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long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands,

hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!

But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt when I became

conscious next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I

had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate--my recollection

of that indelible look which Agnes had given me--the torturing

impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, Beast that I was,

how she came to be in London, or where she stayed--my disgust of

the very sight of the room where the revel had been held--my racking

head--the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of

going out, or even getting up! Oh, what a day it was!

Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton

broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my

predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story as well as to his

chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal

all! What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the

broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire remains

of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen

breast and say, in heartfelt penitence, ‘Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp,

never mind the broken meats! I am very miserable!’--only that I doubted,

even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide

in!

CHAPTER 25. GOOD AND BAD ANGELS

I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of

headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind

relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had

taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months

back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in his

hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; but when he saw me

on the top of the staircase, looking at him over the banisters, he swung

into a trot, and came up panting as if he had run himself into a state

of exhaustion.

‘T. Copperfield, Esquire,’ said the ticket-porter, touching his hat with

his little cane.

I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the

conviction that the letter came from Agnes. However, I told him I was T.

Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the letter, which

he said required an answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for

the answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous state

that I was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast table, and

familiarize myself with the outside of it a little, before I could

resolve to break the seal.

I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note, containing

no reference to my condition at the theatre. All it said was, ‘My dear

Trotwood. I am staying at the house of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in

Ely Place, Holborn. Will you come and see me today, at any time you like

to appoint? Ever yours affectionately, AGNES.’

It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my

satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have

thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written

half-a-dozen answers at least. I began one, ‘How can I ever hope,

my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting

impression’--there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up. I began

another, ‘Shakespeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is

that a man should put an enemy into his mouth’--that reminded me of

Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note,

in a six-syllable line, ‘Oh, do not remember’--but that associated

itself with the fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many

attempts, I wrote, ‘My dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what

could I say of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come at

four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T.C.’ With this missive

(which I was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon as it was

out of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.

If the day were half as tremendous to any other professional gentleman

in Doctors’ Commons as it was to me, I sincerely believe he made some

expiation for his share in that rotten old ecclesiastical cheese.

Although I left the office at half past three, and was prowling about

the place of appointment within a few minutes afterwards, the appointed

time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, according to the

clock of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient

desperation to pull the private bell-handle let into the left-hand

door-post of Mr. Waterbrook’s house.

The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook’s establishment was done on

the ground-floor, and the genteel business (of which there was a good

deal) in the upper part of the building. I was shown into a pretty but

rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse.

She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my airy

fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid wretch

I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my

self-reproach and shame, and--in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot

deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon

the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous.

‘If it had been anyone but you, Agnes,’ said I, turning away my head, ‘I

should not have minded it half so much. But that it should have been you

who saw me! I almost wish I had been dead, first.’

She put her hand--its touch was like no other hand--upon my arm for a

moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help

moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.

‘Sit down,’ said Agnes, cheerfully. ‘Don’t be unhappy, Trotwood. If you

cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?’

‘Ah, Agnes!’ I returned. ‘You are my good Angel!’

She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.

‘Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!’

‘If I were, indeed, Trotwood,’ she returned, ‘there is one thing that I

should set my heart on very much.’

I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of her

meaning.

‘On warning you,’ said Agnes, with a steady glance, ‘against your bad

Angel.’

‘My dear Agnes,’ I began, ‘if you mean Steerforth--’

‘I do, Trotwood,’ she returned. ‘Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much.

He my bad Angel, or anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, and

a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to

judge him from what you saw of me the other night?’

‘I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,’ she quietly

replied.

‘From what, then?’

‘From many things--trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to

be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account

of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over

you.’

There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a

chord within me, answering to that sound alone. It was always earnest;

but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a thrill in it

that quite subdued me. I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on

her work; I sat seeming still to listen to her; and Steerforth, in spite

of all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone.

‘It is very bold in me,’ said Agnes, looking up again, ‘who have lived

in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to give you my

advice so confidently, or even to have this strong opinion. But I know

in what it is engendered, Trotwood,--in how true a remembrance of our

having grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relating

to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am certain that what I say is

right. I am quite sure it is. I feel as if it were someone else speaking

to you, and not I, when I caution you that you have made a dangerous

friend.’

Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was silent, and

again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened.

