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release her from constraint, I shall close my eyes upon her honoured

face, with unbounded confidence and love; and leave her, with no sorrow

then, to happier and brighter days.’

I could not see him for the tears which his earnestness and goodness,

so adorned by, and so adorning, the perfect simplicity of his manner,

brought into my eyes. He had moved to the door, when he added:

‘Gentlemen, I have shown you my heart. I am sure you will respect it.

What we have said tonight is never to be said more. Wickfield, give me

an old friend’s arm upstairs!’

Mr. Wickfield hastened to him. Without interchanging a word they went

slowly out of the room together, Uriah looking after them.

‘Well, Master Copperfield!’ said Uriah, meekly turning to me. ‘The thing

hasn’t took quite the turn that might have been expected, for the old

Scholar--what an excellent man!--is as blind as a brickbat; but this

family’s out of the cart, I think!’

I needed but the sound of his voice to be so madly enraged as I never

was before, and never have been since.

‘You villain,’ said I, ‘what do you mean by entrapping me into your

schemes? How dare you appeal to me just now, you false rascal, as if we

had been in discussion together?’

As we stood, front to front, I saw so plainly, in the stealthy

exultation of his face, what I already so plainly knew; I mean that he

forced his confidence upon me, expressly to make me miserable, and had

set a deliberate trap for me in this very matter; that I couldn’t bear

it. The whole of his lank cheek was invitingly before me, and I struck

it with my open hand with that force that my fingers tingled as if I had

burnt them.

He caught the hand in his, and we stood in that connexion, looking at

each other. We stood so, a long time; long enough for me to see the

white marks of my fingers die out of the deep red of his cheek, and

leave it a deeper red.

‘Copperfield,’ he said at length, in a breathless voice, ‘have you taken

leave of your senses?’

‘I have taken leave of you,’ said I, wresting my hand away. ‘You dog,

I’ll know no more of you.’

‘Won’t you?’ said he, constrained by the pain of his cheek to put his

hand there. ‘Perhaps you won’t be able to help it. Isn’t this ungrateful

of you, now?’

‘I have shown you often enough,’ said I, ‘that I despise you. I have

shown you now, more plainly, that I do. Why should I dread your doing

your worst to all about you? What else do you ever do?’

He perfectly understood this allusion to the considerations that had

hitherto restrained me in my communications with him. I rather think

that neither the blow, nor the allusion, would have escaped me, but for

the assurance I had had from Agnes that night. It is no matter.

There was another long pause. His eyes, as he looked at me, seemed to

take every shade of colour that could make eyes ugly.

‘Copperfield,’ he said, removing his hand from his cheek, ‘you have

always gone against me. I know you always used to be against me at Mr.

Wickfield’s.’

‘You may think what you like,’ said I, still in a towering rage. ‘If it

is not true, so much the worthier you.’

‘And yet I always liked you, Copperfield!’ he rejoined.

I deigned to make him no reply; and, taking up my hat, was going out to

bed, when he came between me and the door.

‘Copperfield,’ he said, ‘there must be two parties to a quarrel. I won’t

be one.’

‘You may go to the devil!’ said I.

‘Don’t say that!’ he replied. ‘I know you’ll be sorry afterwards. How

can you make yourself so inferior to me, as to show such a bad spirit?

But I forgive you.’

‘You forgive me!’ I repeated disdainfully.

‘I do, and you can’t help yourself,’ replied Uriah. ‘To think of your

going and attacking me, that have always been a friend to you! But there

can’t be a quarrel without two parties, and I won’t be one. I will be

a friend to you, in spite of you. So now you know what you’ve got to

expect.’

The necessity of carrying on this dialogue (his part in which was

very slow; mine very quick) in a low tone, that the house might not be

disturbed at an unseasonable hour, did not improve my temper; though my

passion was cooling down. Merely telling him that I should expect from

him what I always had expected, and had never yet been disappointed in,

I opened the door upon him, as if he had been a great walnut put there

to be cracked, and went out of the house. But he slept out of the house

too, at his mother’s lodging; and before I had gone many hundred yards,

came up with me.

