XXIII. I Corroborate Mr. Dick and Choose a Profession   
     
WHEN I awoke in the morning I thought very much of little Em’ly, and her emotion last night, after Martha had left. I felt as if I had come into the knowledge of those domestic weaknesses and tendernesses in a sacred confidence, and that to disclose them, even to Steerforth, would be wrong. I had no gentler feeling towards anyone than towards the pretty creature who had been my playmate, and whom I have always been persuaded, and shall always be persuaded, to my dying day, I then devotedly loved. The repetition to any ears—even to Steerforth’s—of what she had been unable to repress when her heart lay open to me by an accident, I felt would be a rough deed, unworthy of myself, unworthy of the light of our poor childhood, which I always saw encircling her head. I made a resolution, therefore, to keep it in my own breast; and there it gave her image a new grace.      1   
  While we were at breakfast, a letter was delivered to me from my aunt. As it contained matter on which I thought Steerforth could advise me as well as any one, and on which I knew I should be delighted to consult him, I resolved to make it a subject of discussion on our journey home. For the present we had enough to do, in taking leave of all our friends. Mr. Barkis was far from being the last among them, in his regret at our departure; and I believe would even have opened the box again, and sacrificed another guinea, if it would have kept us eight-and-forty hours in Yarmouth. Peggotty, and all her family, were full of grief at our going. The whole house of Omer and Joram turned out to bid us good bye; and there were so many seafaring volunteers in attendance on Steerforth, when our portmanteaus went to the coach, that if we had had the baggage of a regiment with us, we should hardly have wanted porters to carry it. In a word, we departed to the regret and admiration of all concerned, and left a great many people very sorry behind us.      2   
  “Do you stay long here, Littimer?” said I, as he stood waiting to see the coach start.      3   
  “No, Sir,” he replied; “probably not very long, Sir.”      4   
  “He can hardly say just now,” observed Steerforth, carelessly. “He knows what he has to do, and he’ll do it.”      5   
  “That I am sure he will,” said I.      6   
  Littimer touched his hat in acknowledgment of my good opinion, and I felt about eight years old. He touched it once more, wishing us a good journey; and we left him standing on the pavement, as respectable a mystery as any pyramid in Egypt.      7   
  For some little time we held no conversation, Steerforth being unusually silent, and I being sufficiently engaged in wondering, within myself, when I should see the old places again, and what new changes might happen to me or them in the meanwhile. At length Steerforth, becoming gay and talkative in a moment, as he could become anything he liked at any moment, pulled me by the arm: “Find a voice, David. What about the letter you were speaking of at breakfast?”      8   
  “Oh!” said I, taking it out of my pocket. “It’s from my aunt.”      9   
  “And what does she say, requiring consideration!”     10   
  “Why, she reminds me, Steerforth,” said I, “that I came out on this expedition to look about me, and to think a little.”     11   
  “Which, of course, you have done?”     12   
  “Indeed I can’t say I have, particularly. To tell you the truth, I am afraid I had forgotten it.”     13   
  “Well! look about you now, and make up for negligence,” said Steerforth. “Look to the right, and you’ll see a flat country, with a good deal of marsh in it; look to the left, and you’ll see the same. Look to the front, and you’ll find no difference; look to the rear, and there it is still.”     14   
  I laughed, and replied that I saw no suitable profession in the whole prospect; which was perhaps to be attributed to its flatness.     15   
  “What says our aunt on the subject?” inquired Steerforth, glancing at the letter in my hand. “Does she suggest anything?”     16   
  “Why, yes,” said I. “She asks me, here, if I think I should like to be a proctor? What do you think of it?”     17   
  “Well, I don’t know,” replied Steerforth, coolly. “You may as well do that as anything else, I suppose.”     18   
  I could not help laughing again, at his balancing all callings and professions so equally; and I told him so.     19   
  “What is a proctor, Steerforth?” said I.     20   
  “Why, he is a sort of monkish attorney,” replied Steerforth. “He is, to some faded courts held in Doctors’ Commons—a lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard—what solicitors are to the courts of law and equity. He is a functionary whose existence, in the natural course of things, would have terminated about two hundred years ago. I can tell you best what he is, by telling you what Doctors’ Commons is. It’s a little out-of-the-way place, where they administer what is called ecclesiastical law, and play all kinds of tricks with obsolete old monsters of Acts of Parliament, which three-fourths of the world know nothing about, and the other fourth supposes to have been dug up, in a fossil state, in the days of the Edwards. It’s a place that has an ancient monopoly in suits about people’s wills and people’s marriages, and disputes among ships and boats.”     21   
  “Nonsense, Steerforth!” I exclaimed. “You don’t mean to say that there is any affinity between nautical matters and ecclesiastical matters?”     22   
  “I don’t, indeed, my dear boy,” he returned; “but I mean to say that they are managed and decided by the same set of people, down in that same Doctors’ Commons. You shall go there one day, and find them blundering through half the nautical terms in Young’s Dictionary, apropos of the ‘Nancy’ having run down the ‘Sarah Jane’ or Mr. Peggotty and the Yarmouth boatmen having put off in a gale of wind with an anchor and cable to the ‘Nelson’ Indiaman in distress; and you shall go there another day, and find them deep in the evidence, pro and con, respecting a clergyman who has misbehaved himself; and you shall find the judge in the nautical case, the advocate in the clergyman case, or contrariwise. They are like actors: now a man’s a judge, and now he is not a judge; now he’s one thing, now he’s another; now he’s something else, change and change about; but it’s always a very pleasant profitable little affair of private theatricals, presented to an uncommonly select audience.”     23   
  “But advocates and proctors are not one and the same?” said I, a little puzzled. “Are they?”     24   
  “No,” returned Steerforth, “the advocates are civilians—men who have taken a doctor’s degree at college—which is the first reason of my knowing anything about it. The proctors employ the advocates. Both get very comfortable fees, and altogether they make a mighty snug little party. On the whole, I would recommend you to take to Doctors’ Commons kindly, David. They plume themselves on their gentility there, I can tell you, if that’s any satisfaction.”     25   
  I made allowance for Steerforth’s light way of treating the subject, and, considering it with reference to the staid air of gravity and antiquity which I associated with that “lazy old nook near St. Paul’s Churchyard,” did not feel indisposed towards my aunt’s suggestion; which she left to my free decision, making no scruple of telling me that it had occurred to her, on her lately visiting her own proctor in Doctors’ Commons for the purpose of settling her will in my favour.     26   
  “That’s a laudable proceeding on the part of our aunt, at all events,” said Steerforth, when I mentioned it; “and one deserving of all encouragement. Daisy, my advice is that you take kindly to Doctors’ Commons.     27   
  I quite made up my mind to do so. I then told Steerforth that my aunt was in town awaiting me (as I found from her letter), and that she had taken lodgings for a week at a kind of private hotel in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where there was a stone staircase, and a convenient door in the roof; my aunt being firmly persuaded that every house in London was going to be burnt down every night.     28   
  We achieved the rest of our journey pleasantly, sometimes recurring to Doctors’ Commons, and anticipating the distant days when I should be a proctor there, which Steerforth pictured in a variety of humorous and whimsical lights, that made us both merry. When we came to our journey’s end, he went home, engaging to call upon me next day but one; and I drove to Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where I found my aunt up, and waiting supper.     29   
  If I had been round the world since we parted, we could hardly have been better pleased to meet again. My aunt cried outright as she embraced me; and said, pretending to laugh, that if my poor mother had been alive, that silly little creature would have shed tears, she had no doubt.     30   
  “So you have left Mr. Dick behind, aunt?” said I. “I am sorry for that. Ah, Janet, how do you do?”     31   
  As Janet curtsied, hoping I was well, I observed my aunt’s visage lengthen very much.     32   
  “I am sorry for it, too,” said my aunt, rubbing her nose.     33   
  “I have had no peace of mind, Trot, since I have been here.”     34   
  Before I could ask why, she told me.     35   
  “I am convinced,” said my aunt; laying her hand with melancholy firmness on the table, “that Dick’s character is not a character to keep the donkeys off. I am confident he wants strength of purpose. I ought to have left Janet at home, instead, and then my mind might perhaps have been at ease.” If ever there was a donkey trespassing on my green, said my aunt, with emphasis, “there was one this afternoon at four o’clock. A cold feeling came over me from head to foot, and I know it was a donkey!”     36   
  I tried to comfort her on this point, but she rejected consolation.     37   
  “It was a donkey,” said my aunt; “and it was the one with the stumpy tail which that Murdering sister of a woman rode, when she came to my house.” This had been, ever since, the only name my aunt knew for Miss Murdstone. “If there is any donkey in Dover, whose audacity it is harder to me to bear than another’s, that,” said my aunt, striking the table, “is the animal.”     38   
  Janet ventured to suggest that my aunt might be disturbing herself unnecessarily, and that she believed the donkey in question was then engaged in the sand-and-gravel line of business, and was not available for purposes of trespass. But my aunt wouldn’t hear of it.     39   
  Supper was comfortably served and hot, though my aunt’s rooms were very high up—whether that she might have more stone stairs for her money, or might be nearer to the door in the roof, I don’t know—and consisted of a roast fowl, a steak, and some vegetables, to all of which I did ample justice, and which were all excellent. But my aunt had her own ideas concerning London provision, and ate but little.     40   
  “I suppose this unfortunate fowl was born and brought up in a cellar,” said my aunt, “and never took the air except on a hackney coach-stand. I hope the steak may be beef, but I don’t believe it. Nothing’s genuine in the place, in my opinion, but the dirt.”     41   
  “Don’t you think the fowl may have come out of the country, aunt?” I hinted.     42   
  “Certainly not,” returned my aunt. “It would be no pleasure to a London tradesman to sell anything which was what he pretended it was.”     43   
  I did not venture to controvert this opinion, but I made a good supper, which it greatly satisfied her to see me do. When the table was cleared, Janet assisted her to arrange her hair, to put on her nightcap, which was of a smarter construction than usual (“in case of fire,” my aunt said), and to fold her gown back over her knees, these being her usual preparations for warming herself before going to bed. I then made her, according to certain established regulations from which no deviation, however slight, could ever be permitted, a glass of hot white wine and water, and a slice of toast cut into long thin strips. With these accompaniments we were left alone to finish the evening, my aunt sitting opposite to me drinking her wine and water; soaking her strips of toast in it, one by one, before eating them; and looking benignantly on me, from among the borders of her nightcap.     44   
  “Well, Trot,” she began, “what do you think of the proctor plan? Or have you not begun to think about it yet?”     45   
  “I have thought a good deal about it, my dear aunt, and I have talked a good deal about it with Steerforth. I like it very much indeed. I like it exceedingly.”     46   
  “Come!” said my aunt. “That’s cheering!”     47   
  “I have only one difficulty, aunt.”     48   
  “Say what it is, Trot,” she returned.

  “Why, I want to ask, aunt, as this seems, from what I understand, to be a limited profession, whether my entrance into it would not be very expensive?”     50   
  “It will cost,” returned my aunt, “to article you, just a thousand pounds.”     51   
  “Now, my dear aunt,” said I, drawing my chair nearer, “I am uneasy in my mind about that. It’s a large sum of money. You have expended a great deal on my education, and have always been as liberal to me in all things, as it was possible to be. You have been the soul of generosity. Surely there are some ways in which I might begin life with hardly any outlay, and yet begin with a good hope of getting on by resolution and exertion. Are you sure that it would not be better to try that course? Are you certain that you can afford to part with so much money, and that it is right that it should be so expended? I only ask you, my second mother, to consider. Are you certain?”     52   
  My aunt finished eating the piece of toast on which she was then engaged, looking me full in the face all the while; and then setting her glass on the chimney-piece, and folding her hands upon her folded skirts, replied as follows:     53   
  “Trot, my child, if I have any object in life, it is to provide for your being a good, a sensible, and a happy man. I am bent upon it—so is Dick. I should like some people that I know to hear Dick’s conversation on the subject. Its sagacity is wonderful. But no one knows the resources of that man’s intellect, except myself!”     54   
  She stopped for a moment to take my hand between hers, and went on:     55   
  “It’s in vain, Trot, to recall the past, unless it works some influence upon the present. Perhaps I might have been better friends with your poor father. Perhaps I might have been better friends with that poor child your mother, even after your sister Betsey Trotwood disappointed me. When you came to me, a little runaway boy, all dusty and wayworn, perhaps I thought so. From that time until now, Trot, you have ever been a credit to me and a pride and pleasure. I have no other claim upon my means; at least”—here to my surprise she hesitated, and was confused—“no, I have no other claim upon my means—and you are my adopted child. Only be a loving child to me in my age, and bear with my whims and fancies; and you will do more for an old woman whose prime of life was not so happy or conciliating as it might have been, than ever that old woman did for you.”     56   
  It was the first time I had heard my aunt refer to her past history. There was a magnanimity in her quiet way of doing so, and of dismissing it, which would have exalted her in my respect and affection, if anything could.     57   
  “All is agreed and understood between us now, Trot,” said my aunt, “and we need talk of this no more. Give me a kiss, and we’ll go to the Commons after breakfast to-morrow.”     58   
  We had a long chat by the fire before we went to bed. I slept in a room on the same floor with my aunt’s, and was a little disturbed in the course of the night by her knocking at my door as often as she was agitated by a distant sound of hackney-coaches or market-carts, and inquiring “if I heard the engines?” But towards morning she slept better, and suffered me to do so too.     59   
  At about midday, we set out for the office of Messrs. Spenlow and Jorkins, in Doctors’ Commons. My aunt, who had this other general opinion in reference to London, that every man she saw was a pickpocket, gave me her purse to carry for her, which had ten guineas in it and some silver.     60   
  We made a pause at the toy-shop in Fleet Street, to see the giants of Saint Dunstan’s strike upon the bells—we had timed our going, so as to catch them at it, at twelve o’clock—and then went on towards Ludgate Hill and St. Paul’s Churchyard. We were crossing to the former place, when I found that my aunt greatly accelerated her speed and looked frightened. I observed, at the same time, that a lowering ill-dressed man who had stopped and stared at us in passing, a little before, was coming so close after us, as to brush against her.     61   
  “Trot! My dear Trot!” cried my aunt, in a terrified whisper, and pressing my arm. “I don’t know what I am to do.”     62   
  “Don’t be alarmed,” said I. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Step into a shop, and I’ll soon get rid of this fellow.”     63   
  “No, no, child!” she returned. “Don’t speak to him for the world. I entreat, I order you!”     64   
  “Good Heaven, aunt!” said I. “He is nothing but a sturdy beggar.”     65   
  “You don’t know what he is!” replied my aunt. “You don’t know who he is! You don’t know what you say!”     66   
  We had stopped in an empty doorway, while this was passing, and he had stopped too.     67   
  “Don’t look at him!” said my aunt, as I turned my head indignantly, “but get me a coach, my dear, and wait for me in St. Paul’s Churchyard.”     68   
  “Wait for you?” I repeated.     69   
  “Yes,” rejoined my aunt. “I must go alone. I must go with him.”     70   
  “With him, aunt? This man?”     71   
  “I am in my senses,” she replied, “and I tell you I must. Get me a coach!”     72   
  However much astonished I might be, I was sensible that I had no right to refuse compliance with such a peremptory command. I hurried away a few paces, and called a hackney-chariot which was passing empty. Almost before I could let down the steps, my aunt sprang in, I don’t know how, and then the man followed. She waved her hand to me to go away, so earnestly, that, all confounded as I was, I turned from them at once. In doing so, I heard her say to the coachman, “Drive anywhere! Drive straight on!” and presently the chariot passed me, going up the hill.     73   
  What Mr. Dick had told me, and what I had supposed to be a delusion of his, now came into my mind. I could not doubt that this person was the person of whom he had made such mysterious mention, though what the nature of his hold upon my aunt could possibly be, I was quite unable to imagine. After half an hour’s cooling in the Churchyard, I saw the chariot coming back. The driver stopped beside me, and my aunt was sitting in it alone.     74   
  She had not yet sufficiently recovered from her agitation to be quite prepared for the visit we had to make. She desired me to get into the chariot, and to tell the coachman to drive slowly up and down a little while. She said no more, except, “My dear child, never ask me what it was, and don’t refer to it,” until she had perfectly regained her composure, when she told me she was quite herself now, and we might get out. On her giving me her purse, to pay the driver, I found that all the guineas were gone, and only the loose silver remained.     75   
  Doctors’ Commons was approached by a little low archway. Before we had taken many paces down the street beyond it, the noise of the city seemed to melt, as if by magic, into a softened distance. A few dull courts, and narrow ways, brought us to the sky-lighted offices of Spenlow and Jorkins; in the vestibule of which temple, accessible to pilgrims without the ceremony of knocking, three or four clerks were at work as copyists. One of these, a little dry man, sitting by himself, who wore a stiff brown wig that looked as if it were made of gingerbread, rose to receive my aunt, and show us into Mr. Spenlow’s room.     76   
  “Mr. Spenlow’s in Court, ma’am,” said the dry man; “it’s an Arches day; but it’s close by, and I’ll send for him directly.”     77   
  As we were left to look about us while Mr. Spenlow was fetched, I availed myself of the opportunity. The furniture of the room was old-fashioned and dusty; and the green baize on the top of the writing-table had lost all its colour, and was as withered and pale as an old pauper. There were a great many bundles of papers on it, some indorsed as Allegations, and some (to my surprise) as Libels, and some as being in the Consistory Court, and some in the Arches Court, and some in the Prerogative Court, and some in the Admiralty Court, and some in the Delegates’ Court; giving me occasion to wonder much, how many Courts there might be in the gross, and how long it would take to understand them all. Besides these, there were sundry immense manuscript Books of Evidence taken on affidavit, strongly bound, and tied together in massive sets, a set to each cause, as if every cause were a history in ten or twenty volumes. All this looked tolerably expensive, I thought, and gave me an agreeable notion of a proctor’s business. I was casting my eyes with increasing complacency over these and many similar objects, when hasty footsteps were heard in the room outside, and Mr. Spenlow, in a black gown trimmed with white fur, came hurrying in, taking off his hat as he came.     78   
  He was a little light-haired gentleman, with undeniable boots, and the stiffest of white cravats and shirt-collars. He was buttoned up mighty trim and tight, and must have taken a great deal of pains with his whiskers, which were accurately curled. His gold watch-chain was so massive, that a fancy came across me, that he ought to have a sinewy golden arm, to draw it out with, like those which are put up over the gold-beaters’ shops. He was got up with such care, and was so stiff, that he could hardly bend himself; being obliged, when he glanced at some papers on his desk, after sitting down in his chair, to move his whole body, from the bottom of his spine, like Punch.     79   
  I had previously been presented by my aunt, and had been courteously received. He now said:

  “And so, Mr. Copperfield, you think of entering into our profession? I casually mentioned to Miss Trotwood, when I had the pleasure of an interview with her the other day,”—with another inclination of his body—Punch again—“that there was a vacancy here. Miss Trotwood was good enough to mention that she had a nephew who was her peculiar care, and for whom she was seeking to provide genteelly in life. That nephew, I believe. I have now the pleasure of”—Punch again.     81   
  I bowed my acknowledgments, and said, my aunt had mentioned to me that there was that opening, and that I believed I should like it very much. That I was strongly inclined to like it, and had taken immediately to the proposal. That I could not absolutely pledge myself to like it, until I knew something more about it. That although it was little else than a matter of form, I presumed I should have an opportunity of trying how I liked it, before I bound myself to it irrevocably.     82   
  “Oh surely! surely!” said Mr. Spenlow. “We always in this house, propose a month—an initiatory month. I should be happy, myself, to propose two months—three—an indefinite period, in fact—but I have a partner. Mr. Jorkins.”     83   
  “And the premium, Sir,” I returned, “is a thousand pounds.”     84   
  “And the premium, stamp included, is a thousand pounds,” said Mr. Spenlow. “As I have mentioned to Miss Trotwood, I am actuated by no mercenary considerations; few men are less so, I believe; but Mr. Jorkins has his opinions on these subjects, and I am bound to respect Mr. Jorkins’s opinions. Mr. Jorkins thinks a thousand pounds too little, in short.”     85   
  “I suppose, Sir,” said I, still desiring to spare my aunt, “that it is not the custom here, if an articled clerk were particularly useful, and made himself a perfect master of his profession”—I could not help blushing, this looked so like praising myself—“I suppose it is not the custom, in the later years of his time, to allow him any——”     86   
  Mr. Spenlow, by a great effort, just lifted his head far enough out of his cravat, to shake it, and answered, anticipating the word “salary.”     87   
  “No. I will not say what consideration I might give to that point myself, Mr. Copperfield, if I were unfettered. Mr. Jorkins is immovable.”     88   
  I was quite dismayed by the idea of this terrible Jorkins. But I found out afterwards that he was a mild man of a heavy temperament, whose place in the business was to keep himself in the background, and be constantly exhibited by name as the most obdurate and ruthless of men. If a clerk wanted his salary raised, Mr. Jorkins wouldn’t listen to such a proposition. If a client were slow to settle his bill of costs, Mr. Jorkins was resolved to have it paid; and however painful these things might be (and always were) to the feelings of Mr. Spenlow, Mr. Jorkins would have his bond. The heart and hand of the good angel Spenlow would have been always open, but for the restraining demon Jorkins. As I have grown older, I think I have had experience of some other houses doing business on the principle of Spenlow and Jorkins!     89   
  It was settled that I should begin my month’s probation as soon as I pleased, and that my aunt need neither remain in town nor return at its expiration, as the articles of agreement, of which I was to be the subject, could easily be sent to her at home for her signature. When we had got so far, Mr. Spenlow offered to take me into Court then and there, and show me what sort of place it was. As I was willing enough to know, we went out with this object, leaving my aunt behind; who would trust herself, she said, in no such place, and who, I think, regarded all Courts of Law as a sort of powder-mills that might blow up at any time.     90   
