The Personal History of David Copperfield

CHAPTER LII.

I ASSIST AT AN EXPLOSION

When the time Mr. Micawber had appointed so mysteriously, was within four-and-twenty hours of being come, my aunt and I consulted how we should proceed; for my aunt was very unwilling to leave Dora. Ah! how easily I carried Dora up and down stairs, now!

We were disposed, notwithstanding Mr. Micawber’s stipulation for my aunt’s attendance, to arrange that she should stay at home, and be represented by Mr. Dick and me. In short, we had resolved to take this course, when Dora again unsettled us by declaring that she never would forgive herself, and never would forgive her bad boy, if my aunt remained behind, on any pretence.

“I won’t speak to you,” said Dora, shaking her curls at my aunt. “I’ll be disagreeable! I’ll make Jip bark at you all day. I shall be sure that you really are a cross old thing, if you don’t go!”

“Tut, Blossom!” laughed my aunt. “You know you can’t do without me!”

“Yes, I can,” said Dora. “You are no use to me at all. You never run up and down stairs for me, all day long. You never sit and tell me stories about Doady, when his shoes were worn out, and he was covered with dust – oh, what a poor little mite of a fellow! You never do anything at all to please me, do you, dear?” Dora made haste to kiss my aunt, and say, “Yes, you do! I’m only joking!” – lest my aunt should think she really meant it.

“But, aunt,” said Dora, coaxingly, “now listen. You must go. I shall tease you, ’till you let me have my own way about it. I shall lead my naughty boy such a life, if he don’t make you go. I shall make myself so disagreeable – and so will Jip! You’ll wish you had gone, like a good thing, for ever and ever so long, if you don’t go. Besides,” said Dora, putting back her hair, and looking wonderingly at my aunt and me, “why shouldn’t you both go? I am not very ill indeed. Am I?”

“Why, what a question!” cried my aunt.

“What a fancy!” said I.

“Yes! I know I am a silly little thing!” said Dora, slowly looking from one of us to the other, and then putting up her pretty lips to kiss us as she lay upon her couch. “Well, then, you must both go, or I shall not believe you; and then I shall cry!”

I saw, in my aunt’s face, that she began to give way now, and Dora brightened again, as she saw it too.

“You’ll come back with so much to tell me, that it’ll take at least a week to make me understand!” said Dora. “Because I know I sha’n’t understand, for a length of time, if there’s any business in it. And there’s sure to be some business in it! If there’s any thing to add up, besides, I don’t know when I shall make it out; and my bad boy will look so miserable all the time. There! Now you’ll go, won’t you? You’ll only be gone one night, and Jip will take care of me while you are gone. Doady will carry me up stairs before you go, and I won’t come down again till you come back; and you shall take Agnes a dreadfully scolding letter from me, because she has never been to see us!”

We agreed, without any more consultation, that we would both go, and that Dora was a little Impostor, who feigned to be rather unwell, because she liked to be petted. She was greatly pleased, and very merry; and we four, that is to say, my aunt, Mr. Dick, Traddles, and I, went down to Canterbury by the Dover mail that night.

At the hotel where Mr. Micawber had requested us to await him, which we got into, with some trouble, in the middle of the night, I found a letter, importing that he would appear in the morning punctually at half-past nine. After which, we went shivering, at that uncomfortable hour, to our respective beds, through various close passages; which smelt as if they had been steeped, for ages, in a solution of soup and stables.

Early in the morning, I sauntered through the dear old tranquil streets, and again mingled with the shadows of the venerable gateways and churches. The rooks were sailing about the cathedral towers; and the towers themselves, overlooking many a long unaltered mile of the rich country and its pleasant streams, were cutting the bright morning air, as if there were no such thing as change on earth. Yet the bells, when they sounded, told me sorrowfully of change in everything; told me of their own age, and my pretty Dora’s youth; and of the many, never old, who had lived and loved and died, while the reverberations of the bells had hummed through the rusty armour of the Black Prince hanging up within, and, motes upon the deep of Time, had lost themselves in air, as circles do in water.

I looked at the old house from the corner of the street, but did not go nearer to it, lest, being observed, I might unwittingly do any harm to the design I had come to aid. The early sun was striking edgewise on its gables and lattice-windows, touching them with gold; and some beams of its old peace seemed to touch my heart.

