David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

  Seeing that Traddles now glanced anxiously at my aunt again, I reminded him of the second and last point to which he had adverted.

  "You and your aunt will excuse me, Copperfield, if I touch upon a painful theme, as I greatly fear I shall," said Traddles, hesitating, "but I think it necessary to bring it to your recollection. On the day of Mr. Micawber's memorable denunciation, a threatening allusion was made by Uriah Heep to your aunt's--husband."

  My aunt, retaining her stiff position, and apparent composure, assented with a nod.

  "Perhaps," observed Traddles, "it was mere purposeless impertinence?"

  "No," returned my aunt.

  "There was--pardon me--really such a person, and at all in his power?" hinted Traddles.

  "Yes, my good friend," said my aunt.

  Traddles, with a perceptible lengthening of his face, explained that he had not been able to approach this subject, that it had shared the fate of Mr. Micawber's liabilities, in not being comprehended in the terms he had made, that we were no longer of any authority with Uriah Heep, and that if he could do us, or any of us, any injury or annoyance, no doubt he would.

  My aunt remained quiet, until again some stray tears found their way to her cheeks.

  "You are quite right," she said. "It was very thoughtful to mention it."

  "Can I--or Copperfield--do anything?" asked Traddles, gently.

  "Nothing," said my aunt. "I thank you many times. Trot, my dear, a vain threat! Let us have Mr. and Mrs. Micawber back. And don't any of you speak to me!" With that she smoothed her dress, and sat, with her upright carriage, looking at the door.

  "Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawberl" said my aunt, when they entered. "We have been discussing your emigration, with many apologies to you for keeping you out of the room so long, and I'll tell you what arrangements we propose."

  These she explained to the unbounded satisfaction of the family--children and all being then present--and so much to the awakening of Mr. Micawber's punctual habits in the opening stage of all bill transactions, that he could not be dissuaded from immediately rushing out, in the highest spirits, to buy the stamps for his notes of hand. But, his joy received a sudden check, for, within five minutes, he returned in the custody of a sheriff's officer, informing us, in a flood of tears, that all was lost. We, being quite prepared for this event, which was of course a proceeding of Uriah Heep's, soon paid the money, and in five minutes more Mr. Micawber was seated at the table, filling up the stamps with an expression of perfect joy, which only that congenial employment, or the making of punch, could impart in full completeness to his shining face. To see him at work on the stamps, with the relish of an artist, touching them like pictures, looking at them sideways, taking weighty notes of dates and amounts in his pocket-book, and contemplating them when finished, with a high sense of their precious value, was a sight indeed.

  "Now, the best thing you can do, sir, if you'll allow me to advise you," said my aunt, after silently observing him, "is to abjure that occupation for evermore."

  "Madam," replied Mr. Micawber, "it is my intention to register such a vow on the virgin page of the future. Mrs. Micawber will attest it. I trust," said Mr. Micawber, solemnly, "that my son Wilkins will ever bear in mind that he had infinitely better put his fist in the fire, than use it to handle the serpents that have poisoned the life-blood of his unhappy parent!" Deeply affected, and changed in a moment to the image of despair, Mr. Micawber regarded the serpents with a look of gloomy abhorrence (in which his late admiration of them was not quite subdued), folded them up and put them in his pocket.

  This closed the proceedings of the evening. We were weary with sorrow and fatigue, and my aunt and I were to return to London on the morrow. It was arranged that the Micawbers should follow us, after effecting a sale of their goods to a broker, that Mr. Wickfield's affairs should be brought to a settlement, with all convenient speed, under the direction of Traddles, and that Agnes should also come to London, pending those arrangements. We passed the night at the old house, which, freed from the presence of the Heeps, seemed purged of a disease, and I lay in my old room, like a shipwrecked wanderer come home.

  We went back next day to my aunt's house--not to mine, and when she and I sat alone, as of old, before going to bed, she said:

  "Trot, do you really wish to know what I have had upon my mind lately?"

  "Indeed I do, Aunt. If there ever was a time when I felt unwilling that you should have a sorrow or anxiety which I could not share, it is now."

  "You have had sorrow enough, child," said my aunt, affectionately, "without the addition of my little miseries. I could have no other motive, Trot, in keeping anything from you."

  "I know that well," said I. "But tell me now."

  "Would you ride with me a little way tomorrow morning?" asked my aunt.