  Mr. Spenlow conducted me through a paved courtyard formed of grave brick houses, which I inferred, from the Doctors’ names upon the doors, to be the official abidingplaces of the learned advocates of whom Steerforth had told me; and into a large dull room, not unlike a chapel to my thinking, on the left hand. The upper part of this room was fenced off from the rest; and there, on the two sides of a raised platform of the horseshoe form, sitting on easy old-fashioned dining-room chairs, were sundry gentlemen in red gowns and grey wigs, whom I found to be the Doctors aforesaid. Blinking over a little desk like a pulpitdesk, in the curve of the horseshoe, was an old gentleman, whom, if I had seen him in an aviary, I should certainly have taken for an owl, but who I learned was the presiding judge. In the space within the horseshoe, lower than these, that is to say, on about the level of the floor, were sundry other gentlemen of Mr. Spenlow’s rank, and dressed like him in black gowns with white fur upon them, sitting at a long green table. Their cravats were in general stiff, I thought, and their looks haughty; but in this last respect, I presently conceived I had done them an injustice, for when two or three of them had to rise and answer a question of the presiding dignitary, I never saw anything more sheepish. The public, represented by a boy with a comforter, and a shabby-genteel man secretly eating crumbs out of his coat pockets, was warming itself at a stove in the centre of the Court. The languid stillness of the place was only broken by the chirping of this fire and by the voice of one of the Doctors, who was wandering slowly through a perfect library of evidence, and stopping to put up, from time to time, at little roadside inns of argument on the journey. Altogether, I have never, on any occasion, made one at such a cosey, dozey, old-fashioned, time-forgotten, sleepy-headed little family-party in all my life; and I felt it would be quite a soothing opiate to belong to it in any character—except perhaps as a suitor.     91   
  Very well satisfied with the dreamy nature of this retreat, I informed Mr. Spenlow that I had seen enough for that time, and we rejoined my aunt; in company with whom I presently departed from the Commons, feeling very young when I went out of Spenlow and Jorkins’s, on account of the clerks poking one another with their pens to point me out.     92   
  We arrived at Lincoln’s Inn Fields without any new adventures, except encountering an unlucky donkey in a costermonger’s cart, who suggested painful associations to my aunt. We had another long talk about my plans, when we were safely housed; and as I knew she was anxious to get home, and between fire, food, and pickpockets, could never be considered at her ease for half-an-hour in London, I urged her not to be uncomfortable on my account, but to leave me to take care of myself.     93   
  “I have not been here a week to-morrow, without considering that too, my dear,” she returned. “There is a furnished little set of chambers to be let in the Adelphi, Trot, which ought to suit you to a marvel.”     94   
  With this brief introduction, she produced from her pocket an advertisement, carefully cut out of a newspaper, setting forth that in Buckingham Street in the Adelphi there was to be let furnished, with a view of the river, a singularly desirable and compact set of chambers, forming a genteel residence for a young gentleman, a member of one of the Inns of Court, or otherwise, with immediate possession. Terms moderate, and could be taken for a month only if required.     95   
  “Why, this is the very thing, aunt!” said I, flushed with the possible dignity of living in chambers.     96   
  “Then come,” replied my aunt, immediately resuming the bonnet she had a minute before laid aside. “We’ll go and look at ’em.”     97   
  Away we went. The advertisement directed us to apply to Mrs. Crupp on the premises, and we rang the area bell, which we supposed to communicate with Mrs. Crupp. It was not until we had rung three or four times that we could prevail on Mrs. Crupp to communicate with us, but at last she appeared, being a stout lady with a flounce of flannel petticoat below a nankeen gown.     98   
  “Let us see these chambers of yours, if you please, ma’am,” said my aunt.     99   
  “For this gentleman?” said Mrs. Crupp, feeling in her pocket for her keys.    100   
  “Yes, for my nephew,” said my aunt.    101   
  “And a sweet set they is for sich!” said Mrs. Crupp.    102   
  So we went up-stairs.    103   
  They were on the top of the house—a great point with my aunt, being near the fire-escape—and consisted of a little half-blind entry where you could see hardly anything, a little stone-blind pantry where you could see nothing at all, a sitting-room, and a bedroom. The furniture was rather faded, but quite good enough for me; and, sure enough, the river was outside the windows.    104   
  As I was delighted with the place, my aunt and Mrs. Crupp withdrew into the pantry to discuss the terms, while I remained on the sitting-room sofa, hardly daring to think it possible that I could be destined to live in such a noble residence. After a single combat of some duration they returned, and I saw, to my joy, both in Mrs. Crupp’s countenance and in my aunt’s, that the deed was done.    105   
  “Is it the last occupant’s furniture?” inquired my aunt.    106   
  “Yes it is, ma’am,” said Mrs. Crupp.    107   
  “What’s become of him?” asked my aunt.    108   
  Mrs. Crupp was taken with a troublesome cough, in the midst of which she articulated with much difficulty. “He was took ill here, ma’am, and—ugh! ugh! ugh! dear me!—and he died!”    109   
  “Hey! What did he die of?” asked my aunt.    110   
  “Well, ma’am, he died of drink,” said Mrs. Crupp, in confidence. “And smoke.”    111   
  “Smoke? You don’t mean chimneys?” said my aunt.    112   
  “No, ma’am,” returned Mrs. Crupp. “Cigars and pipes.”    113   
  “That’s not catching, Trot, at any rate,” remarked my aunt, turning to me.    114   
  “No, indeed,” said I.    115   
  In short, my aunt, seeing how enraptured I was with the premises, took them for a month, with leave to remain for twelve months when that time was out. Mrs. Crupp was to find linen, and to cook; every other necessary was already provided; and Mrs. Crupp expressly intimated that she should always yearn towards me as a son. I was to take possession the day after to-morrow, and Mrs. Crupp said, thank Heaven she had now found summun she could care for!    116   
  On our way back, my aunt informed me how she confidently trusted that the life I was now to lead would make me firm and self-reliant, which was all I wanted. She repeated this several times next day, in the intervals of our arranging for the transmission of my clothes and books from Mr. Wickfield’s; relative to which, and to all my late holiday, I wrote a long letter to Agnes, of which my aunt took charge, as she was to leave on the succeeding day. Not to lengthen these particulars, I need only add, that she made a handsome provision for all my possible wants during my month of trial; that Steerforth, to my great disappointment and hers too, did not make his appearance Dover coach, exulting in the coming discomfiture of the vagrant donkeys, with Janet at her side; and that when the coach was gone, I turned my face to the Adelphi, pondering on the old days when I used to roam about its subterranean arches, and on the happy changes which had brought me to the surface.

XXIV. My First Dissipation   
     
IT was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robinson Crusoe, when he had got into his fortification, and pulled his ladder up after him. It was a wonderfully fine thing to walk about town with the key of my house in my pocket, and to know that I could ask any fellow to come home, and make quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody, if it were not so to me. It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out, and to come and go without a word to any one, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping, from the depths of the earth, when I wanted her—and when she was disposed to come. All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I must say, too, that there were times when it was very dreary.      1   
  It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings. It looked a very fresh, free life, by daylight: still fresher, and more free, by sunlight. But as the day declined, the life seemed to go down too. I don’t know how it was; it seldom looked well by candle-light. I wanted somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank, in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother me with his decease.      2   
  After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year, and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever.      3   
  Steerforth not yet appearing, which induced me to apprehend that he must be ill, I left the Commons early on the third day, and walked out to Highgate. Mrs. Steerforth was very glad to see me, and said that he had gone away with one of his Oxford friends to see another who lived near St. Albans, but that she expected him to return tomorrow. I was so fond of him, that I felt quite jealous of his Oxford friends.      4   
  As she pressed me to stay to dinner, I remained, and I believe we talked about nothing but him all day. I told her how much the people liked him at Yarmouth, and what a delightful companion he had been. Miss Dartle was full of hints and mysterious questions, but took a great interest in all our proceedings there, and said, “Was it really, though?” and so forth, so often, that she got everything out of me she wanted to know. Her appearance was exactly what I have described it, when I first saw her; but the society of the two ladies was so agreeable, and came so natural to me, that I felt myself falling a little in love with her. I could not help thinking, several times in the course of the evening, and particularly when I walked home at night, what delightful company she would be in Buckingham Street.      5   
  I was taking my coffee and roll in the morning, before going to the Commons—and I may observe in this place that it is surprising how much coffee Mrs. Crupp used, and how weak it was, considering—when Steerforth himself walked in, to my unbounded joy.      6   
  “My dear Steerforth,” cried I, “I began to think I should never see you again!”      7   
  “I was carried off by force of arms,” said Steerforth, “the very next morning after I got home. Why, Daisy, what a rare old bachelor you are here!”      8   
  I showed him over the establishment, not omitting the pantry, with no little pride, and he commended it highly. “I tell you what, old boy,” he added, “I shall make quite a town-house of this place, unless you give me notice to quit.”      9   
  This was a delightful hearing. I told him if he waited for that, he would have to wait till doomsday.     10   
  “But you shall have some breakfast!” said I, with my hand on the bell-rope, “and Mrs. Crupp shall make you some fresh coffee, and I’ll toast you some bacon in a bachelor’s Dutch-oven that I have got here.”     11   
  “No, no!” said Steerforth. “Don’t ring! I can’t! I am going to breakfast with one of these fellows who is at the Piazza Hotel, in Covent Garden.”     12   
  “But you’ll come back to dinner?” said I.     13   
  “I can’t, upon my life. There’s nothing I should like better, but I must remain with these two fellows. We are all three off together to-morrow morning.”     14   
  “Then bring them here to dinner,” I returned. “Do you think they would come?”     15   
  “Oh! they would come fast enough,” said Steerforth; “but we should inconvenience you. You had better come and dine with us somewhere.”     16   
  I would not by any means consent to this, for it occurred to me that I really ought to have a little house-warming, and that there never could be a better opportunity. I had a new pride in my rooms after his approval of them, and burned with a desire to develop their utmost resources. I therefore made him promise positively in the names of his two friends, and we appointed six o’clock as the dinner-hour.     17   
  When he was gone, I rang for Mrs. Crupp, and acquainted her with my desperate design. Mrs. Crupp said, in the first place, of course it was well known she couldn’t be expected to wait, but she knew a handy young man, who she thought could be prevailed upon to do it, and whose terms would be five shillings, and what I pleased. I said, certainly we would have him. Next, Mrs. Crupp said it was clear she couldn’t be in two places at once (which I felt to be reasonable), and that “a young gal” stationed in the pantry with a bedroom candle, there never to desist from washing plates, would be indispensable. I said, what would be the expense of this young female, and Mrs. Crupp said she supposed eighteen-pence would neither make me nor break me. I said I supposed not; and that was settled. Then Mrs. Crupp said, Now about the dinner.     18   
  It was a remarkable instance of want of forethought on the part of the ironmonger who had made Mrs. Crupp’s kitchen fireplace, that it was capable of cooking nothing but chops and mashed potatoes. As to a fish-kittle, Mrs. Crupp said, well! would I only come and look at the range? She couldn’t say fairer than that. Would I come and look at it? As I should not have been much the wiser if I had looked at it, I declined, and said, “Never mind fish.” But Mrs. Crupp said, Don’t say that; oysters was in, and why not them? So that was settled. Mrs. Crupp then said what she would recommend would be this. A pair of hot roast fowls—from the pastrycook’s; a dish of stewed beef, with vegetables—from the pastrycook’s; two little corner things, as a raised pie and a dish of kidneys—from the pastrycook’s; a tart, and (if I liked) a shape of jelly—from the pastrycook’s. This, Mrs. Crupp said, would leave her at full liberty to concentrate her mind on the potatoes, and to serve up the cheese and celery as she could wish to see it done.     19   
  I acted on Mrs. Crupp’s opinion, and gave the order at the pastrycook’s myself. Walking along the Strand, afterwards, and observing a hard mottled substance in the window of a ham and beef shop, which resembled marble, but was labelled “Mock Turtle,” I went in and bought a slab of it, which I have since seen reason to believe would have sufficed for fifteen people. This preparation, Mrs. Crupp, after some difficulty, consented to warm up; and it shrank so much in a liquid state, that we found it what Steerforth called “rather a tight fit” for four.     20   
