Chapter: For a time--at all events until my book should be completed, which would
be the work of several months--I took up my abode in my aunt's house at
Dover; and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at
the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly
pursued my task.

In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when
their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my
story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and
triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest
earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have
already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will
supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the
rest will be of interest to no one.

Occasionally, I went to London; to lose myself in the swarm of life
there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had
managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgement; and my
worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon
me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no
knowledge--chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer--I
agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the
devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me; and
there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of
State without the salary.

Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an
obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking
about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take
the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me
a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers; being already
aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence,
and considering the Commons quite bad enough, without my doing anything
to make it worse.

The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles's
door; and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of
Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty
little strip of garden with a pump in it. But there I always found her,
the same bright housewife; often humming her Devonshire ballads when no
strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his
official closet with melody.

I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book;
and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the
table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had
just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out
of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?

'Oh, DON'T, Tom!' cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the
fire.

'My dear,' returned Tom, in a delighted state, 'why not? What do you say
to that writing, Copperfield?'

'It's extraordinarily legal and formal,' said I. 'I don't think I ever
saw such a stiff hand.'

'Not like a lady's hand, is it?' said Traddles.

'A lady's!' I repeated. 'Bricks and mortar are more like a lady's hand!'

Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was
Sophy's writing; that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a
copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk; that she had acquired
this hand from a pattern; and that she could throw off--I forget how
many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all
this, and said that when 'Tom' was made a judge he wouldn't be so ready
to proclaim it. Which 'Tom' denied; averring that he should always be
equally proud of it, under all circumstances.

'What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!'
said I, when she had gone away, laughing.

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Traddles, 'she is, without any
exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place; her
punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order; her cheerfulness,
Copperfield!'

'Indeed, you have reason to commend her!' I returned. 'You are a happy
fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the
happiest people in the world.'

'I am sure we ARE two of the happiest people,' returned Traddles. 'I
admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up
by candle-light on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day's
arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn,
caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of
the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in
its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up
at night with me if it's ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging
always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can't believe it,
Copperfield!'

He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them
on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.

'I positively sometimes can't believe it,' said Traddles. 'Then our
pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful!
When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and
draw those curtains--which she made--where could we be more snug? When
it's fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets
abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the
jewellers' shops; and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents,
coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could
afford it; and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are
capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal
lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if
she could afford it; and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices,
butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both
afford it; and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we
stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let,
sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would THAT do, if I was made
a judge? And we parcel it out--such a room for us, such rooms for the
girls, and so forth; until we settle to our satisfaction that it
would do, or it wouldn't do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at
half-price to the pit of the theatre--the very smell of which is cheap,
in my opinion, at the money--and there we thoroughly enjoy the play:
which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home,
perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook's-shop, or a little
lobster at the fishmongers, and bring it here, and make a splendid
supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if
I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn't do this!'

'You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles,' thought
I, 'that would be pleasant and amiable. And by the way,' I said aloud,
'I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?'

'Really,' replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, 'I can't wholly
deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For being in one of the back rows
of the King's Bench the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came
into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am
afraid there's a skeleton--in a wig--on the ledge of the desk.'

After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a
smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, 'Old Creakle!'

'I have a letter from that old--Rascal here,' said I. For I never was
less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, than
when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.

'From Creakle the schoolmaster?' exclaimed Traddles. 'No!'

'Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and
fortune,' said I, looking over my letters, 'and who discover that they
were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not
a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex
Magistrate.'

I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at
all.

'How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?' said I.

'Oh dear me!' replied Traddles, 'it would be very difficult to answer
that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody,
or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or
jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the
county to nominate him for the commission.'

'On the commission he is, at any rate,' said I. 'And he writes to me
here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true
system of prison discipline; the only unchallengeable way of making
sincere and lasting converts and penitents--which, you know, is by
solitary confinement. What do you say?'

'To the system?' inquired Traddles, looking grave.

'No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?'

'I don't object,' said Traddles.

'Then I'll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our
treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose,
and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?'

'Perfectly,' said Traddles.

