Weeks, months, seasons, pass along.They seem little more than a summer day and a winter evening.Now, the Common where I walk with Dora is all in bloom,a field of bright gold;and now the unseen heather lies in mounds and bunches underneath a covering of snow. In a breath, the river that flows through our Sunday walks is sparkling in the summer sun, is ruffled by the winter wind, or thickened with drifting heaps of ice. Faster than ever river ran towards the sea, it flashes, darkens, and rolls away.
Not a thread changes,in the house of the two little bird-like ladies.The clock ticks over the fireplace,the weather-glass hangs in the hall.Neither clock nor weather-glass is ever right;but we believe in both, devoutly.
I have come legally to man’s estate.I have attained the dignity of twenty-one.But this is a sort of dignity that may be thrust upon one.Let me think what I have achieved.
I have tamed that savage stenographic mystery.I make a respectable income by it.I am in high repute for my accomplishment in all pertaining to the art,and am joined with eleven others in reporting the debates in Parliament for a Morning Newspaper. Night after night, I record predictions that never come to pass, professions that are never fulfilled, explanations that are only meant to mystify. I wallow in words. Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl: skewered through and through with office-pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape. I am sufficiently behind the scenes to know the worth of political life. I am quite an Infidel about it, and shall never be converted.
My dear old Traddles has tried his hand at the same pursuit,but it is not in Traddles’s way.He is perfectly good-humoured respecting his failure,and reminds me that he always did consider himself slow.He has occasional employment on the same newspaper,in getting up the facts of dry subjects,to be written about and embellished by more fertile minds.He is called to the bar;and with admirable industry and self-denial has scraped another hundred pounds together, to fee a Conveyancer whose chambers he attends. A great deal of very hot port wine was consumed at his call; and, considering the figure, I should think the Inner Temple must have made a profit by it.
I have come out in another way.I have taken with fear and trembling to authorship.I wrote a little something, in secret,and sent it to a magazine,and it was published in the magazine. Since then,I have taken heart to write a good many trifling pieces.Now, I am regularly paid for them. Altogether,I am well off, when I tell my income on the fingers of my left hand,I pass the third finger and take in the fourth to the middle joint.
We have removed, from Buckingham Street,to a pleasant little cottage very near the one I looked at,when my enthusiasm first came on. My aunt,however (who has sold the house at Dover,to good advantage), is not going to remain here,but intends removing herself to a still more tiny cottage close at hand.What does this portend?My marriage?Yes!
Yes!I am going to be married to Dora!Miss Lavinia and Miss Clarissa have given their consent;and if ever canary birds were in a flutter, they are.Miss Lavinia, self-charged with the superintendence of my darling’s wardrobe,is constantly cutting out brown-paper cuirasses,and differing in opinion from a highly respectable young man,with a long bundle, and a yard measure under his arm.A dressmaker, always stabbed in the breast with a needle and thread,boards and lodges in the house; and seems to me,eating, drinking, or sleeping,never to take her thimble off.They make a lay-figure of my dear.They are always sending for her to come and try something on.We can’t be happy together for five minutes in the evening,but some intrusive female knocks at the door, and says,‘Oh, if you please, Miss Dora, would you step upstairs!’
Miss Clarissa and my aunt roam all over London,to find out articles of furniture for Dora and me to look at.It would be better for them to buy the goods at once,without this ceremony of inspection; for,when we go to see a kitchen fender and meat-screen,Dora sees a Chinese house for Jip,with little bells on the top, and prefers that.And it takes a long time to accustom Jip to his new residence,after we have bought it; whenever he goes in or out,he makes all the little bells ring,and is horribly frightened.
Peggotty comes up to make herself useful,and falls to work immediately.Her department appears to be,to clean everything over and over again.She rubs everything that can be rubbed,until it shines, like her own honest forehead,with perpetual friction. And now it is,that I begin to see her solitary brother passing through the dark streets at night, and looking, as he goes, among the wandering faces. I never speak to him at such an hour. I know too well, as his grave figure passes onward, what he seeks, and what he dreads.
Why does Traddles look so important when he calls upon me this afternoon in the Commons--where I still occasionally attend, for form’s sake, when I have time?The realization of my boyish day-dreams is at hand.I am going to take out the licence.
It is a little document to do so much;and Traddles contemplates it, as it lies upon my desk,half in admiration, half in awe. There are the names,in the sweet old visionary connexion,David Copperfield and Dora Spenlow; and there,in the corner, is that Parental Institution,the Stamp Office, which is so benignantly interested in the various transactions of human life, looking down upon our Union; and there is the Archbishop of Canterbury invoking a blessing on us in print, and doing it as cheap as could possibly be expected.
Nevertheless, I am in a dream, a flustered, happy,hurried dream. I can’t believe that it is going to be;and yet I can’t believe but that everyone I pass in the street,must have some kind of perception,that I am to be married the day after tomorrow.The Surrogate knows me, when I go down to be sworn;and disposes of me easily,as if there were a Masonic understanding between us.Traddles is not at all wanted,but is in attendance as my general backer.
‘I hope the next time you come here, my dear fellow,’ I say to Traddles,‘it will be on the same errand for yourself.And I hope it will be soon.’
‘Thank you for your good wishes, my dear Copperfield,’ he replies. ‘I hope so too.It’s a satisfaction to know that she’ll wait for me any length of time,and that she really is the dearest girl--’
‘When are you to meet her at the coach?’ I ask.
‘At seven,’ says Traddles,looking at his plain old silver watch--the very watch he once took a wheel out of, at school, to make a water-mill. ‘That is about Miss Wickfield’s time, is it not?’
‘A little earlier. Her time is half past eight.’ ‘I assure you, my dear boy,’ says Traddles,‘I am almost as pleased as if I were going to be married myself,to think that this event is coming to such a happy termination.And really the great friendship and consideration of personally associating Sophy with the joyful occasion, and inviting her to be a bridesmaid in conjunction with Miss Wickfield, demands my warmest thanks. I am extremely sensible of it.’
I hear him, and shake hands with him; and we talk,and walk, and dine, and so on; but I don’t believe it. Nothing is real.
Sophy arrives at the house of Dora’s aunts,in due course. She has the most agreeable of faces,--not absolutely beautiful,but extraordinarily pleasant,--and is one of the most genial, unaffected, frank,engaging creatures I have ever seen.Traddles presents her to us with great pride;and rubs his hands for ten minutes by the clock,with every individual hair upon his head standing on tiptoe,when I congratulate him in a corner on his choice.