardò di sghembo e, con il suo sorriso più smagliante, disse: “Intendi tua madre.”
“Sì, certo che lo faccio,” dissi io.
“Ah! Ma sapete bene quanto siamo umili,” rispose lui. “E conoscendo bene la nostra umiltà, dobbiamo assicurarci di non essere spinti fino al limite da loro. Chi non è umile, infatti, non può sopravvivere in questo ambiente. In amore, signore, qualsiasi strategia è lecita.”
Alzò le sue grandi mani fino a farle toccare il mento, se le strofinò dolcemente e ridacchiò sottovoce; sembrava un babbuino malvagio, pensai, o forse qualunque altra cosa potesse assomigliare a un essere umano.
“Vedi,” disse, continuando ad abbracciarsi in quel modo sgradevole e scuotendo la testa verso di me, “sei davvero un rivale pericoloso, Maestro Copperfield. Lo sei sempre stato, sai.”
“State forse sorvegliando la signorina Wickfield e impedendole di tornare a casa sua, a causa mia?” dissi.
“Oh! Maestro Copperfield! Quelle sono parole molto volgari,” rispose lui.
“Esprimi il mio pensiero con qualsiasi parola tu voglia,” dissi. “Tu sai cosa significa, Uriah, proprio come lo so io.”
“Oh no! Devi proprio esprimerlo a parole,” disse. “Davvero? Io non ci sarei riuscito.”
“Pensi davvero,” dissi, sforzandomi di essere molto moderato e calmo con lui, per via di Agnes, “che io consideri la signorina Wickfield diversamente da come considero una sorella molto cara?”
“Beh, signor Copperfield,” rispose, “vedete bene che non sono obbligato a rispondere a quella domanda. Non siete tenuto, sapete. Ma d’altra parte, potreste anche farlo!”
Niente poteva eguagliare la malvagia astuzia del suo volto, e dei suoi occhi senza ombre, privi della minima traccia di una ciglia. Niente che io abbia mai visto prima.
“Allora!” dissi. “Per il bene di Miss Wickfield, ”
“Mia Agnes!” esclamò, contorcendosi in modo malato e angoloso.
“Per favore, chiamatela Agnes, Signor Copperfield, ”
“Per il bene di Agnes Wickfield. Che il cielo la benedica!”
“Grazie per questa benedizione, Maestro Copperfield!” intervenne lui.
“Vi dirò ciò che, in qualsiasi altra circostanza, avrei pensato di dire subito a. Jack Ketch.”
“Per chi, signore?”, chiese Uriah, allungando il collo e coprendosi un orecchio con la mano.
“Al boia,” risposi. “La persona meno adatta che potessi immaginare, ” – anche se il suo stesso viso sembrava suggerire quella connessione in modo del tutto naturale. “Sono fidanzato con un’altra giovane signora. Spero che questo vi soddisfi.”
“Sulla tua ‘anima?” disse Uriah.
Stavo per confermare con indignazione la mia affermazione, come lui richiedeva, quando afferrò la mia mano e la strinse.
“Oh, Maestro Copperfield!” disse. “Se solo aveste avuto la gentilezza di ripristinare la mia fiducia in voi quando vi ho raccontato tutto ciò che sapevo. Quella notte in cui mi sono addormentato davanti al camino del vostro salotto, vi ho causato tanto disturbo. Non avrei mai dovuto dubitare di voi. Ora, sono sicuro che andrò subito da mia madre, e con grande gioia. So che perdonerete queste precauzioni dettate dall’affetto, vero? Che peccato, Maestro Copperfield, che non abbiate voluto ripristinare la mia fiducia in voi! Sono certo di avervi dato tutte le opportunità. Ma voi non avete mai mostrato verso di me quella gentilezza di cui avevo tanto bisogno. So che non mi avete mai apprezzato, proprio come io vi ho sempre amato, ”
Per tutto questo tempo, lui stringeva la mia mano con le sue dita umide e puzzolenti di pesce; io, intanto, facevo di tutto il possibile per liberarmene. Ma senza successo. Lui infilò la mia mano sotto la manica del suo grande cappotto color gelso, e io continuai a camminare, quasi costretta, a braccio con lui.
“Dovremmo girare?” disse Uriah, dopo un po’ di tempo, facendo ruotare la sedia su cui ero seduto verso la città; la luna nascente illuminava già le finestre lontane, rendendole argentee.
“Prima di lasciare questo argomento,” dissi, interrompendo un lungo silenzio, “dovresti capire che ritengo Agnes Wickfield molto superiore a te, e completamente lontana da tutte le tue aspirazioni, proprio come quella luna stessa!”
“Pacevole. Non è vero?” disse Uriah. “Molto! Ora confessa, Signor Copperfield: non ti sono piaciuto davvero quanto a me sei piaciuto tu. Finora hai pensato che fossi troppo umile, non è vero?”
“Non mi piacciono affatto le dichiarazioni di umiltà”, risposi, “né quelle di qualsiasi altra cosa”. “Ecco qua!”, disse Uriah, sembrando flaccido e pallido sotto la luce della luna. “Non lo sapevo forse? Ma quanto poco si considera l’umiltà che è dovuta a una persona nella mia posizione, signor Copperfield. Mio padre ed io siamo stati entrambi educati in una scuola per ragazzi; anche mia madre proveniva da un istituto pubblico, di carattere benefico. Ci hanno insegnato molto sull’umiltà. Non so proprio cosa altro ci abbiano insegnato, dal mattino alla sera. Dovevamo essere umili con questa persona, e umili con quell’altra; toglierci il cappello qui, fare un inchino là. E sempre sapere dove ci collocavamo e umiliarci di fronte ai nostri superiori. Ne avevamo davvero molti, di superiori. Mio padre ha ottenuto la medaglia per l’umiltà; anch’io l’ho ottenuta. È diventato custode della scuola proprio perché era umile. Aveva una tale reputazione tra la gente rispettabile che decisero di assumerlo. ‘Sii umile, Uriah’, mi diceva mio padre, ‘e avrai successo. È quello che ci hanno insegnato sempre a scuola. È ciò che funziona meglio. Sii umile, e ce la farai!’ E davvero, non è andata male, ”
It was the first time it had ever occurred to me, that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed.
‘When I was quite a young boy,’ said Uriah, ‘I got to know what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite. I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and says I, “Hold hard!” When you offered to teach me Latin, I knew better. “People like to be above you,” says father, “keep yourself down.” I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I’ve got a little power!’
And he said all this—I knew, as I saw his face in the moonlight—that I might understand he was resolved to recompense himself by using his power. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit, must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.
His account of himself was so far attended with an agreeable result, that it led to his withdrawing his hand in order that he might have another hug of himself under the chin. Once apart from him, I was determined to keep apart; and we walked back, side by side, saying very little more by the way. Whether his spirits were elevated by the communication I had made to him, or by his having indulged in this retrospect, I don’t know; but they were raised by some influence. He talked more at dinner than was usual with him; asked his mother (off duty, from the moment of our re-entering the house) whether he was not growing too old for a bachelor; and once looked at Agnes so, that I would have given all I had, for leave to knock him down.
When we three males were left alone after dinner, he got into a more adventurous state. He had taken little or no wine; and I presume it was the mere insolence of triumph that was upon him, flushed perhaps by the temptation my presence furnished to its exhibition.
I had observed yesterday, that he tried to entice Mr. Wickfield to drink; and, interpreting the look which Agnes had given me as she went out, had limited myself to one glass, and then proposed that we should follow her. I would have done so again today; but Uriah was too quick for me.
‘We seldom see our present visitor, sir,’ he said, addressing Mr. Wickfield, sitting, such a contrast to him, at the end of the table, ‘and I should propose to give him welcome in another glass or two of wine, if you have no objections. Mr. Copperfield, your elth and appiness!’
I was obliged to make a show of taking the hand he stretched across to me; and then, with very different emotions, I took the hand of the broken gentleman, his partner.
‘Come, fellow-partner,’ said Uriah, ‘if I may take the liberty,—now, suppose you give us something or another appropriate to Copperfield!’
I pass over Mr. Wickfield’s proposing my aunt, his proposing Mr. Dick, his proposing Doctors’ Commons, his proposing Uriah, his drinking everything twice; his consciousness of his own weakness, the ineffectual effort that he made against it; the struggle between his shame in Uriah’s deportment, and his desire to conciliate him; the manifest exultation with which Uriah twisted and turned, and held him up before me. It made me sick at heart to see, and my hand recoils from writing it.
‘Come, fellow-partner!’ said Uriah, at last, ‘I’ll give you another one, and I umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the divinest of her sex.’
Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it down, look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink back in his elbow-chair.
‘I’m an umble individual to give you her elth,’ proceeded Uriah, ‘but I admire—adore her.’
No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I think, could have been more terrible to me, than the mental endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands.
‘Agnes,’ said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what the nature of his action was, ‘Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends? To be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her usband—’
Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her father rose up from the table! ‘What’s the matter?’ said Uriah, turning of a deadly colour. ‘You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I hope? If I say I’ve an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to it as another man. I have a better right to it than any other man!’
I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that I could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm himself a little. He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair, beating his head, trying to force me from him, and to force himself from me, not answering a word, not looking at or seeing anyone; blindly striving for he knew not what, his face all staring and distorted—a frightful spectacle.
I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned manner, not to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me. I besought him to think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to recollect how Agnes and I had grown up together, how I honoured her and loved her, how she was his pride and joy. I tried to bring her idea before him in any form; I even reproached him with not having firmness to spare her the knowledge of such a scene as this. I may have effected something, or his wildness may have spent itself; but by degrees he struggled less, and began to look at me—strangely at first, then with recognition in his eyes. At length he said, ‘I know, Trotwood! My darling child and you—I know! But look at him!’
He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very much out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.
Fu la prima volta che mi venne in mente l’idea che quel detestabile atteggiamento di falsa umiltà potesse aver avuto origine nella famiglia Heep. Avevo visto i risultati di tale comportamento, ma non avevo mai pensato alle sue cause originarie.
“Quando ero ancora molto giovane,” disse Uriah, “scoprii cosa significasse essere umili e decisi di seguirne l’esempio. Mangiavo con grande appetito quelle pietanze semplici. Mi fermai al livello più basso delle mie conoscenze e dissi a me stesso: ‘Resisti!’ Quando mi offriste di insegnarmi il latino, capii che non era la cosa giusta per me. ‘Le persone vogliono essere superiori a te,’ diceva mio padre, ‘Mantieniti umile.’ Fino ad ora sono molto umile, Maestro Copperfield, ma ho comunque un po’ di potere!”
E lui disse tutto questo. Quando vidi il suo viso alla luce della luna, capii che era deciso a compensarsi utilizzando il proprio potere. Non avevo mai dubitato della sua meschinità, della sua astuzia e malvagità; ma ora, per la prima volta, compresi appieno quale spirito basso, spietato e vendicativo dovesse essersi formato a causa di questa repressione precoce e duratura.
Il suo racconto di sé aveva ottenuto un risultato così positivo che lo spinse ad allontanarsi per potersi abbracciare di nuovo il mento da solo. Una volta lontani l’uno dall’altro, decisi di mantenere le distanze; camminammo fianco a fianco, parlando molto poco lungo la strada. Non so se il suo umore fosse migliorato a causa delle parole che gli avevo detto o perché si era lasciato andare a questi ricordi. Comunque, qualcosa lo aveva certamente rallegrato. A cena parlò più del solito; chiese a sua madre (fuori dal contesto quotidiano, non appena rientrammo in >casa) se non stesse invecchiando troppo per rimanere scapolo. E una volta guardò Agnes in un modo tale che avrei dato qualsiasi cosa pur di poterlo colpire.
Quando noi tre uomini rimanemmo soli dopo cena, lui divenne ancora più audace. Aveva bevuto poco o niente vino; e presumo che fosse semplicemente l’arroganza derivante dalla vittoria a spingerlo, forse anche stimolato dalla tentazione che la mia presenza offriva per manifestarsi.
Ieri avevo notato che cercava di convincere il signor Wickfield a bere; e, interpretando lo sguardo che Agnes mi aveva rivolto uscendo, mi ero limitato a bere un solo bicchiere, poi avevamo deciso di seguirla. Avrei fatto lo stesso anche oggi; ma Uriah è stato troppo veloce per me.
“Raramente vediamo il nostro attuale ospite, signore,” disse, rivolgendosi a Mr. Wickfield, seduto all’estremità del tavolo, in netto contrasto con lui. “E propongo di offrirgli un altro paio di bicchieri di vino per dargli il benvenuto, se non avete obiezioni. Signor Copperfield, la vostra presenza è una vera gioia per noi!”
Ebbi l’obbligo di fingere di prendere la mano che lui mi stese; e poi, con emozioni molto diverse, presi la mano del gentiluomo ferito, il suo compagno.
“Ma come, caro collega,” disse Uriah, “se posso permettermi di dirlo. Supponiamo che tu ci dia qualcosa di appropriato per Copperfield!”
Ometto di parlare del modo in cui il signor Wickfield chiese la mano a mia zia, del suo tentativo con il signor Dick, delle sue proposte riguardo al Parlamento dei Medici, di Uriah. Ometto anche di menzionare il fatto che bevesse tutto in doppie dosi, della sua consapevolezza della propria debolezza e degli sforzi inefficaci che faceva per combatterla; ometto la lotta interiore tra la vergogna dovuta al comportamento di Uriah e il suo desiderio di compiacerlo. Ometto, in breve, tutto ciò che riguarda lui. Vederlo mi ha fatto star male nel profondo del cuore, e la sola idea di scriverne mi fa ancora rivoltare lo stomaco.
“Ma come, caro socio!”, disse finalmente Uriah, “ti ne darò un’altra. E ti chiedo anche dei paraurti, visto che intendo farne la più bella del suo genere.”
Suo padre aveva il bicchiere vuoto in mano. Lo vidi posarlo, guardare la foto che lei assomigliava così tanto a quella persona, portarsi una mano alla fronte e rilassarsi nella sua poltrona con lo schienale inclinato.
“Sono una persona umile per potervi donare la sua vita,” proseguì Uriah, “ma la ammiro, la adoro.”
Nessun dolore fisico che la testa grigia di suo padre potesse sopportare, penso, avrebbe potuto essere più terribile per me di quella sofferenza mentale che vidi concentrarsi nelle sue mani in quel momento.
“Agnes,” disse Uriah, o forse non lo stava nemmeno guardando, o forse non comprendeva la >natura delle sue azioni, “Agnes Wickfield è, posso dirlo con certezza, la più meravigliosa creatura del suo sesso. Posso parlare apertamente, tra amici? Essere suo padre è una distinzione che mi riempie di orgoglio, ma essere suo marito, ”
Risparmiatemi dal dover mai più sentire un grido del genere, come quello con cui suo padre si alzò di scatto dalla tavola! “Che cosa c’è?” disse Uriah, impallidendo mortalmente. “Non siete impazzito, vero, signor Wickfield? Spero proprio di no. Se dico di avere l’ambizione di far diventare la vostra Agnes mia moglie, ho tutti i diritti di farlo, quanto qualsiasi altro uomo. Anzi, ho più diritti di chiunque altro!”
Avevo le braccia intorno al signor Wickfield, implorandolo con tutte le parole che mi venivano in mente, soprattutto ricordandogli il suo amore per Agnes, affinché si calmasse un po’. In quel momento era pazzo: si strappava i capelli, si colpiva la testa, cercava di allontanarmi da sé e allo stesso tempo di allontanarsi da me, senza rispondere a una parola, senza guardare o vedere nessuno; lottava ciecamente per qualcosa che nemmeno lui sapeva cosa fosse. Il suo viso era contorto e spaventoso da vedere.
Lo chiamai, in modo incoerente ma con la massima passione, affinché non si abbandonasse a questa follia, ma mi ascoltasse. Gli supplicai di pensare ad Agnes, di collegarmi ad Agnes, di ricordare come Agnes e io fossimo cresciuti insieme, come la rispettassi e l’amassi, come lei fosse la sua orgoglio e la sua gioia. Cercai in ogni modo di fargli venire in mente il suo nome; lo rimproverai persino per non avere la forza di risparmiarle una simile esperienza. Forse riuscii a qualcosa, o forse la sua follia si esaurì da sola; comunque, gradualmente smise di resistere e iniziò a guardarmi, all’inizio in modo strano, poi con un’espressione di riconoscimento negli occhi. Alla fine disse: “Lo so, Trotwood! La mia adorata >bambina e tu. Lo so! Ma guarda lui!”
Indicò Uriah, pallido e con lo sguardo torvo in un angolo; evidentemente, i suoi piani erano andati storti e era stato colto di sorpresa.
‘Look at my torturer,’ he replied. ‘Before him I have step by step abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.’
‘I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and quiet, and your house and home too,’ said Uriah, with a sulky, hurried, defeated air of compromise. ‘Don’t be foolish, Mr. Wickfield. If I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I suppose? There’s no harm done.’
‘I looked for single motives in everyone,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘and I was satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest. But see what he is—oh, see what he is!’
‘You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,’ cried Uriah, with his long forefinger pointing towards me. ‘He’ll say something presently—mind you!—he’ll be sorry to have said afterwards, and you’ll be sorry to have heard!’
‘I’ll say anything!’ cried Mr. Wickfield, with a desperate air. ‘Why should I not be in all the world’s power if I am in yours?’
‘Mind! I tell you!’ said Uriah, continuing to warn me. ‘If you don’t stop his mouth, you’re not his friend! Why shouldn’t you be in all the world’s power, Mr. Wickfield? Because you have got a daughter. You and me know what we know, don’t we? Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse ‘em? I don’t. Can’t you see I am as umble as I can be? I tell you, if I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. What would you have, sir?’
‘Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!’ exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands. ‘What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house! I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road I have traversed since! Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness. My natural grief for my child’s mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I dearly love, I know—you know! I thought it possible that I could truly love one creature in the world, and not love the rest; I thought it possible that I could truly mourn for one creature gone out of the world, and not have some part in the grief of all who mourned. Thus the lessons of my life have been perverted! I have preyed on my own morbid coward heart, and it has preyed on me. Sordid in my grief, sordid in my love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!’
He dropped into a chair, and weakly sobbed. The excitement into which he had been roused was leaving him. Uriah came out of his corner.
‘I don’t know all I have done, in my fatuity,’ said Mr. Wickfield, putting out his hands, as if to deprecate my condemnation. ‘He knows best,’ meaning Uriah Heep, ‘for he has always been at my elbow, whispering me. You see the millstone that he is about my neck. You find him in my house, you find him in my business. You heard him, but a little time ago. What need have I to say more!’
‘You haven’t need to say so much, nor half so much, nor anything at all,’ observed Uriah, half defiant, and half fawning. ‘You wouldn’t have took it up so, if it hadn’t been for the wine. You’ll think better of it tomorrow, sir. If I have said too much, or more than I meant, what of it? I haven’t stood by it!’
The door opened, and Agnes, gliding in, without a vestige of colour in her face, put her arm round his neck, and steadily said, ‘Papa, you are not well. Come with me!’
He laid his head upon her shoulder, as if he were oppressed with heavy shame, and went out with her. Her eyes met mine for but an instant, yet I saw how much she knew of what had passed.
‘I didn’t expect he’d cut up so rough, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘But it’s nothing. I’ll be friends with him tomorrow. It’s for his good. I’m umbly anxious for his good.’
I gave him no answer, and went upstairs into the quiet room where Agnes had so often sat beside me at my books. Nobody came near me until late at night. I took up a book, and tried to read. I heard the clocks strike twelve, and was still reading, without knowing what I read, when Agnes touched me.
‘You will be going early in the morning, Trotwood! Let us say good-bye, now!’
She had been weeping, but her face then was so calm and beautiful!
‘Heaven bless you!’ she said, giving me her hand.
‘Dearest Agnes!’ I returned, ‘I see you ask me not to speak of tonight—but is there nothing to be done?’
‘There is God to trust in!’ she replied.
‘Can I do nothing—I, who come to you with my poor sorrows?’
‘And make mine so much lighter,’ she replied. ‘Dear Trotwood, no!’
‘Dear Agnes,’ I said, ‘it is presumptuous for me, who am so poor in all in which you are so rich—goodness, resolution, all noble qualities—to doubt or direct you; but you know how much I love you, and how much I owe you. You will never sacrifice yourself to a mistaken sense of duty, Agnes?’
More agitated for a moment than I had ever seen her, she took her hands from me, and moved a step back.
‘Say you have no such thought, dear Agnes! Much more than sister! Think of the priceless gift of such a heart as yours, of such a love as yours!’
Oh! long, long afterwards, I saw that face rise up before me, with its momentary look, not wondering, not accusing, not regretting. Oh, long, long afterwards, I saw that look subside, as it did now, into the lovely smile, with which she told me she had no fear for herself—I need have none for her—and parted from me by the name of Brother, and was gone!
It was dark in the morning, when I got upon the coach at the inn door. The day was just breaking when we were about to start, and then, as I sat thinking of her, came struggling up the coach side, through the mingled day and night, Uriah’s head.
‘Copperfield!’ said he, in a croaking whisper, as he hung by the iron on the roof, ‘I thought you’d be glad to hear before you went off, that there are no squares broke between us. I’ve been into his room already, and we’ve made it all smooth. Why, though I’m umble, I’m useful to him, you know; and he understands his interest when he isn’t in liquor! What an agreeable man he is, after all, Master Copperfield!’
I obliged myself to say that I was glad he had made his apology.
‘Oh, to be sure!’ said Uriah. ‘When a person’s umble, you know, what’s an apology? So easy! I say! I suppose,’ with a jerk, ‘you have sometimes plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?’
‘I suppose I have,’ I replied.
‘I did that last night,’ said Uriah; ‘but it’ll ripen yet! It only wants attending to. I can wait!’
Profuse in his farewells, he got down again as the coachman got up. For anything I know, he was eating something to keep the raw morning air out; but he made motions with his mouth as if the pear were ripe already, and he were smacking his lips over it.
“Guardate il mio tormentatore,” rispose. “Di fronte a lui ho abbandonato passo dopo passo nome e reputazione, pace e tranquillità, casa e dimora.”
“Ho mantenuto il tuo nome e la tua reputazione per te, così come la tua pace e tranquillità, nonché la tua casa e il tuo focolare,” disse Uriah con un tono cupo, affrettato e pieno di rassegnazione. “Non essere sciocco, signor Wickfield. Se ho forse esagerato un po’, posso tornare indietro, no? Non è successo nulla di male.”
“Cercavo motivi personali in tutti,” disse il signor Wickfield, “e ero convinto di averlo legato a me attraverso interessi comuni. Ma guardate cos’è diventato, oh, guardate cos’è diventato!”
“Dovresti fermarlo, Copperfield, se puoi,” gridò Uriah, puntando il suo lungo dito indice verso di me. “Tra poco dirà qualcosa, stai attento! Più tardi si pentirà di averlo detto, e tu ti pentirai di averlo ascoltato!”
“Dirò qualsiasi cosa!” gridò il signor Wickfield con un tono disperato. “Perché non dovrei avere tutto il potere del mondo se ne ho il tuo?”
“Attenzione! Ve lo dico io!” disse Uriah, continuando a avvertirmi. “Se non gli chiudete la bocca, allora non siete suo amico! Perché mai non dovreste disporre di tutto il potere del mondo, signor Wickfield? Perché avete una figlia. Voi e io sappiamo quello che sappiamo, vero? Lasciate che i “cani addormentati” rimangano tranquilli. Chi vorrebbe svegliarli? Io no. Non vedete forse che sono estremamente umile? Vi dico: se ho esagerato, mi dispiace. Cosa volete che faccia, signore?”
‘Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!’ esclamò il signor Wickfield, stringendosi le mani.
‘In che stato sono finito da quando ti ho visto per la prima volta in questa casa! Allora ero già sulla strada del declino, ma quale strada desolata e cupa ho percorso da allora! L’indulgenza mi ha distrutto: l’indulgenza nei ricordi, e l’indulgenza nell’oblio. Il mio dolore naturale per la madre di mio figlio si è trasformato in malattia; il mio amore naturale per mio figlio si è trasformato in malattia. Ho contaminato tutto ciò che toccavo. Ho portato miseria a ciò che amavo profondamente. Lo so, lo sai anche tu! Pensavo fosse possibile amare davvero una sola persona al mondo, e non tutte le altre; pensavo fosse possibile piangere veramente per una sola persona scomparsa, senza condividere il dolore di tutti coloro che la piangevano. Eppure, gli insegnamenti della mia vita sono stati distorti. Ho approfittato del mio stesso cuore debole e vigliacco. E quel cuore mi ha distrutto. Sordido nel mio dolore, sordido nel mio amore. Oh, guarda la rovina in cui mi trovo. Odiami. Allontanati da me!’
Si lasciò cadere su una sedia e singhiozzò debolmente. L’emozione che lo aveva invaso stava svanendo. Uriah uscì dal suo angolo.
“Non so tutto ciò che ho fatto, nella mia follia,” disse il signor Wickfield, aprendo le mani come per scusarsi della mia condanna. “Lui lo sa meglio, intendo Uriah Heep, perché è sempre stato al mio fianco, sussurrandomi all’orecchio. Vedete quel macigno che ha attorno al collo. Lo trovate nella mia casa, lo trovate nei miei affari. L’avete sentito poco tempo fa. Che bisogno ho di dire di più?”
“Non c’era bisogno di dire così tanto, né nemmeno la metà, o addirittura nulla,” osservò Uriah, a metà in tono ribelle e a metà lusinghiero. “Non avreste preso in considerazione questa proposta, se non fosse stato per il vino. Domani cambierete idea, signore. Anche se ho detto troppo, o più di quanto volessi, che importanza ha? Non ho mica mantenuto quelle parole!”
La porta si aprì e Agnes, entrando silenziosamente, con il viso privo di qualsiasi traccia di colore, gli mise un braccio intorno al collo e disse con fermezza: “Papà, non stai bene. Vieni con me!”
Posò la testa sulla sua spalla, come se fosse sopraffatto da un profondo senso di vergogna, e poi uscì con lei. I suoi occhi incrociarono i miei per un istante solo, ma capii subito quanto sapesse riguardo a ciò che era accaduto.
“Non mi aspettavo che reagisse in modo così brusco, Maestro Copperfield,” disse Uriah.
“Ma non è niente. Domani diventerò suo amico. È per il suo bene. Sono davvero ansioso per il suo bene.”
Non gli risposi nulla e salii al piano di sopra, nella stanza silenziosa dove Agnes spesso si sedeva accanto a me mentre studiavo. Nessuno mi si avvicinò fino a tardi, quella notte. Presi un libro e provai a leggere. Sentii le campane battere le dodici, ma continuai a leggere senza nemmeno sapere di cosa si trattasse, quando Agnes mi toccò.
“Partirai presto, questa mattina, Trotwood. Diamo il nostro addio ora!”
Piangeva, ma in quel momento il suo viso era così calmo e bello.
“Che il cielo ti benedica!”, disse, porgendomi la mano.
“Carissima Agnes!”, risposi, “vedo che mi chiedi di non parlare di stasera, ma non c’è nulla che possiamo fare?”
“C’è Dio in cui poter confidare!”, rispose lei.
“Non posso fare nulla io, che vi vengo incontro con le mie povere sofferenze?”
“E rendilo molto più leggero, ”, rispose. “Caro Trotwood, no!”
“Carissima Agnes,” dissi, “è presuntuoso da parte mia, che sono così povero in tutto ciò in cui tu sei così ricca – bontà, determinazione, tutte qualità nobili – dubitare o darti consigli; ma tu sai quanto ti amo e quanto ti devo. Non sacrificherai mai te stessa per un errato senso del dovere, vero, Agnes?”
Per un momento fu più agitata di quanto l’avessi mai vista; allontanò le sue mani dalle mie e fece un passo indietro.
“Dì che non hai un tale pensiero, cara Agnes. Molto di più di una semplice sorella! Pensa al dono inestimabile di un cuore come il tuo, a un’amore così profondo, ”
Oh! Molto tempo dopo, vidi quel volto riapparire davanti a me, con quell’espressione fugace: senza domande, senza accuse, senza rimpianti. Oh, molto tempo dopo, vidi quell’espressione svanire, trasformandosi nel bellissimo sorriso con cui mi disse di non avere alcuna paura per sé. Anch’io non dovrei averne per lei. E poi se ne andò, chiamandomi “fratello”, e scomparve!
Era buio la mattina quando salii sul carro davanti all’ingresso dell’ostello. Il giorno stava appena iniziando quando stavamo per partire; e mentre me ne stavo seduto a pensare a lei, la testa di Uriah apparve lentamente sul bordo del carro, attraverso l’oscurità della notte che ancora persisteva.
“Copperfield!” disse lui, con un sussurro rauco, mentre penzolava dall’ironia sul tetto, “Pensavo che sareste stato contento di sapere, prima di andarvene, che non ci sono più problemi tra noi. Sono già entrato nella sua stanza e abbiamo risolto tutto. Del resto, anche se sono umile, sono utile per lui, lo sapete. E lui capisce i propri interessi quando non è sotto l’effetto dell’alcol! Che uomo gradevole, dopotutto, il signor Copperfield, ”
Mi sono imposto di dire che ero felice che avesse presentato le sue scuse.
“Oh, certamente!” disse Uriah. “Quando una persona è umile, insomma, che cos’è un’scusa? Così facile! Dico io. Immagino,” aggiunse con un gesto brusco, “che a volte abbiate anche raccolto delle pere prima che fossero mature, signor Copperfield, ”
“Immagino di sì,” risposi.
“L’ho fatto la scorsa notte”, disse Uriah; “ma maturerà ancora! Ha solo bisogno di alcune cure. Posso aspettare!”
Mentre pronunciava mille addii, si rimise a sedere non appena il cocchiere si alzò. Per quel che ne so, stava mangiando qualcosa per proteggersi dall’aria fresca del mattino; ma faceva movimenti con la bocca come se la pera fosse già matura e lui la stesse assaporando con gusto.
CHAPTER 40. THE WANDERER
We had a very serious conversation in Buckingham Street that night, about the domestic occurrences I have detailed in the last chapter. My aunt was deeply interested in them, and walked up and down the room with her arms folded, for more than two hours afterwards. Whenever she was particularly discomposed, she always performed one of these pedestrian feats; and the amount of her discomposure might always be estimated by the duration of her walk. On this occasion she was so much disturbed in mind as to find it necessary to open the bedroom door, and make a course for herself, comprising the full extent of the bedrooms from wall to wall; and while Mr. Dick and I sat quietly by the fire, she kept passing in and out, along this measured track, at an unchanging pace, with the regularity of a clock-pendulum.
When my aunt and I were left to ourselves by Mr. Dick’s going out to bed, I sat down to write my letter to the two old ladies. By that time she was tired of walking, and sat by the fire with her dress tucked up as usual. But instead of sitting in her usual manner, holding her glass upon her knee, she suffered it to stand neglected on the chimney-piece; and, resting her left elbow on her right arm, and her chin on her left hand, looked thoughtfully at me. As often as I raised my eyes from what I was about, I met hers. ‘I am in the lovingest of tempers, my dear,’ she would assure me with a nod, ‘but I am fidgeted and sorry!’
I had been too busy to observe, until after she was gone to bed, that she had left her night-mixture, as she always called it, untasted on the chimney-piece. She came to her door, with even more than her usual affection of manner, when I knocked to acquaint her with this discovery; but only said, ‘I have not the heart to take it, Trot, tonight,’ and shook her head, and went in again.
She read my letter to the two old ladies, in the morning, and approved of it. I posted it, and had nothing to do then, but wait, as patiently as I could, for the reply. I was still in this state of expectation, and had been, for nearly a week; when I left the Doctor’s one snowy night, to walk home.
It had been a bitter day, and a cutting north-east wind had blown for some time. The wind had gone down with the light, and so the snow had come on. It was a heavy, settled fall, I recollect, in great flakes; and it lay thick. The noise of wheels and tread of people were as hushed, as if the streets had been strewn that depth with feathers.
My shortest way home,—and I naturally took the shortest way on such a night—was through St. Martin’s Lane. Now, the church which gives its name to the lane, stood in a less free situation at that time; there being no open space before it, and the lane winding down to the Strand. As I passed the steps of the portico, I encountered, at the corner, a woman’s face. It looked in mine, passed across the narrow lane, and disappeared. I knew it. I had seen it somewhere. But I could not remember where. I had some association with it, that struck upon my heart directly; but I was thinking of anything else when it came upon me, and was confused.
On the steps of the church, there was the stooping figure of a man, who had put down some burden on the smooth snow, to adjust it; my seeing the face, and my seeing him, were simultaneous. I don’t think I had stopped in my surprise; but, in any case, as I went on, he rose, turned, and came down towards me. I stood face to face with Mr. Peggotty!
Then I remembered the woman. It was Martha, to whom Emily had given the money that night in the kitchen. Martha Endell—side by side with whom, he would not have seen his dear niece, Ham had told me, for all the treasures wrecked in the sea.
We shook hands heartily. At first, neither of us could speak a word.
‘Mas’r Davy!’ he said, gripping me tight, ‘it do my art good to see you, sir. Well met, well met!’
‘Well met, my dear old friend!’ said I.
‘I had my thowts o’ coming to make inquiration for you, sir, tonight,’ he said, ‘but knowing as your aunt was living along wi’ you—fur I’ve been down yonder—Yarmouth way—I was afeerd it was too late. I should have come early in the morning, sir, afore going away.’
‘Again?’ said I.
‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, patiently shaking his head, ‘I’m away tomorrow.’
‘Where were you going now?’ I asked.
‘Well!’ he replied, shaking the snow out of his long hair, ‘I was a-going to turn in somewheers.’
In those days there was a side-entrance to the stable-yard of the Golden Cross, the inn so memorable to me in connexion with his misfortune, nearly opposite to where we stood. I pointed out the gateway, put my arm through his, and we went across. Two or three public-rooms opened out of the stable-yard; and looking into one of them, and finding it empty, and a good fire burning, I took him in there.
When I saw him in the light, I observed, not only that his hair was long and ragged, but that his face was burnt dark by the sun. He was greyer, the lines in his face and forehead were deeper, and he had every appearance of having toiled and wandered through all varieties of weather; but he looked very strong, and like a man upheld by steadfastness of purpose, whom nothing could tire out. He shook the snow from his hat and clothes, and brushed it away from his face, while I was inwardly making these remarks. As he sat down opposite to me at a table, with his back to the door by which we had entered, he put out his rough hand again, and grasped mine warmly.
‘I’ll tell you, Mas’r Davy,’ he said,—‘wheer all I’ve been, and what-all we’ve heerd. I’ve been fur, and we’ve heerd little; but I’ll tell you!’
I rang the bell for something hot to drink. He would have nothing stronger than ale; and while it was being brought, and being warmed at the fire, he sat thinking. There was a fine, massive gravity in his face, I did not venture to disturb.
CAPITOLO 40. IL VIAGGIATORE
Quella notte, in Buckingham Street, abbiamo avuto una conversazione molto seria riguardo agli eventi domestici di cui ho parlato nel capitolo precedente. Mia zia ne era profondamente interessata; camminava avanti e indietro nella stanza con le braccia incrociate, per più di due ore consecutive. Ogni volta che si sentiva particolarmente turbata, iniziava a fare queste lunghe passeggiate. La durata di tali passeggiate indicava esattamente il grado della sua agitazione. Quella volta era così sconvolta che decise addirittura di aprire la porta della camera da letto e percorrere l’intera stanza, da un’estremità all’altra; mentre io e il signor Dick sedevamo tranquillamente accanto al focolare, lei continuava a passare avanti e indietro lungo quel percorso prestabilito, con un ritmo costante, regolare come quello di un pendolo d’orologio.
Quando mio zio andò a letto, mia zia ed io rimanemmo sole. Mi sedetti per scrivere la mia lettera alle due anziane signore. A quell’ora, lei era stanca di camminare e si era seduta accanto al focolare, come al solito, con l’abito tirato su fino ai ginocchi. Ma invece di stare seduta nel suo solito modo, tenendo il bicchiere sulle ginocchia, lo lasciò semplicemente abbandonato sulla mensola del camino; appoggiò il gomito sinistro al braccio destro e il mento sulla mano sinistra, guardandomi con aria pensierosa. Ogni volta che alzavo lo sguardo da ciò che stavo facendo, incrociavo il suo. “Sono di umore molto affettuoso, cara”, mi assicurava lei annuendo, “ma sono irrequieta e un po’ triste, ”
Ero troppo occupato per accorgermene, fino a quando non se ne fu andata a letto; aveva lasciato la sua “miscela notturna”, come la chiamava sempre, intatta sul camino. Quando bussai alla sua porta per informarla di questa scoperta, venne ad aprirmi con un affetto ancora maggiore del solito; ma disse solo: “Stasera non ho il cuore di prenderla, Trot”, scosse la testa e rientrò in casa.
Lei lesse la mia lettera alle due anziane signore, la mattina seguente, e la approvò. La inviai via posta e, dopo, non mi restò altro da fare se non aspettare, con tutta la pazienza possibile, la risposta. Rimasi in questo stato di attesa per quasi una settimana; quella sera nevosa, lasciai la casa del Dottore per tornare a casa a piedi.
Era stata una giornata amara, e un freddo vento di nord-est soffiava da qualche tempo. Il vento si era placato con l’arrivo della notte, e così era iniziata la nevicata. Era una neve fitta e densa; i suoni delle ruote e dei passi umani sembravano attutiti, come se le strade fossero state coperte da uno spesso tappeto di piume.
Il percorso più breve per tornare a casa – e naturalmente, in una notte del genere, sceglievo sempre il percorso più breve – passava per St. Martin’s Lane. La chiesa che dava il nome a quella strada, in quel momento, si trovava in una posizione meno favorevole: non c’era spazio aperto davanti ad essa, e la strada proseguiva serpeggiando verso Strand. Mentre superavo i gradini del portico, all’angolo vidi il viso di una donna. Mi guardò, poi scomparve oltre il corridoio stretto della strada. La riconobbi. L’avevo già vista da qualche parte, ma non riuscivo a ricordare dove. C’era un legame tra quella donna e me, qualcosa che mi colpì direttamente nel cuore; però in quel momento stavo pensando ad altro, quindi rimasi confuso.
Sulle scale della chiesa c’era la figura curva di un uomo che aveva posato qualche carico sulla soffice neve per sistemarlo; vidi il suo viso e lo riconobbi nello stesso istante. Non credo di essere rimasto fermo per lo stupore, ma comunque, mentre continuavo a camminare, lui si alzò, si girò e venne verso di me. Mi trovai faccia a faccia con il signor Peggotty!
Poi mi ricordai di quella donna. Era Martha, a cui Emily aveva dato i soldi quella notte in cucina. Martha Endell, al suo fianco, secondo quanto mi aveva detto Ham, lui non avrebbe mai ritrovato sua cara nipote, per quanti tesori fossero andati persi in mare.
Ci stringemmo la mano con calore. All’inizio, nessuno dei due riusciva a pronunciare una parola.
“Maestro Davy!”, disse, stringendomi forte, “è davvero bello rivedervi, signore. Che piacere incontrarvi di nuovo!”
“Beh, eccomi qui, mio caro vecchio amico!” dissi io.
“Stasera avevo intenzione di venire a chiedervi notizie, signore,” disse, “ma sapendo che vostra zia viveva con voi, essendomi trovato da quelle parti, lungo la strada per Yarmouth, temevo fosse troppo tardi. Avrei dovuto venire presto al mattino, prima di partire.”
“Di nuovo?” dissi io.
“Sì, signore,” rispose pazientemente scuotendo la testa, “domani me ne andrò.”
“Dove stavi andando adesso?” chiesi.
“Beh!”, rispose scuotendo la neve dai suoi lunghi capelli, “stavo per andare da qualche parte.”
In quei tempi c’era un ingresso secondario nel cortile stalle della Golden Cross, quell’osteria così memorabile per me legata alla sua sfortuna; si trovava quasi di fronte al punto in cui ci trovavamo noi. Gli indicai l’ingresso, misi il mio braccio attraverso il suo e insieme entrammo. Dal cortile stalle si aprivano due o tre sale pubbliche; ne guardai una: era vuota e c’era un bel fuoco acceso, quindi lo portai lì dentro.
Quando lo vidi alla luce, notai non solo che i suoi capelli erano lunghi e disordinati, ma anche che il suo viso era scurito dal sole. Sembrava più anziano; le rughe sul suo volto e sulla fronte erano più profonde, e dava chiaramente l’impressione di aver lavorato sodo e vagabondato in ogni tipo di clima; tuttavia, appariva molto forte, come un uomo guidato da una ferma determinazione, a cui nulla avrebbe potuto stancare. Scosse la neve dal cappello e dai vestiti, spazzandola via dal viso, mentre io facevo queste osservazioni interiormente. Quando si sedette di fronte a me al tavolo, con le spalle rivolte verso la porta da cui eravamo entrati, tese di nuovo la sua mano ruvida e strinse calorosamente la mia.
“Vi dirò tutto, signor Davy,” disse lui, “dove sono stato e cosa abbiamo sentito. Sono stato in posti lontani, e abbiamo sentito cose strane. Ma vi racconterò tutto!”
Suonai la campanella per chiedere qualcosa da bere caldo. Lui non beveva niente di più forte della birra; mentre gliela portavano e la riscaldavano vicino al fuoco, sedeva a pensare. C’era una grande, solenne serietà sul suo volto; non osai disturbarlo.
‘When she was a child,’ he said, lifting up his head soon after we were left alone, ‘she used to talk to me a deal about the sea, and about them coasts where the sea got to be dark blue, and to lay a-shining and a-shining in the sun. I thowt, odd times, as her father being drownded made her think on it so much. I doen’t know, you see, but maybe she believed—or hoped—he had drifted out to them parts, where the flowers is always a-blowing, and the country bright.’
‘It is likely to have been a childish fancy,’ I replied.
‘When she was—lost,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I know’d in my mind, as he would take her to them countries. I know’d in my mind, as he’d have told her wonders of ‘em, and how she was to be a lady theer, and how he got her to listen to him fust, along o’ sech like. When we see his mother, I know’d quite well as I was right. I went across-channel to France, and landed theer, as if I’d fell down from the sky.’
I saw the door move, and the snow drift in. I saw it move a little more, and a hand softly interpose to keep it open.
‘I found out an English gen’leman as was in authority,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and told him I was a-going to seek my niece. He got me them papers as I wanted fur to carry me through—I doen’t rightly know how they’re called—and he would have give me money, but that I was thankful to have no need on. I thank him kind, for all he done, I’m sure! “I’ve wrote afore you,” he says to me, “and I shall speak to many as will come that way, and many will know you, fur distant from here, when you’re a-travelling alone.” I told him, best as I was able, what my gratitoode was, and went away through France.’
‘Alone, and on foot?’ said I.
‘Mostly a-foot,’ he rejoined; ‘sometimes in carts along with people going to market; sometimes in empty coaches. Many mile a day a-foot, and often with some poor soldier or another, travelling to see his friends. I couldn’t talk to him,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘nor he to me; but we was company for one another, too, along the dusty roads.’
I should have known that by his friendly tone.
‘When I come to any town,’ he pursued, ‘I found the inn, and waited about the yard till someone turned up (someone mostly did) as know’d English. Then I told how that I was on my way to seek my niece, and they told me what manner of gentlefolks was in the house, and I waited to see any as seemed like her, going in or out. When it warn’t Em’ly, I went on agen. By little and little, when I come to a new village or that, among the poor people, I found they know’d about me. They would set me down at their cottage doors, and give me what-not fur to eat and drink, and show me where to sleep; and many a woman, Mas’r Davy, as has had a daughter of about Em’ly’s age, I’ve found a-waiting fur me, at Our Saviour’s Cross outside the village, fur to do me sim’lar kindnesses. Some has had daughters as was dead. And God only knows how good them mothers was to me!’
It was Martha at the door. I saw her haggard, listening face distinctly. My dread was lest he should turn his head, and see her too.
‘They would often put their children—particular their little girls,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘upon my knee; and many a time you might have seen me sitting at their doors, when night was coming in, a’most as if they’d been my Darling’s children. Oh, my Darling!’
Overpowered by sudden grief, he sobbed aloud. I laid my trembling hand upon the hand he put before his face. ‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, ‘doen’t take no notice.’
In a very little while he took his hand away and put it on his breast, and went on with his story. ‘They often walked with me,’ he said, ‘in the morning, maybe a mile or two upon my road; and when we parted, and I said, “I’m very thankful to you! God bless you!” they always seemed to understand, and answered pleasant. At last I come to the sea. It warn’t hard, you may suppose, for a seafaring man like me to work his way over to Italy. When I got theer, I wandered on as I had done afore. The people was just as good to me, and I should have gone from town to town, maybe the country through, but that I got news of her being seen among them Swiss mountains yonder. One as know’d his servant see ‘em there, all three, and told me how they travelled, and where they was. I made fur them mountains, Mas’r Davy, day and night. Ever so fur as I went, ever so fur the mountains seemed to shift away from me. But I come up with ‘em, and I crossed ‘em. When I got nigh the place as I had been told of, I began to think within my own self, “What shall I do when I see her?”’
The listening face, insensible to the inclement night, still drooped at the door, and the hands begged me—prayed me—not to cast it forth.
‘I never doubted her,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘No! Not a bit! On’y let her see my face—on’y let her heer my voice—on’y let my stanning still afore her bring to her thoughts the home she had fled away from, and the child she had been—and if she had growed to be a royal lady, she’d have fell down at my feet! I know’d it well! Many a time in my sleep had I heerd her cry out, “Uncle!” and seen her fall like death afore me. Many a time in my sleep had I raised her up, and whispered to her, “Em’ly, my dear, I am come fur to bring forgiveness, and to take you home!”’
He stopped and shook his head, and went on with a sigh.
‘He was nowt to me now. Em’ly was all. I bought a country dress to put upon her; and I know’d that, once found, she would walk beside me over them stony roads, go where I would, and never, never, leave me more. To put that dress upon her, and to cast off what she wore—to take her on my arm again, and wander towards home—to stop sometimes upon the road, and heal her bruised feet and her worse-bruised heart—was all that I thowt of now. I doen’t believe I should have done so much as look at him. But, Mas’r Davy, it warn’t to be—not yet! I was too late, and they was gone. Wheer, I couldn’t learn. Some said heer, some said theer. I travelled heer, and I travelled theer, but I found no Em’ly, and I travelled home.’
“Quando era una bambina”, disse lui, alzando la testa poco dopo che fummo rimasti soli, “mi parlava spesso del mare, di quelle coste dove l’acqua diventa di un blu scuro e brillante sotto il sole. Penso che, dopo la morte di suo padre annegato, questo argomento assumesse per lei un’importanza particolare. Non so, forse credeva – o sperava – che lui fosse finito in quei luoghi, dove i fiori sbocciano sempre e la natura è così splendida.”
“Probabilmente era solo un capriccio infantile,” risposi.
“Quando lei era, persa”, disse il signor Peggotty, “sapevo nel mio cuore che lui l’avrebbe portata in quei paesi. Sapevo che le avrebbe raccontato delle meraviglie di quel posto, che lì sarebbe diventata una signora, e che l’avrebbe fatta ascoltare a lui per primo, insieme ad altre persone simili. Quando abbiamo incontrato sua madre, ho capito subito che avevo ragione. Sono partito attraverso la Manica per la Francia, ed è come se fossi caduto dal cielo.”
Vidi la porta muoversi e la neve entrare dentro. La vidi muoversi ancora un po’, e poi una mano intervenne dolcemente per tenerla aperta.
“Ho incontrato un gentiluomo inglese che aveva l’autorità necessaria,” disse il signor Peggotty, “e gli ho detto che intendevo cercare mia nipote. Mi ha fornito i documenti necessari per viaggiare. Non so esattamente come si chiamino. E avrebbe voluto darmi del denaro, ma io gli ho ringraziato, dicendo di non averne bisogno. Gli sono davvero grato per tutto ciò che ha fatto! ‘Ti ho già scritto in precedenza,’ mi ha detto, ‘e parlerò con molte persone che verranno da quella parte; molti ti conosceranno, anche se sei lontano da qui, quando viaggerai da solo.’ Gli ho espresso la mia gratitudine nel modo migliore che sapessi e sono partito per la Francia.”
“Da solo, e a piedi?” dissi io.
“Per lo più camminando a piedi,” rispose; “a volte in carri insieme alle persone che andavano al mercato; altre volte in carrozze vuote. Molte miglia al giorno a piedi, e spesso insieme a qualche povero soldato che viaggiava per vedere i suoi amici. Non riuscivo a parlare con lui,” disse il signor Peggotty, “né lui con me; ma comunque eravamo compagnia l’uno per l’altro, lungo quelle strade polverose.”
Avrei dovuto capirlo dal suo tono amichevole.
“Quando arrivavo in una qualsiasi città,” continuò, “trovavo l’ostello e aspettavo nel cortile finché qualcuno non si presentava (di solito qualcuno c’era), qualcuno che conoscesse l’inglese. Allora raccontavo di essere in viaggio per cercare mia nipote, e loro mi dicevano di quale tipo fossero le persone che abitavano nella casa in questione. Aspettavo quindi che qualcuna che sembrasse lei entrasse o uscisse. Se non era Em’ly, proseguivo il mio viaggio. Gradualmente, quando arrivavo in un nuovo villaggio, tra la gente povera, scoprivo che conoscevano già la mia storia. Mi facevano accomodare davanti alle loro case, mi offrivano da mangiare e da bere, e mi indicavano dove dormire. Molte donne, signor Davy, che avevano figlie dell’età di Em’ly, venivano ad aspettarmi fuori dal villaggio, presso la Croce del nostro Salvatore, per farmi ancora più gentilezze. Alcune avevano persino figlie morte. E solo Dio sa quanto fossero buone queste madri con me!”
Era Martha alla porta. La vidi chiaramente: il suo viso era pallido e teso mentre ascoltava. Temevo che lui girasse la testa e la vedesse anche lei.
“Spesso mettevano i loro bambini – soprattutto le loro piccole ragazze – sulle mie ginocchia,” disse il signor Peggotty. “Molte volte si poteva vedermi seduto davanti alle loro porte, quando calava la notte, come se quei bambini fossero stati i miei stessi figli. Oh, mio caro!”
Sopraffatto da un dolore improvviso, iniziò a singhiozzare ad alta voce. Posai la mia mano tremante sulla sua, che teneva davanti al viso. “Grazie, signore,” disse, “non se ne preoccupi.”
In molto poco tempo tolse la mano dal petto e continuò la sua storia: «Spesso camminavano con me, al mattino, forse per un miglio o due lungo la mia strada; e quando ci separavamo e io dicevo: “Sono davvero grato a voi! Che Dio vi benedica!”, sembrava sempre che capissero e rispondessero in modo gentile. Alla fine arrivai al mare. Non doveva essere difficile, per uno come me che aveva vissuto per tanto tempo sul mare, raggiungere l’Italia». Una volta là, continuai a viaggiare come avevo fatto prima: la gente era altrettanto gentile con me. Avrei potuto spostarmi da una città all’altra, forse attraversare anche tutta la regione. Ma ricevetti la notizia che lei veniva vista tra quelle montagne svizzere lì vicino. Qualcuno aveva detto di averla vista insieme alle altre due, e mi raccontò come viaggiassero e dove si trovassero. Cercai loro tra quelle montagne, signor Davy, giorno e notte. Più avanzavo, più sembrava che le montagne si allontanassero da me. Ma alla fine riuscii a trovarle. Quando fui vicino al luogo in cui mi era stata data quella informazione, cominciai a chiedermi: “Cosa farò quando la vedrò?”»
Il volto che ascoltava, indifferente alle avverse condizioni della notte, continuava ad essere appoggiato alla porta; le mani mi pregavano, mi supplicavano di non buttarlo via.
“Non ho mai dubitato di lei,” disse il signor Peggotty. “No! Nemmeno per un attimo! Basta che lei veda il mio viso, basta che senta la mia voce. Il fatto che io stia ancora qui davanti a lei le farà ricordare la casa da cui è fuggita, e la bambina che era un tempo. Anche se fosse diventata una dama reale, si inginocchierebbe ai miei piedi! Lo so con certezza! Molte volte, nel sonno, l’ho sentita gridare “Zio!” e vederla cadere davanti a me come se fosse morta. Molte volte, nel sonno, l’ho rialzata e le ho sussurrato: ‘Em’ly, mia cara, sono venuto per portarti il perdono e riportarti a casa!’”
Si fermò, scosse la testa e poi proseguì con un sospiro.
‘Ora lui non significava nulla per me. Solo Em’ly contava. Comprai un abito da campagna per farlo indossare a lei; sapevo che, una volta ritrovata, avrebbe camminato al mio fianco su quei sentieri di pietra, sarebbe andata dove volevo io, e non mi avrebbe mai più lasciato. Farle indossare quell’abito, farle togliere quello che aveva addosso, prenderla di nuovo sul braccio e dirigersi verso casa, fermarsi ogni tanto lungo la strada per curare i suoi piedi feriti e il suo cuore ancora più spezzato. Era tutto ciò a cui pensavo in quel momento. Non credo che avrei mai fatto qualcosa del genere, nemmeno lo avrei considerato. Ma, signor Davy, non era ancora il momento! Ero arrivata troppo tardi, erano già andati via. Non riuscii a scoprire dove fossero. Alcuni dicevano qui, altri là. Viaggiai in entrambe le direzioni, ma non trovai Em’ly, e tornai casa.’
‘How long ago?’ I asked.
‘A matter o’ fower days,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I sighted the old boat arter dark, and the light a-shining in the winder. When I come nigh and looked in through the glass, I see the faithful creetur Missis Gummidge sittin’ by the fire, as we had fixed upon, alone. I called out, “Doen’t be afeerd! It’s Dan’l!” and I went in. I never could have thowt the old boat would have been so strange!’ From some pocket in his breast, he took out, with a very careful hand a small paper bundle containing two or three letters or little packets, which he laid upon the table.
‘This fust one come,’ he said, selecting it from the rest, ‘afore I had been gone a week. A fifty pound Bank note, in a sheet of paper, directed to me, and put underneath the door in the night. She tried to hide her writing, but she couldn’t hide it from Me!’
He folded up the note again, with great patience and care, in exactly the same form, and laid it on one side.
‘This come to Missis Gummidge,’ he said, opening another, ‘two or three months ago.’ After looking at it for some moments, he gave it to me, and added in a low voice, ‘Be so good as read it, sir.’
I read as follows:
‘Oh what will you feel when you see this writing, and know it comes from my wicked hand! But try, try—not for my sake, but for uncle’s goodness, try to let your heart soften to me, only for a little little time! Try, pray do, to relent towards a miserable girl, and write down on a bit of paper whether he is well, and what he said about me before you left off ever naming me among yourselves—and whether, of a night, when it is my old time of coming home, you ever see him look as if he thought of one he used to love so dear. Oh, my heart is breaking when I think about it! I am kneeling down to you, begging and praying you not to be as hard with me as I deserve—as I well, well, know I deserve—but to be so gentle and so good, as to write down something of him, and to send it to me. You need not call me Little, you need not call me by the name I have disgraced; but oh, listen to my agony, and have mercy on me so far as to write me some word of uncle, never, never to be seen in this world by my eyes again!
‘Dear, if your heart is hard towards me—justly hard, I know—but, listen, if it is hard, dear, ask him I have wronged the most—him whose wife I was to have been—before you quite decide against my poor poor prayer! If he should be so compassionate as to say that you might write something for me to read—I think he would, oh, I think he would, if you would only ask him, for he always was so brave and so forgiving—tell him then (but not else), that when I hear the wind blowing at night, I feel as if it was passing angrily from seeing him and uncle, and was going up to God against me. Tell him that if I was to die tomorrow (and oh, if I was fit, I would be so glad to die!) I would bless him and uncle with my last words, and pray for his happy home with my last breath!’
Some money was enclosed in this letter also. Five pounds. It was untouched like the previous sum, and he refolded it in the same way. Detailed instructions were added relative to the address of a reply, which, although they betrayed the intervention of several hands, and made it difficult to arrive at any very probable conclusion in reference to her place of concealment, made it at least not unlikely that she had written from that spot where she was stated to have been seen.
‘What answer was sent?’ I inquired of Mr. Peggotty.
‘Missis Gummidge,’ he returned, ‘not being a good scholar, sir, Ham kindly drawed it out, and she made a copy on it. They told her I was gone to seek her, and what my parting words was.’
‘Is that another letter in your hand?’ said I.
‘It’s money, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, unfolding it a little way. ‘Ten pound, you see. And wrote inside, “From a true friend,” like the fust. But the fust was put underneath the door, and this come by the post, day afore yesterday. I’m a-going to seek her at the post-mark.’
He showed it to me. It was a town on the Upper Rhine. He had found out, at Yarmouth, some foreign dealers who knew that country, and they had drawn him a rude map on paper, which he could very well understand. He laid it between us on the table; and, with his chin resting on one hand, tracked his course upon it with the other.
I asked him how Ham was? He shook his head.
‘He works,’ he said, ‘as bold as a man can. His name’s as good, in all that part, as any man’s is, anywheres in the wureld. Anyone’s hand is ready to help him, you understand, and his is ready to help them. He’s never been heerd fur to complain. But my sister’s belief is (‘twixt ourselves) as it has cut him deep.’
‘Poor fellow, I can believe it!’
‘He ain’t no care, Mas’r Davy,’ said Mr. Peggotty in a solemn whisper—‘kinder no care no-how for his life. When a man’s wanted for rough sarvice in rough weather, he’s theer. When there’s hard duty to be done with danger in it, he steps for’ard afore all his mates. And yet he’s as gentle as any child. There ain’t a child in Yarmouth that doen’t know him.’
He gathered up the letters thoughtfully, smoothing them with his hand; put them into their little bundle; and placed it tenderly in his breast again. The face was gone from the door. I still saw the snow drifting in; but nothing else was there.
‘Well!’ he said, looking to his bag, ‘having seen you tonight, Mas’r Davy (and that doos me good!), I shall away betimes tomorrow morning. You have seen what I’ve got heer’; putting his hand on where the little packet lay; ‘all that troubles me is, to think that any harm might come to me, afore that money was give back. If I was to die, and it was lost, or stole, or elseways made away with, and it was never know’d by him but what I’d took it, I believe the t’other wureld wouldn’t hold me! I believe I must come back!’
He rose, and I rose too; we grasped each other by the hand again, before going out.
‘I’d go ten thousand mile,’ he said, ‘I’d go till I dropped dead, to lay that money down afore him. If I do that, and find my Em’ly, I’m content. If I doen’t find her, maybe she’ll come to hear, sometime, as her loving uncle only ended his search for her when he ended his life; and if I know her, even that will turn her home at last!’
As he went out into the rigorous night, I saw the lonely figure flit away before us. I turned him hastily on some pretence, and held him in conversation until it was gone.
He spoke of a traveller’s house on the Dover Road, where he knew he could find a clean, plain lodging for the night. I went with him over Westminster Bridge, and parted from him on the Surrey shore. Everything seemed, to my imagination, to be hushed in reverence for him, as he resumed his solitary journey through the snow.
I returned to the inn yard, and, impressed by my remembrance of the face, looked awfully around for it. It was not there. The snow had covered our late footprints; my new track was the only one to be seen; and even that began to die away (it snowed so fast) as I looked back over my shoulder.
“Quanto tempo fa?” chiesi.
“Tra quattro giorni al massimo,” disse il signor Peggotty. “Ho visto quella vecchia barca nel buio, con la luce che brillava all’interno. Quando mi sono avvicinato e ho guardato attraverso il vetro, ho visto quella brava donna, la signora Gummidge, seduta accanto al focolare, proprio come avevamo concordato, da sola. Ho gridato: ‘Non abbiate paura! Sono Dan’l!’ e sono entrato. Non avrei mai pensato che quella vecchia barca potesse essere così strana, ” Da una tasca del suo petto tirò fuori, con molta cura, un piccolo pacchetto di carta contenente due o tre lettere o piccoli foglietti, che posò sul tavolo.
“Questo è arrivato,” disse, selezionandolo dagli altri, “prima che fossi partito da una settimana. Una banconota da cinquanta sterline, in un foglio di carta, indirizzata a me, e lasciata sotto la porta di notte. Ha cercato di nascondere la sua scrittura, ma non è riuscita a nasconderla da Me!”
Ripiegò di nuovo il biglietto, con grande pazienza e cura, esattamente nella stessa forma originale, e lo mise da parte.
“Questo è arrivato per la signora Gummidge,” disse, aprendone un altro, “due o tre mesi fa.” Dopo averlo guardato per qualche momento, me lo diede e aggiunse a bassa voce: “Per favore, leggilo, signore.”
Ho letto quanto segue:
“Oh, cosa proverai quando vedrai queste parole e saprai che provengono dalla mia mano malvagia. Ma prova, prova. Non per il mio bene, ma per la bontà di zio. Prova almeno per un attimo a addolcire il tuo cuore nei miei confronti! Per favore, cerca di avere pietà di una ragazza sfortunata e scrivi su un pezzo di carta se lui sta bene, cosa ha detto di me prima di smettere mai più di menzionarmi tra voi. E se, una notte, quando sarà il mio vecchio momento di tornare a casa, lo vedrai mai guardare come se pensasse a qualcuno che un tempo amava tanto. Oh, il mio cuore si spezza al solo pensarci! Mi sto inginocchiando davanti a te, pregandoti di non essere così crudele con me come merito. Come so bene che merito. Ma sii gentile e buono, scrivi qualcosa su di lui e mandamelo. Non devi chiamarmi “piccola”, non devi usare il nome che ho disonorato. Ma oh, ascolta la mia angoscia. E abbi pietà di me, almeno scrivimi qualcosa su zio. Qualcosa che i miei occhi non vedranno mai più in questo mondo, ”
‘Caro, anche se il tuo cuore è duro verso di me – so che lo è, giustamente – ma ascolta: se davvero lo è, chiedigli se ho offeso qualcuno più di tutti, lui, di cui avrei dovuto essere la moglie. Prima di decidere definitivamente contro la mia povera preghiera! Se fosse così compassionevole da dirti che potresti scrivermi qualcosa da leggere. Penso che lo farebbe, oh, penso che lo farebbe, se solo glielo chiedessi. Lui è sempre stato così coraggioso e così indulgente. Digli allora (ma nient’altro) che, quando sento il vento soffiare di notte, ho l’impressione che passi infuriato dopo aver visto lui e lo zio, e vada dritto verso Dio contro di me. Digli anche che, se domani dovessi morire, (e oh, se solo fossi in grado di farlo, ne sarei così felice, ) gli benedirei con le mie ultime parole e pregherei per la sua felicità, ’
In questa lettera era incluso anche del denaro: cinque sterline. Era rimasto intatto, proprio come la somma precedente, e lui lo ripiegò nello stesso modo. Erano state aggiunte istruzioni dettagliate riguardo all’indirizzo da utilizzare per rispondere; sebbene queste indicazioni rivelassero l’intervento di diverse persone e rendessero difficile trarre conclusioni certe sul luogo in cui lei si trovava, almeno non era improbabile che avesse scritto da quel posto dove si diceva fosse stata vista.
“Qual è stata la risposta inviata?” chiesi al signor Peggotty.
“Signora Gummidge,” rispose lui, “poiché non era molto versata nello studio, il signor Ham le ha gentilmente spiegato tutto, e lei ne ha fatto una copia. Le hanno detto che ero andato a cercarla e quali fossero state le mie ultime parole prima di partire.”
“È un’altra lettera quella che hai in mano?” dissi.
“È denaro, signore,” disse il signor Peggotty, svolgendo un po’ il foglio. “Dieci sterline, vedete. E sopra c’è scritto: ‘Da un vero amico’. Ma la lettera originale è stata lasciata sotto la porta; questa invece è arrivata per posta, ieri mattina. Andrò a cercare chi l’ha inviata presso l’ufficio postale.”
Me lo mostrò: era una città situata sulle rive dell’Alto Reno. Aveva scoperto, a Yarmouth, alcuni commercianti stranieri che conoscevano quella regione; loro gli avevano disegnato su carta una mappa approssimativa, che lui riusciva facilmente a comprendere. La posò tra di noi sul tavolo e, appoggiando il mento su una mano, indicò con l’altra il percorso da seguire.
Gli ho chiesto come stesse Ham; lui ha scosso la testa.
“Lavora,” disse, “con la stessa determinazione di qualsiasi altro uomo. Il suo nome, in quella zona, è tanto buono quanto quello di chiunque altro, ovunque nel mondo. Tutti sono pronti ad aiutarlo, capisci, e lui è pronto ad aiutare loro. Non si è mai lamentato. Ma la convinzione di mia sorella, beh, questa lo ha profondamente colpito.”
“Povero ragazzo. Posso crederci davvero!”
“Non gli importa nulla, signor Davy,” disse il signor Peggotty sottovoce e con solennità. “Gli è completamente indifferente la sua stessa vita. Quando c’è bisogno di qualcuno che si occupi di lavori duri in condizioni avverse, lui è sempre lì. E quando serve compiere compiti difficili e pericolosi, lui si fa avanti prima di tutti gli altri. Eppure è gentile come qualsiasi bambino. Non c’è un solo bambino a Yarmouth che non lo conosca.”
Raccolse le lettere con cura, lisciandole con la mano; le mise nel loro piccolo pacchetto e lo posò delicatamente sul proprio petto. Il volto era scomparso dalla porta; vedevo ancora la neve che continuava a cadere, ma non c’era nient’altro.
“Beh!” disse, guardando la sua borsa, “dopo avervi visto stasera, signor Davy (e questo mi fa davvero bene!), partirò domani mattina presto. Avete visto cosa ho qui”; mise la mano nel punto in cui si trovava il piccolo pacchetto; “Tutto ciò che mi preoccupa è il pensiero che possa succedermi qualcosa di male prima che quel denaro venga restituito. Se dovessi morire e quel denaro andasse perso, rubato o in qualche altro modo scomparisse, senza che lui sapesse mai che l’avevo preso io, credo che nemmeno l’altro mondo potrebbe accettarmi! Credo proprio di dover tornare indietro!”
Lui si è alzato in piedi, e anch’io mi sono alzata in piedi; ci siamo di nuovo tenuti per mano prima di uscire.
“Andrei diecimila miglia,” disse, “andrei fino a morire, pur di mettere quei soldi davanti a lui. Se ci riesco e trovo mia moglie, sarò felice. Se non la trovo, forse un giorno verrà a sapere, visto che suo caro zio ha smesso di cercarla solo quando ha smesso di vivere; e se la riconoscerò, anche questo la farà finalmente tornare a casa, ”
Mentre usciva nella rigida notte, vidi quella figura solitaria allontanarsi davanti a noi. Lo trattai con premura per qualche motivo e continuai a conversare con lui finché non scomparve.
Parlò di una locanda per viaggiatori situata sulla Strada di Dover, dove sapeva di poter trovare un alloggio pulito e semplice per la notte. Lo seguii oltre il Ponte di Westminster e ci separammo sulla riva del Surrey. A mio immaginario, tutto sembrava essere immerso in un silenzio rispettoso nei suoi confronti, mentre riprendeva il suo solitario viaggio attraverso la neve.
Tornai nel cortile dell’ostello e, colpito dalla mia capacità di ricordare quel volto, guardai intorno con attenzione. Ma non c’era. La neve aveva coperto le nostre orme; la sola traccia visibile era la mia. E anche quella iniziava a scomparire, poiché nevicava sempre più forte.
CHAPTER 41. DORA’S AUNTS
At last, an answer came from the two old ladies. They presented their compliments to Mr. Copperfield, and informed him that they had given his letter their best consideration, ‘with a view to the happiness of both parties’—which I thought rather an alarming expression, not only because of the use they had made of it in relation to the family difference before-mentioned, but because I had (and have all my life) observed that conventional phrases are a sort of fireworks, easily let off, and liable to take a great variety of shapes and colours not at all suggested by their original form. The Misses Spenlow added that they begged to forbear expressing, ‘through the medium of correspondence’, an opinion on the subject of Mr. Copperfield’s communication; but that if Mr. Copperfield would do them the favour to call, upon a certain day (accompanied, if he thought proper, by a confidential friend), they would be happy to hold some conversation on the subject.
To this favour, Mr. Copperfield immediately replied, with his respectful compliments, that he would have the honour of waiting on the Misses Spenlow, at the time appointed; accompanied, in accordance with their kind permission, by his friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple. Having dispatched which missive, Mr. Copperfield fell into a condition of strong nervous agitation; and so remained until the day arrived.
It was a great augmentation of my uneasiness to be bereaved, at this eventful crisis, of the inestimable services of Miss Mills. But Mr. Mills, who was always doing something or other to annoy me—or I felt as if he were, which was the same thing—had brought his conduct to a climax, by taking it into his head that he would go to India. Why should he go to India, except to harass me? To be sure he had nothing to do with any other part of the world, and had a good deal to do with that part; being entirely in the India trade, whatever that was (I had floating dreams myself concerning golden shawls and elephants’ teeth); having been at Calcutta in his youth; and designing now to go out there again, in the capacity of resident partner. But this was nothing to me. However, it was so much to him that for India he was bound, and Julia with him; and Julia went into the country to take leave of her relations; and the house was put into a perfect suit of bills, announcing that it was to be let or sold, and that the furniture (Mangle and all) was to be taken at a valuation. So, here was another earthquake of which I became the sport, before I had recovered from the shock of its predecessor!
I was in several minds how to dress myself on the important day; being divided between my desire to appear to advantage, and my apprehensions of putting on anything that might impair my severely practical character in the eyes of the Misses Spenlow. I endeavoured to hit a happy medium between these two extremes; my aunt approved the result; and Mr. Dick threw one of his shoes after Traddles and me, for luck, as we went downstairs.
Excellent fellow as I knew Traddles to be, and warmly attached to him as I was, I could not help wishing, on that delicate occasion, that he had never contracted the habit of brushing his hair so very upright. It gave him a surprised look—not to say a hearth-broomy kind of expression—which, my apprehensions whispered, might be fatal to us.
I took the liberty of mentioning it to Traddles, as we were walking to Putney; and saying that if he WOULD smooth it down a little—
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, lifting off his hat, and rubbing his hair all kinds of ways, ‘nothing would give me greater pleasure. But it won’t.’
‘Won’t be smoothed down?’ said I.
‘No,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing will induce it. If I was to carry a half-hundred-weight upon it, all the way to Putney, it would be up again the moment the weight was taken off. You have no idea what obstinate hair mine is, Copperfield. I am quite a fretful porcupine.’
I was a little disappointed, I must confess, but thoroughly charmed by his good-nature too. I told him how I esteemed his good-nature; and said that his hair must have taken all the obstinacy out of his character, for he had none.
‘Oh!’ returned Traddles, laughing. ‘I assure you, it’s quite an old story, my unfortunate hair. My uncle’s wife couldn’t bear it. She said it exasperated her. It stood very much in my way, too, when I first fell in love with Sophy. Very much!’
‘Did she object to it?’
‘SHE didn’t,’ rejoined Traddles; ‘but her eldest sister—the one that’s the Beauty—quite made game of it, I understand. In fact, all the sisters laugh at it.’
‘Agreeable!’ said I.
‘Yes,’ returned Traddles with perfect innocence, ‘it’s a joke for us. They pretend that Sophy has a lock of it in her desk, and is obliged to shut it in a clasped book, to keep it down. We laugh about it.’
‘By the by, my dear Traddles,’ said I, ‘your experience may suggest something to me. When you became engaged to the young lady whom you have just mentioned, did you make a regular proposal to her family? Was there anything like—what we are going through today, for instance?’ I added, nervously.
‘Why,’ replied Traddles, on whose attentive face a thoughtful shade had stolen, ‘it was rather a painful transaction, Copperfield, in my case. You see, Sophy being of so much use in the family, none of them could endure the thought of her ever being married. Indeed, they had quite settled among themselves that she never was to be married, and they called her the old maid. Accordingly, when I mentioned it, with the greatest precaution, to Mrs. Crewler—’
‘The mama?’ said I.
‘The mama,’ said Traddles—‘Reverend Horace Crewler—when I mentioned it with every possible precaution to Mrs. Crewler, the effect upon her was such that she gave a scream and became insensible. I couldn’t approach the subject again, for months.’
CAPITOLO 41. LE ZIE DI DORA
Finalmente, arrivarono le risposte dalle due anziane signore. Espressero i loro complimenti a Mr. Copperfield e gli dissero di aver attentamente considerato la sua lettera, “al fine della felicità di entrambe le parti”. Una formulazione che mi sembrò piuttosto allarmante, non solo per il modo in cui era stata utilizzata riguardo alla disputa familiare menzionata in precedenza, ma anche perché avevo sempre osservato (e lo faccio tuttora) che le frasi convenzionali sono come dei fuochi d’artificio: facilmente utilizzabili, ma capaci di assumere forme e colori del tutto diversi da quelli previsti dalla loro origine. Le signorine Spenlow aggiunsero inoltre che avrebbero preferito non esprimere, “attraverso la corrispondenza”, alcuna opinione sul contenuto della lettera di Mr. Copperfield; ma che, se lui avesse avuto la gentilezza di far loro visita in un certo giorno (accompagnato, se lo riteneva opportuno, da un amico fidato), sarebbero state felici di discutere l’argomento con lui.
Rispondendo immediatamente con i suoi rispettosi complimenti, il signor Copperfield accettò l’onore di attendere le signorine Spenlow all’ora stabilita, accompagnato, con il loro gentile permesso, dal suo amico il signor Thomas Traddles dell’Inner Temple. Dopo aver inviato questa lettera, il signor Copperfield cadde in uno stato di forte agitazione nervosa; rimase così fino all’arrivo del giorno previsto.
Fu un ulteriore aggravamento della mia angoscia il fatto che, in questa crisi decisiva, dovessi privarmi dei preziosissimi servizi di Miss Mills. Ma Mr. Mills, che era sempre impegnato a fare qualcosa per infastidirmi, o almeno così mi sembrava, aveva portato le sue azioni all’estremo, decidendo di andare in India. Perché mai avrebbe dovuto andare in India, se non per tormentarmi? Di certo non aveva nulla a che fare con nessun altro angolo del mondo, tranne forse con quell’India, dato che si occupava esclusivamente di affari legati al commercio in quella regione; anzi, avevo persino alcuni vaghi sogni riguardo a sciarpe dorate e denti d’elefante. Aveva trascorso la sua giovinezza a Calcutta e ora intendeva tornarci come socio residente. Ma per me tutto ciò non significava nulla. Per lui, invece, era una questione di vita o di morte: doveva andare in India, e anche Julia lo avrebbe seguito; lei partì quindi per salutare i suoi parenti, mentre la casa venne messa in vendita, con tutti gli arredi che sarebbero stati valutati e poi venduti. Ecco un altro terremoto, di cui divenni vittima, prima ancora di essermi ripresa dallo shock del precedente!
Ero molto indeciso su come vestirmi in quel giorno importante: da un lato desideravo apparire al meglio, dall’altro temevo che qualsiasi abbigliamento potesse mettere in risalto il mio carattere estremamente pratico agli occhi delle signorine Spenlow. Cercai di trovare un equilibrio tra questi due estremi; mia zia approvò il risultato, e mentre scendevamo le scale, il signor Dick ci lanciò uno dei suoi scarponi per portare fortuna.
Essendo Traddles una persona eccellente, e avendoci un legame affettuoso, in quella delicata occasione non potei fare a meno di sperare che non avesse mai preso l’abitudine di pettinarsi i capelli in modo così rigido. Quel gesto gli fece assumere un’espressione sorpresa, per non dire addirittura allarmata, e le mie preoccupazioni sussurravano che ciò potesse rivelarsi fatale per noi.
Mi sono preso la libertà di menzionarglielo mentre camminavamo verso Putney, dicendogli che se avesse potuto sistemare un po’ le cose.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” disse Traddles, togliendosi il cappello e pettinandosi i capelli in tutti i modi possibili, “niente mi darebbe più piacere. Ma non sarà possibile.”
“Non verrà sistemato?” dissi io.
“No,” disse Traddles. “Niente riuscirebbe a farlo scendere. Anche se dovessi portare un peso di mezzo centinaio di libbre su di esso, per tutta la strada fino a Putney, si rialzerebbe non appena il peso venisse tolto. Non hai idea di quanto sia testardo quel mio pelo, Copperfield. Sono davvero come un porcospino irrequieto.”
Devo ammettere che ero un po’ deluso, ma allo stesso tempo completamente affascinato dalla sua buona >natura. Gli dissi quanto apprezzassi la sua bontà e aggiunsi che i suoi capelli dovevano aver assorbito tutta l’ostinazione presente nel suo carattere, perché lui, in realtà, non ne aveva affatto.
“Oh!” rispose Traddles ridendo. “Vi assicuro, è una storia piuttosto vecchia, i miei sfortunati capelli, insomma. La moglie di mio zio non li poteva sopportare; diceva che la infastidivano molto. Anche a me hanno creato molti problemi quando ho iniziato a innamorarmi di Sophy. Davvero molti problemi!”
“Ha obiettato qualcosa al riguardo?”
“Non l’ha fatto,” ribatté Traddles; “ma sua sorella maggiore – quella che è la bellezza – ne ha fatto una questione di scherzo, capisco. Infatti, tutte le sorelle se ne ridono.”
“Piacevole!” dissi io.
“Sì,” rispose Traddles con perfetta innocenza, “per noi è solo uno scherzo. Fingono che Sophy abbia una ciocca di capelli in cassetto e che debba nasconderla dentro un libro chiuso a chiave per tenerla nascosta. Noi ci ridiamo.”
“A proposito, caro Traddles,” dissi, “la tua esperienza potrebbe essermi d’aiuto. Quando ti sei fidanzato con la giovane donna di cui hai appena parlato, hai fatto una proposta formale alla sua famiglia? È successo qualcosa del genere, come ciò che stiamo vivendo oggi, per esempio?” aggiunsi, nervosamente.
“Perché,” rispose Traddles, il cui viso attento aveva assunto un’espressione pensierosa, “per quanto mi riguarda, è stata una transazione piuttosto dolorosa, Copperfield. Vede, poiché Sophy era così utile in famiglia, nessuno di loro riusciva a sopportare l’idea che potesse mai sposarsi. Anzi, avevano deciso tutti insieme che non avrebbe mai dovuto sposarsi, e la chiamavano ‘la zitella’. Pertanto, quando ne parlai con la massima cautela alla signora Crewler, ”
“La mamma?”, dissi io.
“La mamma,” disse Traddles, “il reverendo Horace Crewler. Quando ne parlai con la signora Crewler, prendendo tutte le precauzioni possibili, l’effetto su di lei fu tale che gridò e perse i sensi. Non riuscii più a sollevare l’argomento per mesi.”
‘You did at last?’ said I.
‘Well, the Reverend Horace did,’ said Traddles. ‘He is an excellent man, most exemplary in every way; and he pointed out to her that she ought, as a Christian, to reconcile herself to the sacrifice (especially as it was so uncertain), and to bear no uncharitable feeling towards me. As to myself, Copperfield, I give you my word, I felt a perfect bird of prey towards the family.’
‘The sisters took your part, I hope, Traddles?’
‘Why, I can’t say they did,’ he returned. ‘When we had comparatively reconciled Mrs. Crewler to it, we had to break it to Sarah. You recollect my mentioning Sarah, as the one that has something the matter with her spine?’
‘Perfectly!’
‘She clenched both her hands,’ said Traddles, looking at me in dismay; ‘shut her eyes; turned lead-colour; became perfectly stiff; and took nothing for two days but toast-and-water, administered with a tea-spoon.’
‘What a very unpleasant girl, Traddles!’ I remarked.
‘Oh, I beg your pardon, Copperfield!’ said Traddles. ‘She is a very charming girl, but she has a great deal of feeling. In fact, they all have. Sophy told me afterwards, that the self-reproach she underwent while she was in attendance upon Sarah, no words could describe. I know it must have been severe, by my own feelings, Copperfield; which were like a criminal’s. After Sarah was restored, we still had to break it to the other eight; and it produced various effects upon them of a most pathetic nature. The two little ones, whom Sophy educates, have only just left off de-testing me.’
‘At any rate, they are all reconciled to it now, I hope?’ said I.
‘Ye-yes, I should say they were, on the whole, resigned to it,’ said Traddles, doubtfully. ‘The fact is, we avoid mentioning the subject; and my unsettled prospects and indifferent circumstances are a great consolation to them. There will be a deplorable scene, whenever we are married. It will be much more like a funeral, than a wedding. And they’ll all hate me for taking her away!’
His honest face, as he looked at me with a serio-comic shake of his head, impresses me more in the remembrance than it did in the reality, for I was by this time in a state of such excessive trepidation and wandering of mind, as to be quite unable to fix my attention on anything. On our approaching the house where the Misses Spenlow lived, I was at such a discount in respect of my personal looks and presence of mind, that Traddles proposed a gentle stimulant in the form of a glass of ale. This having been administered at a neighbouring public-house, he conducted me, with tottering steps, to the Misses Spenlow’s door.
I had a vague sensation of being, as it were, on view, when the maid opened it; and of wavering, somehow, across a hall with a weather-glass in it, into a quiet little drawing-room on the ground-floor, commanding a neat garden. Also of sitting down here, on a sofa, and seeing Traddles’s hair start up, now his hat was removed, like one of those obtrusive little figures made of springs, that fly out of fictitious snuff-boxes when the lid is taken off. Also of hearing an old-fashioned clock ticking away on the chimney-piece, and trying to make it keep time to the jerking of my heart,—which it wouldn’t. Also of looking round the room for any sign of Dora, and seeing none. Also of thinking that Jip once barked in the distance, and was instantly choked by somebody. Ultimately I found myself backing Traddles into the fireplace, and bowing in great confusion to two dry little elderly ladies, dressed in black, and each looking wonderfully like a preparation in chip or tan of the late Mr. Spenlow.
‘Pray,’ said one of the two little ladies, ‘be seated.’
When I had done tumbling over Traddles, and had sat upon something which was not a cat—my first seat was—I so far recovered my sight, as to perceive that Mr. Spenlow had evidently been the youngest of the family; that there was a disparity of six or eight years between the two sisters; and that the younger appeared to be the manager of the conference, inasmuch as she had my letter in her hand—so familiar as it looked to me, and yet so odd!—and was referring to it through an eye-glass. They were dressed alike, but this sister wore her dress with a more youthful air than the other; and perhaps had a trifle more frill, or tucker, or brooch, or bracelet, or some little thing of that kind, which made her look more lively. They were both upright in their carriage, formal, precise, composed, and quiet. The sister who had not my letter, had her arms crossed on her breast, and resting on each other, like an Idol.
‘Mr. Copperfield, I believe,’ said the sister who had got my letter, addressing herself to Traddles.
This was a frightful beginning. Traddles had to indicate that I was Mr. Copperfield, and I had to lay claim to myself, and they had to divest themselves of a preconceived opinion that Traddles was Mr. Copperfield, and altogether we were in a nice condition. To improve it, we all distinctly heard Jip give two short barks, and receive another choke.
‘Mr. Copperfield!’ said the sister with the letter.
I did something—bowed, I suppose—and was all attention, when the other sister struck in.
‘My sister Lavinia,’ said she ‘being conversant with matters of this nature, will state what we consider most calculated to promote the happiness of both parties.’
I discovered afterwards that Miss Lavinia was an authority in affairs of the heart, by reason of there having anciently existed a certain Mr. Pidger, who played short whist, and was supposed to have been enamoured of her. My private opinion is, that this was entirely a gratuitous assumption, and that Pidger was altogether innocent of any such sentiments—to which he had never given any sort of expression that I could ever hear of. Both Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa had a superstition, however, that he would have declared his passion, if he had not been cut short in his youth (at about sixty) by over-drinking his constitution, and over-doing an attempt to set it right again by swilling Bath water. They had a lurking suspicion even, that he died of secret love; though I must say there was a picture of him in the house with a damask nose, which concealment did not appear to have ever preyed upon.
“Finalmente l’hai fatto?” dissi io.
“Beh, sì, il Reverendo Horace lo fece,” disse Traddles. “È un uomo eccellente, davvero modello sotto ogni aspetto; le spiegò che, come cristiana, doveva rassegnarsi a quel sacrificio (soprattutto considerando quanto fosse incerto) e non provare alcun sentimento negativo nei miei confronti. Per quanto mi riguarda, Copperfield, vi giuro: provavo davvero un profondo disprezzo per quella famiglia.”
“Le sorelle hanno preso le tue difese, spero, Traddles, ”
“Beh, non posso dire che l’abbiano fatto,” rispose. “Quando riuscimmo a far accettare la cosa alla signora Crewler, dovemmo dirlo anche a Sarah. Vi ricordate che ho menzionato Sarah, quella che ha qualche problema con la colonna vertebrale?”
“Perfettamente!”
“Strinse entrambe le mani,” disse Traddles, guardandomi con preoccupazione; “chiuse gli occhi, impallidì, rimase completamente rigida. E per due giorni non mangiò nulla se non pane tostato e acqua, somministrati con un cucchiaino.”
“Che ragazza davvero sgradevole, Traddles!”, osservai.
“Oh, mi scusi tanto, Copperfield!”, disse Traddles. “È una ragazza molto carina, ma ha un cuore molto sensibile. Anzi, tutte loro lo hanno. Dopo, Sophie mi ha detto che il senso di colpa che provò mentre assisteva Sarah era indescrivibile con le parole. So che doveva essere terribile, per quanto ne so io stesso, Copperfield; i miei sentimenti erano proprio quelli di un criminale. Dopo che Sarah si fu ripresa, abbiamo dovuto comunicare la notizia anche alle altre otto ragazze. E questo ha avuto effetti molto tristi su di loro. Le due più piccole, che Sophie sta educando, hanno appena smesso di mettermi alla prova, ”
“Comunque sia, ora sono tutti rassegnati ad essa, spero, ” dissi.
“Sì-sì, devo dire che in generale sono rassegnati ad accettarlo,” disse Traddles, con esitazione. “Il fatto è che evitiamo di parlare dell’argomento; e le mie incerte prospettive future, insieme alle mie condizioni economiche disastrose, rappresentano per loro un grande conforto. Quando ci sposeremo, ci sarà una scena davvero tragica. Sarà molto più simile a un funerale che a un matrimonio. E tutti mi odieranno per averla portata via!”
Il suo viso onesto, mentre mi guardava scuotendo la testa in un gesto serio e comico allo stesso tempo, mi impressiona di più nel ricordo che nella realtà; perché a quel momento ero in uno stato di tale agitazione e confusione mentale da essere completamente incapace di concentrarmi su nulla. Mentre ci avvicinavamo alla casa dove vivevano le signorine Spenlow, mi sentivo così trasandato nell’aspetto e nella concentrazione che Traddles propose di darmi un “piccolo stimolante” sotto forma di una birra. Dopo averla bevuta in una taverna vicina, mi accompagnò, con passi incerti, fino alla porta delle signorine Spenlow.
Ero pervaso da una vaga sensazione di essere, per così dire, esposto alla vista di tutti quando la cameriera aprì la porta; sentivo anche di muovermi, in qualche modo, attraverso un corridoio nel quale c’era un barometro, fino a raggiungere un piccolo salotto tranquillo al piano terra, che si affacciava su un giardino ordinato. Mi immaginavo seduto lì, su un divano, e vedevo i capelli di Traddles rizzarsi non appena si toglieva il cappello, come quelle piccole figure metalliche a molla che spuntano fuori dalle scatole da naso nei racconti fantastici quando si solleva il coperchio. Sentivo anche il ticchettio di un orologio vecchio stile sulla mensola del caminetto, e cercavo di far sì che mantenesse il ritmo dei battiti del mio cuore, ma non ci riusciva. Guardavo intorno nella stanza alla ricerca di qualche traccia di Dora, ma non ne vedevo alcuna. Mi ricordavo anche che una volta Jip aveva abbaiato in lontananza, per poi essere immediatamente soffocato da qualcuno. Alla fine mi ritrovai a spingere Traddles verso il caminetto e, nel più grande imbarazzo, a inchinarmi davanti a due anziane signore dall’aspetto severo, vestite di nero, ognuna delle quali assomigliava in modo sorprendente a una sorta di conserva essiccata del defunto signor Spenlow.
“Pregate,” disse una delle due giovani signore, “sedetevi.”
Dopo essere caduto addosso a Traddles e essermi seduto su qualcosa che non era un gatto – il mio primo “posto a sedere”, – riuscii finalmente a riprendere la vista abbastanza da notare che il signor Spenlow era chiaramente il più giovane della famiglia; che c’era una differenza di sei o otto anni tra le due sorelle; e che sembrava proprio la più giovane ad essere quella che gestiva la conversazione, visto che teneva in mano la mia lettera. Una lettera così familiare per me, eppure così strana. La leggeva attraverso un paio di occhiali. Erano vestite allo stesso modo, ma questa sorella indossava il suo abito con un’aria più giovanile rispetto all’altra; forse aveva anche qualche ricamo in più, o un brocciaio, o un braccialetto, qualcosa del genere che la rendeva più vivace. Entrambe si comportavano in modo dignitoso, formale, preciso e tranquillo. La sorella che non aveva la mia lettera teneva le braccia incrociate sul petto, appoggiate l’una sull’altra, come un idolo.
“Credo che si tratti di Mr. Copperfield,” disse la sorella che aveva ricevuto la mia lettera, rivolgendosi a Traddles.
Fu un inizio terribile. Traddles dovette chiarire che io ero il signor Copperfield, e io dovetti rivendicare la mia identità; inoltre, loro dovettero abbandonare l’idea preconcetta che Traddles fosse il signor Copperfield. Insomma, eravamo davvero in una situazione difficile. Per peggiorare le cose, sentimmo tutti chiaramente Jip abbaiare due volte brevemente e ricevere un altro colpo alla gola.
“Signor Copperfield!”, disse la sorella con la lettera in mano.
Ho fatto qualcosa, immagino che abbia inchinato la testa, e stavo dando tutta la mia attenzione, quando l’altra sorella intervenne.
“Mia sorella Lavinia,” disse, “essendo esperta in queste questioni, ci dirà cosa ritiene possa promuovere maggiormente la felicità di entrambe le parti.”
In seguito scoprii che la signorina Lavinia era un’autorità in questioni d’amore: anticamente esisteva infatti un certo signor Pidger, che giocava a whist e si diceva fosse innamorato di lei. La mia opinione personale è che si trattasse puramente di un’ipotesi infondata, poiché Pidger era assolutamente innocente di simili sentimenti; inoltre, non aveva mai espresso nulla del genere, per quanto ne so. Tuttavia, sia la signorina Lavinia che la signorina Clarissa nutrivano il sospetto che Pidger avesse confessato i propri sentimenti se solo non fosse morto giovane, all’età di circa sessant’anni, a causa dell’eccessivo consumo di alcol e dei tentativi disperati di riprendersi bevendo acqua di Bath. Avevano persino il sospetto che fosse morto per un amore segreto, anche se devo dire che in casa sua c’era un suo ritratto con il naso dipinto a damasco, e sembrava proprio che quel dettaglio non avesse mai destato alcun sospetto.
‘We will not,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘enter on the past history of this matter. Our poor brother Francis’s death has cancelled that.’
‘We had not,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘been in the habit of frequent association with our brother Francis; but there was no decided division or disunion between us. Francis took his road; we took ours. We considered it conducive to the happiness of all parties that it should be so. And it was so.’
Each of the sisters leaned a little forward to speak, shook her head after speaking, and became upright again when silent. Miss Clarissa never moved her arms. She sometimes played tunes upon them with her fingers—minuets and marches I should think—but never moved them.
‘Our niece’s position, or supposed position, is much changed by our brother Francis’s death,’ said Miss Lavinia; ‘and therefore we consider our brother’s opinions as regarded her position as being changed too. We have no reason to doubt, Mr. Copperfield, that you are a young gentleman possessed of good qualities and honourable character; or that you have an affection—or are fully persuaded that you have an affection—for our niece.’
I replied, as I usually did whenever I had a chance, that nobody had ever loved anybody else as I loved Dora. Traddles came to my assistance with a confirmatory murmur.
Miss Lavinia was going on to make some rejoinder, when Miss Clarissa, who appeared to be incessantly beset by a desire to refer to her brother Francis, struck in again:
‘If Dora’s mama,’ she said, ‘when she married our brother Francis, had at once said that there was not room for the family at the dinner-table, it would have been better for the happiness of all parties.’
‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia. ‘Perhaps we needn’t mind that now.’
‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘it belongs to the subject. With your branch of the subject, on which alone you are competent to speak, I should not think of interfering. On this branch of the subject I have a voice and an opinion. It would have been better for the happiness of all parties, if Dora’s mama, when she married our brother Francis, had mentioned plainly what her intentions were. We should then have known what we had to expect. We should have said “Pray do not invite us, at any time”; and all possibility of misunderstanding would have been avoided.’
When Miss Clarissa had shaken her head, Miss Lavinia resumed: again referring to my letter through her eye-glass. They both had little bright round twinkling eyes, by the way, which were like birds’ eyes. They were not unlike birds, altogether; having a sharp, brisk, sudden manner, and a little short, spruce way of adjusting themselves, like canaries.
Miss Lavinia, as I have said, resumed:
‘You ask permission of my sister Clarissa and myself, Mr. Copperfield, to visit here, as the accepted suitor of our niece.’
‘If our brother Francis,’ said Miss Clarissa, breaking out again, if I may call anything so calm a breaking out, ‘wished to surround himself with an atmosphere of Doctors’ Commons, and of Doctors’ Commons only, what right or desire had we to object? None, I am sure. We have ever been far from wishing to obtrude ourselves on anyone. But why not say so? Let our brother Francis and his wife have their society. Let my sister Lavinia and myself have our society. We can find it for ourselves, I hope.’
As this appeared to be addressed to Traddles and me, both Traddles and I made some sort of reply. Traddles was inaudible. I think I observed, myself, that it was highly creditable to all concerned. I don’t in the least know what I meant.
‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, having now relieved her mind, ‘you can go on, my dear.’
Miss Lavinia proceeded:
‘Mr. Copperfield, my sister Clarissa and I have been very careful indeed in considering this letter; and we have not considered it without finally showing it to our niece, and discussing it with our niece. We have no doubt that you think you like her very much.’
‘Think, ma’am,’ I rapturously began, ‘oh!—’
But Miss Clarissa giving me a look (just like a sharp canary), as requesting that I would not interrupt the oracle, I begged pardon.
‘Affection,’ said Miss Lavinia, glancing at her sister for corroboration, which she gave in the form of a little nod to every clause, ‘mature affection, homage, devotion, does not easily express itself. Its voice is low. It is modest and retiring, it lies in ambush, waits and waits. Such is the mature fruit. Sometimes a life glides away, and finds it still ripening in the shade.’
Of course I did not understand then that this was an allusion to her supposed experience of the stricken Pidger; but I saw, from the gravity with which Miss Clarissa nodded her head, that great weight was attached to these words.
‘The light—for I call them, in comparison with such sentiments, the light—inclinations of very young people,’ pursued Miss Lavinia, ‘are dust, compared to rocks. It is owing to the difficulty of knowing whether they are likely to endure or have any real foundation, that my sister Clarissa and myself have been very undecided how to act, Mr. Copperfield, and Mr.—’
‘Traddles,’ said my friend, finding himself looked at.
‘I beg pardon. Of the Inner Temple, I believe?’ said Miss Clarissa, again glancing at my letter.
Traddles said ‘Exactly so,’ and became pretty red in the face.
Now, although I had not received any express encouragement as yet, I fancied that I saw in the two little sisters, and particularly in Miss Lavinia, an intensified enjoyment of this new and fruitful subject of domestic interest, a settling down to make the most of it, a disposition to pet it, in which there was a good bright ray of hope. I thought I perceived that Miss Lavinia would have uncommon satisfaction in superintending two young lovers, like Dora and me; and that Miss Clarissa would have hardly less satisfaction in seeing her superintend us, and in chiming in with her own particular department of the subject whenever that impulse was strong upon her. This gave me courage to protest most vehemently that I loved Dora better than I could tell, or anyone believe; that all my friends knew how I loved her; that my aunt, Agnes, Traddles, everyone who knew me, knew how I loved her, and how earnest my love had made me. For the truth of this, I appealed to Traddles. And Traddles, firing up as if he were plunging into a Parliamentary Debate, really did come out nobly: confirming me in good round terms, and in a plain sensible practical manner, that evidently made a favourable impression.
“Non ne parleremo,” disse la signorina Lavinia, “della passata storia di questa questione. La morte del nostro povero fratello Francis l’ha cancellata.”
“Non avevamo l’abitudine di frequentare spesso nostro fratello Francis,” disse la signorina Clarissa, “ma non esisteva alcuna vera separazione o dissidio tra noi. Francis ha seguito la sua strada; noi abbiamo seguito la nostra. Ritenevamo che questo fosse vantaggioso per la felicità di tutti, e infatti così è stato.”
Ogni una delle sorelle si sporgeva leggermente in avanti per parlare, scuoteva la testa dopo aver detto qualcosa e poi tornava a sedersi dritta quando taceva. La signorina Clarissa non muoveva mai le braccia; a volte ne suonava delle melodie con le dita – credo fossero minuetti o marce – ma non le muoveva mai.
“La posizione di nostra nipote, o quanto meno quella che si riteneva fosse la sua, è profondamente cambiata a seguito della morte di nostro fratello Francis”, disse la signorina Lavinia; “perciò riteniamo che anche le opinioni di nostro fratello riguardo alla sua situazione siano cambiate. Non abbiamo alcun motivo per dubitare, signor Copperfield, che lei sia un giovane gentiluomo dotato di buone qualità e carattere onorevole; né che provi per nostra nipote un sentimento affettuoso, o che siamo pienamente convinte che ne abbia uno.”
Risposi, come facevo di solito ogni volta che ne avevo l’occasione, che nessuno aveva mai amato qualcun altro quanto amavo Dora. Traddles mi diede il suo assenso con un mormorio di conferma.
La signorina Lavinia stava per replicare quando la signorina Clarissa, che sembrava essere costantemente assillata dal desiderio di menzionare suo fratello Francis, intervenne di nuovo:
“Se la mamma di Dora,” disse, “quando sposò nostro fratello Francis, avesse detto subito che non c’era spazio per tutta la famiglia intorno al tavolo da pranzo, sarebbe stato meglio per la felicità di tutti.”
“Suor Clarissa,” disse la signorina Lavinia. “Forse ora non dovremmo più preoccuparcene.”
“Sorella Lavinia”, disse la signorina Clarissa, “questo argomento riguarda direttamente la persona in questione. Per quanto riguarda quella branca dell’argomento di cui tu sei l’unica competente a parlare, non dovrei nemmeno pensare di interferire. Su questa branca, invece, ho il diritto di esprimere il mio parere. Sarebbe stato meglio per la felicità di tutte le parti se la madre di Dora, quando ha sposato nostro fratello Francis, avesse espresso chiaramente quali fossero le sue intenzioni. In quel caso avremmo saputo cosa aspettarci e avremmo potuto dire: ‘Per favore, non invitateci mai’; così si sarebbero evitate tutte possibili malintese.”
Quando la signorina Clarissa scosse la testa, la signorina Lavinia continuò: ancora una volta si riferì alla mia lettera attraverso i suoi occhiali. Entrambe avevano piccoli occhi luminosi e scintillanti, del resto, simili agli occhi degli uccelli. Non erano affatto diverse dagli uccelli; avevano un modo di comportarsi rapido, deciso e improvviso, e un modo leggermente vivace e svelto di muoversi, proprio come i canarini.
Signorina Lavinia, come ho detto, riprese:
“Lei chiede il permesso di mia sorella Clarissa e mio, signor Copperfield, per venire qui in visita, in qualità di pretendente accettato da nostra nipote.”
“Se nostro fratello Francis”, disse Miss Clarissa, riprendendo a parlare dopo un breve silenzio, “desiderasse circondarsi soltanto dell’atmosfera tipica di Doctors’ Commons, quale diritto o desiderio avremmo noi di opporci? Nessuno, ne sono certa. Non abbiamo mai voluto invadere la vita di nessuno. Ma perché non dirlo apertamente? Lasciamo che nostro fratello Francis e sua moglie abbiano la loro compagnia; lasciamo che mia sorella Lavinia e io abbiamo la nostra. Spero che riusciremo a trovarci una compagnia adeguata per noi.”
Poiché sembrava che fosse indirizzato sia a Traddles che a me, entrambi rispondemmo in qualche modo. La risposta di Traddles era incomprensibile; credo di aver osservato che ciò fosse molto lodevole per tutti i coinvolti. Anche se, in realtà, non ho la minima idea di cosa intendessi dire.
“Sorella Lavinia”, disse la signorina Clarissa, ora che aveva espresso i suoi pensieri, “puoi continuare, cara mia.”
La signorina Lavinia proseguì:
‘Signor Copperfield, mia sorella Clarissa ed io abbiamo prestato molta attenzione nell’esaminare questa lettera; inoltre l’abbiamo mostrata anche a nostra nipote e ne abbiamo discusso con lei. Non abbiamo alcun dubbio che lei le piaccia molto.’
“Pensaci, signora,” iniziai con fervore, “oh, ”
Ma la signorina Clarissa mi lanciò uno sguardo (proprio come un canarino acuto), come per chiedermi di non interrompere l’“oracolo”, quindi chiesi scusa.
“Affetto,” disse la signorina Lavinia, guardando sua sorella in cerca di conferma, che questa le diede annuendo leggermente ad ogni frase; “un affetto maturo, un omaggio sincero, una devozione profonda, non si esprimono facilmente. La loro voce è sommessa, riservata, aspettano, attendono pazientemente. Questo è il frutto maturo dell’amore. A volte, una vita trascorre senza che se ne accorga, e solo in seguito scopre che quell’affetto continua a maturare, nell’ombra, ”
Certo, all’epoca non capii che si trattasse di un’allusione alla sua presunta esperienza con quel Pidger malato; ma vidi, dal modo grave in cui la signorina Clarissa annuì, che quelle parole avevano un grande significato per lei.
“Le inclinazioni di persone molto giovani, le chiamo ‘luce’, in confronto a sentimenti del genere,” proseguì la signorina Lavinia, “sono soltanto ‘polvere’, rispetto alle rocce. Proprio a causa della difficoltà di capire se tali inclinazioni possano durare nel tempo o abbiano una base reale, mia sorella Clarissa ed io non siamo riuscite a decidere come comportarci, signor Copperfield, ”
“Traddles,” disse il mio amico, quando si accorse di essere stato osservato.
“Mi scusi. Del Tempio Interno, credo?” disse la signorina Clarissa, guardando di nuovo la mia lettera.
Traddles disse: “Esattamente così”, e il suo viso diventò molto rosso.
Ora, anche se non avevo ricevuto alcun incoraggiamento esplicito fino ad allora, immaginavo di vedere nelle due sorelle minori, e soprattutto in Miss Lavinia, un grande interesse per questo nuovo e proficuo argomento legato alle attività domestiche; una volontà concreta di sfruttarlo al meglio, una predisposizione a dedicarsi con cura a queste attività, che rappresentavano davvero una luce di speranza nel loro futuro. Pensavo che Miss Lavinia avrebbe trovato grande soddisfazione nell’assistere due giovani innamorati come Dora e me; e che anche Miss Clarissa avrebbe provato altrettanta gioia nel prendersi cura di noi, intervenendo ogni volta che quel desiderio diventava particolarmente forte in lei. Questo mi diede il coraggio di affermare con grande fervore che amavo Dora più di quanto potessi esprimere a parole o far credere a chiunque; che tutti i miei amici sapevano quanto la amassi; che mia zia Agnes, Traddles e chiunque mi conoscesse erano a conoscenza dell’intensità del mio amore per lei. Per dimostrare la verità di queste parole, mi rivolsi a Traddles. E lui, con grande entusiasmo, come se si stesse lanciando in un’debatte parlamentare, confermò decisamente le mie affermazioni in modo chiaro, semplice e convincente, lasciando sicuramente una buona impressione.
‘I speak, if I may presume to say so, as one who has some little experience of such things,’ said Traddles, ‘being myself engaged to a young lady—one of ten, down in Devonshire—and seeing no probability, at present, of our engagement coming to a termination.’
‘You may be able to confirm what I have said, Mr. Traddles,’ observed Miss Lavinia, evidently taking a new interest in him, ‘of the affection that is modest and retiring; that waits and waits?’
‘Entirely, ma’am,’ said Traddles.
Miss Clarissa looked at Miss Lavinia, and shook her head gravely. Miss Lavinia looked consciously at Miss Clarissa, and heaved a little sigh. ‘Sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘take my smelling-bottle.’
Miss Lavinia revived herself with a few whiffs of aromatic vinegar—Traddles and I looking on with great solicitude the while; and then went on to say, rather faintly:
‘My sister and myself have been in great doubt, Mr. Traddles, what course we ought to take in reference to the likings, or imaginary likings, of such very young people as your friend Mr. Copperfield and our niece.’
‘Our brother Francis’s child,’ remarked Miss Clarissa. ‘If our brother Francis’s wife had found it convenient in her lifetime (though she had an unquestionable right to act as she thought best) to invite the family to her dinner-table, we might have known our brother Francis’s child better at the present moment. Sister Lavinia, proceed.’
Miss Lavinia turned my letter, so as to bring the superscription towards herself, and referred through her eye-glass to some orderly-looking notes she had made on that part of it.
‘It seems to us,’ said she, ‘prudent, Mr. Traddles, to bring these feelings to the test of our own observation. At present we know nothing of them, and are not in a situation to judge how much reality there may be in them. Therefore we are inclined so far to accede to Mr. Copperfield’s proposal, as to admit his visits here.’
‘I shall never, dear ladies,’ I exclaimed, relieved of an immense load of apprehension, ‘forget your kindness!’
‘But,’ pursued Miss Lavinia,—‘but, we would prefer to regard those visits, Mr. Traddles, as made, at present, to us. We must guard ourselves from recognizing any positive engagement between Mr. Copperfield and our niece, until we have had an opportunity—’
‘Until YOU have had an opportunity, sister Lavinia,’ said Miss Clarissa.
‘Be it so,’ assented Miss Lavinia, with a sigh—‘until I have had an opportunity of observing them.’
‘Copperfield,’ said Traddles, turning to me, ‘you feel, I am sure, that nothing could be more reasonable or considerate.’
‘Nothing!’ cried I. ‘I am deeply sensible of it.’
‘In this position of affairs,’ said Miss Lavinia, again referring to her notes, ‘and admitting his visits on this understanding only, we must require from Mr. Copperfield a distinct assurance, on his word of honour, that no communication of any kind shall take place between him and our niece without our knowledge. That no project whatever shall be entertained with regard to our niece, without being first submitted to us—’ ‘To you, sister Lavinia,’ Miss Clarissa interposed.
‘Be it so, Clarissa!’ assented Miss Lavinia resignedly—‘to me—and receiving our concurrence. We must make this a most express and serious stipulation, not to be broken on any account. We wished Mr. Copperfield to be accompanied by some confidential friend today,’ with an inclination of her head towards Traddles, who bowed, ‘in order that there might be no doubt or misconception on this subject. If Mr. Copperfield, or if you, Mr. Traddles, feel the least scruple, in giving this promise, I beg you to take time to consider it.’
I exclaimed, in a state of high ecstatic fervour, that not a moment’s consideration could be necessary. I bound myself by the required promise, in a most impassioned manner; called upon Traddles to witness it; and denounced myself as the most atrocious of characters if I ever swerved from it in the least degree.
‘Stay!’ said Miss Lavinia, holding up her hand; ‘we resolved, before we had the pleasure of receiving you two gentlemen, to leave you alone for a quarter of an hour, to consider this point. You will allow us to retire.’
It was in vain for me to say that no consideration was necessary. They persisted in withdrawing for the specified time. Accordingly, these little birds hopped out with great dignity; leaving me to receive the congratulations of Traddles, and to feel as if I were translated to regions of exquisite happiness. Exactly at the expiration of the quarter of an hour, they reappeared with no less dignity than they had disappeared. They had gone rustling away as if their little dresses were made of autumn-leaves: and they came rustling back, in like manner.
I then bound myself once more to the prescribed conditions.
‘Sister Clarissa,’ said Miss Lavinia, ‘the rest is with you.’
Miss Clarissa, unfolding her arms for the first time, took the notes and glanced at them.
‘We shall be happy,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘to see Mr. Copperfield to dinner, every Sunday, if it should suit his convenience. Our hour is three.’
I bowed.
‘In the course of the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘we shall be happy to see Mr. Copperfield to tea. Our hour is half-past six.’
I bowed again.
‘Twice in the week,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘but, as a rule, not oftener.’
I bowed again.
‘Miss Trotwood,’ said Miss Clarissa, ‘mentioned in Mr. Copperfield’s letter, will perhaps call upon us. When visiting is better for the happiness of all parties, we are glad to receive visits, and return them. When it is better for the happiness of all parties that no visiting should take place, (as in the case of our brother Francis, and his establishment) that is quite different.’
I intimated that my aunt would be proud and delighted to make their acquaintance; though I must say I was not quite sure of their getting on very satisfactorily together. The conditions being now closed, I expressed my acknowledgements in the warmest manner; and, taking the hand, first of Miss Clarissa, and then of Miss Lavinia, pressed it, in each case, to my lips.
“Parlo,” disse Traddles, “se posso permettermi di dirlo, come qualcuno che ha un po’ di esperienza in queste cose. Poiché io stesso sono fidanzato con una giovane signorina. Una delle dieci presenti nel Devonshire. E al momento non vedo alcuna probabilità che il nostro fidanzamento possa terminare.”
“Potreste forse confermare quanto ho detto, signor Traddles,” osservò la signorina Lavinia, dimostrando chiaramente un nuovo interesse per lui. “Quell’affetto che è modesto e riservato, che aspetta e aspetta, ”
“Del tutto, signora,” disse Traddles.
Miss Clarissa guardò Miss Lavinia e scosse gravemente la testa. Miss Lavinia le rivolse lo sguardo con consapevolezza e sospirò leggermente. “Sorella Lavinia,” disse Miss Clarissa, “prendi il mio flacone profumato.”
La signorina Lavinia si riprese dopo aver respirato alcuni sorsi di aceto aromatico; Traddles ed io la osservavamo con grande attenzione in quel momento; poi continuò a parlare, con voce piuttosto debole:
“Mia sorella ed io siamo piene di grande >dubbio, signor Traddles, su quale strada dovremmo intraprendere riguardo ai gusti, o presunti gusti, di persone così giovani come il vostro amico, il signor Copperfield, e nostra nipote.”
“Il figlio di nostro fratello Francis,” osservò la signorina Clarissa. “Se durante la sua vita nostra sorella di Francis avesse ritenuto opportuno (sebbene avesse senza dubbio il diritto di agire come credeva meglio) invitare tutta la famiglia a tavola, forse oggi conosceremmo meglio il figlio di nostro fratello Francis. Suorina Lavinia, continui pure.”
La signorina Lavinia girò la mia lettera in modo che l’intestazione fosse rivolta verso di lei, e poi, attraverso i suoi occhiali da lettura, esaminò alcune note ben organizzate che aveva preso su quella parte della lettera.
“Ci sembra,” disse lei, “saggio da parte del signor Traddles mettere queste sensazioni alla prova della nostra stessa osservazione. Al momento non sappiamo nulla al riguardo e non siamo in condizioni di giudicare quanto realtà possano contenere. Pertanto, per il momento siamo disposti ad accettare la proposta del signor Copperfield, permettendogli di venire qui a farci visita.”
“Non dimenticherò mai, care signore,” esclamai, sollevato da un enorme peso di preoccupazione, “la vostra gentilezza!”
“Ma,” continuò la signorina Lavinia, “tuttavia preferiremmo considerare quelle visite, signor Traddles, come effettuate, per il momento, a nostro favore. Dobbiamo fare attenzione a non riconoscere alcun impegno concreto tra il signor Copperfield e nostra nipote, fino a quando non avremo avuto l’opportunità di, ”
“Finché tu non avrai avuto l’opportunità di farlo, sorella Lavinia”, disse la signorina Clarissa.
“Che sia così,” acconsentì la signorina Lavinia con un sospiro, “finché non avrò l’opportunità di osservarli personalmente.”
“Copperfield,” disse Traddles, rivolgendosi a me, “sono sicuro che tu ritenga che non ci possa essere nulla di più ragionevole o premuroso.”
“Niente!” gridai. “Ne sono profondamente consapevole.”
“Nella situazione attuale,” disse la signorina Lavinia, riferendosi di nuovo alle sue note, “e ammettendo che le sue visite avvengano solo su queste condizioni, dobbiamo chiedere al signor Copperfield una garanzia esplicita, sulla sua parola d’onore, che nessun tipo di comunicazione possa avvenire tra lui e nostra nipote senza il nostro consenso. Inoltre, nessun progetto relativo a nostra nipote deve essere preso in considerazione senza prima essere sottoposto a noi, ” “A te, sorella Lavinia,” intervenne la signorina Clarissa.
“Che sia così, Clarissa!” acconsentì Miss Lavinia con rassegnazione – “a me, e dopo aver ricevuto il nostro consenso. Dobbiamo stabilire questa condizione in modo chiaro e serio, affinché non venga mai infranta. Vorremmo che oggi il signor Copperfield fosse accompagnato da un amico fidato,” disse, inclinando la testa verso Traddles, che fece un inchino, “per evitare qualsiasi >dubbio o malinteso su questo argomento. Se il signor Copperfield, o voi stesso, signor Traddles, provaste anche solo il minimo rimorso nell’impegnarvi in questa promessa, vi prego di prendervi il tempo necessario per rifletterci.”
Esclamai, in uno stato di estrema eccitazione e fervore, che non era necessario nemmeno un attimo di riflessione. Mi impegnai con la promessa richiesta, in modo molto appassionato; chiesi a Traddles di farne testimonianza; e dichiarai che mi consideravo il personaggio più orribile se mai dovessi deviare anche solo minimamente da essa.
“Restate!” disse la signorina Lavinia, alzando la mano; “prima ancora di avere il piacere di ricevervi, voi due gentiluomini, avevamo deciso di lasciarvi da soli per un quarto d’ora, per riflettere su questa questione. Ci permetterete di ritirarci.”
Fu inutile che dicessi che non era necessario alcun ringraziamento; insistettero comunque nel ritirarsi entro l’orario stabilito. Così, questi piccoli uccellini se ne andarono con grande dignità, lasciandomi ad affrontare le congratulazioni di Traddles, e a sentirmi come se fossi stato trasportato in regioni di estrema felicità. Esattamente al termine di quei venti minuti, ricomparvero con la stessa dignità con cui se n’erano andati. Si erano allontanati frusciando, come se i loro piccoli abiti fossero fatti di autunali foglie, e tornarono indietro allo stesso modo.
Poi mi sono nuovamente impegnato a rispettare le condizioni prescritte.
“Suor Clarissa,” disse la signorina Lavinia, “il resto spetta a voi.”
Miss Clarissa, aprendo le braccia per la prima volta, prese i fogli e li scorse rapidamente.
“Saremo felici,” disse la signorina Clarissa, “di invitare il signor Copperfield a cena ogni )domenica, se questo gli conviene. L’ora fissata è le tre.”
Mi inchinai.
“Nel corso della settimana,” disse la signorina Clarissa, “ci farebbe molto piacere invitare il signor Copperfield a prendere il tè con noi. Il nostro orario è le sei e mezza.”
Mi inchinai di nuovo.
“Due volte alla settimana”, disse la signorina Clarissa, “ma di solito non più spesso”.
Mi inchinai di nuovo.
“Miss Trotwood,” disse Miss Clarissa, “menzionata nella lettera di Mr. Copperfield, potrebbe venire a farci visita. Quando una visita è vantaggiosa per la felicità di tutti, siamo felici di riceverla e di ricambiarla. Ma quando invece è meglio che nessuna visita avvenga (come nel caso di nostro fratello Francis e della sua situazione attuale), allora è tutta un’altra cosa.”
Dissi che mia zia sarebbe stata orgogliosa e felice di conoscerli; anche se devo ammettere di non essere del tutto sicuro che si sarebbero intesi bene insieme. Ora che le condizioni erano state stabilite, espressi la mia gratitudine nel modo più caloroso possibile; presi poi per mano prima la signorina Clarissa e poi la signorina Lavinia, baciai ciascuna delle loro mani.
Miss Lavinia then arose, and begging Mr. Traddles to excuse us for a minute, requested me to follow her. I obeyed, all in a tremble, and was conducted into another room. There I found my blessed darling stopping her ears behind the door, with her dear little face against the wall; and Jip in the plate-warmer with his head tied up in a towel.
Oh! How beautiful she was in her black frock, and how she sobbed and cried at first, and wouldn’t come out from behind the door! How fond we were of one another, when she did come out at last; and what a state of bliss I was in, when we took Jip out of the plate-warmer, and restored him to the light, sneezing very much, and were all three reunited!
‘My dearest Dora! Now, indeed, my own for ever!’
‘Oh, DON’T!’ pleaded Dora. ‘Please!’
‘Are you not my own for ever, Dora?’
‘Oh yes, of course I am!’ cried Dora, ‘but I am so frightened!’
‘Frightened, my own?’
‘Oh yes! I don’t like him,’ said Dora. ‘Why don’t he go?’
‘Who, my life?’
‘Your friend,’ said Dora. ‘It isn’t any business of his. What a stupid he must be!’
‘My love!’ (There never was anything so coaxing as her childish ways.) ‘He is the best creature!’
‘Oh, but we don’t want any best creatures!’ pouted Dora.
‘My dear,’ I argued, ‘you will soon know him well, and like him of all things. And here is my aunt coming soon; and you’ll like her of all things too, when you know her.’
‘No, please don’t bring her!’ said Dora, giving me a horrified little kiss, and folding her hands. ‘Don’t. I know she’s a naughty, mischief-making old thing! Don’t let her come here, Doady!’ which was a corruption of David.
Remonstrance was of no use, then; so I laughed, and admired, and was very much in love and very happy; and she showed me Jip’s new trick of standing on his hind legs in a corner—which he did for about the space of a flash of lightning, and then fell down—and I don’t know how long I should have stayed there, oblivious of Traddles, if Miss Lavinia had not come in to take me away. Miss Lavinia was very fond of Dora (she told me Dora was exactly like what she had been herself at her age—she must have altered a good deal), and she treated Dora just as if she had been a toy. I wanted to persuade Dora to come and see Traddles, but on my proposing it she ran off to her own room and locked herself in; so I went to Traddles without her, and walked away with him on air.
‘Nothing could be more satisfactory,’ said Traddles; ‘and they are very agreeable old ladies, I am sure. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if you were to be married years before me, Copperfield.’
‘Does your Sophy play on any instrument, Traddles?’ I inquired, in the pride of my heart.
‘She knows enough of the piano to teach it to her little sisters,’ said Traddles.
‘Does she sing at all?’ I asked.
‘Why, she sings ballads, sometimes, to freshen up the others a little when they’re out of spirits,’ said Traddles. ‘Nothing scientific.’
‘She doesn’t sing to the guitar?’ said I.
‘Oh dear no!’ said Traddles.
‘Paint at all?’
‘Not at all,’ said Traddles.
I promised Traddles that he should hear Dora sing, and see some of her flower-painting. He said he should like it very much, and we went home arm in arm in great good humour and delight. I encouraged him to talk about Sophy, on the way; which he did with a loving reliance on her that I very much admired. I compared her in my mind with Dora, with considerable inward satisfaction; but I candidly admitted to myself that she seemed to be an excellent kind of girl for Traddles, too.
Of course my aunt was immediately made acquainted with the successful issue of the conference, and with all that had been said and done in the course of it. She was happy to see me so happy, and promised to call on Dora’s aunts without loss of time. But she took such a long walk up and down our rooms that night, while I was writing to Agnes, that I began to think she meant to walk till morning.
My letter to Agnes was a fervent and grateful one, narrating all the good effects that had resulted from my following her advice. She wrote, by return of post, to me. Her letter was hopeful, earnest, and cheerful. She was always cheerful from that time.
I had my hands more full than ever, now. My daily journeys to Highgate considered, Putney was a long way off; and I naturally wanted to go there as often as I could. The proposed tea-drinkings being quite impracticable, I compounded with Miss Lavinia for permission to visit every Saturday afternoon, without detriment to my privileged Sundays. So, the close of every week was a delicious time for me; and I got through the rest of the week by looking forward to it.
I was wonderfully relieved to find that my aunt and Dora’s aunts rubbed on, all things considered, much more smoothly than I could have expected. My aunt made her promised visit within a few days of the conference; and within a few more days, Dora’s aunts called upon her, in due state and form. Similar but more friendly exchanges took place afterwards, usually at intervals of three or four weeks. I know that my aunt distressed Dora’s aunts very much, by utterly setting at naught the dignity of fly-conveyance, and walking out to Putney at extraordinary times, as shortly after breakfast or just before tea; likewise by wearing her bonnet in any manner that happened to be comfortable to her head, without at all deferring to the prejudices of civilization on that subject. But Dora’s aunts soon agreed to regard my aunt as an eccentric and somewhat masculine lady, with a strong understanding; and although my aunt occasionally ruffled the feathers of Dora’s aunts, by expressing heretical opinions on various points of ceremony, she loved me too well not to sacrifice some of her little peculiarities to the general harmony.
The only member of our small society who positively refused to adapt himself to circumstances, was Jip. He never saw my aunt without immediately displaying every tooth in his head, retiring under a chair, and growling incessantly: with now and then a doleful howl, as if she really were too much for his feelings. All kinds of treatment were tried with him, coaxing, scolding, slapping, bringing him to Buckingham Street (where he instantly dashed at the two cats, to the terror of all beholders); but he never could prevail upon himself to bear my aunt’s society. He would sometimes think he had got the better of his objection, and be amiable for a few minutes; and then would put up his snub nose, and howl to that extent, that there was nothing for it but to blind him and put him in the plate-warmer. At length, Dora regularly muffled him in a towel and shut him up there, whenever my aunt was reported at the door.
Allora la signorina Lavinia si alzò e, chiedendo al signor Traddles di scusarci per un momento, mi pregò di seguirla. Obbedii, tremando tutto, e fui condotto in un’altra stanza. Lì trovai la mia adorata bambina che si teneva le orecchie coperte dietro la porta, con il suo caro visino premuto contro il muro; mentre Jip era nel riscaldavasiere, con la testa avvolta in un asciugamano.
Oh! Quanto era bella con quel vestito nero. E quanto pianse e singhiozzò all’inizio, rifiutando di uscire da dietro la porta! Quanto ci volevamo bene. Quando finalmente uscì, che felicità. E che stato di beatitudine quando tirammo fuori Jip dal riscaldatore di piatti e lo riportammo alla luce. Soffiava molto, ma eravamo tutti e tre di nuovo insieme!
“Mia adorata Dora. Ora davvero, per sempre mia!”
“Oh, per favore, no!” supplicò Dora. “Ti prego!”
“Non sarai per sempre mia, Dora?”
“Certo che sì!” esclamò Dora, “ma ho così paura, ”
“Spaventata, io?”
“Ah sì. Non mi piace affatto,” disse Dora. “Perché non se ne va?”
“Chi, la mia vita?”
“Il tuo amico, ”, disse Dora. “Non ha nulla a che fare con questa faccenda. Che stupido deve essere!”
“La mia amore!” (Non c’era nulla di più dolce e affettuoso nei suoi modi infantili.)
“È la creatura migliore che esista!”
“Ah, ma noi non vogliamo alcuna creatura ‘migliore’!” fece il broncio Dora.
“Mia cara,” argomentai, “presto lo conoscerai bene e ti piacerà molto. Inoltre, mia zia arriverà presto; anche lei ti piacerà moltissimo, quando la conoscerai.”
“No, per favore non portarla qui!” disse Dora, dandomi un bacio spaventato e incrociando le mani. “Per favore. So che è una vecchia pazza, sempre a fare dispetti! Non lasciarla venire qui, Doady, ” Il nome “Doady” era in realtà una storpiatura di “David”.
Allora, protestare non serviva a nulla; quindi risi, ammirai tutto e mi sentii davvero molto innamorata e felice. Lei mi mostrò anche il nuovo trucco di Jip: si alzava sulle zampe posteriori in un angolo, ma lo faceva soltanto per l’intervallo di tempo necessario a balenare una scintilla di lampo, poi cadeva a terra. Non so quanto tempo sarei rimasta lì, ignorando completamente Traddles, se non fosse stata Miss Lavinia ad entrare per portarmi via. A Miss Lavinia piaceva molto Dora; mi disse che Dora era esattamente come lei alla sua età, anche se sicuramente doveva essere cambiata molto da allora. Trattava Dora come se fosse un giocattolo. Volevo convincere Dora ad andare a vedere Traddles, ma non appena glielo proposi, lei corse nella sua stanza e si chiuse dentro a chiave. Così andai da Traddles senza di lei e passai il tempo con lui in modo davvero meraviglioso.
“Niente potrebbe essere più soddisfacente,” disse Traddles; “e sono sicuramente due anziane signore molto gentili. Non mi sorprenderei affatto se tu ti sposassi anni prima di me, Copperfield.”
“Tua figlia Sophie suona qualche strumento, Traddles?”, chiesi, con orgoglio nel cuore.
“Conosce abbastanza il pianoforte per poter insegnarlo alle sue sorelline,” disse Traddles.
“Canta mai?” chiesi.
“Beh, a volte canta canzoni d’amore per rallegrare un po’ gli altri quando sono giù di morale,” disse Traddles. “Niente di scientifico, insomma.”
“Non canta accompagnandosi alla chitarra?”, dissi io.
“Oddio no!”, disse Traddles.
“Dipingere affatto?”
“Assolutamente no,” disse Traddles.
Promisi a Traddles che avrebbe potuto ascoltare Dora cantare e vedere alcune delle sue pitture di fiori. Disse che gli sarebbe piaciuto molto, e così tornammo a casa abbracciati, in un’atmosfera di grande allegria e felicità. Lungo la strada lo incoraggiai a parlare di Sophy; lo fece con un affetto e una fiducia in lei che ammirai molto. Nel mio cuore la paragonai a Dora, con notevole soddisfazione interiore; ma ammisi onestamente con me stessa che sembrava davvero una ragazza eccellente anche per Traddles.
Naturalmente mia zia venne immediatamente informata riguardo al successo della conferenza, nonché di tutto ciò che era stato detto e fatto durante di essa. Fu felice di vedermi così contenta e promise di andare a trovare le zie di Dora il prima possibile. Tuttavia fece un giro così lungo nei nostri corridoi che, quella notte, mentre scrivevo ad Agnes, iniziai a pensare che avesse intenzione di continuare a camminare fino al mattino.
La mia lettera ad Agnes era piena di fervore e gratitudine; raccontavo tutti i positivi risultati derivanti dall’aver seguito i suoi consigli. Lei mi rispose per posta. La sua lettera era piena di speranza, sincerità e allegria. Da quel momento, lei fu sempre allegra.
Ora avevo le mani più impegnate che mai. Considerando i miei spostamenti quotidiani verso Highgate, Putney si trovava piuttosto lontano; naturalmente volevo andarci il più spesso possibile. Poiché le proposte di incontrarci per bere tè risultavano del tutto impraticabili, chiesi a Miss Lavinia il permesso di farle visita ogni sabato pomeriggio, senza che ciò interferisse con i miei domenici riservati. Quindi, la fine di ogni settimana rappresentava per me un momento davvero piacevole; superavo il resto della settimana aspettando con impazienza quel momento.
Fui immensamente sollevato nel scoprire che, considerando tutto, mia zia e le zie di Dora si comportavano molto più agevolmente di quanto avessi potuto aspettarmi. Mia zia fece la visita promessa pochi giorni dopo la conferenza; e pochi giorni dopo ancora, le zie di Dora andarono a trovarla, entrambe in ottima forma. Successivamente ebbero luogo scambi simili, ma più cordiali, solitamente ogni tre o quattro settimane. So che mia zia causò notevoli disagi alle zie di Dora, ignorando completamente le convenzioni sociali riguardo ai mezzi di trasporto e viaggiando a Putney in orari insoliti, come subito dopo colazione o poco prima del tè; inoltre indossava il cappello nel modo che le sembrava più comodo, senza tenere affatto conto delle convenzioni della società in materia. Tuttavia, le zie di Dora finirono per considerare mia zia una donna eccentrica e un po’ mascolina, ma con un’intelligenza notevole; e sebbene occasionalmente suscitasse il loro disappunto esprimendo opinioni “eretiche” su vari aspetti della cerimoniaia, mi amava troppo per non sacrificare alcune delle sue piccole peculiarità in nome dell’armonia generale.
L’unico membro della nostra piccola comunità che si rifiutò categoricamente di adattarsi alle circostanze era Jip. Non vedeva mai mia zia senza mostrare immediatamente tutti i suoi denti, ritirarsi sotto una sedia e ringhiare incessantemente; di tanto in tanto emetteva anche un ululato lamentoso, come se lei rappresentasse davvero qualcosa di insopportabile per i suoi sentimenti. Furono provate tutte le possibili strategie: blandire, rimproverare, schiaffeggiarlo, portarlo in Buckingham Street (dove immediatamente si lanciava contro i due gatti, terrorizzando tutti quelli che lo vedevano); ma non riuscimmo mai a farlo accettare la compagnia di mia zia. A volte sembrava che riuscisse a superare le sue resistenze e diventava gentile per qualche minuto; poi, però, alzava il suo naso sprezzante e iniziava a ululare così forte che non ci restava altro da fare se non bendarlo e metterlo nel forno a microonde. Alla fine, ogni volta che si annunciava l’arrivo di mia zia, Dora lo copriva regolarmente con un asciugamano e lo chiudeva lì dentro.
One thing troubled me much, after we had fallen into this quiet train. It was, that Dora seemed by one consent to be regarded like a pretty toy or plaything. My aunt, with whom she gradually became familiar, always called her Little Blossom; and the pleasure of Miss Lavinia’s life was to wait upon her, curl her hair, make ornaments for her, and treat her like a pet child. What Miss Lavinia did, her sister did as a matter of course. It was very odd to me; but they all seemed to treat Dora, in her degree, much as Dora treated Jip in his.
I made up my mind to speak to Dora about this; and one day when we were out walking (for we were licensed by Miss Lavinia, after a while, to go out walking by ourselves), I said to her that I wished she could get them to behave towards her differently.
‘Because you know, my darling,’ I remonstrated, ‘you are not a child.’
‘There!’ said Dora. ‘Now you’re going to be cross!’
‘I am sure they’re very kind to me,’ said Dora, ‘and I am very happy—’
‘Well! But my dearest life!’ said I, ‘you might be very happy, and yet be treated rationally.’
Dora gave me a reproachful look—the prettiest look!—and then began to sob, saying, if I didn’t like her, why had I ever wanted so much to be engaged to her? And why didn’t I go away, now, if I couldn’t bear her?
What could I do, but kiss away her tears, and tell her how I doted on her, after that!
‘I am sure I am very affectionate,’ said Dora; ‘you oughtn’t to be cruel to me, Doady!’
‘Cruel, my precious love! As if I would—or could—be cruel to you, for the world!’
‘Then don’t find fault with me,’ said Dora, making a rosebud of her mouth; ‘and I’ll be good.’
I was charmed by her presently asking me, of her own accord, to give her that cookery-book I had once spoken of, and to show her how to keep accounts as I had once promised I would. I brought the volume with me on my next visit (I got it prettily bound, first, to make it look less dry and more inviting); and as we strolled about the Common, I showed her an old housekeeping-book of my aunt’s, and gave her a set of tablets, and a pretty little pencil-case and box of leads, to practise housekeeping with.
But the cookery-book made Dora’s head ache, and the figures made her cry. They wouldn’t add up, she said. So she rubbed them out, and drew little nosegays and likenesses of me and Jip, all over the tablets.
Then I playfully tried verbal instruction in domestic matters, as we walked about on a Saturday afternoon. Sometimes, for example, when we passed a butcher’s shop, I would say:
‘Now suppose, my pet, that we were married, and you were going to buy a shoulder of mutton for dinner, would you know how to buy it?’
My pretty little Dora’s face would fall, and she would make her mouth into a bud again, as if she would very much prefer to shut mine with a kiss.
‘Would you know how to buy it, my darling?’ I would repeat, perhaps, if I were very inflexible.
Dora would think a little, and then reply, perhaps, with great triumph:
‘Why, the butcher would know how to sell it, and what need I know? Oh, you silly boy!’
So, when I once asked Dora, with an eye to the cookery-book, what she would do, if we were married, and I were to say I should like a nice Irish stew, she replied that she would tell the servant to make it; and then clapped her little hands together across my arm, and laughed in such a charming manner that she was more delightful than ever.
Consequently, the principal use to which the cookery-book was devoted, was being put down in the corner for Jip to stand upon. But Dora was so pleased, when she had trained him to stand upon it without offering to come off, and at the same time to hold the pencil-case in his mouth, that I was very glad I had bought it.
And we fell back on the guitar-case, and the flower-painting, and the songs about never leaving off dancing, Ta ra la! and were as happy as the week was long. I occasionally wished I could venture to hint to Miss Lavinia, that she treated the darling of my heart a little too much like a plaything; and I sometimes awoke, as it were, wondering to find that I had fallen into the general fault, and treated her like a plaything too—but not often.
C’era una cosa che mi turbava molto: dopo essere saliti su questo treno silenzioso. Era il fatto che Dora sembrasse essere considerata, da tutti, come un grazioso giocattolo o un oggetto di divertimento. Mia zia, con cui lei si era gradualmente affiatata, la chiamava sempre “Piccola Fioritura”; per Miss Lavinia il piacere più grande della vita era prendersi cura di lei, arricciarle i capelli, farle degli ornamenti e trattarla come un piccolo animale domestico. Quello che faceva Miss Lavinia, sua sorella lo faceva naturalmente anche lei. Per me era molto strano. Ma sembrava che tutti trattassero Dora, secondo il loro ruolo, esattamente come Dora trattava Jip.
Decisi di parlare con Dora di questa questione; e un giorno, mentre eravamo fuori a fare una passeggiata (poiché la signorina Lavinia ci aveva dato il permesso di uscire da soli dopo un po’), le dissi che avrei voluto che loro si comportassero in modo diverso con lei.
“Perché sai, tesoro mio,” gli dissi, “tu non sei più un bambino.”
“Eccolo!” disse Dora. “Ora sarai nei guai, ”
“Sono sicura che siano molto gentili con me,” disse Dora, “e sono molto felice, ”
“Beh! Ma mio caro amore, ”, dissi, “potresti essere molto felice e allo stesso tempo trattato in modo razionale.”
Dora mi lanciò uno sguardo pieno di rimprovero, il più bello degli sguardi, e poi iniziò a singhiozzare, dicendo: “Se non mi piaci, perché allora hai sempre voluto sposarti con me? E perché non te ne vai, ora, se non riesci a sopportarmi?”
Cosa avrei potuto fare, se non baciare via le sue lacrime e dirle quanto la amassi, dopo quello?
“Sono sicura di essere molto affettuosa”, disse Dora; “non dovresti essere crudele con me, Doady!”
“Crudele, mio caro amore. Come se io potessi essere crudele con te, per niente al mondo!”
“Allora non rimproverarmi,” disse Dora, formando con le labbra un bocciolo di rosa; “e sarò buona.”
Fui incantato quando, di sua iniziativa, mi chiese di darle quel libro di cucina di cui avevo parlato e di insegnarle come tenere i conti, come avevo promesso. La volta successiva che la rividi, portai con me il libro (prima lo feci rilegare in modo più elegante, per farlo sembrare meno noioso e più attraente); mentre passeggiavamo nel parco, le mostrai un vecchio libro di cucina di mia zia e le diedi anche delle tavolette, una graziosa scatola con la matita e dei gommini, per che potesse esercitarsi nella gestione domestica.
Ma il libro di cucina dava mal di testa a Dora, e le figure la facevano piangere. Diceva che non corrispondevano mai tra loro. Così le cancellò tutte e disegnò invece dei piccoli mazzi di fiori e ritratti di me e Jip su quelle pagine.
Poi, in modo scherzoso, provai a dargli indicazioni verbali su questioni domestiche, mentre camminavamo una domenica pomeriggio. A volte, ad esempio, quando passavamo davanti a un negozio di macelleria, dicevo:
“Ora immagina, mio caro, che fossimo sposati e tu dovessi comprare una spalla di montone per la cena, sapresti come farlo?”
Il viso della mia adorabile piccola Dora si rabbuiava, e lei serrava di nuovo le labbra, come se preferisse chiudere le mie con un bacio.
“Saresti in grado di sapere come comprarlo, mio caro?” Forse lo ripeterei, se fossi davvero irremovibile.
“Dora ci penserebbe un attimo, e poi forse risponderebbe con grande trionfo, ”
“Ma il macellaio saprebbe sicuramente come venderlo, che bisogno ho io di saperlo? Oh, ragazzo sciocco!”
So, una volta chiesi a Dora, guardando il libro di cucina, cosa avrebbe fatto se ci fossimo sposati e io le avessi detto che volevo una bella zuppa irlandese; lei rispose che avrebbe ordinato alla serva di prepararla. Poi mise le manine sul mio braccio e rise in un modo così incantevole che fu ancora più deliziosa del solito.
Di conseguenza, l’uso principale per cui era stato acquistato quel libro di cucina era quello di farne un piedistallo su cui Jip potesse stare in piedi. Ma Dora ne fu così contenta quando riuscì ad abituarlo a stare sopra senza voler scendere, e allo stesso tempo a tenere la custodia della penna in bocca, che fui molto felice di averlo comprato.
E ci rifugiammo di nuovo nella custodia della chitarra, nelle decorazioni floreali e nelle canzoni che parlavano di non smetter mai di ballare, “Ta ra la!” E eravamo felici per tutta la durata della settimana. A volte desideravo osare suggerire a Miss Lavinia che trattasse il tesoro del mio cuore un po’ troppo come un giocattolo; e qualche volta mi svegliavo chiedendomi se anch’io non fossi caduto nella stessa errore, trattandola anch’io come un giocattolo. Ma non molto spesso.
CHAPTER 42. MISCHIEF
I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that whatever I have devoted myself to, I have devoted myself to completely; that in great aims and in small, I have always been thoroughly in earnest. I have never believed it possible that any natural or improved ability can claim immunity from the companionship of the steady, plain, hard-working qualities, and hope to gain its end. There is no such thing as such fulfilment on this earth. Some happy talent, and some fortunate opportunity, may form the two sides of the ladder on which some men mount, but the rounds of that ladder must be made of stuff to stand wear and tear; and there is no substitute for thorough-going, ardent, and sincere earnestness. Never to put one hand to anything, on which I could throw my whole self; and never to affect depreciation of my work, whatever it was; I find, now, to have been my golden rules.
How much of the practice I have just reduced to precept, I owe to Agnes, I will not repeat here. My narrative proceeds to Agnes, with a thankful love.
She came on a visit of a fortnight to the Doctor’s. Mr. Wickfield was the Doctor’s old friend, and the Doctor wished to talk with him, and do him good. It had been matter of conversation with Agnes when she was last in town, and this visit was the result. She and her father came together. I was not much surprised to hear from her that she had engaged to find a lodging in the neighbourhood for Mrs. Heep, whose rheumatic complaint required change of air, and who would be charmed to have it in such company. Neither was I surprised when, on the very next day, Uriah, like a dutiful son, brought his worthy mother to take possession.
‘You see, Master Copperfield,’ said he, as he forced himself upon my company for a turn in the Doctor’s garden, ‘where a person loves, a person is a little jealous—leastways, anxious to keep an eye on the beloved one.’
‘Of whom are you jealous, now?’ said I.
‘Thanks to you, Master Copperfield,’ he returned, ‘of no one in particular just at present—no male person, at least.’
‘Do you mean that you are jealous of a female person?’
He gave me a sidelong glance out of his sinister red eyes, and laughed.
‘Really, Master Copperfield,’ he said, ‘—I should say Mister, but I know you’ll excuse the abit I’ve got into—you’re so insinuating, that you draw me like a corkscrew! Well, I don’t mind telling you,’ putting his fish-like hand on mine, ‘I’m not a lady’s man in general, sir, and I never was, with Mrs. Strong.’
His eyes looked green now, as they watched mine with a rascally cunning.
‘What do you mean?’ said I.
‘Why, though I am a lawyer, Master Copperfield,’ he replied, with a dry grin, ‘I mean, just at present, what I say.’
‘And what do you mean by your look?’ I retorted, quietly.
‘By my look? Dear me, Copperfield, that’s sharp practice! What do I mean by my look?’
‘Yes,’ said I. ‘By your look.’
He seemed very much amused, and laughed as heartily as it was in his nature to laugh. After some scraping of his chin with his hand, he went on to say, with his eyes cast downward—still scraping, very slowly:
‘When I was but an umble clerk, she always looked down upon me. She was for ever having my Agnes backwards and forwards at her ouse, and she was for ever being a friend to you, Master Copperfield; but I was too far beneath her, myself, to be noticed.’
‘Well?’ said I; ‘suppose you were!’
‘—And beneath him too,’ pursued Uriah, very distinctly, and in a meditative tone of voice, as he continued to scrape his chin.
‘Don’t you know the Doctor better,’ said I, ‘than to suppose him conscious of your existence, when you were not before him?’
He directed his eyes at me in that sidelong glance again, and he made his face very lantern-jawed, for the greater convenience of scraping, as he answered:
‘Oh dear, I am not referring to the Doctor! Oh no, poor man! I mean Mr. Maldon!’
My heart quite died within me. All my old doubts and apprehensions on that subject, all the Doctor’s happiness and peace, all the mingled possibilities of innocence and compromise, that I could not unravel, I saw, in a moment, at the mercy of this fellow’s twisting.
‘He never could come into the office, without ordering and shoving me about,’ said Uriah. ‘One of your fine gentlemen he was! I was very meek and umble—and I am. But I didn’t like that sort of thing—and I don’t!’
He left off scraping his chin, and sucked in his cheeks until they seemed to meet inside; keeping his sidelong glance upon me all the while.
CAPITOLO 42. GUAI
Mi sembra che, anche se questo manoscritto è destinato esclusivamente ai miei occhi, senza il mio impegno nel utilizzare quel metodo di stenografia rapida e nelle continue migliorie apportate, non sarei mai riuscito a portare a termine il mio compito, sentendomi in dovere verso Dora e le sue zie. Vorrei aggiungere soltanto che, riflettendo su questo periodo della mia vita, vedo nella costanza, nell’energia paziente e continua che allora iniziò a svilupparsi in me – e che so essere la parte più forte del mio carattere, se mai ne ha una – la fonte del mio successo. Sono stato molto fortunato nelle questioni materiali; molti uomini hanno lavorato con maggiore impegno, ma non hanno ottenuto risultati altrettanto buoni. Tuttavia, non avrei mai potuto realizzare ciò che ho fatto senza le abitudini di puntualità, ordine e diligenza, senza la determinazione di concentrarmi su un obiettivo alla volta, indipendentemente da quanto rapidamente ne apparisse un altro. Scrivo queste cose senza alcun intento di auto-lode. Chi esamina la propria vita, come faccio io, pagina dopo pagina, deve davvero essere una brava persona per non provare il dolore di aver trascurato molti talenti, sprecato molte opportunità, e visto tanti sentimenti errati e perversi lottare costantemente dentro di sé. Non credo di possedere alcun dono naturale che non abbia abusato. Quello che voglio dire è semplicemente che, in tutto ciò che ho cercato di fare nella vita, ho sempre messo il massimo impegno; in tutto ciò a cui mi sono dedicato, l’ho fatto con totale dedizione. Non ho mai creduto che alcuna abilità naturale o acquisita possa prescindere dall’essere accompagnata da qualità come la costanza, la diligenza e la speranza di raggiungere il proprio obiettivo. Non esiste una realizzazione del genere in questo mondo. Un certo talento fortunato e un’opportunità favorevole possono rappresentare i due gradini su cui alcuni uomini salgono, ma i gradini stessi devono essere fatti di materiale resistente allo sfogo; non esiste nulla che possa sostituire una dedizione totale, appassionata e sincera. Non aver mai messo tutto me stesso in ciò che facevo, e non aver mai sottovalutato il lavoro che svolgevo, sono stati i miei principi guida.
Quanto della pratica che ho appena descritto abbia poi trasformato in insegnamenti, lo devo ad Agnes; non ripeterò qui i dettagli. La mia narrazione prosegue con Agnes, attraverso un sentimento di profonda gratitudine e amore.
Venne a fare una visita di due settimane da parte del Dottore. Il signor Wickfield era un vecchio amico del Dottore, e quest’ultimo desiderava parlare con lui e fargli del bene. L’argomento era stato discusso con Agnes l’ultima volta che lei era in città, ed ecco il risultato di quella conversazione: lei e suo padre si riunirono. Non mi sorprese affatto quando mi disse che aveva trovato un alloggio nei dintorni per la signora Heep, la cui condizione reumatica richiedeva un cambiamento d’aria; inoltre, la signora Heep sarebbe stata molto felice di trovarsi in tale compagnia. Nemmeno mi sorprese quando, il giorno seguente stesso, Uriah, come un figlio devoto, portò sua madre ad occupare l’appartamento.
“Vede, Signor Copperfield,” disse lui, mentre si impondeva alla mia compagnia per fare un giro nel giardino del Dottore, “dove una persona ama, quella persona diventa un po’ gelosa, almeno, ha voglia di tenere d’occhio la persona amata.”
“Di chi sei geloso adesso?” dissi io.
“Grazie a te, Maestro Copperfield,” rispose lui, “al momento non c’è nessuno in particolare, almeno nessun uomo.”
“Vuoi dire che sei geloso di una donna?”
Mi lanciò uno sguardo obliquo con i suoi sinistri occhi rossi, poi rise.
“Davvero, Maestro Copperfield,” disse, “devo dire Signore, ma so che mi perdonerete questa abitudine. Siete così astuto da condurmi verso ciò che desiderate! Beh, non mi dispiace dirvelo,” aggiunse mettendo la sua mano, simile a quella di un pesce, sulla mia, “in generale, non sono il tipo d’uomo adatto alle signore. E non lo sono mai stato, nemmeno con la Signora Strong.”
I suoi occhi ora sembravano verdi, mentre mi fissavano con un’astuzia maliziosa.
“Cosa intendi dire?”, dissi io.
“Perché, anche se sono un avvocato, signor Copperfield,” rispose lui con un sorriso asciutto, “intendo dire, proprio in questo momento, ciò che sto dicendo.”
“E cosa intendi con quel tuo sguardo?” ribattei, in tono tranquillo.
“Dal mio aspetto? Oh mio Dio, Copperfield, che osservazione acuta! Cosa intendo dire con “dal mio aspetto”?”
“Sì,” dissi. “A giudicare dal tuo aspetto.”
Sembrava davvero divertito e rideva con quella stessa allegria che era tipica della sua >natura. Dopo essersi grattato un po’ il mento con la mano, continuò a dire, con lo sguardo abbassato, continuando a grattarsi, molto lentamente.
“Quando ero solo un umile impiegato, lei mi disprezzava sempre. Voleva che la mia Agnes andasse avanti e indietro nella sua casa, e voleva sempre essere tua amica, Maestro Copperfield; ma io ero troppo inferiore a lei per essere notato.”
“‘Beh?’” dissi io; “immagina che tu lo fossi!”
“E anche sotto di lui,” proseguì Uriah, molto chiaramente e con un tono meditativo, mentre continuava a grattarsi il mento.
“Non conosci forse meglio il Dottore,” dissi, “per poter pensare che sia a conoscenza della tua esistenza, quando prima non eri nemmeno presente davanti a lui?”
Di nuovo rivolse lo sguardo verso di me con quel suo modo obliquo; poi aprì molto la bocca, per poter raschiare più facilmente, mentre rispondeva:
“Oddio, non mi riferisco al Dottore. No, poveruomo. Intendo il signor Maldon!”
Il mio cuore sembrò morire dentro di me. Tutti i miei vecchi dubbi e timori su quell’argomento, tutta la felicità e la serenità del Dottore, tutte quelle possibili combinazioni tra innocenza e compromessi che non riuscivo a comprendere. Vidi tutto, in un istante, grazie alla “misericordia” delle distorsioni di quel individuo.
“Non riusciva mai ad entrare in ufficio senza comandarmi e spingermi dappertutto,” disse Uriah. “Uno dei vostri bei signori, ecco cos’era! Ero molto umile e sottomesso, e lo sono ancora. Ma non mi piaceva quel genere di comportamento, e non mi piace affatto!”
Smise di grattarsi il mento e si gonfiò le guance fino a farle sembrare che si incontrassero all’interno; continuando intanto a guardarmi di sguardo obliquo.
‘She is one of your lovely women, she is,’ he pursued, when he had slowly restored his face to its natural form; ‘and ready to be no friend to such as me, I know. She’s just the person as would put my Agnes up to higher sort of game. Now, I ain’t one of your lady’s men, Master Copperfield; but I’ve had eyes in my ed, a pretty long time back. We umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking—and we look out of ‘em.’
I endeavoured to appear unconscious and not disquieted, but, I saw in his face, with poor success.
‘Now, I’m not a-going to let myself be run down, Copperfield,’ he continued, raising that part of his countenance, where his red eyebrows would have been if he had had any, with malignant triumph, ‘and I shall do what I can to put a stop to this friendship. I don’t approve of it. I don’t mind acknowledging to you that I’ve got rather a grudging disposition, and want to keep off all intruders. I ain’t a-going, if I know it, to run the risk of being plotted against.’
‘You are always plotting, and delude yourself into the belief that everybody else is doing the like, I think,’ said I.
‘Perhaps so, Master Copperfield,’ he replied. ‘But I’ve got a motive, as my fellow-partner used to say; and I go at it tooth and nail. I mustn’t be put upon, as a numble person, too much. I can’t allow people in my way. Really they must come out of the cart, Master Copperfield!’
‘I don’t understand you,’ said I.
‘Don’t you, though?’ he returned, with one of his jerks. ‘I’m astonished at that, Master Copperfield, you being usually so quick! I’ll try to be plainer, another time.---Is that Mr. Maldon a-norseback, ringing at the gate, sir?’
‘It looks like him,’ I replied, as carelessly as I could.
Uriah stopped short, put his hands between his great knobs of knees, and doubled himself up with laughter. With perfectly silent laughter. Not a sound escaped from him. I was so repelled by his odious behaviour, particularly by this concluding instance, that I turned away without any ceremony; and left him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like a scarecrow in want of support.
It was not on that evening; but, as I well remember, on the next evening but one, which was a Sunday; that I took Agnes to see Dora. I had arranged the visit, beforehand, with Miss Lavinia; and Agnes was expected to tea.
I was in a flutter of pride and anxiety; pride in my dear little betrothed, and anxiety that Agnes should like her. All the way to Putney, Agnes being inside the stage-coach, and I outside, I pictured Dora to myself in every one of the pretty looks I knew so well; now making up my mind that I should like her to look exactly as she looked at such a time, and then doubting whether I should not prefer her looking as she looked at such another time; and almost worrying myself into a fever about it.
I was troubled by no doubt of her being very pretty, in any case; but it fell out that I had never seen her look so well. She was not in the drawing-room when I presented Agnes to her little aunts, but was shyly keeping out of the way. I knew where to look for her, now; and sure enough I found her stopping her ears again, behind the same dull old door.
