Chapter: I must have been married, if I may trust to my imperfect memory for
dates, about a year or so, when one evening, as I was returning from a
solitary walk, thinking of the book I was then writing--for my success
had steadily increased with my steady application, and I was engaged at
that time upon my first work of fiction--I came past Mrs. Steerforth's
house. I had often passed it before, during my residence in that
neighbourhood, though never when I could choose another road. Howbeit,
it did sometimes happen that it was not easy to find another, without
making a long circuit; and so I had passed that way, upon the whole,
pretty often.

I had never done more than glance at the house, as I went by with a
quickened step. It had been uniformly gloomy and dull. None of the best
rooms abutted on the road; and the narrow, heavily-framed old-fashioned
windows, never cheerful under any circumstances, looked very dismal,
close shut, and with their blinds always drawn down. There was a covered
way across a little paved court, to an entrance that was never used; and
there was one round staircase window, at odds with all the rest, and the
only one unshaded by a blind, which had the same unoccupied blank look.
I do not remember that I ever saw a light in all the house. If I had
been a casual passer-by, I should have probably supposed that some
childless person lay dead in it. If I had happily possessed no knowledge
of the place, and had seen it often in that changeless state, I should
have pleased my fancy with many ingenious speculations, I dare say.

As it was, I thought as little of it as I might. But my mind could not
go by it and leave it, as my body did; and it usually awakened a long
train of meditations. Coming before me, on this particular evening that
I mention, mingled with the childish recollections and later fancies,
the ghosts of half-formed hopes, the broken shadows of disappointments
dimly seen and understood, the blending of experience and imagination,
incidental to the occupation with which my thoughts had been busy, it
was more than commonly suggestive. I fell into a brown study as I walked
on, and a voice at my side made me start.

It was a woman's voice, too. I was not long in recollecting Mrs.
Steerforth's little parlour-maid, who had formerly worn blue ribbons in
her cap. She had taken them out now, to adapt herself, I suppose, to
the altered character of the house; and wore but one or two disconsolate
bows of sober brown.

'If you please, sir, would you have the goodness to walk in, and speak
to Miss Dartle?'

'Has Miss Dartle sent you for me?' I inquired.

'Not tonight, sir, but it's just the same. Miss Dartle saw you pass a
night or two ago; and I was to sit at work on the staircase, and when I
saw you pass again, to ask you to step in and speak to her.'

I turned back, and inquired of my conductor, as we went along, how Mrs.
Steerforth was. She said her lady was but poorly, and kept her own room
a good deal.

When we arrived at the house, I was directed to Miss Dartle in the
garden, and left to make my presence known to her myself. She was
sitting on a seat at one end of a kind of terrace, overlooking the great
city. It was a sombre evening, with a lurid light in the sky; and as
I saw the prospect scowling in the distance, with here and there some
larger object starting up into the sullen glare, I fancied it was no
inapt companion to the memory of this fierce woman.

She saw me as I advanced, and rose for a moment to receive me. I thought
her, then, still more colourless and thin than when I had seen her last;
the flashing eyes still brighter, and the scar still plainer.

Our meeting was not cordial. We had parted angrily on the last occasion;
and there was an air of disdain about her, which she took no pains to
conceal.

'I am told you wish to speak to me, Miss Dartle,' said I, standing near
her, with my hand upon the back of the seat, and declining her gesture
of invitation to sit down.

'If you please,' said she. 'Pray has this girl been found?'

'No.'

'And yet she has run away!'

I saw her thin lips working while she looked at me, as if they were
eager to load her with reproaches.

'Run away?' I repeated.

'Yes! From him,' she said, with a laugh. 'If she is not found, perhaps
she never will be found. She may be dead!'

The vaunting cruelty with which she met my glance, I never saw expressed
in any other face that ever I have seen.

'To wish her dead,' said I, 'may be the kindest wish that one of her own
sex could bestow upon her. I am glad that time has softened you so much,
Miss Dartle.'

She condescended to make no reply, but, turning on me with another
scornful laugh, said:

'The friends of this excellent and much-injured young lady are friends
of yours. You are their champion, and assert their rights. Do you wish
to know what is known of her?'

'Yes,' said I.

She rose with an ill-favoured smile, and taking a few steps towards
a wall of holly that was near at hand, dividing the lawn from a
kitchen-garden, said, in a louder voice, 'Come here!'--as if she were
calling to some unclean beast.

'You will restrain any demonstrative championship or vengeance in this
place, of course, Mr. Copperfield?' said she, looking over her shoulder
at me with the same expression.

I inclined my head, without knowing what she meant; and she said, 'Come
here!' again; and returned, followed by the respectable Mr. Littimer,
who, with undiminished respectability, made me a bow, and took up his
position behind her. The air of wicked grace: of triumph, in which,
strange to say, there was yet something feminine and alluring: with
which she reclined upon the seat between us, and looked at me, was
worthy of a cruel Princess in a Legend.

'Now,' said she, imperiously, without glancing at him, and touching
the old wound as it throbbed: perhaps, in this instance, with pleasure
rather than pain. 'Tell Mr. Copperfield about the flight.'

'Mr. James and myself, ma'am--'

'Don't address yourself to me!' she interrupted with a frown.

'Mr. James and myself, sir--'

'Nor to me, if you please,' said I.

Mr. Littimer, without being at all discomposed, signified by a slight
obeisance, that anything that was most agreeable to us was most
agreeable to him; and began again.

'Mr. James and myself have been abroad with the young woman, ever
since she left Yarmouth under Mr. James's protection. We have been in a
variety of places, and seen a deal of foreign country. We have been in
France, Switzerland, Italy, in fact, almost all parts.'

He looked at the back of the seat, as if he were addressing himself to
that; and softly played upon it with his hands, as if he were striking
chords upon a dumb piano.

'Mr. James took quite uncommonly to the young woman; and was more
settled, for a length of time, than I have known him to be since I have
been in his service. The young woman was very improvable, and spoke the
languages; and wouldn't have been known for the same country-person. I
noticed that she was much admired wherever we went.'

Miss Dartle put her hand upon her side. I saw him steal a glance at her,
and slightly smile to himself.

'Very much admired, indeed, the young woman was. What with her dress;
what with the air and sun; what with being made so much of; what with
this, that, and the other; her merits really attracted general notice.'

He made a short pause. Her eyes wandered restlessly over the distant
prospect, and she bit her nether lip to stop that busy mouth.

Taking his hands from the seat, and placing one of them within the
other, as he settled himself on one leg, Mr. Littimer proceeded, with
his eyes cast down, and his respectable head a little advanced, and a
little on one side:

'The young woman went on in this manner for some time, being
occasionally low in her spirits, until I think she began to weary Mr.
James by giving way to her low spirits and tempers of that kind; and
things were not so comfortable. Mr. James he began to be restless again.
The more restless he got, the worse she got; and I must say, for myself,
that I had a very difficult time of it indeed between the two. Still
matters were patched up here, and made good there, over and over again;
and altogether lasted, I am sure, for a longer time than anybody could
have expected.'

Recalling her eyes from the distance, she looked at me again now, with
her former air. Mr. Littimer, clearing his throat behind his hand with a
respectable short cough, changed legs, and went on:

'At last, when there had been, upon the whole, a good many words and
reproaches, Mr. James he set off one morning, from the neighbourhood of
Naples, where we had a villa (the young woman being very partial to
the sea), and, under pretence of coming back in a day or so, left it in
charge with me to break it out, that, for the general happiness of all
concerned, he was'--here an interruption of the short cough--'gone. But
Mr. James, I must say, certainly did behave extremely honourable; for
he proposed that the young woman should marry a very respectable person,
who was fully prepared to overlook the past, and who was, at least, as
good as anybody the young woman could have aspired to in a regular way:
her connexions being very common.'

He changed legs again, and wetted his lips. I was convinced that the
scoundrel spoke of himself, and I saw my conviction reflected in Miss
Dartle's face.

'This I also had it in charge to communicate. I was willing to do
anything to relieve Mr. James from his difficulty, and to restore
harmony between himself and an affectionate parent, who has undergone
so much on his account. Therefore I undertook the commission. The
young woman's violence when she came to, after I broke the fact of his
departure, was beyond all expectations. She was quite mad, and had to
be held by force; or, if she couldn't have got to a knife, or got to the
sea, she'd have beaten her head against the marble floor.'

Miss Dartle, leaning back upon the seat, with a light of exultation in
her face, seemed almost to caress the sounds this fellow had uttered.

'But when I came to the second part of what had been entrusted to me,'
said Mr. Littimer, rubbing his hands uneasily, 'which anybody might
have supposed would have been, at all events, appreciated as a kind
intention, then the young woman came out in her true colours. A more
outrageous person I never did see. Her conduct was surprisingly bad. She
had no more gratitude, no more feeling, no more patience, no more reason
in her, than a stock or a stone. If I hadn't been upon my guard, I am
convinced she would have had my blood.'

'I think the better of her for it,' said I, indignantly.

Mr. Littimer bent his head, as much as to say, 'Indeed, sir? But you're
young!' and resumed his narrative.

'It was necessary, in short, for a time, to take away everything nigh
her, that she could do herself, or anybody else, an injury with, and
to shut her up close. Notwithstanding which, she got out in the night;
forced the lattice of a window, that I had nailed up myself; dropped on
a vine that was trailed below; and never has been seen or heard of, to
my knowledge, since.'

'She is dead, perhaps,' said Miss Dartle, with a smile, as if she could
have spurned the body of the ruined girl.

'She may have drowned herself, miss,' returned Mr. Littimer, catching at
an excuse for addressing himself to somebody. 'It's very possible. Or,
she may have had assistance from the boatmen, and the boatmen's wives
and children. Being given to low company, she was very much in the
habit of talking to them on the beach, Miss Dartle, and sitting by their
boats. I have known her do it, when Mr. James has been away, whole days.
Mr. James was far from pleased to find out, once, that she had told the
children she was a boatman's daughter, and that in her own country, long
ago, she had roamed about the beach, like them.'

Oh, Emily! Unhappy beauty! What a picture rose before me of her sitting
on the far-off shore, among the children like herself when she was
innocent, listening to little voices such as might have called her
Mother had she been a poor man's wife; and to the great voice of the
sea, with its eternal 'Never more!'

'When it was clear that nothing could be done, Miss Dartle--'

'Did I tell you not to speak to me?' she said, with stern contempt.

'You spoke to me, miss,' he replied. 'I beg your pardon. But it is my
service to obey.'

'Do your service,' she returned. 'Finish your story, and go!'

'When it was clear,' he said, with infinite respectability and an
obedient bow, 'that she was not to be found, I went to Mr. James, at the
place where it had been agreed that I should write to him, and informed
him of what had occurred. Words passed between us in consequence, and
I felt it due to my character to leave him. I could bear, and I have
borne, a great deal from Mr. James; but he insulted me too far. He hurt
me. Knowing the unfortunate difference between himself and his mother,
and what her anxiety of mind was likely to be, I took the liberty of
coming home to England, and relating--'

'For money which I paid him,' said Miss Dartle to me.

'Just so, ma'am--and relating what I knew. I am not aware,' said Mr.
Littimer, after a moment's reflection, 'that there is anything else.
I am at present out of employment, and should be happy to meet with a
respectable situation.'

Miss Dartle glanced at me, as though she would inquire if there were
anything that I desired to ask. As there was something which had
occurred to my mind, I said in reply:

'I could wish to know from this--creature,' I could not bring myself
to utter any more conciliatory word, 'whether they intercepted a letter
that was written to her from home, or whether he supposes that she
received it.'

He remained calm and silent, with his eyes fixed on the ground, and the
tip of every finger of his right hand delicately poised against the tip
of every finger of his left.

Miss Dartle turned her head disdainfully towards him.

'I beg your pardon, miss,' he said, awakening from his abstraction,
'but, however submissive to you, I have my position, though a servant.
Mr. Copperfield and you, miss, are different people. If Mr. Copperfield
wishes to know anything from me, I take the liberty of reminding Mr.
Copperfield that he can put a question to me. I have a character to
maintain.'