I strolled into the country for an hour or so, and then returned by the main street, which in the interval had shaken off its last night’s sleep. Among those who were stirring in the shops, I saw my ancient enemy the butcher, now advanced to top-boots and a baby, and in business for himself. He was nursing the baby, and appeared to be a benignant member of society.

We all became very anxious and impatient, when we sat down to breakfast. As it approached nearer and nearer to half-past nine o’clock, our restless expectation of Mr. Micawber increased. At last we made no more pretence of attending to the meal, which, except with Mr. Dick, had been a mere form from the first; but my aunt walked up and down the room, Traddles sat upon the sofa affecting to read the paper with his eyes on the ceiling; and I looked out of the window to give early notice of Mr. Micawber’s coming. Nor had I long to watch, for, at the first chime of the half hour, he appeared in the street.

“Here he is,” said I, “and not in his legal attire!”

My aunt tied the strings of her bonnet (she had come down to breakfast in it), and put on her shawl, as if she were ready for anything that was resolute and uncompromising. Traddles buttoned his coat with a determined air. Mr. Dick, disturbed by these formidable appearances, but feeling it necessary to imitate them, pulled his hat, with both hands, as firmly over his ears as he possibly could; and instantly took it off again, to welcome Mr. Micawber.

“Gentlemen, and madam,” said Mr. Micawber, “good morning! My dear sir,” to Mr. Dick, who shook hands with him violently, “you are extremely good.”

“Have you breakfasted?” said Mr. Dick. “Have a chop!”

“Not for the world, my good sir!” cried Mr. Micawber, stopping him on his way to the bell; “appetite and myself, Mr. Dixon, have long been strangers.”

Mr. Dixon was so pleased with his new name, and appeared to think it so very obliging in Mr. Micawber to confer it upon him, that he shook hands with him again, and laughed rather childishly.

“Dick,” said my aunt, “attention!”

Mr. Dick recovered himself, with a blush.

“Now, sir,” said my aunt to Mr. Micawber, as she put on her gloves, “we are ready for Mount Vesuvius, or anything else, as soon as you please.”

“Madam,” returned Mr. Micawber, “I trust you will shortly witness an eruption. Mr. Traddles, I have your permission, I believe, to mention here that we have been in communication together?”

“It is undoubtedly the fact, Copperfield,” said Traddles, to whom I looked in surprise. “Mr. Micawber has consulted me, in reference to what he has in contemplation; and I have advised him to the best of my judgment.”

“Unless I deceive myself, Mr. Traddles,” pursued Mr. Micawber, “what I contemplate is a disclosure of an important nature.”

“Highly so,” said Traddles.

“Perhaps, under such circumstances, madam and gentlemen,” said Mr. Micawber, “you will do me the favor to submit yourselves, for the moment, to the direction of one, who, however unworthy to be regarded in any other light but as a Waif and Stray upon the shore of human nature, is still your fellow man, though crushed out of his original form by individual errors, and the accumulative force of a combination of circumstances?”

“We have perfect confidence in you, Mr. Micawber,” said I, “and will do what you please.”

“Mr. Copperfield,” returned Mr. Micawber, “your confidence is not, at the existing juncture, ill-bestowed. I would beg to be allowed a start of five minutes by the clock; and then to receive the present company, inquiring for Miss Wickfield, at the office of Wickfield and Heep, whose Stipendiary I am.”

My aunt and I looked at Traddles, who nodded his approval.

“I have no more,” observed Mr. Micawber, “to say at present.”

With which, to my infinite surprise, he included us all in a comprehensive bow, and disappeared; his manner being extremely distant, and his face extremely pale.

Traddles only smiled, and shook his head (with his hair standing upright on the top of it), when I looked to him for an explanation; so I took out my watch, and, as a last resource, counted off the five minutes. My aunt, with her own watch in her hand, did the like. When the time was expired, Traddles gave her his arm; and we all went out together to the old house, without saying one word on the way.

We found Mr. Micawber at his desk, in the turret office on the ground floor, either writing, or pretending to write, hard. The large office-ruler was stuck into his waistcoat, and was not so well concealed but that a foot or more of that instrument protruded from his bosom, like a new kind of shirt-frill.