At first she wouldn’t come at all; and then she pleaded for five minutes by my watch. When at length she put her arm through mine, to be taken to the drawing-room, her charming little face was flushed, and had never been so pretty. But, when we went into the room, and it turned pale, she was ten thousand times prettier yet.
Dora was afraid of Agnes. She had told me that she knew Agnes was ‘too clever’. But when she saw her looking at once so cheerful and so earnest, and so thoughtful, and so good, she gave a faint little cry of pleased surprise, and just put her affectionate arms round Agnes’s neck, and laid her innocent cheek against her face.
I never was so happy. I never was so pleased as when I saw those two sit down together, side by side. As when I saw my little darling looking up so naturally to those cordial eyes. As when I saw the tender, beautiful regard which Agnes cast upon her.
Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa partook, in their way, of my joy. It was the pleasantest tea-table in the world. Miss Clarissa presided. I cut and handed the sweet seed-cake—the little sisters had a bird-like fondness for picking up seeds and pecking at sugar; Miss Lavinia looked on with benignant patronage, as if our happy love were all her work; and we were perfectly contented with ourselves and one another.
The gentle cheerfulness of Agnes went to all their hearts. Her quiet interest in everything that interested Dora; her manner of making acquaintance with Jip (who responded instantly); her pleasant way, when Dora was ashamed to come over to her usual seat by me; her modest grace and ease, eliciting a crowd of blushing little marks of confidence from Dora; seemed to make our circle quite complete.
‘I am so glad,’ said Dora, after tea, ‘that you like me. I didn’t think you would; and I want, more than ever, to be liked, now Julia Mills is gone.’
I have omitted to mention it, by the by. Miss Mills had sailed, and Dora and I had gone aboard a great East Indiaman at Gravesend to see her; and we had had preserved ginger, and guava, and other delicacies of that sort for lunch; and we had left Miss Mills weeping on a camp-stool on the quarter-deck, with a large new diary under her arm, in which the original reflections awakened by the contemplation of Ocean were to be recorded under lock and key.
Agnes said she was afraid I must have given her an unpromising character; but Dora corrected that directly.
‘Oh no!’ she said, shaking her curls at me; ‘it was all praise. He thinks so much of your opinion, that I was quite afraid of it.’
‘My good opinion cannot strengthen his attachment to some people whom he knows,’ said Agnes, with a smile; ‘it is not worth their having.’
“È una delle vostre belle donne, lo è davvero,” continuò lui, dopo essersi lentamente ripreso; “e so che non è disposta ad essere amica di persone come me. È proprio il tipo di persona che potrebbe spingere la mia Agnes a intraprendere cose più pericolose. Ora, io non sono certo uno dei vostri cortigiani, signor Copperfield; ma ho gli occhi, e li uso da molto tempo. Noi persone comuni abbiamo pur sempre gli occhi, e li usiamo.”
Cercavo di sembrare privo di sensi e tranquillo, ma, con scarso successo, potevo vedere sul suo viso che non era affatto così.
“Ora, non intendo permettere che mi mettano in difficoltà, Copperfield,” continuò, sollevando quella parte del suo viso dove sarebbero state le sue sopracciglia rosse, se ne avesse avute, con un tono di malvagio trionfo, “e farò tutto il possibile per porre fine a questa amicizia. Non la approvo affatto. Non mi dispiace ammetterlo: ho una certa avversione verso di essa e voglio tenere lontani tutti gli intrusi. Non intendo, per certo, correre il rischio di essere vittima di complotti.”
“Sei sempre impegnato a tramare, e ti illudi pensando che anche tutti gli altri facciano lo stesso,” dissi io.
“Forse sì, Signor Copperfield,” rispose. “Ma ho un motivo, come usava dire il mio socio; e mi impegno con tutte le mie forze. Non posso permettere che mi prendano in giro, come se fossi una persona stupida. Non posso lasciare che gli altri ostacolino la mia strada. Davvero, devono smetterla di interferire, Signor Copperfield!”
“Non ti capisco,” dissi io.
“Non è forse così, vero?” ribatté lui con uno dei suoi gesti bruschi. “Sono sorpreso, signor Copperfield, di solito siete così veloce! Cercherò di essere più chiaro, la prossima volta, — È quel signor Maldon che sta bussando alla porta, signore?”
“Sembra lui,” risposi, con la massima noncuranza possibile.
Uriah si fermò di colpo, mise le mani tra i suoi grossi ginocchi e scoppiò a ridere. Una risata perfettamente silenziosa. Nessun suono uscì dalla sua bocca. Il suo comportamento odioso, soprattutto questo ultimo episodio, mi disgustò così tanto che me ne andai senza alcuna cerimonia, lasciandolo piegato in due nel mezzo del giardino, come un fantoccio privo di sostegno.
Non fu quella sera; ma, come ricordo bene, la sera seguente, che era un )domenica, portai Agnes a trovare Dora. Avevo organizzato l’incontro in anticipo con la signorina Lavinia; e si prevedeva che Agnes partecipasse al tè.
Ero pervasa da un misto di orgoglio e ansia: orgoglio per la mia cara fidanzata, e ansia che Agnes le piacesse. Per tutto il tragitto fino a Putney, mentre Agnes era dentro la carrozza e io fuori, mi immaginavo Dora con ogni uno di quei bellissimi aspetti che conoscevo così bene; a volte decidevo che mi sarebbe piaciuto se fosse sembrata esattamente come in quel momento, altre volte invece pensavo che preferissi se fosse sembrata diversamente. Fin quasi per preoccuparmi fino alla febbre.
Non avevo alcun dubbio che fosse molto bella, comunque; ma risultò che non l’avevo mai vista così bella. Non era nella sala da pranzo quando presentai Agnes alle sue zie, ma si teneva timidamente in disparte. Ora sapevo dove cercarla. E infatti la trovai di nuovo dietro quella stessa vecchia porta, a coprirsi le orecchie.
All’inizio non voleva assolutamente venire; poi, per cinque minuti, continuò a supplicarmi. Quando finalmente mise il braccio nel mio, per essere portata in salotto, il suo visino adorabile era arrossito e mai era stata così bella. Ma quando entrammo nella stanza, il suo viso divenne ancora più pallido, ed era diecimila volte più incantevole di prima.
Dora aveva paura di Agnes. Mi aveva detto che sapeva che Agnes era “troppo intelligente”. Ma quando la vide apparire così allegra, così seria, così pensierosa e così gentile, emise un lieve grido di piacere sorpreso, avvolse le sue braccia affettuose intorno al collo di Agnes e appoggiò la sua guancia innocente contro il suo viso.
Non sono mai stato così felice. Non sono mai stato così soddisfatto come quando ho visto quei due sedersi insieme, uno accanto all’altro. Come quando ho visto la mia piccola adorata alzare lo sguardo con tanta naturalezza verso quegli occhi pieni di affetto. E come quando ho visto lo sguardo tenero e bellissimo che Agnes le rivolgeva.
Miss Lavinia e Miss Clarissa, a loro modo, condivisero la mia gioia. Fu il più piacevole incontro intorno al tavolo da tè del mondo. Miss Clarissa presiedette la riunione; io tagliai e servii il dolce di semi. Le sorelline avevano una vera passione per raccogliere i semi e mordicchiare lo zucchero; Miss Lavinia osservava tutto con benevolenza, come se la nostra felice amore fosse interamente opera sua. E noi eravamo perfettamente soddisfatte di noi stesse e l’una dell’altra.
La dolce allegria di Agnes raggiungeva i cuori di tutti. Il suo interesse tranquillo per tutto ciò che interessava Dora; il modo in cui si avvicinò a Jip (che rispose immediatamente); il suo atteggiamento gentile quando Dora si vergognava di andare al suo solito posto accanto a me; la sua modestia e disinvoltura, che suscitavano in Dora un senso di fiducia e imbarazzo. Sembrava che tutto ciò rendesse il nostro gruppo davvero completo.
“Sono così felice,” disse Dora dopo il tè, “che tu mi piaccia. Non pensavo che lo facessi; e ora, che Julia Mills se n’è andata, desidero ancora di più essere apprezzata.”
A proposito, ho dimenticato di menzionarlo: la signorina Mills era partita per mare, e io e Dora eravamo salite a bordo di un grande vascello delle Indie Orientali a Gravesend per vederla; avevamo portato con noi zenzero, guava e altre delizie del genere per pranzo. L’abbiamo lasciata piangere su una sedia da campeggio sul ponte di poppa, con un grande diario nuovo sotto il braccio: in esso avrebbero dovuto essere registrate, sotto chiave, le sue prime riflessioni suscitate dalla contemplazione dell’Oceano.
Agnes disse di temere che avessi dato di lei un ritratto poco promettente; ma Dora la corresse immediatamente su questo punto.
“Oh no!”, disse lei, scuotendo i suoi riccioli verso di me; “erano solo complimenti. Lui dà così grande importanza al tuo parere che avevo davvero paura.”
“La mia buona opinione non può certo rafforzare il suo attaccamento verso alcune persone che conosce,” disse Agnes sorridendo; “non vale la pena che le abbiano.”
‘But please let me have it,’ said Dora, in her coaxing way, ‘if you can!’
We made merry about Dora’s wanting to be liked, and Dora said I was a goose, and she didn’t like me at any rate, and the short evening flew away on gossamer-wings. The time was at hand when the coach was to call for us. I was standing alone before the fire, when Dora came stealing softly in, to give me that usual precious little kiss before I went.
‘Don’t you think, if I had had her for a friend a long time ago, Doady,’ said Dora, her bright eyes shining very brightly, and her little right hand idly busying itself with one of the buttons of my coat, ‘I might have been more clever perhaps?’
‘My love!’ said I, ‘what nonsense!’
‘Do you think it is nonsense?’ returned Dora, without looking at me. ‘Are you sure it is?’
‘Of course I am!’ ‘I have forgotten,’ said Dora, still turning the button round and round, ‘what relation Agnes is to you, you dear bad boy.’
‘No blood-relation,’ I replied; ‘but we were brought up together, like brother and sister.’
‘I wonder why you ever fell in love with me?’ said Dora, beginning on another button of my coat.
‘Perhaps because I couldn’t see you, and not love you, Dora!’
‘Suppose you had never seen me at all,’ said Dora, going to another button.
‘Suppose we had never been born!’ said I, gaily.
I wondered what she was thinking about, as I glanced in admiring silence at the little soft hand travelling up the row of buttons on my coat, and at the clustering hair that lay against my breast, and at the lashes of her downcast eyes, slightly rising as they followed her idle fingers. At length her eyes were lifted up to mine, and she stood on tiptoe to give me, more thoughtfully than usual, that precious little kiss—once, twice, three times—and went out of the room.
They all came back together within five minutes afterwards, and Dora’s unusual thoughtfulness was quite gone then. She was laughingly resolved to put Jip through the whole of his performances, before the coach came. They took some time (not so much on account of their variety, as Jip’s reluctance), and were still unfinished when it was heard at the door. There was a hurried but affectionate parting between Agnes and herself; and Dora was to write to Agnes (who was not to mind her letters being foolish, she said), and Agnes was to write to Dora; and they had a second parting at the coach door, and a third when Dora, in spite of the remonstrances of Miss Lavinia, would come running out once more to remind Agnes at the coach window about writing, and to shake her curls at me on the box.
The stage-coach was to put us down near Covent Garden, where we were to take another stage-coach for Highgate. I was impatient for the short walk in the interval, that Agnes might praise Dora to me. Ah! what praise it was! How lovingly and fervently did it commend the pretty creature I had won, with all her artless graces best displayed, to my most gentle care! How thoughtfully remind me, yet with no pretence of doing so, of the trust in which I held the orphan child!
Never, never, had I loved Dora so deeply and truly, as I loved her that night. When we had again alighted, and were walking in the starlight along the quiet road that led to the Doctor’s house, I told Agnes it was her doing.
‘When you were sitting by her,’ said I, ‘you seemed to be no less her guardian angel than mine; and you seem so now, Agnes.’
‘A poor angel,’ she returned, ‘but faithful.’
The clear tone of her voice, going straight to my heart, made it natural to me to say:
‘The cheerfulness that belongs to you, Agnes (and to no one else that ever I have seen), is so restored, I have observed today, that I have begun to hope you are happier at home?’
‘I am happier in myself,’ she said; ‘I am quite cheerful and light-hearted.’
I glanced at the serene face looking upward, and thought it was the stars that made it seem so noble.
‘There has been no change at home,’ said Agnes, after a few moments.
‘No fresh reference,’ said I, ‘to—I wouldn’t distress you, Agnes, but I cannot help asking—to what we spoke of, when we parted last?’
‘No, none,’ she answered.
‘I have thought so much about it.’
‘You must think less about it. Remember that I confide in simple love and truth at last. Have no apprehensions for me, Trotwood,’ she added, after a moment; ‘the step you dread my taking, I shall never take.’
Although I think I had never really feared it, in any season of cool reflection, it was an unspeakable relief to me to have this assurance from her own truthful lips. I told her so, earnestly.
‘And when this visit is over,’ said I,—‘for we may not be alone another time,—how long is it likely to be, my dear Agnes, before you come to London again?’
‘Probably a long time,’ she replied; ‘I think it will be best—for papa’s sake—to remain at home. We are not likely to meet often, for some time to come; but I shall be a good correspondent of Dora’s, and we shall frequently hear of one another that way.’
We were now within the little courtyard of the Doctor’s cottage. It was growing late. There was a light in the window of Mrs. Strong’s chamber, and Agnes, pointing to it, bade me good night.
‘Do not be troubled,’ she said, giving me her hand, ‘by our misfortunes and anxieties. I can be happier in nothing than in your happiness. If you can ever give me help, rely upon it I will ask you for it. God bless you always!’ In her beaming smile, and in these last tones of her cheerful voice, I seemed again to see and hear my little Dora in her company. I stood awhile, looking through the porch at the stars, with a heart full of love and gratitude, and then walked slowly forth. I had engaged a bed at a decent alehouse close by, and was going out at the gate, when, happening to turn my head, I saw a light in the Doctor’s study. A half-reproachful fancy came into my mind, that he had been working at the Dictionary without my help. With the view of seeing if this were so, and, in any case, of bidding him good night, if he were yet sitting among his books, I turned back, and going softly across the hall, and gently opening the door, looked in.
“Ma per favore lasciamelo avere,” disse Dora con quel suo tono dolce e persuasivo, “se possibile!”
Ci divertimmo molto per il fatto che Dora volesse essere apprezzata; lei disse che ero una “oca” e che comunque non le piacevo affatto. Quella breve serata volò via come se fosse portata da ali di seta. Era arrivato il momento in cui il treno avrebbe dovuto venire a prenderci. Stavo in piedi da sola davanti al fuoco, quando Dora entrò silenziosamente per darmi quel solito, prezioso bacio prima che me ne andassi.
“Non pensi che, se l’avessi avuta come amica molto tempo fa, Doady, ”, disse Dora, i suoi occhi luminosi brillare intensamente, mentre la sua piccola mano destra si occupava distrattamente di uno dei bottoni del mio cappotto, “forse sarei stata più astuta?”
“Mio amore!”, dissi, “che sciocchezza!”
“Pensi che sia sciocchezza?” rispose Dora, senza guardarmi.
“Ne sei sicura?”
“Certo che lo sono!” “Me ne sono dimenticata,” disse Dora, continuando a girare e rigirare il pulsante, “quale sia la relazione tra Agnes e te, caro cattivo ragazzo.”
“Nessun legame di sangue,” risposi; “ma siamo cresciuti insieme, come fratello e sorella.”
“Mi chiedo perché tu sia mai finito per innamorarti di me, ”, disse Dora, cominciando ad abbottonarmi il cappotto da un’altra parte.
“Forse perché non riuscivo a vederti, e quindi non potevo amarti, Dora!”
“Immagina che non mi avessi mai visto,” disse Dora, mentre si dirigeva verso un altro bottone.
“Magari non fossimo mai nati!” dissi, allegramente.
Mi chiedevo a cosa stesse pensando, mentre osservavo in silenzio quella piccola mano che si muoveva lungo la fila di bottoni del mio cappotto, quei capelli che mi sfioravano il petto e quelle ciglia dei suoi occhi abbassati che si sollevavano leggermente seguendo i movimenti delle sue dita. Alla fine alzò lo sguardo verso il mio, si mise in punta di piedi e mi diede quel bacio prezioso, più pensieroso del solito, una volta, due volte, tre volte, poi uscì dalla stanza.
Tutti tornarono insieme entro cinque minuti; a quel punto, la strana premura di Dora era completamente svanita. Decise, ridendo, di far svolgere a Jip tutte le sue esibizioni prima dell’arrivo dell’allenatore. Ci volle un po’ di tempo (non tanto a causa della varietà delle prove, quanto per la riluttanza di Jip), e quando finalmente tutto fu pronto, si udì bussare alla porta. Ci fu un addio affrettato ma affettuoso tra Agnes e Dora; Dora avrebbe scritto ad Agnes (dicendo che non le dispiaceva se le sue lettere fossero sciocche), e Agnes avrebbe risposto a Dora. Si salutarono ancora una volta alla porta dell’auto, e per la terza volta quando Dora, nonostante le raccomandazioni di Miss Lavinia, corse fuori un’altra volta per ricordare ad Agnes di scrivere, e mi fece anche l’occhiolino dalla finestra dell’auto.
Il calesse ci avrebbe lasciato vicino a Covent Garden, dove avremmo preso un altro calesse per Highgate. Non vedevo l’ora di fare quella breve passeggiata, così che Agnes potesse lodare Dora davanti a me. Ah! Che lodi! Con quanta affetto e fervore descriveva quella bella creatura che avevo conquistato, con tutte le sue grazie naturali messe in mostra al meglio, affidandola alla mia più tenera cura. E come, senza alcuna pretesa, mi ricordava della fiducia che riponevo in quell’orfana bambina!
Mai, mai prima d’allora avevo amato Dora con tanta intensità e sincerità, come quella notte. Quando fummo di nuovo a terra e camminammo sotto la luce delle stelle lungo il tranquillo sentiero che portava alla casa del Dottore, dissi ad Agnes che era stata lei a farlo.
“Quando eri seduto accanto a lei,” dissi, “sembravi essere un angelo custode per lei tanto quanto lo sei per me; e sembri esserlo ancora adesso, Agnes.”
“Un angelo povero,” rispose lei, “ma fedele.”
“Il tono chiaro della sua voce, che raggiungeva direttamente il mio cuore, mi fece dire spontaneamente, ”
“Quella allegria che appartiene a te, Agnes (e a nessun altro che abbia mai incontrato), è tornata completamente, ho notato oggi. Ho iniziato a sperare che tu sia più felice a casa.”
“Sono più felice dentro di me,” disse; “sono davvero allegra e spensierata.”
Guardai quel volto sereno rivolto verso l’alto e pensai che fossero le stelle a renderlo così nobile.
“Non c’è stato alcun cambiamento a casa,” disse Agnes dopo alcuni momenti.
“Nessuna nuova informazione”, dissi, “riguardo a. Non vorrei disturbarti, Agnes, ma non posso fare a meno di chiedere: di cosa abbiamo parlato l’ultima volta che ci siamo visti?”
“No, nessuno,” rispose lei.
“Ci ho pensato molto.”
“Dovresti pensare meno a questa cosa. Ricorda che finalmente mi affido a un semplice amore e a una verità. Non avere preoccupazioni per me, Trotwood,” aggiunse dopo un momento; “il passo che temi possa compiere, io non lo farò mai.”
Anche se penso di non averla mai veramente temuta, in qualsiasi momento di riflessione serena, ricevere questa conferma dalle sue stesse parole sincere fu per me un vero sollievo indescrivibile. Glielo dissi con sincerità.
“E quando questa visita sarà finita,” dissi, “poiché forse non saremo più soli un’altra volta. Quanto tempo ci vorrà, cara Agnes, prima che tu venga di nuovo a )Londra?”
“Probabilmente per un lungo tempo,” rispose lei; “Penso che sia meglio – per il bene di papà – rimanere a casa. Non sarà facile incontrarci nei prossimi tempi, ma sarò una buona corrispondente per Dora, e così potremo continuare a tenerci in contatto.”
Eravamo ora all’interno del piccolo cortile della capanna del Dottore. Era già tardi. C’era una luce nella finestra della stanza di Mrs. Strong, e Agnes, indicandola, mi augurò la buona notte.
“Non lasciarti turbare,” disse, porgendomi la mano, “dai nostri mali e dalle nostre preoccupazioni. Non posso essere più felice di quanto lo sia con la tua felicità. Se mai avrai bisogno del mio aiuto, puoi contare su di me: te lo chiederò senza esitazione. Che Dio ti benedica sempre!” Nel suo sorriso radioso e nelle ultime note della sua voce allegra, sembrava di rivedere e sentire ancora la mia piccola Dora al suo fianco. Rimasi lì per un po’, a guardare le stelle attraverso il portico, con il cuore pieno di amore e gratitudine, poi uscii lentamente. Avevo prenotato una stanza in una locanda vicina e stavo per andarmene quando, voltando la testa, vidi una luce accesa nello studio del dottore. Mi venne in mente l’idea che potesse essere ancora impegnato a lavorare al dizionario senza il mio aiuto. Decisi di verificare e, comunque, di augurargli buona notte, nel caso fosse ancora seduto tra i suoi libri. Così tornai indietro, attraversai silenziosamente il corridoio e aprii delicatamente la porta per guardare all’interno.
The first person whom I saw, to my surprise, by the sober light of the shaded lamp, was Uriah. He was standing close beside it, with one of his skeleton hands over his mouth, and the other resting on the Doctor’s table. The Doctor sat in his study chair, covering his face with his hands. Mr. Wickfield, sorely troubled and distressed, was leaning forward, irresolutely touching the Doctor’s arm.
For an instant, I supposed that the Doctor was ill. I hastily advanced a step under that impression, when I met Uriah’s eye, and saw what was the matter. I would have withdrawn, but the Doctor made a gesture to detain me, and I remained.
‘At any rate,’ observed Uriah, with a writhe of his ungainly person, ‘we may keep the door shut. We needn’t make it known to ALL the town.’
Saying which, he went on his toes to the door, which I had left open, and carefully closed it. He then came back, and took up his former position. There was an obtrusive show of compassionate zeal in his voice and manner, more intolerable—at least to me—than any demeanour he could have assumed.
‘I have felt it incumbent upon me, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah, ‘to point out to Doctor Strong what you and me have already talked about. You didn’t exactly understand me, though?’
I gave him a look, but no other answer; and, going to my good old master, said a few words that I meant to be words of comfort and encouragement. He put his hand upon my shoulder, as it had been his custom to do when I was quite a little fellow, but did not lift his grey head.
‘As you didn’t understand me, Master Copperfield,’ resumed Uriah in the same officious manner, ‘I may take the liberty of umbly mentioning, being among friends, that I have called Doctor Strong’s attention to the goings-on of Mrs. Strong. It’s much against the grain with me, I assure you, Copperfield, to be concerned in anything so unpleasant; but really, as it is, we’re all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be. That was what my meaning was, sir, when you didn’t understand me.’ I wonder now, when I recall his leer, that I did not collar him, and try to shake the breath out of his body.
‘I dare say I didn’t make myself very clear,’ he went on, ‘nor you neither. Naturally, we was both of us inclined to give such a subject a wide berth. Hows’ever, at last I have made up my mind to speak plain; and I have mentioned to Doctor Strong that—did you speak, sir?’
This was to the Doctor, who had moaned. The sound might have touched any heart, I thought, but it had no effect upon Uriah’s.
‘—mentioned to Doctor Strong,’ he proceeded, ‘that anyone may see that Mr. Maldon, and the lovely and agreeable lady as is Doctor Strong’s wife, are too sweet on one another. Really the time is come (we being at present all mixing ourselves up with what oughtn’t to be), when Doctor Strong must be told that this was full as plain to everybody as the sun, before Mr. Maldon went to India; that Mr. Maldon made excuses to come back, for nothing else; and that he’s always here, for nothing else. When you come in, sir, I was just putting it to my fellow-partner,’ towards whom he turned, ‘to say to Doctor Strong upon his word and honour, whether he’d ever been of this opinion long ago, or not. Come, Mr. Wickfield, sir! Would you be so good as tell us? Yes or no, sir? Come, partner!’
‘For God’s sake, my dear Doctor,’ said Mr. Wickfield again laying his irresolute hand upon the Doctor’s arm, ‘don’t attach too much weight to any suspicions I may have entertained.’
‘There!’ cried Uriah, shaking his head. ‘What a melancholy confirmation: ain’t it? Him! Such an old friend! Bless your soul, when I was nothing but a clerk in his office, Copperfield, I’ve seen him twenty times, if I’ve seen him once, quite in a taking about it—quite put out, you know (and very proper in him as a father; I’m sure I can’t blame him), to think that Miss Agnes was mixing herself up with what oughtn’t to be.’
‘My dear Strong,’ said Mr. Wickfield in a tremulous voice, ‘my good friend, I needn’t tell you that it has been my vice to look for some one master motive in everybody, and to try all actions by one narrow test. I may have fallen into such doubts as I have had, through this mistake.’
‘You have had doubts, Wickfield,’ said the Doctor, without lifting up his head. ‘You have had doubts.’
‘Speak up, fellow-partner,’ urged Uriah.
‘I had, at one time, certainly,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I—God forgive me—I thought YOU had.’
‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief. ‘I thought, at one time,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘that you wished to send Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.’
‘No, no, no!’ returned the Doctor. ‘To give Annie pleasure, by making some provision for the companion of her childhood. Nothing else.’
‘So I found,’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘I couldn’t doubt it, when you told me so. But I thought—I implore you to remember the narrow construction which has been my besetting sin—that, in a case where there was so much disparity in point of years—’
‘That’s the way to put it, you see, Master Copperfield!’ observed Uriah, with fawning and offensive pity.
‘—a lady of such youth, and such attractions, however real her respect for you, might have been influenced in marrying, by worldly considerations only. I make no allowance for innumerable feelings and circumstances that may have all tended to good. For Heaven’s sake remember that!’
‘How kind he puts it!’ said Uriah, shaking his head.
‘Always observing her from one point of view,’ said Mr. Wickfield; ‘but by all that is dear to you, my old friend, I entreat you to consider what it was; I am forced to confess now, having no escape-’
‘No! There’s no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ observed Uriah, ‘when it’s got to this.’
‘—that I did,’ said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distractedly at his partner, ‘that I did doubt her, and think her wanting in her duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel averse to Agnes being in such a familiar relation towards her, as to see what I saw, or in my diseased theory fancied that I saw. I never mentioned this to anyone. I never meant it to be known to anyone. And though it is terrible to you to hear,’ said Mr. Wickfield, quite subdued, ‘if you knew how terrible it is for me to tell, you would feel compassion for me!’
La prima persona che vidi, per mia sorpresa, alla luce sobria della lampada schermata, fu Uriah. Stava in piedi proprio accanto a essa, con una delle sue mani ossute sulla bocca e l’altra appoggiata sul tavolo del Dottore. Il Dottore era seduto nella sua poltrona dello studio, con le mani sul viso. Il signor Wickfield, profondamente turbato e angosciato, si sporgeva in avanti, toccando incerto il braccio del Dottore.
Per un istante, pensai che il Dottore fosse malato. Muovendomi con fretta, mossi un passo avanti sotto quell’impressione, quando incontrai lo sguardo di Uriah e capii cosa stesse succedendo. Avrei voluto ritirarmi, ma il Dottore fece un gesto per trattenermi, quindi rimasi.
“Comunque,” osservò Uriah, contorcendo il proprio corpo goffo, “possiamo tenere la porta chiusa. Non c’è bisogno che lo sappia TUTTA la città.”
Detto questo, si avvicinò in punta di piedi alla porta che avevo lasciato aperta e la chiuse con cura. Poi tornò indietro e riprese la sua posizione precedente. Nel suo tono e nel suo comportamento c’era un’evidente esibizione di zelo compassionevole, che era ancora più insopportabile – almeno per me – di qualsiasi atteggiamento avesse potuto assumere.
“Ho ritenuto mio dovere, Signor Copperfield,” disse Uriah, “fare notare al Dottor Strong ciò di cui noi due avevamo già parlato. Tuttavia, lei non mi ha del tutto capito, vero?”
Gli lanciai uno sguardo, ma non risposi nulla; poi andai dal mio vecchio e caro maestro e gli dissi alcune parole che volevano essere di conforto e incoraggiamento. Lui mise la mano sulla mia spalla, come faceva sempre quando ero molto piccolo, ma non alzò mai la sua testa grigia.
“Poiché non mi avete capito, Signor Copperfield,” continuò Uriah con lo stesso tono autoritario, “posso permettermi di menzionare, tra amici, che ho attirato l’attenzione del Dottor Strong su quanto sta accadendo alla signora Strong. Vi assicuro, Copperfield, che non mi piace affatto immischiarmi in cose così sgradevoli; ma in realtà, ormai, tutti noi ci stiamo intromettendo in situazioni che non dovremmo.” Ora mi chiedo, ripensando al suo sguardo malizioso, perché non l’abbia afferrato e non abbia cercato di fargli perdere i sensi.
“Oserei dire di non essere stato molto chiaro,” continuò, “né voi lo siete stati. Naturalmente, entrambi tendevamo ad evitare di affrontare un argomento del genere. Comunque, finalmente ho deciso di parlare apertamente; e ho menzionato tutto questo al Dottor Strong. Avete detto qualcosa, signore?”
Questo era per il Dottore, che aveva gemuto. Quel suono avrebbe potuto commuovere qualsiasi cuore, pensai, ma non ebbe alcun effetto su quello di Uriah.
“—ho detto al Dottor Strong,” proseguì, “che chiunque può vedere che il signor Maldon e la deliziosa e affabile signora, ovvero la moglie del Dottor Strong, si vogliono molto bene. Davvero è arrivato il momento (visto che ora ci immischiamo in cose che non dovremmo), di dire al Dottor Strong che tutto questo è evidente a tutti, tanto quanto il sole; che il signor Maldon ha trovato scuse per tornare qui, e nient’altro; e che è sempre qui, solo per questo motivo. Quando siete entrato, signore, stavo appunto chiedendo al mio socio, ” Si rivolse a quest’ultimo: “di dire al Dottor Strong, sulla sua parola e onore, se anche lui la pensava così da tempo. Allora, signor Wickfield, vi prego: potreste dircelo? Sì o no, signore? Suvvia, socio, ”
“Per l’amor di Dio, mio caro Dottore,” disse di nuovo il signor Wickfield, posando la sua mano indecisa sul braccio del dottore, “non attribuisca troppa importanza a eventuali sospetti che possa aver avuto.”
“Eccolo!” esclamò Uriah scuotendo la testa. “Che conferma melanconica, non è vero? Lui, un vecchio amico così caro! Benedetta la tua ‘anima. Quando io ero solo un impiegato nel suo ufficio, Copperfield, l’ho visto venti volte, anzi, forse di più. Era davvero sconvolto, molto addolorato, capisci. E del resto, da padre, non posso certo biasimarlo. Pensare che Miss Agnes si fosse immischiata in cose che non le spettavano, ”
“Mio caro Strong,” disse il signor Wickfield con voce tremante, “mio buon amico, non c’è bisogno che ti dica che è sempre stato il mio vizio cercare in tutti un motivo principale, e giudicare tutte le azioni secondo uno schema ristretto. Forse sono caduto in questi dubbi proprio a causa di questo errore.”
“Hai avuto dei dubbi, Wickfield,” disse il Dottore, senza alzare la testa. “Hai avuto dei dubbi.”
“Parla, compagno,” lo esortò Uriah.
“Una volta, sì,” disse il signor Wickfield. “Io. Dio mi perdoni, pensavo che fosse tuo.”
“No, no, no!” rispose il Dottore, con un tono di profondo dolore.
“A un certo momento,” disse il signor Wickfield, “pensavo che volesse mandare Maldon all’estero per ottenere una separazione desiderabile.”
“No, no, no!” rispose il Dottore. “Solo per rendere felice Annie, prendendoci cura della compagna della sua infanzia. Nient’altro.”
“Lo so,” disse il signor Wickfield. “Non potevo dubitarne, quando me l’hai detto tu. Ma ho pensato. Ti supplico di ricordare quella mentalità ristretta che è sempre stata il mio difetto principale. In un caso in cui c’era una tale disparità di età, ”
“È proprio così che si dovrebbe esprimere, vedete, Maestro Copperfield!”, osservò Uriah con un tono servile e offensivo.
“Una signora così giovane e attraente, per quanto sincera fosse la sua stima per te, avrebbe potuto essere influenzata da considerazioni mondane nel decidere di sposarti. Non tengo conto delle innumerevoli emozioni e circostanze che avrebbero potuto tutti contribuire a un esito positivo. Per l’amor del cielo, ricordatelo!”
“Che gentile modo ha di dirlo!”, disse Uriah scuotendo la testa.
“Sempre osservandola da un solo punto di vista,” disse il signor Wickfield; “ma per tutto ciò che vi è caro, mio vecchio amico, vi supplico di riflettere su cosa fosse realmente. Ora sono costretto ad ammetterlo, poiché non ho altra scelta, ”
“No! Non c’è scampo, signor Wickfield,” osservò Uriah, “quando le cose sono arrivate a questo punto.”
“–È vero,” disse il signor Wickfield, guardando suo malgrado e con aria distratta il proprio socio, “è vero che dubitavo di lei, che pensavo non stesse adempiendo ai suoi doveri verso di te; e che a volte, se devo dire tutto, provavo avversione all’idea che Agnes mantenesse con lei un rapporto così intimo da permetterle di vedere ciò che ho visto, o, nella mia distorta interpretazione dei fatti, credevo di aver visto. Non ne ho mai parlato con nessuno; non volevo assolutamente che qualcuno lo sapesse. E anche se per te è terribile sentirlo,” aggiunse il signor Wickfield, visibilmente sopraffatto, “se solo sapessi quanto sia orribile per me dirlo, provheresti compassione per me!”
The Doctor, in the perfect goodness of his nature, put out his hand. Mr. Wickfield held it for a little while in his, with his head bowed down.
‘I am sure,’ said Uriah, writhing himself into the silence like a Conger-eel, ‘that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to everybody. But since we have got so far, I ought to take the liberty of mentioning that Copperfield has noticed it too.’
I turned upon him, and asked him how he dared refer to me!
‘Oh! it’s very kind of you, Copperfield,’ returned Uriah, undulating all over, ‘and we all know what an amiable character yours is; but you know that the moment I spoke to you the other night, you knew what I meant. You know you knew what I meant, Copperfield. Don’t deny it! You deny it with the best intentions; but don’t do it, Copperfield.’
I saw the mild eye of the good old Doctor turned upon me for a moment, and I felt that the confession of my old misgivings and remembrances was too plainly written in my face to be overlooked. It was of no use raging. I could not undo that. Say what I would, I could not unsay it.
We were silent again, and remained so, until the Doctor rose and walked twice or thrice across the room. Presently he returned to where his chair stood; and, leaning on the back of it, and occasionally putting his handkerchief to his eyes, with a simple honesty that did him more honour, to my thinking, than any disguise he could have effected, said:
‘I have been much to blame. I believe I have been very much to blame. I have exposed one whom I hold in my heart, to trials and aspersions—I call them aspersions, even to have been conceived in anybody’s inmost mind—of which she never, but for me, could have been the object.’
Uriah Heep gave a kind of snivel. I think to express sympathy.
‘Of which my Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘never, but for me, could have been the object. Gentlemen, I am old now, as you know; I do not feel, tonight, that I have much to live for. But my life—my Life—upon the truth and honour of the dear lady who has been the subject of this conversation!’
I do not think that the best embodiment of chivalry, the realization of the handsomest and most romantic figure ever imagined by painter, could have said this, with a more impressive and affecting dignity than the plain old Doctor did.
‘But I am not prepared,’ he went on, ‘to deny—perhaps I may have been, without knowing it, in some degree prepared to admit—that I may have unwittingly ensnared that lady into an unhappy marriage. I am a man quite unaccustomed to observe; and I cannot but believe that the observation of several people, of different ages and positions, all too plainly tending in one direction (and that so natural), is better than mine.’
I had often admired, as I have elsewhere described, his benignant manner towards his youthful wife; but the respectful tenderness he manifested in every reference to her on this occasion, and the almost reverential manner in which he put away from him the lightest doubt of her integrity, exalted him, in my eyes, beyond description.
‘I married that lady,’ said the Doctor, ‘when she was extremely young. I took her to myself when her character was scarcely formed. So far as it was developed, it had been my happiness to form it. I knew her father well. I knew her well. I had taught her what I could, for the love of all her beautiful and virtuous qualities. If I did her wrong; as I fear I did, in taking advantage (but I never meant it) of her gratitude and her affection; I ask pardon of that lady, in my heart!’
He walked across the room, and came back to the same place; holding the chair with a grasp that trembled, like his subdued voice, in its earnestness.
‘I regarded myself as a refuge, for her, from the dangers and vicissitudes of life. I persuaded myself that, unequal though we were in years, she would live tranquilly and contentedly with me. I did not shut out of my consideration the time when I should leave her free, and still young and still beautiful, but with her judgement more matured—no, gentlemen—upon my truth!’
His homely figure seemed to be lightened up by his fidelity and generosity. Every word he uttered had a force that no other grace could have imparted to it.
‘My life with this lady has been very happy. Until tonight, I have had uninterrupted occasion to bless the day on which I did her great injustice.’
His voice, more and more faltering in the utterance of these words, stopped for a few moments; then he went on:
‘Once awakened from my dream—I have been a poor dreamer, in one way or other, all my life—I see how natural it is that she should have some regretful feeling towards her old companion and her equal. That she does regard him with some innocent regret, with some blameless thoughts of what might have been, but for me, is, I fear, too true. Much that I have seen, but not noted, has come back upon me with new meaning, during this last trying hour. But, beyond this, gentlemen, the dear lady’s name never must be coupled with a word, a breath, of doubt.’
For a little while, his eye kindled and his voice was firm; for a little while he was again silent. Presently, he proceeded as before:
‘It only remains for me, to bear the knowledge of the unhappiness I have occasioned, as submissively as I can. It is she who should reproach; not I. To save her from misconstruction, cruel misconstruction, that even my friends have not been able to avoid, becomes my duty. The more retired we live, the better I shall discharge it. And when the time comes—may it come soon, if it be His merciful pleasure!—when my death shall release her from constraint, I shall close my eyes upon her honoured face, with unbounded confidence and love; and leave her, with no sorrow then, to happier and brighter days.’
Il Dottore, nella perfetta bontà della sua natura, tese la mano. Il signor Wickfield la tenne per un po’ nella sua, con la testa china.
“Ne sono sicuro,” disse Uriah, immergendosi nel silenzio come un’anguilla di mare, “che questo è un argomento pieno di spiacevolezze per tutti. Ma poiché siamo arrivati a questo punto, dovrei prendermi la libertà di menzionare che anche Copperfield se n’è accorto.”
Mi girai verso di lui e gli chiesi come osasse parlarmi in quel modo!
“Oh! È davvero molto gentile da parte tua, Copperfield,” rispose Uriah, tremando tutto, “e sappiamo tutti quanto tu sia una persona amabile; ma sai bene che non appena ti ho parlato quella notte, hai capito cosa intendevo. Lo sai, vero, Copperfield. Non negarlo! Forse lo fai con le migliori intenzioni, ma non farlo, per favore.”
Vidi per un momento lo sguardo gentile del buon vecchio Dottore rivolto verso di me, e sentii che la confessione dei miei vecchi timori e ricordi era troppo chiaramente scritta sul mio viso per essere ignorata. Non aveva senso infuriarsi: non potevo cancellare nulla. Qualunque cosa dicessi, non avrei potuto ritrattarla.
Rimanemmo di nuovo in silenzio, e così rimanemmo fino a quando il Dottore non si alzò e camminò due o tre volte per la stanza. Poi tornò dove stava seduto sulla sua sedia; appoggiandosi allo schienale e mettendosi di tanto in tanto il fazzoletto sugli occhi, con una semplicità e onestà che, a mio parere, gli conferivano più onore di qualsiasi mascheramento avesse potuto utilizzare, disse:
‘Sono stato molto colpevole. Credo di esserlo davvero stato molto. Ho esposto una persona che tengo nel mio cuore a prove e calunnie. Le chiamo calunnie, anche solo il pensiero che qualcuno possa averle concepite nella propria mente. Una persona che, se non fosse stato per me, non avrebbe mai potuto essere oggetto di tutto ciò.’
Uriah Heep emise un sorta di singhiozzo; penso che volesse esprimere compassione.
“Di cui la mia Annie,” disse il Dottore, “non avrebbe mai potuto essere l’oggetto, se non per me. Signori, ormai sono vecchio; stasera non sento di avere molto per cui vivere. Ma la mia vita, la mia vita, sulla verità e l’onore della cara signora di cui abbiamo parlato!”
Non credo che la migliore incarnazione della cavalleria, l’incarnazione della figura più nobile e romantica mai immaginata da un pittore, avrebbe potuto dire queste parole con una dignità così impressionante ed commovente come fece quel semplice e vecchio Dottore.
“Ma non sono preparato,” continuò, “a negare. Forse, senza saperlo, ero in qualche modo pronto ad ammettere che potrei aver inconsapevolmente intrappolato quella signora in un matrimonio infelice. Sono un uomo del tutto abituato a non osservare attentamente le cose; e non posso fare a meno di credere che l’osservazione di molte persone, di diverse età e posizioni sociali, che tende chiaramente nella stessa direzione (e in modo così naturale), sia più affidabile della mia.”
Avevo spesso ammirato, come ho descritto altrove, il suo modo gentile e premuroso verso sua moglie giovane; ma la tenerezza rispettosa che dimostrò in ogni occasione riguardante lei, e il modo quasi reverenziale con cui scacciò via anche il minimo dubbio sulla sua integrità, lo elevarono, ai miei occhi, al di sopra di qualsiasi descrizione.
“Ho sposato quella signora,” disse il Dottore, “quando era ancora molto giovane. L’ho presa con me quando il suo carattere non era ancora del tutto formato. Finché si stava sviluppando, è stato un piacere per me contribuire a formarlo. Conoscevo bene suo padre, e anche lei. Le ho insegnato tutto ciò che potevo, per l’amore di tutte le sue belle e virtuose qualità. Se l’ho trattata male, come temo di aver fatto, approfittando (ma mai con cattive intenzioni) della sua gratitudine e del suo affetto, le chiedo scusa dal profondo del cuore!”
Attraversò la stanza e tornò nello stesso posto; teneva la sedia con una presa che tremava, proprio come la sua voce, nella sua serietà.
“Mi consideravo un rifugio per lei, contro i pericoli e le avversità della vita. Mi convincevo che, nonostante la differenza d’età, lei potesse vivere tranquillamente e felicemente con me. Non escludevo dalla mia considerazione il momento in cui avrei dovuto lasciarla libera, ancora giovane e ancora bella, ma con un giudizio ormai più maturo. No, signori, sulla mia verità’!”
La sua figura semplice sembrava essere illuminata dalla sua fedeltà e generosità. Ogni parola che pronunciava aveva una forza che nessun’altra grazia avrebbe potuto conferirle.
“La mia vita con questa signora è stata molto felice. Fino a stasera, ho avuto l’opportunità di ringraziare ogni giorno in cui le ho fatto un grande torto.”
La sua voce, sempre più incerta mentre pronunciava queste parole, si fermò per alcuni momenti; poi continuò:
‘Una volta risvegliato dal mio sogno – sono sempre stato un povero sognatore, in un modo o nell’altro, per tutta la mia vita – capisco quanto sia naturale che lei provi qualche sentimento di rimpianto verso il suo vecchio compagno e suo pari. Che lei lo guardi con un certo innocente rimpianto, con pensieri innocenti su ciò che avrebbe potuto essere, se non fosse stato per me, temo che tutto questo sia troppo vero. Molte cose che avevo visto, ma non notato, sono tornate a galla assumendo un nuovo significato in quest’ultima ora difficile. Ma, oltre a questo, signori, il nome di quella cara signora non deve mai essere associato a una parola, nemmeno a un semplice respiro pieno di dubbio.’
Per un momento, il suo sguardo si illuminò e la sua voce divenne ferma; per un altro momento rimase di nuovo in silenzio. Poi continuò come prima.
‘Tutto ciò che mi resta da fare è sopportare, con la massima umiltà possibile, il peso della sfortuna che ho causato. È lei quella che dovrebbe rimproverarmi, non io. Per salvarla da un malinteso crudele – un malinteso che nemmeno i miei amici sono riusciti a evitare – diventa mio dovere. Più reclusi vivremo, meglio sarò in grado di adempiere a questo dovere. E quando arriverà il momento, possa arrivare presto, se tale è la Sua misericordiosa volontà, quando la mia morte la libererà da queste costrizioni, chiuderò gli occhi sul suo volto onorevole con infinita fiducia e amore, lasciandola, senza alcun dolore, ad affrontare giorni più felici e luminosi.’
I could not see him for the tears which his earnestness and goodness, so adorned by, and so adorning, the perfect simplicity of his manner, brought into my eyes. He had moved to the door, when he added:
‘Gentlemen, I have shown you my heart. I am sure you will respect it. What we have said tonight is never to be said more. Wickfield, give me an old friend’s arm upstairs!’
Mr. Wickfield hastened to him. Without interchanging a word they went slowly out of the room together, Uriah looking after them.
‘Well, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah, meekly turning to me. ‘The thing hasn’t took quite the turn that might have been expected, for the old Scholar—what an excellent man!—is as blind as a brickbat; but this family’s out of the cart, I think!’
I needed but the sound of his voice to be so madly enraged as I never was before, and never have been since.
‘You villain,’ said I, ‘what do you mean by entrapping me into your schemes? How dare you appeal to me just now, you false rascal, as if we had been in discussion together?’
As we stood, front to front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that he forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable, and had set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I couldn’t bear it. The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly before me, and I struck it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled as if I had burnt them.
He caught the hand in his, and we stood in that connexion, looking at each other. We stood so, a long time; long enough for me to see the white marks of my fingers die out of the deep red of his cheek, and leave it a deeper red.
‘Copperfield,’ he said at length, in a breathless voice, ‘have you taken leave of your senses?’
‘I have taken leave of you,’ said I, wresting my hand away. ‘You dog, I’ll know no more of you.’
‘Won’t you?’ said he, constrained by the pain of his cheek to put his hand there. ‘Perhaps you won’t be able to help it. Isn’t this ungrateful of you, now?’
‘I have shown you often enough,’ said I, ‘that I despise you. I have shown you now, more plainly, that I do. Why should I dread your doing your worst to all about you? What else do you ever do?’
He perfectly understood this allusion to the considerations that had hitherto restrained me in my communications with him. I rather think that neither the blow, nor the allusion, would have escaped me, but for the assurance I had had from Agnes that night. It is no matter.
There was another long pause. His eyes, as he looked at me, seemed to take every shade of colour that could make eyes ugly.
‘Copperfield,’ he said, removing his hand from his cheek, ‘you have always gone against me. I know you always used to be against me at Mr. Wickfield’s.’
‘You may think what you like,’ said I, still in a towering rage. ‘If it is not true, so much the worthier you.’
‘And yet I always liked you, Copperfield!’ he rejoined.
I deigned to make him no reply; and, taking up my hat, was going out to bed, when he came between me and the door.
‘Copperfield,’ he said, ‘there must be two parties to a quarrel. I won’t be one.’
‘You may go to the devil!’ said I.
‘Don’t say that!’ he replied. ‘I know you’ll be sorry afterwards. How can you make yourself so inferior to me, as to show such a bad spirit? But I forgive you.’
‘You forgive me!’ I repeated disdainfully.
‘I do, and you can’t help yourself,’ replied Uriah. ‘To think of your going and attacking me, that have always been a friend to you! But there can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be a friend to you, in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to expect.’
The necessity of carrying on this dialogue (his part in which was very slow; mine very quick) in a low tone, that the house might not be disturbed at an unseasonable hour, did not improve my temper; though my passion was cooling down. Merely telling him that I should expect from him what I always had expected, and had never yet been disappointed in, I opened the door upon him, as if he had been a great walnut put there to be cracked, and went out of the house. But he slept out of the house too, at his mother’s lodging; and before I had gone many hundred yards, came up with me.
‘You know, Copperfield,’ he said, in my ear (I did not turn my head), ‘you’re in quite a wrong position’; which I felt to be true, and that made me chafe the more; ‘you can’t make this a brave thing, and you can’t help being forgiven. I don’t intend to mention it to mother, nor to any living soul. I’m determined to forgive you. But I do wonder that you should lift your hand against a person that you knew to be so umble!’
I felt only less mean than he. He knew me better than I knew myself. If he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay tormented half the night.
In the morning, when I came out, the early church-bell was ringing, and he was walking up and down with his mother. He addressed me as if nothing had happened, and I could do no less than reply. I had struck him hard enough to give him the toothache, I suppose. At all events his face was tied up in a black silk handkerchief, which, with his hat perched on the top of it, was far from improving his appearance. I heard that he went to a dentist’s in London on the Monday morning, and had a tooth out. I hope it was a double one.
The Doctor gave out that he was not quite well; and remained alone, for a considerable part of every day, during the remainder of the visit. Agnes and her father had been gone a week, before we resumed our usual work. On the day preceding its resumption, the Doctor gave me with his own hands a folded note not sealed. It was addressed to myself; and laid an injunction on me, in a few affectionate words, never to refer to the subject of that evening. I had confided it to my aunt, but to no one else. It was not a subject I could discuss with Agnes, and Agnes certainly had not the least suspicion of what had passed.
Non riuscivo a vederlo a causa delle lacrime che la sua sincerità e bontà, così evidenti nella semplicità perfetta del suo comportamento, avevano fatto scaturire dai miei occhi. Era già arrivato alla porta quando aggiunse:
“Signori, vi ho mostrato il mio cuore. Sono certo che lo rispetterete. Quello che abbiamo detto stasera non deve mai essere ripetuto. Wickfield, datemi il braccio di un vecchio amico, al piano di sopra!”
Il signor Wickfield si affrettò verso di lui. Senza scambiare una parola, uscirono lentamente dalla stanza insieme, con Uriah che li seguiva.
‘Beh, Signor Copperfield!’, disse Uriah, voltandosi verso di me con umiltà. ‘Le cose non sono andate esattamente come ci si poteva aspettare. Quell’anziano studioso – che uomo eccellente! – è completamente cieco; ma penso che questa famiglia ormai sia fuori pericolo.’
Avevo bisogno che la sua voce suonasse così follemente arrabbiata come non era mai stata prima, e come non è mai più stata da allora.
“Tu, scemo malvagio,” dissi, “che cosa intendi con intrappolarmi nei tuoi piani? Come osi rivolgerti a me proprio ora, tu bugiardo imbroglione, come se avessimo mai discusso insieme?”
Mentre stavamo uno di fronte all’altro, vidi con estrema chiarezza, nell’esultanza furtiva sul suo viso, ciò che già sapevo perfettamente: lui stava cercando di trasmettermi la sua fiducia, esclusivamente per rendermi infelice, e aveva preparato apposta una trappola proprio su questo argomento; non riuscivo più a sopportarlo. Tutto il suo viso magro era davanti a me, e lo colpii con la mano aperta con tale forza che le dita mi formicolarono, come se fossi rimasto bruciato.
Prese quella mano nella sua, e rimanemmo così, uno di fronte all’altro. Rimanemmo in quella posizione per molto tempo; abbastanza a lungo perché potessi vedere le macchie bianche delle mie dita scomparire dal rosso scuro della sua guancia, lasciandola di un rosso ancora più intenso.
“Copperfield,” disse infine, con voce affannosa, “hai perso la ragione?”
“Mi sono congedato da te,” dissi, liberando la mia mano. “Tu, cane. Non voglio più saper nulla di te.”
“Non lo farai?” disse lui, costretto dal )dolore sulla guancia a mettere la mano lì. “Forse non potrai evitarlo. Non è forse ingrato da parte tua?”
“Vi ho dimostrato abbastanza spesso,” dissi, “che vi disprezzo. Ora ve l’ho mostrato ancora più chiaramente. Perché dovrei temere che facciate del vostro peggio con tutti quelli intorno a voi? Cosa altro fate mai?”
Capì perfettamente questa allusione alle considerazioni che fino ad allora mi avevano trattenuto dal comunicare con lui. Penso piuttosto che né il colpo né l’allusione mi sarebbero sfuggiti, se non fosse stato per la rassicurazione ricevuta da Agnes quella notte. Ma ormai non importa più.
Ci fu un’altra lunga pausa. I suoi occhi, mentre mi guardavano, sembravano assumere tutte le sfumature di colore che possano rendere gli occhi brutti.
“Copperfield,” disse, togliendo la mano dalla guancia, “tu sei sempre stato contro di me. So che fin da quando eravamo con il signor Wickfield eri sempre contrario a me.”
“Puoi pensare quello che vuoi,” dissi, ancora furioso. “Se non è vero, allora sei ancora più meritevole.”
“Eppure ti ho sempre amato, Copperfield!” ribatté lui.
Decisi di non rispondergli; presi il mio cappello e stavo per andare a letto, quando lui si mise davanti a me e bloccò la porta.
“Copperfield,” disse, “in una lite ci devono essere due parti coinvolte. Io non farò parte di nessuna delle due.”
“Puoi andare all’inferno!” dissi io.
“Non dirlo!” rispose. “So che te ne pentirai dopo. Come puoi umiliarti così tanto davanti a me, dimostrando un comportamento così negativo? Ma ti perdono.”
“Perdona me!”, ripetei con disprezzo.
“Lo farò, e non potrai fare nulla al riguardo,” rispose Uriah. “Pensare che tu voglia attaccarmi, io che sono sempre stato tuo amico! Ma non può esserci una lite senza due parti coinvolte, e io non sarò una di queste parti. Sarò ancora tuo amico, nonostante tutto. Ora sai quindi cosa aspettarti.”
La necessità di proseguire questo dialogo (la sua parte era molto lenta; la mia molto veloce) a bassa voce, affinché la casa non venisse disturbata in un’ora inopportuna, non migliorò certo il mio umore; anche se la mia passione stava cominciando a placarsi. Gli dissi semplicemente che mi aspettavo da lui ciò che avevo sempre atteso e di cui non ero mai stata delusa, poi aprii la porta e lo lasciai andare, come se fosse stato un grosso noce lì messo apposta per essere spezzato. E uscii dalla casa. Ma lui dormì anche fuori, nell’abitazione di sua madre; e prima ancora che avessi percorso centinaia di metri, mi raggiunse.
“Sai, Copperfield,” disse lui all’orecchio mio (non girai la testa), “ti trovi in una situazione davvero difficile”; e io pensavo che fosse vero, il che mi rendeva ancora più irritato. “Non puoi farne una questione di coraggio, e non puoi evitare di essere perdonato. Non intendo parlarne con tua madre, né con nessun’altra persona al mondo. Sono deciso a perdonarti. Ma mi chiedo davvero perché tu abbia alzato la mano contro una persona che sapevi essere così umile, ”
Mi sentivo soltanto un po’ meno malvagio di lui. Lui mi conosceva meglio di quanto io conoscessi me stesso. Se avesse ribattuto o si fosse apertamente infastidito, sarebbe stato un sollievo, e anche una giustificazione; ma invece mi ha messo su un lento “fuoco”, sul quale sono rimasto tormentato per metà della notte.
La mattina, quando uscii, la campana della chiesa suonava già; lui stava camminando avanti e indietro con sua madre. Mi parlò come se nulla fosse successo, e non potei fare altro che rispondergli. Immagino di averlo colpito abbastanza forte da fargli male ai denti. Comunque, il suo viso era coperto da un fazzoletto di seta nera; con il cappello posato sopra, il suo aspetto non era certo migliore. Ho sentito dire che lunedì mattina è andato dal dentista a Londra e si è fatto togliere un dente. Spero fosse un dente “doppio”.
Il Dottore fece capire che non si sentiva del tutto bene; rimaneva da solo, per gran parte della giornata, durante il resto della visita. Agnes e suo padre se n’erano andati da una settimana prima che riprendessimo il nostro solito lavoro. Il giorno precedente la ripresa, il Dottore mi diede personalmente un biglietto piegato, non sigillato. Era indirizzato a me; e in poche parole affettuose mi impose di non mai menzionare l’argomento di quella sera. L’avevo confidato solo alla mia zia, a nessun altro. Non era un argomento che potessi discutere con Agnes, e lei certamente non aveva la minima idea di ciò che era accaduto.
Neither, I felt convinced, had Mrs. Strong then. Several weeks elapsed before I saw the least change in her. It came on slowly, like a cloud when there is no wind. At first, she seemed to wonder at the gentle compassion with which the Doctor spoke to her, and at his wish that she should have her mother with her, to relieve the dull monotony of her life. Often, when we were at work, and she was sitting by, I would see her pausing and looking at him with that memorable face. Afterwards, I sometimes observed her rise, with her eyes full of tears, and go out of the room. Gradually, an unhappy shadow fell upon her beauty, and deepened every day. Mrs. Markleham was a regular inmate of the cottage then; but she talked and talked, and saw nothing.
As this change stole on Annie, once like sunshine in the Doctor’s house, the Doctor became older in appearance, and more grave; but the sweetness of his temper, the placid kindness of his manner, and his benevolent solicitude for her, if they were capable of any increase, were increased. I saw him once, early on the morning of her birthday, when she came to sit in the window while we were at work (which she had always done, but now began to do with a timid and uncertain air that I thought very touching), take her forehead between his hands, kiss it, and go hurriedly away, too much moved to remain. I saw her stand where he had left her, like a statue; and then bend down her head, and clasp her hands, and weep, I cannot say how sorrowfully.
Sometimes, after that, I fancied that she tried to speak even to me, in intervals when we were left alone. But she never uttered a word. The Doctor always had some new project for her participating in amusements away from home, with her mother; and Mrs. Markleham, who was very fond of amusements, and very easily dissatisfied with anything else, entered into them with great good-will, and was loud in her commendations. But Annie, in a spiritless unhappy way, only went whither she was led, and seemed to have no care for anything.
I did not know what to think. Neither did my aunt; who must have walked, at various times, a hundred miles in her uncertainty. What was strangest of all was, that the only real relief which seemed to make its way into the secret region of this domestic unhappiness, made its way there in the person of Mr. Dick.
What his thoughts were on the subject, or what his observation was, I am as unable to explain, as I dare say he would have been to assist me in the task. But, as I have recorded in the narrative of my school days, his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and there is a subtlety of perception in real attachment, even when it is borne towards man by one of the lower animals, which leaves the highest intellect behind. To this mind of the heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some bright ray of the truth shot straight.
He had proudly resumed his privilege, in many of his spare hours, of walking up and down the garden with the Doctor; as he had been accustomed to pace up and down The Doctor’s Walk at Canterbury. But matters were no sooner in this state, than he devoted all his spare time (and got up earlier to make it more) to these perambulations. If he had never been so happy as when the Doctor read that marvellous performance, the Dictionary, to him; he was now quite miserable unless the Doctor pulled it out of his pocket, and began. When the Doctor and I were engaged, he now fell into the custom of walking up and down with Mrs. Strong, and helping her to trim her favourite flowers, or weed the beds. I dare say he rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet interest, and his wistful face, found immediate response in both their breasts; each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and he became what no one else could be—a link between them.
When I think of him, with his impenetrably wise face, walking up and down with the Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard words in the Dictionary; when I think of him carrying huge watering-pots after Annie; kneeling down, in very paws of gloves, at patient microscopic work among the little leaves; expressing as no philosopher could have expressed, in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her friend; showering sympathy, trustfulness, and affection, out of every hole in the watering-pot; when I think of him never wandering in that better mind of his to which unhappiness addressed itself, never bringing the unfortunate King Charles into the garden, never wavering in his grateful service, never diverted from his knowledge that there was something wrong, or from his wish to set it right—I really feel almost ashamed of having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of the utmost I have done with mine.
‘Nobody but myself, Trot, knows what that man is!’ my aunt would proudly remark, when we conversed about it. ‘Dick will distinguish himself yet!’
I must refer to one other topic before I close this chapter. While the visit at the Doctor’s was still in progress, I observed that the postman brought two or three letters every morning for Uriah Heep, who remained at Highgate until the rest went back, it being a leisure time; and that these were always directed in a business-like manner by Mr. Micawber, who now assumed a round legal hand. I was glad to infer, from these slight premises, that Mr. Micawber was doing well; and consequently was much surprised to receive, about this time, the following letter from his amiable wife.
‘CANTERBURY, Monday Evening.
‘You will doubtless be surprised, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to receive this communication. Still more so, by its contents. Still more so, by the stipulation of implicit confidence which I beg to impose. But my feelings as a wife and mother require relief; and as I do not wish to consult my family (already obnoxious to the feelings of Mr. Micawber), I know no one of whom I can better ask advice than my friend and former lodger.
Né io, devo dire, ero convinto che la signora Strong lo fosse in quel momento. Trascorsero diverse settimane prima di notare il minimo cambiamento in lei. Il cambiamento arrivò lentamente, come una nuvola senza vento. All’inizio, sembrava meravigliarsi della gentile compassione con cui il dottore le parlava, e del suo desiderio che avesse sua madre accanto a sé per alleviare la monotonia della sua vita. Spesso, mentre noi lavoravamo e lei era seduta lì vicino, la vedevo fermarsi e guardarlo con quel volto indimenticabile. In seguito, talvolta la osservavo alzarsi, con gli occhi pieni di lacrime, e uscire dalla stanza. Gradualmente, un’ombra di tristezza calò sulla sua bellezza, approfondendosi giorno dopo giorno. A quel tempo, la signora Markleham era una frequentatrice abituale della capanna; ma parlava senza sosta, senza però accorgersi di nulla.
Mentre questo cambiamento si impadroniva di Annie, come un raggio di sole nella casa del Dottore, quest’ultimo iniziò ad apparire più anziano e più serio; tuttavia la dolcezza del suo carattere, la gentilezza tranquilla delle sue maniere e la sua premurosa attenzione verso di lei, se mai potevano aumentare, lo fecero davvero. Una volta, all’alba del suo compleanno, mentre noi eravamo al lavoro (cosa che lei faceva sempre, ma ora lo faceva con un atteggiamento timido e incerto che mi sembrò molto commovente), la vidi prendersi la fronte tra le mani, baciarla e allontanarsi in fretta, troppo commossa per rimanere lì. La vidi poi restare ferma nel punto in cui lui l’aveva lasciata, immobile come una statua; poi abbassò la testa, si strinse le mani e pianse, non so dire con quanta tristezza.
A volte, dopo quel momento, immaginavo che cercasse anche di parlarmi, nei momenti in cui rimanevamo soli. Ma non pronunciava mai una parola. Il Dottore aveva sempre qualche nuovo progetto per lei: partecipare a divertimenti lontano da casa, insieme a sua madre; e la signora Markleham, che amava molto i divertimenti e si annoiava facilmente di qualsiasi altra attività, vi prendeva parte con grande entusiasmo, esprimendo spesso il suo apprezzamento. Ma Annie, in modo apatico e scontento, seguiva semplicemente ciò che le veniva detto, senza mostrare alcun interesse per nulla.
Non sapevo cosa pensare. Nemmeno mia zia lo sapeva; che, nella sua incertezza, deve aver percorso centinaia di miglia in più occasioni. La cosa più strana di tutte era che l’unica vera consolazione che sembrava poter alleviare questa situazione di scontento familiare arrivava proprio attraverso la figura di Mr. Dick.
Quali fossero i suoi pensieri sull’argomento, o quale fosse la sua osservazione, non sono in grado di spiegarlo, proprio come dubito che lui stesso sarebbe stato in grado di aiutarmi in questa impresa. Tuttavia, come ho raccontato nel resoconto dei miei anni scolastici, il suo rispetto per il Dottore era senza limiti; e c’è una sottigliezza nella percezione che caratterizza un vero affetto, anche quando proviene da uno degli esseri più semplici, un “animale inferiore”, e supera persino l’intelligenza umana. In questo tipo di sentimento, se così posso chiamarlo, nel caso del signor Dick, brillò per un attimo una luce intensa della verità.
Aveva ripreso con orgoglio il privilegio, nei suoi molti momenti liberi, di passeggiare avanti e indietro nel giardino insieme al Dottore; era abituato a fare lo stesso lungo il “Dottor’s Walk” a Canterbury. Ma non appena le cose presero questa piega, dedicò tutto il suo tempo libero (e si alzava persino più presto per poterlo fare) a queste passeggiate. Se mai era stato così felice come quando il Dottore leggeva quel meraviglioso “Dizionario” per lui, ora era davvero miserabile, se il Dottore non lo tirava fuori dal taschino e iniziava a leggerlo. Quando io e il Dottore eravamo impegnati in altre cose, lui prendeva l’abitudine di passeggiare avanti e indietro con la signora Strong, aiutandola a curare i suoi fiori preferiti o a diserbare i vasi. Oserei dire che raramente pronunciava più di una dozzina di parole in un’ora. Ma il suo silenzioso interesse e il suo sguardo malinconico trovavano immediata risposta nel cuore di entrambi; entrambi sapevano che l’altro lo apprezzava, e che lui li amava entrambi. E così divenne qualcosa che nessun altro avrebbe potuto essere: un legame tra loro.
Quando penso a lui, con quel volto di saggezza impenetrabile, mentre camminava avanti e indietro insieme al Dottore, felice di essere “colpito” dalle dure parole del Dizionario; quando penso a lui che portava enormi vasi da annaffiare dietro ad Annie; quando lo vedo inginocchiarsi, con i guanti, impegnato in un lavoro microscopico tra le piccole foglie; quando vedo come, in tutto ciò che faceva, esprimesse, in modi che nessun filosofo avrebbe potuto eguagliare, un desiderio delicato e sincero di essere suo amico; quando penso a lui che riversava simpatia, fiducia e affetto da ogni angolo di quei vasi. Quando penso a lui, che non si perdeva mai in quel “migliore stato mentale” al quale si rivolgeva la sfortuna, che non portava mai il sfortunato Re Carlo in quel “giardino”, che non vacillava mai nel suo servizio grato, che non si allontanava mai dalla consapevolezza che qualcosa non andasse, né dal desiderio di rimediare. Davvero mi sento quasi in imbarazzo al pensiero che lui non fosse del tutto sano di mente, considerando tutto ciò che io stesso ho fatto con la mia.
“Nessuno tranne me, Trot, sa chi sia quell’uomo!” diceva mia zia con orgoglio ogni volta che ne parlavamo. “Dick si farà ancora notare!”
Devo menzionare un altro argomento prima di concludere questo capitolo. Mentre la visita dal Dottore era ancora in corso, notai che ogni mattina il postino portava due o tre lettere per Uriah Heep, il quale rimaneva a Highgate fino a quando gli altri se ne erano andati, poiché si trattava di un momento di tempo libero; inoltre, queste lettere venivano sempre indirizzate in modo professionale da parte di Mr. Micawber, che ormai assumeva un atteggiamento decisamente formale e legale. Fu con piacere che dedussi, partendo da questi piccoli indizi, che le cose andavano bene per Mr. Micawber; per questo motivo fui molto sorpreso quando, intorno a quell’epoca, ricevetti la seguente lettera dalla sua affabile moglie.
“CANTERBURY, lunedì sera.”
“Senza dubbio sarà sorpreso, caro signor Copperfield, di ricevere questa comunicazione. Ancora di più lo sarà per il suo contenuto. E ancora di più per la richiesta di riservatezza che lesto chiedo. Ma i miei sentimenti di moglie e madre richiedono un sfogo; e poiché non desidero consultare la mia famiglia (che già offende i sentimenti del signor Micawber), non conosco nessuno a cui potrei chiedere consiglio meglio che al mio amico e ex inquilino.”
‘You may be aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that between myself and Mr. Micawber (whom I will never desert), there has always been preserved a spirit of mutual confidence. Mr. Micawber may have occasionally given a bill without consulting me, or he may have misled me as to the period when that obligation would become due. This has actually happened. But, in general, Mr. Micawber has had no secrets from the bosom of affection—I allude to his wife—and has invariably, on our retirement to rest, recalled the events of the day.
‘You will picture to yourself, my dear Mr. Copperfield, what the poignancy of my feelings must be, when I inform you that Mr. Micawber is entirely changed. He is reserved. He is secret. His life is a mystery to the partner of his joys and sorrows—I again allude to his wife—and if I should assure you that beyond knowing that it is passed from morning to night at the office, I now know less of it than I do of the man in the south, connected with whose mouth the thoughtless children repeat an idle tale respecting cold plum porridge, I should adopt a popular fallacy to express an actual fact.
‘But this is not all. Mr. Micawber is morose. He is severe. He is estranged from our eldest son and daughter, he has no pride in his twins, he looks with an eye of coldness even on the unoffending stranger who last became a member of our circle. The pecuniary means of meeting our expenses, kept down to the utmost farthing, are obtained from him with great difficulty, and even under fearful threats that he will Settle himself (the exact expression); and he inexorably refuses to give any explanation whatever of this distracting policy.
‘This is hard to bear. This is heart-breaking. If you will advise me, knowing my feeble powers such as they are, how you think it will be best to exert them in a dilemma so unwonted, you will add another friendly obligation to the many you have already rendered me. With loves from the children, and a smile from the happily-unconscious stranger, I remain, dear Mr. Copperfield,
‘Your afflicted, ‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
I did not feel justified in giving a wife of Mrs. Micawber’s experience any other recommendation, than that she should try to reclaim Mr. Micawber by patience and kindness (as I knew she would in any case); but the letter set me thinking about him very much.
“Lei probabilmente sa, caro signor Copperfield, che tra me e il signor Micawber (che non abbandonerò mai) è sempre esistito uno spirito di reciproca fiducia. A volte il signor Micawber potrebbe aver emesso assegni senza consultarmi, o potrebbe avermi ingannato riguardo al termine entro cui quella obbligazione sarebbe scaduta. Questo è effettivamente accaduto. Ma in generale, il signor Micawber non ha mai tenuto segreti. Mi riferisco a sua moglie. E ogni volta che ci ritiravamo per riposare, ricordava sempre gli eventi della giornata.”
“Potete immaginare, caro signor Copperfield, quanto sia profonda la mia angoscia quando vi dico che il signor Micawber è completamente cambiato: è riservato, misterioso. La sua vita rappresenta un vero enigma per la persona che condivide i suoi momenti di gioia e dolore. Mi riferisco ancora a sua moglie. E se vi dicessi che, oltre al fatto che sappia che trascorre le giornate in ufficio, ora ne so meno di quanto ne sappia su quell’uomo del sud il cui nome vengono ripetuti da bambini senza pensarci, raccontando storie sciocche riguardo a una qualche zuppa di prugne, allora starei semplicemente commettendo un errore comune per esprimere un fatto reale.”
“Ma non è tutto. Il signor Micawber è cupo, severo; si è allontanato dal nostro figlio e dalla nostra figlia maggiore, non prova alcuna orgoglio per i suoi gemelli, e guarda con freddezza anche lo sconosciuto innocente che recentemente è entrato a far parte del nostro gruppo. I mezzi finanziari necessari per coprire le nostre spese, ridotti al minimo indispensabile, vengono ottenuti da lui con grande difficoltà, e persino sotto minacce terribili; inoltre, si rifiuta categoricamente di fornire qualsiasi spiegazione riguardo a questa sua politica così distrattiva.”
“È difficile da sopportare. È davvero straziante. Se voleste darmi un consiglio, considerando le mie deboli capacità, vi prego di dirmi quale sia il modo migliore per utilizzarle in una situazione così insolita. Aggiungereste così un altro gesto di gentilezza tra quelli molti che mi avete già dimostrato. Con l’amore dei bambini e un sorriso da parte di quella sconosciuta felicemente ignara di tutto, rimango. Caro signor Copperfield.”
“La tua sofferente, ‘EMMA MICAWBER.’”
Non ritenevo giusto fornire alla moglie di Mr. Micawber altre raccomandazioni, se non quella di cercare di riconquistarlo con pazienza e gentilezza (poiché sapevo che comunque lo avrebbe fatto); tuttavia, quella lettera mi fece riflettere molto su di lui.
CHAPTER 43. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
Once again, let me pause upon a memorable period of my life. Let me stand aside, to see the phantoms of those days go by me, accompanying the shadow of myself, in dim procession.
Weeks, months, seasons, pass along. They seem little more than a summer day and a winter evening. Now, the Common where I walk with Dora is all in bloom, a field of bright gold; and now the unseen heather lies in mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. In a breath, the river that flows through our Sunday walks is sparkling in the summer sun, is ruffled by the winter wind, or thickened with drifting heaps of ice. Faster than ever river ran towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and rolls away.
Not a thread changes, in the house of the two little bird-like ladies. The clock ticks over the fireplace, the weather-glass hangs in the hall. Neither clock nor weather-glass is ever right; but we believe in both, devoutly.
I have come legally to man’s estate. I have attained the dignity of twenty-one. But this is a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one. Let me think what I have achieved.
I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery. I make a respectable income by it. I am in high repute for my accomplishment in all pertaining to the art, and am joined with eleven others in reporting the debates in Parliament for a Morning Newspaper. Night after night, I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in words. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape. I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know the worth of political life. I am quite an Infidel about it, and shall never be converted.
My dear old Traddles has tried his hand at the same pursuit, but it is not in Traddles’s way. He is perfectly good-humoured respecting his failure, and reminds me that he always did consider himself slow. He has occasional employment on the same newspaper, in getting up the facts of dry subjects, to be written about and embellished by more fertile minds. He is called to the bar; and with admirable industry and self-denial has scraped another hundred pounds together, to fee a Conveyancer whose chambers he attends. A great deal of very hot port wine was consumed at his call; and, considering the figure, I should think the Inner Temple must have made a profit by it.
I have come out in another way. I have taken with fear and trembling to authorship. I wrote a little something, in secret, and sent it to a magazine, and it was published in the magazine. Since then, I have taken heart to write a good many trifling pieces. Now, I am regularly paid for them. Altogether, I am well off, when I tell my income on the fingers of my left hand, I pass the third finger and take in the fourth to the middle joint.
We have removed, from Buckingham Street, to a pleasant little cottage very near the one I looked at, when my enthusiasm first came on. My aunt, however (who has sold the house at Dover, to good advantage), is not going to remain here, but intends removing herself to a still more tiny cottage close at hand. What does this portend? My marriage? Yes!
Yes! I am going to be married to Dora! Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa have given their consent; and if ever canary birds were in a flutter, they are. Miss Lavinia, self-charged with the superintendence of my darling’s wardrobe, is constantly cutting out brown-paper cuirasses, and differing in opinion from a highly respectable young man, with a long bundle, and a yard measure under his arm. A dressmaker, always stabbed in the breast with a needle and thread, boards and lodges in the house; and seems to me, eating, drinking, or sleeping, never to take her thimble off. They make a lay-figure of my dear. They are always sending for her to come and try something on. We can’t be happy together for five minutes in the evening, but some intrusive female knocks at the door, and says, ‘Oh, if you please, Miss Dora, would you step upstairs!’
Miss Clarissa and my aunt roam all over London, to find out articles of furniture for Dora and me to look at. It would be better for them to buy the goods at once, without this ceremony of inspection; for, when we go to see a kitchen fender and meat-screen, Dora sees a Chinese house for Jip, with little bells on the top, and prefers that. And it takes a long time to accustom Jip to his new residence, after we have bought it; whenever he goes in or out, he makes all the little bells ring, and is horribly frightened.
Peggotty comes up to make herself useful, and falls to work immediately. Her department appears to be, to clean everything over and over again. She rubs everything that can be rubbed, until it shines, like her own honest forehead, with perpetual friction. And now it is, that I begin to see her solitary brother passing through the dark streets at night, and looking, as he goes, among the wandering faces. I never speak to him at such an hour. I know too well, as his grave figure passes onward, what he seeks, and what he dreads.
Why does Traddles look so important when he calls upon me this afternoon in the Commons—where I still occasionally attend, for form’s sake, when I have time? The realization of my boyish day-dreams is at hand. I am going to take out the licence.
It is a little document to do so much; and Traddles contemplates it, as it lies upon my desk, half in admiration, half in awe. There are the names, in the sweet old visionary connexion, David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow; and there, in the corner, is that Parental Institution, the Stamp Office, which is so benignantly interested in the various transactions of human life, looking down upon our Union; and there is the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a blessing on us in print, and doing it as cheap as could possibly be expected.
CAPITOLO 43. UN’ALTRA RIVISITAZIONE DEL PASSATO
Ancora una volta, lasciate che mi soffermi su un periodo indimenticabile della mia vita. Lasciate che mi metta da parte e osservi i fantasmi di quei giorni passarmi accanto, accompagnando l’ombra di me stesso in una processione fioca.
Settimane, mesi, stagioni passano. Sembrano poco più di una giornata d’estate o di una serata d’inverno. Ora, il prato dove cammino con Dora è tutto in fiore, un campo di oro brillante; mentre l’erica invisibile si trova sotto uno strato di neve. In un attimo, il fiume che scorre lungo i nostri sentieri risplende al sole d’estate, viene agitato dal vento d’inverno o si riempie di cumuli di ghiaccio. Più velocemente che mai, il fiume corre verso il mare. Luccica, scurisce e poi si allontana.
Nessun dettaglio cambia nella casa di quelle due giovani donne simili a uccellini.
L’orologio ticchetta sopra il caminetto, il barometro pende nell’ingresso.
Né l’orologio né il barometro sono mai precisi; ma li crediamo entrambi, con devozione.
Sono entrato legalmente in possesso dell’eredità di quell’uomo. Ho raggiunto la dignità dei ventuno anni. Ma si tratta di una sorta di dignità che può essere imposta a qualcuno contro la sua volontà. Lasciate che rifletta su ciò che ho realmente ottenuto.
Ho domato quel mistero stenografico selvaggio. Ne traggo un reddito considerevole. Sono molto stimato per le mie competenze in questo campo; insieme ad altri undici colleghi, redigo i resoconti delle discussioni parlamentari per un quotidiano mattutino. Notte dopo notte, registro previsioni che non si avverano mai, promesse che non vengono mantenute, spiegazioni destinate soltanto a creare confusione. Mi immergo completamente nelle parole. Britannia, quella sfortunata donna, è sempre davanti ai miei occhi: infilzata da cima a fondo dalle penne da stenografia, legata mani e piedi dalla burocrazia. Sono abbastanza vicino alle quinte per conoscere il vero valore della vita politica. Ne sono un vero “infedele”. E non mi convertirò mai.
Il mio caro vecchio Traddles ha provato anche lui a intraprendere la stessa attività, ma non è nel suo carattere. Accetta con ottimismo il proprio fallimento e mi ricorda sempre di essere considerato una persona lenta. Ogni tanto trova lavoro nello stesso giornale, dove si occupa di raccogliere informazioni su argomenti noiosi, per poi farle scrivere e arricchire da menti più creative. Ha iniziato anche a praticare la legge; con grande impegno e sacrificio personale è riuscito a risparmiare altre cento sterline, sufficienti a pagare un avvocato presso il quale lavora. Durante le sue attività professionali veniva consumato molto vino di Porto. E, considerando la quantità, direi che l’Inner Temple abbia sicuramente tratto profitto da tutto ciò.
Sono entrato nel mondo della scrittura in un modo diverso. Ho affrontato l’attività di autore con paura e tremore; ho scritto qualcosa di piccolo, in segreto, e l’ho inviato a una rivista, che poi lo ha pubblicato. Da allora, ho preso coraggio e ho scritto molti altri pezzi, anche se di poco conto. Ora vengo regolarmente pagato per essi. In definitiva, me la cavo bene; quando elenco i miei guadagni, passo il terzo dito della mano sinistra e prendo il quarto fino alla giuntura centrale.
Abbiamo traslocato da Buckingham Street in una graziosa casetta, molto vicina a quella che avevo visto quando per la prima volta provai entusiasmo per quell’idea. Tuttavia mia zia (che ha venduto la casa a Dover con ottimi risultati) non intende rimanere qui, ma si trasferirà in una casetta ancora più piccola, situata nelle vicinanze. Cosa significa tutto questo? Il mio matrimonio? Sì!
Sì! Sposerò Dora! La signorina Lavinia e la signorina Clarissa hanno dato il loro consenso; e se mai ci fossero canarini in preda all’agitazione, beh, lo sono sicuramente. La signorina Lavinia, incaricata della gestione dell’abbigliamento di mia cara, non smette mai di creare protettori realizzati con carta marrone, e spesso ha opinioni diverse da quelle di un giovane molto rispettabile, che, sotto il braccio, porta sempre con sé una lunga fune e un metro. C’è anche una sarta, che sembra essere sempre pungolata da aghi e filo, soggiorna nella nostra casa e, a mio parere, non si toglie mai l’anello dal dito mentre mangia, beve o dorme. Creano continuamente modelli per il vestito di mia cara. Non riusciamo nemmeno a stare insieme felici per cinque minuti la sera, che qualcuna bussa alla porta e dice: “Oh, per favore, signorina Dora, potrebbe salire un attimo?”
Miss Clarissa e mia zia vanno in giro per tutta Londra alla ricerca di mobili che Dora e io possiamo esaminare. Sarebbe meglio se li comprassero subito, senza tutte queste procedure di ispezione; infatti, quando andiamo a vedere un paravento da cucina o una griglia per la carne, Dora immagina invece una casa cinese per Jip, con piccoli campanelli in cima. E le ci vuole molto tempo per abituare Jip alla sua nuova dimora, dopo che l’abbiamo comprata: ogni volta che entra o esce, fa suonare tutti quei piccoli campanelli e si spaventa terribilmente.
Peggotty si avvicina per essere d’aiuto e subito inizia a lavorare. Sembra che il suo compito sia pulire tutto, ancora e ancora. Lava ogni superficie possibile fino a farla brillare, proprio come la sua stessa fronte onesta, frizionata costantemente. Ora comincio a vederla: di notte, suo fratello solitario attraversa le strade buie, guardando intorno tra i volti erranti. In un momento del genere non gli parlo mai. So troppo bene, mentre la sua figura grave prosegue per la sua strada, cosa cerca e cosa teme.
Perché Traddles sembra così importante quando mi chiama questo pomeriggio alla Camera dei Comuni, dove ancora occasionalmente vado, per pura forma, quando ho tempo? La realizzazione dei miei sogni d’infanzia è finalmente vicina. Prenderò quella licenza.
È un documento così semplice eppure capace di tanto; Traddles lo osserva, mentre giace sulla mia scrivania: metà ammirato, metà intimidito. Ci sono i nomi, collegati in quel modo dolce e antico: David Copperfield e Dora Spenlow. E lì, nell’angolo, c’è quell’istituzione “parentale”, l’Ufficio Postale, che si interessa con tanta benevolenza alle varie transazioni della vita umana; guarda giù verso la nostra Unione. E c’è anche l’Arcivescovo di Canterbury che ci invoca una benedizione, e lo fa in modo estremamente economico, come si potrebbe aspettarsi.
Nevertheless, I am in a dream, a flustered, happy, hurried dream. I can’t believe that it is going to be; and yet I can’t believe but that everyone I pass in the street, must have some kind of perception, that I am to be married the day after tomorrow. The Surrogate knows me, when I go down to be sworn; and disposes of me easily, as if there were a Masonic understanding between us. Traddles is not at all wanted, but is in attendance as my general backer.
‘I hope the next time you come here, my dear fellow,’ I say to Traddles, ‘it will be on the same errand for yourself. And I hope it will be soon.’
‘Thank you for your good wishes, my dear Copperfield,’ he replies. ‘I hope so too. It’s a satisfaction to know that she’ll wait for me any length of time, and that she really is the dearest girl—’
‘When are you to meet her at the coach?’ I ask.
‘At seven,’ says Traddles, looking at his plain old silver watch—the very watch he once took a wheel out of, at school, to make a water-mill. ‘That is about Miss Wickfield’s time, is it not?’
‘A little earlier. Her time is half past eight.’ ‘I assure you, my dear boy,’ says Traddles, ‘I am almost as pleased as if I were going to be married myself, to think that this event is coming to such a happy termination. And really the great friendship and consideration of personally associating Sophy with the joyful occasion, and inviting her to be a bridesmaid in conjunction with Miss Wickfield, demands my warmest thanks. I am extremely sensible of it.’
I hear him, and shake hands with him; and we talk, and walk, and dine, and so on; but I don’t believe it. Nothing is real.
Sophy arrives at the house of Dora’s aunts, in due course. She has the most agreeable of faces,—not absolutely beautiful, but extraordinarily pleasant,—and is one of the most genial, unaffected, frank, engaging creatures I have ever seen. Traddles presents her to us with great pride; and rubs his hands for ten minutes by the clock, with every individual hair upon his head standing on tiptoe, when I congratulate him in a corner on his choice.
I have brought Agnes from the Canterbury coach, and her cheerful and beautiful face is among us for the second time. Agnes has a great liking for Traddles, and it is capital to see them meet, and to observe the glory of Traddles as he commends the dearest girl in the world to her acquaintance.
Still I don’t believe it. We have a delightful evening, and are supremely happy; but I don’t believe it yet. I can’t collect myself. I can’t check off my happiness as it takes place. I feel in a misty and unsettled kind of state; as if I had got up very early in the morning a week or two ago, and had never been to bed since. I can’t make out when yesterday was. I seem to have been carrying the licence about, in my pocket, many months.
Next day, too, when we all go in a flock to see the house—our house—Dora’s and mine—I am quite unable to regard myself as its master. I seem to be there, by permission of somebody else. I half expect the real master to come home presently, and say he is glad to see me. Such a beautiful little house as it is, with everything so bright and new; with the flowers on the carpets looking as if freshly gathered, and the green leaves on the paper as if they had just come out; with the spotless muslin curtains, and the blushing rose-coloured furniture, and Dora’s garden hat with the blue ribbon—do I remember, now, how I loved her in such another hat when I first knew her!—already hanging on its little peg; the guitar-case quite at home on its heels in a corner; and everybody tumbling over Jip’s pagoda, which is much too big for the establishment. Another happy evening, quite as unreal as all the rest of it, and I steal into the usual room before going away. Dora is not there. I suppose they have not done trying on yet. Miss Lavinia peeps in, and tells me mysteriously that she will not be long. She is rather long, notwithstanding; but by and by I hear a rustling at the door, and someone taps.
I say, ‘Come in!’ but someone taps again.
I go to the door, wondering who it is; there, I meet a pair of bright eyes, and a blushing face; they are Dora’s eyes and face, and Miss Lavinia has dressed her in tomorrow’s dress, bonnet and all, for me to see. I take my little wife to my heart; and Miss Lavinia gives a little scream because I tumble the bonnet, and Dora laughs and cries at once, because I am so pleased; and I believe it less than ever.
‘Do you think it pretty, Doady?’ says Dora.
Pretty! I should rather think I did.
‘And are you sure you like me very much?’ says Dora.
The topic is fraught with such danger to the bonnet, that Miss Lavinia gives another little scream, and begs me to understand that Dora is only to be looked at, and on no account to be touched. So Dora stands in a delightful state of confusion for a minute or two, to be admired; and then takes off her bonnet—looking so natural without it!—and runs away with it in her hand; and comes dancing down again in her own familiar dress, and asks Jip if I have got a beautiful little wife, and whether he’ll forgive her for being married, and kneels down to make him stand upon the cookery-book, for the last time in her single life.
I go home, more incredulous than ever, to a lodging that I have hard by; and get up very early in the morning, to ride to the Highgate road and fetch my aunt.
I have never seen my aunt in such state. She is dressed in lavender-coloured silk, and has a white bonnet on, and is amazing. Janet has dressed her, and is there to look at me. Peggotty is ready to go to church, intending to behold the ceremony from the gallery. Mr. Dick, who is to give my darling to me at the altar, has had his hair curled. Traddles, whom I have taken up by appointment at the turnpike, presents a dazzling combination of cream colour and light blue; and both he and Mr. Dick have a general effect about them of being all gloves.
Tuttavia, mi trovo in un sogno, un sogno confuso, felice e affrettato. Non riesco a credere che tutto ciò stia davvero per accadere; eppure non posso fare a meno di pensare che tutte le persone che incontro per strada debbano aver qualche indizio del fatto che mi sposerò domani. La “surrogata” mi conosce bene, quando vado a firmare i documenti legali; si occupa di me con facilità, come se esistesse un’intesa segreta tra noi. Traddles non è affatto necessario, ma partecipa alla cerimonia in qualità di mio “sostenitore principale”.
“Spero che la prossima volta che verrai qui, caro amico,” dico a Traddles, “sarà per lo stesso motivo. E spero che accada presto.”
“Grazie per i tuoi buoni desideri, mio caro Copperfield,” risponde. “Anch’io lo spero. È una grande consolazione sapere che mi aspetterà per qualsiasi periodo di tempo e che davvero è la ragazza più cara, ”
“Quando la incontrerai alla stazione?” chiedo.
“Alle sette,” disse Traddles, guardando il suo vecchio orologio d’argento semplice, lo stesso orologio da cui una volta, a scuola, aveva rimosso un ingranaggio per costruire un mulino ad acqua. “Quella è più o meno l’ora in cui arriva la signorina Wickfield, vero?”
“Un po’ prima. Il suo orario è le otto e mezza.” “Te lo assicuro, mio caro ragazzo,” disse Traddles, “sono quasi altrettanto felice come se fossi io stesso a sposarmi, al pensiero che questa vicenda abbia una conclusione così felice. E davvero, la grande amicizia e la considerazione dimostrata nel voler coinvolgere personalmente Sophy in questa gioiosa occasione, invitandola ad essere damigella d’onore insieme a Miss Wickfield, meritano le mie più calde ringraziamenti. Ne sono profondamente grato.”
Lo sento, gli stringo la mano; parliamo, camminiamo, mangiamo insieme, e così via, ma non ci credo. Niente di tutto questo è reale.
Sophy arriva, dopo un po’, nella casa delle zie di Dora. Ha il viso più piacevole che si possa immaginare: non assolutamente bellissimo, ma straordinariamente attraente; è anche una delle persone più gentili, sincere e affascinanti che abbia mai incontrato. Traddles ce la presenta con grande orgoglio; e per dieci minuti consecutive si strofina le mani davanti all’orologio, con ogni singola ciocca di capelli dritta in piedi, quando gli faccio i complimenti per la sua scelta.
Ho portato Agnes dal treno di Canterbury; il suo viso allegro e bellissimo è tra noi per la seconda volta. Agnes ha una grande simpatia per Traddles, ed è davvero meraviglioso vederli incontrarsi e osservare l’emozione di Traddles quando presenta alla sua conoscente la ragazza più cara del mondo.
Ancora non ci credo. Stiamo trascorrendo una serata deliziosa e siamo estremamente felici; ma ancora non ci credo. Non riesco a calmarmi, non riesco ad accettare questa felicità che sta avvenendo davanti ai miei occhi. Mi sento in uno stato confuso e agitato, come se fossi sveglio da molto tempo, una settimana o due fa, e non fossi mai andato a letto da allora. Non riesco nemmeno a ricordare quando è stata ieri. Sembra che porti con me questo “certificato” nella mia tasca da molti mesi ormai.
Anche il giorno dopo, quando tutti andiamo insieme a vedere quella casa – la nostra casa, quella di Dora e mia – non riesco proprio a considerarmi il suo padrone. Sembra che io ci sia lì soltanto con il permesso di qualcun altro. Spero quasi che il vero proprietario arrivi da un momento all’altro e dica di essere felice di vedermi. Che bella, piccola casa: tutto è così luminoso e nuovo; i fiori sui tappeti sembrano appena raccolti, le foglie verdi sulle pareti come se fossero appena spuntate; le tende di mussola sono immacolate, i mobili di colore rosa brillante. E il cappello da giardino di Dora, con la sciarpa blu. Ricordo ancora quanto mi piacesse quando l’ho conosciuta per la prima volta. Il violino è già al suo posto, nell’angolo; e tutti giocano con quella pagoda di Jip, che è decisamente troppo grande per quel luogo. Un altro sereno pomeriggio, altrettanto irreale come tutti gli altri. Mi intrufolo nella solita stanza prima di andarmene. Dora non c’è. Immagino che non abbiano ancora iniziato a provarsi i vestiti. La signorina Lavinia entra e mi dice misteriosamente che arriverà presto. In realtà, ci mette un po’. Ma alla fine sento un fruscio alla porta. Qualcuno bussa.
Dico: “Entra!”, ma qualcuno bussa di nuovo.
Vado alla porta chiedendomi chi possa essere; lì incontro due occhi luminosi e un viso arrossito: sono gli occhi e il viso di Dora, e la signorina Lavinia l’ha vestita con l’abito di domani, cappello compreso, affinché io lo potessi vedere. Stringo mia moglie al mio cuore; e la signorina Lavinia emette un piccolo grido perché faccio cadere il cappello. Dora ride e piange allo stesso tempo, perché sono così felice. E io ci credo ancora meno che mai.
“Pensi che sia bella, Doady?” chiede Dora.
Carina! Direi proprio di sì.
“E sei sicura che ti piaccio davvero molto?” chiede Dora.
L’argomento presenta molti pericoli per il cappello; così la signorina Lavinia grida di nuovo e mi supplica di capire che Dora può essere solo ammirata, ma assolutamente non toccata. Così Dora rimane per un minuto o due in uno stato di deliziosa confusione, adatta all’ammirazione; poi si toglie il cappello – sembra così naturale senza di esso! – e scappa via con esso in mano; poi torna danzando, indossando di nuovo i suoi vestiti abituali, e chiede a Jip se ho una bella mogliettina, e se gli perdonerà il fatto che si sia sposata. Si inginocchia anche, per farlo salire sul libro di cucina, l’ultima volta nella sua vita da single.
Torno a casa, più incredulo che mai, in una locanda che si trova vicino a casa mia; mi alzo molto presto la mattina per recarmi sulla strada di Highgate e prendere mia zia.
Non ho mai visto mia zia in tale stato. È vestita di seta color lavanda, indossa un cappello bianco ed è davvero straordinaria. Janet l’ha aiutata ad abbigliarsi e ora è lì a guardarmi. Peggotty è pronta per andare in chiesa, intenzionata a assistere alla cerimonia dalla galleria. Il signor Dick, che dovrà consegnarmi la mia cara all’altare, ha i capelli arricciati. Traddles, che ho incontrato come previsto al bivio, presenta un abbigliamento davvero affascinante: un mix di colore crema e blu chiaro; sia lui che il signor Dick hanno l’aspetto, beh, come se fossero vestiti interamente con guanti.
No doubt I see this, because I know it is so; but I am astray, and seem to see nothing. Nor do I believe anything whatever. Still, as we drive along in an open carriage, this fairy marriage is real enough to fill me with a sort of wondering pity for the unfortunate people who have no part in it, but are sweeping out the shops, and going to their daily occupations.
My aunt sits with my hand in hers all the way. When we stop a little way short of the church, to put down Peggotty, whom we have brought on the box, she gives it a squeeze, and me a kiss.
‘God bless you, Trot! My own boy never could be dearer. I think of poor dear Baby this morning.’ ‘So do I. And of all I owe to you, dear aunt.’
‘Tut, child!’ says my aunt; and gives her hand in overflowing cordiality to Traddles, who then gives his to Mr. Dick, who then gives his to me, who then gives mine to Traddles, and then we come to the church door.
The church is calm enough, I am sure; but it might be a steam-power loom in full action, for any sedative effect it has on me. I am too far gone for that.
The rest is all a more or less incoherent dream.
A dream of their coming in with Dora; of the pew-opener arranging us, like a drill-sergeant, before the altar rails; of my wondering, even then, why pew-openers must always be the most disagreeable females procurable, and whether there is any religious dread of a disastrous infection of good-humour which renders it indispensable to set those vessels of vinegar upon the road to Heaven.
Of the clergyman and clerk appearing; of a few boatmen and some other people strolling in; of an ancient mariner behind me, strongly flavouring the church with rum; of the service beginning in a deep voice, and our all being very attentive.
Of Miss Lavinia, who acts as a semi-auxiliary bridesmaid, being the first to cry, and of her doing homage (as I take it) to the memory of Pidger, in sobs; of Miss Clarissa applying a smelling-bottle; of Agnes taking care of Dora; of my aunt endeavouring to represent herself as a model of sternness, with tears rolling down her face; of little Dora trembling very much, and making her responses in faint whispers.
Of our kneeling down together, side by side; of Dora’s trembling less and less, but always clasping Agnes by the hand; of the service being got through, quietly and gravely; of our all looking at each other in an April state of smiles and tears, when it is over; of my young wife being hysterical in the vestry, and crying for her poor papa, her dear papa.
Of her soon cheering up again, and our signing the register all round. Of my going into the gallery for Peggotty to bring her to sign it; of Peggotty’s hugging me in a corner, and telling me she saw my own dear mother married; of its being over, and our going away.
Of my walking so proudly and lovingly down the aisle with my sweet wife upon my arm, through a mist of half-seen people, pulpits, monuments, pews, fonts, organs, and church windows, in which there flutter faint airs of association with my childish church at home, so long ago.
Of their whispering, as we pass, what a youthful couple we are, and what a pretty little wife she is. Of our all being so merry and talkative in the carriage going back. Of Sophy telling us that when she saw Traddles (whom I had entrusted with the licence) asked for it, she almost fainted, having been convinced that he would contrive to lose it, or to have his pocket picked. Of Agnes laughing gaily; and of Dora being so fond of Agnes that she will not be separated from her, but still keeps her hand.
Of there being a breakfast, with abundance of things, pretty and substantial, to eat and drink, whereof I partake, as I should do in any other dream, without the least perception of their flavour; eating and drinking, as I may say, nothing but love and marriage, and no more believing in the viands than in anything else.
Of my making a speech in the same dreamy fashion, without having an idea of what I want to say, beyond such as may be comprehended in the full conviction that I haven’t said it. Of our being very sociably and simply happy (always in a dream though); and of Jip’s having wedding cake, and its not agreeing with him afterwards.
Of the pair of hired post-horses being ready, and of Dora’s going away to change her dress. Of my aunt and Miss Clarissa remaining with us; and our walking in the garden; and my aunt, who has made quite a speech at breakfast touching Dora’s aunts, being mightily amused with herself, but a little proud of it too.
Of Dora’s being ready, and of Miss Lavinia’s hovering about her, loth to lose the pretty toy that has given her so much pleasant occupation. Of Dora’s making a long series of surprised discoveries that she has forgotten all sorts of little things; and of everybody’s running everywhere to fetch them.
Of their all closing about Dora, when at last she begins to say good-bye, looking, with their bright colours and ribbons, like a bed of flowers. Of my darling being almost smothered among the flowers, and coming out, laughing and crying both together, to my jealous arms.
Of my wanting to carry Jip (who is to go along with us), and Dora’s saying no, that she must carry him, or else he’ll think she don’t like him any more, now she is married, and will break his heart. Of our going, arm in arm, and Dora stopping and looking back, and saying, ‘If I have ever been cross or ungrateful to anybody, don’t remember it!’ and bursting into tears.
Of her waving her little hand, and our going away once more. Of her once more stopping, and looking back, and hurrying to Agnes, and giving Agnes, above all the others, her last kisses and farewells.
We drive away together, and I awake from the dream. I believe it at last. It is my dear, dear, little wife beside me, whom I love so well!
‘Are you happy now, you foolish boy?’ says Dora, ‘and sure you don’t repent?’
I have stood aside to see the phantoms of those days go by me. They are gone, and I resume the journey of my story.
Non ho alcun dubbio al riguardo, perché so che è così; ma sono perso nella confusione e sembra che non veda nulla. Non credo nemmeno in nulla. Tuttavia, mentre viaggiamo in una carrozza scoperta, questo strano matrimonio appare abbastanza reale da suscitare in me un sentimento di compassione per quelle sfortunate persone che non ne fanno parte e che, invece, devono pulire le strade e dedicarsi alle loro occupazioni quotidiane.
Mia zia tiene sempre la mia mano nella sua durante tutto il percorso. Quando ci fermiamo un po’ prima della chiesa, per mettere giù Peggotty che abbiamo portato su una scatola, lei stringe la mia mano e mi dà un bacio.
“Dio ti benedica, Trot! Mio figlio non potrebbe mai essere più caro di te. Stamattina penso spesso a povera cara Baby.” “Anch’io. E a tutto ciò che devo a te, cara zia.”
“Tut, bambino!” dice mia zia; e pone la sua mano con grande cordialità a quella di Traddles, che poi la dà a Mr. Dick, il quale la dà a me, io la do a Traddles, e infine arriviamo alla porta della chiesa.
La chiesa è abbastanza tranquilla, ne sono sicuro. Ma potrebbe anche essere una macchina da tessere a vapore in pieno funzionamento; comunque, ha su di me un effetto calmante. Tuttavia, ormai sono troppo lontano da qualsiasi forma di normalità.
Il resto è tutto un sogno più o meno incoerente.
Un sogno in cui arrivavano insieme a Dora; di come il responsabile delle panche ci sistemasse, come un sergente istruttore, davanti alle barriere dell’altare; e di come io mi chiedessi, anche allora, perché proprio quelle donne debbano essere sempre le più sgradevoli tra tutte, e se esista qualche timore religioso riguardo al rischio che una “infezione” negativa possa rovinare il buon umore, rendendo quindi indispensabile l’uso di quei “vasi di aceto” lungo la Roadstrada verso il Cielo”.
Del prete e del chierico che erano presenti; di alcuni barcaioli e altre persone che passeggiavano lì intorno; di un vecchio marinaio dietro di me, che diffondeva nell’aria l’aroma forte del rum. Del servizio religioso che iniziò con una voce profonda, e di noi tutti che ascoltavamo con grande attenzione.
Di Miss Lavinia, che agisce come damigella d’onore ausiliaria e fu la prima a piangere, e di come, tra i singhiozzi, rendesse omaggio alla memoria di Pidger; di Miss Clarissa che le applicò un flacone profumato; di Agnes che si prendeva cura di Dora; di mia zia che cercava di apparire esempio di severità, con le lacrime che le scorrevano lungo il viso; e di piccola Dora, che tremava molto e rispondeva a bassa voce.
Del nostro inginocchiarci insieme, uno accanto all’altro; del tremore di Dora che diminuiva sempre di più, ma che continuava a tenere la mano di Agnes; della cerimonia che si svolgeva in silenzio e con solennità; di noi tutti che ci guardavamo l’un l’altro con sorrisi e lacrime nel cuore, al termine della cerimonia; della mia giovane moglie che, nella sacrestia, scoppiò in isteria piangendo per il suo povero papà, il suo caro papà.
Del suo rallegrarsi di nuovo poco dopo, e del fatto che abbiamo firmato tutti il registro insieme. Del mio entrare nella galleria affinché Peggotty potesse venire a firmarlo; di Peggotty che mi ha abbracciata in un angolo e mi ha detto di aver visto mia madre sposarsi. Di come tutto sia finito e di come siamo andati via.
Mentre camminavo con tanta fierezza e affetto lungo la navata, tenendo mia moglie dolce al mio braccio, attraverso una nebbia di persone a metà visibili, pulpiti, monumenti, banchi, fonti battesimali, organi e vetrate della chiesa, in quelle vetrate fluttuavano deboli ricordi legati alla mia chiesetta d’infanzia, lì a casa, tanto tempo fa.
Del loro sussurro, mentre passavamo. Che giovane coppia siamo, e che bella piccola moglie lei è. Di quanto fossimo tutti felici e chiacchieroni nel viaggio di ritorno in carrozza. Di come Sophie ci abbia detto che, quando ha visto Traddles (a cui avevo affidato il permesso) chiederlo, quasi sveniva, convinta che avrebbe cercato di perderlo o che glielo avrebbero rubato. Di Agnes che rideva felicemente. E di Dora, che amava così tanto Agnes da non voler essere separata da lei e continuava a tenere la sua mano.
Che ci fosse una colazione, con abbondanza di cibi e bevande belle e sostanziose, di cui partecipavo, proprio come avrei fatto in qualsiasi altro sogno, senza percepire minimamente il loro sapore; mangiando e bevendo, per così dire, soltanto amore e matrimonio, senza credere affatto in quei cibi più di quanto credessi in qualsiasi altra cosa.
Del fatto che io tenessi un discorso nello stesso modo sognante, senza avere la minima idea di ciò che volessi dire, se non cose che potessero essere comprese dalla piena convinzione che in realtà non lo avessi detto. Del fatto che fossimo molto felici, in modo semplice e sociale (sempre, però, in un sogno); e del fatto che a Jip fosse stata preparata una torta nuziale, ma che in seguito non gli andasse affatto bene.
Dei due cavalli da posta noleggiati che erano pronti, e di Dora che andava a cambiarsi d’abito. Di mia zia e della signorina Clarissa che rimanevano con noi; e del nostro passeggiata nel giardino; e di mia zia, che aveva tenuto un lungo discorso a colazione riguardo alle zie di Dora, divertendosi molto di se stessa, ma anche un po’ orgogliosa di esserselo cavata bene.
Del fatto che Dora fosse pronta, e di come la signorina Lavinia le stesse sempre intorno, riluttante a perdere quel grazioso “giocattolo” che le forniva così tante distrazioni piacevoli. Del fatto che Dora facesse una lunga serie di scoperte sorprendenti, rendendosi conto di aver dimenticato un sacco di piccole cose; e di come tutti corressero in giro per recuperarle.
Tutti loro si radunavano intorno a Dora; quando finalmente iniziò a dire addio, sembrava un letto di fiori con i suoi colori vivaci e le sue nastri. La mia adorata era quasi soffocata tra quei fiori, ma poi uscì, ridendo e piangendo insieme, per gettarsi tra le mie braccia gelose.
Del mio desiderio di portare Jip con noi, e del rifiuto di Dora, che insisteva nel volerlo portare lei stessa, altrimenti lui avrebbe pensato che non lo amasse più, ora che era sposata. E poi di come ci siamo mossi, mano nella mano, mentre Dora si è fermata e si è girata indietro, dicendo: “Se mai sono stata crudele o ingrata con qualcuno, per favore non ricordatelo, ” e ha scoppiato in lacrime.
Del suo salutare con la manina, e del nostro ripartire ancora una volta. Del fatto che si fermò di nuovo, si girò indietro, corse da Agnes e le diede, più di tutte le altre, i suoi ultimi baci e addii.
Partiamo insieme in macchina, e io mi risveglio da quel sogno. Finalmente ci credo: è la mia adorata, piccola moglie al mio fianco, che amo così tanto!
“Ora sei felice, ragazzo sciocco? E davvero non ti penti?” dice Dora.
Mi sono tenuto in disparte per osservare i fantasmi di quei giorni passarmi accanto. Ora se ne sono andati, e riprendo il viaggio della mia storia.
CHAPTER 44. OUR HOUSEKEEPING
It was a strange condition of things, the honeymoon being over, and the bridesmaids gone home, when I found myself sitting down in my own small house with Dora; quite thrown out of employment, as I may say, in respect of the delicious old occupation of making love.
It seemed such an extraordinary thing to have Dora always there. It was so unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have to write to her, not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her. Sometimes of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it was that there we were, alone together as a matter of course—nobody’s business any more—all the romance of our engagement put away upon a shelf, to rust—no one to please but one another—one another to please, for life.
When there was a debate, and I was kept out very late, it seemed so strange to me, as I was walking home, to think that Dora was at home! It was such a wonderful thing, at first, to have her coming softly down to talk to me as I ate my supper. It was such a stupendous thing to know for certain that she put her hair in papers. It was altogether such an astonishing event to see her do it!
I doubt whether two young birds could have known less about keeping house, than I and my pretty Dora did. We had a servant, of course. She kept house for us. I have still a latent belief that she must have been Mrs. Crupp’s daughter in disguise, we had such an awful time of it with Mary Anne.
Her name was Paragon. Her nature was represented to us, when we engaged her, as being feebly expressed in her name. She had a written character, as large as a proclamation; and, according to this document, could do everything of a domestic nature that ever I heard of, and a great many things that I never did hear of. She was a woman in the prime of life; of a severe countenance; and subject (particularly in the arms) to a sort of perpetual measles or fiery rash. She had a cousin in the Life-Guards, with such long legs that he looked like the afternoon shadow of somebody else. His shell-jacket was as much too little for him as he was too big for the premises. He made the cottage smaller than it need have been, by being so very much out of proportion to it. Besides which, the walls were not thick, and, whenever he passed the evening at our house, we always knew of it by hearing one continual growl in the kitchen.
Our treasure was warranted sober and honest. I am therefore willing to believe that she was in a fit when we found her under the boiler; and that the deficient tea-spoons were attributable to the dustman.
But she preyed upon our minds dreadfully. We felt our inexperience, and were unable to help ourselves. We should have been at her mercy, if she had had any; but she was a remorseless woman, and had none. She was the cause of our first little quarrel.
‘My dearest life,’ I said one day to Dora, ‘do you think Mary Anne has any idea of time?’
‘Why, Doady?’ inquired Dora, looking up, innocently, from her drawing.
‘My love, because it’s five, and we were to have dined at four.’
Dora glanced wistfully at the clock, and hinted that she thought it was too fast.
‘On the contrary, my love,’ said I, referring to my watch, ‘it’s a few minutes too slow.’
My little wife came and sat upon my knee, to coax me to be quiet, and drew a line with her pencil down the middle of my nose; but I couldn’t dine off that, though it was very agreeable.
‘Don’t you think, my dear,’ said I, ‘it would be better for you to remonstrate with Mary Anne?’
‘Oh no, please! I couldn’t, Doady!’ said Dora.
‘Why not, my love?’ I gently asked.
‘Oh, because I am such a little goose,’ said Dora, ‘and she knows I am!’
I thought this sentiment so incompatible with the establishment of any system of check on Mary Anne, that I frowned a little.
‘Oh, what ugly wrinkles in my bad boy’s forehead!’ said Dora, and still being on my knee, she traced them with her pencil; putting it to her rosy lips to make it mark blacker, and working at my forehead with a quaint little mockery of being industrious, that quite delighted me in spite of myself.
‘There’s a good child,’ said Dora, ‘it makes its face so much prettier to laugh.’ ‘But, my love,’ said I.
‘No, no! please!’ cried Dora, with a kiss, ‘don’t be a naughty Blue Beard! Don’t be serious!’
‘My precious wife,’ said I, ‘we must be serious sometimes. Come! Sit down on this chair, close beside me! Give me the pencil! There! Now let us talk sensibly. You know, dear’; what a little hand it was to hold, and what a tiny wedding-ring it was to see! ‘You know, my love, it is not exactly comfortable to have to go out without one’s dinner. Now, is it?’
‘N-n-no!’ replied Dora, faintly.
‘My love, how you tremble!’
‘Because I KNOW you’re going to scold me,’ exclaimed Dora, in a piteous voice.
‘My sweet, I am only going to reason.’
‘Oh, but reasoning is worse than scolding!’ exclaimed Dora, in despair. ‘I didn’t marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!’
I tried to pacify Dora, but she turned away her face, and shook her curls from side to side, and said, ‘You cruel, cruel boy!’ so many times, that I really did not exactly know what to do: so I took a few turns up and down the room in my uncertainty, and came back again.
‘Dora, my darling!’
‘No, I am not your darling. Because you must be sorry that you married me, or else you wouldn’t reason with me!’ returned Dora.
I felt so injured by the inconsequential nature of this charge, that it gave me courage to be grave.
CAPITOLO 44. LA NOSTRA GESTION DOMESTICA
Era una strana situazione: la luna di miele era finita e le damigelle d’onore erano tornate a casa, quando mi ritrovai seduta nella mia piccola casa con Dora; in un certo senso, ero senza lavoro, visto che non potevo più dedicarmi a quella deliziosa e vecchia attività di, fare l’amore.
Sembrava davvero qualcosa di straordinario avere Dora sempre lì con me. Era così bello non dover uscire per vederla, non avere alcuna ragione per tormentarmi a causa sua, non doverle scrivere, non dover inventare scuse per passare del tempo da soli. A volte, la sera, quando alzavo lo sguardo dal mio lavoro e la vedevo seduta di fronte a me, mi appoggiavo allo schienale della sedia e pensavo quanto fosse strano che fossimo lì, da soli, come se fosse la cosa più naturale del mondo. Nessun altro aveva nulla a che fare con noi; tutta quella romantica atmosfera legata al nostro fidanzamento era stata messa da parte, dimenticata. C’eravamo solo noi due, l’uno per l’altro, per tutta la vita.
Quando c’era una debatte e mi trattennero fino a molto tardi, mi sembrò davvero strano, mentre camminavo verso casa, pensare che Dora fosse anch’essa a casa! All’inizio fu una cosa meravigliosa: lei scendeva dolcemente per parlarmi mentre mangiavo la cena. Fu anche incredibile scoprire con certezza che si metteva i capelli dentro dei fogli di carta. E vedere lei farlo fu davvero un evento sorprendente!
Dubito che due giovani uccellini possano sapere meno di me e della mia adorabile Dora su come gestire una casa. Ovviamente avevamo una domestica: era lei a occuparsi della casa per noi. Ancora oggi ho il sospetto che in realtà fosse la figlia di Mrs. Crupp sotto mentite spoglie. Abbiamo avuto davvero momenti terribili con Mary Anne.
Si chiamava Paragon. La sua natura ci fu descritta, quando la assumemmo, come qualcosa di debolmente espresso nel suo nome stesso. Aveva un carattere scritto, grande quanto un proclama ufficiale; e, secondo quel documento, era in grado di fare tutto ciò che riguarda le mansioni domestiche, di cui avevo mai sentito parlare, e anche molte altre cose di cui non avevo mai nemmeno sentito parlare. Era una donna nel fiore degli anni, dal viso severo; e soffriva, soprattutto nelle braccia, di una sorta di eruzione cutanea continua, simile a morbillo o orticaria. Aveva un cugino nella Guardia Reale: le sue gambe erano così lunghe che sembrava l’ombra pomeridiana di qualcun altro; il suo giubbotto era decisamente troppo piccolo per lui, e lui, a sua volta, era troppo grande per quel giubbotto. La sua presenza rendeva la casetta ancora più piccola di quanto avrebbe dovuto essere, a causa della totale sproporzione tra le sue dimensioni e quelle dell’edificio stesso. Inoltre, le pareti non erano molto spesse, e ogni volta che passava la serata a casa nostra, lo si capiva subito: si sentiva un continuo ringhiare in cucina.
Il nostro tesoro era certamente frutto di sobrietà e onestà. Pertanto, sono disposto a credere che lei stesse soffrendo di un attacco quando la trovammo sotto il caldaio; inoltre, l’assenza delle cucchiai da tè può essere attribuita al netturbino.
Ma lei tormentava terribilmente le nostre menti. Ci rendevamo conto della nostra inesperienza e non eravamo in grado di fare nulla per proteggerci. Avremmo dovuto essere alla sua mercede, se ne avesse avuta; ma lei era una donna spietata, priva di qualsiasi compassione. Fu proprio lei la causa della nostra prima piccola lite.
“Mia adorata,” dissi un giorno a Dora, “pensi che Mary Anne abbia la minima idea di cosa sia il tempo?”
“Perché, Doady?”, chiese Dora, alzando lo sguardo, con aria innocente, mentre disegnava.
“Mio amore, perché sono le cinque, e dovevamo pranzare alle quattro.”
Dora guardò con malinconia l’orologio e suggerì che, a suo parere, avanzasse troppo velocemente.
“Al contrario, mio amore”, dissi, indicando il mio orologio, “è qualche minuto in ritardo.”
Mia moglie venne e si sedette sulle mie ginocchia per convincermi a stare in silenzio; poi tracciò una linea con la sua matita proprio al centro del mio naso. Ma non riuscii comunque a “pranzare” con quella linea, anche se era davvero molto attraente.
“Non pensi anche tu, cara mia,” dissi, “che sarebbe meglio se discutessi la questione con Mary Anne?”
“Oh no, per favore! Non ce l’ho fatta, Doady!” disse Dora.
“Perché no, mio amore?” chiesi dolcemente.
“Ah, perché sono proprio una piccola oca,” disse Dora, “e lei lo sa benissimo!”
Ritenni che questo sentimento fosse del tutto incompatibile con l’istituzione di qualsiasi sistema di controllo su Mary Anne, al punto da aggrottare leggermente la fronte.
“Oh, che brutte rughe sulla fronte di questo mio cattivello!” disse Dora; rimanendo ancora sulle mie ginocchia, le tracciò con la sua matita, poi la avvicinò alle sue labbra rosse per farle apparire più scure, e continuò a lavorare sulla mia fronte con una sorta di buffa sollecitudine, il che, nonostante tutto, mi fece molto piacere.
“C’è un bambino davvero carino,” disse Dora, “il suo viso diventa ancora più bello quando ride.” “Ma, mio amore,” risposi io.
“No, no! Per favore!” gridò Dora, dandogli un bacio. “Non essere cattivo, Blue Beard. Non prendertela sul serio!”
“Mia cara moglie,” dissi, “a volte dobbiamo essere seri. Vieni! Siediti su questa sedia, proprio accanto a me! Dammi la penna! Ecco. Ora parliamo con ragionevolezza. Sai, tesoro, ” Che piccola mano da tenere, e che minuscolo anello nuziale da vedere, “Sai, mio amore, non è affatto comodo dover uscire senza aver mangiato. Non trovi?”
“N-no!” rispose Dora, in un sussurro debole.
“Mio amore, come tremi, ”
“Perché so che mi rimprovererai,” esclamò Dora con voce supplichevole.
“Mia cara, voglio solo ragionare con te.”
“Oh, ma ragionare è ancora peggio che rimproverare!” esclamò Dora, in disperazione.
“Non mi sono sposata per essere rimproverata. Se volevi discutere con una povera creatura come me, avresti dovuto dirmelo, ragazzo crudele!”
Cercai di calmare Dora, ma lei girò il viso dall’altra parte, scosse i suoi riccioli avanti e indietro, e ripeté più volte: “Tu ragazzo crudele, crudele!”, tanto che davvero non sapevo cosa fare. Così, nella mia incertezza, camminai un po’ avanti e indietro per la stanza, poi tornai da lei.
“Dora, mia cara!”
“No, non sono la tua cara. Perché sicuramente ti penti di avermi sposata, altrimenti non cercheresti di ragionare con me!” rispose Dora.
Mi sentii profondamente ferito dall’insignificanza di questa accusa; proprio per questo ne trassi il coraggio di affrontare la situazione con serietà.
‘Now, my own Dora,’ said I, ‘you are very childish, and are talking nonsense. You must remember, I am sure, that I was obliged to go out yesterday when dinner was half over; and that, the day before, I was made quite unwell by being obliged to eat underdone veal in a hurry; today, I don’t dine at all—and I am afraid to say how long we waited for breakfast—and then the water didn’t boil. I don’t mean to reproach you, my dear, but this is not comfortable.’
‘Oh, you cruel, cruel boy, to say I am a disagreeable wife!’ cried Dora.
‘Now, my dear Dora, you must know that I never said that!’
‘You said, I wasn’t comfortable!’ cried Dora. ‘I said the housekeeping was not comfortable!’
‘It’s exactly the same thing!’ cried Dora. And she evidently thought so, for she wept most grievously.
I took another turn across the room, full of love for my pretty wife, and distracted by self-accusatory inclinations to knock my head against the door. I sat down again, and said:
‘I am not blaming you, Dora. We have both a great deal to learn. I am only trying to show you, my dear, that you must—you really must’ (I was resolved not to give this up)—‘accustom yourself to look after Mary Anne. Likewise to act a little for yourself, and me.’
‘I wonder, I do, at your making such ungrateful speeches,’ sobbed Dora. ‘When you know that the other day, when you said you would like a little bit of fish, I went out myself, miles and miles, and ordered it, to surprise you.’
‘And it was very kind of you, my own darling,’ said I. ‘I felt it so much that I wouldn’t on any account have even mentioned that you bought a Salmon—which was too much for two. Or that it cost one pound six—which was more than we can afford.’
‘You enjoyed it very much,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And you said I was a Mouse.’
‘And I’ll say so again, my love,’ I returned, ‘a thousand times!’
But I had wounded Dora’s soft little heart, and she was not to be comforted. She was so pathetic in her sobbing and bewailing, that I felt as if I had said I don’t know what to hurt her. I was obliged to hurry away; I was kept out late; and I felt all night such pangs of remorse as made me miserable. I had the conscience of an assassin, and was haunted by a vague sense of enormous wickedness.
It was two or three hours past midnight when I got home. I found my aunt, in our house, sitting up for me.
‘Is anything the matter, aunt?’ said I, alarmed.
‘Nothing, Trot,’ she replied. ‘Sit down, sit down. Little Blossom has been rather out of spirits, and I have been keeping her company. That’s all.’
I leaned my head upon my hand; and felt more sorry and downcast, as I sat looking at the fire, than I could have supposed possible so soon after the fulfilment of my brightest hopes. As I sat thinking, I happened to meet my aunt’s eyes, which were resting on my face. There was an anxious expression in them, but it cleared directly.
‘I assure you, aunt,’ said I, ‘I have been quite unhappy myself all night, to think of Dora’s being so. But I had no other intention than to speak to her tenderly and lovingly about our home-affairs.’
My aunt nodded encouragement.
‘You must have patience, Trot,’ said she.
‘Of course. Heaven knows I don’t mean to be unreasonable, aunt!’
‘No, no,’ said my aunt. ‘But Little Blossom is a very tender little blossom, and the wind must be gentle with her.’
I thanked my good aunt, in my heart, for her tenderness towards my wife; and I was sure that she knew I did.
‘Don’t you think, aunt,’ said I, after some further contemplation of the fire, ‘that you could advise and counsel Dora a little, for our mutual advantage, now and then?’
‘Trot,’ returned my aunt, with some emotion, ‘no! Don’t ask me such a thing.’
Her tone was so very earnest that I raised my eyes in surprise.
‘I look back on my life, child,’ said my aunt, ‘and I think of some who are in their graves, with whom I might have been on kinder terms. If I judged harshly of other people’s mistakes in marriage, it may have been because I had bitter reason to judge harshly of my own. Let that pass. I have been a grumpy, frumpy, wayward sort of a woman, a good many years. I am still, and I always shall be. But you and I have done one another some good, Trot,—at all events, you have done me good, my dear; and division must not come between us, at this time of day.’
‘Division between us!’ cried I.
‘Child, child!’ said my aunt, smoothing her dress, ‘how soon it might come between us, or how unhappy I might make our Little Blossom, if I meddled in anything, a prophet couldn’t say. I want our pet to like me, and be as gay as a butterfly. Remember your own home, in that second marriage; and never do both me and her the injury you have hinted at!’
I comprehended, at once, that my aunt was right; and I comprehended the full extent of her generous feeling towards my dear wife.
‘These are early days, Trot,’ she pursued, ‘and Rome was not built in a day, nor in a year. You have chosen freely for yourself’; a cloud passed over her face for a moment, I thought; ‘and you have chosen a very pretty and a very affectionate creature. It will be your duty, and it will be your pleasure too—of course I know that; I am not delivering a lecture—to estimate her (as you chose her) by the qualities she has, and not by the qualities she may not have. The latter you must develop in her, if you can. And if you cannot, child,’ here my aunt rubbed her nose, ‘you must just accustom yourself to do without ‘em. But remember, my dear, your future is between you two. No one can assist you; you are to work it out for yourselves. This is marriage, Trot; and Heaven bless you both, in it, for a pair of babes in the wood as you are!’
My aunt said this in a sprightly way, and gave me a kiss to ratify the blessing.
“Ora, mia cara Dora,” dissi, “sei davvero troppo infantile e stai dicendo sciocchezze. Devi ricordare, ne sono sicura, che ieri ho dovuto uscire mentre la cena era ancora a metà; inoltre, il giorno prima mi ero ammalata perché avevo dovuto mangiare carne di vitello poco cotta in fretta. Oggi non pranzo affatto. E temo di dover dire quanto abbiamo aspettato per colazione. In più, l’acqua non bolliva nemmeno. Non voglio rimproverarti, cara, ma questa situazione non è affatto confortevole.”
“Oh, tu ragazzo crudele, crudele. Dire che sono una moglie sgradevole!” gridò Dora.
“Ora, mia cara Dora, devi sapere che io non ho mai detto una cosa del genere!”
“Hai detto che non mi sentivo a mio agio!”, gridò Dora. “Ho detto che le condizioni della casa non erano confortevoli!”
“È esattamente la stessa cosa!”, gridò Dora. E ovviamente lo pensava davvero, perché pianse molto amaramente.
Feci un altro giro per la stanza, pieno di amore per mia bella moglie,
ma distratto dalle mie tendenze autoaccusatorie, rischiavo di sbattere la testa contro la porta.
Mi sedetti di nuovo e dissi:
“Non ti sto rimproverando, Dora. Entrambe abbiamo molto da imparare. Sto solo cercando di farti capire, cara mia, che devi, davvero devi abituarti ad occuparti di Mary Anne. E allo stesso modo, a prenderti cura anche di te stessa e di me.”
“Che meraviglia, davvero, che tu pronunci discorsi così ingrati,” singhiozzò Dora. “Sapendo che l’altro giorno, quando hai detto di voler mangiare un po’ di pesce, sono andata io stessa, per chilometri e chilometri, per ordinarlo apposta, per farti una sorpresa.”
“E è stato davvero molto gentile da parte tua, mio caro,” dissi. “Me ne sono resa così conto che non avrei mai nemmeno menzionato il fatto che hai comprato un salmone. Il quale era troppo per due persone. O che è costato un paio di sterline e sei pence. Il che è più di quanto possiamo permetterci.”
“Ti è piaciuto molto,” singhiozzò Dora. “E hai detto che ero un topolino.”
“E lo ripeterò ancora, mio amore”, risposi, “mille volte!”
Ma avevo ferito il tenero cuore di Dora, e lei non poteva essere consolata. Era così patetica nel suo pianto e nel suo lamento che mi sembrava di aver fatto qualcosa di terribile. Ero costretto ad andarmene in fretta; sono rimasto fuori fino a tardi; per tutta la notte ho provato dolori di rimorso che mi hanno reso infelice. Avevo la coscienza di un assassino, e non riuscivo a liberarmi di una vaga sensazione di enorme malvagità.
Erano già passate due o tre ore dalla mezzanotte quando sono tornato a casa. Ho trovato mia zia, nella nostra casa, che mi aspettava sveglia.
“C’è qualche problema, zia?” dissi, preoccupato.
“Niente, Trot,” rispose lei. “Siediti, siediti. Little Blossom è un po’ giù di morale, e io le ho tenuto compagnia. Nient’altro.”
Appoggiai la testa sulla mano; mentre sedevo a fissare il fuoco, mi sentii ancora più triste e scoraggiato di quanto avessi potuto immaginare, così presto dopo la realizzazione delle mie speranze più grandi. Mentre riflettevo, i miei occhi incrociarono quelli di mia zia, che erano fissi sul mio viso. C’era un’espressione ansiosa nei suoi occhi, ma scomparve immediatamente.
“Vi assicuro, zia,” dissi, “anch’io sono stato molto infelice tutta la notte, pensando a come Dora si sentisse. Ma non avevo alcuna intenzione diversa da parlare con lei in modo dolce e affettuoso delle nostre questioni familiari.”
Mia zia annuì incoraggiandolo.
“Devi avere pazienza, Trot,” disse lei.
“Certo, certo. Per l’amor del cielo, non intendo essere irragionevole, zia!”
“No, no,” disse mia zia. “Ma Little Blossom è un piccolo bocciolo molto delicato, e il vento deve essere gentile con lei.”
Nel mio cuore ringraziai mia buona zia per la sua gentilezza verso mia moglie; ero sicuro che lei sapesse che lo facevo.
“Non pensi anche tu, zia,” dissi dopo aver ancora osservato il fuoco, “che potresti consigliare e guidare Dora, per il nostro reciproco beneficio, di tanto in tanto?”
“Mai”, rispose mia zia con emozione, “non chiedermi una cosa del genere”.
Il suo tono era così sincero che alzai lo sguardo, sorpreso.
“Ripensando alla mia vita, bambino,” disse mia zia, “penso a molte persone che ora sono sepolte, con le quali avrei potuto avere rapporti più cordiali. Se ho giudicato severamente gli errori altrui nel matrimonio, forse è stato perché avevo motivi personali per farlo. Lasciamo perdere. Sono stata una donna scontrosa, capricciosa e ribelle per molti anni; lo sono ancora, e lo sarò sempre. Ma tu ed io ci siamo fatti del bene a vicenda, Trot, almeno tu mi hai fatto del bene, caro mio. E in questo momento non deve esserci alcuna distanza tra di noi.”
“Una divisione tra di noi!” gridai.
‘Bambino, bambino!’ disse mia zia, lisciandosi il vestito, ‘chissà quando potrebbe intervenire qualcosa tra noi, o quanto possa rendere infelice la nostra “Piccola Fioritura” se mi intromettessi in qualche cosa. Nemmeno un profeta potrebbe dirlo con certezza. Voglio che il nostro piccolo amato mi apprezzi e sia felice come una farfalla. Ricorda la tua stessa casa, durante quel secondo matrimonio; e per favore, non causare mai a me né a lei il dolore di cui hai parlato!’
Capii immediatamente che mia zia aveva ragione; e compresi appieno l’entità del suo nobile sentimento verso mia cara moglie.
“Sono solo i primi giorni, Trot,” continuò lei, “e Roma non fu costruita in un giorno, né in un anno. Hai scelto liberamente per te stesso, ”; per un momento un’ombra passò sul suo viso; “e hai scelto una persona molto bella e molto affettuosa. Sarà tuo dovere, ma anche tua gioia. Certo che lo so; non sto certo tenendo una lezione. Devi valutarla (come l’hai scelta tu) in base alle qualità che possiede, e non a quelle che forse non ha. Le seconde devi cercare di svilupparle in lei, se possibile. E se non ci riesci, bambino, ” Qui mia zia si strofinò il naso, “dovrai semplicemente abituarti a farne a meno. Ma ricorda: il tuo futuro dipende solo da voi due. Nessuno può aiutarti; dovete risolvere tutto da soli. Questo è il matrimonio, Trot. E che il Cielo vi benedica entrambi!”
Mia zia lo disse in tono allegro e mi diede un bacio per confermare la benedizione.
‘Now,’ said she, ‘light my little lantern, and see me into my bandbox by the garden path’; for there was a communication between our cottages in that direction. ‘Give Betsey Trotwood’s love to Blossom, when you come back; and whatever you do, Trot, never dream of setting Betsey up as a scarecrow, for if I ever saw her in the glass, she’s quite grim enough and gaunt enough in her private capacity!’
With this my aunt tied her head up in a handkerchief, with which she was accustomed to make a bundle of it on such occasions; and I escorted her home. As she stood in her garden, holding up her little lantern to light me back, I thought her observation of me had an anxious air again; but I was too much occupied in pondering on what she had said, and too much impressed—for the first time, in reality—by the conviction that Dora and I had indeed to work out our future for ourselves, and that no one could assist us, to take much notice of it.
Dora came stealing down in her little slippers, to meet me, now that I was alone; and cried upon my shoulder, and said I had been hard-hearted and she had been naughty; and I said much the same thing in effect, I believe; and we made it up, and agreed that our first little difference was to be our last, and that we were never to have another if we lived a hundred years.
The next domestic trial we went through, was the Ordeal of Servants. Mary Anne’s cousin deserted into our coal-hole, and was brought out, to our great amazement, by a piquet of his companions in arms, who took him away handcuffed in a procession that covered our front-garden with ignominy. This nerved me to get rid of Mary Anne, who went so mildly, on receipt of wages, that I was surprised, until I found out about the tea-spoons, and also about the little sums she had borrowed in my name of the tradespeople without authority. After an interval of Mrs. Kidgerbury—the oldest inhabitant of Kentish Town, I believe, who went out charing, but was too feeble to execute her conceptions of that art—we found another treasure, who was one of the most amiable of women, but who generally made a point of falling either up or down the kitchen stairs with the tray, and almost plunged into the parlour, as into a bath, with the tea-things. The ravages committed by this unfortunate, rendering her dismissal necessary, she was succeeded (with intervals of Mrs. Kidgerbury) by a long line of Incapables; terminating in a young person of genteel appearance, who went to Greenwich Fair in Dora’s bonnet. After whom I remember nothing but an average equality of failure.
Everybody we had anything to do with seemed to cheat us. Our appearance in a shop was a signal for the damaged goods to be brought out immediately. If we bought a lobster, it was full of water. All our meat turned out to be tough, and there was hardly any crust to our loaves. In search of the principle on which joints ought to be roasted, to be roasted enough, and not too much, I myself referred to the Cookery Book, and found it there established as the allowance of a quarter of an hour to every pound, and say a quarter over. But the principle always failed us by some curious fatality, and we never could hit any medium between redness and cinders.
I had reason to believe that in accomplishing these failures we incurred a far greater expense than if we had achieved a series of triumphs. It appeared to me, on looking over the tradesmen’s books, as if we might have kept the basement storey paved with butter, such was the extensive scale of our consumption of that article. I don’t know whether the Excise returns of the period may have exhibited any increase in the demand for pepper; but if our performances did not affect the market, I should say several families must have left off using it. And the most wonderful fact of all was, that we never had anything in the house.
As to the washerwoman pawning the clothes, and coming in a state of penitent intoxication to apologize, I suppose that might have happened several times to anybody. Also the chimney on fire, the parish engine, and perjury on the part of the Beadle. But I apprehend that we were personally fortunate in engaging a servant with a taste for cordials, who swelled our running account for porter at the public-house by such inexplicable items as ‘quartern rum shrub (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Half-quartern gin and cloves (Mrs. C.)’; ‘Glass rum and peppermint (Mrs. C.)’—the parentheses always referring to Dora, who was supposed, it appeared on explanation, to have imbibed the whole of these refreshments.
One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner to Traddles. I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me that afternoon. He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I would bring him home. It was pleasant weather, and on the road we made my domestic happiness the theme of conversation. Traddles was very full of it; and said, that, picturing himself with such a home, and Sophy waiting and preparing for him, he could think of nothing wanting to complete his bliss.
I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the opposite end of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat down, for a little more room. I did not know how it was, but though there were only two of us, we were at once always cramped for room, and yet had always room enough to lose everything in. I suspect it may have been because nothing had a place of its own, except Jip’s pagoda, which invariably blocked up the main thoroughfare. On the present occasion, Traddles was so hemmed in by the pagoda and the guitar-case, and Dora’s flower-painting, and my writing-table, that I had serious doubts of the possibility of his using his knife and fork; but he protested, with his own good-humour, ‘Oceans of room, Copperfield! I assure you, Oceans!’
There was another thing I could have wished, namely, that Jip had never been encouraged to walk about the tablecloth during dinner. I began to think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the melted butter. On this occasion he seemed to think he was introduced expressly to keep Traddles at bay; and he barked at my old friend, and made short runs at his plate, with such undaunted pertinacity, that he may be said to have engrossed the conversation.
“Ora,” disse lei, “accendi la mia piccola lanterna e accompagnami fino alla mia casetta vicino al sentiero del giardino; i nostri cottage erano collegati in quella direzione. Quando tornerai, porta l’amore di Betsey Trotwood a Blossom. E per quanto tu possa fare, Trot, non pensare mai di trasformare Betsey in un fantoccio spaventoso: se la vedessi nello specchio, le troverei già abbastanza pallida e magra nella sua vita privata, ”
Con questo fazzoletto mia zia si legò i capelli, come faceva abitualmente in occasioni del genere; poi la accompagnai a casa. Mentre stava nel suo giardino, tenendo alta la sua piccola lanterna per guidarmi nel ritorno, mi sembrò che il suo sguardo su di me avesse un’aria preoccupata; ma ero troppo impegnato a riflettere su ciò che aveva detto, e troppo colpito – per la prima volta, in realtà – dalla consapevolezza che Dora ed io dovessimo davvero decidere il nostro futuro da soli, senza l’aiuto di nessuno, per prestargli molta attenzione.
Dora arrivò di nascosto, indossando i suoi piccoli pantofoli, per incontrarmi ora che ero solo; pianse sul mio petto e disse che ero stato crudele e che lei aveva comportato male; credo che io abbia detto più o meno la stessa cosa. Ci siamo riconciliati e abbiamo deciso che quella nostra prima piccola incomprensione fosse anche l’ultima, e che non ne avremmo mai avute altre, anche se vivessimo cento anni.
Il prossimo episodio spiacevole che abbiamo vissuto riguardava i “servitori”. Il cugino di Mary Anne si nascose nel nostro deposito del carbone e, per nostra grande sorpresa, fu portato fuori da un gruppo dei suoi compagni d’armi; venne poi portato via in catene, in una processione che coprì di vergogna il nostro giardino anteriore. Questo evento mi spinse a liberarmi di Mary Anne: lei, infatti, dopo aver ricevuto lo stipendio, si comportava in modo così docile da sorprendermi, fino a quando non scoprii le cose che aveva fatto, come prendere in prestito piccole somme di denaro in mio nome senza autorizzazione. Dopo un periodo durante il quale la signora Kidgerbury – credo l’abitante più anziana di Kentish Town, che andava in giro a raccogliere offerte per le chiese, ma era troppo debole per svolgere efficacemente quel compito – si occupò della gestione domestica, trovammo un’altra persona, una donna molto gentile, ma che spesso faceva cadere il vassoio giù dalle scale della cucina e quasi si gettava nel salotto con tutto il servizio da tè. I disastri causati da questa sfortunata donna resero necessario licenziarla; dopo di lei ci furono altre persone inadeguate, fino a quando non arrivò una giovane dall’aspetto distinto, che andò alla fiera di Greenwich indossando il cappello di Dora. Dopo di lei, ricordo solo una serie continua di fallimenti e insuccessi.
Tutti coloro con cui avevamo a che fare sembravano tradirci. La nostra presenza in un negozio era il segnale per far portare immediatamente fuori i prodotti danneggiati. Se compravamo una aragosta, era piena d’acqua. Tutta la carne che acquistavamo risultava dura, e nei nostri panini c’era quasi nessuna crosta. Nel tentativo di capire quale fosse il metodo giusto per arrostire le carni in modo che risultassero cotte a puntino, senza esagerare, ho consultato un libro di cucina e vi ho trovato indicata una regola: aggiungere un quarto d’ora di cottura per ogni libbra di carne. Ma questa regola, per qualche strana ragione, non funzionava mai; non riuscivamo mai a ottenere un risultato equilibrato, né troppo cotto né poco.
Avevo motivo di credere che, compiendo questi fallimenti, avessimo sostenuto spese molto maggiori rispetto a quelle che avremmo dovuto affrontare se fossimo riusciti in una serie di successi. Esaminando i registri dei commercianti, mi sembrava che avremmo potuto mantenere il seminterrato completamente ricoperto di burro, data l’enorme quantità di burro che consumavamo. Non so se i dati relativi alle tasse sulle bevande alcoliche di quel periodo mostrassero un aumento della domanda di pepe; ma se le nostre attività non avessero influenzato il mercato, direi che molte famiglie avrebbero smesso di usarlo. E la cosa più straordinaria di tutte era che, in casa nostra, non avevamo mai nulla.
Per quanto riguarda la lavandaia che impegnava i vestiti e poi arrivava in uno stato di ubriachezza pentita per scusarsi, immagino che una cosa del genere potrebbe essere accaduta molte volte a chiunque. Anche la ciminiera che bruciava, il motore della parrocchia, e le menzogne del Beadle. Ma credo che siamo stati particolarmente fortunati ad assumere una domestica con una passione per i liquori: lei aumentava continuamente il nostro conto alla taverna pubblica con voci del tipo “quartern di rum (Signora C.)”, “mezzo-quartern di gin e chiodi di garofano (Signora C.)”, “un bicchiere di rum al pepe mentolo (Signora C.)”. Le parentesi si riferivano sempre a Dora, che, a quanto pare, beveva tutta quella roba.
Uno dei nostri primi “successi” in ambito domestico fu organizzare una piccola cena per Traddles. Lo incontrai in città e gli chiesi di uscire con me quel pomeriggio; acconsentì subito, così scrissi a Dora dicendole che lo avrei portato a casa. Il tempo era piacevole, e lungo la strada parlammo spesso della mia felicità domestica. Traddles ne parlava con grande entusiasmo; disse che, immaginando di avere una casa del genere e Sophy che lo aspettava e si prendeva cura di lui, non riusciva a pensare a nulla che potesse mancare per rendere la sua vita perfetta.
Non avrei potuto desiderare una moglie più bella all’altro capo del tavolo, ma di certo avrei voluto, quando ci siamo seduti, un po’ più di spazio. Non so perché, ma sebbene fossimo solo in due, c’era sempre troppo poco spazio, eppure ne avevamo sempre abbastanza per perdere tutto dentro. Sospetto che il motivo fosse che nulla aveva il proprio posto fisso, tranne la pagoda di Jip, che inevitabilmente bloccava il passaggio principale. In quell’occasione, Traddles era così stretto tra la pagoda, la custodia della chitarra, i dipinti floreali di Dora e la mia scrivania, che dubitavo seriamente che potesse utilizzare coltello e forchetta. Ma lui protestò, con il suo solito buon umore: “Oceani di spazio, Copperfield! Ve lo assicuro, oceani!”
C’era un’altra cosa che avrei potuto desiderare, ovvero che a Jip non fosse mai stato permesso di muoversi sopra la tovaglia durante i pasti. Iniziai a pensare che ci fosse qualcosa di disordinato nel fatto stesso che si trovasse lì, anche se non aveva l’abitudine di mettere i piedi nel sale o nel burro fuso. Quella volta sembrava proprio credere di essere stato invitato apposta per tenere Traddles a bada; abbaiava contro il mio vecchio amico e correva verso il suo piatto con tale ostinazione, che si potrebbe dire che avesse completamente monopolizzato la conversazione.
However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favourite, I hinted no objection. For similar reasons I made no allusion to the skirmishing plates upon the floor; or to the disreputable appearance of the castors, which were all at sixes and sevens, and looked drunk; or to the further blockade of Traddles by wandering vegetable dishes and jugs. I could not help wondering in my own mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of mutton before me, previous to carving it, how it came to pass that our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes—and whether our butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world; but I kept my reflections to myself.
‘My love,’ said I to Dora, ‘what have you got in that dish?’
I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempting little faces at me, as if she wanted to kiss me.
‘Oysters, dear,’ said Dora, timidly.
‘Was that YOUR thought?’ said I, delighted.
‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora.
‘There never was a happier one!’ I exclaimed, laying down the carving-knife and fork. ‘There is nothing Traddles likes so much!’
‘Ye-yes, Doady,’ said Dora, ‘and so I bought a beautiful little barrel of them, and the man said they were very good. But I—I am afraid there’s something the matter with them. They don’t seem right.’ Here Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes.
‘They are only opened in both shells,’ said I. ‘Take the top one off, my love.’
‘But it won’t come off!’ said Dora, trying very hard, and looking very much distressed.
‘Do you know, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, cheerfully examining the dish, ‘I think it is in consequence—they are capital oysters, but I think it is in consequence—of their never having been opened.’
They never had been opened; and we had no oyster-knives—and couldn’t have used them if we had; so we looked at the oysters and ate the mutton. At least we ate as much of it as was done, and made up with capers. If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that Traddles would have made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a plateful of raw meat, to express enjoyment of the repast; but I would hear of no such immolation on the altar of friendship, and we had a course of bacon instead; there happening, by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder.
My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was not, that the discomfiture I had subdued, very soon vanished, and we passed a happy evening; Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By and by she made tea for us; which it was so pretty to see her do, as if she was busying herself with a set of doll’s tea-things, that I was not particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet over.
When Traddles went away, and I came back into the parlour from seeing him out, my wife planted her chair close to mine, and sat down by my side. ‘I am very sorry,’ she said. ‘Will you try to teach me, Doady?’
‘I must teach myself first, Dora,’ said I. ‘I am as bad as you, love.’
‘Ah! But you can learn,’ she returned; ‘and you are a clever, clever man!’
‘Nonsense, mouse!’ said I.
‘I wish,’ resumed my wife, after a long silence, ‘that I could have gone down into the country for a whole year, and lived with Agnes!’
Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder, and her chin rested on them, and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.
‘Why so?’ I asked.
‘I think she might have improved me, and I think I might have learned from her,’ said Dora.
‘All in good time, my love. Agnes has had her father to take care of for these many years, you should remember. Even when she was quite a child, she was the Agnes whom we know,’ said I.
‘Will you call me a name I want you to call me?’ inquired Dora, without moving.
‘What is it?’ I asked with a smile.
‘It’s a stupid name,’ she said, shaking her curls for a moment. ‘Child-wife.’
I laughingly asked my child-wife what her fancy was in desiring to be so called. She answered without moving, otherwise than as the arm I twined about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:
‘I don’t mean, you silly fellow, that you should use the name instead of Dora. I only mean that you should think of me that way. When you are going to be angry with me, say to yourself, “it’s only my child-wife!” When I am very disappointing, say, “I knew, a long time ago, that she would make but a child-wife!” When you miss what I should like to be, and I think can never be, say, “still my foolish child-wife loves me!” For indeed I do.’
I had not been serious with her; having no idea until now, that she was serious herself. But her affectionate nature was so happy in what I now said to her with my whole heart, that her face became a laughing one before her glittering eyes were dry. She was soon my child-wife indeed; sitting down on the floor outside the Chinese House, ringing all the little bells one after another, to punish Jip for his recent bad behaviour; while Jip lay blinking in the doorway with his head out, even too lazy to be teased.
This appeal of Dora’s made a strong impression on me. I look back on the time I write of; I invoke the innocent figure that I dearly loved, to come out from the mists and shadows of the past, and turn its gentle head towards me once again; and I can still declare that this one little speech was constantly in my memory. I may not have used it to the best account; I was young and inexperienced; but I never turned a deaf ear to its artless pleading.
Tuttavia, poiché sapevo quanto fosse tenero di cuore il mio caro Dora e quanto fosse sensibile a qualsiasi offesa riguardante il suo animale preferito, non feci alcuna obiezione. Per motivi simili, non menzionai nemmeno le piastre da cucina sparse sul pavimento, né l’aspetto disordinato dei contenitori per gli ingredienti, che sembravano tutti in disordine e “ubriachi”; né ancora il fatto che Traddles fosse ulteriormente ostruito da piatti di verdure e giare disseminate ovunque. Mentre contemplavo quella gamba di montone bollita prima di cominciare a tagliarla, non potei fare a meno di chiedermi come mai le nostre articolazioni di carne avessero forme così strane. E se il nostro macellaio si impegnasse per forza ad acquistare tutte le pecore deformi che nascevano al mondo. Ma tenni queste riflessioni per me.
“Mia amata”, dissi a Dora, “cosa c’è in quel piatto?”
Non riuscivo a capire perché Dora mi facesse quei sorrisetti invitanti, come se volesse baciarmi.
“Ostriche, caro,” disse Dora, timidamente.
“Quella era la TUA idea?”, dissi, felice.
“Sì-sì, Doady,” disse Dora.
“Non c’è mai stata nessuna più felice!” esclamai, mettendo da parte il coltello da intaglio e la forchetta. “Non c’è nulla che a Traddles piaccia di più!”
“Sì-sì, Doady,” disse Dora, “e così ho comprato un bellissimo barattolo pieno di loro; l’uomo ha detto che erano molto buoni. Ma temo che ci sia qualcosa che non va. Non sembrano giusti, ” Qui Dora scosse la testa, e i diamanti nei suoi occhi brillarono.
“Si aprono solo aprendo entrambe le conchiglie,” dissi. “Togli quella sopra, mio amore.”
“Ma non si staccherà!” disse Dora, provando con tutte le sue forze e sembrando molto angosciata.
“Lo sai, Copperfield,” disse Traddles, esaminando felicemente il piatto, “penso che sia proprio perché, sono ostriche di prima qualità, ma credo che sia anche perché non sono mai state aperte.”
Non erano mai stati aperti; e noi non avevamo coltelli per le ostriche. E comunque non avremmo potuto usarli nemmeno se li avessimo avuti; quindi abbiamo semplicemente guardato le ostriche e mangiato la carne d’agnello. Almeno ne abbiamo mangiata abbastanza, compensandola con i capperi. Se glielo avessi permesso, sono sicuro che Traddles si sarebbe trasformato in un vero “selvaggio”, mangiando una porzione intera di carne cruda per esprimere la sua soddisfazione per il pasto. Ma io non permetterei mai una simile cosa sull’altare dell’amicizia; invece abbiamo mangiato del bacon. Per fortuna, in dispensa c’era del bacon freddo.
Povera mia piccola moglie. Era così angosciata quando pensava che io potessi essere arrabbiato, e così felice quando scoprì che non lo ero; quindi il dispiacere che avevo causato scomparve rapidamente, e trascorremmo una serata felice. Dora sedeva accanto a me, appoggiando un braccio alla mia sedia, mentre Traddles ed io bevevamo del vino; lei approfittava di ogni occasione per sussurrarmi quanto fosse gentile da parte mia non comportarmi come un vecchio ragazzo crudele. Poi ci preparò il tè; era così carino vederla occuparsi di tutto, come se stesse usando degli attrezzi da tè per bambole. Che non mi importava affatto della qualità del liquido. Dopo, Traddles ed io giocammo a qualche partita di cribbage, mentre Dora cantava al pianoforte; in quel momento, mi sembrò che il nostro corteggiamento e il nostro matrimonio fossero soltanto un dolce sogno. E che la notte in cui avevo ascoltato per la prima volta la sua voce non fosse ancora finita.
Quando Traddles se ne andò e io tornai nel salotto dopo averlo accompagnato fuori, mia moglie posizionò la sua sedia vicino alla mia e si sedette al mio fianco. “Mi dispiace molto,” disse. “Cercheresti di insegnarmi, Doady?”
“Devo prima imparare da sola, Dora,” dissi. “Sono altrettanto incapace di te, amore mio.”
“Ah! Ma puoi imparare,” rispose lei; “e sei un uomo intelligente, davvero intelligente!”
“Sciocchezze, topo!” dissi io.
“Vorrei,” riprese mia moglie, dopo un lungo silenzio, “che potessi essere andata in campagna per un intero anno e vivere con Agnes!”
Le sue mani erano posate sulle mie spalle, il suo mento appoggiato su di esse, e i suoi occhi azzurri mi guardavano in silenzio.
“Perché?” chiesi.
“Penso che lei avrebbe potuto migliorarmi, e penso di aver imparato qualcosa da lei,” disse Dora.
“Col tempo giusto, mio amore. Agnes ha avuto suo padre che si prendeva cura di lei per tutti questi anni; dovresti ricordarlo. Anche quando era ancora una piccola bambina, era già quella Agnes che conosciamo oggi,” dissi io.
“Mi chiamerai con il nome che voglio che tu mi chiami?”, chiese Dora, senza muoversi.
“Che cos’è?” chiesi sorridendo.
“È un nome stupido,” disse, scuotendo per un momento i suoi riccioli. “‘Moglie di Bambino’, ”
Ridendo, chiesi a mia moglie, che è anche una bambina, quale fosse la sua voglia di essere chiamata in quel modo. Lei rispose senza muoversi, se non per il fatto che il braccio che le avevo intorno potesse aver avvicinato i suoi occhi azzurri a me.
