David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

  She dropped her face on my old nurse's breast, and, ceasing this supplication, which in its agony and grief was half a woman's, half a child's, as all her manner was (being, in that, more natural, and better suited to her beauty, as I thought, than any other manner could have been), wept silently, while my old nurse hushed her like an infant.

  She got calmer by degrees, and then we soothed her, now talking encouragingly, and now jesting a little with her, until she began to raise her head and speak to us. So we got on, until she was able to smile, and then to laugh, and then to sit up, half-ashamed, while Peggotty recalled her stray ringlets, dried her eyes, and made her neat again, lest her uncle should wonder, when she got home, why his darling had been crying.

  I saw her do, that night, what I had never seen her do before. I saw her innocently kiss her chosen husband on the cheek, and creep close to his bluff form as if it were her best support. When they went away together, in the waning moonlight, and I looked after them, comparing their departure in my mind with Martha's, I saw that she held his arm with both her hands, and still kept close to him.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  I Corroborate Mr. Dick, and Choose a profession

  WTHEN I AWOKE IN THE MORNING I THOUGHT VERY MUCH of little Em'ly, and her emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears--even to Steerforth's--of what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of the light of our pure childhood, which I always saw encircling her head. I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast, and there it gave her image a new grace.

  [But I told Steerforth of what had passed with Martha. He listened to that recital in perfect silence, and was evidently moved by it. I thought it moved him to a kind of dread, like that I had observed in him last night, more than to pity; but it did move him, and strongly too.]

  While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt. As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me as well as anyone, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home. For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends. Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at our departure, and I believe would even have opened the box again, and sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty and all her family were full of grief at our going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good-bye, and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth, when our portmanteaus went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it. In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned, and left a great many people very sorry behind us.

  "Do you stay long here, Littimer?" said I, as he stood waiting to see the coach start.

  "No, sir," he replied, "probably not very long, sir."

  "He can hardly say, just now," observed Steerforth, carelessly. "He knows what he has to do, and he'll do it."

  "That I am sure he will," said I.

  Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgment of my good opinion, and I felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good journey, and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.

  For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself, when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at any moment, pulled me by the arm:

  "Find a voice, David. What about the letter you were speaking of at breakfast?"

  "Oh!" said I, taking it out of my pocket. "It's from my aunt."

  "And what does she say, requiring consideration?"

  "Why, she reminds me, Steerforth," said I, "that I came out on this expedition to look about me, and to think a little."

  "Which, of course, you have done?"

  "Indeed I can't say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am afraid I had forgotten it."

  "Well! look about you now, and make up for your negligence," said Steerforth. "Look to the right, and you'll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you'll see the same. Look to the front, and you'll find no difference; look to the rear, and there it is still."

  I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the whole prospect, which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.

  "What says our aunt on the subject?" inquired Steerforth, glancing at the letter in my hand. "Does she suggest anything?"

  "Why, yes," said I. "She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a proctor? What do you think of it?"

  "Well, I don't know," replied Steerforth, coolly. "You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose?"

  I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and professions so equally, and I told him so.

  ["I confess I think it's in the main a question of gammon and spinach, as my friend Miss Mowcher would say," he returned. "A proctor is a gentlemanly sort of fellow. I don't see any objection to your being a proctor. You shall take out my marriage-license, in case I ever want one, if that is any inducement, and you shall separate my wife and me afterwards, and you shall prove my will, if you live long enough."]

  "What is a proctor, Steerforth?" said I.

  "Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney," replied Steerforth. "He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors' Commons--a lazy old nook near St. Paul's Churchyard--what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity. He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best what he is by telling you what Doctors' Commons is. It's a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It's a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people's wills and people's marriages, and disputes among ships and boats."

  "Nonsense, Steerforth!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean to say that there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?"

  "I don't, indeed, my dear boy," he returned, "but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors' Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young's Dictionary, apropos of the "Nancy" having run down the "Sarah Jane," or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatman having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the "Nelson" Indiaman in distress, and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has misbehaved himself, and you shall find the judge in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman's case, or contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man's a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he's one thing, now he's another; now he's something else, change and change about, but it's always a very pleasant profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audience."

  "But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?" said I, a little puzzled. "Are they?"