As it appeared to me that I was expected to speak, I said aloud:

“How do you do, Mr. Micawber?”

“Mr. Copperfield,” said Mr. Micawber, gravely, “I hope I see you well?”

“Is Miss Wickfield at home?” said I.

“Mr. Wickfield is unwell in bed, sir, of a rheumatic fever,” he returned; “but Miss Wickfield, I have no doubt, will be happy to see old friends. Will you walk in, sir?”

He preceded us to the dining-room – the first room I had entered in that house – and flinging open the door of Mr. Wickfield’s former office, said, in a sonorous voice:

“Miss Trotwood, Mr. David Copperfield, Mr. Thomas Traddles, and Mr. Dixon!”

I had not seen Uriah Heep since the time of the blow. Our visit astonished him, evidently; not the less, I dare say, because it astonished ourselves. He did not gather his eyebrows together, for he had none worth mentioning; but he frowned to that degree that he almost closed his small eyes, while the hurried raising of his grisly hand to his chin betrayed some trepidation or surprise. This was only when we were in the act of entering his room, and when I caught a glance at him over my aunt’s shoulder. A moment afterwards, he was as fawning and as humble as ever.

“Well, I am sure,” he said. “This is indeed an unexpected pleasure! To have, as I may say, all friends round Saint Paul’s, at once, is a treat unlooked for! Mr. Copperfield, I hope I see you well, and – if I may umbly express self so – friendly towards them as is ever your friends, whether or not. Mrs. Copperfield, sir, I hope she’s getting on. We have been made quite uneasy by the poor accounts we have had of her state, lately, I do assure you.”

I felt ashamed to let him take my hand, but I did not know yet what else to do.

“Things are changed in this office, Miss Trotwood, since I was a numble clerk, and held your pony; ain’t they?” said Uriah, with his sickliest smile. “But I am not changed, Miss Trotwood.”

“Well, sir,” returned my aunt, “to tell you the truth, I think you are pretty constant to the promise of your youth; if that’s any satisfaction to you.”

“Thank you, Miss Trotwood,” said Uriah, writhing in his ungainly manner, “for your good opinion! Micawber, tell ’em to let Miss Agnes know – and mother. Mother will be quite in a state, when she sees the present company!” said Uriah, setting chairs.

“You are not busy, Mr. Heep?” said Traddles, whose eye the cunning red eye accidentally caught, as it at once scrutinised and evaded us.

“No, Mr. Traddles,” replied Uriah, resuming his official seat, and squeezing his bony hands, laid palm to palm, between his bony knees. “Not so much so, as I could wish. But lawyers, sharks, and leeches, are not easily satisfied, you know! Not but what myself and Micawber have our hands pretty full, in general, on account of Mr. Wickfield’s being hardly fit for any occupation, sir. But it’s a pleasure as well as a duty, I am sure, to work for him. You’ve not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield, I think, Mr. Traddles? I believe I’ve only had the honor of seeing you once myself?”

“No, I have not been intimate with Mr. Wickfield,” returned Traddles; “or I might perhaps have waited on you long ago, Mr. Heep.”

There was something in the tone of this reply, which made Uriah look at the speaker again, with a very sinister and suspicious expression. But, seeing only Traddles with his good-natured face, simple manner, and hair on end, he dismissed it as he replied, with a jerk of his whole body, but especially his throat:

“I am sorry for that, Mr. Traddles. You would have admired him as much as we all do. His little failings would only have endeared him to you the more. But if you would like to hear my fellow-partner eloquently spoken of, I should refer you to Copperfield. The family is a subject he’s very strong upon, if you never heard him.”

I was prevented from disclaiming the compliment (if I should have done so, in any case), by the entrance of Agnes, now ushered in by Mr. Micawber. She was not quite so self-possessed as usual, I thought; and had evidently undergone anxiety and fatigue. But her earnest cordiality, and her quiet beauty, shone with the gentler lustre for it.

I saw Uriah watch her while she greeted us; and he reminded me of an ugly and rebellious genie watching a good spirit. In the meanwhile, some slight sign passed between Mr. Micawber and Traddles; and Traddles, unobserved except by me, went out.

“Don’t wait, Micawber,” said Uriah.