“Non intendo dire, sciocco che sei, che tu debba usare quel nome al posto di Dora. Voglio solo che tu mi consideri in quel modo. Quando sarai arrabbiato con me, pensa a te stesso: ‘È solo la mia moglie-bambina!’ Quando mi comporterò molto male, digli: ‘Lo sapevo già da tempo che sarebbe diventata solo una moglie-bambina, ’ Quando ti mancherà ciò che vorrei essere, e che penso non possa mai diventare, pensa ancora: ‘Comunque, la mia stupida moglie-bambina mi ama!’ Perché infatti è così.”
Non avevo preso sul serio le mie parole con lei; fino ad ora non sapevo nemmeno che lei fosse seria a sua volta. Ma la sua affettuosa natura era così felice di ciò che le dissi ora con tutto il cuore, che il suo viso si illuminò di sorrisi e i suoi occhi scintillanti si asciugarono in un attimo. Presto divenne davvero la mia moglie; seduta a terra fuori dalla casa cinese, suonava tutti quei piccoli campanelli, uno dopo l’altro, per punire Jip per il suo comportamento scorretto di recente. Mentre Jip giaceva sulla soglia, sbattendo le palpebre con la testa fuori dalla porta, troppo pigro persino per essere preso in giro.
Questo appello di Dora ha lasciato su di me un’impressione profonda. Ripenso al tempo in cui scrivevo; richiamo quell’immagine innocente che amavo tanto, affinché emerga dalle nebbie e dalle ombre del passato e volti ancora una volta il suo sguardo gentile verso di me; e posso ancora affermare che quelle poche parole sono rimaste costantemente nella mia memoria. Forse non le ho utilizzate al meglio; ero giovane ed inesperta; ma non ho mai ignorato il loro modo semplice e sincero di esprimersi.
Dora told me, shortly afterwards, that she was going to be a wonderful housekeeper. Accordingly, she polished the tablets, pointed the pencil, bought an immense account-book, carefully stitched up with a needle and thread all the leaves of the Cookery Book which Jip had torn, and made quite a desperate little attempt ‘to be good’, as she called it. But the figures had the old obstinate propensity—they WOULD NOT add up. When she had entered two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip would walk over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out. Her own little right-hand middle finger got steeped to the very bone in ink; and I think that was the only decided result obtained.
Sometimes, of an evening, when I was at home and at work—for I wrote a good deal now, and was beginning in a small way to be known as a writer—I would lay down my pen, and watch my child-wife trying to be good. First of all, she would bring out the immense account-book, and lay it down upon the table, with a deep sigh. Then she would open it at the place where Jip had made it illegible last night, and call Jip up, to look at his misdeeds. This would occasion a diversion in Jip’s favour, and some inking of his nose, perhaps, as a penalty. Then she would tell Jip to lie down on the table instantly, ‘like a lion’—which was one of his tricks, though I cannot say the likeness was striking—and, if he were in an obedient humour, he would obey. Then she would take up a pen, and begin to write, and find a hair in it. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and find that it spluttered. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and say in a low voice, ‘Oh, it’s a talking pen, and will disturb Doady!’ And then she would give it up as a bad job, and put the account-book away, after pretending to crush the lion with it.
Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she would sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and other documents, which looked more like curl-papers than anything else, and endeavour to get some result out of them. After severely comparing one with another, and making entries on the tablets, and blotting them out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again, backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed and discouraged, and would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to see her bright face clouded—and for me!—and I would go softly to her, and say:
‘What’s the matter, Dora?’
Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, ‘They won’t come right. They make my head ache so. And they won’t do anything I want!’
Then I would say, ‘Now let us try together. Let me show you, Dora.’
Then I would commence a practical demonstration, to which Dora would pay profound attention, perhaps for five minutes; when she would begin to be dreadfully tired, and would lighten the subject by curling my hair, or trying the effect of my face with my shirt-collar turned down. If I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me; and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.
I had a great deal of work to do, and had many anxieties, but the same considerations made me keep them to myself. I am far from sure, now, that it was right to do this, but I did it for my child-wife’s sake. I search my breast, and I commit its secrets, if I know them, without any reservation to this paper. The old unhappy loss or want of something had, I am conscious, some place in my heart; but not to the embitterment of my life. When I walked alone in the fine weather, and thought of the summer days when all the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment, I did miss something of the realization of my dreams; but I thought it was a softened glory of the Past, which nothing could have thrown upon the present time. I did feel, sometimes, for a little while, that I could have wished my wife had been my counsellor; had had more character and purpose, to sustain me and improve me by; had been endowed with power to fill up the void which somewhere seemed to be about me; but I felt as if this were an unearthly consummation of my happiness, that never had been meant to be, and never could have been.
I was a boyish husband as to years. I had known the softening influence of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves. If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now.
Thus it was that I took upon myself the toils and cares of our life, and had no partner in them. We lived much as before, in reference to our scrambling household arrangements; but I had got used to those, and Dora I was pleased to see was seldom vexed now. She was bright and cheerful in the old childish way, loved me dearly, and was happy with her old trifles.
When the debates were heavy—I mean as to length, not quality, for in the last respect they were not often otherwise—and I went home late, Dora would never rest when she heard my footsteps, but would always come downstairs to meet me. When my evenings were unoccupied by the pursuit for which I had qualified myself with so much pains, and I was engaged in writing at home, she would sit quietly near me, however late the hour, and be so mute, that I would often think she had dropped asleep. But generally, when I raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me with the quiet attention of which I have already spoken.
‘Oh, what a weary boy!’ said Dora one night, when I met her eyes as I was shutting up my desk.
Poco dopo, Dora mi disse che sarebbe diventata una meravigliosa casalinga. Così, pulì attentamente le tavolette, sistemò la penna, comprò un enorme libro di conti, cucì con cura tutte le pagine strappate dal Libro di Cucina da Jip e fece davvero un piccolo, disperato tentativo, “di comportarsi bene”, come lei stessa diceva. Ma i numeri avevano quella vecchia ostinazione: semplicemente non volevano aggiungersi tra loro correttamente. Ogni volta che inseriva due o tre voci nel libro di conti, Jip si avvicinava alla pagina, scodinzolando, e le cancellava tutte. Anche il suo piccolo dito medio destro finì per imbevversi completamente d’inchiostro. E credo che quello fosse l’unico risultato concreto ottenuto.
A volte, la sera, quando ero a casa e al lavoro – perché ormai scrivevo molto e iniziavo a essere conosciuto come scrittore – mettevo da parte la penna e osservavo mia moglie, che cercava di comportarsi bene. Prima di tutto, tirava fuori il enorme libro delle contabilità e lo posizionava sul tavolo, emettendo un profondo sospiro. Poi lo apriva nel punto in cui Jip l’aveva reso illeggibile la sera precedente, e chiamava Jip per fargli vedere i suoi “misfatti”. Questo causava qualche problema a Jip: forse gli veniva spalmato inchiostro sul naso come punizione. Dopo, gli diceva di stendersi immediatamente sul tavolo, “come un leone”, il che era uno dei suoi trucchi, anche se non posso dire che assomigliasse davvero a un leone. E se si comportava bene, obbediva. Poi prendeva una penna e iniziava a scrivere, ma trovava sempre qualche difetto nella penna stessa. Ne prendeva un’altra, ma anche quella funzionava male. Alla fine ne prendeva un’altra ancora, e sussurrava: “Oh, questa parla, disturberà Doady!” Poi abbandonava tutto, metteva da parte il libro delle contabilità e fingeva di schiacciare quel “leone” con esso.
Oppure, se fosse in uno stato d’animo molto tranquillo e serio, si sarebbe seduta con quelle tavolette, insieme a un piccolo cestino pieno di conti e altri documenti che sembravano più dei foglietti piegati che altro, e avrebbe cercato di ottenere qualche risultato da loro. Dopo aver confrontato attentamente uno dopo l’altro, aver fatto annotazioni sulle tavolette, averle cancellate e aver contato più e più volte tutte le dita della sua mano sinistra, avanti e indietro, si sarebbe sentita così frustrata e scoraggiata, e avrebbe avuto un aspetto così scontento, che mi faceva davvero male vedere il suo viso solitamente radioso offuscarsi. E per me! Allora mi avvicinavo dolcemente a lei e le dicevo:
“Che c’è che non va, Dora?”
Dora alzava lo sguardo con aria disperata e rispondeva: “Non andranno mai bene. Mi fanno mal di testa. E non faranno mai ciò che voglio io!”
“Allora direi: ‘Ora proviamo insieme. Lascia che ti mostri, Dora.’”
Allora iniziavo una dimostrazione pratica; Dora prestava attenzione profonda, forse per cinque minuti. Poi iniziava ad annoiarsi terribilmente e cercava di distrarsi pettinandomi i capelli o provando diversi effetti visivi con il colletto della camicia abbassato. Se io ignoravo queste sue buffonate e continuavo, lei assumeva un’espressione spaventata e disperata, diventando sempre più confusa. A quel punto mi veniva in mente la sua naturale allegria quando ci eravamo conosciuti, e il fatto che fosse stata la mia “moglie bambina”. Allora mettevo giù la matita e chiedevo la chitarra.
Avevo molto lavoro da fare e molte preoccupazioni, ma per le stesse ragioni decisi di tenerle per me. Ora non sono affatto sicuro che sia stato giusto agire in questo modo, ma lo feci per il bene della mia moglie, la madre di mio figlio. Esamino attentamente i miei pensieri e condivido con queste pagine tutti i segreti che conosco, senza alcuna riserva. Quella vecchia perdita, quel senso di mancanza, avevano sicuramente un certo impatto sul mio cuore, ma non al punto di rendere la mia vita amara. Quando camminavo da solo in tempo sereno e ripensavo ai giorni d’estate in cui tutto sembrava essere pervaso dalla mia gioventù e dalle mie speranze, sentivo davvero la mancanza della realizzazione dei miei sogni. Ma pensavo che si trattasse soltanto di un ricordo dolce del Passato, qualcosa che nulla avrebbe potuto offuscare nel Presente. A volte, per un breve istante, desideravo che mia moglie fosse stata la mia consigliera. Che avesse avuto più carattere e determinazione per sostenermi e aiutarmi a migliorare. Che avesse avuto il potere di colmare quel vuoto che sembrava circondarmi. Ma sentivo che tutto ciò rappresentasse una sorta di felicità irreale, qualcosa che non era mai stato previsto e che probabilmente non sarebbe mai stato possibile realizzare.
In termini di anni, ero un marito ancora giovane. Non avevo conosciuto l’influenza lenitiva di altre sofferenze o esperienze se non quelle descritte in queste pagine. Se ho commesso degli errori – e probabilmente ne ho fatti molti – è stato per un amore sbagliato e per la mia mancanza di saggezza. Scrivo la verità esatta. Ora non servirebbe a nulla cercare scuse o attenuanti.
E così fu che assunsi su di me le fatiche e i problemi della nostra vita, senza alcun compagno al mio fianco. Vivevamo più o meno come prima, con tutte quelle difficoltà legate alle nostre quotidiane faccende domestiche; ma ormai mi ero abituata a esse, e vedevo con piacere che Dora raramente si lamentava più. Era sempre vivace e allegra, con quel suo vecchio modo infantile; mi amava molto e era felice con le sue piccole cose quotidiane.
Quando le discussioni duravano a lungo – intendo per quanto riguarda la durata, non la qualità, perché in questo senso spesso non era diverso – e tornavo a casa tardi, Dora non riusciva mai a riposare non appena sentiva i miei passi; scendeva sempre al piano di sotto per venirmi incontro. Quando le mie serate non erano dedicate alle attività per cui mi ero preparato con tanto impegno e mi dedicavo alla scrittura a casa, lei si sedeva silenziosamente accanto a me, indipendentemente dall’ora, e rimaneva così immobile che spesso pensavo fosse addormentata. Ma di solito, quando alzavo lo sguardo, la vedevo con i suoi occhi blu fissarmi con quell’attenzione silenziosa di cui ho già parlato.
“Oh, che ragazzo stanco, ” disse Dora una notte, quando i nostri sguardi si incrociarono mentre chiudevo la mia scrivania.
‘What a weary girl!’ said I. ‘That’s more to the purpose. You must go to bed another time, my love. It’s far too late for you.’
‘No, don’t send me to bed!’ pleaded Dora, coming to my side. ‘Pray, don’t do that!’
‘Dora!’ To my amazement she was sobbing on my neck. ‘Not well, my dear! not happy!’
‘Yes! quite well, and very happy!’ said Dora. ‘But say you’ll let me stop, and see you write.’
‘Why, what a sight for such bright eyes at midnight!’ I replied.
‘Are they bright, though?’ returned Dora, laughing. ‘I’m so glad they’re bright.’ ‘Little Vanity!’ said I.
But it was not vanity; it was only harmless delight in my admiration. I knew that very well, before she told me so.
‘If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you write!’ said Dora. ‘Do you think them pretty?’
‘Very pretty.’
‘Then let me always stop and see you write.’
‘I am afraid that won’t improve their brightness, Dora.’
‘Yes, it will! Because, you clever boy, you’ll not forget me then, while you are full of silent fancies. Will you mind it, if I say something very, very silly?---more than usual?’ inquired Dora, peeping over my shoulder into my face.
‘What wonderful thing is that?’ said I.
‘Please let me hold the pens,’ said Dora. ‘I want to have something to do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the pens?’
The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a new pen—which I very often feigned to do—suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretence of wanting a page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear to other men.
She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling about the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to her slender waist. I seldom found that the places to which they belonged were locked, or that they were of any use except as a plaything for Jip—but Dora was pleased, and that pleased me. She was quite satisfied that a good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke.
So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me, and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was ‘a cross old thing’. I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone. She courted Jip, though Jip never responded; listened, day after day, to the guitar, though I am afraid she had no taste for music; never attacked the Incapables, though the temptation must have been severe; went wonderful distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that she found out Dora wanted; and never came in by the garden, and missed her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the stairs, in a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:
‘Where’s Little Blossom?’
“Che ragazza stanca, ” dissi. “È proprio quello che ci vuole. Devi andare a letto un’altra volta, mio amore. È troppo tardi ormai.”
“No, non mandarmi a letto!” supplicò Dora, avvicinandosi a me. “Per favore, non farlo!”
“Dora!” Con mia sorpresa, lei stava piangendo appoggiata al mio collo. “Non sto bene, cara. Non sono felice!”
“Sì! Molto bene, e molto felice!” disse Dora. “Ma promettimi che mi permetterai di fermarti e di vederti scrivere.”
“Ma che meravigliosa vista per occhi così luminosi a mezzanotte!” risposi.
“Ma sono davvero intelligenti?” rispose Dora ridendo. “Sono così contenta che lo siano.” “Piccola Vanità, ” dissi io.
Ma non era vanità; era soltanto un innocuo piacere derivante dal mio ammiramento. Lo sapevo molto bene, prima ancora che lei me lo dicesse.
“Se le trovi belle, dimmi che posso fermarmi sempre per vederti scrivere!”, disse Dora. “Le trovi belle?”
“Molto carino.”
“Allora lasciami sempre fermarmi per vederti scrivere.”
“Temo che questo non aumenterà la loro luminosità, Dora.”
“Sì, lo farà! Perché tu, ragazzo intelligente, non mi dimenticherai mai, mentre sei immerso nelle tue fantasie silenziose. Ti dispiacerebbe se dicessi qualcosa di molto, molto sciocco? Più del solito, ” chiese Dora, spiando il mio viso da sopra la mia spalla.
“Che cosa meravigliosa è questa?” dissi io.
“Per favore, lasciami tenere le penne,” disse Dora. “Vorrei contribuire in qualche modo a tutte quelle ore in cui sei così impegnata. Posso tenere le penne?”
Il ricordo della sua grande gioia quando ho detto di sì mi fa venire le lacrime agli occhi. La prossima volta che mi sono seduto a scrivere, e anche in seguito, lei si sedeva sempre nello stesso posto, con un mazzo di penne accanto a sé. Il suo “trionfo” legato al mio lavoro, e la sua felicità ogni volta che ne volevo una nuova – cosa che facevo spesso solo per farla contenta – mi hanno suggerito un nuovo modo per rendere felice mia moglie. A volte fingevo di voler che mi copiasse uno o due fogli del manoscritto; in quei momenti, Dora era al suo apice: preparava tutto con cura, indossava grembiuli, prendeva in prestito strofinacci dalla cucina per non sporcarsi d’inchiostro, ci metteva un sacco di tempo, e si fermava continuamente per ridere con Jip, come se lui capisse tutto. Era convinta che il suo lavoro non fosse completo senza la sua firma in fondo. E poi me lo portava davanti, come se fosse una copia scolastica; quando lo lodavo, mi abbracciava forte. Sono ricordi commoventi, anche se a molti potrebbero sembrare semplici.
Poco dopo, prese in possesso le chiavi e iniziò a girare per la >casa con l’intero mazzo dentro un piccolo cestino legato intorno alla sua snella vita. Raramente capitava che i posti a cui quelle chiavi appartenevano fossero chiusi a chiave, o che avessero qualche utilità diversa da quella di essere semplicemente giocattoli per Jip. Ma Dora era felice, e questo mi rendeva felice anch’io. Era davvero soddisfatta del fatto che questa “finta attività domestica” portasse a dei risultati concreti; e si divertiva tantissimo, come se stessimo davvero gestendo una “casa per bambini”, solo per scherzo.
E così continuammo. Dora era quasi altrettanto affettuosa con mia zia quanto con me, e le raccontava spesso di quando temeva di essere “una vecchia cosa inutile”. Non ho mai visto mia zia mostrare tanta disponibilità verso nessuno. Corteggiava Jip, anche se Jip non rispondeva mai; ascoltava giorno dopo giorno la chitarra, anche se probabilmente non aveva alcun gusto per la musica; non attaccava mai le persone considerate “incapaci”, anche se la tentazione doveva essere molto forte; percorreva distanze incredibili a piedi pur di comprare, come sorpresa, qualsiasi piccola cosa scoprisse che Dora desiderava; e non entrava mai dal giardino, e quando la mancava nella stanza, chiamava dalla base delle scale con una voce che risuonava allegramente in tutta la casa:
“Dove è finita la piccola Blossom?”
CHAPTER 45. MR. DICK FULFILS MY AUNT’S PREDICTIONS
It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor. Living in his neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house on two or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent quarters under the Doctor’s roof. She was exactly the same as ever, and the same immortal butterflies hovered over her cap.
Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my life, Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her daughter was. She required a great deal of amusement, and, like a deep old soldier, pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to be devoting herself to her child. The Doctor’s desire that Annie should be entertained, was therefore particularly acceptable to this excellent parent; who expressed unqualified approval of his discretion.
I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor’s wound without knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so strongly commending his design of lightening the load of her life.
‘My dear soul,’ she said to him one day when I was present, ‘you know there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be always shut up here.’
The Doctor nodded his benevolent head. ‘When she comes to her mother’s age,’ said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan, ‘then it’ll be another thing. You might put ME into a Jail, with genteel society and a rubber, and I should never care to come out. But I am not Annie, you know; and Annie is not her mother.’
‘Surely, surely,’ said the Doctor.
‘You are the best of creatures—no, I beg your pardon!’ for the Doctor made a gesture of deprecation, ‘I must say before your face, as I always say behind your back, you are the best of creatures; but of course you don’t—now do you?---enter into the same pursuits and fancies as Annie?’
‘No,’ said the Doctor, in a sorrowful tone.
‘No, of course not,’ retorted the Old Soldier. ‘Take your Dictionary, for example. What a useful work a Dictionary is! What a necessary work! The meanings of words! Without Doctor Johnson, or somebody of that sort, we might have been at this present moment calling an Italian-iron, a bedstead. But we can’t expect a Dictionary—especially when it’s making—to interest Annie, can we?’
The Doctor shook his head.
‘And that’s why I so much approve,’ said Mrs. Markleham, tapping him on the shoulder with her shut-up fan, ‘of your thoughtfulness. It shows that you don’t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on young shoulders. You have studied Annie’s character, and you understand it. That’s what I find so charming!’
Even the calm and patient face of Doctor Strong expressed some little sense of pain, I thought, under the infliction of these compliments.
‘Therefore, my dear Doctor,’ said the Old Soldier, giving him several affectionate taps, ‘you may command me, at all times and seasons. Now, do understand that I am entirely at your service. I am ready to go with Annie to operas, concerts, exhibitions, all kinds of places; and you shall never find that I am tired. Duty, my dear Doctor, before every consideration in the universe!’
She was as good as her word. She was one of those people who can bear a great deal of pleasure, and she never flinched in her perseverance in the cause. She seldom got hold of the newspaper (which she settled herself down in the softest chair in the house to read through an eye-glass, every day, for two hours), but she found out something that she was certain Annie would like to see. It was in vain for Annie to protest that she was weary of such things. Her mother’s remonstrance always was, ‘Now, my dear Annie, I am sure you know better; and I must tell you, my love, that you are not making a proper return for the kindness of Doctor Strong.’
This was usually said in the Doctor’s presence, and appeared to me to constitute Annie’s principal inducement for withdrawing her objections when she made any. But in general she resigned herself to her mother, and went where the Old Soldier would.
It rarely happened now that Mr. Maldon accompanied them. Sometimes my aunt and Dora were invited to do so, and accepted the invitation. Sometimes Dora only was asked. The time had been, when I should have been uneasy in her going; but reflection on what had passed that former night in the Doctor’s study, had made a change in my mistrust. I believed that the Doctor was right, and I had no worse suspicions.
My aunt rubbed her nose sometimes when she happened to be alone with me, and said she couldn’t make it out; she wished they were happier; she didn’t think our military friend (so she always called the Old Soldier) mended the matter at all. My aunt further expressed her opinion, ‘that if our military friend would cut off those butterflies, and give ‘em to the chimney-sweepers for May-day, it would look like the beginning of something sensible on her part.’
But her abiding reliance was on Mr. Dick. That man had evidently an idea in his head, she said; and if he could only once pen it up into a corner, which was his great difficulty, he would distinguish himself in some extraordinary manner.
Unconscious of this prediction, Mr. Dick continued to occupy precisely the same ground in reference to the Doctor and to Mrs. Strong. He seemed neither to advance nor to recede. He appeared to have settled into his original foundation, like a building; and I must confess that my faith in his ever Moving, was not much greater than if he had been a building.
But one night, when I had been married some months, Mr. Dick put his head into the parlour, where I was writing alone (Dora having gone out with my aunt to take tea with the two little birds), and said, with a significant cough:
CAPITOLO 45. IL SIGNOR DICK RISPEDE LE PREVISIONI DI MIA ZIA
Era già passato un po’ di tempo da quando avevo lasciato il Dottore. Vivendo nel suo quartiere, lo vedevo spesso; inoltre, due o tre volte siamo andati a cena o a prendere il tè a casa sua. Quella vecchia soldatessa viveva stabilmente sotto il tetto del Dottore. Era esattamente la stessa di sempre, e le solite farfalle immortali volteggiavano sopra il suo cappello.
Come molte altre madri che ho conosciuto nella mia vita, anche la signora Markleham preferiva di gran lunga il divertimento alla felicità della sua figlia. Aveva bisogno di molto intrattenimento e, come un vecchio soldato esperto, fingeva di seguire i propri desideri, mentre in realtà si dedicava a sua figlia. Pertanto, il desiderio del dottore che Annie fosse divertita le sembrò particolarmente accettabile; anzi, esprimeva piena approvazione per la sua saggezza.
Non ho alcun >dubbio che abbia esaminato la ferita del Dottore senza saperlo. Ciò rappresenta soltanto un segno di frivolezza e egoismo maturi, qualcosa che, a mio parere, non è sempre inevitabile con l’avanzare dell’età. Con il suo forte apprezzamento per la sua intenzione di alleviare il peso della vita di sua moglie giovane, lei ha in realtà rafforzato la sua >paura di rappresentare un ostacolo per lei e di non condividere con lei gli stessi sentimenti.
“Mia cara ‘anima”, gli disse un giorno in mia presenza, “sai bene che sarebbe un po’ troppo triste per Annie stare sempre chiusa qui dentro.”
Il Dottore annuì con la sua testa benevola. “Quando arriverà all’età di sua madre,” disse la signora Markleham, agitando il suo ventaglio, “allora sarà un’altra storia. Potreste anche mettermi in prigione, tra gente raffinata e con tutto il lusso possibile. Eppure non mi verrebbe mai voglia di uscire. Ma io non sono Annie, capite; e Annie non è sua madre.”
“Certamente, certamente,” disse il Dottore.
“Sei la migliore delle creature, no, scusami!” Il Dottore fece un gesto di modestia. “Devo dirlo davanti a te, proprio come lo dico sempre dietro le tue spalle: sei davvero la migliore delle creature. Ma ovviamente non ti dedichi alle stesse cose e ai medesimi pensieri di Annie, vero?”
“No,” disse il Dottore, con un tono triste.
“No, certo che no,” ribatté il Vecchio Soldato. “Prendi ad esempio il dizionario: che strumento utile, che cosa indispensabile! I significati delle parole. Senza il Dottor Johnson o qualcuno del genere, forse in questo momento chiameremmo un letto ‘ferro italiano’. Ma non possiamo certo aspettarci che un dizionario interessi Annie, vero?”
Il Dottore scosse la testa.
“Ed è proprio per questo che approvo così tanto,” disse la signora Markleham, dandogli una pacca sulla spalla con il suo ventaglio chiuso, “la tua premura. Dimostra che non ti aspetti, come fanno molti anziani, che le esperienze di chi ha più anni siano trasferite su giovani spalle. Hai studiato il carattere di Annie e lo comprendi davvero. È proprio questo che trovo così affascinante!”
Anche il volto calmo e paziente del Dottor Strong, pensai, mostrava un certo segno di dolore» sotto l’effetto di questi complimenti.
“Quindi, mio caro Dottore,” disse il Vecchio Soldato dandogli alcune affettuose pacche, “potete comandarmi in qualsiasi momento e in qualsiasi stagione. Ora, capite bene che sono completamente a vostra disposizione. Sono pronto ad andare con Annie agli spettacoli d’opera, ai concerti, alle mostre, in ogni genere di luogo; e non troverete mai che io sia stanco. Il dovere, mio caro Dottore, viene prima di qualsiasi altra considerazione nell’universo!”
Rimase fedele alla sua parola. Era una di quelle persone capaci di provare grandi emozioni di gioia senza mai vacillare nella loro determinazione nel perseguire i propri obiettivi. Raramente aveva l’opportunità di leggere il giornale (che ogni giorno, per due ore, si sistemava nella sedia più confortevole della casa per leggerlo con gli occhiali), ma riusciva sempre a scoprire qualcosa che era sicura Annie avrebbe voluto vedere. Era inutile che Annie protestasse dicendo di essere stufa di queste cose: le remore di sua madre erano sempre le stesse: “Ora, cara Annie, sono sicura che tu sappia cosa è meglio; e devo dirti, mia adorata, che non stai ricambiando a dovere la gentilezza del Dottor Strong”.
Questo veniva solitamente detto in presenza del Dottore, e a mio parere costituiva il principale motivo per cui Annie ritirava le sue obiezioni ogni volta che ne faceva. Ma in generale si arrendeva alle decisioni di sua madre e andava dove voleva l’Old Soldier.
Ora accadeva raramente che il signor Maldon li accompagnasse. A volte mia zia e Dora venivano invitate ad andare con lui e accettavano l’invito; altre volte veniva chiesta solo Dora. C’era stato un tempo in cui avrei dovuto sentirmi a disagio all’idea che lei andasse, ma riflettendo su quanto era accaduto quella precedente notte nello studio del dottore, il mio sospetto aveva cambiato. Credevo che il dottore avesse ragione e non avevo più alcun sospetto negativo.
A volte mia zia si strofinava il naso quando era sola con me e diceva di non riuscire a capire; desiderava che fossero più felici; non pensava affatto che il nostro amico militare (così lo chiamava sempre) avesse risolto la situazione in alcun modo. Mia zia espresse anche l’opinione che, “se il nostro amico militare tagliasse quelle farfalle e le desse ai spazzacamini per il Primo Maggio, sembrerebbe il segno di un inizio serio da parte sua”.
Ma la sua fiducia costante era riposta nel signor Dick. Quell’uomo, diceva lei, aveva evidentemente un’idea in testa; e se solo fosse riuscito una volta a metterla per iscritto, il che rappresentava per lui una grande difficoltà, si sarebbe distinto in qualche modo straordinario.
Ignaro di questa previsione, il signor Dick continuò ad occupare esattamente lo stesso punto di vista riguardo al Dottore e alla signora Strong. Sembrava che né avanzasse né arretrasse; sembrava essersi stabilizzato sulla sua posizione iniziale, come un edificio. Devo ammettere che la mia >fede nel suo costante “muoversi” non era molto maggiore di quella che avrei avuto se fosse stato davvero un edificio.
Ma una notte, quando erano passati alcuni mesi dal mio matrimonio, il signor Dick mise la testa nel salotto, dove stavo scrivendo da sola (Dora era uscita con mia zia per prendere il tè con quelle due piccole bambine), e disse, con un colpo di tosse significativo:
‘You couldn’t speak to me without inconveniencing yourself, Trotwood, I am afraid?’
‘Certainly, Mr. Dick,’ said I; ‘come in!’
‘Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick, laying his finger on the side of his nose, after he had shaken hands with me. ‘Before I sit down, I wish to make an observation. You know your aunt?’
‘A little,’ I replied.
‘She is the most wonderful woman in the world, sir!’
After the delivery of this communication, which he shot out of himself as if he were loaded with it, Mr. Dick sat down with greater gravity than usual, and looked at me.
‘Now, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I am going to put a question to you.’
‘As many as you please,’ said I.
‘What do you consider me, sir?’ asked Mr. Dick, folding his arms.
‘A dear old friend,’ said I. ‘Thank you, Trotwood,’ returned Mr. Dick, laughing, and reaching across in high glee to shake hands with me. ‘But I mean, boy,’ resuming his gravity, ‘what do you consider me in this respect?’ touching his forehead.
I was puzzled how to answer, but he helped me with a word.
‘Weak?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Well,’ I replied, dubiously. ‘Rather so.’
‘Exactly!’ cried Mr. Dick, who seemed quite enchanted by my reply. ‘That is, Trotwood, when they took some of the trouble out of you-know-who’s head, and put it you know where, there was a—’ Mr. Dick made his two hands revolve very fast about each other a great number of times, and then brought them into collision, and rolled them over and over one another, to express confusion. ‘There was that sort of thing done to me somehow. Eh?’
I nodded at him, and he nodded back again.
‘In short, boy,’ said Mr. Dick, dropping his voice to a whisper, ‘I am simple.’
I would have qualified that conclusion, but he stopped me.
‘Yes, I am! She pretends I am not. She won’t hear of it; but I am. I know I am. If she hadn’t stood my friend, sir, I should have been shut up, to lead a dismal life these many years. But I’ll provide for her! I never spend the copying money. I put it in a box. I have made a will. I’ll leave it all to her. She shall be rich—noble!’
Mr. Dick took out his pocket-handkerchief, and wiped his eyes. He then folded it up with great care, pressed it smooth between his two hands, put it in his pocket, and seemed to put my aunt away with it.
‘Now you are a scholar, Trotwood,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘You are a fine scholar. You know what a learned man, what a great man, the Doctor is. You know what honour he has always done me. Not proud in his wisdom. Humble, humble—condescending even to poor Dick, who is simple and knows nothing. I have sent his name up, on a scrap of paper, to the kite, along the string, when it has been in the sky, among the larks. The kite has been glad to receive it, sir, and the sky has been brighter with it.’
I delighted him by saying, most heartily, that the Doctor was deserving of our best respect and highest esteem.
‘And his beautiful wife is a star,’ said Mr. Dick. ‘A shining star. I have seen her shine, sir. But,’ bringing his chair nearer, and laying one hand upon my knee—‘clouds, sir—clouds.’
I answered the solicitude which his face expressed, by conveying the same expression into my own, and shaking my head.
‘What clouds?’ said Mr. Dick.
He looked so wistfully into my face, and was so anxious to understand, that I took great pains to answer him slowly and distinctly, as I might have entered on an explanation to a child.
‘There is some unfortunate division between them,’ I replied. ‘Some unhappy cause of separation. A secret. It may be inseparable from the discrepancy in their years. It may have grown up out of almost nothing.’
Mr. Dick, who had told off every sentence with a thoughtful nod, paused when I had done, and sat considering, with his eyes upon my face, and his hand upon my knee.
‘Doctor not angry with her, Trotwood?’ he said, after some time.
‘No. Devoted to her.’
‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick.
The sudden exultation with which he slapped me on the knee, and leaned back in his chair, with his eyebrows lifted up as high as he could possibly lift them, made me think him farther out of his wits than ever. He became as suddenly grave again, and leaning forward as before, said—first respectfully taking out his pocket-handkerchief, as if it really did represent my aunt:
‘Most wonderful woman in the world, Trotwood. Why has she done nothing to set things right?’
‘Too delicate and difficult a subject for such interference,’ I replied.
‘Fine scholar,’ said Mr. Dick, touching me with his finger. ‘Why has HE done nothing?’
‘For the same reason,’ I returned.
‘Then, I have got it, boy!’ said Mr. Dick. And he stood up before me, more exultingly than before, nodding his head, and striking himself repeatedly upon the breast, until one might have supposed that he had nearly nodded and struck all the breath out of his body.
‘A poor fellow with a craze, sir,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘a simpleton, a weak-minded person—present company, you know!’ striking himself again, ‘may do what wonderful people may not do. I’ll bring them together, boy. I’ll try. They’ll not blame me. They’ll not object to me. They’ll not mind what I do, if it’s wrong. I’m only Mr. Dick. And who minds Dick? Dick’s nobody! Whoo!’ He blew a slight, contemptuous breath, as if he blew himself away.
It was fortunate he had proceeded so far with his mystery, for we heard the coach stop at the little garden gate, which brought my aunt and Dora home.
‘Not a word, boy!’ he pursued in a whisper; ‘leave all the blame with Dick—simple Dick—mad Dick. I have been thinking, sir, for some time, that I was getting it, and now I have got it. After what you have said to me, I am sure I have got it. All right!’ Not another word did Mr. Dick utter on the subject; but he made a very telegraph of himself for the next half-hour (to the great disturbance of my aunt’s mind), to enjoin inviolable secrecy on me.
To my surprise, I heard no more about it for some two or three weeks, though I was sufficiently interested in the result of his endeavours; descrying a strange gleam of good sense—I say nothing of good feeling, for that he always exhibited—in the conclusion to which he had come. At last I began to believe, that, in the flighty and unsettled state of his mind, he had either forgotten his intention or abandoned it.
“Non potresti parlarmi senza causarti delle difficoltà, vero, Trotwood?”
“Certamente, signor Dick,” dissi; “entri pure!”
“Trotwood,” disse il signor Dick, mettendosi un dito sul naso, dopo essersi stretto la mano con me. “Prima di sedermi, vorrei fare una osservazione. Conosci tua zia?”
“Un po’,” risposi.
“È la donna più meravigliosa del mondo, signore!”
Dopo aver inviato questo messaggio, che sembrava essere stato espresso con grande intensità da parte sua, il signor Dick si sedette con maggiore gravità del solito e mi guardò.
“Ora, ragazzo,” disse il signor Dick, “ti farò una domanda.”
“Quanti ne volete,” dissi io.
“Che cosa pensa che io sia, signore?”, chiese il signor Dick, incrociando le braccia.
“Un caro vecchio amico,” dissi io. “Grazie, Trotwood,” rispose il signor Dick, ridendo e tendendomi la mano con grande gioia. “Ma intanto, ragazzo,” riprese seriamente, “che cosa pensi che io sia in questo senso?” si toccò la fronte.
Ero perplesso su come rispondere, ma lui mi aiutò con una parola.
“Debole?” disse il signor Dick.
“Beh, ”, risposi, con esitazione. “Meglio così.”
“Esattamente!” esclamò il signor Dick, che sembrava davvero incantato dalla mia risposta. “Voglio dire, Trotwood, quando hanno tolto parte di quella responsabilità a chi sai tu, e l’hanno messa, beh, in un posto che non so dirti. C’è stato qualcosa del genere anche con me, in qualche modo. Eh?”
Gli feci un cenno con la testa, e lui ricambiò il gesto.
“In breve, ragazzo,” disse il signor Dick, abbassando la voce a un sussurro, “sono semplice.”
Avrei voluto precisare quella conclusione, ma lui mi ha fermato.
“Sì, lo sono! Lei finge che non lo sia. Non vuole nemmeno ascoltarmi; ma lo sono. So di esserlo. Se non avesse sostenuto il mio amico, signore, sarei stato costretto a tacere e a condurre una vita miserabile per tutti questi anni. Ma me ne occuperò io di lei! Non spendo mai i soldi che guadagno con il lavoro di copiatura; li metto in una scatola. Ho anche redatto un testamento: le lascerò tutto. Diventerà ricca, nobile!”
Il signor Dick tirò fuori il fazzoletto di tasca e si asciugò gli occhi. Poi lo piegò con grande cura, lo appiattì tra le due mani, se lo mise in tasca, e sembrò quasi che, insieme a esso, avesse messo via anche mia zia.
“Ora sei uno studioso, Trotwood,” disse il signor Dick. “Sei davvero un ottimo studioso. Sai quanto sia colto, quanto sia grande quell’uomo, il Dottore. Sai quale onore mi abbia sempre reso. Non è orgoglioso della sua saggezza. È umile, molto umile. Si abbassa persino verso povero Dick, che è semplice e non sa nulla. Ho scritto il suo nome su un pezzo di carta e l’ho legato alla corda del aquilone, quando era in cielo, tra gli uccellini. L’aquilone ha accettato volentieri quel messaggio, signore. E il cielo è diventato ancora più luminoso grazie a esso.”
Gli dissi con grande entusiasmo che il Dottore meritava il nostro massimo rispetto e la nostra più alta stima.
“E sua moglie bellissima è una stella,” disse il signor Dick. “Una stella splendente. L’ho vista brillare, signore. Ma,” avvicinando la sedia e posando una mano sul mio ginocchio, “ci sono delle nuvole, signore, delle nuvole.”
Risposi alla preoccupazione che si leggeva sul suo volto, riproducendo lo stesso espressione sul mio e scuotendo la testa.
“Quali nuvole?” disse il signor Dick.
Mi guardava con tale desiderio di comprendere, e con tanta ansia, che mi presi grande cura di rispondergli lentamente e chiaramente, come se stessi dando spiegazioni a un >bambino.
“C’è una qualche sfortunata divergenza tra loro,” risposi. “Qualche motivo spiacevole che li ha separati. Un segreto. Forse questa divergenza è strettamente legata alla differenza di età tra loro. O forse è nata da qualcosa di insignificante.”
Il signor Dick, che aveva annuito pensosamente ad ogni frase che dicevo, si fermò quando ebbi finito di parlare; rimase seduto a riflettere, con lo sguardo fisso sul mio viso e la mano posata sulla mia gamba.
“Dottore, non è arrabbiato con lei, Trotwood?”, chiese dopo un po’.
“Devoto a lei.”
“Allora, l’ho capito, ragazzo!” disse il signor Dick.
Quell’improvvisa esultanza con cui mi diede una pacca sulla gamba e si appoggiò allo schienale della sedia, sollevando le sopracciglia il più possibile, mi fece pensare che fosse ancora più fuori di testa del solito. Poi d’un tratto tornò serio come prima, si chinò in avanti e disse. Prima di tutto, estrasse rispettosamente il fazzoletto di tasca, come se davvero rappresentasse mia zia.
“La donna più meravigliosa del mondo, Trotwood. Perché non ha fatto nulla per rimettere le cose a posto?”
“Un argomento troppo delicato e complesso per un intervento del genere,” risposi.
“Un bravo studioso,” disse il signor Dick, toccandomi con un dito. “Perché NON ha fatto nulla?”
“Per lo stesso motivo,” risposi.
“Allora, l’ho capito, ragazzo!” disse il signor Dick. Si alzò davanti a me, ancora più esultante del solito, annuendo con la testa e battendosi ripetutamente sul petto, fino a far pensare che avesse quasi perso tutta l’aria nei suoi Corporei.
“Un povero diavolo con una mania, signore,” disse il signor Dick, “un sempliciotto, una persona debole di mente. Voi tutti qui presenti lo sapete bene! Può fare cose meravigliose che altre persone non riescono nemmeno a immaginare. Li farò incontrare, ragazzo. Proverò. Non mi biasimeranno, non si opporranno a me. Non gli importerà di ciò che faccio, anche se fosse sbagliato. Sono solo il signor Dick. E a chi importa del signor Dick? Il signor Dick non è nessuno! Woo!” Espirò con disprezzo, come se volesse cancellare completamente la propria esistenza.
Fu fortunato che avesse portato avanti il suo mistero fino a quel punto, perché sentimmo l’autoferro fermarsi davanti al piccolo cancello del giardino, il che permise a mia zia e a Dora di tornare a casa.
“Nessuna parola, ragazzo!” continuò sussurrando; “lascia che tutta la colpa ricada su Dick, il semplice Dick, quel pazzo di Dick. Ho riflettuto per un po’, signore, e ora ho capito tutto. Dopo quello che mi avete detto, sono sicuro di aver compreso. Bene!” Non pronunciò più una parola sull’argomento; ma per il resto della mezz’ora seguente si comportò in modo estremamente deciso (causando grande preoccupazione a mia zia), esigendo che io mantenessi il segreto assolutamente.
A mia sorpresa, per circa due o tre settimane non se ne sentì più parlare, sebbene fossi molto interessato al risultato dei suoi sforzi; notavo infatti un curioso barlume di buon senso nelle conclusioni a cui era giunto. Alla fine iniziai a credere che, nel suo stato mentale incostante e instabile, avesse o dimenticato il proprio intento o lo avesse abbandonato del tutto.
One fair evening, when Dora was not inclined to go out, my aunt and I strolled up to the Doctor’s cottage. It was autumn, when there were no debates to vex the evening air; and I remember how the leaves smelt like our garden at Blunderstone as we trod them under foot, and how the old, unhappy feeling, seemed to go by, on the sighing wind.
It was twilight when we reached the cottage. Mrs. Strong was just coming out of the garden, where Mr. Dick yet lingered, busy with his knife, helping the gardener to point some stakes. The Doctor was engaged with someone in his study; but the visitor would be gone directly, Mrs. Strong said, and begged us to remain and see him. We went into the drawing-room with her, and sat down by the darkening window. There was never any ceremony about the visits of such old friends and neighbours as we were.
We had not sat here many minutes, when Mrs. Markleham, who usually contrived to be in a fuss about something, came bustling in, with her newspaper in her hand, and said, out of breath, ‘My goodness gracious, Annie, why didn’t you tell me there was someone in the Study!’
‘My dear mama,’ she quietly returned, ‘how could I know that you desired the information?’
‘Desired the information!’ said Mrs. Markleham, sinking on the sofa. ‘I never had such a turn in all my life!’
‘Have you been to the Study, then, mama?’ asked Annie.
‘BEEN to the Study, my dear!’ she returned emphatically. ‘Indeed I have! I came upon the amiable creature—if you’ll imagine my feelings, Miss Trotwood and David—in the act of making his will.’
Her daughter looked round from the window quickly.
‘In the act, my dear Annie,’ repeated Mrs. Markleham, spreading the newspaper on her lap like a table-cloth, and patting her hands upon it, ‘of making his last Will and Testament. The foresight and affection of the dear! I must tell you how it was. I really must, in justice to the darling—for he is nothing less!—tell you how it was. Perhaps you know, Miss Trotwood, that there is never a candle lighted in this house, until one’s eyes are literally falling out of one’s head with being stretched to read the paper. And that there is not a chair in this house, in which a paper can be what I call, read, except one in the Study. This took me to the Study, where I saw a light. I opened the door. In company with the dear Doctor were two professional people, evidently connected with the law, and they were all three standing at the table: the darling Doctor pen in hand. “This simply expresses then,” said the Doctor—Annie, my love, attend to the very words—“this simply expresses then, gentlemen, the confidence I have in Mrs. Strong, and gives her all unconditionally?” One of the professional people replied, “And gives her all unconditionally.” Upon that, with the natural feelings of a mother, I said, “Good God, I beg your pardon!” fell over the door-step, and came away through the little back passage where the pantry is.’
Mrs. Strong opened the window, and went out into the verandah, where she stood leaning against a pillar.
‘But now isn’t it, Miss Trotwood, isn’t it, David, invigorating,’ said Mrs. Markleham, mechanically following her with her eyes, ‘to find a man at Doctor Strong’s time of life, with the strength of mind to do this kind of thing? It only shows how right I was. I said to Annie, when Doctor Strong paid a very flattering visit to myself, and made her the subject of a declaration and an offer, I said, “My dear, there is no doubt whatever, in my opinion, with reference to a suitable provision for you, that Doctor Strong will do more than he binds himself to do.”’
Here the bell rang, and we heard the sound of the visitors’ feet as they went out.
‘It’s all over, no doubt,’ said the Old Soldier, after listening; ‘the dear creature has signed, sealed, and delivered, and his mind’s at rest. Well it may be! What a mind! Annie, my love, I am going to the Study with my paper, for I am a poor creature without news. Miss Trotwood, David, pray come and see the Doctor.’
I was conscious of Mr. Dick’s standing in the shadow of the room, shutting up his knife, when we accompanied her to the Study; and of my aunt’s rubbing her nose violently, by the way, as a mild vent for her intolerance of our military friend; but who got first into the Study, or how Mrs. Markleham settled herself in a moment in her easy-chair, or how my aunt and I came to be left together near the door (unless her eyes were quicker than mine, and she held me back), I have forgotten, if I ever knew. But this I know,—that we saw the Doctor before he saw us, sitting at his table, among the folio volumes in which he delighted, resting his head calmly on his hand. That, in the same moment, we saw Mrs. Strong glide in, pale and trembling. That Mr. Dick supported her on his arm. That he laid his other hand upon the Doctor’s arm, causing him to look up with an abstracted air. That, as the Doctor moved his head, his wife dropped down on one knee at his feet, and, with her hands imploringly lifted, fixed upon his face the memorable look I had never forgotten. That at this sight Mrs. Markleham dropped the newspaper, and stared more like a figure-head intended for a ship to be called The Astonishment, than anything else I can think of.
The gentleness of the Doctor’s manner and surprise, the dignity that mingled with the supplicating attitude of his wife, the amiable concern of Mr. Dick, and the earnestness with which my aunt said to herself, ‘That man mad!’ (triumphantly expressive of the misery from which she had saved him)—I see and hear, rather than remember, as I write about it.
‘Doctor!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘What is it that’s amiss? Look here!’
‘Annie!’ cried the Doctor. ‘Not at my feet, my dear!’
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘I beg and pray that no one will leave the room! Oh, my husband and father, break this long silence. Let us both know what it is that has come between us!’
Una bella sera, quando Dora non aveva voglia di uscire, mia zia ed io ci incamminammo verso la capanna del Dottore. Era autunno, e non c’erano dibattiti che potessero turbare l’aria serale; ricordo come le foglie profumassero di nostro giardino a Blunderstone mentre le calpestavamo, e come quella vecchia sensazione di tristezza sembrasse svanire con il sospiro del vento.
Era il crepuscolo quando arrivammo alla capanna. La signora Strong stava appena uscendo dal giardino, dove il signor Dick si attardava ancora, occupato con il suo coltello ad aiutare il giardiniere a piantare alcuni paletti. Il dottore era impegnato a parlare con qualcuno nel suo studio; ma la visita se ne sarebbe andata subito, disse la signora Strong, e ci pregò di restare per incontrarla. Entrammo insieme nel salotto e ci sedemmo vicino alla finestra, ormai avvolta nell’oscurità. Per visite di vecchi amici e vicini come noi, non c’era mai alcuna formalità.
Non eravamo seduti qui da molti minuti, quando la signora Markleham, che di solito trova sempre qualcosa per cui agitarsi, entrò di corsa, con il suo giornale in mano, e disse, senza fiato: “Mio Dio, Annie, perché non mi hai detto che c’era qualcuno nello studio?”
“Mia cara mamma,” rispose lei in silenzio, “come avrei potuto sapere che desideravate quella informazione?”
“Volevo quelle informazioni!”, disse la signora Markleham, sedendosi sul divano. “Non mi era mai capitato nulla del genere in tutta la mia vita!”
“Allora, mamma, sei stata nello Studio?” chiese Annie.
“Sono stata nello studio, cara!” rispose lei con decisione. “Certo che ci sono stata! Ho trovato quella cara creatura, se riuscite a immaginare i miei sentimenti, signorina Trotwood e David, mentre stava redigendo il suo testamento.”
Sua figlia guardò rapidamente intorno dalla finestra.
“Nel momento stesso in cui lo fece, cara Annie,” ripeté la signora Markleham, stendendo il giornale sulle sue ginocchia come se fosse un tovagliolo e battendoci sopra le mani, “nel momento stesso in cui redasse il suo ultimo testamento. Che previdenza e affetto da parte di quel caro! Devo assolutamente raccontarvi com’è andata. Davvero devo farlo, per giustizia verso lui, perché non è certo meno di un angelo! Forse sapete, signorina Trotwood, che in questa casa non si accende mai una candela, finché le persone non stanno letteralmente morendo di stanchezza a forza di leggere il giornale. E non c’è nemmeno una sedia in tutta la casa dove si possa davvero leggere un giornale, tranne che nello studio. Così sono andata nello studio, e ho visto una luce. Ho aperto la porta: insieme al caro dottore c’erano due persone professioniste, chiaramente legate al mondo legale; tutti e tre stavano davanti alla scrivania, il caro dottore con la penna in mano. ‘Questo, signori,’ disse il dottore, ‘esprime semplicemente la fiducia che ho nella signora Strong, e le conferisce tutto, senza condizioni.’ Uno dei professionisti rispose: ‘E le conferisce tutto, senza condizioni.’ Allora, con i sentimenti naturali di una madre, dissi: ‘Dio mio, mi scusi!’ E caddi per terra, per poi uscire dal piccolo passaggio posteriore dove si trova la dispensa.”
La signora Strong aprì la finestra e uscì sul portico, dove si appoggiò a un pilastro.
“Ma ora non è forse così, signorina Trotwood, non è vero, David? È davvero incoraggiante trovare un uomo, alla età del dottor Strong, con la forza di volontà necessaria per fare una cosa del genere. Questo dimostra quanto avessi ragione. Quando il dottor Strong mi fece visita e le fece una proposta, dissi ad Annie: ‘Mia cara, non ho alcun dubbio che il dottor Strong farà molto di più di ciò che si è impegnato a fare’.”
Qui suonò la campanella, e sentimmo il rumore dei passi degli ospiti che se ne andavano.
“È tutto finito, senza alcun >dubbio”, disse il Vecchio Soldato dopo aver ascoltato; “quella cara creatura ha firmato, sigillato e consegnato tutto, e ora la sua mente è in pace. Beh, forse è davvero così! Che mente straordinaria! Annie, mio amore, vado nello studio con il mio documento; sono una povera creatura senza notizie. Signorina Trotwood, David, vi prego venite a vedere il Dottore.”
Ero consapevole della posizione di Mr. Dick nell’ombra della stanza; quando l’abbiamo accompagnata nello Studio, lui ha messo via il coltello. Ricordo anche che mia zia si strofinava violentemente il naso, come modo leggero per esprimere la sua intolleranza verso il nostro amico militare. Ma chi è entrato per primo nello Studio, o come Mrs. Markleham si sia subito sistemata nella sua poltrona, o come mia zia ed io siamo rimaste da sole vicino alla porta. Non lo so più; forse i miei occhi non erano abbastanza veloci. Comunque, ricordo che abbiamo visto il Dottore prima che lui ci vedesse: seduto al suo tavolo, tra i volumi rilegati di cui andava così fiero, con la testa appoggiata tranquillamente sulla mano. Nello stesso istante, abbiamo visto entrare Mrs. Strong: pallida e tremante. Mr. Dick l’ha sostenuta con il braccio; ha posato l’altra mano su quella del Dottore, facendolo alzare lo sguardo con aria assente. Quando il Dottore ha mosso la testa, sua moglie si è inginocchiata ai suoi piedi, sollevando le mani in un gesto supplichevole, fissandolo con uno sguardo che non ho mai dimenticato. A quel vedere, Mrs. Markleham ha lasciato cadere il giornale e ha fissato Mr. Dick come se fosse la testa di una nave da chiamare “L’Astonishment”. Più che qualsiasi altra cosa possa immaginare.
La gentilezza nel modo di fare del Dottore e la sua sorpresa, la dignità che si mescolava all’atteggiamento supplicante di sua moglie, la premurosa attenzione di Mr. Dick, e l’intensità con cui mia zia si disse: “Quell’uomo è pazzo!” – esprimendo in modo trionfale la miseria da cui lei lo aveva salvato. Tutto questo lo vedo e lo sento, piuttosto che ricordarlo, mentre ne scrivo.
“Dottore!”, disse il signor Dick. “Cosa c’è che non va? Guardi qui!”
“Annie!” gridò il Dottore. “Non inginocchiarti davanti a me, cara, ”
“Sì!” disse lei. “Prego e supplico che nessuno lasci questa stanza! Oh, mio marito e mio padre, rompete questo lungo silenzio. Diteci entrambi cosa c’è che ci separa!”
Mrs. Markleham, by this time recovering the power of speech, and seeming to swell with family pride and motherly indignation, here exclaimed, ‘Annie, get up immediately, and don’t disgrace everybody belonging to you by humbling yourself like that, unless you wish to see me go out of my mind on the spot!’
‘Mama!’ returned Annie. ‘Waste no words on me, for my appeal is to my husband, and even you are nothing here.’
‘Nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham. ‘Me, nothing! The child has taken leave of her senses. Please to get me a glass of water!’
I was too attentive to the Doctor and his wife, to give any heed to this request; and it made no impression on anybody else; so Mrs. Markleham panted, stared, and fanned herself.
‘Annie!’ said the Doctor, tenderly taking her in his hands. ‘My dear! If any unavoidable change has come, in the sequence of time, upon our married life, you are not to blame. The fault is mine, and only mine. There is no change in my affection, admiration, and respect. I wish to make you happy. I truly love and honour you. Rise, Annie, pray!’
But she did not rise. After looking at him for a little while, she sank down closer to him, laid her arm across his knee, and dropping her head upon it, said:
‘If I have any friend here, who can speak one word for me, or for my husband in this matter; if I have any friend here, who can give a voice to any suspicion that my heart has sometimes whispered to me; if I have any friend here, who honours my husband, or has ever cared for me, and has anything within his knowledge, no matter what it is, that may help to mediate between us, I implore that friend to speak!’
There was a profound silence. After a few moments of painful hesitation, I broke the silence.
‘Mrs. Strong,’ I said, ‘there is something within my knowledge, which I have been earnestly entreated by Doctor Strong to conceal, and have concealed until tonight. But, I believe the time has come when it would be mistaken faith and delicacy to conceal it any longer, and when your appeal absolves me from his injunction.’
She turned her face towards me for a moment, and I knew that I was right. I could not have resisted its entreaty, if the assurance that it gave me had been less convincing.
‘Our future peace,’ she said, ‘may be in your hands. I trust it confidently to your not suppressing anything. I know beforehand that nothing you, or anyone, can tell me, will show my husband’s noble heart in any other light than one. Howsoever it may seem to you to touch me, disregard that. I will speak for myself, before him, and before God afterwards.’
Thus earnestly besought, I made no reference to the Doctor for his permission, but, without any other compromise of the truth than a little softening of the coarseness of Uriah Heep, related plainly what had passed in that same room that night. The staring of Mrs. Markleham during the whole narration, and the shrill, sharp interjections with which she occasionally interrupted it, defy description.
When I had finished, Annie remained, for some few moments, silent, with her head bent down, as I have described. Then, she took the Doctor’s hand (he was sitting in the same attitude as when we had entered the room), and pressed it to her breast, and kissed it. Mr. Dick softly raised her; and she stood, when she began to speak, leaning on him, and looking down upon her husband—from whom she never turned her eyes.
‘All that has ever been in my mind, since I was married,’ she said in a low, submissive, tender voice, ‘I will lay bare before you. I could not live and have one reservation, knowing what I know now.’
‘Nay, Annie,’ said the Doctor, mildly, ‘I have never doubted you, my child. There is no need; indeed there is no need, my dear.’
‘There is great need,’ she answered, in the same way, ‘that I should open my whole heart before the soul of generosity and truth, whom, year by year, and day by day, I have loved and venerated more and more, as Heaven knows!’
‘Really,’ interrupted Mrs. Markleham, ‘if I have any discretion at all—’
(‘Which you haven’t, you Marplot,’ observed my aunt, in an indignant whisper.) —‘I must be permitted to observe that it cannot be requisite to enter into these details.’
‘No one but my husband can judge of that, mama,’ said Annie without removing her eyes from his face, ‘and he will hear me. If I say anything to give you pain, mama, forgive me. I have borne pain first, often and long, myself.’
‘Upon my word!’ gasped Mrs. Markleham.
‘When I was very young,’ said Annie, ‘quite a little child, my first associations with knowledge of any kind were inseparable from a patient friend and teacher—the friend of my dead father—who was always dear to me. I can remember nothing that I know, without remembering him. He stored my mind with its first treasures, and stamped his character upon them all. They never could have been, I think, as good as they have been to me, if I had taken them from any other hands.’
‘Makes her mother nothing!’ exclaimed Mrs. Markleham.
‘Not so mama,’ said Annie; ‘but I make him what he was. I must do that. As I grew up, he occupied the same place still. I was proud of his interest: deeply, fondly, gratefully attached to him. I looked up to him, I can hardly describe how—as a father, as a guide, as one whose praise was different from all other praise, as one in whom I could have trusted and confided, if I had doubted all the world. You know, mama, how young and inexperienced I was, when you presented him before me, of a sudden, as a lover.’
‘I have mentioned the fact, fifty times at least, to everybody here!’ said Mrs. Markleham.
(‘Then hold your tongue, for the Lord’s sake, and don’t mention it any more!’ muttered my aunt.)
‘It was so great a change: so great a loss, I felt it, at first,’ said Annie, still preserving the same look and tone, ‘that I was agitated and distressed. I was but a girl; and when so great a change came in the character in which I had so long looked up to him, I think I was sorry. But nothing could have made him what he used to be again; and I was proud that he should think me so worthy, and we were married.’ ‘—At Saint Alphage, Canterbury,’ observed Mrs. Markleham.
La signora Markleham, ormai in grado di parlare nuovamente e visibilmente colma di orgoglio familiare e indignazione materna, esclamò: “Annie, alzati immediatamente! Non rovinare la reputazione di tutta la tua famiglia umiliandoti in quel modo, a meno che tu non voglia vedermi perdere completamente il controllo!”
“Mamma!”, rispose Annie. “Non perdere tempo a parlarmi con me, perché la mia supplica è rivolta a mio marito. E nemmeno tu conti nulla in questa situazione.”
“Niente!” esclamò la signora Markleham. “Io, niente! Quel bambino ha perso completamente il senno. Per favore, portatemi un bicchiere di acqua!”
Ero troppo concentrato sul Dottore e sua moglie per prestare attenzione a questa richiesta; inoltre, nessun altro se ne accorse nemmeno; così la signora Markleham continuava ad ansimare, a fissare qualcosa con lo sguardo e a farsi aria con il ventaglio.
“Annie!” disse il Dottore, prendendola dolcemente tra le braccia. “Mia cara. Se qualche cambiamento inevitabile è avvenuto, nel corso del tempo, nella nostra vita coniugale, non è colpa tua. La colpa è mia, e solo mia. Il mio affetto, la mia ammirazione e il mio rispetto per te non sono cambiati. Voglio renderti felice. Ti amo davvero e ti rispetto profondamente. Alzati, Annie, per favore, ”
Ma non si alzò. Dopo averlo guardato per un po’, si avvicinò di più a lui, posò il braccio sul suo ginocchio e, appoggiandovi la testa, disse:
“Se qui c’è qualcuno che possa dire una parola a mio favore, o a favore di mio marito in questa questione; se qui c’è qualcuno che possa dare voce a eventuali sospetti che a volte il mio cuore mi ha sussurrato; se qui c’è qualcuno che rispetta mio marito, o che si è mai preso cura di me, e che abbia in suo possesso qualsiasi informazione possa essere utile per mediare tra noi, prego quel qualcuno di intervenire!”
Regnava un profondo silenzio. Dopo alcuni momenti di doloroso esitare, ruppi quel silenzio.
“Signora Strong,” dissi, “c’è qualcosa che so, e il dottor Strong mi ha supplicato ardentemente di tenerlo nascosto; l’ho tenuto nascosto fino a stasera. Ma credo sia arrivato il momento in cui continuare a nasconderlo significherebbe mancare di fedeltà e delicatezza, e che la vostra richiesta mi liberi da tale impegno.”
Per un momento girò il viso verso di me, e capii che avevo ragione. Non avrei potuto resistere a quella supplica, se la sicurezza che mi offriva non fosse stata così convincente.
“La nostra futura pace,” disse lei, “potrebbe essere nelle vostre mani. Vi affido con fiducia il compito di non nascondere nulla. So già che nulla di ciò che voi o chiunque altro possiate dirmi potrà far apparire il nobile cuore di mio marito in modo diverso da come è realmente. Qualunque cosa possa sembrarvi opportuna per influenzarmi, ignoratela. Parlerò io stessa davanti a lui, e poi anche davanti a Dio.”
Avendo ricevuto questa sincera richiesta, non chiesi il permesso al Dottore, ma, senza compromettere in alcun modo la verità se non attenuando leggermente la durezza dei modi di Uriah Heep, raccontai chiaramente quanto era accaduto nella stessa stanza quella notte. Lo sguardo fisso della signora Markleham durante tutto il racconto, nonché le sue interruzioni acute e stridule, sono indescrivibili.
Quando ebbi finito, Annie rimase in silenzio per alcuni momenti, con la testa china, proprio come avevo descritto. Poi prese la mano del Dottore (era seduto nella stessa posizione di quando eravamo entrati nella stanza), se la premette sul petto e la baciò. Il signor Dick la sollevò dolcemente; lei si alzò in piedi, appoggiandosi a lui, e guardò verso suo marito, senza mai distogliere lo sguardo da lui.
“Tutto ciò che è mai stato nel mio cuore, da quando mi sono sposata,” disse con una voce bassa, sottomessa e tenera, “lo rivelerò davanti a te. Non potrei vivere avendo anche solo un rimorso, ora che so quello che so.”
“No, Annie,” disse il Dottore con dolcezza, “non ho mai dubitato di te, mia cara bambina. Non c’è bisogno; davvero, non c’è alcun bisogno.”
“C’è un grande bisogno,” rispose lei nello stesso modo, “che io apra tutto il mio cuore davanti all’anima della generosità e della verità, che anno dopo anno, giorno dopo giorno, ho amato e venerato sempre di più, come solo il Cielo sa!”
“Davvero,” interruppe la signora Markleham, “se ho anche solo un minimo di discrezione, ”
“Che cosa che non hai fatto, tu birichino,” osservò mia zia, sussurrando con indignazione. “Devo però dire che non è necessario entrare nei dettagli.”
“Nessuno tranne mio marito può giudicare in merito, mamma,” disse Annie senza staccare lo sguardo dal suo viso, “e lui mi ascolterà. Se dicessi qualcosa che possa causarti dolore, mamma, perdonami. Io stessa ho sopportato molto dolore, spesso e a lungo.”
“Per la mia parola!”, esclamò ansimando la signora Markleham.
“Quando ero molto piccola,” disse Annie, “una bambina ancora piccolissima, le mie prime esperienze legate alla conoscenza di qualsiasi tipo erano indissolubilmente legate a un amico e insegnante paziente, l’amico di mio padre defunto, che fu sempre molto caro per me. Non riesco a ricordare nulla di ciò che so senza ricordarlo lui. Fu lui ad arricchire la mia mente con i primi ‘tesori’ della conoscenza e a improntarvi il carattere suo stesso. Penso che quelle conoscenze non sarebbero mai state così preziose per me se le avessi acquisite da altre persone.”
“Non le vale assolutamente nulla!” esclamò la signora Markleham.
“Non proprio, mamma,” disse Annie; “ma sono io che lo ho reso ciò che è oggi. Devo farlo. Crescendo, lui ha continuato ad occupare lo stesso posto nella mia vita. Ero orgogliosa del suo interesse per me: profondamente legata a lui, con affetto e gratitudine. Lo ammiravo. Non so nemmeno come descriverlo: come un padre, come una guida, come qualcuno il cui complimento era diverso da tutti gli altri; come qualcuno in chi avrei potuto confidare completamente, anche se dubitassi di tutto il resto del mondo. Sai, mamma, quanto fossi giovane e inesperta quando me lo hai presentato all’improvviso, come un innamorato, ”
“Ho menzionato questo fatto almeno cinquanta volte con tutti voi qui presenti!” disse la signora Markleham.
“Allora taci, per l’amor del Signore, e non ne parla più!” mormorò mia zia.
“È stato un cambiamento così grande, una perdita così enorme, lo sentivo chiaramente all’inizio,” disse Annie, mantenendo sempre lo stesso sguardo e lo stesso tono di voce, “che ero agitata e angosciata. Ero solo una ragazza; e quando un cambiamento così radicale avvenne nel carattere di lui, verso il quale avevo sempre provato grande ammirazione, penso che mi dispiacesse. Ma nulla avrebbe potuto farlo tornare com’era prima; ed ero orgogliosa che pensasse di me in modo così positivo. E poi ci siamo sposati.” “– A Saint Alphage, Canterbury,” osservò la signora Markleham.
(‘Confound the woman!’ said my aunt, ‘she WON’T be quiet!’)
‘I never thought,’ proceeded Annie, with a heightened colour, ‘of any worldly gain that my husband would bring to me. My young heart had no room in its homage for any such poor reference. Mama, forgive me when I say that it was you who first presented to my mind the thought that anyone could wrong me, and wrong him, by such a cruel suspicion.’
‘Me!’ cried Mrs. Markleham.
(‘Ah! You, to be sure!’ observed my aunt, ‘and you can’t fan it away, my military friend!’)
‘It was the first unhappiness of my new life,’ said Annie. ‘It was the first occasion of every unhappy moment I have known. These moments have been more, of late, than I can count; but not—my generous husband!—not for the reason you suppose; for in my heart there is not a thought, a recollection, or a hope, that any power could separate from you!’
She raised her eyes, and clasped her hands, and looked as beautiful and true, I thought, as any Spirit. The Doctor looked on her, henceforth, as steadfastly as she on him.
‘Mama is blameless,’ she went on, ‘of having ever urged you for herself, and she is blameless in intention every way, I am sure,—but when I saw how many importunate claims were pressed upon you in my name; how you were traded on in my name; how generous you were, and how Mr. Wickfield, who had your welfare very much at heart, resented it; the first sense of my exposure to the mean suspicion that my tenderness was bought—and sold to you, of all men on earth—fell upon me like unmerited disgrace, in which I forced you to participate. I cannot tell you what it was—mama cannot imagine what it was—to have this dread and trouble always on my mind, yet know in my own soul that on my marriage-day I crowned the love and honour of my life!’
‘A specimen of the thanks one gets,’ cried Mrs. Markleham, in tears, ‘for taking care of one’s family! I wish I was a Turk!’
(‘I wish you were, with all my heart—and in your native country!’ said my aunt.)
‘It was at that time that mama was most solicitous about my Cousin Maldon. I had liked him’: she spoke softly, but without any hesitation: ‘very much. We had been little lovers once. If circumstances had not happened otherwise, I might have come to persuade myself that I really loved him, and might have married him, and been most wretched. There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
I pondered on those words, even while I was studiously attending to what followed, as if they had some particular interest, or some strange application that I could not divine. ‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose’—‘no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’
‘There is nothing,’ said Annie, ‘that we have in common. I have long found that there is nothing. If I were thankful to my husband for no more, instead of for so much, I should be thankful to him for having saved me from the first mistaken impulse of my undisciplined heart.’
She stood quite still, before the Doctor, and spoke with an earnestness that thrilled me. Yet her voice was just as quiet as before.
‘When he was waiting to be the object of your munificence, so freely bestowed for my sake, and when I was unhappy in the mercenary shape I was made to wear, I thought it would have become him better to have worked his own way on. I thought that if I had been he, I would have tried to do it, at the cost of almost any hardship. But I thought no worse of him, until the night of his departure for India. That night I knew he had a false and thankless heart. I saw a double meaning, then, in Mr. Wickfield’s scrutiny of me. I perceived, for the first time, the dark suspicion that shadowed my life.’
‘Suspicion, Annie!’ said the Doctor. ‘No, no, no!’
‘In your mind there was none, I know, my husband!’ she returned. ‘And when I came to you, that night, to lay down all my load of shame and grief, and knew that I had to tell that, underneath your roof, one of my own kindred, to whom you had been a benefactor, for the love of me, had spoken to me words that should have found no utterance, even if I had been the weak and mercenary wretch he thought me—my mind revolted from the taint the very tale conveyed. It died upon my lips, and from that hour till now has never passed them.’
Mrs. Markleham, with a short groan, leaned back in her easy-chair; and retired behind her fan, as if she were never coming out any more.
‘I have never, but in your presence, interchanged a word with him from that time; then, only when it has been necessary for the avoidance of this explanation. Years have passed since he knew, from me, what his situation here was. The kindnesses you have secretly done for his advancement, and then disclosed to me, for my surprise and pleasure, have been, you will believe, but aggravations of the unhappiness and burden of my secret.’
She sunk down gently at the Doctor’s feet, though he did his utmost to prevent her; and said, looking up, tearfully, into his face:
‘Do not speak to me yet! Let me say a little more! Right or wrong, if this were to be done again, I think I should do just the same. You never can know what it was to be devoted to you, with those old associations; to find that anyone could be so hard as to suppose that the truth of my heart was bartered away, and to be surrounded by appearances confirming that belief. I was very young, and had no adviser. Between mama and me, in all relating to you, there was a wide division. If I shrunk into myself, hiding the disrespect I had undergone, it was because I honoured you so much, and so much wished that you should honour me!’
‘Annie, my pure heart!’ said the Doctor, ‘my dear girl!’
‘A little more! a very few words more! I used to think there were so many whom you might have married, who would not have brought such charge and trouble on you, and who would have made your home a worthier home. I used to be afraid that I had better have remained your pupil, and almost your child. I used to fear that I was so unsuited to your learning and wisdom. If all this made me shrink within myself (as indeed it did), when I had that to tell, it was still because I honoured you so much, and hoped that you might one day honour me.’
“Maledetta donna!” disse mia zia, “non smette mai di fare rumore!”
“Non l’avrei mai pensato,” continuò Annie, con il viso arrossito, “che mio marito potesse portarmi qualche vantaggio materiale. Il mio giovane cuore non aveva spazio per simili considerazioni. Mamma, perdonami se dico che sei stata tu ad introdurre nella mia mente l’idea che qualcuno potesse ferirmi, e ferire anche lui, con un sospetto così crudele.”
“Me!”, gridò la signora Markleham.
(“Ah! Sicuramente sei tu!” osservò mia zia, “e non puoi certo scacciarla via con un ventaglio, mio caro amico militare, ”).
“Fu la prima infelicità della mia nuova vita,” disse Annie. “Fu l’occasione che diede origine a ogni momento triste che ho vissuto da allora. In questi ultimi tempi, tali momenti sono stati più numerosi di quanto possa contare; ma no, mio generoso marito, non per la ragione che pensate voi; perché nel mio cuore non esiste alcun pensiero, alcuna memoria, né alcuna speranza che possa separarmi da voi!”
Alzò lo sguardo, incrociò le mani e sembrava così bella e sincera. Pensai che fosse come qualsiasi Spirito. Da quel momento in poi, il Dottore la guardò con la stessa determinazione con cui lei lo guardava.
“Mamma è innocente,” continuò, “di aver mai cercato di ottenere qualcosa per sé da te; ne sono sicura, anche le sue intenzioni sono sempre state pure. Ma quando ho visto quante richieste insistenti venivano fatte a tuo nome; come tu venivi sfruttato in mio nome; quanto fossi generoso, e come il signor Wickfield, che teneva molto alla tua felicità, ne fosse offeso. Il primo sentimento di essere esposta a quella ignobile sospettazione – che la mia tenerezza fosse stata comprata e venduta a te, proprio a te tra tutte le persone al mondo – mi colpì come un disonore ingiustificato, nel quale ti costrinsi a coinvolgerti. Non riesco nemmeno a descrivertelo. Mamma non può nemmeno immaginare quanto fosse terribile avere sempre questo timore e questa angoscia nella mente, sapendo però nel profondo del mio cuore che, nel giorno del mio matrimonio, avrei incoronato l’amore e l’onore della mia vita, ”
“Un esempio delle ringraziamenti che si ricevono,” gridò la signora Markleham tra le lacrime, “per aver curato la propria famiglia! Vorrei essere una turca, ”
(“Vorrei tanto che fossi qui, con tutto il mio cuore, e nel tuo paese natale!” disse mia zia.)
‘Fu in quel momento che mia madre si preoccupò molto di mio cugino Maldon. Gli piacevo’, disse lei a voce bassa, ma senza alcuna esitazione: ‘Molto. Un tempo eravamo stati piccoli “innamorati”. Se le circostanze fossero state diverse, forse avrei finito per convincermi davvero di amarlo e lo avrei sposato. E sarei stata molto infelice. Non esiste niente di più incompatibile di una diversità di mentalità e di obiettivi nella matrimonio’.
Riflettevo su quelle parole, anche mentre prestavo attenzione a ciò che seguiva, come se avessero un significato particolare o una applicazione strana che non riuscivo a comprendere. “Non può esserci alcuna disparità nel matrimonio derivante dall’inadeguatezza di mente e scopi”, “Nessuna disparità nel matrimonio dovuta all’incompatibilità di intenti e aspirazioni.”
“Non c’è nulla,” disse Annie, “che abbiamo in comune. Da tempo ho capito che non c’è davvero nulla. Se fossi grata a mio marito anche solo per questo, invece di per tante altre cose, gli sarei grata perché mi ha salvata dal primo impulso errato del mio cuore indisciplinato.”
Stava ferma immobile davanti al Dottore e parlava con una sincerità che mi commosse profondamente. Eppure la sua voce era ancora così tranquilla come prima.
‘Mentre aspettava di diventare oggetto della tua generosità, così liberamente concessa a mio favore, e mentre io ero infelice nell’aspetto meschino che mi era stato imposto, pensai che sarebbe stato meglio per lui se avesse cercato di farcela da solo. Avrei fatto lo stesso, a costo di qualsiasi difficoltà. Ma non ho mai pensato nulla di male su di lui, fino alla notte della sua partenza per l’India. Quella notte capii che aveva un cuore falso e ingrato. Allora compresi il doppio significato nascosto nel modo in cui il signor Wickfield mi osservava. Per la prima volta, percepii quella oscura sospetto che aveva sempre offuscato la mia vita.’
“Sospetto, Annie!”, disse il Dottore. “No, no, no!”
“Nella tua mente non c’era nulla del genere, lo so, mio marito!” rispose lei. “E quando sono venuta da te, quella notte, per confidarti tutto il mio dolore e la mia vergogna, e ho capito che dovevo dirti che, sotto il tuo tetto, uno dei miei stessi parenti – a cui tu avevi fatto del bene – per l’amore che provava per me, mi aveva detto cose che non avrebbero mai dovuto essere pronunciate, anche se fossi stata la debole e meschina creatura che lui pensava fossi. La mia mente si ribellò al solo pensiero di quelle parole. Non riuscii a dirle. E da quell’ora, fino ad ora, non le ho mai più pronunciate.”
La signora Markleham, con un breve gemito, si appoggiò allo schienale della sua poltrona e si nascose dietro il ventaglio, come se non dovesse mai più uscire.
‘Da quel momento, non ho mai più scambiato una parola con lui, se non in tua presenza; e anche allora, solo quando era necessario per evitare questa spiegazione. Sono passati molti anni da quando ha saputo da me quale fosse la sua situazione qui. Le gentilezze che hai segretamente fatto per il suo progresso, e poi mi hai rivelato, per mia sorpresa e gioia, sono state, credimi, solo un ulteriore aggravamento della mia infelicità e del peso del mio segreto.’
Si abbassò dolcemente ai piedi del Dottore, nonostante lui facesse di tutto per impedirglielo; e, alzando lo sguardo verso di lui con le lacrime agli occhi, disse:
“Non parlarmi ancora! Lasciami dire di più. Giusto o sbagliato, se dovesse accadere di nuovo, penso che farei esattamente la stessa cosa. Non si può mai capire cosa significhi essere devoti a qualcuno, con tutti quei ricordi del passato; scoprire che qualcuno possa essere così crudele da pensare che la verità del mio cuore sia stata barattata via, e trovarsi circondati da circostanze che confermano tale convinzione. Ero molto giovane e non avevo nessuno a cui chiedere consiglio. Tra me e mia madre, su tutto ciò che ti riguardava, c’era un grande divario. Se mi ritiravo in me stessa, nascondendo l’umiliazione che avevo subito, era perché ti rispettavo troppo. E desideravo davvero tanto che tu mi rispettassi!”
“Annie, il mio cuore puro!” disse il Dottore, “la mia cara ragazza!”
‘Un po’ di più! Solo poche parole in più. Pensavo che ci fossero molte persone con cui avresti potuto sposarti, persone che non ti avrebbero causato tanti problemi e difficoltà, e che avrebbero reso la tua casa una vera casa. Temevo quasi di essere rimasta soltanto la tua allieva, quasi la tua figlia. Avevo paura di non essere adatta alle tue conoscenze e alla tua saggezza. Anche se tutto questo mi faceva sentire inadeguata quando dovevo dirti quelle cose, era perché ti rispettavo troppo, e speravo che un giorno tu potessi rispettarmi anch’tu.’
‘That day has shone this long time, Annie,’ said the Doctor, ‘and can have but one long night, my dear.’
‘Another word! I afterwards meant—steadfastly meant, and purposed to myself—to bear the whole weight of knowing the unworthiness of one to whom you had been so good. And now a last word, dearest and best of friends! The cause of the late change in you, which I have seen with so much pain and sorrow, and have sometimes referred to my old apprehension—at other times to lingering suppositions nearer to the truth—has been made clear tonight; and by an accident I have also come to know, tonight, the full measure of your noble trust in me, even under that mistake. I do not hope that any love and duty I may render in return, will ever make me worthy of your priceless confidence; but with all this knowledge fresh upon me, I can lift my eyes to this dear face, revered as a father’s, loved as a husband’s, sacred to me in my childhood as a friend’s, and solemnly declare that in my lightest thought I have never wronged you; never wavered in the love and the fidelity I owe you!’
She had her arms around the Doctor’s neck, and he leant his head down over her, mingling his grey hair with her dark brown tresses.
‘Oh, hold me to your heart, my husband! Never cast me out! Do not think or speak of disparity between us, for there is none, except in all my many imperfections. Every succeeding year I have known this better, as I have esteemed you more and more. Oh, take me to your heart, my husband, for my love was founded on a rock, and it endures!’
In the silence that ensued, my aunt walked gravely up to Mr. Dick, without at all hurrying herself, and gave him a hug and a sounding kiss. And it was very fortunate, with a view to his credit, that she did so; for I am confident that I detected him at that moment in the act of making preparations to stand on one leg, as an appropriate expression of delight.
‘You are a very remarkable man, Dick!’ said my aunt, with an air of unqualified approbation; ‘and never pretend to be anything else, for I know better!’
With that, my aunt pulled him by the sleeve, and nodded to me; and we three stole quietly out of the room, and came away.
‘That’s a settler for our military friend, at any rate,’ said my aunt, on the way home. ‘I should sleep the better for that, if there was nothing else to be glad of!’
‘She was quite overcome, I am afraid,’ said Mr. Dick, with great commiseration.
‘What! Did you ever see a crocodile overcome?’ inquired my aunt.
‘I don’t think I ever saw a crocodile,’ returned Mr. Dick, mildly.
‘There never would have been anything the matter, if it hadn’t been for that old Animal,’ said my aunt, with strong emphasis. ‘It’s very much to be wished that some mothers would leave their daughters alone after marriage, and not be so violently affectionate. They seem to think the only return that can be made them for bringing an unfortunate young woman into the world—God bless my soul, as if she asked to be brought, or wanted to come!—is full liberty to worry her out of it again. What are you thinking of, Trot?’
I was thinking of all that had been said. My mind was still running on some of the expressions used. ‘There can be no disparity in marriage like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’ ‘The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.’ ‘My love was founded on a rock.’ But we were at home; and the trodden leaves were lying under-foot, and the autumn wind was blowing.
“Quel giorno è durato così a lungo, Annie,” disse il Dottore, “e ora può avere soltanto una lunga notte, mia cara.”
“Un’ultima parola! In seguito ho inteso – e mi sono proposto con fermezza – di sopportare tutto il peso della consapevolezza dell’inadeguatezza di colui a cui hai dimostrato tanta gentilezza. E ora, un’ultima cosa, carissimo e migliore degli amici. La causa del recente cambiamento in te, che ho osservato con tanto dolore e angoscia, e che a volte ho attribuito alle mie vecchie preoccupazioni, altre volte a supposizioni più vicine alla verità, è stata chiarita stasera; e per caso ho anche scoperto, stasera, l’entità della tua nobile fiducia in me, nonostante quell’errore. Non spero che l’amore e il dovere che possa ricambiarti siano mai sufficienti a rendermi degno di questa inestimabile fiducia. Ma con tutte queste conoscenze fresche nella mia mente, posso alzare lo sguardo su questo volto caro: rispettato come quello di un padre, amato come quello di un marito, sacro per me fin dall’infanzia come quello di un amico. E dichiaro solennemente che in nessun momento ho mai tradito la tua fiducia; non ho mai vacillato nell’amore e nella fedeltà che ti devo!”
Aveva le braccia intorno al collo del Dottore, e lui si chinò su di lei, mescolando i suoi capelli grigi con i suoi lunghi riccioli castano scuro.
“Oh, tienimi stretta al tuo cuore, mio marito! Non mi allontanare mai! Non pensare né parlare di alcuna disparità tra noi, perché non ne esiste alcuna, se non nelle mie molte imperfezioni. Ogni anno che passa ne sono sempre più convinta, poiché ti stimo sempre di più. Oh, prendimi con te nel tuo cuore, mio marito, il mio amore è fondato su roccia e durerà per sempre!”
Nel silenzio che seguì, mia zia si avvicinò con solennità al signor Dick, senza affrettarsi minimamente, e lo abbracciò e gli diede un bacio sonoro. E fu davvero fortunato per lui che lei lo fece; perché sono sicura che in quel momento lo vidi mentre si preparava a stare in piedi su una gamba, come espressione appropriata della sua gioia.
“Sei davvero un uomo straordinario, Dick!” disse mia zia con un tono di totale approvazione; “e non cercare mai di fingere di essere qualcos’altro, perché io lo so meglio!”
Con questo, mia zia lo prese per la manica e annuì verso di me; poi noi tre uscimmo silenziosamente dalla stanza e ce ne andammo.
“Comunque, è un regalo perfetto per il nostro amico militare,” disse mia zia, mentre eravamo in viaggio verso casa. “Dovrei riuscire a dormire meglio, anche se non ci fosse altro di cui essere felici, ”
“Temo che fosse davvero sopraffatta,” disse il signor Dick con grande compassione.
“Che cosa! Hai mai visto un coccodrillo essere sconfitto?” chiese mia zia.
“Non credo di aver mai visto un coccodrillo,” rispose gentilmente il signor Dick.
“Non sarebbe mai successo nulla, se non fosse stato per quel vecchio animale,” disse mia zia, con forte enfasi. “Speriamo davvero che alcune madri lascino le loro figlie solo dopo il matrimonio, e non siano così appassionate nei loro confronti. Sembrano pensare che l’unica ricompensa per aver portato al mondo una giovane donna sfortunata, – Dio benedica la mia ‘anima; come se lei avesse chiesto di essere messa al mondo, o volesse venire qui! – sia quella di poterla preoccupare fino a farle perdere la ragione. A cosa stai pensando, Trot?”
Stavo pensando a tutto ciò che era stato detto. La mia mente continuava a ripensare ad alcune delle espressioni utilizzate: “Non può esserci disparità nel matrimonio, come l’incompatibilità di mentalità e obiettivi”; “Il primo impulso errato di un cuore indisciplinato”; “Il mio amore è fondato su roccia”. Ma eravamo a casa; le foglie calpestate giacevano sotto i nostri piedi, e il autunno soffiava.
CHAPTER 46. INTELLIGENCE
I must have been married, if I may trust to my imperfect memory for dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning from a solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing—for my success had steadily increased with my steady application, and I was engaged at that time upon my first work of fiction—I came past Mrs. Steerforth’s house. I had often passed it before, during my residence in that neighbourhood, though never when I could choose another road. Howbeit, it did sometimes happen that it was not easy to find another, without making a long circuit; and so I had passed that way, upon the whole, pretty often.
I had never done more than glance at the house, as I went by with a quickened step. It had been uniformly gloomy and dull. None of the best rooms abutted on the road; and the narrow, heavily-framed old-fashioned windows, never cheerful under any circumstances, looked very dismal, close shut, and with their blinds always drawn down. There was a covered way across a little paved court, to an entrance that was never used; and there was one round staircase window, at odds with all the rest, and the only one unshaded by a blind, which had the same unoccupied blank look. I do not remember that I ever saw a light in all the house. If I had been a casual passer-by, I should have probably supposed that some childless person lay dead in it. If I had happily possessed no knowledge of the place, and had seen it often in that changeless state, I should have pleased my fancy with many ingenious speculations, I dare say.
As it was, I thought as little of it as I might. But my mind could not go by it and leave it, as my body did; and it usually awakened a long train of meditations. Coming before me, on this particular evening that I mention, mingled with the childish recollections and later fancies, the ghosts of half-formed hopes, the broken shadows of disappointments dimly seen and understood, the blending of experience and imagination, incidental to the occupation with which my thoughts had been busy, it was more than commonly suggestive. I fell into a brown study as I walked on, and a voice at my side made me start.
It was a woman’s voice, too. I was not long in recollecting Mrs. Steerforth’s little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue ribbons in her cap. She had taken them out now, to adapt herself, I suppose, to the altered character of the house; and wore but one or two disconsolate bows of sober brown.
‘If you please, sir, would you have the goodness to walk in, and speak to Miss Dartle?’
‘Has Miss Dartle sent you for me?’ I inquired.
‘Not tonight, sir, but it’s just the same. Miss Dartle saw you pass a night or two ago; and I was to sit at work on the staircase, and when I saw you pass again, to ask you to step in and speak to her.’
I turned back, and inquired of my conductor, as we went along, how Mrs. Steerforth was. She said her lady was but poorly, and kept her own room a good deal.
When we arrived at the house, I was directed to Miss Dartle in the garden, and left to make my presence known to her myself. She was sitting on a seat at one end of a kind of terrace, overlooking the great city. It was a sombre evening, with a lurid light in the sky; and as I saw the prospect scowling in the distance, with here and there some larger object starting up into the sullen glare, I fancied it was no inapt companion to the memory of this fierce woman.
She saw me as I advanced, and rose for a moment to receive me. I thought her, then, still more colourless and thin than when I had seen her last; the flashing eyes still brighter, and the scar still plainer.
Our meeting was not cordial. We had parted angrily on the last occasion; and there was an air of disdain about her, which she took no pains to conceal.
‘I am told you wish to speak to me, Miss Dartle,’ said I, standing near her, with my hand upon the back of the seat, and declining her gesture of invitation to sit down.
‘If you please,’ said she. ‘Pray has this girl been found?’
‘No.’
‘And yet she has run away!’
I saw her thin lips working while she looked at me, as if they were eager to load her with reproaches.
‘Run away?’ I repeated.
‘Yes! From him,’ she said, with a laugh. ‘If she is not found, perhaps she never will be found. She may be dead!’
The vaunting cruelty with which she met my glance, I never saw expressed in any other face that ever I have seen.
‘To wish her dead,’ said I, ‘may be the kindest wish that one of her own sex could bestow upon her. I am glad that time has softened you so much, Miss Dartle.’
She condescended to make no reply, but, turning on me with another scornful laugh, said:
‘The friends of this excellent and much-injured young lady are friends of yours. You are their champion, and assert their rights. Do you wish to know what is known of her?’
‘Yes,’ said I.
She rose with an ill-favoured smile, and taking a few steps towards a wall of holly that was near at hand, dividing the lawn from a kitchen-garden, said, in a louder voice, ‘Come here!’—as if she were calling to some unclean beast.
‘You will restrain any demonstrative championship or vengeance in this place, of course, Mr. Copperfield?’ said she, looking over her shoulder at me with the same expression.
I inclined my head, without knowing what she meant; and she said, ‘Come here!’ again; and returned, followed by the respectable Mr. Littimer, who, with undiminished respectability, made me a bow, and took up his position behind her. The air of wicked grace: of triumph, in which, strange to say, there was yet something feminine and alluring: with which she reclined upon the seat between us, and looked at me, was worthy of a cruel Princess in a Legend.
‘Now,’ said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching the old wound as it throbbed: perhaps, in this instance, with pleasure rather than pain. ‘Tell Mr. Copperfield about the flight.’
CAPITOLO 46. INTELLIGENZA
Devo essere stato sposato, se posso fidarmi della mia imperfetta memoria riguardo alle date. Circa un anno fa, una sera, mentre tornavo da una passeggiata solitaria e pensavo al libro che stavo scrivendo – poiché il mio successo aumentava costantemente grazie al mio impegno costante – passai davanti alla casa della signora Steerforth. L’avevo già superata molte volte durante la mia residenza in quella zona, anche se mai quando avevo la possibilità di scegliere un altro percorso. Tuttavia, a volte non era facile trovare un’altra strada senza dover fare una lunga deviazione; quindi, in generale, passavo spesso da quel lato.
Non avevo mai fatto altro che gettare un’occhiata veloce a quella casa, mentre la superavo con passi affrettati. Era sempre stata cupa e triste; nessuna delle stanze migliori si affacciava sulla strada; inoltre, le strette finestre vecchio stile, mai allegramente illuminate in alcune circostanze, sembravano ancora più desolate: chiuse a chiave, con le tende sempre abbassate. C’era un passaggio coperto che attraversava un piccolo cortile lastricato, portando a un ingresso che non veniva mai utilizzato; inoltre, c’era una sola scala circolare, l’unica senza tende, che presentava lo stesso aspetto desolato e vuoto. Non ricordo di aver mai visto una luce all’interno di tutta quella casa. Se fossi stato solo un passante casuale, probabilmente avrei pensato che vi fosse morta dentro qualcuna persona senza figli. Se non avessi conosciuto quel posto e lo avessi visto spesso in quello stesso stato immutabile, forse avrei lasciato volare la mia fantasia, facendo molte ipotesi ingegnose.
Come stava le cose, ci pensai il meno possibile. Ma la mia mente non riusciva a lasciar perdere l’argomento, proprio come il mio corpo non lo faceva; spesso questo ricordo suscitava in me una lunga serie di riflessioni. Quella particolare sera, mentre mi tornavano in mente ricordi infantili e fantasie successive, insieme agli “spettri” di speranze incompiute e alle ombre delusioni appena percepite e comprese, al miscuglio tra esperienza e immaginazione, tutto ciò divenne particolarmente suggestivo. Mentre camminavo, mi immersi nei miei pensieri, quando una voce accanto a me mi fece sobbalzare.
Era anche la voce di una donna. Non ci volle molto per ricordare la giovane cameriera della signora Steerforth, quella che in passato portava nastri blu sul cappello. Ora li aveva tolti, probabilmente per adattarsi al cambiamento nel carattere di quella casa; indossava soltanto uno o due semplici nastri marroni.
“Se le fosse possibile, signore, potrebbe entrare e parlare con la signorina Dartle?”
“La signorina Dartle vi ha mandato a chiamarmi?” chiesi.
“Non stasera, signore, ma è lo stesso. La signorina Dartle vi ha visto passare una o due notti fa; e io dovevo sedermi a lavorare sulle scale, e quando vi ho visto passare di nuovo, dovevo chiedervi di entrare e parlare con lei.”
Tornai indietro e, mentre camminavamo, chiesi al mio conducente come stesse la signora Steerforth. Lui disse che sua signora stava molto male e trascorreva gran parte del tempo nella sua stanza.
Quando arrivammo alla >casa, mi fu detto di recarmi da Miss Dartle nel >jardino e di presentarmi personalmente a lei. Era seduta su una panchina all’estremità di una sorta di terrazza, con vista sulla grande >città. Era una serata cupa; il cielo era illuminato da una luce sinistra e fosca. Guardando quella scena desolata in lontananza, con qua e là oggetti più grandi che emergevano da quell’oscurità, pensai che quel paesaggio fosse un compagno assai adatto alla memoria di questa donna spietata.
Mi vide avvicinarmi e per un momento si alzò in piedi per accogliermi. Pensai che fosse ancora più pallida e magra di quando l’avevo vista l’ultima volta; i suoi occhi scintillanti erano ancora più luminosi, e la cicatrice ancora più evidente.
Il nostro incontro non fu affatto cordiale. L’ultima volta ci eravamo separati in modo arrabbiato; inoltre, c’era un’aria di disprezzo da parte sua, che lei non si preoccupava nemmeno di nascondere.
“Mi è stato detto che desiderate parlarmi, signorina Dartle,” dissi, fermandomi vicino a lei con la mano appoggiata allo schienale della sedia, rifiutando il suo gesto di invito a sedermi.
“Per favore,” disse lei. “Si è trovata questa ragazza, per caso?”
‘No.’
“Eppure se n’è andata!”
Vidi le sue labbra sottili muoversi mentre mi guardava, come se fossero desiderose di riversarmi addosso rimproveri.
“Scappare?” ripetei.
“Sì! Da lui,” disse lei ridendo. “Se non viene trovata, forse non verrà mai trovata. Potrebbe essere morta!”
Quella crudeltà arrogante con cui lei incrociò il mio sguardo. Non l’avevo mai vista esprimersi in nessun altro volto che avessi mai incontrato.
“Desiderare la sua morte,” dissi, “potrebbe essere il desiderio più gentile che qualcuno del suo stesso sesso possa nutrire per lei. Sono felice che il tempo abbia mitigato così tanto i tuoi sentimenti, signorina Dartle.”
“Si degnò di non rispondere, ma, girandosi verso di me con un altro sorriso sprezzante, disse, ”
“I amici di questa eccellente e molto sofferente giovane donna sono anche tuoi amici. Tu sei il loro difensore, quello che sostiene i loro diritti. Vuoi sapere ciò che si sa su di lei?”
“Sì,” dissi io.
Lei sorrise in modo poco piacevole, fece qualche passo verso un muro di alloro che si trovava lì vicino, separando il prato da un giardino della cucina, e disse a voce più alta: “Vieni qui!” – come se stesse chiamando qualche bestia sporca.
“Naturalmente, signor Copperfield, si asterrà da qualsiasi comportamento esibizionistico o atto di vendetta in questo luogo, vero?” disse lei, guardandomi da sopra la spalla con lo stesso tono.
Inclinai la testa, senza capire cosa intendesse; lei disse di nuovo: “Vieni qui!”, e tornò indietro, seguita dal rispettabile signor Littimer, il quale, con la stessa immutabile rispettabilità, mi fece un inchino e si posizionò dietro di lei. Quell’aria di malvagia grazia, di trionfo, stranamente, in essa c’era ancora qualcosa di femminile e affascinante, con cui si appoggiò allo schienale del sedile tra noi e mi guardò, era degna di una crudele principessa in una leggenda.
“Ora,” disse lei, con tono imperioso, senza guardarlo e toccando la vecchia ferita che pulsava ancora: forse, in questo caso, con piacere piuttosto che con dolore. “Racconta al signor Copperfield di quella fuga.”
‘Mr. James and myself, ma’am—’
‘Don’t address yourself to me!’ she interrupted with a frown.
‘Mr. James and myself, sir—’
‘Nor to me, if you please,’ said I.
Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most agreeable to him; and began again.
‘Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever since she left Yarmouth under Mr. James’s protection. We have been in a variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country. We have been in France, Switzerland, Italy, in fact, almost all parts.’
He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself to that; and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were striking chords upon a dumb piano.
‘Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman; and was more settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I have been in his service. The young woman was very improvable, and spoke the languages; and wouldn’t have been known for the same country-person. I noticed that she was much admired wherever we went.’
Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side. I saw him steal a glance at her, and slightly smile to himself.
‘Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress; what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of; what with this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted general notice.’
He made a short pause. Her eyes wandered restlessly over the distant prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy mouth.
Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded, with his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little advanced, and a little on one side:
‘The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary Mr. James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that kind; and things were not so comfortable. Mr. James he began to be restless again. The more restless he got, the worse she got; and I must say, for myself, that I had a very difficult time of it indeed between the two. Still matters were patched up here, and made good there, over and over again; and altogether lasted, I am sure, for a longer time than anybody could have expected.’
Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now, with her former air. Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his hand with a respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:
‘At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words and reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the neighbourhood of Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman being very partial to the sea), and, under pretence of coming back in a day or so, left it in charge with me to break it out, that, for the general happiness of all concerned, he was’—here an interruption of the short cough—‘gone. But Mr. James, I must say, certainly did behave extremely honourable; for he proposed that the young woman should marry a very respectable person, who was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular way: her connexions being very common.’
He changed legs again, and wetted his lips. I was convinced that the scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected in Miss Dartle’s face.
‘This I also had it in charge to communicate. I was willing to do anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has undergone so much on his account. Therefore I undertook the commission. The young woman’s violence when she came to, after I broke the fact of his departure, was beyond all expectations. She was quite mad, and had to be held by force; or, if she couldn’t have got to a knife, or got to the sea, she’d have beaten her head against the marble floor.’
Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation in her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had uttered.
‘But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to me,’ said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands uneasily, ‘which anybody might have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as a kind intention, then the young woman came out in her true colours. A more outrageous person I never did see. Her conduct was surprisingly bad. She had no more gratitude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason in her, than a stock or a stone. If I hadn’t been upon my guard, I am convinced she would have had my blood.’
‘I think the better of her for it,’ said I, indignantly.
Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, ‘Indeed, sir? But you’re young!’ and resumed his narrative.
‘It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything nigh her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury with, and to shut her up close. Notwithstanding which, she got out in the night; forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up myself; dropped on a vine that was trailed below; and never has been seen or heard of, to my knowledge, since.’
‘She is dead, perhaps,’ said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could have spurned the body of the ruined girl.
‘She may have drowned herself, miss,’ returned Mr. Littimer, catching at an excuse for addressing himself to somebody. ‘It’s very possible. Or, she may have had assistance from the boatmen, and the boatmen’s wives and children. Being given to low company, she was very much in the habit of talking to them on the beach, Miss Dartle, and sitting by their boats. I have known her do it, when Mr. James has been away, whole days. Mr. James was far from pleased to find out, once, that she had told the children she was a boatman’s daughter, and that in her own country, long ago, she had roamed about the beach, like them.’
“Mr. James ed io, signora, ”
“Non rivolgerti a me!” interruppe lei, con un cipiglio.
“Mr. James e io, signore, ”
“Nemmeno a me, se vi piace,” dissi io.
Il signor Littimer, senza mostrare alcun segno di turbamento, fece un leggero inchino per indicare che qualsiasi cosa fosse più gradita a noi lo era anche a lui; e poi riprese a parlare.
‘Il signor James ed io siamo stati all’estero con quella giovane donna, fin da quando lei lasciò Yarmouth sotto la protezione del signor James. Siamo stati in vari posti e abbiamo visto molte parti del mondo straniero: Francia, Svizzera, Italia, insomma, quasi tutte le regioni.’
Guardò il sedile posteriore, come se stesse parlando con esso; e ne accarezzò dolcemente le superfici con le mani, come se suonasse delle corde su un pianoforte muto.
‘Il signor James si comportava in modo piuttosto insolito verso quella giovane donna; ed è rimasto più stabile, per un certo periodo di tempo, di quanto lo abbia mai visto da quando lavoro al suo servizio. La giovane donna aveva molte potenzialità e parlava diverse lingue; non si sarebbe mai detta una persona del posto. Ho notato che veniva molto ammirata ovunque andassimo.’
La signorina Dartle si appoggiò a un fianco con la mano. Vidi che lui le lanciò uno sguardo furtivo e sorrise leggermente tra sé e sé.
La giovane donna era davvero molto ammirata. Con quel suo abito, con quell’aspetto e quella luce del sole, con tutto ciò che le veniva riconosciuto, i suoi meriti attiravano davvero l’attenzione generale.
Fece una breve pausa. I suoi occhi si aggirarono inquieti su quella distante vista, e morse il labbro inferiore per fermare quel chiacchiericcio incessante.
Togliendo le mani dal sedile e intrecciandone una nell’altra, mentre si sistemava su una gamba sola, il signor Littimer continuò a parlare, con lo sguardo basso e la sua rispettabile testa leggermente inclinata da un lato.
La giovane donna continuò in questo modo per un certo periodo di tempo, talvolta provando tristezza; finché, credo, iniziò ad annoiare il signor James con i suoi stati d’animo negativi e le sue capricci, e le cose non andarono più bene. Il signor James tornò ad essere irrequieto; più diventava inquieto, peggio andavano le cose per lei. Devo dire che, personalmente, ho trascorso un periodo davvero molto difficile tra i due. Comunque, le cose venivano sistemate di nuovo, ancora e ancora; e, sono sicura, sono durate più a lungo di quanto chiunque avrebbe potuto aspettarsi.
Ricordando i suoi occhi da lontano, ora mi guardava di nuovo con quell’aria di prima. Il signor Littimer, schiarendosi la gola dietro la mano con un colpo di tosse breve e rispettabile, cambiò posizione e continuò:
‘Finalmente, dopo molte parole e rimproveri, una mattina il signor James partì dalla zona di Napoli, dove avevamo una villa (la giovane donna amava molto il mare), e, sotto pretesto di tornare entro un giorno o due, mi lasciò in carica della situazione, dicendo che, per il bene generale di tutti, se n’era andato. Ma devo dire che il signor James si comportò davvero in modo estremamente onorevole; propose infatti che la giovane donna sposasse una persona molto rispettabile, pronta a perdonare il passato, e che, almeno, era altrettanto adatta a lei di qualsiasi altra persona potesse aspirare a sposare in modo “normale”, considerando le sue condizioni sociali piuttosto comuni.’
Cambiò di nuovo piede e si bagnò le labbra. Ero convinto che quel farabutto stesse parlando di sé stesso, e vidi la mia convinzione riflessa sul viso della signorina Dartle.
‘Era anche mio compito comunicare questa informazione. Ero disposto a fare qualsiasi cosa pur di aiutare il signor James ad uscire da quella difficoltà e a ripristinare l’armonia tra lui e una madre affettuosa che aveva sofferto così tanto a causa sua. Per questo ho accettato l’incarico. La reazione violenta di quella giovane donna, quando venne a sapere della sua partenza, è stata oltre ogni previsione. Era completamente fuori di sé e ha dovuto essere trattenuta con la forza; altrimenti, se solo avesse potuto prendere un coltello o raggiungere il mare, si sarebbe sbattuta la testa contro il pavimento di marmo.’
La signorina Dartle, appoggiata allo schienale della sedia e con un lampo di gioia sul viso, sembrava quasi accarezzare le parole che quell’uomo aveva pronunciato.
“Ma quando arrivai alla seconda parte di ciò che mi era stato affidato,” disse il signor Littimer, strofinandosi le mani con nervosismo, “che chiunque avrebbe potuto ritenere fosse comunque inteso come un gesto gentile, allora quella giovane donna mostrò la sua vera natura. Non ho mai visto una persona più oltraggiosa di lei. Il suo comportamento fu sorprendentemente spregevole: non aveva né gratitudine, né sentimenti, né pazienza. Era priva di qualsiasi traccia di umanità, proprio come un pezzo di legno o una pietra. Se non fossi stato attento, sono convinto che avrebbe cercato di prendersi il mio sangue.”
“Penso che ne trarrà solo beneficio,” dissi, indignata.
Il signor Littimer chinò la testa, come per dire: “Davvero, signore? Ma lei è giovane!”, e poi riprese il suo racconto.
In breve, era necessario, per un certo periodo di tempo, toglierle tutto ciò che le permetteva di farsi del male a se stessa o ad altri, e tenerla chiusa in casa. Nonostante ciò, quella notte riuscì a uscire; forzò la grata di una finestra che avevo io stesso fissato; si calò su un rampicante che si estendeva sotto la finestra. Da allora, per quanto ne so, non è mai più stata vista né sentita.
“Forse è morta,” disse la signorina Dartle sorridendo, come se potesse disprezzare il corpo di quella ragazza distrutta.
“Potrebbe essersi suicidata, signorina,” rispose il signor Littimer, cercando una scusa per rivolgersi a qualcuno. “È molto probabile. Oppure potrebbe essere stata aiutata dai barcaioli, dalle loro mogli e dai loro figli. Essendo in compagnia di gente poco raccomandabile, aveva l’abitudine di parlare con loro sulla spiaggia, signorina Dartle, e di sedersi vicino alle loro barche. L’ho vista farlo per intere giornate, quando il signor James non c’era. Una volta, il signor James si arrabbiò molto scoprendo che aveva raccontato ai bambini di essere la figlia di un barcaiolo, e che nel suo paese d’origine, molto tempo fa, girovagava sulla spiaggia proprio come loro.”
Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her sitting on the far-off shore, among the children like herself when she was innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her Mother had she been a poor man’s wife; and to the great voice of the sea, with its eternal ‘Never more!’
‘When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle—’
‘Did I tell you not to speak to me?’ she said, with stern contempt.
‘You spoke to me, miss,’ he replied. ‘I beg your pardon. But it is my service to obey.’
‘Do your service,’ she returned. ‘Finish your story, and go!’
‘When it was clear,’ he said, with infinite respectability and an obedient bow, ‘that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James, at the place where it had been agreed that I should write to him, and informed him of what had occurred. Words passed between us in consequence, and I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear, and I have borne, a great deal from Mr. James; but he insulted me too far. He hurt me. Knowing the unfortunate difference between himself and his mother, and what her anxiety of mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of coming home to England, and relating—’
‘For money which I paid him,’ said Miss Dartle to me.
‘Just so, ma’am—and relating what I knew. I am not aware,’ said Mr. Littimer, after a moment’s reflection, ‘that there is anything else. I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to meet with a respectable situation.’
Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there were anything that I desired to ask. As there was something which had occurred to my mind, I said in reply:
‘I could wish to know from this—creature,’ I could not bring myself to utter any more conciliatory word, ‘whether they intercepted a letter that was written to her from home, or whether he supposes that she received it.’
He remained calm and silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against the tip of every finger of his left.
Miss Dartle turned her head disdainfully towards him.
‘I beg your pardon, miss,’ he said, awakening from his abstraction, ‘but, however submissive to you, I have my position, though a servant. Mr. Copperfield and you, miss, are different people. If Mr. Copperfield wishes to know anything from me, I take the liberty of reminding Mr. Copperfield that he can put a question to me. I have a character to maintain.’
After a momentary struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him, and said, ‘You have heard my question. Consider it addressed to yourself, if you choose. What answer do you make?’
‘Sir,’ he rejoined, with an occasional separation and reunion of those delicate tips, ‘my answer must be qualified; because, to betray Mr. James’s confidence to his mother, and to betray it to you, are two different actions. It is not probable, I consider, that Mr. James would encourage the receipt of letters likely to increase low spirits and unpleasantness; but further than that, sir, I should wish to avoid going.’
‘Is that all?’ inquired Miss Dartle of me.
I indicated that I had nothing more to say. ‘Except,’ I added, as I saw him moving off, ‘that I understand this fellow’s part in the wicked story, and that, as I shall make it known to the honest man who has been her father from her childhood, I would recommend him to avoid going too much into public.’
He had stopped the moment I began, and had listened with his usual repose of manner.
‘Thank you, sir. But you’ll excuse me if I say, sir, that there are neither slaves nor slave-drivers in this country, and that people are not allowed to take the law into their own hands. If they do, it is more to their own peril, I believe, than to other people’s. Consequently speaking, I am not at all afraid of going wherever I may wish, sir.’
With that, he made a polite bow; and, with another to Miss Dartle, went away through the arch in the wall of holly by which he had come. Miss Dartle and I regarded each other for a little while in silence; her manner being exactly what it was, when she had produced the man.
‘He says besides,’ she observed, with a slow curling of her lip, ‘that his master, as he hears, is coasting Spain; and this done, is away to gratify his seafaring tastes till he is weary. But this is of no interest to you. Between these two proud persons, mother and son, there is a wider breach than before, and little hope of its healing, for they are one at heart, and time makes each more obstinate and imperious. Neither is this of any interest to you; but it introduces what I wish to say. This devil whom you make an angel of. I mean this low girl whom he picked out of the tide-mud,’ with her black eyes full upon me, and her passionate finger up, ‘may be alive,—for I believe some common things are hard to die. If she is, you will desire to have a pearl of such price found and taken care of. We desire that, too; that he may not by any chance be made her prey again. So far, we are united in one interest; and that is why I, who would do her any mischief that so coarse a wretch is capable of feeling, have sent for you to hear what you have heard.’
I saw, by the change in her face, that someone was advancing behind me. It was Mrs. Steerforth, who gave me her hand more coldly than of yore, and with an augmentation of her former stateliness of manner, but still, I perceived—and I was touched by it—with an ineffaceable remembrance of my old love for her son. She was greatly altered. Her fine figure was far less upright, her handsome face was deeply marked, and her hair was almost white. But when she sat down on the seat, she was a handsome lady still; and well I knew the bright eye with its lofty look, that had been a light in my very dreams at school.
‘Is Mr. Copperfield informed of everything, Rosa?’
Oh, Emily! Che bellezza sfortunata. Che immagine meravigliosa quella della rosa davanti ai miei occhi: lei seduta sulla riva lontana, tra bambini simili a lei quando era innocente, ascoltando voci tenue che forse l’avrebbero chiamata “Mamma” se fosse stata la moglie di un uomo povero. E anche il grande suono del mare, con il suo eterno “Non mai più”.
“Quando divenne chiaro che non si poteva fare nulla, la signorina Dartle, ”
“Non ti ho detto di non parlarmi?” disse lei, con un tono severo e pieno di disprezzo.
“Avete parlato con me, signorina,” rispose. “Mi scuso, ma è mio dovere obbedire.”
“Fai il tuo dovere,” rispose lei. “Finisci la tua storia e vattene!”
“Quando divenne chiaro,” disse lui, con infinita rispettabilità e un inchino obbediente, “che non si riusciva a trovarla, andai da Mr. James, nel luogo dove era stato concordato che gli scrivessi, e gli raccontai ciò che era accaduto. Ne seguirono alcune parole tra noi, e sentii che fosse dovere del mio carattere lasciarlo. Avevo sopportato, e continuo a sopportare, molte cose da parte di Mr. James; ma questa volta mi ha insultato troppo. Mi ha ferito. Conoscendo la sfortunata differenza tra lui e sua madre, e considerando quanto fosse probabile che lei fosse angosciata, ho preso l’iniziativa di tornare in Inghilterra e raccontargli tutto, ”
“Per i soldi che gli ho dato,” mi disse la signorina Dartle.
“Solo questo, signora, e basandomi su ciò che so. Non sono a conoscenza di nulla altro,” disse il signor Littimer, dopo un momento di riflessione. “Attualmente sono senza lavoro e sarei felice di trovare una situazione rispettabile.”
La signorina Dartle mi lanciò un’occhiata, come se volesse chiedermi se avessi qualcosa da domandare. Poiché mi era venuta in mente una cosa, risposi:
“Vorrei davvero sapere da questa, creatura,” non riuscivo a pronunciare altre parole concilianti, “se abbiano intercettato una lettera scritta per lei dalla casa, o se lui pensi che l’abbia ricevuta.”
Rimase calmo e in silenzio, con lo sguardo fisso a terra; la punta di ogni dito della sua mano destra era posizionata con delicatezza contro la punta di ogni dito della sua mano sinistra.
La signorina Dartle girò la testa verso di lui con disprezzo.
“Perdonatemi, signorina,” disse, riprendendosi dal suo distacco, “ma per quanto io sia sottomesso a voi, ho pur sempre la mia posizione, anche se sono solo un servitore. Il signor Copperfield e voi, signorina, siete persone diverse. Se il signor Copperfield desidera sapere qualcosa da me, mi permetto di ricordargli che può pormi domande direttamente. Devo pur mantenere la mia dignità.”
Dopo un breve momento di lotta interiore, rivolsi lo sguardo verso di lui e dissi: “Hai sentito la mia domanda. Puoi considerarla rivolta a te stesso, se lo desideri. Qual è la tua risposta?”
“Signore,” rispose lui, con quelle delicate punte delle labbra che a volte si separavano e poi si riunivano, “la mia risposta deve essere qualificata; perché tradire la fiducia del signor James nei confronti di sua madre e tradirla nei vostri confronti sono due azioni diverse. Non credo sia probabile che il signor James incoraggiasse la ricezione di lettere capaci di aumentare lo sconforto e l’infelicità; ma, oltre a questo, signore, vorrei evitare di procedere in tal senso.”
“È tutto?” mi chiese la signorina Dartle.
Dissi che non avevo altro da aggiungere. “Tranne,” aggiunsi, vedendolo allontanarsi, “che comprendo il ruolo di quest’uomo in questa storia malvagia, e che, poiché ne informerò l’uomo onesto che è stato suo padre fin da quando era una >bambina, gli consiglierei di evitare di apparire troppo in pubblico.”
Si era fermato non appena avevo iniziato a parlare, ascoltando con la solita calma e compostezza del suo comportamento.
“Grazie, signore. Ma mi permetta di dire che in questo paese non esistono né schiavi né persone che li sfruttino, e che alle persone non è permesso prendere la legge nelle proprie mani. Se lo fanno, credo che sia più un pericolo per loro stessi che per gli altri. Pertanto, non ho affatto paura di andare dove desidero, signore.”
Detto questo, fece un inchino cortese; e, dopo aver fatto un altro inchino alla signorina Dartle, se ne andò attraverso l’arco nel muro di ginepro da cui era entrato. La signorina Dartle ed io ci guardammo per un po’ in silenzio; il suo comportamento era esattamente lo stesso di quando aveva fatto comparire quell’uomo.
“Dice anche,” osservò lei, con un lento sollevare del labbro, “che il suo padrone, secondo quanto ha sentito, sta viaggiando lungo la costa della Spagna; e una volta terminato quel viaggio, partirà di nuovo per soddisfare i suoi gusti marittimi, finché non ne avrà abbastanza. Ma questo non ti interessa affatto. Tra queste due persone orgogliose, madre e figlio, esiste un divario ancora più profondo di prima, e le possibilità che si possa rimediare sono scarse: in realtà, sono una sola nel cuore, e il tempo rende entrambe sempre più testarde e prepotenti. Nemmeno questo ti interessa. Ma questo mi porta al punto che voglio dire: quel diavolo che tu consideri un angelo. Intendo quella ragazza volgare che lui ha scelto tra la folla,” disse, i suoi occhi neri fissi su di me e il dito puntato verso di me con passione, “potrebbe essere ancora viva. Credo che alcune cose volgari siano difficili da distruggere del tutto. Se è così, sicuramente vorrai che una perla di tale valore venga trovata e protetta. Anche noi lo desideriamo; non vogliamo che lui possa nuovamente prenderla in trappola. Per ora, siamo d’accordo su questo punto. Ed è per questo che io, pronta a farle qualsiasi male quel miserabile sia in grado di infliggerle, ti ho fatto chiamare per farti ascoltare ciò che hai appena sentito.”
Vidi, dal cambiamento sul suo viso, che qualcuno si stava avvicinando da dietro di me. Era la signora Steerforth, che mi porse la mano in modo più freddo del solito, con ancora maggiore dignità nel comportamento. Ma percepii – e ne fui commosso – un ricordo indelebile del mio vecchio amore per suo figlio. Era molto cambiata: la sua figura snella non era più eretta come prima, il suo bel viso presentava profonde tracce di invecchiamento e i suoi capelli erano quasi bianchi. Tuttavia, quando si sedette, rimase comunque una signora elegante; e riconobbi subito quegli occhi luminosi, con quel loro sguardo maestoso. Gli stessi occhi che, ai tempi della scuola, erano stati come una luce nei miei >sogni.
“Rosa, è stato informato di tutto il signor Copperfield?”
‘Yes.’
‘And has he heard Littimer himself?’
‘Yes; I have told him why you wished it.’ ‘You are a good girl. I have had some slight correspondence with your former friend, sir,’ addressing me, ‘but it has not restored his sense of duty or natural obligation. Therefore I have no other object in this, than what Rosa has mentioned. If, by the course which may relieve the mind of the decent man you brought here (for whom I am sorry—I can say no more), my son may be saved from again falling into the snares of a designing enemy, well!’
She drew herself up, and sat looking straight before her, far away.
‘Madam,’ I said respectfully, ‘I understand. I assure you I am in no danger of putting any strained construction on your motives. But I must say, even to you, having known this injured family from childhood, that if you suppose the girl, so deeply wronged, has not been cruelly deluded, and would not rather die a hundred deaths than take a cup of water from your son’s hand now, you cherish a terrible mistake.’
‘Well, Rosa, well!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, as the other was about to interpose, ‘it is no matter. Let it be. You are married, sir, I am told?’
I answered that I had been some time married.
‘And are doing well? I hear little in the quiet life I lead, but I understand you are beginning to be famous.’
‘I have been very fortunate,’ I said, ‘and find my name connected with some praise.’
‘You have no mother?’—in a softened voice.
‘No.’
‘It is a pity,’ she returned. ‘She would have been proud of you. Good night!’
I took the hand she held out with a dignified, unbending air, and it was as calm in mine as if her breast had been at peace. Her pride could still its very pulses, it appeared, and draw the placid veil before her face, through which she sat looking straight before her on the far distance.
As I moved away from them along the terrace, I could not help observing how steadily they both sat gazing on the prospect, and how it thickened and closed around them. Here and there, some early lamps were seen to twinkle in the distant city; and in the eastern quarter of the sky the lurid light still hovered. But, from the greater part of the broad valley interposed, a mist was rising like a sea, which, mingling with the darkness, made it seem as if the gathering waters would encompass them. I have reason to remember this, and think of it with awe; for before I looked upon those two again, a stormy sea had risen to their feet.
Reflecting on what had been thus told me, I felt it right that it should be communicated to Mr. Peggotty. On the following evening I went into London in quest of him. He was always wandering about from place to place, with his one object of recovering his niece before him; but was more in London than elsewhere. Often and often, now, had I seen him in the dead of night passing along the streets, searching, among the few who loitered out of doors at those untimely hours, for what he dreaded to find.
He kept a lodging over the little chandler’s shop in Hungerford Market, which I have had occasion to mention more than once, and from which he first went forth upon his errand of mercy. Hither I directed my walk. On making inquiry for him, I learned from the people of the house that he had not gone out yet, and I should find him in his room upstairs.
He was sitting reading by a window in which he kept a few plants. The room was very neat and orderly. I saw in a moment that it was always kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out but he thought it possible he might bring her home. He had not heard my tap at the door, and only raised his eyes when I laid my hand upon his shoulder.
‘Mas’r Davy! Thankee, sir! thankee hearty, for this visit! Sit ye down. You’re kindly welcome, sir!’
‘Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, taking the chair he handed me, ‘don’t expect much! I have heard some news.’
‘Of Em’ly!’
He put his hand, in a nervous manner, on his mouth, and turned pale, as he fixed his eyes on mine.
‘It gives no clue to where she is; but she is not with him.’
He sat down, looking intently at me, and listened in profound silence to all I had to tell. I well remember the sense of dignity, beauty even, with which the patient gravity of his face impressed me, when, having gradually removed his eyes from mine, he sat looking downward, leaning his forehead on his hand. He offered no interruption, but remained throughout perfectly still. He seemed to pursue her figure through the narrative, and to let every other shape go by him, as if it were nothing.
When I had done, he shaded his face, and continued silent. I looked out of the window for a little while, and occupied myself with the plants.
‘How do you fare to feel about it, Mas’r Davy?’ he inquired at length.
‘I think that she is living,’ I replied.
‘I doen’t know. Maybe the first shock was too rough, and in the wildness of her art—! That there blue water as she used to speak on. Could she have thowt o’ that so many year, because it was to be her grave!’
He said this, musing, in a low, frightened voice; and walked across the little room.
‘And yet,’ he added, ‘Mas’r Davy, I have felt so sure as she was living—I have know’d, awake and sleeping, as it was so trew that I should find her—I have been so led on by it, and held up by it—that I doen’t believe I can have been deceived. No! Em’ly’s alive!’
He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face into a resolute expression.
‘My niece, Em’ly, is alive, sir!’ he said, steadfastly. ‘I doen’t know wheer it comes from, or how ‘tis, but I am told as she’s alive!’
He looked almost like a man inspired, as he said it. I waited for a few moments, until he could give me his undivided attention; and then proceeded to explain the precaution, that, it had occurred to me last night, it would be wise to take.
“Sì, davvero.”
“E lui stesso ha sentito parlare di Littimer?”
“Sì; gli ho spiegato il motivo per cui lo desideravi.” “Sei una brava ragazza. Ho avuto qualche breve corrispondenza con la tua ex amica, signora,” mi disse, “ma questo non è servito a far riacquistare a lui senso del dovere o obbligo naturale. Pertanto, l’unico scopo della mia azione è quello che Rosa ha menzionato. Se, attraverso le misure che possano alleviare i timori di quell’uomo onesto che avete portato qui (per il quale provo rammarico, non posso dire di più), mio figlio potrà essere salvato dal rischio di cadere nuovamente nelle trappole di un nemico astuto, benissimo!”
Si alzò in piedi e si sedette, fissando qualcosa lontano davanti a sé.
“Signora,” dissi rispettosamente, “capisco. Le assicuro che non corro il rischio di interpretare in modo errato i suoi motivi. Ma devo dire, anche a lei, avendo conosciuto questa famiglia colpita fin dall’infanzia, che se ritiene che quella ragazza, così profondamente ingiustamente trattata, non sia stata crudelmente ingannata e preferirebbe morire cento volte piuttosto che bere una tazza d’acqua dalle mani di suo figlio in questo momento, allora commette un terribile errore.”
“Beh, Rosa, va bene così!”, disse la signora Steerforth, mentre l’altra stava per intervenire, “non importa. Lasciamo perdere. Lei è sposato, vero?”
Risposi che ero stato sposato per un certo periodo di tempo.
“E come stai? Non sento molto parlare della tua vita tranquilla, ma so che stai iniziando a diventare famoso.”
“Sono stato molto fortunato,” dissi, “e il mio nome è associato ad alcune lodi.”
“Non hai madre?” – disse con voce più dolce.
‘No.’
“È un peccato,” rispose lei. “Sarebbe stata orgogliosa di te. Buona notte!”
Presi la mano che lei mi tese con un atteggiamento dignitoso e fermo; era così calma nella mia, come se il suo cuore fosse in pace. Sembra che la sua orgoglio riuscisse ancora a regolare i suoi battiti cardiaci e ad abbassare quel velo sereno sul suo viso, attraverso cui lei fissava lontano davanti a sé.
Mentre mi allontanavo da loro lungo il terrazzo, non potei fare a meno di osservare quanto fermamente sedessero entrambi, fissando quella vista davanti a loro; e come quella scena si facesse sempre più densa e avvolgesse completamente loro. Qui e là, alcune prime luci lampeggiavano nella lontana >città; e nella parte orientale del cielo, quella luce sinistra continuava a fluttuare nell’oscurità. Ma dalla maggior parte della vasta valle che si estendeva davanti a loro, una nebbia si alzava come un mare; mescolandosi con l’oscurità, dava l’impressione che quelle acque in movimento stessero per sommergerli. Ho motivo di ricordare questo evento e di pensarci con timore, perché prima ancora che potessi rivederli, un mare tempestoso si era già levato davanti a loro.
Riflettendo su ciò che mi era stato raccontato, ritenni giusto comunicarlo al signor Peggotty. La sera seguente andai a Londra alla sua ricerca. Lui passava sempre da un posto all’altro, con l’unica meta di riportare sua nipote a casa; però trascorreva più tempo a Londra che altrove. Spesso, nelle profondità della notte, lo vedevo camminare per le strade, cercando tra poche persone che si attardavano all’aperto in quelle ore tardive, ciò che temeva di trovare.
Aveva preso in affitto una stanza sopra il piccolo negozio del candelaio nel mercato di Hungerford, di cui ho avuto occasione di parlare più volte; da lì partì per compiere la sua missione di misericordia. Fu lì che mi recai. Dopo averlo cercato, gli abitanti della casa mi dissero che non era ancora uscito e che lo avrei trovato nella sua stanza al piano di sopra.
Era seduto a leggere vicino a una finestra nella quale teneva alcune piante. La stanza era molto ordinata e pulita. In un attimo capii che era sempre tenuta pronta per il suo arrivo, e che lui non usciva mai, anche se pensava fosse possibile portarla >a casa. Non aveva sentito bussare alla porta; sollevò lo sguardo solo quando posai la mano sulla sua spalla.
“Signor Davy! Grazie mille, signore, davvero molto grato per questa visita! Si accomodi pure.
È un vero onore averla qui con noi!”
“Signor Peggotty,” dissi, prendendo la sedia che mi stava offrendo, “non si aspetti molto. Ho sentito alcune notizie.”
‘Of Em’ly!’
Posò la mano, in modo nervoso, sulla bocca e impallidì, mentre i suoi occhi si fissavano nei miei.
“Non fornisce alcuna indicazione su dove si trovi, ma lei non è con lui.”
Si sedette, guardandomi con attenzione, e ascoltò in un profondo silenzio tutto ciò che avevo da dire. Ricordo bene quell’impressione di dignità, persino di bellezza, che emanava dalla sua espressione seria; gradualmente distolse lo sguardo dal mio, fissando il pavimento con la fronte appoggiata alla mano. Non interruppe mai, rimanendo perfettamente immobile per tutto il tempo. Sembrava seguire attentamente ogni dettaglio della mia storia, lasciando che tutte le altre cose intorno a lui passassero inosservate, come se non esistessero affatto.
Quando ebbi finito, si coprì il viso con la mano e continuò a rimanere in silenzio. Guardai fuori dalla finestra per un po’ e mi occupai delle piante.
“Come fa a sentirsi al riguardo, signor Davy?”, chiese infine.
“Penso che sia ancora viva,” risposi.
“Non lo so. Forse il primo shock è stato troppo forte, e nella follia della sua arte. Quell’azzurro dell’acqua, di cui parlava sempre. Forse ci ha pensato per tanti anni. Perché doveva diventare il colore del suo cimitero, ”
Lo disse così, meditando, con una voce bassa e spaventata; poi attraversò la piccola stanza.
“Eppure,” aggiunse, “Signor Davy, ero così sicuro che fosse ancora viva. Lo sapevo, sia sveglio che addormentato; ero convinto che l’avrei trovata. Ero guidato da questa certezza, sostenuto da essa. Non credo di essere stato ingannato. No! Emily è viva!”
Posò la mano con fermezza sul tavolo, e il suo viso abbronzato assunse un’espressione decisa.
“Mia nipote, Em’ly, è viva, signore!” disse lui con fermezza. “Non so da dove provenga questa notizia, né come sia possibile, ma mi è stato detto che è viva!”
Sembrava quasi un uomo ispirato mentre lo diceva. Aspettai qualche momento, finché non poté dedicarmi tutta la sua attenzione; poi procedetti a spiegargli la precauzione che mi era venuta in mente la scorsa notte e che ritenevo fosse saggia da adottare.
‘Now, my dear friend—‘I began.
‘Thankee, thankee, kind sir,’ he said, grasping my hand in both of his.
‘If she should make her way to London, which is likely—for where could she lose herself so readily as in this vast city; and what would she wish to do, but lose and hide herself, if she does not go home?—’
‘And she won’t go home,’ he interposed, shaking his head mournfully. ‘If she had left of her own accord, she might; not as It was, sir.’
‘If she should come here,’ said I, ‘I believe there is one person, here, more likely to discover her than any other in the world. Do you remember—hear what I say, with fortitude—think of your great object!—do you remember Martha?’
‘Of our town?’
I needed no other answer than his face.
‘Do you know that she is in London?’
‘I have seen her in the streets,’ he answered, with a shiver.
‘But you don’t know,’ said I, ‘that Emily was charitable to her, with Ham’s help, long before she fled from home. Nor, that, when we met one night, and spoke together in the room yonder, over the way, she listened at the door.’
‘Mas’r Davy!’ he replied in astonishment. ‘That night when it snew so hard?’
‘That night. I have never seen her since. I went back, after parting from you, to speak to her, but she was gone. I was unwilling to mention her to you then, and I am now; but she is the person of whom I speak, and with whom I think we should communicate. Do you understand?’
‘Too well, sir,’ he replied. We had sunk our voices, almost to a whisper, and continued to speak in that tone.
‘You say you have seen her. Do you think that you could find her? I could only hope to do so by chance.’
‘I think, Mas’r Davy, I know wheer to look.’
‘It is dark. Being together, shall we go out now, and try to find her tonight?’
He assented, and prepared to accompany me. Without appearing to observe what he was doing, I saw how carefully he adjusted the little room, put a candle ready and the means of lighting it, arranged the bed, and finally took out of a drawer one of her dresses (I remember to have seen her wear it), neatly folded with some other garments, and a bonnet, which he placed upon a chair. He made no allusion to these clothes, neither did I. There they had been waiting for her, many and many a night, no doubt.
‘The time was, Mas’r Davy,’ he said, as we came downstairs, ‘when I thowt this girl, Martha, a’most like the dirt underneath my Em’ly’s feet. God forgive me, theer’s a difference now!’
As we went along, partly to hold him in conversation, and partly to satisfy myself, I asked him about Ham. He said, almost in the same words as formerly, that Ham was just the same, ‘wearing away his life with kiender no care nohow for ‘t; but never murmuring, and liked by all’.
I asked him what he thought Ham’s state of mind was, in reference to the cause of their misfortunes? Whether he believed it was dangerous? What he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and Steerforth ever should encounter?
‘I doen’t know, sir,’ he replied. ‘I have thowt of it oftentimes, but I can’t awize myself of it, no matters.’
I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when we were all three on the beach. ‘Do you recollect,’ said I, ‘a certain wild way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about “the end of it”?’
‘Sure I do!’ said he.
‘What do you suppose he meant?’
‘Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘I’ve put the question to myself a mort o’ times, and never found no answer. And theer’s one curious thing—that, though he is so pleasant, I wouldn’t fare to feel comfortable to try and get his mind upon ‘t. He never said a wured to me as warn’t as dootiful as dootiful could be, and it ain’t likely as he’d begin to speak any other ways now; but it’s fur from being fleet water in his mind, where them thowts lays. It’s deep, sir, and I can’t see down.’
‘You are right,’ said I, ‘and that has sometimes made me anxious.’
‘And me too, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined. ‘Even more so, I do assure you, than his ventersome ways, though both belongs to the alteration in him. I doen’t know as he’d do violence under any circumstances, but I hope as them two may be kep asunders.’
We had come, through Temple Bar, into the city. Conversing no more now, and walking at my side, he yielded himself up to the one aim of his devoted life, and went on, with that hushed concentration of his faculties which would have made his figure solitary in a multitude. We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned his head and pointed to a solitary female figure flitting along the opposite side of the street. I knew it, readily, to be the figure that we sought.
We crossed the road, and were pressing on towards her, when it occurred to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman’s interest in the lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place, aloof from the crowd, and where we should be less observed. I advised my companion, therefore, that we should not address her yet, but follow her; consulting in this, likewise, an indistinct desire I had, to know where she went.
He acquiescing, we followed at a distance: never losing sight of her, but never caring to come very near, as she frequently looked about. Once, she stopped to listen to a band of music; and then we stopped too.
She went on a long way. Still we went on. It was evident, from the manner in which she held her course, that she was going to some fixed destination; and this, and her keeping in the busy streets, and I suppose the strange fascination in the secrecy and mystery of so following anyone, made me adhere to my first purpose. At length she turned into a dull, dark street, where the noise and crowd were lost; and I said, ‘We may speak to her now’; and, mending our pace, we went after her.
“Ora, mio caro amico, ” iniziai a dire.
“Grazie mille, signore gentile,” disse, stringendo la mia mano con entrambe le sue.
‘Se dovesse recarsi a Londra, il che è molto probabile, dove potrebbe perdersi più facilmente che in questa vasta città? E cosa vorrebbe fare, se non nascondersi e scomparire, se non tornasse a casa?’
“E lei non tornerà a casa”, intervenne lui, scuotendo la testa tristemente. “Se se ne fosse andata di sua volontà, forse lo avrebbe fatto; ma così come stanno le cose, no, signore.”
“Se dovesse venire qui,” dissi, “credo che ci sia una persona, proprio qui, più probabile di chiunque altro al mondo a scoprirla. Ti ricordi, ascolta attentamente quello che dico, con forza, pensa al tuo grande obiettivo, ti ricordi di Martha?”
“Del nostro paese?”
Non avevo bisogno di alcuna altra risposta se non il suo viso.
“Sai che lei si trova a Londra?”
“L’ho vista per le strade,” rispose, rabbrividendo.
“Ma tu non lo sai,” dissi, “che Emily era gentile con lei, con l’aiuto di Ham, molto prima che fuggisse da casa. E nemmeno che, una notte, quando ci incontrammo e parlammo insieme in quella stanza laggiù, lei ascoltava dietro la porta.”
“Maestro Davy!”, rispose, stupito. “Quella notte in cui nevicava così forte?”
‘Quella notte. Da allora non l’ho più vista. Sono tornato dopo essermi separato da te per parlarle, ma lei se n’era già andata. Allora non volevo menzionarla con te, e ora nemmeno; ma è proprio di lei che sto parlando, ed è con lei che penso dovremmo metterci in contatto. Capisci?’
“Troppo bene, signore,” rispose lui. Avevamo abbassato la voce, quasi a sussurrare, e continuammo a parlare in quel tono.
“Dici di averla vista. Credi che riusciresti a trovarla? Io posso solo sperare di farlo per caso.”
“Credo, signor Davy, di sapere dove cercare.”
“È buio. Rimanendo insieme, usciamo adesso e proviamo a trovarla stasera?”
Accettò e si preparò ad accompagnarmi. Senza dare l’impressione di prestare attenzione a ciò che stava facendo, vidi quanto con cura sistemasse la piccola stanza: preparò una candela e gli strumenti necessari per accenderla, sistemò il letto e infine tirò fuori da un cassetto uno dei suoi vestiti (ricordo di averla visto indossarlo), piegato con cura insieme ad altri abiti e a un cappello, che posizionò su una sedia. Lui non fece alcuna allusione a quegli indumenti, né io. Lì erano rimasti ad aspettarla, per molte, molte notti, senza alcun dubbio.
“Quel tempo, signor Davy,” disse mentre scendevamo le scale, “era quando pensavo che questa ragazza, Martha, fosse quasi come la sporcizia sotto i piedi di mia moglie Emily. Dio mi perdoni, ora c’è davvero una differenza!”
Man mano che procedevamo nel nostro discorso, sia per mantenere la conversazione in corso sia per soddisfare la mia curiosità, gli chiesi notizie di Ham. Lui rispose, quasi con le stesse parole di prima, che Ham era sempre lo stesso: “Trascorreva la sua vita senza curarsi minimamente di nulla, ma senza mai lamentarsi e apprezzato da tutti”.
Gli ho chiesto cosa pensasse dello stato d’animo di Ham, riguardo alla causa delle loro sfortune; se riteneva che fosse pericoloso; e cosa immaginava che Ham potesse fare, ad esempio, se lui e Steerforth si incontrassero mai.
“Non lo so, signore,” rispose. “Ci ho pensato molte volte, ma non riesco proprio a ricordarmelo, per quanto ci provi.”
Ricordai a sua memoria la mattina dopo la sua partenza, quando eravamo tutti e tre in spiaggia. “Ti ricordi,” dissi, “di quel modo strano in cui guardava il mare e parlava di ‘la fine di tutto’?”
“Certo che sì!” disse lui.
“Cosa pensi che volesse dire?”
“Mas’r Davy,” rispose, “me lo sono chiesto molte volte, ma non ho mai trovato una risposta. C’è qualcosa di curioso: anche se è molto gentile, non mi sentirei a mio agio nel provare a capirne i pensieri. Non mi ha mai detto nulla che potesse essere considerato offensivo, e probabilmente ora non inizierebbe mai a parlare in modo diverso; ma la sua mente non è affatto superficiale. È profonda, signore, e io non riesco a comprenderla.”
“Hai ragione,” dissi, “e questo a volte mi ha reso ansioso.”
“Anch’io, signor Davy,” rispose lui. “Ancora di più, vi assicuro, rispetto ai suoi comportamenti avventati, anche se entrambi fanno parte di quel cambiamento in lui. Non so se sarebbe capace di usare la violenza in qualsiasi circostanza, ma spero che questi due aspetti del suo carattere possano essere tenuti separati.”
Eravamo entrati nella città attraverso Temple Bar. Ora non parlavamo più; camminando al mio fianco, si dedicava interamente all’unico scopo della sua vita devota, con quella concentrazione silenziosa che avrebbe reso la sua figura unica in mezzo alla folla. Non eravamo lontani dal ponte Blackfriars quando girò la testa e indicò una figura femminile solitaria che si muoveva dall’altra parte della strada. Riconobbi subito che era proprio quella persona che cercavamo.
Avevamo attraversato la strada e ci stavamo avvicinando a lei, quando mi venne in mente che forse sarebbe stata più disposta ad ascoltare le parole di una donna riguardo alla ragazza scomparsa, se l’avessimo parlata in un posto più tranquillo, lontano dalla folla, dove fossimo stati meno osservati. Perciò consigliai al mio compagno di non parlarle ancora, ma di seguirla; in questo modo avremmo anche soddisfatto un vago -desiderio che avevo di sapere dove stesse andando.
Dopo aver acconsentito, la seguimmo da lontano: senza mai perderla di vista, ma senza mai avvicinarci troppo, poiché lei si guardava intorno spesso. Una volta, si fermò ad ascoltare un gruppo musicale; e allora anche noi ci fermammo.
Camminò per una lunga strada. Eppure continuammo ad andare avanti. Era evidente, dal modo in cui manteneva la sua direzione, che stava andando verso un luogo preciso; questo, unito al fatto che si muoveva sempre per le strade affollate, e probabilmente anche a quella strana attrazione che provavo nel seguire qualcuno con tanta segretezza e mistero, mi spinsero ad attuare il mio piano iniziale. Alla fine entrò in una strada buia e desolata, dove il rumore e la folla scomparvero. E allora dissi: “Ora possiamo parlarle”. E, accelerando il passo, la seguimmo.
CHAPTER 47. MARTHA
We were now down in Westminster. We had turned back to follow her, having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the leading streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of the two currents of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that, between this and the advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her. At that moment she crossed the road, as if to avoid the footsteps that she heard so close behind; and, without looking back, passed on even more rapidly.
A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my companion without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her, and both followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as quietly as we could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.
There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying street, a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street ceases, and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river. As soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she had come to her destination; and presently went slowly along by the brink of the river, looking intently at it.
All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house; indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark glimpse of the river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her going no farther.
The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished, rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which—having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather—they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like green hair, and the rags of last year’s handbills offering rewards for drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.
As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the river’s brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and still, looking at the water.
There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. I then signed to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged from their shade to speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling; for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread within me.
I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed in gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and that she was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more like the action of a sleep-walker than a waking person. I know, and never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner which gave me no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes, until I had her arm within my grasp.
At the same moment I said ‘Martha!’
She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger hand than mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us. We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones, and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.
‘Oh, the river!’ she cried passionately. ‘Oh, the river!’
‘Hush, hush!’ said I. ‘Calm yourself.’
But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, ‘Oh, the river!’ over and over again.
‘I know it’s like me!’ she exclaimed. ‘I know that I belong to it. I know that it’s the natural company of such as I am! It comes from country places, where there was once no harm in it—and it creeps through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable—and it goes away, like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled—and I feel that I must go with it!’ I have never known what despair was, except in the tone of those words.
CAPITOLO 47. MARTHA
Eravamo ora a Westminster. Eravamo tornati indietro per seguirla, dopo averla incontrata mentre ci veniva incontro; l’Abbazia di Westminster era il punto in cui lei lasciava alle spalle le luci e il rumore delle strade principali. Procedeva così velocemente che, una volta liberatasi dalle due correnti di passeggeri diretti verso il ponte o ne provenienti, prima ancora che riuscissimo a raggiungerla, ci trovavamo già nella stretta strada lungo il fiume, vicino a Millbank. In quel momento lei attraversò la strada, come se volesse evitare i passi che sentiva così vicini dietro di sé; e, senza guardarsi indietro, proseguì ancora più rapidamente.
Un’occhiata al fiume attraverso un cancello scuro, dove alcuni carri erano riparati per la notte, sembrò fermarmi. Toccai il mio compagno senza dire una parola, e entrambi decidemmo di non proseguire oltre quel punto; seguimmo quindi il sentiero dall’altra parte, mantenendoci il più silenziosamente possibile nell’ombra delle case, ma sempre molto vicini a lei.
C’era, e c’è ancora quando scrivo, alla fine di quella strada in basso, un piccolo edificio di legno fatiscente, probabilmente un vecchio e ormai obsoleto edificio per il traghetto. Si trova proprio nel punto in cui la strada finisce e la strada inizia a estendersi tra una fila di case e il fiume. Non appena lei arrivò qui e vide l’acqua, si fermò come se fosse giunta a destinazione; poi proseguì lentamente lungo la riva del fiume, osservandolo attentamente.
Per tutto il tragitto, avevo supposto che stesse andando in qualche casa; anzi, avevo vagamente sperato che quella casa potesse essere in qualche modo collegata alla ragazza scomparsa. Ma quell’unico breve sguardo al fiume, attraverso il cancello, mi aveva istintivamente preparato all’idea che non avrebbe proseguito oltre.
Il quartiere era desolato in quel periodo; di notte risultava opprimente, triste e solitario, come qualsiasi altro nel Londra. Non c’erano né moli né case lungo quella tristezza di strada vicino alla grande e desolata prigione. Un canale fangoso depositava il suo limo contro le mura della prigione; erba ruvida e piante infestanti crescevano ovunque su quel terreno paludoso. In alcuni punti, rovine di case iniziate ma mai completate marcivano lentamente; in altri, il terreno era coperto da macchine arrugginite: caldaie a vapore, ruote, manovelle, tubi, fornaci. Oggetti strani accumulati chissà da chi, sepolti nella polvere e sommersi dal fango nei periodi di pioggia; sembrava che cercassero invano di nascondersi. La luce abbagliante delle fabbriche lungo il fiume disturbava tutto, tranne il fumo denso che usciva dalle loro ciminiere. Strade fangose e tortuose, fiancheggiate da vecchi mucchi di legno su cui si attaccava una sostanza viscida simile a capelli verdi, con avvisi vecchi di un anno che offrivano ricompense per i caduti in acqua, conducevano verso il livello dell’acqua bassa. Si diceva che in quel luogo fosse stata scavata una fossa per i morti durante l’epoca della Grande Peste; sembrava che un’influenza maligna avesse contaminato l’intera zona. Oppure forse tutto ciò era il risultato dell’inquinamento causato da quell’acqua corrotta.
Come se facesse parte dei rifiuti che quel luogo aveva scartato e abbandonato alla corruzione e al deperimento, la ragazza che avevamo seguito si era inoltrata fino al bordo del fiume e stava lì, immobile e solitaria, ad osservare le acque del fiume.
C’erano alcune barche e chiatte incagliate nel fango, e queste ci permisero di avvicinarci a pochi metri da lei senza essere visti. Poi feci segno al signor Peggotty di rimanere dove si trovava, e uscii dall’ombra per parlare con lei. Non mi avvicinai alla sua solitaria figura senza tremare: quel tragico epilogo del suo viaggio risoluto, e il modo in cui stava lì, quasi immersa nell’oscura ombra del ponte di ferro, guardando le luci riflesse in modo distorto dalla forte corrente, suscitarono in me un terribile timore.
Penso che stesse parlando da sola. Sono sicuro che, sebbene fosse completamente assorta nella contemplazione dell’acqua, il suo scialle le era scivolato dalle spalle e si copriva le mani con esso, in modo agitato e confuso. Più simile al comportamento di una persona che sogna ad occhi aperti che a quello di qualcuno sveglio. So bene, e non potrò mai dimenticarlo, che nel suo atteggiamento frenetico c’era qualcosa che mi faceva temere che potesse cadere davanti ai miei occhi. Fino a quando non riuscii ad afferrare il suo braccio.
Nello stesso istante dissi: “Martha!”
Emise un grido spaventato e lottò contro di me con tale forza che dubitavo fossi in grado di tenerla da sola. Ma una mano più forte della mia si posò su di lei; quando alzò i suoi occhi spaventati e vide a chi apparteneva, fece un ultimo sforzo e poi cadde a terra tra noi. La portammo lontano dall’acqua, dove c’erano alcune pietre secche, e la adagiammo lì, mentre piangeva e si lamentava. Dopo poco, si sedette tra le pietre, tenendosi la testa con entrambe le mani.
“Oh, il fiume!” gridò con passione. “Oh, il )fiume!”
“Zitta, zitta!”, dissi. “Calmati.”
Ma continuava a ripetere le stesse parole, esclamando senza sosta: “Oh, il fiume!” ancora e ancora.
“So che è proprio come me! So di appartenerci. So che è il compagno naturale di persone come me. Proviene dai luoghi rurali, dove un tempo non c’era alcun male associato a esso. Si insinua nelle strade desolate, sporche e misere. E poi scompare, proprio come la mia vita, verso un mare sempre agitato. E sento che devo seguirlo, ” Non avevo mai conosciuto cosa fosse il dispero. Fino a quel momento.
‘I can’t keep away from it. I can’t forget it. It haunts me day and night. It’s the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that’s fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!’
The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion, as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his niece’s history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand—I touched it with my own, for his appearance alarmed me—was deadly cold.
‘She is in a state of frenzy,’ I whispered to him. ‘She will speak differently in a little time.’
I don’t know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to her with his outstretched hand.
A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more tranquil.
‘Martha,’ said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise—she seemed to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was weak, and leaned against a boat. ‘Do you know who this is, who is with me?’
She said faintly, ‘Yes.’
‘Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?’
She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against her forehead.
‘Are you composed enough,’ said I, ‘to speak on the subject which so interested you—I hope Heaven may remember it!—that snowy night?’
Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to me for not having driven her away from the door.
‘I want to say nothing for myself,’ she said, after a few moments. ‘I am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,’ she had shrunk away from him, ‘if you don’t feel too hard to me to do it, that I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.’ ‘It has never been attributed to you,’ I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.
‘It was you, if I don’t deceive myself,’ she said, in a broken voice, ‘that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so gentle to me; didn’t shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me such kind help! Was it you, sir?’
‘It was,’ said I.
‘I should have been in the river long ago,’ she said, glancing at it with a terrible expression, ‘if any wrong to her had been upon my mind. I never could have kept out of it a single winter’s night, if I had not been free of any share in that!’
‘The cause of her flight is too well understood,’ I said. ‘You are innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,—we know.’
‘Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better heart!’ exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; ‘for she was always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself, knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever from her!’
Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.
‘And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some belonging to our town,’ cried Martha, ‘the bitterest thought in all my mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me, and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died to have brought back her good name!’
Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and grief was terrible.
‘To have died, would not have been much—what can I say?---I would have lived!’ she cried. ‘I would have lived to be old, in the wretched streets—and to wander about, avoided, in the dark—and to see the day break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used to shine into my room, and wake me once—I would have done even that, to save her!’
Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.
‘What shall I ever do!’ she said, fighting thus with her despair. ‘How can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to everyone I come near!’ Suddenly she turned to my companion. ‘Stamp upon me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can’t believe—why should you?---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a word. I don’t complain. I don’t say she and I are alike—I know there is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and love her. Oh, don’t think that all the power I had of loving anything is quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being what I am, and having ever known her; but don’t think that of me!’
He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.
‘Martha,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen’t know half the change that’s come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it likely. Well!’ he paused a moment, then went on. ‘You doen’t understand how ‘tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You doen’t understand what ‘tis we has afore us. Listen now!’
“Non riesco a starne lontano. Non riesco a dimenticarlo. Mi perseguita giorno e notte. È l’unica cosa al mondo per cui sono adatto, o che è adatta a me. Oh, quel terribile fiume, ”
Mi passò per la mente che, di fronte al mio compagno, mentre la guardava in silenzio e senza muoversi, avrei potuto comprendere tutta la storia di sua nipote, anche se non ne sapevo nulla. Non avevo mai visto, né in un dipinto né nella realtà, un tale intreccio di orrore e compassione. Tremava come se stesse per cadere; e la sua mano, la toccai con la mia, perché il suo aspetto mi aveva allarmato, era mortalmente fredda.
“È in uno stato di follia,” gli sussurrai. “Tra poco parlerà in modo diverso.”
Non so cosa avrebbe detto in risposta. Fece alcuni movimenti con la bocca, e sembrava pensare di aver parlato; ma in realtà aveva soltanto indicato verso di lei con la mano tesa.
Un nuovo attacco di pianto la colpì; ancora una volta nascose il viso tra le pietre e giacque davanti a noi, un’immagine di umiliazione e rovina. Sapendo che questo stato doveva passare prima che potessimo parlarle con qualche speranza, osai impedire al mio compagno di sollevarla; rimanemmo in silenzio fino a quando non si calmò un po’.
“Martha,” dissi allora, chinandomi e aiutandola ad alzarsi; sembrava voler si alzare con l’intenzione di andarsene, ma era debole e si appoggiò a una barca. “Conosci chi è questa persona che è con me?”
Disse debolmente: “Sì.”
“Lo sai che ti abbiamo seguito per una lunga strada stasera?”
Scosse la testa. Non guardò né lui né me, ma rimase in una posizione umile, tenendo il cappello e lo scialle in una mano, come se non se ne accorgesse nemmeno, mentre con l’altra mano, stretta a pugno, si premeva la fronte.
“Sei abbastanza calmo,” dissi, “per parlare di quell’argomento che ti interessava tanto. Spero che il Cielo se ne ricordi. Quella notte nevosa, ”
I suoi singhiozzi ripresero improvvisamente; mormorò qualche ringraziamento inarticolato per il fatto che non l’avevo allontanata dalla porta.
“Non voglio dire nulla per me stessa,” disse dopo alcuni momenti. “Sono cattiva, sono persa. Non ho affatto alcuna speranza. Ma ditegli, signore,” aggiunse, allontanandosi da lui, “se non vi sembra troppo difficile per me farlo, che io non sono mai stata in alcun modo la causa della sua sfortuna.” “Non è mai stato attribuito a voi,” risposi, con sincerità, rispondendo alla sua serietà.