  These preparations happily completed, I bought a little dessert in Covent Garden Market, and gave a rather extensive order at a retail wine-merchant’s in that vicinity. When I came home in the afternoon, and saw the bottles drawn up in a square on the pantry-floor, they looked so numberous (though there were two missing, which made Mrs. Crupp very uncomfortable), that I was absolutely frightened at them.     21   
  One of Steerforth’s friends was named Grainger, and the other Markham. They were both very gay and lively fellows; Grainger, something older than Steerforth; Markham, youthful-looking, and I should say not more than twenty. I observed that the latter always spoke of himself indefinitely, as “a man,” and seldom or never in the first person singular.     22   
  ‘A man might get on very well here, Mr. Copperfield,” said Markham—meaning himself.     23   
  “It’s not a bad situation,” said I, “and the rooms are really commodious.”     24   
  “I hope you have both brought appetites with you?” said Steerforth.     25   
  “Upon my honour,” returned Markham, “town seems to sharpen a man’s appetite. A man is hungry all day long. A man is perpetually eating.”     26   
  Being a little embarrassed at first, and feeling much too young to preside, I made Steerforth take the head of the table when dinner was announced, and seated myself opposite to him. Everything was very good; we did not spare the wine; and he exerted himself so brilliantly to make the thing pass off well, that there was no pause in our festivity. I was not quite such good company during dinner as I could have wished to be, for my chair was opposite the door, and my attention was distracted by observing that the handy young man went out of the room very often, and that his shadow always presented itself, immediately afterwards, on the wall of the entry, with a bottle at its mouth. The “young gal” likewise occasioned me some uneasiness: not so much by neglecting to wash the plates, as by breaking them. For being of an inquisitive disposition, and unable to confine herself (as her positive instructions were) to the pantry, she was constantly peering in at us, and constantly imagining herself detected; in which belief, she several times retired upon the plates (with which she had carefully paved the floor), and did a great deal of destruction.     27   
  These, however, were small drawbacks, and easily forgotten when the cloth was cleared, and the dessert put on the table; at which period of the entertainment the handy young man was discovered to be speechless. Giving him private directions to seek the society of Mrs. Crupp, and to remove the “young gal” to the basement also, I abandoned myself to enjoyment.     28   
  I began, by being singularly cheerful and lighted-hearted; all sorts of half-forgotten things to talk about, came rushing into my mind, and made me hold forth in a most unwonted manner. I laughed heartily at my own jokes, and everybody else’s; called Steerforth to order for not passing the wine; made several engagements to go to Oxford; announced that I meant to have a dinner-party exactly like that, once a week until further notice; and madly took so much snuff out of Grainger’s box, that I was obliged to go into the pantry, and have a private fit of sneezing ten minutes long.     29   
  I went on, by passing the wine faster and faster yet, and continually starting up with a corkscrew to open more wine, long before any was needed. I proposed Steerforth’s health. I said he was my dearest friend, the protector of my boyhood, and the companion of my prime. I said I was delighted to propose his health. I said I owed him more obligations that I could ever repay, and held him in a higher admiration than I could ever express. I finished by saying, “I’ll give you Steerforth! God bless him! Hurrah!” We have him three times three, and another, and a good one to finish with. I broke my glass in going round the table to shake hands with him, and I said (in two words) “Steerforth you’re the guiding star of my existence.”

  I went on, by finding suddenly that somebody was in the middle of a song. Markham was the singer, and he sang “When the heart of a man is depressed with care.” He said, when he had sung it, he would give us “Woman!” I took objection to that, and I couldn’t allow it. I said it was not a respectful way of proposing the toast, and I would never permit that toast to be drunk in my house otherwise than as “The Ladies!” I was very high with him, mainly I think because I saw Steerforth and Grainger laughing at me—or at him—or at both of us. He said a man was not to be dictated to. I said a man was. He said a man was not to be insulted, then. I said he was right there—never under my roof, where the Lares were sacred, and the laws of hospitality paramount. He said it was no derogation from a man’s dignity to confess that I was a devilish good fellow. I instantly proposed his health.     31   
  Somebody was smoking. We were all smoking. I was smoking, and trying to suppress a rising tendency to shudder. Steerforth had made a speech about me, in the course of which I had been affected almost to tears. I returned thanks and hoped the present company would dine with me to-morrow, and the day after—each day at five o’clock, that we might enjoy the pleasures of conversation and society through a long evening. I felt called upon to propose an individual. I would give them by aunt. Miss Betsey Trotwood, the best of her sex!     32   
  Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as “Copperfield,” and saying, “Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t do it.” Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair—only my hair, nothing else—looked drunk.     33   
  Somebody said to me, “Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!” There was no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table covered with glasses; the lamp; Grainger on my right hand, Markham on my left, and Steerforth opposite—all sitting in a mist, and a long way off. The theatre? To be sure. The very thing. Come along! But they must excuse me if I saw everybody out first, and turned the lamp off—in case of fire.     34   
  Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing, took me by the arm and led me out. We went down-stairs, one behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down. Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to think there might be some foundation for it.     35   
  A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the streets! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamppost, and put my hat into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a most extraordinary manner, for I hadn’t had it on before. Steerforth then said, “You are all right, Copperfield, are you not?” and I told him, “Neverberrer.”     36   
  A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole place, looked out of the fog, and took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the gentlemen paid for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember in the glimpse I had of him) whether to take the money for me or not. Shortly afterwards, we were very high up in a very hot theatre, looking down into a large pit, that seemed to me to smoke; the people with whom it was crammed were so indistinct. There was a great stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after the streets; and there were people upon it, talking about something or other, but not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance of bright lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in the boxes, and I don’t know what more. The whole building looked to me, as if it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an unaccountable manner, when I tried to steady it.     37   
  On somebody’s motion, we resolved to go down-stairs to the dress-boxes, where the ladies were. A gentleman lounging, full dressed, on a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, passed before my view, and also my own figure at full length in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of these boxes, and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people about me crying “Silence!” to somebody, and ladies casting indignant glances at me, and—what! yes!—Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside her, whom I didn’t know. I see her face now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its indelible look of regret and wonder turned upon me.     38   
  “Agnes!” I said, thickly, “Lorblessmer! Agnes!”     39   
  “Hush! Pray!” she answered, I could not conceive why. “You disturb the company. Look at the stage!”     40   
  I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something of what was going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at her again by-and-by, and saw her shrink into her corner, and put her gloved hand to her forehead.     41   
  “Agnes!” I said. “I’m afraid you’re nor well.”     42   
  “Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood,” she returned. “Listen! Are you going away soon?”     43   
  “Amigoarawaysoo?” I repeated.     44   
  “Yes.”     45   
  I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait, to hand her down-stairs. I suppose I expressed it, somehow; for, after she had looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared to understand, and replied in a low tone: “I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest in it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you home.”     46   
  She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I was angry with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short “Goori!” (which I intended for “Good night”) got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the box-door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling him that Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine.     47   
  How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over again, at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night—the bed a rocking sea that was never still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!     48   
  But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt, when I became conscious next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate—my recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me—the torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, beast that I was, how she came to be in London, or where she stayed—my disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been held—my racking head—the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of going out, or even getting up! Oh, what a day it was!     49   
  Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story as well as to his chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal all! What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire remains of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen breast, and say, in heartfelt penitence, “Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp, never mind the broken meats! I am very miserable!”—only that I doubted, even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide in!

XXV. Good and Bad Angels   
     
I WAS going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming up-stairs, with a letter in his hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; but when he saw me on the top of the staircase, looking at him over the banisters, he swung into a trot, and came up panting as if he had run himself into a state of exhaustion.      1   
  “T. Copperfield, Esquire,” said the ticket-porter, touching his hat with his little cane.      2   
  I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the conviction that the letter came from Agnes. However, I told him I was T. Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the letter, which he said required an answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for the answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous state that I was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast-table, and familiarise myself with the outside of it a little, before I could resolve to break the seal.      3   
  I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note, containing no reference to my condition at the theatre. All it said was, “My dear Trotwood. I am staying at the house of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in Ely Place, Holborn. Will you come and see me to-day, at any time you like to appoint? Ever yours affectionately, AGNES.”      4   
  It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my satisfaction, that I don’t know what the ticket-porter can have thought, unless he thought I was learning to write. I must have written half a dozen answers at least. I began one, “How can I ever hope, my dear Agnes, to efface from your remembrance the disgusting impression”—there I didn’t like it, and then I tore it up. I began another, “Shakspeare has observed, my dear Agnes, how strange it is that a man should put an enemy into his mouth”—that reminded me of Markham, and it got no farther. I even tried poetry. I began one note, in a six-syllable line, “Oh, do not remember”—but that associated itself with the Fifth of November, and became an absurdity. After many attempts, I wrote, “My dear Agnes. Your letter is like you, and what could I say of it that would be higher praise than that? I will come at four o’clock. Affectionately and sorrowfully, T. C.” With this missive (which I was in twenty minds at once about recalling, as soon at it was out of my hands), the ticket-porter at last departed.      5   
  If the day were half as tremendous to any other professional gentleman in Doctors’ Commons as it was to me, I sincerely believe he made some expiation for his share in that rotten old ecclesiastical cheese. Although I left the office at half-past three, and was prowling about the place of appointment within a few minutes afterwards, the appointed time was exceeded by a full quarter of an hour, according to the clock of St. Andrew’s, Holborn, before I could muster up sufficient desperation to pull the private bell-handle let into the left-hand door-post of Mr. Waterbrook’s house.      6   
