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[Illustration: Frontispiece]
[Illustration: David Copperfield. By Charles Dickens.]
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD.
by
CHARLES DICKENS.
With Illustrations by H. K. Browne.
London:
Bradbury & Evans, 11, Bouverie Street.
1850.
London
Bradbury and Evans, Printers, Whitefriars.
AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED
TO
THE HON. MR. AND MRS. RICHARD WATSON,
OF
ROCKINGHAM, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.
PREFACE.
I do not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from this Book, in
the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the
composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest
in it, is so recent and strong; and my mind is so divided between
pleasure and regret--pleasure in the achievement of a long design,
regret in the separation from many companions--that I am in danger of
wearying the reader whom I love, with personal confidences, and private
emotions.
Besides which, all that I could say of the Story, to any purpose, I have
endeavoured to say in it.
It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know, how sorrowfully
the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or
how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself
into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are
going from him for ever. Yet, I have nothing else to tell; unless,
indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still) that no
one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I have
believed it in the writing.
Instead of looking back, therefore, I will look forward. I cannot close
this Volume more agreeably to myself, than with a hopeful glance towards
the time when I shall again put forth my two green leaves once a month,
and with a faithful remembrance of the genial sun and showers that have
fallen on these leaves of David Copperfield, and made me happy.
LONDON,
_October_, 1850.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I. I AM BORN 1
CHAP. II. I observe 10
CHAP. III. I have a Change 21
CHAP. IV. I fall into Disgrace 33
CHAP. V. I am sent away from Home 46
CHAP. VI. I enlarge my Circle of Acquaintance 59
CHAP. VII. My "first half" at Salem House 65
CHAP. VIII. My Holidays. Especially one happy Afternoon 78
CHAP. IX. I have a memorable Birthday 88
CHAP. X. I become neglected, and am provided for 97
CHAP. XI. I begin Life on my own Account, and don't
like it 111
CHAP. XII. Liking Life on my own Account no better, I
form a great Resolution 122
CHAP. XIII. The Sequel of my Resolution 129
CHAP. XIV. My Aunt makes up her Mind about me 143
CHAP. XV. I make another Beginning 154
CHAP. XVI. I am a New Boy in more senses than one 161
CHAP. XVII. Somebody turns up 176
CHAP. XVIII. A Retrospect 188
CHAP. XIX. I look about me, and make a Discovery 193
CHAP. XX. Steerforth's Home 205
CHAP. XXI. Little Em'ly 211
CHAP. XXII. Some old Scenes, and some new People 225
CHAP. XXIII. I corroborate Mr. Dick, and choose a
Profession 240
CHAP. XXIV. My first Dissipation 251
CHAP. XXV. Good and bad Angels 257
CHAP. XXVI. I fall into Captivity 271
CHAP. XXVII. Tommy Traddles 283
CHAP. XXVIII. Mr. Micawber's Gauntlet 289
CHAP. XXIX. I visit Steerforth at his Home, again 303
CHAP. XXX. A Loss 308
CHAP. XXXI. A greater Loss 314
CHAP. XXXII. The Beginning of a long Journey 321
CHAP. XXXIII. Blissful 334
CHAP. XXXIV. My Aunt astonishes me 346
CHAP. XXXV. Depression 353
CHAP. XXXVI. Enthusiasm 367
CHAP. XXXVII. A little Cold Water 379
CHAP. XXXVIII. A Dissolution of Partnership 385
CHAP. XXXIX. Wickfield and Heep 397
CHAP. XL. The Wanderer 411
CHAP. XLI. Dora's Aunts 417
CHAP. XLII. Mischief 428
CHAP. XLIII. Another Retrospect 443
CHAP. XLIV. Our Housekeeping 449
CHAP. XLV. Mr. Dick fulfils my Aunt's Prediction 460
CHAP. XLVI. Intelligence 471
CHAP. XLVII. Martha 481
CHAP. XLVIII. Domestic 489
CHAP. XLIX. I am involved in Mystery 497
CHAP. L. Mr. Peggotty's Dream comes true 506
CHAP. LI. The Beginning of a longer Journey 513
CHAP. LII. I assist at an Explosion 525
CHAP. LIII. Another Retrospect 541
CHAP. LIV. Mr. Micawber's Transactions 545
CHAP. LV. Tempest 556
CHAP. LVI. The new Wound, and the old 564
CHAP. LVII. The Emigrants 569
CHAP. LVIII. Absence 577
CHAP. LIX. Return 582
CHAP. LX. Agnes 594
CHAP. LXI. I am shown two interesting Penitents 600
CHAP. LXII. A Light shines on my way 609
CHAP. LXIII. A Visitor 615
CHAP. LXIV. A last Retrospect 621
LIST OF PLATES.
PAGE
FRONTISPIECE.
OUR PEW AT CHURCH 11
I AM HOSPITABLY RECEIVED BY MR. PEGGOTTY 23
THE FRIENDLY WAITER AND I 49
MY MUSICAL BREAKFAST 55
STEERFORTH AND MR. MELL 70
CHANGES AT HOME 79
MRS. GUMMIDGE CASTS A DAMP ON OUR DEPARTURE 105
MY MAGNIFICENT ORDER AT THE PUBLIC-HOUSE 117
I MAKE MYSELF KNOWN TO MY AUNT 137
THE MOMENTOUS INTERVIEW 149
I RETURN TO THE DOCTOR'S AFTER THE PARTY 175
SOMEBODY TURNS UP 182
MY FIRST FALL IN LIFE 201
WE ARRIVE UNEXPECTEDLY AT MR. PEGGOTTY'S FIRESIDE 220
I MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MISS MOWCHER 233
MARTHA 238
URIAH PERSISTS IN HOVERING NEAR US, AT THE DINNER PARTY 262
I FALL INTO CAPTIVITY 274
WE ARE DISTURBED IN OUR COOKERY 292
I FIND MR. BARKIS "GOING OUT WITH THE TIDE" 313
MR. PEGGOTTY AND MRS. STEERFORTH 330
MY AUNT ASTONISHES ME 350
MR. WICKFIELD AND HIS PARTNER WAIT UPON MY AUNT 364
MR. MICAWBER DELIVERS SOME VALEDICTORY REMARKS 378
TRADDLES MAKES A FIGURE IN PARLIAMENT, AND I REPORT HIM 386
THE WANDERER 412
TRADDLES AND I, IN CONFERENCE WITH THE MISSES SPENLOW 420
I AM MARRIED 447
OUR HOUSEKEEPING 454
MR. DICK FULFILS MY AUNT'S PREDICTION 465
THE RIVER 482
MR. PEGGOTTY'S DREAM COMES TRUE 512
RESTORATION OF MUTUAL CONFIDENCE BETWEEN MR. AND MRS. MICAWBER 539
MY CHILD-WIFE'S OLD COMPANION 544
I AM THE BEARER OF EVIL TIDINGS 566
THE EMIGRANTS 575
I AM SHOWN TWO INTERESTING PENITENTS 605
A STRANGER CALLS TO SEE ME 615
ERRATA.
Page 74, line 7 from bottom of page, _for_ "bo'" _read_ "bor'."
74, " 2 from bottom of page, make the same correction.
76, " 14 from bottom of page, make the same correction.
102, " 21 from top of page, make the same correction.
102, twenty lines in advance, make the same correction.
558, line 19 from bottom of page, _for_ "Norwich" _read_ "Ipswich."
THE
PERSONAL HISTORY AND EXPERIENCE
OF
DAVID COPPERFIELD THE YOUNGER.
CHAPTER I.
I AM BORN.
Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that
station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show. To begin my
life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have
been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It
was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry,
simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared by the
nurse, and by some sage women in the neighbourhood who had taken a
lively interest in me several months before there was any possibility of
our becoming personally acquainted, first, that I was destined to be
unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and
spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all
unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a
Friday night.
I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show
better than my history whether that prediction was verified or falsified
by the result. On the second branch of the question, I will only remark,
that unless I ran through that part of my inheritance while I was still
a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of
having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in
the present enjoyment of it, he is heartily welcome to keep it.
I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the
newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas. Whether sea-going
people were short of money about that time, or were short of faith
and preferred cork-jackets, I don't know; all I know is, that there
was but one solitary bidding, and that was from an attorney connected
with the bill-broking business, who offered two pounds in cash, and
the balance in sherry, but declined to be guaranteed from drowning
on any higher bargain. Consequently the advertisement was withdrawn
at a dead loss--for as to sherry, my poor dear mother's own sherry
was in the market then--and ten years afterwards the caul was put
up in a raffle down in our part of the country, to fifty members at
half-a-crown a head, the winner to spend five shillings. I was present
myself, and I remember to have felt quite uncomfortable and confused,
at a part of myself being disposed of in that way. The caul was won, I
recollect, by an old lady with a hand-basket, who, very reluctantly,
produced from it the stipulated five shillings, all in halfpence, and
twopence halfpenny short--as it took an immense time and a great waste
of arithmetic, to endeavour without any effect to prove to her. It is
a fact which will be long remembered as remarkable down there, that
she was never drowned, but died triumphantly in bed, at ninety-two.
I have understood that it was, to the last, her proudest boast, that
she never had been on the water in her life, except upon a bridge; and
that over her tea (to which she was extremely partial) she, to the
last, expressed her indignation at the impiety of mariners and others,
who had the presumption to go "meandering" about the world. It was in
vain to represent to her that some conveniences, tea perhaps included,
resulted from this objectionable practice. She always returned, with
greater emphasis and with an instinctive knowledge of the strength of
her objection, "Let us have no meandering."
Not to meander, myself, at present, I will go back to my birth.
I was born at Blunderstone, in Suffolk, or "thereby," as they say in
Scotland. I was a posthumous child. My father's eyes had closed upon
the light of this world six months, when mine opened on it. There is
something strange to me, even now, in the reflection that he never
saw me; and something stranger yet in the shadowy remembrance that I
have of my first childish associations with his white grave-stone in
the church-yard, and of the indefinable compassion I used to feel for
it lying out alone there in the dark night, when our little parlor
was warm and bright with fire and candle, and the doors of our house
were--almost cruelly, it seemed to me sometimes--bolted and locked
against it.
An aunt of my father's, and consequently a great-aunt of mine, of whom I
shall have more to relate by and by, was the principal magnate of our
family. Miss Trotwood, or Miss Betsey, as my poor mother always called
her, when she sufficiently overcame her dread of this formidable
personage to mention her at all (which was seldom), had been married to
a husband younger than herself, who was very handsome, except in the
sense of the homely adage, "handsome is, that handsome does"--for he was
strongly suspected of having beaten Miss Betsey, and even of having
once, on a disputed question of supplies, made some hasty but determined
arrangements to throw her out of a two pair of stairs' window. These
evidences of an incompatibility of temper induced Miss Betsey to pay him
off, and effect a separation by mutual consent. He went to India with
his capital, and there, according to a wild legend in our family, he was
once seen riding on an elephant, in company with a Baboon; but I think
it must have been a Baboo--or a Begum. Any how, from India tidings of
his death reached home, within ten years. How they affected my aunt,
nobody knew; for immediately upon the separation, she took her maiden
name again, bought a cottage in a hamlet on the sea-coast a long way
off, established herself there as a single woman with one servant, and
was understood to live secluded, ever afterwards, in an inflexible
retirement.
My father had once been a favorite of hers, I believe; but she was
mortally affronted by his marriage, on the ground that my mother was "a
wax doll." She had never seen my mother, but she knew her to be not yet
twenty. My father and Miss Betsey never met again. He was double my
mother's age when he married, and of but a delicate constitution. He
died a year afterwards, and, as I have said, six months before I came
into the world.
This was the state of matters, on the afternoon of, what _I_ may be
excused for calling, that eventful and important Friday. I can make no
claim therefore to have known, at that time, how matters stood; or to
have any remembrance, founded on the evidence of my own senses, of what
follows.
My mother was sitting by the fire, but poorly in health, and very low in
spirits, looking at it through her tears, and desponding heavily about
herself and the fatherless little stranger, who was already welcomed by
some grosses of prophetic pins, in a drawer up-stairs, to a world not at
all excited on the subject of his arrival; my mother, I say, was sitting
by the fire, that bright, windy March afternoon, very timid and sad, and
very doubtful of ever coming alive out of the trial that was before her,
when, lifting her eyes as she dried them, to the window opposite, she
saw a strange lady coming up the garden.
My mother had a sure foreboding at the second glance, that it was Miss
Betsey. The setting sun was glowing on the strange lady, over the
garden-fence, and she came walking up to the door with a fell rigidity
of figure and composure of countenance that could have belonged to
nobody else.
When she reached the house, she gave another proof of her identity. My
father had often hinted that she seldom conducted herself like any
ordinary Christian; and now, instead of ringing the bell, she came and
looked in at that identical window, pressing the end of her nose against
the glass to that extent, that my poor dear mother used to say it became
perfectly flat and white in a moment.
She gave my mother such a turn, that I have always been convinced I am
indebted to Miss Betsey for having been born on a Friday.
My mother had left her chair in her agitation, and gone behind it in the
corner. Miss Betsey, looking round the room, slowly and enquiringly,
began on the other side, and carried her eyes on, like a Saracen's Head
in a Dutch clock, until they reached my mother. Then she made a frown
and a gesture to my mother, like one who was accustomed to be obeyed, to
come and open the door. My mother went.
"Mrs. David Copperfield, I _think_," said Miss Betsey; the emphasis
referring, perhaps, to my mother's mourning weeds, and her condition.
"Yes," said my mother, faintly.
"Miss Trotwood," said the visitor. "You have heard of her, I dare say?"
My mother answered she had had that pleasure. And she had a disagreeable
consciousness of not appearing to imply that it had been an overpowering
pleasure.
"Now you see her," said Miss Betsey. My mother bent her head, and begged
her to walk in.
They went into the parlor my mother had come from, the fire in the best
room on the other side of the passage not being lighted--not having been
lighted, indeed, since my father's funeral; and when they were both
seated, and Miss Betsey said nothing, my mother, after vainly trying to
restrain herself, began to cry.
"Oh tut, tut, tut!" said Miss Betsey, in a hurry. "Don't do that! Come,
come!"
My mother couldn't help it notwithstanding, so she cried until she had
had her cry out.
"Take off your cap, child," said Miss Betsey, "and let me see you."
My mother was too much afraid of her to refuse compliance with this odd
request, if she had any disposition to do so. Therefore she did as she
was told, and did it with such nervous hands that her hair (which was
luxuriant and beautiful) fell all about her face.
"Why, bless my heart!" exclaimed Miss Betsey. "You are a very Baby!"
My mother was, no doubt, unusually youthful in appearance even for her
years; she hung her head, as if it were her fault, poor thing, and said,
sobbing, that indeed she was afraid she was but a childish widow, and
would be but a childish mother if she lived. In a short pause which
ensued, she had a fancy that she felt Miss Betsey touch her hair, and
that with no ungentle hand; but, looking at her, in her timid hope, she
found that lady sitting with the skirt of her dress tucked up, her hands
folded on one knee, and her feet upon the fender, frowning at the fire.
"In the name of Heaven," said Miss Betsey, suddenly, "why Rookery?"
"Do you mean the house, ma'am?" asked my mother.
"Why Rookery?" said Miss Betsey. "Cookery would have been more to the
purpose, if you had had any practical ideas of life, either of you."
"The name was Mr. Copperfield's choice," returned my mother. "When he
bought the house, he liked to think that there were rooks about it."
The evening wind made such a disturbance just now, among some tall old
elm-trees at the bottom of the garden, that neither my mother nor Miss
Betsey could forbear glancing that way. As the elms bent to one another,
like giants who were whispering secrets, and after a few seconds of such
repose, fell into a violent flurry, tossing their wild arms about, as if
their late confidences were really too wicked for their peace of mind,
some weather-beaten ragged old rooks'-nests, burdening their higher
branches, swung like wrecks upon a stormy sea.
"Where are the birds?" asked Miss Betsey.
"The ----?" My mother had been thinking of something else.
"The rooks--what has become of them?" asked Miss Betsey.
"There have not been any since we have lived here," said my mother. "We
thought--Mr. Copperfield thought--it was quite a large rookery; but the
nests were very old ones, and the birds have deserted them a long
while."