“Eri tu,” disse lei con voce rotta, “quella notte che sei entrato in cucina, che hai avuto tanta pietà di me, che sei stato così gentile con me. Non ti sei allontanato come fanno tutti gli altri, e mi hai dato un aiuto così generoso! Eri tu, signore?”
“Era così,” dissi io.
“Avrei dovuto essere nel fiume da molto tempo,” disse, guardandolo con un’espressione terribile, “se avessi avuto anche solo il minimo pensiero negativo nei suoi confronti. Non sarei mai riuscita a resistere nemmeno per una singola notte d’inverno, se non fossi stata completamente estranea a tutto ciò!”
“La causa della sua fuga è troppo chiara,” dissi. “Siamo assolutamente convinti che tu non abbia avuto alcuna parte in essa. Lo sappiamo con certezza.”
“Oh, forse sarei stato molto meglio per lei, se avessi avuto un cuore più gentile!” esclamò la ragazza con profondo rimpianto; “perché lei è sempre stata buona con me! Non mi ha mai detto una parola che non fosse piacevole e giusta. Come potrei mai cercare di farla diventare come sono io, sapendo perfettamente chi sono? Quando ho perso tutto ciò che rende la vita preziosa, il pensiero più terribile è stato quello di essere separata da lei per sempre, ”
Il signor Peggotty, con una mano appoggiata al bordo della barca e lo sguardo abbassato, mise l’altra mano davanti al viso.
“E quando ho saputo ciò che era accaduto quella nevosa notte, da persone della nostra città,” gridò Martha, “il pensiero più amaro che mi sia venuto in mente è stato che la gente avrebbe ricordato che un tempo lei era mia amica, e avrebbe detto che ero stata io a corromperla! Per Dio, sarei morta pur di ripristinare la sua reputazione!”
Non essendo abituata da tempo a alcun tipo di autocontrollo, il dolore acuto del suo rimorso e della sua tristezza era terribile.
“Morire, non sarebbe stato poi così terribile. Cosa posso dire? Avrei continuato a vivere!” gridò. “Avrei vissuto fino ad invecchiare, per le strade misere. Avrei vagabondato, evitata da tutti, al buio. Avrei visto sorgere il sole su quelle case orribili. Avrei ricordato come lo stesso sole un tempo entrasse nella mia stanza e mi svegliasse. Avrei fatto anche quello, pur di salvarla!”
Appoggiandosi alle pietre, ne prese alcune in ciascuna mano e le strinse forte, come se volesse frantumarle. Continuava a cambiare posizione: irrigidiva le braccia, le torceva davanti al viso, come per escludere dalla propria vista quella debole luce che c’era, e abbassava la testa, come se fosse pesante di ricordi insopportabili.
“Cosa dovrei mai fare,?” disse lei, lottando contro il proprio dispero. “Come posso continuare a vivere così, come una maledizione per me stessa, come una vergogna per chiunque mi avvicini, ” All’improvviso si rivolse al mio compagno: “Calpestami, uccidimi! Quando lei era la tua orgoglio, avresti pensato che le avessi fatto del male anche solo se l’avessi sfiorata per strada. Non puoi crederci. Perché dovresti? Nemmeno una parola che esca dalle mie labbra. Sarebbe una vera vergogna per te, anche ora, se io e lei scambiassimo una parola. Non mi lamento. Non dico che siamo simili. So che c’è un abisso tra di noi. Dico solo, con tutta la mia colpa e miseria addosso, che le sono grata dal profondo del mio cuore e la amo. Oh, non pensare che tutto il mio amore sia ormai svanito. Gettami via, come fanno tutti. Uccidimi per ciò che sono. Ma non pensare così di me, ”
La guardava mentre lei faceva questa preghiera, con un’espressione assente e confusa; e quando lei tacque, la sollevò dolcemente.
“Martha,” disse il signor Peggotty, “Dio non voglia che io ti giudichi male. Per favore, mia cara, che proprio io, tra tutte le persone possibili, debba farlo! Non immagini nemmeno quanto sia cambiato io nel corso del tempo, anche se potresti pensarlo possibile. Beh, ” fece una pausa, poi continuò: “Non capisci perché questo signore e io vogliamo parlarti. Non comprendi cosa abbiamo davanti a noi. Ascolta ora!”
His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him, as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was quite hushed and mute.
‘If you heerd,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘owt of what passed between Mas’r Davy and me, th’ night when it snew so hard, you know as I have been—wheer not—fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,’ he repeated steadily. ‘Fur she’s more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear afore.’
She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.
‘I have heerd her tell,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘as you was early left fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you’d had such a friend, you’d have got into a way of being fond of him in course of time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.’
As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her, taking it up from the ground for that purpose.
‘Whereby,’ said he, ‘I know, both as she would go to the wureld’s furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would fly to the wureld’s furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she ain’t no call to doubt my love, and doen’t—and doen’t,’ he repeated, with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, ‘there’s shame steps in, and keeps betwixt us.’
I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself, new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature it presented.
‘According to our reckoning,’ he proceeded, ‘Mas’r Davy’s here, and mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to London. We believe—Mas’r Davy, me, and all of us—that you are as innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You’ve spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew she was! I knew she always was, to all. You’re thankful to her, and you love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!’
She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were doubtful of what he had said.
‘Will you trust me?’ she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.
‘Full and free!’ said Mr. Peggotty.
‘To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to you, and bring you to her?’ she asked hurriedly.
We both replied together, ‘Yes!’
She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its passing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if that were possible, than she had been upon the river’s brink that night; and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!
She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the gloomy water.
We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.
She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not to know.
Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but remained inexorable.
‘There may be work to be got,’ she said. ‘I’ll try.’
‘At least take some assistance,’ I returned, ‘until you have tried.’
‘I could not do what I have promised, for money,’ she replied. ‘I could not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away the only certain thing that saves me from the river.’
‘In the name of the great judge,’ said I, ‘before whom you and all of us must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do some good, if we will.’
She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she answered:
‘It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to try for. I know no more, and I can say no more.’
Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes expressed privation and endurance.
Il suo influenzo su di lei era totale. Lei stava lì, tremante, davanti a lui, come se avesse paura di incrociare il suo sguardo; ma il suo dolore appassionato era completamente soffocato e silenzioso.
“Se aveste sentito,” disse il signor Peggotty, “di ciò che è accaduto tra il signor Davy e me quella notte in cui nevicava così forte, sapreste quanto io abbia cercato mia cara nipote. Dappertutto, senza sosta. Mia cara nipote,” ripeté con insistenza, “ora è ancora più preziosa per me di prima, Martha.”
Si mise le mani davanti al viso; per il resto rimase in silenzio.
“Ho sentito lei dire,” disse il signor Peggotty, “che quando eri piccolo rimanesti orfano di padre e madre, senza nessun amico che ti potesse aiutare in quel duro ambiente marittimo. Forse puoi capire che, se avessi avuto un tale amico, col tempo avresti iniziato a volergli bene, e che mia nipote si è comportata con me come una vera figlia.”
Mentre lei tremava in silenzio, lui le avvolse con cura il scialle, raccogliendolo dal suolo apposta per quel scopo.
“Per questo,” disse lui, “so che lei sarebbe disposta ad andare fino all’estremità più remota del mondo con me, se solo potesse rivedermi; e allo stesso tempo, vorrebbe correre fino a quell’estremità per evitare di vedermi. Perché, anche se non ha alcun motivo di dubitare del mio amore, e non lo fa, e non lo fa,” ripeté con una tranquilla certezza della verità di ciò che stava dicendo, “c’è comunque la vergogna a intervenire e a separarci.”
Leggevo, in ogni parola del suo modo semplice e incisivo di esprimersi, nuove prove del fatto che avesse riflettuto su questo argomento, in ogni sua particolarità.
“Secondo i nostri calcoli,” proseguì, “il signor Davy è qui, e mia moglie, un giorno, probabilmente, intraprenderà da sola il suo solitario viaggio verso Londra. Noi crediamo – il signor Davy, io e tutti noi – che tu sia completamente innocente di tutto ciò che le è accaduto, proprio come quel >bambino ancora non nato. Hai detto che lei è stata gentile, premurosa e affettuosa con te. Benedicila! Lo sapevo già: so che lo è sempre stata con tutti. Sei grato per ciò che ha fatto per te, e la ami. Aiutaci il più possibile a trovarla. E che il Cielo ti ricompensi!”
Lo guardò in fretta, e per la prima volta, sembrava dubitare di ciò che aveva detto.
“Mi crederai?” chiese lei, con voce bassa e sorpresa.
“Completo e libero!” disse il signor Peggotty.
“Parlarle, se mai dovessi riuscire a trovarla; offrirle riparo, se avessi qualcosa con cui poterla proteggere. E poi, senza che lei lo sappia, venire da te e portarti da lei”, chiese lei in fretta.
“Sì!”, rispondemmo entrambi all’unisono.
Alzò lo sguardo e dichiarò solennemente che si sarebbe dedicata a questa missione con fervore e fedeltà. Che non avrebbe mai vacillato, mai deviato dal suo obiettivo, mai rinunciato ad esso, finché ci fosse stata anche solo una possibilità di >speranza. Se non fosse stata leale a questo impegno, forse l’unico scopo che ora aveva nella vita, che la legava a qualcosa di puro e senza malvagità, al suo svanire l’avrebbe lasciata ancora più desolata e disperata, se ciò fosse stato possibile. E allora, forse, tutto ciò che esisteva, umano o divino, avrebbe dovuto abbandonarla per sempre!
Non alzò la voce, non ci parlò, ma disse queste parole alla notte stellata; poi rimase in silenzio, fissando l’oscura acqua.
Ritenemmo opportuno, ora, raccontarle tutto ciò che sapevamo; e io lo feci dettagliatamente. Ascoltò con grande attenzione, il suo volto cambiava spesso espressione, ma tutte queste variazioni avevano lo stesso significato. Di tanto in tanto i suoi occhi si riempivano di lacrime, ma lei le trattenne. Sembrava che il suo spirito fosse completamente cambiato, e non poteva essere più tranquilla di così.
Lei chiese, una volta che tutto fu spiegato, dove poter contattarci in caso di necessità. Sotto la luce fioca di una lampada sulla strada, scrissi le nostre due indirizzi su un foglietto del mio portafoglio, lo strappai e glielo diedi; lei lo mise nel suo povero petto. Le chiesi dove abitasse lei stessa. Dopo una pausa, rispose: “In nessun posto. Meglio non saperlo.”
Il signor Peggotty mi sussurrò ciò che già era accaduto a me; tirai fuori la mia borsa, ma non riuscii a convincerla ad accettare del denaro, né a ottenere da lei la promessa di farlo in un’altra occasione. Le spiegai che il signor Peggotty, data la sua condizione, non poteva essere considerato povero; inoltre, l’idea che lei si impegnasse in questa ricerca affidandosi soltanto alle sue risorse personali ci aveva entrambi scioccati. Lei rimase irremovibile. In questo particolare caso, l’influenza di lui su di lei era altrettanto inefficace della mia. Gli ringraziò con gratitudine, ma rimase ferma nella sua decisione.
“Potrebbe esserci del lavoro da fare,” disse. “Ci proverò.”
“Almeno chiedi un po’ di aiuto,” risposi, “prima di provare da solo.”
“Non avrei potuto fare ciò che avevo promesso, per denaro,” rispose. “Non l’avrei accettato nemmeno se stessi morendo di fame. Darmi del denaro significherebbe togliermi la vostra fiducia, togliermi ciò che mi avete dato, togliermi l’unica cosa certa che mi salva dalla fiume.”
“Nel nome del grande Giudice,” dissi, “davanti al quale tu e tutti noi dovremo presentarci nel Suo terribile giorno, abbandona quell’idea orribile! Tutti possiamo compiere qualcosa di buono, se lo vogliamo.”
“Tremava, le labbra le tremavano e il viso era più pallido mentre rispondeva, ”
“Forse è stato posto nei vostri cuori il compito di salvare una creatura miserabile affinché possa pentirsi. Temo di pensarci; sembra troppo audace. Se da me dovesse derivare qualche bene, forse potrei iniziare a >sperare. Ma finora le mie azioni hanno portato solo danno. Per la prima volta dopo molto tempo, la mia misera vita può essere affidata a voi, grazie a ciò che mi avete dato per provare. Non so altro, e non posso dire di più.”
Di nuovo represse le lacrime che avevano iniziato a scorrere; poi, tendendo la sua mano tremante e toccando il signor Peggotty, come se in lui ci fosse qualche virtù capace di guarire, se ne andò lungo quella desolata strada. Era malata, probabilmente da molto tempo. In quell’occasione di osservazione più attenta, notai che era stanca e segnata dal dolore; i suoi occhi infossati esprimevano privazione e resilienza.
We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets. I had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put it to Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like distrusting her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same mind, and equally reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours, which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way; and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort, there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss to interpret.
It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own gate, and was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul’s, the sound of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see that the door of my aunt’s cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining out across the road.
Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms, and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great surprise that I saw a man standing in her little garden.
He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking. I stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now, though obscured; and I recognized the man whom I had once supposed to be a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and had once encountered with my aunt in the streets of the city.
He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle on the ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though with a covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.
The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I heard it chink.
‘What’s the use of this?’ he demanded.
‘I can spare no more,’ returned my aunt.
‘Then I can’t go,’ said he. ‘Here! You may take it back!’
‘You bad man,’ returned my aunt, with great emotion; ‘how can you use me so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am! What have I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to your deserts?’
‘And why don’t you abandon me to my deserts?’ said he.
‘You ask me why!’ returned my aunt. ‘What a heart you must have!’
He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at length he said:
‘Is this all you mean to give me, then?’
‘It is all I CAN give you,’ said my aunt. ‘You know I have had losses, and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having got it, why do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing what you have become?’
‘I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,’ he said. ‘I lead the life of an owl.’
‘You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,’ said my aunt. ‘You closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and repent of it. Don’t add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done me!’
‘Aye!’ he returned. ‘It’s all very fine—Well! I must do the best I can, for the present, I suppose.’
In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt’s indignant tears, and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three quick steps, as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he came out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.
‘Aunt,’ said I, hurriedly. ‘This man alarming you again! Let me speak to him. Who is he?’
‘Child,’ returned my aunt, taking my arm, ‘come in, and don’t speak to me for ten minutes.’
We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the round green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a chair, and occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour. Then she came out, and took a seat beside me.
‘Trot,’ said my aunt, calmly, ‘it’s my husband.’
‘Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead!’
‘Dead to me,’ returned my aunt, ‘but living.’
I sat in silent amazement.
‘Betsey Trotwood don’t look a likely subject for the tender passion,’ said my aunt, composedly, ‘but the time was, Trot, when she believed in that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and for ever, in a grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.’
‘My dear, good aunt!’
‘I left him,’ my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of mine, ‘generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,’ said my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; ‘and I believed him—I was a fool!—to be the soul of honour!’
She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.
‘He is nothing to me now, Trot—less than nothing. But, sooner than have him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in this country), I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what I once believed him to be, I wouldn’t have even this shadow of my idle fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman was.’
My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.
‘There, my dear!’ she said. ‘Now you know the beginning, middle, and end, and all about it. We won’t mention the subject to one another any more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is my grumpy, frumpy story, and we’ll keep it to ourselves, Trot!’
CHAPTER 48. DOMESTIC
I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears, notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise I got, the more I tried to deserve.
It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. They express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer to them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.
Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence. Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and nothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myself reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the old drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except, perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.
I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page. The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook; in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.
He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper occasions,—as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in the evening,—and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very much attached to us, and wouldn’t go. He was a tearful boy, and broke into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother—no anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands; and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.
This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum, was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew—and he grew like scarlet beans—with painful apprehensions of the time when he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey. I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he was an old man.
I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate’s manner of getting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora’s watch, which, like everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own; and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always a weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London and Uxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well as I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; when four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn’t play, were found upon his person.
The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeable to me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, and in a peculiar way—not in the lump, but by instalments. For example: the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he made certain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believed to be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles and corks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew of the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a new twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early every morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises, on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any money to hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being permitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the case that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amends in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.
At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life until he was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn’t be quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dora before he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when she found herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my life until he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherd of, ‘up the country’ somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.
CAPITOLO 48. DOMESTICO
Lavorai sodo al mio libro, senza permettere che interferisse con l’adempimento puntuale dei miei doveri per il giornale; e alla fine uscì, riscuotendo grande successo. Non fui sorpreso dai complimenti che ricevetti, anche se ne ero molto consapevole e ritenevo di aver fatto meglio di chiunque altro. Ho sempre osservato, nella natura umana, che una persona che ha buone ragioni per fidarsi di sé stessa non si mette mai in evidenza davanti agli altri affinché questi credano in lei. Per questo motivo mantenni la mia modestia, e più complimenti ricevevo, più cercavo di meritarli.
Non è mio scopo, in questo resoconto – sebbene in ogni altro aspetto si tratti della mia memoria scritta – indagare sulla storia delle mie stesse opere di fantasia. Queste opere si esprimono da sole; le lascio libere di farlo. Quando vi faccio riferimento, è soltanto come parte del mio percorso creativo.
A quel punto, avendo già una certa convinzione che fosse stata la >natura e il caso a rendermi uno scrittore, proseguii nella mia vocazione con fiducia. Senza tale certezza, probabilmente avrei abbandonato tutto e dedicato le mie energie ad altro; avrei cercato di scoprire veramente cosa la >natura e il caso mi avessero reso, e di essere soltanto quello, nient’altro. Avevo scritto con tanto successo sui giornali e altrove che, quando ottenni nuovi risultati positivi, ritenni di avere tutto il diritto di allontanarmi da quelle noiose discussioni. Quella sera, quindi, trascrissi per l’ultima volta la melodia delle cornamuse parlamentari, e da allora non l’ho più sentita; anche se riconosco ancora quel vecchio ritmo nei giornali, senza alcuna variazione sostanziale (forse solo un po’ più frequente), per tutta la durata delle sessioni parlamentari.
Ora scrivo di quel periodo in cui ero sposata da circa un anno e mezzo. Dopo aver provato diversi metodi, avevamo deciso che gestire la casa fosse un compito troppo noioso. La casa si manteneva da sola, e noi ci occupavamo soltanto di tenere i registri contabili. Il ruolo principale di questa “dipendente” era quello di litigare con la cuoca; in questo senso, rappresentava il perfetto esempio di un Whittington, senza però la gatta, e naturalmente senza alcuna possibilità di diventare Lord Mayor.
A mio parere, aveva vissuto in un ambiente pieno di disordini e caos. Tutta la sua esistenza era un continuo tumulto: gridava per chiedere aiuto nelle occasioni più inappropriate – ad esempio quando organizzavamo una piccola cena o ricevevamo alcuni amici la sera – e poi usciva di corsa dalla cucina, con degli “missili di ferro” che gli volavano dietro. Volevamo sbarazzarcene, ma lui era molto legato a noi e non voleva andarsene. Era un bambino piagnucolone: ogni volta che accennavamo al fatto che avremmo potuto interrompere quella relazione, iniziava a lamentarsi in modo così disperato che eravamo costretti a tenerlo con noi. Non aveva madre, né parenti, per quel che ne so; l’unica sorella era fuggita in America non appena lo abbiamo preso in custodia. Così è finito a vivere con noi, come un orribile “piccolo cambiavalute”. Era ben consapevole della propria sfortunata situazione e si puliva sempre gli occhi con la manica della giacca, o si soffiava il naso nell’angolo di un piccolo fazzoletto che non tirava mai fuori completamente dalla tasca, ma lo teneva sempre nascosto.
Questa sfortunata pagina, che costava sei libbre e dieci scellini all’anno in un momento particolarmente negativo, rappresentava per me una fonte continua di problemi. Lo osservavo mentre cresceva, e cresceva velocemente, come i fagioli rossi, con ansie continue riguardo al momento in cui avrebbe iniziato a radersi, e persino riguardo ai giorni in cui sarebbe diventato calvo o grigio. Non vedevo alcuna possibilità di sbarazzarmene; e, proiettandomi nel futuro, pensavo a quanto sarebbe stato scomodo quando fosse diventato vecchio.
Non mi aspettavo certo nulla di meno del modo in cui quel sfortunato cercò di aiutarmi ad uscire dalla mia difficoltà. Rubò l’orologio di Dora, che, come tutto il resto che ci apparteneva, non aveva un posto specifico dove essere conservato; poi lo trasformò in denaro e lo spendette per viaggiare incessantemente avanti e indietro tra Londra e Uxbridge. Fu portato in Bow Street, se ricordo bene, al termine del suo quindicesimo viaggio; su di lui furono trovati quattro scellini e un fischio di seconda mano che non sapeva nemmeno suonare.
La sorpresa e le sue conseguenze sarebbero state molto meno sgradevoli per me se non fosse stato pentito. Ma lo era davvero, e in modo particolare: non tutto d’un tratto, ma a poco a poco. Ad esempio, il giorno dopo quello in cui fui costretto ad affrontarlo in tribunale, fece alcune rivelazioni riguardo a un cesto nello scantinato che credevamo fosse pieno di vino, ma che in realtà conteneva solo bottiglie e tappi. Pensammo che avesse finalmente confessato tutto ciò che sapeva sul cuoco. Ma un giorno o due dopo, la sua coscienza lo tormentò di nuovo: rivelò che la cuoca aveva una bambina che ogni mattina portava via il nostro pane, e che lui stesso era stato corrotto per aiutare il lattaio a ottenere carbone. Ancora dopo un paio di giorni, le autorità mi comunicarono che aveva fatto scoprire delle costine di manzo tra gli ingredienti della cucina, nonché dei lenzuola nascosti nel sacco dei rifiuti. Poco dopo, iniziò a confessare altre cose ancora: ammise di essere a conoscenza di intenzioni rubricole da parte del ragazzo addetto alle pulizie delle nostre stanze. Quest’ultimo fu immediatamente arrestato. Mi vergognai tantissimo di essere diventato una vittima così facile. Avrei dato qualsiasi somma per farlo tacere, o avrei offerto una grossa tangente affinché potesse scappare. La cosa peggiore era che lui non aveva la minima idea di tutto ciò; credeva davvero di starmi facendo un favore con ogni nuova rivelazione. Per non dire che continuava ad aggiungere ulteriori “obblighi” sulle mie spalle.
Alla fine anch’io scappai ogni volta che vedevo un emissario della polizia avvicinarsi con nuove informazioni; condussi una vita nascosta fino al momento in cui fu processato e ordinato il suo trasferimento. Anche allora non riusciva a stare in pace, continuava sempre a scriverci lettere; desiderava così tanto rivedere Dora prima di partire che lei andò a fargli visita, ma svenne non appena si trovò dietro le sbarre di ferro. In breve, non ebbi un attimo di pace fino a quando non fu espulso dal paese e, come ho poi saputo, divenne pastore in qualche parte “nel profondo interno del paese”; non ho la minima idea di dove esattamente.
All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora one evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.
‘My love,’ said I, ‘it is very painful to me to think that our want of system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have got used to), but other people.’
‘You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be cross!’ said Dora.
‘No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.’
‘I think I don’t want to know,’ said Dora.
‘But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down.’
Dora put his nose to mine, and said ‘Boh!’ to drive my seriousness away; but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking at me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression of countenance.
‘The fact is, my dear,’ I began, ‘there is contagion in us. We infect everyone about us.’
I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora’s face had not admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy, for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made my meaning plainer.
‘It is not merely, my pet,’ said I, ‘that we lose money and comfort, and even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out ill because we don’t turn out very well ourselves.’
‘Oh, what an accusation,’ exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; ‘to say that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!’
‘My dearest,’ I remonstrated, ‘don’t talk preposterous nonsense! Who has made the least allusion to gold watches?’
‘You did,’ returned Dora. ‘You know you did. You said I hadn’t turned out well, and compared me to him.’
‘To whom?’ I asked.
‘To the page,’ sobbed Dora. ‘Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn’t you tell me your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn’t you say, you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my goodness!’
‘Now, Dora, my love,’ I returned, gently trying to remove the handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, ‘this is not only very ridiculous of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it’s not true.’
‘You always said he was a story-teller,’ sobbed Dora. ‘And now you say the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!’
‘My darling girl,’ I retorted, ‘I really must entreat you to be reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora, unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice—which we are not—even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so—which we don’t—I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can’t help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss, and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that’s all. Come now. Don’t be foolish!’
Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief. She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why had I ever been married? Why hadn’t I said, even the day before we went to church, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If I couldn’t bear her, why didn’t I send her away to her aunts at Putney, or to Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would not call her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of the sort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being in that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.
What other course was left to take? To ‘form her mind’? This was a common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I resolved to form Dora’s mind.
I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I would have infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave—and disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her—and fatigued her to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quite casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion—and she started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers. No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little wife’s mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.
I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and whenever he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification of Dora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed upon Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but it had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always playing spider to Dora’s fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her infinite disturbance.
Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I should have ‘formed her mind’ to my entire satisfaction, I persevered, even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that perhaps Dora’s mind was already formed.
Tutto questo mi spinse a fare alcune riflessioni serie e fece emergere i nostri errori da un nuovo punto di vista; così, una sera, nonostante il mio affetto per Dora, non riuscii a trattenermi dal parlarle.
“Mio amore”, dissi, “è molto doloroso per me pensare che la mancanza di un sistema e di una gestione efficaci riguardi non solo noi stessi (a cui ci siamo abituati), ma anche altre persone.”
“Sei stato in silenzio per molto tempo, e ora stai per fare qualcosa di sbagliato!”, disse Dora.
“No, mia cara, davvero! Lascia che ti spieghi cosa intendo.”
“Credo che non voglia saperlo,” disse Dora.
“Ma voglio che tu sappia, il mio amore. Metti giù Jip.”
Dora mise il suo naso contro il mio e disse “Boh!”, per scacciare la mia serietà; ma non riuscendoci, lo mandò nella sua Pagoda e si sedette a guardarmi, con le mani incrociate e un’espressione di resa sul viso.
“La verità è, carissima,” iniziai, “che dentro di noi c’è qualcosa che si diffonde. Contagiamo tutti quelli che ci circondano.”
Avrei potuto continuare in questo modo figurato, se il viso di Dora non mi avesse fatto capire che stava cercando disperatamente di capire se intendevo proporre qualche nuovo tipo di vaccinazione o altro rimedio medico per questa nostra condizione poco salutare. Quindi mi controllai e spiegai più chiaramente cosa intendevo dire.
“Non è solo il mio animale domestico,” dissi, “a perdere soldi e comodità, e a volte anche la pazienza, a causa della nostra mancanza di attenzione; ma siamo anche responsabili del fatto che roviniamo chiunque entri al nostro servizio o abbia rapporti con noi. Inizio a temere che il problema non sia da attribuire interamente a una sola parte, ma che queste persone finiscano per andare male proprio perché nemmeno noi stessi siamo molto, ” buoni.
“Oh, che accusa,” esclamò Dora, spalancando gli occhi; “dire che tu mi abbia mai visto prendere orologi d’oro. Oh!”
“Mio caro”, gli dissi, “smettila di dire sciocchezze assurde! Chi mai ha fatto il minimo accenno a orologi d’oro?”
“Lo hai fatto,” rispose Dora. “Lo sai che lo hai fatto. Hai detto che non ero riuscita a cavarmela bene, e mi hai paragonata a lui.”
“A chi?” chiesi.
“Verso quella pagina, ”, singhiozzò Dora. “Oh, tu crudele individuo, paragonare tua moglie affettuosa a una semplice pagina trasportata via! Perché non mi hai detto cosa pensavi di me prima che ci sposassimo? Perché non hai mai detto, tu cuore di pietra, che eri convinto che fossi peggiore di una semplice pagina trasportata via? Oh, quale orribile opinione hai di me. Oh, mio Dio!”
“Ora, Dora, il mio amore, ”, ripresi dolcemente, cercando di toglierle dal viso il fazzoletto che si teneva premuto sugli occhi, “non solo è molto ridicolo da parte tua, ma anche completamente sbagliato. Prima di tutto, non è vero.”
“Sempre hai detto che era un bravo narratore di storie,” singhiozzò Dora. “E ora dici la stessa cosa anche di me! Oh, cosa devo fare. Cosa devo fare!”
“Mia cara ragazza,” ribattei, “devo davvero supplicarti di essere ragionevole, di ascoltare ciò che ho detto. Mia cara Dora, a meno che non impariamo a svolgere il nostro dovere verso coloro che impieghiamo, loro non impareranno mai a farlo verso di noi. Temo che stiamo offrendo alle persone opportunità di commettere errori, opportunità che non dovrebbero mai esserci. Anche se fossimo così negligenti nelle nostre decisioni, per scelta nostra – il che non è vero – anche se ci piacesse e trovassimo confortevole comportarci in questo modo, il che non è affatto vero, sono convinta che non avremmo alcun diritto di continuare così. Stiamo letteralmente corrompendo le persone. Dobbiamo pensarci seriamente. Non posso fare a meno di pensarci, Dora. È un pensiero che non riesco a scacciare dalla mia mente, e a volte mi provoca grande angoscia. Ora basta, cara. Vieni qui, per favore. Non essere sciocca!”
Per un lungo periodo, Dora non mi permise di togliermi il fazzoletto. Sedeva piangendo e mormorando che, se mi sentivo a disagio, perché mai mi ero sposata? Perché non avevo detto, anche il giorno prima di andare in chiesa, che sapevo di dovermi sentire a disagio e che preferivo non farlo? Se non riuscivo a sopportarla, perché non la mandavo via dalle sue zie a Putney, o da Julia Mills in India? Julia sarebbe stata felice di vederla e non l’avrebbe mai chiamata “una ragazza capricciosa”; anzi, Julia non l’aveva mai definita così. In breve, Dora era così angosciata, e il suo stato mi causava tanto disagio, che sentii fosse inutile continuare a provare con questi metodi, per quanto delicati, e decisi di prendere un altro approccio.
Quale altro percorso restava da seguire? “Formare la sua mente”? Questa era un’espressione comune, che suonava giusta e promettente; decisi quindi di “formare la mente” di Dora.
Iniziai immediatamente. Quando Dora era ancora molto bambina, e avrei preferito di gran lunga prendere in giro lei piuttosto che parlare seriamente con lei, provavo ad essere serio, ma questo la metteva a disagio, così come me. Le parlavo degli argomenti che occupavano i miei pensieri; le leggevo Shakespeare, e la stancavo fino allo estremo. Mi abituai a fornirle, in modo quasi casuale, piccoli frammenti di informazioni utili o opinioni sensate; lei, non appena li riceveva, ne faceva uso come se fossero stati dei “cracker”. Non importava quanto cercassi di influenzare gradualmente il suo modo di pensare in modo naturale e disinvolto, non riuscivo a nascondere che lei aveva sempre una percezione istintiva di ciò che stavo facendo, e questo la portava ad avere delle preoccupazioni eccessive. In particolare, era evidente che considerasse Shakespeare un individuo terribile. Il processo di formazione del suo pensiero procedeva molto lentamente.
Lo costrinsi a lavorare per noi senza che se ne rendesse conto; e ogni volta che veniva a trovarci, facevo esplodere le mie “mine” contro di lui, al fine di educare indirettamente Dora. La quantità di saggezza pratica che gli impartii in questo modo fu enorme e di ottima qualità. Ma tutto ciò ebbe l’unico effetto di deprimere lo spirito di Dora, facendola sempre nervosa, con la paura che fosse il suo turno successivo. Mi ritrovai quindi nella condizione di un maestro, di una trappola: dovevo sempre “giocare al ragno” rispetto a Dora, pronta ad attaccarla non appena lei si avvicinava. Il risultato? Solo caos e scompiglio per lei.
Tuttavia, guardando avanti attraverso questa fase intermedia, verso il momento in cui dovrebbe esserci una perfetta sintonia tra Dora e me, e quando io avrò “formato la sua mente” a mio pieno soddisfazione, ho perseverato, anche per mesi. Alla fine, però, mi sono resa conto che, sebbene in tutto questo tempo fossi stata estremamente determinata, non avevo ottenuto alcun risultato; allora ho iniziato a pensare che forse la mente di Dora fosse già formata da tempo.
On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than in action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and to try to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tired of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.
Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; but there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mind that it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, I would keep it for the future in my own breast.
I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears; and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good company lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerely felt, and which indeed it was.
‘The truth is, Dora, my life,’ I said; ‘I have been trying to be wise.’
‘And to make me wise too,’ said Dora, timidly. ‘Haven’t you, Doady?’
I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissed the parted lips.
‘It’s of not a bit of use,’ said Dora, shaking her head, until the ear-rings rang again. ‘You know what a little thing I am, and what I wanted you to call me from the first. If you can’t do so, I am afraid you’ll never like me. Are you sure you don’t think, sometimes, it would have been better to have—’
‘Done what, my dear?’ For she made no effort to proceed.
‘Nothing!’ said Dora.
‘Nothing?’ I repeated.
She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see it.
‘Don’t I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to have tried to form my little wife’s mind?’ said I, laughing at myself. ‘Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do.’
‘Is that what you have been trying?’ cried Dora. ‘Oh what a shocking boy!’
‘But I shall never try any more,’ said I. ‘For I love her dearly as she is.’
‘Without a story—really?’ inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.
‘Why should I seek to change,’ said I, ‘what has been so precious to me for so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, my sweet Dora; and we’ll try no conceited experiments, but go back to our old way, and be happy.’
‘And be happy!’ returned Dora. ‘Yes! All day! And you won’t mind things going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?’
‘No, no,’ said I. ‘We must do the best we can.’
‘And you won’t tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,’ coaxed Dora; ‘will you? Because you know it’s so dreadfully cross!’
‘No, no,’ said I.
‘It’s better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn’t it?’ said Dora.
‘Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.’
‘In the world! Ah, Doady, it’s a large place!’
She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine, kissed me, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on Jip’s new collar.
So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora. I had been unhappy in trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I could not reconcile it with her former appeal to me as my child-wife. I resolved to do what I could, in a quiet way, to improve our proceedings myself, but I foresaw that my utmost would be very little, or I must degenerate into the spider again, and be for ever lying in wait.
And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more, but was to rest wholly on my own heart? How did that fall?
The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated, once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something wanting.
In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my mind on this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its secrets to the light. What I missed, I still regarded—I always regarded—as something that had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of realization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural pain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if my wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.
Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I felt was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me, and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no distinct sense of their opposition to each other. When I thought of the airy dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of the better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then the contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, like spectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, but never more could be reanimated here.
Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might have happened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never known each other? But she was so incorporated with my existence, that it was the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of my reach and sight, like gossamer floating in the air.
I always loved her. What I am describing, slumbered, and half awoke, and slept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence of it in me; I know of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I bore the weight of all our little cares, and all my projects; Dora held the pens; and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the case required. She was truly fond of me, and proud of me; and when Agnes wrote a few earnest words in her letters to Dora, of the pride and interest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation, and read my book as if they heard me speaking its contents, Dora read them out to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dear old clever, famous boy.
Dopo ulteriori riflessioni, mi resi conto che la cosa sembrava molto probabile, quindi abbandonai il mio piano, che in teoria appariva più promettente di quanto non fosse in realtà; decisi quindi di accontentarmi della mia moglie, e di cercare in ogni modo di farla diventare qualcos’altro. Ero davvero stanco di essere sempre sagace e prudente da solo, e di vedere la mia adorata sotto restrizioni; così le comprai un bel paio di orecchini e un collare per Jip, e un giorno tornai a casa nel tentativo di rendermi più gradito.
Dora era molto felice dei piccoli regali e mi baciò con gioia; ma c’era un’ombra tra di noi, anche se lieve, e avevo deciso che non dovesse esserci. Se proprio doveva esserci una tale ombra da qualche parte, l’avrei tenuta dentro di me per il futuro.
Mi sedetti accanto a mia moglie sul divano e le infilai gli orecchini; poi le dissi che temevo che ultimamente non fossimo stati una compagnia così piacevole come prima, e che la colpa fosse mia. Lo pensavo sinceramente, ed effettivamente lo era.
“La verità è che Dora, sei la mia vita,” dissi; “ho cercato sempre di essere saggio.”
“E anche per rendermi saggia, ”, disse Dora, timidamente. “Non è vero, Doady?”
Annuii in risposta a quella bella domanda, espressa attraverso le sopracciglia sollevate, e baciai quelle labbra dischiuse.
“Non è affatto utile,” disse Dora scuotendo la testa, fino a quando gli orecchini non risuonarono di nuovo. “Tu sai quanto io sia piccola e cosa volevo che tu mi chiamassi fin dall’inizio. Se non puoi farlo, temo che non mi amerai mai davvero. Sei sicura di non pensare, a volte, che sarebbe stato meglio se, ”
“Cosa hai fatto, caro mio?” Poiché lei non fece alcuno sforzo per continuare.
“Niente!” disse Dora.
“Niente?” ripetei.
Mi mise le braccia intorno al collo, rise e si chiamò con il suo nome preferito per una oca; poi nascose il viso sulla mia spalla, tra tanti riccioli che fu davvero difficile districarli per riuscire a vederle il viso.
“Non credete che sarebbe stato meglio non fare nulla, piuttosto che cercare di influenzare la mente della mia giovane moglie?” dissi, ridendo di me stesso. “È questa la domanda? Sì, effettivamente lo è.”
“È davvero questo che stavi cercando di fare?”, esclamò Dora. “Oh, che ragazzo scioccante!”
“Ma non proverò mai più,” dissi. “Perché la amo davvero molto, così com’è.”
“Senza una storia, davvero?” chiese Dora, avvicinandosi lentamente a me.
“Perché dovrei cercare di cambiare,” dissi, “ciò che è stato così prezioso per me per tanto tempo? Non puoi mai essere migliore di come sei realmente, mia dolce Dora; non proveremo alcun esperimento presuntuoso, ma torneremo al nostro vecchio modo di vivere e saremo felici.”
“E sii felice!” rispose Dora. “Sì! Tutto il giorno. E non ti dispiacerà se a volte le cose vanno un po’ storte, vero?”
“No, no,” dissi. “Dobbiamo fare del nostro meglio.”
“E non mi dirai più che noi rendiamo gli altri cattivi,” insistette Dora; “vero? Perché sai che è davvero terribilmente offensivo”.
“No, no,” dissi io.
“È meglio per me essere stupida piuttosto che sentirmi a disagio, non è vero?” disse Dora.
“Meglio essere naturalmente Dora che qualsiasi altra cosa al mondo.”
“Nel mondo. Ah, Doady, è un posto davvero vasto!”
Scosse la testa, alzò i suoi occhi luminosi e felici verso di me, mi baciò, scoppiò in una risata allegra e corse via per mettersi il nuovo collare di Jip.
Così terminò il mio ultimo tentativo di apportare qualche cambiamento in Dora. Non ero stata soddisfatta nel provarci; non riuscivo a tollerare la mia stessa saggezza solitaria, né a conciliarla con l’attrazione che lei esercitava su di me in passato, come moglie e “figlia” del mio cuore. Decisi quindi di fare tutto ciò che potevo, in modo discreto, per migliorare la situazione da sola, ma sapevo che i miei sforzi sarebbero stati molto limitati. Altrimenti avrei finito per trasformarmi di nuovo in quella “ragnatela” silenziosa e in attesa, per sempre.
E quell’ombra di cui ho parlato, che non doveva più esistere tra noi, ma doveva riposare interamente nel mio cuore. Come è finita?
Quel vecchio e triste sentimento pervadeva tutta la mia vita. Anche se forse era cambiato in qualche modo, rimaneva comunque indefinito, come una melodia malinconica che si percepisce appena nella notte. Amavo molto mia moglie e ero felice; ma quella felicità che un tempo avevo vagamente immaginato non era affatto quella che provavo ora. C’era sempre qualcosa che mancava.
Nel rispetto dell’impegno che mi sono assunto con me stesso di riflettere attentamente su questi pensieri, li esamino nuovamente in modo approfondito, portando alla luce i loro segreti. Quello che avevo trascurato lo consideravo ancora – sempre lo ho considerato – come qualcosa che fosse stato soltanto un sogno della mia immaginazione giovanile; qualcosa di irrealizzabile. Ora, con un certo naturale dolore, mi rendo conto che anche gli altri provano lo stesso. Tuttavia sapevo che sarebbe stato meglio per me se mia moglie avesse potuto aiutarmi di più, condividendo con me tutti quei pensieri in cui non avevo nessuno con cui parlare. E sapevo anche che questo era possibile.
Tra queste due conclusioni irreconciliabili: una secondo cui ciò che provavo era qualcosa di generale e inevitabile; l’altra secondo cui tale sentimento fosse specifico solo per me e potesse essere diverso, oscillavo curiosamente tra queste due possibilità, senza percepire chiaramente il loro contrasto reciproco. Quando pensavo ai sogni leggeri e irrealizzabili della giovinezza, riflettevo sullo stato migliore che precedeva l’età adulta e di cui ormai ero al di fuori; poi i giorni felici trascorsi con Agnes, nella cara vecchia casa, mi tornavano alla mente come spettri del passato. Spettri che forse avrebbero potuto rivivere in un altro mondo, ma mai più qui.
A volte mi venivano in mente queste speculazioni: cosa sarebbe potuto accadere, o cosa sarebbe successo, se Dora e io non ci fossimo mai conosciuti? Ma lei era così parte integrante della mia esistenza che quelle erano solo fantasie oziose, che presto svanivano dalla mia mente e dalla mia vista, come fili di seta che galleggiano nell’aria.
L’ho sempre amata. Quello che sto descrivendo dormiva, si risvegliava a metà, poi riprendeva a dormire nei recessi più profondi della mia mente. Non c’era alcuna traccia di tutto ciò in me; non so che influenza abbia avuto su qualsiasi cosa io abbia detto o fatto. Io portavo sulle spalle il peso di tutte le nostre piccole preoccupazioni e dei miei progetti; Dora era quella che “impugnava la penna”. E entrambi sentivamo che i nostri ruoli fossero equilibrati, secondo quanto richiesto dalle circostanze. Lei mi voleva davvero bene e ne andava fiera; e quando Agnes scriveva qualche parola sincera nelle sue lettere a Dora, riguardo alla orgoglio e all’interesse con cui i miei vecchi amici ascoltavano parlare della mia crescente reputazione, o leggevano il mio libro come se mi sentissero mentre ne raccontavo i contenuti, Dora me le leggeva ad alta voce, con lacrime di gioia negli occhi, e diceva che ero un caro, vecchio, intelligente e famoso ragazzo.
‘The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.’ Those words of Mrs. Strong’s were constantly recurring to me, at this time; were almost always present to my mind. I awoke with them, often, in the night; I remember to have even read them, in dreams, inscribed upon the walls of houses. For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when it first loved Dora; and that if it had been disciplined, it never could have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secret experience.
‘There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind and purpose.’ Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adapt Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear on my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. This was the discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think. It made my second year much happier than my first; and, what was better still, made Dora’s life all sunshine.
But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighter hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smile upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be. The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison, and, unconscious of captivity, took wing.
‘When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,’ said Dora, ‘I shall make Jip race. He is getting quite slow and lazy.’
‘I suspect, my dear,’ said my aunt quietly working by her side, ‘he has a worse disorder than that. Age, Dora.’
‘Do you think he is old?’ said Dora, astonished. ‘Oh, how strange it seems that Jip should be old!’
‘It’s a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on in life,’ said my aunt, cheerfully; ‘I don’t feel more free from it than I used to be, I assure you.’
‘But Jip,’ said Dora, looking at him with compassion, ‘even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!’
‘I dare say he’ll last a long time yet, Blossom,’ said my aunt, patting Dora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look at Jip, who responded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking himself in various asthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders. ‘He must have a piece of flannel in his house this winter, and I shouldn’t wonder if he came out quite fresh again, with the flowers in the spring. Bless the little dog!’ exclaimed my aunt, ‘if he had as many lives as a cat, and was on the point of losing ‘em all, he’d bark at me with his last breath, I believe!’
Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my aunt to such a furious extent, that he couldn’t keep straight, but barked himself sideways. The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproached her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutable reason he considered the glasses personal.
Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and when he was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through her hand, repeating thoughtfully, ‘Even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!’
‘His lungs are good enough,’ said my aunt, gaily, ‘and his dislikes are not at all feeble. He has a good many years before him, no doubt. But if you want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has lived too well for that, and I’ll give you one.’
‘Thank you, aunt,’ said Dora, faintly. ‘But don’t, please!’
‘No?’ said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.
‘I couldn’t have any other dog but Jip,’ said Dora. ‘It would be so unkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn’t be such friends with any other dog but Jip; because he wouldn’t have known me before I was married, and wouldn’t have barked at Doady when he first came to our house. I couldn’t care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid, aunt.’
‘To be sure!’ said my aunt, patting her cheek again. ‘You are right.’
‘You are not offended,’ said Dora. ‘Are you?’
‘Why, what a sensitive pet it is!’ cried my aunt, bending over her affectionately. ‘To think that I could be offended!’
‘No, no, I didn’t really think so,’ returned Dora; ‘but I am a little tired, and it made me silly for a moment—I am always a silly little thing, you know, but it made me more silly—to talk about Jip. He has known me in all that has happened to me, haven’t you, Jip? And I couldn’t bear to slight him, because he was a little altered—could I, Jip?’
Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.
‘You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you’ll leave your mistress yet?’ said Dora. ‘We may keep one another company a little longer!’
My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday, and was so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on Sunday), we thought she would be ‘running about as she used to do’, in a few days. But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait a few days more; and still she neither ran nor walked. She looked very pretty, and was very merry; but the little feet that used to be so nimble when they danced round Jip, were dull and motionless.
I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every night. She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as if I did it for a wager. Jip would bark and caper round us, and go on before, and look back on the landing, breathing short, to see that we were coming. My aunt, the best and most cheerful of nurses, would trudge after us, a moving mass of shawls and pillows. Mr. Dick would not have relinquished his post of candle-bearer to anyone alive. Traddles would be often at the bottom of the staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportive messages from Dora to the dearest girl in the world. We made quite a gay procession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.
But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter in my arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were approaching to some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. I avoided the recognition of this feeling by any name, or by any communing with myself; until one night, when it was very strong upon me, and my aunt had left her with a parting cry of ‘Good night, Little Blossom,’ I sat down at my desk alone, and tried to think, Oh what a fatal name it was, and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree!
“Il primo impulso errato di un cuore indisciplinato.” Queste parole della signora Strong continuavano a ripresentarsi nella mia mente in questo momento; erano quasi sempre presenti nei miei pensieri. Spesso mi svegliavo con esse nella notte; ricordo persino di averle lette, nei sogni, scritte sui muri delle case. Perché ora sapevo che il mio cuore era indisciplinato quando aveva amato per la prima volta Dora; e che se fosse stato disciplinato, non avrebbe mai provato, dopo il nostro matrimonio, ciò che aveva provato in quelle esperienze segrete.
“Non può esserci alcuna disparità nel matrimonio, come ad esempio incompatibilità di mentalità e obiettivi.” Anche quelle parole me le ricordavo. Avevo cercato di adattare Dora a me, ma mi ero resa conto che era impossibile. Quello che restava da fare era adattarmi io a Dora: condividerle tutto ciò che potevo e essere felice; sopportare da sola ciò che dovevo e comunque essere felice. Questa fu la disciplina che cercai di imporre al mio cuore quando iniziai a riflettere seriamente. Questo approccio rese il mio secondo anno molto più felice del primo; e, cosa ancora migliore, trasformò la vita di Dora in un ambiente pieno di luce e gioia.
Ma, con il passare dell’anno, Dora non stava bene. Speravo che mani più delicate delle mie potessero aiutare a plasmare il suo carattere, e che un sorriso di bambino sul suo viso potesse trasformare la mia moglie-in-feto in una donna. Ma non andò così. Lo spirito, per un momento, esitò sulla soglia della sua piccola “prigione”, e, ignaro della cattività, spiccò il volo.
“Quando potrò correre di nuovo, come facevo prima, zia,” disse Dora, “farò gareggiare Jip. Sta diventando davvero troppo lento e pigro.”
“Sospetto, cara mia,” disse mia zia mentre lavorava silenziosamente al suo fianco, “che abbia un problema più grave di quello. L’età, Dora.”
“Pensi che sia vecchio?”, disse Dora, sorpresa. “Oh, quanto sembra strano che Jip possa essere vecchio, ”
“È un lamento di cui tutti noi siamo soggetti, piccolino, man mano che andiamo avanti nella vita,” disse mia zia con allegria; “Ti assicuro che non mi sento meno libera da esso rispetto a prima.”
“Ma Jip, ”, disse Dora, guardandolo con compassione, “anche il piccolo Jip! Oh, povero animale, ”
“Oserei dire che gli rimarrà ancora molto tempo da vivere, Blossom,” disse mia zia, accarezzando Dora sulla guancia mentre si sporgeva dal divano per guardare Jip, il quale rispose mettendosi sulle zampe posteriori e cercando disperatamente di arrampicarsi lungo la testa e le spalle di mia zia. “Deve avere un pezzo di flanella in casa durante questo inverno, e non mi sorprenderebbe affatto se, quando arriverà la primavera, fosse di nuovo pulito e fresco. Benedetto quel cagnolino!” esclamò mia zia. “Se avesse tante vite quante un gatto, e stesse per perderle tutte, credo che mi abbaierebbe ancora con l’ultimo respiro, ”
Dora lo aveva aiutato ad alzarsi sul divano; in quel momento stava davvero sfidando mia zia in modo così furioso che non riusciva nemmeno a stare dritto e finiva per barcollare di lato. Più mia zia lo guardava, più lui la rimproverava; infatti lei aveva recentemente iniziato a portare gli occhiali, e per qualche motivo inspiegabile lui li considerava una questione personale.
Dora lo fece sdraiare accanto a lei, con molta persuasione; e quando si calmò, infilò una delle sue lunghe orecchie nella sua mano, ripetendo pensierosamente: “Anche il piccolo Jip. Oh, povero animale!”
“I suoi polmoni sono abbastanza buoni,” disse mia zia con allegria, “e i suoi gusti non sono affatto deboli. Gli restano ancora molti anni davanti, senza alcun dubbio. Ma se vuoi un cane da far gareggiare, Little Blossom, beh, lui ha vissuto troppo bene per questo scopo; ti ne darò uno.”
“Grazie, zia,” disse Dora, con voce debole. “Ma per favore, non fatelo!”
“Non vuoi?” disse mia zia, togliendosi gli occhiali.
“Non potrei avere nessun altro cane se non Jip,” disse Dora. “Sarebbe molto crudele nei confronti di Jip. Inoltre, non potrei essere così amica di nessun altro cane se non Jip: perché lui non mi avrebbe conosciuta prima che mi sposassi, e non avrebbe abbaiato contro Doady quando è arrivato per la prima volta nella nostra casa. Temo proprio che non possa interessarmi nessun altro cane se non Jip, zia.”
“Certo che sì!” disse mia zia, dandosi un’altra pacca sulla guancia. “Hai ragione.”
“Non sei offeso, vero?” disse Dora. “Lo sei?”
“Ma che animale domestico sensibile!” esclamò mia zia, chinandosi su di esso con affetto. “Chissà perché potrei anche offenderlo, ”
“No, no, non lo pensavo davvero,” rispose Dora; “ma sono un po’ stanca, e per un momento mi è venuta in mente una sciocchezza. Sono sempre stata un po’ sciocca, sai. Ma parlare di Jip. Lui ha conosciuto tutte le cose che mi sono successe, vero, Jip? E non avrei potuto trattarlo male, perché era un po’ cambiato. Avrei potuto farlo, Jip?”
Jip si avvicinò ancora di più alla sua padroncina e le leccò pigramente la mano.
“Non sei mica così vecchio, Jip, vero? Non lascerai già la tua padrona, no?” disse Dora. “Possiamo ancora stare insieme per un po’!”
Mia cara Dora! Quando scese a cena il seguente domenica e fu così felice di rivedere il vecchio Traddles (che sempre pranzava con noi il domenica), pensammo che in pochi giorni avrebbe ricominciato a “correre in giro come faceva prima”. Ma ci dissero di aspettare ancora qualche giorno. E poi ancora un po’. Eppure lei non correva né camminava. Sembrava molto carina e felice; ma i suoi piccoli piedini, che un tempo erano così agili quando danzavano intorno a Jip, ora erano lenti e immobili.
Iniziai a portarla giù al piano di sotto ogni mattina e su al piano di sopra ogni notte. Lei mi abbracciava il collo e rideva, come se lo facessi per una scommessa. Jip abbaiava e saltellava intorno a noi, correndo avanti e poi voltandosi indietro sul pianerottolo, ansimando, per assicurarsi che stessimo arrivando. Mia zia, la migliore e più allegra delle infermiere, ci seguiva pesantemente, un groviglio di sciarpe e cuscini. Il signor Dick non avrebbe mai lasciato il suo ruolo di “portatore di candele” a nessuno al mondo. Traddles era spesso in fondo alla scala, a osservare e a trasmettere i messaggi giocosi che Dora inviava alla ragazza più cara del mondo. Formavamo davvero una processione allegra, e mia moglie, la mia figlia, era senz’altro la più felice di tutte.
Ma a volte, quando la prendevo in braccio e sentivo che era più leggera tra le mie mani, mi assaliva una sensazione di vuoto totale, come se stessi avvicinandomi a qualche regione gelata e invisibile, che intorpidiva tutta la mia vita. Evitavo di dare un nome a questa sensazione, né di rifletterci sopra; fino a quella notte, quando fu particolarmente intensa. Mia zia se n’era andata dicendo “Buona notte, Piccola Fioritura”. Mi sedetti da sola alla mia scrivania e pensai: “Che nome fatale. E come quella ‘fioritura’ è appassita ancora nel pieno della sua bellezza sull’albero, ”
CHAPTER 49. I AM INVOLVED IN MYSTERY
I received one morning by the post, the following letter, dated Canterbury, and addressed to me at Doctor’s Commons; which I read with some surprise:
‘MY DEAR SIR,
‘Circumstances beyond my individual control have, for a considerable lapse of time, effected a severance of that intimacy which, in the limited opportunities conceded to me in the midst of my professional duties, of contemplating the scenes and events of the past, tinged by the prismatic hues of memory, has ever afforded me, as it ever must continue to afford, gratifying emotions of no common description. This fact, my dear sir, combined with the distinguished elevation to which your talents have raised you, deters me from presuming to aspire to the liberty of addressing the companion of my youth, by the familiar appellation of Copperfield! It is sufficient to know that the name to which I do myself the honour to refer, will ever be treasured among the muniments of our house (I allude to the archives connected with our former lodgers, preserved by Mrs. Micawber), with sentiments of personal esteem amounting to affection.
‘It is not for one, situated, through his original errors and a fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered Bark (if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination), who now takes up the pen to address you—it is not, I repeat, for one so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of congratulation. That he leaves to abler and to purer hands.
‘If your more important avocations should admit of your ever tracing these imperfect characters thus far—which may be, or may not be, as circumstances arise—you will naturally inquire by what object am I influenced, then, in inditing the present missive? Allow me to say that I fully defer to the reasonable character of that inquiry, and proceed to develop it; premising that it is not an object of a pecuniary nature.
‘Without more directly referring to any latent ability that may possibly exist on my part, of wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging flame in any quarter, I may be permitted to observe, in passing, that my brightest visions are for ever dispelled—that my peace is shattered and my power of enjoyment destroyed—that my heart is no longer in the right place—and that I no more walk erect before my fellow man. The canker is in the flower. The cup is bitter to the brim. The worm is at his work, and will soon dispose of his victim. The sooner the better. But I will not digress. ‘Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber’s influence, though exercised in the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my intention to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a respite of eight-and-forty hours to revisiting some metropolitan scenes of past enjoyment. Among other havens of domestic tranquillity and peace of mind, my feet will naturally tend towards the King’s Bench Prison. In stating that I shall be (D. V.) on the outside of the south wall of that place of incarceration on civil process, the day after tomorrow, at seven in the evening, precisely, my object in this epistolary communication is accomplished.
‘I do not feel warranted in soliciting my former friend Mr. Copperfield, or my former friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple, if that gentleman is still existent and forthcoming, to condescend to meet me, and renew (so far as may be) our past relations of the olden time. I confine myself to throwing out the observation, that, at the hour and place I have indicated, may be found such ruined vestiges as yet
‘Remain, ‘Of ‘A ‘Fallen Tower, ‘WILKINS MICAWBER.
‘P.S. It may be advisable to superadd to the above, the statement that Mrs. Micawber is not in confidential possession of my intentions.’
I read the letter over several times. Making due allowance for Mr. Micawber’s lofty style of composition, and for the extraordinary relish with which he sat down and wrote long letters on all possible and impossible occasions, I still believed that something important lay hidden at the bottom of this roundabout communication. I put it down, to think about it; and took it up again, to read it once more; and was still pursuing it, when Traddles found me in the height of my perplexity.
‘My dear fellow,’ said I, ‘I never was better pleased to see you. You come to give me the benefit of your sober judgement at a most opportune time. I have received a very singular letter, Traddles, from Mr. Micawber.’
‘No?’ cried Traddles. ‘You don’t say so? And I have received one from Mrs. Micawber!’
With that, Traddles, who was flushed with walking, and whose hair, under the combined effects of exercise and excitement, stood on end as if he saw a cheerful ghost, produced his letter and made an exchange with me. I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber’s letter, and returned the elevation of eyebrows with which he said “‘Wielding the thunderbolt, or directing the devouring and avenging flame!” Bless me, Copperfield!’—and then entered on the perusal of Mrs. Micawber’s epistle.
It ran thus:
‘My best regards to Mr. Thomas Traddles, and if he should still remember one who formerly had the happiness of being well acquainted with him, may I beg a few moments of his leisure time? I assure Mr. T. T. that I would not intrude upon his kindness, were I in any other position than on the confines of distraction.
‘Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber (formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr. Micawber’s conduct, of his wildness, of his violence. It has gradually augmented, until it assumes the appearance of aberration of intellect. Scarcely a day passes, I assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm does not take place. Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings, when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited confidence. The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is anything he would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a separation. Last night, on being childishly solicited for twopence, to buy ‘lemon-stunners’—a local sweetmeat—he presented an oyster-knife at the twins!
CAPITOLO 49. SONO IMPEGNATO IN UN MISTERO
Una mattina ricevetti per posta la seguente lettera, datata da Canterbury e indirizzata a me presso il Doctor’s Commons; la lessi con una certa sorpresa:
“Mio caro signore,”
“Circonstanze al di fuori del mio controllo individuale hanno, per un periodo considerevole di tempo, causato la rottura di quell’intimità che, nelle rare occasioni concesse durante le mie mansioni professionali per riflettere sulle scene e gli eventi del passato, illuminati dai colori prismatici della memoria, mi ha sempre procurato emozioni straordinarie. Questo fatto, mio caro signore, unito alla notevole posizione che i vostri talenti vi hanno permesso di raggiungere, mi impedisce di osare rivolgermi alla compagna della mia giovinezza con l’affettuoso nome di Copperfield! È sufficiente sapere che il nome a cui ho l’onore di riferirmi sarà sempre custodito tra i documenti della nostra casa (intendo gli archivi relativi ai nostri precedenti inquilini, conservati dalla signora Micawber), accompagnato da sentimenti di profondo rispetto e affetto.”
“Non è certo una persona che, a causa dei propri errori iniziali e di una combinazione fortuita di eventi sfortunati – come nel caso della nave affondata (se si può permetterle tale denominazione marittima) – quella che ora prende la penna per rivolgersi a voi. Non è certo una persona nelle sue condizioni ad adottare un linguaggio di lode o di congratulazioni. Quello spetta, ripeto, a persone più capaci e più pure.”
‘Se le vostre occupazioni più importanti vi permettessero di seguire ancora queste persone imperfette – il che potrebbe accadere, o forse no, a seconda delle circostanze – naturalmente vi chiedereste quale sia lo scopo per cui sto scrivendo questa lettera. Lasciate che vi dica che rispetto pienamente la legittimità di tale domanda e procederò ad esporla, presupponendo che non abbia alcun legame con questioni di natura finanziaria.’
‘Senza fare riferimento diretto ad alcuna capacità nascosta che potrei possedere, come quella di utilizzare il fulmine o di dirigere la fiamma divorante e vendicativa in qualsiasi luogo, posso permettermi di osservare, incidentalmente, che le mie più brillanti visioni sono per sempre svanite; la mia pace è distrutta, la mia capacità di godermi le cose è annientata; il mio cuore non si trova più nel posto giusto. E non cammino più dritto davanti ai miei simili. Il cancro è già nella “fioritura”; la coppa è piena fino all’orlo di amarezza. Il verme sta operando, e presto distruggerà la sua vittima. Più presto sarà meglio. Ma non voglio deviare dal tema.’
‘Rinchiuso in una condizione mentale particolarmente dolorosa, al di fuori dell’ambito d’influenza persino della signora Micawber – che esercita il proprio ruolo di donna, moglie e madre – intendo allontanarmi da me stesso per un breve periodo e dedicare quarantotto ore alla rievocazione di alcuni momenti di felicità trascorsi nella città. Tra i tanti luoghi di tranquillità domestica e serenità d’animo, i miei passi naturalmente si dirigeranno verso la prigione del Re. Dichiarando che sarò presente all’esterno del muro sud di quel luogo di reclusione il giorno dopo domani, alle sette di sera esattamente, ho raggiunto lo scopo di questa comunicazione epistolare.’
‘Non ritengo giustificato chiedere al mio ex amico il signor Copperfield, o al mio ex amico il signor Thomas Traddles dell’Inner Temple – se quell’onorevole gentiluomo sia ancora in vita e disponibile – di concedermi l’onore di incontrarmi e di rinnovare, per quanto possibile, le nostre vecchie relazioni dei tempi passati. Mi limito a osservare che, all’ora e nel luogo che ho indicato, si possono forse trovare ancora alcuni vestigi di ciò che un tempo esisteva.’
“Rimani, di una torre caduta, WILKINS MICAWBER.”
‘P.S. Potrebbe essere opportuno aggiungere che la signora Micawber non conosce in modo confidenziale le mie intenzioni.’
Lessi la lettera più volte. Tenendo conto dello stile elevato di scrittura del signor Micawber, e dell’entusiasmo con cui si dedicava a scrivere lunghe lettere in ogni occasione possibile e impossibile, ero ancora convinto che ci fosse qualcosa di importante nascosto alla fine di questa comunicazione tortuosa. La misi da parte per pensarci meglio; la ripresi in mano per rileggerla; e continuavo a rifletterci sopra, quando Traddles mi trovò nel bel mezzo della mia confusione.
“Mio caro amico,” dissi, “non sono mai stato più felice di vederti. Sei venuto proprio nel momento più opportuno per offrirmi il beneficio del tuo giudizio sobrio. Ho ricevuto una lettera molto strana da parte del signor Micawber, Traddles.”
“Mai?” esclamò Traddles. “Davvero? E io ne ho ricevuta una anche dalla signora Micawber!”
Così, Traddles, arrossito per la camminata e i cui capelli, sotto l’effetto combinato dell’esercizio fisico e dell’eccitazione, erano dritti in piedi come se avesse visto un allegro fantasma, tirò fuori la sua lettera e ne scambiammo i contenuti. Lo osservai attentamente mentre leggeva la lettera di Mr. Micawber, e ricambiai l’espressione di sorpresa con cui lui disse: “‘Impugnando il fulmine, o guidando la fiamma divorante e vendicativa! Beneditemi, Copperfield!’” Poi iniziai a leggere la lettera di Mrs. Micawber.
Così andò la cosa
‘Con i miei migliori saluti per il signor Thomas Traddles: se ancora si ricorda di qualcuno che un tempo ebbe la fortuna di conoscerlo bene, potrei chiedergli qualche minuto del suo tempo? Assicuro al signor T. T. che non oserei mai importunarlo, se non fossi in questa condizione di disperazione.’
“Anche se per me è doloroso parlarne, l’allontanamento di Mr. Micawber – un tempo così affezionato alla sua famiglia – dalla moglie e dai figli è la ragione per cui mi sono rivolto a Mr. Traddles chiedendogli il suo aiuto. Mr. Traddles non può nemmeno immaginare quanto sia cambiato il comportamento di Mr. Micawber: diventato selvaggio, violento. Questi sintomi si sono gradualmente intensificati, fino a sembrare manifestazioni di un disturbo mentale. Quasi ogni giorno, gli assalono crisi di rabbia. Non è necessario che io descriva i miei sentimenti: ormai mi sono abituato ad ascoltare Mr. Micawber affermare di essersi venduto. Il mistero e il segreto sono da tempo le sue caratteristiche principali; hanno sostituito completamente la fiducia in sé stesso. La minima provocazione – anche solo chiedergli cosa desideri per cena – lo spinge a esprimere il desiderio di separarsi dalla famiglia. L’scorsa notte, quando gli ho timidamente chiesto due penny per comprare dei ‘lemon-stunners’, una sorta di dolce locale, ha addirittura minacciato i gemelli con un coltello da ostriche!”
‘I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these details. Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to form the faintest conception of my heart-rending situation.
‘May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? Will he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? Oh yes, for I know his heart!
‘The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the female sex. Mr. Micawber is going to London. Though he studiously concealed his hand, this morning before breakfast, in writing the direction-card which he attached to the little brown valise of happier days, the eagle-glance of matrimonial anxiety detected, d, o, n, distinctly traced. The West-End destination of the coach, is the Golden Cross. Dare I fervently implore Mr. T. to see my misguided husband, and to reason with him? Dare I ask Mr. T. to endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his agonized family? Oh no, for that would be too much!
‘If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will Mr. T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar entreaties? In any case, he will have the benevolence to consider this communication strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be fraught with less painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who subscribes herself, in extreme distress,
‘Mr. Thomas Traddles’s respectful friend and suppliant,
‘EMMA MICAWBER.’
‘What do you think of that letter?’ said Traddles, casting his eyes upon me, when I had read it twice.
‘What do you think of the other?’ said I. For he was still reading it with knitted brows.
‘I think that the two together, Copperfield,’ replied Traddles, ‘mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their correspondence—but I don’t know what. They are both written in good faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion. Poor thing!’ he was now alluding to Mrs. Micawber’s letter, and we were standing side by side comparing the two; ‘it will be a charity to write to her, at all events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.’
I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself with having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking a good deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the family, and my hearing nothing more, had gradually ended in my dismissing the subject. I had often thought of the Micawbers, but chiefly to wonder what ‘pecuniary liabilities’ they were establishing in Canterbury, and to recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to Uriah Heep.
However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our joint names, and we both signed it. As we walked into town to post it, Traddles and I held a long conference, and launched into a number of speculations, which I need not repeat. We took my aunt into our counsels in the afternoon; but our only decided conclusion was, that we would be very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber’s appointment.
Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour before the time, we found Mr. Micawber already there. He was standing with his arms folded, over against the wall, looking at the spikes on the top, with a sentimental expression, as if they were the interlacing boughs of trees that had shaded him in his youth.
When we accosted him, his manner was something more confused, and something less genteel, than of yore. He had relinquished his legal suit of black for the purposes of this excursion, and wore the old surtout and tights, but not quite with the old air. He gradually picked up more and more of it as we conversed with him; but, his very eye-glass seemed to hang less easily, and his shirt-collar, though still of the old formidable dimensions, rather drooped.
‘Gentlemen!’ said Mr. Micawber, after the first salutations, ‘you are friends in need, and friends indeed. Allow me to offer my inquiries with reference to the physical welfare of Mrs. Copperfield in esse, and Mrs. Traddles in posse,—presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr. Traddles is not yet united to the object of his affections, for weal and for woe.’
We acknowledged his politeness, and made suitable replies. He then directed our attention to the wall, and was beginning, ‘I assure you, gentlemen,’ when I ventured to object to that ceremonious form of address, and to beg that he would speak to us in the old way.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ he returned, pressing my hand, ‘your cordiality overpowers me. This reception of a shattered fragment of the Temple once called Man—if I may be permitted so to express myself—bespeaks a heart that is an honour to our common nature. I was about to observe that I again behold the serene spot where some of the happiest hours of my existence fleeted by.’
‘Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,’ said I. ‘I hope she is well?’
‘Thank you,’ returned Mr. Micawber, whose face clouded at this reference, ‘she is but so-so. And this,’ said Mr. Micawber, nodding his head sorrowfully, ‘is the Bench! Where, for the first time in many revolving years, the overwhelming pressure of pecuniary liabilities was not proclaimed, from day to day, by importune voices declining to vacate the passage; where there was no knocker on the door for any creditor to appeal to; where personal service of process was not required, and detainees were merely lodged at the gate! Gentlemen,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘when the shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure has been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks. I have been familiar with every stone in the place. If I betray weakness, you will know how to excuse me.’
“Prego il signor Traddles di avere pazienza mentre gli illustro questi dettagli. Senza di essi, il signor T. troverebbe davvero difficile farsi un’idea anche solo vaga della mia terribile situazione.”
“Posso ora osare confidare al signor T. lo scopo della mia lettera? Mi permetterà ora di affidarmi alla sua gentile considerazione? Oh sì, perché conosco il suo cuore!”
“L’occhio attento e pieno di affetto non si offusca facilmente, soprattutto nel caso delle donne. Il signor Micawber sta partendo per Londra. Anche se ha cercato con cura di nascondere la destinazione mentre scriveva l’indirizzo da attaccare alla piccola valigia marrone dei tempi felici, lo sguardo acuto dell’ansia coniugale è riuscito a individuarla chiaramente. La destinazione del treno è il Golden Cross nell’East End. Oso supplicare ardentemente il signor T. di incontrare mio marito e di parlare con lui? Oso chiedergli di intervenire tra il signor Micawber e la sua famiglia in preda al dolore? Oh no, questo sarebbe troppo, ”
“Se mai il signor Copperfield dovesse ricordarsi di qualcuno sconosciuto al grande pubblico, potrebbe il signor T. trasmettere i miei sentimenti sinceri e le mie suppliche? In ogni caso, spero che abbia la gentilezza di considerare questa comunicazione strettamente privata e di non menzionarla mai, nemmeno in modo indiretto, in presenza del signor Micawber. Se il signor T. dovesse mai rispondere (cosa che ritengo molto improbabile), una lettera indirizzata a M.E., Ufficio Postale di Canterbury, avrà conseguenze meno dolorose di qualsiasi altra inviata direttamente a colui che si rivolge a me in estrema difficoltà.”
“L’amico rispettoso e supplicante di Mr. Thomas Traddles”
‘Emma Micawber.’
“Che ne pensi di quella lettera?” disse Traddles, guardandomi dopo che l’avevo letta due volte.
“Che ne pensi dell’altro?” dissi. Perché lui continuava a leggerlo, con le sopracciglia corrugate.
“Penso che i due insieme, Copperfield,” rispose Traddles, “significhino di più di quanto il signor e la signora Micawber di solito intendano nelle loro lettere, ma non so esattamente cosa. Entrambe le lettere sono scritte con buona >fede, ne sono sicuro, e senza alcuna collusione tra di loro. Povera donna, ” Stava alludendo alla lettera della signora Micawber; eravamo uno accanto all’altro a confrontarle entrambe. “Comunque sia, scriverele e dirle che non mancheremo di aiutare il signor Micawber sarà sicuramente una buona azione.”
Accettai questa proposta con maggiore facilità, perché ora mi rimproveravo di aver trattato la sua precedente lettera in modo piuttosto superficiale. All’epoca aveva suscitato in me molte riflessioni, come ho già menzionato; ma a causa della mia assorbita attenzione per i miei affari personali, delle esperienze familiari che stavo vivendo e del fatto che non ricevetti più alcuna notizia da lei, gradualmente abbandonai l’argomento. Spesso pensavo ai Micawber, ma soprattutto mi chiedevo quali “obbligazioni finanziarie” stessero contrahendo a Canterbury, e ricordavo quanto Mr. Micawber fosse timido con me quando divenne impiegato di Uriah Heep.
Tuttavia, ho ora scritto una lettera rassicurante alla signora Micawber, a nome nostro congiunto, e l’abbiamo firmata entrambi. Mentre andavamo in città per imbuciarla, Traddles ed io abbiamo avuto una lunga conversazione e abbiamo fatto varie ipotesi, che non è necessario ripetere. Nel pomeriggio abbiamo coinvolto anche mia zia nelle nostre discussioni; ma la nostra unica conclusione definitiva è stata quella di mantenere rigorosamente l’appuntamento con il signor Micawber.
Anche se siamo arrivati nel luogo stabilito un quarto d’ora prima dell’orario previsto, abbiamo trovato il signor Micawber già lì. Stava fermo con le braccia incrociate, appoggiato al muro, a guardare quelle spine in cima, con un’espressione malinconica, come se fossero i rami intrecciati degli alberi che lo avevano riparato da giovane.
Quando lo avvicinammo, il suo comportamento era più confuso e meno raffinato rispetto al passato. Aveva abbandonato il suo solito abbigliamento scuro per questa escursione, indossando l’antico soprabito e i calzamani aderenti, ma non con lo stesso stile di un tempo. Man mano che conversavamo con lui, iniziò gradualmente a riprendere quell’aspetto; tuttavia, persino il suo monocolo sembrava pendere meno saldamente, e il colletto della camicia, sebbene ancora delle stesse dimensioni imponenti di prima, appariva un po’ più flaccido.
“Signori!” disse il signor Micawber, dopo i primi saluti, “voi siete amici nei momenti di bisogno, e davvero amici. Permettetemi di esprimere la mia preoccupazione per il benessere fisico della signora Copperfield e della signora Traddles, supponendo, naturalmente, che mio amico il signor Traddles non sia ancora unito all’oggetto dei suoi affetti, per bene o per male.”
Riconoscemmo la sua cortesia e rispondemmo adeguatamente. Poi egli attirò la nostra attenzione sul muro e stava per dire: “Vi assicuro, signori, ”, quando io osai obiettare a quel modo formale di rivolgersi a noi e chiesi che continuasse a parlare con noi nel vecchio modo.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” rispose lui, stringendomi la mano, “la tua cordialità mi commuove profondamente. Questo accogliimento di un frammento spezzato del Tempio un tempo chiamato Uomo, se mi è permesso esprimermi così, dimostra un cuore che rappresenta un vero onore per la nostra comune natura umana. Stavo per aggiungere che rivedo finalmente quel luogo sereno dove sono trascorsi alcuni dei momenti più felici della mia vita.”
“Sicuramente è stata la signora Micawber a farlo,” dissi. “Spero che stia bene, ”
“Grazie,” rispose il signor Micawber, il cui viso si oscurò al sentir menzionare questo argomento. “È solo una donna mediocre. E questa,” aggiunse scuotendo tristemente la testa, “è la Corte! Dove, per la prima volta in molti anni, la schiacciante pressione dei debiti non viene annunciata giorno dopo giorno da voci insistenti che rifiutano di lasciare il passaggio; dove non c’è alcun campanello alla porta a cui i creditori possano rivolgersi; dove non è necessario l’intervento personale degli ufficiali giudiziari, e le persone arrestate vengono semplicemente trattenute all’ingresso. Signori,” proseguì il signor Micawber, “quando l’ombra di quell’edificio in mattoni si rifletterà sulla ghiaia della strada principale, vedrò i miei figli muoversi tra i complicati meandri di quel labirinto, evitando quelle ombre scure. Conosco ogni singola pietra di quel luogo. Se dovessi mostrare debolezza, saprete come perdonarmi.”
‘We have all got on in life since then, Mr. Micawber,’ said I.
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, ‘when I was an inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and punch his head if he offended me. My fellow-man and myself are no longer on those glorious terms!’
Turning from the building in a downcast manner, Mr. Micawber accepted my proffered arm on one side, and the proffered arm of Traddles on the other, and walked away between us.
‘There are some landmarks,’ observed Mr. Micawber, looking fondly back over his shoulder, ‘on the road to the tomb, which, but for the impiety of the aspiration, a man would wish never to have passed. Such is the Bench in my chequered career.’
‘Oh, you are in low spirits, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles.
‘I am, sir,’ interposed Mr. Micawber.
‘I hope,’ said Traddles, ‘it is not because you have conceived a dislike to the law—for I am a lawyer myself, you know.’
Mr. Micawber answered not a word.
‘How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?’ said I, after a silence.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, bursting into a state of much excitement, and turning pale, ‘if you ask after my employer as YOUR friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after him as MY friend, I sardonically smile at it. In whatever capacity you ask after my employer, I beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to this—that whatever his state of health may be, his appearance is foxy: not to say diabolical. You will allow me, as a private individual, to decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to the utmost verge of desperation in my professional capacity.’
I expressed my regret for having innocently touched upon a theme that roused him so much. ‘May I ask,’ said I, ‘without any hazard of repeating the mistake, how my old friends Mr. and Miss Wickfield are?’
‘Miss Wickfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, now turning red, ‘is, as she always is, a pattern, and a bright example. My dear Copperfield, she is the only starry spot in a miserable existence. My respect for that young lady, my admiration of her character, my devotion to her for her love and truth, and goodness!—Take me,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘down a turning, for, upon my soul, in my present state of mind I am not equal to this!’
We wheeled him off into a narrow street, where he took out his pocket-handkerchief, and stood with his back to a wall. If I looked as gravely at him as Traddles did, he must have found our company by no means inspiriting.
‘It is my fate,’ said Mr. Micawber, unfeignedly sobbing, but doing even that, with a shadow of the old expression of doing something genteel; ‘it is my fate, gentlemen, that the finer feelings of our nature have become reproaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield, is a flight of arrows in my bosom. You had better leave me, if you please, to walk the earth as a vagabond. The worm will settle my business in double-quick time.’
Without attending to this invocation, we stood by, until he put up his pocket-handkerchief, pulled up his shirt-collar, and, to delude any person in the neighbourhood who might have been observing him, hummed a tune with his hat very much on one side. I then mentioned—not knowing what might be lost if we lost sight of him yet—that it would give me great pleasure to introduce him to my aunt, if he would ride out to Highgate, where a bed was at his service.
‘You shall make us a glass of your own punch, Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘and forget whatever you have on your mind, in pleasanter reminiscences.’
‘Or, if confiding anything to friends will be more likely to relieve you, you shall impart it to us, Mr. Micawber,’ said Traddles, prudently.
‘Gentlemen,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘do with me as you will! I am a straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by the elephants—I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.’
We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of starting; and arrived at Highgate without encountering any difficulties by the way. I was very uneasy and very uncertain in my mind what to say or do for the best—so was Traddles, evidently. Mr. Micawber was for the most part plunged into deep gloom. He occasionally made an attempt to smarten himself, and hum the fag-end of a tune; but his relapses into profound melancholy were only made the more impressive by the mockery of a hat exceedingly on one side, and a shirt-collar pulled up to his eyes.
We went to my aunt’s house rather than to mine, because of Dora’s not being well. My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and welcomed Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality. Mr. Micawber kissed her hand, retired to the window, and pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, had a mental wrestle with himself.
Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so exceedingly compassionate of anyone who seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to find any such person out, that he shook hands with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen times in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trouble, this warmth, on the part of a stranger, was so extremely touching, that he could only say, on the occasion of each successive shake, ‘My dear sir, you overpower me!’ Which gratified Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it again with greater vigour than before.
‘The friendliness of this gentleman,’ said Mr. Micawber to my aunt, ‘if you will allow me, ma’am, to cull a figure of speech from the vocabulary of our coarser national sports—floors me. To a man who is struggling with a complicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such a reception is trying, I assure you.’
‘My friend Mr. Dick,’ replied my aunt proudly, ‘is not a common man.’
‘That I am convinced of,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘My dear sir!’ for Mr. Dick was shaking hands with him again; ‘I am deeply sensible of your cordiality!’
“Da allora, tutti noi abbiamo proseguito la nostra vita, signor Micawber,” dissi io.
“Signor Copperfield,” rispose amaramente il signor Micawber, “quando ero un ospite di quel rifugio, potevo guardare in faccia i miei simili e colpirli se mi offendevano. Ora io e i miei simili non ci troviamo più in quei rapporti gloriosi, ”
Dietro di sé, con aria malinconica, il signor Micawber accettò il mio braccio offertogli da un lato e quello di Traddles dall’altro, e se ne andò tra di noi.
“Ci sono alcuni momenti significativi,” osservò il signor Micawber, guardando indietro con nostalgia, “nel percorso verso la tomba. Momenti che, se non fosse per l’impietà delle nostre aspirazioni, un uomo vorrebbe non aver mai vissuto. Questo è uno di quei momenti nella mia vita.”
“Ah, sembrate giù di morale, signor Micawber,” disse Traddles.
“Sì, signore,” intervenne il signor Micawber.
“Spero,” disse Traddles, “che non sia perché abbiate preso in antipatia la legge, visto che anch’io sono un avvocato, sapete.”
Il signor Micawber non rispose nemmeno una parola.
“Come sta il nostro amico Heep, signor Micawber?”, dissi dopo un po’ di silenzio.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” rispose il signor Micawber, improvvisamente molto eccitato e impallidito, “se chiedi notizie del mio datore di lavoro come SEI TUO amico, mi dispiace; se invece lo chiedi come MIO amico, ne rido con sarcasmo. In qualunque modo tu voglia informarti sul mio datore di lavoro, ti prego, senza offenderti, di limitare la mia risposta a questo: che, qualunque sia il suo stato di salute, l’aspetto che presenta è davvero sinistro, per non dire demoniaco. Ti permetto, come individuo privato, di rifiutarmi di approfondire un argomento che, nella mia veste professionale, mi ha portato sull’orlo della disperazione.”
Espressi il mio rammarico per aver toccato, in modo innocente, un argomento che lo aveva così turbato. “Posso chiedere,” dissi, “senza rischio di ripetere lo stesso errore, come stanno i miei vecchi amici, il signor e la signorina Wickfield?”
“Miss Wickfield,” disse il signor Micawber, ora arrossendo, “è, come sempre, un esempio da seguire, un modello di virtù. Caro Copperfield, lei è l’unica luce in una vita miserabile. Il mio rispetto per quella giovane donna, la mia ammirazione per il suo carattere, la mia devozione verso di lei per il suo amore e la sua verità, e la sua bontà. Portatemi via,” disse il signor Micawber, “perché, giuro sulla mia ‘anima, in questo stato d’animo non riesco a reggere!”
Lo portammo in una strada stretta; lì tirò fuori il fazzoletto di tasca e si appoggiò al muro con la schiena rivolta verso di noi. Se lo avessi guardato con lo stesso sguardo serio di Traddles, sicuramente non avrebbe trovato la nostra compagnia affatto incoraggiante.
“È il mio destino,” disse il signor Micawber, singhiozzando sinceramente, ma anche in quel momento manteneva quell’antico atteggiamento che lo caratterizzava; “è il mio destino, signori, che i sentimenti più nobili della nostra natura siano diventati per me motivo di vergogna. Il mio rispetto per la signorina Wickfield è soltanto un’emozione incontrollabile nel mio cuore. È meglio che mi lasciate andare, così potrò vivere come un vagabondo. Il verme si occuperà della mia sorte molto presto, ”
Senza prestare attenzione a questa invocazione, rimanemmo in piedi ad aspettare, finché lui non tirò fuori il fazzoletto da tasca, si alzò il colletto della camicia e, per ingannare eventuali persone del vicinato che potessero osservarlo, intonò una canzone con il cappello storto su un lato. Allora io suggerii – senza sapere cosa potesse accadere se lo perdessimo di vista – che mi farebbe molto piacere presentargli mia zia, se fosse disposto ad andare a Highgate, dove gli avrebbero messo a disposizione una stanza.
“Ci prepari una coppa del suo stesso punch, signor Micawber,” dissi, “e dimentichi tutto ciò che ha in mente, rivivendo momenti più piacevoli.”
“Oppure, se confidare qualcosa agli amici potrà aiutarvi di più a sentirvi meglio, potete condividerlo con noi, signor Micawber,” disse Traddles, con cautela.
“Signori,” rispose il signor Micawber, “fate di me ciò che volete! Sono solo un filo d’erba sulla superficie dell’abisso, spinto in tutte le direzioni dai venti. Scusate, avrei dovuto dire dagli elementi.”
Continuammo a camminare, mano nella mano; trovammo il calesse proprio mentre stava per partire e arrivammo a Highgate senza incontrare alcuna difficoltà lungo la strada. Ero molto nervoso e incerto su cosa dire o fare per il meglio. Lo stesso valeva, evidentemente, anche per Traddles. Il signor Micawber era per lo più immerso in una profonda tristezza; di tanto in tanto cercava di rallegrarsi canticchiando qualche nota, ma i suoi ricadute nella profonda melancolia risultavano ancora più evidenti a causa del cappello storto da un lato e del colletto della camicia tirato fino agli occhi.
Siamo andati a casa di mia zia invece che alla mia, perché Dora non stava bene. Mia zia si presentò non appena fu chiamata e accolse il signor Micawber con grande cordialità. Il signor Micawber le baciò la mano, si avvicinò alla finestra e, tirando fuori il fazzoletto di tasca, iniziò a riflettere intensamente.
Il signor Dick era a casa. Essendo una persona estremamente compassionevole verso chiunque sembrasse essere in difficoltà, riusciva sempre a individuare tali persone e stringere loro la mano; con il signor Micawber fece almeno sei volte questo gesto in soli cinque minuti. Per il signor Micawber, nel suo momento di difficoltà, questa gentilezza da parte di uno sconosciuto fu così commovente che, ogni volta che stringeva la mano del signor Dick, non poteva fare a meno di dire: “Mio caro signore, mi commuovete profondamente!” Il che rese il signor Dick ancora più felice, tanto che continuò con ancora maggiore entusiasmo.
“L’affabilità di questo signore,” disse il signor Micawber a mia zia, “se mi permettete, signora, di ricorrere a una metafora tratta dal gergo dei nostri sport nazionali più rozzi, mi lascia senza parole. Per un uomo che lotta con un complesso carico di perplessità e inquietudine, un’accoglienza del genere è davvero incoraggiante, vi assicuro.”
“Mio amico il signor Dick,” rispose mia zia con orgoglio, “non è una persona comune.”
“Ne sono convinto,” disse il signor Micawber. “Mio caro signore!” perché Dick gli stava stringendo di nuovo la mano; “Apprezzo profondamente la sua cordialità!”
‘How do you find yourself?’ said Mr. Dick, with an anxious look.
‘Indifferent, my dear sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, sighing.
‘You must keep up your spirits,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘and make yourself as comfortable as possible.’
Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these friendly words, and by finding Mr. Dick’s hand again within his own. ‘It has been my lot,’ he observed, ‘to meet, in the diversified panorama of human existence, with an occasional oasis, but never with one so green, so gushing, as the present!’
At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to reveal something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that I was in a perfect fever. Traddles, sitting on the edge of his chair, with his eyes wide open, and his hair more emphatically erect than ever, stared by turns at the ground and at Mr. Micawber, without so much as attempting to put in a word. My aunt, though I saw that her shrewdest observation was concentrated on her new guest, had more useful possession of her wits than either of us; for she held him in conversation, and made it necessary for him to talk, whether he liked it or not.
‘You are a very old friend of my nephew’s, Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt. ‘I wish I had had the pleasure of seeing you before.’
‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I wish I had had the honour of knowing you at an earlier period. I was not always the wreck you at present behold.’
‘I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are well, sir,’ said my aunt.
Mr. Micawber inclined his head. ‘They are as well, ma’am,’ he desperately observed after a pause, ‘as Aliens and Outcasts can ever hope to be.’
‘Lord bless you, sir!’ exclaimed my aunt, in her abrupt way. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The subsistence of my family, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘trembles in the balance. My employer—’
Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and began to peel the lemons that had been under my directions set before him, together with all the other appliances he used in making punch.
‘Your employer, you know,’ said Mr. Dick, jogging his arm as a gentle reminder.
‘My good sir,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘you recall me, I am obliged to you.’ They shook hands again. ‘My employer, ma’am—Mr. Heep—once did me the favour to observe to me, that if I were not in the receipt of the stipendiary emoluments appertaining to my engagement with him, I should probably be a mountebank about the country, swallowing a sword-blade, and eating the devouring element. For anything that I can perceive to the contrary, it is still probable that my children may be reduced to seek a livelihood by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets their unnatural feats by playing the barrel-organ.’
Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive flourish of his knife, signified that these performances might be expected to take place after he was no more; then resumed his peeling with a desperate air.
My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round table that she usually kept beside her, and eyed him attentively. Notwithstanding the aversion with which I regarded the idea of entrapping him into any disclosure he was not prepared to make voluntarily, I should have taken him up at this point, but for the strange proceedings in which I saw him engaged; whereof his putting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into the snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug, and confidently attempting to pour boiling water out of a candlestick, were among the most remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand, and it came. He clattered all his means and implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out his pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, behind his handkerchief, ‘this is an occupation, of all others, requiring an untroubled mind, and self-respect. I cannot perform it. It is out of the question.’
‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘what is the matter? Pray speak out. You are among friends.’
‘Among friends, sir!’ repeated Mr. Micawber; and all he had reserved came breaking out of him. ‘Good heavens, it is principally because I AM among friends that my state of mind is what it is. What is the matter, gentlemen? What is NOT the matter? Villainy is the matter; baseness is the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name of the whole atrocious mass is—HEEP!’
My aunt clapped her hands, and we all started up as if we were possessed.
‘The struggle is over!’ said Mr. Micawber violently gesticulating with his pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to time with both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. ‘I will lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal scoundrel’s service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family, substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and I’ll do it. With an appetite!’
I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and wouldn’t hear a word.
‘I’ll put my hand in no man’s hand,’ said Mr. Micawber, gasping, puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man fighting with cold water, ‘until I have—blown to fragments—the—a—detestable—serpent—HEEP! I’ll partake of no one’s hospitality, until I have—a—moved Mount Vesuvius—to eruption—on—a—the abandoned rascal—HEEP! Refreshment—a—underneath this roof—particularly punch—would—a—choke me—unless—I had—previously—choked the eyes—out of the head—a—of—interminable cheat, and liar—HEEP! I—a—I’ll know nobody—and—a—say nothing—and—a—live nowhere—until I have crushed—to—a—undiscoverable atoms—the—transcendent and immortal hypocrite and perjurer—HEEP!’
“Come te la stai cavando?”, chiese il signor Dick con un’espressione preoccupata.
“Indifferente, mio caro signore,” rispose il signor Micawber, sospirando.
“Dovete mantenere alto il morale,” disse il signor Dick, “e cercare di stare il più comodi possibile.”
Il signor Micawber fu profondamente commosso da queste parole gentili e dal rivedere di nuovo la mano del signor Dick nella sua. “È stato il mio destino,” osservò, “in questo variegato panorama dell’esistenza umana, incontrare occasionalmente oasi di conforto, ma mai una così rigogliosa e generosa come questa!”
In un altro momento avrei dovuto trovarlo divertente; ma sentivo che tutti eravamo a disagio e in tensione. Osservavo il signor Micawber con grande ansia: oscillava continuamente tra la voglia evidente di rivelare qualcosa e quella opposta di non dire nulla, tanto che ero nel panico totale. Traddles, seduto sul bordo della sedia con gli occhi spalancati e i capelli ancora più dritti del solito, fissava alternativamente il pavimento e il signor Micawber, senza nemmeno provare a intervenire con una parola. Mia zia, sebbene concentrasse la sua attenzione sul nuovo ospite, dimostrò di avere un’intelligenza molto più pratica della nostra; riuscì infatti a mantenere una conversazione con lui, costringendolo a parlare, che gli piacesse o no.
“Siete un vecchio amico di mio nipote, signor Micawber,” disse mia zia.
“Vorrei tanto aver avuto il piacere di conoscervi prima.”
“Signora,” rispose il signor Micawber, “vorrei aver avuto l’onore di conoscerla in tempi precedenti. Non sono sempre stato lo straccio che vedete ora.”
“Spero che la signora Micawber e tutta la sua famiglia stiano bene, signore,” disse mia zia.
Il signor Micawber inclinò la testa. “Sono, nel miglior stato possibile, signora,” osservò disperatamente dopo una pausa, “per quanto gli Stranieri e gli Esclusi possano mai sperare di essere.”
“Che il Signore vi benedica, signore!” esclamò mia zia, con quel suo modo brusco. “Di cosa state parlando?”
“La sussistenza della mia famiglia, signora,” rispose il signor Micawber, “è in pericolo. Il mio datore di lavoro, ”
E qui il signor Micawber, in modo provocatorio, smise di parlare e iniziò a sbucciare i limoni che gli erano stati messi davanti secondo le mie istruzioni, insieme a tutti gli altri ingredienti che utilizzava per preparare il punch.
“Il tuo datore di lavoro, sai, ” disse il signor Dick, accarezzandogli il braccio come un gentile promemoria.
“Mio buon signore,” rispose il signor Micawber, “si ricorda di me, le sono grato.” Si strinsero di nuovo la mano. “Il mio datore di lavoro, signora, il signor Heep, mi fece un giorno l’onore di dirmi che, se non ricevessi gli stipendi dovuti per il mio incarico presso di lui, probabilmente finirei per girare per le campagne come un ciarlatano, ingoiando lame di spada e mangiando sostanze velenose. Per quanto io possa saperne, è ancora possibile che i miei figli debbano cercare di guadagnarsi da vivere con esibizioni straordinarie, mentre la signora Micawber li aiuta in queste loro imprese ‘innaturali’ suonando l’organetto a canne.”
Il signor Micawber, con un gesto casuale ma espressivo della sua coltella, fece capire che tali eventi avrebbero potuto verificarsi soltanto dopo la sua morte; poi riprese a pelare le patate con aria disperata.
Mia zia appoggiò il gomito al piccolo tavolino rotondo che di solito teneva accanto a sé e lo osservò attentamente. Nonostante l’avversione che provavo all’idea di costringerlo a rivelare qualcosa che non era disposto a confessare volontariamente, avrei dovuto intervenire in quel momento, se non fosse stato per le strane azioni che stava compiendo: mettere la buccia di limone nella pentola, lo zucchero nel portaceneri, il liquore nel recipiente vuoto, e tentare con insistenza di versare acqua bollente da un candelabro. Erano davvero le azioni più strane che avessi mai visto. Capii che stava per verificarsi una crisi. E infatti arrivò. Lui gettò via tutti gli strumenti che aveva a disposizione, si alzò dalla sedia, tirò fuori il fazzoletto di tasca e scoppiò in lacrime.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” disse il signor Micawber, tenendosi il fazzoletto davanti al viso, “questa è un’occupazione che richiede, più di qualsiasi altra, una mente serena e autostima. Non riesco a svolgerla. È semplicemente impossibile.”
“Signor Micawber,” dissi, “che cosa c’è? Per favore, parli liberamente. Sei tra amici.”
“Tra amici, signore!” ripeté il signor Micawber; e tutto ciò che aveva trattenuto in sé esplose improvvisamente. “Dio mio, è proprio perché SONO tra amici che il mio stato d’animo è quello che è. Cosa c’è, signori? Cosa NON c’è? La malvagità è il problema; la bassezza è il problema; l’inganno, la frode, la cospirazione, sono il problema; e il nome di tutto questo orribile insieme è. EEP!”
Mia zia batté le mani, e tutti noi iniziammo a muoverci come se fossimo posseduti.
“La lotta è finita!”, disse il signor Micawber gesticolando violentemente con il fazzoletto da tasca, muovendo entrambe le braccia avanti e indietro come se stesse nuotando tra difficoltà sovrumane. “Non continuerò più a vivere in questo modo. Sono un essere miserabile, tagliato fuori da tutto ciò che rende la vita sopportabile. Sono stato costretto a servire quel maledetto individuo. Restituitemi mia moglie, restituitemi la mia famiglia. Rimpiazzate quel meschino che attualmente indossa le mie scarpe. Chiedetemi di ingoiare una spada domani. E lo farò. Con grande piacere!”
Nella mia vita non ho mai visto un uomo così eccitato. Ho provato a calmarlo, per cercare di raggiungere una soluzione razionale; ma lui diventava sempre più agitato e non voleva ascoltare nulla.
“Non metterò mai la mia mano nella mano di nessuno,” disse il signor Micawber, ansimando, sbuffando e singhiozzando a tal punto da sembrare un uomo che lottasse contro dell’acqua gelida; “finché non avrò, distrutto in mille pezzi quel detestabile serpente. AH! Non accetterò mai l’ospitalità di nessuno, finché non avrò fatto eruttare il Vesuvio su quel miserabile traditore. AH! Qualsiasi bevanda, soprattutto il punch, sotto questo tetto potrebbe soffocarmi, a meno che prima non strappi gli occhi a quel bugiardo e imbroglione senza fine. AH! Non conoscerò più nessuno, non dirò nulla e non vivrò da nessuna parte, finché non avrò ridotto in atomi invisibili quel ipocrita immortale e traditore. AH!”
I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber’s dying on the spot. The manner in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences, and, whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep, fought his way on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and brought it out with a vehemence little less than marvellous, was frightful; but now, when he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked at us, with every possible colour in his face that had no business there, and an endless procession of lumps following one another in hot haste up his throat, whence they seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the appearance of being in the last extremity. I would have gone to his assistance, but he waved me off, and wouldn’t hear a word.
‘No, Copperfield!—No communication—a—until—Miss Wickfield—a—redress from wrongs inflicted by consummate scoundrel—HEEP!’ (I am quite convinced he could not have uttered three words, but for the amazing energy with which this word inspired him when he felt it coming.) ‘Inviolable secret—a—from the whole world—a—no exceptions—this day week—a—at breakfast-time—a—everybody present—including aunt—a—and extremely friendly gentleman—to be at the hotel at Canterbury—a—where—Mrs. Micawber and myself—Auld Lang Syne in chorus—and—a—will expose intolerable ruffian—HEEP! No more to say—a—or listen to persuasion—go immediately—not capable—a—bear society—upon the track of devoted and doomed traitor—HEEP!’
With this last repetition of the magic word that had kept him going at all, and in which he surpassed all his previous efforts, Mr. Micawber rushed out of the house; leaving us in a state of excitement, hope, and wonder, that reduced us to a condition little better than his own. But even then his passion for writing letters was too strong to be resisted; for while we were yet in the height of our excitement, hope, and wonder, the following pastoral note was brought to me from a neighbouring tavern, at which he had called to write it:—
‘Most secret and confidential. ‘MY DEAR SIR,
‘I beg to be allowed to convey, through you, my apologies to your excellent aunt for my late excitement. An explosion of a smouldering volcano long suppressed, was the result of an internal contest more easily conceived than described.
‘I trust I rendered tolerably intelligible my appointment for the morning of this day week, at the house of public entertainment at Canterbury, where Mrs. Micawber and myself had once the honour of uniting our voices to yours, in the well-known strain of the Immortal exciseman nurtured beyond the Tweed.
‘The duty done, and act of reparation performed, which can alone enable me to contemplate my fellow mortal, I shall be known no more. I shall simply require to be deposited in that place of universal resort, where
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,
‘—With the plain Inscription,
Ero davvero molto spaventato all’idea che il signor Micawber potesse morire lì sul posto. Il modo in cui cercava di esprimersi attraverso frasi incoerenti, e soprattutto quando si avvicinava al nome di Heep, lottava disperatamente per pronunciarlo, come se stesse per svenire. Quella sua determinazione era davvero straordinaria, ma ora, mentre si lasciava cadere su una sedia, sudando copiosamente e guardandoci con espressioni del viso assolutamente incomprensibili, sembrava davvero essere al limite delle sue forze. Avrei voluto aiutarlo, ma lui mi fece segno di andarmene e non volle ascoltare nulla.
“No, Copperfield. Nessuna comunicazione. Fino a quando non arriverà la signorina Wickfield. Una giustizia per gli torti inflitti da quel perfido scellerato. ZITTO!” Sono assolutamente convinto che non sarebbe stato in grado di pronunciare nemmeno tre parole, se non fosse stata l’incredibile forza che quella parola gli infuse nel momento in cui la pensò. “Un segreto inviolabile. Per tutto il mondo. Nessuna eccezione. Oggi, questa settimana. A colazione. Alle [L01]ore. Tutti presenti. Inclusa zia. E anche un gentiluomo estremamente amichevole. Saranno all’hotel di Canterbury. Lì. La signora Micawber ed io. Canteremo ‘Auld Lang Syne’ insieme. E scopriremo quel furfante intollerabile. ZITTO! Nient’altro da dire. Né ascoltare alcuna [L03]persuasione. Andate subito. Non ne sono in grado. Non posso sopportare la compagnia della gente. Devo inseguire quel traditore fedele ma condannato. ZITTO!”
Con questa ultima ripetizione della parola magica che gli aveva permesso di andare avanti fino ad allora, e nella quale superò tutti i suoi sforzi precedenti, il signor Micawber uscì di corsa dalla casa; lasciandoci in uno stato di eccitazione, speranza e meraviglia tale da ridurci a una condizione poco migliore della sua. Ma anche allora la sua passione per scrivere lettere era troppo forte per essere resistita; perché mentre eravamo ancora nel culmine della nostra eccitazione, speranza e meraviglia, mi fu portata questa seguente nota pastorale da una taverna vicina, dove era andato a scriverla:–
“Altamente segreto e confidenziale.
Mio caro signore,
“Vi prego di permettermi di trasmettere, attraverso di voi, le mie scuse alla vostra eccellente zia per la mia precedente agitazione. L’esplosione di un vulcano da tempo soppresso rappresentava il risultato di un conflitto interiore più facile da immaginare che da descrivere.”
Spero di aver reso abbastanza comprensibile la mia appuntamento per la mattina di questa giornata, presso il teatro di intrattenimento pubblico di Canterbury, dove io e la signora Micawber abbiamo avuto l’onore di unirci a voi nel canto ben noto dell’immortale autore di quella canzone, nato al di là del fiume Tweed.
Una volta compiuto il dovere e eseguito l’atto di riparazione che può permettermi di considerare i miei simili mortali, non sarò più conosciuto. Sarà sufficiente che io venga depositato in quel luogo di rifugio universale.
Ognuno, nella propria stretta cella, giace per sempre; I rozzi antenati di quel villaggio dormono.
“–Con quella semplice iscrizione,”
CHAPTER 50. Mr. PEGGOTTY’S DREAM COMES TRUE
By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the bank of the river with Martha. I had never seen her since, but she had communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions. Nothing had come of her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily’s fate. I confess that I began to despair of her recovery, and gradually to sink deeper and deeper into the belief that she was dead.
His conviction remained unchanged. So far as I know—and I believe his honest heart was transparent to me—he never wavered again, in his solemn certainty of finding her. His patience never tired. And, although I trembled for the agony it might one day be to him to have his strong assurance shivered at a blow, there was something so religious in it, so affectingly expressive of its anchor being in the purest depths of his fine nature, that the respect and honour in which I held him were exalted every day.
His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more. He had been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in all things wherein he wanted help he must do his own part faithfully, and help himself. I have known him set out in the night, on a misgiving that the light might not be, by some accident, in the window of the old boat, and walk to Yarmouth. I have known him, on reading something in the newspaper that might apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a journey of three—or four-score miles. He made his way by sea to Naples, and back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted me. All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily’s sake, when she should be found. In all this long pursuit, I never heard him repine; I never heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.
Dora had often seen him since our marriage, and was quite fond of him. I fancy his figure before me now, standing near her sofa, with his rough cap in his hand, and the blue eyes of my child-wife raised, with a timid wonder, to his face. Sometimes of an evening, about twilight, when he came to talk with me, I would induce him to smoke his pipe in the garden, as we slowly paced to and fro together; and then, the picture of his deserted home, and the comfortable air it used to have in my childish eyes of an evening when the fire was burning, and the wind moaning round it, came most vividly into my mind.
One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha waiting near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out, and that she had asked him not to leave London on any account, until he should have seen her again.
‘Did she tell you why?’ I inquired.
‘I asked her, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied, ‘but it is but few words as she ever says, and she on’y got my promise and so went away.’
‘Did she say when you might expect to see her again?’ I demanded.
‘No, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned, drawing his hand thoughtfully down his face. ‘I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she could tell.’
As I had long forborne to encourage him with hopes that hung on threads, I made no other comment on this information than that I supposed he would see her soon. Such speculations as it engendered within me I kept to myself, and those were faint enough.
I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight afterwards. I remember that evening well. It was the second in Mr. Micawber’s week of suspense. There had been rain all day, and there was a damp feeling in the air. The leaves were thick upon the trees, and heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the sky was still dark; and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully. As I walked to and fro in the garden, and the twilight began to close around me, their little voices were hushed; and that peculiar silence which belongs to such an evening in the country when the lightest trees are quite still, save for the occasional droppings from their boughs, prevailed.
There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the side of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden where I was walking, into the road before the house. I happened to turn my eyes towards this place, as I was thinking of many things; and I saw a figure beyond, dressed in a plain cloak. It was bending eagerly towards me, and beckoning.
‘Martha!’ said I, going to it.
‘Can you come with me?’ she inquired, in an agitated whisper. ‘I have been to him, and he is not at home. I wrote down where he was to come, and left it on his table with my own hand. They said he would not be out long. I have tidings for him. Can you come directly?’
My answer was, to pass out at the gate immediately. She made a hasty gesture with her hand, as if to entreat my patience and my silence, and turned towards London, whence, as her dress betokened, she had come expeditiously on foot.
I asked her if that were not our destination? On her motioning Yes, with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty coach that was coming by, and we got into it. When I asked her where the coachman was to drive, she answered, ‘Anywhere near Golden Square! And quick!’—then shrunk into a corner, with one trembling hand before her face, and the other making the former gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.
Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and dread, I looked at her for some explanation. But seeing how strongly she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my own natural inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to break the silence. We proceeded without a word being spoken. Sometimes she glanced out of the window, as though she thought we were going slowly, though indeed we were going fast; but otherwise remained exactly as at first.
CAPITOLO 50. IL SOGNO DEL SIGNOR PEGGOTTY SI AVVERA
A quel momento, erano passati alcuni mesi dalla nostra conversazione sulla riva del fiume con Martha. Non l’avevo più vista da allora, ma lei aveva contattato più volte il signor Peggotty. Le sue fervide tentativi non avevano portato a nulla; né potevo dedurre, dalle informazioni che lui mi aveva fornito, che fosse stata trovata qualche traccia del destino di Emily. Devo ammettere che iniziai a disperare per la sua salvezza e gradualmente presi a credere sempre di più che fosse morta.
La sua convinzione rimase immutata. Per quanto ne so – e credo che il suo cuore onesto fosse trasparente per me – non vacillò mai più nella sua solenne certezza di trovarla. La sua pazienza non si esaurì mai. E, sebbene tremassi all’idea dell’agonia che un giorno potesse provare quando la sua forte fiducia venisse scossa da qualche ostacolo, c’era qualcosa di così profondamente religioso in tutto ciò, qualcosa che esprimeva con tanta intensità quanto il suo credo fosse radicato nelle più pure profondità della sua nobile natura, che il rispetto e l’‘onore che provavo per lui aumentavano ogni giorno di più.
La sua non era una fiducia pigra e passiva che si limitava ad aspettare senza fare nulla: per tutta la vita era stato un uomo d’azione deciso, e sapeva bene che in ogni situazione in cui avesse bisogno di aiuto, doveva prima svolgere fedelmente la propria parte e poi cercare di ottenere il sostegno necessario. L’ho visto partire di notte, temendo che la luce potesse non esserci, per qualche motivo, nella finestra della vecchia barca, e andare fino a Yarmouth. L’ho visto anche prendere il suo bastone e intraprendere viaggi di tre o addirittura quaranta miglia, dopo aver letto qualcosa sul giornale che potesse riguardarla. Si recava in nave fino a Napoli e tornava indietro, dopo aver ascoltato le storie di cui Miss Dartle mi aveva raccontato. Tutti i suoi viaggi erano fatti con grande determinazione; era sempre infatti deciso a risparmiare denaro per Emily, nel caso fosse mai stata ritrovata. Durante tutta questa lunga ricerca, non l’ho mai sentito lamentarsi né dire di essere stanco o scoraggiato.
Dora lo aveva spesso visto da quando ci eravamo sposati, e le piaceva molto. Ora riesco a immaginare la sua figura davanti a me: in piedi vicino al suo divano, con il cappello ruvido in mano, mentre gli occhi blu di mia moglie, ancora una bambina, lo guardavano con timido stupore. A volte, verso sera, quando veniva a parlarmi, lo invitavo a fumare la sua pipa nel giardino, mentre camminavamo lentamente avanti e indietro insieme; in quei momenti, l’immagine della sua casa deserta e dell’atmosfera confortevole che un tempo vi regnava mi tornava vivida alla mente, soprattutto nelle serate in cui il fuoco ardeva nel camino e il vento soffiava intorno.
Una sera, alle stesse ore di questa volta, mi raccontò che la sera precedente, quando era uscito, aveva trovato Martha ad aspettarlo vicino al suo alloggio e che lei gli aveva chiesto di non lasciare Londra a nessun costo, finché non l’avesse rivista.
“Ti ha detto il motivo?” chiesi.
“Gliel’ho chiesto, signor Davy,” rispose, “ma lei dice poche parole, e dopo aver ottenuto la mia promessa se n’è andata.”
“Ha detto quando si può aspettarsi di rivederla?” chiesi.
“No, signor Davy,” rispose lui, passandosi pensierosamente la mano sul viso. “Anch’io l’ho chiesto; ma era qualcosa di più, (ha detto lei) di quanto potesse spiegare.”
Poiché da tempo avevo rinunciato ad incoraggiarlo con speranze fragili e incerte, non feci alcun commento su questa notizia, se non che immaginavo che l’avrebbe vista presto. Le speculazioni che ne derivarono nella mia mente le tenni per me stesso, e erano comunque piuttosto vaghe.
Quella sera, circa due settimane dopo, camminavo da solo nel giardino. Ricordo bene quella serata: era la seconda della settimana di suspense per il signor Micawber. Aveva piovuto tutto il giorno, e l’aria era umida; le foglie sugli alberi erano fitte e bagnate, ma la pioggia aveva smesso, anche se il cielo rimaneva scuro. Gli uccellini cantavano allegramente. Mentre camminavo avanti e indietro nel giardino, e il crepuscolo iniziava a calare intorno a me, i loro canti si affievolirono. E quella particolare quiete tipica di una serata di campagna – quando anche gli alberi più leggeri rimangono immobili, tranne per occasionali gocce che cadono dai rami – prese il sopravvento.
Sul lato della nostra capanna c’era una piccola vista verde formata da graticci e edera; attraverso di essa riuscivo a vedere, dal giardino in cui stavo camminando, la strada che si estendeva davanti alla casa. Mentre pensavo a molte cose, ho rivolto lo sguardo verso quel punto e ho visto una figura vestita con un semplice mantello. Si stava avvicinando con impazienza verso di me, facendomi segni con la mano.
“Martha!”, dissi, avvicinandomi a lei.
“Puoi venire con me?” chiese lei, sussurrando in modo agitato. “Sono stata da lui e non è a casa. Ho scritto dove avrebbe dovuto essere e l’ho lasciata sul suo tavolo di mia mano. Hanno detto che non sarebbe uscito per molto. Ho notizie importanti per lui. Puoi venire subito?”
La mia risposta fu: “Svenire immediatamente alla porta”. Lei fece un gesto rapido con la mano, come per implorare la mia pazienza e il mio silenzio, poi si diresse verso Londra, da dove, a giudicare dal suo abbigliamento, era arrivata rapidamente a piedi.
Le chiesi se quella non fosse la nostra destinazione; quando lei annuì con lo stesso gesto affrettato di prima, fermai un carro vuoto che passava e salimmo a bordo. Quando le chiesi dove fosse il cocchiere per partire, rispose: “Ovunque vicino a Golden Square. E in fretta!” Poi si rintanò in un angolo, con una mano tremante davanti al viso e l’altra che ripeteva quel gesto, come se non potesse sopportare alcun suono.
Ora molto turbato e abbagliato da contrastanti luci di speranza e terrore, la guardai in cerca di una spiegazione. Ma vedendo quanto desiderasse rimanere in silenzio, e sentendo che anche per me era una naturale inclinazione in un momento del genere, non tentai di rompere quel silenzio. Proseguimmo senza dire una parola. A volte lei guardava fuori dalla finestra, come se pensasse che viaggiassimo lentamente, mentre in realtà andavamo molto velocemente; per il resto, rimase esattamente com’era all’inizio.
We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had mentioned, where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that we might have some occasion for it. She laid her hand on my arm, and hurried me on to one of the sombre streets, of which there are several in that part, where the houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation of single families, but have, and had, long degenerated into poor lodgings let off in rooms. Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was like a tributary channel to the street.
The house swarmed with inmates. As we went up, doors of rooms were opened and people’s heads put out; and we passed other people on the stairs, who were coming down. In glancing up from the outside, before we entered, I had seen women and children lolling at the windows over flower-pots; and we seemed to have attracted their curiosity, for these were principally the observers who looked out of their doors. It was a broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood; cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and broad seats in the windows. But all these tokens of past grandeur were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe. Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away from the other. Several of the back windows on the staircase had been darkened or wholly blocked up. In those that remained, there was scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the mansion.
We proceeded to the top-storey of the house. Two or three times, by the way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts of a female figure going up before us. As we turned to ascend the last flight of stairs between us and the roof, we caught a full view of this figure pausing for a moment, at a door. Then it turned the handle, and went in.
‘What’s this!’ said Martha, in a whisper. ‘She has gone into my room. I don’t know her!’
I knew her. I had recognized her with amazement, for Miss Dartle.
I said something to the effect that it was a lady whom I had seen before, in a few words, to my conductress; and had scarcely done so, when we heard her voice in the room, though not, from where we stood, what she was saying. Martha, with an astonished look, repeated her former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and then, by a little back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which she pushed open with a touch, into a small empty garret with a low sloping roof, little better than a cupboard. Between this, and the room she had called hers, there was a small door of communication, standing partly open. Here we stopped, breathless with our ascent, and she placed her hand lightly on my lips. I could only see, of the room beyond, that it was pretty large; that there was a bed in it; and that there were some common pictures of ships upon the walls. I could not see Miss Dartle, or the person whom we had heard her address. Certainly, my companion could not, for my position was the best. A dead silence prevailed for some moments. Martha kept one hand on my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.
‘It matters little to me her not being at home,’ said Rosa Dartle haughtily, ‘I know nothing of her. It is you I come to see.’
‘Me?’ replied a soft voice.
At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame. For it was Emily’s!
‘Yes,’ returned Miss Dartle, ‘I have come to look at you. What? You are not ashamed of the face that has done so much?’
The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had seen her standing in the light. I saw the flashing black eyes, and the passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.
‘I have come to see,’ she said, ‘James Steerforth’s fancy; the girl who ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like James Steerforth. I want to know what such a thing is like.’
There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself before it. It was succeeded by a moment’s pause.
When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a stamp upon the ground.
‘Stay there!’ she said, ‘or I’ll proclaim you to the house, and the whole street! If you try to evade me, I’ll stop you, if it’s by the hair, and raise the very stones against you!’
A frightened murmur was the only reply that reached my ears. A silence succeeded. I did not know what to do. Much as I desired to put an end to the interview, I felt that I had no right to present myself; that it was for Mr. Peggotty alone to see her and recover her. Would he never come? I thought impatiently.
‘So!’ said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, ‘I see her at last! Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate mock-modesty, and that hanging head!’
‘Oh, for Heaven’s sake, spare me!’ exclaimed Emily. ‘Whoever you are, you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven’s sake spare me, if you would be spared yourself!’
‘If I would be spared!’ returned the other fiercely; ‘what is there in common between US, do you think!’
Scesi presso uno degli ingressi della piazza di cui lei aveva parlato; lì ordinai al cocchiere di aspettare, senza sapere esattamente per quale motivo potessimo averne bisogno. Lei mi mise una mano sul braccio e mi spinse rapidamente in una delle strade oscure presenti in quella zona. Le case un tempo erano abitazioni dignitose, occupate da famiglie singole, ma ormai erano degenerate in misere stanze affittate a piccoli inquilini. Entrando attraverso la porta aperta di una di queste case, lei mi lasciò andare e mi fece seguire le scale comuni, che sembravano un “canale secondario” collegato alla strada principale.
La casa era piena di detenuti. Mentre salivamo le scale, le porte delle stanze si aprirono e le persone uscirono; incontrammo anche altre persone che scendevano. Prima di entrare, avevo notato donne e bambini appoggiati alle finestre accanto ai vasi fioriti; sembrava che la nostra presenza avesse suscitato la loro curiosità, poiché erano loro a guardare fuori dalle porte. Si trattava di una scala con larghi pannelli e imponenti ringhiere in legno scuro; le cornici sopra le porte erano decorate con frutta intagliata e fiori; nelle finestre c’erano anche ampi sedili. Tuttavia, tutti questi segni di un passato glorioso erano ormai in condizioni miserevoli: il legno era marcio, umido e logoro; i pavimenti, in molti punti, erano instabili e persino pericolosi. Si erano fatti alcuni tentativi per “rinnovare” questa struttura in declino, riparando alcune parti con legno comune; ma era come se un nobile anziano e decaduto si fosse unito a un poveraccio plebeo: entrambi si allontanavano l’uno dall’altro. Alcune delle finestre posteriori erano state oscurate o completamente chiuse; in quelle rimaste, mancava quasi del tutto il vetro; attraverso le cornici rotte, da cui sembrava sempre entrare aria cattiva e mai uscire, si potevano vedere altre case nelle stesse condizioni. E guardando giù, si scorgeva un cortile miserabile, diventato il deposito comune di spazzatura della casa.
Proseguimmo verso il piano superiore della casa. Due o tre volte, tra l’altro, pensai di aver visto, nella luce fioca, le gonne di una figura femminile che ci precedeva mentre salivamo. Quando ci trovammo davanti all’ultima rampa di scale che ci separava dal tetto, riuscimmo a vedere chiaramente questa figura: si fermò per un momento davanti a una porta, poi girò la maniglia ed entrò.
“Che cos’è questo!”, sussurrò Martha. “È entrata nella mia stanza. Non la conosco affatto!”
La conoscevo. L’avevo riconosciuta, pieno di stupore. Era la signorina Dartle.
Dissei qualcosa del tipo che si trattava di una signora che avevo già visto prima; in poche parole, riferii tutto alla mia accompagnatrice. Appena finito di parlare, sentimmo la sua voce nella stanza, anche se da dove ci trovavamo non riuscivamo a capire cosa stesse dicendo. Martha, con un’espressione sorpresa, ripeté l’azione che aveva già fatto prima e mi guidò silenziosamente su per le scale; poi, attraverso una piccola porta sul retro che sembrava non avere serratura, entrammo in un piccolo solaio vuoto, con il soffitto inclinato, poco meglio di un armadio. Tra quel solaio e la stanza che lei aveva definito sua c’era una piccola porta comunicante, parzialmente aperta. Ci fermammo lì, senza fiato per la salita; lei posò dolcemente una mano sulle mie labbra. Di quella stanza riuscivo a vedere solo che era abbastanza grande, che c’era un letto e che sulle pareti erano appese alcune immagini di navi. Non vedevo né Miss Dartle né la persona a cui avevamo sentito rivolgersi. Sicuramente nemmeno la mia compagna riusciva a vederla, perché io mi trovavo nella posizione migliore per osservare. Per qualche momento regnò un silenzio assoluto; Martha continuava a tenere una mano sulle mie labbra e con l’altra ascoltava attentamente.
“Non mi importa affatto che lei non sia a casa”, disse Rosa Dartle con aria sprezzante, “non so nulla di lei. Sono venuta da te.”
“Me?” rispose una voce dolce.
Al suono di quella voce, un brivido mi attraversò il corpo. Era la voce di Emily!
“Sì,” rispose la signorina Dartle, “sono venuta a vederti. Cosa? Non ti vergogni di quel viso che ha fatto tante cose brutte?”
L’odio risoluto e implacabile nel suo tono, la sua freddezza severa, la sua rabbia controllata, tutto ciò mi fece vedere lei come se fosse davvero lì, sotto i miei occhi. Vidi quegli occhi neri scintillanti, quella figura consumata dalla passione; vidi anche quella cicatrice bianca che le attraversava le labbra, tremolante e pulsante mentre parlava.
“Sono venuta per vedere,” disse, “la donna di cui parla tutta la città riguardo a James Steerforth; quella ragazza che è fuggita con lui. Voglio sapere com’è davvero una persona del genere.”
Si udì un fruscio, come se la ragazza sfortunata, verso cui erano state rivolte queste offese, stesse correndo verso la porta; l’interlocutrice intervenne rapidamente prima che lei potesse raggiungerla. Seguì un momento di silenzio.
Quando la signorina Dartle parlò di nuovo, lo fece attraverso i suoi denti serrati, e con un tonfo sul pavimento.
“Resta lì!” disse lei, “altrimenti ti farò conoscere in tutta la casa e per tutta la strada! Se provi a sfuggirmi, ti fermerò, anche se dovesse costarmi la vita, e userò persino le pietre contro di te!”
Un mormorio spaventato fu l’unica risposta che raggiunse le mie orecchie. Seguì un silenzio. Non sapevo cosa fare. Per quanto desiderassi porre fine a quell’incontro, sentivo di non avere il diritto di intervenire; spettava soltanto al signor Peggotty unicamente vederla e riprenderla con sé. Non sarebbe mai arrivato? Pensai con impazienza.
“Lo so!” disse Rosa Dartle con una risata sprezzante. “Finalmente la vedo! Che povera creatura. Com’è potuta cadere vittima di quella falsa modestia, di quel modo di abbassare la testa, ”
“Oh, per l’amor del cielo, risparmiatemi!” esclamò Emily. “Chiunque siate, conoscete la mia triste storia. Per l’amor del cielo, risparmiatemi, se volete che anche voi veniate risparmiati!”
“Se solo fossi risparmiato!” ribatté l’altro con ferocia; “che cosa abbiamo in comune, secondo te?”
‘Nothing but our sex,’ said Emily, with a burst of tears.
‘And that,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘is so strong a claim, preferred by one so infamous, that if I had any feeling in my breast but scorn and abhorrence of you, it would freeze it up. Our sex! You are an honour to our sex!’
‘I have deserved this,’ said Emily, ‘but it’s dreadful! Dear, dear lady, think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen! Oh, Martha, come back! Oh, home, home!’
Miss Dartle placed herself in a chair, within view of the door, and looked downward, as if Emily were crouching on the floor before her. Being now between me and the light, I could see her curled lip, and her cruel eyes intently fixed on one place, with a greedy triumph.
‘Listen to what I say!’ she said; ‘and reserve your false arts for your dupes. Do you hope to move me by your tears? No more than you could charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.’
‘Oh, have some mercy on me!’ cried Emily. ‘Show me some compassion, or I shall die mad!’
‘It would be no great penance,’ said Rosa Dartle, ‘for your crimes. Do you know what you have done? Do you ever think of the home you have laid waste?’
‘Oh, is there ever night or day, when I don’t think of it!’ cried Emily; and now I could just see her, on her knees, with her head thrown back, her pale face looking upward, her hands wildly clasped and held out, and her hair streaming about her. ‘Has there ever been a single minute, waking or sleeping, when it hasn’t been before me, just as it used to be in the lost days when I turned my back upon it for ever and for ever! Oh, home, home! Oh dear, dear uncle, if you ever could have known the agony your love would cause me when I fell away from good, you never would have shown it to me so constant, much as you felt it; but would have been angry to me, at least once in my life, that I might have had some comfort! I have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them were always fond of me!’ She dropped on her face, before the imperious figure in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her dress.
Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of brass. Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she must keep a strong constraint upon herself—I write what I sincerely believe—or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful form with her foot. I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of her face and character seemed forced into that expression.---Would he never come?
‘The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!’ she said, when she had so far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could trust herself to speak. ‘YOUR home! Do you imagine that I bestow a thought on it, or suppose you could do any harm to that low place, which money would not pay for, and handsomely? YOUR home! You were a part of the trade of your home, and were bought and sold like any other vendible thing your people dealt in.’
‘Oh, not that!’ cried Emily. ‘Say anything of me; but don’t visit my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as honourable as you! Have some respect for them, as you are a lady, if you have no mercy for me.’
‘I speak,’ she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal, and drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily’s touch, ‘I speak of HIS home—where I live. Here,’ she said, stretching out her hand with her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, ‘is a worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief in a house where she wouldn’t have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of anger, and repining, and reproach. This piece of pollution, picked up from the water-side, to be made much of for an hour, and then tossed back to her original place!’
‘No! no!’ cried Emily, clasping her hands together. ‘When he first came into my way—that the day had never dawned upon me, and he had met me being carried to my grave!—I had been brought up as virtuous as you or any lady, and was going to be the wife of as good a man as you or any lady in the world can ever marry. If you live in his home and know him, you know, perhaps, what his power with a weak, vain girl might be. I don’t defend myself, but I know well, and he knows well, or he will know when he comes to die, and his mind is troubled with it, that he used all his power to deceive me, and that I believed him, trusted him, and loved him!’
Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them. The blow, which had no aim, fell upon the air. As she now stood panting, looking at her with the utmost detestation that she was capable of expressing, and trembling from head to foot with rage and scorn, I thought I had never seen such a sight, and never could see such another.
‘YOU love him? You?’ she cried, with her clenched hand, quivering as if it only wanted a weapon to stab the object of her wrath.
Emily had shrunk out of my view. There was no reply.
‘And tell that to ME,’ she added, ‘with your shameful lips? Why don’t they whip these creatures? If I could order it to be done, I would have this girl whipped to death.’
And so she would, I have no doubt. I would not have trusted her with the rack itself, while that furious look lasted. She slowly, very slowly, broke into a laugh, and pointed at Emily with her hand, as if she were a sight of shame for gods and men.
‘SHE love!’ she said. ‘THAT carrion! And he ever cared for her, she’d tell me. Ha, ha! The liars that these traders are!’
Her mockery was worse than her undisguised rage. Of the two, I would have much preferred to be the object of the latter. But, when she suffered it to break loose, it was only for a moment. She had chained it up again, and however it might tear her within, she subdued it to herself.
“Nient’altro che il nostro sesso,” disse Emily, con un fiotto di lacrime.
“E questo,” disse Rosa Dartle, “è un’accusa così grave, pronunciata da una persona così infame, che se nel mio cuore ci fosse anche solo un briciolo di disprezzo e orrore per te, si congelerebbe all’istante. Il nostro sesso. Tu sei un’onore per il nostro sesso!”
“Me lo sono meritato,” disse Emily, “ma è terribile! Cara, cara signora, pensate a quanto ho sofferto e a come sono caduta in rovina. Oh, Martha, torna da me! Oh, casa, casa, ”
La signorina Dartle si sedette su una sedia, in posizione tale da poter vedere la porta, e fissò il pavimento, come se Emily fosse accovacciata davanti a lei. Ora che si trovava tra me e la luce, riuscivo a vedere il suo labbro arricciato e i suoi occhi crudeli fissi su un punto preciso, con un’espressione di avido trionfo.
“Ascolta quello che dico!” disse lei; “e riserva le tue false arti solo per le tue vittime. Speri davvero di commuovermi con le tue lacrime? Non più di quanto tu possa incantarmi con i tuoi sorrisi. Tu, che hai comprato schiavi.”
“Oh, avete pietà di me!” gridò Emily. “Mostratemi un po’ di compassione, altrimenti morirò di follia!”
“Non sarebbe certo una grande penitenza,” disse Rosa Dartle, “per i tuoi crimini. Sai davvero cosa hai fatto? Pensi mai alla casa che hai distrutto?”
“Oh, esiste davvero qualche momento, di giorno o di notte, in cui non ci penso?” gridò Emily; “Ora riesco quasi a vederla: in ginocchio, con la testa gettata all’indietro, il viso pallido rivolto verso l’alto, le mani strette disperatamente. Oh, [casa], [casa]! Oh caro zio, se solo aveste potuto capire l’agonia che la vostra [amore] mi ha causato quando ho abbandonato la retta via. Non me l’avreste mai dimostrato con tanta costanza, nonostante la vostra sofferenza; forse mi sareste stato addirittura arrabbiati, almeno una volta nella mia vita, affinché potessi trovare un po’ di conforto. Ma io non ne ho alcuno, su questa terra. Tutti quanti mi hanno sempre amata, ” Si gettò a terra davanti alla figura imponente seduta sulla sedia, cercando disperatamente di afferrare l’orlo del suo abito.
Rosa Dartle sedeva lì, a fissarla con uno sguardo immobile, rigida come una statua di bronzo. Le sue labbra erano strette forte, come se sapesse di dover mantenere un controllo assoluto su sé stessa. Scrivo ciò che credo sinceramente: altrimenti sarebbe stata tentata di colpire quella bella figura con il piede. La vedevo chiaramente; tutta la forza del suo volto e del suo carattere sembrava essere concentrata in quell’espressione. Quando non sarebbe mai arrivato?
“La misera vanità di questi esseri insignificanti!” disse lei, quando finalmente riuscì a controllare la rabbia che le ribolliva nel petto al punto da poter parlare con calma. “LA VOstra casa. Pensate davvero che io ci presti anche solo un minimo di attenzione, o che possiate causare qualche danno a quel luogo disprezzabile, per il quale nemmeno il denaro potrebbe essere sufficiente? LA VOstra casa. Facevate parte del commercio della vostra famiglia, e venivate comprati e venduti come qualsiasi altra merce scambiabile, ”
“Oh, no!” gridò Emily. “Dite pure qualsiasi cosa su di me; ma non portate la mia vergogna e il mio disonore davanti a persone oneste come voi! Rispettateli, visto che siete una signora, anche se non avete pietà per me.”
“Parlo,” disse lei, senza degnarsi di prestare attenzione a questo appello, e allontanando la sua veste dalla contaminazione del tocco di Emily, “parlo della SUA casa, dove io vivo. Ecco,” aggiunse, tendendo la mano con un sorriso sprezzante e guardando in basso verso la ragazza prostrata, “una causa degna di divisione tra madre e figlio; dolore in una casa dove lei non sarebbe stata nemmeno ammessa come serva in cucina; rabbia, rimpianti e rimproveri. Questo pezzo di ‘contaminazione’, raccolto dalla riva dell’acqua, a cui si è dato tanto valore per un’ora, e poi gettato indietro al suo posto originale!”
“No! no!” gridò Emily, stringendo le mani. “Quando lui mi è apparso per la prima volta, in quel giorno non avevo mai immaginato che potesse accadere una cosa del genere; mi stavano portando alla mia tomba. Sono stata educata con principi morali altrettanto rigidi dei vostri o di qualsiasi altra signora, e stavo per diventare la moglie di un uomo altrettanto nobile di qualsiasi altro uomo al mondo. Se vivete nella sua casa e lo conoscete, allora saprete certamente quale potere possieda su una ragazza debole e vanitosa come me. Non mi sto difendendo, ma so molto bene. E lui sa molto bene anche lui; o almeno lo scoprirà quando morirà, e il rimorso lo tormenterà per aver usato tutti i suoi mezzi per ingannarmi. Io l’ho creduto, gli ho confidato tutto, e l’amavo!”
Rosa Dartle balzò in piedi dal suo posto; indietreggiò, e nel farlo colpì me, con un volto così pieno di malvagità, così oscurato e deformato dall’ira, che quasi mi gettai tra loro. Il colpo, privo di qualsiasi bersaglio preciso, andò a vuoto. Mentre lei ora stava lì, ansimante, guardandomi con tutto il disprezzo di cui era capace, tremando dalla testa ai piedi per rabbia e disprezzo, pensai di non aver mai visto una scena del genere, e che probabilmente non ne avrei mai vista un’altra.
“Lo ami? Tu?” gridò lei, con la mano stretta a pugno, tremante come se volesse solo un’arma per pugnalare l’oggetto della sua rabbia.
Emily era scomparsa dalla mia vista; non ci fu alcuna risposta.
“E dimmelo tu,” aggiunse, “con quelle tue labbra vergognose? Perché non frustano queste creature? Se potessi ordinarlo, farei frustare questa ragazza fino alla morte.”
E così fece, non ho alcun dubbio al riguardo. Non le avrei affidato nemmeno quella macchina per tormentare, finché durava quell’aspetto furioso. Poi, molto lentamente, iniziò a ridere e indicò Emily con la mano, come se fosse una vergogna per gli dèi e gli uomini.
“La ama!” disse lei. “Quel verme. E lui l’ha mai davvero amata, me lo avrebbe detto lei stessa. Ahah! Quei bugiardi che sono questi commercianti, ”
Il suo sarcasmo era peggiore della sua rabbia palese. Tra i due, avrei preferito di gran lunga essere l’oggetto della seconda. Ma quando quella rabbia finalmente sfociava, durava solo un momento. Lei la incatenava di nuovo dentro di sé, e per quanto potesse straziarla interiormente, riusciva sempre a domarla.
‘I came here, you pure fountain of love,’ she said, ‘to see—as I began by telling you—what such a thing as you was like. I was curious. I am satisfied. Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours, with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are expecting you, and whom your money will console. When it’s all gone, you can believe, and trust, and love again, you know! I thought you a broken toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished, and thrown away. But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and trustfulness—which you look like, and is quite consistent with your story!—I have something more to say. Attend to it; for what I say I’ll do. Do you hear me, you fairy spirit? What I say, I mean to do!’
Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.
‘Hide yourself,’ she pursued, ‘if not at home, somewhere. Let it be somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life—or, better still, in some obscure death. I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have found no way of helping it to be still! I have heard of such means sometimes. I believe they may be easily found.’
A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here. She stopped, and listened to it as if it were music.
‘I am of a strange nature, perhaps,’ Rosa Dartle went on; ‘but I can’t breathe freely in the air you breathe. I find it sickly. Therefore, I will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you. If you live here tomorrow, I’ll have your story and your character proclaimed on the common stair. There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed. If, leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me), the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat. Being assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your hand, I am sanguine as to that.’
Would he never, never come? How long was I to bear this? How long could I bear it? ‘Oh me, oh me!’ exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there was no relenting in Rosa Dartle’s smile. ‘What, what, shall I do!’
‘Do?’ returned the other. ‘Live happy in your own reflections! Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth’s tenderness—he would have made you his serving-man’s wife, would he not?---or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who would have taken you as his gift. Or, if those proud remembrances, and the consciousness of your own virtues, and the honourable position to which they have raised you in the eyes of everything that wears the human shape, will not sustain you, marry that good man, and be happy in his condescension. If this will not do either, die! There are doorways and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair—find one, and take your flight to Heaven!’
I heard a distant foot upon the stairs. I knew it, I was certain. It was his, thank God!
She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out of my sight.
‘But mark!’ she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door to go away, ‘I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds that I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my reach altogether, or drop your pretty mask. This is what I had to say; and what I say, I mean to do!’
The foot upon the stairs came nearer—nearer—passed her as she went down—rushed into the room!
‘Uncle!’
A fearful cry followed the word. I paused a moment, and looking in, saw him supporting her insensible figure in his arms. He gazed for a few seconds in the face; then stooped to kiss it—oh, how tenderly!—and drew a handkerchief before it.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, in a low tremulous voice, when it was covered, ‘I thank my Heav’nly Father as my dream’s come true! I thank Him hearty for having guided of me, in His own ways, to my darling!’
With those words he took her up in his arms; and, with the veiled face lying on his bosom, and addressed towards his own, carried her, motionless and unconscious, down the stairs.
“Sono venuta qui, tu pura fonte di amore,” disse lei, “per vedere, come vi avevo detto all’inizio, com’è veramente una persona come te. Ero curiosa. Ora sono soddisfatta. Voglio anche dirti che dovresti cercare al più presto quella tua ‘casa’, nasconderti tra quelle persone meravigliose che ti stanno aspettando, e le cui cure potranno consolarti quando tutto il tuo denaro sarà finito. Allora potrai credere di nuovo, fidarti di nuovo, e amare di nuovo, capisci? Pensavo che tu fossi solo un giocattolo rotto, ormai inutile; una lustrina senza valore, annerita e gettata via. Ma scoprendo che sei oro vero, una vera signora, un’innocente maltrattata, con un cuore fresco pieno di amore e fiducia, proprio come sembri, e come risulta evidente dalla tua storia, ho qualcos’altro da dirti. Ascoltami bene: farò esattamente ciò che dico. Mi senti, spirito fatato? Quello che dico, lo intendo davvero fare!”
La sua rabbia prese di nuovo il sopravvento per un momento; ma poi passò, come uno spasmo, e la lasciò sorridere.
“Nasconditi,” lo incitò lei, “se non a casa, allora da qualche parte. Lontano dalla mia portata, in una vita oscura. O, meglio ancora, in una morte oscura. Mi chiedo se il tuo amorevole cuore non si spezzerà, visto che non hai trovato modo di farlo calmare. Ho sentito parlare di simili metodi. Credo che possano essere facilmente reperiti.”
Un debole pianto proveniente da Emily interruppe quel momento. Si fermò e lo ascoltò, come se fosse musica.
“Forse sono di una strana natura”, continuò Rosa Dartle; “ma non riesco a respirare liberamente nell’aria che voi respirate. La trovo malsana. Pertanto, la renderò pulita, la purificherò da voi. Se domani sarete ancora qui, farò pubblicare la vostra storia e il vostro carattere sulle scale comuni. Mi è stato detto che in questa casa ci siano donne perbene. È un peccato che una persona come voi debba trovarsi tra loro, nascosta. Se, lasciando questo posto, cercaste rifugio in questa città con qualsiasi altro carattere se non il vostro vero (che potete tranquillamente portare, senza che io vi disturbi), lo stesso trattamento vi verrà riservato, se ne venissi a conoscenza. Avendo l’aiuto di un gentiluomo che poco tempo fa aspirava al vostro favore, sono ottimista al riguardo.”
Non sarebbe mai, mai tornato? Per quanto tempo avrei dovuto sopportare questa situazione? Per quanto ancora potevo resistere? “Oh mio Dio, oh mio Dio!”, esclamò la sventurata Emily con un tono che, avrei pensato, avrebbe potuto commuovere anche il cuore più duro. Ma sul viso di Rosa Dartle non c’era alcun segno di pietà. “Cosa devo fare, cosa devo fare?”
“Che cosa?” rispose l’altro. “Vivi felice nelle tue stesse riflessioni! Consacra la tua esistenza al ricordo della tenerezza di James Steerforth. Lui avrebbe voluto farti sua moglie, non è vero?. Oppure sii grata verso quella persona onesta e meritevole che ti ha accettata come dono suo. O, se nemmeno questi ricordi orgogliosi, la consapevolezza delle tue virtù e la posizione onorevole che ti hanno dato agli occhi di tutti coloro che portano il nome umano non sono sufficienti a sostenerti. Sposa quell’uomo buono e sii felice della sua gentilezza. Se nemmeno questo funziona, muori! Esistono porte e mucchi di polvere pronti per un simile destino, e anche una tale disperazione. Trovali, e vola verso il Cielo!”
Sentii dei passi lontani sulle scale. Lo riconobbi, ne ero certa. Erano i suoi, grazie al cielo!
Mentre lo diceva, si mosse lentamente davanti alla porta e poi scomparve dalla mia vista.
“Ma fai attenzione!” aggiunse lei, lentamente e con severità, aprendo l’altra porta per andarsene. “Sono decisa, per motivi che ho e per gli odi che provo, a cacciarti via, a meno che tu non ti allontani completamente dalla mia portata, o che non ti tolga quella tua bella maschera. Questo è ciò che dovevo dire; e quello che dico, intendo farlo davvero!”
Il piede che si trovava sulle scale si avvicinava sempre di più, sempre di più, le passò accanto mentre lei scendeva, e poi irruppe nella stanza!
“Zio!”
Un grido di terrore seguì quelle parole. Mi fermai per un momento e, guardando all’interno, lo vidi mentre teneva tra le braccia il suo corpo privo di sensi. Rimase a fissarne il viso per qualche secondo; poi si chinò a baciarlo, oh, con quanto affetto! E dopo ci prese un fazzoletto per coprirlo.
“Maestro Davy,” disse lui con una voce bassa e tremante, quando la lettera fu consegnata, “ringrazio il mio Padre Celeste perché il mio sogno si è avverato! Gli sono davvero grato per avermi guidato, a modo suo, verso la mia amata!”
Con quelle parole la prese tra le braccia; con il viso velato appoggiato al suo petto, e rivolto verso di lui, la portò giù per le scale, immobile e priva di sensi.
CHAPTER 51. THE BEGINNING OF A LONGER JOURNEY
It was yet early in the morning of the following day, when, as I was walking in my garden with my aunt (who took little other exercise now, being so much in attendance on my dear Dora), I was told that Mr. Peggotty desired to speak with me. He came into the garden to meet me half-way, on my going towards the gate; and bared his head, as it was always his custom to do when he saw my aunt, for whom he had a high respect. I had been telling her all that had happened overnight. Without saying a word, she walked up with a cordial face, shook hands with him, and patted him on the arm. It was so expressively done, that she had no need to say a word. Mr. Peggotty understood her quite as well as if she had said a thousand.
‘I’ll go in now, Trot,’ said my aunt, ‘and look after Little Blossom, who will be getting up presently.’
‘Not along of my being heer, ma’am, I hope?’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘Unless my wits is gone a bahd’s neezing’—by which Mr. Peggotty meant to say, bird’s-nesting—‘this morning, ‘tis along of me as you’re a-going to quit us?’
‘You have something to say, my good friend,’ returned my aunt, ‘and will do better without me.’
‘By your leave, ma’am,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘I should take it kind, pervising you doen’t mind my clicketten, if you’d bide heer.’
‘Would you?’ said my aunt, with short good-nature. ‘Then I am sure I will!’
So, she drew her arm through Mr. Peggotty’s, and walked with him to a leafy little summer-house there was at the bottom of the garden, where she sat down on a bench, and I beside her. There was a seat for Mr. Peggotty too, but he preferred to stand, leaning his hand on the small rustic table. As he stood, looking at his cap for a little while before beginning to speak, I could not help observing what power and force of character his sinewy hand expressed, and what a good and trusty companion it was to his honest brow and iron-grey hair.
‘I took my dear child away last night,’ Mr. Peggotty began, as he raised his eyes to ours, ‘to my lodging, wheer I have a long time been expecting of her and preparing fur her. It was hours afore she knowed me right; and when she did, she kneeled down at my feet, and kiender said to me, as if it was her prayers, how it all come to be. You may believe me, when I heerd her voice, as I had heerd at home so playful—and see her humbled, as it might be in the dust our Saviour wrote in with his blessed hand—I felt a wownd go to my ‘art, in the midst of all its thankfulness.’
He drew his sleeve across his face, without any pretence of concealing why; and then cleared his voice.
‘It warn’t for long as I felt that; for she was found. I had on’y to think as she was found, and it was gone. I doen’t know why I do so much as mention of it now, I’m sure. I didn’t have it in my mind a minute ago, to say a word about myself; but it come up so nat’ral, that I yielded to it afore I was aweer.’
‘You are a self-denying soul,’ said my aunt, ‘and will have your reward.’
Mr. Peggotty, with the shadows of the leaves playing athwart his face, made a surprised inclination of the head towards my aunt, as an acknowledgement of her good opinion; then took up the thread he had relinquished.
‘When my Em’ly took flight,’ he said, in stern wrath for the moment, ‘from the house wheer she was made a prisoner by that theer spotted snake as Mas’r Davy see,—and his story’s trew, and may GOD confound him!—she took flight in the night. It was a dark night, with a many stars a-shining. She was wild. She ran along the sea beach, believing the old boat was theer; and calling out to us to turn away our faces, for she was a-coming by. She heerd herself a-crying out, like as if it was another person; and cut herself on them sharp-pinted stones and rocks, and felt it no more than if she had been rock herself. Ever so fur she run, and there was fire afore her eyes, and roarings in her ears. Of a sudden—or so she thowt, you unnerstand—the day broke, wet and windy, and she was lying b’low a heap of stone upon the shore, and a woman was a-speaking to her, saying, in the language of that country, what was it as had gone so much amiss?’
He saw everything he related. It passed before him, as he spoke, so vividly, that, in the intensity of his earnestness, he presented what he described to me, with greater distinctness than I can express. I can hardly believe, writing now long afterwards, but that I was actually present in these scenes; they are impressed upon me with such an astonishing air of fidelity.
‘As Em’ly’s eyes—which was heavy—see this woman better,’ Mr. Peggotty went on, ‘she know’d as she was one of them as she had often talked to on the beach. Fur, though she had run (as I have said) ever so fur in the night, she had oftentimes wandered long ways, partly afoot, partly in boats and carriages, and know’d all that country, ‘long the coast, miles and miles. She hadn’t no children of her own, this woman, being a young wife; but she was a-looking to have one afore long. And may my prayers go up to Heaven that ‘twill be a happiness to her, and a comfort, and a honour, all her life! May it love her and be dootiful to her, in her old age; helpful of her at the last; a Angel to her heer, and heerafter!’
‘Amen!’ said my aunt.
‘She had been summat timorous and down,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and had sat, at first, a little way off, at her spinning, or such work as it was, when Em’ly talked to the children. But Em’ly had took notice of her, and had gone and spoke to her; and as the young woman was partial to the children herself, they had soon made friends. Sermuchser, that when Em’ly went that way, she always giv Em’ly flowers. This was her as now asked what it was that had gone so much amiss. Em’ly told her, and she—took her home. She did indeed. She took her home,’ said Mr. Peggotty, covering his face.
CAPITOLO 51. L’inizio di un lungo viaggio
Era ancora presto la mattina del giorno seguente quando, mentre passeggiavo nel mio jardino con mia zia (che ormai praticava pochissima attività fisica, essendo sempre molto impegnata a prendersi cura della mia cara Dora), mi fu detto che il signor Peggotty desiderava parlarmi. Entrò nel jardino per incontrarmi a metà strada, mentre mi dirigevo verso il cancello; e si tolse il cappello, come faceva sempre quando vedeva mia zia, di cui nutriva grande rispetto. Le avevo raccontato tutto ciò che era accaduto durante la notte. Senza dire una parola, lei si avvicinò con un viso cordiale, gli strinse la mano e gli diede una pacca sul braccio. Fu fatto in modo così esplicito che non ebbe bisogno di pronunciare una sola parola. Il signor Peggotty capì perfettamente ciò che voleva dire, proprio come se lei avesse detto mille cose.
“Ora entrerò, Trot,” disse mia zia, “e mi prenderò cura di Little Blossom, che tra poco si alzerà.”
“Non intendo assolutamente andarmene, signora,” disse il signor Peggotty. “A meno che la mia mente non abbia completamente perso il senso. Voglio dire, a meno che non sia diventata del tutto confusa, ”
“Hai qualcosa da dire, mio caro amico,” rispose mia zia, “e probabilmente sarà meglio senza di me.”
“Con il vostro permesso, signora,” rispose il signor Peggotty, “mi sarebbe molto gradito se non vi dispiacesse che io continui a scrivere le mie note, purché voi rimaniate qui.”
“Lo faresti?” disse mia zia, con quella sua breve e gentile natura. “Allora sono sicura che lo farò!”
Così, lei mise il braccio intorno a quello del signor Peggotty e camminò con lui verso una piccola, ombreggiata casa estiva situata in fondo al giardino, dove si sedette su una panchina, e io accanto a lei. C’era anche un posto a sedere per il signor Peggotty, ma lui preferì stare in piedi, appoggiando la mano sul piccolo tavolo rustico. Mentre stava lì, guardandosi il cappello per qualche istante prima di iniziare a parlare, non potei fare a meno di notare quale forza e carattere esprimesse quella sua mano muscolosa, e quanto fosse un compagno affidabile per la sua fronte onesta e i suoi capelli grigi come il ferro.
“Ho portato via la mia cara bambina ieri sera,” cominciò il signor Peggotty alzando lo sguardo verso di noi, “nella mia dimora, dove aspettavo da molto tempo il suo arrivo e mi preparavo ad accoglierla. Ci sono volute ore prima che riconoscesse me; e quando finalmente lo fece, si inginocchiò ai miei piedi e, con voce piena di gratitudine, come se stesse pregando, mi spiegò tutto ciò che era accaduto. Potete credermi: quando sentii la sua voce, così allegra come quella di una bambina a casa, e vidi quanto fosse umile, mi sembrò che il mio cuore si riempisse di gioia, nonostante tutta la mia gratitudine.”
Si coprì il viso con la manica, senza alcuna intenzione di nascondere il motivo; poi schiarì la voce.
Non passò molto che ebbi di nuovo quella sensazione; perché lei fu trovata. Bastava che pensassi al fatto che fosse stata trovata, ed essa scompariva immediatamente. Non so davvero perché ora ne parli così spesso. Sicuramente un minuto fa non avevo affatto intenzione di parlare di me stesso; ma l’idea è venuta fuori in modo così naturale che ho ceduto senza nemmeno rendermene conto.
“Sei un’anima che si nega se stessa,” disse mia zia, “e riceverai la tua ricompensa.”
Il signor Peggotty, con le ombre delle foglie che si muovevano sul suo viso, fece un cenno di sorpresa verso mia zia, come segno di apprezzamento per il suo buon parere; poi riprese il filo del discorso che aveva interrotto.
“Quando mia figlia Em’ly fuggì,” disse, con un’ira intensa in quel momento, “dalla casa dove era stata rinchiusa da quella serpente. La storia di quell’uomo è vera; possa Dio confonderlo! Lei fuggì di notte. Era una notte buia, piena di stelle che brillavano. Era in preda al panico; corse lungo la riva del mare, credendo che quella vecchia barca fosse il suo rifugio. Ci chiamò di distogliere lo sguardo, perché stava arrivando. Sentì se stessa gridare, come se fosse un’altra persona. Si ferì con quelle pietre affilate. Corse ancora, ma davanti ai suoi occhi c’era il fuoco, e rumori terribili nelle sue orecchie. All’improvviso, o almeno così le sembrò, spuntò il giorno: era umido e ventoso. Lei giaceva sotto un mucchio di pietre sulla riva. E una donna le parlava, usando la lingua di quella regione. Le chiedeva cosa fosse andato storto, ”
Vide tutto ciò che stava raccontando. Gli eventi gli passavano davanti agli occhi mentre parlava, con tale vividezza che, nell’intensità della sua sincerità, descriveva ciò che mi raccontava in modo ancora più chiaro di quanto io possa esprimere a parole. Ora, scrivendo molto tempo dopo, fatico a credere che fossi davvero presente in quelle scene; sono impresse nella mia memoria con una fedeltà davvero sorprendente.
“Poiché gli occhi di Em’ly – che erano pesanti – vedevano questa donna più chiaramente,” continuò il signor Peggotty, “lei sapeva di essere una di loro, poiché aveva spesso parlato con loro sulla spiaggia. Anche se aveva corso lontano, di notte, come ho detto, spesso aveva percorso lunghe distanze, a piedi, in barche o in carrozze; conosceva bene tutta quella regione, lungo la costa, per miglia e miglia. Questa donna non aveva figli propri, essendo una giovane sposa; ma sperava di averne presto. E possano le mie preghiere raggiungere il Cielo affinché questo diventi la sua felicità, il suo conforto, e la sua onore per tutta la vita! Possa quell’essere amarla e prendersi cura di lei nella vecchiaia; aiutarla negli ultimi momenti della sua vita, essere un angelo per lei, ora e per sempre, ”
“‘Amen!’ disse mia zia.”
