第 133 页

‘As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever

been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something

better; ever directing me to higher things!’

She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet

smile.

‘And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that there

is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don’t

know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall look up to you,

and be guided by you, as I have been through the darkness that is past.

Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may

come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now,

and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource, as you

have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always

before me, pointing upward!’

She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I

said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went

on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me. ‘Do you know,

what I have heard tonight, Agnes,’ said I, strangely seems to be a part

of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first--with

which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?’

‘You knew I had no mother,’ she replied with a smile, ‘and felt kindly

towards me.’

‘More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story,

that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding

you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can

now understand it was), but was not so in you.’

She softly played on, looking at me still.

‘Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?’

‘No!’

‘Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could

be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease

to be so, until you ceased to live?---Will you laugh at such a dream?’

‘Oh, no! Oh, no!’

For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the

start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me

with her own calm smile.

As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless

memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not

happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and,

thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that

sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with

a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me

when I loved her here.

CHAPTER 61. I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS

For a time--at all events until my book should be completed, which would

be the work of several months--I took up my abode in my aunt’s house at

Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at

the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly

pursued my task.

In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when

their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my

story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and

triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest

earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have

already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will

supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the

rest will be of interest to no one.

Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life

there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had

managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my

worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon

me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no

knowledge--chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer--I

agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the

devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and

there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of

State without the salary.

Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an

obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking

about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take

the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me

a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already

aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence,

and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything

to make it worse.

The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles’s

door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of

Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty

little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her,

the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no

strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his

official closet with melody.

I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book;

and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the

table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had

just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out

of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?

‘Oh, DON’T, Tom!’ cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the

fire.

‘My dear,’ returned Tom, in a delighted state, ‘why not? What do you say

to that writing, Copperfield?’

‘It’s extraordinarily legal and formal,’ said I. ‘I don’t think I ever

saw such a stiff hand.’

‘Not like a lady’s hand, is it?’ said Traddles.

‘A lady’s!’ I repeated. ‘Bricks and mortar are more like a lady’s hand!’

Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was

Sophy’s writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a

copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired

this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off--I forget how

many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all

this, and said that when ‘Tom’ was made a judge he wouldn’t be so ready

to proclaim it. Which ‘Tom’ denied; averring that he should always be

equally proud of it, under all circumstances.

‘What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!’

said I, when she had gone away, laughing.

‘My dear Copperfield,’ returned Traddles, ‘she is, without any

exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her

punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness,

Copperfield!’

‘Indeed, you have reason to commend her!’ I returned. ‘You are a happy

fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the

happiest people in the world.’

‘I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,’ returned Traddles. ‘I

admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up

by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day’s

arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn,

caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of

the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in

its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up

at night with me if it’s ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging

always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can’t believe it,

Copperfield!’

He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them

on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.

‘I positively sometimes can’t believe it,’ said Traddles. ‘Then our

pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful!

When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and

draw those curtains--which she made--where could we be more snug? When

it’s fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets

abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the

jewellers’ shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents,

coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could

afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are

capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal

lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if

she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices,

butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both

afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we

stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let,

sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT do, if I was made

a judge? And we parcel it out--such a room for us, such rooms for the

girls, and so forth; until we settle to our satisfaction that it

would do, or it wouldn’t do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at

half-price to the pit of the theatre--the very smell of which is cheap,

in my opinion, at the money--and there we thoroughly enjoy the play:

which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home,

perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook’s-shop, or a little

lobster at the fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid

supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if

I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn’t do this!’

‘You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,’ thought

I, ‘that would be pleasant and amiable. And by the way,’ I said aloud,

‘I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?’

‘Really,’ replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, ‘I can’t wholly

deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For being in one of the back rows

of the King’s Bench the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came

into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am

afraid there’s a skeleton--in a wig--on the ledge of the desk.’

After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a

smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, ‘Old Creakle!’

‘I have a letter from that old--Rascal here,’ said I. For I never was

less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, than

when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.

‘From Creakle the schoolmaster?’ exclaimed Traddles. ‘No!’

‘Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and

fortune,’ said I, looking over my letters, ‘and who discover that they

were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not

a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex

Magistrate.’

I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at

all.

‘How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?’ said I.

‘Oh dear me!’ replied Traddles, ‘it would be very difficult to answer

that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody,

or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or

jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the

county to nominate him for the commission.’

‘On the commission he is, at any rate,’ said I. ‘And he writes to me

here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true

system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making

sincere and lasting converts and penitents--which, you know, is by

solitary confinement. What do you say?’

‘To the system?’ inquired Traddles, looking grave.

‘No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?’

‘I don’t object,’ said Traddles.

‘Then I’ll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our

treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose,

and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?’

‘Perfectly,’ said Traddles.

‘Yet, if you’ll read his letter, you’ll find he is the tenderest of

men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,’ said I;

‘though I can’t find that his tenderness extends to any other class of

created beings.’

Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not

expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my observation of

similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the

time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.

On the appointed day--I think it was the next day, but no

matter--Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was

powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast

expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what

an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had

proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an

industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving

old.

In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of

Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old

schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the

busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought. He

received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and

had always loved me tenderly. On my introducing Traddles, Mr. Creakle

expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior degree, that he had always

been Traddles’s guide, philosopher, and friend. Our venerable instructor

was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance. His face was

as fiery as ever; his eyes were as small, and rather deeper set. The

scanty, wet-looking grey hair, by which I remembered him, was almost

gone; and the thick veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable

to look at.

After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might have

supposed that there was nothing in the world to be legitimately taken

into account but the supreme comfort of prisoners, at any expense, and

nothing on the wide earth to be done outside prison-doors, we began

our inspection. It being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the

great kitchen, where every prisoner’s dinner was in course of being set

out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity