"I have been with him going on four years, Master Copperfield," said
Uriah, "since a year after my father's death. How much I have to be
thankful for in that! How much have I to be thankful for in Mr.
Wickfield's kind intention to give me my articles, which would otherwise
not lay within the 'umble means of mother and self!"
"Perhaps, when you're a regular lawyer, you'll be a partner in Mr.
Wickfield's business, one of these days," I said to make myself
agreeable; "and it will be Wickfield and Heep or Heep late Wickfield."
"Oh, no, Master Copperfield," returned Uriah, shaking his head, "I am
much too 'umble for that!"
It must have been five or six years later, when I was in London, that
Uriah recalled my prophecy to me.
Agnes had noticed as I had noticed, long before this, a gradual
alteration in Mr. Wickfield. He sat longer and longer over his wine, and
it was at such times, when his hands trembled, and his speech was not
plain, that Uriah was most certain to want him on some business.
So it came about that Agnes had to tell me that Uriah had made himself
indispensable to her father.
"He is subtle and watchful," she said. "He has mastered papa's
weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until papa is
afraid of him."
If I was indignant to hear that Uriah had wormed himself into such
promotion, I restrained my feelings when we met, for Agnes had bidden me
not to repel him, for her father's sake, and for her own.
"What a prophet you have shown yourself, Master Copperfield!" said
Uriah, reminding me of my early words. "You may not recollect it; but
when a person is 'umble, a person treasures such things up. But the
'umblest persons, Master Copperfield, may be instruments of good. I am
glad to think I have been the instrument of good to Mr. Wickfield, and
that I may be more so. Oh, what a worthy man he is; but how imprudent he
has been!"
When the rascal went on to tell me confidentially that he "loved the
ground his Agnes walked on," and that he thought she might come to be
kind to him, knowing his usefulness to her father, I had a delirious
idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire and running him
through with it. However, I thought of Agnes, and could say nothing. In
the end all the evil machinations of Uriah Heep were frustrated by my
old friend Mr. Micawber, who, visiting Canterbury on the chance of
something suitable turning up, and meeting me in Heep's company, was
subsequently engaged by Heep as a clerk at twenty-two and sixpence per
week.
It was only after Micawber had found that Uriah Heep had forged Mr.
Wickfield's name to various documents, and had fraudulently speculated
with moneys entrusted by my aunt, amongst others, to his partner, that
he turned upon him and denounced him, and accomplished what he called
"the final pulverisation of Keep."
Mr. Micawber being once more "in pecuniary shackles," my aunt, so
grateful, as we all were, for the services he had rendered, suggested
emigration to Australia to him; he at once responded to the idea.
"The climate, I believe, is healthy," said Mrs. Micawber. "Then the
question arises: Now, _are_ the circumstances of the country such that a
man of Mr. Micawber's abilities would have a fair chance of rising?--I
will not say, at present, to be governor or anything of that sort; but
would there be a reasonable opening for his talents to develop
themselves? If so, it is evident to me that Australia is the legitimate
sphere of action for Mr. Micawber."
"I entertain the conviction," said Mr. Micawber, "that it is, under
existing circumstances, the land, the only land, for myself and family;
and that something of an extraordinary nature will turn up on that
shore."
But the defeat of Heep and Micawber's departure belong to the days of my
manhood. Let me look back at intervening years.
_V.--I Achieve Manhood_
My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence--the unseen,
unfelt progress of my life--from childhood up to youth!
Time has stolen on unobserved, and _I_ am the head boy now in the
school, and look down on the line of boys below me with a condescending
interest in such of them as bring to my mind the boy I was myself when I
first came here. That little fellow seems to be no part of me; I
remember him as something left behind upon the road of life, and almost
think of him as of someone else.
And the little girl I saw on that first day at Mr. Wickfield's, where is
she? Gone also. In her stead, the perfect likeness of the picture, a
child likeness no more, moves about the house; and Agnes--my sweet
sister, as I call her in my thoughts, my counsellor and friend--the
better angel of the lives of all who come within her calm, good,
self-denying influence--is quite a woman.
It is time for me to have a profession, and my aunt proposes that I
should be a proctor in Doctors' Commons. I learn that the proctors are a
sort of solicitors, and that the Doctors' Commons is a faded court held
near St. Paul's Churchyard, where people's marriages and wills are
disposed of and disputes about ships and boats are settled.
So I am articled, and later, when my aunt has lost her money, through no
fault of her own, but through the rascality of Uriah Heep, and I seek
Mr. Spenlow to know if it is possible for my articles to be cancelled,
it is, I am assured, Mr. Jorkins who is inexorable.
"If it had been my lot to have my hands unfettered, if I had not a
partner--Mr. Jorkins," says Mr. Spenlow. "But I know my partner,
Copperfield. Mr. Jorkins is _not_ a man to respond to a proposition of
this peculiar nature. Mr. Jorkins is very difficult to move from the
beaten track."
The years pass.
I have come legally to man's estate. I have attained the dignity of
twenty-one. Let me think what I have achieved.
Determined to do something to bring in money, I have mastered the savage
mystery of shorthand, and make a respectable income by reporting the
debates in Parliament for a morning newspaper. Night after night I
record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never
fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify.
I have come out in another way. I have taken, with fear and trembling,
to authorship. I wrote a little something in secret, and sent it to a
magazine, and it was published. Since then I have taken heart to write a
good many trifling pieces.
My record is nearly finished.
Peggotty, a widow, is with my aunt, and Mr. Dick is in the room.
"Goodness me!" said my aunt, "who's this you're bringing home?"
"Agnes," said I.
We were to be married within a fortnight. It was not till I had told
Agnes of my love that I learnt from her, as she laid her gentle hands
upon my shoulders and looked calmly in my face, that she had loved me
all my life.
Let me look back once more, for the last time, before I close these
leaves.
I have advanced in fame and fortune. I have been married ten years, and
I see my children playing in the room.
Here is my aunt, in stronger spectacles, an old woman of fourscore years
and more, but upright yet, and godmother to a real, living Betsey
Trotwood. Always with her, here comes Peggotty, my good old nurse,
likewise in spectacles. A newspaper from Australia tells me that Mr.
Micawber is now a magistrate and a rising townsman at Port Middlebay.
One face is above all these and beyond them all. I turn my head and see
it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me. So may thy face be by me,
Agnes, when I close my life; and when realities are melting from me, may
I still find thee near me, pointing upward!
* * * * *