‘I am not so unreasonable as to expect,’ said Agnes, resuming her usual

tone, after a little while, ‘that you will, or that you can, at once,

change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all

a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting disposition. You ought not

hastily to do that. I only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me--I

mean,’ with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her, and she

knew why, ‘as often as you think of me--to think of what I have said. Do

you forgive me for all this?’

‘I will forgive you, Agnes,’ I replied, ‘when you come to do Steerforth

justice, and to like him as well as I do.’

‘Not until then?’ said Agnes.

I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this mention of him, but

she returned my smile, and we were again as unreserved in our mutual

confidence as of old.

‘And when, Agnes,’ said I, ‘will you forgive me the other night?’

‘When I recall it,’ said Agnes.

She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it to

allow that, and insisted on telling her how it happened that I had

disgraced myself, and what chain of accidental circumstances had had the

theatre for its final link. It was a great relief to me to do this, and

to enlarge on the obligation that I owed to Steerforth for his care of

me when I was unable to take care of myself.

‘You must not forget,’ said Agnes, calmly changing the conversation as

soon as I had concluded, ‘that you are always to tell me, not only when

you fall into trouble, but when you fall in love. Who has succeeded to

Miss Larkins, Trotwood?’

‘No one, Agnes.’

‘Someone, Trotwood,’ said Agnes, laughing, and holding up her finger.

‘No, Agnes, upon my word! There is a lady, certainly, at Mrs.

Steerforth’s house, who is very clever, and whom I like to talk to--Miss

Dartle--but I don’t adore her.’

Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me that if I were

faithful to her in my confidence she thought she should keep a little

register of my violent attachments, with the date, duration, and

termination of each, like the table of the reigns of the kings and

queens, in the History of England. Then she asked me if I had seen

Uriah.

‘Uriah Heep?’ said I. ‘No. Is he in London?’

‘He comes to the office downstairs, every day,’ returned Agnes. ‘He

was in London a week before me. I am afraid on disagreeable business,

Trotwood.’

‘On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,’ said I. ‘What

can that be?’

Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one

another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of

hers:

‘I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.’

‘What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such

promotion!’ I cried, indignantly. ‘Have you made no remonstrance about

it, Agnes? Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak

out. You must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You must

prevent it, Agnes, while there’s time.’

Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking, with a

faint smile at my warmth: and then replied:

‘You remember our last conversation about papa? It was not long after

that--not more than two or three days--when he gave me the first

intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him struggling between

his desire to represent it to me as a matter of choice on his part,

and his inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt very

sorry.’

‘Forced upon him, Agnes! Who forces it upon him?’

‘Uriah,’ she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, ‘has made himself

indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has mastered papa’s

weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until--to say

all that I mean in a word, Trotwood,--until papa is afraid of him.’

There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or that she

suspected; I clearly saw. I could not give her pain by asking what it

was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father. It

had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but

feel, on the least reflection, that it had been going on to this for a

long time. I remained silent.

‘His ascendancy over papa,’ said Agnes, ‘is very great. He professes

humility and gratitude--with truth, perhaps: I hope so--but his position

is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.’

I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to

me.

‘At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,’ pursued

Agnes, ‘he had told papa that he was going away; that he was very sorry,

and unwilling to leave, but that he had better prospects. Papa was very

much depressed then, and more bowed down by care than ever you or I have

seen him; but he seemed relieved by this expedient of the partnership,

though at the same time he seemed hurt by it and ashamed of it.’

‘And how did you receive it, Agnes?’

‘I did, Trotwood,’ she replied, ‘what I hope was right. Feeling sure

that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be

made, I entreated him to make it. I said it would lighten the load

of his life--I hope it will!--and that it would give me increased

opportunities of being his companion. Oh, Trotwood!’ cried Agnes,

putting her hands before her face, as her tears started on it, ‘I almost

feel as if I had been papa’s enemy, instead of his loving child. For

I know how he has altered, in his devotion to me. I know how he has

narrowed the circle of his sympathies and duties, in the concentration

of his whole mind upon me. I know what a multitude of things he has shut

out for my sake, and how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his

life, and weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always upon

one idea. If I could ever set this right! If I could ever work out his

restoration, as I have so innocently been the cause of his decline!’

I had never before seen Agnes cry. I had seen tears in her eyes when I

had brought new honours home from school, and I had seen them there when