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‘I won’t, if I can help it, Doady. But I am very happy; though my dear

boy is so lonely by himself, before his child-wife’s empty chair!’

It is night; and I am with her still. Agnes has arrived; has been among

us for a whole day and an evening. She, my aunt, and I, have sat with

Dora since the morning, all together. We have not talked much, but Dora

has been perfectly contented and cheerful. We are now alone.

Do I know, now, that my child-wife will soon leave me? They have told me

so; they have told me nothing new to my thoughts--but I am far from

sure that I have taken that truth to heart. I cannot master it. I have

withdrawn by myself, many times today, to weep. I have remembered Who

wept for a parting between the living and the dead. I have bethought me

of all that gracious and compassionate history. I have tried to resign

myself, and to console myself; and that, I hope, I may have done

imperfectly; but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end

will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine,

I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a

pale lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared.

‘I am going to speak to you, Doady. I am going to say something I have

often thought of saying, lately. You won’t mind?’ with a gentle look.

‘Mind, my darling?’

‘Because I don’t know what you will think, or what you may have thought

sometimes. Perhaps you have often thought the same. Doady, dear, I am

afraid I was too young.’

I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes, and

speaks very softly. Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a stricken

heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.

‘I am afraid, dear, I was too young. I don’t mean in years only, but

in experience, and thoughts, and everything. I was such a silly little

creature! I am afraid it would have been better, if we had only loved

each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it. I have begun to think I

was not fit to be a wife.’

I try to stay my tears, and to reply, ‘Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be

a husband!’

‘I don’t know,’ with the old shake of her curls. ‘Perhaps! But if I had

been more fit to be married I might have made you more so, too. Besides,

you are very clever, and I never was.’

‘We have been very happy, my sweet Dora.’

‘I was very happy, very. But, as years went on, my dear boy would have

wearied of his child-wife. She would have been less and less a companion

for him. He would have been more and more sensible of what was wanting

in his home. She wouldn’t have improved. It is better as it is.’

‘Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so. Every word seems a

reproach!’

‘No, not a syllable!’ she answers, kissing me. ‘Oh, my dear, you never

deserved it, and I loved you far too well to say a reproachful word to

you, in earnest--it was all the merit I had, except being pretty--or you

thought me so. Is it lonely, down-stairs, Doady?’

‘Very! Very!’

‘Don’t cry! Is my chair there?’

‘In its old place.’

‘Oh, how my poor boy cries! Hush, hush! Now, make me one promise. I want

to speak to Agnes. When you go downstairs, tell Agnes so, and send her

up to me; and while I speak to her, let no one come--not even aunt.

I want to speak to Agnes by herself. I want to speak to Agnes, quite

alone.’

I promise that she shall, immediately; but I cannot leave her, for my

grief.

‘I said that it was better as it is!’ she whispers, as she holds me in

her arms. ‘Oh, Doady, after more years, you never could have loved your

child-wife better than you do; and, after more years, she would so have

tried and disappointed you, that you might not have been able to love

her half so well! I know I was too young and foolish. It is much better

as it is!’

Agnes is downstairs, when I go into the parlour; and I give her the

message. She disappears, leaving me alone with Jip.

His Chinese house is by the fire; and he lies within it, on his bed of

flannel, querulously trying to sleep. The bright moon is high and clear.

As I look out on the night, my tears fall fast, and my undisciplined

heart is chastened heavily--heavily.

I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those

secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage. I think of every

little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that trifles

make the sum of life. Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the

image of the dear child as I knew her first, graced by my young love,

and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich. Would

it, indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and a

girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!

How the time wears, I know not; until I am recalled by my child-wife’s

old companion. More restless than he was, he crawls out of his house,

and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and whines to go upstairs.

‘Not tonight, Jip! Not tonight!’

He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hand, and lifts his dim eyes

to my face.

‘Oh, Jip! It may be, never again!’

He lies down at my feet, stretches himself out as if to sleep, and with

a plaintive cry, is dead.

‘Oh, Agnes! Look, look, here!’ --That face, so full of pity, and of

grief, that rain of tears, that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn

hand upraised towards Heaven!

‘Agnes?’

It is over. Darkness comes before my eyes; and, for a time, all things

are blotted out of my remembrance.

CHAPTER 54. Mr. MICAWBER’S TRANSACTIONS

This is not the time at which I am to enter on the state of my mind

beneath its load of sorrow. I came to think that the Future was walled

up before me, that the energy and action of my life were at an end, that

I never could find any refuge but in the grave. I came to think so, I

say, but not in the first shock of my grief. It slowly grew to that.

If the events I go on to relate, had not thickened around me, in the

beginning to confuse, and in the end to augment, my affliction, it is

possible (though I think not probable), that I might have fallen at once

into this condition. As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew

my own distress; an interval, in which I even supposed that its sharpest

pangs were past; and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on

all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that was

closed for ever.

When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came to be

agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my peace in change

and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. The spirit of Agnes so

pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that

I assume I may refer the project to her influence. But her influence was

so quiet that I know no more.

And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with

the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of

what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the

fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. In all that sorrow, from

the moment, never to be forgotten, when she stood before me with her

upraised hand, she was like a sacred presence in my lonely house. When

the Angel of Death alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep--they told

me so when I could bear to hear it--on her bosom, with a smile. From my

swoon, I first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her

words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a purer

region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and softening its

pain.