"David Copperfield all over!" cried Miss Betsey. "David Copperfield from
head to foot! Calls a house a rookery when there's not a rook near it,
and takes the birds on trust, because he sees the nests!"
"Mr. Copperfield," returned my mother, "is dead, and if you dare to
speak unkindly of him to me----"
My poor dear mother, I suppose, had some momentary intention of
committing an assault and battery upon my aunt, who could easily have
settled her with one hand, even if my mother had been in far better
training for such an encounter than she was that evening. But it passed
with the action of rising from her chair; and she sat down again very
meekly, and fainted.
When she came to herself, or when Miss Betsey had restored her,
whichever it was, she found the latter standing at the window. The
twilight was by this time shading down into darkness; and dimly as they
saw each other, they could not have done that without the aid of the
fire.
"Well?" said Miss Betsey, coming back to her chair, as if she had only
been taking a casual look at the prospect; "and when do you expect----"
"I am all in a tremble," faltered my mother. "I don't know what's the
matter. I shall die, I am sure!"
"No, no, no," said Miss Betsey. "Have some tea."
"Oh dear me, dear me, do you think it will do me any good?" cried my
mother in a helpless manner.
"Of course it will," said Miss Betsey. "It's nothing but fancy. What do
you call your girl?"
"I don't know that it will be a girl, yet, ma'am," said my mother
innocently.
"Bless the Baby!" exclaimed Miss Betsey, unconsciously quoting the
second sentiment of the pincushion in the drawer up-stairs, but
applying it to my mother instead of me, "I don't mean that. I mean your
servant-girl."
"Peggotty," said my mother.
"Peggotty!" repeated Miss Betsey, with some indignation. "Do you mean to
say, child, that any human being has gone into a Christian church, and
got herself named Peggotty?"
"It's her surname," said my mother, faintly. "Mr. Copperfield called her
by it, because her Christian name was the same as mine."
"Here! Peggotty!" cried Miss Betsey, opening the parlor-door. "Tea. Your
mistress is a little unwell. Don't dawdle."
Having issued this mandate with as much potentiality as if she had been
a recognised authority in the house ever since it had been a house, and
having looked out to confront the amazed Peggotty coming along the
passage with a candle at the sound of a strange voice, Miss Betsey shut
the door again, and sat down as before: with her feet on the fender, the
skirt of her dress tucked up, and her hands folded on one knee.
"You were speaking about its being a girl," said Miss Betsey. "I have no
doubt it will be a girl. I have a presentiment that it must be a girl.
Now child, from the moment of the birth of this girl--"
"Perhaps boy," my mother took the liberty of putting in.
"I tell you I have a presentiment that it must be a girl," returned Miss
Betsey. "Don't contradict. From the moment of this girl's birth, child,
I intend to be her friend. I intend to be her godmother, and I beg
you'll call her Betsey Trotwood Copperfield. There must be no mistakes
in life with _this_ Betsey Trotwood. There must be no trifling with
_her_ affections, poor dear. She must be well brought up, and well
guarded from reposing any foolish confidences where they are not
deserved. I must make that _my_ care."
There was a twitch of Miss Betsey's head, after each of these sentences,
as if her own old wrongs were working within her, and she repressed any
plainer reference to them by strong constraint. So my mother suspected,
at least, as she observed her by the low glimmer of the fire: too much
scared by Miss Betsey, too uneasy in herself, and too subdued and
bewildered altogether, to observe anything very clearly, or to know what
to say.
"And was David good to you, child?" asked Miss Betsey, when she had been
silent for a little while, and these motions of her head had gradually
ceased. "Were you comfortable together?"
"We were very happy," said my mother. "Mr. Copperfield was only too good
to me."
"What, he spoilt you, I suppose?" returned Miss Betsey.
"For being quite alone and dependent on myself in this rough world
again, yes, I fear he did indeed," sobbed my mother.
"Well! Don't cry!" said Miss Betsey. "You were not equally matched,
child--if any two people _can_ be equally matched--and so I asked the
question. You were an orphan, weren't you?"
"Yes."
"And a governess?"
"I was nursery-governess in a family where Mr. Copperfield came to
visit. Mr. Copperfield was very kind to me, and took a great deal of
notice of me, and paid me a good deal of attention, and at last proposed
to me. And I accepted him. And so we were married," said my mother
simply.
