The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible of acute pains in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and was now so tired and low that I could hardly keep myself awake for five minutes together. When I had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a pair of trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, and tied me up in two or three great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, I don't know, but I felt a very hot one. Feeling also very faint and drowsy, I soon lay down on the sofa again and fell asleep.
It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my head more comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words, "Pretty fellow," or "Poor fellow," seemed to me in my ears, too, but certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to lead me to believe that they had been uttered by my aunt, who sat in the bow-window gazing at the sea from behind the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of swivel, and turned any way.
We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding, I sitting at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with considerable difficulty. But, as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no complaint of being incon venienced. All this time, I was deeply anxious to know what she was going to do with me, but she took her dinner in profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me sitting opposite, and said, "Mercy upon us!" which did not by any means relieve my anxiety.
The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us, and looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story, which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who, I thought, would have gone to sleep but for that, and who, whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was checked by a frown from my aunt.
"Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby that she must go and be married again," said my aunt, when I had finished, "I can't conceive."
"Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband," Mr. Dick suggested.
"Fell in love!" repeated my aunt, "What do you mean? What business had she to do it?"
"Perhaps," Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, "she did it for pleasure."
"Pleasure, indeed!" replied my aunt. "A mighty pleasure for the poor Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain to ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself, I should like to know ! She had had one husband. She had seen David Copperfield out of the world, who was always running after wax dolls from his cradle. She had got a baby--oh, there were a pair of babies when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night!--and what more did she want?"
Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no getting over this.
"She couldn't even have a baby like anybody else," said my aunt. "Where was this child's sister, Betsey Trotwood? Not forthcoming. Don't tell met"
Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.
"That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side," said my aunt, "Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do was to say to me, like a robin red-breast--as he is--'It's a boy.' A boy! Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of 'em!"
The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly, and me, too, if I am to tell the truth.
"And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently in the light of this child's sister, Betsey Trotwood," said my aunt, "she marries a second time--goes and marries a Murderer--or a man with a name like it--and stands in this child's light! And the natural consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he prowls and wanders. He's as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can be."
Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in his character.
"And then there's that woman with the Pagan name," said my aunt, "that Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married next, as the child relates. I only hope," said my aunt, shaking her head, "that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the newspapers, and will beat her well with one."
I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in the world, who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly, who had held my mother's dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both choking me, I broke down as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on her--I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in my hands upon the table.
"Well, well!" said my aunt, "the child is right to stand by those who have stood by him--Janet! Donkeys!"
I thoroughly believed that, but for those unfortunate donkeys, we should have come to a good understanding, for my aunt had laid her hand on my shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her and beseech her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all softer ideas for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her country, and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.
After tea, we sat at the window--on the look-out, as I imagined, from my aunt's sharp expression of face, for more invaders--until dusk, when Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down the blinds.
"Now, Mr. Dick," said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger up as before, "I am going to ask you another question. Look at this child."
"David's son?" said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.
"Exactly so," returned my aunt. "What would you do with him, now?"
"Do with David's son?" said Mr. Dick.
"Ay," replied my aunt, "with David's son."
"Oh!" said Mr. Dick. "Yes. Do with--I should put him to bed."
"Janet!" cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had remarked before. "Mr. Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we'll take him up to it."
Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it, kindly, but in some sort like a prisoner, my aunt going in front, and Janet bringing up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope was my aunt's stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there, and Janet's replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore, and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things over in my mind, I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took precautions, on that account, to have me in safe keeping.
The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my fortune in it, as in a bright book, or to see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to look upon me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling, with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed--and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets!--inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary pl
aces under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.
CHAPTER XIV
My Aunt Makes Up Her Mind About Me
ON GOING DOWN IN THE MORNING, I FOUND MY AUNT MUSING so profoundly over the breakfast-table, with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of the urn had overflowed the tea-pot and were laying the whole table-cloth under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight. I felt sure that I had been the subject of her reflections, and was more than ever anxious to know her intentions towards me. Yet I dared not express my anxiety, lest it should give her offence.
My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue, were attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast. I never could look at her for a few moments together but I found her looking at me--in an odd thoughtful manner, as if I were an immense way off, instead of being on the other side of the small round table. When she had finished her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair, knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure, with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by embarrassment. Not having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted to hide my confusion by proceeding with it, but my knife tumbled over my fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing under my aunt's close scrutiny.
"Hallol" said my aunt, after a long time.
I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.
"I have written to him," said my aunt.
"To--?"
"To your father-in-law," said my aunt. "I have sent him a letter that I'll trouble him to attend to, or he and I will fall out, I can tell himl"
"Does he know where I am, Aunt?" I inquired, alarmed.
"I have told him," said my aunt, with a nod.
"Shall I--be--given up to him?" I faltered.
"I don't know," said my aunt. "We shall see."
"Oh! I can't think what I shall do," I exclaimed, "if I have to go back to Mr. Murdstone!"
"I don't know anything about it," said my aunt, shaking her head, "I can't say, I am sure. We shall see."
My spirits sank under these words, and I became very downcast and heavy of heart. My aunt, without appearing to take much heed of me, put on a coarse apron with a bib, which she took out of the press, washed up the teacups with her own hands, and, when everything was washed and set in the tray again, and the cloth folded and put on the top of the whole, rang for Janet to remove it. She next swept up the crumbs with a little broom (putting on a pair of gloves first), until there did not appear to be one microscopic speck left on the carpet, next dusted and arranged the room, which was dusted and arranged to a hair's-breadth already. When all these tasks were performed to her satisfaction, she took off the gloves and apron, folded them up, put them in the particular corner of the press from which they had been taken, brought out her work-box to her own table in the open window, and sat down, with the green fan between her and the light, to work.