After a momentary struggle with myself, I turned my eyes upon him, and
said, 'You have heard my question. Consider it addressed to yourself, if
you choose. What answer do you make?'

'Sir,' he rejoined, with an occasional separation and reunion of those
delicate tips, 'my answer must be qualified; because, to betray Mr.
James's confidence to his mother, and to betray it to you, are two
different actions. It is not probable, I consider, that Mr. James would
encourage the receipt of letters likely to increase low spirits and
unpleasantness; but further than that, sir, I should wish to avoid
going.'

'Is that all?' inquired Miss Dartle of me.

I indicated that I had nothing more to say. 'Except,' I added, as I
saw him moving off, 'that I understand this fellow's part in the wicked
story, and that, as I shall make it known to the honest man who has been
her father from her childhood, I would recommend him to avoid going too
much into public.'

He had stopped the moment I began, and had listened with his usual
repose of manner.

'Thank you, sir. But you'll excuse me if I say, sir, that there are
neither slaves nor slave-drivers in this country, and that people are
not allowed to take the law into their own hands. If they do, it is
more to their own peril, I believe, than to other people's. Consequently
speaking, I am not at all afraid of going wherever I may wish, sir.'

With that, he made a polite bow; and, with another to Miss Dartle, went
away through the arch in the wall of holly by which he had come. Miss
Dartle and I regarded each other for a little while in silence; her
manner being exactly what it was, when she had produced the man.

'He says besides,' she observed, with a slow curling of her lip, 'that
his master, as he hears, is coasting Spain; and this done, is away
to gratify his seafaring tastes till he is weary. But this is of no
interest to you. Between these two proud persons, mother and son, there
is a wider breach than before, and little hope of its healing, for they
are one at heart, and time makes each more obstinate and imperious.
Neither is this of any interest to you; but it introduces what I wish to
say. This devil whom you make an angel of. I mean this low girl whom he
picked out of the tide-mud,' with her black eyes full upon me, and her
passionate finger up, 'may be alive,--for I believe some common things
are hard to die. If she is, you will desire to have a pearl of such
price found and taken care of. We desire that, too; that he may not
by any chance be made her prey again. So far, we are united in one
interest; and that is why I, who would do her any mischief that so
coarse a wretch is capable of feeling, have sent for you to hear what
you have heard.'

I saw, by the change in her face, that someone was advancing behind me.
It was Mrs. Steerforth, who gave me her hand more coldly than of yore,
and with an augmentation of her former stateliness of manner, but still,
I perceived--and I was touched by it--with an ineffaceable remembrance
of my old love for her son. She was greatly altered. Her fine figure was
far less upright, her handsome face was deeply marked, and her hair was
almost white. But when she sat down on the seat, she was a handsome lady
still; and well I knew the bright eye with its lofty look, that had been
a light in my very dreams at school.

'Is Mr. Copperfield informed of everything, Rosa?'

'Yes.'

'And has he heard Littimer himself?'

'Yes; I have told him why you wished it.' 'You are a good girl. I have
had some slight correspondence with your former friend, sir,' addressing
me, 'but it has not restored his sense of duty or natural obligation.
Therefore I have no other object in this, than what Rosa has mentioned.
If, by the course which may relieve the mind of the decent man you
brought here (for whom I am sorry--I can say no more), my son may be
saved from again falling into the snares of a designing enemy, well!'

She drew herself up, and sat looking straight before her, far away.

'Madam,' I said respectfully, 'I understand. I assure you I am in no
danger of putting any strained construction on your motives. But I must
say, even to you, having known this injured family from childhood,
that if you suppose the girl, so deeply wronged, has not been cruelly
deluded, and would not rather die a hundred deaths than take a cup of
water from your son's hand now, you cherish a terrible mistake.'

'Well, Rosa, well!' said Mrs. Steerforth, as the other was about to
interpose, 'it is no matter. Let it be. You are married, sir, I am
told?'

I answered that I had been some time married.

'And are doing well? I hear little in the quiet life I lead, but I
understand you are beginning to be famous.'

'I have been very fortunate,' I said, 'and find my name connected with
some praise.'

'You have no mother?'--in a softened voice.

'No.'

'It is a pity,' she returned. 'She would have been proud of you. Good
night!'

I took the hand she held out with a dignified, unbending air, and it
was as calm in mine as if her breast had been at peace. Her pride could
still its very pulses, it appeared, and draw the placid veil before
her face, through which she sat looking straight before her on the far
distance.

As I moved away from them along the terrace, I could not help observing
how steadily they both sat gazing on the prospect, and how it thickened
and closed around them. Here and there, some early lamps were seen to
twinkle in the distant city; and in the eastern quarter of the sky
the lurid light still hovered. But, from the greater part of the broad
valley interposed, a mist was rising like a sea, which, mingling with
the darkness, made it seem as if the gathering waters would encompass
them. I have reason to remember this, and think of it with awe; for
before I looked upon those two again, a stormy sea had risen to their
feet.

Reflecting on what had been thus told me, I felt it right that it should
be communicated to Mr. Peggotty. On the following evening I went into
London in quest of him. He was always wandering about from place to
place, with his one object of recovering his niece before him; but was
more in London than elsewhere. Often and often, now, had I seen him in
the dead of night passing along the streets, searching, among the few
who loitered out of doors at those untimely hours, for what he dreaded
to find.

He kept a lodging over the little chandler's shop in Hungerford Market,
which I have had occasion to mention more than once, and from which he
first went forth upon his errand of mercy. Hither I directed my walk. On
making inquiry for him, I learned from the people of the house that he
had not gone out yet, and I should find him in his room upstairs.

He was sitting reading by a window in which he kept a few plants. The
room was very neat and orderly. I saw in a moment that it was always
kept prepared for her reception, and that he never went out but he
thought it possible he might bring her home. He had not heard my tap
at the door, and only raised his eyes when I laid my hand upon his
shoulder.

'Mas'r Davy! Thankee, sir! thankee hearty, for this visit! Sit ye down.
You're kindly welcome, sir!'

'Mr. Peggotty,' said I, taking the chair he handed me, 'don't expect
much! I have heard some news.'

'Of Em'ly!'

He put his hand, in a nervous manner, on his mouth, and turned pale, as
he fixed his eyes on mine.

'It gives no clue to where she is; but she is not with him.'

He sat down, looking intently at me, and listened in profound silence
to all I had to tell. I well remember the sense of dignity, beauty even,
with which the patient gravity of his face impressed me, when, having
gradually removed his eyes from mine, he sat looking downward, leaning
his forehead on his hand. He offered no interruption, but remained
throughout perfectly still. He seemed to pursue her figure through
the narrative, and to let every other shape go by him, as if it were
nothing.

When I had done, he shaded his face, and continued silent. I looked out
of the window for a little while, and occupied myself with the plants.

'How do you fare to feel about it, Mas'r Davy?' he inquired at length.

'I think that she is living,' I replied.

'I doen't know. Maybe the first shock was too rough, and in the wildness
of her art--! That there blue water as she used to speak on. Could she
have thowt o' that so many year, because it was to be her grave!'

He said this, musing, in a low, frightened voice; and walked across the
little room.

'And yet,' he added, 'Mas'r Davy, I have felt so sure as she was
living--I have know'd, awake and sleeping, as it was so trew that I
should find her--I have been so led on by it, and held up by it--that I
doen't believe I can have been deceived. No! Em'ly's alive!'

He put his hand down firmly on the table, and set his sunburnt face into
a resolute expression.

'My niece, Em'ly, is alive, sir!' he said, steadfastly. 'I doen't know
wheer it comes from, or how 'tis, but I am told as she's alive!'

He looked almost like a man inspired, as he said it. I waited for a
few moments, until he could give me his undivided attention; and then
proceeded to explain the precaution, that, it had occurred to me last
night, it would be wise to take.

'Now, my dear friend--'I began.

'Thankee, thankee, kind sir,' he said, grasping my hand in both of his.

'If she should make her way to London, which is likely--for where could
she lose herself so readily as in this vast city; and what would she
wish to do, but lose and hide herself, if she does not go home?--'

'And she won't go home,' he interposed, shaking his head mournfully. 'If
she had left of her own accord, she might; not as It was, sir.'

'If she should come here,' said I, 'I believe there is one person,
here, more likely to discover her than any other in the world. Do
you remember--hear what I say, with fortitude--think of your great
object!--do you remember Martha?'

'Of our town?'

I needed no other answer than his face.

'Do you know that she is in London?'

'I have seen her in the streets,' he answered, with a shiver.

'But you don't know,' said I, 'that Emily was charitable to her, with
Ham's help, long before she fled from home. Nor, that, when we met one
night, and spoke together in the room yonder, over the way, she listened
at the door.'

'Mas'r Davy!' he replied in astonishment. 'That night when it snew so
hard?'

'That night. I have never seen her since. I went back, after parting
from you, to speak to her, but she was gone. I was unwilling to mention
her to you then, and I am now; but she is the person of whom I speak,
and with whom I think we should communicate. Do you understand?'

'Too well, sir,' he replied. We had sunk our voices, almost to a
whisper, and continued to speak in that tone.

'You say you have seen her. Do you think that you could find her? I
could only hope to do so by chance.'

'I think, Mas'r Davy, I know wheer to look.'

'It is dark. Being together, shall we go out now, and try to find her
tonight?'

He assented, and prepared to accompany me. Without appearing to observe
what he was doing, I saw how carefully he adjusted the little room,
put a candle ready and the means of lighting it, arranged the bed, and
finally took out of a drawer one of her dresses (I remember to have
seen her wear it), neatly folded with some other garments, and a bonnet,
which he placed upon a chair. He made no allusion to these clothes,
neither did I. There they had been waiting for her, many and many a
night, no doubt.

'The time was, Mas'r Davy,' he said, as we came downstairs, 'when I
thowt this girl, Martha, a'most like the dirt underneath my Em'ly's
feet. God forgive me, theer's a difference now!'

As we went along, partly to hold him in conversation, and partly to
satisfy myself, I asked him about Ham. He said, almost in the same words
as formerly, that Ham was just the same, 'wearing away his life with
kiender no care nohow for 't; but never murmuring, and liked by all'.

I asked him what he thought Ham's state of mind was, in reference to the
cause of their misfortunes? Whether he believed it was dangerous? What
he supposed, for example, Ham would do, if he and Steerforth ever should
encounter?

'I doen't know, sir,' he replied. 'I have thowt of it oftentimes, but I
can't awize myself of it, no matters.'

I recalled to his remembrance the morning after her departure, when we
were all three on the beach. 'Do you recollect,' said I, 'a certain wild
way in which he looked out to sea, and spoke about "the end of it"?'

'Sure I do!' said he.

'What do you suppose he meant?'

'Mas'r Davy,' he replied, 'I've put the question to myself a mort o'
times, and never found no answer. And theer's one curious thing--that,
though he is so pleasant, I wouldn't fare to feel comfortable to try and
get his mind upon 't. He never said a wured to me as warn't as dootiful
as dootiful could be, and it ain't likely as he'd begin to speak any
other ways now; but it's fur from being fleet water in his mind, where
them thowts lays. It's deep, sir, and I can't see down.'

'You are right,' said I, 'and that has sometimes made me anxious.'

'And me too, Mas'r Davy,' he rejoined. 'Even more so, I do assure you,
than his ventersome ways, though both belongs to the alteration in him.
I doen't know as he'd do violence under any circumstances, but I hope as
them two may be kep asunders.'

We had come, through Temple Bar, into the city. Conversing no more now,
and walking at my side, he yielded himself up to the one aim of his
devoted life, and went on, with that hushed concentration of his
faculties which would have made his figure solitary in a multitude.
We were not far from Blackfriars Bridge, when he turned his head and
pointed to a solitary female figure flitting along the opposite side of
the street. I knew it, readily, to be the figure that we sought.