  The professional business of Mr. Waterbrook’s establishment was done on the ground floor, and the genteel business (of which there was a good deal) in the upper part of the building. I was shown into a pretty but rather close drawing-room, and there sat Agnes, netting a purse.      7   
  She looked so quiet and good, and reminded me so strongly of my airy fresh school days at Canterbury, and the sodden, smoky, stupid wretch I had been the other night, that, nobody being by, I yielded to my self-reproach and shame, and—in short, made a fool of myself. I cannot deny that I shed tears. To this hour I am undecided whether it was upon the whole the wisest thing I could have done, or the most ridiculous.      8   
  “If it had been any one but you, Agnes,” said I turning away my head, “I should not have minded it half so much. But that it should have been you who saw me! I almost wish I had been dead, first.”      9   
  She put her hand—its touch was like no other hand—upon my arm for a moment; and I felt so befriended and comforted, that I could not help moving it to my lips, and gratefully kissing it.     10   
  “Sit down,” said Agnes, cheerfully. “Don’t be unhappy, Trotwood. If you cannot confidently trust me, whom will you trust?”     11   
  “Ah, Agnes!” I returned. “You are my good Angel!”     12   
  She smiled rather sadly, I thought, and shook her head.     13   
  “Yes, Agnes, my good Angel! Always my good Angel!”     14   
  “If I were, indeed, Trotwood,” she returned, “there is one thing that I should set my heart on very much.”     15   
  I looked at her inquiringly; but already with a foreknowledge of her meaning.     16   
  “On warning you,” said Agnes, with a steady glance, “against your bad Angel.”     17   
  “My dear Agnes,” I began, “if you mean Steerforth——”     18   
  “I do, Trotwood,” she returned.     19   
  “Then, Agnes, you wrong him very much. He my bad Angel, or anyone’s! He, anything but a guide, a support, and a friend to me! My dear Agnes! Now, is it not unjust, and unlike you, to judge him from what you saw of me the other night?”     20   
  “I do not judge him from what I saw of you the other night,” she quietly replied.     21   
  “From what, then?”     22   
  “From many things—trifles in themselves, but they do not seem to me to be so, when they are put together. I judge him, partly from your account of him, Trotwood, and your character, and the influence he has over you.”     23   
  There was always something in her modest voice that seemed to touch a chord within me, answering to that sound alone. It was always earnest; but when it was very earnest, as it was now, there was a thrill in it that quite subdued me. I sat looking at her as she cast her eyes down on her work; I sat seeming still to listen to her; and Steerforth, in spite of all my attachment to him, darkened in that tone.     24   
  “It is very bold in me,” said Agnes, looking up again, “who have lived in such seclusion, and can know so little of the world, to give you my advice so confidently, or even to have this strong opinion. But I know in what it is engendered, Trotwood,—in how true a remembrance of our having grown up together, and in how true an interest in all relating to you. It is that which makes me bold. I am certain that what I say is right. I am quite sure it is. I feel as if it were some one else speaking to you, and not I, when I caution you that you have made a dangerous friend.”     25   
  Again I looked at her, again I listened to her after she was silent, and again his image, though it was still fixed in my heart, darkened.     26   
  “I am not so unreasonable as to expect,” said Agnes, resuming her usual tone, after a little while, “that you will, or that you can, at once, change any sentiment that has become a conviction to you; least of all a sentiment that is rooted in your trusting disposition. You ought not hastily to do that. I only ask you, Trotwood, if you ever think of me—I mean,” with a quiet smile, for I was going to interrupt her and she knew why, “as often as you think of me—to think of what I have said. Do you forgive me for all this?”     27   
  “I will forgive you, Agnes,” I replied, “when you come to do Steerforth justice, and to like him as well as I do.”     28   
  “Not until then?” said Agnes.     29   
  I saw a passing shadow on her face when I made this mention of him, but she returned my smile, and we were again as unreserved in our mutual confidence as of old.     30   
  “And when, Agnes,” said I, “will you forgive me the other night?”     31   
  “When I recall it,” said Agnes.     32   
  She would have dismissed the subject so, but I was too full of it to allow that, and insisted on telling her how it happened that I had disgraced myself, and what chain of accidental circumstances had had the theatre for its final link. It was a great relief to me to do this, and to enlarge on the obligation that I owed to Steerforth for his care of me when I was unable to take care of myself.     33   
  “You must not forget,” said Agnes, calmly changing the conversation as soon as I had concluded, “that you are always to tell me, not only when you fall into trouble, but when you fall in love. Who has succeeded to Miss Larkins, Trotwood?”     34   
  “No one, Agnes.”     35   
  “Some one, Trotwood,” said Agnes, laughing, and holding up her finger.     36   
  “No, Agnes, upon my word! There is a lady, certainly, at Mrs. Steerforth’s house, who is very clever, and whom I like to talk to—Miss Dartle—but I don’t adore her.”     37   
  Agnes laughed again at her own penetration, and told me that if I were faithful to her in my confidence she thought she could keep a little register of my violent attachments, with the date, duration, and termination of each, like the table of the reigns of the kings and queens, in the History of England. Then she asked me if I had seen Uriah.     38   
  “Uriah Heep?” said I. “No. Is he in London?”’     39   
  “He comes to the office down-stairs, every day,” returned Agnes. “He was in London a week before me. I am afraid on disagreeable business, Trotwood.”     40   
  “On some business that makes you uneasy, Agnes, I see,” said I. “What can that be?”     41   
  Agnes laid aside her work, and replied, folding her hands upon one another, and looking pensively at me out of those beautiful soft eyes of hers:     42   
  “I believe he is going to enter into partnership with papa.”     43   
  “What? Uriah? That mean, fawning fellow, worm himself into such promotion!” I cried, indignantly. “Have you made no remonstrance about it, Agnes? Consider what a connexion it is likely to be. You must speak out. You must not allow your father to take such a mad step. You must prevent it, Agnes, while there’s time.”     44   
  Still looking at me, Agnes shook her head while I was speaking, with a faint smile at my warmth: and then replied:     45   
  “You remember our last conversation about papa? It was not long after that—not more than two or three days—when he gave me the first intimation of what I tell you. It was sad to see him struggling between his desire to represent it to me as a matter of choice on his part, and his inability to conceal that it was forced upon him. I felt very sorry.”     46   
  “Forced upon him, Agnes! Who forces it upon him?”     47   
  “Uriah,” she replied, after a moment’s hesitation, “has made himself indispensable to papa. He is subtle and watchful. He has mastered papa’s weaknesses, fostered them, and taken advantage of them, until—to say all that I mean in a word, Trotwood—until papa is afraid of him.”

 There was more that she might have said; more that she knew, or that she suspected; I clearly saw. I could not give her pain by asking what it was, for I knew that she withheld it from me, to spare her father. It had long been going on to this, I was sensible: yes, I could not but feel, on the least reflection, that it had been going on to this for a long time. I remained silent.     49   
  “His ascendancy over papa,” said Agnes, “is very great. He professes humility and gratitude—with truth, perhaps: I hope so—but his position is really one of power, and I fear he makes a hard use of his power.”     50   
  I said he was a hound, which, at the moment, was a great satisfaction to me.     51   
  “At the time I speak of, as the time when papa spoke to me,” pursued Agues, “he had told papa that he was going away; that he was very sorry, and unwilling to leave, but that he had better prospects. Papa was very much depressed then, and more bowed down by care than ever you or I have seen him; but he seemed relieved by this expedient of the partnership, though at the same time he seemed hurt by it and ashamed of it.”     52   
  “And how did you receive it, Agnes?”     53   
  “I did, Trotwood,” she replied, “what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to make it. I said it would lighten the load of his life—I hope it will!—and that it would give me increased opportunities of being his companion. Oh, Trotwood!” cried Agnes, putting her hands before her face, as her tears started on it, “I almost feel as if I had been papa’s enemy, instead of his loving child. For I know how he has altered, in his devotion to me. I know how he has narrowed the circle of his sympathies and duties, in the concentration of his whole mind upon me. I know what multitude of things he has shut out for my sake, and how his anxious thoughts of me have shadowed his life, and weakened his strength and energy, by turning them always upon one idea. If I could ever set this right! If I could ever work out his restoration, as I have so innocently been the cause of his decline!”     54   
  I had never before seen Agnes cry. I had seen tears in her eyes when I had brought new honours home from school, and I had seen them there when we last spoke about her father, and I had seen her turn her gentle head aside when we took leave of one another; but I had never seen her grieve like this. It made me so sorry that I could only say, in a foolish, helpless manner, “Pray, Agnes, don’t! Don’t, my dear sister!”     55   
  But Agnes was too superior to me in character and purpose, as I know well now, whatever I might know or not know then, to be long in need of my entreaties. The beautiful, calm manner, which makes her so different in my remembrance from everybody else, came back again, as if a cloud had passed from a serene sky.     56   
  “We are not likely to remain alone much longer,” said Agnes, “and while I have an opportunity, let me earnestly entreat you, Trotwood, to be friendly to Uriah. Don’t repel him. Don’t resent (as I think you have a general disposition to do) what may be uncongenial to you in him. He may not deserve it, for we know no certain ill of him. In any case, think first of papa and me!”     57   
  Agnes had no time to say more, for the room-door opened, and Mrs. Waterbrook, who was a large lady—or who wore a large dress: I don’t exactly know which, for I don’t know which was dress and which was lady—came sailing in. I had a dim recollection of having seen her at the theatre, as if I had seen her in a pale magic-lantern; but she appeared to remember me perfectly, and still to suspect me of being in a state of intoxication.     58   
  Finding by degrees, however, that I was sober, and (I hope) that I was a modest young gentleman, Mrs. Waterbrook softened towards me considerably, and inquired, firstly, if I went much into the parks, and secondly, if I went much into society. On my replying to both these questions in the negative, it occurred to me that I fell again in her good opinion; but she concealed the fact gracefully, and invited me to dinner next day. I accepted the invitation, and took my leave, making a call on Uriah in the office as I went out, and leaving a card for him in his absence.     59   
  When I went to dinner next day, and, on the street-door being opened, plunged into a vapour-bath of haunch of mutton, I divined that I was not the only guest, for I immediately identified the ticket-porter in disguise, assisting the family servant, and waiting at the foot of the stairs to carry up my name. He looked, to the best of his ability, when he asked me for it confidentially, as if he had never seen me before; but well did I know him, and well did he know me. Conscience made cowards of us both.     60   
  I found Mr. Waterbrook to be a middle-aged gentleman, with a short throat, and a good deal of shirt collar, who only wanted a black nose to be the portrait of a pug-dog. He told me he was happy to have the honour of making my acquaintance; and when I had paid my homage to Mrs. Waterbrook, presented me, with much ceremony, to a very awful lady in a black velvet dress, and a great black velvet hat, whom I remember as looking like a near relation of Hamlet’s—say his aunt.     61   
  Mrs. Henry Spiker was this lady’s name; and her husband was there too: so cold a man, that his head, instead of being grey, seemed to be sprinkled with hoar-frost. Immense deference was shown to the Henry Spikers, male and female; which Agnes told me was on account of Mr. Henry Spiker being solicitor to something or to somebody. I forget what or which, remotely connected with the Treasury.     62   
  I found Uriah Heep among the company, in a suit of black, and in deep humility. He told me, when I shook hands with him, that he was proud to be noticed by me, and that he really felt obliged to me for my condescension. I could have wished he had been less obliged to me, for he hovered about me in his gratitude all the rest of the evening; and whenever I said a word to Agnes, was sure, with his shadowless eyes and cadaverous face, to be looking gauntly down upon us from behind.     63   
