David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

  "Come here, when you're called," said the tinker, "or I'll rip your young body open."

  I thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, trying to propitiate the tinker by my looks, I observed that the woman had a black eye.

  "Where are you going?" said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my shirt with his blackened hand.

  "I am going to Dover," I said.

  "Where do you come from?" asked the tinker, giving his hand another turn in my shirt, to hold me more securely.

  "I come from London," I said.

  "What lay are you upon?" asked the tinker. "Are you a prig?"

  "N--no," I said.

  "Ain't you, by G--? If you make a brag of your honesty to me," said the tinker, "I'll knock your brains out."

  With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then looked at me from head to foot.

  "Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?" said the tinker. "If you have, out with it, afore I take it away!"

  I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman's look, and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form "No!" with her lips.

  "I am very poor," I said, attempting to smile, "and have got no money."

  "Why, what do you mean?" said the tinker, looking so sternly at me that I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.

  "Sir!" I stammered.

  "What do you mean," said the tinker, "by wearing my brother's silk handkercher? Give it over here!" And he had mine off my neck in a moment, and tossed it to the woman.

  The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a joke, and tossed it back to me, nodded once, as slightly as before, and made the word "Go!" with her lips. Before I could obey, however, the tinker seized the handkerchief out of my hand with a roughness that threw me away like a feather, and, putting it loosely around his own neck, turned upon the woman with an oath, and knocked her down. I never shall forget seeing her fall backward on the hard road, and lie there with her bonnet tumbled off, and her hair all whitened in the dust, nor, when I looked back from a distance, seeing her sitting on the pathway, which was a bank by the roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner of her shawl, while he went on ahead.

  This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any of these people coming, I turned back until I could find a hiding-place, where I remained until they had gone out of sight, which happened so often that I was very seriously delayed. But under this difficulty, as under all the other difficulties of my journey, I seemed to be sustained and led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth, before I came into the world. It always kept me company. It was there, among the hops, when I lay down to sleep; it was with me on my waking in the morning; it went before me all day. I have associated it, ever since, with the sunny street of Canterbury, dozing as it were in the hot light, and with the sight of its old houses and gateways, and the stately, grey Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. When I came, at last, upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary aspect of the scene with hope, and not until I reached that first great aim of my journey, and actually set foot in the town itself, on the sixth day of my night, did it desert me. But then, strange to say, when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt, half-clothed figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream, and to leave me helpless and dispirited.

  I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen fint, and received various answers. One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so, another, that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour, and could only be visited at half-tide, a third, that she was locked up in Maidstone Jail for child-stealing, a fourth, that she was seen to mount a broom, in the last high wind, and made direct for Calais. The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next, were equally jocose and equally disrespectful, and the shopkeepers, not liking my appearance, generally replied, without hearing what I. had to say, that they had got nothing for me. I felt more miserable and destitute than I had done at any period of my running away. My money was all gone; I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and worn out, and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in London.

  The morning had worn away in these inquiries, and I was sitting on the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place, deliberating upon wandering towards those other places which had been mentioned, when a fly-driver, coming by with his carriage, dropped a horsecloth. Something good-natured in the man's face, as I handed it up, encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived, though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my lips.

  "Trotwood," said he. "Let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady?"

  "Yes," I said, "rather."

  "Pretty stiff in the back?" said he, making himself upright.

  "Yes," I said. "I should think it very likely." "Carries a bag?" said he, "bag with a good deal of room in it, is gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?"

  My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this description.

  "Why then, I tell you what," said he. "If you go up there," pointing with his whip towards the heights, "and keep right on till you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you'll hear of her. My opinion is she won't stand anything, so here's a penny for you."

  I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. Despatching this refreshment by the way, I went in the direction my friend had indicated, and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses he had mentioned. At length I saw some before me, and, approaching them, went into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop, at home), and inquired if they could have the goodness to tell me where Miss Trotwood lived. I addressed myself to a man behind the counter, who was weighing some rice for a young woman, but the latter, taking the inquiry to herself, turned round quickly.

  "My mistress?" she said. "What do you want with her, boy?"

  "I want," I replied, "to speak to her, if you please."

  "To beg of her, you mean," retorted the damsel.

  "No," I said, "indeed." But, suddenly remembering that in truth I came for no other purpose, I held my peace in confusion, and felt my face burn.

  My aunt's handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said; put her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop, telling me that I could follow her, if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I needed no second permission, though I was by this time in such a state of consternation and agitation that my legs shook under me. I followed the young woman, and we soon came to a very neat little cottage with cheerful bow-windows, in front of it, a small square gravelled court or garden full of flowers, carefully tended, and smelling deliciously.

  "This is Miss Trotwood's" said the young woman. "Now you know, and that's all I have got to say." With which words she hurried into the house, as if to shake off the responsibility of my appearance, and left me standing at the garden-gate, looking disconsolately over the top of it towards the parlour-window, where a muslin curtain partly undrawn in the middle, a large round green screen or fan fastened on to the window-sill, a small table, and a great chair, suggested to me that my aunt might be at that moment seated in awful state.

  My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed themselves bit by bit, and the upper leathers had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them. My hat (which had served me for a nightcap, too) was so crushed and bent that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it. My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass, and the Kentish soil on which I had slept--and torn besides--might have frightened the birds from my aunt's garden, as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck, and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown. From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and
dust, as if I had come out of a limekiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it, I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable aunt.