'Yet, if you'll read his letter, you'll find he is the tenderest of
men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies,' said I;
'though I can't find that his tenderness extends to any other class of
created beings.'

Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not
expected him to be, and was not surprised myself; or my observation of
similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the
time of our visit, and I wrote accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.

On the appointed day--I think it was the next day, but no
matter--Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was
powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast
expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what
an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had
proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an
industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving
old.

In an office that might have been on the ground-floor of the Tower of
Babel, it was so massively constructed, we were presented to our old
schoolmaster; who was one of a group, composed of two or three of the
busier sort of magistrates, and some visitors they had brought. He
received me, like a man who had formed my mind in bygone years, and
had always loved me tenderly. On my introducing Traddles, Mr. Creakle
expressed, in like manner, but in an inferior degree, that he had always
been Traddles's guide, philosopher, and friend. Our venerable instructor
was a great deal older, and not improved in appearance. His face was
as fiery as ever; his eyes were as small, and rather deeper set. The
scanty, wet-looking grey hair, by which I remembered him, was almost
gone; and the thick veins in his bald head were none the more agreeable
to look at.

After some conversation among these gentlemen, from which I might have
supposed that there was nothing in the world to be legitimately taken
into account but the supreme comfort of prisoners, at any expense, and
nothing on the wide earth to be done outside prison-doors, we began
our inspection. It being then just dinner-time, we went, first into the
great kitchen, where every prisoner's dinner was in course of being set
out separately (to be handed to him in his cell), with the regularity
and precision of clock-work. I said aside, to Traddles, that I wondered
whether it occurred to anybody, that there was a striking contrast
between these plentiful repasts of choice quality, and the dinners, not
to say of paupers, but of soldiers, sailors, labourers, the great bulk
of the honest, working community; of whom not one man in five hundred
ever dined half so well. But I learned that the 'system' required high
living; and, in short, to dispose of the system, once for all, I found
that on that head and on all others, 'the system' put an end to all
doubts, and disposed of all anomalies. Nobody appeared to have the least
idea that there was any other system, but THE system, to be considered.

As we were going through some of the magnificent passages, I inquired of
Mr. Creakle and his friends what were supposed to be the main advantages
of this all-governing and universally over-riding system? I found
them to be the perfect isolation of prisoners--so that no one man in
confinement there, knew anything about another; and the reduction of
prisoners to a wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition
and repentance.

Now, it struck me, when we began to visit individuals in their cells,
and to traverse the passages in which those cells were, and to have the
manner of the going to chapel and so forth, explained to us, that there
was a strong probability of the prisoners knowing a good deal about each
other, and of their carrying on a pretty complete system of intercourse.
This, at the time I write, has been proved, I believe, to be the case;
but, as it would have been flat blasphemy against the system to have
hinted such a doubt then, I looked out for the penitence as diligently
as I could.

And here again, I had great misgivings. I found as prevalent a fashion
in the form of the penitence, as I had left outside in the forms of the
coats and waistcoats in the windows of the tailors' shops. I found a
vast amount of profession, varying very little in character: varying
very little (which I thought exceedingly suspicious), even in words. I
found a great many foxes, disparaging whole vineyards of inaccessible
grapes; but I found very few foxes whom I would have trusted within
reach of a bunch. Above all, I found that the most professing men were
the greatest objects of interest; and that their conceit, their vanity,
their want of excitement, and their love of deception (which many
of them possessed to an almost incredible extent, as their histories
showed), all prompted to these professions, and were all gratified by
them.

However, I heard so repeatedly, in the course of our goings to and fro,
of a certain Number Twenty Seven, who was the Favourite, and who really
appeared to be a Model Prisoner, that I resolved to suspend my judgement
until I should see Twenty Seven. Twenty Eight, I understood, was also
a bright particular star; but it was his misfortune to have his glory
a little dimmed by the extraordinary lustre of Twenty Seven. I heard so
much of Twenty Seven, of his pious admonitions to everybody around him,
and of the beautiful letters he constantly wrote to his mother (whom he
seemed to consider in a very bad way), that I became quite impatient to
see him.