“Era piuttosto timida e triste,” disse il signor Peggotty, “e all’inizio sedeva un po’ in disparte, a filare o a fare qualche altra occupazione del genere, mentre Em’ly parlava con i bambini. Ma Em’ly se n’era accorta e le era andata vicino per parlarle; e poiché anche quella giovane donna aveva una particolare affinità con i bambini, in poco tempo erano diventate amiche. Sai, ogni volta che Em’ly andava da lei, le regalava sempre delle fiori. E ora questa donna le aveva chiesto cosa fosse successo per far sì che tutto andasse così stortamente. Em’ly le ha spiegato, e lei, l’ha portata a casa sua,” disse il signor Peggotty, coprendosi il viso.
He was more affected by this act of kindness, than I had ever seen him affected by anything since the night she went away. My aunt and I did not attempt to disturb him.
‘It was a little cottage, you may suppose,’ he said, presently, ‘but she found space for Em’ly in it,—her husband was away at sea,—and she kep it secret, and prevailed upon such neighbours as she had (they was not many near) to keep it secret too. Em’ly was took bad with fever, and, what is very strange to me is,—maybe ‘tis not so strange to scholars,—the language of that country went out of her head, and she could only speak her own, that no one unnerstood. She recollects, as if she had dreamed it, that she lay there always a-talking her own tongue, always believing as the old boat was round the next pint in the bay, and begging and imploring of ‘em to send theer and tell how she was dying, and bring back a message of forgiveness, if it was on’y a wured. A’most the whole time, she thowt,—now, that him as I made mention on just now was lurking for her unnerneath the winder; now that him as had brought her to this was in the room,—and cried to the good young woman not to give her up, and know’d, at the same time, that she couldn’t unnerstand, and dreaded that she must be took away. Likewise the fire was afore her eyes, and the roarings in her ears; and theer was no today, nor yesterday, nor yet tomorrow; but everything in her life as ever had been, or as ever could be, and everything as never had been, and as never could be, was a crowding on her all at once, and nothing clear nor welcome, and yet she sang and laughed about it! How long this lasted, I doen’t know; but then theer come a sleep; and in that sleep, from being a many times stronger than her own self, she fell into the weakness of the littlest child.’
Here he stopped, as if for relief from the terrors of his own description. After being silent for a few moments, he pursued his story.
‘It was a pleasant arternoon when she awoke; and so quiet, that there warn’t a sound but the rippling of that blue sea without a tide, upon the shore. It was her belief, at first, that she was at home upon a Sunday morning; but the vine leaves as she see at the winder, and the hills beyond, warn’t home, and contradicted of her. Then, come in her friend to watch alongside of her bed; and then she know’d as the old boat warn’t round that next pint in the bay no more, but was fur off; and know’d where she was, and why; and broke out a-crying on that good young woman’s bosom, wheer I hope her baby is a-lying now, a-cheering of her with its pretty eyes!’
He could not speak of this good friend of Emily’s without a flow of tears. It was in vain to try. He broke down again, endeavouring to bless her!
‘That done my Em’ly good,’ he resumed, after such emotion as I could not behold without sharing in; and as to my aunt, she wept with all her heart; ‘that done Em’ly good, and she begun to mend. But, the language of that country was quite gone from her, and she was forced to make signs. So she went on, getting better from day to day, slow, but sure, and trying to learn the names of common things—names as she seemed never to have heerd in all her life—till one evening come, when she was a-setting at her window, looking at a little girl at play upon the beach. And of a sudden this child held out her hand, and said, what would be in English, “Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!”—for you are to unnerstand that they used at first to call her “Pretty lady”, as the general way in that country is, and that she had taught ‘em to call her “Fisherman’s daughter” instead. The child says of a sudden, “Fisherman’s daughter, here’s a shell!” Then Em’ly unnerstands her; and she answers, bursting out a-crying; and it all comes back!
‘When Em’ly got strong again,’ said Mr. Peggotty, after another short interval of silence, ‘she cast about to leave that good young creetur, and get to her own country. The husband was come home, then; and the two together put her aboard a small trader bound to Leghorn, and from that to France. She had a little money, but it was less than little as they would take for all they done. I’m a’most glad on it, though they was so poor! What they done, is laid up wheer neither moth or rust doth corrupt, and wheer thieves do not break through nor steal. Mas’r Davy, it’ll outlast all the treasure in the wureld.
‘Em’ly got to France, and took service to wait on travelling ladies at a inn in the port. Theer, theer come, one day, that snake. —Let him never come nigh me. I doen’t know what hurt I might do him!—Soon as she see him, without him seeing her, all her fear and wildness returned upon her, and she fled afore the very breath he draw’d. She come to England, and was set ashore at Dover.
‘I doen’t know,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘for sure, when her ‘art begun to fail her; but all the way to England she had thowt to come to her dear home. Soon as she got to England she turned her face tow’rds it. But, fear of not being forgiv, fear of being pinted at, fear of some of us being dead along of her, fear of many things, turned her from it, kiender by force, upon the road: “Uncle, uncle,” she says to me, “the fear of not being worthy to do what my torn and bleeding breast so longed to do, was the most fright’ning fear of all! I turned back, when my ‘art was full of prayers that I might crawl to the old door-step, in the night, kiss it, lay my wicked face upon it, and theer be found dead in the morning.”
‘She come,’ said Mr. Peggotty, dropping his voice to an awe-stricken whisper, ‘to London. She—as had never seen it in her life—alone—without a penny—young—so pretty—come to London. A’most the moment as she lighted heer, all so desolate, she found (as she believed) a friend; a decent woman as spoke to her about the needle-work as she had been brought up to do, about finding plenty of it fur her, about a lodging fur the night, and making secret inquiration concerning of me and all at home, tomorrow. When my child,’ he said aloud, and with an energy of gratitude that shook him from head to foot, ‘stood upon the brink of more than I can say or think on—Martha, trew to her promise, saved her.’
Fu più colpito da questo atto di gentilezza di quanto lo avessi mai visto essere colpito da qualcosa, da quella notte in cui lei se ne andò. Mia zia ed io non cercammo mai di disturbarlo.
“Era una piccola capanna, potete immaginare,” disse dopo un po’, “ma lei trovò spazio per Em’ly al suo interno. Suo marito era lontano in mare. Lei tenne tutto segreto e riuscì a convincere anche i pochi vicini che aveva a mantenere il silenzio. Em’ly si ammalò gravemente di febbre. E, cosa molto strana per me, forse non così strana per gli studiosi, le lingue di quel paese le uscirono dalla mente; riusciva a parlare solo la sua lingua madre, che nessuno capiva. Ricorda, come se fosse stato un sogno, di aver sempre parlato nella sua lingua madre, credendo sempre che quella vecchia barca si trovasse poco lontano nella baia. Pregava e supplicava che qualcuno andasse a dire quanto stesse male, e che portasse indietro un messaggio di perdono, anche solo uno sincero. Per la maggior parte del tempo pensava, ora che quell’uomo di cui ho parlato poco fa l’aspettasse nascosto sotto il tetto; ora che colui che l’aveva portata lì fosse nella stanza. Piangeva e supplicava quella brava giovane donna di non abbandonarla. Ma allo stesso tempo sapeva di non riuscire a comunicare con lei, e temeva di essere portata via. C’era il fuoco davanti ai suoi occhi, rumori assordanti nelle sue orecchie. Non esistevano né oggi né ieri né domani. Tutto ciò che c’era nella sua vita, tutto ciò che poteva esserci, e anche tutto ciò che non c’era mai stato, le si riversava addosso contemporaneamente. Niente era chiaro o gradito. Eppure lei cantava e rideva! Non so quanto tempo durò questa condizione. Poi arrivò il sonno. E in quel sonno, diventando molto più debole di quanto fosse normalmente, tornò alla fragilità di una piccola bambina.”
Si fermò lì, come se volesse riposarsi dal terrore descritto nelle sue stesse parole. Dopo alcuni momenti di silenzio, continuò la sua storia.
Era una piacevole pomeriggio quando si svegliò; tutto era così silenzioso che non si udiva alcun suono, se non il fruscio di quel mare blu senza onde sulla riva. All’inizio pensò di essere a casa in una mattina di domenica; ma le foglie di vite che vedeva fuori dalla finestra, e le colline in lontananza, le dimostrarono che non era a casa. Poi arrivò la sua amica a sedersi accanto al suo letto; allora capì che la vecchia barca non era più nel porto, ma se n’era andata lontano. E finalmente comprese dove si trovava e perché. E scoppiò in lacrime tra le braccia di quella buona giovane donna. Dove, spero, ora il suo bambino giace, felice e sereno, con i suoi bellissimi occhi.
Non riusciva a parlare di questo buon amico di Emily senza che gli scendessero le lacrime. Era inutile provare; si ritrovò di nuovo in lacrime, mentre cercava disperatamente di benedirla.
“Questo le ha fatto molto bene, a mia sorella Em’ly,” continuò lui, dopo un tale slancio emotivo che non potevo assistervi senza condividerlo anch’io; quanto a mia zia, pianse con tutto il cuore: “Questo le ha fatto davvero bene, e lei ha iniziato a migliorare. Ma la lingua di quel paese le era completamente sconosciuta, quindi fu costretta a comunicare tramite gesti. Così andò avanti, migliorando giorno dopo giorno, lentamente ma con sicurezza, cercando di imparare i nomi delle cose comuni, nomi che, a quanto pare, non aveva mai sentito in tutta la sua vita. Fino a una sera, quando stava seduta alla finestra a guardare una bambina che giocava sulla spiaggia. All’improvviso quella bambina le tese la mano e disse, in inglese: ‘Figlia del pescatore, ecco una conchiglia!’. Bisogna capire che all’inizio la chiamavano ‘Signorina bella’, come è consuetudine in quel paese, ma lei aveva insegnato loro a chiamarla ‘Figlia del pescatore’. Allora Em’ly capì subito; rispose piangendo di gioia. E tutto tornò finalmente al suo posto!”
“Quando Em’ly tornò in forza,” disse il signor Peggotty, dopo un altro breve intervallo di silenzio, “decise di lasciare quel bravo giovane e tornare nel suo paese natale. A quel tempo il marito era già tornato a casa; insieme la misero su una piccola nave diretta a Livorno, da lì in Francia. Aveva un po’ di soldi, ma non abbastanza per pagare tutto ciò che avevano fatto per lei. Sono davvero felice per questo, anche se erano così poveri! Quello che hanno fatto è stato conservato in un luogo dove né i tarli né la ruggine possono rovinarlo, e dove nemmeno i ladri possono entrare a rubare. Signor Davy, sopravviverà a tutti i tesori del mondo.”
‘Em’ly arrivò in Francia e iniziò a lavorare in un ostello del porto, servendo le signore che vi soggiornavano. Un giorno, arrivo quel serpente. – Che non si avvicini mai a me. Non so cosa potrei fargli! – Appena lo vide, senza che lui se ne accorgesse, tutta la sua paura e la sua follia tornarono ad assalirla; fuggì all’istante, davanti al solo respiro che lui emetteva. Tornò in Inghilterra e sbarcò a Dover.
“Non lo so con certezza,” disse il signor Peggotty, “perché esattamente quando la sua arte iniziò a fallirle; ma per tutto il viaggio verso l’Inghilterra aveva sempre pensato di tornare nella sua cara casa. Appena arrivata in Inghilterra, si diresse subito verso di essa. Ma la paura di non essere perdonata, la paura di essere criticata, la paura che alcuni di noi potessero essere morti mentre lei era via, tante paure la spinsero, contro la sua volontà, a prendere la strada: ‘Zio, zio,’ mi disse, ‘la paura di non essere degna di fare ciò che il mio cuore desiderava ardentemente era la paura più terribile di tutte. Così sono tornata indietro; mentre pregavo disperatamente affinché mi fosse permesso di strisciare fino alla vecchia soglia, di baciarla nella notte, di appoggiarvi il mio viso peccaminoso, e di essere trovata morta l’indomani.’”
“È venuta,” disse il signor Peggotty, abbassando la voce a un sussurro pieno di ammirazione, “a Londra. Lei, che non l’aveva mai vista in vita sua, da sola, senza un penny, giovane e così bella, è venuta a Londra. Appena arrivata, in una città così desolata, ha trovato (come credeva) un’amica: una donna perbene che le parlò di lavori a maglia, come lei era abituata a fare, le promise che avrebbe trovato molto lavoro per lei, le trovò un alloggio per la notte, e il giorno dopo iniziò a chiedere informazioni su di me e su tutta la mia famiglia a casa. Quando mio figlio, ” disse ad alta voce, con un’emozione di gratitudine che lo scosse da capo a piedi, “si trovò di fronte a qualcosa di così grande che non riesco nemmeno a esprimerlo. Martha, mantenendo la sua promessa, l’ha salvato.”
I could not repress a cry of joy.
‘Mas’r Davy!’ said he, gripping my hand in that strong hand of his, ‘it was you as first made mention of her to me. I thankee, sir! She was arnest. She had know’d of her bitter knowledge wheer to watch and what to do. She had done it. And the Lord was above all! She come, white and hurried, upon Em’ly in her sleep. She says to her, “Rise up from worse than death, and come with me!” Them belonging to the house would have stopped her, but they might as soon have stopped the sea. “Stand away from me,” she says, “I am a ghost that calls her from beside her open grave!” She told Em’ly she had seen me, and know’d I loved her, and forgive her. She wrapped her, hasty, in her clothes. She took her, faint and trembling, on her arm. She heeded no more what they said, than if she had had no ears. She walked among ‘em with my child, minding only her; and brought her safe out, in the dead of the night, from that black pit of ruin!
‘She attended on Em’ly,’ said Mr. Peggotty, who had released my hand, and put his own hand on his heaving chest; ‘she attended to my Em’ly, lying wearied out, and wandering betwixt whiles, till late next day. Then she went in search of me; then in search of you, Mas’r Davy. She didn’t tell Em’ly what she come out fur, lest her ‘art should fail, and she should think of hiding of herself. How the cruel lady know’d of her being theer, I can’t say. Whether him as I have spoke so much of, chanced to see ‘em going theer, or whether (which is most like, to my thinking) he had heerd it from the woman, I doen’t greatly ask myself. My niece is found.
‘All night long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘we have been together, Em’ly and me. ‘Tis little (considering the time) as she has said, in wureds, through them broken-hearted tears; ‘tis less as I have seen of her dear face, as grow’d into a woman’s at my hearth. But, all night long, her arms has been about my neck; and her head has laid heer; and we knows full well, as we can put our trust in one another, ever more.’
He ceased to speak, and his hand upon the table rested there in perfect repose, with a resolution in it that might have conquered lions.
‘It was a gleam of light upon me, Trot,’ said my aunt, drying her eyes, ‘when I formed the resolution of being godmother to your sister Betsey Trotwood, who disappointed me; but, next to that, hardly anything would have given me greater pleasure, than to be godmother to that good young creature’s baby!’
Mr. Peggotty nodded his understanding of my aunt’s feelings, but could not trust himself with any verbal reference to the subject of her commendation. We all remained silent, and occupied with our own reflections (my aunt drying her eyes, and now sobbing convulsively, and now laughing and calling herself a fool); until I spoke.
‘You have quite made up your mind,’ said I to Mr. Peggotty, ‘as to the future, good friend? I need scarcely ask you.’
‘Quite, Mas’r Davy,’ he returned; ‘and told Em’ly. Theer’s mighty countries, fur from heer. Our future life lays over the sea.’
‘They will emigrate together, aunt,’ said I.
‘Yes!’ said Mr. Peggotty, with a hopeful smile. ‘No one can’t reproach my darling in Australia. We will begin a new life over theer!’
I asked him if he yet proposed to himself any time for going away.
‘I was down at the Docks early this morning, sir,’ he returned, ‘to get information concerning of them ships. In about six weeks or two months from now, there’ll be one sailing—I see her this morning—went aboard—and we shall take our passage in her.’
‘Quite alone?’ I asked.
‘Aye, Mas’r Davy!’ he returned. ‘My sister, you see, she’s that fond of you and yourn, and that accustomed to think on’y of her own country, that it wouldn’t be hardly fair to let her go. Besides which, theer’s one she has in charge, Mas’r Davy, as doen’t ought to be forgot.’
‘Poor Ham!’ said I.
‘My good sister takes care of his house, you see, ma’am, and he takes kindly to her,’ Mr. Peggotty explained for my aunt’s better information. ‘He’ll set and talk to her, with a calm spirit, wen it’s like he couldn’t bring himself to open his lips to another. Poor fellow!’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘theer’s not so much left him, that he could spare the little as he has!’
‘And Mrs. Gummidge?’ said I.
‘Well, I’ve had a mort of consideration, I do tell you,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, with a perplexed look which gradually cleared as he went on, ‘concerning of Missis Gummidge. You see, wen Missis Gummidge falls a-thinking of the old ‘un, she an’t what you may call good company. Betwixt you and me, Mas’r Davy—and you, ma’am—wen Mrs. Gummidge takes to wimicking,’—our old country word for crying,—‘she’s liable to be considered to be, by them as didn’t know the old ‘un, peevish-like. Now I DID know the old ‘un,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and I know’d his merits, so I unnerstan’ her; but ‘tan’t entirely so, you see, with others—nat’rally can’t be!’
My aunt and I both acquiesced.
‘Wheerby,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘my sister might—I doen’t say she would, but might—find Missis Gummidge give her a leetle trouble now-and-again. Theerfur ‘tan’t my intentions to moor Missis Gummidge ‘long with them, but to find a Beein’ fur her wheer she can fisherate for herself.’ (A Beein’ signifies, in that dialect, a home, and to fisherate is to provide.) ‘Fur which purpose,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘I means to make her a ‘lowance afore I go, as’ll leave her pretty comfort’ble. She’s the faithfullest of creeturs. ‘Tan’t to be expected, of course, at her time of life, and being lone and lorn, as the good old Mawther is to be knocked about aboardship, and in the woods and wilds of a new and fur-away country. So that’s what I’m a-going to do with her.’
He forgot nobody. He thought of everybody’s claims and strivings, but his own.
‘Em’ly,’ he continued, ‘will keep along with me—poor child, she’s sore in need of peace and rest!—until such time as we goes upon our voyage. She’ll work at them clothes, as must be made; and I hope her troubles will begin to seem longer ago than they was, wen she finds herself once more by her rough but loving uncle.’
Non riuscii a trattenere un grido di gioia.
“Maestro Davy!” disse lui, stringendomi la mano con quella sua forte presa,
“siete stato voi il primo a parlarmi di lei. Vi ringrazio, signore! Era sincera. Sapeva esattamente dove e come agire. L’ha fatto. E il Signore era al di sopra di tutto! È arrivata, pallida e affrettata, mentre Em’ly dormiva. Le ha detto: ‘Alzati da qualcosa di peggiore della morte, e vieni con me!’ Coloro che appartenevano a quella casa avrebbero potuto fermarla, ma sarebbe stato come cercare di fermare il mare. ‘Allontanatevi da me,’ ha detto, ‘sono un fantasma che la chiama dal suo tumulo aperto!’ Ha raccontato a Em’ly di avermi visto, di sapere che l’amavo e che le perdonavo. L’ha avvolta rapidamente nei suoi vestiti, l’ha presa in braccio, esausta e tremante. Non ha più ascoltato nulla di ciò che dicevano, come se non avesse orecchie. È passata tra loro con mio figlio, pensando solo a lei. E l’ha portata in salvo, nel cuore della notte, fuori da quella oscura tomba di rovina!”
“Si è presa cura di Em’ly,” disse il signor Peggotty, che aveva lasciato andare la mia mano e si era appoggiato una mano sul petto che si alzava e si abbassava; “si è presa cura della mia povera Em’ly, che giaceva esausta e confusa, fino a tarda notte. Poi è andata a cercarmi; poi è andata a cercarti, signor Davy. Non ha detto a Em’ly il motivo per cui era uscita, per non farle perdere le forze e per evitare che pensasse di nascondersi. Come quella crudele donna abbia saputo che si trovava lì, non lo so proprio. Forse qualcuno che ho menzionato tante volte l’ha vista andarci, oppure (il che mi sembra più probabile) ne ha sentito parlare da quella donna. Non me lo chiedo nemmeno troppo. Mia nipote è stata trovata.”
‘Per tutta la notte’, disse il signor Peggotty, ‘siamo stati insieme, Em’ly e io. È poco (considerando il tempo trascorso), come lei ha detto, ciò che abbiamo vissuto insieme, tra lacrime di dolore; è anche raro che abbia potuto vedere di nuovo il suo caro viso, ormai trasformatosi in quello di una donna, accanto al mio focolare. Ma per tutta la notte’, le sue braccia sono state intorno al mio collo; la sua testa è stata appoggiata contro la mia; e sappiamo molto bene, ora che possiamo fidarci l’uno dell’altro, quanto siamo legati.’
Smise di parlare; la sua mano, posata sul tavolo, rimase immobile, esprimendo una determinazione tale da poter sconfiggere anche i leoni.
“È stato come un raggio di luce per me, Trot,” disse mia zia asciugandosi gli occhi, “quando ho preso la decisione di fare da madrina a tua sorella Betsey Trotwood, che mi ha deluso; ma, dopo tutto, nulla mi avrebbe dato più gioia che essere la madrina del bambino di quella brava giovane donna!”
Il signor Peggotty annuì, mostrando di comprendere i sentimenti di mia zia, ma non riusciva a pronunciare una parola al riguardo. Rimanemmo tutti in silenzio, immersi nei nostri pensieri: mia zia si asciugava gli occhi, a tratti singhiozzava convulsivamente, altre volte rideva e si definiva una stupida; fino a quando non parlai io.
“Avete già preso una decisione riguardo al futuro, caro amico,” dissi a Mr. Peggotty. “Non c’è quasi bisogno di chiedervelo.”
“Certamente, signor Davy,” rispose; “e l’ho detto anche a Emily. Ci sono grandi paesi, molto lontani da qui. La nostra futura vita si trova oltre il mare.”
“Emigreranno insieme, zia,” dissi io.
“Sì!” disse il signor Peggotty con un sorriso pieno di speranza. “Nessuno potrà rimproverare la mia cara in Australia. Lì inizieremo una nuova vita!”
Gli ho chiesto se avesse già deciso, in qualche momento, di andarsene.
“Stamattina presto ero ai Docks, signore,” rispose, “per raccogliere informazioni su quei velivoli. Tra circa sei settimane o due mesi ne partirà uno. L’ho visto stamattina stesso mentre le persone salivano a bordo. E noi prenderemo il nostro posto a bordo di quello.”
“Del tutto solo?” chiesi.
“Sì, signor Davy!” rispose lui. “Vede, mia sorella vi tiene molto in considerazione e è talmente abituata a pensare solo al suo paese d’origine, che non sarebbe affatto giusto lasciarla andare. Inoltre, c’è qualcun altro di cui si deve prendersi cura, signor Davy, qualcuno che non dovrebbe essere dimenticato.”
“Povero Ham!”, dissi io.
“Mia cara sorella si occupa della sua casa, capisce signora, e lui la tratta con grande gentilezza,” spiegò il signor Peggotty per fornire maggiori dettagli a mia zia. “Si siede a parlare con lei con calma, anche se sembrerebbe che non riesca nemmeno a rivolgere parola ad altre persone. Povero ragazzo!” disse il signor Peggotty scuotendo la testa. “Gli è rimasto così poco, che non può permettersi nemmeno di darle quel poco che ha, ”
“E la signora Gummidge?” dissi io.
“Beh,” rispose il signor Peggotty con un’espressione perplessa che gradualmente si schiarì man mano che continuava a parlare, “ho riflettuto molto riguardo alla signora Gummidge. Vede, quando la signora Gummidge inizia a pensare al vecchio, beh, non è certo una compagnia piacevole. Tra me e voi, signor Davy, e anche voi, signora, quando la signora Gummidge si mette a piangere, ” – il nostro vecchio termine rurale per “piangere” – “è facile che venga considerata, da chi non conosceva il vecchio, una persona irritabile. Ora, io conoscevo bene il vecchio,” aggiunse il signor Peggotty, “e conoscevo anche i suoi meriti, quindi la capivo; ma per gli altri, beh, naturalmente è diverso!”
Sia mia zia che io acconsentimmo entrambe.
“Wheerby,” disse il signor Peggotty, “mia sorella potrebbe. Non dico che lo farebbe, ma potrebbe, trovare che la signora Gummidge le causi qualche piccolo problema di tanto in tanto. Non è certo mia intenzione trattenere a lungo la signora Gummidge con loro, ma trovarle un posto dove possa provvedersi da sola.” (“Beein’”, in quel dialetto, significa “casa”; “fisherate” vuol dire “procurarsi il necessario”). “A tale scopo,” continuò il signor Peggotty, “intendo darle una piccola somma di denaro prima di partire, così da lasciarla in condizioni abbastanza comode. È davvero la creatura più fedele che esista. Ma, naturalmente, non ci si può aspettare molto da lei, alla sua età, e essendo sola e senza famiglia, proprio come quella buona vecchia madre che ora è costretta a vagabondare su navi, nei boschi e nelle lande lontane di un paese straniero. Ecco quindi cosa intendo fare per lei.”
Non dimenticò nessuno. Pensò alle richieste e ai desideri di tutti, tranne i propri.
“‘Em’ly”, continuò, “resterà con me, povera bambina, ha davvero bisogno di pace e riposo, fino al momento in cui partiremo per il nostro viaggio. Lavorerà a cucire i vestiti che ci serviranno; e spero che i suoi problemi comincino ad apparirle come qualcosa che è accaduto molto tempo fa, quando si troverà di nuovo con suo zio, rude ma amorevole.”
My aunt nodded confirmation of this hope, and imparted great satisfaction to Mr. Peggotty.
‘Theer’s one thing furder, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, putting his hand in his breast-pocket, and gravely taking out the little paper bundle I had seen before, which he unrolled on the table. ‘Theer’s these here banknotes—fifty pound, and ten. To them I wish to add the money as she come away with. I’ve asked her about that (but not saying why), and have added of it up. I an’t a scholar. Would you be so kind as see how ‘tis?’
He handed me, apologetically for his scholarship, a piece of paper, and observed me while I looked it over. It was quite right.
‘Thankee, sir,’ he said, taking it back. ‘This money, if you doen’t see objections, Mas’r Davy, I shall put up jest afore I go, in a cover directed to him; and put that up in another, directed to his mother. I shall tell her, in no more wureds than I speak to you, what it’s the price on; and that I’m gone, and past receiving of it back.’
I told him that I thought it would be right to do so—that I was thoroughly convinced it would be, since he felt it to be right.
‘I said that theer was on’y one thing furder,’ he proceeded with a grave smile, when he had made up his little bundle again, and put it in his pocket; ‘but theer was two. I warn’t sure in my mind, wen I come out this morning, as I could go and break to Ham, of my own self, what had so thankfully happened. So I writ a letter while I was out, and put it in the post-office, telling of ‘em how all was as ‘tis; and that I should come down tomorrow to unload my mind of what little needs a-doing of down theer, and, most-like, take my farewell leave of Yarmouth.’
‘And do you wish me to go with you?’ said I, seeing that he left something unsaid.
‘If you could do me that kind favour, Mas’r Davy,’ he replied. ‘I know the sight on you would cheer ‘em up a bit.’
My little Dora being in good spirits, and very desirous that I should go—as I found on talking it over with her—I readily pledged myself to accompany him in accordance with his wish. Next morning, consequently, we were on the Yarmouth coach, and again travelling over the old ground.
As we passed along the familiar street at night—Mr. Peggotty, in despite of all my remonstrances, carrying my bag—I glanced into Omer and Joram’s shop, and saw my old friend Mr. Omer there, smoking his pipe. I felt reluctant to be present, when Mr. Peggotty first met his sister and Ham; and made Mr. Omer my excuse for lingering behind.
‘How is Mr. Omer, after this long time?’ said I, going in.
He fanned away the smoke of his pipe, that he might get a better view of me, and soon recognized me with great delight.
‘I should get up, sir, to acknowledge such an honour as this visit,’ said he, ‘only my limbs are rather out of sorts, and I am wheeled about. With the exception of my limbs and my breath, howsoever, I am as hearty as a man can be, I’m thankful to say.’
I congratulated him on his contented looks and his good spirits, and saw, now, that his easy-chair went on wheels.
‘It’s an ingenious thing, ain’t it?’ he inquired, following the direction of my glance, and polishing the elbow with his arm. ‘It runs as light as a feather, and tracks as true as a mail-coach. Bless you, my little Minnie—my grand-daughter you know, Minnie’s child—puts her little strength against the back, gives it a shove, and away we go, as clever and merry as ever you see anything! And I tell you what—it’s a most uncommon chair to smoke a pipe in.’
I never saw such a good old fellow to make the best of a thing, and find out the enjoyment of it, as Mr. Omer. He was as radiant, as if his chair, his asthma, and the failure of his limbs, were the various branches of a great invention for enhancing the luxury of a pipe.
‘I see more of the world, I can assure you,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘in this chair, than ever I see out of it. You’d be surprised at the number of people that looks in of a day to have a chat. You really would! There’s twice as much in the newspaper, since I’ve taken to this chair, as there used to be. As to general reading, dear me, what a lot of it I do get through! That’s what I feel so strong, you know! If it had been my eyes, what should I have done? If it had been my ears, what should I have done? Being my limbs, what does it signify? Why, my limbs only made my breath shorter when I used ‘em. And now, if I want to go out into the street or down to the sands, I’ve only got to call Dick, Joram’s youngest ‘prentice, and away I go in my own carriage, like the Lord Mayor of London.’
He half suffocated himself with laughing here.
‘Lord bless you!’ said Mr. Omer, resuming his pipe, ‘a man must take the fat with the lean; that’s what he must make up his mind to, in this life. Joram does a fine business. Ex-cellent business!’
‘I am very glad to hear it,’ said I.
‘I knew you would be,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘And Joram and Minnie are like Valentines. What more can a man expect? What’s his limbs to that!’
His supreme contempt for his own limbs, as he sat smoking, was one of the pleasantest oddities I have ever encountered.
‘And since I’ve took to general reading, you’ve took to general writing, eh, sir?’ said Mr. Omer, surveying me admiringly. ‘What a lovely work that was of yours! What expressions in it! I read it every word—every word. And as to feeling sleepy! Not at all!’
I laughingly expressed my satisfaction, but I must confess that I thought this association of ideas significant.
‘I give you my word and honour, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘that when I lay that book upon the table, and look at it outside; compact in three separate and indiwidual wollumes—one, two, three; I am as proud as Punch to think that I once had the honour of being connected with your family. And dear me, it’s a long time ago, now, ain’t it? Over at Blunderstone. With a pretty little party laid along with the other party. And you quite a small party then, yourself. Dear, dear!’
Mia zia annuì in segno di conferma per questa >speranza, il che procurò grande soddisfazione al signor Peggotty.
“C’è ancora una cosa, signor Davy,” disse lui, mettendo la mano nella tasca del petto e tirando fuori con serietà quel piccolo pacchetto di carta che avevo già visto prima; lo aprì sul tavolo. “Qui ci sono queste banconote: cinquanta sterline e dieci sterline. Vorrei aggiungere anche i soldi che lei porterà via con sé. Gliel’ho chiesto (senza dire il motivo) e ho fatto i conti. Non sono un esperto. Le dispiacerebbe dare un’occhiata?”
Mi porse, scusandosi per la sua scarsa cultura, un pezzo di carta e mi osservò mentre lo leggevo. Era tutto corretto.
“Grazie, signore,” disse, riprendendolo. “Questi soldi, se non avete obiezioni, signor Davy, li investirò prima di partire, in un conto intestato a lui; e ne metterò un altro, intestato a sua madre. Le dirò, esattamente come vi sto dicendo a voi, quale è il prezzo richiesto; e che me ne sono andato, senza più possibilità di riceverli indietro.”
Gli dissi che pensavo fosse giusto farlo; ero completamente convinta che lo fosse, visto che anche lui riteneva che lo fosse.
“Dissi che c’era solo una cosa in più,” proseguì con un sorriso serio, dopo aver di nuovo preparato il suo piccolo fagottino e messolo in tasca; “ma in realtà ce n’erano due. Questa mattina, uscendo, non ero sicuro se dovesse dirlo a Ham di mia iniziativa. Così ho scritto una lettera e l’ho spedita, raccontandogli tutto come stavano le cose; verrò domani per parlare delle piccole faccende da sistemare laggiù, e probabilmente per salutare definitivamente Yarmouth.”
“E vuoi che venga con te?” dissi, vedendo che c’era qualcosa che non aveva detto.
“Se poteste farmi questo favore, signor Davy,” rispose lui. “So che vedere voi li rallegrerebbe un po’.”
La mia piccola Dora era di buon umore e desiderava molto che io andassi; dopo averne parlato con lei, accettai volentieri di accompagnarla secondo il suo desiderio. Il giorno seguente, quindi, salimmo sul treno per Yarmouth e ripartimmo ancora una volta lungo quei vecchi luoghi.
Mentre percorrevamo quella strada familiare di notte – il signor Peggotty, nonostante tutte le mie proteste, portava la mia borsa – gettai un’occhiata nel negozio di Omer e Joram e vidi lì il mio vecchio amico, il signor Omer, che fumava la sua pipa. Ero riluttante ad essere presente quando il signor Peggotty incontrò per la prima volta sua sorella e Ham; quindi utilizzai il signor Omer come scusa per trattenermi indietro.
“Come sta il signor Omer, dopo tutto questo tempo?” dissi entrando.
Scosse via il fumo della sua pipa per potermi vedere meglio, e presto mi riconobbe con grande gioia.
“Dovrei alzarmi, signore, per ringraziare per un tale ‘onore come questa visita,” disse, “ma le mie membra non sono proprio in ottima forma e devo muovermi su una sedia a rotelle. A parte le membre e il respiro, posso dire di essere in perfette condizioni fisiche, per fortuna.”
Gli feci i complimenti per il suo aspetto soddisfatto e il suo buon umore, e notai che la sua poltrona da riposo aveva le ruote.
“È davvero un’invenzione ingegnosa, non è vero?”, chiese, seguendo la direzione del mio sguardo e pulendosi il gomito con il braccio. “Si muove leggera come una piuma e segue traiettorie precise come quelle di una carrozza postale. Benedetta tu, mia piccola Minnie, sai, è la nipote di Minnie. Lei applica tutta la sua forza sullo schienale, dà una spinta e via siamo, veloci e divertenti come sempre! E ti dico una cosa: è davvero una sedia insolita per fumare la pipa.”
Non ho mai visto un uomo così gentile e saggio nel sfruttare al meglio le cose e nel trovare il piacere che esse possono offrire, come il signor Omer. Era così radioso, come se la sua sedia a rotelle, l’asma e l’inabilità dei suoi arti fossero in realtà i vari elementi di una grande invenzione finalizzata ad aumentare il piacere di fumare la pipa.
“Vi assicuro che, da seduto su questa sedia, vedo più del mondo di quanto ne abbia mai visto in piedi”, disse il signor Omer. “Sareste sorpresi dal numero di persone che vengono a chiacchierare con me ogni giorno. Ne leggo davvero tantissimo sui giornali, da quando ho iniziato a usare questa sedia. Per quanto riguarda la lettura in generale, beh, ne faccio davvero molta! È per questo che mi sento così in forza. Se fossero stati i miei occhi o le mie orecchie ad avere problemi, cosa avrei potuto fare? E se fossero state le mie membra a non funzionare, beh, quelle facevano solo sì che il mio respiro diventasse più affannoso quando le utilizzavo. Ora, invece, se voglio uscire in strada o andare sulle spiagge, basta che chiami Dick, il più giovane apprendista di Joram, e via sono, nella mia stessa carrozza, come il sindaco di Londra!”
Si è quasi soffocato dalle risate qui.
“Che il Signore ti benedica!”, disse il signor Omer, riprendendo a fumare la sua pipa, “un uomo deve accettare sia il buono che il cattivo; è questo che deve decidere di fare in questa vita. Joram conduce un ottimo affare. Un affare davvero eccellente!”
“Sono molto felice di saperlo,” dissi.
“Sapevo che saresti venuto,” disse il signor Omer. “E Joram e Minnie sono come dei regali di San Valentino. Cosa si può ancora desiderare da una persona del genere? I suoi arti, in confronto, non contano nulla!”
Il suo supremo disprezzo per le proprie membra, mentre sedeva a fumare, era una delle stranezze più piacevoli che abbia mai incontrato.
“E poiché io ho preso l’abitudine di leggere molto, anche voi avete preso l’abitudine di scrivere molto, eh, signore?” disse il signor Omer, guardandomi con ammirazione. “Che bell’opera è stata la vostra! Che espressioni meravigliose contiene. L’ho letta parola per parola. E riguardo al sonno. Affatto!”
Risi, esprimendo la mia soddisfazione, ma devo ammettere che ritenni questa associazione di idee piuttosto significativa.
“Vi do la mia parola e il mio .onore, signore,” disse il signor Omer, “che quando metterò quel libro sul tavolo e lo guarderò dall’esterno, composto in tre volumi separati e distinti – uno, due, tre – sono altrettanto orgoglioso di aver avuto l’onore di essere legato alla vostra famiglia quanto lo è Punch. E, mio Dio, è passato davvero molto tempo, vero? A Blunderstone. In compagnia di un piccolo gruppo di persone. E voi all’epoca eravate ancora molto giovane. Caro, caro, ”
I changed the subject by referring to Emily. After assuring him that I did not forget how interested he had always been in her, and how kindly he had always treated her, I gave him a general account of her restoration to her uncle by the aid of Martha; which I knew would please the old man. He listened with the utmost attention, and said, feelingly, when I had done:
‘I am rejoiced at it, sir! It’s the best news I have heard for many a day. Dear, dear, dear! And what’s going to be undertook for that unfortunate young woman, Martha, now?’
‘You touch a point that my thoughts have been dwelling on since yesterday,’ said I, ‘but on which I can give you no information yet, Mr. Omer. Mr. Peggotty has not alluded to it, and I have a delicacy in doing so. I am sure he has not forgotten it. He forgets nothing that is disinterested and good.’
‘Because you know,’ said Mr. Omer, taking himself up, where he had left off, ‘whatever is done, I should wish to be a member of. Put me down for anything you may consider right, and let me know. I never could think the girl all bad, and I am glad to find she’s not. So will my daughter Minnie be. Young women are contradictory creatures in some things—her mother was just the same as her—but their hearts are soft and kind. It’s all show with Minnie, about Martha. Why she should consider it necessary to make any show, I don’t undertake to tell you. But it’s all show, bless you. She’d do her any kindness in private. So, put me down for whatever you may consider right, will you be so good? and drop me a line where to forward it. Dear me!’ said Mr. Omer, ‘when a man is drawing on to a time of life, where the two ends of life meet; when he finds himself, however hearty he is, being wheeled about for the second time, in a speeches of go-cart; he should be over-rejoiced to do a kindness if he can. He wants plenty. And I don’t speak of myself, particular,’ said Mr. Omer, ‘because, sir, the way I look at it is, that we are all drawing on to the bottom of the hill, whatever age we are, on account of time never standing still for a single moment. So let us always do a kindness, and be over-rejoiced. To be sure!’
He knocked the ashes out of his pipe, and put it on a ledge in the back of his chair, expressly made for its reception.
‘There’s Em’ly’s cousin, him that she was to have been married to,’ said Mr. Omer, rubbing his hands feebly, ‘as fine a fellow as there is in Yarmouth! He’ll come and talk or read to me, in the evening, for an hour together sometimes. That’s a kindness, I should call it! All his life’s a kindness.’
‘I am going to see him now,’ said I.
‘Are you?’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Tell him I was hearty, and sent my respects. Minnie and Joram’s at a ball. They would be as proud to see you as I am, if they was at home. Minnie won’t hardly go out at all, you see, “on account of father”, as she says. So I swore tonight, that if she didn’t go, I’d go to bed at six. In consequence of which,’ Mr. Omer shook himself and his chair with laughter at the success of his device, ‘she and Joram’s at a ball.’
I shook hands with him, and wished him good night.
‘Half a minute, sir,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘If you was to go without seeing my little elephant, you’d lose the best of sights. You never see such a sight! Minnie!’ A musical little voice answered, from somewhere upstairs, ‘I am coming, grandfather!’ and a pretty little girl with long, flaxen, curling hair, soon came running into the shop.
‘This is my little elephant, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, fondling the child. ‘Siamese breed, sir. Now, little elephant!’
The little elephant set the door of the parlour open, enabling me to see that, in these latter days, it was converted into a bedroom for Mr. Omer who could not be easily conveyed upstairs; and then hid her pretty forehead, and tumbled her long hair, against the back of Mr. Omer’s chair.
‘The elephant butts, you know, sir,’ said Mr. Omer, winking, ‘when he goes at a object. Once, elephant. Twice. Three times!’
At this signal, the little elephant, with a dexterity that was next to marvellous in so small an animal, whisked the chair round with Mr. Omer in it, and rattled it off, pell-mell, into the parlour, without touching the door-post: Mr. Omer indescribably enjoying the performance, and looking back at me on the road as if it were the triumphant issue of his life’s exertions.
After a stroll about the town I went to Ham’s house. Peggotty had now removed here for good; and had let her own house to the successor of Mr. Barkis in the carrying business, who had paid her very well for the good-will, cart, and horse. I believe the very same slow horse that Mr. Barkis drove was still at work.
I found them in the neat kitchen, accompanied by Mrs. Gummidge, who had been fetched from the old boat by Mr. Peggotty himself. I doubt if she could have been induced to desert her post, by anyone else. He had evidently told them all. Both Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge had their aprons to their eyes, and Ham had just stepped out ‘to take a turn on the beach’. He presently came home, very glad to see me; and I hope they were all the better for my being there. We spoke, with some approach to cheerfulness, of Mr. Peggotty’s growing rich in a new country, and of the wonders he would describe in his letters. We said nothing of Emily by name, but distantly referred to her more than once. Ham was the serenest of the party.
But, Peggotty told me, when she lighted me to a little chamber where the Crocodile book was lying ready for me on the table, that he always was the same. She believed (she told me, crying) that he was broken-hearted; though he was as full of courage as of sweetness, and worked harder and better than any boat-builder in any yard in all that part. There were times, she said, of an evening, when he talked of their old life in the boat-house; and then he mentioned Emily as a child. But, he never mentioned her as a woman.
Cambiai argomento menzionando Emily. Dopo avergli assicurato che non avevo dimenticato quanto fosse sempre stato interessato a lei, e quanto l’avesse sempre trattata con gentilezza, gli raccontai in dettaglio come fosse stata riportata dal suo zio grazie all’aiuto di Martha; sapevo che questo avrebbe fatto piacere all’uomo anziano. Ascoltò con estrema attenzione e, quando ebbi finito, disse con emozione:
“Ne sono molto felice, signore! È la migliore notizia che abbia ricevuto da molti giorni. Caro, caro, caro! E cosa si farà ora per quella povera giovane donna, Martha?”
“Avete toccato un argomento su cui i miei pensieri si sono soffermati da ieri,” dissi, “ma non posso ancora fornirvi alcuna informazione al riguardo, signor Omer. Il signor Peggotty non ne ha fatto menzione, e io ritengo sia opportuno non parlarne. Sono sicuro che non se ne sia dimenticato. Lui non dimentica mai nulla di ciò che è onesto e nobile.”
“Perché sai,” disse il signor Omer, riprendendo il discorso da dove lo aveva interrotto, “quello che viene fatto, vorrei sempre farne parte anch’io. Indica pure qualunque cosa ritenga giusta e fammelo sapere. Non ho mai potuto pensare che quella ragazza fosse davvero cattiva, e sono felice di scoprire che non lo è. Lo sarà anche mia figlia Minnie. Le giovani donne, in alcune cose, sono davvero contraddittorie. Sua madre era esattamente come lei. Ma i loro cuori sono teneri e gentili. Per quanto riguarda Minnie e Martha. Non so proprio perché debba considerare necessario comportarsi in quel modo. Ma è tutto solo apparenza, credimi. In privato, le mostrerebbe sicuramente la stessa gentilezza. Quindi, indica pure qualunque cosa ritenga giusta. E fammi sapere dove inviarla. Oh, mio Dio!” disse il signor Omer, “quando un uomo si avvicina alla fine della sua vita. Quando si rende conto che, per quanto sia ancora in forze, sta cominciando a vivere una seconda volta, dovrebbe essere davvero felice di poter compiere qualcosa di gentile, se ne ha la possibilità. Desidera tanto la bontà. E non parlo solo di me,” aggiunse il signor Omer, “perché, in fondo, tutti noi ci stiamo avvicinando alla fine della nostra vita. Indipendentemente dall’età, perché il tempo non si ferma mai nemmeno per un istante. Quindi, facciamoci sempre del bene. E siamo felici di farlo. Sicuramente!”
Svuotò le ceneri dalla sua pipa e la posizionò su un ripiano sul retro della sedia, appositamente creato per questo scopo.
“C’è il cugino di Em’ly, quello con cui avrebbe dovuto sposarsi,” disse il signor Omer, strofinandosi le mani debolmente, “un ragazzo davvero perbene, uno dei migliori di Yarmouth! Veniva a parlare o a leggermi qualcosa, qualche volta anche per un’ora intera la sera. È davvero una gentilezza. Una vera dimostrazione di affetto.”
“Ora andrò a vederlo,” dissi.
“Sei davvero tu?” disse il signor Omer. “Digli che ero molto contento e che gli ho inviato i miei saluti. Minnie e Joram sono a un ballo. Sarebbero altrettanto felici di vederti quanto lo sono io, se fossero a casa. Minnie ormai quasi non esce più, sai, ‘Per via di papà’, dice lei. Così stasera ho giurato che, se lei non andava, io sarei andato a letto alle sei. E guarda un po’, ” Il signor Omer si scosse e fece ridere anche la sua sedia per il successo del suo piano. “Ecco, ora lei e Joram sono a un ballo.”
Gli strinsi la mano e gli augurai una buona notte.
“Mezzo minuto, signore,” disse il signor Omer. “Se se ne andasse senza vedere il mio piccolo elefante, perderebbe la vista più meravigliosa di tutte. Non vedrà mai nulla del genere! Minnie!” Una vocina musicale rispose da qualche parte al piano di sopra: “Vengo subito, nonno!” E poco dopo una graziosa bambina con lunghi capelli biondi e ricciuti corse dentro il negozio.
“Questo è il mio piccolo elefante, signore,” disse il signor Omer, accarezzando il bambino. “Di razza siamese, signore. E ora, piccolo elefante!”
La piccola elefanta aprì la porta del salotto, permettendomi di vedere che, in questi ultimi tempi, era stata trasformata in una camera da letto per il signor Omer, il quale non poteva essere facilmente portato al piano di sopra; poi nascose la sua bella fronte e lasciò scivolare i suoi lunghi capelli sullo schienale della sedia del signor Omer.
“Gli elefanti colpiscono con la proboscide, sa signore,” disse il signor Omer, facendo l’occhiolino, “quando attaccano un oggetto. Una volta. Due volte. Tre volte!”
A questo segnale, il piccolo elefante, con una destrezza davvero meravigliosa per un animale così piccolo, fece girare la sedia su cui era seduto il signor Omer e la portò a tutta velocità nella sala, senza nemmeno toccare lo stipite della porta. Il signor Omer si divertiva in modo indescrivibile a questa scenetta e, guardandomi mentre tornavamo per la strada, sembrava che fosse il culmine dei sforzi di tutta la sua vita.
Dopo una passeggiata per la città sono andato a casa di Ham. A quel punto Peggotty si era trasferita lì definitivamente; aveva affittato la sua casa al successore di Mr. Barkis nel settore del trasporto, il quale le aveva pagato molto bene per la buona volontà, il carretto e il cavallo. Credo che lo stesso vecchio cavallo con cui Mr. Barkis viaggiava fosse ancora in uso.
Li trovai nella cucina ordinata, insieme a Mrs. Gummidge, che era stata portata lì dall’anziano battello dallo stesso Mr. Peggotty. Dubito che qualcun altro sarebbe riuscito a convincerla a lasciare il suo posto. Ovviamente lui aveva raccontato tutto a entrambi. Sia Peggotty che Mrs. Gummidge si coprivano gli occhi con i grembiuli; Ham, intanto, era appena uscito “per fare una passeggiata sulla spiaggia”. Tornò presto a casa, molto felice di vedermi; e spero che la mia presenza abbia migliorato l’atmosfera in quella casa. Parlammo, con un certo spirito di allegria, del fatto che Mr. Peggotty stesse diventando ricco in un nuovo paese, e delle meraviglie che avrebbe descritto nelle sue lettere. Non menzionammo mai il nome di Emily, ma ne parlammo più volte in modo indiretto. Ham era senz’altro la persona più serena del gruppo.
Ma Peggotty mi disse che, quando mi portò in una piccola stanza dove il libro sul Coccodrillo giaceva pronto sul tavolo per me, lui era sempre lo stesso. Credeva (me lo raccontò piangendo) che avesse il cuore spezzato; nonostante fosse pieno tanto di coraggio quanto di dolcezza, e lavorasse più sodo e meglio di qualsiasi costruttore di barche in tutta quella zona. A volte, diceva, la sera parlava della loro vecchia vita nella casa sul fiume; allora menzionava Emily come una bambina. Ma mai la menzionò come donna.
I thought I had read in his face that he would like to speak to me alone. I therefore resolved to put myself in his way next evening, as he came home from his work. Having settled this with myself, I fell asleep. That night, for the first time in all those many nights, the candle was taken out of the window, Mr. Peggotty swung in his old hammock in the old boat, and the wind murmured with the old sound round his head.
All next day, he was occupied in disposing of his fishing-boat and tackle; in packing up, and sending to London by waggon, such of his little domestic possessions as he thought would be useful to him; and in parting with the rest, or bestowing them on Mrs. Gummidge. She was with him all day. As I had a sorrowful wish to see the old place once more, before it was locked up, I engaged to meet them there in the evening. But I so arranged it, as that I should meet Ham first.
It was easy to come in his way, as I knew where he worked. I met him at a retired part of the sands, which I knew he would cross, and turned back with him, that he might have leisure to speak to me if he really wished. I had not mistaken the expression of his face. We had walked but a little way together, when he said, without looking at me:
‘Mas’r Davy, have you seen her?’
‘Only for a moment, when she was in a swoon,’ I softly answered.
We walked a little farther, and he said:
‘Mas’r Davy, shall you see her, d’ye think?’
‘It would be too painful to her, perhaps,’ said I.
‘I have thowt of that,’ he replied. ‘So ‘twould, sir, so ‘twould.’
‘But, Ham,’ said I, gently, ‘if there is anything that I could write to her, for you, in case I could not tell it; if there is anything you would wish to make known to her through me; I should consider it a sacred trust.’
‘I am sure on’t. I thankee, sir, most kind! I think theer is something I could wish said or wrote.’
‘What is it?’
We walked a little farther in silence, and then he spoke.
‘’Tan’t that I forgive her. ‘Tan’t that so much. ‘Tis more as I beg of her to forgive me, for having pressed my affections upon her. Odd times, I think that if I hadn’t had her promise fur to marry me, sir, she was that trustful of me, in a friendly way, that she’d have told me what was struggling in her mind, and would have counselled with me, and I might have saved her.’
I pressed his hand. ‘Is that all?’ ‘Theer’s yet a something else,’ he returned, ‘if I can say it, Mas’r Davy.’
We walked on, farther than we had walked yet, before he spoke again. He was not crying when he made the pauses I shall express by lines. He was merely collecting himself to speak very plainly.
‘I loved her—and I love the mem’ry of her—too deep—to be able to lead her to believe of my own self as I’m a happy man. I could only be happy—by forgetting of her—and I’m afeerd I couldn’t hardly bear as she should be told I done that. But if you, being so full of learning, Mas’r Davy, could think of anything to say as might bring her to believe I wasn’t greatly hurt: still loving of her, and mourning for her: anything as might bring her to believe as I was not tired of my life, and yet was hoping fur to see her without blame, wheer the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest—anything as would ease her sorrowful mind, and yet not make her think as I could ever marry, or as ‘twas possible that anyone could ever be to me what she was—I should ask of you to say that—with my prayers for her—that was so dear.’
I pressed his manly hand again, and told him I would charge myself to do this as well as I could.
‘I thankee, sir,’ he answered. ‘’Twas kind of you to meet me. ‘Twas kind of you to bear him company down. Mas’r Davy, I unnerstan’ very well, though my aunt will come to Lon’on afore they sail, and they’ll unite once more, that I am not like to see him agen. I fare to feel sure on’t. We doen’t say so, but so ‘twill be, and better so. The last you see on him—the very last—will you give him the lovingest duty and thanks of the orphan, as he was ever more than a father to?’
This I also promised, faithfully.
‘I thankee agen, sir,’ he said, heartily shaking hands. ‘I know wheer you’re a-going. Good-bye!’
With a slight wave of his hand, as though to explain to me that he could not enter the old place, he turned away. As I looked after his figure, crossing the waste in the moonlight, I saw him turn his face towards a strip of silvery light upon the sea, and pass on, looking at it, until he was a shadow in the distance.
The door of the boat-house stood open when I approached; and, on entering, I found it emptied of all its furniture, saving one of the old lockers, on which Mrs. Gummidge, with a basket on her knee, was seated, looking at Mr. Peggotty. He leaned his elbow on the rough chimney-piece, and gazed upon a few expiring embers in the grate; but he raised his head, hopefully, on my coming in, and spoke in a cheery manner.
‘Come, according to promise, to bid farewell to ‘t, eh, Mas’r Davy?’ he said, taking up the candle. ‘Bare enough, now, an’t it?’ ‘Indeed you have made good use of the time,’ said I.
‘Why, we have not been idle, sir. Missis Gummidge has worked like a—I doen’t know what Missis Gummidge an’t worked like,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at her, at a loss for a sufficiently approving simile.
Mrs. Gummidge, leaning on her basket, made no observation.
‘Theer’s the very locker that you used to sit on, ‘long with Em’ly!’ said Mr. Peggotty, in a whisper. ‘I’m a-going to carry it away with me, last of all. And heer’s your old little bedroom, see, Mas’r Davy! A’most as bleak tonight, as ‘art could wish!’
In truth, the wind, though it was low, had a solemn sound, and crept around the deserted house with a whispered wailing that was very mournful. Everything was gone, down to the little mirror with the oyster-shell frame. I thought of myself, lying here, when that first great change was being wrought at home. I thought of the blue-eyed child who had enchanted me. I thought of Steerforth: and a foolish, fearful fancy came upon me of his being near at hand, and liable to be met at any turn.
Pensavo di aver letto nel suo sguardo che desiderasse parlarmi da solo. Così decisi di presentarmi davanti a lui la sera seguente, quando sarebbe tornato a casa dal lavoro. Dopo essermi fatta questa promessa, mi addormentai. Quella notte, per la prima volta in tutte quelle molte notti, la candela fu spenta dalla finestra; il signor Peggotty dondolava nella sua vecchia amaca sulla vecchia barca, e il vento sussurrava con quel suo solito suono intorno a lui.
Il giorno seguente, fu impegnato a disfararsi della sua barca da pesca e dell’attrezzatura da pesca; a impacchettare e inviare a Londra con un carro quelle piccole cose domestiche che riteneva potessero essergli utili; e a separarsi dal resto, o donarlo a Mrs. Gummidge. Lei era con lui tutto il giorno. Poiché avevo il triste desiderio di rivedere quel vecchio posto un’ultima volta, prima che venisse chiuso, concordai di incontrarli lì la sera stessa. Ma organizzai le cose in modo da incontrare prima Ham.
Era facile intralciargli la strada, poiché conoscevo dove lavorava. Lo incontrai in una zona desolata delle dune, che sapevo avrebbe attraversato, e lo seguii indietro, così da lasciargli il tempo di parlarmi se davvero lo desiderava. Non avevo frainteso l’espressione sul suo viso. Avevamo camminato insieme per poco quando lui, senza guardarmi, disse:
“Signor Davy, l’avete vista?”
“Solo per un momento, quando era svenuta,” risposi dolcemente.
Continuammo a camminare per un po’, e poi lui disse:
“Maestro Davy, secondo te dovresti incontrarla?”
“Forse le sarebbe troppo doloroso,” dissi io.
“Ci ho pensato,” rispose. “Certo che sì, signore, certamente.”
“Ma, Ham,” dissi dolcemente, “se ci fosse qualcosa che potessi scrivere a lei, per te, nel caso non riuscissi a dirlo di persona; se ci fosse qualcosa che tu desiderassi farle conoscere attraverso di me, lo considererei un sacro incarico.”
“Non ne sono sicuro. Grazie mille, signore! Penso che ci sia qualcosa che vorrei fosse detto o scritto.”
“Che cos’è?”
Camminammo ancora un po’ in silenzio, poi lui parlò.
“Non è che io la perdoni. Non è nemmeno tanto. Più che altro, le chiedo di perdonarmi per averle espresso i miei sentimenti. Strani tempi. Penso che, se non fosse stata per la sua promessa di sposarmi, lei avrebbe avuto abbastanza fiducia in me da confidarmi ciò che la tormentava e chiedermi consiglio. Forse così avrei potuto salvarla.”
Gli strinsi la mano. “È tutto?” “C’è ancora qualcos’altro,” rispose lui, “se posso dirlo, signor Davy.”
Continuammo a camminare, più lontano di quanto avessimo fatto fino ad allora, prima che parlasse di nuovo. Non stava piangendo quando faceva quelle pause che descriverò con delle righe. Si stava semplicemente preparando per parlare in modo molto chiaro e comprensibile.
“L’amavo, e amo ancora il ricordo di lei, troppo profondamente per poter farle credere che io, nella mia vita attuale, sia un uomo felice. Potrei essere felice soltanto dimenticandola, ma temo di non riuscire a sopportare se le venisse detto che l’ho fatto. Ma se voi, signor Davy, così colmo di saggezza, poteste trovare qualcosa da dire che la facesse credere che io non sia profondamente ferito, che ancora l’ammi e la piango, che non abbia perso speranza nella mia vita, che anzi desideri ancora rivederla senza rimproveri, in un mondo dove il male cessa di tormentare e chi è stanco trova finalmente pace, qualsiasi cosa possa alleviare il suo dolore, ma senza farle pensare che io possa mai sposarmi di nuovo, o che qualcuno possa mai per me essere ciò che lei è stata, vi chiederei di dirlo, con le mie preghiere per lei, perché è davvero troppo importante.”
Strinsi di nuovo la sua mano virile e gli dissi che mi sarei assunto l’impegno di farlo nel miglior modo possibile.
“Grazie mille, signore,” rispose. “È stato molto gentile da parte sua incontrarmi e accompagnarlo fino a qui. Signor Davy, capisco molto bene. Anche se mia zia arriverà a Londra prima che partano e si riuniranno di nuovo, so con certezza che non lo rivedrò mai più. Siamo sicuri che andrà così. Meglio così, in realtà. L’ultima volta che lo vedrà, davvero l’ultima, gli trasmetterà i più affettuosi ringraziamenti di un orfano, perché lui è stato per me molto di più di un padre, non è vero?”
Anche questo l’ho promesso, fedelmente.
“Grazie mille, signore,” disse stringendogli calorosamente la mano. “So dove sta andando. Addio!”
Con un leggero gesto della mano, come se volesse spiegarmi che non poteva entrare in quel luogo vecchio, si allontanò. Mentre lo guardavo mentre attraversava quella landa desolata alla luce della luna, vidi che girava il viso verso una striscia di luce argentea sul mare e continuava a camminare, fissandola, fino a quando non divenne solo un’ombra in lontananza.
La porta della casa-barca era aperta quando mi avvicinai; entrando, la trovai completamente priva di mobili, tranne che per un vecchio armadio. Sulla soglia, con un cesto sulle ginocchia, sedeva la signora Gummidge, intenta a guardare il signor Peggotty. Lui appoggiava il gomito al rustico camino e fissava le poche braci ancora accese nel focolare; ma non appena mi vide entrare, sollevò lo sguardo con espressione speranzosa e parlò in tono allegro.
“Come promesso, per dire addio a ‘lui’, eh, signor Davy?” disse lui, prendendo la candela. “Abbastanza, ora, non è vero?” “Davvero avete sfruttato bene il tempo,” dissi io.
“Beh, non abbiamo certo trascorso il tempo a far nulla, signore. La signora Gummidge ha lavorato come, beh, non so proprio come possa descrivere il modo in cui la signora Gummidge ha lavorato,” disse il signor Peggotty, guardandola senza riuscire a trovare un paragone abbastanza lusinghiero.
La signora Gummidge, appoggiata al suo cestino, non fece alcuna osservazione.
“Ecco proprio lo stesso armadietto su cui ti sedevi una volta, insieme a Em’ly!” disse il signor Peggotty sottovoce. “Lo porterò via con me, per l’ultima volta. E ecco anche la tua vecchia cameretta, vedi, signor Davy! Stasera è proprio così desolata, come potresti desiderare, ”
Nella verità, il vento, sebbene debole, aveva un suono solenne; si insinuava intorno alla deserta casa, emettendo un lamento sommesso e molto triste. Tutto era scomparso, persino il piccolo specchio con il telaio in conchiglia. Pensai a me stesso, sdraiato lì, mentre quel primo grande cambiamento stava avvenendo nella mia casa. Pensai al bambino dagli occhi blu che mi aveva incantato. E poi pensai a Steerforth: mi venne l’idea assurda e spaventosa che potesse essere vicino, pronto ad apparire da un momento all’altro.
‘’Tis like to be long,’ said Mr. Peggotty, in a low voice, ‘afore the boat finds new tenants. They look upon ‘t, down heer, as being unfortunate now!’
‘Does it belong to anybody in the neighbourhood?’ I asked.
‘To a mast-maker up town,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘I’m a-going to give the key to him tonight.’
We looked into the other little room, and came back to Mrs. Gummidge, sitting on the locker, whom Mr. Peggotty, putting the light on the chimney-piece, requested to rise, that he might carry it outside the door before extinguishing the candle.
‘Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge, suddenly deserting her basket, and clinging to his arm ‘my dear Dan’l, the parting words I speak in this house is, I mustn’t be left behind. Doen’t ye think of leaving me behind, Dan’l! Oh, doen’t ye ever do it!’
Mr. Peggotty, taken aback, looked from Mrs. Gummidge to me, and from me to Mrs. Gummidge, as if he had been awakened from a sleep.
‘Doen’t ye, dearest Dan’l, doen’t ye!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge, fervently. ‘Take me ‘long with you, Dan’l, take me ‘long with you and Em’ly! I’ll be your servant, constant and trew. If there’s slaves in them parts where you’re a-going, I’ll be bound to you for one, and happy, but doen’t ye leave me behind, Dan’l, that’s a deary dear!’
‘My good soul,’ said Mr. Peggotty, shaking his head, ‘you doen’t know what a long voyage, and what a hard life ‘tis!’ ‘Yes, I do, Dan’l! I can guess!’ cried Mrs. Gummidge. ‘But my parting words under this roof is, I shall go into the house and die, if I am not took. I can dig, Dan’l. I can work. I can live hard. I can be loving and patient now—more than you think, Dan’l, if you’ll on’y try me. I wouldn’t touch the ‘lowance, not if I was dying of want, Dan’l Peggotty; but I’ll go with you and Em’ly, if you’ll on’y let me, to the world’s end! I know how ‘tis; I know you think that I am lone and lorn; but, deary love, ‘tan’t so no more! I ain’t sat here, so long, a-watching, and a-thinking of your trials, without some good being done me. Mas’r Davy, speak to him for me! I knows his ways, and Em’ly’s, and I knows their sorrows, and can be a comfort to ‘em, some odd times, and labour for ‘em allus! Dan’l, deary Dan’l, let me go ‘long with you!’
And Mrs. Gummidge took his hand, and kissed it with a homely pathos and affection, in a homely rapture of devotion and gratitude, that he well deserved.
We brought the locker out, extinguished the candle, fastened the door on the outside, and left the old boat close shut up, a dark speck in the cloudy night. Next day, when we were returning to London outside the coach, Mrs. Gummidge and her basket were on the seat behind, and Mrs. Gummidge was happy.
“È come essere in attesa,” disse il signor Peggotty a bassa voce, “prima che la barca trovi nuovi inquilini. Loro la considerano, qui giù, una sorta di ‘imbarcazione sfortunata’, ”
“Appartiene a qualcuno del quartiere?” chiesi.
“Da un falegname in città,” disse il signor Peggotty. “Stasera gli porterò la chiave.”
Entrammo nell’altra piccola stanza e tornammo da Mrs. Gummidge, che era seduta sullo scaffale; Mr. Peggotty, accendendo la lampada sul camino, le chiese di alzarsi affinché potesse portarla fuori dalla porta prima di spegnere la candela.
“Dan’,” disse la signora Gummidge, abbandonando improvvisamente il suo cestino e aggrappandosi al suo braccio, “mio caro Dan. Le ultime parole che dico in questa casa sono: non lasciarmi indietro. Non penserai mica di abbandonarmi, Dan. Oh, per favore, non farlo mai!”
Il signor Peggotty, preso alla sprovvista, guardò prima la signora Gummidge e poi me, e di nuovo la signora Gummidge, come se fosse stato svegliato da un sonno profondo.
“Non lo farai mica, caro Dan’l, vero?” gridò la signora Gummidge con fervore.
“Portami con te, Dan’l, portami via con te e Em’ly! Sarò la tua serva, fedele e devota. Se in quei luoghi ci sono schiavi, sarò uno di loro, e felice, ma per favore, non lasciarmi indietro, Dan’l, è troppo doloroso!”
“Mia buona ‘anima”, disse il signor Peggotty scuotendo la testa, “non sai quanto sia lungo quel viaggio, e quanto dura quella vita, ”
“Sì, lo so, Dan’l! Posso immaginarlo!”, esclamò la signora Gummidge. “Ma le mie ultime parole sotto questo tetto sono queste: entrerò in quella casa e morirò lì, se non mi prendono con loro. So scavare, so lavorare. Posso sopportare qualsiasi difficoltà. Ora posso essere amorevole e paziente, di più di quanto tu possa pensare, Dan’l, se solo mi dai una possibilità. Non accetterei nemmeno quella piccola somma di denaro, anche se morissi di fame. Ma verrò con te ed Em’ly, fino all’estremità del mondo, se solo me lo permetterete! So com’è. So che pensate che io sia sola e abbandonata. Ma no, caro mio. Non è così! Non ho passato tutto questo tempo qui a guardare e pensare alle vostre difficoltà senza che ne derivasse qualche bene per me. Signor Davy, parlate con lui per me. Conosco i suoi modi, e quelli di Em’ly. So delle loro sofferenze. E posso essere un conforto per loro, a volte. Lavorerò sempre per loro! Dan’l, caro Dan’l. Lasciami venire con voi!”
E la signora Gummidge prese la sua mano e la baciò con un sentimento di affetto e devozione così sincero e profondo, che lui se lo meritava davvero.
Tirammo fuori il barchino, spensammo la candela, chiudemmo a chiave la porta dall’esterno e lasciammo l’antico barchino ben chiuso, un punto scuro nella nebbiosa notte. Il giorno dopo, mentre tornavamo a Londra in carrozza, la signora Gummidge e il suo cesto erano sul sedile dietro di noi, e la signora Gummidge era felice.
CHAPTER 52. I ASSIST AT AN EXPLOSION
When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was within four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted how we should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave Dora. Ah! how easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!
We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber’s stipulation for my aunt’s attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be represented by Mr. Dick and me. In short, we had resolved to take this course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she never would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy, if my aunt remained behind, on any pretence.
‘I won’t speak to you,’ said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt. ‘I’ll be disagreeable! I’ll make Jip bark at you all day. I shall be sure that you really are a cross old thing, if you don’t go!’
‘Tut, Blossom!’ laughed my aunt. ‘You know you can’t do without me!’
‘Yes, I can,’ said Dora. ‘You are no use to me at all. You never run up and down stairs for me, all day long. You never sit and tell me stories about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he was covered with dust—oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow! You never do anything at all to please me, do you, dear?’ Dora made haste to kiss my aunt, and say, ‘Yes, you do! I’m only joking!’-lest my aunt should think she really meant it.
‘But, aunt,’ said Dora, coaxingly, ‘now listen. You must go. I shall tease you, ‘till you let me have my own way about it. I shall lead my naughty boy such a life, if he don’t make you go. I shall make myself so disagreeable—and so will Jip! You’ll wish you had gone, like a good thing, for ever and ever so long, if you don’t go. Besides,’ said Dora, putting back her hair, and looking wonderingly at my aunt and me, ‘why shouldn’t you both go? I am not very ill indeed. Am I?’
‘Why, what a question!’ cried my aunt.
‘What a fancy!’ said I.
‘Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!’ said Dora, slowly looking from one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to kiss us as she lay upon her couch. ‘Well, then, you must both go, or I shall not believe you; and then I shall cry!’
I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora brightened again, as she saw it too.
‘You’ll come back with so much to tell me, that it’ll take at least a week to make me understand!’ said Dora. ‘Because I know I shan’t understand, for a length of time, if there’s any business in it. And there’s sure to be some business in it! If there’s anything to add up, besides, I don’t know when I shall make it out; and my bad boy will look so miserable all the time. There! Now you’ll go, won’t you? You’ll only be gone one night, and Jip will take care of me while you are gone. Doady will carry me upstairs before you go, and I won’t come down again till you come back; and you shall take Agnes a dreadfully scolding letter from me, because she has never been to see us!’
We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go, and that Dora was a little Impostor, who feigned to be rather unwell, because she liked to be petted. She was greatly pleased, and very merry; and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick, Traddles, and I, went down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that night.
At the hotel where Mr. Micawber had requested us to await him, which we got into, with some trouble, in the middle of the night, I found a letter, importing that he would appear in the morning punctually at half past nine. After which, we went shivering, at that uncomfortable hour, to our respective beds, through various close passages; which smelt as if they had been steeped, for ages, in a solution of soup and stables.
Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth. Yet the bells, when they sounded, told me sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of their own age, and my pretty Dora’s youth; and of the many, never old, who had lived and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells had hummed through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in air, as circles do in water.
I looked at the old house from the corner of the street, but did not go nearer to it, lest, being observed, I might unwittingly do any harm to the design I had come to aid. The early sun was striking edgewise on its gables and lattice-windows, touching them with gold; and some beams of its old peace seemed to touch my heart.
I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last night’s sleep. Among those who were stirring in the shops, I saw my ancient enemy the butcher, now advanced to top-boots and a baby, and in business for himself. He was nursing the baby, and appeared to be a benignant member of society.
We all became very anxious and impatient, when we sat down to breakfast. As it approached nearer and nearer to half past nine o’clock, our restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased. At last we made no more pretence of attending to the meal, which, except with Mr. Dick, had been a mere form from the first; but my aunt walked up and down the room. Traddles sat upon the sofa affecting to read the paper with his eyes on the ceiling; and I looked out of the window to give early notice of Mr. Micawber’s coming. Nor had I long to watch, for, at the first chime of the half hour, he appeared in the street.
CAPITOLO 52. Assisto a un’esplosione
Quando il momento che il signor Micawber aveva indicato in modo così misterioso era ormai a soli ventiquattro ore di distanza, mia zia ed io discutemmo su come procedere; infatti mia zia non voleva assolutamente lasciare Dora. Ah! Come riuscivo facilmente ora a portare su e giù le scale con Dora.
Nonostante le condizioni poste da Mr. Micawber riguardo alla presenza di mia zia, eravamo disposti ad organizzare in modo che lei rimanesse a >casa e fosse rappresentata da me e da Mr. Dick. In breve, avevamo deciso di procedere in questo modo, quando Dora ci confuse nuovamente dichiarando che non si sarebbe mai perdonata, né avrebbe mai perdonato il suo “cattivo ragazzo”, se mia zia fosse rimasta indietro, per qualsiasi motivo.
“Non parlerò con te,” disse Dora, scuotendo i suoi riccioli davanti a mia zia. “Sarò sgarbata! Farò sì che Jip abbaie contro di voi tutto il giorno. Sarò sicura che siate davvero una vecchia strega se non ve ne andate!”
“Tut, Blossom!”, rise mia zia. “Lo sai bene che non puoi farne a meno di me!”
“Sì, posso farlo,” disse Dora. “Tu non mi sei affatto di alcuna utilità. Non corri mai su e giù per le scale per me, tutto il giorno; non ti siedi mai a raccontarmi storie di Doady, quando i suoi scarponi erano logori e lui era coperto di polvere. Oh, che povero piccolo essere! Non fai mai nulla per compiacermi, vero, carina?” Dora si affrettò a baciare mia zia e disse: “Sì, certo che lo faccio! Sto solo scherzando!” Per evitare che mia zia pensasse davvero che parlasse sul serio.
“Ma zia,” disse Dora con tono persuasivo, “ascoltami ora. Devi andare. Ti prenderò in giro finché non mi lascerai fare a modo mio. Se quel mio ragazzo disobbediente non ti fa andare, gli farò vivere una vita terribile. E lo stesso farà Jip! Vorrai davvero essere andata via, per sempre, se non lo fai. Inoltre,” aggiunse Dora, sistemandosi i capelli e guardandoci entrambe con curiosità, “perché non dovreste andare tutte e due? In realtà non sto molto male, vero?”
“Ma che domanda strana!”, esclamò mia zia.
“Che lusso!” dissi io.
“Sì! So di essere una sciocchina, ” disse Dora, guardandoci uno dopo l’altro lentamente, poi sollevò le sue belle labbra per baciarci mentre giaceva sul divano. “Allora, dovete andare entrambi. Altrimenti non vi crederò e piangerò!”
Vidi, sul viso di mia zia, che iniziava a cedere; anche Dora si rallegrò di nuovo, vedendolo.
“Tornerai con così tante cose da raccontarmi che ci vorrà almeno una settimana per capirle tutte!”, disse Dora. “Perché so che non riuscirò a comprenderle, per un bel po’ di tempo. Se c’è davvero qualcosa di serio dietro tutto questo. E sicuramente c’è qualcosa di serio! Inoltre, non so proprio quando riuscirò a capire. E il mio povero ragazzo sembrerà così infelice tutto questo tempo. Ora vattene, per favore. Sarai via solo una notte, e Jip si prenderà cura di me mentre sei via. Doady mi porterà di sopra prima che tu parta, e non scenderò più fino al tuo ritorno. E dovrai portare ad Agnes una lettera molto severa da parte mia. Perché non è mai venuta a trovarci!”
Ci accordammo, senza ulteriori consultazioni, che entrambi avremmo partecipato; inoltre, concordammo sul fatto che Dora fosse in realtà un piccolo “impostore” che fingeva di essere malata solo per farsi coccolare. Fu molto felice e allegra; noi quattro, cioè mia zia, il signor Dick, Traddles e io, partimmo per Canterbury con la posta di Dover quella notte.
All’hotel dove il signor Micawber ci aveva chiesto di aspettarlo, e nel quale riuscimmo ad entrare, dopo alcuni problemi, a mezzanotte, trovai una lettera nella quale si diceva che lui sarebbe arrivato puntualmente la mattina alle nove e mezza. Dopo di ciò, andammo a letto, tremando in quell’ora scomoda, attraverso varie stanze strette e buie; quelle stanze puzzavano come se fossero state immerse da tempo in una soluzione di zuppa e letame.
All’alba, passeggiavo lentamente per quelle antiche e tranquille strade, mescolandomi di nuovo alle ombre delle maestose porte e delle chiese. I corvi volavano intorno alle torri della >cattedrale; le stesse torri, che dominavano un lungo tratto di terra rigogliosa e dei suoi piacevoli ruscelli, tagliavano l’aria luminosa del mattino, come se sulla terra non esistesse il cambiamento. Eppure, quando i campanelli suonavano, mi raccontavano tristemente di tutto ciò che cambia; mi parlavano della loro stessa età, e della giovinezza della mia adorabile Dora; e di tante persone, mai invecchiate, che avevano vissuto, amato e poi perso la vita. Mentre le loro eco risuonavano attraverso l’armatura arrugginita del “Principe Nero” appesa all’interno della cattedrale, si perdevano nell’aria, come cerchi che si disperdono nell’Tempo.
Guardai quella vecchia casa dall’angolo della strada, ma non mi avvicinai di più, per non rischiare che, se fossi stato notato, potessi involontariamente danneggiare il progetto che ero venuto ad aiutare. Il primo sole illuminava di taglio i suoi tetti e le sue finestre a griglia, tingendoli d’oro; e alcuni raggi di quella vecchia serenità sembravano toccare il mio cuore.
Ho passeggiato per un’ora circa nella campagna, poi sono tornato per la strada principale, che nel frattempo aveva già ripreso la sua attività quotidiana, dopo la notte precedente. Tra coloro che si muovevano nelle botteghe, ho visto il mio vecchio nemico, il macellaio: ora indossava stivali eleganti e aveva anche un bambino; gestiva da solo il proprio negozio. Stava allattando il bambino e sembrava davvero un membro benevolo della società.
Tutti noi diventammo molto ansiosi e impazienti quando ci sedemmo a colazione. Man mano che l’ora si avvicinava alle nove e mezza, la nostra attesa inquieta per il signor Micawber aumentava sempre di più. Alla fine smettemmo del tutto di fingere di interessarci al pasto, che, ad eccezione del signor Dick, era stato fin dall’inizio solo una formalità; mia zia invece andava avanti e indietro nella stanza. Traddles sedeva sul divano, fingendo di leggere il giornale mentre in realtà fissava il soffitto; io, dal finestra, cercavo di individuare l’arrivo del signor Micawber il prima possibile. Non dovette aspettare a lungo: non appena suonò la mezz’ora, apparve in strada.
‘Here he is,’ said I, ‘and not in his legal attire!’
My aunt tied the strings of her bonnet (she had come down to breakfast in it), and put on her shawl, as if she were ready for anything that was resolute and uncompromising. Traddles buttoned his coat with a determined air. Mr. Dick, disturbed by these formidable appearances, but feeling it necessary to imitate them, pulled his hat, with both hands, as firmly over his ears as he possibly could; and instantly took it off again, to welcome Mr. Micawber.
‘Gentlemen, and madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘good morning! My dear sir,’ to Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him violently, ‘you are extremely good.’
‘Have you breakfasted?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Have a chop!’
‘Not for the world, my good sir!’ cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him on his way to the bell; ‘appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long been strangers.’
Mr. Dixon was so well pleased with his new name, and appeared to think it so obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he shook hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.
‘Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘attention!’
Mr. Dick recovered himself, with a blush.
‘Now, sir,’ said my aunt to Mr. Micawber, as she put on her gloves, ‘we are ready for Mount Vesuvius, or anything else, as soon as YOU please.’
‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘I trust you will shortly witness an eruption. Mr. Traddles, I have your permission, I believe, to mention here that we have been in communication together?’
‘It is undoubtedly the fact, Copperfield,’ said Traddles, to whom I looked in surprise. ‘Mr. Micawber has consulted me in reference to what he has in contemplation; and I have advised him to the best of my judgement.’
‘Unless I deceive myself, Mr. Traddles,’ pursued Mr. Micawber, ‘what I contemplate is a disclosure of an important nature.’
‘Highly so,’ said Traddles.
‘Perhaps, under such circumstances, madam and gentlemen,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you will do me the favour to submit yourselves, for the moment, to the direction of one who, however unworthy to be regarded in any other light but as a Waif and Stray upon the shore of human nature, is still your fellow-man, though crushed out of his original form by individual errors, and the accumulative force of a combination of circumstances?’
‘We have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘and will do what you please.’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘your confidence is not, at the existing juncture, ill-bestowed. I would beg to be allowed a start of five minutes by the clock; and then to receive the present company, inquiring for Miss Wickfield, at the office of Wickfield and Heep, whose Stipendiary I am.’
My aunt and I looked at Traddles, who nodded his approval.
‘I have no more,’ observed Mr. Micawber, ‘to say at present.’
With which, to my infinite surprise, he included us all in a comprehensive bow, and disappeared; his manner being extremely distant, and his face extremely pale.
Traddles only smiled, and shook his head (with his hair standing upright on the top of it), when I looked to him for an explanation; so I took out my watch, and, as a last resource, counted off the five minutes. My aunt, with her own watch in her hand, did the like. When the time was expired, Traddles gave her his arm; and we all went out together to the old house, without saying one word on the way.
We found Mr. Micawber at his desk, in the turret office on the ground floor, either writing, or pretending to write, hard. The large office-ruler was stuck into his waistcoat, and was not so well concealed but that a foot or more of that instrument protruded from his bosom, like a new kind of shirt-frill.
As it appeared to me that I was expected to speak, I said aloud:
‘How do you do, Mr. Micawber?’
‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, gravely, ‘I hope I see you well?’
‘Is Miss Wickfield at home?’ said I.
‘Mr. Wickfield is unwell in bed, sir, of a rheumatic fever,’ he returned; ‘but Miss Wickfield, I have no doubt, will be happy to see old friends. Will you walk in, sir?’
He preceded us to the dining-room—the first room I had entered in that house—and flinging open the door of Mr. Wickfield’s former office, said, in a sonorous voice:
‘Miss Trotwood, Mr. David Copperfield, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and Mr. Dixon!’
I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow. Our visit astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it astonished ourselves. He did not gather his eyebrows together, for he had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he almost closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his grisly hand to his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise. This was only when we were in the act of entering his room, and when I caught a glance at him over my aunt’s shoulder. A moment afterwards, he was as fawning and as humble as ever.
‘Well, I am sure,’ he said. ‘This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! To have, as I may say, all friends round St. Paul’s at once, is a treat unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you well, and—if I may umbly express myself so—friendly towards them as is ever your friends, whether or not. Mrs. Copperfield, sir, I hope she’s getting on. We have been made quite uneasy by the poor accounts we have had of her state, lately, I do assure you.’
I felt ashamed to let him take my hand, but I did not know yet what else to do.
‘Things are changed in this office, Miss Trotwood, since I was an umble clerk, and held your pony; ain’t they?’ said Uriah, with his sickliest smile. ‘But I am not changed, Miss Trotwood.’
‘Well, sir,’ returned my aunt, ‘to tell you the truth, I think you are pretty constant to the promise of your youth; if that’s any satisfaction to you.’
‘Thank you, Miss Trotwood,’ said Uriah, writhing in his ungainly manner, ‘for your good opinion! Micawber, tell ‘em to let Miss Agnes know—and mother. Mother will be quite in a state, when she sees the present company!’ said Uriah, setting chairs.
“Eccolo qui,” dissi, “e non indossa nemmeno l’abbigliamento appropriato per le occasioni formali!”
Mia zia legò i lacci del suo cappello (era scesa a colazione indossandolo) e si mise il mantello, come se fosse pronta ad affrontare qualsiasi situazione decisa e irremovibile. Traddles abbottonò il suo cappotto con aria risoluta. Il signor Dick, disturbato da queste apparenze imponenti, ma sentendosi in dovere di imitarle, tirò indietro il cappello con entrambe le mani, sistemandolo il più strettamente possibile sulle orecchie; poi immediatamente se lo tolse di nuovo per accogliere il signor Micawber.
“Signori e signora,” disse il signor Micawber, “buongiorno! Caro signore,” aggiunse rivolgendosi al signor Dick, che gli strinse la mano con forza, “siete davvero molto gentile.”
“Hai già fatto colazione?” chiese il signor Dick. “Mangia un boccone!”
“Per nulla al mondo, mio caro signore!” esclamò il signor Micawber, fermandolo mentre si dirigeva verso la campanella; “l’appetito e io, signor Dixon, siamo da tempo estranei l’uno all’altro.”
Il signor Dixon era così contento del suo nuovo nome, e sembrava ritenere davvero molto gentile da parte del signor Micawber averglielo dato, che gli strinse di nuovo la mano e rise in modo piuttosto infantile.
“Dick,” disse mia zia, “attenzione!”
Il signor Dick si riprese, arrossendo.
“Ora, signore,” disse mia zia a Mr. Micawber mentre si infilava i guanti, “siamo pronti per il Monte Vesuvio o qualsiasi altra cosa lei desideri.”
“Signora,” rispose il signor Micawber, “credo che presto assisterete a un’eruzione. Signor Traddles, credo di avere il vostro permesso per menzionare qui che abbiamo mantenuto contatti reciproci.”
“È senza dubbio un fatto certo, Copperfield,” disse Traddles, e io lo guardai sorpreso. “Il signor Micawber mi ha consultato riguardo a ciò che sta considerando di fare; e ho dato il mio parere nel modo migliore che conoscevo.”
“A meno che non mi stia ingannando, signor Traddles,” proseguì il signor Micawber, “quello che intendo fare è rivelare un aspetto importante di questa situazione.”
“Assolutamente sì,” disse Traddles.
“Forse, in tali circostanze, signori e signore,” disse il signor Micawber, “vi pregherei di sottomettervi, per il momento, alla guida di una persona che, anche se non merita alcun altro riconoscimento se non quello di un vagabondo abbandonato sulla riva della natura umana, rimane comunque uno dei vostri simili, anche se schiacciata dalla forza cumulativa degli errori individuali e di una serie di circostanze sfavorevoli.”
“Abbiamo piena fiducia in voi, signor Micawber,” dissi, “e faremo ciò che desiderate.”
“Signor Copperfield,” rispose il signor Micawber, “la sua fiducia, in questo momento, non è affatto mal riposta. Le chiederei di concedermi cinque minuti, secondo l’orologio; dopodiché le presenterò questa compagnia, che desidera informazioni sulla signorina Wickfield, presso lo studio legale Wickfield e Heep, dove lavoro come impiegato.”
Mia zia ed io guardammo Traddles, che annuì in segno di approvazione.
“Non ho altro da dire per il momento”, osservò il signor Micawber.
Con questo gesto, per la mia infinita sorpresa, ci incluse tutti in un inchino comprensivo e poi scomparve; il suo comportamento era estremamente distaccato, e il suo viso estremamente pallido.
Traddles si limitò a sorridere e scuotere la testa (con i capelli che gli si ergevano dritti in cima), quando gli chiesi una spiegazione; così presi l’orologio e, come ultima risorsa, contai quei cinque minuti. Anche mia zia fece lo stesso, tenendo il proprio orologio in mano. Quando il tempo fu scaduto, Traddles le offrì il braccio; e uscimmo tutti insieme verso quella vecchia casa, senza dire una parola lungo la strada.
Trovammo il signor Micawber alla sua scrivania, nell’ufficio situato al piano terra; o stava scrivendo, oppure fingeva di scrivere con grande impegno. La lunga riga da ufficio era infilata nel suo gilet e non era affatto ben nascosta: un piede o più di quell’oggetto spuntava dal suo petto, come una sorta di nuovo tipo di volantino sul colletto della camicia.
“Poiché sembrava che si aspettasse da me di parlare, dissi ad alta voce:”
“Come va, signor Micawber?”
“Signor Copperfield,” disse seriamente il signor Micawber, “spero di vedervi in buona salute, ”
“La signorina Wickfield è a >casa?” chiesi.
“Il signor Wickfield è malato a letto, signore, soffre di febbre reumatica,” rispose; “ma la signorina Wickfield, non ho alcun >dubbio, sarà felice di rivedere vecchi amici. Vuole entrare, signore?”
Ci precedette nella sala da pranzo – la prima stanza che avevo visitato in quella >casa – e spalancò la porta dell’ex ufficio del signor Wickfield, dicendo con voce tonante:
“Signorina Trotwood, signor David Copperfield, signor Thomas Traddles e signor Dixon!”
Non vedevo Uriah Heep da quando aveva ricevuto quel colpo. La nostra visita lo sorprese chiaramente; tuttavia, oserei dire che non meno di quanto ci avesse sorpresi noi stessi. Non si arricciò le sopracciglia – non ne aveva affatto degne di nota – ma aggrottò la fronte a tal punto da quasi chiudere gli occhi; inoltre, l’improvviso movimento della sua mano verso il mento rivelava una certa trepidazione o sorpresa. Questo accadde soltanto quando stavamo per entrare nella sua stanza, e io lo vidi di sfuggita oltre la spalla di mia zia. Un attimo dopo, era già tornato a essere così ossequioso e umile come sempre.
“Beh, ne sono sicuro,” disse. “È davvero una piacere inaspettata! Trovarsi, per così dire, con tutti gli amici intorno a St. Paul’s nello stesso momento è un vero regalo! Signor Copperfield, spero di vedervi in buona salute, e, se posso esprimermi in modo umile, spero che siate gentile con loro, come sempre lo siete stato con tutti i vostri amici. Signora Copperfield, spero che stia bene. Vi assicuro che le notizie negative riguardo alla sua salute di recente ci hanno molto preoccupati.”
Mi vergognavo di lasciargli prendere la mia mano, ma non sapevo ancora cosa altro fare.
“Le cose in questo ufficio sono cambiate, signorina Trotwood, da quando ero solo un umile impiegato che teneva a posto il suo pony. Non è vero?” disse Uriah, con il suo sorriso più malvagio. “Ma io non sono cambiato, signorina Trotwood.”
“Beh, signore,” rispose mia zia, “per dirle la verità, credo che lei mantenga abbastanza fedele alla promessa fatta da giovane; se questo può esserle di qualche conforto, ”
“Grazie, signorina Trotwood,” disse Uriah, muovendosi in modo goffo, “per la sua buona opinione! Micawber, dica loro di far sapere alla signorina Agnes, e anche a mia madre. Mia madre sarà davvero sconvolta quando vedrà questa compagnia!” aggiunse Uriah, mentre sistemava le sedie.
‘You are not busy, Mr. Heep?’ said Traddles, whose eye the cunning red eye accidentally caught, as it at once scrutinized and evaded us.
‘No, Mr. Traddles,’ replied Uriah, resuming his official seat, and squeezing his bony hands, laid palm to palm between his bony knees. ‘Not so much so as I could wish. But lawyers, sharks, and leeches, are not easily satisfied, you know! Not but what myself and Micawber have our hands pretty full, in general, on account of Mr. Wickfield’s being hardly fit for any occupation, sir. But it’s a pleasure as well as a duty, I am sure, to work for him. You’ve not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield, I think, Mr. Traddles? I believe I’ve only had the honour of seeing you once myself?’
‘No, I have not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield,’ returned Traddles; ‘or I might perhaps have waited on you long ago, Mr. Heep.’
There was something in the tone of this reply, which made Uriah look at the speaker again, with a very sinister and suspicious expression. But, seeing only Traddles, with his good-natured face, simple manner, and hair on end, he dismissed it as he replied, with a jerk of his whole body, but especially his throat:
‘I am sorry for that, Mr. Traddles. You would have admired him as much as we all do. His little failings would only have endeared him to you the more. But if you would like to hear my fellow-partner eloquently spoken of, I should refer you to Copperfield. The family is a subject he’s very strong upon, if you never heard him.’
I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by Mr. Micawber. She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I thought; and had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue. But her earnest cordiality, and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler lustre for it.
I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of an ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit. In the meanwhile, some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and Traddles; and Traddles, unobserved except by me, went out.
‘Don’t wait, Micawber,’ said Uriah.
Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood erect before the door, most unmistakably contemplating one of his fellow-men, and that man his employer.
‘What are you waiting for?’ said Uriah. ‘Micawber! did you hear me tell you not to wait?’
‘Yes!’ replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.
‘Then why DO you wait?’ said Uriah.
‘Because I—in short, choose,’ replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.
Uriah’s cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at Mr. Micawber attentively, with his whole face breathing short and quick in every feature.
‘You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,’ he said, with an effort at a smile, ‘and I am afraid you’ll oblige me to get rid of you. Go along! I’ll talk to you presently.’
‘If there is a scoundrel on this earth,’ said Mr. Micawber, suddenly breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, ‘with whom I have already talked too much, that scoundrel’s name is—HEEP!’
Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:
‘Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take care. You’ll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you and me. There’s no love between us. You were always a puppy with a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you? None of your plots against me; I’ll counterplot you! Micawber, you be off. I’ll talk to you presently.’
‘Mr. Micawber,’ said I, ‘there is a sudden change in this fellow, in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to bay. Deal with him as he deserves!’
‘You are a precious set of people, ain’t you?’ said Uriah, in the same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his forehead, with his long lean hand, ‘to buy over my clerk, who is the very scum of society,—as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you,—to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I’ll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I won’t know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not join that gang. I’ll ruin him, if you do. Now, come! I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don’t want to be crushed. I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently, you fool! while there’s time to retreat. Where’s mother?’ he said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles, and pulling down the bell-rope. ‘Fine doings in a person’s own house!’
‘Mrs. Heep is here, sir,’ said Traddles, returning with that worthy mother of a worthy son. ‘I have taken the liberty of making myself known to her.’
‘Who are you to make yourself known?’ retorted Uriah. ‘And what do you want here?’
‘I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ said Traddles, in a composed and business-like way. ‘And I have a power of attorney from him in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.’
‘The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,’ said Uriah, turning uglier than before, ‘and it has been got from him by fraud!’
‘Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,’ returned Traddles quietly; ‘and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.’
‘Ury—!’ Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.
‘YOU hold your tongue, mother,’ he returned; ‘least said, soonest mended.’
“Non è occupato, signor Heep?”, disse Traddles; il suo sguardo fu casualmente attratto da quel astuto occhio rosso, che ci osservò per un attimo prima di sfuggire alla nostra vista.
“No, signor Traddles,” rispose Uriah, riprendendo il suo posto ufficiale e stringendo le sue mani ossute, posizionandole una contro l’altra tra le ginocchia. “Non proprio quanto vorrei. Ma gli avvocati, i predoni e gli sfruttatori non sono facilmente soddisfatti, sa! Soprattutto perché io e Micawber abbiamo già abbastanza da fare, visto che il signor Wickfield è praticamente incapace di svolgere qualsiasi attività lavorativa. Tuttavia, lavorare per lui è sia un piacere che un dovere, ne sono certo. Non ha avuto molte occasioni di frequentare il signor Wickfield, vero, signor Traddles? Credo di aver avuto l’onore di incontrarla solo una volta, ”
“No, non ho avuto rapporti intimi con il signor Wickfield,” rispose Traddles; “altrimenti forse vi avrei servito molto tempo fa, signor Heep.”
C’era qualcosa nel tono di questa risposta che fece sì che Uriah guardasse di nuovo il parlante con un’espressione molto sinistra e sospettosa. Ma, vedendo solo Traddles, con il suo viso gentile, i modi semplici e i capelli arruffati, scartò quel pensiero e rispose, muovendo l’intero corpo, soprattutto la gola:
“Mi dispiace molto per questo, signor Traddles. Lei lo avrebbe ammirato tanto quanto tutti noi. I suoi piccoli difetti gli avrebbero reso ancora più caro ai vostri occhi. Ma se desidera ascoltare il mio socio parlare con eloquenza di lui, le consiglio di rivolgersi a Copperfield: la famiglia è un argomento su cui è molto versato, nel caso non lo abbia mai sentito parlare.”
Mi fu impedito di rifiutare quel complimento (anche se avrei dovuto farlo, in ogni caso), con l’arrivo di Agnes, introdotta ora da Mr. Micawber. Non sembrava essere del tutto padrona di sé come al solito; era evidente che aveva sofferto d’ansia e stanchezza. Tuttavia, la sua sincera cordialità e la sua tranquilla bellezza brillavano di una luce più dolce e naturale.
Vidi Uriah guardarla mentre ci salutava; e mi ricordò di un brutto e ribelle genio che osserva uno spirito buono. Nel frattempo, ci fu qualche cenno tra il signor Micawber e Traddles; e Traddles, senza essere notato da nessun altro se non da me, uscì.
“Non aspettare, Micawber,” disse Uriah.
Il signor Micawber, con la mano appoggiata al righello che teneva sul petto, stava in piedi dritto davanti alla porta, chiaramente intento a osservare uno dei suoi simili, e quell’uomo era il suo datore di lavoro.
“Cosa stai aspettando?”, disse Uriah. “Micawber, hai sentito che ti ho detto di non aspettare?”
“Sì!”, rispose il ferreo signor Micawber.
“Allora perché aspetti?” disse Uriah.
“Perché io, in breve, scelgo,” rispose il signor Micawber, con un impeto improvviso.
Le guance di Uriah persero colore; una pallidezza poco sana, ancora leggermente sfumata dal rosso che gli impregnava il viso, lo coprì interamente. Guardò attentamente il signor Micawber, con ogni tratto del suo volto che respirava affannosamente e rapidamente.
“Sei un individuo dissipato, come tutti sanno,” disse lui, cercando di sorridere, “e temo che mi costringerai ad eliminarti. Vattene. Ne parleremo più tardi.”
“Se esiste un farabutto su questa terra,” disse il signor Micawber, riprendendo all’improvviso a parlare con estrema veemenza, “con cui ho già discusso troppo, il nome di quel farabutto è. ZITTO!”
Uriah indietreggiò, come se fosse stato colpito o pungolato. Guardandoci lentamente intorno con l’espressione più cupa e malvagia che il suo volto potesse assumere, disse a voce bassa:
‘Oho! Questa è una cospirazione! Vi siete incontrati qui su appuntamento. State cercando di approfittare della mia segretaria, vero, Copperfield? Ora fate attenzione: non riuscirete a ottenere nulla. Ci capiamo bene, io e voi. Non c’è alcun amore tra noi. Siete sempre stato un individuo vanitoso e meschino, fin dal vostro primo arrivo qui; invidiate la mia ascesa, vero? Non funzioneranno mai i vostri piani contro di me. Vi contraplanterò! Micawber, andatevene. Ne parleremo più tardi.’
“Signor Micawber,” dissi, “c’è un cambiamento improvviso in questo individuo, in molti aspetti diversi da quello straordinario legato al fatto che abbia detto la verità su una questione specifica; questo mi fa pensare che sia ormai alle strette. Trattatelo come merita!”
“Siete davvero un gruppo di persone preziose, non è vero?” disse Uriah, sempre con quella voce bassa, e improvvisamente si sentì coprire il viso di sudore; con la sua lunga mano magra se lo asciugò dalla fronte. “Voi volete comprare il mio impiegato, che è davvero la feccia della società, proprio come voi stessi, Copperfield, lo sapete bene, prima che qualcuno mostrasse pietà verso di voi, per poi diffamarmi con le sue menzogne. Signorina Trotwood, sarebbe meglio che smetteste tutto questo; altrimenti fermerò vostro marito in un modo che non vi piacerà affatto. Non ho alcun interesse professionale nella vostra storia, vecchia signora! Signorina Wickfield, se avete un po’ d’amore per vostro padre, fareste meglio a non unirvi a quella banda. Vi distruggerò, se lo fate. Ora, andiamo! Ho già alcuni di voi sotto la mia pressione. Pensateci bene, prima che sia troppo tardi. Pensateci bene, Micawber, se non volete essere distrutti. Vi consiglio di allontanarvi subito, e di lasciarvi parlare adesso, mentre c’è ancora tempo per ritirarsi. Dov’è la madre?” disse improvvisamente, notando con preoccupazione l’assenza di Traddles, e tirò la corda del campanello. “Che comportamenti in casa propria, ”
“La signora Heep è qui, signore,” disse Traddles, tornando insieme a quella nobile madre di un nobile figlio. “Ho avuto l’audacia di presentarmi a lei.”
“Chi sei tu per pretendere di farti conoscere? E cosa vuoi qui?” ribatté Uriah.
“Sono l’agente e l’amico del signor Wickfield, signore,” disse Traddles in tono composto e professionale. “E ho con me un potere legale firmato da lui, che mi autorizza ad agire per suo conto in ogni questione.”
“Quel vecchio idiota si è ubriacato fino a perdere la ragione,” disse Uriah, diventando ancora più brutto del solito, “e tutto questo gli è stato fatto con l’inganno!”
“Qualcosa gli è stato ottenuto con l’inganno, lo so,” rispose tranquillamente Traddles; “e lo sa anche lei, signor Heep. Se le va bene, lasciamo che sia il signor Micawber a occuparsi di questa questione.”
“Ury–!” iniziò la signora Heep, con un gesto ansioso.
“Tieni la bocca chiusa, madre”, le rispose; “meno si dice, prima si guarisce”.
‘But, my Ury—’
‘Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?’
Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done—all this time being desperate too, and at his wits’ end for the means of getting the better of us—though perfectly consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.
I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing us, one after another; for I had always understood that he hated me, and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when his eyes passed on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt his power over her slipping away, and the exhibition, in their disappointment, of the odious passions that had led him to aspire to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within sight of such a man.
After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking at us with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.
‘You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride yourself so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak about my place, eaves-dropping with my clerk? If it had been ME, I shouldn’t have wondered; for I don’t make myself out a gentleman (though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according to Micawber), but being you!—And you’re not afraid of doing this, either? You don’t think at all of what I shall do, in return; or of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very well. We shall see! Mr. What’s-your-name, you were going to refer some question to Micawber. There’s your referee. Why don’t you make him speak? He has learnt his lesson, I see.’
Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat on the edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of his splay feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for what might follow.
Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the first syllable of SCOUN-drel! without getting to the second, now burst forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a defensive weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap document, folded in the form of a large letter. Opening this packet, with his old flourish, and glancing at the contents, as if he cherished an artistic admiration of their style of composition, he began to read as follows:
‘“Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen—“’
‘Bless and save the man!’ exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. ‘He’d write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!’
Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.
‘“In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate Villain that has ever existed,”’ Mr. Micawber, without looking off the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah Heep, ‘“I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances. Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have, collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career.”’
The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself as a prey to these dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis with which he read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered to it with a roll of his head, when he thought he had hit a sentence very hard indeed.
‘“In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I entered the office—or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would term it, the Bureau—of the Firm, nominally conducted under the appellation of Wickfield and—HEEP, but in reality, wielded by—HEEP alone. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the mainspring of that machine. HEEP, and only HEEP, is the Forger and the Cheat.”’
Uriah, more blue than white at these words, made a dart at the letter, as if to tear it in pieces. Mr. Micawber, with a perfect miracle of dexterity or luck, caught his advancing knuckles with the ruler, and disabled his right hand. It dropped at the wrist, as if it were broken. The blow sounded as if it had fallen on wood.
‘The Devil take you!’ said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain. ‘I’ll be even with you.’
‘Approach me again, you—you—you HEEP of infamy,’ gasped Mr. Micawber, ‘and if your head is human, I’ll break it. Come on, come on!’
I think I never saw anything more ridiculous—I was sensible of it, even at the time—than Mr. Micawber making broad-sword guards with the ruler, and crying, ‘Come on!’ while Traddles and I pushed him back into a corner, from which, as often as we got him into it, he persisted in emerging again.
His enemy, muttering to himself, after wringing his wounded hand for sometime, slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up; then held it in his other hand, and sat upon his table with his sullen face looking down.
Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool, proceeded with his letter.
‘“The stipendiary emoluments in consideration of which I entered into the service of—HEEP,”’ always pausing before that word and uttering it with astonishing vigour, ‘“were not defined, beyond the pittance of twenty-two shillings and six per week. The rest was left contingent on the value of my professional exertions; in other and more expressive words, on the baseness of my nature, the cupidity of my motives, the poverty of my family, the general moral (or rather immoral) resemblance between myself and—HEEP. Need I say, that it soon became necessary for me to solicit from—HEEP—pecuniary advances towards the support of Mrs. Micawber, and our blighted but rising family? Need I say that this necessity had been foreseen by—HEEP? That those advances were secured by I.O.U.’s and other similar acknowledgements, known to the legal institutions of this country? And that I thus became immeshed in the web he had spun for my reception?”’
“Ma, mio Ury, ”
“Mamma, potresti stare zitta e lasciare che me ne occupi io?”
Anche se da tempo sapevo che la sua sottomissione era falsa e tutte le sue pretese erano astute e vuote, non avevo mai avuto una vera idea dell’entità della sua ipocrisia, fino a quando non lo vidi senza più quella maschera. La rapidità con cui la gettò via, quando si rese conto che ormai era inutile per lui; la malvagità, l’insolenza e l’odio che rivelò; il sorriso compiaciuto con cui, anche in quel momento, esultava per il male che aveva commesso. Tutto questo, unito al fatto che era ormai disperato e senza più idee su come batterci, sebbene fosse perfettamente coerente con ciò che sapevo di lui, mi colpì comunque alla sprovvista, anche io che lo conoscevo da tanto tempo e lo odiavo profondamente.
Non oso nemmeno parlare dello sguardo che mi rivolse mentre ci osservava uno dopo l’altro; sapevo infatti che mi odiava, e ricordavo le tracce lasciate dalla mia mano sulla sua guancia. Ma quando i suoi occhi si posarono su Agnes, e vidi la rabbia con cui si rese conto di perdere il controllo su di lei, e come, nel loro delusione, quelle odiose passioni che lo avevano spinto ad aspirare a una donna le cui virtù non avrebbe mai potuto apprezzare o amare venissero messe in mostra, fui scioccata solo al pensiero che lei fosse vissuta, anche per un solo istante, alla vista di un uomo del genere.
Dopo essersi strofinato la parte inferiore del viso e averci guardato con quegli occhi terribili, attraverso le sue dita orribili, ci rivolse un’altra volta la parola, metà piagnucolando, metà insultandoci.
“Pensi davvero che sia giustificabile, vero, Copperfield? Tu, che ti vanti così tanto della tua onore e di tutto il resto. Intrufolarti nella mia casa, ascoltare di nascosto le mie conversazioni con il mio impiegato. Se fossi stato IO, non mi sarei nemmeno chiesto il motivo; dopotutto non mi considero certo un gentiluomo (anche se in strada non sono mai stato come te, secondo Micawber, ) Ma tu. E non hai paura di farlo? Non pensi affatto a ciò che potrei fare io in risposta, o al fatto che potresti finire nei guai per cospirazione e simili? Molto bene. Vedremo! Signor Che-sia-il-tuo-nome, stavi per porre una domanda a Micawber. Ecco il tuo giudice: perché non lo fai parlare? A quanto pare ha imparato la lezione, ”
Vedendo che ciò che aveva detto non aveva alcun effetto su di me o su nessuno di noi, si sedette sul bordo del suo tavolo con le mani in tasca; uno dei suoi piedi era avvolto intorno all’altra gamba, e aspettava pazientemente ciò che sarebbe potuto accadere dopo.
Il signor Micawber, la cui impulsività avevo fino ad allora cercato di contenere con grande difficoltà, e che ripetutamente aveva iniziato a parlare con la prima sillaba della parola “SCOUN-drel!”, senza mai arrivare alla seconda, ora si fece avanti di scatto, estrasse dalla propria giacca una riga da disegno (apparentemente come arma difensiva) e tirò fuori dalla tasca un documento piegato a forma di grande lettera. Aprì quel foglio con il suo solito gesto teatrale e diede un’occhiata al contenuto, come se ne apprezzasse lo stile di composizione. Poi iniziò a leggere quanto segue:
“Caro signorina Trotwood e gentiluomini, ”
“Benedite e salvatelo!”, esclamò mia zia a bassa voce. “Scriverebbe lettere a mucchi, anche se fosse un crimine capitale!”
Il signor Micawber, senza ascoltarla, continuò a parlare.
“Presentandomi davanti a voi per denunciare probabilmente il più consumato Malvagio che sia mai esistito,” disse il signor Micawber, senza distogliere lo sguardo dalla lettera, puntando la riga come se fosse un bastone spettrale verso Uriah Heep, “non chiedo alcuna considerazione per me stesso. Fin da piccolo, sono stato vittima di debiti finanziari che non sono mai riuscito a saldare; ho sempre fatto da bersaglio e giocattolo di circostanze umilianti. Vergogna, povertà, Disperazione e Pazzia hanno accompagnato tutta la mia vita.”
Il piacere con cui il signor Micawber si descriveva come vittima di queste terribili calamità era paragonabile solo all’attenzione con cui leggeva la sua lettera; inoltre, il modo in cui la onorava scuotendo la testa quando ritieneva di aver espresso un pensiero particolarmente efficace era davvero notevole.
“In un insieme di ignominia, povertà, disperazione e pazzia, entrai nell’ufficio, o, come lo chiamerebbe il nostro vivace vicino gallo, l’Ufficio della Ditta, nominalmente gestito sotto la denominazione di Wickfield e–HEEP, ma in realtà controllato esclusivamente da–HEEP. Solo HEEP è la forza motrice di quella macchina; solo HEEP è il falsario e l’imbroglione.”
Uriah, diventato ancora più pallido di prima alle queste parole, si lanciò verso la lettera, come se volesse strapparla in pezzi. Il signor Micawber, con una perfetta combinazione di destrezza e fortuna, afferrò le sue nocche con la riga e gli paralizzò la mano destra; essa cadde a terra all’altezza del polso, come se fosse rotta. Lo schianto sembrò quello di un oggetto che colpisce del legno.
“Che il Diavolo ti prenda!” disse Uriah, contorcendosi per il dolore. “Me la pagherai.”
“Avvicinati di nuovo a me, tu, tu, maledetto individuo senza vergogna,” ansimò il signor Micawber, “e se hai una testa umana, te la romperò. Vieni, vieni!”
Credo di non aver mai visto nulla di più ridicolo. Me ne rendevo conto anche all’momento, che il signor Micawber facesse gesti teatrali con la riga e gridasse “Forza!”, mentre Traddles ed io lo spingevamo in un angolo; ogni volta che riuscivamo a farlo, lui continuava comunque a uscirne fuori.
Il suo nemico, mormorando tra sé, dopo aver stretto a lungo la propria mano ferita, lentamente tirò fuori il fazzoletto da collo e lo usò per fasciarsi; poi lo tenne nell’altra mano e si sedette al tavolo, con il viso cupo e lo sguardo abbassato.
Il signor Micawber, quando si fu sufficientemente calmato, continuò a scrivere la sua lettera.
“Gli stipendi che mi venivano pagati in cambio del mio servizio. EEP, ” Si fermava sempre prima di quella parola e la pronunciava con un vigore sorprendente. “Non erano mai stati definiti con precisione; si trattava soltanto di una miseria di ventidue scellini e sei pence a settimana. Il resto dipendeva dal valore del mio lavoro professionale. In altre parole, dalla bassezza della mia natura, dalla avidità dei miei motivi, dalla poverza della mia famiglia, e dalla somiglianza morale – o meglio, immorale – che esisteva tra me e. EEP. Non c’è bisogno di dire che ben presto divenne necessario chiedere a. EEP dei prestiti per mantenere la signora Micawber e la nostra famiglia, purtroppo in difficoltà. Non c’è bisogno di dire che questa necessità era stata prevista da. EEP? Che quei prestiti venivano ottenuti tramite cambiali e altri documenti simili, ben noti alle istituzioni legali di questo paese. E che così io finii per trovarmi intrappolato nella rete che lui stesso aveva tessuto per me, ”
Mr. Micawber’s enjoyment of his epistolary powers, in describing this unfortunate state of things, really seemed to outweigh any pain or anxiety that the reality could have caused him. He read on:
‘“Then it was that—HEEP—began to favour me with just so much of his confidence, as was necessary to the discharge of his infernal business. Then it was that I began, if I may so Shakespearianly express myself, to dwindle, peak, and pine. I found that my services were constantly called into requisition for the falsification of business, and the mystification of an individual whom I will designate as Mr. W. That Mr. W. was imposed upon, kept in ignorance, and deluded, in every possible way; yet, that all this while, the ruffian—HEEP—was professing unbounded gratitude to, and unbounded friendship for, that much-abused gentleman. This was bad enough; but, as the philosophic Dane observes, with that universal applicability which distinguishes the illustrious ornament of the Elizabethan Era, worse remains behind!”’
Mr. Micawber was so very much struck by this happy rounding off with a quotation, that he indulged himself, and us, with a second reading of the sentence, under pretence of having lost his place.
‘“It is not my intention,”’ he continued reading on, ‘“to enter on a detailed list, within the compass of the present epistle (though it is ready elsewhere), of the various malpractices of a minor nature, affecting the individual whom I have denominated Mr. W., to which I have been a tacitly consenting party. My object, when the contest within myself between stipend and no stipend, baker and no baker, existence and non-existence, ceased, was to take advantage of my opportunities to discover and expose the major malpractices committed, to that gentleman’s grievous wrong and injury, by—HEEP. Stimulated by the silent monitor within, and by a no less touching and appealing monitor without—to whom I will briefly refer as Miss W.—I entered on a not unlaborious task of clandestine investigation, protracted—now, to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief, over a period exceeding twelve calendar months.”’
He read this passage as if it were from an Act of Parliament; and appeared majestically refreshed by the sound of the words.
‘“My charges against—HEEP,”’ he read on, glancing at him, and drawing the ruler into a convenient position under his left arm, in case of need, ‘“are as follows.”’
We all held our breath, I think. I am sure Uriah held his.
‘“First,”’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘“When Mr. W.’s faculties and memory for business became, through causes into which it is not necessary or expedient for me to enter, weakened and confused,—HEEP—designedly perplexed and complicated the whole of the official transactions. When Mr. W. was least fit to enter on business,—HEEP was always at hand to force him to enter on it. He obtained Mr. W.’s signature under such circumstances to documents of importance, representing them to be other documents of no importance. He induced Mr. W. to empower him to draw out, thus, one particular sum of trust-money, amounting to twelve six fourteen, two and nine, and employed it to meet pretended business charges and deficiencies which were either already provided for, or had never really existed. He gave this proceeding, throughout, the appearance of having originated in Mr. W.’s own dishonest intention, and of having been accomplished by Mr. W.’s own dishonest act; and has used it, ever since, to torture and constrain him.”’
‘You shall prove this, you Copperfield!’ said Uriah, with a threatening shake of the head. ‘All in good time!’
‘Ask—HEEP—Mr. Traddles, who lived in his house after him,’ said Mr. Micawber, breaking off from the letter; ‘will you?’
‘The fool himself—and lives there now,’ said Uriah, disdainfully.
‘Ask—HEEP—if he ever kept a pocket-book in that house,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘will you?’
I saw Uriah’s lank hand stop, involuntarily, in the scraping of his chin.
‘Or ask him,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘if he ever burnt one there. If he says yes, and asks you where the ashes are, refer him to Wilkins Micawber, and he will hear of something not at all to his advantage!’
The triumphant flourish with which Mr. Micawber delivered himself of these words, had a powerful effect in alarming the mother; who cried out, in much agitation:
‘Ury, Ury! Be umble, and make terms, my dear!’
‘Mother!’ he retorted, ‘will you keep quiet? You’re in a fright, and don’t know what you say or mean. Umble!’ he repeated, looking at me, with a snarl; ‘I’ve umbled some of ‘em for a pretty long time back, umble as I was!’
Mr. Micawber, genteelly adjusting his chin in his cravat, presently proceeded with his composition.
‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief—“’
‘But that won’t do,’ muttered Uriah, relieved. ‘Mother, you keep quiet.’
‘We will endeavour to provide something that WILL do, and do for you finally, sir, very shortly,’ replied Mr. Micawber.
‘“Second. HEEP has, on several occasions, to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief, systematically forged, to various entries, books, and documents, the signature of Mr. W.; and has distinctly done so in one instance, capable of proof by me. To wit, in manner following, that is to say:”’
Again, Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words, which, however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not at all peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the course of my life, in numbers of men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In the taking of legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy themselves mightily when they come to several good words in succession, for the expression of one idea; as, that they utterly detest, abominate, and abjure, or so forth; and the old anathemas were made relishing on the same principle. We talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannize over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words.
Il piacere che il signor Micawber provava nell’esercitare le sue capacità epistolari, descrivendo questa sfortunata situazione, sembrava davvero superare qualsiasi dolore o ansia che la realtà potesse causargli. Continuò a leggere:
“Fu allora che, quel individuo iniziò a fidarsi di me al punto necessario per svolgere i suoi scopi malvagi. Fu allora che, per usare un’espressione shakespeariana, iniziai a svanire, a perdere importanza. Scoprii che i miei servizi venivano costantemente utilizzati per falsificare documenti e ingannare una persona che chiamerò il signor W. Quel signor W. veniva manipolato, tenuto all’oscuro di tutto e ingannato in ogni modo possibile; eppure, durante tutto quel tempo, quell’individuo continuava a professare un’immensa gratitudine, e un’immensa ‘amicizia’ verso quel gentiluomo così maltrattato. Questo era già abbastanza grave; ma, come osserva il filosofo danese, c’è di peggio, ”
Il signor Micawber fu così profondamente colpito da questa felice conclusione accompagnata da una citazione, che si concesse, e a noi pure, la possibilità di rileggere la frase, fingendo di aver perso il punto in cui si era fermato.
“Non è mia intenzione,” continuò leggendo, “entrare in un elenco dettagliato, nell’ambito di questa lettera (sebbene sia già disponibile altrove), delle varie malpratiche di natura minore commesse da una persona che ho chiamato il signor W., e di cui sono stato tacitamente complice. Il mio obiettivo, quando la lotta interiore tra ricevere uno stipendio o no, essere panettiere o no, vivere o non vivere, si è placata, era quello di sfruttare le opportunità a mia disposizione per scoprire e denunciare le gravi ingiustizie e danni arrecati a quel gentiluomo. Stimolato sia dal ‘silenzioso monitor’ interiore che da un altro stimolo altrettanto forte e persuasivo esterno – a cui mi riferirò brevemente come la signorina W. – ho intrapreso un compito non troppo faticoso: indagini segrete, protratte, per quanto ne so, informazioni e credenze al riguardo, per un periodo che supera i dodici mesi.”
Leggeva questo passaggio come se fosse tratto da un atto del Parlamento; e sembrava davvero rinvigorito dal suono di quelle parole.
“Le mie accuse contro. Ehm, ” continuò leggendo, lanciandogli un’occhiata e posizionando la riga metrica sotto il suo braccio sinistro, per ogni evenienza, “sono le seguenti.”
Credo che tutti noi trattenessimo il respiro. Sono sicuro che anche Uriah lo facesse.
“Prima di tutto,” disse il signor Micawber, “quando le capacità e la memoria del signor W. per gli affari divennero, per cause di cui non è necessario né opportuno che io parli, indebolite e confuse. HEEP intenzionalmente rese complesse e difficili tutte le transazioni ufficiali. Quando il signor W. era meno in grado di occuparsi degli affari, HEEP era sempre lì pronto a costringerlo a farlo. Ottenne la firma del signor W. su documenti importanti, presentandoli come altri documenti privi di alcuna rilevanza. Indusse il signor W. ad autorizzarlo a prelevare una determinata somma di denaro fiduciario, pari a dodici seicentoquattordici sterline e due scellini e nove pence, e la utilizzò per coprire spese fittizie o deficienze che in realtà erano già state previste, oppure non esistevano affatto. In tutto questo processo, fece in modo che sembrasse che tutto fosse nato dall’intenzione disonesta del signor W. stesso e che fosse stato compiuto con i suoi stessi mezzi disonesti; da allora ha continuato a usarlo per tormentarlo e costringerlo.”
“Dovrai dimostrarlo, tu, Copperfield!”, disse Uriah scuotendo la testa minacciosamente. “Tutto a suo tempo, ”
“Chiedi, a Mr. Traddles, che dopo di lui visse nella sua casa,” disse Mr. Micawber, interrompendosi mentre leggeva la lettera; “lo farai?”
“Quel idiota, ora vive lì,” disse Uriah con disprezzo.
“Chiedigli, per favore, se abbia mai tenuto un portafoglio in quella casa,” disse il signor Micawber; “lo farai?”
Vidi la mano magra di Uriah fermarsi, involontariamente, mentre si grattava il mento.
“O chiedetegli,” disse il signor Micawber, “se abbia mai bruciato qualcosa lì. Se risponde di sì e vi chiede dove siano le ceneri, indirizzatelo a Wilkins Micawber; allora scoprirà qualcosa che non gli sarà affatto vantaggioso!”
Il trionfale tono con cui il signor Micawber pronunciò queste parole ebbe un effetto molto preoccupante sulla madre, la quale gridò, in grande agitazione:
“Ury, Ury! Sii umile e cerca un accordo, caro mio!”
“Mamma!”, ribatté lui, “potresti stare zitta? Sei spaventata e non sai nemmeno quello che dici o cosa intendi. Umble!”, ripeté guardandomi con rabbia; “Li ho confusi io stesso da un bel po’ di tempo, anche se ero confuso anch’io!”
Il signor Micawber, sistemando con cura il mento nella cravatta, proseguì immediatamente la stesura del suo scritto.
“Secondo quanto ne so, credo e ho informazioni precise, in diverse occasioni HEEP ha, ”
“Ma così non va,” mormorò Uriah, sollevato. “Mamma, stai zitta.”
“Ci impegneremo a fornirvi qualcosa che funzioni davvero, e che vi sia d’aiuto, finalmente, signore, molto presto,” rispose il signor Micawber.
“Secondo quanto so, credo e ho verificato personalmente, ‘HEEP’ ha in più occasioni falsificato sistematicamente la firma del signor W. su diverse voci, libri e documenti; in un caso specifico, tale falsificazione può essere dimostrata. Nello specifico, è avvenuto nel seguente modo, ”
Ancora una volta, il signor Micawber trovava piacere in questo accumulo formale di parole; qualunque fosse l’aspetto ridicolo di tale comportamento nel suo caso, devo dire che non era affatto tipico solo di lui. Ho osservato questa abitudine nella mia vita, in moltissime persone. Mi sembra rappresentare una regola generale: ad esempio, durante la prestazione di giuramenti legali, le parti che li rilasciano sembrano divertirsi molto quando possono utilizzare molte parole consecutive per esprimere un’unica idea – come “detestano profondamente”, “abominano” o “giurano di rinunciare”, e via dicendo. Anche gli antichi anatemi venivano pronunciati seguendo lo stesso principio. Parliamo della tirannia delle parole, ma a noi piace anche esercitare su di esse un certo controllo; ci piace disporre di un gran numero di parole superflue che possano “servirci” in occasioni importanti: pensiamo che questo dia un’impressione di importanza e che suoni, “bene”. Proprio come non ci curiamo del significato delle nostre vesti ufficiali nelle occasioni statali, purché siano abbastanza eleganti e numerose, allo stesso modo il significato o la necessità effettiva delle parole diventa un aspetto secondario, se solo ne facciamo un grande uso. E proprio come gli individui possono finire nei guai se esibiscono troppo le loro vesti ufficiali, o come i servi possono ribellarsi ai loro padroni se sono troppi numerosi, credo che si possa parlare di una nazione che ha già incontrato molte difficoltà, e ne incontrerà ancora molte altre, a causa dell’uso eccessivo di parole.
Mr. Micawber read on, almost smacking his lips:
‘“To wit, in manner following, that is to say. Mr. W. being infirm, and it being within the bounds of probability that his decease might lead to some discoveries, and to the downfall of—HEEP’S—power over the W. family,—as I, Wilkins Micawber, the undersigned, assume—unless the filial affection of his daughter could be secretly influenced from allowing any investigation of the partnership affairs to be ever made, the said—HEEP—deemed it expedient to have a bond ready by him, as from Mr. W., for the before-mentioned sum of twelve six fourteen, two and nine, with interest, stated therein to have been advanced by—HEEP—to Mr. W. to save Mr. W. from dishonour; though really the sum was never advanced by him, and has long been replaced. The signatures to this instrument purporting to be executed by Mr. W. and attested by Wilkins Micawber, are forgeries by—HEEP. I have, in my possession, in his hand and pocket-book, several similar imitations of Mr. W.’s signature, here and there defaced by fire, but legible to anyone. I never attested any such document. And I have the document itself, in my possession.”’ Uriah Heep, with a start, took out of his pocket a bunch of keys, and opened a certain drawer; then, suddenly bethought himself of what he was about, and turned again towards us, without looking in it.
‘“And I have the document,”’ Mr. Micawber read again, looking about as if it were the text of a sermon, ‘“in my possession,—that is to say, I had, early this morning, when this was written, but have since relinquished it to Mr. Traddles.”’
‘It is quite true,’ assented Traddles.
‘Ury, Ury!’ cried the mother, ‘be umble and make terms. I know my son will be umble, gentlemen, if you’ll give him time to think. Mr. Copperfield, I’m sure you know that he was always very umble, sir!’
It was singular to see how the mother still held to the old trick, when the son had abandoned it as useless.
‘Mother,’ he said, with an impatient bite at the handkerchief in which his hand was wrapped, ‘you had better take and fire a loaded gun at me.’
‘But I love you, Ury,’ cried Mrs. Heep. And I have no doubt she did; or that he loved her, however strange it may appear; though, to be sure, they were a congenial couple. ‘And I can’t bear to hear you provoking the gentlemen, and endangering of yourself more. I told the gentleman at first, when he told me upstairs it was come to light, that I would answer for your being umble, and making amends. Oh, see how umble I am, gentlemen, and don’t mind him!’
‘Why, there’s Copperfield, mother,’ he angrily retorted, pointing his lean finger at me, against whom all his animosity was levelled, as the prime mover in the discovery; and I did not undeceive him; ‘there’s Copperfield, would have given you a hundred pound to say less than you’ve blurted out!’
‘I can’t help it, Ury,’ cried his mother. ‘I can’t see you running into danger, through carrying your head so high. Better be umble, as you always was.’
He remained for a little, biting the handkerchief, and then said to me with a scowl:
‘What more have you got to bring forward? If anything, go on with it. What do you look at me for?’
Mr. Micawber promptly resumed his letter, glad to revert to a performance with which he was so highly satisfied.
‘“Third. And last. I am now in a condition to show, by—HEEP’S—false books, and—HEEP’S—real memoranda, beginning with the partially destroyed pocket-book (which I was unable to comprehend, at the time of its accidental discovery by Mrs. Micawber, on our taking possession of our present abode, in the locker or bin devoted to the reception of the ashes calcined on our domestic hearth), that the weaknesses, the faults, the very virtues, the parental affections, and the sense of honour, of the unhappy Mr. W. have been for years acted on by, and warped to the base purposes of—HEEP. That Mr. W. has been for years deluded and plundered, in every conceivable manner, to the pecuniary aggrandisement of the avaricious, false, and grasping—HEEP. That the engrossing object of—HEEP—was, next to gain, to subdue Mr. and Miss W. (of his ulterior views in reference to the latter I say nothing) entirely to himself. That his last act, completed but a few months since, was to induce Mr. W. to execute a relinquishment of his share in the partnership, and even a bill of sale on the very furniture of his house, in consideration of a certain annuity, to be well and truly paid by—HEEP—on the four common quarter-days in each and every year. That these meshes; beginning with alarming and falsified accounts of the estate of which Mr. W. is the receiver, at a period when Mr. W. had launched into imprudent and ill-judged speculations, and may not have had the money, for which he was morally and legally responsible, in hand; going on with pretended borrowings of money at enormous interest, really coming from—HEEP—and by—HEEP—fraudulently obtained or withheld from Mr. W. himself, on pretence of such speculations or otherwise; perpetuated by a miscellaneous catalogue of unscrupulous chicaneries—gradually thickened, until the unhappy Mr. W. could see no world beyond. Bankrupt, as he believed, alike in circumstances, in all other hope, and in honour, his sole reliance was upon the monster in the garb of man,”’—Mr. Micawber made a good deal of this, as a new turn of expression,—‘“who, by making himself necessary to him, had achieved his destruction. All this I undertake to show. Probably much more!”’
I whispered a few words to Agnes, who was weeping, half joyfully, half sorrowfully, at my side; and there was a movement among us, as if Mr. Micawber had finished. He said, with exceeding gravity, ‘Pardon me,’ and proceeded, with a mixture of the lowest spirits and the most intense enjoyment, to the peroration of his letter.
‘“I have now concluded. It merely remains for me to substantiate these accusations; and then, with my ill-starred family, to disappear from the landscape on which we appear to be an encumbrance. That is soon done. It may be reasonably inferred that our baby will first expire of inanition, as being the frailest member of our circle; and that our twins will follow next in order. So be it! For myself, my Canterbury Pilgrimage has done much; imprisonment on civil process, and want, will soon do more. I trust that the labour and hazard of an investigation—of which the smallest results have been slowly pieced together, in the pressure of arduous avocations, under grinding penurious apprehensions, at rise of morn, at dewy eve, in the shadows of night, under the watchful eye of one whom it were superfluous to call Demon—combined with the struggle of parental Poverty to turn it, when completed, to the right account, may be as the sprinkling of a few drops of sweet water on my funeral pyre. I ask no more. Let it be, in justice, merely said of me, as of a gallant and eminent naval Hero, with whom I have no pretensions to cope, that what I have done, I did, in despite of mercenary and selfish objects,
“Mr. Micawber continuò a leggere, quasi leccandosi le labbra, ”
“Cioè, nel modo seguente: poiché il signor W. era malato, e c’era la possibilità che la sua morte potesse portare a scoperte e alla rovina del potere di –HEEP– sulla famiglia W, –io, Wilkins Micawber–, ritenendo che l’affetto filiale della figlia del signor W. potesse essere influenzato in modo segreto affinché non venissero mai condotte indagini sugli affari della società, –HEEP– riteneva quindi opportuno far preparare un contratto da parte sua, a nome del signor W., per la somma di dodicicentosessantquattro sterline e due scellini, con gli interessi previsti; tale somma sarebbe stata prestata dallo stesso –HEEP– al signor W. per evitargli disonore. Anche se in realtà quella somma non fu mai prestata da lui e è stata da tempo rimborsata. Le firme presenti su questo documento, che dovrebbero essere quelle del signor W. e certificate da Wilkins Micawber, sono in realtà falsificazioni opera di –HEEP–. Ho in mio possesso diverse imitazioni della firma del signor W., trovate nel suo portafoglio; alcune sono state danneggiate dal fuoco, ma comunque leggibili. Non ho mai certificato nessun documento del genere. E ho anche il documento stesso in mio possesso.” Uriah Heep, con un sobbalzo, tirò fuori dal taschino un mazzo di chiavi e aprì un cassetto; poi, improvvisamente ricordandosi di ciò che stava facendo, si girò di nuovo verso di noi senza guardare all’interno del cassetto.”
‘“E ho il documento,”’ ripeté il signor Micawber, guardandosi intorno come se si trattasse del testo di un sermone, ‘“in mio possesso; cioè, l’avevo stamattina presto, quando tutto questo è stato scritto, ma da allora l’ho ceduto al signor Traddles.”’
“È proprio vero,” concordò Traddles.
“Ury, Ury!” gridò la madre, “sii umile e cerca di raggiungere un accordo. So che mio figlio sarà umile, signori, se gli date il tempo di pensarci. Signor Copperfield, sono sicura che sappiate quanto fosse sempre molto umile, ”
Era davvero strano vedere come la madre continuasse a usare quell’antico trucco, quando il figlio l’aveva già ritenuto inutile.
“Mamma,” disse, mordendo impazientemente il fazzoletto con cui aveva avvolto la mano, “sarebbe meglio che tu prendessi una pistola carica e la sparassi contro di me.”
“Ma io ti amo, Ury,” gridò la signora Heep. E non ho alcun dubbio che fosse vero; né che lui l’amasse, per quanto possa sembrare strano. Anche se, a dire il vero, erano una coppia davvero assortita. “E non riesco proprio a sopportare di vederti provocare quei signori e metterti ancora più in pericolo. Quando quel signore mi ha detto che la situazione era venuta alla luce, gli ho promesso che avrei fatto in modo che tu ti scusassi umilmente e rimediassi ai tuoi errori. Oh, vedete quanto sono umile ora. Signori, per favore, non badate a lui!”
“Ehi, è Copperfield, mamma!”, ribatté arrabbiato, puntando il suo dito magro verso di me, contro di me si concentrava tutta la sua ostilità, visto che ero io il responsabile di quella scoperta; e non gli dissi la verità: “È Copperfield. Avrebbe dato cento sterline pur di farti dire qualcosa di diverso da ciò che hai detto!”
“Non posso farci nulla, Ury,” gridò sua madre. “Non riesco a sopportare l’idea che tu ti metta in pericolo per via della tua presunzione. È meglio essere umili, come sei sempre stato.”
Rimase lì per un po’, mordicchiando il fazzoletto, poi mi disse con un’espressione cupa:
“Cosa altro hai da aggiungere? Se c’è qualcosa, continua pure. Perché mi guardi in questo modo?”
Il signor Micawber riprese immediatamente a scrivere la sua lettera, felice di poter tornare a un’attività che lo soddisfaceva così tanto.
“Terzo e ultimo: sono ora in grado di dimostrare, attraverso libri falsi e documenti autentici – a partire dal portafoglio parzialmente distrutto che non riuscii a comprendere al momento della sua scoperta accidentale da parte della signora Micawber, quando ci trasferimmo nella nostra attuale abitazione, nel cassetto destinato ad accogliere le ceneri bruciate sul nostro focolare domestico – che le debolezze, i difetti, persino le cosiddette ‘virtù’ di quel sfortunato signor W. sono stati per anni sfruttati e distorti a fini malvagi da quella stessa persona. Per anni il signor W. è stato ingannato e derubato in ogni modo possibile, al solo scopo di arricchire ulteriormente quella persona avida, falsa e rapace. L’obiettivo principale di tale individuo era, oltre al guadagno, sottomettere completamente il signor e la signorina W. Per quanto riguarda le sue intenzioni nei confronti della seconda, non oso dire nulla. Il suo ultimo atto, compiuto solo pochi mesi fa, fu indurre il signor W a rinunciare alla propria quota nella società in cui erano coinvolti, e addirittura a firmare un contratto di vendita dei mobili della sua casa, in cambio di una certa rendita che quella persona si impegnava a pagare regolarmente ogni quattro mesi. Tutta questa rete di inganni – a partire da bilanci falsificati riguardanti i beni di cui il signor W era amministratore, in un periodo in cui quest’ultimo aveva intrapreso speculazioni imprudenti e senza senso, e probabilmente non disponeva dei fondi necessari; proseguendo con fittizi prestiti a tassi esorbitanti, in realtà provenienti da quella stessa persona, ottenuti o trattenuti fraudolentemente dal signor W stesso – si è gradualmente intensificata fino a rendere impossibile per il sfortunato signor W vedere alcuna via d’uscita. Bancarottato, privo di speranze in ogni ambito e della propria dignità, la sua unica ancora era legata a quella ‘bestia’ mascherata da uomo che, rendendosi indispensabile per lui, aveva causato la sua rovina. Tutto questo lo dimostrerò. E probabilmente molto di più!””
Sussurrai alcune parole ad Agnes, che piangeva, metà di gioia e metà di tristezza, al mio fianco; poi ci fu un movimento tra noi, come se il signor Micawber avesse finito di parlare. Disse, con estrema gravità: “Perdonatemi”, e proseguì, mescolando sentimenti molto negativi con un’intensa gioia, nella conclusione della sua lettera.
“Ora ho concluso. Mi resta soltanto dimostrare la fondatezza di queste accuse; e poi, insieme alla mia sfortunata famiglia, scomparire da questa società che sembra considerarci un peso. Sarà fatto presto. Si può ragionevolmente supporre che il nostro bambino morirà per prima cosa di inedia, essendo il membro più debole della nostra famiglia; e poi seguiranno i nostri gemelli. Che sia così! Per quanto mi riguarda, il mio ‘Pellegrinaggio a Canterbury’ ha già fatto molto; l’carcere per ordine giudiziario e la povertà faranno il resto. Spero che lo sforzo e i rischi di questa indagine – i cui risultati sono stati ottenuti lentamente, tra impegni ardui, sotto costante angoscia, all’alba, al crepuscolo, nell’oscurità della notte, sotto lo sguardo attento di qualcuno che sarebbe superfluo definire ‘demonio’ – uniti alla lotta della nostra povertà per far sì che tutto ciò abbia un senso, possano rappresentare, almeno in parte, una sorta di offerta dolce sul mio rogo funebre. Non chiedo di più. Che si dica di me, giustamente, come di un nobile e illustre eroe navale, anche se non ho alcuna pretesa di paragonarmi a lui: ciò che ho fatto l’ho fatto nonostante obiettivi meschini e egoistici.”
For England, home, and Beauty.
‘“Remaining always, &c. &c., WILKINS MICAWBER.”’
Much affected, but still intensely enjoying himself, Mr. Micawber folded up his letter, and handed it with a bow to my aunt, as something she might like to keep.
There was, as I had noticed on my first visit long ago, an iron safe in the room. The key was in it. A hasty suspicion seemed to strike Uriah; and, with a glance at Mr. Micawber, he went to it, and threw the doors clanking open. It was empty.
‘Where are the books?’ he cried, with a frightful face. ‘Some thief has stolen the books!’
Mr. Micawber tapped himself with the ruler. ‘I did, when I got the key from you as usual—but a little earlier—and opened it this morning.’
‘Don’t be uneasy,’ said Traddles. ‘They have come into my possession. I will take care of them, under the authority I mentioned.’
‘You receive stolen goods, do you?’ cried Uriah.
‘Under such circumstances,’ answered Traddles, ‘yes.’
What was my astonishment when I beheld my aunt, who had been profoundly quiet and attentive, make a dart at Uriah Heep, and seize him by the collar with both hands!
‘You know what I want?’ said my aunt.
‘A strait-waistcoat,’ said he.
‘No. My property!’ returned my aunt. ‘Agnes, my dear, as long as I believed it had been really made away with by your father, I wouldn’t—and, my dear, I didn’t, even to Trot, as he knows—breathe a syllable of its having been placed here for investment. But, now I know this fellow’s answerable for it, and I’ll have it! Trot, come and take it away from him!’
Whether my aunt supposed, for the moment, that he kept her property in his neck-kerchief, I am sure I don’t know; but she certainly pulled at it as if she thought so. I hastened to put myself between them, and to assure her that we would all take care that he should make the utmost restitution of everything he had wrongly got. This, and a few moments’ reflection, pacified her; but she was not at all disconcerted by what she had done (though I cannot say as much for her bonnet) and resumed her seat composedly.
During the last few minutes, Mrs. Heep had been clamouring to her son to be ‘umble’; and had been going down on her knees to all of us in succession, and making the wildest promises. Her son sat her down in his chair; and, standing sulkily by her, holding her arm with his hand, but not rudely, said to me, with a ferocious look:
‘What do you want done?’
‘I will tell you what must be done,’ said Traddles.
‘Has that Copperfield no tongue?’ muttered Uriah, ‘I would do a good deal for you if you could tell me, without lying, that somebody had cut it out.’
‘My Uriah means to be umble!’ cried his mother. ‘Don’t mind what he says, good gentlemen!’
‘What must be done,’ said Traddles, ‘is this. First, the deed of relinquishment, that we have heard of, must be given over to me now—here.’
‘Suppose I haven’t got it,’ he interrupted.
‘But you have,’ said Traddles; ‘therefore, you know, we won’t suppose so.’ And I cannot help avowing that this was the first occasion on which I really did justice to the clear head, and the plain, patient, practical good sense, of my old schoolfellow. ‘Then,’ said Traddles, ‘you must prepare to disgorge all that your rapacity has become possessed of, and to make restoration to the last farthing. All the partnership books and papers must remain in our possession; all your books and papers; all money accounts and securities, of both kinds. In short, everything here.’
‘Must it? I don’t know that,’ said Uriah. ‘I must have time to think about that.’
‘Certainly,’ replied Traddles; ‘but, in the meanwhile, and until everything is done to our satisfaction, we shall maintain possession of these things; and beg you—in short, compel you—to keep to your own room, and hold no communication with anyone.’
‘I won’t do it!’ said Uriah, with an oath.
‘Maidstone jail is a safer place of detention,’ observed Traddles; ‘and though the law may be longer in righting us, and may not be able to right us so completely as you can, there is no doubt of its punishing YOU. Dear me, you know that quite as well as I! Copperfield, will you go round to the Guildhall, and bring a couple of officers?’
Here, Mrs. Heep broke out again, crying on her knees to Agnes to interfere in their behalf, exclaiming that he was very humble, and it was all true, and if he didn’t do what we wanted, she would, and much more to the same purpose; being half frantic with fears for her darling. To inquire what he might have done, if he had had any boldness, would be like inquiring what a mongrel cur might do, if it had the spirit of a tiger. He was a coward, from head to foot; and showed his dastardly nature through his sullenness and mortification, as much as at any time of his mean life.
‘Stop!’ he growled to me; and wiped his hot face with his hand. ‘Mother, hold your noise. Well! Let ‘em have that deed. Go and fetch it!’
‘Do you help her, Mr. Dick,’ said Traddles, ‘if you please.’
Proud of his commission, and understanding it, Mr. Dick accompanied her as a shepherd’s dog might accompany a sheep. But, Mrs. Heep gave him little trouble; for she not only returned with the deed, but with the box in which it was, where we found a banker’s book and some other papers that were afterwards serviceable.
‘Good!’ said Traddles, when this was brought. ‘Now, Mr. Heep, you can retire to think: particularly observing, if you please, that I declare to you, on the part of all present, that there is only one thing to be done; that it is what I have explained; and that it must be done without delay.’
Uriah, without lifting his eyes from the ground, shuffled across the room with his hand to his chin, and pausing at the door, said:
‘Copperfield, I have always hated you. You’ve always been an upstart, and you’ve always been against me.’
‘As I think I told you once before,’ said I, ‘it is you who have been, in your greed and cunning, against all the world. It may be profitable to you to reflect, in future, that there never were greed and cunning in the world yet, that did not do too much, and overreach themselves. It is as certain as death.’
Per l’Inghilterra, la propria terra, e per la Bellezza.
“Rimarrà sempre così, ecc., WILKINS MICAWBER.”
Molto commosso, ma ancora immerso nel piacere di quel momento, il signor Micawber ripiegò la sua lettera e la porse con un inchino a mia zia, come qualcosa che forse le sarebbe piaciuto conservare.
C’era, come avevo notato durante la mia prima visita molto tempo fa, un armadio di ferro nella stanza; la chiave era al suo interno. A Uriah sembrò balenare in mente un sospetto improvviso; dopo aver gettato uno sguardo a Mr. Micawber, si avvicinò all’armadio e lo aprì con forza. Era vuoto.
“Dove sono i libri?”, gridò, con un’espressione spaventata. “Qualcun ladro li ha rubati!”
Il signor Micawber si batté la riga sulla fronte. “Sì, l’ho fatto: quando ho preso la chiave da te, come al solito, ma un po’ prima, e l’ho aperta stamattina.”
“Non preoccupatevi,” disse Traddles. “Sono passati sotto la mia custodia. Me ne occuperò, con l’autorità di cui ho parlato.”
“Ricevi merci rubate, vero?”, gridò Uriah.
“In tali circostanze,” rispose Traddles, “sì.”
Quanto fui sorpreso quando vidi mia zia, che fino ad allora era stata estremamente tranquilla e attenta, lanciarsi su Uriah Heep e afferrarlo per il colletto con entrambe le mani!
“Sai cosa voglio?” disse mia zia.
“Un gilet stretto alla vita,” disse lui.
“No. È mia proprietà!” rispose mia zia. “Agnes, cara, finché credevo che fosse davvero stata portata via da tuo padre, non avrei mai detto una parola – e, cara, non l’ho detto nemmeno a Trot, come lui sa – riguardo al fatto che fosse stata messa qui per investimenti. Ma ora so che quest’uomo ne è responsabile, e la voglio indietro! Trot, vieni a prenderla!”
Se mia zia pensasse, in quel momento, che lui tenesse la sua proprietà nel fazzoletto da collo, non ne sono certo; ma di certo lo tirò, come se lo credesse davvero. Mi affrettai a mettermi tra loro e a rassicurarla che ci saremmo assicurati che restituisse tutto ciò che aveva preso indebitamente. Questo, insieme a qualche momento di riflessione, la calmò; ma non fu affatto turbata da ciò che aveva fatto (anche se non posso dire lo stesso per il suo cappello), e riprese a sedersi con tranquillità.
Negli ultimi minuti, la signora Heep aveva continuato a esortare suo figlio ad essere “umile”; si era anche inginocchiata davanti a noi uno dopo l’altro, facendo le promesse più assurde. Suo figlio la fece sedere sulla sua sedia; poi, standole accanto in silenzio e tenendole il braccio con la mano, ma senza essere scortese, mi disse con uno sguardo minaccioso:
“Cosa vuoi che si faccia?”
“Vi dirò cosa bisogna fare,” disse Traddles.
“Quel Copperfield non ha la lingua?” mormorò Uriah. “Ti farei un ottimo affare se potessi dirmi, senza mentire, che qualcuno gliel’ha tagliata via.”
“Mio Uriah vuole solo essere umile!”, gridò sua madre. “Non badate a quello che dice, gentili signori, ”
“Quello che deve essere fatto,” disse Traddles, “è questo. Prima di tutto, l’atto di rinuncia di cui abbiamo parlato deve essere consegnato a me ora, qui.”
“Supponiamo che non l’abbia,” interruppe lui.
“Ma tu ce l’hai,” disse Traddles; “quindi, capisci, non penseremo così.” E devo ammettere che questa fu la prima volta in cui riconobbi davvero il chiaro intelletto, la semplicità, la pazienza e il buon senso pratico del mio vecchio compagno di scuola. “Allora,” disse Traddles, “dovrai essere pronto a restituire tutto ciò che la tua avidità ti ha fatto ottenere, e a ripristinare ogni singolo penny. Tutti i documenti relativi alle società in cui sei coinvolto devono rimanere in nostro possesso; tutti i tuoi libri e documenti; tutte le tue contabilità finanziarie e garanzie, di entrambi i tipi. In breve, tutto ciò che hai qui.”
“Devo proprio farlo? Non ne sono sicuro,” disse Uriah. “Devo avere del tempo per pensarci.”
“Certamente,” rispose Traddles; “ma intanto, finché non sarà tutto fatto a nostro soddisfazione, manterremo il possesso di queste cose; e vi preghiamo, in breve, vi costringiamo, a rimanere nella vostra stanza e a non comunicare con nessuno.”
“Non lo farò!” disse Uriah, giurando.
“La prigione di Maidstone è un luogo di detenzione più sicuro,” osservò Traddles; “e anche se la legge potrebbe impiegare più tempo per rimediare ai nostri torti, e forse non riuscirà a farlo completamente come potresti tu, non c’è alcun >dubbio che punirà TE. Per l’amor del cielo, lo sai benissimo quanto me! Copperfield, potresti andare al Guildhall e portare con te un paio di agenti?”
Qui, la signora Heep scoppiò di nuovo in lacrime, inginocchiandosi davanti ad Agnes e supplicandola di intervenire a loro favore, esclamando che lui era molto umile e che tutto ciò che diceva era vero; aggiungeva anche che, se lui non avesse fatto ciò che volevano, lei lo avrebbe fatto certamente, e con ancora maggiore determinazione. Era quasi impazzita per la paura di perdere il suo caro. Chiedere cosa potesse aver fatto, nel caso avesse avuto un po’ di coraggio, sarebbe stato come chiedere cosa potesse fare un cane meticolo se avesse lo spirito di una tigre. Era un codardo, dalla testa ai piedi; e mostrava la sua spregevole >natura attraverso il suo sguardo cupo e l’umiliazione che provava, proprio come in ogni altro momento della sua meschina esistenza.
“Fermati!” mi ringhiò; poi si asciugò il viso sudato con la mano. “Mamma, taci. Lasciali fare quello che vogliono. Vai a prenderlo!”
“La aiuterà, signor Dick, per favore?” disse Traddles.
Orgoglioso della sua commissione e comprensivo dei suoi doveri, il signor Dick la accompagnò, proprio come un cane da pastore accompagna le pecore. Tuttavia, la signora Heep non gli causò alcun problema; infatti, non solo tornò con l’atto in questione, ma anche con la scatola in cui era contenuto, all’interno della quale trovammo un libro contabile e alcuni altri documenti che si rivelarono poi utili in seguito.
“Bene!”, disse Traddles quando gli fu portato. “Ora, signor Heep, può ritirarsi per riflettere. E soprattutto tenga presente che, da parte di tutti noi presenti, le viene chiesto di fare una sola cosa: quella che ho spiegato; e deve essere fatta senza indugio.”
Uriah, senza alzare lo sguardo dal pavimento, si mosse inciampando per la stanza, tenendosi il mento con una mano; arrivato alla porta, disse:
“Copperfield, ti ho sempre odiato. Sei sempre stato un arrivista e sei sempre stato contro di me.”
“Come credo di averti detto già una volta,” dissi, “sei tu stesso che, con la tua avidità e astuzia, hai agito contro tutto il mondo. Forse ti sarà utile riflettere in futuro sul fatto che non esiste mai stata un’avidità o un’astuzia al mondo che non abbia causato troppi danni e non si sia spinta oltre i limiti. È una verità altrettanto certa quanto la morte.”
‘Or as certain as they used to teach at school (the same school where I picked up so much umbleness), from nine o’clock to eleven, that labour was a curse; and from eleven o’clock to one, that it was a blessing and a cheerfulness, and a dignity, and I don’t know what all, eh?’ said he with a sneer. ‘You preach, about as consistent as they did. Won’t umbleness go down? I shouldn’t have got round my gentleman fellow-partner without it, I think. —Micawber, you old bully, I’ll pay YOU!’
Mr. Micawber, supremely defiant of him and his extended finger, and making a great deal of his chest until he had slunk out at the door, then addressed himself to me, and proffered me the satisfaction of ‘witnessing the re-establishment of mutual confidence between himself and Mrs. Micawber’. After which, he invited the company generally to the contemplation of that affecting spectacle.
‘The veil that has long been interposed between Mrs. Micawber and myself, is now withdrawn,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘and my children and the Author of their Being can once more come in contact on equal terms.’
As we were all very grateful to him, and all desirous to show that we were, as well as the hurry and disorder of our spirits would permit, I dare say we should all have gone, but that it was necessary for Agnes to return to her father, as yet unable to bear more than the dawn of hope; and for someone else to hold Uriah in safe keeping. So, Traddles remained for the latter purpose, to be presently relieved by Mr. Dick; and Mr. Dick, my aunt, and I, went home with Mr. Micawber. As I parted hurriedly from the dear girl to whom I owed so much, and thought from what she had been saved, perhaps, that morning—her better resolution notwithstanding—I felt devoutly thankful for the miseries of my younger days which had brought me to the knowledge of Mr. Micawber.
His house was not far off; and as the street door opened into the sitting-room, and he bolted in with a precipitation quite his own, we found ourselves at once in the bosom of the family. Mr. Micawber exclaiming, ‘Emma! my life!’ rushed into Mrs. Micawber’s arms. Mrs. Micawber shrieked, and folded Mr. Micawber in her embrace. Miss Micawber, nursing the unconscious stranger of Mrs. Micawber’s last letter to me, was sensibly affected. The stranger leaped. The twins testified their joy by several inconvenient but innocent demonstrations. Master Micawber, whose disposition appeared to have been soured by early disappointment, and whose aspect had become morose, yielded to his better feelings, and blubbered.
‘Emma!’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘The cloud is past from my mind. Mutual confidence, so long preserved between us once, is restored, to know no further interruption. Now, welcome poverty!’ cried Mr. Micawber, shedding tears. ‘Welcome misery, welcome houselessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest, and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us to the end!’
With these expressions, Mr. Micawber placed Mrs. Micawber in a chair, and embraced the family all round; welcoming a variety of bleak prospects, which appeared, to the best of my judgement, to be anything but welcome to them; and calling upon them to come out into Canterbury and sing a chorus, as nothing else was left for their support.