"Ha! poor Baby!" mused Miss Betsey, with her frown still bent upon the
fire. "Do you know anything?"
"I beg your pardon, ma'am," faltered my mother.
"About keeping house, for instance," said Miss Betsey.
"Not much, I fear," returned my mother. "Not so much as I could wish.
But Mr. Copperfield was teaching me--"
("Much he knew about it himself!") said Miss Betsey in a parenthesis.
--"And I hope I should have improved, being very anxious to learn, and
he very patient to teach, if the great misfortune of his death"--my
mother broke down again here, and could get no farther.
"Well, well!" said Miss Betsey.
--"I kept my housekeeping-book regularly, and balanced it with Mr.
Copperfield every night," cried my mother in another burst of distress,
and breaking down again.
"Well, well!" said Miss Betsey. "Don't cry any more."
--"And I am sure we never had a word of difference respecting it, except
when Mr. Copperfield objected to my threes and fives being too much like
each other, or to my putting curly tails to my sevens and nines,"
resumed my mother in another burst, and breaking down again.
"You'll make yourself ill," said Miss Betsey, "and you know that will
not be good either for you or for my god-daughter. Come! You mustn't do
it!"
This argument had some share in quieting my mother, though her
increasing indisposition perhaps had a larger one. There was an interval
of silence, only broken by Miss Betsey's occasionally ejaculating "Ha!"
as she sat with her feet upon the fender.
"David had bought an annuity for himself with his money, I know," said
she, by and by. "What did he do for you?"
"Mr. Copperfield," said my mother, answering with some difficulty, "was
so considerate and good as to secure the reversion of a part of it to
me."
"How much?" asked Miss Betsey.
"A hundred and five pounds a year," said my mother.
"He might have done worse," said my aunt.
The word was appropriate to the moment. My mother was so much worse that
Peggotty, coming in with the teaboard and candles, and seeing at a
glance how ill she was,--as Miss Betsey might have done sooner if there
had been light enough,--conveyed her up-stairs to her own room with all
speed; and immediately dispatched Ham Peggotty, her nephew, who had been
for some days past secreted in the house, unknown to my mother, as a
special messenger in case of emergency, to fetch the nurse and doctor.
Those allied powers were considerably astonished, when they arrived
within a few minutes of each other, to find an unknown lady of
portentous appearance, sitting before the fire, with her bonnet tied
over her left arm, stopping her ears with jewellers' cotton. Peggotty
knowing nothing about her, and my mother saying nothing about her, she
was quite a mystery in the parlor; and the fact of her having a magazine
of jewellers' cotton in her pocket, and sticking the article in her ears
in that way, did not detract from the solemnity of her presence.
The doctor having been up-stairs and come down again, and having
satisfied himself, I suppose, that there was a probability of this
unknown lady and himself having to sit there, face to face, for some
hours, laid himself out to be polite and social. He was the meekest of
his sex, the mildest of little men. He sidled in and out of a room, to
take up the less space. He walked as softly as the Ghost in Hamlet, and
more slowly. He carried his head on one side, partly in modest
depreciation of himself, partly in modest propitiation of everybody
else. It is nothing to say that he hadn't a word to throw at a dog. He
couldn't have _thrown_ a word at a mad dog. He might have offered him
one gently, or half a one, or a fragment of one; for he spoke as slowly
as he walked; but he wouldn't have been rude to him, and he couldn't
have been quick with him, for any earthly consideration.
Mr. Chillip, looking mildly at my aunt, with his head on one side, and
making her a little bow, said, in allusion to the jewellers' cotton, as
he softly touched his left ear:
"Some local irritation, ma'am?"
"What!" replied my aunt, pulling the cotton out of one ear like a cork.
Mr. Chillip was so alarmed by her abruptness--as he told my mother
afterwards--that it was a mercy he didn't lose his presence of mind. But
he repeated, sweetly:
"Some local irritation, ma'am?"
"Nonsense!" replied my aunt, and corked herself again, at one blow.
Mr. Chillip could do nothing after this, but sit and look at her feebly,
as she sat and looked at the fire, until he was called up-stairs again.