I had to restrain my impatience for some time, on account of Twenty
Seven being reserved for a concluding effect. But, at last, we came to
the door of his cell; and Mr. Creakle, looking through a little hole in
it, reported to us, in a state of the greatest admiration, that he was
reading a Hymn Book.

There was such a rush of heads immediately, to see Number Twenty Seven
reading his Hymn Book, that the little hole was blocked up, six or seven
heads deep. To remedy this inconvenience, and give us an opportunity of
conversing with Twenty Seven in all his purity, Mr. Creakle directed the
door of the cell to be unlocked, and Twenty Seven to be invited out into
the passage. This was done; and whom should Traddles and I then behold,
to our amazement, in this converted Number Twenty Seven, but Uriah Heep!

He knew us directly; and said, as he came out--with the old writhe,--

'How do you do, Mr. Copperfield? How do you do, Mr. Traddles?'

This recognition caused a general admiration in the party. I rather
thought that everyone was struck by his not being proud, and taking
notice of us.

'Well, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle, mournfully admiring him. 'How do
you find yourself today?'

'I am very umble, sir!' replied Uriah Heep.

'You are always so, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle.

Here, another gentleman asked, with extreme anxiety: 'Are you quite
comfortable?'

'Yes, I thank you, sir!' said Uriah Heep, looking in that direction.
'Far more comfortable here, than ever I was outside. I see my follies,
now, sir. That's what makes me comfortable.'

Several gentlemen were much affected; and a third questioner, forcing
himself to the front, inquired with extreme feeling: 'How do you find
the beef?'

'Thank you, sir,' replied Uriah, glancing in the new direction of this
voice, 'it was tougher yesterday than I could wish; but it's my duty to
bear. I have committed follies, gentlemen,' said Uriah, looking round
with a meek smile, 'and I ought to bear the consequences without
repining.' A murmur, partly of gratification at Twenty Seven's celestial
state of mind, and partly of indignation against the Contractor who had
given him any cause of complaint (a note of which was immediately made
by Mr. Creakle), having subsided, Twenty Seven stood in the midst of
us, as if he felt himself the principal object of merit in a highly
meritorious museum. That we, the neophytes, might have an excess of
light shining upon us all at once, orders were given to let out Twenty
Eight.

I had been so much astonished already, that I only felt a kind of
resigned wonder when Mr. Littimer walked forth, reading a good book!

'Twenty Eight,' said a gentleman in spectacles, who had not yet spoken,
'you complained last week, my good fellow, of the cocoa. How has it been
since?'

'I thank you, sir,' said Mr. Littimer, 'it has been better made. If I
might take the liberty of saying so, sir, I don't think the milk which
is boiled with it is quite genuine; but I am aware, sir, that there is
a great adulteration of milk, in London, and that the article in a pure
state is difficult to be obtained.'

It appeared to me that the gentleman in spectacles backed his Twenty
Eight against Mr. Creakle's Twenty Seven, for each of them took his own
man in hand.

'What is your state of mind, Twenty Eight?' said the questioner in
spectacles.

'I thank you, sir,' returned Mr. Littimer; 'I see my follies now, sir.
I am a good deal troubled when I think of the sins of my former
companions, sir; but I trust they may find forgiveness.'

'You are quite happy yourself?' said the questioner, nodding
encouragement.

'I am much obliged to you, sir,' returned Mr. Littimer. 'Perfectly so.'

'Is there anything at all on your mind now?' said the questioner. 'If
so, mention it, Twenty Eight.'

'Sir,' said Mr. Littimer, without looking up, 'if my eyes have not
deceived me, there is a gentleman present who was acquainted with me
in my former life. It may be profitable to that gentleman to know, sir,
that I attribute my past follies, entirely to having lived a thoughtless
life in the service of young men; and to having allowed myself to be led
by them into weaknesses, which I had not the strength to resist. I hope
that gentleman will take warning, sir, and will not be offended at my
freedom. It is for his good. I am conscious of my own past follies. I
hope he may repent of all the wickedness and sin to which he has been a
party.'

I observed that several gentlemen were shading their eyes, each with one
hand, as if they had just come into church.

'This does you credit, Twenty Eight,' returned the questioner. 'I should
have expected it of you. Is there anything else?'

