‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber; ‘Copperfield,’ for so he had been accustomed to call me, of late,‘has a heart to feel for the distresses of his fellow-creatures when they are behind a cloud,and a head to plan, and a hand to--in short,a general ability to dispose of such available property as could be made away with.’
I expressed my sense of this commendation,and said I was very sorry we were going to lose one another.
‘My dear young friend,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘I am older than you; a man of some experience in life,and--and of some experience, in short, in difficulties, generally speaking. At present,and until something turns up (which I am, I may say, hourly expecting),I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is so far worth taking, that--in short,that I have never taken it myself, and am the’--here Mr. Micawber,who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and face, up to the present moment,checked himself and frowned--‘the miserable wretch you behold.’
‘My dear Micawber!’ urged his wife.
‘I say,’ returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again,‘the miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today.Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!’
‘My poor papa’s maxim,’ Mrs. Micawber observed.
‘My dear,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘your papa was very well in his way,and Heaven forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne’er shall--in short,make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time of life,the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles.But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear; and that was so far prematurely entered into,in consequence, that I never recovered the expense.’ Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber,and added: ‘Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.’ After which, he was grave for a minute or so.
‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds,annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds,annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. The blossom is blighted,the leaf is withered, the god of day goes down upon the dreary scene,and--and in short you are for ever floored. As I am!’
To make his example the more impressive, Mr.Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe.
I did not fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my mind,though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they affected me visibly.Next morning I met the whole family at the coach office, and saw them, with a desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back.
‘Master Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Micawber, ‘God bless you!I never can forget all that, you know, and I never would if I could.’
‘Copperfield,’ said Mr. Micawber, ‘farewell!Every happiness and prosperity!If, in the progress of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you,I should feel that I had not occupied another man’s place in existence altogether in vain.In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident),I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your prospects.’
I think, as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the children,and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes,and she saw what a little creature I really was. I think so,because she beckoned to me to climb up, with quite a new and motherly expression in her face,and put her arm round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her own boy.I had barely time to get down again before the coach started,and I could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a minute.The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road,and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to St. Luke’s workhouse,as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and Grinby’s.
But with no intention of passing many more weary days there. No.I had resolved to run away.---To go, by some means or other, down into the country,to the only relation I had in the world, and tell my story to my aunt, Miss Betsey.I have already observed that I don’t know how this desperate idea came into my brain. But,once there, it remained there; and hardened into a purpose than which I have never entertained a more determined purpose in my life.I am far from sure that I believed there was anything hopeful in it,but my mind was thoroughly made up that it must be carried into execution.
Again, and again, and a hundred times again,since the night when the thought had first occurred to me and banished sleep,I had gone over that old story of my poor mother’s about my birth,which it had been one of my great delights in the old time to hear her tell,and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that story, and walked out of it,a dread and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on,and which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement.I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand;and though it might have been altogether my mother’s fancy,and might have had no foundation whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it,of my terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so much,which softened the whole narrative. It is very possible that it had been in my mind a long time,and had gradually engendered my determination.
As I did not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long letter to Peggotty, and asked her,incidentally, if she remembered; pretending that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place I named at random,and had a curiosity to know if it were the same. In the course of that letter,I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for half a guinea;and that if she could lend me that sum until I could repay it,I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell her afterwards what I had wanted it for.
Peggotty’s answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate devotion.She enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have had a world of trouble to get it out of Mr.Barkis’s box), and told me that Miss Betsey lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself,at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not say. One of our men, however,informing me on my asking him about these places, that they were all close together,I deemed this enough for my object, and resolved to set out at the end of that week.
Being a very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the memory I was going to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby’s,I considered myself bound to remain until Saturday night; and,as I had been paid a week’s wages in advance when I first came there,not to present myself in the counting-house at the usual hour, to receive my stipend.For this express reason, I had borrowed the half-guinea,that I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses. Accordingly,when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting in the warehouse to be paid,and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in first to draw his money,I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him, when it came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr.Quinion that I had gone to move my box to Tipp’s; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy Potatoes, ran away.
My box was at my old lodging, over the water,and I had written a direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed on the casks:‘Master David, to be left till called for, at the Coach Office, Dover.’ This I had in my pocket ready to put on the box, after I should have got it out of the house;and as I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the booking-office.
There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the Obelisk,in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and who,addressing me as ‘Sixpenn’orth of bad ha’pence,’ hoped ‘I should know him agin to swear to’--in allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him.I stopped to assure him that I had not done so in bad manners,but uncertain whether he might or might not like a job.
‘Wot job?’ said the long-legged young man.
‘To move a box,’ I answered.
‘Wot box?’ said the long-legged young man.
I told him mine, which was down that street there,and which I wanted him to take to the Dover coach office for sixpence.
‘Done with you for a tanner!’ said the long-legged young man, and directly got upon his cart,which was nothing but a large wooden tray on wheels, and rattled away at such a rate,that it was as much as I could do to keep pace with the donkey.
There was a defiant manner about this young man,and particularly about the way in which he chewed straw as he spoke to me,that I did not much like; as the bargain was made, however,I took him upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought the box down, and put it on his cart.Now, I was unwilling to put the direction-card on there,lest any of my landlord’s family should fathom what I was doing, and detain me;so I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a minute,when he came to the dead-wall of the King’s Bench prison. The words were no sooner out of my mouth,than he rattled away as if he, my box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad;and I was quite out of breath with running and calling after him,when I caught him at the place appointed.
Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my pocket in pulling the card out.I put it in my mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a good deal,had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction,when I felt myself violently chucked under the chin by the long-legged young man,and saw my half-guinea fly out of my mouth into his hand.
‘Wot!’ said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a frightful grin. ‘This is a pollis case, is it?You’re a-going to bolt, are you?Come to the pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!’
‘You give me my money back, if you please,’ said I, very much frightened; ‘and leave me alone.’
‘Come to the pollis!’ said the young man. ‘You shall prove it yourn to the pollis.’
‘Give me my box and money, will you,’ I cried, bursting into tears.
The young man still replied: ‘Come to the pollis!’ and was dragging me against the donkey in a violent manner,as if there were any affinity between that animal and a magistrate, when he changed his mind,jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder than ever.
I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out with,and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly escaped being run over,twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I lost him,now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again,now running into somebody’s arms, now running headlong at a post. At length,confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time be turning out for my apprehension,I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying,but never stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover Road:taking very little more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsey,than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her so much umbrage.
CHAPTER 13. THE SEQUEL OF MY RESOLUTION
For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the way to Dover,when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the donkey-cart, and started for Greenwich.My scattered senses were soon collected as to that point, if I had;for I came to a stop in the Kent Road, at a terrace with a piece of water before it,and a great foolish image in the middle, blowing a dry shell. Here I sat down on a doorstep,quite spent and exhausted with the efforts I had already made,and with hardly breath enough to cry for the loss of my box and half-guinea.
It was by this time dark; I heard the clocks strike ten, as I sat resting.But it was a summer night, fortunately, and fine weather. When I had recovered my breath,and had got rid of a stifling sensation in my throat, I rose up and went on.In the midst of my distress, I had no notion of going back. I doubt if I should have had any,though there had been a Swiss snow-drift in the Kent Road.
But my standing possessed of only three-halfpence in the world (and I am sure I wonder how they came to be left in my pocket on a Saturday night!) troubled me none the less because I went on. I began to picture to myself,as a scrap of newspaper intelligence, my being found dead in a day or two, under some hedge;and I trudged on miserably, though as fast as I could, until I happened to pass a little shop,where it was written up that ladies’ and gentlemen’s wardrobes were bought,and that the best price was given for rags, bones, and kitchen-stuff.The master of this shop was sitting at the door in his shirt-sleeves, smoking;and as there were a great many coats and pairs of trousers dangling from the low ceiling,and only two feeble candles burning inside to show what they were,I fancied that he looked like a man of a revengeful disposition, who had hung all his enemies, and was enjoying himself.
My late experiences with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber suggested to me that here might be a means of keeping off the wolf for a little while.I went up the next by-street, took off my waistcoat, rolled it neatly under my arm, and came back to the shop door.
‘If you please, sir,’ I said, ‘I am to sell this for a fair price.’
Mr. Dolloby--Dolloby was the name over the shop door, at least--took the waistcoat,stood his pipe on its head, against the door-post, went into the shop, followed by me,snuffed the two candles with his fingers, spread the waistcoat on the counter,and looked at it there, held it up against the light, and looked at it there, and ultimately said:
‘What do you call a price, now, for this here little weskit?’
‘Oh!you know best, sir,’ I returned modestly.