We crossed the road, and were pressing on towards her, when it occurred
to me that she might be more disposed to feel a woman's interest in the
lost girl, if we spoke to her in a quieter place, aloof from the crowd,
and where we should be less observed. I advised my companion, therefore,
that we should not address her yet, but follow her; consulting in this,
likewise, an indistinct desire I had, to know where she went.

He acquiescing, we followed at a distance: never losing sight of her,
but never caring to come very near, as she frequently looked about.
Once, she stopped to listen to a band of music; and then we stopped too.

She went on a long way. Still we went on. It was evident, from the
manner in which she held her course, that she was going to some fixed
destination; and this, and her keeping in the busy streets, and I
suppose the strange fascination in the secrecy and mystery of so
following anyone, made me adhere to my first purpose. At length she
turned into a dull, dark street, where the noise and crowd were lost;
and I said, 'We may speak to her now'; and, mending our pace, we went
after her.



We were now down in Westminster. We had turned back to follow her,
having encountered her coming towards us; and Westminster Abbey was
the point at which she passed from the lights and noise of the leading
streets. She proceeded so quickly, when she got free of the two currents
of passengers setting towards and from the bridge, that, between this
and the advance she had of us when she struck off, we were in the narrow
water-side street by Millbank before we came up with her. At that moment
she crossed the road, as if to avoid the footsteps that she heard so
close behind; and, without looking back, passed on even more rapidly.

A glimpse of the river through a dull gateway, where some waggons were
housed for the night, seemed to arrest my feet. I touched my companion
without speaking, and we both forbore to cross after her, and both
followed on that opposite side of the way; keeping as quietly as we
could in the shadow of the houses, but keeping very near her.

There was, and is when I write, at the end of that low-lying street,
a dilapidated little wooden building, probably an obsolete old
ferry-house. Its position is just at that point where the street ceases,
and the road begins to lie between a row of houses and the river. As
soon as she came here, and saw the water, she stopped as if she had come
to her destination; and presently went slowly along by the brink of the
river, looking intently at it.

All the way here, I had supposed that she was going to some house;
indeed, I had vaguely entertained the hope that the house might be in
some way associated with the lost girl. But that one dark glimpse of the
river, through the gateway, had instinctively prepared me for her going
no farther.

The neighbourhood was a dreary one at that time; as oppressive, sad, and
solitary by night, as any about London. There were neither wharves nor
houses on the melancholy waste of road near the great blank Prison. A
sluggish ditch deposited its mud at the prison walls. Coarse grass and
rank weeds straggled over all the marshy land in the vicinity. In one
part, carcases of houses, inauspiciously begun and never finished,
rotted away. In another, the ground was cumbered with rusty iron
monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles,
anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange
objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust,
underneath which--having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet
weather--they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves.
The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, arose
by night to disturb everything except the heavy and unbroken smoke that
poured out of their chimneys. Slimy gaps and causeways, winding among
old wooden piles, with a sickly substance clinging to the latter, like
green hair, and the rags of last year's handbills offering rewards for
drowned men fluttering above high-water mark, led down through the ooze
and slush to the ebb-tide. There was a story that one of the pits
dug for the dead in the time of the Great Plague was hereabout; and
a blighting influence seemed to have proceeded from it over the whole
place. Or else it looked as if it had gradually decomposed into that
nightmare condition, out of the overflowings of the polluted stream.

As if she were a part of the refuse it had cast out, and left to
corruption and decay, the girl we had followed strayed down to the
river's brink, and stood in the midst of this night-picture, lonely and
still, looking at the water.

There were some boats and barges astrand in the mud, and these enabled
us to come within a few yards of her without being seen. I then signed
to Mr. Peggotty to remain where he was, and emerged from their shade to
speak to her. I did not approach her solitary figure without trembling;
for this gloomy end to her determined walk, and the way in which she
stood, almost within the cavernous shadow of the iron bridge, looking
at the lights crookedly reflected in the strong tide, inspired a dread
within me.

I think she was talking to herself. I am sure, although absorbed in
gazing at the water, that her shawl was off her shoulders, and that she
was muffling her hands in it, in an unsettled and bewildered way, more
like the action of a sleep-walker than a waking person. I know, and
never can forget, that there was that in her wild manner which gave me
no assurance but that she would sink before my eyes, until I had her arm
within my grasp.

At the same moment I said 'Martha!'

She uttered a terrified scream, and struggled with me with such strength
that I doubt if I could have held her alone. But a stronger hand than
mine was laid upon her; and when she raised her frightened eyes and saw
whose it was, she made but one more effort and dropped down between us.
We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones,
and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat
among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.

'Oh, the river!' she cried passionately. 'Oh, the river!'

'Hush, hush!' said I. 'Calm yourself.'

But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, 'Oh, the
river!' over and over again.

'I know it's like me!' she exclaimed. 'I know that I belong to it.
I know that it's the natural company of such as I am! It comes from
country places, where there was once no harm in it--and it creeps
through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable--and it goes away,
like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled--and I feel that
I must go with it!' I have never known what despair was, except in the
tone of those words.

'I can't keep away from it. I can't forget it. It haunts me day and
night. It's the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that's
fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river!'

The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion,
as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his
niece's history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any
painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He
shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand--I touched it with my
own, for his appearance alarmed me--was deadly cold.

'She is in a state of frenzy,' I whispered to him. 'She will speak
differently in a little time.'

I don't know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with
his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to
her with his outstretched hand.

A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid
her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of
humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could
speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would
have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more
tranquil.

'Martha,' said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise--she seemed
to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was
weak, and leaned against a boat. 'Do you know who this is, who is with
me?'

She said faintly, 'Yes.'

'Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight?'

She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in
a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without
appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against
her forehead.

'Are you composed enough,' said I, 'to speak on the subject which so
interested you--I hope Heaven may remember it!--that snowy night?'

Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to
me for not having driven her away from the door.

'I want to say nothing for myself,' she said, after a few moments. 'I
am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,' she had
shrunk away from him, 'if you don't feel too hard to me to do it, that
I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune.' 'It has never been
attributed to you,' I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.

'It was you, if I don't deceive myself,' she said, in a broken voice,
'that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so
gentle to me; didn't shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me
such kind help! Was it you, sir?'

'It was,' said I.

'I should have been in the river long ago,' she said, glancing at it
with a terrible expression, 'if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.
I never could have kept out of it a single winter's night, if I had not
been free of any share in that!'

'The cause of her flight is too well understood,' I said. 'You are
innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,--we know.'

'Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better
heart!' exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; 'for she was
always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant
and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself,
knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes
life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever
from her!'

Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his
eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.

'And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some
belonging to our town,' cried Martha, 'the bitterest thought in all my
mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me,
and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died
to have brought back her good name!'

Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and
grief was terrible.

'To have died, would not have been much--what can I say?---I would
have lived!' she cried. 'I would have lived to be old, in the wretched
streets--and to wander about, avoided, in the dark--and to see the day
break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used
to shine into my room, and wake me once--I would have done even that, to
save her!'

Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them
up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture
constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as
though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and
drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.

'What shall I ever do!' she said, fighting thus with her despair. 'How
can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to
everyone I come near!' Suddenly she turned to my companion. 'Stamp upon
me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had
done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can't
believe--why should you?---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It
would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a
word. I don't complain. I don't say she and I are alike--I know there
is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and
wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and
love her. Oh, don't think that all the power I had of loving anything is
quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being
what I am, and having ever known her; but don't think that of me!'

He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild
distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.

'Martha,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid
as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen't know half the
change that's come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it
likely. Well!' he paused a moment, then went on. 'You doen't understand
how 'tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You
doen't understand what 'tis we has afore us. Listen now!'

His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him,
as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was
quite hushed and mute.

'If you heerd,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'owt of what passed between Mas'r
Davy and me, th' night when it snew so hard, you know as I have
been--wheer not--fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,' he repeated
steadily. 'Fur she's more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear
afore.'

She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.

'I have heerd her tell,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as you was early left
fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough
seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you'd had such
a friend, you'd have got into a way of being fond of him in course of
time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me.'

As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her,
taking it up from the ground for that purpose.

'Whereby,' said he, 'I know, both as she would go to the wureld's
furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would
fly to the wureld's furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she
ain't no call to doubt my love, and doen't--and doen't,' he repeated,
with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, 'there's shame
steps in, and keeps betwixt us.'

I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself,
new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature
it presented.

'According to our reckoning,' he proceeded, 'Mas'r Davy's here, and
mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to
London. We believe--Mas'r Davy, me, and all of us--that you are as
innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You've
spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew
she was! I knew she always was, to all. You're thankful to her, and you
love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you!'

She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were
doubtful of what he had said.

'Will you trust me?' she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.

'Full and free!' said Mr. Peggotty.

'To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any
shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to
you, and bring you to her?' she asked hurriedly.

We both replied together, 'Yes!'

She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote
herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never
waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there
was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object
she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its
passing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if
that were possible, than she had been upon the river's brink that night;
and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!

She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said
this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the
gloomy water.

We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted
at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often
changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her
eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed
as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.

She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if
occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two
addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to
her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived
herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not
to know.

Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred
to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to
accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would
do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could
not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her
engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked
us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence
upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but
remained inexorable.

'There may be work to be got,' she said. 'I'll try.'

'At least take some assistance,' I returned, 'until you have tried.'

'I could not do what I have promised, for money,' she replied. 'I could
not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away
your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away
the only certain thing that saves me from the river.'

'In the name of the great judge,' said I, 'before whom you and all of us
must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do
some good, if we will.'

She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she
answered:

'It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature
for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good
should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever
come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long
while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to
try for. I know no more, and I can say no more.'

Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out
her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some
healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been
ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity
of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes
expressed privation and endurance.

We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same
direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets. I
had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put it to
Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like distrusting
her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same mind, and equally
reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours,
which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way;
and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort,
there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss
to interpret.

It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own gate, and
was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul's, the sound
of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of
striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see that the door of my
aunt's cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining
out across the road.

Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms,
and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in
the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great surprise
that I saw a man standing in her little garden.

He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking. I
stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now,
though obscured; and I recognized the man whom I had once supposed to be
a delusion of Mr. Dick's, and had once encountered with my aunt in the
streets of the city.

He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry
appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were
the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle on the
ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though with a
covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.

The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came
out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I heard it
chink.

'What's the use of this?' he demanded.

'I can spare no more,' returned my aunt.

'Then I can't go,' said he. 'Here! You may take it back!'

'You bad man,' returned my aunt, with great emotion; 'how can you use me
so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am! What have
I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to
your deserts?'

'And why don't you abandon me to my deserts?' said he.

'You ask me why!' returned my aunt. 'What a heart you must have!'

He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at
length he said:

'Is this all you mean to give me, then?'

'It is all I CAN give you,' said my aunt. 'You know I have had losses,
and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having got it, why
do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing
what you have become?'

'I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,' he said. 'I lead the
life of an owl.'

'You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,' said my aunt.
'You closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You
treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and repent of it.
Don't add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done
me!'

'Aye!' he returned. 'It's all very fine--Well! I must do the best I can,
for the present, I suppose.'

In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt's indignant tears,
and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three quick steps,
as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he came
out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.

'Aunt,' said I, hurriedly. 'This man alarming you again! Let me speak to
him. Who is he?'

'Child,' returned my aunt, taking my arm, 'come in, and don't speak to
me for ten minutes.'

We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the round
green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a chair, and
occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour. Then she
came out, and took a seat beside me.

'Trot,' said my aunt, calmly, 'it's my husband.'

'Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead!'

'Dead to me,' returned my aunt, 'but living.'

I sat in silent amazement.

'Betsey Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion,'
said my aunt, composedly, 'but the time was, Trot, when she believed in
that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there
was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given
him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her
heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and for ever, in a
grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down.'

'My dear, good aunt!'