'Sir,' returned Mr. Littimer, slightly lifting up his eyebrows, but not
his eyes, 'there was a young woman who fell into dissolute courses, that
I endeavoured to save, sir, but could not rescue. I beg that gentleman,
if he has it in his power, to inform that young woman from me that
I forgive her her bad conduct towards myself, and that I call her to
repentance--if he will be so good.'

'I have no doubt, Twenty Eight,' returned the questioner, 'that the
gentleman you refer to feels very strongly--as we all must--what you
have so properly said. We will not detain you.'

'I thank you, sir,' said Mr. Littimer. 'Gentlemen, I wish you a good
day, and hoping you and your families will also see your wickedness, and
amend!'

With this, Number Twenty Eight retired, after a glance between him and
Uriah; as if they were not altogether unknown to each other, through
some medium of communication; and a murmur went round the group, as his
door shut upon him, that he was a most respectable man, and a beautiful
case.

'Now, Twenty Seven,' said Mr. Creakle, entering on a clear stage with
his man, 'is there anything that anyone can do for you? If so, mention
it.'

'I would umbly ask, sir,' returned Uriah, with a jerk of his malevolent
head, 'for leave to write again to mother.'

'It shall certainly be granted,' said Mr. Creakle.

'Thank you, sir! I am anxious about mother. I am afraid she ain't safe.'

Somebody incautiously asked, what from? But there was a scandalized
whisper of 'Hush!'

'Immortally safe, sir,' returned Uriah, writhing in the direction of
the voice. 'I should wish mother to be got into my state. I never should
have been got into my present state if I hadn't come here. I wish mother
had come here. It would be better for everybody, if they got took up,
and was brought here.'

This sentiment gave unbounded satisfaction--greater satisfaction, I
think, than anything that had passed yet.

'Before I come here,' said Uriah, stealing a look at us, as if he would
have blighted the outer world to which we belonged, if he could, 'I was
given to follies; but now I am sensible of my follies. There's a deal
of sin outside. There's a deal of sin in mother. There's nothing but sin
everywhere--except here.'

'You are quite changed?' said Mr. Creakle.

'Oh dear, yes, sir!' cried this hopeful penitent.

'You wouldn't relapse, if you were going out?' asked somebody else.

'Oh de-ar no, sir!'

'Well!' said Mr. Creakle, 'this is very gratifying. You have addressed
Mr. Copperfield, Twenty Seven. Do you wish to say anything further to
him?'

'You knew me, a long time before I came here and was changed, Mr.
Copperfield,' said Uriah, looking at me; and a more villainous look
I never saw, even on his visage. 'You knew me when, in spite of my
follies, I was umble among them that was proud, and meek among them that
was violent--you was violent to me yourself, Mr. Copperfield. Once, you
struck me a blow in the face, you know.'

General commiseration. Several indignant glances directed at me.

'But I forgive you, Mr. Copperfield,' said Uriah, making his forgiving
nature the subject of a most impious and awful parallel, which I shall
not record. 'I forgive everybody. It would ill become me to bear malice.
I freely forgive you, and I hope you'll curb your passions in future. I
hope Mr. W. will repent, and Miss W., and all of that sinful lot. You've
been visited with affliction, and I hope it may do you good; but you'd
better have come here. Mr. W. had better have come here, and Miss W.
too. The best wish I could give you, Mr. Copperfield, and give all of
you gentlemen, is, that you could be took up and brought here. When I
think of my past follies, and my present state, I am sure it would be
best for you. I pity all who ain't brought here!'

He sneaked back into his cell, amidst a little chorus of approbation;
and both Traddles and I experienced a great relief when he was locked
in.

It was a characteristic feature in this repentance, that I was fain to
ask what these two men had done, to be there at all. That appeared to be
the last thing about which they had anything to say. I addressed
myself to one of the two warders, who, I suspected from certain latent
indications in their faces, knew pretty well what all this stir was
worth.

'Do you know,' said I, as we walked along the passage, 'what felony was
Number Twenty Seven's last "folly"?'

The answer was that it was a Bank case.