Let me go on.

I was to go abroad. That seemed to have been determined among us from

the first. The ground now covering all that could perish of my

departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the ‘final

pulverization of Heep’; and for the departure of the emigrants.

At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in

my trouble, we returned to Canterbury: I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We

proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber’s house; where, and at

Mr. Wickfield’s, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive

meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes,

she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs.

Micawber’s heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many

years.

‘Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber,’ was my aunt’s first salutation after we

were seated. ‘Pray, have you thought about that emigration proposal of

mine?’

‘My dear madam,’ returned Mr. Micawber, ‘perhaps I cannot better express

the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and I may

add our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing

the language of an illustrious poet, to reply that our Boat is on the

shore, and our Bark is on the sea.’

‘That’s right,’ said my aunt. ‘I augur all sort of good from your

sensible decision.’

‘Madam, you do us a great deal of honour,’ he rejoined. He then referred

to a memorandum. ‘With respect to the pecuniary assistance enabling

us to launch our frail canoe on the ocean of enterprise, I have

reconsidered that important business-point; and would beg to propose

my notes of hand--drawn, it is needless to stipulate, on stamps of the

amounts respectively required by the various Acts of Parliament applying

to such securities--at eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months.

The proposition I originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and

twenty-four; but I am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not

allow sufficient time for the requisite amount of--Something--to turn

up. We might not,’ said Mr. Micawber, looking round the room as if it

represented several hundred acres of highly cultivated land, ‘on the

first responsibility becoming due, have been successful in our harvest,

or we might not have got our harvest in. Labour, I believe, is sometimes

difficult to obtain in that portion of our colonial possessions where it

will be our lot to combat with the teeming soil.’

‘Arrange it in any way you please, sir,’ said my aunt.

‘Madam,’ he replied, ‘Mrs. Micawber and myself are deeply sensible of

the very considerate kindness of our friends and patrons. What I wish

is, to be perfectly business-like, and perfectly punctual. Turning over,

as we are about to turn over, an entirely new leaf; and falling back,

as we are now in the act of falling back, for a Spring of no common

magnitude; it is important to my sense of self-respect, besides being

an example to my son, that these arrangements should be concluded as

between man and man.’

I don’t know that Mr. Micawber attached any meaning to this last phrase;

I don’t know that anybody ever does, or did; but he appeared to relish

it uncommonly, and repeated, with an impressive cough, ‘as between man

and man’.

‘I propose,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘Bills--a convenience to the mercantile

world, for which, I believe, we are originally indebted to the Jews, who

appear to me to have had a devilish deal too much to do with them

ever since--because they are negotiable. But if a Bond, or any other

description of security, would be preferred, I should be happy to

execute any such instrument. As between man and man.’

My aunt observed, that in a case where both parties were willing to

agree to anything, she took it for granted there would be no difficulty

in settling this point. Mr. Micawber was of her opinion.

‘In reference to our domestic preparations, madam,’ said Mr. Micawber,

with some pride, ‘for meeting the destiny to which we are now understood

to be self-devoted, I beg to report them. My eldest daughter attends

at five every morning in a neighbouring establishment, to acquire

the process--if process it may be called--of milking cows. My younger

children are instructed to observe, as closely as circumstances will

permit, the habits of the pigs and poultry maintained in the poorer

parts of this city: a pursuit from which they have, on two occasions,

been brought home, within an inch of being run over. I have myself

directed some attention, during the past week, to the art of baking; and

my son Wilkins has issued forth with a walking-stick and driven cattle,

when permitted, by the rugged hirelings who had them in charge, to

render any voluntary service in that direction--which I regret to say,

for the credit of our nature, was not often; he being generally warned,

with imprecations, to desist.’

‘All very right indeed,’ said my aunt, encouragingly. ‘Mrs. Micawber has

been busy, too, I have no doubt.’

‘My dear madam,’ returned Mrs. Micawber, with her business-like air.

‘I am free to confess that I have not been actively engaged in pursuits

immediately connected with cultivation or with stock, though well aware

that both will claim my attention on a foreign shore. Such opportunities

as I have been enabled to alienate from my domestic duties, I have

devoted to corresponding at some length with my family. For I own it

seems to me, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, who always

fell back on me, I suppose from old habit, to whomsoever else she might

address her discourse at starting, ‘that the time is come when the past

should be buried in oblivion; when my family should take Mr. Micawber by

the hand, and Mr. Micawber should take my family by the hand; when the

lion should lie down with the lamb, and my family be on terms with Mr.

Micawber.’

I said I thought so too.

‘This, at least, is the light, my dear Mr. Copperfield,’ pursued Mrs.

Micawber, ‘in which I view the subject. When I lived at home with my

papa and mama, my papa was accustomed to ask, when any point was under

discussion in our limited circle, “In what light does my Emma view the

subject?” That my papa was too partial, I know; still, on such a point

as the frigid coldness which has ever subsisted between Mr. Micawber and

my family, I necessarily have formed an opinion, delusive though it may

be.’

‘No doubt. Of course you have, ma’am,’ said my aunt.

‘Precisely so,’ assented Mrs. Micawber. ‘Now, I may be wrong in my

conclusions; it is very likely that I am, but my individual impression

is, that the gulf between my family and Mr. Micawber may be traced to an