Mr. Micawber, with his hand upon the ruler in his breast, stood erect before the door, most unmistakeably contemplating one of his fellow-men, and that man his employer.

“What are you waiting for?” said Uriah. “Micawber! Did you hear me tell you not to wait?”

“Yes!” replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.

“Then why do you wait?” said Uriah.

“Because I – in short choose,” replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.

Uriah’s cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at Mr. Micawber attentively, with his whole face breathing short and quick in every feature.

“You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,” he said, with an effort at a smile, “and I am afraid you’ll oblige me to get rid of you. Go along! I’ll talk to you presently.”

“If there is a scoundrel on this earth,” said Mr. Micawber, suddenly breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, “with whom I have already talked too much, that scoundrel’s name is – Heep!”

Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:

“Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here, by appointment! You are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take care. You’ll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you and me. There’s no love between us. You were always a puppy with a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you? None of your plots against me; I’ll counterplot you! Micawber, you be off. I’ll talk to you presently.”

“Mr. Micawber,” said I, “there is a sudden change in this fellow, in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to bay. Deal with him as he deserves!”

“You are a precious set of people, ain’t you?” said Uriah, in the same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his forehead, with his long lean hand, “to buy over my clerk, who is the very scum of society, – as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you, – to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I’ll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I won’t know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not join that gang. I’ll ruin him, if you do. Now, come! I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don’t want to be crushed. I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently, you fool! while there’s time to retreat. Where’s mother!” he said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles, and pulling down the bell-rope. “Fine doings in a person’s own house!”

“Mrs. Heep is here, sir,” said Traddles, returning with that worthy mother of a worthy son. “I have taken the liberty of making myself known to her.”

“Who are you to make yourself known?” retorted Uriah. “And what do you want here?”

“I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,” said Traddles, in a composed business-like way. “And I have a power of attorney from him in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.”

“The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,” said Uriah, turning uglier than before, “and it has been got from him by fraud!”

“Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,” returned Traddles quietly; “and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.”

“Ury – !” Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.

“You hold your tongue, mother,” he returned; “least said, soonest mended.”

“But my Ury – .”

“Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?”

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done – all this time being desperate too, and at his wits’ end for the means of getting the better of us – though perfectly consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.

I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing us, one after another; for I had always understood that he hated me, and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when his eyes passed on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt his power over her slipping away, and the exhibition, in their disappointment, of the odious passions that had led him to aspire to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within sight of such a man.

After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking at us with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.

“You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride yourself so much on your honor and all the rest of it, to sneak about my place, eaves-dropping with my clerk? If it had been me, I shouldn’t have wondered; for I don’t make myself out a gentleman (though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according to Micawber), but being you! – And you’re not afraid of doing this, either? You don’t think at all of what I shall do, in return; or of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very well. We shall see! Mr. What’s-your-name, you were going to refer some question to Micawber. There’s your referee. Why don’t you make him speak? He has learnt his lesson, I see.”

Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us, he sat on the edge of his table with his hands in his pockets, and one of his splay feet twisted round the other leg, waiting doggedly for what might follow.

Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the first syllable of Scoun-drel! without getting to the second, now burst forward, drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a defensive weapon), and produced from his pocket a foolscap document, folded in the form of a large letter. Opening this packet, with his old flourish, and glancing at the contents, as if he cherished an artistic admiration of their style of composition, he began to read as follows:

“‘Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen – ’”

“Bless and save the man!” exclaimed my aunt in a low voice. “He’d write letters by the ream, if it was a capital offence!”

Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.

“‘In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate Villain that has ever existed,’” Mr. Micawber, without looking off the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah Heep, “‘I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances. Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have, collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career.’”

The relish with which Mr. Micawber described himself, as a prey to these dismal calamities, was only to be equalled by the emphasis with which he read his letter; and the kind of homage he rendered to it with a roll of his head, when he thought he had hit a sentence very hard indeed.

“‘In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, I entered the office – or, as our lively neighbour the Gaul would term it, the Bureau – of the Firm, nominally conducted under the appellation of Wickfield and – Heep, but, in reality, wielded by – Heep alone. Heep, and only Heep, is the mainspring of that machine. Heep, and only Heep, is the Forger and the Cheat.’”