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defeated Red Whisker and all, went their several ways, and we went ours

through the still evening and the dying light, with sweet scents

rising up around us. Mr. Spenlow being a little drowsy after the

champagne--honour to the soil that grew the grape, to the grape that

made the wine, to the sun that ripened it, and to the merchant who

adulterated it!--and being fast asleep in a corner of the carriage, I

rode by the side and talked to Dora. She admired my horse and patted

him--oh, what a dear little hand it looked upon a horse!--and her shawl

would not keep right, and now and then I drew it round her with my arm;

and I even fancied that Jip began to see how it was, and to understand

that he must make up his mind to be friends with me.

That sagacious Miss Mills, too; that amiable, though quite used up,

recluse; that little patriarch of something less than twenty, who had

done with the world, and mustn’t on any account have the slumbering

echoes in the caverns of Memory awakened; what a kind thing she did!

‘Mr. Copperfield,’ said Miss Mills, ‘come to this side of the carriage a

moment--if you can spare a moment. I want to speak to you.’

Behold me, on my gallant grey, bending at the side of Miss Mills, with

my hand upon the carriage door!

‘Dora is coming to stay with me. She is coming home with me the day

after tomorrow. If you would like to call, I am sure papa would be

happy to see you.’ What could I do but invoke a silent blessing on Miss

Mills’s head, and store Miss Mills’s address in the securest corner of

my memory! What could I do but tell Miss Mills, with grateful looks

and fervent words, how much I appreciated her good offices, and what an

inestimable value I set upon her friendship!

Then Miss Mills benignantly dismissed me, saying, ‘Go back to Dora!’ and

I went; and Dora leaned out of the carriage to talk to me, and we talked

all the rest of the way; and I rode my gallant grey so close to the

wheel that I grazed his near fore leg against it, and ‘took the bark

off’, as his owner told me, ‘to the tune of three pun’ sivin’--which I

paid, and thought extremely cheap for so much joy. What time Miss Mills

sat looking at the moon, murmuring verses--and recalling, I suppose, the

ancient days when she and earth had anything in common.

Norwood was many miles too near, and we reached it many hours too soon;

but Mr. Spenlow came to himself a little short of it, and said,

‘You must come in, Copperfield, and rest!’ and I consenting, we had

sandwiches and wine-and-water. In the light room, Dora blushing looked

so lovely, that I could not tear myself away, but sat there staring, in

a dream, until the snoring of Mr. Spenlow inspired me with sufficient

consciousness to take my leave. So we parted; I riding all the way

to London with the farewell touch of Dora’s hand still light on mine,

recalling every incident and word ten thousand times; lying down in my

own bed at last, as enraptured a young noodle as ever was carried out of

his five wits by love.

When I awoke next morning, I was resolute to declare my passion to Dora,

and know my fate. Happiness or misery was now the question. There was no

other question that I knew of in the world, and only Dora could give the

answer to it. I passed three days in a luxury of wretchedness, torturing

myself by putting every conceivable variety of discouraging construction

on all that ever had taken place between Dora and me. At last, arrayed

for the purpose at a vast expense, I went to Miss Mills’s, fraught with

a declaration.

How many times I went up and down the street, and round the

square--painfully aware of being a much better answer to the old riddle

than the original one--before I could persuade myself to go up the steps

and knock, is no matter now. Even when, at last, I had knocked, and was

waiting at the door, I had some flurried thought of asking if that

were Mr. Blackboy’s (in imitation of poor Barkis), begging pardon, and

retreating. But I kept my ground.

Mr. Mills was not at home. I did not expect he would be. Nobody wanted

HIM. Miss Mills was at home. Miss Mills would do.

I was shown into a room upstairs, where Miss Mills and Dora were. Jip

was there. Miss Mills was copying music (I recollect, it was a new song,

called ‘Affection’s Dirge’), and Dora was painting flowers. What were my

feelings, when I recognized my own flowers; the identical Covent Garden

Market purchase! I cannot say that they were very like, or that

they particularly resembled any flowers that have ever come under my

observation; but I knew from the paper round them which was accurately

copied, what the composition was.