'I left him,' my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of
mine, 'generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left
him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected
a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks
and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another
woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he
is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,' said
my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; 'and
I believed him--I was a fool!--to be the soul of honour!'

She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.

'He is nothing to me now, Trot--less than nothing. But, sooner than have
him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in
this country), I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals
when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am
so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what
I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle
fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman
was.'

My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.

'There, my dear!' she said. 'Now you know the beginning, middle, and
end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another any
more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is
my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it to ourselves, Trot!'




I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the
punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very
successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears,
notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of
my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has
always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any
good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the
faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this
reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise
I got, the more I tried to deserve.

It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials
it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. They
express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer to
them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and
accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence.
Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and
bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find
out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and
nothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so
prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myself
reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night,
therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the
last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the
old drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except,
perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.

I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year
and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the
housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page.
The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook;
in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the
remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole
existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper
occasions,--as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in
the evening,--and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron
missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very
much attached to us, and wouldn't go. He was a tearful boy, and broke
into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion
was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother--no
anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a
sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands;
and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had
a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing
his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on
the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would
take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.

This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum,
was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew--and
he grew like scarlet beans--with painful apprehensions of the time when
he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey.
I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself
into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he
was an old man.

I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate's manner of
getting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora's watch, which, like
everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own;
and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always a
weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London and
Uxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well as
I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; when
four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn't play, were
found upon his person.

The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeable
to me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, and
in a peculiar way--not in the lump, but by instalments. For example:
the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he made
certain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believed
to be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles and
corks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew
of the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a
new twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early every
morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned
to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was
informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of
sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A
little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and
confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises,
on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so
ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any money
to hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being
permitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the case
that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amends
in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.

At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police
approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life until
he was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn't be
quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dora
before he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when she
found herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my life
until he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherd
of, 'up the country' somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.

All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our
mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora one
evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.

'My love,' said I, 'it is very painful to me to think that our want of
system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have got
used to), but other people.'

'You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be
cross!' said Dora.

'No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean.'

'I think I don't want to know,' said Dora.

'But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down.'

Dora put his nose to mine, and said 'Boh!' to drive my seriousness away;
but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking at
me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression of
countenance.

'The fact is, my dear,' I began, 'there is contagion in us. We infect
everyone about us.'

I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora's face had not
admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was
going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy,
for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made
my meaning plainer.

'It is not merely, my pet,' said I, 'that we lose money and comfort, and
even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we
incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into
our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the
fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out
ill because we don't turn out very well ourselves.'

'Oh, what an accusation,' exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; 'to say
that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh!'

'My dearest,' I remonstrated, 'don't talk preposterous nonsense! Who has
made the least allusion to gold watches?'

'You did,' returned Dora. 'You know you did. You said I hadn't turned
out well, and compared me to him.'

'To whom?' I asked.

'To the page,' sobbed Dora. 'Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your
affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn't you tell me
your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn't you say,
you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a
transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my
goodness!'

'Now, Dora, my love,' I returned, gently trying to remove the
handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, 'this is not only very ridiculous
of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it's not true.'

'You always said he was a story-teller,' sobbed Dora. 'And now you say
the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do!'

'My darling girl,' I retorted, 'I really must entreat you to be
reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora,
unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never
learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to
people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were
as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice--which we are
not--even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so--which we
don't--I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We
are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can't
help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss,
and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that's all. Come
now. Don't be foolish!'

Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief.
She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why had
I ever been married? Why hadn't I said, even the day before we went to
church, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If I
couldn't bear her, why didn't I send her away to her aunts at Putney, or
to Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would not
call her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of the
sort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being
in that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of
effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.

What other course was left to take? To 'form her mind'? This was a
common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I
resolved to form Dora's mind.

I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I would
have infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave--and
disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which
occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her--and fatigued her
to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quite
casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion--and she
started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers.
No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little
wife's mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive
perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest
apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought
Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.

I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and whenever
he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification of
Dora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed upon
Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but it
had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her
always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found
myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always
playing spider to Dora's fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her
infinite disturbance.

Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time
when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I
should have 'formed her mind' to my entire satisfaction, I persevered,
even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been
all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with
determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that
perhaps Dora's mind was already formed.

On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned
my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than in
action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and to
try to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tired
of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under
restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar
for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.

Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; but
there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mind
that it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, I
would keep it for the future in my own breast.

I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears;
and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good company
lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerely
felt, and which indeed it was.

'The truth is, Dora, my life,' I said; 'I have been trying to be wise.'

'And to make me wise too,' said Dora, timidly. 'Haven't you, Doady?'

I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissed
the parted lips.

'It's of not a bit of use,' said Dora, shaking her head, until the
ear-rings rang again. 'You know what a little thing I am, and what I
wanted you to call me from the first. If you can't do so, I am afraid
you'll never like me. Are you sure you don't think, sometimes, it would
have been better to have--'

'Done what, my dear?' For she made no effort to proceed.

'Nothing!' said Dora.

'Nothing?' I repeated.

She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her
favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a
profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see
it.

'Don't I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to
have tried to form my little wife's mind?' said I, laughing at myself.
'Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do.'

'Is that what you have been trying?' cried Dora. 'Oh what a shocking
boy!'

'But I shall never try any more,' said I. 'For I love her dearly as she
is.'

'Without a story--really?' inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.

'Why should I seek to change,' said I, 'what has been so precious to me
for so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, my
sweet Dora; and we'll try no conceited experiments, but go back to our
old way, and be happy.'

'And be happy!' returned Dora. 'Yes! All day! And you won't mind things
going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes?'

'No, no,' said I. 'We must do the best we can.'

'And you won't tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,' coaxed
Dora; 'will you? Because you know it's so dreadfully cross!'

'No, no,' said I.

'It's better for me to be stupid than uncomfortable, isn't it?' said
Dora.

'Better to be naturally Dora than anything else in the world.'

'In the world! Ah, Doady, it's a large place!'

She shook her head, turned her delighted bright eyes up to mine, kissed
me, broke into a merry laugh, and sprang away to put on Jip's new
collar.

So ended my last attempt to make any change in Dora. I had been unhappy
in trying it; I could not endure my own solitary wisdom; I could not
reconcile it with her former appeal to me as my child-wife. I resolved
to do what I could, in a quiet way, to improve our proceedings myself,
but I foresaw that my utmost would be very little, or I must degenerate
into the spider again, and be for ever lying in wait.

And the shadow I have mentioned, that was not to be between us any more,
but was to rest wholly on my own heart? How did that fall?

The old unhappy feeling pervaded my life. It was deepened, if it were
changed at all; but it was as undefined as ever, and addressed me like
a strain of sorrowful music faintly heard in the night. I loved my wife
dearly, and I was happy; but the happiness I had vaguely anticipated,
once, was not the happiness I enjoyed, and there was always something
wanting.

In fulfilment of the compact I have made with myself, to reflect my mind
on this paper, I again examine it, closely, and bring its secrets to the
light. What I missed, I still regarded--I always regarded--as something
that had been a dream of my youthful fancy; that was incapable of
realization; that I was now discovering to be so, with some natural
pain, as all men did. But that it would have been better for me if my
wife could have helped me more, and shared the many thoughts in which I
had no partner; and that this might have been; I knew.

Between these two irreconcilable conclusions: the one, that what I felt
was general and unavoidable; the other, that it was particular to me,
and might have been different: I balanced curiously, with no distinct
sense of their opposition to each other. When I thought of the airy
dreams of youth that are incapable of realization, I thought of the
better state preceding manhood that I had outgrown; and then the
contented days with Agnes, in the dear old house, arose before me, like
spectres of the dead, that might have some renewal in another world, but
never more could be reanimated here.

Sometimes, the speculation came into my thoughts, What might have
happened, or what would have happened, if Dora and I had never known
each other? But she was so incorporated with my existence, that it
was the idlest of all fancies, and would soon rise out of my reach and
sight, like gossamer floating in the air.

I always loved her. What I am describing, slumbered, and half awoke, and
slept again, in the innermost recesses of my mind. There was no evidence
of it in me; I know of no influence it had in anything I said or did. I
bore the weight of all our little cares, and all my projects; Dora held
the pens; and we both felt that our shares were adjusted as the case
required. She was truly fond of me, and proud of me; and when Agnes
wrote a few earnest words in her letters to Dora, of the pride and
interest with which my old friends heard of my growing reputation, and
read my book as if they heard me speaking its contents, Dora read them
out to me with tears of joy in her bright eyes, and said I was a dear
old clever, famous boy.

'The first mistaken impulse of an undisciplined heart.' Those words of
Mrs. Strong's were constantly recurring to me, at this time; were almost
always present to my mind. I awoke with them, often, in the night; I
remember to have even read them, in dreams, inscribed upon the walls
of houses. For I knew, now, that my own heart was undisciplined when it
first loved Dora; and that if it had been disciplined, it never
could have felt, when we were married, what it had felt in its secret
experience.

'There can be no disparity in marriage, like unsuitability of mind and
purpose.' Those words I remembered too. I had endeavoured to adapt
Dora to myself, and found it impracticable. It remained for me to adapt
myself to Dora; to share with her what I could, and be happy; to bear
on my own shoulders what I must, and be happy still. This was the
discipline to which I tried to bring my heart, when I began to think.
It made my second year much happier than my first; and, what was better
still, made Dora's life all sunshine.

But, as that year wore on, Dora was not strong. I had hoped that lighter
hands than mine would help to mould her character, and that a baby-smile
upon her breast might change my child-wife to a woman. It was not to be.
The spirit fluttered for a moment on the threshold of its little prison,
and, unconscious of captivity, took wing.

'When I can run about again, as I used to do, aunt,' said Dora, 'I shall
make Jip race. He is getting quite slow and lazy.'

'I suspect, my dear,' said my aunt quietly working by her side, 'he has
a worse disorder than that. Age, Dora.'

'Do you think he is old?' said Dora, astonished. 'Oh, how strange it
seems that Jip should be old!'

'It's a complaint we are all liable to, Little One, as we get on in
life,' said my aunt, cheerfully; 'I don't feel more free from it than I
used to be, I assure you.'

'But Jip,' said Dora, looking at him with compassion, 'even little Jip!
Oh, poor fellow!'

'I dare say he'll last a long time yet, Blossom,' said my aunt, patting
Dora on the cheek, as she leaned out of her couch to look at Jip, who
responded by standing on his hind legs, and baulking himself in various
asthmatic attempts to scramble up by the head and shoulders. 'He must
have a piece of flannel in his house this winter, and I shouldn't wonder
if he came out quite fresh again, with the flowers in the spring. Bless
the little dog!' exclaimed my aunt, 'if he had as many lives as a cat,
and was on the point of losing 'em all, he'd bark at me with his last
breath, I believe!'

Dora had helped him up on the sofa; where he really was defying my aunt
to such a furious extent, that he couldn't keep straight, but barked
himself sideways. The more my aunt looked at him, the more he reproached
her; for she had lately taken to spectacles, and for some inscrutable
reason he considered the glasses personal.

Dora made him lie down by her, with a good deal of persuasion; and when
he was quiet, drew one of his long ears through and through her hand,
repeating thoughtfully, 'Even little Jip! Oh, poor fellow!'

'His lungs are good enough,' said my aunt, gaily, 'and his dislikes are
not at all feeble. He has a good many years before him, no doubt. But if
you want a dog to race with, Little Blossom, he has lived too well for
that, and I'll give you one.'

'Thank you, aunt,' said Dora, faintly. 'But don't, please!'

'No?' said my aunt, taking off her spectacles.

'I couldn't have any other dog but Jip,' said Dora. 'It would be so
unkind to Jip! Besides, I couldn't be such friends with any other dog
but Jip; because he wouldn't have known me before I was married,
and wouldn't have barked at Doady when he first came to our house. I
couldn't care for any other dog but Jip, I am afraid, aunt.'