  "Of course."

  "At nine," said she. "I'll tell you then, my dear."

  At nine, accordingly, we went out in a little chariot, and drove to London. We drove a long way through the streets until we came to one of the large hospitals. Standing hard by the building was a plain hearse. The driver recognized my aunt, and, in obedience to a motion of her hand at the window, drove slowly off, we following.

  "You understand it now, Trot," said my aunt. "He is gone!"

  "Did he die in the hospital?"

  "Yes."

  She sat immovable beside me, but, again, I saw the stray tears on her face.

  "He was there once before," said my aunt presently. "He was ailing a long time--a shattered, broken man, these many years. When he knew his state in this last illness, he asked them to send for me. He was sorry then. Very sorry."

  "You went, I know, Aunt."

  "I went. I was with him a good deal afterwards."

  "He died the night before we went to Canterbury?" said I.

  My aunt nodded. "No one can harm him now," she said. "It was a vain threat."

  We drove away, out of town, to the churchyard at Hornsey. "Better here than in the streets," said my aunt. "He was born here."

  We alighted, and followed the plain coffin to a corner I remember well, where the service was read consigning it to the dust.

  "Six-and-thirty years ago, this day, my dear," said my aunt, as we walked back to the chariot, "I was married. God forgive us all!"

  We took our seats in silence, and so she sat beside me for a long time, holding my hand. At length she suddenly burst into tears, and said:

  "He was a fine-looking man when I married him, Trot--and he was sadly changed!"

  It did not last long. After the relief of tears, she soon became composed, and even cheerful. Her nerves were a little shaken, she said, or she would not have given way to it. God forgive us all!

  So we rode back to her little cottage at Highgate, where we found the following short note, which had arrived by that morning's post from Mr. Micawber: "Canterbury,

  "Friday.

  "My dear Madam, and Copperfield,

  "The fair land of promise lately looming on the horizon is again enveloped in impenetrable mists, and for ever withdrawn from the eyes of a drifting wretch whose Doom is sealed!

  "Another writ has been issued (in His Majesty's High Court of King's Bench at Westminster), in another cause of HEEP v. MICAWBER, and the defendant in that cause is the prey of the sheriff having legal jurisdiction in this bailiwick.

  " 'Now's the day, and now's the hour.

  See the front of battle lower,

  See approach proud EDWARD'S power--

  Chains and slavery!'

  Consigned to which, and to a speedy end' (for mental torture is not supportable beyond a certain point, and that point I feel I have attained), my course is run. Bless you, bless you! Some future traveller, visiting, from motives of curiosity, not unmingled, let us hope, with sympathy, the place of confinement allotted to debtors in this city, may, and I trust will, ponder, as he traces on its wall, inscribed with a rusty nail, "The obscure initials

  "W. M.

 
; "P.S. I reopen this to say that our common friend, Mr. Thomas Traddles (who has not yet left us, and is looking extremely well), has paid the debt and costs, in the noble name of Miss Trotwood, and that myself and family are at the height of earthly bliss."

  CHAPTER LV

  Tempest

  I NOW APPROACH AN EVENT IN MY LIFE, SO INDELIBLE, SO awful, so bound by an infinite variety of ties to all that has preceded it, in these pages, that, from the beginning of my narrative, I have seen it growing larger and larger as I advanced, like a great tower in a plain, and throwing its forecast shadow even on the incidents of my childish days.

  For years after it occurred, I dreamed of it often. I have started up so vividly impressed by it that its fury has yet seemed raging in my quiet room, in the still night. I dream of it sometimes, though at lengthened and uncertain intervals, to this hour. I have an association between it and a stormy wind, or the lightest mention of a sea-shore, as strong as any of which my mind is conscious. As plainly as I behold what happened, I will try to write it down. I do not recall it, but see it done, for it happens again before me.

  The time drawing on rapidly for the sailing of the emigrant-ship, my good old nurse (almost broken-hearted for me, when we first met) came up to London. I was constantly with her, and her brother, and the Micawbers (they being very much together), but Emily I never saw.

  One evening when the time was close at hand, I was alone with Peggotty and her brother. Our conversation turned on Ham. She described to us how tenderly he had taken leave of her, and how manfully and quietly he had borne himself, most of all, of late, when she believed he was most tried. It was a subject of which the affectionate creature never tired, and our interest in hearing the many examples which she, who was so much with him, had to relate, was equal to hers in relating them.