But Mrs. Micawber having, in the strength of her emotions, fainted away, the first thing to be done, even before the chorus could be considered complete, was to recover her. This my aunt and Mr. Micawber did; and then my aunt was introduced, and Mrs. Micawber recognized me.
‘Excuse me, dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said the poor lady, giving me her hand, ‘but I am not strong; and the removal of the late misunderstanding between Mr. Micawber and myself was at first too much for me.’
‘Is this all your family, ma’am?’ said my aunt.
‘There are no more at present,’ returned Mrs. Micawber.
‘Good gracious, I didn’t mean that, ma’am,’ said my aunt. ‘I mean, are all these yours?’
‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is a true bill.’
‘And that eldest young gentleman, now,’ said my aunt, musing, ‘what has he been brought up to?’
‘It was my hope when I came here,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘to have got Wilkins into the Church: or perhaps I shall express my meaning more strictly, if I say the Choir. But there was no vacancy for a tenor in the venerable Pile for which this city is so justly eminent; and he has—in short, he has contracted a habit of singing in public-houses, rather than in sacred edifices.’
‘But he means well,’ said Mrs. Micawber, tenderly.
‘I dare say, my love,’ rejoined Mr. Micawber, ‘that he means particularly well; but I have not yet found that he carries out his meaning, in any given direction whatsoever.’
Master Micawber’s moroseness of aspect returned upon him again, and he demanded, with some temper, what he was to do? Whether he had been born a carpenter, or a coach-painter, any more than he had been born a bird? Whether he could go into the next street, and open a chemist’s shop? Whether he could rush to the next assizes, and proclaim himself a lawyer? Whether he could come out by force at the opera, and succeed by violence? Whether he could do anything, without being brought up to something?
My aunt mused a little while, and then said:
‘Mr. Micawber, I wonder you have never turned your thoughts to emigration.’
‘Madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘it was the dream of my youth, and the fallacious aspiration of my riper years.’ I am thoroughly persuaded, by the by, that he had never thought of it in his life.
‘Aye?’ said my aunt, with a glance at me. ‘Why, what a thing it would be for yourselves and your family, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, if you were to emigrate now.’
‘Capital, madam, capital,’ urged Mr. Micawber, gloomily.
‘That is the principal, I may say the only difficulty, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ assented his wife.
“O almeno, così come ci insegnavano a scuola (quella stessa scuola dove ho imparato tanta umiltà): dalle nove alle undici, quel lavoro era una maledizione; dalle undici all’una, invece, era una benedizione, una fonte di gioia, dignità, e chissà cos’altro ancora, eh?” disse lui con un sorriso beffardo. “Voi predicate, ma con la stessa coerenza di loro. L’umiltà non finirà per scomparire? Penso che senza di essa non sarei riuscito a conquistare il mio gentile socio. Micawber, vecchio bullo, te la farò pagare!”
Il signor Micawber, mostrando un’aperta sfida nei suoi confronti e verso il suo dito teso, si gonfiò orgogliosamente il petto fino a quando non uscì dalla porta; poi si rivolse a me, offrendomi l’opportunità di “assistere al ristabilimento della fiducia reciproca tra lui e la signora Micawber”. Dopo ciò, invitò tutti i presenti ad ammirare quell’emozionante spettacolo.
“Il velo che da tempo si frapponeva tra la signora Micawber e me è ora stato rimosso,” disse il signor Micawber; “e i miei figli, nonché colui che li ha creati, possono nuovamente entrare in contatto su basi di parità.”
Poiché eravamo tutti molto grati a lui e desideravamo ardentemente dimostrarlo, per quanto la fretta e il disordine dei nostri sentimenti ce lo permettessero, oserei dire che saremmo andati tutti, ma era necessario che Agnes tornasse dal suo padre, che ancora non riusciva a sopportare di più della semplice speranza dell’alba; inoltre, qualcuno doveva assicurarsi che Uriah fosse al sicuro. Così Traddles rimase per questo scopo, per essere poi sostituito da Mr. Dick; mentre io, mia zia e Mr. Micawber tornammo a casa. Mentre mi separavo in fretta da quella cara ragazza a cui dovevo così tanto, e pensando a ciò che forse era stata salvata quella mattina – nonostante la sua decisione più matura – provai una profonda gratitudine per le sofferenze dei miei giorni più giovani che mi avevano portato a conoscere Mr. Micawber.
La sua casa non era lontana; e non appena la porta d’ingresso si aprì sul salotto, lui entrò di corsa con quella sua tipica precipitazione, e ci trovammo immediatamente nel cuore della famiglia. Il signor Micawber esclamò: “Emma! Mia vita!” e corse tra le braccia della signora Micawber. La signora Micawber gridò e strinse il marito a sé. La signorina Micawber, che stava curando lo sconosciuto privo di sensi menzionato nella lettera precedente della madre, fu visibilmente commossa. Lo sconosciuto si alzò all’improvviso; i gemelli espressero la loro gioia con alcune manifestazioni poco convenzionali ma innocenti. Il signor Micawber, il cui umore sembrava essere stato offeso da delusioni precedenti e il cui aspetto era diventato cupo, cedette finalmente ai suoi sentimenti migliori e scoppiò in lacrime.
“‘Emma!’’ disse il signor Micawber. “Il peso che mi opprimeva è svanito. La fiducia reciproca, una volta conservata tra di noi, è stata ristabilita e non subirà più interferenze. Ora, benvenuta la povertà!” esclamò il signor Micawber, versando lacrime. “Benvenuti la miseria, l’essere senza fissa dimora, la fame, i stracci, le tempeste, e la povertà stessa! La fiducia reciproca ci sosterrà fino alla fine!”
Con queste parole, il signor Micawber fece sedere la signora Micawber su una sedia e abbracciò tutta la famiglia; accolse con indifferenza una serie di prospettive cupe che, a mio parere, non potevano affatto rivelarsi positive per loro; e li esortò ad andare a Canterbury per cantare un coro, poiché non restava altro su cui contare.
Ma poiché la signora Micawber, sopraffatta dalle sue emozioni, svenne, la prima cosa da fare, ancora prima che il coro potesse essere considerato completo, fu farla riprendere i sensi. Questo compito fu assunto da mia zia e dal signor Micawber; dopodiché mia zia fu presentata e la signora Micawber mi riconobbe.
“Scusi, caro signor Copperfield,” disse la povera donna porgendomi la mano, “ma non sono molto in forza; e la risoluzione di quel malinteso che un tempo c’era tra il signor Micawber e me è stata troppo difficile da sopportare per me.”
“Tutta la sua famiglia è così, signora?” chiese mia zia.
“Al momento non ne sono più,” rispose la signora Micawber.
“Mio Dio, non volevo dire quello, signora,” disse mia zia. “Voglio dire, sono tutte queste cose sue?”
“Signora,” rispose il signor Micawber, “è una fattura regolare.”
“E quel giovane signore più anziano,” disse mia zia, riflettendo, “in che ambiente è stato cresciuto?”
“La mia speranza quando sono arrivato qui,” disse il signor Micawber, “era quella di far entrare Wilkins nella Chiesa. O forse dovrei esprimermi in modo più preciso: nel coro della Chiesa. Ma non c’erano posti disponibili per un tenore nella venerabile Pile, per la quale questa città è così giustamente rinomata; e lui, insomma, ha preso l’abitudine di cantare nei locali pubblici, piuttosto che nelle strutture sacre.”
“Ma intende dire, ” disse dolcemente la signora Micawber.
“Oserei dire, mia amata”, riprese il signor Micawber, “che intenda davvero fare del bene; ma non ho ancora constatato che abbia messo in atto tali intenzioni, in alcun modo concreto.”
La malinconia che caratterizzava il signor Micawber tornò ad affliggerlo; con tono irritato, chiese cosa dovesse fare. Forse era nato carpentiere o verniciatore di carrozze, proprio come forse era nato un uccello. Poteva forse andare nella strada accanto e aprire una farmacia? Poteva partecipare alle prossime assise e dichiararsi avvocato? Poteva forse irrompere con la forza all’opera e ottenere ciò che voleva con la violenza? Insomma, poteva fare qualcosa, senza prima essere stato educato o addestrato per farlo?
“Mia zia rifletté per un po’, poi disse, ”
“Signor Micawber, mi chiedo se abbiate mai considerato l’idea di emigrare.”
“Signora,” rispose il signor Micawber, “era il sogno della mia giovinezza, l’illusoria aspirazione dei miei anni maturi. In realtà, sono assolutamente convinto che non ci abbia mai pensato in tutta la sua vita.”
“Ah sì?” disse mia zia, guardandomi. “Davvero, sarebbe qualcosa di meraviglioso per voi e per la vostra famiglia, signor e signora Micawber, se ora emigraste.”
“Capitale, signora, capitale,” insisteva il signor Micawber con tono cupo.
“Quella è la principale difficoltà, anzi direi l’unica difficoltà, caro signor Copperfield,” concordò sua moglie.
‘Capital?’ cried my aunt. ‘But you are doing us a great service—have done us a great service, I may say, for surely much will come out of the fire—and what could we do for you, that would be half so good as to find the capital?’
‘I could not receive it as a gift,’ said Mr. Micawber, full of fire and animation, ‘but if a sufficient sum could be advanced, say at five per cent interest, per annum, upon my personal liability—say my notes of hand, at twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months, respectively, to allow time for something to turn up—’
‘Could be? Can be and shall be, on your own terms,’ returned my aunt, ‘if you say the word. Think of this now, both of you. Here are some people David knows, going out to Australia shortly. If you decide to go, why shouldn’t you go in the same ship? You may help each other. Think of this now, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Take your time, and weigh it well.’
‘There is but one question, my dear ma’am, I could wish to ask,’ said Mrs. Micawber. ‘The climate, I believe, is healthy?’
‘Finest in the world!’ said my aunt.
‘Just so,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘Then my question arises. Now, are the circumstances of the country such, that a man of Mr. Micawber’s abilities would have a fair chance of rising in the social scale? I will not say, at present, might he aspire to be Governor, or anything of that sort; but would there be a reasonable opening for his talents to develop themselves—that would be amply sufficient—and find their own expansion?’
‘No better opening anywhere,’ said my aunt, ‘for a man who conducts himself well, and is industrious.’
‘For a man who conducts himself well,’ repeated Mrs. Micawber, with her clearest business manner, ‘and is industrious. Precisely. It is evident to me that Australia is the legitimate sphere of action for Mr. Micawber!’
‘I entertain the conviction, my dear madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘that it is, under existing circumstances, the land, the only land, for myself and family; and that something of an extraordinary nature will turn up on that shore. It is no distance—comparatively speaking; and though consideration is due to the kindness of your proposal, I assure you that is a mere matter of form.’
Shall I ever forget how, in a moment, he was the most sanguine of men, looking on to fortune; or how Mrs. Micawber presently discoursed about the habits of the kangaroo! Shall I ever recall that street of Canterbury on a market-day, without recalling him, as he walked back with us; expressing, in the hardy roving manner he assumed, the unsettled habits of a temporary sojourner in the land; and looking at the bullocks, as they came by, with the eye of an Australian farmer!
“Capitale?” esclamò mia zia. “Ma ci state facendo un grande favore, anzi, potrei dire che ci avete reso un enorme servizio, perché sicuramente molte cose emergeranno da quell’incendio. E cosa potremmo fare per voi che fosse anche solo la metà di utile rispetto al trovare quel capitale?”
“Non potrei accettarlo come regalo,” disse il signor Micawber, pieno di entusiasmo e vivacità, “ma se si potesse prestarmi una somma sufficiente, ad esempio al tasso dell’5% di interesse annuo, sulla mia responsabilità personale, diciamo, sui miei assegni, con scadenze rispettivamente di dodici, diciotto e ventiquattro mesi, così da avere il tempo necessario perché qualcosa possa emergere, ”
“Potrebbe essere. Può essere e sicuramente sarà, secondo i tuoi termini,” rispose mia zia, “se solo lo dici. Pensateci ora, voi due. Ci sono alcune persone che David conosce e che stanno per partire per l’Australia. Se decidete di andare, perché non viaggiare nello stesso barco? Potreste aiutarvi a vicenda. Pensateci bene, signor e signora Micawber. Prendetevi il vostro tempo e valutate attentamente la situazione.”
“C’è solo una domanda che vorrei porre, mia cara signora,” disse la signora Micawber. “Il clima, credo, sia salutare, ”
“La migliore al mondo!” disse mia zia.
“Proprio così,” rispose la signora Micawber. “Allora sorge la mia domanda: sono le circostanze del paese tali che un uomo dalle capacità di Mr. Micawber abbia una reale possibilità di salire nella scala sociale? Non dico che al momento possa aspirare a diventare governatore o qualcosa del genere; ma esisterebbe comunque uno spazio ragionevole per lo sviluppo dei suoi talenti, sufficiente affinché possano trovare la loro piena realizzazione?”
“Non c’è inizio migliore, da nessuna parte,” disse mia zia, “per un uomo che si comporta bene e che è diligente.”
“Per un uomo che si comporta in modo corretto”, ripeté la signora Micawber con il suo tono più professionale, “e che è diligente. Esattamente. È evidente per me che l’Australia rappresenti davvero l’ambito d’azione ideale per il signor Micawber!”
“Sono convinto, mia cara signora,” disse il signor Micawber, “che, nelle circostanze attuali, la terra, l’unica terra disponibile per me e la mia famiglia, sia proprio quella; e che qualcosa di straordinario possa emergere da quelle terre. Non è una distanza lunga, in confronto; e anche se devo prendere in considerazione la gentilezza della sua proposta, le assicuro che si tratta soltanto di una formalità.”
Riuscirò mai dimenticare come, in un attimo, diventasse l’uomo più ottimista del mondo, pieno di fiducia nella fortuna. O come la signora Micawber iniziasse subito a parlare delle abitudini dei canguri! Riuscirò mai a ricordare quella strada di Canterbury in un giorno di mercato, senza pensare a lui mentre camminava con noi; mentre, con quel suo modo deciso e vagabondo, esprimeva le abitudini incerte di uno straniero temporaneo in quella terra. E come osservasse i buoi che passavano, con lo sguardo di un agricoltore australiano!
CHAPTER 53. ANOTHER RETROSPECT
I must pause yet once again. O, my child-wife, there is a figure in the moving crowd before my memory, quiet and still, saying in its innocent love and childish beauty, Stop to think of me—turn to look upon the Little Blossom, as it flutters to the ground!
I do. All else grows dim, and fades away. I am again with Dora, in our cottage. I do not know how long she has been ill. I am so used to it in feeling, that I cannot count the time. It is not really long, in weeks or months; but, in my usage and experience, it is a weary, weary while.
They have left off telling me to ‘wait a few days more’. I have begun to fear, remotely, that the day may never shine, when I shall see my child-wife running in the sunlight with her old friend Jip.
He is, as it were suddenly, grown very old. It may be that he misses in his mistress, something that enlivened him and made him younger; but he mopes, and his sight is weak, and his limbs are feeble, and my aunt is sorry that he objects to her no more, but creeps near her as he lies on Dora’s bed—she sitting at the bedside—and mildly licks her hand.
Dora lies smiling on us, and is beautiful, and utters no hasty or complaining word. She says that we are very good to her; that her dear old careful boy is tiring himself out, she knows; that my aunt has no sleep, yet is always wakeful, active, and kind. Sometimes, the little bird-like ladies come to see her; and then we talk about our wedding-day, and all that happy time.
What a strange rest and pause in my life there seems to be—and in all life, within doors and without—when I sit in the quiet, shaded, orderly room, with the blue eyes of my child-wife turned towards me, and her little fingers twining round my hand! Many and many an hour I sit thus; but, of all those times, three times come the freshest on my mind.
It is morning; and Dora, made so trim by my aunt’s hands, shows me how her pretty hair will curl upon the pillow yet, an how long and bright it is, and how she likes to have it loosely gathered in that net she wears.
‘Not that I am vain of it, now, you mocking boy,’ she says, when I smile; ‘but because you used to say you thought it so beautiful; and because, when I first began to think about you, I used to peep in the glass, and wonder whether you would like very much to have a lock of it. Oh what a foolish fellow you were, Doady, when I gave you one!’
‘That was on the day when you were painting the flowers I had given you, Dora, and when I told you how much in love I was.’
‘Ah! but I didn’t like to tell you,’ says Dora, ‘then, how I had cried over them, because I believed you really liked me! When I can run about again as I used to do, Doady, let us go and see those places where we were such a silly couple, shall we? And take some of the old walks? And not forget poor papa?’
‘Yes, we will, and have some happy days. So you must make haste to get well, my dear.’
‘Oh, I shall soon do that! I am so much better, you don’t know!’
It is evening; and I sit in the same chair, by the same bed, with the same face turned towards me. We have been silent, and there is a smile upon her face. I have ceased to carry my light burden up and down stairs now. She lies here all the day.
‘Doady!’
‘My dear Dora!’
‘You won’t think what I am going to say, unreasonable, after what you told me, such a little while ago, of Mr. Wickfield’s not being well? I want to see Agnes. Very much I want to see her.’
‘I will write to her, my dear.’
‘Will you?’
‘Directly.’
‘What a good, kind boy! Doady, take me on your arm. Indeed, my dear, it’s not a whim. It’s not a foolish fancy. I want, very much indeed, to see her!’
‘I am certain of it. I have only to tell her so, and she is sure to come.’
‘You are very lonely when you go downstairs, now?’ Dora whispers, with her arm about my neck.
‘How can I be otherwise, my own love, when I see your empty chair?’
‘My empty chair!’ She clings to me for a little while, in silence. ‘And you really miss me, Doady?’ looking up, and brightly smiling. ‘Even poor, giddy, stupid me?’
‘My heart, who is there upon earth that I could miss so much?’
‘Oh, husband! I am so glad, yet so sorry!’ creeping closer to me, and folding me in both her arms. She laughs and sobs, and then is quiet, and quite happy.
‘Quite!’ she says. ‘Only give Agnes my dear love, and tell her that I want very, very, much to see her; and I have nothing left to wish for.’
‘Except to get well again, Dora.’
‘Ah, Doady! Sometimes I think—you know I always was a silly little thing!—that that will never be!’
‘Don’t say so, Dora! Dearest love, don’t think so!’
‘I won’t, if I can help it, Doady. But I am very happy; though my dear boy is so lonely by himself, before his child-wife’s empty chair!’
It is night; and I am with her still. Agnes has arrived; has been among us for a whole day and an evening. She, my aunt, and I, have sat with Dora since the morning, all together. We have not talked much, but Dora has been perfectly contented and cheerful. We are now alone.
Do I know, now, that my child-wife will soon leave me? They have told me so; they have told me nothing new to my thoughts—but I am far from sure that I have taken that truth to heart. I cannot master it. I have withdrawn by myself, many times today, to weep. I have remembered Who wept for a parting between the living and the dead. I have bethought me of all that gracious and compassionate history. I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared.
‘I am going to speak to you, Doady. I am going to say something I have often thought of saying, lately. You won’t mind?’ with a gentle look.
‘Mind, my darling?’
‘Because I don’t know what you will think, or what you may have thought sometimes. Perhaps you have often thought the same. Doady, dear, I am afraid I was too young.’
I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes, and speaks very softly. Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a stricken heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.
‘I am afraid, dear, I was too young. I don’t mean in years only, but in experience, and thoughts, and everything. I was such a silly little creature! I am afraid it would have been better, if we had only loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it. I have begun to think I was not fit to be a wife.’
I try to stay my tears, and to reply, ‘Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be a husband!’
‘I don’t know,’ with the old shake of her curls. ‘Perhaps! But if I had been more fit to be married I might have made you more so, too. Besides, you are very clever, and I never was.’
‘We have been very happy, my sweet Dora.’
‘I was very happy, very. But, as years went on, my dear boy would have wearied of his child-wife. She would have been less and less a companion for him. He would have been more and more sensible of what was wanting in his home. She wouldn’t have improved. It is better as it is.’
‘Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so. Every word seems a reproach!’
‘No, not a syllable!’ she answers, kissing me. ‘Oh, my dear, you never deserved it, and I loved you far too well to say a reproachful word to you, in earnest—it was all the merit I had, except being pretty—or you thought me so. Is it lonely, down-stairs, Doady?’
‘Very! Very!’
‘Don’t cry! Is my chair there?’
‘In its old place.’
‘Oh, how my poor boy cries! Hush, hush! Now, make me one promise. I want to speak to Agnes. When you go downstairs, tell Agnes so, and send her up to me; and while I speak to her, let no one come—not even aunt. I want to speak to Agnes by herself. I want to speak to Agnes, quite alone.’
I promise that she shall, immediately; but I cannot leave her, for my grief.
‘I said that it was better as it is!’ she whispers, as she holds me in her arms. ‘Oh, Doady, after more years, you never could have loved your child-wife better than you do; and, after more years, she would so have tried and disappointed you, that you might not have been able to love her half so well! I know I was too young and foolish. It is much better as it is!’
Agnes is downstairs, when I go into the parlour; and I give her the message. She disappears, leaving me alone with Jip.
His Chinese house is by the fire; and he lies within it, on his bed of flannel, querulously trying to sleep. The bright moon is high and clear. As I look out on the night, my tears fall fast, and my undisciplined heart is chastened heavily—heavily.
I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage. I think of every little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that trifles make the sum of life. Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the image of the dear child as I knew her first, graced by my young love, and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich. Would it, indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and a girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!
How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my child-wife’s old companion. More restless than he was, he crawls out of his house, and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and whines to go upstairs.
‘Not tonight, Jip! Not tonight!’
He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hand, and lifts his dim eyes to my face.
‘Oh, Jip! It may be, never again!’
He lies down at my feet, stretches himself out as if to sleep, and with a plaintive cry, is dead.
‘Oh, Agnes! Look, look, here!’ —That face, so full of pity, and of grief, that rain of tears, that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn hand upraised towards Heaven!
‘Agnes?’
It is over. Darkness comes before my eyes; and, for a time, all things are blotted out of my remembrance.
CAPITOLO 53. UN’ALTRA RIVISITAZIONE DEL PASSATO
Devo fermarmi ancora una volta. Oh, mia moglie e mio bambino. C’è una figura nella folla che si muove davanti alla mia memoria: silenziosa e immobile, che con la sua innocenza, il suo amore e la sua bellezza infantile dice: “Fermati un attimo a pensare a me. Guarda quella piccola fiorellina che cade a terra!”
Sì. Tutto il resto diventa sfocato e scompare. Sono di nuovo con Dora, nella nostra capanna. Non so da quanto tempo sia malata. Mi sono talmente abituata a questa situazione che non riesco nemmeno a calcolare quanto tempo sia trascorso. Non è davvero molto: poche settimane o mesi; ma, per me, è stato un periodo lungo e estenuante.
Hanno smesso di dirmi di “aspettare ancora qualche giorno”. Ho iniziato a temere che quel giorno possa non mai arrivare, quando vedrò la mia moglie e figlia correre sotto il sole insieme alla loro vecchia amica Jip.
È, per così dire, invecchiato all’improvviso. Forse nella sua amante manca qualcosa che prima lo rendeva più vivace e gli dava un aspetto più giovane; ma ora si aggira tristemente, la vista gli è debole, le membra sono indebolite. Mia zia prova compassione per lui: non le oppone più resistenza, ma si avvicina timidamente mentre giace sul letto di Dora – lei seduta accanto al letto – e le lecca dolcemente la mano.
Dora giace sorridendo su di noi, è bellissima e non pronuncia mai parole affrettate o lamentose. Dice che siamo molto buoni con lei; che il suo caro vecchio ragazzo premuroso si sta stancando troppo, lo sa; che mia zia non riesce a dormire, ma è sempre sveglia, attiva e gentile. A volte, quelle piccole signore simili a uccellini vengono a farle visita; e allora parliamo del nostro giorno di nozze e di tutto quel felice tempo passato insieme.
Che strana pausa e riposo sembra esserci nella mia vita, e in tutta la vita, dentro e fuori dalle mura di casa. Quando mi siedo in quella stanza tranquilla, ombreggiata e ordinata, con gli occhi azzurri di mia moglie, che è anche una bambina, rivolti verso di me, e le sue dita piccole intrecciate alle mie. Passo molte ore in questo modo; ma di tutti quei momenti, tre mi rimangono particolarmente impressi nella memoria.
È mattina; e Dora, resa così graziosa dalle cure di mia zia, mi mostra come i suoi bei capelli si arricceranno sul cuscino, quanto siano lunghi e luminosi, e quanto le piaccia tenerli leggermente raccolti in quella rete che indossa.
“Non che ora ne sia vanita, ragazzo mio derisorio,” dice lei quando sorrido; “ma perché una volta tu dicevi che ti sembrava molto bella; e perché, quando per la prima volta iniziai a pensare a te, mi guardavo nello specchio e mi chiedevo se ti sarebbe piaciuto molto averne una ciocca. Oh, quanto eri sciocco, Doady, quando te ne diedi una!”
“Quel giorno stavi dipingendo i fiori che ti avevo regalato, Dora, e io ti dissi quanto fossi innamorato di te.”
“Ah! Ma non volevo dirtelo,” dice Dora, “quanto ho pianto per loro, perché credevo davvero che tu mi volessi bene! Quando potrò di nuovo correre liberamente come facevo prima, Doady, andiamo a visitare quei posti dove eravamo una coppia così sciocca, va bene? E ripercorriamo anche quei vecchi sentieri. E non dimentichiamo povero papà, vero?”
“Sì, lo faremo e trascorreremo giorni felici. Quindi devi affrettarti a guarire, caro mio.”
“Ah, lo farò presto! Sto molto meglio, non sapete quanto!”
È sera; sono seduto nella stessa sedia, accanto allo stesso letto, con lo stesso viso rivolto verso di me. Siamo rimasti in silenzio, e sul suo volto c’è un sorriso. Ora ho smesso di portare su e giù le scale questo mio “pesante fardello”. Lei sta qui tutto il giorno.
“Doady!”
“Mia cara Dora!”
“Non crederete a quello che sto per dire. Non sembra plausibile, dopo quello che mi avete raccontato poco fa riguardo al fatto che il signor Wickfield non stia bene. Voglio vedere Agnes. Voglio vederla davvero molto.”
“Le scriverò, cara mia.”
“Lo farai?”
“Direttamente.”
“Che bravo e gentile ragazzo! Doady, prendimi per il braccio. Davvero, mio caro, non è un capriccio. Non è una sciocca fantasia. Voglio davvero vederla!”
“Ne sono certo. Basta che glielo dica, e sicuramente verrà.”
“Sei molto sola ora che scendi al piano di sotto, vero?” sussurra Dora, mettendomi un braccio intorno al collo.
“Come potrei comportarmi diversamente, mio caro amore, quando vedo la tua sedia vuota?”
“La mia sedia vuota, ” Si attacca a me per un po’, in silenzio. “E tu mi manchi davvero, Doady?”, chiede alzando lo sguardo e sorridendo felice. “Anche di me, povera, stupida come sono?”
“Cuore mio, chi esiste al mondo che possa mancarmi così tanto?”
“Oh, marito mio! Sono così felice, eppure anche così triste!” Si avvicinò a me lentamente, stringendomi tra le sue braccia. Rideva e singhiozzava, poi rimase in silenzio, e finalmente molto felice.
“Esatto!” dice lei. “Solo dì ad Agnes la mia cara affetto, e digli che voglio tantissimo vederla. Non desidero più nulla.”
“Tranne che per tornare a stare bene, Dora.”
“Ah, Doady! A volte penso, sai, ho sempre sido una sciocchina, che quella cosa non succederà mai!”
“Non dire così, Dora! Mio caro amore, non pensarlo!”
“Non lo farò, se posso evitarlo, Doady. Ma sono molto felice; anche se mio caro ragazzo è così solo, davanti alla sedia vuota di sua moglie, ”
È notte; e sono ancora con lei. Agnes è arrivata; è stata con noi per un intero giorno e una sera. Lei, mia zia, ed io abbiamo passato il tempo con Dora fin dal mattino, tutte insieme. Non abbiamo parlato molto, ma Dora è stata perfettamente felice e allegra. Ora siamo soli.
Ora so for certo che mia moglie, che è anche una figlia per me, mi lascerà presto. Me lo hanno detto; non mi hanno rivelato nulla di nuovo che possa cambiare le mie convinzioni. Ma non sono affatto sicuro di aver davvero accettato questa verità nel mio cuore. Non riesco a dominarla. Molte volte oggi mi sono ritirato da solo per piangere; ho ricordato Chi pianse per la separazione tra i vivi e i morti. Ho pensato a tutta quella storia piena di grazia e compassione. Ho cercato di rassegnarmi e di consolarmi. E spero di esserci riuscito, anche se in modo imperfetto. Quello che non riesco ad accettare con certezza è che la fine arriverà inevitabilmente. Stringo la sua mano nella mia, tengo il suo cuore vicino al mio. Vedo il suo amore per me, ancora vivo e forte. Non riesco a scacciare quella debole, persistente speranza che possa essere risparmiata.
“Devo parlarti, Doady. Devo dire qualcosa che ultimamente ho spesso pensato di dirti. Non ti dispiacerà, vero?” disse con uno sguardo gentile.
“Attenta, mia cara, ”
“Perché non so cosa penserai tu, o cosa a volte hai potuto pensare. Forse spesso hai pensato la stessa cosa. Doady, caro, temo di essere stata troppo giovane.”
Appoggio il mio viso sul cuscino accanto al suo; lei guarda nei miei occhi e parla molto dolcemente. Man mano che continua a parlare, con il cuore colpito da emozione, capisco che sta parlando di sé stessa come se fosse già passata nel passato.
“Temo, caro. Ero troppo giovane. Non intendo solo in termini di anni, ma anche di esperienza, di pensieri. Ero davvero una creatura così sciocca! Forse sarebbe stato meglio se ci fossimo amati soltanto da bambini e poi avessimo dimenticato tutto. Ora penso di non essere adatta a essere una moglie.”
Cerco di trattenere le mie lacrime e rispondo: “Oh, Dora, mio amore, come potrei essere adatto a diventare un marito!”
“Non lo so,” disse scuotendo le sue onde di capelli. “Forse sì. Ma se fossi stata più adatta per sposarmi, forse avrei potuto renderti anche tu più adatto. Inoltre, tu sei molto intelligente, mentre io mai lo sono stata.”
“Siamo stati molto felici, mia cara Dora.”
Ero molto felice, davvero molto. Ma con il passare degli anni, mio caro ragazzo si sarebbe stancato di sua moglie, ancora una bambina. Lei sarebbe diventata sempre meno una compagna adatta per lui. Lui avrebbe iniziato a rendersi conto sempre meglio di ciò che mancava nella sua famiglia. Lei, invece, non sarebbe mai migliorata. È meglio così, come stanno le cose.
“Oh, Dora, cara, cara. Non parlarmi in questo modo. Ogni parola sembra una rimprovera!”
“No, nemmeno una sillaba!” risponde lei baciandomi. “Oh, mio caro, non te lo meritavi mai, e ti ho amato troppo bene per dire una parola di rimprovero. Era tutto ciò che avevo, a parte essere bella, o almeno tu pensavi che lo fossi. È solitario stare giù, Doady?”
“Molto! Molto!”
“Non piangere! La mia sedia è lì?”
“In suo vecchio posto.”
“Oh, quanto piange il mio povero bambino! Zitta, zitta! Ora, faimi una promessa: voglio parlare con Agnes. Quando scenderai al piano di sotto, diglielo e mandala da me; e mentre parlo con lei, che nessuno entri, nemmeno la zia. Voglio parlare con Agnes da sola, completamente sola.”
Prometto che lo farà immediatamente; ma non posso lasciarla a causa del mio dolore.
“Ho detto che era meglio così!” sussurra mentre mi tiene tra le braccia. “Oh, Doady, dopo tutti questi anni, non avresti mai potuto amare di più tua moglie e figlia. E, dopo tutti questi anni, lei avrebbe cercato in ogni modo di deluderti, fino al punto che forse non saresti riuscito ad amarla nemmeno la metà di quanto la ami ora! So di essere stata troppo giovane e sciocca. È davvero meglio così!”
Agnes è al piano di sotto; quando entro nel salotto, le riferisco il messaggio. Lei scompare, lasciandomi solo con Jip.
La sua casa cinese si trova vicino al fuoco; lui giace al suo interno, sul letto di flanella, cercando con difficoltà di addormentarsi. La luna brillante è alta e chiara nel cielo notturno. Mentre guardo fuori nella notte, le mie lacrime cadono velocemente, e il mio cuore incontrollato viene duramente punito, molto duramente.
Mi siedo accanto al focolare, riflettendo con un rimorso profondo su tutti quei sentimenti segreti che ho nutrito dopo il mio matrimonio. Penso a ogni piccola cosa che è accaduta tra me e Dora, e capisco che sono proprio queste cose insignificanti a comporre la realtà della vita. Continuamente riemerge nella mia memoria l’immagine di quella cara bambina come l’ho conosciuta all’inizio: incantevole per il mio giovane amore e anche per il suo, con tutta la fascinazione che tale amore può portare. Sarebbe davvero stato meglio se ci fossimo amati quando eravamo ancora ragazzi e poi avessimo dimenticato tutto? Rispondi tu, cuore indisciplinato.
Come passi il tempo, non lo so; finché non verrò richiamato dall’antica compagna di mia moglie, che è anche la madre di mio figlio. Più inquieto di lei, esce dalla sua casa, mi guarda, si avvicina alla porta e piange perché vuole salire al piano di sopra.
“Non stasera, Jip. Non stasera!”
Torna lentamente verso di me, lecca la mia mano e alza i suoi occhi pallidi verso il mio viso.
“Ah, Jip. Forse non accadrà mai più!”
Si sdraia ai miei piedi, si distende come se volesse )dormire, e con un lamento sommesso muore.
“Oh, Agnes! Guarda, guarda, qui!” Quel volto, così pieno di compassione e dolore, quella pioggia di lacrime, quel terribile appello muto verso di me, quella mano solenne alzata verso il Cielo.
“Agnes?”
È finito. L’oscurità mi avvolge davanti agli occhi; e, per un momento, tutto scompare dalla mia memoria.
CHAPTER 54. Mr. MICAWBER’S TRANSACTIONS
This is not the time at which I am to enter on the state of my mind beneath its load of sorrow. I came to think that the Future was walled up before me, that the energy and action of my life were at an end, that I never could find any refuge but in the grave. I came to think so, I say, but not in the first shock of my grief. It slowly grew to that. If the events I go on to relate, had not thickened around me, in the beginning to confuse, and in the end to augment, my affliction, it is possible (though I think not probable), that I might have fallen at once into this condition. As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew my own distress; an interval, in which I even supposed that its sharpest pangs were past; and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that was closed for ever.
When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came to be agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my peace in change and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that I assume I may refer the project to her influence. But her influence was so quiet that I know no more.
And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. In all that sorrow, from the moment, never to be forgotten, when she stood before me with her upraised hand, she was like a sacred presence in my lonely house. When the Angel of Death alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep—they told me so when I could bear to hear it—on her bosom, with a smile. From my swoon, I first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a purer region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and softening its pain.
Let me go on.
I was to go abroad. That seemed to have been determined among us from the first. The ground now covering all that could perish of my departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the ‘final pulverization of Heep’; and for the departure of the emigrants.
At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber’s house; where, and at Mr. Wickfield’s, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes, she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs. Micawber’s heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many years.
‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,’ was my aunt’s first salutation after we were seated. ‘Pray, have you thought about that emigration proposal of mine?’
‘My dear madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘perhaps I cannot better express the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and I may add our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing the language of an illustrious poet, to reply that our Boat is on the shore, and our Bark is on the sea.’
‘That’s right,’ said my aunt. ‘I augur all sort of good from your sensible decision.’
‘Madam, you do us a great deal of honour,’ he rejoined. He then referred to a memorandum. ‘With respect to the pecuniary assistance enabling us to launch our frail canoe on the ocean of enterprise, I have reconsidered that important business-point; and would beg to propose my notes of hand—drawn, it is needless to stipulate, on stamps of the amounts respectively required by the various Acts of Parliament applying to such securities—at eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months. The proposition I originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four; but I am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not allow sufficient time for the requisite amount of—Something—to turn up. We might not,’ said Mr. Micawber, looking round the room as if it represented several hundred acres of highly cultivated land, ‘on the first responsibility becoming due, have been successful in our harvest, or we might not have got our harvest in. Labour, I believe, is sometimes difficult to obtain in that portion of our colonial possessions where it will be our lot to combat with the teeming soil.’
‘Arrange it in any way you please, sir,’ said my aunt.
‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘Mrs. Micawber and myself are deeply sensible of the very considerate kindness of our friends and patrons. What I wish is, to be perfectly business-like, and perfectly punctual. Turning over, as we are about to turn over, an entirely new leaf; and falling back, as we are now in the act of falling back, for a Spring of no common magnitude; it is important to my sense of self-respect, besides being an example to my son, that these arrangements should be concluded as between man and man.’
I don’t know that Mr. Micawber attached any meaning to this last phrase; I don’t know that anybody ever does, or did; but he appeared to relish it uncommonly, and repeated, with an impressive cough, ‘as between man and man’.
‘I propose,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Bills—a convenience to the mercantile world, for which, I believe, we are originally indebted to the Jews, who appear to me to have had a devilish deal too much to do with them ever since—because they are negotiable. But if a Bond, or any other description of security, would be preferred, I should be happy to execute any such instrument. As between man and man.’
My aunt observed, that in a case where both parties were willing to agree to anything, she took it for granted there would be no difficulty in settling this point. Mr. Micawber was of her opinion.
CAPITOLO 54. LE OPERAZIONI FINANZIARI DEL SIGNOR MICAWBER
Non è questo il momento giusto per parlare dello stato d’animo nel quale mi trovo, sopraffatto dal dolore. Pensavo che il Futuro fosse davanti a me come un muro insormontabile, che l’energia e le azioni della mia vita fossero giunte al loro termine, che non potessi trovare rifugio se non nella tomba. Così pensavo, ma non subito, all’inizio del mio dolore. Questa convinzione è cresciuta lentamente nel corso del tempo. Se gli eventi che sto per raccontare non avessero intensificato la mia sofferenza, confondendola all’inizio e aggravandola in seguito, sarebbe stato possibile (sebbene io dubiti che ciò fosse probabile) che cadessi immediatamente in questa condizione. In realtà, è trascorso del tempo prima che comprendessi appieno la gravità della mia angoscia; un periodo durante il quale ho persino creduto che i momenti più dolorosi fossero ormai passati. E quando la mia mente riusciva a trovare conforto in tutto ciò che era più innocente e bello, nella storia tenera e per sempre conclusa della mia vita.
Quando per la prima volta mi fu proposto di andare all’estero, o come mai si decise tra noi che dovessi cercare di ripristinare la mia serenità attraverso il viaggio, non lo so ancora con certezza nemmeno ora. Lo spirito di Agnes permeava ogni nostra idea, parola e azione in quel periodo di dolore, al punto che credo si possa attribuire questa decisione alla sua influenza. Ma la sua influenza fu così sottile che non ne so più nulla con precisione.
E ora, davvero, iniziai a pensare che nel mio vecchio legame tra lei e la vetrata colorata della chiesa ci fosse un presagio profetico di ciò che lei sarebbe diventata per me, nella calamità che avrebbe avuto luogo al termine del tempo. In tutta quella sofferenza, da quel momento indimenticabile in cui lei si presentò davanti a me con la mano levata, fu come una presenza sacra nella mia solitaria casa. Quando l’Angelo della Morte discese lì, mia moglie, che era ancora una bambina, si addormentò – così mi dissero quando riuscii a sopportare di ascoltare – tra le sue braccia, con un sorriso. Dalla mia perdita di coscienza, fui il primo ad accorgermi delle sue lacrime piene di compassione, delle sue parole di speranza e pace, del suo viso gentile che si chinava su di me, come proveniente da una regione più pura, vicina al Cielo, per lenire il mio cuore sofferente.
Lasciami continuare.
Avrei dovuto partire per l’estero. Sembra che questo fosse già deciso tra di noi fin dall’inizio. Ora che tutto ciò che poteva essere distrutto della mia defunta moglie era stato coperto, aspettavo soltanto ciò che il signor Micawber chiamava la “ultima polverizzazione di Heep”, nonché la partenza degli emigranti.
Su richiesta di Traddles, l’amico più affettuoso e devoto nei miei momenti difficili, tornammo a Canterbury: intendo dire mia zia Agnes e io. Ci recammo subito, come previsto, alla casa del signor Micawber; là, così come da parte del signor Wickfield, il mio amico aveva continuato a lavorare da quando ci eravamo incontrati in modo così drammatico. Quando povera signora Micawber mi vide entrare, vestito di nero, ne fu profondamente commossa. Nel cuore della signora Micawber c’era ancora molto bene; quegli anni non erano riusciti a cancellarlo del tutto.
“Beh, signor e signora Micawber,” fu il primo saluto di mia zia dopo che ci fummo seduti. “Vi siete forse pensati a quella mia proposta di emigrazione?”
“Mia cara signora,” rispose il signor Micawber, “forse non posso esprimere meglio la conclusione a cui io, vostro umile servitore, e la signora Micawber, insieme ai nostri figli, siamo giunti, che prendendo in prestito le parole di un illustre poeta: il nostro ‘barca’ è sulla riva, mentre la nostra ‘nave’ è in mare.”
“Esatto,” disse mia zia. “Auguro tutto il meglio per la tua saggia decisione.”
“Signora, ci fa un grande onore,” rispose lui. Poi fece riferimento a un memorandum. “Per quanto riguarda l’aiuto finanziario che ci permetterebbe di lanciare la nostra fragile canoa nell’oceano delle imprese, ho ripensato a questa importante questione; e vorrei proporre le mie note, redatte, ovviamente, con timbri corrispondenti alle somme richieste dai vari atti parlamentari applicabili a tali garanzie: diciotto, ventiquattro e trenta mesi. La proposta che avevo inizialmente presentato prevedeva dodici, diciotto e ventiquattro mesi; ma temo che un tale accordo potrebbe non lasciare abbastanza tempo affinché le somme necessarie possano essere reperite. Potremmo non riuscire,” disse il signor Micawber, guardandosi intorno nella stanza come se rappresentasse centinaia di acri di terreno estremamente coltivato, “nel momento in cui scade la prima scadenza prevista, ad ottenere i risultati desiderati, o forse non riusciremo nemmeno a raccogliere il raccolto. Credo che a volte sia difficile reperire manodopera in quella parte delle nostre colonie dove dovremo lottare contro un terreno particolarmente ostile.”
“Organizzatelo come preferite, signore,” disse mia zia.
“Signora,” rispose, “la signora Micawber ed io siamo profondamente consapevoli della grande gentilezza e considerazione dimostrata dai nostri amici e protettori. Quello che desidero è comportarmi in modo assolutamente professionale e puntuale. Stiamo per iniziare una nuova fase della nostra vita; quindi, è importante, sia per il mio senso di rispetto di me stesso che come esempio per mio figlio, che queste disposizioni vengano concordate in modo chiaro e onesto, da uomo a uomo.”
Non so se il signor Micawber attribuisse qualche significato particolare a questa ultima frase; non so nemmeno se qualcun altro lo faccia o l’abbia mai fatto. Ma lui sembrava trovarci un grande piacere, e la ripeteva più volte, accompagnandola con un colpo di tosse impressionante: “Come tra uomo e uomo”.
“Propongo,” disse il signor Micawber, “obbligazioni, un’utile per il mondo commerciale, di cui credo che siamo originariamente debitori agli ebrei, i quali, a mio parere, hanno avuto troppo a che fare con queste pratiche fin da allora, perché tali obbligazioni sono negoziabili. Ma se preferite un’obbligazione governativa o qualsiasi altro tipo di garanzia, sarò felice di emettere un simile documento. Tra uomo e uomo, dopotutto.”
Mia zia osservò che, in un caso in cui entrambe le parti fossero disposte ad accettare qualsiasi cosa, riteneva fosse impossibile incontrare difficoltà nell’arrivare a un accordo su questo punto. Anche il signor Micawber condivideva questa opinione.
‘In reference to our domestic preparations, madam,’ said Mr. Micawber, with some pride, ‘for meeting the destiny to which we are now understood to be self-devoted, I beg to report them. My eldest daughter attends at five every morning in a neighbouring establishment, to acquire the process—if process it may be called—of milking cows. My younger children are instructed to observe, as closely as circumstances will permit, the habits of the pigs and poultry maintained in the poorer parts of this city: a pursuit from which they have, on two occasions, been brought home, within an inch of being run over. I have myself directed some attention, during the past week, to the art of baking; and my son Wilkins has issued forth with a walking-stick and driven cattle, when permitted, by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge, to render any voluntary service in that direction—which I regret to say, for the credit of our nature, was not often; he being generally warned, with imprecations, to desist.’
‘All very right indeed,’ said my aunt, encouragingly. ‘Mrs. Micawber has been busy, too, I have no doubt.’
‘My dear madam,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, with her business-like air. ‘I am free to confess that I have not been actively engaged in pursuits immediately connected with cultivation or with stock, though well aware that both will claim my attention on a foreign shore. Such opportunities as I have been enabled to alienate from my domestic duties, I have devoted to corresponding at some length with my family. For I own it seems to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always fell back on me, I suppose from old habit, to whomsoever else she might address her discourse at starting, ‘that the time is come when the past should be buried in oblivion; when my family should take Mr. Micawber by the hand, and Mr. Micawber should take my family by the hand; when the lion should lie down with the lamb, and my family be on terms with Mr. Micawber.’
I said I thought so too.
‘This, at least, is the light, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs. Micawber, ‘in which I view the subject. When I lived at home with my papa and mama, my papa was accustomed to ask, when any point was under discussion in our limited circle, “In what light does my Emma view the subject?” That my papa was too partial, I know; still, on such a point as the frigid coldness which has ever subsisted between Mr. Micawber and my family, I necessarily have formed an opinion, delusive though it may be.’
‘No doubt. Of course you have, ma’am,’ said my aunt.
‘Precisely so,’ assented Mrs. Micawber. ‘Now, I may be wrong in my conclusions; it is very likely that I am, but my individual impression is, that the gulf between my family and Mr. Micawber may be traced to an apprehension, on the part of my family, that Mr. Micawber would require pecuniary accommodation. I cannot help thinking,’ said Mrs. Micawber, with an air of deep sagacity, ‘that there are members of my family who have been apprehensive that Mr. Micawber would solicit them for their names.---I do not mean to be conferred in Baptism upon our children, but to be inscribed on Bills of Exchange, and negotiated in the Money Market.’
The look of penetration with which Mrs. Micawber announced this discovery, as if no one had ever thought of it before, seemed rather to astonish my aunt; who abruptly replied, ‘Well, ma’am, upon the whole, I shouldn’t wonder if you were right!’
‘Mr. Micawber being now on the eve of casting off the pecuniary shackles that have so long enthralled him,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘and of commencing a new career in a country where there is sufficient range for his abilities,—which, in my opinion, is exceedingly important; Mr. Micawber’s abilities peculiarly requiring space,—it seems to me that my family should signalize the occasion by coming forward. What I could wish to see, would be a meeting between Mr. Micawber and my family at a festive entertainment, to be given at my family’s expense; where Mr. Micawber’s health and prosperity being proposed, by some leading member of my family, Mr. Micawber might have an opportunity of developing his views.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, with some heat, ‘it may be better for me to state distinctly, at once, that if I were to develop my views to that assembled group, they would possibly be found of an offensive nature: my impression being that your family are, in the aggregate, impertinent Snobs; and, in detail, unmitigated Ruffians.’
‘Micawber,’ said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, ‘no! You have never understood them, and they have never understood you.’
Mr. Micawber coughed.
‘They have never understood you, Micawber,’ said his wife. ‘They may be incapable of it. If so, that is their misfortune. I can pity their misfortune.’
‘I am extremely sorry, my dear Emma,’ said Mr. Micawber, relenting, ‘to have been betrayed into any expressions that might, even remotely, have the appearance of being strong expressions. All I would say is, that I can go abroad without your family coming forward to favour me,—in short, with a parting Shove of their cold shoulders; and that, upon the whole, I would rather leave England with such impetus as I possess, than derive any acceleration of it from that quarter. At the same time, my dear, if they should condescend to reply to your communications—which our joint experience renders most improbable—far be it from me to be a barrier to your wishes.’
The matter being thus amicably settled, Mr. Micawber gave Mrs. Micawber his arm, and glancing at the heap of books and papers lying before Traddles on the table, said they would leave us to ourselves; which they ceremoniously did.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, leaning back in his chair when they were gone, and looking at me with an affection that made his eyes red, and his hair all kinds of shapes, ‘I don’t make any excuse for troubling you with business, because I know you are deeply interested in it, and it may divert your thoughts. My dear boy, I hope you are not worn out?’
“Riguardo alle nostre preparazioni domestiche, signora,” disse il signor Micawber con un certo orgoglio, “per affrontare la sorte alla quale ora si ritiene che siamo destinati, e verso la quale ci stiamo dedicando con tutto il nostro impegno, vi chiedo di permettermi di descriverle. Mia figlia maggiore va ogni mattina alle cinque in una scuola vicina per imparare l’arte, se si può davvero definirla un’arte, del mungimento delle mucche. Ai miei figli più piccoli è stato insegnato, nella misura consentita dalle circostanze, di osservare le abitudini dei maiali e degli uccelli allevati nelle zone più povere di questa città; in due occasioni, però, sono tornati a casa a un soffio dall’essere investiti. Io stesso, nell’ultima settimana, ho dedicato del tempo all’apprendimento dell’arte della panificazione; mio figlio Wilkins, invece, con un bastone da passeggio, quando gli veniva permesso dai rozzi braccianti incaricati di prendersi cura del bestiame, accompagnava le mucche per prestare qualsiasi aiuto possibile in questo campo, il che, a mio parere, non avveniva molto spesso; anzi, veniva generalmente rimproverato aspramente perché smettesse.”
“Molto bene davvero,” disse mia zia in tono incoraggiante. “Anche la signora Micawber deve essere stata molto impegnata, ne sono certa.”
“Mia cara signora,” rispose la signora Micawber con il suo tono pratico.
“Devo ammettere apertamente di non essermi impegnata attivamente in attività direttamente legate all’agricoltura o al commercio, anche se sono ben consapevole che entrambi richiederanno la mia attenzione quando sarò all’estero. Le opportunità che mi sono state concesse, lontano dai miei doveri domestici, le ho dedicate a mantenere una corrispondenza approfondita con la mia famiglia. Perché ritengo, mio caro signor Copperfield,” disse la signora Micawber, rivolgendosi sempre a me, forse per abitudine, “che sia giunto il momento in cui il passato debba essere sepolto nell’oblio; in cui la mia famiglia debba prendere la mano del signor Micawber, e il signor Micawber debba prendere la mano della mia famiglia; in cui il leone debba sdraiarsi accanto al agnello, e la mia famiglia possa vivere in armonia con il signor Micawber.”
Ho detto che anch’io lo pensavo.
“Questo, almeno, è il punto di vista da cui considero la questione, caro signor Copperfield,” proseguì la signora Micawber. “Quando vivevo a casa con mio padre e mia madre, lui aveva l’abitudine, ogni volta che si discuteva di qualcosa nel nostro ristretto circolo, di chiedere: ‘In quale modo mia figlia Emma considera questa questione?’ So bene che mio padre era troppo parziale; tuttavia, riguardo a una questione come la fredda ostilità che è sempre esistita tra il signor Micawber e la mia famiglia, ho inevitabilmente formato un’opinione, anche se forse errata.”
“Nessun dubbio. Certo che ne avete, signora,” disse mia zia.
“Esattamente,” concordò la signora Micawber. “Ora, potrei sbagliarmi nelle mie conclusioni; è molto probabile che sia così, ma la mia impressione personale è che il divario tra la mia famiglia e il signor Micawber derivi dal timore da parte della mia famiglia che il signor Micawber potesse richiedere aiuti finanziari. Non posso fare a meno di pensare,” disse la signora Micawber con un tono di profonda saggezza, “che ci siano membri della mia famiglia che temevano che il signor Micawber potesse chiedere loro i loro nomi. Non intendo dire che questi nomi debbano essere utilizzati per battezzare i nostri figli, ma piuttosto per essere inseriti in cambiali e scambiati sul mercato finanziario.”
Lo sguardo intenso con cui la signora Micawber annunciò questa scoperta, come se nessuno ci avesse mai pensato prima, sembrò davvero sorprendere mia zia, la quale rispose bruscamente: “Beh, signora, in fondo, non mi meraviglierei affatto se aveste ragione!”
“Ora che il signor Micawber è sull’orlo di liberarsi dalle catene finanziarie che lo hanno così a lungo legato,” disse la signora Micawber, “e sta per intraprendere una nuova carriera in un paese dove le sue capacità possono trovare spazio sufficiente – il che, a mio parere, è estremamente importante, dato che le abilità del signor Micawber richiedono proprio uno spazio adeguato – mi sembra che la mia famiglia dovrebbe celebrare questa occasione con un gesto significativo. Quello che vorrei vedere sarebbe un incontro tra il signor Micawber e la mia famiglia durante una festa organizzata a nostre spese; in quell’occasione, qualche membro di rilievo della mia famiglia potrebbe esprimere i propri auguri per la sua salute e prosperità, dando così al signor Micawber l’opportunità di condividere le sue idee.”
“Mia cara,” disse il signor Micawber con una certa veemenza, “forse è meglio che dichiari chiaramente e subito che, se esprimessi le mie opinioni davanti a quel gruppo di persone, probabilmente verrebbero considerate offensive; ho l’impressione che tutta la vostra famiglia sia, nel complesso, un insieme di snob impertinenti; e, in dettaglio, una banda di rozzi e scortesi individui.”
“Micawber,” disse la signora Micawber scuotendo la testa, “no! Non li hai mai capiti, e loro non ti hanno mai capito.”
Il signor Micawber tossì.
“Non ti hanno mai capito, Micawber,” disse sua moglie. “Forse non sono in grado di farlo. Se è così, è la loro sfortuna. Posso provare compassione per la loro sfortuna.”
“Mi dispiace immensamente, mia cara Emma”, disse il signor Micawber, pentendosi, “di aver espresso cose che potrebbero anche solo sembrare troppo dure. Tutto ciò che voglio dire è che posso partire per l’estero senza che la tua famiglia interviene a sostenermi. In altre parole, con il loro totale disinteresse; e onestamente preferisco lasciare l’Inghilterra con le forze che ho, piuttosto che ricevere alcun aiuto da quella parte. Allo stesso tempo, cara mia, se dovessero decidere di rispondere alle tue lettere – il che, data la nostra esperienza comune, è molto improbabile – non permetterò mai che ciò ostacoli i tuoi desideri.”
Dato che la questione era stata risolta in modo amichevole, il signor Micawber offrì il braccio alla signora Micawber e, lanciando un’occhiata al mucchio di libri e documenti posati sul tavolo davanti a Traddles, disse che ci avrebbero lasciati soli; cosa che fecero con grande cortesia.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” disse Traddles, appoggiandosi allo schienale della sedia quando loro se ne furono andati e guardandomi con un affetto che gli fece arrossire gli occhi e arricciargli i capelli in mille modi, “non cerco scuse per disturbarti con queste faccende, perché so che sei molto interessato ad esse e che potrebbero distrarre i tuoi pensieri. Mio caro ragazzo, spero che tu non sia troppo stanco, ”
‘I am quite myself,’ said I, after a pause. ‘We have more cause to think of my aunt than of anyone. You know how much she has done.’
‘Surely, surely,’ answered Traddles. ‘Who can forget it!’
‘But even that is not all,’ said I. ‘During the last fortnight, some new trouble has vexed her; and she has been in and out of London every day. Several times she has gone out early, and been absent until evening. Last night, Traddles, with this journey before her, it was almost midnight before she came home. You know what her consideration for others is. She will not tell me what has happened to distress her.’
My aunt, very pale, and with deep lines in her face, sat immovable until I had finished; when some stray tears found their way to her cheeks, and she put her hand on mine.
‘It’s nothing, Trot; it’s nothing. There will be no more of it. You shall know by and by. Now Agnes, my dear, let us attend to these affairs.’
‘I must do Mr. Micawber the justice to say,’ Traddles began, ‘that although he would appear not to have worked to any good account for himself, he is a most untiring man when he works for other people. I never saw such a fellow. If he always goes on in the same way, he must be, virtually, about two hundred years old, at present. The heat into which he has been continually putting himself; and the distracted and impetuous manner in which he has been diving, day and night, among papers and books; to say nothing of the immense number of letters he has written me between this house and Mr. Wickfield’s, and often across the table when he has been sitting opposite, and might much more easily have spoken; is quite extraordinary.’
‘Letters!’ cried my aunt. ‘I believe he dreams in letters!’
‘There’s Mr. Dick, too,’ said Traddles, ‘has been doing wonders! As soon as he was released from overlooking Uriah Heep, whom he kept in such charge as I never saw exceeded, he began to devote himself to Mr. Wickfield. And really his anxiety to be of use in the investigations we have been making, and his real usefulness in extracting, and copying, and fetching, and carrying, have been quite stimulating to us.’
‘Dick is a very remarkable man,’ exclaimed my aunt; ‘and I always said he was. Trot, you know it.’
‘I am happy to say, Miss Wickfield,’ pursued Traddles, at once with great delicacy and with great earnestness, ‘that in your absence Mr. Wickfield has considerably improved. Relieved of the incubus that had fastened upon him for so long a time, and of the dreadful apprehensions under which he had lived, he is hardly the same person. At times, even his impaired power of concentrating his memory and attention on particular points of business, has recovered itself very much; and he has been able to assist us in making some things clear, that we should have found very difficult indeed, if not hopeless, without him. But what I have to do is to come to results; which are short enough; not to gossip on all the hopeful circumstances I have observed, or I shall never have done.’ His natural manner and agreeable simplicity made it transparent that he said this to put us in good heart, and to enable Agnes to hear her father mentioned with greater confidence; but it was not the less pleasant for that.
‘Now, let me see,’ said Traddles, looking among the papers on the table. ‘Having counted our funds, and reduced to order a great mass of unintentional confusion in the first place, and of wilful confusion and falsification in the second, we take it to be clear that Mr. Wickfield might now wind up his business, and his agency-trust, and exhibit no deficiency or defalcation whatever.’
‘Oh, thank Heaven!’ cried Agnes, fervently.
‘But,’ said Traddles, ‘the surplus that would be left as his means of support—and I suppose the house to be sold, even in saying this—would be so small, not exceeding in all probability some hundreds of pounds, that perhaps, Miss Wickfield, it would be best to consider whether he might not retain his agency of the estate to which he has so long been receiver. His friends might advise him, you know; now he is free. You yourself, Miss Wickfield—Copperfield—I—’
‘I have considered it, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, looking to me, ‘and I feel that it ought not to be, and must not be; even on the recommendation of a friend to whom I am so grateful, and owe so much.’
‘I will not say that I recommend it,’ observed Traddles. ‘I think it right to suggest it. No more.’
‘I am happy to hear you say so,’ answered Agnes, steadily, ‘for it gives me hope, almost assurance, that we think alike. Dear Mr. Traddles and dear Trotwood, papa once free with honour, what could I wish for! I have always aspired, if I could have released him from the toils in which he was held, to render back some little portion of the love and care I owe him, and to devote my life to him. It has been, for years, the utmost height of my hopes. To take our future on myself, will be the next great happiness—the next to his release from all trust and responsibility—that I can know.’
‘Have you thought how, Agnes?’
‘Often! I am not afraid, dear Trotwood. I am certain of success. So many people know me here, and think kindly of me, that I am certain. Don’t mistrust me. Our wants are not many. If I rent the dear old house, and keep a school, I shall be useful and happy.’
The calm fervour of her cheerful voice brought back so vividly, first the dear old house itself, and then my solitary home, that my heart was too full for speech. Traddles pretended for a little while to be busily looking among the papers.
‘Next, Miss Trotwood,’ said Traddles, ‘that property of yours.’
‘Well, sir,’ sighed my aunt. ‘All I have got to say about it is, that if it’s gone, I can bear it; and if it’s not gone, I shall be glad to get it back.’
‘It was originally, I think, eight thousand pounds, Consols?’ said Traddles.
“Sono proprio me stesso,” dissi dopo una pausa. “Dovremmo pensare più a mia zia che a chiunque altro. Sai quanto abbia fatto.”
“Certamente, certamente,” rispose Traddles. “Chi potrebbe dimenticarlo!”
“Ma non è tutto,” dissi. “Negli ultimi quindici giorni, qualche nuovo problema l’ha angosciata; è andata avanti e indietro a Londra ogni giorno. In più occasioni è uscita presto al mattino ed è rimasta via fino alla sera. L’ultima notte, con questo viaggio davanti a lei, è tornata a casa quasi a mezzanotte. Voi conoscete quanto sia premurosa verso gli altri. Non vuole dirmi cosa le sia successo per angosciarla così.”
Mia zia, molto pallida e con profonde rughe sul viso, rimase immobile finché non ebbi finito di parlare; quando alcune lacrime sparse raggiunsero le sue guance, lei mise la sua mano sulla mia.
“Niente, Trot. Non succederà più nulla. Lo scoprirai presto. Ora, Agnes, mia cara, mettiamoci all’opera con queste faccende.”
“Devo rendere giustizia al signor Micawber,” cominciò Traddles, “dicendo che, anche se non sembra aver mai ottenuto grandi risultati lavorando per sé stesso, è davvero un uomo instancabile quando lavora per gli altri. Non ho mai incontrato nessuno del genere. Se continuerà così, probabilmente avrà ormai circa duecento anni. Lo sforzo costante che impegna; il modo frenetico e impulsivo con cui passa le giornate e le notti tra documenti e libri; per non parlare dell’enorme quantità di lettere che mi ha scritto, sia da questa casa che da quella del signor Wickfield, spesso anche mentre eravamo seduti uno di fronte all’altro al tavolo, è davvero straordinario.”
“Lettere!” esclamò mia zia. “Credo che lui sogni lettere, ”
“C’è anche il signor Dick,” disse Traddles, “che ha fatto davvero miracoli! Non appena fu liberato dal compito di sorvegliare Uriah Heep, che gestiva con una diligenza mai vista prima, iniziò a dedicarsi al signor Wickfield. La sua grande volontà di essere d’aiuto nelle indagini che stiamo conducendo, nonché la sua reale utilità nel raccogliere informazioni, copiarle, portarle e consegnarle, sono stati davvero stimolanti per noi.”
“Dick è un uomo davvero straordinario,” esclamò mia zia; “e io l’ho sempre detto. Lo sai bene, Trot.”
“Sono felice di potervi dire, signorina Wickfield,” proseguì Traddles, con grande delicatezza e sincerità, “che in vostra assenza il signor Wickfield è migliorato notevolmente. Liberato dall’incubo che lo aveva oppresso per così tanto tempo e dalle terribili preoccupazioni che lo tormentavano, è quasi un’altra persona. A volte, persino la sua capacità di concentrarsi sui dettagli dei compiti lavorativi si è molto ripresa; ed è stato in grado di aiutarci a risolvere alcune questioni che senza di lui sarebbero risultate davvero difficili, se non addirittura impossibili. Ma ora devo arrivare al dunque, i risultati sono abbastanza chiari; non posso certo perdere tempo a descrivere tutte le circostanze incoraggianti che ho osservato, altrimenti non finirei mai.” Il suo modo naturale di parlare e la sua semplicità affabile rendevano evidente che lo faceva soltanto per rassicurarci e permettere ad Agnes di sentire menzionare suo padre con maggiore fiducia; ma questo non rendeva certo meno piacevole ciò che diceva.
“Ora, lasciate che veda,” disse Traddles, esaminando i documenti sul tavolo. “Dopo aver contato i nostri fondi e sistemato una grande quantità di confusione involontaria inizialmente presente, nonché di confusione intenzionale e falsificazioni successivamente verificatesi, riteniamo che il signor Wickfield possa ora concludere le sue attività e la sua agenzia fiduciaria senza alcuna carenza o irregolarità.”
“Oh, grazie al cielo!” esclamò Agnes con fervore.
“Ma,” disse Traddles, “il surplus che gli rimarrebbe come mezzo di sussistenza – e suppongo anche che la casa debba essere venduta, anche solo dicendolo – sarebbe così esiguo, probabilmente non superando alcune centinaia di sterline, che forse, signorina Wickfield, sarebbe meglio considerare se non fosse opportuno permettergli di mantenere la sua funzione di amministratore dell’eredità per cui è stato ricevitore per così tanto tempo. I suoi amici potrebbero dargli consigli, sapete; ora lui è libero. Voi stessa, signorina Wickfield. Copperfield. Io, ”
“L’ho considerato attentamente, Trotwood,” disse Agnes guardandomi, “e penso che non dovrebbe essere fatto, e non deve assolutamente esserlo; nemmeno su raccomandazione di un’amica a cui sono così grata e a cui devo tanto.”
“Non direi che lo consiglio,” osservò Traddles. “Penso sia giusto suggerirlo. Nient’altro.”
“Sono felice di sentirti dire questo,” rispose Agnes con fermezza, “perché mi dà >speranza, quasi la certezza, che pensiamo allo stesso modo. Caro signor Traddles e cara Trotwood, quando papà sarà finalmente libero e onorato, cosa potrei desiderare di più! Ho sempre aspirato, se solo fossi riuscita a liberarlo dai tormenti in cui era prigioniero, a restituirgli anche solo una piccola parte dell’amore e della cura che gli devo, e a dedicargli la mia vita. Questo è stato per anni l’apice delle mie speranze. Assumermi io stessa le responsabilità del nostro futuro sarà la prossima grande felicità, dopo la sua liberazione da ogni obbligo e responsabilità, quella che posso desiderare.”
“Hai mai pensato a come, Agnes?”
“Spesso! Non ho paura, caro Trotwood. Sono certa del riscatto. Tante persone qui mi conoscono e pensano bene di me. Quindi sono sicura. Non dubitare di me. Le nostre necessità non sono molte. Se affitto quella cara vecchia >casa e apro una scuola, sarò utile e felice.”
Il calmo fervore della sua voce allegra riportò vividamente alla mente, prima la cara vecchia >casa stessa, e poi la mia solitaria )casa, tanto che il mio cuore era troppo pieno per poter parlare. Traddles fingeva per un po’ di essere impegnato a cercare tra i documenti.
“Ora tocca a lei, signorina Trotwood,” disse Traddles, “quella sua proprietà.”
“Beh, signore,” sospirò mia zia. “Tutto quello che posso dire è che, se se n’è andata, posso sopportarlo; e se non se n’è andata, sarò felice di riaverla indietro.”
“Credo che inizialmente fossero ottomila sterline, Consols,” disse Traddles.
‘Right!’ replied my aunt.
‘I can’t account for more than five,’ said Traddles, with an air of perplexity.
‘—thousand, do you mean?’ inquired my aunt, with uncommon composure, ‘or pounds?’
‘Five thousand pounds,’ said Traddles.
‘It was all there was,’ returned my aunt. ‘I sold three, myself. One, I paid for your articles, Trot, my dear; and the other two I have by me. When I lost the rest, I thought it wise to say nothing about that sum, but to keep it secretly for a rainy day. I wanted to see how you would come out of the trial, Trot; and you came out nobly—persevering, self-reliant, self-denying! So did Dick. Don’t speak to me, for I find my nerves a little shaken!’
Nobody would have thought so, to see her sitting upright, with her arms folded; but she had wonderful self-command.
‘Then I am delighted to say,’ cried Traddles, beaming with joy, ‘that we have recovered the whole money!’
‘Don’t congratulate me, anybody!’ exclaimed my aunt. ‘How so, sir?’
‘You believed it had been misappropriated by Mr. Wickfield?’ said Traddles.
‘Of course I did,’ said my aunt, ‘and was therefore easily silenced. Agnes, not a word!’
‘And indeed,’ said Traddles, ‘it was sold, by virtue of the power of management he held from you; but I needn’t say by whom sold, or on whose actual signature. It was afterwards pretended to Mr. Wickfield, by that rascal,—and proved, too, by figures,—that he had possessed himself of the money (on general instructions, he said) to keep other deficiencies and difficulties from the light. Mr. Wickfield, being so weak and helpless in his hands as to pay you, afterwards, several sums of interest on a pretended principal which he knew did not exist, made himself, unhappily, a party to the fraud.’
‘And at last took the blame upon himself,’ added my aunt; ‘and wrote me a mad letter, charging himself with robbery, and wrong unheard of. Upon which I paid him a visit early one morning, called for a candle, burnt the letter, and told him if he ever could right me and himself, to do it; and if he couldn’t, to keep his own counsel for his daughter’s sake.---If anybody speaks to me, I’ll leave the house!’
We all remained quiet; Agnes covering her face.
‘Well, my dear friend,’ said my aunt, after a pause, ‘and you have really extorted the money back from him?’
‘Why, the fact is,’ returned Traddles, ‘Mr. Micawber had so completely hemmed him in, and was always ready with so many new points if an old one failed, that he could not escape from us. A most remarkable circumstance is, that I really don’t think he grasped this sum even so much for the gratification of his avarice, which was inordinate, as in the hatred he felt for Copperfield. He said so to me, plainly. He said he would even have spent as much, to baulk or injure Copperfield.’
‘Ha!’ said my aunt, knitting her brows thoughtfully, and glancing at Agnes. ‘And what’s become of him?’
‘I don’t know. He left here,’ said Traddles, ‘with his mother, who had been clamouring, and beseeching, and disclosing, the whole time. They went away by one of the London night coaches, and I know no more about him; except that his malevolence to me at parting was audacious. He seemed to consider himself hardly less indebted to me, than to Mr. Micawber; which I consider (as I told him) quite a compliment.’
‘Do you suppose he has any money, Traddles?’ I asked.
‘Oh dear, yes, I should think so,’ he replied, shaking his head, seriously. ‘I should say he must have pocketed a good deal, in one way or other. But, I think you would find, Copperfield, if you had an opportunity of observing his course, that money would never keep that man out of mischief. He is such an incarnate hypocrite, that whatever object he pursues, he must pursue crookedly. It’s his only compensation for the outward restraints he puts upon himself. Always creeping along the ground to some small end or other, he will always magnify every object in the way; and consequently will hate and suspect everybody that comes, in the most innocent manner, between him and it. So the crooked courses will become crookeder, at any moment, for the least reason, or for none. It’s only necessary to consider his history here,’ said Traddles, ‘to know that.’
‘He’s a monster of meanness!’ said my aunt.
‘Really I don’t know about that,’ observed Traddles thoughtfully. ‘Many people can be very mean, when they give their minds to it.’
‘And now, touching Mr. Micawber,’ said my aunt.
‘Well, really,’ said Traddles, cheerfully, ‘I must, once more, give Mr. Micawber high praise. But for his having been so patient and persevering for so long a time, we never could have hoped to do anything worth speaking of. And I think we ought to consider that Mr. Micawber did right, for right’s sake, when we reflect what terms he might have made with Uriah Heep himself, for his silence.’
‘I think so too,’ said I.
‘Now, what would you give him?’ inquired my aunt.
‘Oh! Before you come to that,’ said Traddles, a little disconcerted, ‘I am afraid I thought it discreet to omit (not being able to carry everything before me) two points, in making this lawless adjustment—for it’s perfectly lawless from beginning to end—of a difficult affair. Those I.O.U.’s, and so forth, which Mr. Micawber gave him for the advances he had—’
‘Well! They must be paid,’ said my aunt.
‘Yes, but I don’t know when they may be proceeded on, or where they are,’ rejoined Traddles, opening his eyes; ‘and I anticipate, that, between this time and his departure, Mr. Micawber will be constantly arrested, or taken in execution.’
‘Then he must be constantly set free again, and taken out of execution,’ said my aunt. ‘What’s the amount altogether?’
‘Why, Mr. Micawber has entered the transactions—he calls them transactions—with great form, in a book,’ rejoined Traddles, smiling; ‘and he makes the amount a hundred and three pounds, five.’
“Giusto!” rispose mia zia.
“Non riesco a spiegare l’esistenza di più di cinque,” disse Traddles, con un’aria perplessa.
“Mille, intendi dire mille unità, vero?”, chiese mia zia con insolita calma, “o sterline?”
“Cinque migliaia di sterline,” disse Traddles.
“Era tutto ciò che avevo,” rispose mia zia. “Ne ho vendute tre personalmente: una l’ho usata per pagare i tuoi articoli, Trot, caro mio; le altre due le tengo con me. Quando ho perso il resto, ho pensato fosse meglio non parlare di quella somma, ma tenerla nascosta per un momento difficile. Volevo vedere come saresti uscito da questa situazione, Trot. E tu te la sei cavata in modo nobile: perseverante, affidandoti a te stesso, rinunciando a molte cose! Lo stesso vale per Dick. Non parlarmi ora. Mi sento un po’ scossa, ”
Nessuno l’avrebbe mai pensato, vedendola seduta dritta, con le braccia incrociate; ma lei possedeva un meraviglioso controllo su se stessa.
“Allora sono felicissimo di annunciare,” esclamò Traddles, radioso di gioia, “che abbiamo recuperato tutto il denaro!”
“Non congratulatemi, per favore!”, esclamò mia zia. “Perché mai, signora?”
“Pensavate che fosse stato sottratto indebitamente dal signor Wickfield?” chiese Traddles.
“Certo che l’ho fatto,” disse mia zia, “e per questo sono stata facilmente zittita.
Agnes, niente parole!”
“E infatti,” disse Traddles, “fu venduto grazie al potere di gestione che egli aveva ricevuto da voi; ma non c’è bisogno che dica chi lo vendette o su quale firma effettiva. In seguito, quel furfante fingé con il signor Wickfield che avesse ottenuto i soldi (sosteneva di averlo fatto su istruzioni generali) al fine di nascondere altre irregolarità e difficoltà. Il signor Wickfield, essendo così debole e indifeso nelle sue mani da non essere in grado di pagarvi, dovette in seguito versare diverse somme di interessi su un presunto capitale che sapeva benissimo non esistere; questo lo rese, sfortunatamente, complice di quella truffa.”
“E alla fine prese su di sé tutta la colpa,” aggiunse mia zia; “e mi scrisse una lettera folle, incolpandosi di un furto e di altre ingiustizie mai sentite prima. Allora, una mattina presto, andai da lui, chiesi una candela, bruciai la lettera e gli dissi che, se mai avesse potuto rimediare a quanto mi era stato fatto, doveva farlo; altrimenti, per il bene di sua figlia, fosse meglio che tenesse per sé le sue idee. —— Se qualcuno dovesse parlarmi ancora, me ne andrò da questa casa!”
Tutti rimanemmo in silenzio; Agnes si coprì il viso.
“Beh, mio caro amico,” disse mia zia dopo una pausa, “e sei davvero riuscito a fargli restituire i soldi?”
“Beh, il fatto è,” rispose Traddles, “che il signor Micawber lo aveva completamente intrappolato, e era sempre pronto a fornire nuove argomentazioni ogni volta che quelle precedenti fallivano; quindi lui non riusciva assolutamente a liberarsi di noi. Una circostanza davvero straordinaria è che, a mio parere, lui non agì tanto per soddisfare la propria avidità – che era smisurata – quanto piuttosto per l’odio che provava verso Copperfield. Me lo disse apertamente: disse addirittura che avrebbe speso lo stesso denaro pur di ostacolare o danneggiare Copperfield.”
“Ha!” disse mia zia, aggrottando la fronte pensierosamente e lanciando un’occhiata ad Agnes. “E cosa ne è stato di lui?”
“Non lo so. È andato via da qui,” disse Traddles, “con sua madre, che per tutto il tempo non faceva altro che piangere, supplicare e rivelare ogni cosa. Sono partiti con uno di quei treni notturni di Londra e non so più nulla di lui. Tranne che la sua malvagità verso di me al momento della separazione è stata davvero audace. Sembrava considerarsi altrettanto in debito con me quanto lo fosse con il signor Micawber; il che, come gli ho detto anch’io, è senz’altro un complimento.”
“Pensi che abbia del denaro, Traddles?”, chiesi.
“Oh mio Dio, sì, penso proprio di sì,” rispose scuotendo la testa seriamente. “Dovrei dire che deve aver intascato una bella somma, in un modo o nell’altro. Ma credo che tu scopriresti, Copperfield, se avessi l’opportunità di osservare le sue azioni, che quei soldi non riuscirebbero mai a impedirgli di combinare guai. È un ipocrita incarnato: qualsiasi obiettivo persegua, lo fa sempre in modo disonesto. È l’unica compensazione per le restrizioni che si impone. Si muove sempre verso uno scopo meschino, ingrandendo ogni ostacolo sul suo cammino; quindi odia e sospetta chiunque si avvicini, anche nel modo più innocente, tra lui e quel suo obiettivo. Quindi i suoi comportamenti disonesti diventano ancora più tortuosi, in qualsiasi momento, per la minima ragione. O forse senza alcuna ragione,” aggiunse Traddles. “Basta considerare la sua storia per capirlo.”
“È un vero mostro di meschinità!” disse mia zia.
“Onestamente, non ne so molto,” osservò Traddles pensierosamente. “Molte persone possono essere davvero cattive, quando ci mettono impegno.”
“E ora, parliamo del signor Micawber,” disse mia zia.
“Beh, davvero,” disse Traddles, con entusiasmo, “devo ancora una volta lodare molto il signor Micawber. Se non fosse stato così paziente e perseverante per tutto questo tempo, non avremmo mai potuto realizzare nulla di significativo. E penso che dovremmo riconoscere che il signor Micawber ha agito nel modo giusto, per amor della giustizia stessa. Se ci pensiamo bene, con quali condizioni avrebbe potuto accordarsi direttamente con Uriah Heep in cambio del suo silenzio, ”
“Anch’io penso di sì,” dissi.
“Ora, cosa gli daresti?” chiese mia zia.
“Oh! Prima che arriviate a questo punto,” disse Traddles, un po’ turbato, “temo di aver ritenuto opportuno omettere due punti nel formulare questa regola assolutamente illegale. Perché è davvero illegale dall’inizio alla fine. Quei titoli di debito, e così via, che il signor Micawber gli aveva dato in cambio dei prestiti ricevuti, ”
“Beh! Devono essere pagati,” disse mia zia.
“Sì, ma non so quando verranno portate avanti queste azioni, né dove si trovino,” rispose Traddles aprendo gli occhi; “e prevedo che, tra ora e la sua partenza, il signor Micawber verrà continuamente arrestato o messo in esecuzione.”
“Allora deve essere liberato di continuo e salvato dalla pena di morte,” disse mia zia. “Quanto ammonta la somma totale?”
“Ma sì, il signor Micawber ha registrato tutte queste transazioni, le chiama proprio ‘transazioni’, in un libro,” rispose Traddles sorridendo; “e ha indicato l’importo totale come centotré sterline e cinque pence.”
‘Now, what shall we give him, that sum included?’ said my aunt. ‘Agnes, my dear, you and I can talk about division of it afterwards. What should it be? Five hundred pounds?’
Upon this, Traddles and I both struck in at once. We both recommended a small sum in money, and the payment, without stipulation to Mr. Micawber, of the Uriah claims as they came in. We proposed that the family should have their passage and their outfit, and a hundred pounds; and that Mr. Micawber’s arrangement for the repayment of the advances should be gravely entered into, as it might be wholesome for him to suppose himself under that responsibility. To this, I added the suggestion, that I should give some explanation of his character and history to Mr. Peggotty, who I knew could be relied on; and that to Mr. Peggotty should be quietly entrusted the discretion of advancing another hundred. I further proposed to interest Mr. Micawber in Mr. Peggotty, by confiding so much of Mr. Peggotty’s story to him as I might feel justified in relating, or might think expedient; and to endeavour to bring each of them to bear upon the other, for the common advantage. We all entered warmly into these views; and I may mention at once, that the principals themselves did so, shortly afterwards, with perfect good will and harmony.
Seeing that Traddles now glanced anxiously at my aunt again, I reminded him of the second and last point to which he had adverted.
‘You and your aunt will excuse me, Copperfield, if I touch upon a painful theme, as I greatly fear I shall,’ said Traddles, hesitating; ‘but I think it necessary to bring it to your recollection. On the day of Mr. Micawber’s memorable denunciation a threatening allusion was made by Uriah Heep to your aunt’s—husband.’
My aunt, retaining her stiff position, and apparent composure, assented with a nod.
‘Perhaps,’ observed Traddles, ‘it was mere purposeless impertinence?’
‘No,’ returned my aunt.
‘There was—pardon me—really such a person, and at all in his power?’ hinted Traddles.
‘Yes, my good friend,’ said my aunt.
Traddles, with a perceptible lengthening of his face, explained that he had not been able to approach this subject; that it had shared the fate of Mr. Micawber’s liabilities, in not being comprehended in the terms he had made; that we were no longer of any authority with Uriah Heep; and that if he could do us, or any of us, any injury or annoyance, no doubt he would.
My aunt remained quiet; until again some stray tears found their way to her cheeks. ‘You are quite right,’ she said. ‘It was very thoughtful to mention it.’
‘Can I—or Copperfield—do anything?’ asked Traddles, gently.
‘Nothing,’ said my aunt. ‘I thank you many times. Trot, my dear, a vain threat! Let us have Mr. and Mrs. Micawber back. And don’t any of you speak to me!’ With that she smoothed her dress, and sat, with her upright carriage, looking at the door.
‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber!’ said my aunt, when they entered. ‘We have been discussing your emigration, with many apologies to you for keeping you out of the room so long; and I’ll tell you what arrangements we propose.’
These she explained to the unbounded satisfaction of the family,—children and all being then present,—and so much to the awakening of Mr. Micawber’s punctual habits in the opening stage of all bill transactions, that he could not be dissuaded from immediately rushing out, in the highest spirits, to buy the stamps for his notes of hand. But, his joy received a sudden check; for within five minutes, he returned in the custody of a sheriff’s officer, informing us, in a flood of tears, that all was lost. We, being quite prepared for this event, which was of course a proceeding of Uriah Heep’s, soon paid the money; and in five minutes more Mr. Micawber was seated at the table, filling up the stamps with an expression of perfect joy, which only that congenial employment, or the making of punch, could impart in full completeness to his shining face. To see him at work on the stamps, with the relish of an artist, touching them like pictures, looking at them sideways, taking weighty notes of dates and amounts in his pocket-book, and contemplating them when finished, with a high sense of their precious value, was a sight indeed.
‘Now, the best thing you can do, sir, if you’ll allow me to advise you,’ said my aunt, after silently observing him, ‘is to abjure that occupation for evermore.’
‘Madam,’ replied Mr. Micawber, ‘it is my intention to register such a vow on the virgin page of the future. Mrs. Micawber will attest it. I trust,’ said Mr. Micawber, solemnly, ‘that my son Wilkins will ever bear in mind, that he had infinitely better put his fist in the fire, than use it to handle the serpents that have poisoned the life-blood of his unhappy parent!’ Deeply affected, and changed in a moment to the image of despair, Mr. Micawber regarded the serpents with a look of gloomy abhorrence (in which his late admiration of them was not quite subdued), folded them up and put them in his pocket.
This closed the proceedings of the evening. We were weary with sorrow and fatigue, and my aunt and I were to return to London on the morrow. It was arranged that the Micawbers should follow us, after effecting a sale of their goods to a broker; that Mr. Wickfield’s affairs should be brought to a settlement, with all convenient speed, under the direction of Traddles; and that Agnes should also come to London, pending those arrangements. We passed the night at the old house, which, freed from the presence of the Heeps, seemed purged of a disease; and I lay in my old room, like a shipwrecked wanderer come home.
We went back next day to my aunt’s house—not to mine—and when she and I sat alone, as of old, before going to bed, she said:
‘Trot, do you really wish to know what I have had upon my mind lately?’
“Ora, cosa dovremmo dargli, compresa quella somma?” disse mia zia. “Agnes, cara, possiamo parlarne dopo della sua distribuzione. Cosa potrebbe essere? Cinquecento sterline?”
A questo punto, sia Traddles che io intervenimmo immediatamente. Entrambi suggerimmo una piccola somma di denaro, nonché il pagamento, senza alcuna condizione, delle richieste di Uriah non appena queste fossero presentate. Proposimmo inoltre che la famiglia ricevesse i mezzi per il viaggio e l’abbigliamento necessario, oltre a cento sterline; in più, suggerimmo che le modalità con cui Mr. Micawber avrebbe restituito i prestiti venissero formalizzate in modo chiaro, poiché questo avrebbe potuto essere benefico per lui, facendogli sentire di assumersi tale responsabilità. Aggiunsi anche che avrei fornito a Mr. Peggotty alcune spiegazioni riguardo al carattere e alla storia di Mr. Micawber, sapendo di potermi fidare di lui; inoltre, suggerii che a lui venisse concesso il potere discrezionale di concedere un altro cento sterline. Proposi inoltre di coinvolgere Mr. Micawber in questa iniziativa, raccontandogli parte della storia di Mr. Peggotty nel modo che ritenevo giusto o opportuno; in questo modo, entrambi avrebbero potuto collaborare a vantaggio reciproco. Tutti accettammo con entusiasmo queste proposte; devo anche aggiungere che poco dopo anche i diretti interessati aderirono pienamente a esse, con perfetta buona volontà e armonia.
Vedendo che Traddles ora guardava di nuovo con ansia mia zia, gli ricordai il secondo e ultimo punto di cui aveva parlato.
“Voi e vostra zia mi perdonerete, Copperfield, se affronto un argomento doloroso, temo molto di doverlo fare,” disse Traddles esitando; “ma ritengo sia necessario richiamarvelo alla memoria. Il giorno della memorabile denuncia del signor Micawber, Uriah Heep fece un’allusione minacciosa riguardo al marito di vostra zia.”
Mia zia, mantenendo la sua posizione rigida e un’apparente calma, annuì in segno di accordo.
“Forse,” osservò Traddles, “era solo una mera e inutile impertinenza, ”
“No,” rispose mia zia.
“C’era davvero una persona del genere, e lui ne aveva pieno potere?” suggerì Traddles.
“Sì, mio caro amico,” disse mia zia.
Traddles, con un evidente allungamento del viso, spiegò che non era stato in grado di affrontare questo argomento; che esso aveva condiviso lo stesso destino delle responsabilità del signor Micawber, nel senso che non era stato compreso nei termini da lui utilizzati per esprimerlo; che ormai non avevamo alcun potere su Uriah Heep; e che, se avesse potuto causarci, o a qualcuno di noi, qualche danno o fastidio, non c’era alcuna >dubbio che lo avrebbe fatto.
Mia zia rimase in silenzio; fino a quando, di nuovo, alcune lacrime sparse raggiunsero le sue guance. “Hai perfettamente ragione,” disse. “È stato molto gentile da parte tua menzionarlo.”
“Posso io, o Copperfield, fare qualcosa?” chiese Traddles, con dolcezza.
“Niente,” disse mia zia. “Grazie mille. Trot, cara, una minaccia vana! Vogliamo che il signor e la signora Micawber tornino qui. E nessuno di voi mi parli!” Dopo aver detto questo, si sistemò l’abito e sedette, con atteggiamento eretto, fissando la porta.
“Beh, signor e signora Micawber!”, disse mia zia quando entrarono. “Abbiamo discusso della vostra emigrazione. Vi chiediamo scusa per avervi tenuti fuori dalla stanza per così tanto tempo; vi spiegherò quali sono le nostre proposte.”
Le spiegò tutto con grande soddisfazione di tutta la famiglia – che in quel momento era presente – e questo fece sì che il signor Micawber, abituato alla puntualità nelle sue transazioni finanziarie, non potesse essere dissuaso dal correre immediatamente ad acquistare le timbri necessari per i suoi assegni. Tuttavia, la sua gioia subì un improvviso arresto: entro cinque minuti tornò in compagnia di un ufficiale dello sceriffo, che ci comunicò, tra lacrime, che tutto era andato perso. Essendo ben preparati a questo evento – che ovviamente era opera di Uriah Heep – pagammo subito il denaro; e cinque minuti dopo il signor Micawber era di nuovo al tavolo, compilando le timbri con un’espressione di perfetta felicità. Un’emozione che solo quel compito che gli piaceva tanto, o la preparazione del punch, potevano donargli in tutto il loro splendore. Vederlo lavorare sulle timbri, con l’appassionamento di un artista, toccarle come se fossero opere d’arte, guardarle da diversi angoli, prendere appunti precisi sui dati e le cifre nel suo taccuino, e poi contemplarle una volta completate, con profondo rispetto per il loro prezioso valore, era davvero uno spettacolo meraviglioso.
“Ora, la cosa migliore che possiate fare, signore, se mi permettete di darvi un consiglio,” disse mia zia, dopo averlo osservato in silenzio, “è abbandonare per sempre quella professione.”
“Madam,” rispose il signor Micawber, “è mia intenzione registrare un simile voto sulla pagina vergine del futuro. La signora Micawber ne farà testimonianza. Spero,” disse il signor Micawber con solennità, “che mio figlio Wilkins ricordi sempre che avrebbe fatto di gran lunga meglio a gettare il proprio pugno nel fuoco piuttosto che usarlo per affrontare quei serpenti che hanno avvelenato la vita di sua madre sfortunata!” Profondamente commosso e trasformato in un istante nell’immagine del disperazione, il signor Micawber guardò quei serpenti con uno sguardo di cupa repulsione (in cui la sua precedente ammirazione per loro non era ancora del tutto svanita), li raccolse e se li mise in tasca.
Questo concluse le attività della serata. Eravamo stanchi di tristezza e fatica; io e mia zia avremmo dovuto tornare a Londra il giorno seguente. Era stato concordato che i Micawber ci seguissero, dopo aver venduto le loro merci a un intermediario; inoltre, gli affari di Mr. Wickfield sarebbero stati risolti il prima possibile, sotto la guida di Traddles; Agnes, intanto, avrebbe anche raggiunto Londra in attesa di tali accordi. Trascorremmo la notte nella vecchia casa, che, priva della presenza dei Heeps, sembrava finalmente liberata da ogni problema; io mi sdraiai nella mia vecchia stanza, come un viaggiatore disperso che tornasse finalmente a casa.
Tornammo il giorno dopo a casa di mia zia – non alla mia – e quando lei ed io ci sedemmo da soli, come un tempo, prima di andare a letto, lei disse:
“Trot, vuoi davvero sapere cosa ho avuto in mente ultimamente?”
‘Indeed I do, aunt. If there ever was a time when I felt unwilling that you should have a sorrow or anxiety which I could not share, it is now.’
‘You have had sorrow enough, child,’ said my aunt, affectionately, ‘without the addition of my little miseries. I could have no other motive, Trot, in keeping anything from you.’
‘I know that well,’ said I. ‘But tell me now.’
‘Would you ride with me a little way tomorrow morning?’ asked my aunt.
‘Of course.’
‘At nine,’ said she. ‘I’ll tell you then, my dear.’
At nine, accordingly, we went out in a little chariot, and drove to London. We drove a long way through the streets, until we came to one of the large hospitals. Standing hard by the building was a plain hearse. The driver recognized my aunt, and, in obedience to a motion of her hand at the window, drove slowly off; we following.
‘You understand it now, Trot,’ said my aunt. ‘He is gone!’
‘Did he die in the hospital?’
‘Yes.’
She sat immovable beside me; but, again I saw the stray tears on her face.
‘He was there once before,’ said my aunt presently. ‘He was ailing a long time—a shattered, broken man, these many years. When he knew his state in this last illness, he asked them to send for me. He was sorry then. Very sorry.’
‘You went, I know, aunt.’
‘I went. I was with him a good deal afterwards.’
‘He died the night before we went to Canterbury?’ said I. My aunt nodded. ‘No one can harm him now,’ she said. ‘It was a vain threat.’
We drove away, out of town, to the churchyard at Hornsey. ‘Better here than in the streets,’ said my aunt. ‘He was born here.’
We alighted; and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember well, where the service was read consigning it to the dust.
‘Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, my dear,’ said my aunt, as we walked back to the chariot, ‘I was married. God forgive us all!’ We took our seats in silence; and so she sat beside me for a long time, holding my hand. At length she suddenly burst into tears, and said:
‘He was a fine-looking man when I married him, Trot—and he was sadly changed!’
It did not last long. After the relief of tears, she soon became composed, and even cheerful. Her nerves were a little shaken, she said, or she would not have given way to it. God forgive us all!
So we rode back to her little cottage at Highgate, where we found the following short note, which had arrived by that morning’s post from Mr. Micawber:
‘Canterbury,
‘Friday.
‘My dear Madam, and Copperfield,
‘The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon is again enveloped in impenetrable mists, and for ever withdrawn from the eyes of a drifting wretch whose Doom is sealed!
‘Another writ has been issued (in His Majesty’s High Court of King’s Bench at Westminster), in another cause of HEEP V. MICAWBER, and the defendant in that cause is the prey of the sheriff having legal jurisdiction in this bailiwick.
‘Now’s the day, and now’s the hour, See the front of battle lower, See approach proud EDWARD’S power— Chains and slavery!
‘Consigned to which, and to a speedy end (for mental torture is not supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have attained), my course is run. Bless you, bless you! Some future traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let us hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in this city, may, and I trust will, Ponder, as he traces on its wall, inscribed with a rusty nail,
‘The obscure initials,
‘W. M.
‘P.S. I re-open this to say that our common friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles (who has not yet left us, and is looking extremely well), has paid the debt and costs, in the noble name of Miss Trotwood; and that myself and family are at the height of earthly bliss.’
“Certo che sì, zia. Se mai c’è stato un momento in cui ho desiderato di non dover condividere con te alcuna tristezza o preoccupazione, è proprio ora.”
“Hai già sofferto abbastanza, bambino,” disse mia zia con affetto, “senza dover aggiungere anche le mie piccole preoccupazioni. Non avrei alcun altro motivo, Trot, per nasconderti qualcosa.”
“Lo so molto bene,” dissi. “Ma dimmelo adesso.”
“Vorresti venire con me per un tratto domani mattina?” chiese mia zia.
“Certo che sì.”
“Alle nove,” disse lei. “Allora te lo dirò, caro mio.”
All’età di nove anni, quindi, uscimmo in una piccola carrozza e ci dirigemmo verso Londra. Percorremmo molte strade fino a quando non arrivammo in uno dei grandi ospedali. Accanto all’edificio c’era un semplice feretro. Il conducente riconobbe mia zia e, seguendo un suo gesto fatto dalla finestra, partì lentamente; noi lo seguimmo.
“Ora capisci, Trot,” disse mia zia. “È sparito!”
“È morto in ospedale?”
“Sì, davvero.”
Se ne stava seduta immobile accanto a me; ma ancora una volta vidi quelle lacrime sparse sul suo viso.
“C’era già stato una volta,” disse mia zia dopo un po’. “Era malato da molto tempo, un uomo distrutto, spezzato, negli ultimi anni. Quando capì la gravità della sua malattia, chiese che mi mandassero a chiamare. Allora si dispiacque. Si dispiacque molto.”
“Sei andata, lo so, zia.”
“Sono andato. E dopo sono rimasto con lui per un bel po’.”
“È morto la notte prima che andassimo a Canterbury?” dissi. Mia zia annuì. “Ora nessuno può fargli del male,” disse. “Era una minaccia vana.”
Ci allontanammo in macchina, fuori città, verso il cimitero di Hornsey. “È meglio qui che per le strade,” disse mia zia. “Lui è nato qui.”
Scesi dall’auto e seguimmo il semplice feretro fino all’angolo che ricordo molto bene; lì si tenne la cerimonia per affidarlo alla polvere.
“Sessantatré anni fa, proprio in questo giorno, mio caro,” disse mia zia mentre tornavamo alla carrozza, “mi sono sposata. Che Dio ci perdoni tutti!” Ci sedemmo in silenzio; lei rimase accanto a me per molto tempo, tenendomi la mano. Alla fine scoppiò improvvisamente in lacrime e disse:
“Era un uomo molto attraente quando l’ho sposato, Trot, ma purtroppo è cambiato molto!”
Non durò a lungo. Dopo aver pianto, presto si riprese e divenne persino allegra. Disse che i suoi nervi erano un po’ scossi, altrimenti non avrebbe ceduto così facilmente. Che Dio ci perdoni tutti!
Quindi tornammo al suo piccolo cottage a Highgate, dove trovammo la seguente breve nota, arrivata con la posta di quella mattina da parte del signor Micawber:
“Canterbury”
“Venerdì.”
“Mia cara signora e Copperfield, ”
La bella terra promessa, che poco tempo fa appariva all’orizzonte, è di nuovo avvolta da nebbie impenetrabili e per sempre nascosta agli occhi di un infelice il cui destino è già segnato.
È stata emessa un’altra ordinanza (Presso la Corte Suprema di Sua Maestà presso la Corte del Re a Westminster), riguardante un altro caso tra HEEP V. MICAWBER; il convenuto in tale causa è sotto l’effetto delle misure legali adottate dallo sceriffo che ha giurisdizione in questa zona.
“Ora è il giorno, ora è l’ora:
Vedete la linea del fronte avanzare.
Vedete avvicinarsi la potente forza di EDWARD.
Le catene e la schiavitù sono ormai al termine!”
“Consegnato a ciò, e a una fine rapida (poiché la tortura mentale non è sopportabile oltre un certo limite, e credo di averlo raggiunto), il mio percorso è concluso. Beneditevi, beneditevi! Chissà quale viaggiatore del futuro, giungendo qui per curiosità – una curiosità non del tutto disinteressata – possa, mentre visita questo luogo di reclusione riservato ai debitori in questa città, riflettere con compassione su ciò che vi è scritto, inciso su un chiodo arrugginito sulle sue pareti.”
“Le oscure iniziali, ”
‘W. M.
‘P.S. Riapro questo messaggio per dire che il nostro comune amico, il signor Thomas Traddles (che non ci ha ancora lasciati e sembra estremamente in buona salute), ha pagato il debito e tutte le spese, nel nobile nome di Miss Trotwood; e che io e la mia famiglia siamo al culmine della felicità terrena.’
CHAPTER 55. TEMPEST
I now approach an event in my life, so indelible, so awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it, in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its fore-cast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days.
For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often. I have started up so vividly impressed by it, that its fury has yet seemed raging in my quiet room, in the still night. I dream of it sometimes, though at lengthened and uncertain intervals, to this hour. I have an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest mention of a sea-shore, as strong as any of which my mind is conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to write it down. I do not recall it, but see it done; for it happens again before me.
The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship, my good old nurse (almost broken-hearted for me, when we first met) came up to London. I was constantly with her, and her brother, and the Micawbers (they being very much together); but Emily I never saw.
One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with Peggotty and her brother. Our conversation turned on Ham. She described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how manfully and quietly he had borne himself. Most of all, of late, when she believed he was most tried. It was a subject of which the affectionate creature never tired; and our interest in hearing the many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate, was equal to hers in relating them.
My aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at Highgate; I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house at Dover. We had a temporary lodging in Covent Garden. As I walked home to it, after this evening’s conversation, reflecting on what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth, I wavered in the original purpose I had formed, of leaving a letter for Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on board the ship, and thought it would be better to write to her now. She might desire, I thought, after receiving my communication, to send some parting word by me to her unhappy lover. I ought to give her the opportunity.
I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to her. I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me to tell her what I have already written in its place in these sheets. I faithfully repeated it. I had no need to enlarge upon it, if I had had the right. Its deep fidelity and goodness were not to be adorned by me or any man. I left it out, to be sent round in the morning; with a line to Mr. Peggotty, requesting him to give it to her; and went to bed at daybreak.
I was weaker than I knew then; and, not falling asleep until the sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day. I was roused by the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside. I felt it in my sleep, as I suppose we all do feel such things.
‘Trot, my dear,’ she said, when I opened my eyes, ‘I couldn’t make up my mind to disturb you. Mr. Peggotty is here; shall he come up?’
I replied yes, and he soon appeared.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, when we had shaken hands, ‘I giv Em’ly your letter, sir, and she writ this heer; and begged of me fur to ask you to read it, and if you see no hurt in’t, to be so kind as take charge on’t.’
‘Have you read it?’ said I.
He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows:
‘I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for your good and blessed kindness to me!
‘I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I die. They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have prayed over them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you are, and what uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.
‘Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in this world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore.’
This, blotted with tears, was the letter.
‘May I tell her as you doen’t see no hurt in’t, and as you’ll be so kind as take charge on’t, Mas’r Davy?’ said Mr. Peggotty, when I had read it. ‘Unquestionably,’ said I—‘but I am thinking—’
‘Yes, Mas’r Davy?’
‘I am thinking,’ said I, ‘that I’ll go down again to Yarmouth. There’s time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude; to put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am restless, and shall be better in motion. I’ll go down tonight.’
Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was of my mind; and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my intention, would have had the effect. He went round to the coach office, at my request, and took the box-seat for me on the mail. In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many vicissitudes.
‘Don’t you think that,’ I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of London, ‘a very remarkable sky? I don’t remember to have seen one like it.’
‘Nor I—not equal to it,’ he replied. ‘That’s wind, sir. There’ll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long.’
It was a murky confusion—here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel—of flying clouds, tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and blew hard.
CAPITOLO 55. TEMPESTA
Ora mi avvicino a un evento nella mia vita così indelebile, così terribile, così strettamente legato a un’infinità di cose accadute prima. In queste pagine, fin dall’inizio del mio racconto, ho visto questo evento crescere sempre di più man mano che procedevo nella narrazione; era come una grande torre in mezzo alla pianura, la cui ombra si estendeva persino sugli eventi dei miei giorni d’infanzia.
Per anni, dopo che era accaduto, ne sognavo spesso. L’impressione che ne avevo è così vivida che, ancora oggi, a intervalli sempre più lunghi e incerti, continuo a sognarlo. C’è un legame forte tra quel ricordo e un vento tempestoso, o anche solo il menzionare una riva marina; un legame altrettanto intenso di qualsiasi altro che la mia mente possa percepire. Come se vedessi ancora davanti ai miei occhi ciò che è accaduto, cercherò di descriverlo per iscritto. Non me lo ricordo, ma lo vedo succedere di nuovo, perché accade ancora una volta davanti a me.
Il tempo passava velocemente in attesa della partenza della nave degli emigranti; la mia cara vecchia infermiera (che quasi si spezzò il cuore per me quando ci incontrammo la prima volta) venne a Londra. Stavo spesso con lei, con suo fratello e i Micawber (che trascorrevano molto tempo insieme); ma non vidi mai Emily.
Una sera, quando l’ora era ormai vicina, ero da solo con Peggotty e suo fratello. La nostra conversazione riguardò Ham: lei ci descrisse quanto dolcemente si fosse congedato da lei e come, con coraggio e silenzio, avesse affrontato le difficoltà. Soprattutto negli ultimi tempi, quando lei credeva che stesse attraversando momenti particolarmente difficili. Era un argomento di cui quella creatura piena d’affetto non si stancava mai; e il nostro interesse nel ascoltare i numerosi esempi che lei, essendo stata così vicina a lui, aveva da raccontarci era pari al suo entusiasmo nel narrarli.
In quel momento, mia zia ed io stavamo soggiornando nelle due casette di Highgate; intendevo andare all’estero, mentre lei doveva tornare nella sua casa a Dover. Avevamo trovato un alloggio temporaneo a Covent Garden. Mentre camminavo verso casa, dopo quella conversazione serale e riflettendo su quanto era accaduto tra me e Ham l’ultima volta che ero stato a Yarmouth, cambiai idea riguardo al proposito iniziale di lasciare una lettera ad Emily quando avrei salutato suo zio sulla nave; pensai fosse meglio scriverle subito. Forse, dopo aver ricevuto la mia lettera, lei avrebbe voluto inviare qualche parola d’addio tramite me al suo infelice amante. Dovevo darle quell’opportunità.
Quindi, prima di andare a letto, mi sedetti nella mia stanza e le scrissi. Le dissi che lo avevo visto e che lui mi aveva chiesto di riferirle ciò che avevo già scritto in questi fogli. Lo ripetei fedelmente; non c’era bisogno di aggiungere nulla, se solo avessi avuto ragione. La sua profonda fedeltà e bontà non dovevano essere arricchite da me o da alcun altro uomo. Lasciai la lettera pronta per essere inviata il mattino seguente, con una nota indirizzata al signor Peggotty affinché gliela consegnasse; poi andai a letto all’alba.
Ero più debole di quanto pensassi in quel momento; non riuscivo a addormentarmi fino all’alba, quindi dormivo molto tardi e il giorno dopo mi svegliavo stanco e senza riposare a sufficienza. Fu la presenza silenziosa di mia zia accanto al mio letto a svegliarmi. La percepivo mentre dormivo, come credo che tutti noi facciamo in simili situazioni.
“Va’ avanti, caro mio,” disse lei quando aprii gli occhi. “Non ho voluto disturbarvi. Il signor Peggotty è qui; vuoi che venga su?”
Ho risposto di sì, e presto è arrivato.
“Signor Davy,” disse lui dopo averci stretti la mano, “ho dato a Em’ly la sua lettera, signore, e lei ha scritto questo; mi ha pregato di chiedervi di leggerla, e se non vi sembra nulla di male, di essere così gentile da occuparvene voi stesso.”
“L’hai letto?” dissi io.
Scosse la testa con tristezza. Lo aprii e lessi quanto segue:
“Ho ricevuto il tuo messaggio. Oh, cosa posso scrivere per ringraziarti della tua gentilezza e bontà verso di me!”
“Ho messo queste parole vicino al mio cuore. Le terrò con me fino alla morte. Sono come spine acuminate, ma offrono un grande conforto. Le ho pregate, oh, le ho pregate tantissimo. Quando capirò chi sei tu e chi è zio, allora penserò a cosa debba essere Dio e potrò rivolgermi a Lui.”
“Addio per sempre. Ora, mio caro, mio amico, addio per sempre in questo mondo. In un altro mondo, se verrò perdonato, forse potrò risvegliare un bambino e tornare da te. Tutta la mia gratitudine e le mie benedizioni. Addio, per sempre.”
Questa lettera, macchiata di lacrime, era proprio quella.
“Posso dirglielo, visto che non vedete alcun danno in questo e dato che sarete così gentile da occuparvene voi stesso, signor Davy?” disse il signor Peggotty quando ebbi letto quella lettera.
“Senza dubbio,” risposi io, “ma sto pensando, ”
“Sì, signor Davy?”
“Sto pensando,” dissi, “di tornare a Yarmouth. Ho ancora abbastanza tempo per andarci e tornare prima che la nave salpi. Non faccio che pensare a lui, nella sua solitudine; consegnargli questa lettera scritta da lei in questo momento, e permetterti di dirle, al momento della separazione, che l’ha ricevuta, sarebbe un grande favore per entrambi. Ho accettato seriamente la sua richiesta, caro amico, e non posso certo deluderlo. Il viaggio non rappresenta alcun problema per me; sono irrequieto e mi sentirò meglio in movimento. Partirò stasera stesso.”
Anche se si sforzava ansiosamente di dissuadermi, capii che la sua opinione era in linea con la mia; e questo, se avessi avuto bisogno di conferma nella mia decisione, sarebbe stato sufficiente per convincerlo. Su mia richiesta, andò all’ufficio delle ferrovie e prenotò per me il posto a sedere sul treno espresso. La sera partii con quel mezzo, lungo la stessa strada che avevo percorso in passato, attraverso tante avversità.
“Non le sembra,” chiesi al cocchiere, nella prima tappa dopo aver lasciato Londra, “un cielo davvero straordinario? Non ricordo di averne mai visto uno del genere.”
“Nemmeno io, non sono all’altezza,” rispose. “Quello è il vento, signore. Immagino che presto si verificheranno dei disastri in mare.”
Era una confusione oscura e nebbiosa – qua e là macchiata da un colore simile a quello del fumo prodotto da combustibile umido – di nuvole in movimento, ammassate in forme straordinarie, che suggerivano altezze incredibili rispetto alle profondità sottostanti, fino al fondo delle più oscure cavità della terra. La selvaggia luna sembrava precipitare verso di esse a tutta velocità, come se, in seguito a un terribile perturbamento delle leggi della natura, avesse perso la strada e fosse spaventata. C’era stato un vento per tutto il giorno; ora stava aumentando di intensità, con suoni assai potenti. Tra un’ora sarebbe diventato ancora più forte: il cielo si sarebbe oscurato ulteriormente e il vento avrebbe soffiato con violenza ancora maggiore.
But, as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely over-spreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel; and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.
When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich—very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in the market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church-tower, and flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered about the roads and fields. Still, there was no abatement in the storm, but it blew harder.
As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.
I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea; staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea-foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and holding by people I met, at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.
Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads, as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; ship-owners, excited and uneasy; children, huddling together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.
The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds fell fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.
Not finding Ham among the people whom this memorable wind—for it is still remembered down there, as the greatest ever known to blow upon that coast—had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went, by back ways and by-lanes, to the yard where he worked. I learned, there, that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship-repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would be back tomorrow morning, in good time.
I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o’clock in the afternoon. I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to stir it, as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other ships had been seen labouring hard in the Roads, and trying, in great distress, to keep off shore. Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors, said he, if we had another night like the last!
I was very much depressed in spirits; very solitary; and felt an uneasiness in Ham’s not being there, disproportionate to the occasion. I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by late events; and my long exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections, that I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I think, to encounter someone who I knew must be then in London. So to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place naturally awakened; and they were particularly distinct and vivid.
Ma, man mano che la notte avanzava, le nuvole si addensavano e coprivano interamente il cielo; diventò molto buio, e il vento iniziò a soffiare sempre più forte. Continuò ad intensificarsi fino a quando i nostri cavalli faticavano a resistere. Molte volte, nelle ore più oscure della notte (era già tardi settembre, e le notti non erano brevi), i conducenti dovevano girare indietro o fermarsi completamente; spesso temevamo che il carro venisse rovesciato dal vento. Prima di questa tempesta, arrivavano raffiche di pioggia violente, come scrosci d’acciaio; e in quei momenti, se trovavamo qualche riparo offerto da alberi o muri, eravamo costretti a fermarci, poiché era assolutamente impossibile proseguire il viaggio.
Al sorgere del giorno, il vento soffiava sempre più forte. Ero a Yarmouth quando i marinai dissero che il vento era terribile, ma non avevo mai visto nulla del genere, né niente che gli si avvicinasse. Arrivammo a Ipswich molto tardi, dopo aver dovuto lottare per ogni centimetro di strada da quando eravamo distanti dieci miglia da Londra; trovammo un gruppo di persone nella piazza del mercato: si erano alzate dalla loro letti quella notte, spaventate dal rischio che i comignoli crollassero. Alcune di queste, mentre noi cambiavamo cavalli nel cortile dell’osteria, ci raccontarono che grandi lastre di piombo erano state strappate da un alto campanile della chiesa e gettate in una strada laterale, che poi avevano bloccato. Altre persone riferirono che contadini provenienti dai villaggi vicini avevano visto alberi strappati dalla terra e mucchi di legna sparsi per le strade e i campi. Tuttavia, il temporale non accennava a diminuire; anzi, soffiava sempre più forte.
Mentre continuavamo il nostro cammino, avvicinandoci sempre di più al mare da cui soffiava questo potente >vento, la sua forza diventava sempre più terribile. Molto prima che riuscissimo a vedere il mare, le sue onde già bagnavano le nostre labbra e ci investivano con una pioggia salata. L’acqua si era riversata su migliaia di chilometri di territorio pianeggiante adiacente a Yarmouth; ogni pozzanghera e ogni rivo battuto dalle onde minacciava di sommergerci. Quando finalmente raggiungemmo la città, la gente uscì sulle soglie delle case, con i capelli bagnati e arruffati, meravigliandosi del corriere che era riuscito a raggiungerci in una notte così tempestosa.
Mi fermai in quella vecchia locanda e scesi a guardare il mare; barcollavo lungo la strada, piena di sabbia, alghe e schizzi di schiuma marina; avevo paura di inciampare nelle lastre o nei mattoni sparsi sul terreno, e mi tenevo aggrappato alle persone che incontravo in quegli angoli pericolosi. Avvicinandomi alla riva, vidi non solo i barcaioli, ma anche metà della popolazione della città nascosta dietro gli edifici; alcuni, di tanto in tanto, osavano affrontare la furia della tempesta per guardare verso il mare, ma venivano spinti via dal vento mentre cercavano di tornare indietro facendo zigzag.
Unendomi a questi gruppi, incontrai donne in lutto i cui mariti erano partiti su barche per la pesca delle aringhe o degli ostrici; c’erano tutte le ragioni per pensare che potessero essere affondati prima di riuscire a raggiungere un porto sicuro. Tra la gente c’erano anche vecchi marinai, che scuotevano la testa mentre guardavano dall’acqua al cielo e mormoravano tra loro; i proprietari delle navi erano agitati e ansiosi; i bambini si raggruppavano insieme, osservando i volti degli adulti; persino i marinai più robusti sembravano turbati e preoccupati, scrutando il mare attraverso i loro cannocchiali, come se stessero osservando un nemico.
Il stesso immenso mare, quando riuscivo a trovare il momento giusto per osservarlo, nella furia del cieco >vento, delle pietre e della sabbia che volavano in aria, e nel terribile rumore che tutto generava, mi confondeva completamente. Quando le alte onde si avvicinavano, raggiungendo il loro apice per poi infrangersi contro la riva, sembrava che bastasse un solo movimento per sommergere l’intera città. Quando l’onda si ritirava con un ruggito roco, pareva scavare profonde cavità nella spiaggia, come se avesse lo scopo di minare la terra stessa. Quando alcune onde bianche e possenti si schiantavano contro la riva, frantumandosi in mille pezzi prima ancora di toccarla, ogni frammento sembrava portare con sé tutta la furia dell’intera ondata, precipitandosi verso il basso per unirsi a formare un altro “mostro”. Le colline ondulate si trasformavano in valli; le valli ondulate, talvolta attraversate da un solitario uccello tempestoso, venivano sollevate fino a diventare colline; enormi masse d’acqua scuotevano la riva con un fragore assordante. Ogni forma si trasformava continuamente, cambiando posizione e forma nel giro di pochi istanti. La riva ideale all’orizzonte, con le sue torri e i suoi edifici, appariva e scompariva continuamente; le nuvole cadevano velocemente e fitte. Sembrava che tutta la >natura stesse venendo distrutta e sconvolta.
Non trovando Ham tra le persone che questo memorabile >vento – poiché ancora oggi viene ricordato come il più forte mai soffiato su quella costa – aveva radunato, mi recai a casa sua. Era chiusa; e poiché nessuno rispose al mio bussare, percorsi strade secondarie fino al cortile dove lavorava. Lì appresi che era andato a Lowestoft per affrontare un’emergenza legata alla riparazione di una nave, per la quale erano necessarie le sue competenze; ma sarebbe tornato il giorno dopo, in tempo utile.
Tornai all’ostello; dopo essermi lavato e vestito, provai a dormire, ma invano: erano le cinque del pomeriggio. Non ero ancora seduto da cinque minuti vicino al camino della sala da caffè che il cameriere, venendo a rimestare il fuoco per avere un pretesto per parlare, mi raccontò che due navi carbonifere erano affondate, insieme a tutte le loro persone, a poche miglia di distanza; inoltre, alcune altre imbarcazioni si vedevano lottare disperatamente contro le onde, cercando con ogni sforzo di tenersi al largo. “Pietà per loro, e per tutti i poveri marinai”, disse, “se solo avessimo un’altra notte come quella scorsa, ”
Ero molto depresso, solo, e provavo un senso di disagio per l’assenza di Ham, un disagio sproporzionato alla situazione. Gli eventi recenti mi avevano profondamente influenzato, anche se non sapevo fino a che punto; inoltre, l’esposizione prolungata al violento vento mi aveva confuso. I miei pensieri e i miei ricordi erano in disordine; avevo perso la chiara percezione del tempo e della distanza. Quindi, se fossi uscito in città, probabilmente non mi sarei sorpreso di incontrare qualcuno che sapevo dovesse trovarsi a quel momento a Londra. In un certo senso, la mia mente mostrava una curiosa mancanza di attenzione in questi aspetti. Tuttavia, era anche piena di tutti i ricordi che quel luogo naturalmente suscitava; e questi ricordi erano particolarmente nitidi e vividi.
In this state, the waiter’s dismal intelligence about the ships immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that I had an apprehension of his returning from Lowestoft by sea, and being lost. This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat-builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely? If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.
I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none too soon; for the boat-builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking the yard-gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out of them, would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham Peggotty, who had been born to seafaring.
So sensible of this, beforehand, that I had really felt ashamed of doing what I was nevertheless impelled to do, I went back to the inn. If such a wind could rise, I think it was rising. The howl and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in the morning. But there was now a great darkness besides; and that invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.
I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast to anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them. Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with the thundering sea,—the storm, and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the fore-ground.
My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself with a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber before the fire, without losing my consciousness, either of the uproar out of doors, or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new and indefinable horror; and when I awoke—or rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair—my whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.
I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the awful noises: looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire. At length, the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.
It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the inn-servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but, on my lying down, all such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense refined.
For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining, now, that I heard shrieks out at sea; now, that I distinctly heard the firing of signal guns; and now, the fall of houses in the town. I got up, several times, and looked out; but could see nothing, except the reflection in the window-panes of the faint candle I had left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.
At length, my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried on my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the watchers were clustered together, in various attitudes, about a table, purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought near the door. A pretty girl, who had her ears stopped with her apron, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a spirit; but the others had more presence of mind, and were glad of an addition to their company. One man, referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether I thought the souls of the collier-crews who had gone down, were out in the storm?
I remained there, I dare say, two hours. Once, I opened the yard-gate, and looked into the empty street. The sand, the sea-weed, and the flakes of foam, were driving by; and I was obliged to call for assistance before I could shut the gate again, and make it fast against the wind.
There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber, when I at length returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell—off a tower and down a precipice—into the depths of sleep. I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing in my dream. At length, I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don’t know, at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.
The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could not hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great exertion and awoke. It was broad day—eight or nine o’clock; the storm raging, in lieu of the batteries; and someone knocking and calling at my door.
‘What is the matter?’ I cried.
‘A wreck! Close by!’
I sprung out of bed, and asked, what wreck?
‘A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! It’s thought, down on the beach, she’ll go to pieces every moment.’
The excited voice went clamouring along the staircase; and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street.
Numbers of people were there before me, all running in one direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea.
The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of, had been diminished by the silencing of half-a-dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every appearance it had then presented, bore the expression of being swelled; and the height to which the breakers rose, and, looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling. In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless efforts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman, standing next me, pointed with his bare arm (a tattoo’d arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!
In questo stato, la scarsa conoscenza del cameriere riguardo ai navigli si collegò immediatamente, senza alcuno sforzo da parte mia, con il mio disagio riguardo a Ham. Ero convinto che avessi il presentimento che lui stesse tornando da Lowestoft per mare e che potesse perdersi. Questo timore divenne così forte che decisi di tornare nel cantiere prima di cena e chiedere al costruttore di barche se riteneva possibile che Ham tentasse di tornare via mare. Se mi avesse dato anche solo un minimo motivo per crederlo, sarei andato a Lowestoft e avrei cercato di impedirglielo portandolo con me.
Ordinai in fretta la mia cena e tornai nel cortile. Non ci volle molto; il costruttore di barche, con una lanterna in mano, stava chiudendo il cancello del cortile. Rise molto quando gli feci quella domanda e disse che non c’era alcuna paura; nessun uomo sano di mente, né pazzo, avrebbe rimandato un lavoro in mezzo a una tempesta così violenta di vento, soprattutto Ham Peggotty, che era nato per il mare.
Essendo ben consapevole di ciò, e provando davvero vergogna per ciò che ero costretto a fare, tornai all’ostello. Se un tale vento poteva realmente levarsi, pensavo che stesse effettivamente succedendo. Il ululato e il ruggito, lo scricchiolio delle porte e delle finestre, il rombo nelle ciminiere, l’ apparente dondolio stesso della casa che mi riparava, e il terribile tumulto del mare erano ancora più spaventosi di quanto non fossero stati la mattina. Ma ora c’era anche un’immensa oscurità; e questa aggiungeva nuovi terrori, sia reali che immaginari, a quella tempesta.
Non riuscivo a mangiare, non riuscivo a stare fermo, non riuscivo a continuare con determinazione in nulla. Qualcosa dentro di me, rispondendo debolmente a quella tempesta, sollevava le profondità della mia memoria e causava un grande turbamento in esse. Tuttavia, nonostante l’agitazione dei miei pensieri, che correvano selvaggiamente insieme al mare tuonante, la tempesta e la mia ansia riguardo a Ham rimanevano sempre in primo piano.
La mia cena è rimasta quasi intatta, e ho provato a rinfrescarmi con un bicchiere o due di vino. Inutile. Sono caduto in un sonno profondo davanti al fuoco, senza perdere conoscenza né del clamore che proveniva dall’esterno, né del luogo in cui mi trovavo. Tutto ciò è stato oscurato da una nuova e indescrivibile orrore; quando mi sono svegliato, o meglio, quando ho scosso via la letargia che mi immobilizzava sulla sedia, tutto il mio corpo era scosso da un terrore senza motivo e incomprensibile.
Camminavo avanti e indietro, provavo a leggere un vecchio atlante geografico, ascoltavo quei terribili rumori. Guardavo i volti, le scene, le figure nel fuoco. Alla fine, il costante ticchettio dell’orologio appeso al muro mi tormentava a tal punto che decisi di andare a letto.
Era rassicurante, in una notte del genere, sapere che alcuni dei servitori dell’ostello avevano deciso di restare svegli fino al mattino. Andai a letto estremamente stanco e pesante; ma non appena mi sdraiai, tutte quelle sensazioni scomparvero, come per magia, e mi ritrovai completamente sveglio, con tutti i sensi acuiti.
Per ore rimasi lì sdraiato, ascoltando il vento e l’acqua; a volte immaginavo di sentire urla provenire dal mare, altre volte il suono degli spari dei cannoni di segnalazione, ancora altre volte il crollo delle case in città. Mi alzai più volte per guardare fuori, ma non vidi nulla, se non il riflesso nelle finestre della debole candela che avevo lasciato accesa, e il mio stesso volto stanco che mi fissava dal buio.
Alla fine, la mia inquietudine raggiunse un livello tale che mi affrettai a vestirmi e scesi al piano di sotto. Nella grande cucina, dove vedevo appena della pancetta e delle strisce di cipolle appese ai travi del soffitto, i presenti erano riuniti intorno a un tavolo, spostato appositamente lontano dal grande camino e avvicinato alla porta. Una bella ragazza, con le orecchie coperte dall’grembiule e gli occhi fissi sulla porta, gridò quando mi vide apparire, pensando che fossi uno spirito; ma gli altri avevano più presenza di spirito e furono felici dell’arrivo di un nuovo membro del loro gruppo. Un uomo, riferendosi all’argomento di cui stavano discutendo, mi chiese se pensassi che le anime degli operai delle miniere morti in quel disastro fossero fuori, nella tempesta.
Rimasi lì, oserei dire, per due ore. Una volta aprii il cancello del cortile e guardai la strada deserta: sabbia, alghe marine e schizzi di schiuma passavano davanti a me; fui costretto a chiamare aiuto prima di riuscire a chiudere nuovamente il cancello e fissarlo bene contro il vento.
C’era un’oscurità cupa nella mia stanza solitaria quando finalmente vi tornai; ma ero stanco ormai, così mi misi a letto e, come se fossi caduto da una torre giù da un precipizio, piombai nelle profondità del sonno. Ho l’impressione che, per molto tempo, anche se sognavo di essere in altri luoghi e in varie scene, in quei sogni c’era sempre il suono dei cannoni. Alla fine persi quell’ultimo legame con la realtà e mi ritrovai insieme a due cari amici, ma non so chi fossero; eravamo impegnati nell’assedio di una città, tra il fragore incessante dei cannoni.
Il rumore dei cannoni era così forte e incessante che non riuscivo a sentire ciò che desideravo ardentemente ascoltare, fino a quando non feci uno sforzo enorme e mi svegliai. Era pieno giorno: le otto o le nove di ore; la tempesta imperversava al posto delle batterie; qualcuno bussava e chiamava alla mia porta.
“Che cosa c’è?” gridai.
“Un relitto! Vicino!”
Saltai giù dal letto e chiesi: “Quale rovina?”
“Una goletta, proveniente dalla Spagna o dal Portogallo, carica di frutta e vino. Affrettatevi, signore, se volete vederla! Si dice che, sulla spiaggia, possa rompersi da un momento all’altro, ”
La voce eccitata risuonava lungo le scale; io mi infilai i vestiti il più velocemente possibile e corsi in strada.
C’erano molte persone davanti a me; tutte correvano nella stessa direzione, verso la spiaggia. Anch’io corsi nella stessa direzione, superando molti altri, e presto mi trovai di fronte al mare selvaggio.
A quell’ora, il vento forse si era un po’ placato, anche se non molto di più rispetto a quando, nei miei sogni, il cannoneggiamento sarebbe stato attenuato dal silenzio di soltanto mezza dozzina di cannoni su centinaia. Ma il mare, agitato ulteriormente da tutta la notte, era infinitamente più terribile di quando l’avevo visto l’ultima volta: ogni sua forma sembrava indicare un livello di agitazione estrema; l’altezza delle onde, che si sovrapponevano e si schiantavano una contro l’altra in un flusso incessante, era davvero spaventosa. Nel frastuono del vento e delle onde, nella folla, nel caos indescrivibile, e nel tentativo disperato di resistere a tali forze naturali, ero così confuso che guardai verso il mare alla ricerca dei relitti, ma vidi soltanto le creste schiumose delle onde gigantesche. Un barcaiolo seminudo, accanto a me, indicò con il braccio nudo (sul quale c’era un tatuaggio a forma di freccia che puntava nella stessa direzione) verso sinistra. Allora, oh grande Cielo, lo vidi: era proprio lì, vicino a noi!
One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat—which she did without a moment’s pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable—beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made, to cut this portion of the wreck away; for, as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment; the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.
The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach; four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.
There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned on her beam-ends towards the shore, now nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on the shore increased. Men groaned, and clasped their hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.
They were making out to me, in an agitated way—I don’t know how, for the little I could hear I was scarcely composed enough to understand—that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.
I ran to him—as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. But, distracted though I was, by a sight so new to me and terrible, the determination in his face, and his look out to sea—exactly the same look as I remembered in connexion with the morning after Emily’s flight—awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms; and implored the men with whom I had been speaking, not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand!
Another cry arose on shore; and looking to the wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.
Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have entreated the wind. ‘Mas’r Davy,’ he said, cheerily grasping me by both hands, ‘if my time is come, ‘tis come. If ‘tan’t, I’ll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I’m a-going off!’
I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don’t know what I answered, or what they rejoined; but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then, I saw him standing alone, in a seaman’s frock and trousers: a rope in his hand, or slung to his wrist: another round his body: and several of the best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.
The wreck, even to my unpractised eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still, he clung to it. He had a singular red cap on,—not like a sailor’s cap, but of a finer colour; and as the few yielding planks between him and destruction rolled and bulged, and his anticipative death-knell rung, he was seen by all of us to wave it. I saw him do it now, and thought I was going distracted, when his action brought an old remembrance to my mind of a once dear friend.
Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water; rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land. They hauled in hastily.
He was hurt. I saw blood on his face, from where I stood; but he took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him more free—or so I judged from the motion of his arm—and was gone as before.
And now he made for the wreck, rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly. At length he neared the wreck. He was so near, that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,—when a high, green, vast hill-side of water, moving on shoreward, from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!
Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet—insensible—dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration were tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.
As I sat beside the bed, when hope was abandoned and all was done, a fisherman, who had known me when Emily and I were children, and ever since, whispered my name at the door.
‘Sir,’ said he, with tears starting to his weather-beaten face, which, with his trembling lips, was ashy pale, ‘will you come over yonder?’
The old remembrance that had been recalled to me, was in his look. I asked him, terror-stricken, leaning on the arm he held out to support me:
‘Has a body come ashore?’
He said, ‘Yes.’
‘Do I know it?’ I asked then.
He answered nothing.
But he led me to the shore. And on that part of it where she and I had looked for shells, two children—on that part of it where some lighter fragments of the old boat, blown down last night, had been scattered by the wind—among the ruins of the home he had wronged—I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school.
Uno dei alberi era stato spezzato a circa sei o otto piedi dal ponte e giaceva inclinato sul lato della nave, intrappolato in un groviglio di vele e attrezzature; tutta quella rovina, man mano che la nave si rollava e sobbalzava – senza mai fermarsi un istante, con una violenza davvero inimmaginabile – colpiva il fianco della nave come se volesse sfondarlo. In quel momento venivano già fatti alcuni tentativi per tagliare via quella parte del relitto; infatti, mentre la nave, con la fiancata rivolta verso di noi, continuava a rollare, vidi chiaramente i suoi uomini al lavoro con gli accette. In particolare, una figura particolarmente attiva, con lunghi capelli ricci, spiccava tra gli altri. Ma in quel momento si levò un grido forte, udibile persino sopra il rumore del vento e delle onde; il mare, travolgendo il relitto che continuava a rollare, creò una voragine e trascinò con sé uomini, assi, barili, tavole, tutto ciò che si trovava lì dentro, nelle onde tumultuose.
L’albero di maestra secondario era ancora in piedi, con i resti di una vela strappata e un disordine totale di corde spezzate che sventolavano da tutte le parti. La nave aveva urtato qualcosa; lo stesso barcaiolo mi disse ad alta voce che poi si era sollevata di nuovo e aveva colpito ancora. Capii che stava per spezzarsi a metà, e non faticavo a crederci: le onde tumultuose erano troppo forti perché un intervento umano potesse durare a lungo. Mentre parlava, si udì un altro grido di compassione dalla riva; quattro uomini emersero dalle acque profonde, aggrappandosi alle corde dell’albero superstite. In cima a tutti, quella figura energica dai capelli ricci.
A bordo c’era una campana; e mentre la nave si rollava e sobbalzava, come una creatura disperata e impazzita, a volte mostrandoci l’intera superficie del suo ponte quando ruotava verso la riva, altre volte lasciando vedere soltanto la sua chiglia mentre si girava bruscamente verso il mare, la campana suonava; il suo suono, simbolo di morte per quegli sfortunati uomini, ci raggiungeva portato dal >vento. Di nuovo la perdemmo di vista, e poi riapparve. Due uomini erano scomparsi. L’angoscia sulla riva aumentava: gli uomini gemevano, stringendosi le mani; le donne urlavano, voltando via il viso. Alcuni correvano disperatamente su e giù lungo la spiaggia, chiamando aiuto, dove non c’era alcun aiuto possibile. Mi ritrovai tra loro, implorando freneticamente un gruppo di marinai che conoscevo di non lasciare che quelle due persone perdute morissero davanti ai nostri occhi.
Mi stavano parlando in modo agitato. Non so esattamente come, perché di ciò che riuscivo a sentire non ero nemmeno abbastanza lucido per capire. Mi dissero che l’imbarcazione di salvataggio era stata affidata coraggiosamente a delle persone un’ora prima, ma che ormai non poteva fare più nulla; e poiché nessuno sarebbe stato così disperato da tentare di attraversare il mare con una corda per stabilire un contatto con la riva, non restava più nulla da provare. Poi notai che qualcosa di nuovo stava muovendo le persone sulla spiaggia; le vidi allontanarsi e vidi Ham emergere tra loro, avanzando verso il fronte.
Corrii da lui – nel modo migliore che conoscevo – per ripetere il mio appello per chiedere aiuto. Ma, nonostante fossi distratto da una scena così nuova e terribile per me, dalla determinazione sul suo volto e dal suo sguardo verso il mare, esattamente lo stesso sguardo che ricordavo legato alla mattina dopo la fuga di Emily, mi resi conto del pericolo in cui si trovava. Lo trattenni con entrambe le braccia; e supplicai gli uomini con cui avevo parlato di non ascoltarlo, di non commettere un omicidio, di non lasciarlo muoversi da quel punto sulla sabbia!
Un altro grido risuonò sulla riva; guardando verso il relitto, vedemmo la vela crudele che, colpo dopo colpo, spingeva via l’uomo più in basso dei due e si alzava trionfante intorno alla figura ancora attiva, rimasta sola sull’albero maestro.
Di fronte a una tale scena, e di fronte a una tale determinazione da parte di quell’uomo calmo ma disperato, ormai abituato a guidare metà delle persone presenti, avrei potuto anche implorare il vento. “Signor Davy,” disse, afferrandomi alle mani con entusiasmo, “se è giunto il mio momento, allora è giunto. Se no, lo aspetterò. Che il Signore vi benedica tutti! Amici, preparatemi. Me ne vado!”
Fui trascinato via, ma non in modo crudele, fino a una certa distanza; le persone intorno a me mi fecero restare, esortandomi, come percepii confusamente, ad aiutarlo, a costo di disturbare coloro che si riposavano. Non so cosa risposi loro, né cosa dissero; vidi però gente correre sulla riva, uomini che portavano corde da un argano presente lì e che lo avvolgevano in un cerchio di persone che lo nascondevano alla mia vista. Poi lo vidi in piedi, solo, con abiti da marinaio; aveva una corda in mano o legata al polso, un’altra attorno al corpo; alcuni uomini forti tenevano quella corda a distanza, mentre lui la stendeva sulla riva, ai suoi piedi.
Il relitto, anche ai miei occhi inesperti, stava andando in pezzi. Vidi che si stava spezzando a metà, e che la vita di quell’uomo solo, sull’albero maestro, era appesa a un filo. Eppure lui vi si aggrappava disperatamente. Indossava un cappello rosso strano, non simile ai cappelli dei marinai, ma di un colore più raffinato; e mentre le poche assi ancora intatte tra lui e la distruzione si muovevano e sobbalzavano, e il suono della sua imminente morte risuonava nell’aria, tutti noi lo vedemmo agitare quel cappello. Ora lo vedo di nuovo fare lo stesso, e penso di stare perdendo la ragione. Ma quel gesto mi ha riportato alla memoria un vecchio amico molto caro.
Ham guardava il mare, in piedi da solo, con il silenzio di un respiro trattenuto alle sue spalle e la tempesta davanti a lui; fino a quando non arrivò un’onda potente che lo portò via. Guardando indietro verso coloro che tenevano la corda legata intorno al suo corpo, si gettò nell’acqua e in un attimo fu sommerso dalle onde; saliva con le colline, scendeva con i valli, scompariva sotto la schiuma. Poi venne di nuovo tratto a riva. Loro tirarono rapidamente la corda indietro.
Era ferito. Vedevo del sangue sul suo viso, da dove mi trovavo; ma lui non ci fece caso. Sembrava che stesse dando loro delle istruzioni in fretta, per potersi muovere più liberamente, o almeno è quello che ho dedotto dal movimento del suo braccio, e poi se ne andò come prima.
E ora si diresse verso il relitto: saliva insieme alle colline, scendeva con i valli, perdeva di vista tra le onde tumultuose, venendo spinto verso la riva, verso quella nave. Lottava con tutte le sue forze. La distanza non contava; ma la potenza del mare e del >vento rendevano quella lotta mortale. Alla fine si avvicinò al relitto. Era così vicino che, con un ultimo sforzo vigoroso, sarebbe riuscito ad aggrapparsi a esso. Quando all’improvviso, una vasta, verde collina d’acqua, che si muoveva verso la riva, apparsa oltre la nave, sembrò sollevarsi e inghiottirla completamente. La nave era scomparsa!
Vidi alcuni frammenti che galleggiavano in mare, come se un semplice barile fosse stato rotto; corsi sul posto dove stavano recuperandoli. In tutti i volti si leggeva il terrore. Lo portarono proprio davanti a me, privo di sensi, morto. Fu trasportato nella casa più vicina; e poiché nessuno mi impediva di farlo, rimasi al suo fianco, occupandomi di tutto ciò che poteva essere fatto per salvarlo. Ma era stato ucciso dalla grande onda; il suo generoso cuore aveva cessato per sempre di battere.
Mentre sedevo accanto al letto, quando la >speranza fu abbandonata e tutto fu finito, un pescatore che mi conosceva da quando io ed Emily eravamo bambini sussurrò il mio nome alla porta.
“Signore,” disse lui, con le lacrime che iniziavano a scorrere sul suo volto segnato dal tempo; le sue labbra tremanti erano pallide come cenere, “verrebbe da quella parte, per favore?”
Quel vecchio ricordo che mi era tornato in mente si leggeva nel suo sguardo. Gli chiesi, tremando di terrore e appoggiandomi al braccio che lui aveva teso per sostenermi:
“Ha un corpo come quello di una persona che è stata sulla terraferma?”
Disse: “Sì”.
“Lo so davvero?” chiesi allora.
Non rispose nulla.
Ma mi portò sulla riva. E in quella parte della spiaggia dove lei ed io avevamo cercato conchiglie, due bambini. In quella zona dove alcuni frammenti più leggeri dell’antico barca, spazzati via la scorsa notte dal >vento, erano sparsi tra le rovine della >casa che lui aveva offeso. Lo vidi sdraiato, con la testa appoggiata al braccio, proprio come lo avevo spesso visto fare a scuola.
CHAPTER 56. THE NEW WOUND, AND THE OLD
No need, O Steerforth, to have said, when we last spoke together, in that hour which I so little deemed to be our parting-hour—no need to have said, ‘Think of me at my best!’ I had done that ever; and could I change now, looking on this sight!
They brought a hand-bier, and laid him on it, and covered him with a flag, and took him up and bore him on towards the houses. All the men who carried him had known him, and gone sailing with him, and seen him merry and bold. They carried him through the wild roar, a hush in the midst of all the tumult; and took him to the cottage where Death was already.
But when they set the bier down on the threshold, they looked at one another, and at me, and whispered. I knew why. They felt as if it were not right to lay him down in the same quiet room.
We went into the town, and took our burden to the inn. So soon as I could at all collect my thoughts, I sent for Joram, and begged him to provide me a conveyance in which it could be got to London in the night. I knew that the care of it, and the hard duty of preparing his mother to receive it, could only rest with me; and I was anxious to discharge that duty as faithfully as I could.
I chose the night for the journey, that there might be less curiosity when I left the town. But, although it was nearly midnight when I came out of the yard in a chaise, followed by what I had in charge, there were many people waiting. At intervals, along the town, and even a little way out upon the road, I saw more: but at length only the bleak night and the open country were around me, and the ashes of my youthful friendship.
Upon a mellow autumn day, about noon, when the ground was perfumed by fallen leaves, and many more, in beautiful tints of yellow, red, and brown, yet hung upon the trees, through which the sun was shining, I arrived at Highgate. I walked the last mile, thinking as I went along of what I had to do; and left the carriage that had followed me all through the night, awaiting orders to advance.
The house, when I came up to it, looked just the same. Not a blind was raised; no sign of life was in the dull paved court, with its covered way leading to the disused door. The wind had quite gone down, and nothing moved.
I had not, at first, the courage to ring at the gate; and when I did ring, my errand seemed to me to be expressed in the very sound of the bell. The little parlour-maid came out, with the key in her hand; and looking earnestly at me as she unlocked the gate, said:
‘I beg your pardon, sir. Are you ill?’
‘I have been much agitated, and am fatigued.’
‘Is anything the matter, sir?---Mr. James?—’ ‘Hush!’ said I. ‘Yes, something has happened, that I have to break to Mrs. Steerforth. She is at home?’
The girl anxiously replied that her mistress was very seldom out now, even in a carriage; that she kept her room; that she saw no company, but would see me. Her mistress was up, she said, and Miss Dartle was with her. What message should she take upstairs?
Giving her a strict charge to be careful of her manner, and only to carry in my card and say I waited, I sat down in the drawing-room (which we had now reached) until she should come back. Its former pleasant air of occupation was gone, and the shutters were half closed. The harp had not been used for many and many a day. His picture, as a boy, was there. The cabinet in which his mother had kept his letters was there. I wondered if she ever read them now; if she would ever read them more!
The house was so still that I heard the girl’s light step upstairs. On her return, she brought a message, to the effect that Mrs. Steerforth was an invalid and could not come down; but that if I would excuse her being in her chamber, she would be glad to see me. In a few moments I stood before her.
She was in his room; not in her own. I felt, of course, that she had taken to occupy it, in remembrance of him; and that the many tokens of his old sports and accomplishments, by which she was surrounded, remained there, just as he had left them, for the same reason. She murmured, however, even in her reception of me, that she was out of her own chamber because its aspect was unsuited to her infirmity; and with her stately look repelled the least suspicion of the truth.
At her chair, as usual, was Rosa Dartle. From the first moment of her dark eyes resting on me, I saw she knew I was the bearer of evil tidings. The scar sprung into view that instant. She withdrew herself a step behind the chair, to keep her own face out of Mrs. Steerforth’s observation; and scrutinized me with a piercing gaze that never faltered, never shrunk.
‘I am sorry to observe you are in mourning, sir,’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
‘I am unhappily a widower,’ said I.
‘You are very young to know so great a loss,’ she returned. ‘I am grieved to hear it. I am grieved to hear it. I hope Time will be good to you.’
‘I hope Time,’ said I, looking at her, ‘will be good to all of us. Dear Mrs. Steerforth, we must all trust to that, in our heaviest misfortunes.’
The earnestness of my manner, and the tears in my eyes, alarmed her. The whole course of her thoughts appeared to stop, and change.
I tried to command my voice in gently saying his name, but it trembled. She repeated it to herself, two or three times, in a low tone. Then, addressing me, she said, with enforced calmness:
‘My son is ill.’
‘Very ill.’
‘You have seen him?’
‘I have.’
‘Are you reconciled?’
I could not say Yes, I could not say No. She slightly turned her head towards the spot where Rosa Dartle had been standing at her elbow, and in that moment I said, by the motion of my lips, to Rosa, ‘Dead!’
That Mrs. Steerforth might not be induced to look behind her, and read, plainly written, what she was not yet prepared to know, I met her look quickly; but I had seen Rosa Dartle throw her hands up in the air with vehemence of despair and horror, and then clasp them on her face.
CAPITOLO 56. LA NUOVA FERITA E LA VECCHIA
Non c’era bisogno, O Steerforth, che tu dicessi, quando ci siamo parlati l’ultima volta, in quell’ora che ritenevo così poco fosse l’ora della nostra separazione. Non c’era bisogno che dicessi: “Pensa a me nel mio momento migliore!” L’avevo già fatto sempre; e ora, di fronte a questa scena, potrei cambiare davvero?
Portarono un palanchino, lo adagiarono su di esso, lo coprirono con una -bandiera, e lo portarono verso le case. Tutti gli uomini che lo trasportavano lo conoscevano; avevano navigato con lui e lo avevano visto sempre allegro e coraggioso. Lo portarono attraverso il fragore selvaggio, in un silenzio nel mezzo di tutto quel tumulto; e lo condussero alla capanna dove Morte era già arrivata.
Ma quando posarono la bara sul gradino d’ingresso, si guardarono l’un l’altro e poi mi guardarono, sussurrando tra loro. Capivo il motivo: sentivano che non fosse giusto seppellirlo nella stessa stanza tranquilla in cui aveva vissuto.
Entrammo in città e portammo il nostro carico all’ostello. Non appena riuscii a riordinare i miei pensieri, mandai a chiamare Joram e lo pregai di procurarmi un mezzo con cui poter trasportare tutto a Londra quella stessa notte. Sapevo che l’incarico di prendersi cura del carico e di preparare sua madre ad accoglierlo spettava esclusivamente a me; ero quindi desideroso di adempiere a quel dovere con la massima fedeltà possibile.
Scelsi la notte per il mio viaggio, nella speranza che ci fosse meno curiosità quando avrei lasciato la città. Ma, anche se era quasi mezzanotte quando uscii dal cortile su una carrozza, seguito da coloro a cui avevo affidato le mie cose, c’erano molte persone ad aspettarmi. Lungo il percorso, e anche un po’ più avanti sulla strada, ne vidi altre; ma alla fine intorno a me rimasero solo la desolata notte e la campagna aperta, insieme alle ceneri della mia giovane amicizia.
In una dolce giornata d’autunno, verso mattina, quando il terreno era profumato dalle foglie cadute – molte delle quali erano ancora appese agli alberi, illuminate dal sole – arrivai a Highgate. Percorsi l’ultima miglia camminando, pensando a ciò che dovevo fare; lasciai poi la carrozza che mi aveva seguito per tutta la notte, in attesa di ordini per proseguire il viaggio.
La casa, quando ci arrivai davanti, sembrava esattamente la stessa di prima. Nessuna finestra era stata aperta; non c’era alcun segno di vita nel cupo cortile lastricato, con il sentiero coperto che conduceva alla porta dismessa. Il vento si era completamente placato e nulla si muoveva.
All’inizio non avevo il coraggio di suonare al cancello; e quando lo feci, mi sembrò che il motivo della mia visita fosse già espresso dal semplice suono della campanella. La piccola cameriera uscì, con la chiave in mano; e guardandomi attentamente mentre apriva il cancello, disse:
“Mi scusi, signore. Sta male?”
“Sono molto agitato e stanco.”
“C’è qualche problema, signore?. Signor James?” “Zitta!” dissi. “Sì, è successo qualcosa che devo comunicare immediatamente a signora Steerforth. È a casa?”
La ragazza rispose con ansia che la sua padrona ora usciva molto raramente, nemmeno in carrozza; che stava sempre nella sua stanza; che non riceveva visite, ma avrebbe voluto incontrarmi. La sua padrona era già alzata, disse, e Miss Dartle era con lei. Quale messaggio doveva portare di sopra?
Le diedi istruzioni precise di comportarsi con discrezione e di portare soltanto la mia carta, dicendo che avevo aspettato. Mi sedetti nel salotto (al quale eravamo appena arrivati) in attesa del suo ritorno. Quell’atmosfera piacevole e ordinata di un tempo era scomparsa; le persiane erano semi chiuse, e l’arpa non veniva suonata da molti giorni. C’era ancora il suo ritratto da bambino, e anche lo scaffale in cui sua madre aveva conservato le sue lettere. Mi chiesi se lei le leggesse ancora, o se mai le avrebbe lette di nuovo.
La casa era così silenziosa che riuscivo a sentire i passi leggeri della ragazza mentre saliva le scale. Al suo ritorno, portò un messaggio: la signora Steerforth era malata e non poteva scendere; tuttavia, se mi fossi scusato per il fatto che si trovava nella sua stanza, sarebbe stata felice di vedermi. Pochi momenti dopo, mi trovai davanti a lei.
Era nella sua stanza; non nella propria. Naturalmente pensai che l’avesse presa in uso per ricordarlo; e che tutti quei ricordi dei suoi vecchi giochi e delle sue abilità, con cui era circondata, fossero rimasti lì esattamente come lui li aveva lasciati, per lo stesso motivo. Tuttavia, anche mentre mi riceveva, mormorò che si trovava nella stanza altrui perché il suo aspetto non era adatto alle sue condizioni di salute; e con il suo sguardo dignitoso scacciò qualsiasi sospetto riguardo alla verità.
Al suo posto, come al solito, c’era Rosa Dartle. Dal momento in cui i suoi occhi scuri si posarono su di me, capii che sapeva che ero portatore di cattive notizie. La cicatrice divenne immediatamente visibile. Si allontanò di un passo dallo schienale della sedia, per non farsi vedere da Mrs. Steerforth, e mi osservò con uno sguardo penetrante che mai vacillò né si attenuò.
“Mi dispiace molto vedere che lei sia in lutto, signore,” disse la signora Steerforth.
“Sono sfortunatamente un vedovo,” dissi.
“Sei troppo giovane per affrontare una perdita così grande,” le rispose lei. “Mi dispiace molto sentirlo. Spero che il tempo possa esserti d’aiuto.”
“Spero che il tempo,” dissi guardandola, “sia gentile con tutti noi. Cara signora Steerforth, dobbiamo tutti fidarci di questo, anche nei nostri momenti più difficili.”
La serietà del mio comportamento e le lacrime nei miei occhi la allarmarono. L’intero corso dei suoi pensieri sembrò fermarsi e cambiare.
Cercai di controllare la mia voce per pronunciare il suo nome dolcemente, ma tremava. Lo ripeté due o tre volte tra sé, a bassa voce. Poi, rivolgendosi a me, disse con un’calma forzata:
“Mio figlio è malato.”
“Molto malato.”
“L’hai visto?”
‘Ho fatto.’
“Siete riconciliati?”
Non potevo dire Sì, non potevo dire No. Lei girò leggermente la testa verso il punto in cui Rosa Dartle era stata in piedi al suo fianco, e in quel momento, con un movimento delle labbra, dissi a Rosa: “Morta!”
Affinché la signora Steerforth non fosse indotta a guardare indietro e leggere, scritto chiaramente, ciò che ancora non era pronta ad affrontare, incrociai rapidamente il suo sguardo; ma avevo visto Rosa Dartle alzare le mani al cielo con violenza, piena di disperazione e orrore, per poi coprirsi il viso con esse.
The handsome lady—so like, oh so like!—regarded me with a fixed look, and put her hand to her forehead. I besought her to be calm, and prepare herself to bear what I had to tell; but I should rather have entreated her to weep, for she sat like a stone figure.
‘When I was last here,’ I faltered, ‘Miss Dartle told me he was sailing here and there. The night before last was a dreadful one at sea. If he were at sea that night, and near a dangerous coast, as it is said he was; and if the vessel that was seen should really be the ship which—’
‘Rosa!’ said Mrs. Steerforth, ‘come to me!’
She came, but with no sympathy or gentleness. Her eyes gleamed like fire as she confronted his mother, and broke into a frightful laugh.
‘Now,’ she said, ‘is your pride appeased, you madwoman? Now has he made atonement to you—with his life! Do you hear?---His life!’
Mrs. Steerforth, fallen back stiffly in her chair, and making no sound but a moan, cast her eyes upon her with a wide stare.
‘Aye!’ cried Rosa, smiting herself passionately on the breast, ‘look at me! Moan, and groan, and look at me! Look here!’ striking the scar, ‘at your dead child’s handiwork!’
The moan the mother uttered, from time to time, went to My heart. Always the same. Always inarticulate and stifled. Always accompanied with an incapable motion of the head, but with no change of face. Always proceeding from a rigid mouth and closed teeth, as if the jaw were locked and the face frozen up in pain.
‘Do you remember when he did this?’ she proceeded. ‘Do you remember when, in his inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me, marked until I die with his high displeasure; and moan and groan for what you made him!’
‘Miss Dartle,’ I entreated her. ‘For Heaven’s sake—’
‘I WILL speak!’ she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. ‘Be silent, you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud, false son! Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him, moan for your loss of him, moan for mine!’
She clenched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure, as if her passion were killing her by inches.
‘You, resent his self-will!’ she exclaimed. ‘You, injured by his haughty temper! You, who opposed to both, when your hair was grey, the qualities which made both when you gave him birth! YOU, who from his cradle reared him to be what he was, and stunted what he should have been! Are you rewarded, now, for your years of trouble?’
‘Oh, Miss Dartle, shame! Oh cruel!’
‘I tell you,’ she returned, ‘I WILL speak to her. No power on earth should stop me, while I was standing here! Have I been silent all these years, and shall I not speak now? I loved him better than you ever loved him!’ turning on her fiercely. ‘I could have loved him, and asked no return. If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year. I should have been. Who knows it better than I? You were exacting, proud, punctilious, selfish. My love would have been devoted—would have trod your paltry whimpering under foot!’