  The unbroken stillness of the parlour-window leading me to infer, after a while, that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid, pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head, [putting his tongue out against the glass, and carrying it across the pane and back again; who, when his eyes caught mine, squinted at me in a most terrible manner, laughed, and went away.]

  I had been discomposed enough before, but I was so much the more discomposed by this unexpected behaviour, that I was on the point of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed, when there came out of the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap, and a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a toll-man's apron, and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately to be Miss Betsey, for she came stalking out of the house ex actly as my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden at Blunderstone Rookery.

  "Go away!" said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop in the air with her knife. "Go along! No boys here!"

  I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a comer of her garden, and stooped to dig up some little root there. Then, without a scrap of courage, but with a great deal of desperation, I went softly in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.

  "If you please, ma'am," I began.

  She started and looked up.

  "If you please, Aunt."

  "EH?" exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never heard approached.

  "If you please, Aunt, I am your nephew."

  "Oh, Lord!" said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.

  "I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk--where you came, on the night when I was born and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. I have been slighted, and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me. It made me run away to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the way, and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey." Here my self-support gave way all at once, and, with a movement of my hands, intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had suffered something, I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose had been pent up within me all the week.

  My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her countenance, sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry, when she got up in a great hurry, collared me, and took me into the parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press, bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth. I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water, anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had administered these restoratives, as I was still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa, with a shawl under my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet, lest I should sully the cover, and then, sitting herself down behind the green fan or screen I have already mentioned, so that I could not see her face, ejaculated at intervals, "Mercy on us!" letting those exclamations off like minute guns.

  After a time she rang the bell. "Janet," said my aunt, when her servant came in. "Go upstairs, give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish to speak to him."

  Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa (I was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt), but went on her errand. My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked up and down the room, until the gentleman who had squinted at me from the upper window came. in laughing.

  "Mr. Dick," said my aunt, "don't be a fool, because nobody can be more discreet than you can, when you choose. We all know that. So don't be a fool, whatever you are."

  The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought, as if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.

  "Mr. Dick," said my aunt, "you have heard me mention David Copperfield? Now, don't pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better."

  "David Copperfield?" said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to remember much about it. "David Copperfield? Oh yes, to be sure. David, certainly."

  "Well," said my aunt, "this is his boy, his son. He would be as like his father as it's possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too."

  "His son?" said Mr. Dick. "David's son? Indeed!"

  "Yes," pursued my aunt, "and he has done a pretty piece of business. He has run away. Ah! His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run away." My aunt shook her head firmly, confident in the character and behaviour of the girl who never was born.

  "Oh! you think she wouldn't have run away?" said Mr. Dick.

  "Bless and save the man," exclaimed my aunt, sharply, "how he talks! Don't I know she wouldn't? She would have lived with her godmother, and we should have been devoted to one another. Where, in the name of wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?"

  "Nowhere," said Mr. Dick.

  "Well then," returned my aunt, softened by the reply, "how can you pretend to be wool-gathering, Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon's lancet? Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?"

  "What shall you do with him?" said Mr. Dick feebly, scratching his head. "Oh! do with him?"

  "Yes," said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up. "Comel I want some very sound advice."

  "Why, if I was you," said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly at me, "I should--" The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a sudden idea, and he added, briskly, "--I should wash him!"

  "Janet," said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I did not then understand, "Mr. Dick sets us all right. Heat the bathl"

  Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help observing my aunt, Mr. Dick, and Janet, while it was in progress, and completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the room.

  My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but my no means ill-looking. There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage, amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother, but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere. I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey, was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap, I mean a cap, much more common then than now, with sidepieces fastening under the chin. Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat, but scantily made, as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form, more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else. She wore at her side a gentleman's gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make, with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar, and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands.

  Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed and florid; I should have said all about him, in saying so, had not his head been curiously bowed--not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr. Creakle's boys' heads after a beating--and his grey eyes prominent and large, with a strange kind of watery brightness in them that made me, in combination with his vacant manner, his submission to my aunt, and his childish delight when she praised him, suspect him of being a little mad, though if he were mad, how he came to be there, puzzled me extremely. He was dressed like any other ordinary gentleman, in a loose grey morning coat and waistcoat, and white trousers, and had his watch in his fob, and his money in his pockets, which he rattled as if he were very proud of it.

  Janet was a pretty blooming girl of about nineteen or twenty, and a perfect picture of neatness. Though I made no further observation of her at the moment, I may mention here what I did not discover until afterwards, namely, that she was
one of a series of proteges whom my aunt had taken into her service expressly to educate in a renouncement of mankind, and who had generally completed their abjuration by marrying the baker.

  The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt. As I laid down my pen, a moment since, to think of it, the air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers, and I saw the old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished, my aunt's inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window, the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old china, the punch-bowl full of dried rose-leaves, the tall press guarding all sorts of bottles and pots, and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything.

  Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my aunt, to my great alarm, became in one moment rigid with indignation, and had hardly voice to cry out, "Janet! Donkeys!"

  Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the house were in flames, darted out on a little piece of green in front, and warned off two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden, that had presumed to set hoof upon it, while my aunt, rushing out of the house, seized the bridle of a third animal laden with a bestriding child, turned him, led him forth from those sacred precincts, and boxed the ears of the unlucky urchin in attendance who had dared to profane that hallowed ground.

  To this hour I don't know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green, but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours, and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys, or, perhaps, the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready, and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were the more ridiculous to me because she was giving me broth'out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry "Janet! Donkeys!" and go out to the assault.