  My aunt and I were at that time vacating the two cottages at Highgate, I intending to go abroad, and she to return to her house at Dover. We had a temporary lodging in Covent Garden. As I walked home to it, after this evening's conversation, reflecting on what had passed between Ham and myself when I was last at Yarmouth, I wavered in the original purpose I had formed, of leaving a letter for Emily when I should take leave of her uncle on board the ship, and thought it would be better to write to her now. She might desire, I thought, after receiving my communication, to send some parting word by me to her unhappy lover. I ought to give her the opportunity.

  I therefore sat down in my room, before going to bed, and wrote to her. I told her that I had seen him, and that he had requested me to tell her what I have already written in its place in these sheets. I faithfully repeated it. I had no need to enlarge upon it, if I had had the right. Its deep fidelity and goodness were not to be adorned by me or any man. I left it out, to be sent round in the morning, with a line to Mr. Peggotty, requesting him to give it to her, and went to bed at day-break.

  I was weaker than I knew then, and, not falling asleep until the sun was up, lay late, and unrefreshed, next day. I was roused by the silent presence of my aunt at my bedside. I felt it in my sleep, as I suppose we all do feel such things.

  "Trot, my dear," she said, when I opened my eyes, "I couldn't make up my mind to disturb you. Mr. Peggotty is here, shall he come up?"

  I replied yes, and he soon appeared.

  "Mas'r Davy," he said, when we had shaken hands, "I giv Em'ly your letter, sir, and she writ this heer, and begged of me fur to ask you to read it, and if you see no hurt in't, to be so kind as take charge on't."

  "Have you read it?" said I.

  He nodded sorrowfully. I opened it, and read as follows:

  "I have got your message. Oh, what can I write, to thank you for your good and blessed kindness to met "I have put the words close to my heart. I shall keep them till I die. They are sharp thorns, but they are such comfort. I have prayed over them, oh, I have prayed so much. When I find what you are, and what Uncle is, I think what God must be, and can cry to him.

  "Good-bye for ever. Now, my dear, my friend, good-bye for ever in this world. In another world, if I am forgiven, I may wake a child and come to you. All thanks and blessings. Farewell, evermore."

  This, blotted with tears, was the letter.

  "May I tell her as you doen't see no hurt in't, and as you'll be so kind as take charge on't, Mas'r Davy?" said Mr. Peggotty, when I had read it.

  "Unquestionably," said I--"but I am thinking--"

  "Yes, Mas'r Davy?"

  "I am thinking," said I, "that I'll go down again to Yarmouth. There's time, and to spare, for me to go and come back before the ship sails. My mind is constantly running on him, in his solitude; to put this letter of her writing in his hand at this time, and to enable you to tell her, in the moment of parting, that he has got it, will be a kindness to both of them. I solemnly accepted his commission, dear good fellow, and cannot discharge it too completely. The journey is nothing to me. I am restless, and shall be better in motion. I'll go down tonight."

  Though he anxiously endeavoured to dissuade me, I saw that he was of my mind, and this, if I had required to be confirmed in my intention, would have had the effect. He went round to the coach-office, at my request, and took the box-seat for me on the mail. In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road I had traversed under so many vicissitudes.

  "Don't you think that," I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of London, "a very remarkable sky? I don't remember to have seen one like it."

  "Nor I--not equal to it," he replied. "That's wind, sir. There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long."

  It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a colour like the colour of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been a wind all day, and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and blew hard.

  But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow, harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times, in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short), the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop, and we were often in serious apprehension that the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before this storm, like showers of steel, and, at those times, when there was any shelter of trees or lee walls to be got, we were fain to stop, in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.

  When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich--very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London--and found a cluster of people in the market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the inn-yard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church tower, and flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of country people, coming in from neighbouring villages, who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered about the roads and fields. Still, there was no abatement in the storm, but it blew harder.

  As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which this mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth, and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at interva
ls above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

  I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea, staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea-foam, afraid of falling slates and tiles, and holding by people I met, at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings, some, now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

  Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads, as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another, ship-owners, excited and uneasy, children, huddling together, and peering into older faces, even stout mariners, disturbed and anxious, levelling their glasses at the sea, from behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.

  The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a solitary storm-bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills, masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound, every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away, the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell, the clouds flew fast and thick, I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.