  There were other guests—all iced for the occasion, as it struck me, like the wine. But, there was one who attracted my attention before he came in, on account of my hearing him announced as Mr. Traddles! My mind flew back to Salem House; and could it be Tommy, I thought, who used to draw the skeletons!     64   
  I looked for Mr. Traddles with unusual interest. He was a sober, steady-looking young man of retiring manners, with a comic head of hair, and eyes that were rather wide open; and he got into an obscure corner so soon, that I had some difficulty in making him out. At length I had a good view of him, and either my vision deceived me, or it was the old unfortunate Tommy.     65   
  I made my way to Mr. Waterbrook, and said, that I believed I had the pleasure of seeing an old schoolfellow there.     66   
  “Indeed?” said Mr. Waterbrook, surprised. “You are too young to have been at school with Mr. Henry Spiker?”     67   
  “Oh, I don’t mean him!” I returned. “I mean the gentleman named Traddles.”     68   
  “Oh! Ay, ay! Indeed!” said my host, with much diminished interest. “Possibly.”     69   
  “If it’s really the same person,” said I, glancing towards him, “it was at a place called Salem House where we were together, and he was an excellent fellow.”     70   
  “Oh yes. Traddles is a good fellow,” returned my host, nodding his head with an air of toleration. “Traddles is quite a good fellow.”     71   
  “It’s a curious coincidence,” said I.     72   
  “It is really,” returned my host, “quite a coincidence, that Traddles should be here at all: as Traddles was only invited this morning, when the place at table, intended to be occupied by Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, became vacant, in consequence of his indisposition. A very gentlemanly man, Mrs. Henry Spiker’s brother, Mr. Copperfield.”     73   
  I murmured an assent, which was full of feeling, considering that I knew nothing at all about him; and I inquired what Mr. Traddles was by profession.     74   
  “Traddles,” returned Mr. Waterbrook, “is a young man reading for the bar. Yes. He is quite a good fellow—nobody’s enemy but his own.”     75   
  “Is he his own enemy?” said I, sorry to hear this.     76   
  “Well,” returned Mr. Waterbrook, pursing up his mouth, and playing with his watch-chain, in a comfortable, prosperous sort of way. “I should say he was one of those men who stand in their own light. Yes, I should say he would never, for example, be worth five hundred pound. Traddles was recommended to me, by a professional friend. Oh yes. Yes. He has a kind of talent, for drawing briefs, and stating a case in writing, plainly. I am able to throw something in Traddles’s way, in the course of the year; something—for him—considerable. Oh yes. Yes.”     77   
  I was much impressed by the extremely comfortable and satisfied manner in which Mr. Waterbrook delivered himself of this little word “Yes,” every now and then. There was wonderful expression in it. It completely conveyed the idea of a man who had been born, not to say with a silver spoon, but with a scaling-ladder, and had gone on mounting all the heights of life one after another, until now he looked, from the top of the fortifications, with the eye of a philosopher and a patron, on the people down in the trenches.     78   
  My reflections on this theme were still in progress when dinner was announced. Mr. Waterbrook went down with Hamlet’s aunt. Mr. Henry Spiker took Mrs. Waterbrook. Agnes, whom I should have liked to take myself, was given to a simpering fellow with weak legs, Uriah, Traddles, and I, as the junior part of the company, went down last, how we could. I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour: while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters.     79   
  Traddles and I were separated at table, being billeted in two remote corners: he in the glare of a red velvet lady; I, in the gloom of Hamlet’s aunt. The dinner was very long, and the conversation was about the Aristocracy—and Blood. Mrs. Waterbrook repeatedly told us, that if she had a weakness, it was Blood.     80   
  It occurred to me several times that we should have got on better, if we had not been quite so genteel. We were so exceedingly genteel, that our scope was very limited. A Mr. and Mrs. Gulpidge were of the party, who had something to do at second-hand (at least, Mr. Gulpidge had), with the law business of the Bank; and what with the Bank, and what with the Treasury, we were as exclusive as the Court Circular. To mend the matter, Hamlet’s aunt had the family failing of indulging in soliloquy, and held forth in a desultory manner, by herself, on every topic that was introduced. These were few enough, to be sure; but as we always fell back upon Blood, she had as wide a field for abstract speculation as her nephew himself.     81   
  We might have been a party of ogres, the conversation assumed such a sanguine complexion.     82   
  “I confess I am of Mrs. Waterbrook’s opinion,” said Mr. Waterbrook, with his wine-glass at his eye. “Other things are all very well in their way, but give me Blood!”     83   
  “Oh! There is nothing,” observed Hamlet’s aunt, “so satisfactory to one! There is nothing that is so much one’s beau-idéal of—of all that sort of thing, speaking generally. There are some low minds (not many, I am happy to believe, but there are some) that would prefer to do what I should call bow down before idols. Positively idols! Before services, intellect, and so on. But these are intangible points. Blood is not so. We see Blood in a nose, and we know it. We meet with it in a chin, and we say, ‘There it is! That’s Blood!’ It is an actual matter of fact. We point it out. It admits of no doubt.”     84   
  The simpering fellow with the weak legs, who had taken Agnes down, stated the question more decisively yet, I thought.     85   
  “Oh, you know, deuce take it,” said this gentleman, looking round the board with an imbecile smile, “we can’t forego Blood, you know. We must have Blood, you know. Some young fellows, you know, may be a little behind their station, perhaps, in point of education and behaviour, and may go a little wrong, you know, and get themselves and other people into a variety of fixes—and all that—but deuce take it, it’s delightful to reflect that they’ve got Blood in ’em! Myself, I’d rather at any time be knocked down by a man who had got Blood in him, than I’d be picked up by a man who hadn’t!”     86   
  This sentiment, as compressing the general question into a nutshell, gave the utmost satisfaction, and brought the gentleman into great notice until the ladies retired. After that, I observed that Mr. Gulpidge and Mr. Henry Spiker, who had hitherto been very distant, entered into a defensive alliance against us, the common enemy, and exchanged a mysterious dialogue across the table for our defeat and overthrow.     87   
  “That affair of the first bond for four thousand five hundred pounds has not taken the course that was expected, Gulpidge,” said Mr. Henry Spiker.     88   
  “Do you mean the D. of A.’s?” said Mr. Spiker.     89   
  “The C. of B.’s?” said Mr. Gulpidge.     90   
  Mr. Spiker raised his eyebrows, and looked much concerned.     91   
  “When the question was referred to Lord—I needn’t name him,” said Mr. Gulpidge, checking himself—     92   
  “I understand,” said Mr. Spiker, “N.”     93   
  Mr. Gulpidge darkly nodded—“was referred to him, his answer was, ‘Money, or no release.’ ”     94   
  “Lord bless my soul!” cried Mr. Spiker.     95   
  “Money, or no release,” repeated Mr. Gulpidge firmly.     96   
  “The next in reversion—you understand me?”     97   
  “K.,” said Mr. Spiker, with an ominous look.     98   
  “—K. then positively refused to sign. He was attended at Newmarket for that purpose, and he point-blank refused to do it.”     99   
  Mr. Spiker was so interested, that he became quite stony.    100   
  “So the matter rests at this hour,” said Mr. Gulpidge, throwing himself back in his chair. “Our friend Waterbrook will excuse me if I forbear to explain myself generally, on account of the magnitude of the interests involved.”    101   
  Mr. Waterbrook was only too happy, as it appeared to me, to have such interests, and such names, even hinted at, across his table. He assumed an expression of gloomy intelligence (though I am persuaded he knew no more about the discussion than I did), and highly approved of the discretion that had been observed. Mr. Spiker, after the receipt of such a confidence, naturally desired to favour his friend with a confidence of his own; therefore the foregoing dialogue was succeeded by another, in which it was Mr. Gulpidge’s turn to be surprised, and that by another in which the surprise came round to Mr. Spiker’s turn again, and so on, turn and turn about. All this time we, the outsiders, remained oppressed by the tremendous interests involved in the conversation; and our host regarded us with pride, as the victims of a salutary awe and astonishment.

 I was very glad indeed to get up-stairs to Agnes, and to talk with her in a corner, and to introduce Traddles to her, who was shy, but agreeable, and the same good-natured creature still. As he was obliged to leave early, on account of going away next morning for a month, I had not nearly so much conversation with him as I could have wished; but we exchanged addresses, and promised ourselves the pleasure of another meeting when he should come back to town. He was greatly interested to hear that I knew Steerforth, and spoke of him with such warmth that I made him tell Agnes what he thought of him. But Agnes only looked at me the while, and very slightly shook her head when only I observed her.    103   
  As she was not among people with whom I believed she could be very much at home, I was almost glad to hear that she was going away within a few days, though I was sorry at the prospect of parting from her again so soon. This caused me to remain until all the company were gone. Conversing with her, and hearing her sing, was such a delightful reminder to me of my happy life in the grave old house she had made so beautiful, that I could have remained there half the night; but, having no excuse for staying any longer, when the lights of Mr. Waterbrook’s society were all snuffed out, I took my leave very much against my inclination. I felt then, more than ever, that she was my better Angel; and if I thought of her sweet face and placid smile, as though they had shone on me from some removed being, like an Angel, I hope I thought no harm.    104   
  I have said that the company were all gone; but I ought to have excepted Uriah, whom I don’t include in that denomination, and who had never ceased to hover near us. He was close behind me when I went down-stairs. He was close beside me, when I walked away from the house, slowly fitting his long skeleton fingers into the still longer fingers of a great Guy Fawkes pair of gloves.    105   
  It was in no disposition for Uriah’s company, but in remembrance of the entreaty Agnes had made to me, that I asked him if he would come home to my rooms and have some coffee.    106   
  “Oh, really, Master Copperfield,” he rejoined,—“I beg your pardon, Mister Copperfield, but the other comes so natural,—I don’t like that you should put a constraint upon yourself to ask an umble person like me to your ouse.”    107   
  “There is no constraint in the case,” said I. “Will you come?”    108   
  “I should like to, very much,” replied Uriah, with a writhe.    109   
  “Well, then, come along!” said I.    110   
  I could not help being rather short with him, but he appeared not to mind it. We went the nearest way, without conversing much upon the road; and he was so humble in respect of those scarecrow gloves, that he was still putting them on, and seemed to have made no advance on that labour, when we got to my place.    111   
  I led him up the dark stairs, to prevent his knocking his head against anything, and really his damp cold hand felt so like a frog in mine, that I was tempted to drop it and run away. Agnes and hospitality prevailed, however, and I conducted him to my fireside. When I lighted my candles, he fell into meek transports with the room that was revealed to him; and when I heated the coffee in an unassuming block-tin vessel in which Mrs. Crupp delighted to prepare it (chiefly, I believe, because it was not intended for the purpose, being a shaving-pot, and because there was a patent invention of great price mouldering away in the pantry), he professed so much emotion, that I could joyfully have scalded him.    112   
  “Oh, really, Master Copperfield,—I mean Mister Copperfield,” said Uriah, “to see you waiting upon me is what I never could have expected! But, one way and another so many things happen to me which I never could have expected, I am sure, in my umble station, that it seems to rain blessings on my ed. You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield,—I should say, Mister Copperfield?”    113   
  As he sat on my sofa, with his long knees drawn up under his coffee-cup, his hat and gloves upon the ground close to him, his spoon going softly round and round, his shadowless red eyes, which looked as if they had scorched their lashes off, turned towards me without looking at me, the disagreeable dints I have formerly described in his nostrils coming and going with his breath, and a snaky undulation pervading his frame from his chin to his boots, I decided in my own mind that I disliked him intensely. It made me very uncomfortable to have him for a guest, for I was young then, and unused to disguise what I so strongly felt.    114   
  “You have heard something, I des-say, of a change in my expectations, Master Copperfield—I should say, Mister Copperfield?” observed Uriah.    115   
  “Yes,” said I, “something.”    116   
  “Ah! I thought Miss Agnes would know of it!” he quietly returned. “I’m glad to find Miss Agnes knows of it. Oh, thank you, Master—Mister Copperfield!”    117   