'To be sure!' said my aunt, patting her cheek again. 'You are right.'

'You are not offended,' said Dora. 'Are you?'

'Why, what a sensitive pet it is!' cried my aunt, bending over her
affectionately. 'To think that I could be offended!'

'No, no, I didn't really think so,' returned Dora; 'but I am a little
tired, and it made me silly for a moment--I am always a silly little
thing, you know, but it made me more silly--to talk about Jip. He
has known me in all that has happened to me, haven't you, Jip? And I
couldn't bear to slight him, because he was a little altered--could I,
Jip?'

Jip nestled closer to his mistress, and lazily licked her hand.

'You are not so old, Jip, are you, that you'll leave your mistress yet?'
said Dora. 'We may keep one another company a little longer!'

My pretty Dora! When she came down to dinner on the ensuing Sunday, and
was so glad to see old Traddles (who always dined with us on Sunday), we
thought she would be 'running about as she used to do', in a few days.
But they said, wait a few days more; and then, wait a few days more; and
still she neither ran nor walked. She looked very pretty, and was very
merry; but the little feet that used to be so nimble when they danced
round Jip, were dull and motionless.

I began to carry her downstairs every morning, and upstairs every night.
She would clasp me round the neck and laugh, the while, as if I did it
for a wager. Jip would bark and caper round us, and go on before, and
look back on the landing, breathing short, to see that we were coming.
My aunt, the best and most cheerful of nurses, would trudge after us, a
moving mass of shawls and pillows. Mr. Dick would not have relinquished
his post of candle-bearer to anyone alive. Traddles would be often at
the bottom of the staircase, looking on, and taking charge of sportive
messages from Dora to the dearest girl in the world. We made quite a gay
procession of it, and my child-wife was the gayest there.

But, sometimes, when I took her up, and felt that she was lighter in
my arms, a dead blank feeling came upon me, as if I were approaching
to some frozen region yet unseen, that numbed my life. I avoided the
recognition of this feeling by any name, or by any communing with
myself; until one night, when it was very strong upon me, and my aunt
had left her with a parting cry of 'Good night, Little Blossom,' I sat
down at my desk alone, and tried to think, Oh what a fatal name it was,
and how the blossom withered in its bloom upon the tree!



I received one morning by the post, the following letter, dated
Canterbury, and addressed to me at Doctor's Commons; which I read with
some surprise:


'MY DEAR SIR,

'Circumstances beyond my individual control have, for a considerable
lapse of time, effected a severance of that intimacy which, in the
limited opportunities conceded to me in the midst of my professional
duties, of contemplating the scenes and events of the past, tinged by
the prismatic hues of memory, has ever afforded me, as it ever must
continue to afford, gratifying emotions of no common description. This
fact, my dear sir, combined with the distinguished elevation to which
your talents have raised you, deters me from presuming to aspire to
the liberty of addressing the companion of my youth, by the familiar
appellation of Copperfield! It is sufficient to know that the name to
which I do myself the honour to refer, will ever be treasured among
the muniments of our house (I allude to the archives connected with our
former lodgers, preserved by Mrs. Micawber), with sentiments of personal
esteem amounting to affection.

'It is not for one, situated, through his original errors and a
fortuitous combination of unpropitious events, as is the foundered Bark
(if he may be allowed to assume so maritime a denomination), who
now takes up the pen to address you--it is not, I repeat, for one
so circumstanced, to adopt the language of compliment, or of
congratulation. That he leaves to abler and to purer hands.

'If your more important avocations should admit of your ever tracing
these imperfect characters thus far--which may be, or may not be, as
circumstances arise--you will naturally inquire by what object am I
influenced, then, in inditing the present missive? Allow me to say that
I fully defer to the reasonable character of that inquiry, and proceed
to develop it; premising that it is not an object of a pecuniary nature.

'Without more directly referring to any latent ability that may
possibly exist on my part, of wielding the thunderbolt, or directing
the devouring and avenging flame in any quarter, I may be permitted
to observe, in passing, that my brightest visions are for ever
dispelled--that my peace is shattered and my power of enjoyment
destroyed--that my heart is no longer in the right place--and that I no
more walk erect before my fellow man. The canker is in the flower.
The cup is bitter to the brim. The worm is at his work, and will soon
dispose of his victim. The sooner the better. But I will not digress.
'Placed in a mental position of peculiar painfulness, beyond the
assuaging reach even of Mrs. Micawber's influence, though exercised in
the tripartite character of woman, wife, and mother, it is my intention
to fly from myself for a short period, and devote a respite of
eight-and-forty hours to revisiting some metropolitan scenes of past
enjoyment. Among other havens of domestic tranquillity and peace of
mind, my feet will naturally tend towards the King's Bench Prison. In
stating that I shall be (D. V.) on the outside of the south wall of
that place of incarceration on civil process, the day after tomorrow,
at seven in the evening, precisely, my object in this epistolary
communication is accomplished.

'I do not feel warranted in soliciting my former friend Mr. Copperfield,
or my former friend Mr. Thomas Traddles of the Inner Temple, if that
gentleman is still existent and forthcoming, to condescend to meet me,
and renew (so far as may be) our past relations of the olden time. I
confine myself to throwing out the observation, that, at the hour and
place I have indicated, may be found such ruined vestiges as yet

               'Remain,
                    'Of
                         'A
                              'Fallen Tower,
                                   'WILKINS MICAWBER.

'P.S. It may be advisable to superadd to the above, the statement that
Mrs. Micawber is not in confidential possession of my intentions.'


I read the letter over several times. Making due allowance for Mr.
Micawber's lofty style of composition, and for the extraordinary relish
with which he sat down and wrote long letters on all possible and
impossible occasions, I still believed that something important lay
hidden at the bottom of this roundabout communication. I put it down,
to think about it; and took it up again, to read it once more; and
was still pursuing it, when Traddles found me in the height of my
perplexity.

'My dear fellow,' said I, 'I never was better pleased to see you. You
come to give me the benefit of your sober judgement at a most opportune
time. I have received a very singular letter, Traddles, from Mr.
Micawber.'

'No?' cried Traddles. 'You don't say so? And I have received one from
Mrs. Micawber!'

With that, Traddles, who was flushed with walking, and whose hair, under
the combined effects of exercise and excitement, stood on end as if he
saw a cheerful ghost, produced his letter and made an exchange with me.
I watched him into the heart of Mr. Micawber's letter, and returned the
elevation of eyebrows with which he said "'Wielding the thunderbolt,
or directing the devouring and avenging flame!" Bless me,
Copperfield!'--and then entered on the perusal of Mrs. Micawber's
epistle.

It ran thus:


'My best regards to Mr. Thomas Traddles, and if he should still remember
one who formerly had the happiness of being well acquainted with him,
may I beg a few moments of his leisure time? I assure Mr. T. T. that I
would not intrude upon his kindness, were I in any other position than
on the confines of distraction.

'Though harrowing to myself to mention, the alienation of Mr. Micawber
(formerly so domesticated) from his wife and family, is the cause of my
addressing my unhappy appeal to Mr. Traddles, and soliciting his best
indulgence. Mr. T. can form no adequate idea of the change in Mr.
Micawber's conduct, of his wildness, of his violence. It has gradually
augmented, until it assumes the appearance of aberration of intellect.
Scarcely a day passes, I assure Mr. Traddles, on which some paroxysm
does not take place. Mr. T. will not require me to depict my feelings,
when I inform him that I have become accustomed to hear Mr. Micawber
assert that he has sold himself to the D. Mystery and secrecy have
long been his principal characteristic, have long replaced unlimited
confidence. The slightest provocation, even being asked if there is
anything he would prefer for dinner, causes him to express a wish for a
separation. Last night, on being childishly solicited for twopence, to
buy 'lemon-stunners'--a local sweetmeat--he presented an oyster-knife at
the twins!

'I entreat Mr. Traddles to bear with me in entering into these details.
Without them, Mr. T. would indeed find it difficult to form the faintest
conception of my heart-rending situation.

'May I now venture to confide to Mr. T. the purport of my letter? Will
he now allow me to throw myself on his friendly consideration? Oh yes,
for I know his heart!

'The quick eye of affection is not easily blinded, when of the female
sex. Mr. Micawber is going to London. Though he studiously concealed his
hand, this morning before breakfast, in writing the direction-card which
he attached to the little brown valise of happier days, the eagle-glance
of matrimonial anxiety detected, d, o, n, distinctly traced. The
West-End destination of the coach, is the Golden Cross. Dare I fervently
implore Mr. T. to see my misguided husband, and to reason with him?
Dare I ask Mr. T. to endeavour to step in between Mr. Micawber and his
agonized family? Oh no, for that would be too much!

'If Mr. Copperfield should yet remember one unknown to fame, will Mr.
T. take charge of my unalterable regards and similar entreaties? In
any case, he will have the benevolence to consider this communication
strictly private, and on no account whatever to be alluded to, however
distantly, in the presence of Mr. Micawber. If Mr. T. should ever
reply to it (which I cannot but feel to be most improbable), a letter
addressed to M. E., Post Office, Canterbury, will be fraught with
less painful consequences than any addressed immediately to one, who
subscribes herself, in extreme distress,

'Mr. Thomas Traddles's respectful friend and suppliant,

                                   'EMMA MICAWBER.'


'What do you think of that letter?' said Traddles, casting his eyes upon
me, when I had read it twice.

'What do you think of the other?' said I. For he was still reading it
with knitted brows.

'I think that the two together, Copperfield,' replied Traddles,
'mean more than Mr. and Mrs. Micawber usually mean in their
correspondence--but I don't know what. They are both written in good
faith, I have no doubt, and without any collusion. Poor thing!' he was
now alluding to Mrs. Micawber's letter, and we were standing side by
side comparing the two; 'it will be a charity to write to her, at all
events, and tell her that we will not fail to see Mr. Micawber.'

I acceded to this the more readily, because I now reproached myself with
having treated her former letter rather lightly. It had set me thinking
a good deal at the time, as I have mentioned in its place; but my
absorption in my own affairs, my experience of the family, and my
hearing nothing more, had gradually ended in my dismissing the subject.
I had often thought of the Micawbers, but chiefly to wonder what
'pecuniary liabilities' they were establishing in Canterbury, and to
recall how shy Mr. Micawber was of me when he became clerk to Uriah
Heep.

However, I now wrote a comforting letter to Mrs. Micawber, in our
joint names, and we both signed it. As we walked into town to post it,
Traddles and I held a long conference, and launched into a number of
speculations, which I need not repeat. We took my aunt into our counsels
in the afternoon; but our only decided conclusion was, that we would be
very punctual in keeping Mr. Micawber's appointment.

Although we appeared at the stipulated place a quarter of an hour before
the time, we found Mr. Micawber already there. He was standing with his
arms folded, over against the wall, looking at the spikes on the top,
with a sentimental expression, as if they were the interlacing boughs of
trees that had shaded him in his youth.

When we accosted him, his manner was something more confused, and
something less genteel, than of yore. He had relinquished his legal suit
of black for the purposes of this excursion, and wore the old surtout
and tights, but not quite with the old air. He gradually picked up more
and more of it as we conversed with him; but, his very eye-glass seemed
to hang less easily, and his shirt-collar, though still of the old
formidable dimensions, rather drooped.

'Gentlemen!' said Mr. Micawber, after the first salutations, 'you are
friends in need, and friends indeed. Allow me to offer my inquiries with
reference to the physical welfare of Mrs. Copperfield in esse, and
Mrs. Traddles in posse,--presuming, that is to say, that my friend Mr.
Traddles is not yet united to the object of his affections, for weal and
for woe.'

We acknowledged his politeness, and made suitable replies. He then
directed our attention to the wall, and was beginning, 'I assure you,
gentlemen,' when I ventured to object to that ceremonious form of
address, and to beg that he would speak to us in the old way.