'A fraud on the Bank of England?' I asked. 'Yes, sir. Fraud, forgery,
and conspiracy. He and some others. He set the others on. It was a deep
plot for a large sum. Sentence, transportation for life. Twenty Seven
was the knowingest bird of the lot, and had very nearly kept himself
safe; but not quite. The Bank was just able to put salt upon his
tail--and only just.'

'Do you know Twenty Eight's offence?'

'Twenty Eight,' returned my informant, speaking throughout in a low
tone, and looking over his shoulder as we walked along the passage, to
guard himself from being overheard, in such an unlawful reference
to these Immaculates, by Creakle and the rest; 'Twenty Eight (also
transportation) got a place, and robbed a young master of a matter of
two hundred and fifty pounds in money and valuables, the night before
they were going abroad. I particularly recollect his case, from his
being took by a dwarf.'

'A what?'

'A little woman. I have forgot her name?'

'Not Mowcher?'

'That's it! He had eluded pursuit, and was going to America in a flaxen
wig, and whiskers, and such a complete disguise as never you see in all
your born days; when the little woman, being in Southampton, met
him walking along the street--picked him out with her sharp eye in a
moment--ran betwixt his legs to upset him--and held on to him like grim
Death.'

'Excellent Miss Mowcher!' cried I.

'You'd have said so, if you had seen her, standing on a chair in the
witness-box at the trial, as I did,' said my friend. 'He cut her face
right open, and pounded her in the most brutal manner, when she took
him; but she never loosed her hold till he was locked up. She held so
tight to him, in fact, that the officers were obliged to take 'em
both together. She gave her evidence in the gamest way, and was highly
complimented by the Bench, and cheered right home to her lodgings. She
said in Court that she'd have took him single-handed (on account of what
she knew concerning him), if he had been Samson. And it's my belief she
would!'

It was mine too, and I highly respected Miss Mowcher for it.

We had now seen all there was to see. It would have been in vain to
represent to such a man as the Worshipful Mr. Creakle, that Twenty Seven
and Twenty Eight were perfectly consistent and unchanged; that exactly
what they were then, they had always been; that the hypocritical knaves
were just the subjects to make that sort of profession in such a place;
that they knew its market-value at least as well as we did, in the
immediate service it would do them when they were expatriated; in
a word, that it was a rotten, hollow, painfully suggestive piece of
business altogether. We left them to their system and themselves, and
went home wondering.

'Perhaps it's a good thing, Traddles,' said I, 'to have an unsound Hobby
ridden hard; for it's the sooner ridden to death.'

'I hope so,' replied Traddles.




The year came round to Christmas-time, and I had been at home above
two months. I had seen Agnes frequently. However loud the general voice
might be in giving me encouragement, and however fervent the emotions
and endeavours to which it roused me, I heard her lightest word of
praise as I heard nothing else.

At least once a week, and sometimes oftener, I rode over there, and
passed the evening. I usually rode back at night; for the old unhappy
sense was always hovering about me now--most sorrowfully when I left
her--and I was glad to be up and out, rather than wandering over the
past in weary wakefulness or miserable dreams. I wore away the longest
part of many wild sad nights, in those rides; reviving, as I went, the
thoughts that had occupied me in my long absence.

Or, if I were to say rather that I listened to the echoes of those
thoughts, I should better express the truth. They spoke to me from afar
off. I had put them at a distance, and accepted my inevitable place.
When I read to Agnes what I wrote; when I saw her listening face; moved
her to smiles or tears; and heard her cordial voice so earnest on the
shadowy events of that imaginative world in which I lived; I thought
what a fate mine might have been--but only thought so, as I had thought
after I was married to Dora, what I could have wished my wife to be.

My duty to Agnes, who loved me with a love, which, if I disquieted, I
wronged most selfishly and poorly, and could never restore; my matured
assurance that I, who had worked out my own destiny, and won what I
had impetuously set my heart on, had no right to murmur, and must bear;
comprised what I felt and what I had learned. But I loved her: and now
it even became some consolation to me, vaguely to conceive a distant day
when I might blamelessly avow it; when all this should be over; when I
could say 'Agnes, so it was when I came home; and now I am old, and I
never have loved since!'

She did not once show me any change in herself. What she always had been
to me, she still was; wholly unaltered.

