Charles Dickens - The Man Behind the Classics: Autobiographical Novels, Stories, Memoirs, Letters & Biographies. Charles Dickens
follow you?’ said Mr. Wickfield.
‘Quite so,’ returned the other, ‘—would only have to say, that she wanted such and such a thing to be so and so; and it would be so and so, as a matter of course.’
‘And why as a matter of course, Mr. Maldon?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, sedately eating his dinner.
‘Why, because Annie’s a charming young girl, and the old Doctor—Doctor Strong, I mean—is not quite a charming young boy,’ said Mr. Jack Maldon, laughing. ‘No offence to anybody, Mr. Wickfield. I only mean that I suppose some compensation is fair and reasonable in that sort of marriage.’
‘Compensation to the lady, sir?’ asked Mr. Wickfield gravely.
‘To the lady, sir,’ Mr. Jack Maldon answered, laughing. But appearing to remark that Mr. Wickfield went on with his dinner in the same sedate, immovable manner, and that there was no hope of making him relax a muscle of his face, he added: ‘However, I have said what I came to say, and, with another apology for this intrusion, I may take myself off. Of course I shall observe your directions, in considering the matter as one to be arranged between you and me solely, and not to be referred to, up at the Doctor’s.’
‘Have you dined?’ asked Mr. Wickfield, with a motion of his hand towards the table.
‘Thank’ee. I am going to dine,’ said Mr. Maldon, ‘with my cousin Annie. Good-bye!’
Mr. Wickfield, without rising, looked after him thoughtfully as he went out. He was rather a shallow sort of young gentleman, I thought, with a handsome face, a rapid utterance, and a confident, bold air. And this was the first I ever saw of Mr. Jack Maldon; whom I had not expected to see so soon, when I heard the Doctor speak of him that morning.
When we had dined, we went upstairs again, where everything went on exactly as on the previous day. Agnes set the glasses and decanters in the same corner, and Mr. Wickfield sat down to drink, and drank a good deal. Agnes played the piano to him, sat by him, and worked and talked, and played some games at dominoes with me. In good time she made tea; and afterwards, when I brought down my books, looked into them, and showed me what she knew of them (which was no slight matter, though she said it was), and what was the best way to learn and understand them. I see her, with her modest, orderly, placid manner, and I hear her beautiful calm voice, as I write these words. The influence for all good, which she came to exercise over me at a later time, begins already to descend upon my breast. I love little Em’ly, and I don’t love Agnes—no, not at all in that way—but I feel that there are goodness, peace, and truth, wherever Agnes is; and that the soft light of the coloured window in the church, seen long ago, falls on her always, and on me when I am near her, and on everything around.
The time having come for her withdrawal for the night, and she having left us, I gave Mr. Wickfield my hand, preparatory to going away myself. But he checked me and said: ‘Should you like to stay with us, Trotwood, or to go elsewhere?’
‘To stay,’ I answered, quickly.
‘You are sure?’
‘If you please. If I may!’
‘Why, it’s but a dull life that we lead here, boy, I am afraid,’ he said.
‘Not more dull for me than Agnes, sir. Not dull at all!’
‘Than Agnes,’ he repeated, walking slowly to the great chimney-piece, and leaning against it. ‘Than Agnes!’
He had drank wine that evening (or I fancied it), until his eyes were bloodshot. Not that I could see them now, for they were cast down, and shaded by his hand; but I had noticed them a little while before.
‘Now I wonder,’ he muttered, ‘whether my Agnes tires of me. When should I ever tire of her! But that’s different, that’s quite different.’
He was musing, not speaking to me; so I remained quiet.
‘A dull old house,’ he said, ‘and a monotonous life; but I must have her near me. I must keep her near me. If the thought that I may die and leave my darling, or that my darling may die and leave me, comes like a spectre, to distress my happiest hours, and is only to be drowned in—’
He did not supply the word; but pacing slowly to the place where he had sat, and mechanically going through the action of pouring wine from the empty decanter, set it down and paced back again.
‘If it is miserable to bear, when she is here,’ he said, ‘what would it be, and she away? No, no, no. I cannot try that.’
He leaned against the chimney-piece, brooding so long that I could not decide whether to run the risk of disturbing him by going, or to remain quietly where I was, until he should come out of his reverie. At length he aroused himself, and looked about the room until his eyes encountered mine.
‘Stay with us, Trotwood, eh?’ he said in his usual manner, and as if he were answering something I had just said. ‘I am glad of it. You are company to us both. It is wholesome to have you here. Wholesome for me, wholesome for Agnes, wholesome perhaps for all of us.’
‘I am sure it is for me, sir,’ I said. ‘I am so glad to be here.’
‘That’s a fine fellow!’ said Mr. Wickfield. ‘As long as you are glad to be here, you shall stay here.’ He shook hands with me upon it, and clapped me on the back; and told me that when I had anything to do at night after Agnes had left us, or when I wished to read for my own pleasure, I was free to come down to his room, if he were there and if I desired it for company’s sake, and to sit with him. I thanked him for his consideration; and, as he went down soon afterwards, and I was not tired, went down too, with a book in my hand, to avail myself, for half-an-hour, of his permission.
But, seeing a light in the little round office, and immediately feeling myself attracted towards Uriah Heep, who had a sort of fascination for me, I went in there instead. I found Uriah reading a great fat book, with such demonstrative attention, that his lank forefinger followed up every line as he read, and made clammy tracks along the page (or so I fully believed) like a snail.
‘You are working late tonight, Uriah,’ says I.
‘Yes, Master Copperfield,’ says Uriah.
As I was getting on the stool opposite, to talk to him more conveniently, I observed that he had not such a thing as a smile about him, and that he could only widen his mouth and make two hard creases down his cheeks, one on each side, to stand for one.
‘I am not doing office-work, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah.
‘What work, then?’ I asked.
‘I am improving my legal knowledge, Master Copperfield,’ said Uriah. ‘I am going through Tidd’s Practice. Oh, what a writer Mr. Tidd is, Master Copperfield!’
My stool was such a tower of observation, that as I watched him reading on again, after this rapturous exclamation, and following up the lines with his forefinger, I observed that his nostrils, which were thin and pointed, with sharp dints in them, had a singular and most uncomfortable way of expanding and contracting themselves—that they seemed to twinkle instead of his eyes, which hardly ever twinkled at all.
‘I suppose you are quite a great lawyer?’ I said, after looking at him for some time.
‘Me, Master Copperfield?’ said Uriah. ‘Oh, no! I’m a very umble person.’
It was no fancy of mine about his hands, I observed; for he frequently ground the palms against each other as if to squeeze them dry and warm, besides often wiping them, in a stealthy way, on his pocket-handkerchief.
‘I am well aware that I am the umblest person going,’ said Uriah Heep, modestly; ‘let the other be where he may. My mother is likewise a very umble person. We live in a numble abode, Master Copperfield, but have much to be thankful for. My father’s former calling was umble. He was a sexton.’
‘What is he now?’ I asked.
‘He is a partaker of glory at present, Master Copperfield,’