'My dear Copperfield,' he returned, pressing my hand, 'your cordiality
overpowers me. This reception of a shattered fragment of the Temple once
called Man--if I may be permitted so to express myself--bespeaks a heart
that is an honour to our common nature. I was about to observe that
I again behold the serene spot where some of the happiest hours of my
existence fleeted by.'

'Made so, I am sure, by Mrs. Micawber,' said I. 'I hope she is well?'

'Thank you,' returned Mr. Micawber, whose face clouded at this
reference, 'she is but so-so. And this,' said Mr. Micawber, nodding
his head sorrowfully, 'is the Bench! Where, for the first time in many
revolving years, the overwhelming pressure of pecuniary liabilities was
not proclaimed, from day to day, by importune voices declining to vacate
the passage; where there was no knocker on the door for any creditor
to appeal to; where personal service of process was not required, and
detainees were merely lodged at the gate! Gentlemen,' said Mr. Micawber,
'when the shadow of that iron-work on the summit of the brick structure
has been reflected on the gravel of the Parade, I have seen my children
thread the mazes of the intricate pattern, avoiding the dark marks. I
have been familiar with every stone in the place. If I betray weakness,
you will know how to excuse me.'

'We have all got on in life since then, Mr. Micawber,' said I.

'Mr. Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, bitterly, 'when I was an
inmate of that retreat I could look my fellow-man in the face, and punch
his head if he offended me. My fellow-man and myself are no longer on
those glorious terms!'

Turning from the building in a downcast manner, Mr. Micawber accepted
my proffered arm on one side, and the proffered arm of Traddles on the
other, and walked away between us.

'There are some landmarks,' observed Mr. Micawber, looking fondly back
over his shoulder, 'on the road to the tomb, which, but for the impiety
of the aspiration, a man would wish never to have passed. Such is the
Bench in my chequered career.'

'Oh, you are in low spirits, Mr. Micawber,' said Traddles.

'I am, sir,' interposed Mr. Micawber.

'I hope,' said Traddles, 'it is not because you have conceived a dislike
to the law--for I am a lawyer myself, you know.'

Mr. Micawber answered not a word.

'How is our friend Heep, Mr. Micawber?' said I, after a silence.

'My dear Copperfield,' returned Mr. Micawber, bursting into a state of
much excitement, and turning pale, 'if you ask after my employer as
YOUR friend, I am sorry for it; if you ask after him as MY friend,
I sardonically smile at it. In whatever capacity you ask after my
employer, I beg, without offence to you, to limit my reply to this--that
whatever his state of health may be, his appearance is foxy: not to
say diabolical. You will allow me, as a private individual, to
decline pursuing a subject which has lashed me to the utmost verge of
desperation in my professional capacity.'

I expressed my regret for having innocently touched upon a theme
that roused him so much. 'May I ask,' said I, 'without any hazard of
repeating the mistake, how my old friends Mr. and Miss Wickfield are?'

'Miss Wickfield,' said Mr. Micawber, now turning red, 'is, as she always
is, a pattern, and a bright example. My dear Copperfield, she is the
only starry spot in a miserable existence. My respect for that young
lady, my admiration of her character, my devotion to her for her love
and truth, and goodness!--Take me,' said Mr. Micawber, 'down a turning,
for, upon my soul, in my present state of mind I am not equal to this!'

We wheeled him off into a narrow street, where he took out his
pocket-handkerchief, and stood with his back to a wall. If I looked as
gravely at him as Traddles did, he must have found our company by no
means inspiriting.

'It is my fate,' said Mr. Micawber, unfeignedly sobbing, but doing even
that, with a shadow of the old expression of doing something genteel;
'it is my fate, gentlemen, that the finer feelings of our nature have
become reproaches to me. My homage to Miss Wickfield, is a flight of
arrows in my bosom. You had better leave me, if you please, to walk the
earth as a vagabond. The worm will settle my business in double-quick
time.'

Without attending to this invocation, we stood by, until he put up his
pocket-handkerchief, pulled up his shirt-collar, and, to delude any
person in the neighbourhood who might have been observing him, hummed a
tune with his hat very much on one side. I then mentioned--not knowing
what might be lost if we lost sight of him yet--that it would give me
great pleasure to introduce him to my aunt, if he would ride out to
Highgate, where a bed was at his service.

'You shall make us a glass of your own punch, Mr. Micawber,' said
I, 'and forget whatever you have on your mind, in pleasanter
reminiscences.'

'Or, if confiding anything to friends will be more likely to relieve
you, you shall impart it to us, Mr. Micawber,' said Traddles, prudently.

'Gentlemen,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'do with me as you will! I am a
straw upon the surface of the deep, and am tossed in all directions by
the elephants--I beg your pardon; I should have said the elements.'

We walked on, arm-in-arm, again; found the coach in the act of starting;
and arrived at Highgate without encountering any difficulties by the
way. I was very uneasy and very uncertain in my mind what to say or do
for the best--so was Traddles, evidently. Mr. Micawber was for the most
part plunged into deep gloom. He occasionally made an attempt to smarten
himself, and hum the fag-end of a tune; but his relapses into profound
melancholy were only made the more impressive by the mockery of a hat
exceedingly on one side, and a shirt-collar pulled up to his eyes.

We went to my aunt's house rather than to mine, because of Dora's not
being well. My aunt presented herself on being sent for, and welcomed
Mr. Micawber with gracious cordiality. Mr. Micawber kissed her hand,
retired to the window, and pulling out his pocket-handkerchief, had a
mental wrestle with himself.

Mr. Dick was at home. He was by nature so exceedingly compassionate of
anyone who seemed to be ill at ease, and was so quick to find any such
person out, that he shook hands with Mr. Micawber, at least half-a-dozen
times in five minutes. To Mr. Micawber, in his trouble, this warmth, on
the part of a stranger, was so extremely touching, that he could
only say, on the occasion of each successive shake, 'My dear sir, you
overpower me!' Which gratified Mr. Dick so much, that he went at it
again with greater vigour than before.

'The friendliness of this gentleman,' said Mr. Micawber to my aunt, 'if
you will allow me, ma'am, to cull a figure of speech from the vocabulary
of our coarser national sports--floors me. To a man who is struggling
with a complicated burden of perplexity and disquiet, such a reception
is trying, I assure you.'

'My friend Mr. Dick,' replied my aunt proudly, 'is not a common man.'

'That I am convinced of,' said Mr. Micawber. 'My dear sir!' for Mr.
Dick was shaking hands with him again; 'I am deeply sensible of your
cordiality!'

'How do you find yourself?' said Mr. Dick, with an anxious look.

'Indifferent, my dear sir,' returned Mr. Micawber, sighing.

'You must keep up your spirits,' said Mr. Dick, 'and make yourself as
comfortable as possible.'

Mr. Micawber was quite overcome by these friendly words, and by finding
Mr. Dick's hand again within his own. 'It has been my lot,' he observed,
'to meet, in the diversified panorama of human existence, with an
occasional oasis, but never with one so green, so gushing, as the
present!'

At another time I should have been amused by this; but I felt that
we were all constrained and uneasy, and I watched Mr. Micawber so
anxiously, in his vacillations between an evident disposition to reveal
something, and a counter-disposition to reveal nothing, that I was in a
perfect fever. Traddles, sitting on the edge of his chair, with his eyes
wide open, and his hair more emphatically erect than ever, stared by
turns at the ground and at Mr. Micawber, without so much as attempting
to put in a word. My aunt, though I saw that her shrewdest observation
was concentrated on her new guest, had more useful possession of her
wits than either of us; for she held him in conversation, and made it
necessary for him to talk, whether he liked it or not.

'You are a very old friend of my nephew's, Mr. Micawber,' said my aunt.
'I wish I had had the pleasure of seeing you before.'

'Madam,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'I wish I had had the honour of knowing
you at an earlier period. I was not always the wreck you at present
behold.'

'I hope Mrs. Micawber and your family are well, sir,' said my aunt.

Mr. Micawber inclined his head. 'They are as well, ma'am,' he
desperately observed after a pause, 'as Aliens and Outcasts can ever
hope to be.'

'Lord bless you, sir!' exclaimed my aunt, in her abrupt way. 'What are
you talking about?'

'The subsistence of my family, ma'am,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'trembles
in the balance. My employer--'

Here Mr. Micawber provokingly left off; and began to peel the lemons
that had been under my directions set before him, together with all the
other appliances he used in making punch.

'Your employer, you know,' said Mr. Dick, jogging his arm as a gentle
reminder.

'My good sir,' returned Mr. Micawber, 'you recall me, I am obliged to
you.' They shook hands again. 'My employer, ma'am--Mr. Heep--once did
me the favour to observe to me, that if I were not in the receipt of the
stipendiary emoluments appertaining to my engagement with him, I should
probably be a mountebank about the country, swallowing a sword-blade,
and eating the devouring element. For anything that I can perceive to
the contrary, it is still probable that my children may be reduced to
seek a livelihood by personal contortion, while Mrs. Micawber abets
their unnatural feats by playing the barrel-organ.'

Mr. Micawber, with a random but expressive flourish of his knife,
signified that these performances might be expected to take place after
he was no more; then resumed his peeling with a desperate air.

My aunt leaned her elbow on the little round table that she usually kept
beside her, and eyed him attentively. Notwithstanding the aversion with
which I regarded the idea of entrapping him into any disclosure he was
not prepared to make voluntarily, I should have taken him up at this
point, but for the strange proceedings in which I saw him engaged;
whereof his putting the lemon-peel into the kettle, the sugar into the
snuffer-tray, the spirit into the empty jug, and confidently attempting
to pour boiling water out of a candlestick, were among the most
remarkable. I saw that a crisis was at hand, and it came. He clattered
all his means and implements together, rose from his chair, pulled out
his pocket-handkerchief, and burst into tears.

'My dear Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, behind his handkerchief,
'this is an occupation, of all others, requiring an untroubled mind, and
self-respect. I cannot perform it. It is out of the question.'

'Mr. Micawber,' said I, 'what is the matter? Pray speak out. You are
among friends.'

'Among friends, sir!' repeated Mr. Micawber; and all he had reserved
came breaking out of him. 'Good heavens, it is principally because I AM
among friends that my state of mind is what it is. What is the matter,
gentlemen? What is NOT the matter? Villainy is the matter; baseness is
the matter; deception, fraud, conspiracy, are the matter; and the name
of the whole atrocious mass is--HEEP!'

My aunt clapped her hands, and we all started up as if we were
possessed.

'The struggle is over!' said Mr. Micawber violently gesticulating with
his pocket-handkerchief, and fairly striking out from time to time with
both arms, as if he were swimming under superhuman difficulties. 'I will
lead this life no longer. I am a wretched being, cut off from everything
that makes life tolerable. I have been under a Taboo in that infernal
scoundrel's service. Give me back my wife, give me back my family,
substitute Micawber for the petty wretch who walks about in the boots
at present on my feet, and call upon me to swallow a sword tomorrow, and
I'll do it. With an appetite!'

I never saw a man so hot in my life. I tried to calm him, that we might
come to something rational; but he got hotter and hotter, and wouldn't
hear a word.

'I'll put my hand in no man's hand,' said Mr. Micawber, gasping,
puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man
fighting with cold water, 'until I have--blown to
fragments--the--a--detestable--serpent--HEEP! I'll partake of no
one's hospitality, until I have--a--moved Mount Vesuvius--to
eruption--on--a--the abandoned rascal--HEEP! Refreshment--a--underneath
this roof--particularly punch--would--a--choke me--unless--I
had--previously--choked the eyes--out of the head--a--of--interminable
cheat, and liar--HEEP! I--a--I'll know nobody--and--a--say
nothing--and--a--live nowhere--until I have
crushed--to--a--undiscoverable atoms--the--transcendent and immortal
hypocrite and perjurer--HEEP!'