With flashing eyes, she stamped upon the ground as if she actually did it.
‘Look here!’ she said, striking the scar again, with a relentless hand. ‘When he grew into the better understanding of what he had done, he saw it, and repented of it! I could sing to him, and talk to him, and show the ardour that I felt in all he did, and attain with labour to such knowledge as most interested him; and I attracted him. When he was freshest and truest, he loved me. Yes, he did! Many a time, when you were put off with a slight word, he has taken Me to his heart!’
She said it with a taunting pride in the midst of her frenzy—for it was little less—yet with an eager remembrance of it, in which the smouldering embers of a gentler feeling kindled for the moment.
‘I descended—as I might have known I should, but that he fascinated me with his boyish courtship—into a doll, a trifle for the occupation of an idle hour, to be dropped, and taken up, and trifled with, as the inconstant humour took him. When he grew weary, I grew weary. As his fancy died out, I would no more have tried to strengthen any power I had, than I would have married him on his being forced to take me for his wife. We fell away from one another without a word. Perhaps you saw it, and were not sorry. Since then, I have been a mere disfigured piece of furniture between you both; having no eyes, no ears, no feelings, no remembrances. Moan? Moan for what you made him; not for your love. I tell you that the time was, when I loved him better than you ever did!’
She stood with her bright angry eyes confronting the wide stare, and the set face; and softened no more, when the moaning was repeated, than if the face had been a picture.
‘Miss Dartle,’ said I, ‘if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for this afflicted mother—’
‘Who feels for me?’ she sharply retorted. ‘She has sown this. Let her moan for the harvest that she reaps today!’
‘And if his faults—’ I began.
‘Faults!’ she cried, bursting into passionate tears. ‘Who dares malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!’
‘No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer remembrance than I,’ I replied. ‘I meant to say, if you have no compassion for his mother; or if his faults—you have been bitter on them—’
‘It’s false,’ she cried, tearing her black hair; ‘I loved him!’
‘—if his faults cannot,’ I went on, ‘be banished from your remembrance, in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you have never seen before, and render it some help!’
All this time, the figure was unchanged, and looked unchangeable. Motionless, rigid, staring; moaning in the same dumb way from time to time, with the same helpless motion of the head; but giving no other sign of life. Miss Dartle suddenly kneeled down before it, and began to loosen the dress.
‘A curse upon you!’ she said, looking round at me, with a mingled expression of rage and grief. ‘It was in an evil hour that you ever came here! A curse upon you! Go!’
After passing out of the room, I hurried back to ring the bell, the sooner to alarm the servants. She had then taken the impassive figure in her arms, and, still upon her knees, was weeping over it, kissing it, calling to it, rocking it to and fro upon her bosom like a child, and trying every tender means to rouse the dormant senses. No longer afraid of leaving her, I noiselessly turned back again; and alarmed the house as I went out.
Later in the day, I returned, and we laid him in his mother’s room. She was just the same, they told me; Miss Dartle never left her; doctors were in attendance, many things had been tried; but she lay like a statue, except for the low sound now and then.
I went through the dreary house, and darkened the windows. The windows of the chamber where he lay, I darkened last. I lifted up the leaden hand, and held it to my heart; and all the world seemed death and silence, broken only by his mother’s moaning.
Quella bella signora, così simile, oh, davvero così simile! Mi guardò con uno sguardo fisso e si portò la mano alla fronte. Le chiesi di calmarsi e di prepararsi ad ascoltare ciò che dovevo dirle; ma avrei preferito che piangesse, perché rimase seduta lì come una statua di pietra.
“Quando sono stato qui l’ultima volta,” balbettai, “la signorina Dartle mi disse che lui stava viaggiando avanti e indietro per il mare. La notte prima scorsa è stata terribile in mare. Se fosse ancora in mare quella notte, e vicino a una costa pericolosa, come si diceva. E se la nave che è stata vista fosse davvero la stessa nave che, ”
“Rosa!”, disse la signora Steerforth, “vieni da me!”
Arrivò, ma senza alcuna compassione o dolcezza. I suoi occhi brillavano come fuoco quando affrontò sua madre, e poi scoppiò in una risata spaventosa.
“Ora,” disse lei, “la tua orgoglio è soddisfatto, tu strega pazza? Ora lui ti ha ripagata, con la sua vita! Capisci?. Con la sua vita!”
La signora Steerforth, appoggiata rigidamente alla sedia e senza emettere alcun suono se non un lamento, la fissò con uno sguardo intenso.
“Sì!” gridò Rosa, battendosi appassionatamente il petto, “guardami! Piangi, gemi, e guardami! Guarda qui, ” indicando la cicatrice, “l’opera delle mani di tuo figlio morto, ”
Il lamento che la madre emetteva, di tempo in tempo, raggiungeva il mio cuore. Sempre lo stesso. Sempre inarticolato e soffocato. Sempre accompagnato da un movimento incapace della testa, ma senza alcun cambiamento sul viso. Sempre proveniente da una bocca rigida e denti serrati, come se la mascella fosse bloccata e il viso congelato nel dolore.
“Ricordi quando lo fece?” proseguì. “Ricordi quando, ereditando la tua natura e viziando il suo orgoglio e le sue passioni, fece questo e mi disfigurò per sempre? Guardami: porto i segni del suo profondo disprezzo fino alla morte. E piangi, lamentati per ciò che lo hai costretto a fare!”
“Signorina Dartle,” la supplicai. “Per l’amore del cielo, ”
“Parlerò!” disse lei, girandosi verso di me con i suoi occhi luminosi come il fulmine. “Stai zitta tu! Guardami bene: madre orgogliosa di un figlio orgoglioso, ma bugiardo e corrotto! Piangi per averlo cresciuto così, piangi per averlo rovinato, piangi per averlo perso, e piangi anche per me!”
Strinse la mano con forza; il suo corpo magro e logoro tremava, come se quella passione stesse uccidendola poco a poco.
“Tu, che odi la sua volontà indipendente!” esclamò. “Tu, che sei stata ferita dal suo atteggiamento arrogante. Tu, che hai opposto a entrambi, quando i tuoi capelli erano già grigi, le qualità che avrebbero dovuto rendere migliori entrambi al momento della sua nascita. TU, che fin dalla sua culla l’hai educato a diventare ciò che è diventato, impedendogli di crescere come avrebbe potuto. Ora ricevi davvero la ricompensa per tutti questi anni di sacrifici?”
“Ah, signorina Dartle. Che vergogna! Che crudeltà!”
“Te lo dico,” ribatté lei, “parlerò con lei. Nessuna forza al mondo potrebbe impedirmelo, mentre sono qui! Sono rimasta in silenzio per tutti questi anni, e ora non dovrei parlare? L’ho amato più di quanto tu l’abbia mai amato!” disse, girandosi verso di lui con rabbia. “Avrei potuto amarlo senza chiedere nulla in cambio. Se fossi stata sua moglie, avrei potuto sopportare i suoi capricci, per una parola d’amore, anche solo una volta all’anno. Avrei dovuto farlo. Chi lo sa meglio di me? Tu eri esigente, orgoglioso, pignolo, egoista. Il mio amore sarebbe stato devoto, avrebbe calpestato i tuoi meschini lamenti!”
Con gli occhi che lampeggiavano, calpestò il terreno come se davvero l’avesse fatto.
“Guarda qui!” disse lei, colpendo di nuovo la cicatrice con una mano implacabile.
“Quando raggiunse una maggiore comprensione di ciò che aveva fatto, se ne rese conto e ne pentì! Gli potevo cantare, parlare con lui, mostrargli l’entusiasmo che provavo per tutto ciò che faceva, e con fatica gli feci acquisire le conoscenze che lo interessavano di più; riuscii così ad attrarlo. Quando era più sincero e genuino, mi amava. Sì, davvero! Molte volte, quando tu lo respingevi con poche parole, lui mi prendeva nel suo cuore, ”
Lo disse con un tono di orgoglio beffardo, nel mezzo della sua follia, perché non era altro che follia; eppure, allo stesso tempo, con un ricordo fervente di ciò che aveva provato, in cui le braci ancora ardenti di un sentimento più gentile si riaccesero per un momento.
“Scesi, come avrei dovuto sapere che avrei fatto, ma lui mi affascinava con i suoi modi infantili e galanti. Diventai una semplice bambola, un oggetto da utilizzare per passare il tempo, da gettare via, poi riprendere in mano, giocarci sopra, a seconda dei capricci del suo umore incostante. Quando lui si stancava, mi stancavo anch’io. Quando la sua passione svaniva, non avrei mai cercato di rafforzare il legame che avevamo, proprio come non avrei mai accettato di sposarlo se fosse stato costretto a farlo. Ci siamo allontanati l’uno dall’altro senza dire una parola. Forse tu l’hai visto e non ti è dispiaciuto. Da allora, sono diventata soltanto un pezzo di mobilia deformato, tra voi due; senza occhi, senza orecchie, senza sentimenti, senza ricordi. Piangere? Piango per ciò che lo hai reso, non per il tuo amore. Ti dico: c’è stato un tempo in cui lo amavo più di quanto tu abbia mai fatto, ”
Stava lì, con i suoi occhi luminosi e pieni di rabbia, a fronteggiare quello sguardo fisso e quel volto immobile; e non si addolcì nemmeno quando il lamento si ripeté, come se quel volto fosse stato soltanto un dipinto.
“Signorina Dartle,” dissi, “se siete davvero così spietata da non provare compassione per questa madre sfortunata, ”
“Chi si preoccupa per me?” ribatté lei seccamente. “È stata lei a seminare tutto questo. Lasciate che soffra per i frutti che sta raccogliendo oggi!”
“E se i suoi difetti, ” iniziai a dire.
“Colpe!” gridò, scoppiando in appassionate lacrime. “Chi osa diffamarlo? La sua anima vale più di milioni rispetto a tutti quegli amici verso i quali si è umiliato, ”
“Nessuno lo ha amato di più, nessuno lo ricorda con maggiore affetto di me,” risposi. “Volevo dire, se non provate compassione per sua madre; o se i suoi difetti, vi hanno causato dolore, ”
“È falso!”, gridò, strappandosi i capelli neri; “Lo amavo!”
“–Se i suoi difetti non possono essere dimenticati in un momento del genere. Guarda quella figura, come se fosse qualcosa che non hai mai visto prima, e cerca di aiutarla!”
Per tutto questo tempo, la figura rimase immutata, e sembrava davvero incapace di cambiare. Immobile, rigida, con lo sguardo fisso; emettendo sempre lo stesso suono muto, da tempo a tempo, con lo stesso gesto impotente della testa. Ma senza dare alcun altro segno di vita. All’improvviso, la signorina Dartle si inginocchiò davanti a essa e iniziò ad allentare il vestito.
“Maledizione su di te!” disse, guardandomi intorno con un’espressione mista di rabbia e dolore. “È stato in un momento malvagio che sei mai arrivato qui. Maledizione su di te! Vattene!”
Dopo essere uscito dalla stanza, tornai di corsa per suonare la campanella, il prima possibile per avvertire i servitori. Lei aveva già preso in braccio quella figura impassiva e, ancora in ginocchio, piangeva su di essa, la baciava, le parlava, cullandola sul proprio petto come se fosse un bambino, provando ogni mezzo possibile per risvegliare quei sensi addormentati. Ormai senza più paura di lasciarla, tornai indietro in silenzio; e, uscendo, allarmai l’intera casa.
Più tardi quel giorno, tornai e lo adagiammo nella stanza di sua madre. Mi dissero che lei era esattamente come prima; la signorina Dartle non l’aveva mai lasciata; c’erano medici presenti, erano stati provati molti metodi. Ma lei giaceva immobile come una statua, a parte quei deboli suoni che di tanto in tanto emetteva.
Entrai nella tetra casa e oscurai tutte le finestre. Quelle della stanza in cui giaceva lui le oscurai per ultime. Alzai quella mano pesante e la posai sul mio cuore; tutto il mondo sembrava essere morte e silenzio, interrotto soltanto dai lamenti di sua madre.
CHAPTER 57. THE EMIGRANTS
One thing more, I had to do, before yielding myself to the shock of these emotions. It was, to conceal what had occurred, from those who were going away; and to dismiss them on their voyage in happy ignorance. In this, no time was to be lost.
I took Mr. Micawber aside that same night, and confided to him the task of standing between Mr. Peggotty and intelligence of the late catastrophe. He zealously undertook to do so, and to intercept any newspaper through which it might, without such precautions, reach him.
‘If it penetrates to him, sir,’ said Mr. Micawber, striking himself on the breast, ‘it shall first pass through this body!’
Mr. Micawber, I must observe, in his adaptation of himself to a new state of society, had acquired a bold buccaneering air, not absolutely lawless, but defensive and prompt. One might have supposed him a child of the wilderness, long accustomed to live out of the confines of civilization, and about to return to his native wilds.
He had provided himself, among other things, with a complete suit of oilskin, and a straw hat with a very low crown, pitched or caulked on the outside. In this rough clothing, with a common mariner’s telescope under his arm, and a shrewd trick of casting up his eye at the sky as looking out for dirty weather, he was far more nautical, after his manner, than Mr. Peggotty. His whole family, if I may so express it, were cleared for action. I found Mrs. Micawber in the closest and most uncompromising of bonnets, made fast under the chin; and in a shawl which tied her up (as I had been tied up, when my aunt first received me) like a bundle, and was secured behind at the waist, in a strong knot. Miss Micawber I found made snug for stormy weather, in the same manner; with nothing superfluous about her. Master Micawber was hardly visible in a Guernsey shirt, and the shaggiest suit of slops I ever saw; and the children were done up, like preserved meats, in impervious cases. Both Mr. Micawber and his eldest son wore their sleeves loosely turned back at the wrists, as being ready to lend a hand in any direction, and to ‘tumble up’, or sing out, ‘Yeo—Heave—Yeo!’ on the shortest notice.
Thus Traddles and I found them at nightfall, assembled on the wooden steps, at that time known as Hungerford Stairs, watching the departure of a boat with some of their property on board. I had told Traddles of the terrible event, and it had greatly shocked him; but there could be no doubt of the kindness of keeping it a secret, and he had come to help me in this last service. It was here that I took Mr. Micawber aside, and received his promise.
The Micawber family were lodged in a little, dirty, tumble-down public-house, which in those days was close to the stairs, and whose protruding wooden rooms overhung the river. The family, as emigrants, being objects of some interest in and about Hungerford, attracted so many beholders, that we were glad to take refuge in their room. It was one of the wooden chambers upstairs, with the tide flowing underneath. My aunt and Agnes were there, busily making some little extra comforts, in the way of dress, for the children. Peggotty was quietly assisting, with the old insensible work-box, yard-measure, and bit of wax-candle before her, that had now outlived so much.
It was not easy to answer her inquiries; still less to whisper Mr. Peggotty, when Mr. Micawber brought him in, that I had given the letter, and all was well. But I did both, and made them happy. If I showed any trace of what I felt, my own sorrows were sufficient to account for it.
‘And when does the ship sail, Mr. Micawber?’ asked my aunt.
Mr. Micawber considered it necessary to prepare either my aunt or his wife, by degrees, and said, sooner than he had expected yesterday.
‘The boat brought you word, I suppose?’ said my aunt.
‘It did, ma’am,’ he returned.
‘Well?’ said my aunt. ‘And she sails—’
‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘I am informed that we must positively be on board before seven tomorrow morning.’
‘Heyday!’ said my aunt, ‘that’s soon. Is it a sea-going fact, Mr. Peggotty?’ ‘’Tis so, ma’am. She’ll drop down the river with that theer tide. If Mas’r Davy and my sister comes aboard at Gravesen’, arternoon o’ next day, they’ll see the last on us.’
‘And that we shall do,’ said I, ‘be sure!’
‘Until then, and until we are at sea,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with a glance of intelligence at me, ‘Mr. Peggotty and myself will constantly keep a double look-out together, on our goods and chattels. Emma, my love,’ said Mr. Micawber, clearing his throat in his magnificent way, ‘my friend Mr. Thomas Traddles is so obliging as to solicit, in my ear, that he should have the privilege of ordering the ingredients necessary to the composition of a moderate portion of that Beverage which is peculiarly associated, in our minds, with the Roast Beef of Old England. I allude to—in short, Punch. Under ordinary circumstances, I should scruple to entreat the indulgence of Miss Trotwood and Miss Wickfield, but-’
‘I can only say for myself,’ said my aunt, ‘that I will drink all happiness and success to you, Mr. Micawber, with the utmost pleasure.’
‘And I too!’ said Agnes, with a smile.
Mr. Micawber immediately descended to the bar, where he appeared to be quite at home; and in due time returned with a steaming jug. I could not but observe that he had been peeling the lemons with his own clasp-knife, which, as became the knife of a practical settler, was about a foot long; and which he wiped, not wholly without ostentation, on the sleeve of his coat. Mrs. Micawber and the two elder members of the family I now found to be provided with similar formidable instruments, while every child had its own wooden spoon attached to its body by a strong line. In a similar anticipation of life afloat, and in the Bush, Mr. Micawber, instead of helping Mrs. Micawber and his eldest son and daughter to punch, in wine-glasses, which he might easily have done, for there was a shelf-full in the room, served it out to them in a series of villainous little tin pots; and I never saw him enjoy anything so much as drinking out of his own particular pint pot, and putting it in his pocket at the close of the evening.
CAPITOLO 57. GLI EMIGRANTI
C’era ancora una cosa che dovevo fare, prima di lasciarmi travolgere dallo shock di queste emozioni: nascondere ciò che era accaduto a coloro che stavano per partire, e far sì che partissero nella felice ignoranza. In questo non c’era tempo da perdere.
Quella stessa notte, portai il signor Micawber da parte e gli confidai il compito di impedire che il signor Peggotty venisse a conoscenza della tragica catastrofe appena accaduta. Lui si impegnò con zelo ad adempiere a tale incarico, promettendo di intercettare qualsiasi giornale attraverso cui tali informazioni potessero raggiungerlo, se non fossero state prese alcune precauzioni.
“Se dovesse penetrare in lui, signore,” disse il signor Micawber battendosi il petto, “prima dovrà passare attraverso questo corpo!”
Signor Micawber, devo osservare che, nell’adattarsi a una nuova condizione sociale, aveva acquisito un atteggiamento audace e quasi “piratesco”: non del tutto illegale, ma piuttosto difensivo e pronto all’azione. Si sarebbe potuto pensare che fosse un bambino delle foreste selvagge, abituato da tempo a vivere al di fuori dei confini della civiltà, e sul punto di tornare alle sue origini naturali.
Si era fornito, tra le altre cose, di un intero completo di stoffa impermeabile e di un cappello di paglia con una corona molto bassa, fissato sul davanti con del mastice. Con quegli abiti semplici, un comune telescopio da marina sotto il braccio, e l’abitudine di alzare lo sguardo verso il cielo per prevedere eventuali temporali, sembrava molto più “navale”, a suo modo, del signor Peggotty. Tutta la sua famiglia, se così posso esprimermi, era pronta all’azione. Trovai la signora Micawber con un cappello stretto sotto il mento; indossava anche uno scialle che la legava strettamente, proprio come avevo fatto io quando mia zia mi accolse per la prima volta. Anche la signorina Micawber era preparata per le intemperie, con abiti semplici e senza nulla di superfluo. Il signor Micawber era a malapena riconoscibile, con una camicia di Guernsey e il più vecchio dei suoi vestiti; i bambini, invece, erano avvolti in indumenti impermeabili, come carne conservata. Sia il signor Micawber che suo figlio maggiore avevano le maniche arrotolate fino ai polsi, pronti a prestare aiuto in qualsiasi momento e a gridare “Forza! Sollevate!” all’istante.
Così, Traddles ed io li trovammo al tramonto, riuniti sulle scale di legno, in quel luogo allora conosciuto come Hungerford Stairs, mentre osservavano la partenza di una barca su cui era caricata parte dei loro beni. Avevo raccontato a Traddles dell’orribile evento, e questo lo aveva profondamente sconvolto; tuttavia non c’era alcun >dubbio sulla sua disponibilità a mantenere il segreto, ed era venuto ad aiutarmi in questa ultima missione. Fu qui che portai da parte il signor Micawber e ricevetti la sua promessa.
La famiglia Micawber alloggiava in una piccola, sporca e fatiscente casa pubblica, situata in quei tempi vicino alle scale; le stanze di legno che sporgevano si affacciavano sul fiume. Essendo emigranti e quindi oggetto di curiosità nella zona di Hungerford, attiravano così tanta gente che fummo felici di rifugiarci nella loro stanza. Era una delle stanze di legno al piano di sopra, con l’acqua del fiume che scorreva sotto di essa. Mia zia e Agnes erano lì, impegnate a preparare qualche piccolo comfort aggiuntivo, soprattutto per i vestiti dei bambini. Peggotty assisteva silenziosamente, utilizzando quella vecchia cassetta da lavoro, quelle misure di legno e quel pezzetto di candela di cera che ormai avevano visto passare tante cose.
Non era facile rispondere alle sue domande; ancora meno sussurrare a Mr. Peggotty, quando Mr. Micawber lo portò dentro, che avevo consegnato la lettera e che tutto andava bene. Ma ho fatto entrambe le cose, riuscendo a renderli felici. Se avessi mostrato anche solo un minimo di ciò che provavo, le mie stesse preoccupazioni sarebbero state sufficienti a spiegarlo.
“E quando salperà la nave, signor Micawber?” chiese mia zia.
Il signor Micawber ritenne necessario preparare gradualmente sia mia zia che sua moglie, e disse che ci avrebbe messo meno tempo di quanto previsto ieri.
“La barca deve averti portato la notizia, immagino, ” disse mia zia.
“Sì, signora,” rispose lui.
“Beh?”, disse mia zia. “E lei naviga, ”
“Signora,” rispose, “mi è stato detto che dobbiamo assolutamente imbarcarci entro le sette di domani mattina.”
“L’apice delle sue fortune!”, disse mia zia. “Ma sarà presto. È davvero vero che partirà per il mare, signor Peggotty?” “Sì, signora. Sarà trascinata giù dal fiume con quella marea. Se il signor Davy e mia sorella salgono a bordo a Gravesen, nel pomeriggio del giorno dopo, ci vedranno per l’ultima volta.”
“E lo faremo senz’altro,” dissi, “ne sono certo!”
“Fino ad allora, e finché non saremo in mare,” osservò il signor Micawber, lanciandomi uno sguardo intelligente, “il signor Peggotty ed io continueremo a tenere costantemente d’occhio i nostri beni. Emma, mia cara,” proseguì il signor Micawber schiarendosi la voce nel suo solito modo teatrale, “il mio amico il signor Thomas Traddles si è gentilmente offerto di procurarci gli ingredienti necessari per preparare quella bevanda che, nella nostra mente, è strettamente legata alla carne arrostita tipica dell’Inghilterra. In breve, mi riferisco al Punch. Normalmente, esiterei a chiedere questo favore alle signorine Trotwood e Wickfield, ma, ”
“Posso dire solo per me stessa,” disse mia zia, “che beverò tutta la felicità e il successo che possano esservi, signor Micawber, con grande piacere.”
“Anch’io!” disse Agnes, sorridendo.
Il signor Micawber scese immediatamente al bar, dove sembrava sentirsi davvero a proprio agio; in due minuti tornò con un pentolone fumante. Non potei fare a meno di notare che aveva pelato i limoni con il suo stesso coltello da tasca, che, come si addiceva al coltello di un uomo pratico e risoluto, era lungo circa un piede; lo pulì, non senza una certa ostentazione, sulla manica del suo cappotto. La signora Micawber e i due figli più grandi possedevano strumenti simili; ogni bambino, inoltre, aveva il proprio cucchiaio di legno fissato al corpo con un laccio robusto. In questa sorta di preparazione alla vita futura, nel “Bush”, il signor Micawber, invece di aiutare la moglie e i figli a versarsi il vino nei bicchieri – cosa che avrebbe potuto fare facilmente, visto che ce n’era un intero scaffale nella stanza – lo servì in una serie di piccoli barattoli di latta; non ho mai visto godersi nulla tanto quanto bere dal proprio particolare barattolo, per poi metterlo in tasca alla fine della serata.
‘The luxuries of the old country,’ said Mr. Micawber, with an intense satisfaction in their renouncement, ‘we abandon. The denizens of the forest cannot, of course, expect to participate in the refinements of the land of the Free.’
Here, a boy came in to say that Mr. Micawber was wanted downstairs.
‘I have a presentiment,’ said Mrs. Micawber, setting down her tin pot, ‘that it is a member of my family!’
‘If so, my dear,’ observed Mr. Micawber, with his usual suddenness of warmth on that subject, ‘as the member of your family—whoever he, she, or it, may be—has kept us waiting for a considerable period, perhaps the Member may now wait MY convenience.’
‘Micawber,’ said his wife, in a low tone, ‘at such a time as this—’
‘“It is not meet,”’ said Mr. Micawber, rising, ‘“that every nice offence should bear its comment!” Emma, I stand reproved.’
‘The loss, Micawber,’ observed his wife, ‘has been my family’s, not yours. If my family are at length sensible of the deprivation to which their own conduct has, in the past, exposed them, and now desire to extend the hand of fellowship, let it not be repulsed.’
‘My dear,’ he returned, ‘so be it!’
‘If not for their sakes; for mine, Micawber,’ said his wife.
‘Emma,’ he returned, ‘that view of the question is, at such a moment, irresistible. I cannot, even now, distinctly pledge myself to fall upon your family’s neck; but the member of your family, who is now in attendance, shall have no genial warmth frozen by me.’
Mr. Micawber withdrew, and was absent some little time; in the course of which Mrs. Micawber was not wholly free from an apprehension that words might have arisen between him and the Member. At length the same boy reappeared, and presented me with a note written in pencil, and headed, in a legal manner, ‘Heep v. Micawber’. From this document, I learned that Mr. Micawber being again arrested, ‘Was in a final paroxysm of despair; and that he begged me to send him his knife and pint pot, by bearer, as they might prove serviceable during the brief remainder of his existence, in jail. He also requested, as a last act of friendship, that I would see his family to the Parish Workhouse, and forget that such a Being ever lived.
Of course I answered this note by going down with the boy to pay the money, where I found Mr. Micawber sitting in a corner, looking darkly at the Sheriff ‘s Officer who had effected the capture. On his release, he embraced me with the utmost fervour; and made an entry of the transaction in his pocket-book—being very particular, I recollect, about a halfpenny I inadvertently omitted from my statement of the total.
This momentous pocket-book was a timely reminder to him of another transaction. On our return to the room upstairs (where he accounted for his absence by saying that it had been occasioned by circumstances over which he had no control), he took out of it a large sheet of paper, folded small, and quite covered with long sums, carefully worked. From the glimpse I had of them, I should say that I never saw such sums out of a school ciphering-book. These, it seemed, were calculations of compound interest on what he called ‘the principal amount of forty-one, ten, eleven and a half’, for various periods. After a careful consideration of these, and an elaborate estimate of his resources, he had come to the conclusion to select that sum which represented the amount with compound interest to two years, fifteen calendar months, and fourteen days, from that date. For this he had drawn a note-of-hand with great neatness, which he handed over to Traddles on the spot, a discharge of his debt in full (as between man and man), with many acknowledgements.
‘I have still a presentiment,’ said Mrs. Micawber, pensively shaking her head, ‘that my family will appear on board, before we finally depart.’
Mr. Micawber evidently had his presentiment on the subject too, but he put it in his tin pot and swallowed it.
‘If you have any opportunity of sending letters home, on your passage, Mrs. Micawber,’ said my aunt, ‘you must let us hear from you, you know.’
‘My dear Miss Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘I shall only be too happy to think that anyone expects to hear from us. I shall not fail to correspond. Mr. Copperfield, I trust, as an old and familiar friend, will not object to receive occasional intelligence, himself, from one who knew him when the twins were yet unconscious?’
I said that I should hope to hear, whenever she had an opportunity of writing.
‘Please Heaven, there will be many such opportunities,’ said Mr. Micawber. ‘The ocean, in these times, is a perfect fleet of ships; and we can hardly fail to encounter many, in running over. It is merely crossing,’ said Mr. Micawber, trifling with his eye-glass, ‘merely crossing. The distance is quite imaginary.’
I think, now, how odd it was, but how wonderfully like Mr. Micawber, that, when he went from London to Canterbury, he should have talked as if he were going to the farthest limits of the earth; and, when he went from England to Australia, as if he were going for a little trip across the channel.
‘On the voyage, I shall endeavour,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘occasionally to spin them a yarn; and the melody of my son Wilkins will, I trust, be acceptable at the galley-fire. When Mrs. Micawber has her sea-legs on—an expression in which I hope there is no conventional impropriety—she will give them, I dare say, “Little Tafflin”. Porpoises and dolphins, I believe, will be frequently observed athwart our Bows; and, either on the starboard or the larboard quarter, objects of interest will be continually descried. In short,’ said Mr. Micawber, with the old genteel air, ‘the probability is, all will be found so exciting, alow and aloft, that when the lookout, stationed in the main-top, cries Land-oh! we shall be very considerably astonished!’
With that he flourished off the contents of his little tin pot, as if he had made the voyage, and had passed a first-class examination before the highest naval authorities.
“Le lussuose comodità della vecchia patria,” disse il signor Micawber, con profonda soddisfazione nel rinunciarvi, “le abbandoniamo. Gli abitanti della foresta, naturalmente, non possono aspettarsi di partecipare ai comfort e alle raffinatezze del paese dei Liberi.”
Qui, un ragazzo è entrato per dire che il signor Micawber era richiesto al piano di sotto.
“Ho un presentimento”, disse la signora Micawber, posando il suo pentolino di latta, “che si tratti di un membro della mia famiglia!”
“Se è così, mio caro,” osservò il signor Micawber, con la sua solita improvvisa cordialità su quell’argomento, “poiché quel membro della tua famiglia – chiunque esso sia – ci ha fatti aspettare per un periodo considerevole, forse ora quel membro potrà aspettare che io trovi il momento più adatto.”
“Micawber,” disse sua moglie, a bassa voce, “in un momento del genere, ”
“Non è giusto,” disse il signor Micawber alzandosi, “che ogni piccola offesa debba essere commentata. Emma, mi ritrovo in colpa.”
“La perdita, Micawber,” osservò sua moglie, “è stata della mia famiglia, non tua. Se un giorno la mia famiglia comprenderà finalmente la privazione a cui il proprio comportamento del passato l’ha esposta e desidererà ora tendere la mano dell’amicizia, che essa non venga rifiutata.”
“Mia cara,” rispose lui, “che sia così!”
“Se non fosse per loro, per me, invece, Micawber,” disse sua moglie.
‘Emma,’ rispose lui, ‘quella visione della questione, in un momento del genere, è irresistibile. Non posso ancora promettere con certezza di gettarmi ai tuoi piedi; ma il membro della tua famiglia che è qui presente non riceverà da me alcun rifiuto o freddezza.’
Il signor Micawber se ne andò e rimase assente per un po’; nel frattempo, la signora Micawber non poteva escludere che fossero sorti alcuni dissapori tra lui e il funzionario incaricato delle questioni legali. Alla fine, lo stesso ragazzo ricomparve e mi consegnò una nota scritta a matita, con un titolo formulato in modo legale: “Heep contro Micawber”. Da questo documento appresi che il signor Micawber era stato di nuovo arrestato e che si trovava in uno stato estremo di -disperazione; mi chiese quindi di fargli inviare, tramite un messaggero, il suo coltello e la sua pentola, poiché avrebbero potuto essergli utili negli ultimi momenti della sua vita in prigione. Inoltre, mi pregò, come ultimo atto di amicizia, di accompagnare la sua famiglia all’ospizio parrocchiale e di dimenticare che una persona del genere fosse mai esistita.
Naturalmente risposi a quel messaggio accompagnando il ragazzo per pagare i soldi; lì trovai il signor Micawber seduto in un angolo, che fissava con aria cupa l’ufficiale dello sceriffo responsabile della sua cattura. Dopo essere stato rilasciato, mi abbracciò con grande affetto e annotò l’accaduto nel suo taccuino. Ricordo che fu molto attento a un mezzo penny che, per errore, avevo omesso nella mia descrizione totale della somma.
Questo importante taccuino gli servì da promemoria tempestivo di un’altra transazione. Tornato nella stanza al piano di sopra (dove spiegò la propria assenza sostenendo che fosse stata causata da circostanze al di fuori del suo controllo), ne estrasse una grande pagina di carta, piegata in modo ordinato e completamente coperta di calcoli dettagliati riguardanti somme elevate. Dalla fugace occhiata che potei dare, posso dire di non aver mai visto cifre del genere in un taccuino scolastico per le operazioni di crittografia. Si trattava chiaramente di calcoli sull’interesse composto relativo a quella somma che lui stesso definiva “l’importo principale di quarantuno, dieci, undici e mezzo”, calcolati per diversi periodi di tempo. Dopo averli attentamente esaminati e valutato con cura le proprie risorse finanziarie, aveva deciso di scegliere quella somma che rappresentava l’importo moltiplicato per l’interesse composto nel corso di due anni, quindici mesi calendari e quattordici giorni a partire da quella data. Per questo scopo aveva redatto una nota manoscritta con grande precisione, che consegnò immediatamente a Traddles: si trattava di un pagamento integrale del proprio debito (tra persone), accompagnato da molte ringraziamenti.
“Ho ancora un presentimento”, disse la signora Micawber, scuotendo la testa pensierosamente, “che la mia famiglia apparirà a bordo prima che partiamo definitivamente.”
A quanto pare, anche il signor Micawber aveva dei presagi al riguardo, ma li mise da parte e li ignorò.
“Se avete l’opportunità di inviare lettere a casa durante il vostro viaggio,” disse mia zia, “dovete assolutamente farci sapere come state, capite?”
“Mia cara signorina Trotwood,” rispose lei, “sarei davvero molto felice se qualcuno si aspettasse di ricevere notizie da noi. Non mancherò certo di scrivere. Spero che il signor Copperfield, essendo un vecchio e caro amico, non abbia obiezioni ad ricevere occasionalmente qualche informazione da parte di qualcuno che lo conosceva quando i gemelli erano ancora neonati.”
Ho detto che avrei dovuto >sperare di sentirla scrivere ogni volta che ne avesse l’opportunità.
“Per favore, cielo. Ci saranno molte opportunità del genere,” disse il signor Micawber. “In questi tempi, l’oceano è come una flotta di navi perfette; è quasi impossibile non incontrarne molte durante il viaggio. È solo una questione di attraversarlo, ”, aggiunse, giocherellando con il suo occhialino, “solo una questione di attraversarlo. La distanza, beh, è praticamente immaginaria.”
Penso che sia davvero strano, ma allo stesso tempo molto in linea con il carattere del signor Micawber: quando partì da Londra per Canterbury, parlava come se stesse andando ai confini più lontani della terra; mentre quando lasciò l’Inghilterra per l’Australia, si comportava come se stesse facendo un piccolo viaggio attraverso la Manica.
“Durante il viaggio,” disse il signor Micawber, “cercherò di raccontare loro qualche storia ogni tanto; e la melodia di mio figlio Wilkins, spero, sarà gradita intorno al fuoco della cucina. Quando la signora Micawber si sarà abituata al mare – un’espressione con cui, spero, non ci sia alcun errore convenzionale – credo che possa cantare loro ‘Little Tafflin’. Credo inoltre che balene e delfini appariranno spesso davanti a noi; e sia a dritta che a sinistra, continueremo ad osservare oggetti di interesse. In breve,” concluse il signor Micawber con quel suo vecchio tono distinto, “è molto probabile che tutto risulti così emozionante, sia in alto che in basso, che quando il guardiamarina postato sulla coffa griderà ‘Terra!’, saremo davvero molto sorpresi!”
Con quello, si servì del contenuto della sua piccola pentola di latta, come se avesse effettivamente compiuto il viaggio e superato un esame di prima classe davanti alle più alte autorità navali.
‘What I chiefly hope, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘is, that in some branches of our family we may live again in the old country. Do not frown, Micawber! I do not now refer to my own family, but to our children’s children. However vigorous the sapling,’ said Mrs. Micawber, shaking her head, ‘I cannot forget the parent-tree; and when our race attains to eminence and fortune, I own I should wish that fortune to flow into the coffers of Britannia.’
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Britannia must take her chance. I am bound to say that she has never done much for me, and that I have no particular wish upon the subject.’
‘Micawber,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, ‘there, you are wrong. You are going out, Micawber, to this distant clime, to strengthen, not to weaken, the connexion between yourself and Albion.’
‘The connexion in question, my love,’ rejoined Mr. Micawber, ‘has not laid me, I repeat, under that load of personal obligation, that I am at all sensitive as to the formation of another connexion.’
‘Micawber,’ returned Mrs. Micawber. ‘There, I again say, you are wrong. You do not know your power, Micawber. It is that which will strengthen, even in this step you are about to take, the connexion between yourself and Albion.’
Mr. Micawber sat in his elbow-chair, with his eyebrows raised; half receiving and half repudiating Mrs. Micawber’s views as they were stated, but very sensible of their foresight.
‘My dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘I wish Mr. Micawber to feel his position. It appears to me highly important that Mr. Micawber should, from the hour of his embarkation, feel his position. Your old knowledge of me, my dear Mr. Copperfield, will have told you that I have not the sanguine disposition of Mr. Micawber. My disposition is, if I may say so, eminently practical. I know that this is a long voyage. I know that it will involve many privations and inconveniences. I cannot shut my eyes to those facts. But I also know what Mr. Micawber is. I know the latent power of Mr. Micawber. And therefore I consider it vitally important that Mr. Micawber should feel his position.’
‘My love,’ he observed, ‘perhaps you will allow me to remark that it is barely possible that I DO feel my position at the present moment.’
‘I think not, Micawber,’ she rejoined. ‘Not fully. My dear Mr. Copperfield, Mr. Micawber’s is not a common case. Mr. Micawber is going to a distant country expressly in order that he may be fully understood and appreciated for the first time. I wish Mr. Micawber to take his stand upon that vessel’s prow, and firmly say, “This country I am come to conquer! Have you honours? Have you riches? Have you posts of profitable pecuniary emolument? Let them be brought forward. They are mine!”’
Mr. Micawber, glancing at us all, seemed to think there was a good deal in this idea.
‘I wish Mr. Micawber, if I make myself understood,’ said Mrs. Micawber, in her argumentative tone, ‘to be the Caesar of his own fortunes. That, my dear Mr. Copperfield, appears to me to be his true position. From the first moment of this voyage, I wish Mr. Micawber to stand upon that vessel’s prow and say, “Enough of delay: enough of disappointment: enough of limited means. That was in the old country. This is the new. Produce your reparation. Bring it forward!”’
Mr. Micawber folded his arms in a resolute manner, as if he were then stationed on the figure-head.
‘And doing that,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘—feeling his position—am I not right in saying that Mr. Micawber will strengthen, and not weaken, his connexion with Britain? An important public character arising in that hemisphere, shall I be told that its influence will not be felt at home? Can I be so weak as to imagine that Mr. Micawber, wielding the rod of talent and of power in Australia, will be nothing in England? I am but a woman; but I should be unworthy of myself and of my papa, if I were guilty of such absurd weakness.’
Mrs. Micawber’s conviction that her arguments were unanswerable, gave a moral elevation to her tone which I think I had never heard in it before.
‘And therefore it is,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘that I the more wish, that, at a future period, we may live again on the parent soil. Mr. Micawber may be—I cannot disguise from myself that the probability is, Mr. Micawber will be—a page of History; and he ought then to be represented in the country which gave him birth, and did NOT give him employment!’
‘My love,’ observed Mr. Micawber, ‘it is impossible for me not to be touched by your affection. I am always willing to defer to your good sense. What will be—will be. Heaven forbid that I should grudge my native country any portion of the wealth that may be accumulated by our descendants!’
‘That’s well,’ said my aunt, nodding towards Mr. Peggotty, ‘and I drink my love to you all, and every blessing and success attend you!’
Mr. Peggotty put down the two children he had been nursing, one on each knee, to join Mr. and Mrs. Micawber in drinking to all of us in return; and when he and the Micawbers cordially shook hands as comrades, and his brown face brightened with a smile, I felt that he would make his way, establish a good name, and be beloved, go where he would.
Even the children were instructed, each to dip a wooden spoon into Mr. Micawber’s pot, and pledge us in its contents. When this was done, my aunt and Agnes rose, and parted from the emigrants. It was a sorrowful farewell. They were all crying; the children hung about Agnes to the last; and we left poor Mrs. Micawber in a very distressed condition, sobbing and weeping by a dim candle, that must have made the room look, from the river, like a miserable light-house.
I went down again next morning to see that they were away. They had departed, in a boat, as early as five o’clock. It was a wonderful instance to me of the gap such partings make, that although my association of them with the tumble-down public-house and the wooden stairs dated only from last night, both seemed dreary and deserted, now that they were gone.
“Quello che spero soprattutto, caro signor Copperfield,” disse la signora Micawber, “è che in alcune linee della nostra famiglia possiamo tornare a vivere nel vecchio paese. Non si arrabbi, Micawber! Non mi riferisco ora alla mia famiglia, ma ai figli dei nostri figli. Per quanto vigoroso possa essere il germoglio,” aggiunse scuotendo la testa, “non posso dimenticare l’albero genitore; e quando la nostra stirpe raggiungerà onore e ricchezza, confesso che vorrei che quella ricchezza finisse nelle casse della Britannia.”
“Mia cara,” disse il signor Micawber, “la Britannia deve cogliere la sua opportunità. Devo dire che non mi ha mai fatto molto, e in questo senso non ho alcun desiderio particolare.”
“Micawber,” rispose la signora Micawber, “ecco, ti sbagli. Stai andando in quella lontana terra per rafforzare, non per indebolire, i legami tra te e Albione.”
“La relazione di cui parliamo, mia cara,” riprese il signor Micawber, “non mi ha assunto, ripeto, alcun obbligo personale; quindi non sono affatto contrario all’instaurare un’altra relazione.”
“Micawber,” rispose la signora Micawber. “Ecco, dico di nuovo che ti sbagli. Non conosci la tua forza, Micawber. È proprio quella forza che, anche nel passo che stai per compiere, rafforzerà il legame tra te e Albion.”
Il signor Micawber sedeva nella sua poltrona, con le sopracciglia alzate; in parte accettava e in parte respingeva i punti di vista della signora Micawber così come venivano espressi, ma era pienamente consapevole della loro lungimiranza.
“Mio caro signor Copperfield,” disse la signora Micawber, “desidero che il signor Micawber comprenda appieno la sua situazione. A mio parere è estremamente importante che, fin dal momento della partenza, il signor Micawber sia consapevole delle difficoltà che lo aspettano. La vostra vecchia conoscenza di me vi avrà certamente detto che non ho la stessa natura ottimista del signor Micawber. La mia indole, se posso dirlo, è piuttosto pragmatica. So che si tratta di un lungo viaggio, che comporterà molte privazioni e inconvenienti. Non posso ignorare questi fatti. Ma so anche chi è il signor Micawber. Conosco il potenziale nascosto in lui. E per questo ritengo fondamentale che il signor Micawber sia pienamente consapevole della realtà.”
“Mia amata”, osservò, “forse mi permetterai di dire che è quasi impossibile che io provi davvero ciò che sto provando in questo momento.”
“Non credo proprio, Micawber,” rispose lei. “Non del tutto. Caro signor Copperfield, il caso di Micawber non è affatto comune. Micawber sta andando in un paese lontano proprio per essere finalmente compreso e apprezzato per la prima volta. Vorrei che Micawber si piazzasse sulla prua di quella nave e dichiarasse con fermezza: ‘Questo è il paese che sono venuto a conquistare! Avete onori? Avete ricchezze? Avete incarichi che comportino guadagni sostanziosi? Fateli vedere. Sono mie!’”
Il signor Micawber, guardandoci tutti, sembrava pensare che in questa idea ci fosse qualcosa di valido.
“Vorrei che il signor Micawber, se riesco a farmi capire,” disse la signora Micawber con tono argomentativo, “diventasse il ‘Caio’ delle proprie fortune. Questa, caro signor Copperfield, mi sembra la sua vera posizione. Dal primo momento di questo viaggio, vorrei che il signor Micawber si piazzasse sulla prua di quella nave e dicesse: ‘Basta ritardi, basta delusioni, basta mezzi limitati. Quello era il vecchio paese. Questo è il nuovo. Presentate le vostre riparazioni. Subito!’”
Il signor Micawber incrociò le braccia in modo deciso, come se in quel momento fosse fermo sulla prua della nave.
“E facendo così,” disse la signora Micawber, “tenendo conto della sua posizione, non ho forse ragione nel dire che il signor Micawber rafforzerà, e non indebolirà, i suoi legami con la Gran Bretagna? Se in quell’emisfero dovesse emergere una figura pubblica importante, si potrebbe forse pensare che la sua influenza non si farà sentire qui a casa nostra? Potrei davvero essere così sciocca da immaginare che il signor Micawber, avendo in Australia il potere e il talento necessari, possa diventare nulla in Inghilterra? Sono solo una donna, ma sarei indegna di me stessa e di mio padre se commettessi un errore così assurdo.”
La convinzione di Mrs. Micawber che le sue argomentazioni fossero irrefutabili conferiva al suo tono una sorta di nobiltà morale, qualcosa che credo non avessi mai sentito prima.
“E quindi è proprio così,” disse la signora Micawber, “che desidero ancora di più che, in un futuro, possiamo tornare a vivere nella nostra terra natale. Il signor Micawber potrebbe diventare, non posso nascondermi che c’è questa probabilità, il signor Micawber potrebbe diventare una pagina della Storia; e allora dovrebbe essere rappresentato nel paese che lo ha visto nascere, ma che non gli ha mai offerto lavoro!”
“Mia amata”, osservò il signor Micawber, “è impossibile che io non sia commosso dal tuo affetto. Sono sempre disposto ad ascoltare il tuo buon senso. Quello che sarà, sarà. Che il cielo mi protegga dal desiderare che il mio paese natale perda anche solo una parte della ricchezza che i nostri discendenti potranno accumulare!”
“Beh,” disse mia zia, annuendo verso il signor Peggotty, “e brindo alla vostra salute, augurandovi tutta la benedizione e il successo possibile!”
Il signor Peggotty mise giù i due bambini che stava allattando, uno su ogni ginocchio, per unirsi al signore e alla signora Micawber nel brindare a nostro onore; e quando lui e i Micawber si strinsero cordialmente la mano come compagni, e il suo viso scuro si illuminò di un sorriso, sentii che avrebbe fatto fortuna, si sarebbe guadagnato un buon nome e sarebbe stato amato ovunque andasse.
Anche i bambini furono istruiti: ognuno doveva immergere un cucchiaio di legno nella pentola del signor Micawber e giurare fedeltà al suo contenuto. Una volta fatto ciò, mia zia e Agnes si alzarono e si congedarono dagli emigranti. Fu un addio triste: tutti piangevano; i bambini rimasero attaccati ad Agnes fino all’ultimo momento; e noi lasciammo povera signora Micawber in una condizione molto angosciante, che singhiozzava e piangeva accanto a una debole candela. La stanza, vista dal fiume, doveva sembrare una misera “casa di luce”.
La mattina seguente scesi di nuovo e vidi che se n’erano andati. Erano partiti in barca già alle cinque del mattino. Quell’episodio mi dimostrò chiaramente quanto grandi possano essere i cambiamenti causati da simili separazioni: anche se la mia associazione di quei luoghi con quella casa fatiscente e quelle scale di legno risaliva soltanto alla sera precedente, ora tutto sembrava desolato e abbandonato, una volta che loro se n’erano andati.
In the afternoon of the next day, my old nurse and I went down to Gravesend. We found the ship in the river, surrounded by a crowd of boats; a favourable wind blowing; the signal for sailing at her mast-head. I hired a boat directly, and we put off to her; and getting through the little vortex of confusion of which she was the centre, went on board.
Mr. Peggotty was waiting for us on deck. He told me that Mr. Micawber had just now been arrested again (and for the last time) at the suit of Heep, and that, in compliance with a request I had made to him, he had paid the money, which I repaid him. He then took us down between decks; and there, any lingering fears I had of his having heard any rumours of what had happened, were dispelled by Mr. Micawber’s coming out of the gloom, taking his arm with an air of friendship and protection, and telling me that they had scarcely been asunder for a moment, since the night before last.
It was such a strange scene to me, and so confined and dark, that, at first, I could make out hardly anything; but, by degrees, it cleared, as my eyes became more accustomed to the gloom, and I seemed to stand in a picture by OSTADE. Among the great beams, bulks, and ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths, and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous baggage—‘lighted up, here and there, by dangling lanterns; and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a windsail or a hatchway—were crowded groups of people, making new friendships, taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating and drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their few feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others, despairing of a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately. From babies who had but a week or two of life behind them, to crooked old men and women who seemed to have but a week or two of life before them; and from ploughmen bodily carrying out soil of England on their boots, to smiths taking away samples of its soot and smoke upon their skins; every age and occupation appeared to be crammed into the narrow compass of the ‘tween decks.
As my eye glanced round this place, I thought I saw sitting, by an open port, with one of the Micawber children near her, a figure like Emily’s; it first attracted my attention, by another figure parting from it with a kiss; and as it glided calmly away through the disorder, reminding me of—Agnes! But in the rapid motion and confusion, and in the unsettlement of my own thoughts, I lost it again; and only knew that the time was come when all visitors were being warned to leave the ship; that my nurse was crying on a chest beside me; and that Mrs. Gummidge, assisted by some younger stooping woman in black, was busily arranging Mr. Peggotty’s goods.
‘Is there any last wured, Mas’r Davy?’ said he. ‘Is there any one forgotten thing afore we parts?’
‘One thing!’ said I. ‘Martha!’
He touched the younger woman I have mentioned on the shoulder, and Martha stood before me.
‘Heaven bless you, you good man!’ cried I. ‘You take her with you!’
She answered for him, with a burst of tears. I could speak no more at that time, but I wrung his hand; and if ever I have loved and honoured any man, I loved and honoured that man in my soul.
The ship was clearing fast of strangers. The greatest trial that I had, remained. I told him what the noble spirit that was gone, had given me in charge to say at parting. It moved him deeply. But when he charged me, in return, with many messages of affection and regret for those deaf ears, he moved me more.
The time was come. I embraced him, took my weeping nurse upon my arm, and hurried away. On deck, I took leave of poor Mrs. Micawber. She was looking distractedly about for her family, even then; and her last words to me were, that she never would desert Mr. Micawber.
We went over the side into our boat, and lay at a little distance, to see the ship wafted on her course. It was then calm, radiant sunset. She lay between us, and the red light; and every taper line and spar was visible against the glow. A sight at once so beautiful, so mournful, and so hopeful, as the glorious ship, lying, still, on the flushed water, with all the life on board her crowded at the bulwarks, and there clustering, for a moment, bare-headed and silent, I never saw.
Silent, only for a moment. As the sails rose to the wind, and the ship began to move, there broke from all the boats three resounding cheers, which those on board took up, and echoed back, and which were echoed and re-echoed. My heart burst out when I heard the sound, and beheld the waving of the hats and handkerchiefs—and then I saw her!
Then I saw her, at her uncle’s side, and trembling on his shoulder. He pointed to us with an eager hand; and she saw us, and waved her last good-bye to me. Aye, Emily, beautiful and drooping, cling to him with the utmost trust of thy bruised heart; for he has clung to thee, with all the might of his great love!
Surrounded by the rosy light, and standing high upon the deck, apart together, she clinging to him, and he holding her, they solemnly passed away. The night had fallen on the Kentish hills when we were rowed ashore—and fallen darkly upon me.
Nel pomeriggio del giorno seguente, io e la mia vecchia infermiera ci recammo a Gravesend. Trovammo la nave nel fiume, circondata da una folla di barche; soffiava un vento favorevole, e sul suo albero era stato issato il segnale per partire. Noi noleggiammo subito una barca e ci dirigemmo verso di essa; superando il piccolo vortice di confusione dal quale la nave era il centro, salimmo a bordo.
Il signor Peggotty ci stava aspettando sul ponte. Mi disse che il signor Micawber era stato appena arrestato di nuovo (e per l’ultima volta), su istanza di Heep, e che, in risposta a una mia richiesta, aveva pagato la somma di denaro in questione; io glielo restituii subito dopo. Poi ci portò sotto i ponti; lì, qualsiasi timore che potessi avere riguardo al fatto che avesse sentito qualche voce su quanto era accaduto svanì non appena il signor Micawber uscì dall’oscurità, prendendomi per il braccio con un atteggiamento di amicizia e protezione, e mi disse che da quella notte precedente non si erano mai separati nemmeno per un momento.
Era una scena così strana per me, così angusta e buia, che all’inizio riuscivo a distinguere a malapena qualcosa; ma gradualmente tutto divenne più chiaro, man mano che i miei occhi si abituarono alla penombra. Sembravo trovarmi davanti a un dipinto di OSTADE. Tra le grandi strutture del navio, i letti per gli emigranti, i bauli, i fagotti e ogni sorta di bagagli, “illuminati qua e là da lanterne appese; in altri punti dalla luce gialla che filtrava attraverso le vele o le aperture delle cabine”, c’erano gruppi di persone che stringevano nuove amicizie, si salutavano a vicenda, chiacchieravano, ridevano, piangevano, mangiavano e bevevano. Alcuni avevano già sistemato il proprio spazio ristretto, con le loro piccole famiglie ordinate; i bambini erano seduti su sgabelli o in minuscoli divani. Altri, invece, non riuscivano a trovare un posto dove riposare e vagavano disperati per lì intorno. C’erano neonati di appena una settimana o due di vita, anziani curvi che sembrava avessero ancora solo pochi giorni da vivere, contadini con la terra d’Inghilterra incrostata sui loro stivali, fabbri con la fuliggine e il fumo dell’acciaio addosso. Ogni età, ogni professione sembrava essere stipata in quell’angusto spazio tra i due ponti della nave.
Mentre i miei occhi perlustravano quel luogo, mi sembrò di vedere, accanto a un portello aperto e con uno dei bambini Micawber vicino a lei, una figura simile a quella di Emily; attirò subito la mia attenzione perché un’altra figura si staccò da essa dandole un bacio; poi quella figura si allontanò tranquillamente tra il disordine circostante. Agnes! Ma nel caos e nella confusione, non riuscii più a vederla; sapevo soltanto che era arrivato il momento in cui tutti i visitatori venivano avvisati di lasciare la nave; che la mia tata piangeva accanto a me; e che Mrs. Gummidge, assistita da una donna più giovane in abiti neri, stava sistemando con impegno le cose di Mr. Peggotty.
“C’è qualche ultima cosa da fare, signor Davy?”, chiese lui. “Qualcosa che abbiamo dimenticato prima di andarcene?”
“Una cosa!” dissi. “Martha!”
Lei toccò sulla spalla la donna più giovane di cui ho parlato, e Martha si trovò davanti a me.
“Che il cielo ti benedica, buon uomo!” esclamai. “La porterai con te!”
Rispose al suo posto, con un pianto di lacrime. In quel momento non riuscivo a dire nulla, ma strinsi la sua mano; e se mai ho amato e rispettato un uomo, è stato proprio lui, nel profondo della mia anima.
La nave si stava allontanando rapidamente da quegli sconosciuti. La più grande prova che mi restava da affrontare. Gli raccontai ciò che lo nobile spirito che se n’era andato mi aveva incaricato di dirgli al momento dell’addio. Questo lo commosse profondamente. Ma quando, in cambio, mi affidò molti messaggi d’affetto e di rimpianto per quelle orecchie “sordide”, fu ancora di più commosso.
Il momento era arrivato. Lo abbracciai, presi la mia piantagrane in lacrime sul braccio e ci affrettammo a partire. Sul ponte, mi congedai dalla povera signora Micawber. Anche in quel momento, lei cercava disperatamente la sua famiglia; le sue ultime parole furono che non avrebbe mai abbandonato il signor Micawber.
Siamo saliti sulla nostra barca e ci siamo posizionati a una certa distanza per osservare la nave che procedeva lentamente lungo il suo percorso. Era una serata tranquilla, con un tramonto splendido; la nave giaceva tra di noi, illuminata dal bagliore rosso del sole al tramonto. Ogni linea e ogni dettaglio della sua struttura erano visibili contro quel chiarore. Una vista davvero meravigliosa, ma anche malinconica e, allo stesso tempo, piena di speranza. Quella nave magnifica, immobile sull’acqua rossastra, con tutta la vita a bordo raccolta lungo le murate. Un spettacolo che non dimenticherò mai.
In silenzio, per un solo momento. Mentre le vele si sollevavano al vento e la nave iniziava a muoversi, da tutte le barche si levarono tre grida sonore che furono riprese dai presenti a bordo e risuonarono ancora. Il mio cuore scoppiò di gioia quando udii quel suono e vidi i cappelli e i fazzoletti sventolare. E poi la vidi!
Poi la vidi, al fianco di suo zio, tremante sulle sue spalle. Lui ci indicò con una mano ansiosa; e lei ci vide, e mi salutò per l’ultima volta. Sì, Emily, bella e pallida, aggrappati a lui con tutta la fiducia del tuo cuore ferito, perché anche lui si è aggrappato a te, con tutta la forza del suo grande amore!
Ricoperti dalla luce rosata e in piedi sul ponte, lontani da tutti gli altri, lei stretta a lui e lui che la teneva tra le braccia, si allontanarono solennemente. La notte era ormai calata sui colli del Kent quando fummo portati a riva in barca, e un’oscurità profonda avvolse anche me.
CHAPTER 58. ABSENCE
It was a long and gloomy night that gathered on me, haunted by the ghosts of many hopes, of many dear remembrances, many errors, many unavailing sorrows and regrets.
I went away from England; not knowing, even then, how great the shock was, that I had to bear. I left all who were dear to me, and went away; and believed that I had borne it, and it was past. As a man upon a field of battle will receive a mortal hurt, and scarcely know that he is struck, so I, when I was left alone with my undisciplined heart, had no conception of the wound with which it had to strive.
The knowledge came upon me, not quickly, but little by little, and grain by grain. The desolate feeling with which I went abroad, deepened and widened hourly. At first it was a heavy sense of loss and sorrow, wherein I could distinguish little else. By imperceptible degrees, it became a hopeless consciousness of all that I had lost—love, friendship, interest; of all that had been shattered—my first trust, my first affection, the whole airy castle of my life; of all that remained—a ruined blank and waste, lying wide around me, unbroken, to the dark horizon.
If my grief were selfish, I did not know it to be so. I mourned for my child-wife, taken from her blooming world, so young. I mourned for him who might have won the love and admiration of thousands, as he had won mine long ago. I mourned for the broken heart that had found rest in the stormy sea; and for the wandering remnants of the simple home, where I had heard the night-wind blowing, when I was a child.
From the accumulated sadness into which I fell, I had at length no hope of ever issuing again. I roamed from place to place, carrying my burden with me everywhere. I felt its whole weight now; and I drooped beneath it, and I said in my heart that it could never be lightened.
When this despondency was at its worst, I believed that I should die. Sometimes, I thought that I would like to die at home; and actually turned back on my road, that I might get there soon. At other times, I passed on farther away,—from city to city, seeking I know not what, and trying to leave I know not what behind.
It is not in my power to retrace, one by one, all the weary phases of distress of mind through which I passed. There are some dreams that can only be imperfectly and vaguely described; and when I oblige myself to look back on this time of my life, I seem to be recalling such a dream. I see myself passing on among the novelties of foreign towns, palaces, cathedrals, temples, pictures, castles, tombs, fantastic streets—the old abiding places of History and Fancy—as a dreamer might; bearing my painful load through all, and hardly conscious of the objects as they fade before me. Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it—as at last I did, thank Heaven!—and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn.
For many months I travelled with this ever-darkening cloud upon my mind. Some blind reasons that I had for not returning home—reasons then struggling within me, vainly, for more distinct expression—kept me on my pilgrimage. Sometimes, I had proceeded restlessly from place to place, stopping nowhere; sometimes, I had lingered long in one spot. I had had no purpose, no sustaining soul within me, anywhere.
I was in Switzerland. I had come out of Italy, over one of the great passes of the Alps, and had since wandered with a guide among the by-ways of the mountains. If those awful solitudes had spoken to my heart, I did not know it. I had found sublimity and wonder in the dread heights and precipices, in the roaring torrents, and the wastes of ice and snow; but as yet, they had taught me nothing else.
I came, one evening before sunset, down into a valley, where I was to rest. In the course of my descent to it, by the winding track along the mountain-side, from which I saw it shining far below, I think some long-unwonted sense of beauty and tranquillity, some softening influence awakened by its peace, moved faintly in my breast. I remember pausing once, with a kind of sorrow that was not all oppressive, not quite despairing. I remember almost hoping that some better change was possible within me.
I came into the valley, as the evening sun was shining on the remote heights of snow, that closed it in, like eternal clouds. The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the mountain’s-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so dwarfed by the towering heights that they appeared too small for toys. So did even the clustered village in the valley, with its wooden bridge across the stream, where the stream tumbled over broken rocks, and roared away among the trees. In the quiet air, there was a sound of distant singing—shepherd voices; but, as one bright evening cloud floated midway along the mountain’s-side, I could almost have believed it came from there, and was not earthly music. All at once, in this serenity, great Nature spoke to me; and soothed me to lay down my weary head upon the grass, and weep as I had not wept yet, since Dora died!
I had found a packet of letters awaiting me but a few minutes before, and had strolled out of the village to read them while my supper was making ready. Other packets had missed me, and I had received none for a long time. Beyond a line or two, to say that I was well, and had arrived at such a place, I had not had fortitude or constancy to write a letter since I left home.
CAPITOLO 58. ASSENZA
Era una lunga e cupa notte che mi avvolgeva, infestata dai spettri di molte speranze, di molti ricordi cari, di molti errori, di molte dolorose delusioni e rimpianti.
Me ne andai dall’Inghilterra; senza nemmeno sapere, in quel momento, quanto grande fosse lo shock che avrei dovuto affrontare. Lasciai tutte le persone a me care e me ne andai, credendo di aver già superato quella situazione. Proprio come un uomo sul campo di battaglia può ricevere una ferita mortale senza nemmeno rendersene conto, anch’io, rimasto solo con il mio cuore indisciplinato, non avevo idea della gravità del “danno” che doveva affrontare.
La conoscenza mi arrivò non rapidamente, ma poco a poco, granello dopo granello. Quel senso di desolazione con cui ero partito per l’estero si approfondiva e si ampliava ogni ora. All’inizio era un forte senso di perdita e dolore; in seguito, divenne una consapevolezza disperata di tutto ciò che avevo perso: l’amore, l’amicizia, le mie passioni; di tutto ciò che era andato distrutto: la mia prima fiducia, il mio primo affetto, l’intero “castello” fatto di speranze della mia vita. Di tutto ciò che rimaneva: solo un deserto vuoto e inutile, che si estendeva intorno a me, fino all’orizzonte buio.
Se il mio dolore fosse stato egoistico, non me ne sarei resa conto. Piansi per la mia moglie e figlia, portata via così giovane dal suo mondo pieno di vita. Piansi per lui, che avrebbe potuto conquistare l’amore e l’ammirazione di migliaia di persone, proprio come aveva già conquistato il mio molto tempo fa. Piansi per quel cuore spezzato che aveva trovato riposo nel mare tempestoso; e per i resti di quella semplice casa dove, da bambina, ascoltavo il vento notturno soffiare.
Dalla tristezza accumulata nella quale ero caduto, alla fine non avevo più alcuna >speranza di potermi riprendere mai. Vagavo da un posto all’altro, portando con me quel fardello ovunque andassi. Ora ne sentivo tutto il peso; mi piegavo sotto di esso e pensavo nel mio cuore che non avrebbe mai potuto essere alleviato.
Quando questa disperazione raggiungeva il suo apice, credevo che dovessi morire. A volte pensavo di voler morire a >casa; anzi, tornavo indietro sul mio cammino nel tentativo di arrivarvi il prima possibile. Altre volte proseguivo verso lontano, da una >città all’altra, cercando chissà cosa e cercando di lasciare indietro chissà cosa.
Non è in mio potere ripercorrere, uno per uno, tutte le fasi di angoscia e sofferenza attraverso cui sono passato. Ci sono alcuni >sogni che possono essere descritti solo in modo imperfetto e vago; e quando mi costringo a ricordare questo periodo della mia vita, sembra di rivivere proprio uno di questi sogni. Mi vedo muovermi tra le novità delle città straniere, palazzi, cattedrali, templi, dipinti, castelli, tombe, luoghi antichi e suggestivi legati alla Storia e all’immaginazione umana, come potrebbe fare un sognatore; portando con me il mio fardello di dolore attraverso tutto ciò, quasi senza rendersi conto degli oggetti che svaniscono davanti ai miei occhi. Indifferenza verso ogni cosa, solo tristezza profonda, questa è stata l’atmosfera che ha avvolto il mio cuore indisciplinato. Lasciate che mi sollevi da essa, come infine ho fatto, grazie al cielo, e che esca da questo lungo, triste e misero sogno, verso la >alba.
Per molti mesi ho viaggiato con questa nuvola sempre più oscura nella mia mente. Alcune ragioni oscure che mi impedivano di tornare a >casa – ragioni che all’epoca lottavano dentro di me, invano, per trovare un’espressione più chiara – mi hanno costretto a proseguire questo viaggio. A volte mi spostavo senza sosta da un luogo all’altro, senza mai fermarmi; altre volte mi soffermavo a lungo nello stesso posto. Non avevo alcuno scopo, nessuna forza interiore che mi guidasse. Da nessuna parte.
Ero in Svizzera. Ero uscito dall’Italia, attraverso uno dei grandi passi delle Alpi, e da allora avevo vagabondato con un guida tra i sentieri di montagna. Se quelle terribili solitudini avessero parlato al mio cuore, non lo sapevo. Avevo trovato sublimità e meraviglia nelle imponenti altezze e nei precipizi, nei torrenti impetuosi, nelle distese di ghiaccio e -neve; ma per il momento, non mi avevano insegnato nulla altro.
Un pomeriggio, prima del tramonto, scesi in una valle dove avrei dovuto riposare. Mentre mi dirigevo verso di essa, lungo il sentiero serpeggiante sul versante della montagna – da cui vedevo la valle brillare lontano sotto di me – credo che un senso di bellezza e tranquillità, una sorta di influenza lenitiva suscitata dalla pace di quel luogo, si risvegliò nel mio cuore. Ricordo di essermi fermato una volta, provando un dolore non del tutto opprimente, né completamente disperato. Ricordo persino di aver sperato che fosse possibile qualche cambiamento positivo in me stesso.
Entrai nella valle: il sole al tramonto illuminava le lontane cime innevate, che sembravano nuvole eterne che la circondavano. Le basi delle montagne che formavano la gola in cui sorgeva il piccolo villaggio erano riccamente verdi; più in alto, su questa vegetazione più tenera, si estendevano foreste di abeti scuri, che penetravano tra i cumuli di neve invernale, come se volessero fermare le valanghe. Ancora più in alto si susseguivano ripide creste rocciose, rocce grigie, ghiaccio brillante e piccoli appezzamenti di prato verde; tutto ciò si fondeva gradualmente con la neve che ricopriva ogni cosa. Qui e lì, sulle pendici delle montagne, si trovavano piccole capanne di legno; così minuscole rispetto alle imponenti cime circostanti da sembrare quasi giocattoli. Lo stesso valeva per il villaggio situato nella valle, con il suo ponte di legno che attraversava il ruscello, dove quest’ultimo si gettava giù tra le rocce frantumate e scorreva rumorosamente tra gli alberi. Nell’aria tranquilla risuonava la voce di cantanti lontani, voci di pastori; ma quando una nuvola luminosa fluttuò a metà della montagna, quasi credetti che quel canto provenisse da lì, e non fosse affatto musica terrena. All’improvviso, in quella serenità, la grande Natura mi parlò; mi consolò tanto che posai la mia testa stanca sull’erba e piansi, come non avevo più fatto da quando Dora era morta!
Avevo trovato un pacco di lettere che mi aspettavano, ma pochi minuti prima ero uscito dal villaggio per leggerle mentre preparavo la cena. Altri pacchi, invece, non mi erano arrivati; non ne avevo ricevuto nessuno da molto tempo. A parte una o due righe in cui dicevo di stare bene e di essere arrivato in un certo posto, non avevo avuto né la forza né la costanza di scrivere una lettera da quando ero partito da casa.
The packet was in my hand. I opened it, and read the writing of Agnes.
She was happy and useful, was prospering as she had hoped. That was all she told me of herself. The rest referred to me.
She gave me no advice; she urged no duty on me; she only told me, in her own fervent manner, what her trust in me was. She knew (she said) how such a nature as mine would turn affliction to good. She knew how trial and emotion would exalt and strengthen it. She was sure that in my every purpose I should gain a firmer and a higher tendency, through the grief I had undergone. She, who so gloried in my fame, and so looked forward to its augmentation, well knew that I would labour on. She knew that in me, sorrow could not be weakness, but must be strength. As the endurance of my childish days had done its part to make me what I was, so greater calamities would nerve me on, to be yet better than I was; and so, as they had taught me, would I teach others. She commended me to God, who had taken my innocent darling to His rest; and in her sisterly affection cherished me always, and was always at my side go where I would; proud of what I had done, but infinitely prouder yet of what I was reserved to do.
I put the letter in my breast, and thought what had I been an hour ago! When I heard the voices die away, and saw the quiet evening cloud grow dim, and all the colours in the valley fade, and the golden snow upon the mountain-tops become a remote part of the pale night sky, yet felt that the night was passing from my mind, and all its shadows clearing, there was no name for the love I bore her, dearer to me, henceforward, than ever until then.
I read her letter many times. I wrote to her before I slept. I told her that I had been in sore need of her help; that without her I was not, and I never had been, what she thought me; but that she inspired me to be that, and I would try.
I did try. In three months more, a year would have passed since the beginning of my sorrow. I determined to make no resolutions until the expiration of those three months, but to try. I lived in that valley, and its neighbourhood, all the time.
The three months gone, I resolved to remain away from home for some time longer; to settle myself for the present in Switzerland, which was growing dear to me in the remembrance of that evening; to resume my pen; to work.
I resorted humbly whither Agnes had commended me; I sought out Nature, never sought in vain; and I admitted to my breast the human interest I had lately shrunk from. It was not long, before I had almost as many friends in the valley as in Yarmouth: and when I left it, before the winter set in, for Geneva, and came back in the spring, their cordial greetings had a homely sound to me, although they were not conveyed in English words.
I worked early and late, patiently and hard. I wrote a Story, with a purpose growing, not remotely, out of my experience, and sent it to Traddles, and he arranged for its publication very advantageously for me; and the tidings of my growing reputation began to reach me from travellers whom I encountered by chance. After some rest and change, I fell to work, in my old ardent way, on a new fancy, which took strong possession of me. As I advanced in the execution of this task, I felt it more and more, and roused my utmost energies to do it well. This was my third work of fiction. It was not half written, when, in an interval of rest, I thought of returning home.
For a long time, though studying and working patiently, I had accustomed myself to robust exercise. My health, severely impaired when I left England, was quite restored. I had seen much. I had been in many countries, and I hope I had improved my store of knowledge.
I have now recalled all that I think it needful to recall here, of this term of absence—with one reservation. I have made it, thus far, with no purpose of suppressing any of my thoughts; for, as I have elsewhere said, this narrative is my written memory. I have desired to keep the most secret current of my mind apart, and to the last. I enter on it now. I cannot so completely penetrate the mystery of my own heart, as to know when I began to think that I might have set its earliest and brightest hopes on Agnes. I cannot say at what stage of my grief it first became associated with the reflection, that, in my wayward boyhood, I had thrown away the treasure of her love. I believe I may have heard some whisper of that distant thought, in the old unhappy loss or want of something never to be realized, of which I had been sensible. But the thought came into my mind as a new reproach and new regret, when I was left so sad and lonely in the world.
If, at that time, I had been much with her, I should, in the weakness of my desolation, have betrayed this. It was what I remotely dreaded when I was first impelled to stay away from England. I could not have borne to lose the smallest portion of her sisterly affection; yet, in that betrayal, I should have set a constraint between us hitherto unknown.
I could not forget that the feeling with which she now regarded me had grown up in my own free choice and course. That if she had ever loved me with another love—and I sometimes thought the time was when she might have done so—I had cast it away. It was nothing, now, that I had accustomed myself to think of her, when we were both mere children, as one who was far removed from my wild fancies. I had bestowed my passionate tenderness upon another object; and what I might have done, I had not done; and what Agnes was to me, I and her own noble heart had made her.
In the beginning of the change that gradually worked in me, when I tried to get a better understanding of myself and be a better man, I did glance, through some indefinite probation, to a period when I might possibly hope to cancel the mistaken past, and to be so blessed as to marry her. But, as time wore on, this shadowy prospect faded, and departed from me. If she had ever loved me, then, I should hold her the more sacred; remembering the confidences I had reposed in her, her knowledge of my errant heart, the sacrifice she must have made to be my friend and sister, and the victory she had won. If she had never loved me, could I believe that she would love me now?
Il pacchetto era nelle mie mani. L’aprii e lessi il messaggio di Agnes.
Era felice e utile; stava facendo progressi proprio come aveva sperato. Questo è tutto ciò che mi ha detto di sé. Il resto riguardava me.
Non mi diede nessun consiglio; non mi impose alcun dovere; mi disse soltanto, con la sua fervente sincerità, quanto fiducia avesse in me. Sapeva (disse) come una natura come la mia potesse trasformare il dolore in bene; sapeva come le prove e le emozioni potessero elevare e rafforzare tale natura. Era certa che, attraverso il dolore che avevo vissuto, ogni mio intento avrebbe assunto una direzione più ferma e nobile. Lei, che teneva tanto alla mia fama e sperava ardentemente nel suo ulteriore crescimento, sapeva bene che avrei continuato a lottare; sapeva che per me il dolore non poteva essere debolezza, ma doveva diventare forza. Proprio come la resistenza dei miei primi anni aveva contribuito a formarmi così com’ero, calamità ancora più grandi mi avrebbero reso ancora migliore; e così, proprio come esse mi avevano insegnato, anch’io avrei insegnato agli altri. Mi affidò a Dio, che aveva preso il mio caro innocente nel suo riposo; con un affetto fraterno mi protegge sempre e fu sempre al mio fianco, ovunque andassi; era orgogliosa di ciò che avevo fatto, ma ancora più orgogliosa di ciò che ero destinata a fare.
Misi quella lettera sul mio petto e pensai: “Cosa ero un’ora fa?”. Quando sentii le voci allontanarsi, vidi le nuvole della sera farsi più scure, tutti i colori della valle sbiadire. La neve dorata sui picchi delle montagne diventava parte di quel cielo notturno pallido. Eppure sentivo che la notte stessa stava svanendo dalla mia mente, che tutte le sue ombre si stavano dissipando. Non esisteva alcun nome per quell’amore che provavo per lei: da quel momento in poi, era più prezioso di quanto mai fosse stato prima.
Ho letto la sua lettera molte volte. Le ho scritto prima di addormentarmi. Le ho detto che avevo davvero bisogno del suo aiuto; che senza di lei non ero, e mai sarei stato, ciò che lei pensava fossi; ma che era stata lei ad ispirarmi a diventarlo, e che avrei provato.
Ho provato davvero. Tra altri tre mesi sarebbe passato un anno dal momento in cui è iniziata la mia sofferenza. Ho deciso di non prendere alcuna decisione fino alla scadenza di quei tre mesi, ma semplicemente di provare. Ho vissuto in quella valle e nelle sue vicinanze per tutto quel tempo.
Dopo quei tre mesi, decisi di rimanere lontano da >casa per ancora un po’ di tempo; di stabilirmi temporaneamente in Svizzera, che stava diventando sempre più cara a me grazie al ricordo di quella serata; di riprendere a scrivere, di lavorare.
Mi rivolsi umilmente là dove Agnes mi aveva consigliato di andare; cercai la >Natura, e non invano; ammisi nel mio cuore quell’interesse umano che poco prima avevo cercato di evitare. Non trascorse molto tempo che ebbi quasi altrettanti amici nella valle quanti ne avevo a Yarmouth; quando la lasciai, prima dell’inizio dell’>Inverno, per andare a Ginevra, e tornai nell’Primavera, i loro calorosi saluti mi suonarono familiari, anche se non erano espressi in parole inglesi.
Lavorai dall’alba al tramonto, con pazienza e impegno. Scrissi una storia il cui scopo, per niente legato alla mia esperienza personale, venne poi realizzato grazie alle cure di Traddles, che organizzò la sua pubblicazione in modo molto vantaggioso per me; in seguito, notizie della mia crescente reputazione iniziarono ad arrivarmi da viaggiatori che incontravo casualmente. Dopo un po’ di riposo e cambiamento, ripresi a lavorare con lo stesso fervore di sempre su una nuova idea che aveva preso il sopravvento nella mia mente. Man mano che procedevo nell’esecuzione di questo progetto, ne percepivo sempre più chiaramente l’importanza e dedicai tutte le mie energie a portarlo a termine con successo. Questa fu la mia terza opera di fantasia. Non era ancora stata nemmeno completata a metà quando, durante un periodo di pausa, pensai di tornare a casa.
Per un lungo periodo, nonostante studiassi e lavorassi con pazienza, mi ero abituato ad un’intensa attività fisica. La mia salute, gravemente compromessa quando lasciai l’Inghilterra, si era completamente ripresa. Avevo visto molte cose, avevo visitato molti paesi, e spero di aver arricchito le mie conoscenze.
Ora ho ricordato tutto ciò che ritengo necessario ricordare qui riguardo a questo periodo di assenza, con una sola riserva. Fino ad ora l’ho fatto senza alcuna intenzione di sopprimere i miei pensieri; infatti, come ho detto altrove, questa narrazione rappresenta la mia memoria scritta. Ho voluto tenere separato, fino all’ultimo momento, il flusso più segreto dei miei pensieri. Ora ne inizio a parlare. Non riesco a penetrare completamente nel mistero del mio stesso cuore: non so esattamente quando abbia iniziato a credere di aver riposto le mie speranze più belle e luminose su Agnes. Non posso dire in quale fase del mio dolore quel pensiero sia emerso per la prima volta. So soltanto che, durante la mia giovinezza capricciosa, avevo gettato via il tesoro del suo amore. Credo di aver sentito qualche accenno a quel pensiero lontano, in quei momenti di tristezza e di perdita, di qualcosa che non sarebbe mai stato realizzato. Ma quel pensiero è entrato nella mia mente come un nuovo rimprovero, come un nuovo dolore, quando sono rimasto così solo e triste nel mondo.
Se, in quel momento, fossi stato molto vicino a lei, nella debolezza della mia disperazione, l’avrei tradita. Era proprio ciò che temevo vagamente quando per la prima volta decisi di allontanarmi dall’Inghilterra. Non avrei potuto sopportare di perdere anche solo una piccola parte del suo affetto fraterno; eppure, con quella tradizione, avrei posto tra noi un ostacolo fino ad allora sconosciuto.
Non potevo dimenticare che il sentimento con cui lei ora mi considerava era nato dalla mia stessa scelta e volontà. Se mai mi avesse amato con un altro tipo di amore, e a volte pensavo che quel momento potesse essere stato quando avrebbe potuto farlo, l’avevo rifiutato io stesso. Ora non era più nulla; mi ero abituato a considerarla, quando entrambi eravamo ancora bambini, come qualcuno lontano dalle mie folli fantasie. Avevo rivolto la mia tenerezza appassionata verso un’altra persona; ciò che avrei potuto fare non l’avevo fatto; e ciò che Agnes rappresentava per me, era stato io stesso, insieme al suo nobile cuore, a crearlo.
All’inizio di quel cambiamento che gradualmente si verificò in me, quando cercai di comprendere meglio me stesso e di diventare una persona migliore, gettai uno sguardo, attraverso un periodo di incertezza, verso un futuro in cui forse avrei potuto >sperare di cancellare il passato errato e di essere così fortunato da sposarla. Ma con il passare del tempo, questa vaga prospettiva svanì e mi lasciò indietro. Se lei mi aveva mai amato, allora avrei dovuto considerarla ancora più sacra; ricordando le confidenze che le avevo affidato, la sua conoscenza dei miei errori, il sacrificio che doveva aver fatto per essere mia amica e sorella, e la vittoria che aveva ottenuto. Ma se lei non mi aveva mai amato, come potevo credere che ora mi amasse?
I had always felt my weakness, in comparison with her constancy and fortitude; and now I felt it more and more. Whatever I might have been to her, or she to me, if I had been more worthy of her long ago, I was not now, and she was not. The time was past. I had let it go by, and had deservedly lost her.
That I suffered much in these contentions, that they filled me with unhappiness and remorse, and yet that I had a sustaining sense that it was required of me, in right and honour, to keep away from myself, with shame, the thought of turning to the dear girl in the withering of my hopes, from whom I had frivolously turned when they were bright and fresh—which consideration was at the root of every thought I had concerning her—is all equally true. I made no effort to conceal from myself, now, that I loved her, that I was devoted to her; but I brought the assurance home to myself, that it was now too late, and that our long-subsisting relation must be undisturbed.
I had thought, much and often, of my Dora’s shadowing out to me what might have happened, in those years that were destined not to try us; I had considered how the things that never happen, are often as much realities to us, in their effects, as those that are accomplished. The very years she spoke of, were realities now, for my correction; and would have been, one day, a little later perhaps, though we had parted in our earliest folly. I endeavoured to convert what might have been between myself and Agnes, into a means of making me more self-denying, more resolved, more conscious of myself, and my defects and errors. Thus, through the reflection that it might have been, I arrived at the conviction that it could never be.
These, with their perplexities and inconsistencies, were the shifting quicksands of my mind, from the time of my departure to the time of my return home, three years afterwards. Three years had elapsed since the sailing of the emigrant ship; when, at that same hour of sunset, and in the same place, I stood on the deck of the packet vessel that brought me home, looking on the rosy water where I had seen the image of that ship reflected.
Three years. Long in the aggregate, though short as they went by. And home was very dear to me, and Agnes too—but she was not mine—she was never to be mine. She might have been, but that was past!
Avevo sempre percepito la mia debolezza, rispetto alla sua costanza e forza d’animo; ora la sentivo ancora di più. Qualunque cosa fossi stato per lei, o lei per me, se tanto tempo fa fossi stato degno di lei, ora non lo ero più, e nemmeno lei lo era. Quel tempo era ormai passato. L’avevo lasciato andare via, e meritatamente l’avevo persa.
Che abbia sofferto molto in queste contese, che esse mi abbiano riempito di infelicità e rimorso, eppure che avessi la ferma convinzione che fosse mio dovere, per giustizia e onore, allontanare da me, con vergogna, l’idea di rivolgermi a quella cara ragazza nel momento in cui le mie speranze stavano appassendo. L’idea che mi aveva spinto ad allontanarmi da lei quando queste speranze erano ancora vive e fresche. Questo è tutto vero. Ora non cerco più di nascondere a me stesso che la amo, che sono devoto a lei; ma sono giunto alla conclusione che ormai sia troppo tardi, e che il nostro rapporto, durato così a lungo, debba rimanere inalterato.
Avevo spesso e molto riflettuto su ciò che avrebbe potuto accadere tra me e Agnes in quegli anni destinati a non metterci alla prova; avevo considerato come le cose che non accadono siano spesso, per i loro effetti, altrettanto reali di quelle che invece si realizzano. Gli stessi anni di cui lei parlava erano ormai diventati realtà, almeno per il mio bene; e forse sarebbero diventati realtà un giorno, anche se ci fossimo separati nella nostra prima follia. Cercai quindi di trasformare ciò che avrebbe potuto accadere in un mezzo per rendermi più disposto a rinunciare a me stesso, più risoluto, più consapevole di me stesso, dei miei difetti e degli errori. Così, riflettendo su ciò che avrebbe potuto essere, giunsi alla conclusione che in realtà non sarebbe mai potuto accadere.
Queste incertezze e contraddizioni rappresentavano i “dissolvi terreni” della mia mente, dal momento della mia partenza fino al mio ritorno a casa, tre anni dopo. Erano trascorsi tre anni dalla partenza della nave degli emigranti; in quella stessa ora del tramonto, nello stesso luogo, mi trovavo sul ponte della nave che mi riportava a casa, guardando le acque rosate su cui avevo visto riflettersi l’immagine di quella nave.
Tre anni. Un periodo lungo nel complesso, anche se veloce quando si viveva quei momenti. E >casa era molto cara per me, così come Agnes. Ma lei non era mia. Non lo sarebbe mai stata. Forse avrebbe potuto esserlo, ma ormai era troppo tardi!
CHAPTER 59. RETURN
I landed in London on a wintry autumn evening. It was dark and raining, and I saw more fog and mud in a minute than I had seen in a year. I walked from the Custom House to the Monument before I found a coach; and although the very house-fronts, looking on the swollen gutters, were like old friends to me, I could not but admit that they were very dingy friends.
I have often remarked—I suppose everybody has—that one’s going away from a familiar place, would seem to be the signal for change in it. As I looked out of the coach window, and observed that an old house on Fish-street Hill, which had stood untouched by painter, carpenter, or bricklayer, for a century, had been pulled down in my absence; and that a neighbouring street, of time-honoured insalubrity and inconvenience, was being drained and widened; I half expected to find St. Paul’s Cathedral looking older.
For some changes in the fortunes of my friends, I was prepared. My aunt had long been re-established at Dover, and Traddles had begun to get into some little practice at the Bar, in the very first term after my departure. He had chambers in Gray’s Inn, now; and had told me, in his last letters, that he was not without hopes of being soon united to the dearest girl in the world.
They expected me home before Christmas; but had no idea of my returning so soon. I had purposely misled them, that I might have the pleasure of taking them by surprise. And yet, I was perverse enough to feel a chill and disappointment in receiving no welcome, and rattling, alone and silent, through the misty streets.
The well-known shops, however, with their cheerful lights, did something for me; and when I alighted at the door of the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house, I had recovered my spirits. It recalled, at first, that so-different time when I had put up at the Golden Cross, and reminded me of the changes that had come to pass since then; but that was natural.
‘Do you know where Mr. Traddles lives in the Inn?’ I asked the waiter, as I warmed myself by the coffee-room fire.
‘Holborn Court, sir. Number two.’
‘Mr. Traddles has a rising reputation among the lawyers, I believe?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ returned the waiter, ‘probably he has, sir; but I am not aware of it myself.’
This waiter, who was middle-aged and spare, looked for help to a waiter of more authority—a stout, potential old man, with a double chin, in black breeches and stockings, who came out of a place like a churchwarden’s pew, at the end of the coffee-room, where he kept company with a cash-box, a Directory, a Law-list, and other books and papers.
‘Mr. Traddles,’ said the spare waiter. ‘Number two in the Court.’
The potential waiter waved him away, and turned, gravely, to me.
‘I was inquiring,’ said I, ‘whether Mr. Traddles, at number two in the Court, has not a rising reputation among the lawyers?’
‘Never heard his name,’ said the waiter, in a rich husky voice.
I felt quite apologetic for Traddles.
‘He’s a young man, sure?’ said the portentous waiter, fixing his eyes severely on me. ‘How long has he been in the Inn?’
‘Not above three years,’ said I.
The waiter, who I supposed had lived in his churchwarden’s pew for forty years, could not pursue such an insignificant subject. He asked me what I would have for dinner?
I felt I was in England again, and really was quite cast down on Traddles’s account. There seemed to be no hope for him. I meekly ordered a bit of fish and a steak, and stood before the fire musing on his obscurity.
As I followed the chief waiter with my eyes, I could not help thinking that the garden in which he had gradually blown to be the flower he was, was an arduous place to rise in. It had such a prescriptive, stiff-necked, long-established, solemn, elderly air. I glanced about the room, which had had its sanded floor sanded, no doubt, in exactly the same manner when the chief waiter was a boy—if he ever was a boy, which appeared improbable; and at the shining tables, where I saw myself reflected, in unruffled depths of old mahogany; and at the lamps, without a flaw in their trimming or cleaning; and at the comfortable green curtains, with their pure brass rods, snugly enclosing the boxes; and at the two large coal fires, brightly burning; and at the rows of decanters, burly as if with the consciousness of pipes of expensive old port wine below; and both England, and the law, appeared to me to be very difficult indeed to be taken by storm. I went up to my bedroom to change my wet clothes; and the vast extent of that old wainscoted apartment (which was over the archway leading to the Inn, I remember), and the sedate immensity of the four-post bedstead, and the indomitable gravity of the chests of drawers, all seemed to unite in sternly frowning on the fortunes of Traddles, or on any such daring youth. I came down again to my dinner; and even the slow comfort of the meal, and the orderly silence of the place—which was bare of guests, the Long Vacation not yet being over—were eloquent on the audacity of Traddles, and his small hopes of a livelihood for twenty years to come.
I had seen nothing like this since I went away, and it quite dashed my hopes for my friend. The chief waiter had had enough of me. He came near me no more; but devoted himself to an old gentleman in long gaiters, to meet whom a pint of special port seemed to come out of the cellar of its own accord, for he gave no order. The second waiter informed me, in a whisper, that this old gentleman was a retired conveyancer living in the Square, and worth a mint of money, which it was expected he would leave to his laundress’s daughter; likewise that it was rumoured that he had a service of plate in a bureau, all tarnished with lying by, though more than one spoon and a fork had never yet been beheld in his chambers by mortal vision. By this time, I quite gave Traddles up for lost; and settled in my own mind that there was no hope for him.
CAPITOLO 59. RITORNO
Sbarcai a Londra in una serata d’autunno invernale. Era buio e pioveva; vidi più nebbia e fango in un minuto di quanti ne avessi visti in un anno intero. Camminai dalla Dogana al Monument prima di trovare una carrozza; e sebbene le facciate stesse delle case, affacciate sui rigagnoli gonfi, mi fossero care come vecchi amici, non potei fare a meno di ammettere che erano amici piuttosto sudici.
Ho spesso osservato — e suppongo lo abbiano fatto tutti — che l’andarsene da un luogo familiare sembra dare il segnale di un cambiamento in esso. Mentre guardavo fuori dal finestrino della carrozza, notai che una vecchia casa su Fish-street Hill, rimasta intatta da imbianchini, falegnami e muratori per un secolo, era stata abbattuta durante la mia assenza; e la strada vicina, di un’insalubrità e scomodità onorate dal tempo, veniva prosciugata e allargata; quasi mi aspettavo di trovare la Cattedrale di St. Paul più vecchia.
A certi cambiamenti nelle fortune dei miei amici ero preparato. Mia zia si era da tempo ristabilita a Dover, e Traddles aveva cominciato a farsi un po’ di pratica al Foro, nel primo periodo dopo la mia partenza. Ora aveva uno studio a Gray’s Inn; e mi aveva scritto, nelle ultime lettere, che non era privo di speranze di unirsi presto alla più cara ragazza del mondo.
Mi aspettavano a casa prima di Natale; ma non avevano idea che tornassi così presto. Li avevo tratti in inganno di proposito, per potermi prendere il piacere di coglierli di sorpresa. Eppure ero abbastanza perverso da provare una fredda delusione nel non ricevere alcun benvenuto, mentre sferragliavo solo e silenzioso per le strade nebbiose.
Le botteghe ben note, tuttavia, con le loro luci allegre, fecero qualcosa per me; e quando scesi alla porta del Gray’s Inn Coffee-house, ritrovai il buon umore. Dapprima mi ricordò il tempo tanto diverso in cui avevo alloggiato al Golden Cross, e mi rammentò i cambiamenti avvenuti da allora; ma questo era naturale.
‘Sapete dove abita il signor Traddles, qui all’Inn?’ chiesi al cameriere, mentre mi scaldavo accanto al fuoco della sala del caffè.
‘Holborn Court, signore. Numero due.’
‘Il signor Traddles gode di una reputazione crescente tra gli avvocati, credo?’ dissi io.
‘Beh, signore,’ rispose il cameriere, ‘probabilmente sì, signore; ma io non ne sono al corrente.’
Questo cameriere, di mezza età e magro, cercò aiuto in un cameriere di maggiore autorità — un vecchio robusto e influente, con un doppio mento, in calzoni e calze neri, che uscì da un posto simile al banco di un sagrestano, in fondo alla sala del caffè, dove teneva compagnia alla cassetta del denaro, all’Elenco, alla Lista degli avvocati e ad altri libri e carte.
‘Il signor Traddles,’ disse il cameriere magro. ‘Numero due nel Court.’
Il cameriere influente lo scacciò con un gesto, si voltò e, con gravità, si rivolse a me.
‘Stavo chiedendo,’ dissi, ‘se il signor Traddles, numero due nel Court, non abbia una reputazione crescente tra gli avvocati.’
‘Mai sentito quel nome,’ disse il cameriere, con voce ricca e rauca.
Mi sentii quasi in dovere di scusarmi per Traddles.
‘È un giovanotto, immagino?’ disse il cameriere solenne, fissandomi con severità. ‘Da quanto tempo è all’Inn?’
‘Non più di tre anni,’ dissi io.
Il cameriere, che supponevo avesse vissuto nel banco del sagrestano per quarant’anni, non poté proseguire un argomento tanto insignificante. Mi chiese cosa desiderassi per cena.
Sentii di essere di nuovo in Inghilterra, ed ero davvero molto abbattuto per via di Traddles. Sembrava non esserci alcuna speranza per lui. Ordinai umilmente un pezzetto di pesce e una bistecca, e me ne stetti davanti al fuoco a rimuginare sulla sua oscurità.
Mentre seguivo con gli occhi il cameriere capo, non potei fare a meno di pensare che il giardino in cui era gradualmente sbocciato fino a diventare il fiore che era fosse un luogo arduo in cui crescere. Aveva un’aria così prescrittiva, rigida, radicata, solenne e attempata. Diedi un’occhiata alla sala, il cui pavimento cosparso di sabbia era stato cosparso, senza dubbio, esattamente allo stesso modo di quando il cameriere capo era un ragazzo — se mai lo era stato, cosa che pareva improbabile; e ai tavoli lucenti, dove mi vedevo riflesso, nelle placide profondità del vecchio mogano; alle lampade, senza un difetto nella regolazione o nella pulizia; alle comode tende verdi, con le loro pure aste d’ottone, che racchiudevano accoglienti i séparé; ai due grandi fuochi di carbone, che ardevano vivaci; e alle file di caraffe, corpulente come se fossero consapevoli delle botti di costoso e vecchio vino di porto lì sotto; e sia l’Inghilterra sia la legge mi parvero davvero molto difficili da espugnare con una tempesta. Salii nella mia camera per cambiarmi gli abiti bagnati; la vasta e posata immensità del letto a quattro colonne, l’indomabile gravità dei cassettoni, tutto sembrava unirsi nel guardare severamente accigliato le fortune di Traddles, o di qualunque simile audace giovane. Scesi di nuovo per la cena; perfino la lenta comodità del pasto, il silenzio ordinato del luogo — quasi privo di ospiti, non essendo ancora finite le lunghe vacanze — erano eloquenti sull’audacia di Traddles e sulle scarse speranze di guadagnarsi da vivere per i vent’anni a venire.
Non avevo visto nulla di simile da quando ero partito, e ciò abbatté del tutto le mie speranze per il mio amico. Il cameriere capo ne aveva avuto abbastanza di me. Non mi si avvicinò più; ma si dedicò a un vecchio signore in lunghe ghette, per incontrare il quale una pinta di porto speciale sembrò uscire dalla cantina di sua spontanea volontà, poiché egli non diede alcun ordine. Il secondo cameriere mi informò, in un sussurro, che quel vecchio signore era un notaio in pensione che viveva nella Square, ricco sfondato, e che si diceva avrebbe lasciato tutto alla figlia della sua lavandaia; si vociferava inoltre che tenesse un servizio di piatti d’argento nel cassettone, tutto annerito dall’inattività, benché più di un cucchiaio e una forchetta non fossero mai stati scorti da occhio mortale nel suo studio. A questo punto, avevo ormai dato Traddles per perso; e stabilii nella mia mente che non c’era alcuna speranza per lui.
Being very anxious to see the dear old fellow, nevertheless, I dispatched my dinner, in a manner not at all calculated to raise me in the opinion of the chief waiter, and hurried out by the back way. Number two in the Court was soon reached; and an inscription on the door-post informing me that Mr. Traddles occupied a set of chambers on the top storey, I ascended the staircase. A crazy old staircase I found it to be, feebly lighted on each landing by a club-headed little oil wick, dying away in a little dungeon of dirty glass.
In the course of my stumbling upstairs, I fancied I heard a pleasant sound of laughter; and not the laughter of an attorney or barrister, or attorney’s clerk or barrister’s clerk, but of two or three merry girls. Happening, however, as I stopped to listen, to put my foot in a hole where the Honourable Society of Gray’s Inn had left a plank deficient, I fell down with some noise, and when I recovered my footing all was silent.
Groping my way more carefully, for the rest of the journey, my heart beat high when I found the outer door, which had Mr. TRADDLES painted on it, open. I knocked. A considerable scuffling within ensued, but nothing else. I therefore knocked again.
A small sharp-looking lad, half-footboy and half-clerk, who was very much out of breath, but who looked at me as if he defied me to prove it legally, presented himself.
‘Is Mr. Traddles within?’ I said.
‘Yes, sir, but he’s engaged.’
‘I want to see him.’
After a moment’s survey of me, the sharp-looking lad decided to let me in; and opening the door wider for that purpose, admitted me, first, into a little closet of a hall, and next into a little sitting-room; where I came into the presence of my old friend (also out of breath), seated at a table, and bending over papers.
‘Good God!’ cried Traddles, looking up. ‘It’s Copperfield!’ and rushed into my arms, where I held him tight.
‘All well, my dear Traddles?’
‘All well, my dear, dear Copperfield, and nothing but good news!’
We cried with pleasure, both of us.
‘My dear fellow,’ said Traddles, rumpling his hair in his excitement, which was a most unnecessary operation, ‘my dearest Copperfield, my long-lost and most welcome friend, how glad I am to see you! How brown you are! How glad I am! Upon my life and honour, I never was so rejoiced, my beloved Copperfield, never!’
I was equally at a loss to express my emotions. I was quite unable to speak, at first.
‘My dear fellow!’ said Traddles. ‘And grown so famous! My glorious Copperfield! Good gracious me, WHEN did you come, WHERE have you come from, WHAT have you been doing?’
Never pausing for an answer to anything he said, Traddles, who had clapped me into an easy-chair by the fire, all this time impetuously stirred the fire with one hand, and pulled at my neck-kerchief with the other, under some wild delusion that it was a great-coat. Without putting down the poker, he now hugged me again; and I hugged him; and, both laughing, and both wiping our eyes, we both sat down, and shook hands across the hearth.
‘To think,’ said Traddles, ‘that you should have been so nearly coming home as you must have been, my dear old boy, and not at the ceremony!’
‘What ceremony, my dear Traddles?’
‘Good gracious me!’ cried Traddles, opening his eyes in his old way. ‘Didn’t you get my last letter?’
‘Certainly not, if it referred to any ceremony.’
‘Why, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, sticking his hair upright with both hands, and then putting his hands on my knees, ‘I am married!’
‘Married!’ I cried joyfully.
‘Lord bless me, yes!’ said Traddles—‘by the Reverend Horace—to Sophy—down in Devonshire. Why, my dear boy, she’s behind the window curtain! Look here!’
To my amazement, the dearest girl in the world came at that same instant, laughing and blushing, from her place of concealment. And a more cheerful, amiable, honest, happy, bright-looking bride, I believe (as I could not help saying on the spot) the world never saw. I kissed her as an old acquaintance should, and wished them joy with all my might of heart.
‘Dear me,’ said Traddles, ‘what a delightful re-union this is! You are so extremely brown, my dear Copperfield! God bless my soul, how happy I am!’
‘And so am I,’ said I.
‘And I am sure I am!’ said the blushing and laughing Sophy.
‘We are all as happy as possible!’ said Traddles. ‘Even the girls are happy. Dear me, I declare I forgot them!’
‘Forgot?’ said I.
‘The girls,’ said Traddles. ‘Sophy’s sisters. They are staying with us. They have come to have a peep at London. The fact is, when—was it you that tumbled upstairs, Copperfield?’
‘It was,’ said I, laughing.
‘Well then, when you tumbled upstairs,’ said Traddles, ‘I was romping with the girls. In point of fact, we were playing at Puss in the Corner. But as that wouldn’t do in Westminster Hall, and as it wouldn’t look quite professional if they were seen by a client, they decamped. And they are now—listening, I have no doubt,’ said Traddles, glancing at the door of another room.
‘I am sorry,’ said I, laughing afresh, ‘to have occasioned such a dispersion.’
‘Upon my word,’ rejoined Traddles, greatly delighted, ‘if you had seen them running away, and running back again, after you had knocked, to pick up the combs they had dropped out of their hair, and going on in the maddest manner, you wouldn’t have said so. My love, will you fetch the girls?’
Sophy tripped away, and we heard her received in the adjoining room with a peal of laughter.
‘Really musical, isn’t it, my dear Copperfield?’ said Traddles. ‘It’s very agreeable to hear. It quite lights up these old rooms. To an unfortunate bachelor of a fellow who has lived alone all his life, you know, it’s positively delicious. It’s charming. Poor things, they have had a great loss in Sophy—who, I do assure you, Copperfield is, and ever was, the dearest girl!—and it gratifies me beyond expression to find them in such good spirits. The society of girls is a very delightful thing, Copperfield. It’s not professional, but it’s very delightful.’
Essendo molto ansioso di vedere quel caro vecchio amico, nonostante tutto, finii rapidamente la mia cena – in un modo che certamente non avrebbe migliorato la mia opinione presso il capocameriere – e uscii di fretta dalla porta posteriore. Presto raggiunsi il numero due della Corte; un’iscrizione sul battente mi informò che il signor Traddles occupava degli appartamenti al piano superiore, così salii le scale. Che scala folle. Ogni pianerottolo era debolmente illuminato da una piccola lampada a olio con becco a forma di mazza, la cui luce si spegneva in un angolo buio e pieno di vetri sporchi.
Mentre cercavo goffamente di salire le scale, mi sembrò di sentire una piacevole risata; non la risata di un avvocato o di uno studio legale, ma di due o tre ragazze allegre. Tuttavia, quando mi fermai ad ascoltare, misi il piede in un buco lasciato aperto da una tavola mancante del Gray’s Inn. Caddi facendo un po’ di rumore, e quando riuscii a riprendere l’equilibrio, tutto era silenzio.
Procedendo con maggiore attenzione per il resto della passeggiata, il mio cuore batteva forte quando trovai la porta esterna, su cui era dipinto il nome del signor TRADDLES, aperta. Bussai. All’interno si udirono alcuni rumori confusi, ma nient’altro. Così bussai di nuovo.
Un ragazzo piccolo e dall’aspetto deciso, metà ragazzo di servizio e metà impiegato, che era molto senza fiato, ma che mi guardava come se mi sfidasse a dimostrarlo legalmente, si presentò.
“Il signor Traddles è dentro?” chiesi.
“Sì, signore, ma è già impegnato.”
“Voglio vederlo.”
Dopo avermi osservato per un momento, il ragazzo dall’aspetto deciso decise di lasciarmi entrare; allargò quindi la porta e mi fece prima passare in una piccola stanza adiacente all’ingresso, e poi in un piccolo salotto. Lì incontrai il mio vecchio amico (anch’egli senza fiato), seduto a un tavolo e intento a leggere dei documenti.
“Mio Dio!” esclamò Traddles alzando lo sguardo. “È Copperfield!” e si gettò tra le mie braccia; io lo strinsi forte a me.
“Ah, mio caro Traddles, ”
“Ah, mio caro, caro Copperfield, solo buone notizie!”
Abbiamo pianto di gioia, entrambi.
“Mio caro amico,” disse Traddles, arruffandosi i capelli per l’emozione, un gesto del tutto inutile, “mio carissimo Copperfield, mio vecchio e tanto atteso amico. Che gioia rivederti! Sei così abbronzato. Che felicità! Sul mio onore, non sono mai stato così contento in vita mia, mio adorato Copperfield, davvero mai!”
Anch’io ero completamente incapace di esprimere i miei sentimenti. All’inizio, non riuscivo affatto a parlare.
“Mio caro amico!” disse Traddles. “E sei diventato così famoso. Il mio glorioso Copperfield! Buon Dio, quando sei arrivato? Da dove vieni? Cosa hai fatto in tutto questo tempo?”
Senza mai aspettare una risposta a nulla di ciò che diceva, Traddles, che mi aveva fatto sedere in una poltrona vicino al focolare, continuava imperterritamente a ravvivare il fuoco con una mano e a tirare il mio fazzoletto per il collo con l’altra, convinto, chissà per quale folle idea, che si trattasse di un cappotto pesante. Senza nemmeno posare la paletta, mi abbracciò di nuovo; anch’io lo abbracciai. Ridendo e asciugandoci le lacrime, ci sedemmo entrambi e stringemmo la mano sopra il camino.
“Pensarci, ”, disse Traddles, “che tu fossi quasi arrivato a casa, mio caro vecchio amico, e invece non alla cerimonia, ”
“Che cerimonia, mio caro Traddles?”
“Mio Dio!” esclamò Traddles, aprendo gli occhi nel suo solito modo. “Non hai ricevuto la mia ultima lettera?”
Certamente no, se si riferisse a qualche cerimonia.
“Perché, mio caro Copperfield,” disse Traddles, sistemandosi i capelli dritti con entrambe le mani e poi posandole sulle mie ginocchia, “sono sposato!”
“Sposata!”, esclamai felice.
“Signore, beneditemi, sì!” disse Traddles. “Per il reverendo Horace, a Sophie, laggiù nel Devonshire. Ma guarda, caro ragazzo: è proprio dietro la tenda della finestra! Guarda qui!”
Per mia grande sorpresa, la ragazza più cara del mondo arrivò proprio in quel momento, ridendo e arrossendo, dal suo nascondiglio. E credo che non ci sia mai stata una sposa più allegra, più gentile, più onesta, più felice e più bella. Non potei fare a meno di dirlo lì stesso. La baciai come si farebbe con un’antica conoscenza e desiderai loro tutta la gioia possibile con tutto il cuore.
“Mio Dio,” disse Traddles, “che deliziosa riunione! Sei così abbronzato, caro Copperfield. Che Dio benedica la mia anima, quanto sono felice!”
“Anch’io lo sono,” dissi.
“E ne sono sicura!” disse Sophie, arrossendo e ridendo.
“Siamo tutti il più felici possibile!”, disse Traddles. “Anche le ragazze sono felici. Oddio, devo ammettere di averle dimenticate!”
“Dimenticato?”, dissi io.
“Le ragazze,” disse Traddles. “Le sorelle di Sophie. Stanno da noi. Sono venute per dare un’occhiata a Londra. A dire il vero, è stato tu a cadere al piano di sopra, vero, Copperfield?”
“Era proprio così,” dissi ridendo.
“Allora,” disse Traddles, “quando sei caduto di sopra, io stavo giocando con le ragazze. In realtà, stavamo facendo ‘La Gatta nell’Angolo’. Ma visto che questo non sarebbe stato appropriato per la Westminster Hall, e che non sembrerebbe molto professionale se un cliente ci vedesse, beh, sono andate via. E ora sicuramente stanno ascoltando,” aggiunse Traddles, lanciando uno sguardo verso la porta di un’altra stanza.
“Mi dispiace,” dissi ridendo di nuovo, “di aver causato una tale dispersione.”
“Per la mia parola,” riprese Traddles, molto compiaciuto, “se solo li aveste visti scappare e poi tornare indietro subito dopo che avevate bussato, per raccogliere le pettine che si erano fatte cadere dai capelli, e comportarsi in modo davvero pazzesco, non avreste detto così. Mia amata, vuoi andare a chiamare le ragazze?”
Sophy inciampò e si allontanò; sentimmo che veniva accolta nella stanza adiacente con una risata fragorosa.
“Davvero molto musicale, non è vero, caro Copperfield?” disse Traddles. “È davvero piacevole ascoltarlo. Rende queste vecchie stanze molto più accoglienti. Per un povero scapolo che ha vissuto da solo per tutta la vita, sai, è davvero delizioso. È incantevole. Povere persone. Hanno subito una grande perdita con Sophy. Che, ti assicuro, Copperfield, era e sarà sempre la ragazza più cara che esista. E mi rende immensamente felice vederli di così buon umore. La compagnia delle ragazze è davvero qualcosa di meraviglioso, Copperfield. Non è certo “professionale”, ma è davvero molto piacevole.”
Observing that he slightly faltered, and comprehending that in the goodness of his heart he was fearful of giving me some pain by what he had said, I expressed my concurrence with a heartiness that evidently relieved and pleased him greatly.
‘But then,’ said Traddles, ‘our domestic arrangements are, to say the truth, quite unprofessional altogether, my dear Copperfield. Even Sophy’s being here, is unprofessional. And we have no other place of abode. We have put to sea in a cockboat, but we are quite prepared to rough it. And Sophy’s an extraordinary manager! You’ll be surprised how those girls are stowed away. I am sure I hardly know how it’s done!’
‘Are many of the young ladies with you?’ I inquired.
‘The eldest, the Beauty is here,’ said Traddles, in a low confidential voice, ‘Caroline. And Sarah’s here—the one I mentioned to you as having something the matter with her spine, you know. Immensely better! And the two youngest that Sophy educated are with us. And Louisa’s here.’
‘Indeed!’ cried I.
‘Yes,’ said Traddles. ‘Now the whole set—I mean the chambers—is only three rooms; but Sophy arranges for the girls in the most wonderful way, and they sleep as comfortably as possible. Three in that room,’ said Traddles, pointing. ‘Two in that.’
I could not help glancing round, in search of the accommodation remaining for Mr. and Mrs. Traddles. Traddles understood me.
‘Well!’ said Traddles, ‘we are prepared to rough it, as I said just now, and we did improvise a bed last week, upon the floor here. But there’s a little room in the roof—a very nice room, when you’re up there—which Sophy papered herself, to surprise me; and that’s our room at present. It’s a capital little gipsy sort of place. There’s quite a view from it.’
‘And you are happily married at last, my dear Traddles!’ said I. ‘How rejoiced I am!’
‘Thank you, my dear Copperfield,’ said Traddles, as we shook hands once more. ‘Yes, I am as happy as it’s possible to be. There’s your old friend, you see,’ said Traddles, nodding triumphantly at the flower-pot and stand; ‘and there’s the table with the marble top! All the other furniture is plain and serviceable, you perceive. And as to plate, Lord bless you, we haven’t so much as a tea-spoon.’
‘All to be earned?’ said I, cheerfully.
‘Exactly so,’ replied Traddles, ‘all to be earned. Of course we have something in the shape of tea-spoons, because we stir our tea. But they’re Britannia metal.’
‘The silver will be the brighter when it comes,’ said I.
‘The very thing we say!’ cried Traddles. ‘You see, my dear Copperfield,’ falling again into the low confidential tone, ‘after I had delivered my argument in DOE dem. JIPES versus WIGZIELL, which did me great service with the profession, I went down into Devonshire, and had some serious conversation in private with the Reverend Horace. I dwelt upon the fact that Sophy—who I do assure you, Copperfield, is the dearest girl!—’
‘I am certain she is!’ said I.
‘She is, indeed!’ rejoined Traddles. ‘But I am afraid I am wandering from the subject. Did I mention the Reverend Horace?’
‘You said that you dwelt upon the fact—’
‘True! Upon the fact that Sophy and I had been engaged for a long period, and that Sophy, with the permission of her parents, was more than content to take me—in short,’ said Traddles, with his old frank smile, ‘on our present Britannia-metal footing. Very well. I then proposed to the Reverend Horace—who is a most excellent clergyman, Copperfield, and ought to be a Bishop; or at least ought to have enough to live upon, without pinching himself—that if I could turn the corner, say of two hundred and fifty pounds, in one year; and could see my way pretty clearly to that, or something better, next year; and could plainly furnish a little place like this, besides; then, and in that case, Sophy and I should be united. I took the liberty of representing that we had been patient for a good many years; and that the circumstance of Sophy’s being extraordinarily useful at home, ought not to operate with her affectionate parents, against her establishment in life—don’t you see?’
‘Certainly it ought not,’ said I.
‘I am glad you think so, Copperfield,’ rejoined Traddles, ‘because, without any imputation on the Reverend Horace, I do think parents, and brothers, and so forth, are sometimes rather selfish in such cases. Well! I also pointed out, that my most earnest desire was, to be useful to the family; and that if I got on in the world, and anything should happen to him—I refer to the Reverend Horace—’
‘I understand,’ said I.
‘—Or to Mrs. Crewler—it would be the utmost gratification of my wishes, to be a parent to the girls. He replied in a most admirable manner, exceedingly flattering to my feelings, and undertook to obtain the consent of Mrs. Crewler to this arrangement. They had a dreadful time of it with her. It mounted from her legs into her chest, and then into her head—’
‘What mounted?’ I asked.
‘Her grief,’ replied Traddles, with a serious look. ‘Her feelings generally. As I mentioned on a former occasion, she is a very superior woman, but has lost the use of her limbs. Whatever occurs to harass her, usually settles in her legs; but on this occasion it mounted to the chest, and then to the head, and, in short, pervaded the whole system in a most alarming manner. However, they brought her through it by unremitting and affectionate attention; and we were married yesterday six weeks. You have no idea what a Monster I felt, Copperfield, when I saw the whole family crying and fainting away in every direction! Mrs. Crewler couldn’t see me before we left—couldn’t forgive me, then, for depriving her of her child—but she is a good creature, and has done so since. I had a delightful letter from her, only this morning.’
‘And in short, my dear friend,’ said I, ‘you feel as blest as you deserve to feel!’
‘Oh! That’s your partiality!’ laughed Traddles. ‘But, indeed, I am in a most enviable state. I work hard, and read Law insatiably. I get up at five every morning, and don’t mind it at all. I hide the girls in the daytime, and make merry with them in the evening. And I assure you I am quite sorry that they are going home on Tuesday, which is the day before the first day of Michaelmas Term. But here,’ said Traddles, breaking off in his confidence, and speaking aloud, ‘ARE the girls! Mr. Copperfield, Miss Crewler—Miss Sarah—Miss Louisa—Margaret and Lucy!’
Notando che esitava leggermente, e comprendendo che, per bontà d’animo, temeva di causarmi qualche dolore con ciò che stava dicendo, espressi il mio accordo con grande sincerità, il che ovviamente lo rassicurò molto e lo rese felice.
“Ma poi,” disse Traddles, “devo dire la verità, le nostre sistemazioni domestiche sono davvero del tutto inadeguate. Anche il fatto che Sophie sia qui è inappropriato. E non abbiamo nessun altro posto dove vivere. Siamo partiti su una piccola barca, ma siamo pronti ad affrontare qualsiasi difficoltà. E Sophie è davvero un’organizzatrice straordinaria! Sarai sorpreso da come quelle ragazze siano state sistemate. Sono sicuro di non sapere nemmeno io come sia stato fatto!”
“Ci sono molte giovani signore con voi?” chiesi.
“La maggiore, la Bellezza, è qui,” disse Traddles a voce bassa e confidenziale, “Caroline. E anche Sarah è qui – quella di cui ti ho parlato, che ha qualche problema alla schiena, sai. Sta molto meglio ora! Inoltre, le due più giovani che Sophy ha educato sono con noi. E c’è anche Louisa.”
“Certamente!” esclamai.
“Sì,” disse Traddles. “Ora l’intero appartamento, intendo dire le stanze, sono soltanto tre; ma Sophy organizza tutto in modo meraviglioso, e le ragazze dormono il più comodamente possibile. Tre in quella stanza,” disse Traddles, indicando. “Due in un’altra.”
Non potei fare a meno di guardarmi intorno, alla ricerca dell’alloggio che doveva ancora essere disponibile per il signor e la signora Traddles. Traddles capì ciò che intendevo.
‘Bene!’ disse Traddles, ‘siamo pronti ad affrontare qualsiasi difficoltà, come ho appena detto; la scorsa settimana abbiamo addirittura improvvisato un letto qui sul pavimento. Ma c’è uno spazio nel soffitto, uno spazio davvero piacevole, quando ci si trova lì sopra. Sophie ci ha tappezzato le pareti per sorprendermi; ed è ora il nostro “letto”. È un posto davvero accogliente, un po’ come una piccola tenda da zingari. Da lì si gode anche una bella vista.’
“E finalmente sei felicemente sposata, mia cara Traddles!”, dissi. “Che gioia per me!”
“Grazie, mio caro Copperfield,” disse Traddles mentre ci stringevamo di nuovo la mano. “Sì, sono felice quanto sia possibile esserlo. Ecco il tuo vecchio amico, vedi?” aggiunse Traddles, annuendo trionfante verso il vaso con la pianta; “e c’è anche quel tavolo con il piano di marmo! Tutti gli altri mobili sono semplici e pratici, come puoi vedere. E per quanto riguarda le stoviglie, beh, Signore, non abbiamo nemmeno una cucchiaino da tè.”
“Tutto deve essere guadagnato?” dissi, allegramente.
“Esattamente,” rispose Traddles, “tutto deve essere guadagnato. Certo, abbiamo qualcosa del tipo di cucchiai da tè, perché mescoliamo il nostro tè. Ma sono fatti di metallo Britannia.”
“L’argento diventerà ancora più luminoso quando arriverà,” dissi.
“Proprio quello che stiamo dicendo!” esclamò Traddles. “Vedi, caro Copperfield,” riprese, tornando al tono confidenziale di sempre, “dopo aver presentato il mio argomento nel caso DOE contro JIPES contro WIGZIELL, che mi fu di grande aiuto nella mia professione, andai nel Devonshire e ebbi una seria conversazione in privato con il Reverendo Horace. Insistetti sul fatto che Sophy, che ti assicuro, Copperfield, è la ragazza più adorabile, ”
“Sono sicuro che lo sia!” dissi io.
“Lo è davvero!” ribatté Traddles. “Ma temo di essermi allontanato dall’argomento principale. Ho menzionato il reverendo Horace?”
“Hai detto di concentrarti su quel fatto, ”
“Vero! Visto che io e Sophie eravamo fidanzati da molto tempo, e che lei, con il permesso dei suoi genitori, era più che disposta ad accettarmi, insomma,” disse Traddles, con quel suo vecchio sorriso sincero, “con le nostre attuali risorse. Molto bene. Allora proposi al reverendo Horace – che è un eccellente clérigo, Copperfield, e dovrebbe diventare vescovo; o almeno avere abbastanza per vivere senza privazioni – che se riuscissi a guadagnare duecentocinquanta sterline in un anno, e se fossi sicuro di potercela fare anche l’anno successivo, e inoltre di poter fornire una piccola casa come questa, allora, in quel caso, io e Sophie ci saremmo uniti. Mi presi la libertà di sottolineare che avevamo aspettato con pazienza per molti anni; e che il fatto che Sophie fosse estremamente utile in casa non dovrebbe influenzare negativamente le decisioni dei suoi genitori affettuosi riguardo al suo futuro, capisce?”
“Certamente non dovrebbe,” dissi io.
“Sono felice che tu la pensi così, Copperfield,” rispose Traddles, “perché, senza voler fare alcuna accusa contro il reverendo Horace, credo davvero che genitori, fratelli e simili a volte siano piuttosto egoisti in queste circostanze. Beh. Ho anche detto che il mio più sincero desiderio era quello di essere utile alla mia famiglia; e che, se avessi avuto successo nella vita, qualcosa potesse accadere a lui. Intendo dire al reverendo Horace, ”
“Capisco,” dissi io.
‘–O forse con la signora Crewler. Sarebbe la massima realizzazione dei miei desideri poter diventare genitore di quelle ragazze. Lui rispose in modo davvero ammirevole, lusinghiero nei miei confronti, e si impegnò ad ottenere il consenso della signora Crewler per questo accordo. Hanno avuto un incontro terribile con lei. La situazione è peggiorata: è passata dalle sue gambe al suo petto, e poi alla sua testa, ’
“Cosa è successo?” chiesi.
“Il suo dolore, ”, rispose Traddles con un’espressione seria. “I suoi sentimenti, in generale. Come ho già detto in precedenza, è una donna davvero eccezionale, ma ha perso l’uso delle gambe. Qualunque cosa le accada per causarle sofferenza, di solito si manifesta nelle gambe; ma questa volta il dolore si è diffuso al petto, poi alla testa. Insomma, ha invaso l’intero organismo in modo davvero allarmante. Tuttavia, grazie a un’attenzione costante e affettuosa da parte di tutti noi, ce l’è cavata; e ieri ci siamo sposati, dopo sei settimane. Non avete idea di quale mostro io fossi, Copperfield, quando ho visto tutta la famiglia piangere e svenire dappertutto! La signora Crewler non riusciva nemmeno a guardarmi prima che partissimo. Non mi perdonava ancora per averle portato via il suo bambino. Ma è una brava persona, e ormai ha superato questa fase. Questa mattina ho ricevuto una sua lettera molto gentile.”
“In breve, caro amico,” dissi, “ti senti davvero fortunato, proprio come meriti!”
“Oh! Quindi questa è la tua preferenza, ” rise Traddles. “Ma davvero, mi trovo in una condizione molto invidiabile: lavoro sodo e studio legge con grande passione. Mi alzo alle cinque ogni mattina senza alcun problema. Durante il giorno nascondo le ragazze e mi diverto con loro la sera. E vi assicuro che mi dispiace davvero molto che debbano tornare a casa martedì, il giorno prima dell’inizio del semestre di Michaelmas. Ma eccole qui,” disse Traddles, interrompendosi e parlando ad alta voce, “le ragazze! Signor Copperfield, Miss Crewler. Miss Sarah. Miss Louisa. Margaret e Lucy!”
They were a perfect nest of roses; they looked so wholesome and fresh. They were all pretty, and Miss Caroline was very handsome; but there was a loving, cheerful, fireside quality in Sophy’s bright looks, which was better than that, and which assured me that my friend had chosen well. We all sat round the fire; while the sharp boy, who I now divined had lost his breath in putting the papers out, cleared them away again, and produced the tea-things. After that, he retired for the night, shutting the outer door upon us with a bang. Mrs. Traddles, with perfect pleasure and composure beaming from her household eyes, having made the tea, then quietly made the toast as she sat in a corner by the fire.
She had seen Agnes, she told me while she was toasting. ‘Tom’ had taken her down into Kent for a wedding trip, and there she had seen my aunt, too; and both my aunt and Agnes were well, and they had all talked of nothing but me. ‘Tom’ had never had me out of his thoughts, she really believed, all the time I had been away. ‘Tom’ was the authority for everything. ‘Tom’ was evidently the idol of her life; never to be shaken on his pedestal by any commotion; always to be believed in, and done homage to with the whole faith of her heart, come what might.
The deference which both she and Traddles showed towards the Beauty, pleased me very much. I don’t know that I thought it very reasonable; but I thought it very delightful, and essentially a part of their character. If Traddles ever for an instant missed the tea-spoons that were still to be won, I have no doubt it was when he handed the Beauty her tea. If his sweet-tempered wife could have got up any self-assertion against anyone, I am satisfied it could only have been because she was the Beauty’s sister. A few slight indications of a rather petted and capricious manner, which I observed in the Beauty, were manifestly considered, by Traddles and his wife, as her birthright and natural endowment. If she had been born a Queen Bee, and they labouring Bees, they could not have been more satisfied of that.
But their self-forgetfulness charmed me. Their pride in these girls, and their submission of themselves to all their whims, was the pleasantest little testimony to their own worth I could have desired to see. If Traddles were addressed as ‘a darling’, once in the course of that evening; and besought to bring something here, or carry something there, or take something up, or put something down, or find something, or fetch something, he was so addressed, by one or other of his sisters-in-law, at least twelve times in an hour. Neither could they do anything without Sophy. Somebody’s hair fell down, and nobody but Sophy could put it up. Somebody forgot how a particular tune went, and nobody but Sophy could hum that tune right. Somebody wanted to recall the name of a place in Devonshire, and only Sophy knew it. Something was wanted to be written home, and Sophy alone could be trusted to write before breakfast in the morning. Somebody broke down in a piece of knitting, and no one but Sophy was able to put the defaulter in the right direction. They were entire mistresses of the place, and Sophy and Traddles waited on them. How many children Sophy could have taken care of in her time, I can’t imagine; but she seemed to be famous for knowing every sort of song that ever was addressed to a child in the English tongue; and she sang dozens to order with the clearest little voice in the world, one after another (every sister issuing directions for a different tune, and the Beauty generally striking in last), so that I was quite fascinated. The best of all was, that, in the midst of their exactions, all the sisters had a great tenderness and respect both for Sophy and Traddles. I am sure, when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming out to walk with me to the coffee-house, I thought I had never seen an obstinate head of hair, or any other head of hair, rolling about in such a shower of kisses.
Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with pleasure, for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles good night. If I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set of chambers, in that withered Gray’s Inn, they could not have brightened it half so much. The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the attorneys’ offices; and of the tea and toast, and children’s songs, in that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the Sultan’s famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water into Gray’s Inn Hall. Somehow, I found that I had taken leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffee-house, with a great change in my despondency about him. I began to think he would get on, in spite of all the many orders of chief waiters in England.
Drawing a chair before one of the coffee-room fires to think about him at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his happiness to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking, as they broke and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and separations that had marked my life. I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth, which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.
I could think of the past now, gravely, but not bitterly; and could contemplate the future in a brave spirit. Home, in its best sense, was for me no more. She in whom I might have inspired a dearer love, I had taught to be my sister. She would marry, and would have new claimants on her tenderness; and in doing it, would never know the love for her that had grown up in my heart. It was right that I should pay the forfeit of my headlong passion. What I reaped, I had sown.
Erano un nido perfetto di rose; sembravano così sane e fresche.
Tutte erano belle, e la signorina Caroline era davvero molto attraente; ma negli occhi luminosi di Sophie c’era qualcosa di amorevole, gioioso e accogliente che le dava un fascino ancora maggiore. E questo mi assicurò che la mia amica aveva fatto una scelta eccellente.
Ci sedemmo tutti intorno al focolare; mentre quel ragazzo vivace, che ora capii aver perso il fiato nel spegnere i documenti, li ripose ordinatamente e preparò le cose per il tè. Dopo di ciò, si ritirò per la notte, chiudendo la porta esterna con un tonfo.
La signora Traddles, con un sorriso sereno e felice sul viso, preparò il tè e poi, seduta in un angolo vicino al focolare, tostò tranquillamente il pane.
Aveva visto Agnes, mi disse mentre faceva il brindisi. “Tom” l’aveva portata nel Kent per una vacanza di nozze, e là aveva incontrato anche mia zia; sia mia zia che Agnes stavano bene, e avevano parlato solo di me. Credeva davvero che “Tom” non avesse mai smesso di pensare a me, in tutto il tempo in cui ero stata lontana. “Tom” era l’autorità su ogni cosa; evidentemente era l’idolo della sua vita: nessuna turbolenza avrebbe mai potuto scuoterlo dal suo piedistallo; doveva essere sempre creduto in lui e rispettato con tutta la >fede del suo cuore, qualunque cosa fosse successa.
Il rispetto che sia lei che Traddles mostravano verso la bellezza mi piacque molto. Non so se lo considerassi del tutto ragionevole, ma mi sembrò davvero incantevole e parte essenziale del loro carattere. Se mai Traddles, per un istante, dimenticò le cucchiaiate di tè che ancora doveva guadagnarsi, non ho >dubbi che ciò accadde quando porse alla bellezza il suo tè. Se la sua moglie, dal carattere mite, avesse mai potuto esprimere un po’ di autodifesa verso qualcuno, sono sicuro che sarebbe stato solo perché era la sorella della bellezza. Alcuni piccoli segni di un comportamento un po’ viziato e capriccioso, che osservai nella bellezza, venivano chiaramente considerati da Traddles e sua moglie come un diritto innato e una caratteristica naturale di lei. Anche se fosse nata una Regina delle Api e loro semplici api operaie, non avrebbero potuto essere più soddisfatti di così.
Ma la loro capacità di dimenticarsi di sé mi affascinava. Il loro orgoglio per quelle ragazze e la loro sottomissione a ogni loro capriccio rappresentavano il più piacevole testimonianza del loro valore personale che potessi desiderare vedere. Se a Traddles veniva chiesto, una volta sola quella sera, di portare qualcosa qui o là, di prendere o mettere giù qualcosa, di trovare o recuperare qualcosa, almeno dodici volte in un’ora una delle sue cognate lo chiamava così. Niente potevano fare senza Sophy: se a qualcuno cadeva i capelli, solo Sophy poteva rimetterli a posto; se qualcuno dimenticava come si cantava una certa canzone, solo Sophy poteva intonarla correttamente; se qualcuno voleva ricordare il nome di un luogo nel Devonshire, solo Sophy lo sapeva; se c’era bisogno che qualcosa venisse scritto a casa, solo Sophy poteva farlo prima della colazione. Se qualcosa si rompeva durante il lavoro a maglia, solo Sophy riusciva a ripararlo correttamente. Erano loro le vere padrone di quella casa, e Sophy insieme a Traddles si prendevano cura di loro. Quanti bambini Sophy avrebbe potuto prendersi cura in tutto quel tempo. Non riesco nemmeno a immaginarlo; ma sembrava famosa per conoscere ogni tipo di canzone che fosse mai stata scritta per i bambini in inglese, e cantava decine di esse su richiesta, con la voce più chiara del mondo, una dopo l’altra. Ogni sorella le chiedeva di cantare una canzone diversa, e lei rispondeva sempre perfettamente. Era davvero affascinante. La cosa migliore di tutte era che, nonostante tutte quelle richieste, tutte le sorelle provavano grande tenerezza e rispetto sia per Sophy che per Traddles. Sono sicuro che, quando me ne sono andato e Traddles è uscito con me verso la caffetteria, ho pensato di non aver mai visto una testa caparbia, o qualsiasi altra testa, del resto, ricevere così tanti baci.
In definitiva, era una scena a cui non potevo fare a meno di ripensare con piacere; per molto tempo, dopo essere tornato a casa e aver augurato a Traddles una buona notte, continuai a rifletterci sopra. Anche se avessi visto mille rose fiorire in quegli uffici desolati di Gray’s Inn, non avrebbero potuto renderli nemmeno lontanamente più luminosi. L’immagine di quelle ragazze del Devonshire, tra i duri impiegati legali e gli uffici degli avvocati; il pensiero al tè, al pane tostato e alle canzoni dei bambini, in quell’atmosfera cupa fatta di pratiche burocratiche, documenti polverosi, inchiostri, carta da lettere e rapporti legali, sembrava quasi altrettanto piacevole quanto se avessi sognato che la famosa famiglia del Sultano fosse stata ammessa tra gli avvocati di Gray’s Inn Hall, portando con sé il pappagallo parlante, l’albero canoro e l’acqua dorata. In qualche modo, mi resi conto di aver salutato Traddles per la notte e di essere tornato al caffè, con un cambiamento radicale nel mio atteggiamento verso di lui. Cominciai a pensare che, nonostante tutte le difficoltà, avrebbe sicuramente avuto successo.
Mettendo una sedia davanti al camino del salotto da caffè per riflettere su di lui con calma, passai gradualmente dal considerare la sua felicità a osservare le fiamme dei carboni ardenti; mentre queste si spegnevano e cambiavano forma, iniziai a pensare alle principali avversità e separazioni che avevano segnato la mia vita. Non vedevo un fuoco alimentato da carboni da quando avevo lasciato l’Inghilterra tre anni prima; invece, avevo assistito molte volte al creparsi di un fuoco a legna, che si trasformava in cenere grigia e si mescolava con i mucchi di scaglie presenti sul camino. Questa immagine, nella mia disperazione, mi rappresentava efficacemente le mie stesse speranze ormai infrante.
Ora potevo ricordare il passato con serietà, ma senza amarezza; e potevo affrontare il futuro con coraggio. Casa, nel suo senso più vero, non esisteva più per me. Lei, in lei avrei potuto suscitare un amore ancora più profondo. L’avevo insegnata a considerarsi mia sorella. Sposandosi, avrebbe avuto altri che avrebbero rivendicato la sua tenerezza; e nel farlo, non avrebbe mai conosciuto l’amore che aveva germogliato nel mio cuore per lei. Era giusto che pagassi il prezzo della mia passione impulsiva. Quello che ho raccolto, l’avevo seminato io stesso.
I was thinking. And had I truly disciplined my heart to this, and could I resolutely bear it, and calmly hold the place in her home which she had calmly held in mine,—when I found my eyes resting on a countenance that might have arisen out of the fire, in its association with my early remembrances.
Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted in the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper in the shadow of an opposite corner. He was tolerably stricken in years by this time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.
Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his elbow. He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.
I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, ‘How do you do, Mr. Chillip?’
He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a stranger, and replied, in his slow way, ‘I thank you, sir, you are very good. Thank you, sir. I hope YOU are well.’
‘You don’t remember me?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking his head as he surveyed me, ‘I have a kind of an impression that something in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I couldn’t lay my hand upon your name, really.’
‘And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,’ I returned.
‘Did I indeed, sir?’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Is it possible that I had the honour, sir, of officiating when—?’
‘Yes,’ said I.
‘Dear me!’ cried Mr. Chillip. ‘But no doubt you are a good deal changed since then, sir?’
‘Probably,’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ observed Mr. Chillip, ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, if I am compelled to ask the favour of your name?’
On my telling him my name, he was really moved. He quite shook hands with me—which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advance of his hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with it. Even now, he put his hand in his coat-pocket as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed relieved when he had got it safe back.
‘Dear me, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip, surveying me with his head on one side. ‘And it’s Mr. Copperfield, is it? Well, sir, I think I should have known you, if I had taken the liberty of looking more closely at you. There’s a strong resemblance between you and your poor father, sir.’
‘I never had the happiness of seeing my father,’ I observed.
‘Very true, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, in a soothing tone. ‘And very much to be deplored it was, on all accounts! We are not ignorant, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his little head again, ‘down in our part of the country, of your fame. There must be great excitement here, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, tapping himself on the forehead with his forefinger. ‘You must find it a trying occupation, sir!’
‘What is your part of the country now?’ I asked, seating myself near him.
‘I am established within a few miles of Bury St. Edmund’s, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Mrs. Chillip, coming into a little property in that neighbourhood, under her father’s will, I bought a practice down there, in which you will be glad to hear I am doing well. My daughter is growing quite a tall lass now, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, giving his little head another little shake. ‘Her mother let down two tucks in her frocks only last week. Such is time, you see, sir!’
As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made this reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would keep him company with another. ‘Well, sir,’ he returned, in his slow way, ‘it’s more than I am accustomed to; but I can’t deny myself the pleasure of your conversation. It seems but yesterday that I had the honour of attending you in the measles. You came through them charmingly, sir!’
I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was soon produced. ‘Quite an uncommon dissipation!’ said Mr. Chillip, stirring it, ‘but I can’t resist so extraordinary an occasion. You have no family, sir?’
I shook my head.
‘I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘I heard it from your father-in-law’s sister. Very decided character there, sir?’
‘Why, yes,’ said I, ‘decided enough. Where did you see her, Mr. Chillip?’
‘Are you not aware, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest smile, ‘that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine?’
‘No,’ said I.
‘He is indeed, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Married a young lady of that part, with a very good little property, poor thing.---And this action of the brain now, sir? Don’t you find it fatigue you?’ said Mr. Chillip, looking at me like an admiring Robin.
I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones. ‘I was aware of his being married again. Do you attend the family?’ I asked.
‘Not regularly. I have been called in,’ he replied. ‘Strong phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr. Murdstone and his sister, sir.’
I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was emboldened by that, and the negus together, to give his head several short shakes, and thoughtfully exclaim, ‘Ah, dear me! We remember old times, Mr. Copperfield!’
‘And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are they?’ said I.
‘Well, sir,’ replied Mr. Chillip, ‘a medical man, being so much in families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his profession. Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to this life and the next.’
‘The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare say,’ I returned: ‘what are they doing as to this?’
Stavo pensando. Se davvero avessi disciplinato il mio cuore in questo senso, se fossi stato in grado di sopportarlo con determinazione e di occupare con calma nel suo >casa lo stesso posto che lei aveva sempre occupato nella mia. Quando i miei occhi si posarono su un volto che sembrava poter essere emerso dalle fiamme, legato ai miei primi ricordi.
Il piccolo signor Chillip il Dottore, al cui aiuto dovevo molto già nel primo capitolo di questa storia, sedeva a leggere un giornale all’ombra di un angolo opposto. Con l’andare degli anni era diventato piuttosto anziano; ma essendo una persona mite, gentile e tranquilla, invecchiava in modo molto naturale. In quel momento sembrava esattamente come quando sedeva nel nostro salotto, aspettando che io nascessi.
Il signor Chillip se n’era andato da Blunderstone sei o sette anni prima, e da allora non l’avevo più visto. Sedeva tranquillamente, leggendo il giornale con la sua piccola testa inclinata da un lato, e aveva un bicchiere di sherry caldo accanto al gomito. Il suo comportamento era così estremamente accomodante che sembrava addirittura scusarsi con il giornale stesso per aver avuto l’ardire di leggerlo.
Mi avvicinai al posto dove sedeva e dissi: “Come va, signor Chillip?”
Fu molto turbato da questo improvviso messaggio di uno sconosciuto e rispose, con il suo modo lento e tranquillo: “Grazie, signore, lei è davvero molto gentile. Grazie, signore. Spero che lei stia bene.”
“Non ti ricordi di me?” dissi io.
“Beh, signore,” rispose il signor Chillip, sorridendo molto umilmente e scuotendo la testa mentre mi osservava, “ho l’impressione che qualcosa nel vostro aspetto mi sia familiare, signore; ma non riesco proprio a ricordare il vostro nome.”
“Eppure tu lo sapevi, molto prima che io lo scoprissi,” risposi.
“Davvero l’ho fatto, signore?”, disse il signor Chillip. “È possibile che io abbia avuto l’onore di officiare quando–?”
“Sì,” dissi io.
“Mio Dio!”, esclamò il signor Chillip. “Ma non c’è dubbio che da allora siate cambiato molto, signore, ”
“Probabilmente,” dissi io.
“Beh, signore,” osservò il signor Chillip, “spero che mi perdonerete se sono costretto a chiedervi il vostro nome.”
Quando gli dissi il mio nome, rimase davvero commosso. Mi strinse la mano con grande calore, il che per lui era un gesto insolito: di solito si limitava a passarsi una fetta di pesce tiepida lungo la coscia, mostrando notevole imbarazzo ogni volta che qualcuno cercava di afferrarla. Anche ora, non appena riusciva a liberare la mano dalla tasca del cappotto, la infilava subito dentro e sembrava sollevato quando la riportava al sicuro.
“Mio Dio, signore!”, disse il signor Chillip, osservandomi con la testa inclinata da un lato. “E lei è il signor Copperfield, vero? Beh, signore, credo che avrei dovuto riconoscerla se mi fossi preso la libertà di guardarla più attentamente. C’è una forte somiglianza tra lei e suo povero padre, signore.”
“Non ho mai avuto la felicità di vedere mio padre,” osservai.
“Assolutamente vero, signore,” disse il signor Chillip con un tono rassicurante. “E davvero molto deplorevole, sotto ogni aspetto! Non siamo ignoranti, signore,” aggiunse il signor Chillip, scuotendo lentamente di nuovo la sua piccola testa, “nella nostra zona di campagna, della vostra fama. Deve esserci molta agitazione qui, signore,” disse ancora, battendosi la fronte con l’indice. “Deve essere un compito davvero impegnativo per voi, signore, ”
“Qual è ora la tua parte del paese?” chiesi, sedendomi vicino a lui.
“Sono stabilito a pochi chilometri da Bury St. Edmund’s, signore,” disse il signor Chillip. “La signora Chillip, avendo ereditato una piccola proprietà in quella zona secondo il testamento di suo padre, io ho comprato un studio lì; sono molto soddisfatto dei risultati, come potrete constatare. Mia figlia ormai sta crescendo davvero in fretta, signore,” aggiunse scuotendo leggermente la testa. “Sua madre, solo la settimana scorsa, ha fatto due rimbocchi alle sue gonne. Che tempi, vero, signore?”
Mentre il piccolo uomo portava al proprio labbro il bicchiere ormai vuoto e faceva questa riflessione, gli proposi di farlo riempire di nuovo e di accompagnarlo con un altro bicchiere. “Beh, signore,” rispose lui con il suo modo lento, “è più di quanto io sia abituato; ma non posso negarmi il piacere della vostra compagnia. Sembra che sia stato solo ieri che ho avuto l’onore di assistervi durante l’epidemia di morbillo. Siete sopravvissuto a essa in modo davvero straordinario, signore!”
Accettai questo complimento e ordinai il “negus”, che fu presto servito. “Che strana abitudine davvero!”, disse il signor Chillip, mescolandolo, “ma non posso resistere a un’occasione così eccezionale. Non ha famiglia, signore?”
Scossi la testa.
“Sapevo che avevate subito una perdita, signore, qualche tempo fa,” disse il signor Chillip. “L’ho saputo dalla sorella di vostro suocero. Una persona molto decisa, vero, signore?”
“Beh, sì,” dissi, “deciso del tutto. Dove l’ha vista, signor Chillip?”
“Non lo sapeva, signore?”, rispose il signor Chillip con il suo sorriso più sereno, “che suo suocero è di nuovo mio vicino?”
“No,” dissi io.
“È proprio così, signore!” disse il signor Chillip. “Sposato con una giovane donna di quella zona, che possiede anche una piccola proprietà. Poverina. E questa attività cerebrale, ora. Non la trova stancante?” chiese il signor Chillip, guardandomi come un Robin pieno di ammirazione.
Lasciai perdere quella domanda e tornai agli argomenti riguardanti i Murdstones. “Sapevo che si era risposato. Vi riunite spesso in famiglia?” chiesi.
“Non regolarmente. Sono stato chiamato,” rispose. “Forti sviluppi frenologici dell’organo della fermezza, nel signor Murdstone e sua sorella, signore.”
Risposi con uno sguardo così espressivo che il signor Chillip ne fu incoraggiato; insieme al negus, scosse più volte la testa e esclamò pensieroso: “Ah, mio caro! Ricordiamo i tempi passati, signor Copperfield!”
“E il fratello e la sorella continuano percorrendo la loro vecchia strada, vero?” dissi io.
“Beh, signore,” rispose il signor Chillip, “un medico, essendo costantemente a contatto con le famiglie, dovrebbe non prestare attenzione né agli occhi né alle orecchie di nulla se non alla sua professione. Tuttavia devo dire che quelle regole sono davvero molto severe, signore: sia per questa vita che per l’altra.”
“Quelli successivi saranno regolamentati senza tener conto molto di loro, oserei dire,” risposi: “che cosa stanno facendo al riguardo?”
Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.
‘She was a charming woman, sir!’ he observed in a plaintive manner.
‘The present Mrs. Murdstone?’
‘A charming woman indeed, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘as amiable, I am sure, as it was possible to be! Mrs. Chillip’s opinion is, that her spirit has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is all but melancholy mad. And the ladies,’ observed Mr. Chillip, timorously, ‘are great observers, sir.’
‘I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable mould, Heaven help her!’ said I. ‘And she has been.’
‘Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘but she is quite a shadow now. Would it be considered forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that since the sister came to help, the brother and sister between them have nearly reduced her to a state of imbecility?’
I told him I could easily believe it.
‘I have no hesitation in saying,’ said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself with another sip of negus, ‘between you and me, sir, that her mother died of it—or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone nearly imbecile. She was a lively young woman, sir, before marriage, and their gloom and austerity destroyed her. They go about with her, now, more like her keepers than her husband and sister-in-law. That was Mrs. Chillip’s remark to me, only last week. And I assure you, sir, the ladies are great observers. Mrs. Chillip herself is a great observer!’
‘Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in such association) religious still?’ I inquired.
‘You anticipate, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging. ‘One of Mrs. Chillip’s most impressive remarks. Mrs. Chillip,’ he proceeded, in the calmest and slowest manner, ‘quite electrified me, by pointing out that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself, and calls it the Divine Nature. You might have knocked me down on the flat of my back, sir, with the feather of a pen, I assure you, when Mrs. Chillip said so. The ladies are great observers, sir?’
‘Intuitively,’ said I, to his extreme delight.
‘I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,’ he rejoined. ‘It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical opinion, I assure you. Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses sometimes, and it is said,—in short, sir, it is said by Mrs. Chillip,—that the darker tyrant he has lately been, the more ferocious is his doctrine.’
‘I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,’ said I.
‘Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,’ pursued the meekest of little men, much encouraged, ‘that what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say, sir,’ he continued, mildly laying his head on one side, ‘that I DON’T find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament?’
‘I never found it either!’ said I.
‘In the meantime, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, ‘they are much disliked; and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. Now, sir, about that brain of yours, if you’ll excuse my returning to it. Don’t you expose it to a good deal of excitement, sir?’
I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip’s own brain, under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from this topic to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he was quite loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces of information, that he was then at the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house to lay his professional evidence before a Commission of Lunacy, touching the state of mind of a patient who had become deranged from excessive drinking. ‘And I assure you, sir,’ he said, ‘I am extremely nervous on such occasions. I could not support being what is called Bullied, sir. It would quite unman me. Do you know it was some time before I recovered the conduct of that alarming lady, on the night of your birth, Mr. Copperfield?’
I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that night, early in the morning; and that she was one of the most tender-hearted and excellent of women, as he would know full well if he knew her better. The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again, appeared to terrify him. He replied with a small pale smile, ‘Is she so, indeed, sir? Really?’ and almost immediately called for a candle, and went to bed, as if he were not quite safe anywhere else. He did not actually stagger under the negus; but I should think his placid little pulse must have made two or three more beats in a minute, than it had done since the great night of my aunt’s disappointment, when she struck at him with her bonnet.
Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt’s old parlour while she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of his holding her in such dread remembrance; and both she and Peggotty had a great deal to say about my poor mother’s second husband, and ‘that murdering woman of a sister’,—on whom I think no pain or penalty would have induced my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any other designation.
Il signor Chillip scosse la testa, mescolò il suo negus e ne bevve un sorso.
“Era una donna incantevole, signore!” osservò lui con tono malinconico.
“La attuale signora Murdstone?”
“Davvero una donna affascinante, signore,” disse il signor Chillip; “sicuramente molto gentile, quanto ci si possa aspettare! Secondo la signora Chillip, lo spirito di sua moglie è completamente distrutto dopo il suo matrimonio, e lei è quasi completamente impazzita dal melanconico. E le signore,” osservò timidamente il signor Chillip, “sono delle grandi osservatrici, signore.”
“Suppongo che dovesse essere plasmata e adattata al loro odioso modello. Che il cielo la aiuti!”, dissi. “E infatti è stato così.”
“Beh, signore, all’inizio ci sono stati violenti litigi, glielo assicuro,” disse il signor Chillip; “ma ora lei è praticamente una ombra. Sarebbe considerato audace da parte mia se le dicessi, in confidenza, che da quando la sorella è venuta ad aiutarla, fratello e sorella insieme l’hanno quasi ridotta a uno stato di stupidità?”
Gli dissi che potevo crederci facilmente.
“Non esito affatto nel dirlo,” disse il signor Chillip, rincuorandosi con un altro sorso di negus, “tra me e lei, signore, sua madre è morta a causa di quella situazione, oppure la tirannia, la tristezza e le preoccupazioni hanno reso la signora Murdstone quasi incapace di ragionare. Prima del matrimonio, era una giovane donna vivace e allegra; ma la loro atmosfera cupa e austera l’hanno distrutta. Ora, lei vive con loro come se fossero i suoi custodi, piuttosto che suo marito e sua cognata. Queste sono le parole della signora Chillip, pronunciate soltanto la scorsa settimana. E vi assicuro, signore: le donne sono grandi osservatrici. Anche la signora Chillip stessa è una grande osservatrice!”
“Continua ancora a dichiararsi, con aria triste, religioso. Mi vergogno di usare questa parola in un contesto del genere”, chiesi.
“Voi anticipate, signore,” disse il signor Chillip, con le palpebre che diventavano sempre più rosse a causa di quell’insolito stimolo al quale si stava abbandonando. “Una delle osservazioni più sorprendenti della signora Chillip. La signora Chillip,” proseguì, con il modo più calmo e lento possibile, “mi ha davvero colpito profondamente quando ha sottolineato che il signor Murdstone si costruisce un’immagine di sé stesso e la chiama ‘la Divina Natura’. Vi assicuro, signore, che quelle parole avrebbero potuto stendermi a terra con la sola forza di una penna. Le donne sono davvero grandi osservatrici, vero, signore?”
“Intuitivamente,” dissi, con suo grande piacere.
“Sono molto felice di ricevere un tale sostegno, signore,” rispose. “Non è frequente che osi esprimere un parere non medico, vi assicuro. A volte il signor Murdstone tiene discorsi pubblici, e si dice, in breve, signore, la signora Chillip afferma che più cupo diventa recentemente il suo comportamento, più feroce è anche la sua dottrina.”
“Credo che la signora Chillip abbia perfettamente ragione,” dissi io.
“La signora Chillip arriva persino a dire,” proseguì il più mite dei bambini, molto incoraggiato, “che ciò che queste persone chiamano religione non è altro che un modo per sfogare i loro cattivi umori e la loro arroganza. E devo dirvi, signore,” continuò, appoggiando dolcemente la testa da una parte, “che NON trovo alcuna autorità a sostegno delle opinioni del signor e della signorina Murdstone nel Nuovo Testamento.”
“Nemmeno io l’ho mai trovata!” dissi.
“Nel frattempo, signore,” disse il signor Chillip, “vengono molto disprezzati; e poiché sono molto propensi a mandare tutti coloro che li disprezzano all’inferno, nella nostra zona c’è davvero molta ‘inferno’ in corso. Tuttavia, come dice la signora Chillip, subiscono una punizione continua: vengono costretti a nutrirsi dei propri cuori, e i loro cuori sono davvero molto cattivi da mangiare. Ora, riguardo a quel suo cervello, se mi permette di tornare sull’argomento. Non lo esponga forse a molte emozioni intense, signore?”
Non mi risultò difficile, data l’agitazione mentale del signor Chillip e sotto l’effetto delle sue bevande alcoliche, distogliere la sua attenzione da questo argomento e farla rivolgere alle sue stesse faccende; per il successivo mezz’ora fu piuttosto loquace e mi fornì, tra le altre informazioni, dettagli su come fosse riuscito a “riportare alla ragione” quella donna allarmante nella notte della tua nascita, signor Copperfield. “E vi assicuro,” disse, “che in occasioni del genere sono estremamente nervoso. Non potrei sopportare di essere trattato con prepotenza; mi sembrerebbe davvero indegno di un uomo. Sapete quanta tempo ci sia voluto per riuscirci?”
Gli dissi che sarei andato da mia zia, la “Draconessa” di quella notte, all’alba; e che lei era una delle donne più gentili e meravigliose che ci fossero, come avrebbe capito benissimo se l’avesse conosciuta meglio. Solo il pensiero di poterla rivedere un giorno lo spaventava a morte. Rispose con un debole sorriso pallido: “Davvero è così, signore? Sul serio?” Poi chiamò subito una candela e andò a letto, come se non si sentisse al sicuro da nessun’altra parte. In realtà non barcollò per l’emozione; ma credo che il suo battito cardiaco fosse più veloce di qualche battito al minuto rispetto a quando, in quella notte terribile, mia zia lo aveva colpito con il cappello.