  I could have thrown my bootjack at him (it lay ready on the rug), for having entrapped me into the disclosure of anything concerning Agnes, however immaterial. But I only drank my coffee.    118   
  “What a prophet you have shown yourself, Mister Copperfield!” pursued Uriah. “Dear me, what a prophet you have proved yourself to be! Don’t you remember saying to me once, that perhaps I should be a partner in Mr. Wickfield’s business, and perhaps it might be Wickfield and Heep? You may not recollect it; but when a person is umble, Master Copperfield, a person treasures such things up!”    119   
  “I recollect talking about it,” said I, “though I certainly did not think it very likely then.”    120   
  “Oh! who would have thought it likely, Mister Copperfield!” returned Uriah, enthusiastically. “I am sure I didn’t myself. I recollect saying with my own lips that I was much too umble. So I considered myself really and truly.”    121   
  He sat, with that carved grin on his face, looking at the fire as I looked at him.    122   
  “But the umblest persons, Master Copperfield,” he presently resumed, “may be the 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, Mister Copperfield, but how imprudent he has been!”    123   
  “I am sorry to hear it,” said I. I could not help adding rather pointedly, “on all accounts.”    124   
  “Decidedly so, Mister Copperfield,” replied Uriah. “On all accounts. Miss Agnes’s above all! You don’t remember your own eloquent expressions, Master Copperfield; but I remember how you said one day that everybody must admire her, and how I thanked you for it! You have forgot that I have no doubt, Master Copperfield?”    125   
  “No,” said I, drily.    126   
  “Oh how glad I am, you have not!” exclaimed Uriah. “To think that you should be the first to kindle the sparks of ambition in my umble breast, and that you’ve not forgot it! Oh!—Would you excuse me asking for a cup more coffee?”    127   
  Something in the emphasis he laid upon the kindling of those sparks, and something in the glance he directed at me as he said it, had made me start as if I had seen him illuminated by a blaze of light. Recalled by his request, preferred in quite another tone of voice, I did the honours of the shaving-pot; but I did them with an unsteadiness of hand, a sudden sense of being no match for him, and a perplexed suspicious anxiety as to what he might be going to say next, which I felt could not escape his observation.    128   
  He said nothing at all. He stirred his coffee round and round, he sipped it, he felt his chin softly with his grisly hand, he looked at the fire, he looked about the room, he gasped rather than smiled at me, he writhed and undulated about, in his deferential servility, he stirred and sipped again, but he left the renewal of the conversation to me.    129   
  “So, Mr. Wickfield,” said I, at last, “who is worth five hundred of you—or me;” for my life, I think, I could not have helped dividing that part of the sentence with an awkward jerk; “has been imprudent, has he, Mr. Heep?”    130   
  “Oh, very imprudent indeed, Master Copperfield,” returned Uriah, sighing modestly. “Oh very much so! But I wish you’d call me Uriah, if you please. It’s like old times.”    131   
  “Well! Uriah,” said I, bolting it out with some difficulty.    132   
  “Thank you!” he returned, with fervour. “Thank you, Master Copperfield! It’s like the blowing of old breezes or the ringing of old bellses to hear you say Uriah. I beg your pardon. Was I making any observation?”    133   
  “About Mr. Wickfield,” I suggested.    134   
  “Oh! Yes, truly,” said Uriah. “Ah! Great imprudence, Master Copperfield. It’s a topic that I wouldn’t touch upon, to any soul but you. Even to you I can only touch upon it, and no more. If any one else had been in my place during the last few years, by this time he would have had Mr. Wickfield (oh, what a worthy man he is, Master Copperfield, too!) under his thumb. Un—der—his thumb,” said Uriah, very slowly, as he stretched out his cruel-looking hand above my table, and pressed his own thumb down upon it, until it shook, and shook the room.    135   
  If I had been obliged to look at him with his splay foot on Mr. Wickfield’s head, I think I could scarcely have hated him more.    136   
  “Oh dear, yes, Master Copperfield,” he proceeded, in a soft voice, most remarkably contrasting with the action of his thumb, which did not diminish its hard pressure in the least degree, “there’s no doubt of it. There would have been loss, disgrace, I don’t know what all. Mr. Wickfield knows it. I am the umble instrument of umbly serving him, and he puts me on an eminence I hardly could have hoped to reach. How thankful should I be!” With his face turned towards me, as he finished, but without looking at me, he took his crooked thumb off the spot where he had planted it, and slowly and thoughtfully scraped his lank jaw with it, as if he were shaving himself.    137   
  I recollect well how indignantly my heart beat, as I saw his crafty face, with the appropriately red light of the fire upon it, preparing for something else.    138   
  “Master Copperfield,” he began—“but am I keeping you up?”    139   
  “You are not keeping me up. I generally go to bed late.”    140   
  “Thank you, Master Copperfield! I have risen from my umble station since first you used to address me, it is true; but I am umble still. I hope I never shall be otherwise than umble. You will not think the worse of my umbleness, if I make a little confidence to you, Master Copperfield? Will you?”    141   
  “Oh no,” said I, with an effort.    142   
  “Thank you!” He took out his pocket-handkerchief, and began wiping the palms of his hands. “Miss Agnes, Master Copperfield——”    143   
  “Well, Uriah?”    144   
  “Oh, how pleasant to be called Uriah, spontaneously!” he cried; and gave himself a jerk, like a convulsive fish. “You thought her looking very beautiful to-night, Master Copperfield?”    145   
  “I thought her looking as she always does: superior, in all respects, to every one around her,” I returned.    146   
  “Oh, thank you! It’s so true!” he cried. “Oh, thank you very much for that!”    147   
  “Not at all,” I said, loftily. “There is no reason why you should thank me.”    148   
  “Why that, Master Copperfield,” said Uriah, “is, in fact, the confidence that I am going to take the liberty of reposing. Umble as I am,” he wiped his hands harder, and looked at them and at the fire by turns, “umble as my mother is, and lowly as our poor but honest roof has ever been, the image of Miss Agnes (I don’t mind trusting you with my secret, Master Copperfield, for I have always overflowed towards you since the first moment I had the pleasure of beholding you in a pony-shay) has been in my breast for years. Oh, Master Copperfield, with what a pure affection do I love the ground my Agnes walks on!”    149   
  I believe I had a delirious idea of seizing the red-hot poker out of the fire, and running him through with it. It went from me with a shock, like a ball fired from a rifle: but the image of Agnes, outraged by so much as a thought of this red-headed animal’s, remained in my mind when I looked at him, sitting all awry as if his mean soul griped his body, and made me giddy. He seemed to swell and grow before my eyes; the room seemed full of the echoes of his voice; and the strange feeling (to which, perhaps, no one is quite a stranger) that all this had occurred before, at some indefinite time, and that I knew what he was going to say next, took possession of me.

  A timely observation of the sense of power that there was in his face, did more to bring back to my remembrance the entreaty of Agnes, in its full force, than any effort I could have made. I asked him, with a better appearance of composure than I could have thought possible a minute before, whether he had made his feelings known to Agnes.    151   
  “Oh, no, Master Copperfield!” he returned; “oh dear, no! Not to anyone but you. You see I am only just emerging from my lowly station. I rest a good deal of hope on her observing how useful I am to her father (for I trust to be very useful to him indeed, Master Copperfield), and how I smooth the way for him, and keep him straight. She’s so much attached to her father, Master Copperfield (oh what a lovely thing it is in a daughter!), that I think she may come, on his account to be kind to me.”    152   
  I fathomed the depth of the rascal’s whole scheme, and understood why he laid it bare.    153   
  “If you’ll have the goodness to keep my secret, Master Copperfield,” he pursued, “and not, in general, to go against me, I shall take it as a particular favour. You wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness. I know what a friendly heart you’ve got; but having only known me on my umble footing (on my umblest, I should say, for I am very umble still), you might, unbeknown, go against me rather, with my Agnes. I call her mine, you see, Master Copperfield. There’s a song that says ‘I’d crowns resign, to call her mine!’ I hope to do it, one of these days.”    154   
  Dear Agnes! So much too loving and too good for anyone that I could think of, was it possible that she was reserved to be the wife of such a wretch as this!    155   
  “There’s no hurry at present, you know, Master Copperfield,” Uriah proceeded, in his slimy way, as I sat gazing at him, with this thought in my mind. “My Agnes is very young still; and mother and me will have to work our way upwards, and make a good many new arrangements, before it would be quite convenient. So I shall have time gradually to make her familiar with my hopes, as opportunities offer. Oh, I’m so much obliged to you for this confidence! Oh, it’s such a relief, you can’t think, to know that you understand our situation, and are certain (as you wouldn’t wish to make unpleasantness in the family) not to go against me!”    156   
  He took the hand which I dared not withhold, and having given it a damp squeeze, referred to his pale-faced watch.    157   
  “Dear me!” he said, “it’s past one. The moments slip away so, in the confidence of old times, Master Copperfield, that it’s almost half-past one!”    158   
  I answered that I had thought it was later. Not that I had really thought so, but because my conversational powers were effectually scattered.    159   
  “Dear me!” he said, considering. “The ouse that I am stopping at—a sort of a private hotel and boarding ouse, Master Copperfield, near the New River ed—will have gone to bed these two hours.”    160   
  “I am sorry,” I returned, “that there is only one bed here, and that I——”    161   
  “Oh don’t think of mentioning beds Master Copperfield!” he rejoined ecstatically drawing up one leg. “But would you have any objections to my laying down before the fire?”    162   
  “If it comes to that,” I said, “pray take my bed, and I’ll lie down before the fire.”    163   
  His repudiation of this offer was almost shrill enough, in the excess of its surprise and humility, to have penetrated to the ears of Mrs. Crupp, then sleeping, I suppose, in a distant chamber, situated at about the level of low-water mark, soothed in her slumbers by the ticking of an incorrigible clock to which she always referred me when we had any little difference on the score of punctuality, and which was never less than three-quarters of an hour too slow, and had always been put right in the morning by the best authorities. As no arguments I could urge, in my bewildered condition, had the least effect upon his modesty in inducing him to accept my bedroom, I was obliged to make the best arrangements I could, for his repose before the fire. The mattress of the sofa (which was a great deal too short for his lank figure), the sofa pillows, a blanket, the table cover, a clean breakfastcloth and a great-coat, made him a bed and covering, for which he was more than thankful. Having lent him a nightcap, which he put on at once, and in which he made such an awful figure that I have never worn once since, I left him to his rest.    164   
  I never shall forget that night. I never shall forget how I turned and tumbled; how I wearied myself with thinking about Agnes and this creature; how I considered what could I do, and what ought I to do; how I could come to no other conclusion than that the best course for her peace, was to do nothing, and to keep to myself what I had heard. If I went to sleep for a few moments, the image of Agnes with her tender eyes, and of her father looking fondly on her, as I had so often seen him look, arose before me with appealing faces, and filled me with vague terrors. When I awoke, the recollection that Uriah was lying in the next room sat heavy on me like a waking nightmare; and oppressed me with a leaden dread, as if I had had some meaner quality of devil for a lodger.    165   
  The poker got into my dozing thoughts besides, and wouldn’t come out. I thought, between sleeping and waking, that it was still red-hot, and I had snatched it out of the fire, and run him through the body. I was so haunted at last by the idea, though I knew there was nothing in it, that I stole into the next room to look at him. There I saw him, lying on his back, with his legs extending to I don’t know where, gurglings taking place in this throat, stoppages in his nose, and his mouth open like a post-office. He was so much worse in reality than in my distempered fancy, that afterwards I was attracted to him in very repulsion, and could not help wandering in and out every half-hour or so, and taking another look at him. Still, the long, long night seemed heavy and hopeless as ever, and no promise of day was in the murky sky.    166   
  When I saw him going down-stairs early in the morning (for, thank Heaven! he would not stay to breakfast), it appeared to me as if the night was going away in his person. When I went out to the Commons, I charged Mrs. Crupp with particular directions to leave the windows open, that my sitting-room might be aired, and purged of his presence.