I really had some fear of Mr. Micawber's dying on the spot. The manner
in which he struggled through these inarticulate sentences, and,
whenever he found himself getting near the name of Heep, fought his way
on to it, dashed at it in a fainting state, and brought it out with a
vehemence little less than marvellous, was frightful; but now, when
he sank into a chair, steaming, and looked at us, with every possible
colour in his face that had no business there, and an endless procession
of lumps following one another in hot haste up his throat, whence they
seemed to shoot into his forehead, he had the appearance of being in
the last extremity. I would have gone to his assistance, but he waved me
off, and wouldn't hear a word.

'No, Copperfield!--No communication--a--until--Miss
Wickfield--a--redress from wrongs inflicted by consummate
scoundrel--HEEP!' (I am quite convinced he could not have uttered three
words, but for the amazing energy with which this word inspired him when
he felt it coming.) 'Inviolable secret--a--from the whole world--a--no
exceptions--this day week--a--at breakfast-time--a--everybody
present--including aunt--a--and extremely friendly gentleman--to be at
the hotel at Canterbury--a--where--Mrs. Micawber and myself--Auld Lang
Syne in chorus--and--a--will expose intolerable ruffian--HEEP! No more
to say--a--or listen to persuasion--go immediately--not capable--a--bear
society--upon the track of devoted and doomed traitor--HEEP!'

With this last repetition of the magic word that had kept him going at
all, and in which he surpassed all his previous efforts, Mr. Micawber
rushed out of the house; leaving us in a state of excitement, hope, and
wonder, that reduced us to a condition little better than his own. But
even then his passion for writing letters was too strong to be resisted;
for while we were yet in the height of our excitement, hope, and wonder,
the following pastoral note was brought to me from a neighbouring
tavern, at which he had called to write it:--


          'Most secret and confidential.
'MY DEAR SIR,

'I beg to be allowed to convey, through you, my apologies to your
excellent aunt for my late excitement. An explosion of a smouldering
volcano long suppressed, was the result of an internal contest more
easily conceived than described.

'I trust I rendered tolerably intelligible my appointment for the
morning of this day week, at the house of public entertainment at
Canterbury, where Mrs. Micawber and myself had once the honour of
uniting our voices to yours, in the well-known strain of the Immortal
exciseman nurtured beyond the Tweed.

'The duty done, and act of reparation performed, which can alone enable
me to contemplate my fellow mortal, I shall be known no more. I shall
simply require to be deposited in that place of universal resort, where

     Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
     The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,

                    '--With the plain Inscription,

                         'WILKINS MICAWBER.'




By this time, some months had passed since our interview on the bank
of the river with Martha. I had never seen her since, but she had
communicated with Mr. Peggotty on several occasions. Nothing had come of
her zealous intervention; nor could I infer, from what he told me, that
any clue had been obtained, for a moment, to Emily's fate. I confess
that I began to despair of her recovery, and gradually to sink deeper
and deeper into the belief that she was dead.

His conviction remained unchanged. So far as I know--and I believe
his honest heart was transparent to me--he never wavered again, in his
solemn certainty of finding her. His patience never tired. And, although
I trembled for the agony it might one day be to him to have his strong
assurance shivered at a blow, there was something so religious in it, so
affectingly expressive of its anchor being in the purest depths of
his fine nature, that the respect and honour in which I held him were
exalted every day.

His was not a lazy trustfulness that hoped, and did no more. He had
been a man of sturdy action all his life, and he knew that in all things
wherein he wanted help he must do his own part faithfully, and help
himself. I have known him set out in the night, on a misgiving that the
light might not be, by some accident, in the window of the old boat,
and walk to Yarmouth. I have known him, on reading something in the
newspaper that might apply to her, take up his stick, and go forth on a
journey of three--or four-score miles. He made his way by sea to Naples,
and back, after hearing the narrative to which Miss Dartle had assisted
me. All his journeys were ruggedly performed; for he was always
steadfast in a purpose of saving money for Emily's sake, when she should
be found. In all this long pursuit, I never heard him repine; I never
heard him say he was fatigued, or out of heart.

Dora had often seen him since our marriage, and was quite fond of him.
I fancy his figure before me now, standing near her sofa, with his rough
cap in his hand, and the blue eyes of my child-wife raised, with a timid
wonder, to his face. Sometimes of an evening, about twilight, when
he came to talk with me, I would induce him to smoke his pipe in the
garden, as we slowly paced to and fro together; and then, the picture
of his deserted home, and the comfortable air it used to have in my
childish eyes of an evening when the fire was burning, and the wind
moaning round it, came most vividly into my mind.

One evening, at this hour, he told me that he had found Martha waiting
near his lodging on the preceding night when he came out, and that she
had asked him not to leave London on any account, until he should have
seen her again.

'Did she tell you why?' I inquired.

'I asked her, Mas'r Davy,' he replied, 'but it is but few words as she
ever says, and she on'y got my promise and so went away.'

'Did she say when you might expect to see her again?' I demanded.

'No, Mas'r Davy,' he returned, drawing his hand thoughtfully down his
face. 'I asked that too; but it was more (she said) than she could
tell.'

As I had long forborne to encourage him with hopes that hung on threads,
I made no other comment on this information than that I supposed he
would see her soon. Such speculations as it engendered within me I kept
to myself, and those were faint enough.

I was walking alone in the garden, one evening, about a fortnight
afterwards. I remember that evening well. It was the second in Mr.
Micawber's week of suspense. There had been rain all day, and there was
a damp feeling in the air. The leaves were thick upon the trees, and
heavy with wet; but the rain had ceased, though the sky was still dark;
and the hopeful birds were singing cheerfully. As I walked to and fro
in the garden, and the twilight began to close around me, their little
voices were hushed; and that peculiar silence which belongs to such an
evening in the country when the lightest trees are quite still, save for
the occasional droppings from their boughs, prevailed.

There was a little green perspective of trellis-work and ivy at the side
of our cottage, through which I could see, from the garden where I was
walking, into the road before the house. I happened to turn my eyes
towards this place, as I was thinking of many things; and I saw a figure
beyond, dressed in a plain cloak. It was bending eagerly towards me, and
beckoning.

'Martha!' said I, going to it.

'Can you come with me?' she inquired, in an agitated whisper. 'I have
been to him, and he is not at home. I wrote down where he was to come,
and left it on his table with my own hand. They said he would not be out
long. I have tidings for him. Can you come directly?'

My answer was, to pass out at the gate immediately. She made a hasty
gesture with her hand, as if to entreat my patience and my silence,
and turned towards London, whence, as her dress betokened, she had come
expeditiously on foot.

I asked her if that were not our destination? On her motioning Yes,
with the same hasty gesture as before, I stopped an empty coach that was
coming by, and we got into it. When I asked her where the coachman was
to drive, she answered, 'Anywhere near Golden Square! And quick!'--then
shrunk into a corner, with one trembling hand before her face, and the
other making the former gesture, as if she could not bear a voice.

Now much disturbed, and dazzled with conflicting gleams of hope and
dread, I looked at her for some explanation. But seeing how strongly
she desired to remain quiet, and feeling that it was my own natural
inclination too, at such a time, I did not attempt to break the silence.
We proceeded without a word being spoken. Sometimes she glanced out of
the window, as though she thought we were going slowly, though indeed we
were going fast; but otherwise remained exactly as at first.

We alighted at one of the entrances to the Square she had mentioned,
where I directed the coach to wait, not knowing but that we might have
some occasion for it. She laid her hand on my arm, and hurried me on
to one of the sombre streets, of which there are several in that part,
where the houses were once fair dwellings in the occupation of single
families, but have, and had, long degenerated into poor lodgings let off
in rooms. Entering at the open door of one of these, and releasing my
arm, she beckoned me to follow her up the common staircase, which was
like a tributary channel to the street.

The house swarmed with inmates. As we went up, doors of rooms were
opened and people's heads put out; and we passed other people on the
stairs, who were coming down. In glancing up from the outside, before
we entered, I had seen women and children lolling at the windows over
flower-pots; and we seemed to have attracted their curiosity, for these
were principally the observers who looked out of their doors. It was a
broad panelled staircase, with massive balustrades of some dark wood;
cornices above the doors, ornamented with carved fruit and flowers; and
broad seats in the windows. But all these tokens of past grandeur
were miserably decayed and dirty; rot, damp, and age, had weakened
the flooring, which in many places was unsound and even unsafe. Some
attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this
dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there
with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to
a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away
from the other. Several of the back windows on the staircase had
been darkened or wholly blocked up. In those that remained, there was
scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad
air seemed always to come in, and never to go out, I saw, through other
glassless windows, into other houses in a similar condition, and looked
giddily down into a wretched yard, which was the common dust-heap of the
mansion.

We proceeded to the top-storey of the house. Two or three times, by the
way, I thought I observed in the indistinct light the skirts of a female
figure going up before us. As we turned to ascend the last flight of
stairs between us and the roof, we caught a full view of this figure
pausing for a moment, at a door. Then it turned the handle, and went in.

'What's this!' said Martha, in a whisper. 'She has gone into my room. I
don't know her!'

I knew her. I had recognized her with amazement, for Miss Dartle.

I said something to the effect that it was a lady whom I had seen
before, in a few words, to my conductress; and had scarcely done so,
when we heard her voice in the room, though not, from where we stood,
what she was saying. Martha, with an astonished look, repeated her
former action, and softly led me up the stairs; and then, by a little
back-door which seemed to have no lock, and which she pushed open with a
touch, into a small empty garret with a low sloping roof, little better
than a cupboard. Between this, and the room she had called hers,
there was a small door of communication, standing partly open. Here we
stopped, breathless with our ascent, and she placed her hand lightly on
my lips. I could only see, of the room beyond, that it was pretty large;
that there was a bed in it; and that there were some common pictures of
ships upon the walls. I could not see Miss Dartle, or the person whom
we had heard her address. Certainly, my companion could not, for my
position was the best. A dead silence prevailed for some moments. Martha
kept one hand on my lips, and raised the other in a listening attitude.

'It matters little to me her not being at home,' said Rosa Dartle
haughtily, 'I know nothing of her. It is you I come to see.'

'Me?' replied a soft voice.

At the sound of it, a thrill went through my frame. For it was Emily's!

'Yes,' returned Miss Dartle, 'I have come to look at you. What? You are
not ashamed of the face that has done so much?'

The resolute and unrelenting hatred of her tone, its cold stern
sharpness, and its mastered rage, presented her before me, as if I had
seen her standing in the light. I saw the flashing black eyes, and the
passion-wasted figure; and I saw the scar, with its white track cutting
through her lips, quivering and throbbing as she spoke.

'I have come to see,' she said, 'James Steerforth's fancy; the girl who
ran away with him, and is the town-talk of the commonest people of her
native place; the bold, flaunting, practised companion of persons like
James Steerforth. I want to know what such a thing is like.'

There was a rustle, as if the unhappy girl, on whom she heaped these
taunts, ran towards the door, and the speaker swiftly interposed herself
before it. It was succeeded by a moment's pause.

When Miss Dartle spoke again, it was through her set teeth, and with a
stamp upon the ground.

'Stay there!' she said, 'or I'll proclaim you to the house, and the
whole street! If you try to evade me, I'll stop you, if it's by the
hair, and raise the very stones against you!'

A frightened murmur was the only reply that reached my ears. A silence
succeeded. I did not know what to do. Much as I desired to put an end to
the interview, I felt that I had no right to present myself; that it was
for Mr. Peggotty alone to see her and recover her. Would he never come?
I thought impatiently.

'So!' said Rosa Dartle, with a contemptuous laugh, 'I see her at last!
Why, he was a poor creature to be taken by that delicate mock-modesty,
and that hanging head!'

'Oh, for Heaven's sake, spare me!' exclaimed Emily. 'Whoever you are,
you know my pitiable story, and for Heaven's sake spare me, if you would
be spared yourself!'

'If I would be spared!' returned the other fiercely; 'what is there in
common between US, do you think!'

'Nothing but our sex,' said Emily, with a burst of tears.

'And that,' said Rosa Dartle, 'is so strong a claim, preferred by one
so infamous, that if I had any feeling in my breast but scorn and
abhorrence of you, it would freeze it up. Our sex! You are an honour to
our sex!'