After some quarter of an hour's absence, he returned.
"Well?" said my aunt, taking the cotton out of the ear nearest to him.
"Well, ma'am," returned Mr. Chillip, "we are--we are progressing slowly,
ma'am."
"Ba--a--ah!" said my aunt, with a perfect shake on the contemptuous
interjection. And corked herself, as before.
Really--really--as Mr. Chillip told my mother, he was almost shocked;
speaking in a professional point of view alone, he was almost shocked.
But he sat and looked at her, notwithstanding, for nearly two hours, as
she sat looking at the fire, until he was again called out. After
another absence, he again returned.
"Well?" said my aunt, taking out the cotton on that side again.
"Well, ma'am," returned Mr. Chillip, "we are--we are progressing slowly,
ma'am."
"Ya--a--ah!" said my aunt. With such a snarl at him, that Mr. Chillip
absolutely could not bear it. It was really calculated to break his
spirit, he said afterwards. He preferred to go and sit upon the stairs,
in the dark and a strong draught, until he was again sent for.
Ham Peggotty, who went to the national school, and was a very dragon at
his catechism, and who may therefore be regarded as a credible witness,
reported next day, that happening to peep in at the parlor-door an hour
after this, he was instantly descried by Miss Betsey, then walking to
and fro in a state of agitation, and pounced upon before he could make
his escape. That there were now occasional sounds of feet and voices
overhead which he inferred the cotton did not exclude, from the
circumstance of his evidently being clutched by the lady as a victim on
whom to expend her superabundant agitation when the sounds were loudest.
That, marching him constantly up and down by the collar (as if he had
been taking too much laudanum), she, at those times, shook him, rumpled
his hair, made light of his linen, stopped _his_ ears as if she
confounded them with her own, and otherwise touzled and maltreated him.
This was in part confirmed by his aunt, who saw him at half-past twelve
o'clock, soon after his release, and affirmed that he was then as red as
I was.
The mild Mr. Chillip could not possibly bear malice at such a time, if
at any time. He sidled into the parlor as soon as he was at liberty, and
said to my aunt in his meekest manner:
"Well, ma'am, I am happy to congratulate you."
"What upon?" said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip was fluttered again, by the extreme severity of my aunt's
manner; so he made her a little bow and gave her a little smile, to
mollify her.
"Mercy on the man, what's he doing!" cried my aunt, impatiently. "Can't
he speak?"
"Be calm, my dear ma'am," said Mr. Chillip, in his softest accents.
"There is no longer any occasion for uneasiness, ma'am. Be calm."
It has since been considered almost a miracle that my aunt didn't shake
him, and shake what he had to say, out of him. She only shook her own
head at him, but in a way that made him quail.
"Well, ma'am," resumed Mr. Chillip, as soon as he had courage, "I am
happy to congratulate you. All is now over, ma'am, and well over."
During the five minutes or so that Mr. Chillip devoted to the delivery
of this oration, my aunt eyed him narrowly.
"How is she?" said my aunt, folding her arms with her bonnet still tied
on one of them.
"Well, ma'am, she will soon be quite comfortable, I hope," returned Mr.
Chillip. "Quite as comfortable as we can expect a young mother to be,
under these melancholy domestic circumstances. There cannot be any
objection to your seeing her presently, ma'am. It may do her good."
"And _she_. How is _she_?" said my aunt, sharply.
Mr. Chillip laid his head a little more on one side, and looked at my
aunt like an amiable bird.
"The baby," said my aunt. "How is she?"
"Ma'am," returned Mr. Chillip, "I apprehended you had known. It's a
boy."
My aunt said never a word, but took her bonnet by the strings, in the
manner of a sling, aimed a blow at Mr. Chillip's head with it, put it on
bent, walked out, and never came back. She vanished like a discontented
fairy; or like one of those supernatural beings, whom it was popularly
supposed I was entitled to see; and never came back any more.
No. I lay in my basket, and my mother lay in her bed; but Betsey
Trotwood Copperfield was for ever in the land of dreams and shadows, the
tremendous region whence I had so lately travelled; and the light upon
the window of our room shone out upon the earthly bourne of all such
travellers, and the mound above the ashes and the dust that once was he,
without whom I had never been.