Miss Mills was very glad to see me, and very sorry her papa was not at

home: though I thought we all bore that with fortitude. Miss Mills was

conversational for a few minutes, and then, laying down her pen upon

‘Affection’s Dirge’, got up, and left the room.

I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.

‘I hope your poor horse was not tired, when he got home at night,’ said

Dora, lifting up her beautiful eyes. ‘It was a long way for him.’

I began to think I would do it today.

‘It was a long way for him,’ said I, ‘for he had nothing to uphold him

on the journey.’

‘Wasn’t he fed, poor thing?’ asked Dora.

I began to think I would put it off till tomorrow.

‘Ye-yes,’ I said, ‘he was well taken care of. I mean he had not the

unutterable happiness that I had in being so near you.’

Dora bent her head over her drawing and said, after a little while--I

had sat, in the interval, in a burning fever, and with my legs in a very

rigid state--

‘You didn’t seem to be sensible of that happiness yourself, at one time

of the day.’

I saw now that I was in for it, and it must be done on the spot.

‘You didn’t care for that happiness in the least,’ said Dora, slightly

raising her eyebrows, and shaking her head, ‘when you were sitting by

Miss Kitt.’

Kitt, I should observe, was the name of the creature in pink, with the

little eyes.

‘Though certainly I don’t know why you should,’ said Dora, ‘or why you

should call it a happiness at all. But of course you don’t mean what you

say. And I am sure no one doubts your being at liberty to do whatever

you like. Jip, you naughty boy, come here!’

I don’t know how I did it. I did it in a moment. I intercepted Jip.

I had Dora in my arms. I was full of eloquence. I never stopped for a

word. I told her how I loved her. I told her I should die without her.

I told her that I idolized and worshipped her. Jip barked madly all the

time.

When Dora hung her head and cried, and trembled, my eloquence increased

so much the more. If she would like me to die for her, she had but to

say the word, and I was ready. Life without Dora’s love was not a thing

to have on any terms. I couldn’t bear it, and I wouldn’t. I had loved

her every minute, day and night, since I first saw her. I loved her at

that minute to distraction. I should always love her, every minute, to

distraction. Lovers had loved before, and lovers would love again; but

no lover had loved, might, could, would, or should ever love, as I loved

Dora. The more I raved, the more Jip barked. Each of us, in his own way,

got more mad every moment.

Well, well! Dora and I were sitting on the sofa by and by, quiet enough,

and Jip was lying in her lap, winking peacefully at me. It was off my

mind. I was in a state of perfect rapture. Dora and I were engaged.

I suppose we had some notion that this was to end in marriage. We must

have had some, because Dora stipulated that we were never to be married

without her papa’s consent. But, in our youthful ecstasy, I don’t think

that we really looked before us or behind us; or had any aspiration

beyond the ignorant present. We were to keep our secret from Mr.

Spenlow; but I am sure the idea never entered my head, then, that there

was anything dishonourable in that.

Miss Mills was more than usually pensive when Dora, going to find her,

brought her back;--I apprehend, because there was a tendency in what had

passed to awaken the slumbering echoes in the caverns of Memory. But she

gave us her blessing, and the assurance of her lasting friendship, and

spoke to us, generally, as became a Voice from the Cloister.

What an idle time it was! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time it

was!

When I measured Dora’s finger for a ring that was to be made of

Forget-me-nots, and when the jeweller, to whom I took the measure, found

me out, and laughed over his order-book, and charged me anything he

liked for the pretty little toy, with its blue stones--so associated

in my remembrance with Dora’s hand, that yesterday, when I saw such

another, by chance, on the finger of my own daughter, there was a

momentary stirring in my heart, like pain!

When I walked about, exalted with my secret, and full of my own

interest, and felt the dignity of loving Dora, and of being beloved, so

much, that if I had walked the air, I could not have been more above the

people not so situated, who were creeping on the earth!

When we had those meetings in the garden of the square, and sat within

the dingy summer-house, so happy, that I love the London sparrows to

this hour, for nothing else, and see the plumage of the tropics in their

smoky feathers! When we had our first great quarrel (within a week

of our betrothal), and when Dora sent me back the ring, enclosed in a

despairing cocked-hat note, wherein she used the terrible expression

that ‘our love had begun in folly, and ended in madness!’ which dreadful

words occasioned me to tear my hair, and cry that all was over!