Estremamente stanco, andai a letto anche io a mezzanotte; il giorno seguente lo trascorsi sul treno per Dover; arrivai sano e salvo nella vecchia sala di mia zia mentre lei beveva il tè (ora indossava gli occhiali); fui accolto da lei, dal signor Dick e dalla cara vecchia Peggotty, che faceva da domestica, con aperti bracci e lacrime di gioia. Mia zia si divertì molto quando iniziammo a parlare con calma; ascoltò attentamente il mio racconto dell’incontro con il signor Chillip e di come quest’ultimo la ricordasse con tanta terrore; sia lei che Peggotty avevano molto da dire sul secondo marito di mia madre, e su “quella donna assassina di sorella”. A proposito di lei, penso che nessun dolore né punizione avrebbero mai indotto mia zia a darle un nome cristiano o qualsiasi altro appellativo rispettabile.
CHAPTER 60. AGNES
My aunt and I, when we were left alone, talked far into the night. How the emigrants never wrote home, otherwise than cheerfully and hopefully; how Mr. Micawber had actually remitted divers small sums of money, on account of those ‘pecuniary liabilities’, in reference to which he had been so business-like as between man and man; how Janet, returning into my aunt’s service when she came back to Dover, had finally carried out her renunciation of mankind by entering into wedlock with a thriving tavern-keeper; and how my aunt had finally set her seal on the same great principle, by aiding and abetting the bride, and crowning the marriage-ceremony with her presence; were among our topics—already more or less familiar to me through the letters I had had. Mr. Dick, as usual, was not forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly occupied himself in copying everything he could lay his hands on, and kept King Charles the First at a respectful distance by that semblance of employment; how it was one of the main joys and rewards of her life that he was free and happy, instead of pining in monotonous restraint; and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she could ever fully know what he was.
‘And when, Trot,’ said my aunt, patting the back of my hand, as we sat in our old way before the fire, ‘when are you going over to Canterbury?’
‘I shall get a horse, and ride over tomorrow morning, aunt, unless you will go with me?’
‘No!’ said my aunt, in her short abrupt way. ‘I mean to stay where I am.’
Then, I should ride, I said. I could not have come through Canterbury today without stopping, if I had been coming to anyone but her.
She was pleased, but answered, ‘Tut, Trot; MY old bones would have kept till tomorrow!’ and softly patted my hand again, as I sat looking thoughtfully at the fire.
Thoughtfully, for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes, without the revival of those regrets with which I had so long been occupied. Softened regrets they might be, teaching me what I had failed to learn when my younger life was all before me, but not the less regrets. ‘Oh, Trot,’ I seemed to hear my aunt say once more; and I understood her better now—‘Blind, blind, blind!’
We both kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found that she was steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the current of my mind; for it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful as it had been once.
‘You will find her father a white-haired old man,’ said my aunt, ‘though a better man in all other respects—a reclaimed man. Neither will you find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things must shrink very much, before they can be measured off in that way.’
‘Indeed they must,’ said I.
‘You will find her,’ pursued my aunt, ‘as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.’
There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how had I strayed so far away!
‘If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like herself,’ said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with tears, ‘Heaven knows, her life will be well employed! Useful and happy, as she said that day! How could she be otherwise than useful and happy!’
‘Has Agnes any—’ I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.
‘Well? Hey? Any what?’ said my aunt, sharply.
‘Any lover,’ said I.
‘A score,’ cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. ‘She might have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!’
‘No doubt,’ said I. ‘No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of her? Agnes could care for no other.’
My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand. Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:
‘I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.’
‘A prosperous one?’ said I.
‘Trot,’ returned my aunt gravely, ‘I can’t say. I have no right to tell you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it.’
She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble), that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts. I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in all those many days and nights, and all those many conflicts of my heart.
‘If it should be so,’ I began, ‘and I hope it is-’
‘I don’t know that it is,’ said my aunt curtly. ‘You must not be ruled by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very slight, perhaps. I have no right to speak.’
‘If it should be so,’ I repeated, ‘Agnes will tell me at her own good time. A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will not be reluctant to confide in me.’
My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned them upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and by she put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat, looking into the past, without saying another word, until we parted for the night.
I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days. I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was gaining a victory over myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking on her face again.
The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the quiet streets, where every stone was a boy’s book to me. I went on foot to the old house, and went away with a heart too full to enter. I returned; and looking, as I passed, through the low window of the turret-room where first Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit, saw that it was a little parlour now, and that there was no office. Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its cleanliness and order, still just as it had been when I first saw it. I requested the new maid who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman who waited on her from a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave old staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the unchanged drawing-room. The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on their shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many a night, stood yet at the same old corner of the table. All the little changes that had crept in when the Heeps were there, were changed again. Everything was as it used to be, in the happy time.
CAPITOLO 60. AGNES
Mia zia ed io, rimasti soli, parlammo fino a tarda notte. Discutemmo di come gli emigranti non scrivessero mai alle loro famiglie, se non in termini gioiosi e pieni di speranza; di come il signor Micawber avesse effettivamente inviato diverse piccole somme di denaro, a causa di quelle “obbligazioni finanziarie” di cui aveva parlato con tanta serietà; di come Janet, tornata al servizio di mia zia dopo essere rientrata a Dover, avesse finalmente “rinunciato” al genere umano sposando un prospero proprietario di taverna; e di come anche mia zia avesse aderito a quel stesso principio, aiutando e incoraggiando la sposa, e partecipando personalmente alla cerimonia nuziale. Questi argomenti mi erano già in parte noti grazie alle lettere che avevo ricevuto. Il signor Dick, come al solito, non fu dimenticato: mia zia mi raccontò di come si dedicasse instancabilmente a copiare qualsiasi cosa gli capitasse tra le mani, tenendo così il “re” Carlo I a una distanza rispettosa; di come fosse uno dei maggiori piaceri e soddisfazioni della sua vita il vedere lui libero e felice, invece che soffrire in una monotona restrizione; e di come (come conclusione generale) nessuno, tranne lei, potesse mai comprendere veramente chi fosse.
“E allora, Trot,” disse mia zia, accarezzandomi il dorso della mano mentre eravamo seduti davanti al nostro vecchio focolare, “quando andrai a Canterbury?”
“Prenderò un cavallo e partirò domani mattina, zia, a meno che non vogliate venire con me.”
“Mai!” disse mia zia, con quel suo modo brusco e conciso. “Intendo rimanere dove sono.”
Allora, dovrei andare in bicicletta, dissi. Non sarei mai riuscito a passare per Canterbury oggi senza fermarmi, se non fossi venuto da lei.
Era contenta, ma rispose: “Tut, Trot. Le mie vecchie ossa avrebbero resistito fino a domani!” e mi accarezzò di nuovo dolcemente la mano, mentre io sedevo assorto davanti al fuoco.
Con pensieri profondi, poiché non avrei potuto essere di nuovo qui, così vicino ad Agnes, senza che quei rimpianti, che per tanto tempo avevano occupato la mia mente, riemergessero. Forse erano rimpianti “attenuati”, che mi insegnavano ciò che non ero riuscito a imparare quando la mia vita più giovane era ancora davanti a me, ma rimpianti comunque. “Oh, Trot, ” sembrava che mia zia dicesse di nuovo; e ora la capivo meglio, “Cieco, cieco, cieco!”
Entrambi rimanemmo in silenzio per alcuni minuti. Quando alzai lo sguardo, mi resi conto che lei mi stava osservando attentamente. Forse aveva seguito il corso dei miei pensieri; perché ora mi sembravano facilmente comprensibili, così come un tempo erano stati confusi e complicati.
“Troverai suo padre un vecchio dai capelli bianchi,” disse mia zia, “anche se in tutti gli altri aspetti è un uomo migliore, un uomo redento. Inoltre, non lo troverai a misurare tutti gli interessi, le gioie e i dolori umani con quel suo povero, piccolo righello. Fidati di me, bambino: queste cose devono ridursi molto di dimensioni prima che si possano misurare in quel modo.”
“Certamente devono farlo,” dissi io.
“La troverai,” insistette mia zia, “uguale a sempre: buona, bella, sincera, disinteressata. Se conoscessi parole più lusinghiere per descriverla, Trot, le userei.”
Non esisteva lode più grande per lei; né rimprovero più grave per me. Oh, quanto mi ero allontanato dal giusto cammino.
“Se insegnerà alle giovani ragazze che ha intorno a sé ad essere come lei,” disse mia zia, con tale sincerità che le lacrime le riempirono gli occhi, “Dio solo sa quanto la sua vita sarà utile e felice! Utile e felice, proprio come disse quel giorno. Come potrebbe essere altrimenti se non utile e felice?”
“Ha Agnes qualche, ” Pensavo ad alta voce, più che parlare veramente.
“‘Bene?’ Ehi? C’è qualche novità?” chiese mia zia in tono deciso.
“Qualsiasi amante, ”, dissi io.
“Venti volte!”, esclamò mia zia con un certo orgoglio indignato. “Dopo la tua partenza, cara, avrebbe potuto sposarsi venti volte!”
“Nessun dubbio”, dissi. “Nessun dubbio. Ma ha qualche amante che sia degno di lei? Agnes non potrebbe interessarsi a nessun altro.”
Mia zia rimase seduta a riflettere per un po’, con il mento appoggiato sulla mano. Poi alzò lentamente lo sguardo verso di me e disse:
“Sospetto che abbia un debole per qualcuno, Trot.”
“Una persona prospera?” dissi io.
“Trot,” rispose mia zia con serietà, “non posso dirlo. Non ho il diritto nemmeno di dirti questo. Lei non me l’ha mai confidato, ma sospetto che sia così.”
Mi guardava con tale attenzione e ansia (ho persino visto tremare), che sentii, più che mai, che aveva seguito i miei pensieri più intimi. Chiamai a raccolta tutte le risoluzioni che avevo preso in quei tanti giorni e notti, in tutti quegli scontri interiori.
“Se dovesse accadere,” iniziai, “e spero che accada, ”
“Non so se lo sia,” disse mia zia in modo laconico. “Non devi lasciarti guidare dalle mie sospetti. Devi tenerli segreti. Forse sono solo infondate. Non ho il diritto di parlare.”
“Se dovesse essere così,” ripetei, “Agnes mi lo dirà al momento giusto. Una sorella a cui ho confidato tanto, zia, non esiterà certo a confidarsi con me.”
Mia zia distolse lo sguardo dal mio, con la stessa lentezza con cui me lo aveva rivolto; poi lo coprì pensierosamente con la mano. Dopo un po’, posò l’altra mano sulla mia spalla; e così rimanemmo entrambi seduti, a guardare nel passato, senza dire una parola, fino a quando non ci separammo per la notte.
Partii all’alba, diretto verso il luogo dove avevo trascorso i miei vecchi giorni di scuola.
Non posso dire di essere davvero felice, ma speravo di riuscire a vincere su me stesso; anche solo al pensiero di poterla rivedere presto mi dava gioia.
Il terreno così ben ricordato fu presto attraversato; entrai nelle tranquille strade, dove ogni pietra rappresentava per me un “libro” di memorie. Camminai a piedi fino alla vecchia casa e me ne andai con il cuore troppo pieno per poter entrare. Tornai indietro e, passando, guardai attraverso la bassa finestra della stanza del torrione: là dove prima avevano l’abitudine di sedersi sia Uriah Heep che il signor Micawber. Ora quella stanza era diventata un piccolo salotto, e non c’era più alcun ufficio. Per il resto, la vecchia casa, per quanto riguarda pulizia e ordine, era ancora esattamente come l’avevo vista la prima volta. Chiesi alla nuova cameriera che mi aveva fatto entrare di dire alla signorina Wickfield che c’era un gentiluomo che la serviva, inviato da un amico all’estero. Mi fu mostrata la vecchia scala; attenzione ai gradini che conoscevo così bene. Entrai nel salotto, tutto era rimasto immutato. I libri che Agnes ed io avevamo letto insieme erano ancora sugli scaffali; e la scrivania dove avevo studiato per molte notti si trovava sempre nello stesso angolo del tavolo. Tutti quei piccoli cambiamenti che erano avvenuti quando c’erano i Heep erano stati di nuovo eliminati. Tutto era come una volta, in quei felici tempi.
I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons, when I first came there; and how I had used to speculate about the people who appeared at any of the windows, and had followed them with my eyes up and down stairs, while women went clicking along the pavement in pattens, and the dull rain fell in slanting lines, and poured out of the water-spout yonder, and flowed into the road. The feeling with which I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.
The opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start and turn. Her beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards me. She stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her in my arms.
‘Agnes! my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you.’
‘No, no! I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood!’
‘Dear Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again!’
I folded her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both silent. Presently we sat down, side by side; and her angel-face was turned upon me with the welcome I had dreamed of, waking and sleeping, for whole years.
She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good,—I owed her so much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find no utterance for what I felt. I tried to bless her, tried to thank her, tried to tell her (as I had often done in letters) what an influence she had upon me; but all my efforts were in vain. My love and joy were dumb.
With her own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led me back to the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had visited, in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora’s grave. With the unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched the chords of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one jarred within me; I could listen to the sorrowful, distant music, and desire to shrink from nothing it awoke. How could I, when, blended with it all, was her dear self, the better angel of my life?
‘And you, Agnes,’ I said, by and by. ‘Tell me of yourself. You have hardly ever told me of your own life, in all this lapse of time!’
‘What should I tell?’ she answered, with her radiant smile. ‘Papa is well. You see us here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set at rest, our home restored to us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood, you know all.’
‘All, Agnes?’ said I.
She looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.
‘Is there nothing else, Sister?’ I said.
Her colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again. She smiled; with a quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.
I had sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for, sharply painful to me as it must be to receive that confidence, I was to discipline my heart, and do my duty to her. I saw, however, that she was uneasy, and I let it pass.
‘You have much to do, dear Agnes?’
‘With my school?’ said she, looking up again, in all her bright composure.
‘Yes. It is laborious, is it not?’
‘The labour is so pleasant,’ she returned, ‘that it is scarcely grateful in me to call it by that name.’
‘Nothing good is difficult to you,’ said I.
Her colour came and went once more; and once more, as she bent her head, I saw the same sad smile.
‘You will wait and see papa,’ said Agnes, cheerfully, ‘and pass the day with us? Perhaps you will sleep in your own room? We always call it yours.’
I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt’s at night; but I would pass the day there, joyfully.
‘I must be a prisoner for a little while,’ said Agnes, ‘but here are the old books, Trotwood, and the old music.’
‘Even the old flowers are here,’ said I, looking round; ‘or the old kinds.’
‘I have found a pleasure,’ returned Agnes, smiling, ‘while you have been absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we were children. For we were very happy then, I think.’
‘Heaven knows we were!’ said I.
‘And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,’ said Agnes, with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, ‘has been a welcome companion. Even this,’ showing me the basket-trifle, full of keys, still hanging at her side, ‘seems to jingle a kind of old tune!’
She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.
It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. It was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure. If I once shook the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage, in virtue of which it was given to me, it was lost, and could never be recovered. I set this steadily before myself. The better I loved her, the more it behoved me never to forget it.
I walked through the streets; and, once more seeing my old adversary the butcher—now a constable, with his staff hanging up in the shop—went down to look at the place where I had fought him; and there meditated on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss Larkins, and all the idle loves and likings, and dislikings, of that time. Nothing seemed to have survived that time but Agnes; and she, ever a star above me, was brighter and higher.
When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost every day. I found him as my aunt had described him. We sat down to dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he seemed but the shadow of his handsome picture on the wall.
The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no wine, and I desiring none, we went up-stairs; where Agnes and her little charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the children left us; and we three sat together, talking of the bygone days.
Stavo davanti a una finestra, guardando le case di fronte lungo la vecchia strada, ricordando come le osservassi nei pomeriggi umidi quando ero arrivato lì per la prima volta; e come immaginassi le persone che apparivano alle finestre, seguendole con lo sguardo su e giù per le scale, mentre le donne camminavano sul marciapiede con i loro tacchi alti, e la pioggia battente cadeva in strisce oblique, uscendo dalla fontana laggiù e scorrendo lungo la strada. Quel sentimento che provavo allora, osservando quegli uomini che arrivavano in città nelle serate umide, al crepuscolo, zoppicando con i loro fardelli appesi alle spalle, tornò improvvisamente a galla nella mia mente; pieno, come allora, dell’odore della terra umida, delle foglie bagnate e dei cespugli, e della sensazione stessa degli aria che mi colpivano durante il mio stesso faticoso viaggio.
L’apertura della piccola porta nel muro a pannelli mi fece sobbalzare e girarmi. I suoi bellissimi occhi sereni incrociarono i miei mentre si avvicinava a me. Si fermò, posò una mano sul petto e io la strinsi tra le braccia.
“Agnes! mia cara ragazza. Sono arrivato troppo all’improvviso.”
“No, no! Sono così felice di vederti, Trotwood!”
“Carissima Agnes, che felicità è per me rivederti!”
La strinsi al mio cuore, e per un po’ rimanemmo entrambi in silenzio. Poi ci sedemmo uno accanto all’altro; il suo viso angelico era rivolto verso di me, con quell’accoglienza che avevo sognato, giorno e notte, per interi anni.
Era così sincera, così bella, così gentile. Le dovevo tanta gratitudine; era così cara per me che non riuscivo a trovare le parole giuste per esprimere ciò che provavo. Cercai di benedirla, di ringraziarla, di dirle (come avevo spesso fatto nelle lettere) quanto grande fosse l’influenza che aveva su di me. Ma tutti i miei sforzi furono vani. Il mio amore e la mia gioia rimasero in silenzio.
Con la sua dolce tranquillità, calmò la mia agitazione; mi riportò indietro nel tempo del nostro addio; parlò di Emily, che aveva visitato in segreto molte volte; parlò con tenerezza della >tomba di Dora. Con l’istinto infallibile del suo nobile cuore, toccò le corde della mia memoria in modo così dolce e armonioso che nulla dentro di me si turbò; potei ascoltare quella musica triste e lontana, e non provai alcun desiderio di fuggire da ciò che suscitava. Come avrei potuto farlo, quando, mescolata a tutto ciò, c’era anche la sua cara stessa, l’angelo più gentile della mia vita?
“E tu, Agnes,” dissi dopo un po’. “Raccontami di te. In tutto questo tempo trascorso, quasi mai mi hai parlato della tua vita!”
“Cosa dovrei dire?”, rispose lei con il suo sorriso radioso. “Papà sta bene. Ci vedete qui, tranquilli nella nostra casa; le nostre preoccupazioni sono svanite, la nostra casa ci è stata restituita. E sapendo questo, caro Trotwood, tu sai già tutto.”
“Ehi, Agnes?” dissi io.
Mi guardò, con un certo tremolio di stupore sul viso.
“Non c’è nient’altro, sorella?” dissi.
Il suo colore, che poco prima era svanito, tornò ad apparire, per poi scomparire di nuovo. Sorrise; con una tristezza silenziosa, pensai, e scosse la testa.
Avevo cercato di guidarla verso ciò che mia zia aveva accennato; poiché, per me quanto doveva essere doloroso ricevere quella fiducia, dovevo comunque disciplinare il mio cuore e adempiere al mio dovere nei suoi confronti. Tuttavia, vidi che lei era a disagio, quindi lasciai perdere la cosa.
“Hai molto da fare, cara Agnes?”
“Con la mia scuola?”, disse lei, alzando di nuovo lo sguardo, con tutta la sua serenità e vivacità.
“Sì. È davvero un lavoro faticoso, non è vero?”
“Il lavoro è così piacevole,” rispose lei, “che quasi non mi sembra giusto chiamarlo con quel nome.”
“Niente di difficile è al tuo livello,” dissi io.
Il suo colore scomparve e ricomparve ancora una volta; e di nuovo, quando abbassò la testa, vidi lo stesso sorriso triste.
“Aspetterai e vedrai papà,” disse Agnes, allegramente, “e passerai la giornata con noi? Forse dormirai nella tua stanza. Noi la chiamiamo sempre la tua.”
Non avrei potuto farlo, poiché avevo promesso di tornare da mia zia di notte; ma avrei trascorso la giornata lì, felicemente.
“Devo rimanere prigioniera per un po’,” disse Agnes, “ma ecco qui i vecchi libri, Trotwood, e la vecchia musica.”
“Anche i vecchi >fiori sono qui,” dissi guardandomi intorno; “quelli delle vecchie varietà.”
“Ho trovato un piacere,” rispose Agnes sorridendo, “mentre tu eri assente: mantenere tutto com’era quando eravamo bambini. Perché allora eravamo molto felici, penso.”
“Solo il cielo sa se lo eravamo davvero!”, dissi io.
“E ogni piccola cosa che mi ricorda mio fratello,” disse Agnes, con i suoi occhi cordiali rivolti verso di me con gioia, “è stata una compagnia gradita. Anche questo,” aggiunse, mostrandomi il cestino pieno di chiavi che ancora le pendeva al fianco, “sembra suonare una sorta di vecchia melodia, ”
Sorrise di nuovo e uscì dalla porta attraverso la quale era entrata.
Era mio dovere custodire questo affetto fraterno con la massima cura e devozione religiosa. Era tutto ciò che mi era rimasto, ed era un vero tesoro. Se avessi mai messo in pericolo le basi di quella fiducia sacra e di quel rapporto su cui esso si fondava, sarebbe andato perduto per sempre e non avrebbe più potuto essere recuperato. Questo principio lo tenevo sempre a mente: più la amavo, più era mio dovere non dimenticarlo mai.
Camminai per le strade; e, rivedendo ancora una volta il mio vecchio avversario, quel macellaio che ora era un poliziotto con il suo bastone appeso nel negozio, andai a guardare il luogo in cui avevo combattuto contro di lui. Lì riflettei su Miss Shepherd e sulla più anziana Miss Larkins, su tutte quelle passioni vane e quegli affetti e antipatie di quel tempo. Sembrava che nulla fosse sopravvissuto a quel tempo tranne Agnes; e lei, sempre una stella sopra di me, era ancora più luminosa e più alta.
Quando tornai, il signor Wickfield era già rientrato a >casa, da un giardino che possedeva a qualche chilometro dalla città, dove ora trascorreva quasi tutti i giorni. Lo trovai esattamente come mia zia me l’aveva descritto. Ci sedemmo a cena insieme a una mezza dozzina di bambine; lui sembrava soltanto l’ombra della sua bella immagine appesa al muro.
La tranquillità e la pace che un tempo appartenevano a quel luogo silenzioso nella mia memoria, tornarono ad avvolgerlo. Dopo cena, poiché il signor Wickfield non volle bere vino e nemmeno io ne desideravo, salimmo al piano di sopra; lì Agnes e i suoi piccoli compagni cantavano, giocavano e facevano i loro compiti. Dopo il tè, i bambini se ne andarono; e noi tre rimanemmo insieme a parlare dei tempi passati.
‘My part in them,’ said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, ‘has much matter for regret—for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you well know. But I would not cancel it, if it were in my power.’
I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.
‘I should cancel with it,’ he pursued, ‘such patience and devotion, such fidelity, such a child’s love, as I must not forget, no! even to forget myself.’
‘I understand you, sir,’ I softly said. ‘I hold it—I have always held it—in veneration.’
‘But no one knows, not even you,’ he returned, ‘how much she has done, how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes!’
She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was very, very pale.
‘Well, well!’ he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my aunt had told me. ‘Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has anyone?’
‘Never, sir.’
‘It’s not much—though it was much to suffer. She married me in opposition to her father’s wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was a very hard man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed her. He broke her heart.’
Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
‘She had an affectionate and gentle heart,’ he said; ‘and it was broken. I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always labouring, in secret, under this distress; and being delicate and downcast at the time of his last repulse—for it was not the first, by many—pined away and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old; and the grey hair that you recollect me with, when you first came.’ He kissed Agnes on her cheek.
‘My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself, Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her. If I give you any clue to what I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it, I know. What Agnes is, I need not say. I have always read something of her poor mother’s story, in her character; and so I tell it you tonight, when we three are again together, after such great changes. I have told it all.’
His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more pathetic meaning from it than they had had before. If I had wanted anything by which to mark this night of our re-union, I should have found it in this.
Agnes rose up from her father’s side, before long; and going softly to her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had often listened in that place.
‘Have you any intention of going away again?’ Agnes asked me, as I was standing by.
‘What does my sister say to that?’
‘I hope not.’
‘Then I have no such intention, Agnes.’
‘I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,’ she said, mildly. ‘Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power of doing good; and if I could spare my brother,’ with her eyes upon me, ‘perhaps the time could not.’
‘What I am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best.’
‘I made you, Trotwood?’
‘Yes! Agnes, my dear girl!’ I said, bending over her. ‘I tried to tell you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts since Dora died. You remember, when you came down to me in our little room—pointing upward, Agnes?’
‘Oh, Trotwood!’ she returned, her eyes filled with tears. ‘So loving, so confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget?’
‘As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something better; ever directing me to higher things!’
She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet smile.
‘And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that there is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don’t know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall look up to you, and be guided by you, as I have been through the darkness that is past. Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now, and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource, as you have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always before me, pointing upward!’
She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me. ‘Do you know, what I have heard tonight, Agnes,’ said I, ‘strangely seems to be a part of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first—with which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?’
‘You knew I had no mother,’ she replied with a smile, ‘and felt kindly towards me.’
‘More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story, that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can now understand it was), but was not so in you.’
She softly played on, looking at me still.
‘Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?’
‘No!’
‘Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease to be so, until you ceased to live?---Will you laugh at such a dream?’
‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’
For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me with her own calm smile.
As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.
“La mia parte in tutto questo,” disse il signor Wickfield scuotendo la sua testa bianca, “merita molta rimorso, un profondo rimorso e sincera contrizione, Trotwood, lo sai bene. Ma non vorrei cancellarla, anche se ne avessi il potere.”
Avrei potuto crederci facilmente, guardando il viso accanto a lui.
“Dovrei annullare tutto questo,” continuò, “tanta pazienza e devozione, tanta fedeltà, un amore così profondo da parte di un bambino. Non posso dimenticarlo, assolutamente no! Nemmeno per un momento dovrei scordarmene.”
“La capisco, signore,” dissi dolcemente. “L’ho sempre rispettato. L’ho sempre considerato qualcosa di molto prezioso.”
“Ma nessuno lo sa, nemmeno tu,” rispose lui, “quanto ha fatto, quante sofferenze ha sopportato, quanto sforzo ha compiuto. Cara Agnes!”
Lei aveva posato la sua mano sul suo braccio in un gesto supplichevole, per fermarlo; e era molto, molto pallida.
‘Beh, beh!’ disse lui sospirando, liquidando, come capii poi, qualche difficoltà che lei aveva affrontato o avrebbe ancora dovuto affrontare a causa di ciò che mia zia mi aveva raccontato. ‘Beh! Non ti ho mai parlato della madre di lei. Qualcuno l’ha fatto?’
“Mai, signore.”
“Non è molto, anche se soffrire tanto è stato davvero troppo. Si è sposata con me contro la volontà di suo padre, che poi l’ha ripudiata. Prima che mia figlia Agnes nascesse, lei gli ha chiesto perdono. Era un uomo molto duro, e sua madre era morta da tempo. Lui l’ha rifiutata, le ha spezzato il cuore.”
Agnes si appoggiò al suo braccio e gli passò l’altro braccio intorno al collo.
“Aveva un cuore affettuoso e gentile,” disse; “e quel cuore è stato spezzato. Conoscevo molto bene la sua natura tenera. Nessuno avrebbe potuto capirlo, se non fossi stato io. Mi amava profondamente, ma non fu mai felice. Lottò in segreto contro questa sofferenza; e essendo delicata e depressa nel momento della sua ultima delusione – poiché non era la prima volta – si consumò lentamente fino alla morte. Mi lasciò Agnes, che aveva solo due settimane. E i capelli grigi con cui mi riconoscete quando venite da me per la prima volta.” Baciò Agnes sulla guancia.
‘Il mio amore per la mia cara bambina era un amore malato, ma a quel tempo la mia mente non era affatto sana. Non voglio parlare oltre di questo. Non mi riferisco a me stessa, Trotwood, ma alla sua madre e a lei. Se vi do qualche indizio su ciò che sono o su ciò che sono stata, sicuramente riuscirete a capirlo. Quanto ad Agnes, non c’è bisogno di dirlo. Ho sempre letto qualcosa sulla storia della sua povera madre nel suo carattere; quindi ve la racconto stasera, quando siamo di nuovo tutte e tre insieme, dopo tanti grandi cambiamenti. Ve l’ho raccontata tutta.’
La sua testa china, il suo viso angelico e il suo dovere filiale conferivano a quel gesto un significato ancora più commovente di prima. Se avessi voluto trovare qualcosa che potesse simboleggiare questa notte della nostra ri unione, l’avrei trovata proprio in questo.
Agnes si alzò presto dal fianco di suo padre; poi, avvicinandosi silenziosamente al pianoforte, suonò alcune delle vecchie melodie che spesso ascoltavamo in quel posto.
“Hai intenzione di andartene di nuovo?” mi chiese Agnes mentre stavo lì in piedi.
“Cosa ne dice mia sorella?”
“Non lo spero affatto.”
“Allora non ho alcuna intenzione del genere, Agnes.”
“Penso che non dovresti farlo, Trotwood, visto che mi lo chiedi,” disse lei con dolcezza.
“La tua crescente reputazione e il tuo successo ti danno più possibilità di fare del bene;
e se potessi sacrificare mio fratello, ” guardandomi negli occhi, “forse in quel caso non sarebbe necessario.”
“Quello che sono oggi, Agnes, lo sei tu ad avermi reso tale. Tu dovresti saperlo meglio di chiunque altro.”
“Ti ho creato io, Trotwood?”
“Sì! Agnes, mia cara ragazza!” dissi, chinandomi su di lei. “Ho cercato di dirtelo quando ci siamo incontrati oggi, qualcosa che mi tormenta da quando Dora è morta. Ricordi, quando sei venuta da me nella nostra piccola stanza, hai indicato verso l’alto, Agnes?”
“Oh, Trotwood!” rispose lei, con gli occhi pieni di lacrime. “Così amorevole, così fiduciosa, e così giovane! Come potrò mai dimenticarlo?”
“Proprio come eri allora, mia sorella, da allora ho spesso pensato che tu sei sempre stata al mio fianco. Sempre puntando verso l’alto, Agnes; sempre guidandomi verso qualcosa di meglio; sempre indirizzandomi verso cose più elevate!”
Si limitò ad scuotere la testa; attraverso le sue lacrime vidi lo stesso sorriso triste e silenzioso.
“E sono così grata a te per questo, Agnes. Sono così legata a te, che non esiste alcun nome per l’affetto del mio cuore. Voglio che tu lo sappia, ma non so come dirtelo. Per tutta la mia vita, continuerò ad ammirarti e a lasciarmi guidare da te, proprio come è successo nelle tenebre del passato. Qualunque cosa accada, qualunque nuovo legame tu possa stabilire, qualunque cambiamento possa verificarsi tra di noi. Io continuerò sempre ad amarti, così come faccio ora e ho sempre fatto. Tu sarai sempre il mio conforto e la mia forza, proprio come sei sempre stata. Fino alla mia morte, mia cara sorella, ti vedrò sempre davanti a me, che mi indica la strada da seguire, ”
Mi mise la mano nella mia e mi disse di essere orgogliosa di me e di ciò che avevo detto; anche se l’avevo lodata molto più di quanto meritasse. Poi continuò a suonare dolcemente, senza mai distogliere lo sguardo da me. “Sai una cosa? Quello che ho sentito stasera sembra stranamente far parte di quel sentimento che provavo per te la prima volta che ti ho vista. Di quello stesso sentimento con cui ero seduto accanto a te nei miei giorni difficili alla scuola”, le dissi.
“Sapevi che non avevo madre“, rispose lei sorridendo, “e provavi simpatia per me.“
“Più di tutto, Agnes, sapevo, quasi come se conoscessi già questa storia, che c’era qualcosa di incredibilmente gentile e dolce intorno a te; qualcosa che per un’altra persona avrebbe potuto essere triste (come ora riesco a capire che era), ma che in te non lo era.”
Continuò a suonare dolcemente, continuando a guardarmi.
“Riderai di me per aver nutrito simili fantasie, Agnes?”
‘No!’
“O forse, quando ho detto che credevo davvero di aver provato, anche in quel momento, che tu avresti potuto essere fedele e affettuoso nonostante ogni scoraggiamento, e che non avresti mai smesso di esserlo, fino a quando non avessi più vissuto, riderai di un simile sogno?”
‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’
Per un istante, un’espressione di angoscia attraversò il suo viso; ma anche in quel breve momento, scomparve subito; e lei continuò a giocare, guardandomi con il suo solito sorriso sereno.
Mentre tornavo indietro nella solitaria notte, il vento che mi sfiorava sembrava un’ricordo inquieto; pensai a lei e temetti che non fosse felice. Anch’io non ero felice. Ma fino ad allora avevo fedelmente sigillato il Passato nel mio cuore. Pensandola, alzai lo sguardo verso quel cielo sopra di me: forse lì, in un mistero ancora da scoprire, avrei potuto amarla con un amore mai conosciuto sulla terra. E dirle quale battaglia interiore avevo vissuto quando l’amavo qui.
CHAPTER 61. I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS
For a time—at all events until my book should be completed, which would be the work of several months—I took up my abode in my aunt’s house at Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly pursued my task.
In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the rest will be of interest to no one.
Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no knowledge—chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer—I agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of State without the salary.
Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence, and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything to make it worse.
The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles’s door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her, the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his official closet with melody.
I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book; and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?
‘Oh, DON’T, Tom!’ cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the fire.
‘My dear,’ returned Tom, in a delighted state, ‘why not? What do you say to that writing, Copperfield?’
‘It’s extraordinarily legal and formal,’ said I. ‘I don’t think I ever saw such a stiff hand.’
‘Not like a lady’s hand, is it?’ said Traddles.
‘A lady’s!’ I repeated. ‘Bricks and mortar are more like a lady’s hand!’
Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was Sophy’s writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off—I forget how many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all this, and said that when ‘Tom’ was made a judge he wouldn’t be so ready to proclaim it. Which ‘Tom’ denied; averring that he should always be equally proud of it, under all circumstances.
‘What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!’ said I, when she had gone away, laughing.
‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, ‘she is, without any exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness, Copperfield!’
‘Indeed, you have reason to commend her!’ I returned. ‘You are a happy fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the happiest people in the world.’
‘I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,’ returned Traddles. ‘I admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day’s arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn, caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up at night with me if it’s ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can’t believe it, Copperfield!’
He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.
‘I positively sometimes can’t believe it,’ said Traddles. ‘Then our pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful! When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and draw those curtains—which she made—where could we be more snug? When it’s fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the jewellers’ shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents, coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices, butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let, sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT do, if I was made a judge? And we parcel it out—such a room for us, such rooms for the girls, and so forth; until we settle to our satisfaction that it would do, or it wouldn’t do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at half-price to the pit of the theatre—the very smell of which is cheap, in my opinion, at the money—and there we thoroughly enjoy the play: which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home, perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook’s-shop, or a little lobster at the fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn’t do this!’
CAPITOLO 61. MI VENGONO MOSTRATI DUE PENITENTI INTERESSANTI
Per un certo periodo di tempo – comunque fino al completamento del mio libro, il che avrebbe richiesto diversi mesi – mi stabilii nella casa di mia zia a Dover; lì, seduto alla finestra da cui avevo osservato la luna sul mare, continuai tranquillamente il mio lavoro.
Nel rispetto della mia intenzione di menzionare le mie stesse opere narrative soltanto quando il loro sviluppo si intrecci casualmente con la trama principale della mia storia, non mi soffermerò sulle aspirazioni, sui piaceri, sulle ansie e sui successi della mia attività artistica. Ho già detto che mi sono dedicato a essa con tutto il mio impegno e ho profuso in essa tutta l’energia della mia ‘anima. Se i libri che ho scritto hanno qualche valore, questo sarà sufficiente a dimostrarlo; altrimenti, avrei scritto invano, e il resto non interesserebbe a nessuno.
Di tanto in tanto, andavo a Londra; per perdermi nel vortice della vita di quella città, o per consultarmi con Traddles su qualche questione lavorativa. In mia assenza, lui si era occupato delle mie faccende con grande saggezza; e le mie questioni materiali andavano bene. Poiché la mia notorietà iniziò a farmi ricevere un’enorme quantità di lettere da persone che non conoscevo affatto – per lo più prive di contenuto significativo e estremamente difficili da rispondere – concordai con Traddles nel farsi apporre il mio nome sulla sua porta. Lì, l’affezionato postino del quartiere mi consegnava intere pile di lettere; e là, di tanto in tanto, me ne occupavo, come se fossi un Ministro degli Esteri senza stipendio.
Tra questa corrispondenza, di tanto in tanto comparivano proposte gentili da parte di alcuni di quei numerosi individui che sempre si aggiravano intorno alle aule del Parlamento, offrendosi di praticare sotto il mio nome (se avessi intrapreso le necessarie procedure per diventare il loro supervisore) e di pagarmi una percentuale dei profitti. Ma rifiutai queste offerte: sapevo già che esistevano molti individui che agivano in modo simile, e ritenevo che il Parlamento fosse già abbastanza negativo senza che io aggiungessi altro al suo declino.
Le ragazze erano già tornate a casa, quando il mio nome apparve improvvisamente sulla porta di Traddles; quel ragazzo acuto sembrava non aver mai sentito parlare di Sophie, chiusa in una stanza sul retro, che di tanto in tanto alzava lo sguardo dal suo lavoro verso quella piccola striscia di giardino piena di fuliggine e con una pompa nel mezzo. Ma lì la trovavo sempre: la stessa casalinga vivace e allegra; spesso canticchiava le sue ballate del Devonshire quando nessuno sconosciuto saliva le scale, e con la sua musica soffocava ogni atteggiamento ostile da parte di quel ragazzo.
All’inizio mi chiedevo perché spesso trovassi Sophy mentre scriveva in un quaderno; e perché ogni volta che apparivo lei lo chiudeva immediatamente e lo nascondeva nel cassetto del tavolo. Ma presto scoprii il segreto. Un giorno, Traddles (che era appena tornato a >casa sotto la pioggia di nevischio proveniente da >Corte) tirò fuori un foglio dal suo scrivio e mi chiese cosa ne pensassi di quella calligrafia.
“Oh, NO, Tom!” gridò Sophie, che stava riscaldando i suoi pantofoli davanti al fuoco.
“Mia cara,” rispose Tom, felicissimo, “perché no? Che ne dici di quella lettera, Copperfield?”
“È estremamente legale e formale,” dissi. “Non credo di aver mai visto una procedura così rigida.”
“Non sembra affatto la mano di una signora, vero?” disse Traddles.
“Di una signora!”, ripetei. “I mattoni e il cemento sono più simili alla mano di una signora, ”
Traddles scoppiò in una risata entusiasta e mi spiegò che si trattava della scrittura di Sophie; che Sophie aveva giurato e dichiarato che presto avrebbe avuto bisogno di un copista, e che lei stessa sarebbe stata quella persona; che aveva imparato a scrivere seguendo un modello; e che riusciva a comporre, non ricordo esattamente quanti fogli all’ora. Sophie fu molto confusa quando le dissi tutto questo, e commentò che quando ‘Tom’ sarebbe diventato giudice, probabilmente non avrebbe più mostrato tanta fretta nel farlo sapere. Ma ‘Tom’ negò questa affermazione, sostenendo di essere sempre ugualmente orgoglioso di ciò che faceva, in qualsiasi circostanza.
“Che moglie davvero meravigliosa e affascinante, cara mia Traddles!” dissi ridendo, dopo che se n’era andata.
“Mio caro Copperfield,” rispose Traddles, “è senza dubbio la ragazza più adorabile che esista! Il modo in cui gestisce questo posto; la sua puntualità, le sue conoscenze domestiche, la sua parsimonia e l’ordine che regna qui; la sua allegria. Copperfield!”
“Davvero, hai tutte le ragioni per lodarla!” risposi. “Sei un uomo fortunato. Credo che tu e lei siate tra le persone più felici del mondo.”
“Sono sicuro che siamo davvero due delle persone più felici,” rispose Traddles. “Lo ammetto, in ogni caso. Benedica la mia ‘anima. Quando la vedo alzarsi alla luce delle candele in queste mattine buie, occuparsi dei preparativi per la giornata, andare al mercato prima che gli impiegati arrivino all’osteria, senza curarsi del tempo, inventare i pasti più deliziosi con ingredienti semplici, preparare budini e torte, mantenere tutto in ordine. Lei stessa è sempre così ordinata e graziosa. Rimane con me fino a tardi la sera, è sempre gentile e incoraggiante. Tutto questo solo per me. A volte non riesco proprio a crederci, Copperfield!”
Era molto attento a quelle stesse pantofole che lei aveva riscaldato; le indossò e allungò felicemente i piedi sul parapetto.
“A volte proprio non riesco a crederci,” disse Traddles. “E poi i nostri piaceri. Oh, sono davvero economici, ma incredibilmente deliziosi! Quando siamo a casa, una sera, chiudiamo la porta esterna e tiriamo le tende che lei stessa ha fatto. Dove potremmo stare più al caldo? Se fa bello, usciamo a fare una passeggiata: le strade sono piene di cose belle da vedere. Guardiamo attraverso i vetri scintillanti dei negozi di gioielli; io mostro a Sophy quali di quei serpenti di diamante, avvolti su fondali di raso bianco, le comprerei se potessi permettermelo. E lei mi mostra quali degli orologi d’oro, decorati con pietre preziose e meccanismi complicati, comprerebbe per me, se potesse permetterselo. Scegliamo anche cucchiai, forchette, fette di pesce, coltelli da burro e pinzette per lo zucchero. E davvero ci sembra di averli acquistati! Poi, quando entriamo nelle piazze o nelle grandi strade e vediamo una casa in affitto, a volte la guardiamo e pensiamo: ‘Che bel posto sarebbe se fossi un giudice, ’ La immaginiamo divisa in stanze per noi, stanze per le ragazze, e così via. Fino a quando non decidiamo se ci piacerebbe o meno. A volte andiamo al teatro a metà prezzo. Anche l’odore del teatro, secondo me, è davvero economico rispetto al prezzo che si paga. E lì ci godiamo davvero la rappresentazione: Sophy crede in ogni singola parola detta sul palco, e anch’io. Tornando a casa, magari compriamo qualcosa da un negozio di alimentari o un po’ di aragosta dal pesceggiatore. E poi prepariamo una cena deliziosa, chiacchierando di ciò che abbiamo visto. Ora, sai, Copperfield. Se fossi Cancelliere della Corona, non potremmo certo fare queste cose!”
‘You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,’ thought I, ‘that would be pleasant and amiable. And by the way,’ I said aloud, ‘I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?’
‘Really,’ replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, ‘I can’t wholly deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For being in one of the back rows of the King’s Bench the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am afraid there’s a skeleton—in a wig—on the ledge of the desk.’
After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, ‘Old Creakle!’
‘I have a letter from that old—Rascal here,’ said I. For I never was less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, than when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.
‘From Creakle the schoolmaster?’ exclaimed Traddles. ‘No!’
‘Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and fortune,’ said I, looking over my letters, ‘and who discover that they were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex Magistrate.’
I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at all.
‘How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?’ said I.
‘Oh dear me!’ replied Traddles, ‘it would be very difficult to answer that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody, or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the county to nominate him for the commission.’
‘On the commission he is, at any rate,’ said I. ‘And he writes to me here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making sincere and lasting converts and penitents—which, you know, is by solitary confinement. What do you say?’
‘To the system?’ inquired Traddles, looking grave.
‘No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?’
‘I don’t object,’ said Traddles.
‘Then I’ll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose, and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?’
‘Perfectly,’ said Traddles.
‘Yet, if you’ll read his letter, you’ll find he is the tenderest of men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,’ said I; ‘though I can’t find that his tenderness extends to any other class of created beings.’
Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my observation of similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.
On the appointed day—I think it was the next day, but no matter—Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.
In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought. He received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and had always loved me tenderly. On my introducing Traddles, Mr. Creakle expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior degree, that he had always been Traddles’s guide, philosopher, and friend. Our venerable instructor was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance. His face was as fiery as ever; his eyes were as small, and rather deeper set. The scanty, wet-looking grey hair, by which I remembered him, was almost gone; and the thick veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable to look at.
After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might have supposed that there was nothing in the world to be legitimately taken into account but the supreme comfort of prisoners, at any expense, and nothing on the wide earth to be done outside prison-doors, we began our inspection. It being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the great kitchen, where every prisoner’s dinner was in course of being set out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred ever dined half so well. But I learned that the ‘system’ required high living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found that on that head and on all others, ‘the system’ put an end to all doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.
As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I inquired of Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be the main advantages of this all-governing and universally over-riding system? I found them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners—so that no one man in confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition and repentance.
Now, it struck me, when we began to visit individuals in their cells, and to traverse the passages in which those cells were, and to have the manner of the going to chapel and so forth, explained to us, that there was a strong probability of the prisoners knowing a good deal about each other, and of their carrying on a pretty complete system of intercourse. This, at the time I write, has been proved, I believe, to be the case; but, as it would have been flat blasphemy against the system to have hinted such a doubt then, I looked out for the penitence as diligently as I could.
“Tu faresti qualcosa, qualunque cosa tu fossi, mio caro Traddles,” pensai, “qualcosa di piacevole e gentile. E a proposito,” dissi ad alta voce, “immagino che ormai non disegni più scheletri, vero?”
“Davvero,” rispose Traddles, ridendo e arrossendo, “non posso negare del tutto che lo faccia, mio caro Copperfield. Poiché l’altro giorno mi trovavo in una delle file posteriori della tribuna del Re, con una penna in mano, mi è venuta l’idea di provare a ricordare come fossi riuscito a compiere quell’impresa. E temo che ci sia un, scheletro, con una parrucca, sul bordo della scrivania.”
Dopo esserci messi a ridere di cuore, Traddles alla fine guardò il fuoco con un sorriso e, con quel suo modo indulgente, disse: “Vecchio Creakle!”
“Ho una lettera da quel vecchio, quel birichino,” dissi. Perché non ero mai meno disposto a perdonarlo per il modo in cui trattava Traddles, di quando vedevo Traddles così pronto a perdonarlo lui stesso.
“Dall’insegnante Creakle?”, esclamò Traddles. “No!”
“Tra le persone che sono attratte da me grazie alla mia crescente fama e fortuna,” dissi, esaminando le mie lettere, “e che scoprono di essere sempre state molto legate a me, c’è proprio lo stesso Creakle. Ora non è più un insegnante, Traddles. È andato in pensione. Ora è un magistrato del Middlesex.”
Pensavo che Traddles potesse essere sorpreso nel sentirllo, ma affatto no.
“Come mai è diventato un magistrato di Middlesex?” dissi io.
“Oh mio Dio!”, rispose Traddles, “sarebbe molto difficile rispondere a quella domanda. Forse ha votato per qualcuno, o prestato denaro a qualcuno, o comprato qualcosa da qualcuno, o in qualche altro modo si è reso utile a qualcuno, o ha lavorato per qualcuno che conosceva qualcun altro il quale ha fatto sì che il vice-sceriffo della contea lo nominasse per quella commissione.”
“Comunque, è incaricato di questo compito,” dissi. “E mi scrive qui che sarebbe felice di mostrarmi, in azione, l’unico vero sistema di disciplina carceraria; l’unico modo indiscutibile per ottenere conversioni e pentimenti sinceri e duraturi, il quale, come sai, consiste nella reclusione solitaria. Che ne pensi?”
“Verso il sistema?”, chiese Traddles, con un’espressione seria.
“No. Alla mia accettazione dell’offerta, e al tuo venire con me?”
“Non ho obiezioni,” disse Traddles.
“Allora scriverò per dirlo. Vi ricordate (per non parlare del modo in cui ci hanno trattato) di come quel stesso Creakle mandasse suo figlio fuori casa, e della vita che conduceva con sua moglie e sua figlia?”
“Perfettamente,” disse Traddles.
“Tuttavia, se leggerete la sua lettera, scoprirete che è l’uomo più gentile verso i prigionieri condannati per ogni sorta di reati gravi,” dissi; “sebbene non riesca a constatare che questa sua gentilezza si estenda anche ad altre categorie di esseri viventi.”
Traddles alzò le spalle, senza mostrare alcuna sorpresa. Non mi aspettavo che lo facesse, e nemmeno io ero sorpreso; inoltre, la mia conoscenza di simili satire pratiche era piuttosto limitata. Concordammo l’orario della nostra visita, e quella sera scrissi immediatamente al signor Creakle.
Nel giorno stabilito – credo fosse il giorno dopo, ma non importa – io e Traddles ci recammo nella prigione dove il signor Creakle aveva grande potere. Era un edificio immenso e solido, costruito a grandi spese. Mentre ci avvicinavamo al cancello, non potei fare a meno di pensare a quanto clamore avrebbe suscitato in tutta la regione, se qualcuno avesse proposto di spendere metà delle somme spese per costruire una scuola industriale per i giovani o un rifugio per gli anziani meritevoli.
In un ufficio che probabilmente si trovava al piano terra della Torre di Babele – costruito su una scala così imponente da lasciarci sbalorditi – fummo presentati al nostro vecchio insegnante. Questi faceva parte di un gruppo composto da due o tre magistrati molto impegnati, oltre ad alcuni visitatori che avevano portato con sé. Mi accolse come se avesse plasmato la mia mente negli anni passati e mi avesse sempre amato con tenerezza. Quando presentai Traddles, il signor Creakle esprimeva, in modo simile ma su un livello inferiore, di essere sempre stato la guida, il filosofo e l’amico di Traddles. Il nostro rispettabile insegnante era molto più anziano e il suo aspetto non era affatto migliorato: il viso era ancora altrettanto rossastro; gli occhi erano piccoli e incassati più profondamente nel volto. I pochi capelli grigi, umidi e lisci che ricordavo di lui erano quasi scomparsi del tutto; le vene spesse sulla sua testa calva non erano certo più gradevoli da vedere.
Dopo alcune conversazioni tra questi signori, dalle quali avrei potuto dedurre che non esistesse nulla al mondo da prendere seriamente in considerazione se non il massimo comfort dei prigionieri, a qualunque costo, e che nulla al di fuori delle mura della prigione dovesse essere fatto, iniziammo la nostra ispezione. Essendo ormai l’ora di cena, entrammo prima nella grande cucina, dove il pasto serale di ogni prigioniero veniva preparato separatamente (per essere poi consegnato nelle loro celle) con regolarità e precisione assoluta. Dissi a Traddles che mi chiedevo se qualcuno si rendesse conto del contrasto stridente tra queste abbondanti cene di ottima qualità e i pasti, per non parlare dei poveri, ma anche dei soldati, dei marinai, dei lavoratori, della grande maggioranza delle persone oneste e laboriose; di cui nemmeno uno su cinquecento mangiava mai così bene. Tuttavia appresi che quel “sistema” richiedeva un tenore di vita elevato; in breve, per eliminare definitivamente quel sistema, mi resi conto che, su questo punto e su tutti gli altri, esso risolveva ogni dubbio e eliminava qualsiasi anomalia. Nessuno sembrava nemmeno immaginare l’esistenza di un altro sistema, se non QUELLO.
Mentre leggevamo alcuni di quei passaggi magnifici, chiesi al signor Creakle e ai suoi amici quali fossero i principali vantaggi di questo sistema onnipotente e universalmente dominante. Scoprii che essi consistevano nell’isolamento perfetto dei prigionieri – in modo che nessuno di loro sapesse nulla degli altri – nonché nel portarli in uno stato mentale salutare, favorevole a una sincera contrizione e pentimento.
Ora, mi è venuto in mente che, quando abbiamo iniziato a visitare i detenuti nelle loro celle, percorrendo i corridoi in cui si trovavano e ricevendo spiegazioni su come si svolgevano le attività quotidiane, c’era una forte probabilità che quei prigionieri conoscessero molto l’uno dell’altro e che avessero sviluppato un sistema piuttosto completo di comunicazione tra loro. A quell’epoca in cui scrivo, credo che ciò sia stato effettivamente dimostrato; tuttavia, poiché sollevare un simile >dubbio sarebbe stato un vero e proprio sacrilegio nei confronti di quel sistema, ho cercato di esprimermi con la massima cautela possibile.
And here again, I had great misgivings. I found as prevalent a fashion in the form of the penitence, as I had left outside in the forms of the coats and waistcoats in the windows of the tailors’ shops. I found a vast amount of profession, varying very little in character: varying very little (which I thought exceedingly suspicious), even in words. I found a great many foxes, disparaging whole vineyards of inaccessible grapes; but I found very few foxes whom I would have trusted within reach of a bunch. Above all, I found that the most professing men were the greatest objects of interest; and that their conceit, their vanity, their want of excitement, and their love of deception (which many of them possessed to an almost incredible extent, as their histories showed), all prompted to these professions, and were all gratified by them.
However, I heard so repeatedly, in the course of our goings to and fro, of a certain Number Twenty Seven, who was the Favourite, and who really appeared to be a Model Prisoner, that I resolved to suspend my judgement until I should see Twenty Seven. Twenty Eight, I understood, was also a bright particular star; but it was his misfortune to have his glory a little dimmed by the extraordinary lustre of Twenty Seven. I heard so much of Twenty Seven, of his pious admonitions to everybody around him, and of the beautiful letters he constantly wrote to his mother (whom he seemed to consider in a very bad way), that I became quite impatient to see him.
I had to restrain my impatience for some time, on account of Twenty Seven being reserved for a concluding effect. But, at last, we came to the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a little hole in it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest admiration, that he was reading a Hymn Book.
There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty Seven reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up, six or seven heads deep. To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into the passage. This was done; and whom should Traddles and I then behold, to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!
He knew us directly; and said, as he came out—with the old writhe,—
‘How do you do, Mr. Copperfield? How do you do, Mr. Traddles?’
This recognition caused a general admiration in the party. I rather thought that everyone was struck by his not being proud, and taking notice of us.
‘Well, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. ‘How do you find yourself today?’
‘I am very umble, sir!’ replied Uriah Heep.
‘You are always so, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle.
Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: ‘Are you quite comfortable?’
‘Yes, I thank you, sir!’ said Uriah Heep, looking in that direction. ‘Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. I see my follies, now, sir. That’s what makes me comfortable.’
Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner, forcing himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: ‘How do you find the beef?’
‘Thank you, sir,’ replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of this voice, ‘it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it’s my duty to bear. I have committed follies, gentlemen,’ said Uriah, looking round with a meek smile, ‘and I ought to bear the consequences without repining.’ A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven’s celestial state of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately made by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the midst of us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly meritorious museum. That we, the neophytes, might have an excess of light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to let out Twenty Eight.
I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good book!
‘Twenty Eight,’ said a gentleman in spectacles, who had not yet spoken, ‘you complained last week, my good fellow, of the cocoa. How has it been since?’
‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, ‘it has been better made. If I might take the liberty of saying so, sir, I don’t think the milk which is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir, that there is a great adulteration of milk, in London, and that the article in a pure state is difficult to be obtained.’
It appeared to me that the gentleman in spectacles backed his Twenty Eight against Mr. Creakle’s Twenty Seven, for each of them took his own man in hand.
‘What is your state of mind, Twenty Eight?’ said the questioner in spectacles.
‘I thank you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer; ‘I see my follies now, sir. I am a good deal troubled when I think of the sins of my former companions, sir; but I trust they may find forgiveness.’
‘You are quite happy yourself?’ said the questioner, nodding encouragement.
‘I am much obliged to you, sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer. ‘Perfectly so.’
‘Is there anything at all on your mind now?’ said the questioner. ‘If so, mention it, Twenty Eight.’
‘Sir,’ said Mr. Littimer, without looking up, ‘if my eyes have not deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with me in my former life. It may be profitable to that gentleman to know, sir, that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having lived a thoughtless life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist. I hope that gentleman will take warning, sir, and will not be offended at my freedom. It is for his good. I am conscious of my own past follies. I hope he may repent of all the wickedness and sin to which he has been a party.’
E ancora una volta, ebbi grandi dubbi. Scoprii che esisteva una moda molto diffusa, sotto forma di penitenze, proprio come avevo notato l’esistenza di abiti e gilet nei negozi dei sarti. Notai inoltre un’infinità di persone che professavano certe pratiche religiose, le quali però differivano molto poco tra loro, sia nel contenuto che nelle parole utilizzate. Vidi molte “volpi” che denigravano intere vigne piene di uva inaccessibile; ma ne trovai poche di cui mi sarei fidato anche solo a distanza ravvicinata. Soprattutto, notai che le persone che professavano con maggiore fervore queste pratiche erano proprio quelle che suscitavano il maggior interesse; la loro presunzione, la loro vanità, la loro mancanza di entusiasmo e il loro amore per l’inganno (che molti di loro possedevano in misura quasi incredibile, come dimostravano le loro storie) erano tutti fattori che li spingevano a queste pratiche, e che ne traevano soddisfazione.
Tuttavia, ho sentito parlare così spesso, nel corso delle nostre frequenti visite, di un certo Ventisette che era il favorito e che sembrava davvero un detenuto modello, che ho deciso di rimandare la mia valutazione fino a quando non l’avessi incontrato. Ho anche saputo che Ventiotto era una “stella particolarmente luminosa”; ma sfortunatamente la sua gloria veniva un po’ offuscata dal straordinario splendore di Ventisette. Ho sentito parlare così tanto di Ventisette, delle sue sagge ammonizioni rivolte a tutti quelli intorno a lui, e delle bellissime lettere che scriveva costantemente a sua madre (che, a quanto pare, considerava in modo molto negativo), che non vedevo l’ora di conoscerlo.
Dovevo trattenere la mia impazienza per un po’ di tempo, poiché “Venti Sette” era riservato per un effetto conclusivo. Ma finalmente arrivammo alla porta della sua cella; e il signor Creakle, guardando attraverso una piccola fessura, ci riferì, con grande ammirazione, che stava leggendo un libro di >Inni.
C’era un tale affollamento di persone intorno a lui che la piccola apertura venne completamente bloccata da sei o sette teste. Per rimediare a questa situazione e permetterci di conversare con “Numero Ventisette” nella sua totale purezza, il signor Creakle ordinò di aprire la porta della cella e invitò “Numero Ventisette” ad uscire nel corridoio. E chi vedemmo allora, con nostra grande sorpresa, in questo “Numero Ventisette” trasformato, se non Uriah Heep?
Ci riconobbe subito; e disse, mentre usciva, con quel suo solito movimento contorto:
“Come sta, signor Copperfield? Come sta, signor Traddles?”
Questo riconoscimento suscitò ammirazione generale nel partito. Pensavo piuttosto che tutti fossero colpiti dal fatto che lui non fosse orgoglioso e si fosse preso la briga di prestare attenzione a noi.
“Beh, ventisette anni,” disse il signor Creakle, ammirandolo con tristezza. “Come ti senti oggi?”
“Sono molto umile, signore!” rispose Uriah Heep.
“Sei sempre così, Venti Sette,” disse il signor Creakle.
“Ecco, un altro gentiluomo chiese con estrema ansia: ‘Si trova davvero a suo agio?’”
“Sì, la ringrazio, signore!” disse Uriah Heep, guardando in quella direzione.
“Qui è molto più confortevole di quanto sia mai stato fuori. Ora riesco a vedere le mie follie. Ed è proprio questo che mi dà pace.”
Diversi signori furono profondamente commossi; un terzo interlocutore, facendosi avanti con forza, chiese con grande emozione: “Come la trovate questa carne di manzo?”
“Grazie, signore,” rispose Uriah, guardando nella nuova direzione da cui proveniva quella voce. “Ieri è stato più difficile di quanto avrei voluto; ma è mio dovere sopportarlo. Ho commesso errori, signori,” aggiunse Uriah, guardandosi intorno con un sorriso umile. “E devo affrontarne le conseguenze senza lamentarmi.” Un mormorio, in parte di soddisfazione per lo stato d’animo “celestiale” di Twenty Seven e in parte di indignazione verso il Contrattore che gli aveva dato motivi di lamentela (di cui il signor Creakle si accorse immediatamente), si placò poco dopo. Twenty Seven si trovava ora al centro di noi, come se si considerasse l’oggetto principale di ammirazione in un museo davvero meritevole. Per permetterci, ai neofiti, di essere tutti improvvisamente illuminati da questa luce positiva, fu ordinato di far uscire anche Twenty Eight.
Ero già così sorpreso che provai soltanto una sorta di rassegnato stupore quando il signor Littimer uscì fuori leggendo un bel libro!
“Ventiotto,” disse un signore con gli occhiali che non aveva ancora parlato. “La scorsa settimana hai lamentato il cacao, mio buon amico. Come è andata da allora?”
“Grazie, signore,” disse il signor Littimer, “è stato fatto molto meglio. Se posso permettermi di dirlo, signore, non credo che il latte che viene cotto con questo prodotto sia davvero genuino; ma so bene, signore, che a Londra ci sono molte frodi nel settore del latte, e che è difficile trovare latte di qualità pura.”
Mi sembrò che il signore con gli occhiali avesse schierato i suoi “Venti Otto” contro i “Venti Sette” del signor Creakle, poiché ognuno di loro teneva per mano il proprio uomo.
“Qual è il tuo stato d’animo, Venti Otto?” chiese l’interrogatore che indossava occhiali.
“Grazie, signore,” rispose il signor Littimer; “Ora capisco le mie follie, signore. Mi sento molto in colpa quando penso ai peccati dei miei ex compagni, signore. Ma spero che possano trovare perdono.”
“Sei davvero molto felice?” chiese l’interrogatore, annuendo incoraggiante.
“Le sono molto grato, signore,” rispose il signor Littimer. “Certamente.”
“C’è qualcosa che ti preoccupa in questo momento?” chiese l’interlocutore. “Se sì, parlamene, Venti Otto.”
“Signore,” disse il signor Littimer, senza alzare lo sguardo, “se i miei occhi non mi ingannano, c’è qui un gentiluomo che mi conosceva nella mia vita precedente. Potrebbe essere utile per quel gentiluomo sapere che attribuisco tutte le mie follie passate al fatto di aver vissuto una vita superficiale al servizio di giovani uomini, e di essermi lasciato guidare da loro verso debolezze alle quali non avevo la forza di resistere. Spero che quel gentiluomo prenda atto di questo e non si offenda per la mia franchezza. È nel suo interesse. Sono consapevole delle mie stesse follie passate. Spero che possa pentirsi di tutta la malvagità e del peccato di cui è stato complice.”
I observed that several gentlemen were shading their eyes, each with one hand, as if they had just come into church.
‘This does you credit, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner. ‘I should have expected it of you. Is there anything else?’
‘Sir,’ returned Mr. Littimer, slightly lifting up his eyebrows, but not his eyes, ‘there was a young woman who fell into dissolute courses, that I endeavoured to save, sir, but could not rescue. I beg that gentleman, if he has it in his power, to inform that young woman from me that I forgive her her bad conduct towards myself, and that I call her to repentance—if he will be so good.’
‘I have no doubt, Twenty Eight,’ returned the questioner, ‘that the gentleman you refer to feels very strongly—as we all must—what you have so properly said. We will not detain you.’
‘I thank you, sir,’ said Mr. Littimer. ‘Gentlemen, I wish you a good day, and hoping you and your families will also see your wickedness, and amend!’
With this, Number Twenty Eight retired, after a glance between him and Uriah; as if they were not altogether unknown to each other, through some medium of communication; and a murmur went round the group, as his door shut upon him, that he was a most respectable man, and a beautiful case.
‘Now, Twenty Seven,’ said Mr. Creakle, entering on a clear stage with his man, ‘is there anything that anyone can do for you? If so, mention it.’
‘I would umbly ask, sir,’ returned Uriah, with a jerk of his malevolent head, ‘for leave to write again to mother.’
‘It shall certainly be granted,’ said Mr. Creakle.
‘Thank you, sir! I am anxious about mother. I am afraid she ain’t safe.’
Somebody incautiously asked, what from? But there was a scandalized whisper of ‘Hush!’
‘Immortally safe, sir,’ returned Uriah, writhing in the direction of the voice. ‘I should wish mother to be got into my state. I never should have been got into my present state if I hadn’t come here. I wish mother had come here. It would be better for everybody, if they got took up, and was brought here.’
This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction—greater satisfaction, I think, than anything that had passed yet.
‘Before I come here,’ said Uriah, stealing a look at us, as if he would have blighted the outer world to which we belonged, if he could, ‘I was given to follies; but now I am sensible of my follies. There’s a deal of sin outside. There’s a deal of sin in mother. There’s nothing but sin everywhere—except here.’
‘You are quite changed?’ said Mr. Creakle.
‘Oh dear, yes, sir!’ cried this hopeful penitent.
‘You wouldn’t relapse, if you were going out?’ asked somebody else.
‘Oh de-ar no, sir!’
‘Well!’ said Mr. Creakle, ‘this is very gratifying. You have addressed Mr. Copperfield, Twenty Seven. Do you wish to say anything further to him?’
‘You knew me, a long time before I came here and was changed, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Uriah, looking at me; and a more villainous look I never saw, even on his visage. ‘You knew me when, in spite of my follies, I was umble among them that was proud, and meek among them that was violent—you was violent to me yourself, Mr. Copperfield. Once, you struck me a blow in the face, you know.’
General commiseration. Several indignant glances directed at me.
‘But I forgive you, Mr. Copperfield,’ said Uriah, making his forgiving nature the subject of a most impious and awful parallel, which I shall not record. ‘I forgive everybody. It would ill become me to bear malice. I freely forgive you, and I hope you’ll curb your passions in future. I hope Mr. W. will repent, and Miss W., and all of that sinful lot. You’ve been visited with affliction, and I hope it may do you good; but you’d better have come here. Mr. W. had better have come here, and Miss W. too. The best wish I could give you, Mr. Copperfield, and give all of you gentlemen, is, that you could be took up and brought here. When I think of my past follies, and my present state, I am sure it would be best for you. I pity all who ain’t brought here!’
He sneaked back into his cell, amidst a little chorus of approbation; and both Traddles and I experienced a great relief when he was locked in.
It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain to ask what these two men had done, to be there at all. That appeared to be the last thing about which they had anything to say. I addressed myself to one of the two warders, who, I suspected from certain latent indications in their faces, knew pretty well what all this stir was worth.
‘Do you know,’ said I, as we walked along the passage, ‘what felony was Number Twenty Seven’s last “folly”?’
The answer was that it was a Bank case.
‘A fraud on the Bank of England?’ I asked. ‘Yes, sir. Fraud, forgery, and conspiracy. He and some others. He set the others on. It was a deep plot for a large sum. Sentence, transportation for life. Twenty Seven was the knowingest bird of the lot, and had very nearly kept himself safe; but not quite. The Bank was just able to put salt upon his tail—and only just.’
‘Do you know Twenty Eight’s offence?’
‘Twenty Eight,’ returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage, to guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful reference to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; ‘Twenty Eight (also transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master of a matter of two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables, the night before they were going abroad. I particularly recollect his case, from his being took by a dwarf.’
‘A what?’
‘A little woman. I have forgot her name?’
‘Not Mowcher?’
‘That’s it! He had eluded pursuit, and was going to America in a flaxen wig, and whiskers, and such a complete disguise as never you see in all your born days; when the little woman, being in Southampton, met him walking along the street—picked him out with her sharp eye in a moment—ran betwixt his legs to upset him—and held on to him like grim Death.’
‘Excellent Miss Mowcher!’ cried I.
‘You’d have said so, if you had seen her, standing on a chair in the witness-box at the trial, as I did,’ said my friend. ‘He cut her face right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner, when she took him; but she never loosed her hold till he was locked up. She held so tight to him, in fact, that the officers were obliged to take ‘em both together. She gave her evidence in the gamest way, and was highly complimented by the Bench, and cheered right home to her lodgings. She said in Court that she’d have took him single-handed (on account of what she knew concerning him), if he had been Samson. And it’s my belief she would!’
It was mine too, and I highly respected Miss Mowcher for it.
We had now seen all there was to see. It would have been in vain to represent to such a man as the Worshipful Mr. Creakle, that Twenty Seven and Twenty Eight were perfectly consistent and unchanged; that exactly what they were then, they had always been; that the hypocritical knaves were just the subjects to make that sort of profession in such a place; that they knew its market-value at least as well as we did, in the immediate service it would do them when they were expatriated; in a word, that it was a rotten, hollow, painfully suggestive piece of business altogether. We left them to their system and themselves, and went home wondering.
‘Perhaps it’s a good thing, Traddles,’ said I, ‘to have an unsound Hobby ridden hard; for it’s the sooner ridden to death.’
‘I hope so,’ replied Traddles.
Notai che diversi signori si proteggevano gli occhi con una mano, come se fossero appena entrati in chiesa.
“Questo ti fa onore, Venti Otto,” rispose l’interrogatore. “Avrei dovuto aspettarmelo da te. C’è qualcos’altro?”
“Signore,” rispose il signor Littimer, alzando leggermente le sopracciglia, ma senza sollevare gli occhi, “c’era una giovane donna che aveva iniziato a condurre una vita dissoluta; ho cercato di salvarla, signore, ma non ci sono riuscito. Prego quel gentiluomo, se ne ha la possibilità, di comunicarle da parte mia che le perdono il suo cattivo comportamento verso di me e che la esorto a pentirsi, se sarà così gentile da farlo.”
“Non ho alcun >dubbio, Venti Otto,” rispose l’interrogatore, “che il signore di cui parlate provi molto intensamente – come tutti noi dobbiamo fare – ciò che hai detto in modo così appropriato. Non ti tratterremo oltre.”
“Vi ringrazio, signori,” disse il signor Littimer. “Signori, vi auguro una buona giornata, e spero che anche voi e le vostre famiglie riconosciate la vostra malvagità e vi correggiate!”
Con questo, il Numero Ventotto si ritirò, dopo uno sguardo scambiato con Uriah; come se non fossero del tutto estranei l’uno all’altro, attraverso qualche mezzo di comunicazione segreta. E quando la sua porta si chiuse alle sue spalle, si diffuse tra il gruppo un mormorio: dicevano che fosse un uomo molto rispettabile, e che la sua storia fosse davvero commovente.
“Ora, Venti Sette,” disse il signor Creakle, entrando in scena con il suo assistente, “c’è qualcosa che qualcuno possa fare per voi? Se sì, fatelo sapere.”
“Chiederei umilmente, signore,” rispose Uriah, scuotendo la sua testa malvagia, “di poter scrivere di nuovo a mia madre.”
“Certamente verrà concesso,” disse il signor Creakle.
“Grazie, signore! Sono molto preoccupato per mia madre. Temo che non sia al sicuro.”
“Qualcuno, con imprudenza, chiese: ‘Da cosa?’ Ma si levò un sussurro scandalizzato che diceva: ‘Zitti!’”
“Immortally safe, signore,” rispose Uriah, muovendosi nella direzione della voce. “Vorrei che anche mia madre fosse in questa condizione. Non sarei mai finito in questo stato se non fossi venuto qui. Vorrei che mia madre fosse venuta qui anch’essa. Sarebbe meglio per tutti se venissero presi e portati qui.”
Questo sentimento procurò una soddisfazione infinita; credo, anzi, una soddisfazione maggiore di qualsiasi altra cosa fosse accaduta fino ad allora.
“Prima di venire qui,” disse Uriah, lanciandoci uno sguardo furtivo, come se avesse voluto distruggere tutto il mondo esterno a cui appartenevamo, “mi abbandonavo alle follie; ma ora mi rendo conto dei miei errori. C’è molto peccato là fuori. C’è molto peccato in mia madre. Dappertutto c’è solo peccato, tranne che qui.”
“Sei davvero cambiato molto, vero?” disse il signor Creakle.
“Oh mio Dio, sì, signore!” esclamò questo pentito pieno di speranza.
“Non ricadresti nei tuoi vecchi vizi, se uscissi, vero?” chiese qualcun altro.
“Oh no, signore!”
“Benissimo!”, disse il signor Creakle, “è molto soddisfacente. Avete rivolto la parola al signor Copperfield, numero ventisette. Desiderate aggiungere qualcosa?”
“Mi conoscevate già, da molto tempo prima che venissi qui e cambiassi, signor Copperfield,” disse Uriah guardandomi; e non ho mai visto un’espressione più malvagia sul suo volto. “Mi conoscevate quando, nonostante le mie follie, ero umile tra coloro che erano orgogliosi, e mite tra coloro che erano violenti. Anche voi siete stato violento con me, signor Copperfield. Una volta mi avete colpito in faccia, lo sapete.”
Commozione generale. Diverse occhiate indignate rivolte verso di me.
“Ma vi perdono, signor Copperfield,” disse Uriah, facendo della sua natura indulgente oggetto di un paragone assolutamente irriverente e orribile, che non intendo riportare qui. “Perdono tutti. Non sarebbe da me nutrire rancore. Vi perdono liberamente, e spero che in futuro controlliate le vostre passioni. Spero anche che il signor W., la signorina W. e tutta quella gente peccaminosa si pentano. Avete subito sofferenze, e spero che vi siano servite a qualcosa; ma sarebbe stato meglio se foste venuti qui. Anche il signor W. e la signorina W. avrebbero dovuto venire. Il miglior desiderio che posso avere per voi, signor Copperfield, e per tutti voi signori, è che veniate portati qui. Quando penso alle mie follie passate e al mio stato attuale, sono sicuro che questo sarebbe il meglio per voi. Mi dispiace per tutti coloro che non sono stati portati qui, ”
Rientrò di nascosto nella sua cella, tra un piccolo coro di approvazione; sia io che Traddles provammo un grande sollievo quando fu chiuso dentro.
Una caratteristica distintiva di questo pentimento era che non riuscivo proprio a capire cosa avessero fatto quei due uomini per trovarsi lì. Sembrava proprio l’ultima cosa di cui fossero disposti a parlare. Mi rivolsi a uno dei due guardiani, il quale, a giudicare da certi segnali evidenti sui loro volti, sapeva molto bene cosa significasse tutto quel trambusto.
“Lo sai?” dissi mentre camminavamo lungo il corridoio. “Qual era l’ultima ‘stupidaggine’ commessa dal Numero Ventisette?”
La risposta fu che si trattava di un caso legato alla banca.
“Una truffa contro la Banca d’Inghilterra?” chiesi. “Sì, signore. Truffa, falsificazione e cospirazione. Lui e alcuni altri. Lui ha spinto gli altri ad agire. Era un complotto ben congegnato per ottenere una grande somma di denaro. Sentenza: reclusione a vita. Ventisette era il più informato di tutti, e per poco non è riuscito a sfuggire alla punizione. Ma non del tutto. La Banca è riuscita a incastrarlo appena in tempo.”
“Conosci il reato di ‘Ventiotto’?”
“Ventiotto,” rispose il mio informatore, parlando sempre a bassa voce e guardandosi intorno mentre camminavamo nel corridoio, per evitare che Creakle o gli altri lo sentissero fare un riferimento così illegale a quegli “Immacolati”; “Ventiotto (che si occupava anche di trasporti) ottenne un incarico e derubò un giovane signore di duecentocinquanta sterline in denaro e oggetti di valore, la notte prima che partissero all’estero. Ricordo particolarmente il suo caso, perché fu catturato da un nano.”
“‘A cosa?’”
“Una donna piccola. Mi sono dimenticato il suo nome?”
“Non Mowcher?”
‘Ecco fatto! Era riuscito a eludere le ricerche e stava per andare in America con un parrucchio di lino, delle basette, insomma, con un travestimento così completo che non lo si vedrebbe mai nella vita. Quando quella donna, trovandosi a Southampton, lo vide camminare per strada, lo riconobbe immediatamente con il suo occhio acuto, corse tra le sue gambe per farlo inciampare e lo afferrò con forza, come se fosse la Morte stessa.’
“Eccellente, signorina Mowcher!” esclamai.
“Avresti detto lo stesso se l’avessi vista, in piedi su una sedia nell’angolo dei testimoni durante il processo, proprio come ho fatto io,” disse il mio amico. “Lui le ha tagliato la faccia e l’ha picchiata con estrema brutalità quando lei l’ha accettato; ma lei non ha mai mollato la presa finché lui non è stato messo in prigione. Teneva così stretto a sé che gli agenti hanno dovuto portarli via entrambi insieme. Ha testimoniato in modo davvero coraggioso ed è stata molto lodata dal tribunale; poi è stata acclamata mentre tornava al suo alloggio. In tribunale ha detto che avrebbe affrontato lui da sola (dati ciò che sapeva su di lui), anche se fosse stato Sansone. E credo davvero che l’avrebbe fatto!”
Anche quella era mia, e per questo rispettavo molto la signorina Mowcher.
Ora avevamo visto tutto ciò che c’era da vedere. Sarebbe stato inutile cercare di spiegare a una persona come il rispettabile signor Creakle che i documenti numero Ventisette e Ventotto erano perfettamente coerenti e inalterati; che esattamente come erano allora, sempre erano stati; che quegli ipocriti erano proprio le persone adatte a fare simili dichiarazioni in un posto del genere; che conoscevano perfettamente il loro valore di mercato, tanto quanto noi, e sapevano quale utilità avrebbero avuto per loro quando fossero stati espatriati; insomma, che si trattava di una faccenda completamente fraudolenta e disonesta. Li lasciammo al loro sistema e a se stessi, e tornammo a casa chiedendoci cosa ne sarebbe risultato.
“Forse è una cosa positiva, Traddles,” dissi, “avere un hobby pericoloso su cui concentrarsi con tutte le proprie forze; perché così si arriva più velocemente alla morte.”
“Lo spero davvero,” rispose Traddles.
CHAPTER 62. A LIGHT SHINES ON MY WAY
The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above two months. I had seen Agnes frequently. However loud the general voice might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the emotions and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest word of praise as I heard nothing else.
At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and passed the evening. I usually rode back at night; for the old unhappy sense was always hovering about me now—most sorrowfully when I left her—and I was glad to be up and out, rather than wandering over the past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams. I wore away the longest part of many wild sad nights, in those rides; reviving, as I went, the thoughts that had occupied me in my long absence.
Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those thoughts, I should better express the truth. They spoke to me from afar off. I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable place. When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening face; moved her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I lived; I thought what a fate mine might have been—but only thought so, as I had thought after I was married to Dora, what I could have wished my wife to be.
My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted, I wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my matured assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and won what I had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur, and must bear; comprised what I felt and what I had learned. But I loved her: and now it even became some consolation to me, vaguely to conceive a distant day when I might blamelessly avow it; when all this should be over; when I could say ‘Agnes, so it was when I came home; and now I am old, and I never have loved since!’
She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always had been to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.
Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion, since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or an avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding that we thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into words. When, according to our old custom, we sat before the fire at night, we often fell into this train; as naturally, and as consciously to each other, as if we had unreservedly said so. But we preserved an unbroken silence. I believed that she had read, or partly read, my thoughts that night; and that she fully comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.
This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my mind—whether she could have that perception of the true state of my breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me pain—began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice was nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every poor action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to set this right beyond all doubt;—if such a barrier were between us, to break it down at once with a determined hand.
It was—what lasting reason have I to remember it!—a cold, harsh, winter day. There had been snow, some hours before; and it lay, not deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond my window, the wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been thinking of it, sweeping over those mountain wastes of snow in Switzerland, then inaccessible to any human foot; and had been speculating which was the lonelier, those solitary regions, or a deserted ocean.
‘Riding today, Trot?’ said my aunt, putting her head in at the door.
‘Yes,’ said I, ‘I am going over to Canterbury. It’s a good day for a ride.’
‘I hope your horse may think so too,’ said my aunt; ‘but at present he is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door there, as if he thought his stable preferable.’
My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground, but had not at all relented towards the donkeys.
‘He will be fresh enough, presently!’ said I.
‘The ride will do his master good, at all events,’ observed my aunt, glancing at the papers on my table. ‘Ah, child, you pass a good many hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them.’
‘It’s work enough to read them, sometimes,’ I returned. ‘As to the writing, it has its own charms, aunt.’
‘Ah! I see!’ said my aunt. ‘Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and much more, I suppose? Well: go along with you!’
‘Do you know anything more,’ said I, standing composedly before her—she had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair—‘of that attachment of Agnes?’
She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:
‘I think I do, Trot.’
‘Are you confirmed in your impression?’ I inquired.
‘I think I am, Trot.’
She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger determination to show her a perfectly cheerful face.
‘And what is more, Trot—’ said my aunt.
‘Yes!’
‘I think Agnes is going to be married.’
‘God bless her!’ said I, cheerfully.
‘God bless her!’ said my aunt, ‘and her husband too!’
I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs, mounted, and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do what I had resolved to do.
How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice, brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face; the hard clatter of the horse’s hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground; the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with the waggon of old hay, stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically; the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky, as if they were drawn on a huge slate!
CAPITOLO 62. UNA LUCE MI GUIDA NELLA STRADA
Arrivò il periodo natalizio, e ormai ero a casa da oltre due mesi. Vedevo spesso Agnes. Per quanto forte potesse essere la voce generale che mi incoraggiava, per quanto ferventi fossero le emozioni e gli sforzi che suscitava in me, era solo la sua più lieve parola di lode quella che udivo, nient’altro.
Almeno una volta a settimana, e a volte anche più spesso, andavo laggiù e trascorrevo la serata lì. Di solito tornavo di notte; perché quella vecchia sensazione di infelicità continuava sempre ad aleggiare intorno a me, soprattutto quando la lasciavo. E mi faceva piacere uscire, piuttosto che passare le notti insonni o sogni dolorosi. Fu durante quelle cavalcate che superai la parte più lunga di molte notti tristi e disperate; ripensando, mentre viaggiavo, a tutte le cose che avevano occupato i miei pensieri durante la mia lunga assenza.
O, forse sarebbe più corretto dire che ascoltavo gli echi di quei pensieri: così esprimerei meglio la verità. Quei pensieri mi parlavano da lontano. Li avevo allontanati da me stesso, accettando il mio destino inevitabile. Quando leggevo ad Agnes ciò che avevo scritto; quando vedevo il suo viso attento mentre ascoltava; quando la facevo sorridere o piangere, e sentivo la sua voce sincera parlare di quegli eventi oscuri di quel mondo immaginario in cui vivevo, pensavo a quale destino avrei potuto essere destinato. Ma lo pensavo soltanto, proprio come avevo pensato, dopo essermi sposato con Dora, a cosa avrei desiderato che fosse mia moglie.
Il mio dovere verso Agnes, che mi amava con un amore tale che, se l’avessi turbata, avrei commesso il più egoistico e spregevole degli errori, e non avrei mai potuto rimediare; la mia consapevolezza maturata di aver costruito da solo il mio destino e di aver ottenuto ciò a cui avevo disperatamente anelato, tutto questo rappresentava ciò che provavo e ciò che avevo imparato. Ma l’amavo. E ora, anche l’idea di poter un giorno confessarlo senza rimorsi, quando tutto questo fosse finito, mi dava una sorta di consolazione, “Agnes, è così che è andata quando sono tornato a casa. Ora sono vecchio, e da allora non ho mai più amato nessuno, ”
Non mostrò mai alcun cambiamento in sé stessa. Quello che era sempre stata per me, lo rimase; del tutto immutata.
Tra mia zia e me c’era qualcosa, in questo senso, fin dalla notte del mio ritorno; non si trattava di un ritegno o di un evitare l’argomento, ma piuttosto di un’intesa tacita: entrambi ne parlavamo, ma non ne esprimevamo i pensieri a parole. Quando, secondo la nostra vecchia abitudine, ci sedevamo davanti al fuoco di notte, spesso finivamo per discuterne; lo facevamo in modo naturale e consapevole, come se l’avessimo detto apertamente. Tuttavia mantenevamo un silenzio assoluto. Credo che quella notte lei avesse letto, o almeno intuito in parte, i miei pensieri; e capisse perfettamente perché non li avevo espressi più chiaramente.
Con l’avvicinarsi di questo Natale e poiché Agnes non riponeva più in me alcuna fiducia, un dubbio che mi era già venuto più volte in mente – se lei potesse davvero comprendere la vera natura dei miei sentimenti e quindi evitare di causarmi dolore – iniziò a opprimermi profondamente. Se fosse stato così, il mio sacrificio sarebbe stato vano; il mio dovere più elementare verso di lei non sarebbe stato adempiuto; e tutte le azioni che avevo sempre evitato di compiere, ora le stavo compiendo ogni momento. Decisi quindi di chiarire questa situazione una volta per tutte; se c’era davvero un ostacolo tra noi, lo avrei eliminato immediatamente con decisione.
Era – quale motivo duraturo ho per ricordarlo? – una fredda e rigida giornata d’—inverno. Qualche ora prima era nevicato; la neve non era alta, ma si era congelata saldamente sul terreno. Lì fuori, al di là della mia finestra, il vento soffiava violentemente da nord. Pensavo a quella neve che copriva quelle lande desolate delle montagne svizzere, inaccessibili ad ogni piede umano; mi chiedevo quale fosse più solitario di quei luoghi desolati, o forse un oceano deserto.
“Vai a cavallo oggi, Trot?” chiese mia zia, infilando la testa dentro la porta.
“Sì,” dissi, “sto andando a Canterbury. È una bella giornata per un viaggio in bicicletta.”
“Spero che anche il tuo cavallo la pensi allo stesso modo,” disse mia zia; “ma al momento sta abbassando la testa e le orecchie, fermo lì davanti alla porta, come se preferisse il suo stallo, ”
Posso osservare che mia zia permetteva al mio cavallo di passeggiare su quel terreno proibito, ma non mostrava alcuna indulgenza nei confronti degli asini.
“Tra poco sarà abbastanza fresco!”, dissi io.
“Comunque, questo viaggio farà bene al suo padrone,” osservò mia zia, dando un’occhiata ai documenti sul mio tavolo. “Ah, bambino, passi molte ore qui! Quando leggevo i libri, non mi rendevo mai conto di quanto lavoro ci fosse dietro la loro stesura.”
“A volte basta solo leggerli,” risposi. “Per quanto riguarda la scrittura, beh, ha i suoi fascini, zia.”
“Ah! Capisco!” disse mia zia. “Ambizione, amore per l’approvazione, la simpatia, e molto altro ancora, immagino? Beh: vai pure avanti con i tuoi piani!”
“Sai qualcos’altro?” le chiesi, stando davanti a lei con calma; lei mi aveva dato una pacca sulla spalla e si era seduta nella mia sedia. “Riguardo a quella vicinanza tra Agnes, ”
Mi guardò negli occhi per un momento prima di rispondere:
“Credo di sì, Trot.”
“Sei sicuro della tua impressione?” chiesi.
“Penso di sì, Trot.”
Mi guardava con tale determinazione, con un misto di dubbio, pietà o suspense nel suo sguardo, che riuscii a trovare la forza necessaria per mostrarle un viso perfettamente sereno.
“E inoltre, Trot, ” disse mia zia.
“Sì, davvero!”
“Penso che Agnes si sposerà.”
“Che Dio la benedica!”, dissi felicemente.
“Che Dio la benedica!”, disse mia zia, “e anche suo marito!”
Lo ripetei, mi congedai dalla mia zia e scesi dolcemente le scale; poi montai a cavallo e me ne andai. Ora c’erano ancora più motivi per fare ciò che avevo deciso di fare.
Quanto bene ricordo quella cavalcata invernale! I cristalli di ghiaccio congelati, spazzati via dalle foglie d’erba dal vento e che mi colpivano il viso; lo scroscio secco degli zoccoli del cavallo, che sembravano suonare una melodia sul terreno; il suolo gelato; i cumuli di neve che si muovevano leggermente nella conca, sollevati dalla brezza; il carro carico di fieno vecchio, che si fermava sulla cima della collina per riposare, facendo tintinnare allegramente le loro campane. Le pendici innevate del Downland, stagliate contro il cielo scuro, come se fossero state disegnate su una enorme lastra di pietra!
I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes now, and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book on seeing me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her work-basket and sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.
I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was doing, and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made since my last visit. Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly predicted that I should soon become too famous to be talked to, on such subjects.
‘So I make the most of the present time, you see,’ said Agnes, ‘and talk to you while I may.’
As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she raised her mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.
‘You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!’
‘Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.’
She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.
‘My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?’
‘No!’ she answered, with a look of astonishment.
‘Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?’
‘No!’ she answered, as before.
‘Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards you?’
‘I remember it,’ she said, gently, ‘very well.’
‘You have a secret,’ said I. ‘Let me share it, Agnes.’
She cast down her eyes, and trembled.
‘I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard—but from other lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange—that there is someone upon whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me, as you say you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in this matter, of all others!’
With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the heart.
And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart. Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with hope than fear or sorrow.
‘Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?’
‘Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak to you by and by—another time. I will write to you. Don’t speak to me now. Don’t! don’t!’
I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very world that I must search through in a moment. ‘Agnes, I cannot bear to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl, dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!’
‘Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!’ was all I could distinguish.
Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think of?
‘I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven’s sake, Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy; dismiss it, for I don’t deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain. You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what I feel for you.’
She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:
‘I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood—which, indeed, I do not doubt—to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened for me. If I have any secret, it is—no new one; and is—not what you suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and must remain mine.’
‘Agnes! Stay! A moment!’
She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her waist. ‘In the course of years!’ ‘It is not a new one!’ New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.
‘Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour—whom I so devotedly love! When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different from Sister!—’
Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.
‘Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!’
Ho trovato Agnes da sola. Le bambine erano già tornate a casa loro, e lei era da sola davanti al >focolare, a leggere. Ha messo giù il libro quando mi ha visto entrare; dopo avermi salutata come al solito, ha preso la sua cesta da lavoro e si è seduta vicino a una di quelle vecchie finestre.
Mi sedetti accanto a lei sul posto vicino alla finestra, e parlammo di ciò che stavo facendo, di quando sarebbe stato completato il lavoro e dei progressi che avevo fatto da quando l’avevo vista l’ultima volta. Agnes era molto allegra e scherzò dicendo che presto sarei diventato troppo famoso per poter parlare di queste cose con lei.
“Vedi, sfrutto al massimo il presente tempo”, disse Agnes, “e parlo con te finché ne ho l’opportunità.”
Mentre osservavo il suo bellissimo viso e il modo in cui lavorava, lei alzò i suoi occhi dolci e chiari e si accorse che la stavo guardando.
“Oggi sei davvero pensieroso, Trotwood!”
“Agnes, devo dirti qualcosa. Sono venuto apposta per questo.”
Mise da parte il suo lavoro, come faceva sempre quando discutevamo seriamente di qualcosa; e mi dedicò tutta la sua attenzione.
“Mia cara Agnes, dubiti forse che io sia fedele a te?”
“No!”, rispose lei, con un’espressione di stupore.
“Dubiti forse che io sia ciò che sono sempre stato per te?”
“No!”, rispose lei, come prima.
“Ricordi quando ti ho cercato di dire, al mio ritorno a >casa, quanto debito di gratitudine avessi verso di te, cara Agnes, e quanto profondamente ti amassi?”
“Me lo ricordo,” disse lei dolcemente, “molto bene.”
“Hai un segreto,” dissi. “Lasciami condividerlo con te, Agnes.”
Abbassò lo sguardo e iniziò a tremare.
‘Avrei difficilmente potuto non saperlo, anche se non l’avessi sentito, ma da altre labbra che non le tue, Agnes, il che sembra strano. C’è qualcuno a cui hai donato il tesoro del tuo amore. Non escludermi da ciò che riguarda così tanto la tua felicità! Se puoi fidarti di me, come dici tu possa farlo, e come so che puoi, lasciami essere il tuo amico, il tuo fratello in questa questione, più di ogni altra!’
Con uno sguardo affascinante, quasi accusatorio, lei si alzò dalla finestra; poi, correndo attraverso la stanza come se non sapesse dove andare, si coprì il viso con le mani e scoppiò in lacrime così intense che mi colpirono profondamente nel cuore.
Eppure hanno risvegliato qualcosa in me, portando speranza nel mio cuore.
Senza che io sapessi il perché, queste lacrime si sono unite a quel sorriso triste e silenzioso che era così impresso nella mia memoria, scuotendomi di più con >speranza che con >paura o dolore.
“Agnes! Sorella mia! Cara. Cosa ho fatto?”
“Lasciami andare, Trotwood. Non sto bene. Non sono più me stesso. Ti parlerò presto. Un’altra volta. Ti scriverò. Per ora, non parlarmi. Per favore, ”
Cercavo di ricordare ciò che lei aveva detto quando le avevo parlato quella volta, quella notte, riguardo al fatto che il suo affetto non richiedesse alcuna ricompensa. Sembrava un mondo intero da esplorare in quel momento, “Agnes, non posso sopportare di vederti così e pensare di essere io la causa. Mia adorata ragazza, più preziosa di qualsiasi altra cosa nella mia vita, se sei infelice, lascia che condivida la tua infelicità. Se hai bisogno di aiuto o di consigli, lascia che ci provi a darteli. Se davvero hai un peso nel cuore, lascia che cerchi di alleviarlo. Per chi vivo ora, Agnes, se non per te?”
“Oh, per favore. Non sono più me stesso. Un’altra volta, ” Era tutto ciò che riuscivo a capire.
Era un errore egoistico quello che mi stava allontanando dal giusto percorso? O, avendo una volta intuito l’esistenza della >speranza, forse c’era qualcosa che si stava aprendo davanti a me di cui non avevo osato nemmeno pensare?
“Devo dire di più. Non posso permetterti di lasciarmi così! Per l’amor del cielo, Agnes, non fraintendiamoci dopo tutti questi anni, e dopo tutto ciò che è accaduto. Devo parlare chiaramente: se hai ancora il minimo dubbio che possa invidiare la felicità che mi stai offrendo; che non possa lasciarti con un protettore più degno, scelto da te stessa; che non possa, dal mio distacco, essere un testimone sereno della tua gioia. Scaccia questi pensieri: non me lo merito! Non ho sofferto invano. E tu non mi hai insegnato invano. Ciò che provo per te è puramente sincero.”
Ora era silenziosa. Dopo un po’, girò il suo viso pallido verso di me e disse, con voce bassa, interrotta qua e là, ma molto chiara:
“Grazie alla tua pura amicizia, Trotwood – e di questo, davvero, non dubito affatto – posso dirti che ti sbagli. Non posso fare di più. Se, nel corso degli anni, ho avuto bisogno di aiuto o consigli, me li sono sempre trovati. Se a volte mi sono sentito infelice, quel sentimento è passato. Se mai ho avuto un peso sul cuore, questo si è alleviato. Se ho qualche segreto, beh, non è nulla di nuovo, e non è ciò che tu pensi. Non posso rivelarlo, né condividerlo. Appartiene a me da molto tempo, e deve rimanere mio.”
“Agnes! Aspetta! Un attimo!”
Stava per andarsene, ma la trattenni. Le misi un braccio intorno alla vita. “Nel corso degli anni, ” “Non è certo una cosa nuova, ” Nuovi pensieri e nuove speranze iniziarono a vorticare nella mia mente, e tutti i colori della mia vita cambiarono.
‘Carissima Agnes! Chi io rispetto e onoro così tanto, chi amo con tanta devozione! Quando sono arrivato qui oggi, pensavo che nulla potesse costringermi a confessare ciò che provo. Pensavo di poter tenere questo segreto nel mio cuore per tutta la vita, fino a quando non saremmo invecchiati. Ma Agnes, se davvero esiste una nuova speranza, se un giorno potrò chiamarti qualcosa di più di “sorella”, qualcosa di completamente diverso da “sorella”, ’
Le sue lacrime cadevano velocemente; ma non erano come quelle che aveva versato di recente, e vidi la mia >speranza ravvivarsi attraverso di esse.
‘Agnes! Sempre la mia guida e il mio più grande sostegno. Se solo, quando eravamo bambini e crescevamo insieme qui, tu avessi pensato di più a te stessa e meno a me, credo che la mia fantasia incontrollata non si sarebbe mai allontanata da te. Ma tu eri così molto migliore di me. Così indispensabile in ogni mio sogno infantile e in ogni delusione. Avere qualcuno su cui poter contare, in tutto, è diventato per me una seconda natura. Che, per un certo periodo, ha sostituito la prima e più importante: amarti come ti amo!’
Still weeping, but not sadly—joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
‘When I loved Dora—fondly, Agnes, as you know—’
‘Yes!’ she cried, earnestly. ‘I am glad to know it!’
‘When I loved her—even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!’
Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
‘I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!’
And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!
‘I am so blest, Trotwood—my heart is so overcharged—but there is one thing I must say.’
‘Dearest, what?’
She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my face.
‘Do you know, yet, what it is?’
‘I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.’
‘I have loved you all my life!’
O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we thanked our GOD for having guided us to this tranquillity.
We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.
It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by the fire.
‘Goodness me!’ said my aunt, peering through the dusk, ‘who’s this you’re bringing home?’
‘Agnes,’ said I.
As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said ‘Agnes’; but seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair, and rubbed her nose with them.
She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.
‘By the by, aunt,’ said I, after dinner; ‘I have been speaking to Agnes about what you told me.’
‘Then, Trot,’ said my aunt, turning scarlet, ‘you did wrong, and broke your promise.’
‘You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won’t be, when you learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.’
‘Stuff and nonsense!’ said my aunt.
As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first and only time in all my knowledge of her.
The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honoured, but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were all happy together.
I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes was going to be married; and that I now knew better than anyone how true it was.
We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a rock!
‘Dearest husband!’ said Agnes. ‘Now that I may call you by that name, I have one thing more to tell you.’
‘Let me hear it, love.’
‘It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.’
‘She did.’
‘She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?’
I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to my side.
‘She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last charge.’
‘And it was—’
‘That only I would occupy this vacant place.’
And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her, though we were so happy.
Ancora in lacrime, ma non per tristezza, bensì per gioia! E stretta tra le mie braccia come non era mai stata prima, come non pensavo che sarebbe mai stata.
“Quando amavo Dora, con affetto, Agnes, come sai, ”
“Sì!”, esclamò con sincerità. “Sono felice di saperlo!”
“Quando la amavo, anche allora, il mio amore sarebbe stato incompleto senza la tua comprensione. L’avevo, e così diventò perfetto. E quando l’ho persa, Agnes, cosa sarei stato senza di te?”
Più vicina tra le mie braccia, più vicina al mio cuore. La sua mano tremante sulla mia spalla, i suoi dolci occhi che brillano attraverso le sue lacrime, fissi nei miei!
“Me ne sono andato, cara Agnes, amandoti. Sono rimasto lontano, amandoti. Sono tornato a casa, amandoti!”
E ora, ho cercato di raccontarle delle difficoltà che avevo affrontato e alle conclusioni a cui ero giunto. Ho cercato davvero di aprirle il mio cuore, completamente e sinceramente. Ho cercato di farle capire come sperassi di aver acquisito una conoscenza più profonda di me stesso e di lei; come mi fossi rassegnato a ciò che questa nuova consapevolezza comportava; e come fossi arrivato fino a quel punto, proprio quel giorno, grazie alla mia fedeltà verso di essa. Se lei mi amava davvero (le ho detto), se poteva accettarmi come suo marito, allora lo poteva fare, non per qualche merito mio, ma solo sulla base della veridicità del mio amore per lei, e delle difficoltà attraverso cui quel sentimento era maturato. Ed è per questo che ho deciso di rivelarle tutto. Oh Agnes, persino nei tuoi occhi sinceri, in quel momento stesso, lo spirito della mia moglie, mi guardava con approvazione, e attraverso di te, mi ha fatto rivivere i più teneri ricordi di quella “fioritura” che aveva appassito nel suo pieno sbocciare.
“Sono così fortunata, Trotwood, il mio cuore è così pieno di emozioni, ma c’è una cosa che devo dire.”
“Caro, cosa?”
Posò le sue mani dolci sulle mie spalle e mi guardò con calma negli occhi.
“Lo sai già, cosa sia?”
“Temo di dovermi pronunciare al riguardo. Dimmelo tu, carissima.”
“Ti ho amato per tutta la mia vita!”
Oh, eravamo felici, davvero felici! Le nostre lacrime non erano dovute alle prove (le sue ancora di più) attraverso cui eravamo giunti a questo stato, ma alla gioia di essere così, di non dover mai più essere separati!
Quella sera d’inverno camminammo insieme nei campi; la beata calma che provavamo sembrava essere condivisa anche dall’aria gelida. Le prime stelle iniziarono a brillare mentre noi restavamo lì, e alzando lo sguardo verso di loro, ringraziammo il nostro DIO per averci guidati in questa tranquillità.
Eravamo insieme davanti alla stessa vecchia finestra, di notte, quando la luna brillava; Agnes alzò i suoi occhi tranquilli verso di essa; io seguii il suo sguardo. Lunghe distanze si aprirono davanti alla mia mente; e, continuando nel mio cammino, vidi un ragazzo stracciato e logoro, abbandonato e trascurato, che avrebbe dovuto venire a chiamare anche quel cuore che ora batteva contro il mio, il suo stesso cuore.
Era quasi l’ora di cena il giorno dopo quando ci presentammo davanti a mia zia. Era nella mia stanza da studio; Peggotty disse che per lei era un vero orgoglio tenerla sempre in ordine e pronta per il mio uso. La trovammo con gli occhiali, seduta vicino al focolare.
“Mio Dio!”, disse mia zia, guardando attraverso l’oscurità, “chi è questa persona che state portando a casa?”
“Agnes,” dissi io.
Poiché avevamo concordato di non dire nulla all’inizio, mia zia si trovò piuttosto a disagio. Mi lanciò uno sguardo pieno di speranza quando dissi “Agnes”; ma vedendo che mi comportavo come al solito, si tolse gli occhiali con disperazione e iniziò a strofinarsi il naso con essi.
Salutò comunque Agnes con grande affetto; e presto ci trovammo nel salotto illuminato al piano di sotto, a cena. Mia zia indossò gli occhiali due o tre volte per guardarmi meglio, ma ogni volta se li tolse di nuovo, delusa, e si strofinò il naso con loro. Questo causò grande imbarazzo al signor Dick, che sapeva bene che si trattava di un cattivo segno.
“A proposito, zia,” dissi dopo cena, “ho parlato con Agnes di ciò che mi avevate detto.”
“Allora, Trot,” disse mia zia, arrossendo intensamente, “hai fatto male e hai infranto la tua promessa.”
“Non sei arrabbiata, zia, vero? Sono sicura che non lo sarai quando scoprirai che Agnes non è affatto infelice nella sua relazione.”
“Sciocchezze!” disse mia zia.
Poiché mia zia sembrava infastidita, pensai che il modo migliore fosse porre fine al suo fastidio. Presi Agnes tra le braccia e la portai dietro la sua sedia; entrambi ci chinammo su di lei. Mia zia, con un solo schiocco delle mani e uno sguardo attraverso gli occhiali, scoppiò immediatamente in isteria, per la prima e unica volta che ne ho memoria.
L’isteria fece chiamare Peggotty. Non appena mia zia si riprese, corse da lei, chiamandola una sciocca vecchia creatura e abbracciandola con tutte le sue forze. Dopo di ciò, abbracciò anche il signor Dick (che fu molto onorato, ma anche piuttosto sorpreso); poi spiegò loro il motivo di tutto quel comportamento. E infine, tutti noi fummo felici insieme.
Non riuscivo a capire se mia zia, nella sua ultima breve conversazione con me, fosse caduta vittima di un’inganno pio, o se avesse davvero frainteso lo stato della mia mente. Le bastava, disse, che mi avesse detto che Agnes stava per sposarsi; e che ora io sapessi meglio di chiunque altro quanto fosse vero.
Ci sposammo nel giro di quindici giorni. Traddles e Sophy, insieme al Dottore e alla Signora Strong, furono gli unici ospiti al nostro matrimonio tranquillo. Li lasciammo pieni di gioia e poi partimmo insieme. Abbracciata a lui, tenevo tra le braccia la fonte di ogni vera aspirazione che avessi mai avuto; il centro della mia vita, l’essenza stessa della mia esistenza, mia moglie, il mio amore, fondato su roccia solida!
“Mio caro marito!”, disse Agnes. “Ora che posso chiamarti con quel nome, ho ancora una cosa da dirti.”
“Dimmelo, amore mio.”
“È nato dalla notte in cui Dora è morta. Lei ti ha mandato a cercarmi.”
“Lo ha fatto.”
“Mi ha detto che mi aveva lasciato qualcosa. Riuscite a indovinare di cosa si tratta?”
Credetti di potercela fare. Portai più vicino a me la moglie che mi aveva amato per così tanto tempo.
“Mi ha detto che mi aveva fatto un’ultima richiesta e che mi aveva lasciato un’ultima incombenza da svolgere.”
“E fu, davvero, ”
“Solo io potrei occupare questo posto vuoto.”
E Agnes appoggiò la sua testa sul mio petto e pianse; anch’io piansi con lei, nonostante fossimo così felici.
CHAPTER 63. A VISITOR
What I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but there is yet an incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with delight, and without which one thread in the web I have spun would have a ravelled end.
I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had been married ten happy years. Agnes and I were sitting by the fire, in our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our children were playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.
He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered No; he had come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. He was an old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.
As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like the beginning of a favourite story Agnes used to tell them, introductory to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who hated everybody, it produced some commotion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother’s lap to be out of harm’s way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left her doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap of golden curls from between the window-curtains, to see what happened next.
‘Let him come in here!’ said I.
There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway as he entered, a hale, grey-haired old man. Little Agnes, attracted by his looks, had run to bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face, when my wife, starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and agitated voice, that it was Mr. Peggotty!
It WAS Mr. Peggotty. An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty, strong old age. When our first emotion was over, and he sat before the fire with the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on his face, he looked, to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as handsome, an old man, as ever I had seen.
‘Mas’r Davy,’ said he. And the old name in the old tone fell so naturally on my ear! ‘Mas’r Davy, ‘tis a joyful hour as I see you, once more, ‘long with your own trew wife!’
‘A joyful hour indeed, old friend!’ cried I.
‘And these heer pretty ones,’ said Mr. Peggotty. ‘To look at these heer flowers! Why, Mas’r Davy, you was but the heighth of the littlest of these, when I first see you! When Em’ly warn’t no bigger, and our poor lad were BUT a lad!’
‘Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then,’ said I. ‘But let these dear rogues go to bed; and as no house in England but this must hold you, tell me where to send for your luggage (is the old black bag among it, that went so far, I wonder!), and then, over a glass of Yarmouth grog, we will have the tidings of ten years!’
‘Are you alone?’ asked Agnes.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, kissing her hand, ‘quite alone.’
We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough; and as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have fancied he was still pursuing his long journey in search of his darling niece.
‘It’s a mort of water,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘fur to come across, and on’y stay a matter of fower weeks. But water (‘specially when ‘tis salt) comes nat’ral to me; and friends is dear, and I am heer. —Which is verse,’ said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out, ‘though I hadn’t such intentions.’
‘Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?’ asked Agnes.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he returned. ‘I giv the promise to Em’ly, afore I come away. You see, I doen’t grow younger as the years comes round, and if I hadn’t sailed as ‘twas, most like I shouldn’t never have done ‘t. And it’s allus been on my mind, as I must come and see Mas’r Davy and your own sweet blooming self, in your wedded happiness, afore I got to be too old.’
He looked at us, as if he could never feast his eyes on us sufficiently. Agnes laughingly put back some scattered locks of his grey hair, that he might see us better.
‘And now tell us,’ said I, ‘everything relating to your fortunes.’
‘Our fortuns, Mas’r Davy,’ he rejoined, ‘is soon told. We haven’t fared nohows, but fared to thrive. We’ve allus thrived. We’ve worked as we ought to ‘t, and maybe we lived a leetle hard at first or so, but we have allus thrived. What with sheep-farming, and what with stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with t’other, we are as well to do, as well could be. Theer’s been kiender a blessing fell upon us,’ said Mr. Peggotty, reverentially inclining his head, ‘and we’ve done nowt but prosper. That is, in the long run. If not yesterday, why then today. If not today, why then tomorrow.’
‘And Emily?’ said Agnes and I, both together.
‘Em’ly,’ said he, ‘arter you left her, ma’am—and I never heerd her saying of her prayers at night, t’other side the canvas screen, when we was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name—and arter she and me lost sight of Mas’r Davy, that theer shining sundown—was that low, at first, that, if she had know’d then what Mas’r Davy kep from us so kind and thowtful, ‘tis my opinion she’d have drooped away. But theer was some poor folks aboard as had illness among ‘em, and she took care of them; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of them; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped her.’
‘When did she first hear of it?’ I asked.
‘I kep it from her arter I heerd on ‘t,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘going on nigh a year. We was living then in a solitary place, but among the beautifullest trees, and with the roses a-covering our Beein to the roof. Theer come along one day, when I was out a-working on the land, a traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I doen’t rightly mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv him to eat and drink, and made him welcome. We all do that, all the colony over. He’d got an old newspaper with him, and some other account in print of the storm. That’s how she know’d it. When I came home at night, I found she know’d it.’
CAPITOLO 63. UN VISITATORE
Quello che ho intenzione di registrare è quasi completato; ma c’è ancora un episodio che risalta chiaramente nella mia memoria, al quale spesso ripenso con piacere, e senza il quale uno solo dei fili della trama che ho tessuto si sarebbe spezzato.
Avevo raggiunto grande fama e fortuna; la mia vita domestica era perfetta; ero sposato da dieci anni felici. Quella notte di primavera, Agnes ed io eravamo seduti accanto al fuoco, nella nostra casa a Londra, mentre i nostri tre figli giocavano nella stanza, quando mi fu detto che c’era uno sconosciuto che desiderava vedermi.
Gli era stato chiesto se fosse venuto per affari, e aveva risposto di no; era venuto soltanto per il piacere di vedermi, e aveva percorso una lunga strada. Era un uomo anziano, disse il mio servitore, e sembrava un contadino.
Poiché tutto ciò suonava misterioso ai bambini, e inoltre assomigliava all’inizio di una delle storie preferite che Agnes loro raccontava, storie che parlavano dell’arrivo di una malvagia vecchia fata avvolta in un mantello che odiava tutti, si creò un certo trambusto. Uno dei nostri bambini posò la testa sul grembo di sua madre per stare al sicuro; piccola Agnes (la nostra figlia maggiore) lasciò la sua bambola su una sedia come rappresentazione sua e sporse i suoi riccioli d’oro tra le tende della finestra per vedere cosa sarebbe successo dopo.
“Lasciatelo entrare qui!” dissi io.
Poco dopo apparve un anziano dall’aspetto robusto, con i capelli grigi; la piccola Agnes, attratta dal suo aspetto, era corsa ad aiutarlo ad entrare. Non avevo ancora visto chiaramente il suo volto quando mia moglie, alzandosi di scatto, gridò felice e agitata che si trattava del signor Peggotty!
Era davvero il signor Peggotty. Un vecchio ormai, ma di una corporatura rossastra, robusta e vigorosa. Quando la nostra prima emozione si fu placata, e lui sedette davanti al focolare con i bambini in grembo, mentre le fiamme illuminavano il suo volto, sembrava, a mio parere, un vecchio ancora vigoroso, robusto e anche attraente, come mai ne avevo visti prima.
“Signor Davy,” disse lui. Quel vecchio nome, pronunciato con quel vecchio tono, suonò così naturalmente alle mie orecchie, “Signor Davy, che gioia rivedervi ancora, insieme alla vostra fedele moglie!”
“Che momento gioioso davvero, vecchio amico!” esclamai.
“E queste bellissime fioriture,” disse il signor Peggotty. “Guardare questi fiori. Ma sì, signor Davy, allora eravate alto quanto il più piccolo di questi fiori quando vi ho visto per la prima volta! Em’ly non era più grande di così, e nostro povero ragazzo, era soltanto un ragazzino!”
“Il tempo mi ha cambiato di più rispetto a te da allora,” dissi.
“Ma lascia che questi cari monelli vadano a letto; e poiché in tutta l’Inghilterra c’è solo questa casa che può ospitarti, dimmi dove posso far portare i tuoi bagagli (quella vecchia borsa nera che ha fatto tanta strada, mi chiedo come sia possibile!). Poi, davanti a un bicchiere di grog di Yarmouth, parleremo di ciò che è accaduto in questi dieci anni!”
“Sei da solo?” chiese Agnes.
“Sì, signora,” disse baciandole la mano, “del tutto solo.”
Lo mettemmo tra di noi, senza sapere come accoglierlo a dovere; e mentre iniziavo ad ascoltare la sua vecchia voce familiare, avrei potuto pensare che stesse ancora proseguendo il suo lungo viaggio alla ricerca della sua adorata nipote.
“È una vera e propria mancanza d’acqua,” disse il signor Peggotty, “trovarne è davvero difficile, e in più rimane disponibile solo per quattro settimane. Ma l’acqua (soprattutto quando è salata) mi viene naturale; inoltre gli amici sono preziosi, e io sono qui. Che strano modo di esprimermi,” aggiunse il signor Peggotty, sorpreso di averlo detto, “anche se non avevo intenzione di farlo.”
“Ritornerai davvero dopo tante migliaia di chilometri, così presto?” chiese Agnes.
“Sì, signora,” rispose lui. “Ho promesso a Em’ly prima di partire. Vede, con gli anni non invecchio certo, e se non fossi partito allora, probabilmente non lo avrei mai fatto. E questa idea mi ha perseguitato sempre: volevo assolutamente rivedere il signor Davy e lei stessa, nella vostra felicità coniugale, prima di diventare troppo vecchio.”
Ci guardava, come se non potesse mai saziarsi di ammirarci.
Agnes, ridendo, sistemò alcune ciocche dei suoi capelli grigi, in modo che potesse vederci meglio.
“E ora raccontateci,” dissi, “tutto ciò che riguarda la vostra sorte.”
“La nostra fortuna, signor Davy,” riprese lui, “si scoprirà presto. Non ci è andata affatto male; anzi, siamo riusciti a prosperare. Abbiamo lavorato sodo come dovevamo, e forse all’inizio le cose sono state un po’ difficili, ma alla fine abbiamo avuto successo. Grazie all’allevamento di pecore, all’allevamento di bestiame e a tante altre attività, ora stiamo molto bene, meglio di quanto si possa desiderare. È stata una vera benedizione,” disse il signor Peggotty, chinando rispettosamente la testa, “e non abbiamo fatto altro che prosperare. Almeno, nel lungo periodo. Se non ieri, allora oggi. E se non oggi, allora domani.”
“E Emily?” chiesero Agnes ed io, all’unisono.
“‘Em’ly,” disse lui, “dopo che l’hai lasciata, signora. Non ho mai sentito lei parlare delle sue preghiere di notte, dietro quella tenda di tela, quando ci eravamo sistemati nel Bush. Ma ho sentito il tuo nome. E dopo che lei e io abbiamo perso di vista il signor Davy, quel tramonto così luminoso, all’inizio sembrava così vicino. Se avesse saputo allora quanto il signor Davy si fosse preso cura di noi con tanta gentilezza e premura, secondo me sarebbe crollata. Ma a bordo c’erano alcune persone malate, e lei si è presa cura di loro; c’erano anche dei bambini con noi, e lei si è presa cura di loro. Così è finita per essere impegnata, per fare del bene. E questo l’ha aiutata.”
“Quando l’ha sentito parlare per la prima volta?”, chiesi.
“L’ho tenuto nascosto da lei dopo averlo sentito parlare di quella cosa”, disse il signor Peggotty, “è passato quasi un anno. All’epoca vivevamo in un posto isolato, ma tra gli alberi più belli; le rose coprivano tutto fino al tetto. Un giorno, mentre ero fuori a lavorare nei campi, arrivò un viaggiatore del nostro Norfolk o Suffolk, in Inghilterra. Non ricordo esattamente quale. Naturalmente lo ospitammo, gli offrimmo da mangiare e da bere e lo accogliemmo con calore. Noi tutti facciamo così, in tutta la colonia. Lui aveva con sé un vecchio giornale e anche altri resoconti stampati sull’tempesta. È così che lei ne è venuta a conoscenza. Quando sono tornato a casa di notte, ho scoperto che lo sapeva.”
He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so well remembered overspread his face.
‘Did it change her much?’ we asked.
‘Aye, for a good long time,’ he said, shaking his head; ‘if not to this present hour. But I think the solitoode done her good. And she had a deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and minded of it, and come through. I wonder,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘if you could see my Em’ly now, Mas’r Davy, whether you’d know her!’
‘Is she so altered?’ I inquired.
‘I doen’t know. I see her ev’ry day, and doen’t know; But, odd-times, I have thowt so. A slight figure,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire, ‘kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way—timid a’most. That’s Em’ly!’
We silently observed him as he sat, still looking at the fire.
‘Some thinks,’ he said, ‘as her affection was ill-bestowed; some, as her marriage was broken off by death. No one knows how ‘tis. She might have married well, a mort of times, “but, uncle,” she says to me, “that’s gone for ever.” Cheerful along with me; retired when others is by; fond of going any distance fur to teach a child, or fur to tend a sick person, or fur to do some kindness tow’rds a young girl’s wedding (and she’s done a many, but has never seen one); fondly loving of her uncle; patient; liked by young and old; sowt out by all that has any trouble. That’s Em’ly!’
He drew his hand across his face, and with a half-suppressed sigh looked up from the fire.
‘Is Martha with you yet?’ I asked.
‘Martha,’ he replied, ‘got married, Mas’r Davy, in the second year. A young man, a farm-labourer, as come by us on his way to market with his mas’r’s drays—a journey of over five hundred mile, theer and back—made offers fur to take her fur his wife (wives is very scarce theer), and then to set up fur their two selves in the Bush. She spoke to me fur to tell him her trew story. I did. They was married, and they live fower hundred mile away from any voices but their own and the singing birds.’
‘Mrs. Gummidge?’ I suggested.
It was a pleasant key to touch, for Mr. Peggotty suddenly burst into a roar of laughter, and rubbed his hands up and down his legs, as he had been accustomed to do when he enjoyed himself in the long-shipwrecked boat.
‘Would you believe it!’ he said. ‘Why, someun even made offer fur to marry her! If a ship’s cook that was turning settler, Mas’r Davy, didn’t make offers fur to marry Missis Gummidge, I’m Gormed—and I can’t say no fairer than that!’
I never saw Agnes laugh so. This sudden ecstasy on the part of Mr. Peggotty was so delightful to her, that she could not leave off laughing; and the more she laughed the more she made me laugh, and the greater Mr. Peggotty’s ecstasy became, and the more he rubbed his legs.
‘And what did Mrs. Gummidge say?’ I asked, when I was grave enough.
‘If you’ll believe me,’ returned Mr. Peggotty, ‘Missis Gummidge, ‘stead of saying “thank you, I’m much obleeged to you, I ain’t a-going fur to change my condition at my time of life,” up’d with a bucket as was standing by, and laid it over that theer ship’s cook’s head ‘till he sung out fur help, and I went in and reskied of him.’
Mr. Peggotty burst into a great roar of laughter, and Agnes and I both kept him company.
‘But I must say this, for the good creetur,’ he resumed, wiping his face, when we were quite exhausted; ‘she has been all she said she’d be to us, and more. She’s the willingest, the trewest, the honestest-helping woman, Mas’r Davy, as ever draw’d the breath of life. I have never know’d her to be lone and lorn, for a single minute, not even when the colony was all afore us, and we was new to it. And thinking of the old ‘un is a thing she never done, I do assure you, since she left England!’
‘Now, last, not least, Mr. Micawber,’ said I. ‘He has paid off every obligation he incurred here—even to Traddles’s bill, you remember my dear Agnes—and therefore we may take it for granted that he is doing well. But what is the latest news of him?’
Mr. Peggotty, with a smile, put his hand in his breast-pocket, and produced a flat-folded, paper parcel, from which he took out, with much care, a little odd-looking newspaper.
‘You are to understan’, Mas’r Davy,’ said he, ‘as we have left the Bush now, being so well to do; and have gone right away round to Port Middlebay Harbour, wheer theer’s what we call a town.’
‘Mr. Micawber was in the Bush near you?’ said I.
‘Bless you, yes,’ said Mr. Peggotty, ‘and turned to with a will. I never wish to meet a better gen’l’man for turning to with a will. I’ve seen that theer bald head of his a perspiring in the sun, Mas’r Davy, till I a’most thowt it would have melted away. And now he’s a Magistrate.’
‘A Magistrate, eh?’ said I.
Mr. Peggotty pointed to a certain paragraph in the newspaper, where I read aloud as follows, from the Port Middlebay Times:
‘The public dinner to our distinguished fellow-colonist and townsman, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, Port Middlebay District Magistrate, came off yesterday in the large room of the Hotel, which was crowded to suffocation. It is estimated that not fewer than forty-seven persons must have been accommodated with dinner at one time, exclusive of the company in the passage and on the stairs. The beauty, fashion, and exclusiveness of Port Middlebay, flocked to do honour to one so deservedly esteemed, so highly talented, and so widely popular. Doctor Mell (of Colonial Salem-House Grammar School, Port Middlebay) presided, and on his right sat the distinguished guest. After the removal of the cloth, and the singing of Non Nobis (beautifully executed, and in which we were at no loss to distinguish the bell-like notes of that gifted amateur, WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR), the usual loyal and patriotic toasts were severally given and rapturously received. Doctor Mell, in a speech replete with feeling, then proposed “Our distinguished Guest, the ornament of our town. May he never leave us but to better himself, and may his success among us be such as to render his bettering himself impossible!” The cheering with which the toast was received defies description. Again and again it rose and fell, like the waves of ocean. At length all was hushed, and WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, presented himself to return thanks. Far be it from us, in the present comparatively imperfect state of the resources of our establishment, to endeavour to follow our distinguished townsman through the smoothly-flowing periods of his polished and highly-ornate address! Suffice it to observe, that it was a masterpiece of eloquence; and that those passages in which he more particularly traced his own successful career to its source, and warned the younger portion of his auditory from the shoals of ever incurring pecuniary liabilities which they were unable to liquidate, brought a tear into the manliest eye present. The remaining toasts were DOCTOR MELL; Mrs. MICAWBER (who gracefully bowed her acknowledgements from the side-door, where a galaxy of beauty was elevated on chairs, at once to witness and adorn the gratifying scene), Mrs. RIDGER BEGS (late Miss Micawber); Mrs. MELL; WILKINS MICAWBER, ESQUIRE, JUNIOR (who convulsed the assembly by humorously remarking that he found himself unable to return thanks in a speech, but would do so, with their permission, in a song); Mrs. MICAWBER’S FAMILY (well known, it is needless to remark, in the mother-country), &c. &c. &c. At the conclusion of the proceedings the tables were cleared as if by art-magic for dancing. Among the votaries of TERPSICHORE, who disported themselves until Sol gave warning for departure, Wilkins Micawber, Esquire, Junior, and the lovely and accomplished Miss Helena, fourth daughter of Doctor Mell, were particularly remarkable.’
Abbassò la voce mentre pronunciava queste parole, e quell’espressione di gravità che ricordavo così bene si dipinse sul suo volto.
“Le ha cambiato molto la vita?” chiesi.
“Sì, per un bel po’ di tempo,” disse scuotendo la testa; “se non fosse stato fino a questo momento. Ma penso che il solito metodo abbia funzionato. Aveva in mente un progetto legato all’allevamento di pollame e simili, ci ha lavorato sopra e ce l’è fatta. Mi chiedo,” disse pensieroso, “se riusciste a vedere mia moglie adesso, signor Davy, se la riconoscereste, ”
“È davvero cambiata così tanto?” chiesi.
“Non lo so. La vedo ogni giorno, eppure non lo so. Ma, a volte, penso di sì. Una figura snella,” disse il signor Peggotty, guardando il fuoco, “con i capelli un po’ sciupati; occhi dolci, tristi, di colore blu; un viso delicato; una testolina graziosa, leggermente inclinata in avanti. Una voce e un modo di comportarsi tranquilli. Molto timida. Quella è Em’ly!”
Lo osservammo in silenzio mentre sedeva, ancora fissando il fuoco.
“Alcuni pensano,” disse, “che il suo affetto sia stato mal riposto; altri, che il suo matrimonio sia stato interrotto dalla morte. Nessuno lo sa con certezza. Avrebbe potuto sposare qualcuno davvero adatto per lei. Ma, ‘zio,’ mi dice sempre, “quello è finito per sempre.” È sempre allegra con me; si ritira quando gli altri sono presenti; è disposta a percorrere qualsiasi distanza pur di insegnare a un >bambino, di curare una persona malata o di compiere qualche atto di gentilezza per il matrimonio di una giovane ragazza (ne ha fatti molti, ma non ne ha mai visto uno, ). Ama profondamente suo zio; è paziente; è apprezzata da giovani e anziani; tutti coloro che hanno bisogno di aiuto si rivolgono a lei. Questa è Em’ly!”
Si passò la mano sul viso e, con un sospiro a metà soffocato, alzò lo sguardo dal fuoco.
“Martha è già con te?” chiesi.
“Martha,” rispose, “si è sposata nel secondo anno. Un giovane, un bracciante agricolo che passava da noi sulla strada per il mercato con i carri del suo padrone, una viaggio di oltre cinquecento miglia andata e ritorno, le fece proposte per prenderla in sposa (le mogli sono molto rare da quelle parti), e poi decisero di stabilirsi insieme nella foresta. Lei mi chiese di raccontargli la sua storia vera. Lo feci, e così si sposarono e ora vivono a quattrocento miglia di distanza, lontani da ogni suono umano, tranne il loro e il canto degli uccelli.”
“Signora Gummidge?”, suggerii.
Era una chiave piacevole da tenere in mano, perché il signor Peggotty scoppiò improvvisamente in una risata fragorosa e si strofinò le mani su e giù per le gambe, proprio come faceva quando si divertiva a bordo di quella barca distrutta dal naufragio.
“Ci credete o no?”, disse. “Addirittura qualcuno le ha fatto proposte di matrimonio! Se il cuoco di una nave che stava diventando un colono, il signor Davy, non avesse fatto proposte a signora Gummidge, beh, non potrei dire di no in modo più gentile di così!”
Non avevo mai visto Agnes ridere in quel modo. Quell’improvvisa estasi da parte del signor Peggotty era così deliziosa per lei che non riusciva a smettere di ridere; e più rideva, più mi faceva ridere anch’io, e maggiore diventava l’estasi del signor Peggotty, che continuava ad strofinarsi le gambe.
“E cosa ha detto la signora Gummidge?” chiesi, quando fui abbastanza serio.
“Se mi volete credere,” rispose il signor Peggotty, “la signora Gummidge, invece di dire ‘grazie, vi sono molto obbligata, non ho intenzione di cambiare la mia situazione a questa età della vita’, prese un secchio che c’era lì vicino e lo mise sopra la testa del cuoco di quella nave, finché lui non chiamò aiuto; poi io entrai e mi occupai di lui.”
Il signor Peggotty scoppiò in una gran risata, e sia Agnes che io lo accompagnammo nella sua ilarità.
“Ma devo dire questo, per il bene di quella povera creatura,” riprese, asciugandosi il viso, quando eravamo completamente esausti; “lei è stata esattamente ciò che aveva detto di essere per noi, e anche di più. È la donna più disponibile, più leale, più onesta e più premurosa che io abbia mai conosciuto, signor Davy. Non l’ho mai vista triste o sola nemmeno per un minuto, nemmeno quando la colonia era davanti a noi e eravamo appena arrivati. E vi assicuro che non ha mai fatto nulla del genere da quando ha lasciato l’Inghilterra, ”
“Ora, infine, ma non meno importante, il signor Micawber,” dissi. “Ha saldato tutte le obbligazioni che aveva qui, persino il conto di Traddles, ricordi cara Agnes. Quindi possiamo dare per scontato che stia andando bene. Ma quali sono le ultime notizie su di lui?”
Il signor Peggotty, sorridendo, mise la mano nella tasca del petto e ne tirò fuori un pacchetto di carta piegato in modo piatto; con grande cura ne estrasse un giornale dall’aspetto piuttosto strano.
“Dovete capire,” disse lui, “che ora che abbiamo lasciato la giungla, è molto più sicuro procedere in questo modo; e siamo subito diretti verso il porto di Port Middlebay, dove c’è quella che chiamiamo una città.”
“Il signor Micawber si trovava nella zona vicino a voi?” chiesi.
“Che Dio ti benedica, sì,” disse il signor Peggotty, “e si è rivolto a lui con fiducia. Non desidero mai incontrare un uomo migliore di lui per chiedere aiuto con fiducia. Ho visto quella sua testa calva sudare sotto il sole, signor Davy, sembrava quasi che si sarebbe sciolta. E ora è diventato un magistrato.”
“Un magistrato, eh?”, dissi io.
Il signor Peggotty indicò un certo paragrafo del giornale; lessi ad alta voce quanto segue, tratto dal Port Middlebay Times:
La cena pubblica in onore del nostro distinto concittadino e cittadino rispettabile,
WILKINS MICAWBER signore, magistrato del distretto di Port Middlebay, si è tenuta ieri nella grande sala dell’hotel, dove c’era una folla così numerosa da rendere l’aria irrespirabile. Si stima che non meno di quarantasette persone abbiano partecipato alla cena nello stesso momento, senza contare quelle presenti nei corridoi e sulle scale. La bellezza, la moda e l’eleganza di Port Middlebay si erano radunate per rendere omaggio a una persona così ammirata, così talentuosa e così popolare. Il dottor Mell (della Colonial Salem-House Grammar School di Port Middlebay) ha presieduto la cerimonia; al suo fianco sedeva l’ospite d’onore. Dopo che il tovaglio è stato rimosso e è stata cantata la canzone “Non Nobis” (eseguita con grande maestria, e nella quale si potevano chiaramente riconoscere le note melodiose di quel talentuoso dilettante, WILKINS MICAWBER signore), sono stati fatti vari brindisi patriottici e apprezzati con entusiasmo. Il dottor Mell, nel suo discorso pieno di emozione, ha poi detto: “Il nostro distinto ospite, l’ornamento della nostra città. Possa mai lasciarci solo per migliorarsi ulteriormente, e possa il suo successo tra noi rendere impossibile che continui a migliorare!” L’entusiasmo con cui questi brindisi sono stati accolti è indescrivibile: le acclamazioni continuavano senza sosta. Alla fine tutto si è calmato, e WILKINS MICAWBER signore si è alzato per ringraziare. In questo momento, con le risorse relativamente scarse a nostra disposizione, non possiamo certo cercare di analizzare nel dettaglio il suo discorso elegante e ricco di ornamenti. Basta dire che è stato un capolavoro di eloquenza; in particolare, i passaggi in cui descriveva la propria carriera di successo e avvertiva i giovani presenti di evitare di accumulare debiti finanziari che non potessero mai ripagare hanno fatto scendere lacrime negli occhi di molti. Gli altri brindisi sono stati fatti in onore del dottor Mell, della signora Micawber (che ha ringraziato con grazia dalla porta laterale, dove un gruppo di donne bellissime assisteva alla scena), della signora Ridger Begs (ex signorina Micawber), del dottor Mell stesso, e di WILKINS MICAWBER signore junior, che ha divertito tutti dicendo scherzosamente di non riuscire a ringraziare con un discorso, ma che lo avrebbe fatto, con il loro permesso, attraverso una canzone. Alla fine, i tavoli sono stati sparecchiati come per magia, e si è iniziato a ballare. Tra coloro che hanno goduto della musica di Terpsichore, fino a quando non è arrivato l’ora di congedarsi, Wilkins Micawber signore junior e la bellissima e colta signorina Helena, quarta figlia del dottor Mell, si sono distinti in modo particolare.
I was looking back to the name of Doctor Mell, pleased to have discovered, in these happier circumstances, Mr. Mell, formerly poor pinched usher to my Middlesex magistrate, when Mr. Peggotty pointing to another part of the paper, my eyes rested on my own name, and I read thus:
‘TO DAVID COPPERFIELD, ESQUIRE,
‘THE EMINENT AUTHOR.
‘My Dear Sir,
‘Years have elapsed, since I had an opportunity of ocularly perusing the lineaments, now familiar to the imaginations of a considerable portion of the civilized world.
‘But, my dear Sir, though estranged (by the force of circumstances over which I have had no control) from the personal society of the friend and companion of my youth, I have not been unmindful of his soaring flight. Nor have I been debarred,
Though seas between us braid ha’ roared,
(BURNS) from participating in the intellectual feasts he has spread before us.
‘I cannot, therefore, allow of the departure from this place of an individual whom we mutually respect and esteem, without, my dear Sir, taking this public opportunity of thanking you, on my own behalf, and, I may undertake to add, on that of the whole of the Inhabitants of Port Middlebay, for the gratification of which you are the ministering agent.
‘Go on, my dear Sir! You are not unknown here, you are not unappreciated. Though “remote”, we are neither “unfriended”, “melancholy”, nor (I may add) “slow”. Go on, my dear Sir, in your Eagle course! The inhabitants of Port Middlebay may at least aspire to watch it, with delight, with entertainment, with instruction!
‘Among the eyes elevated towards you from this portion of the globe, will ever be found, while it has light and life,
‘The ‘Eye ‘Appertaining to
‘WILKINS MICAWBER, ‘Magistrate.’
I found, on glancing at the remaining contents of the newspaper, that Mr. Micawber was a diligent and esteemed correspondent of that journal. There was another letter from him in the same paper, touching a bridge; there was an advertisement of a collection of similar letters by him, to be shortly republished, in a neat volume, ‘with considerable additions’; and, unless I am very much mistaken, the Leading Article was his also.
We talked much of Mr. Micawber, on many other evenings while Mr. Peggotty remained with us. He lived with us during the whole term of his stay,—which, I think, was something less than a month,—and his sister and my aunt came to London to see him. Agnes and I parted from him aboard-ship, when he sailed; and we shall never part from him more, on earth.
But before he left, he went with me to Yarmouth, to see a little tablet I had put up in the churchyard to the memory of Ham. While I was copying the plain inscription for him at his request, I saw him stoop, and gather a tuft of grass from the grave and a little earth.
‘For Em’ly,’ he said, as he put it in his breast. ‘I promised, Mas’r Davy.’
CHAPTER 64. A LAST RETROSPECT
And now my written story ends. I look back, once more—for the last time—before I close these leaves.
I see myself, with Agnes at my side, journeying along the road of life. I see our children and our friends around us; and I hear the roar of many voices, not indifferent to me as I travel on.
What faces are the most distinct to me in the fleeting crowd? Lo, these; all turning to me as I ask my thoughts the question!
Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of four-score years and more, but upright yet, and a steady walker of six miles at a stretch in winter weather.
Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse, likewise in spectacles, accustomed to do needle-work at night very close to the lamp, but never sitting down to it without a bit of wax candle, a yard-measure in a little house, and a work-box with a picture of St. Paul’s upon the lid.
The cheeks and arms of Peggotty, so hard and red in my childish days, when I wondered why the birds didn’t peck her in preference to apples, are shrivelled now; and her eyes, that used to darken their whole neighbourhood in her face, are fainter (though they glitter still); but her rough forefinger, which I once associated with a pocket nutmeg-grater, is just the same, and when I see my least child catching at it as it totters from my aunt to her, I think of our little parlour at home, when I could scarcely walk. My aunt’s old disappointment is set right, now. She is godmother to a real living Betsey Trotwood; and Dora (the next in order) says she spoils her.
There is something bulky in Peggotty’s pocket. It is nothing smaller than the Crocodile Book, which is in rather a dilapidated condition by this time, with divers of the leaves torn and stitched across, but which Peggotty exhibits to the children as a precious relic. I find it very curious to see my own infant face, looking up at me from the Crocodile stories; and to be reminded by it of my old acquaintance Brooks of Sheffield.
Among my boys, this summer holiday time, I see an old man making giant kites, and gazing at them in the air, with a delight for which there are no words. He greets me rapturously, and whispers, with many nods and winks, ‘Trotwood, you will be glad to hear that I shall finish the Memorial when I have nothing else to do, and that your aunt’s the most extraordinary woman in the world, sir!’
Who is this bent lady, supporting herself by a stick, and showing me a countenance in which there are some traces of old pride and beauty, feebly contending with a querulous, imbecile, fretful wandering of the mind? She is in a garden; and near her stands a sharp, dark, withered woman, with a white scar on her lip. Let me hear what they say.
‘Rosa, I have forgotten this gentleman’s name.’
Rosa bends over her, and calls to her, ‘Mr. Copperfield.’
‘I am glad to see you, sir. I am sorry to observe you are in mourning. I hope Time will be good to you.’
Her impatient attendant scolds her, tells her I am not in mourning, bids her look again, tries to rouse her.
‘You have seen my son, sir,’ says the elder lady. ‘Are you reconciled?’
Looking fixedly at me, she puts her hand to her forehead, and moans. Suddenly, she cries, in a terrible voice, ‘Rosa, come to me. He is dead!’ Rosa kneeling at her feet, by turns caresses her, and quarrels with her; now fiercely telling her, ‘I loved him better than you ever did!’—now soothing her to sleep on her breast, like a sick child. Thus I leave them; thus I always find them; thus they wear their time away, from year to year.
What ship comes sailing home from India, and what English lady is this, married to a growling old Scotch Croesus with great flaps of ears? Can this be Julia Mills?
Indeed it is Julia Mills, peevish and fine, with a black man to carry cards and letters to her on a golden salver, and a copper-coloured woman in linen, with a bright handkerchief round her head, to serve her Tiffin in her dressing-room. But Julia keeps no diary in these days; never sings Affection’s Dirge; eternally quarrels with the old Scotch Croesus, who is a sort of yellow bear with a tanned hide. Julia is steeped in money to the throat, and talks and thinks of nothing else. I liked her better in the Desert of Sahara.
Or perhaps this IS the Desert of Sahara! For, though Julia has a stately house, and mighty company, and sumptuous dinners every day, I see no green growth near her; nothing that can ever come to fruit or flower. What Julia calls ‘society’, I see; among it Mr. Jack Maldon, from his Patent Place, sneering at the hand that gave it him, and speaking to me of the Doctor as ‘so charmingly antique’. But when society is the name for such hollow gentlemen and ladies, Julia, and when its breeding is professed indifference to everything that can advance or can retard mankind, I think we must have lost ourselves in that same Desert of Sahara, and had better find the way out.
And lo, the Doctor, always our good friend, labouring at his Dictionary (somewhere about the letter D), and happy in his home and wife. Also the Old Soldier, on a considerably reduced footing, and by no means so influential as in days of yore!
Working at his chambers in the Temple, with a busy aspect, and his hair (where he is not bald) made more rebellious than ever by the constant friction of his lawyer’s-wig, I come, in a later time, upon my dear old Traddles. His table is covered with thick piles of papers; and I say, as I look around me:
‘If Sophy were your clerk, now, Traddles, she would have enough to do!’
‘You may say that, my dear Copperfield! But those were capital days, too, in Holborn Court! Were they not?’
‘When she told you you would be a judge? But it was not the town talk then!’
‘At all events,’ says Traddles, ‘if I ever am one—’ ‘Why, you know you will be.’
‘Well, my dear Copperfield, WHEN I am one, I shall tell the story, as I said I would.’
We walk away, arm in arm. I am going to have a family dinner with Traddles. It is Sophy’s birthday; and, on our road, Traddles discourses to me of the good fortune he has enjoyed.
‘I really have been able, my dear Copperfield, to do all that I had most at heart. There’s the Reverend Horace promoted to that living at four hundred and fifty pounds a year; there are our two boys receiving the very best education, and distinguishing themselves as steady scholars and good fellows; there are three of the girls married very comfortably; there are three more living with us; there are three more keeping house for the Reverend Horace since Mrs. Crewler’s decease; and all of them happy.’
‘Except—’ I suggest.
‘Except the Beauty,’ says Traddles. ‘Yes. It was very unfortunate that she should marry such a vagabond. But there was a certain dash and glare about him that caught her. However, now we have got her safe at our house, and got rid of him, we must cheer her up again.’
Traddles’s house is one of the very houses—or it easily may have been—which he and Sophy used to parcel out, in their evening walks. It is a large house; but Traddles keeps his papers in his dressing-room and his boots with his papers; and he and Sophy squeeze themselves into upper rooms, reserving the best bedrooms for the Beauty and the girls. There is no room to spare in the house; for more of ‘the girls’ are here, and always are here, by some accident or other, than I know how to count. Here, when we go in, is a crowd of them, running down to the door, and handing Traddles about to be kissed, until he is out of breath. Here, established in perpetuity, is the poor Beauty, a widow with a little girl; here, at dinner on Sophy’s birthday, are the three married girls with their three husbands, and one of the husband’s brothers, and another husband’s cousin, and another husband’s sister, who appears to me to be engaged to the cousin. Traddles, exactly the same simple, unaffected fellow as he ever was, sits at the foot of the large table like a Patriarch; and Sophy beams upon him, from the head, across a cheerful space that is certainly not glittering with Britannia metal.
And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.
I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.
My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.
O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!
CAPITOLO 64. UN ULTIMO RICORDO
E ora la mia storia scritta finisce. Guardo indietro, un’ultima volta, prima di chiudere queste pagine.
Mi vedo, con Agnes al mio fianco, viaggiare lungo il sentiero della vita. Vedo i nostri figli e i nostri amici intorno a noi; e sento il rumore di molte voci, che non sono indifferenti a me mentre proseguo il mio cammino.
Quali volti sono i più distintivi per me nella folla effimera? Questi, proprio questi; tutti si rivolgono a me mentre pongo questa domanda ai miei pensieri!
Ecco mia zia: indossa occhiali più robusti, è una donna anziana di oltre quarant’anni, ma ancora eretta e in grado di percorrere sei miglia di seguito anche nei mesi invernali.
Sempre con lei, arriva Peggotty, la mia cara vecchia infermiera; anch’ella porta occhiali e è abituata a fare lavori di cucito di notte, molto vicino alla lampada; ma non inizia mai il lavoro senza una candela di cera, un metro da sarto nella sua piccola casa, e una scatola da lavoro con un ritratto di San Paolo sul coperchio.
Le guance e i bracci di Peggotty, un tempo così duri e rossi nei miei giorni infantili, quando mi chiedevo perché gli uccelli non la beccassero invece delle mele, ora sono raggrinziti; e i suoi occhi, che un tempo illuminavano tutto il suo viso, ora sembrano più pallidi (sebbene brillino ancora); ma il suo dito indice ruvido, che una volta mi faceva pensare a uno strumento per grattugiare noce moscata, è esattamente lo stesso. Quando vedo il mio figlio più piccolo afferrarlo mentre barcolla da mia zia a lei, penso alla nostra piccola stanza a casa, quando a malapena riuscivo a camminare. Il vecchio rimpianto di mia zia è finalmente stato compensato: ora è la madrina di una vera e propria Betsey Trotwood; e Dora (la successiva nella linea di successione) dice che la vizi.
C’è qualcosa di ingombrante nella tasca di Peggotty. Non è certo più piccolo del Libro del Coccodrillo, che ormai è in condizioni piuttosto deteriorate: diverse delle sue pagine sono strappate e poi ricucite insieme, ma Peggotty lo mostra ai bambini come un reliquio prezioso. Trovo molto curioso vedere il mio stesso viso da neonato che mi guarda dalle pagine di quelle storie. E questo mi fa pensare al mio vecchio conoscente Brooks di Sheffield.
Tra i miei ragazzi, durante queste vacanze estive, ho visto un vecchio che costruiva aquiloni giganti e li osservava volare nel cielo con una gioia indescrivibile. Mi ha salutato con entusiasmo e, facendo molti cenni del capo e occhiolii, mi ha sussurrato: “Trotwood, sarà felice di sapere che finirò il Memorial non appena avrò altro da fare. E che sua zia è la donna più straordinaria del mondo, signore!”
Chi è questa donna curva, che si appoggia a un bastone e mi mostra un volto in cui si intravedono ancora tracce di vecchia orgoglio e bellezza, che lotta debolmente contro i pensieri irrequieti, stupidi e ansiosi della sua mente? Si trova in un jardino; vicino a lei c’è una donna magra, scura e avvizzita, con una cicatrice bianca sulle labbra. Lasciate che ascolti ciò che dicono.
“Rosa, ho dimenticato il nome di questo signore.”
“Rosa si china verso di lei e la chiama: ‘Signor Copperfield’.”
“Mi fa piacere vedervi, signore. Mi dispiace notare che siate in lutto. Spero che il tempo vi sia d’aiuto.”
La sua impaziente assistente la rimprovera, le dice che non sto piangendo la morte di qualcuno, le ordina di guardare di nuovo e cerca di svegliarla.
“Avete visto mio figlio, signore”, dice la donna più anziana. “Siete riconciliati?”
Guardandomi fisso negli occhi, si porta la mano alla fronte e sospira. All’improvviso, inizia a piangere con una voce terribile: “Rosa, vieni da me. È morto!” Rosa, inginocchiata ai suoi piedi, ora la accarezza dolcemente, ora discute con lei; a volte le dice con forza: “L’ho amato più di quanto tu abbia mai fatto, ” altre volte la consola fino a farla addormentare sul suo petto, come una bambina malata. Così le lascio. Così le trovo sempre. Così trascorrono il loro tempo, anno dopo anno.
Quale nave arriva navigando verso casa dall’India. E quale signora inglese è questa, sposata con un vecchio scozzese dal carattere burbero e dalle orecchie grandi? Può essere Julia Mills?
Infatti è proprio Julia Mills: capricciosa e elegante, con un uomo di colore che le porta carte e lettere su un vassoio d’oro, e una donna di colore con abiti di lino, che le serve i pasti nel suo bagno. Ma al giorno d’oggi Julia non tiene più un diario; non canta mai la “Canzone del Dolore” dell’Amore; litiga continuamente con quel vecchio scozzese, che sembra una sorta di orso giallo dalla pelle abbronzata. Julia è sommersa da soldi fino al collo e non pensa ad altro che a loro. Mi piaceva di più quando era nel “Deserto” del Sahara.
O forse questa È davvero la Deserta del Sahara! Perché, sebbene Julia abbia una casa maestosa, un numeroso seguito e cene sontuose ogni giorno, non vedo intorno a lei alcuna forma di vita verde; nulla che possa mai dare frutto o fiorire. Quello che Julia chiama “società”. Lì c’è il signor Jack Maldon, dal suo ufficio al Patent Office, che deride la mano che lo ha aiutato e parla del Dottore definendolo “così affascinante nell’antichità”. Ma quando “società” indica soltanto gentiluomini e signore vuoti e superficiali, quando il suo scopo dichiarato è l’indifferenza verso tutto ciò che può avanzare o ritardare lo sviluppo dell’umanità, allora penso che abbiamo davvero perso la strada in quella stessa Deserta del Sahara, e che sia meglio trovarne subito l’uscita.
Ecco dunque il Dottore, sempre nostro buon amico, impegnato nella stesura del suo dizionario (intorno alla lettera “D”), felice nella sua casa e con la sua moglie. E poi c’è l’Vecchio Soldato, in condizioni molto più modeste, e assolutamente non più influente come un tempo!
Mentre lavorava nel suo studio presso il Temple, con un’aria molto impegnata e i capelli – lì dove non era calvo – resi ancora più ribelli dal continuo sfregamento del cappello da avvocato, in un momento successivo mi imbattei nel mio caro vecchio Traddles. La sua scrivania era coperta da pile spesse di documenti; e io, guardandomi intorno, dissi.
“Se Sophy fosse la tua segretaria adesso, Traddles, avrebbe davvero molto da fare, ”
“Puoi dirlo, caro Copperfield. Ma anche quei giorni furono davvero importanti, nel tribunale di Holborn. Non è vero?”
“Quando ti disse che saresti diventato un giudice. Ma all’epoca non era certo una voce popolare in giro per la città!”
“Comunque sia,” dice Traddles, “se mai diventerò qualcuno, ” “Ma certo che lo sarai.”
“Beh, caro Copperfield, quando sarò grande, racconterò questa storia, come ho detto.”
Ci allontaniamo, mano nella mano. Andrò a una cena di famiglia con Traddles. È il compleanno di Sophie; e, lungo la nostra strada, Traddles mi parla della fortuna che ha avuto.
“Davvero sono riuscito, caro Copperfield, a realizzare tutto ciò che desideravo ardentemente. Il reverendo Horace è stato promosso e ora guadagna quattrocentocinquanta sterline all’anno; i nostri due figli ricevono la migliore istruzione possibile e si stanno distinguendo come studenti seri e bravi ragazzi; tre delle ragazze sono sposate in modo molto confortevole; altre tre vivono ancora con noi; e altre tre si occupano della casa del reverendo Horace da quando è morta la signora Crewler. E tutti sono felici.”
“Tranne che, ” suggerisco io.
“Tranne quella bellezza,” dice Traddles. “Sì. È stato davvero sfortunato che abbia sposato un tipo del genere. Ma c’era qualcosa di attraente e deciso in lui che l’ha affascinata. Comunque, ora che l’abbiamo portata al sicuro nella nostra casa e ci siamo sbarazzati di lui, dobbiamo rallegrarla di nuovo.”
La casa di Traddles è una di quelle case – o forse proprio quella – in cui lui e Sophy avevano l’abitudine di distribuire regali durante le loro passeggiate serali. È una casa piuttosto grande; ma Traddles conserva i suoi documenti nel suo bagno, e anche le sue scarpe insieme a essi; lui e Sophy si accontentano delle stanze superiori, riservando le camere migliori alla povera Beauty e alle ragazze. Non c’è spazio libero in quella casa: ci sono sempre troppe “ragazze”, per qualche motivo che non so proprio come spiegare. Quando entriamo, ce ne trovi un sacco che corrono verso la porta per baciare Traddles, finché non rimane senza fiato. Lì, stabilita per sempre, c’è anche la povera Beauty, una vedova con una bambina piccola; a cena, nel giorno del compleanno di Sophy, ci sono le tre ragazze sposate con i loro mariti, un fratello di uno dei mariti, un cugino di un altro marito, e anche una sorella di un altro marito, che a mio parere è fidanzata con quel cugino. Traddles, sempre lo stesso uomo semplice e senza pretese di sempre, siede in fondo al grande tavolo come un patriarca; e Sophy lo guarda con occhi pieni d’amore, attraverso uno spazio allegramente arredato, anche se certamente non decorato con oggetti lussuosi.
E ora, mentre concludo il mio compito, reprimendo il mio desiderio di indugiare ancora, questi volti svaniscono uno dopo l’altro. Ma c’è un volto che brilla su di me come una luce celestiale grazie alla quale riesco a vedere tutti gli altri oggetti; è al di sopra di loro e oltre di tutti loro. E quello rimane.
Giro la testa e lo vedo, nella sua bellissima tranquillità, accanto a me.
La mia lampada brucia lentamente; ho scritto per tutta la notte, ma la presenza cara, senza la quale non sarei nulla, è al mio fianco.
Oh Agnes, oh mia ‘anima, che il tuo volto sia sempre accanto a me quando concluderò questa vita. Che anche quando le realtà mi svaniranno intorno, come queste ombre che ora allontano, io possa ancora trovarti vicina a me, che mi indichi verso l’alto!