Charles Dickens - The Man Behind the Classics: Autobiographical Novels, Stories, Memoirs, Letters & Biographies. Charles Dickens
dear young soul,’ returned Miss Mowcher, squeezing her hands upon her heart one over the other. ‘I am ill here, I am very ill. To think that it should come to this, when I might have known it and perhaps prevented it, if I hadn’t been a thoughtless fool!’
Again her large bonnet (very disproportionate to the figure) went backwards and forwards, in her swaying of her little body to and fro; while a most gigantic bonnet rocked, in unison with it, upon the wall.
‘I am surprised,’ I began, ‘to see you so distressed and serious’—when she interrupted me.
‘Yes, it’s always so!’ she said. ‘They are all surprised, these inconsiderate young people, fairly and full grown, to see any natural feeling in a little thing like me! They make a plaything of me, use me for their amusement, throw me away when they are tired, and wonder that I feel more than a toy horse or a wooden soldier! Yes, yes, that’s the way. The old way!’
‘It may be, with others,’ I returned, ‘but I do assure you it is not with me. Perhaps I ought not to be at all surprised to see you as you are now: I know so little of you. I said, without consideration, what I thought.’
‘What can I do?’ returned the little woman, standing up, and holding out her arms to show herself. ‘See! What I am, my father was; and my sister is; and my brother is. I have worked for sister and brother these many years—hard, Mr. Copperfield—all day. I must live. I do no harm. If there are people so unreflecting or so cruel, as to make a jest of me, what is left for me to do but to make a jest of myself, them, and everything? If I do so, for the time, whose fault is that? Mine?’
No. Not Miss Mowcher’s, I perceived.
‘If I had shown myself a sensitive dwarf to your false friend,’ pursued the little woman, shaking her head at me, with reproachful earnestness, ‘how much of his help or good will do you think I should ever have had? If little Mowcher (who had no hand, young gentleman, in the making of herself) addressed herself to him, or the like of him, because of her misfortunes, when do you suppose her small voice would have been heard? Little Mowcher would have as much need to live, if she was the bitterest and dullest of pigmies; but she couldn’t do it. No. She might whistle for her bread and butter till she died of Air.’
Miss Mowcher sat down on the fender again, and took out her handkerchief, and wiped her eyes.
‘Be thankful for me, if you have a kind heart, as I think you have,’ she said, ‘that while I know well what I am, I can be cheerful and endure it all. I am thankful for myself, at any rate, that I can find my tiny way through the world, without being beholden to anyone; and that in return for all that is thrown at me, in folly or vanity, as I go along, I can throw bubbles back. If I don’t brood over all I want, it is the better for me, and not the worse for anyone. If I am a plaything for you giants, be gentle with me.’
Miss Mowcher replaced her handkerchief in her pocket, looking at me with very intent expression all the while, and pursued:
‘I saw you in the street just now. You may suppose I am not able to walk as fast as you, with my short legs and short breath, and I couldn’t overtake you; but I guessed where you came, and came after you. I have been here before, today, but the good woman wasn’t at home.’
‘Do you know her?’ I demanded.
‘I know of her, and about her,’ she replied, ‘from Omer and Joram. I was there at seven o’clock this morning. Do you remember what Steerforth said to me about this unfortunate girl, that time when I saw you both at the inn?’
The great bonnet on Miss Mowcher’s head, and the greater bonnet on the wall, began to go backwards and forwards again when she asked this question.
I remembered very well what she referred to, having had it in my thoughts many times that day. I told her so.
‘May the Father of all Evil confound him,’ said the little woman, holding up her forefinger between me and her sparkling eyes, ‘and ten times more confound that wicked servant; but I believed it was YOU who had a boyish passion for her!’
‘I?’ I repeated.
‘Child, child! In the name of blind ill-fortune,’ cried Miss Mowcher, wringing her hands impatiently, as she went to and fro again upon the fender, ‘why did you praise her so, and blush, and look disturbed?’
I could not conceal from myself that I had done this, though for a reason very different from her supposition.
‘What did I know?’ said Miss Mowcher, taking out her handkerchief again, and giving one little stamp on the ground whenever, at short intervals, she applied it to her eyes with both hands at once. ‘He was crossing you and wheedling you, I saw; and you were soft wax in his hands, I saw. Had I left the room a minute, when his man told me that “Young Innocence” (so he called you, and you may call him “Old Guilt” all the days of your life) had set his heart upon her, and she was giddy and liked him, but his master was resolved that no harm should come of it—more for your sake than for hers—and that that was their business here? How could I BUT believe him? I saw Steerforth soothe and please you by his praise of her! You were the first to mention her name. You owned to an old admiration of her. You were hot and cold, and red and white, all at once when I spoke to you of her. What could I think—what DID I think—but that you were a young libertine in everything but experience, and had fallen into hands that had experience enough, and could manage you (having the fancy) for your own good? Oh! oh! oh! They were afraid of my finding out the truth,’ exclaimed Miss Mowcher, getting off the fender, and trotting up and down the kitchen with her two short arms distressfully lifted up, ‘because I am a sharp little thing—I need be, to get through the world at all!—and they deceived me altogether, and I gave the poor unfortunate girl a letter, which I fully believe was the beginning of her ever speaking to Littimer, who was left behind on purpose!’
I stood amazed at the revelation of all this perfidy, looking at Miss Mowcher as she walked up and down the kitchen until she was out of breath: when she sat upon the fender again, and, drying her face with her handkerchief, shook her head for a long time, without otherwise moving, and without breaking silence.
‘My country rounds,’ she added at length, ‘brought me to Norwich, Mr. Copperfield, the night before last. What I happened to find there, about their secret way of coming and going, without you—which was strange—led to my suspecting something wrong. I got into the coach from London last night, as it came through Norwich, and was here this morning. Oh, oh, oh! too late!’
Poor little Mowcher turned so chilly after all her crying and fretting, that she turned round on the fender, putting her poor little wet feet in among the ashes to warm them, and sat looking at the fire, like a large doll. I sat in a chair on the other side of the hearth, lost in unhappy reflections, and looking at the fire too, and sometimes at her.
‘I must go,’ she said at last, rising as she spoke. ‘It’s late. You don’t mistrust me?’
Meeting her sharp glance, which was as sharp as ever when she asked me, I could not on that short challenge answer no, quite frankly.
‘Come!’ said she, accepting the offer of my hand to help her over the fender, and looking wistfully up into my face, ‘you know you wouldn’t mistrust me, if I was a full-sized woman!’
I felt that there was much truth in this; and I felt rather ashamed of myself.
‘You are a young man,’ she said, nodding. ‘Take a word of advice, even from three foot nothing. Try not to associate bodily defects with mental, my good friend, except for a solid reason.’
She had got over the fender now, and I had got over my suspicion. I told her that I believed she had given me a faithful account of herself, and that we had both been hapless instruments in designing hands. She thanked me, and said I was a good fellow.
‘Now, mind!’ she exclaimed, turning back on her way to the door, and looking shrewdly at me, with her forefinger