When, under cover of the night, I flew to Miss Mills, whom I saw by

stealth in a back kitchen where there was a mangle, and implored Miss

Mills to interpose between us and avert insanity. When Miss Mills

undertook the office and returned with Dora, exhorting us, from the

pulpit of her own bitter youth, to mutual concession, and the avoidance

of the Desert of Sahara!

When we cried, and made it up, and were so blest again, that the back

kitchen, mangle and all, changed to Love’s own temple, where we arranged

a plan of correspondence through Miss Mills, always to comprehend at

least one letter on each side every day!

What an idle time! What an insubstantial, happy, foolish time! Of all

the times of mine that Time has in his grip, there is none that in one

retrospect I can smile at half so much, and think of half so tenderly.

CHAPTER 34. MY AUNT ASTONISHES ME

I wrote to Agnes as soon as Dora and I were engaged. I wrote her a long

letter, in which I tried to make her comprehend how blest I was, and

what a darling Dora was. I entreated Agnes not to regard this as a

thoughtless passion which could ever yield to any other, or had the

least resemblance to the boyish fancies that we used to joke about. I

assured her that its profundity was quite unfathomable, and expressed my

belief that nothing like it had ever been known.

Somehow, as I wrote to Agnes on a fine evening by my open window, and

the remembrance of her clear calm eyes and gentle face came stealing

over me, it shed such a peaceful influence upon the hurry and agitation

in which I had been living lately, and of which my very happiness

partook in some degree, that it soothed me into tears. I remember that

I sat resting my head upon my hand, when the letter was half done,

cherishing a general fancy as if Agnes were one of the elements of my

natural home. As if, in the retirement of the house made almost sacred

to me by her presence, Dora and I must be happier than anywhere. As if,

in love, joy, sorrow, hope, or disappointment; in all emotions; my heart

turned naturally there, and found its refuge and best friend.

Of Steerforth I said nothing. I only told her there had been sad grief

at Yarmouth, on account of Emily’s flight; and that on me it made a

double wound, by reason of the circumstances attending it. I knew how

quick she always was to divine the truth, and that she would never be

the first to breathe his name.

To this letter, I received an answer by return of post. As I read it, I

seemed to hear Agnes speaking to me. It was like her cordial voice in my

ears. What can I say more!

While I had been away from home lately, Traddles had called twice or

thrice. Finding Peggotty within, and being informed by Peggotty (who

always volunteered that information to whomsoever would receive

it), that she was my old nurse, he had established a good-humoured

acquaintance with her, and had stayed to have a little chat with her

about me. So Peggotty said; but I am afraid the chat was all on her

own side, and of immoderate length, as she was very difficult indeed to

stop, God bless her! when she had me for her theme.

This reminds me, not only that I expected Traddles on a certain

afternoon of his own appointing, which was now come, but that Mrs. Crupp

had resigned everything appertaining to her office (the salary excepted)

until Peggotty should cease to present herself. Mrs. Crupp, after

holding divers conversations respecting Peggotty, in a very high-pitched

voice, on the staircase--with some invisible Familiar it would appear,

for corporeally speaking she was quite alone at those times--addressed a

letter to me, developing her views. Beginning it with that statement

of universal application, which fitted every occurrence of her life,

namely, that she was a mother herself, she went on to inform me that

she had once seen very different days, but that at all periods of her

existence she had had a constitutional objection to spies, intruders,

and informers. She named no names, she said; let them the cap fitted,

wear it; but spies, intruders, and informers, especially in widders’

weeds (this clause was underlined), she had ever accustomed herself to

look down upon. If a gentleman was the victim of spies, intruders, and

informers (but still naming no names), that was his own pleasure. He

had a right to please himself; so let him do. All that she, Mrs. Crupp,

stipulated for, was, that she should not be ‘brought in contract’

with such persons. Therefore she begged to be excused from any further

attendance on the top set, until things were as they formerly was, and