XXVI. I Fall into Captivity   
     
I SAW no more of Uriah Heep, until the day when Agnes left town. I was at the coach-office to take leave of her and see her go; and there was he, returning to Canterbury by the same conveyance. It was some small satisfaction to me to observe his spare, short-waisted, high-shouldered, mulberry-coloured great-coat perched up, in company with an umbrella like a small tent, on the edge of the back seat on the roof, while Agnes was, of course, inside; but what I underwent in my efforts to be friendly with him, while Agnes looked on, perhaps deserved that little recompense. At the coach-window, as at the dinner party, he hovered about us without a moment’s intermission, like a great vulture: gorging himself on every syllable that I said to Agnes, or Agnes said to me.      1   
  In the state of trouble into which his disclosure by my fire had thrown me, I had thought very much of the words Agnes had used in reference to the partnership: “I did what I hope was right. Feeling sure that it was necessary for papa’s peace that the sacrifice should be made, I entreated him to make it.” A miserable foreboding that she would yield to, and sustain herself by, the same feeling in reference to any sacrifice for his sake, had oppressed me ever since. I knew how she loved him. I knew what the devotion of her nature was. I knew from her own lips that she regarded herself as the innocent cause of his errors, and as owing him a great debt she ardently desired to pay. I had no consolation in seeing how different she was from this destestable Rufus with the mulberry-coloured greatcoat, for I felt that in the very difference between them, in the self-denial of her pure soul and the sordid baseness of his, the greatest danger lay. All this, doubtless, he knew thoroughly, and had, in his cunning, considered well.      2   
  Yet, I was so certain that the prospect of such a sacrifice afar off, must destroy the happiness of Agnes; and I was so sure, from her manner, of its being unseen by her then, and having cast no shadow on her yet; that I could as soon have injured her, as given her any warning of what impended. Thus it was that we parted without explanation: she waving her hand and smiling farewell from the coachwindow; her evil genius writhing on the roof, as if he had her in his clutches and triumphed.      3   
  I could not get over this farewell glimpse of them for a long time. When Agnes wrote to tell me of her safe arrival, I was as miserable as when I saw her going away. Whenever I fell into a thoughtful state, this subject was sure to present itself, and all my uneasiness was sure to be redoubled. Hardly a night passed without my dreaming of it. It became a part of my life, and as inseparable from my life as my own head.      4   
  I had ample leisure to refine upon my uneasiness: for Steerforth was at Oxford, as he wrote to me, and when I was not at the Commons, I was very much alone. I believe I had at this time some lurking distrust of Steerforth. I wrote to him most affectionately in reply to his, but I think I was glad, upon the whole, that he could not come to London just then. I suspect the truth to be, that the influence of Agnes was upon me, undisturbed by the sight of him; and that it was the more powerful with me, because she had so large a share in my thoughts and interest.      5   
  In the meantime, days and weeks slipped away. I was articled to Spenlow and Jorkins. I had ninety pounds a year (exclusive of my house-rent and sundry collateral matters) from my aunt. My rooms were engaged for twelve months certain: and though I still found them dreary of an evening, and the evenings long, I could settle down into a state of equable low spirits, and resign myself to coffee; which I seem, on looking back, to have taken by the gallon at about this period of my existence. At about this time, too, I made three discoveries: first, that Mrs. Crupp was a martyr to a curious disorder called “the spazzums,” which was generally accompanied with inflammation of the nose, and required to be constantly treated with peppermint; secondly, that something peculiar in the temperature of my pantry, made the brandy-bottles burst; thirdly, that I was alone in the world, and much given to record that circumstance in fragments of English versification.      6   
  On the day when I was articled, no festivity took place, beyond my having sandwiches and sherry into the office for the clerks, and going alone to the theatre at night. I went to see “The Stranger” as a Doctors’ Commons sort of play, and was so dreadfully cut up, that I hardly knew myself in my own glass when I got home. Mr. Spenlow remarked, on this occasion, when we concluded our business, that he should have been happy to have seen me at his house at Norwood to celebrate our becoming connected, but for his domestic arrangements being in some disorder, on account of the expected return of his daughter from finishing her education at Paris. But, he intimated that when she came home he should hope to have the pleasure of entertaining me. I knew that he was a widower with one daughter, and expressed my acknowledgments.      7   
  Mr. Spenlow was as good as his word. In a week or two, he referred to this engagement, and said, that if I would do him the favour to come down next Saturday, and stay till Monday, he would be extremely happy. Of course I said I would do him the favour; and he was to drive me down in his phaeton, and to bring me back.      8   
  When the day arrived, my very carpot-bag was an object of veneration to the stipendiary clerks, to whom the house at Norwood was a sacred mystery. One of them informed me that he had heard that Mr. Spenlow ate entirely off plate and china; and another hinted at champagne being constantly on draught, after the usual custom of table beer. The old clerk with the wig, whose name was Mr. Tiffey, had been down on business several times in the course of his career, and had on each occasion penetrated to the breakfast-parlour. He described it as an apartment of the most sumptuous nature, and said that he had drank brown East India sherry there, of a quality so precious as to make a man wink.      9   
  We had an adjourned cause in the Consistory that day—about excommunicating a baker who had been objecting in a vestry to a paving-rate—and as the evidence was just twice the length of Robinson Crusoe, according to a calculation I made, it was rather late in the day before we finished. However, we got him excommunicated for six weeks, and sentenced in no end of costs; and then the baker’s proctor, and the judge, and the advocates on both sides (who were all nearly related), went out of town together, and Mr. Spenlow and I drove away in the phaeton.     10   
  The phaeton was a very handsome affair; the horses arched their necks and lifted up their legs as if they knew they belonged to Doctors’ Commons. There was a good deal of competition in the Commons on all points of display, and it turned out some very choice equipages then; though I always have considered, and always shall consider, that in my time the great article of competition there was starch: which I think was worn among the proctors to as great an extent as it is in the nature of man to bear.     11   
  We were very pleasant, going down, and Mr. Spenlow gave me some hints in reference to my profession. He said it was the genteelest profession in the world, and must on no account be confounded with the profession of a solicitor: being quite another sort of thing, infinitely more exclusive, less mechanical, and more profitable. We took things much more easily in the Commons than they could be taken anywhere else, he observed, and that sets us, as a privileged class, apart. He said it was impossible to conceal the disagreeable fact, that we were chiefly employed by solicitors; but he gave me to understand that they were an inferior race of men, universally looked down upon by all proctors of any pretensions.     12   
  I asked Mr. Spenlow what he considered the best sort of professional business? He replied, that a good case of a disputed will, where there was a neat little estate of thirty or forty thousand pounds, was, perhaps, the best of all. In such a case, he said, not only were there very pretty pickings, in the way of arguments at every stage of the proceedings, and mountains upon mountains of evidence on interrogatory and counter-interrogatory (to say nothing of an appeal lying, first to the Delegates, and then to the Lords); but, the costs being pretty sure to come out of the estate at last, both sides went at it in a lively and spirited manner, and expense was no consideration. Then, he launched into a general eulogium on the Commons. What was to be particularly admired (he said) in the Commons, was its compactness. It was the most conveniently organised place in the world. It was the complete idea of snugness. It lay in a nutshell. For example: You brought a divorce case, or a restitution case, into the Consistory. Very good. You tried it in the Consistory. You made a quiet little round game of it, among a family group, and you played it out at leisure. Suppose you were not satisfied with the Consistory, what did you do then? Why, you went into the Arches. What was the Arches? The same court, in the same room, with the same bar, and the same practitioners, but another judge, for there the Consistory judge could plead any court-day as an advocate. Well, you played your round game out again. Still you were not satisfied. Very good. What did you do then? Why, you went to the Delegates. Who were the Delegates? Why, the Ecclesiastical Delegates were the advocates without any business, who had looked on at the round game when it was playing in both courts, and had seen the cards shuffled, and cut, and played, and had talked to all the players about it, and now came fresh, as judges, to settle the matter to the satisfaction of everybody! Discontented people might talk of corruption in the Commons, closeness in the Commons, and the necessity of reforming the Commons, said Mr. Spenlow solemnly, in conclusion; but when the price of wheat per bushel had been highest, the Commons had been busiest; and a man might lay his hand upon his heart, and say this to the whole world,—“Touch the Commons, and down comes the country!”     13   
  I listened to all this with attention; and though, I must say, I had my doubts whether the country was quite as much obliged to the Commons as Mr. Spenlow made out, I respectfully deferred to his opinion. That about the price of wheat per bushel, I modestly felt was too much for my strength, and quite settled the question. I have never, to this hour, got the better of that bushel of wheat. It has reappeared to annihilate me, all through my life, in connexion with all kinds of subjects. I don’t know now, exactly, what it has to do with me, or what right it has to crush me, on an infinite variety of occasions; but whenever I see my old friend the bushel brought in by the head and shoulders (as he always is, I observe), I give up a subject for lost.     14   
  This is a digression. I was not the man to touch the Commons, and bring down the country. I submissively expressed, by my silence, my acquiescence in all I had heard from my superior in years and knowledge; and we talked about “The Stranger” and the Drama, and the pair of horses, until we came to Mr. Spenlow’s gate.     15   
  There was a lovely garden to Mr. Spenlow’s house; and though that was not the best time of the year for seeing a garden, it was so beautifully kept, that I was quite enchanted. There was a charming lawn, there were clusters of trees, and there were perspective walks that I could just distinguish in the dark, arched over with trellis-work, on which shrubs and flowers grew in the growing season. “Here Miss Spenlow walks by herself,” I thought. “Dear me!”     16   
  We went into the house, which was cheerfully lighted up, and into a hall where there were all sorts of hats, caps, great-coats, plaids, gloves, whips, and walking-sticks. “Where is Miss Dora?” said Mr. Spenlow to the servant. “Dora!” I thought. “What a beautiful name!”     17   
  We turned into a room near at hand (I think it was the identical breakfast-room, made memorable by the brown East India sherry), and I heard a voice say, “Mr. Copperfield, my daughter Dora, and my daughter Dora’s confidential friend!” It was, no doubt, Mr. Spenlow’s voice, but I didn’t know it, and I didn’t care whose it was. All was over in a moment. I had fulfilled my destiny. I was a captive and a slave. I loved Dora Spenlow to distraction!     18   
  She was more than human to me. She was a Fairy, a Sylph, I don’t know what she was—anything that no one ever saw, and everything that everybody ever wanted. I was swallowed up in an abyss of love in an instant. There was no pausing on the brink; no looking down, or looking back; I was gone, headlong, before I had sense to say a word to her.     19   
  “I,” observed a well-remembered voice, when I had bowed and murmured something, “have seen Mr. Copperfield before.”     20   
  The speaker was not Dora. No; the confidential friend, Miss Murdstone!     21   
  I don’t think I was much astonished. To the best of my judgment, no capacity of astonishment was left in me. There was nothing worth mentioning in the material world, but Dora Spenlow, to be astonished about. I said, “How do you do, Miss Murdstone? I hope you are well.” She answered, “Very well.” I said, “How is Mr. Murdstone?” She replied, “My brother is robust, I am obliged to you.”     22   
  Mr. Spenlow, who, I suppose, had been surprised to see us recognize each other, then put in his word.     23   
  “I am glad to find,” he said, “Copperfield, that you and Miss Murdstone are already acquainted.”