Between my aunt and me there had been something, in this connexion,
since the night of my return, which I cannot call a restraint, or an
avoidance of the subject, so much as an implied understanding that we
thought of it together, but did not shape our thoughts into words. When,
according to our old custom, we sat before the fire at night, we often
fell into this train; as naturally, and as consciously to each other, as
if we had unreservedly said so. But we preserved an unbroken silence. I
believed that she had read, or partly read, my thoughts that night; and
that she fully comprehended why I gave mine no more distinct expression.

This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new
confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my
mind--whether she could have that perception of the true state of
my breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me
pain--began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice was
nothing; my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled; and every poor
action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to set this
right beyond all doubt;--if such a barrier were between us, to break it
down at once with a determined hand.

It was--what lasting reason have I to remember it!--a cold, harsh,
winter day. There had been snow, some hours before; and it lay, not
deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond my window, the
wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been thinking of it, sweeping
over those mountain wastes of snow in Switzerland, then inaccessible to
any human foot; and had been speculating which was the lonelier, those
solitary regions, or a deserted ocean.

'Riding today, Trot?' said my aunt, putting her head in at the door.

'Yes,' said I, 'I am going over to Canterbury. It's a good day for a
ride.'

'I hope your horse may think so too,' said my aunt; 'but at present he
is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door there,
as if he thought his stable preferable.'

My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground, but
had not at all relented towards the donkeys.

'He will be fresh enough, presently!' said I.

'The ride will do his master good, at all events,' observed my aunt,
glancing at the papers on my table. 'Ah, child, you pass a good many
hours here! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was
to write them.'

'It's work enough to read them, sometimes,' I returned. 'As to the
writing, it has its own charms, aunt.'

'Ah! I see!' said my aunt. 'Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and
much more, I suppose? Well: go along with you!'

'Do you know anything more,' said I, standing composedly before her--she
had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair--'of that
attachment of Agnes?'

She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:

'I think I do, Trot.'

'Are you confirmed in your impression?' I inquired.

'I think I am, Trot.'

She looked so steadfastly at me: with a kind of doubt, or pity, or
suspense in her affection: that I summoned the stronger determination to
show her a perfectly cheerful face.

'And what is more, Trot--' said my aunt.

'Yes!'

'I think Agnes is going to be married.'

'God bless her!' said I, cheerfully.

'God bless her!' said my aunt, 'and her husband too!'

I echoed it, parted from my aunt, and went lightly downstairs, mounted,
and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do what I had
resolved to do.

How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice,
brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face;
the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground;
the stiff-tilled soil; the snowdrift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit
as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team with the waggon of old hay,
stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically;
the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky,
as if they were drawn on a huge slate!

I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes now,
and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book on seeing
me come in; and having welcomed me as usual, took her work-basket and
sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.

I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was doing,
and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made since my last
visit. Agnes was very cheerful; and laughingly predicted that I should
soon become too famous to be talked to, on such subjects.

'So I make the most of the present time, you see,' said Agnes, 'and talk
to you while I may.'

As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she raised her
mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.

'You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!'

'Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.'

She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously
discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.

'My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?'

'No!' she answered, with a look of astonishment.

'Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?'

'No!' she answered, as before.

'Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt
of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards
you?'

'I remember it,' she said, gently, 'very well.'

'You have a secret,' said I. 'Let me share it, Agnes.'

She cast down her eyes, and trembled.

'I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard--but from other
lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange--that there is someone upon
whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of
what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me, as you say
you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in
this matter, of all others!'

With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the
window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put
her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the
heart.

And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart.
Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly
sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with
hope than fear or sorrow.

'Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?'

'Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak
to you by and by--another time. I will write to you. Don't speak to me
now. Don't! don't!'

I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on
that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very
world that I must search through in a moment. 'Agnes, I cannot bear
to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl,
dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share
your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to
give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to
lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!'

'Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!' was all I could
distinguish.

Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue
to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think
of?

'I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven's sake,
Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all
that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any
lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that
I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that
I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy;
dismiss it, for I don't deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain.
You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what
I feel for you.'