"I wish you'd go upstairs," said my aunt, as she threaded her needle, "and give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and I'll be glad to know how he gets on with his Memorial."
I rose with all alacrity, to acquit myself of this commission.
"I suppose," said my aunt, eyeing me as narrowly as she had eyed the needle in threading it, "you think Mr. Dick a short name, eh?"
"I thought it was rather a short name, yesterday," I confessed.
"You are not to suppose that he hasn't got a longer name, if he chose to use it," said my aunt, with a loftier air. "Babley --Mr. Richard Babley--that's the gentleman's true name."
I was going to suggest, with a modest sense of my youth and the familiarity I had been already guilty of, that I had better give him the full benefit of that name, when my aunt went on to say:
"But don't you call him by it, whatever you do. He can't bear his name. That's a peculiarity of his. Though I don't know that it's much of a peculiarity, either, for he has been ill-used enough, by some that bear it, to have a mortal antipathy for it. Heaven knows. Mr. Dick is his name here, and everywhere else, now--if he ever went anywhere else, which he don't. So take care, child, you don't call him anything but Mr. Dick."
I promised to obey, and went upstairs with my message, thinking, as I went, that if Mr. Dick had been working at his Memorial long, at the same rate as I had seen him working at it, through the open door, when I came down, he was probably getting on very well indeed. I found him still driving at it with a long pen, and his head almost laid upon the paper. He was so intent upon it that I had ample leisure to observe the large paper kite in a comer, the confusion of bundles of manuscript, the number of pens, and, above all, the quantity of ink (which he seemed to have in, in half-gallon jars by the dozen), before he observed my being present.
"Hal Phoebus!" said Mr. Dick, laying down his pen. "How does the world go? I'll tell you what," he added, in a lower tone, "I shouldn't wish it to be mentioned, but it's a--" here he beckoned to me, and put his lips close to my ear--"it's a mad world. Mad as Bedlam, boy!" said Mr. Dick, taking snuff from a round box on the table, and laughing heartily.
' Without presuming to give my opinion on this question, I delivered my message.
"Well," said Mr. Dick, in answer, "my compliments to her, and I--I believe I have made a start. I think I have made a start," said Mr .Dick, passing his hand among his grey hair, and casting anything but a confident look at his manuscript. "You have been to school?"
"Yes, sir," I answered, "for a short time."
"Do you recollect the date," said Mr. Dick, looking earnestly at me, and taking up his pen to note it down, "when King Charles the First had his head cut off?"
I said I believed it happened in the year sixteen hundred and forty-nine.
"Well," returned Mr. Dick, scratching his ear with his pen, and looking dubiously at me, "so the books say, but I don't see how that can be. Because, if it was so long ago, how could the people about him have made that mistake of putting some of the trouble out of his head, after it was taken off, into mine?"
I was very much surprised by the inquiry, but could give no information on this point.
"It's very strange," said Mr. Dick, with a despondent look upon his papers, and with his hand among his hair again, "that I never can get that quite right. I never can make that perfectly clear. But no matter, no matter!" he said cheerfully, and rousing himself, "there's time enoughl My compliments to Miss Trotwood, I am getting on very well indeed."
I was going away, when he directed my attention to the kite.
"What do you think of that for a kite?" he said.
I answered that it was a beautiful one. I should think it must have been as much as seven feet high.
"I made it. We'll go and fly it, you and I," said Mr. Dick. "Do you see this?"
.He showed me that it was covered with manuscript, very closely and laboriously written, but so plainly that as I looked along the lines, I thought I saw some allusion to King Charles the First's head again, in one or two places.
"There's plenty of string," said Mr. Dick, "and when it flies high, it takes the facts a long way. That's my manner of diffusing 'em. I don't know where they may come down. It's according to circumstances, and the wind, and so forth, but I take my chance of that."
His face was so very mild and pleasant, and had something so reverend in it, though it was hale and hearty, that I was not sure but that he was having a good-humoured jest with me. So I laughed, and he laughed, and we parted the best friends possible.
"Well, child," said my aunt, when I went downstairs. "And what of Mr. Dick, this morning?"
I informed her that he sent h
is compliments, and was getting on very well indeed.
"What do you think of him?" said my aunt.
I had some shadowy idea of endeavouring to evade the question by replying that I thought him a very nice gentleman, but my aunt was not to be so put off, for she laid her work down in her lap, and said, folding her hands upon it:
"Come! Your sister Betsey Trotwood would have told me what she thought of anyone, directly. Be as like your sister as you can, and speak outl"
"Is he--is Mr. Dick--I ask because I don't know, Aunt--is he at all out of his mind, then?" I stammered, for I felt I was on dangerous ground.
"Not a morsel," said my aunt.
"Oh, indeed!" I observed faintly.
"If there is anything in the world," said my aunt, with great decision and force of manner, "that Mr. Dick is not, it's that."
I had nothing better to offer, than another timid "Oh, indeed!"
"He has been called mad," said my aunt., "I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upwards--in fact, ever since your sister, Betsey Trotwood, disappointed me."
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