'I have deserved this,' said Emily, 'but it's dreadful! Dear, dear lady,
think what I have suffered, and how I am fallen! Oh, Martha, come back!
Oh, home, home!'

Miss Dartle placed herself in a chair, within view of the door, and
looked downward, as if Emily were crouching on the floor before her.
Being now between me and the light, I could see her curled lip, and her
cruel eyes intently fixed on one place, with a greedy triumph.

'Listen to what I say!' she said; 'and reserve your false arts for your
dupes. Do you hope to move me by your tears? No more than you could
charm me by your smiles, you purchased slave.'

'Oh, have some mercy on me!' cried Emily. 'Show me some compassion, or I
shall die mad!'

'It would be no great penance,' said Rosa Dartle, 'for your crimes. Do
you know what you have done? Do you ever think of the home you have laid
waste?'

'Oh, is there ever night or day, when I don't think of it!' cried Emily;
and now I could just see her, on her knees, with her head thrown back,
her pale face looking upward, her hands wildly clasped and held out,
and her hair streaming about her. 'Has there ever been a single minute,
waking or sleeping, when it hasn't been before me, just as it used to
be in the lost days when I turned my back upon it for ever and for ever!
Oh, home, home! Oh dear, dear uncle, if you ever could have known the
agony your love would cause me when I fell away from good, you never
would have shown it to me so constant, much as you felt it; but would
have been angry to me, at least once in my life, that I might have had
some comfort! I have none, none, no comfort upon earth, for all of them
were always fond of me!' She dropped on her face, before the imperious
figure in the chair, with an imploring effort to clasp the skirt of her
dress.

Rosa Dartle sat looking down upon her, as inflexible as a figure of
brass. Her lips were tightly compressed, as if she knew that she
must keep a strong constraint upon herself--I write what I sincerely
believe--or she would be tempted to strike the beautiful form with
her foot. I saw her, distinctly, and the whole power of her face and
character seemed forced into that expression.---Would he never come?

'The miserable vanity of these earth-worms!' she said, when she had so
far controlled the angry heavings of her breast, that she could trust
herself to speak. 'YOUR home! Do you imagine that I bestow a thought
on it, or suppose you could do any harm to that low place, which money
would not pay for, and handsomely? YOUR home! You were a part of the
trade of your home, and were bought and sold like any other vendible
thing your people dealt in.'

'Oh, not that!' cried Emily. 'Say anything of me; but don't visit
my disgrace and shame, more than I have done, on folks who are as
honourable as you! Have some respect for them, as you are a lady, if you
have no mercy for me.'

'I speak,' she said, not deigning to take any heed of this appeal, and
drawing away her dress from the contamination of Emily's touch, 'I speak
of HIS home--where I live. Here,' she said, stretching out her hand with
her contemptuous laugh, and looking down upon the prostrate girl, 'is a
worthy cause of division between lady-mother and gentleman-son; of grief
in a house where she wouldn't have been admitted as a kitchen-girl; of
anger, and repining, and reproach. This piece of pollution, picked up
from the water-side, to be made much of for an hour, and then tossed
back to her original place!'

'No! no!' cried Emily, clasping her hands together. 'When he first came
into my way--that the day had never dawned upon me, and he had met me
being carried to my grave!--I had been brought up as virtuous as you or
any lady, and was going to be the wife of as good a man as you or any
lady in the world can ever marry. If you live in his home and know him,
you know, perhaps, what his power with a weak, vain girl might be. I
don't defend myself, but I know well, and he knows well, or he will know
when he comes to die, and his mind is troubled with it, that he used all
his power to deceive me, and that I believed him, trusted him, and loved
him!'

Rosa Dartle sprang up from her seat; recoiled; and in recoiling struck
at her, with a face of such malignity, so darkened and disfigured by
passion, that I had almost thrown myself between them. The blow, which
had no aim, fell upon the air. As she now stood panting, looking at
her with the utmost detestation that she was capable of expressing, and
trembling from head to foot with rage and scorn, I thought I had never
seen such a sight, and never could see such another.

'YOU love him? You?' she cried, with her clenched hand, quivering as if
it only wanted a weapon to stab the object of her wrath.

Emily had shrunk out of my view. There was no reply.

'And tell that to ME,' she added, 'with your shameful lips? Why don't
they whip these creatures? If I could order it to be done, I would have
this girl whipped to death.'

And so she would, I have no doubt. I would not have trusted her with the
rack itself, while that furious look lasted. She slowly, very slowly,
broke into a laugh, and pointed at Emily with her hand, as if she were a
sight of shame for gods and men.

'SHE love!' she said. 'THAT carrion! And he ever cared for her, she'd
tell me. Ha, ha! The liars that these traders are!'

Her mockery was worse than her undisguised rage. Of the two, I would
have much preferred to be the object of the latter. But, when she
suffered it to break loose, it was only for a moment. She had chained
it up again, and however it might tear her within, she subdued it to
herself.

'I came here, you pure fountain of love,' she said, 'to see--as I began
by telling you--what such a thing as you was like. I was curious. I am
satisfied. Also to tell you, that you had best seek that home of yours,
with all speed, and hide your head among those excellent people who are
expecting you, and whom your money will console. When it's all gone, you
can believe, and trust, and love again, you know! I thought you a broken
toy that had lasted its time; a worthless spangle that was tarnished,
and thrown away. But, finding you true gold, a very lady, and
an ill-used innocent, with a fresh heart full of love and
trustfulness--which you look like, and is quite consistent with your
story!--I have something more to say. Attend to it; for what I say I'll
do. Do you hear me, you fairy spirit? What I say, I mean to do!'

Her rage got the better of her again, for a moment; but it passed over
her face like a spasm, and left her smiling.

'Hide yourself,' she pursued, 'if not at home, somewhere. Let it be
somewhere beyond reach; in some obscure life--or, better still, in some
obscure death. I wonder, if your loving heart will not break, you have
found no way of helping it to be still! I have heard of such means
sometimes. I believe they may be easily found.'

A low crying, on the part of Emily, interrupted her here. She stopped,
and listened to it as if it were music.

'I am of a strange nature, perhaps,' Rosa Dartle went on; 'but I can't
breathe freely in the air you breathe. I find it sickly. Therefore, I
will have it cleared; I will have it purified of you. If you live here
tomorrow, I'll have your story and your character proclaimed on the
common stair. There are decent women in the house, I am told; and it
is a pity such a light as you should be among them, and concealed. If,
leaving here, you seek any refuge in this town in any character but your
true one (which you are welcome to bear, without molestation from me),
the same service shall be done you, if I hear of your retreat. Being
assisted by a gentleman who not long ago aspired to the favour of your
hand, I am sanguine as to that.'

Would he never, never come? How long was I to bear this? How long could
I bear it? 'Oh me, oh me!' exclaimed the wretched Emily, in a tone that
might have touched the hardest heart, I should have thought; but there
was no relenting in Rosa Dartle's smile. 'What, what, shall I do!'

'Do?' returned the other. 'Live happy in your own reflections!
Consecrate your existence to the recollection of James Steerforth's
tenderness--he would have made you his serving-man's wife, would he
not?---or to feeling grateful to the upright and deserving creature who
would have taken you as his gift. Or, if those proud remembrances, and
the consciousness of your own virtues, and the honourable position to
which they have raised you in the eyes of everything that wears the
human shape, will not sustain you, marry that good man, and be happy in
his condescension. If this will not do either, die! There are doorways
and dust-heaps for such deaths, and such despair--find one, and take
your flight to Heaven!'

I heard a distant foot upon the stairs. I knew it, I was certain. It was
his, thank God!

She moved slowly from before the door when she said this, and passed out
of my sight.

'But mark!' she added, slowly and sternly, opening the other door to
go away, 'I am resolved, for reasons that I have and hatreds that
I entertain, to cast you out, unless you withdraw from my reach
altogether, or drop your pretty mask. This is what I had to say; and
what I say, I mean to do!'

The foot upon the stairs came nearer--nearer--passed her as she went
down--rushed into the room!

'Uncle!'

A fearful cry followed the word. I paused a moment, and looking in, saw
him supporting her insensible figure in his arms. He gazed for a few
seconds in the face; then stooped to kiss it--oh, how tenderly!--and
drew a handkerchief before it.

'Mas'r Davy,' he said, in a low tremulous voice, when it was covered, 'I
thank my Heav'nly Father as my dream's come true! I thank Him hearty for
having guided of me, in His own ways, to my darling!'

With those words he took her up in his arms; and, with the veiled
face lying on his bosom, and addressed towards his own, carried her,
motionless and unconscious, down the stairs.

 As David is walking past the Steerforth residence one afternoon, he is summoned to speak with Miss Dartle. She is extremely cruel to him and constantly wishes death upon Little Em'ly. It turns out that she has information about Emily, which is related to David through Littimer. Littimer describes how she was admired in all of the countries to which Steerforth brought her, and Littimer states that she mastered all of the languages quite easily. As the story goes, however, Steerforth grew tired of her and left her in Naples, and she was furious when she found out he had left her. Also, she became even more hysterical when Littimer proposed to her, and soon she escaped from the house. As David is leaving, he speaks to Mrs. Steerforth, who actually is quite kind to him. David then goes to find Mr. Peggotty. He tells Mr. Peggotty about the information he has acquired. Mr. Peggotty feels as though Little Em'ly is alive but too ashamed to return home. He suggests this because she did not leave entirely of her own accord. He and Mr. Peggotty decide that they will recruit Emily's friend Martha to help find her. They find Martha in a crowded area and follow her out, waiting to talk to her in a more private place. David and Mr. Peggotty realize that Martha is about to drown herself, and they stop her from doing so just in time. She is miserable. She chides herself for having such an awful heart. Mr. Peggotty's soothing words eventually calm her down, however, and she agrees to help them find Emily and hopes that she can be good for her friend this time. They follow her for a little while as she searches but then decide to part, leaving Martha to search one way as they search another. David returns home fairly late to find the door open. He hears his aunt in the garden talking to a man, the same man who bothered her before. He is obviously trying to get money out of her. He does not leave until Miss Betsey has broken out into indignant tears. David glares at him as he leaves. He asks his aunt if she wants him to talk to the man. Surprisingly, his aunt confides in him that the man is actually her husband. Her husband is not dead after all, and he continues to extort money from her. She then tells him not to tell anyone about this revelation. As for David, his domestic life has not improved by this point. Dora has refused to learn how to keep the house better. When he tries to change this quality of hers, she gets upset and refuses to listen to him. Thus, in order to keep her happy, David stops trying to change her. He believes for a while that perhaps a baby will make her more mature and want to be a good housewife. Unfortunately, after she becomes pregnant the pregnancy does not last, and soon afterward, Dora becomes ill. She is still beautiful and happy, but she can no longer walk or use her legs. David receives a letter from Mr. Micawber describing the poor situation that he and his wife are in this time. The letter begs David to meet with him to discuss the situation. Traddles, it turns out, has received a similar letter from Mrs. Micawber. The two meet with Mr. Micawber, and they soon find out that he has experienced additional financial ruin attributed to Uriah Heep, who apparently cheated him in a business deal. The recollection of this fact produces such a passion in Mr. Micawber that David is afraid he will die of such strong emotions. But Mr. Micawber eventually composes himself and asks that David and his aunt meet him and his wife the following week. Soon it has been several months since Mr. Peggotty's and David's encounter with Martha. Mr. Peggotty mentions that Martha came to him not long ago and told him not to leave London under any circumstances, although she did not say why. One evening, Martha runs to fetch David and Mr. Peggotty. Mr. Peggotty is not home, so she leaves a note. She then brings David to an apartment complex in a bad neighborhood and leads her up to Emily's room. However, Miss Dartle is already there. She abuses Emily, mocking her and spitting words at her with strong hate and passion. David does not intervene, however, because he wants to let Mr. Peggotty do that. Mr. Peggotty eventually comes and takes Emily back to his home.