She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards
me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:

'I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood--which, indeed, I do
not doubt--to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have
sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have
come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed
away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened
for me. If I have any secret, it is--no new one; and is--not what you
suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and
must remain mine.'

'Agnes! Stay! A moment!'

She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her
waist. 'In the course of years!' 'It is not a new one!' New thoughts and
hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were
changing.

'Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour--whom I so devotedly love!
When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this
confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our
lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope
that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different
from Sister!--'

Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed,
and I saw my hope brighten in them.

'Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful
of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my
heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so
much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and
disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in
everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first
and greater one of loving you as I do!'

Still weeping, but not sadly--joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she
had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!

'When I loved Dora--fondly, Agnes, as you know--'

'Yes!' she cried, earnestly. 'I am glad to know it!'

'When I loved her--even then, my love would have been incomplete,
without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost
her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!'

Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my
shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!

'I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I
returned home, loving you!'

And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the
conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and
entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better
knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that
better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my
fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me
for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon
the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to
be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even
out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife
looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to
tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!

'I am so blest, Trotwood--my heart is so overcharged--but there is one
thing I must say.'

'Dearest, what?'

She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my
face.

'Do you know, yet, what it is?'

'I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.'

'I have loved you all my life!'

O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers
so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the
rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!

We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed
calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars
began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we
thanked our GOD for having guided us to this tranquillity.

We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the
moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following
her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and,
toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who
should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.


It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She
was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in
readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by
the fire.

'Goodness me!' said my aunt, peering through the dusk, 'who's this
you're bringing home?'

'Agnes,' said I.

As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little
discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said 'Agnes'; but
seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair,
and rubbed her nose with them.

She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the
lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles
twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them
off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the
discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.

'By the by, aunt,' said I, after dinner; 'I have been speaking to Agnes
about what you told me.'

'Then, Trot,' said my aunt, turning scarlet, 'you did wrong, and broke
your promise.'

'You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won't be, when you
learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.'

'Stuff and nonsense!' said my aunt.

As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her
annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we
both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look
through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first
and only time in all my knowledge of her.

The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she
flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with
all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honoured,
but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were
all happy together.

I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation
with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state
of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes
was going to be married; and that I now knew better than anyone how true
it was.


We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and
Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them
full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the
source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself,
the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a
rock!

'Dearest husband!' said Agnes. 'Now that I may call you by that name, I
have one thing more to tell you.'

'Let me hear it, love.'

'It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.'

'She did.'

'She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?'

I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to
my side.

'She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last
charge.'

'And it was--'

'That only I would occupy this vacant place.'

And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her,
though we were so happy.

 David receives such a large volume of mail because of his writing that he decides to have Traddles manage his correspondence from London. In particular, David and Traddles discuss a letter that has arrived from Mr. Creakle, the former Salem House proprietor. He is now a magistrate who runs a model prison and the two young men decide to visit him. As Traddles and David are escorted through the building, Mr. Creakle explains that each prisoner is isolated so that they may all be restored to a "wholesome state of mind, leading to sincere contrition and repentance." Mr. Creakle is very proud of two of his model prisoners, Numbers Twenty-Seven and Twenty-eight. David is amazed to find that they are Uriah Heep and Littimer! Uriah is in jail for fraud, forgery, and conspiracy, and when he sees David he sanctimoniously "forgives" David for being "violent" to him and warns him to mend his ways. Littimer was imprisoned for robbing his master, and David learns that he would have escaped had it not been for Miss Mowcher, the dwarf hairdresser. David frequently visits Agnes to read her parts of his novel-in-progress. All the time he is with Agnes, he thinks of how much he loves her and what a perfect wife she would be. Shortly after Christmas, Aunt Betsey tells David that Agnes is about to be married. This rouses David to action, and he rides out to see Agnes to break down the barrier "with a determined hand." Agnes is very reluctant to talk about her "attachment" and she begins to cry. David hesitantly professes his intentions and Agnes tells him that he is the only person she has ever loved. Two weeks later they are married. The wedding is a very simple affair and the only guests are Traddles, Sophy, and Dr. Strong and his wife. After the ceremony, Agnes tells David that the night Dora died, she told Agnes that only she should "occupy this vacant place."