  "No," returned Steerforth, "the advocates are civilians--men who have taken a doctor's degree at college--which is the first reason of my knowing anything about i
t. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors' Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that's any satisfaction."

  I made allowance for Steerforth's light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that "lazy old nook near St. Paul's Churchyard," did not feel indisposed towards my aunt's suggestion, which she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors' Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.

  "That's a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events," said Steerforth, when I mentioned it, "and one deserving of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors' Commons."

  I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel in Lincoln's Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof, my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.

  We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors' Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey's end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one, and I drove to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.

  If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me, and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.

  "So you have left Mr. Dick behind, Aunt?" said I. "I am sorry for that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?"

  As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt's visage lengthen very much.

  "I am sorry for it, too," said my aunt, rubbing her nose. "I have had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here."

  Before I could ask why, she told me.

  "I am convinced," said my aunt, laying her hand with melancholy firmness on the table, "that Dick's character is not a character to keep the donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have been at ease. If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green," said my aunt, with emphasis, "there was one this afternoon at four o'clock. A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a donkey!"

  I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.

  "It was a donkey," said my aunt, "and it was the one with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my house." This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. "If there is any donkey in Dover whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another's, that," said my aunt, striking the table, "is the animal!"

  Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn't hear of it.

  ["Don't you contradict, Janet, if you please," said she, "or we'll very soon have you off by the coach to prevent a repetition of such occurrences. Now, Trot, my dear child, here's the supper, and I hope you'll enjoy it."]

  Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt's rooms were very high up--whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don't know--and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but little.

  "I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar," said my aunt, "and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don't believe it. Nothing's genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt."

  "Don't you think the fowl may have come out of the country, Aunt?" I hinted.

  "Certainly not," returned my aunt. "It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was."

  I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which was of a smarter construction than usual ("in case of fire," my aunt said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her, according to certain established regulations from which no deviation, however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot white wine and water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting opposite to me drinking her wine and water, soaking her strips of toast in it, one by one, before eating them, and looking benignantly on me, from among the borders of her nightcap.

  "Well, Trot," she began, "what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have you not begun to think about it yet?"

  "I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like it exceedingly."

  "Come," said my aunt. "That's cheering."

  "I have only one difficulty, Aunt."

  "Say what it is Trot," she returned. ["Out with it! If the boy feels it to be insuperable," said my aunt, shaking her nightcap at the chimney-piece, "one difficulty shall be as powerful with me as a thousand."]

  "Why, I want to ask, Aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very expensive?"

  "It will cost," returned my aunt, "to article you, just a thousand pounds."

  "Now, my dear aunt," said I, drawing my chair nearer, "I am uneasy in my mind about that. It's a large sum of money. You have expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all things as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course? Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second mother, to consider. Are you certain?"

  My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while, and then, setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded skirts, replied as follows:

  "Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it--so is Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick's conversation on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the resources of that man's intellect except myself!"

  She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:

  "It's in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister. Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and way-worn, perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a pride and a pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means, at least"--here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused--"no, I have no other claim upon my means--and you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my w
hims and fancies, and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you."

  It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if anything could.

  "All is agreed and understood between us now, Trot," said my aunt, "and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we'll go to the Commons after breakfast tomorrow."

  We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room on the same floor with my aunt's, and was a little disturbed in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and inquiring "if I heard the engines?" But towards morning she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.

  At about midday, we set out for the office of Messrs. Spenlow and Jorkins, in Doctors' Commons. My aunt, who had this other general opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some silver.

  We made a pause at the toy-shop in Fleet-street, to see the giants of Saint Dustan's strike upon the bells--we had timed our going, so as to catch them at it, at twelve o'clock --and then went on towards Ludgate Hill and St. Paul's Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place, when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed, and looked frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering ill-dressed man who had stopped and stared at us in passing, a little before, was coming so close after us, as to brush against her.

  "Trot! My dear Trotl" cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and pressing my arm. "I don't know what I am to do."

  "Don't be alarmed," said I. "There's nothing to be afraid of. Step into a shop, and I'll soon get rid of this fellow."

  "No, no, child!" she returned. "Don't speak to him for the world. I entreat, I order youl"

  "Good Heaven, Aunt!" said L "He is nothing but a sturdy beggar."

  "You don't know what he is!" replied my aunt. "You don't know who he is! You don't know what you sayl"