‘You know, Copperfield,’ he said, in my ear (I did not turn my head),

‘you’re in quite a wrong position’; which I felt to be true, and that

made me chafe the more; ‘you can’t make this a brave thing, and you

can’t help being forgiven. I don’t intend to mention it to mother, nor

to any living soul. I’m determined to forgive you. But I do wonder

that you should lift your hand against a person that you knew to be so

umble!’

I felt only less mean than he. He knew me better than I knew myself. If

he had retorted or openly exasperated me, it would have been a relief

and a justification; but he had put me on a slow fire, on which I lay

tormented half the night.

In the morning, when I came out, the early church-bell was ringing,

and he was walking up and down with his mother. He addressed me as if

nothing had happened, and I could do no less than reply. I had struck

him hard enough to give him the toothache, I suppose. At all events

his face was tied up in a black silk handkerchief, which, with his hat

perched on the top of it, was far from improving his appearance. I heard

that he went to a dentist’s in London on the Monday morning, and had a

tooth out. I hope it was a double one.

The Doctor gave out that he was not quite well; and remained alone, for

a considerable part of every day, during the remainder of the visit.

Agnes and her father had been gone a week, before we resumed our usual

work. On the day preceding its resumption, the Doctor gave me with his

own hands a folded note not sealed. It was addressed to myself; and laid

an injunction on me, in a few affectionate words, never to refer to the

subject of that evening. I had confided it to my aunt, but to no

one else. It was not a subject I could discuss with Agnes, and Agnes

certainly had not the least suspicion of what had passed.

Neither, I felt convinced, had Mrs. Strong then. Several weeks elapsed

before I saw the least change in her. It came on slowly, like a cloud

when there is no wind. At first, she seemed to wonder at the gentle

compassion with which the Doctor spoke to her, and at his wish that she

should have her mother with her, to relieve the dull monotony of her

life. Often, when we were at work, and she was sitting by, I would see

her pausing and looking at him with that memorable face. Afterwards, I

sometimes observed her rise, with her eyes full of tears, and go out

of the room. Gradually, an unhappy shadow fell upon her beauty, and

deepened every day. Mrs. Markleham was a regular inmate of the cottage

then; but she talked and talked, and saw nothing.

As this change stole on Annie, once like sunshine in the Doctor’s house,

the Doctor became older in appearance, and more grave; but the sweetness

of his temper, the placid kindness of his manner, and his benevolent

solicitude for her, if they were capable of any increase, were

increased. I saw him once, early on the morning of her birthday, when

she came to sit in the window while we were at work (which she had

always done, but now began to do with a timid and uncertain air that I

thought very touching), take her forehead between his hands, kiss it,

and go hurriedly away, too much moved to remain. I saw her stand where

he had left her, like a statue; and then bend down her head, and clasp

her hands, and weep, I cannot say how sorrowfully.

Sometimes, after that, I fancied that she tried to speak even to me,

in intervals when we were left alone. But she never uttered a word. The

Doctor always had some new project for her participating in amusements

away from home, with her mother; and Mrs. Markleham, who was very fond

of amusements, and very easily dissatisfied with anything else, entered

into them with great good-will, and was loud in her commendations. But

Annie, in a spiritless unhappy way, only went whither she was led, and

seemed to have no care for anything.

I did not know what to think. Neither did my aunt; who must have walked,

at various times, a hundred miles in her uncertainty. What was strangest

of all was, that the only real relief which seemed to make its way into

the secret region of this domestic unhappiness, made its way there in

the person of Mr. Dick.

What his thoughts were on the subject, or what his observation was, I am

as unable to explain, as I dare say he would have been to assist me in

the task. But, as I have recorded in the narrative of my school days,

his veneration for the Doctor was unbounded; and there is a subtlety of

perception in real attachment, even when it is borne towards man by one

of the lower animals, which leaves the highest intellect behind. To this

mind of the heart, if I may call it so, in Mr. Dick, some bright ray of

the truth shot straight.

He had proudly resumed his privilege, in many of his spare hours,

of walking up and down the garden with the Doctor; as he had been

accustomed to pace up and down The Doctor’s Walk at Canterbury. But

matters were no sooner in this state, than he devoted all his spare time

(and got up earlier to make it more) to these perambulations. If he had

never been so happy as when the Doctor read that marvellous performance,

the Dictionary, to him; he was now quite miserable unless the Doctor

pulled it out of his pocket, and began. When the Doctor and I were

engaged, he now fell into the custom of walking up and down with Mrs.

Strong, and helping her to trim her favourite flowers, or weed the

beds. I dare say he rarely spoke a dozen words in an hour: but his quiet

interest, and his wistful face, found immediate response in both their

breasts; each knew that the other liked him, and that he loved both; and

he became what no one else could be--a link between them.

When I think of him, with his impenetrably wise face, walking up and

down with the Doctor, delighted to be battered by the hard words in the

Dictionary; when I think of him carrying huge watering-pots after Annie;

kneeling down, in very paws of gloves, at patient microscopic work among

the little leaves; expressing as no philosopher could have expressed,

in everything he did, a delicate desire to be her friend; showering

sympathy, trustfulness, and affection, out of every hole in the

watering-pot; when I think of him never wandering in that better mind

of his to which unhappiness addressed itself, never bringing the

unfortunate King Charles into the garden, never wavering in his grateful

service, never diverted from his knowledge that there was something

wrong, or from his wish to set it right--I really feel almost ashamed

of having known that he was not quite in his wits, taking account of the

utmost I have done with mine.

‘Nobody but myself, Trot, knows what that man is!’ my aunt would proudly

remark, when we conversed about it. ‘Dick will distinguish himself yet!’

I must refer to one other topic before I close this chapter. While the

visit at the Doctor’s was still in progress, I observed that the postman

brought two or three letters every morning for Uriah Heep, who remained

at Highgate until the rest went back, it being a leisure time; and that

these were always directed in a business-like manner by Mr. Micawber,

who now assumed a round legal hand. I was glad to infer, from these

slight premises, that Mr. Micawber was doing well; and consequently was

much surprised to receive, about this time, the following letter from

his amiable wife.

‘CANTERBURY, Monday Evening.

‘You will doubtless be surprised, my dear Mr. Copperfield, to receive

this communication. Still more so, by its contents. Still more so, by

the stipulation of implicit confidence which I beg to impose. But my

feelings as a wife and mother require relief; and as I do not wish to

consult my family (already obnoxious to the feelings of Mr. Micawber),

I know no one of whom I can better ask advice than my friend and former

lodger.

‘You may be aware, my dear Mr. Copperfield, that between myself and Mr.

Micawber (whom I will never desert), there has always been preserved a

spirit of mutual confidence. Mr. Micawber may have occasionally given

a bill without consulting me, or he may have misled me as to the period

when that obligation would become due. This has actually happened.

But, in general, Mr. Micawber has had no secrets from the bosom of

affection--I allude to his wife--and has invariably, on our retirement

to rest, recalled the events of the day.

‘You will picture to yourself, my dear Mr. Copperfield, what the

poignancy of my feelings must be, when I inform you that Mr. Micawber is

entirely changed. He is reserved. He is secret. His life is a mystery to

the partner of his joys and sorrows--I again allude to his wife--and if

I should assure you that beyond knowing that it is passed from morning

to night at the office, I now know less of it than I do of the man in

the south, connected with whose mouth the thoughtless children repeat

an idle tale respecting cold plum porridge, I should adopt a popular

fallacy to express an actual fact.

‘But this is not all. Mr. Micawber is morose. He is severe. He is

estranged from our eldest son and daughter, he has no pride in his

twins, he looks with an eye of coldness even on the unoffending stranger

who last became a member of our circle. The pecuniary means of meeting

our expenses, kept down to the utmost farthing, are obtained from him

with great difficulty, and even under fearful threats that he will

Settle himself (the exact expression); and he inexorably refuses to give

any explanation whatever of this distracting policy.

‘This is hard to bear. This is heart-breaking. If you will advise me,

knowing my feeble powers such as they are, how you think it will be best