‘I can’t be buyer and seller too,’ said Mr. Dolloby. ‘Put a price on this here little weskit.’
‘Would eighteenpence be?’--I hinted, after some hesitation.
Mr. Dolloby rolled it up again, and gave it me back. ‘I should rob my family,’ he said, ‘if I was to offer ninepence for it.’
This was a disagreeable way of putting the business; because it imposed upon me, a perfect stranger,the unpleasantness of asking Mr. Dolloby to rob his family on my account.My circumstances being so very pressing, however, I said I would take ninepence for it,if he pleased. Mr. Dolloby, not without some grumbling, gave ninepence. I wished him good night,and walked out of the shop the richer by that sum, and the poorer by a waistcoat.But when I buttoned my jacket, that was not much. Indeed,I foresaw pretty clearly that my jacket would go next,and that I should have to make the best of my way to Dover in a shirt and a pair of trousers,and might deem myself lucky if I got there even in that trim.But my mind did not run so much on this as might be supposed.Beyond a general impression of the distance before me,and of the young man with the donkey-cart having used me cruelly,I think I had no very urgent sense of my difficulties when I once again set off with my ninepence in my pocket.
A plan had occurred to me for passing the night, which I was going to carry into execution.This was, to lie behind the wall at the back of my old school,in a corner where there used to be a haystack.I imagined it would be a kind of company to have the boys,and the bedroom where I used to tell the stories, so near me:although the boys would know nothing of my being there, and the bedroom would yield me no shelter.
I had had a hard day’s work, and was pretty well jaded when I came climbing out, at last,upon the level of Blackheath. It cost me some trouble to find out Salem House; but I found it,and I found a haystack in the corner, and I lay down by it; having first walked round the wall,and looked up at the windows, and seen that all was dark and silent within.Never shall I forget the lonely sensation of first lying down, without a roof above my head!
Sleep came upon me as it came on many other outcasts, against whom house-doors were locked,and house-dogs barked, that night--and I dreamed of lying on my old school-bed,talking to the boys in my room; and found myself sitting upright,with Steerforth’s name upon my lips, looking wildly at the stars that were glistening and glimmering above me.When I remembered where I was at that untimely hour, a feeling stole upon me that made me get up,afraid of I don’t know what, and walk about. But the fainter glimmering of the stars,and the pale light in the sky where the day was coming, reassured me: and my eyes being very heavy,I lay down again and slept--though with a knowledge in my sleep that it was cold--until the warm beams of the sun,and the ringing of the getting-up bell at Salem House, awoke me.If I could have hoped that Steerforth was there, I would have lurked about until he came out alone;but I knew he must have left long since. Traddles still remained, perhaps,but it was very doubtful; and I had not sufficient confidence in his discretion or good luck,however strong my reliance was on his good nature, to wish to trust him with my situation.So I crept away from the wall as Mr. Creakle’s boys were getting up,and struck into the long dusty track which I had first known to be the Dover Road when I was one of them,and when I little expected that any eyes would ever see me the wayfarer I was now, upon it.
What a different Sunday morning from the old Sunday morning at Yarmouth!In due time I heard the church-bells ringing, as I plodded on;and I met people who were going to church;and I passed a church or two where the congregation were inside,and the sound of singing came out into the sunshine,while the beadle sat and cooled himself in the shade of the porch, or stood beneath the yew-tree,with his hand to his forehead, glowering at me going by.But the peace and rest of the old Sunday morning were on everything, except me.That was the difference. I felt quite wicked in my dirt and dust, with my tangled hair.But for the quiet picture I had conjured up, of my mother in her youth and beauty,weeping by the fire, and my aunt relenting to her,I hardly think I should have had the courage to go on until next day. But it always went before me, and I followed.
I got, that Sunday, through three-and-twenty miles on the straight road, though not very easily,for I was new to that kind of toil. I see myself, as evening closes in,coming over the bridge at Rochester, footsore and tired,and eating bread that I had bought for supper. One or two little houses, with the notice,‘Lodgings for Travellers’, hanging out, had tempted me;but I was afraid of spending the few pence I had,and was even more afraid of the vicious looks of the trampers I had met or overtaken.I sought no shelter, therefore, but the sky; and toiling into Chatham,--which,in that night’s aspect, is a mere dream of chalk, and drawbridges,and mastless ships in a muddy river, roofed like Noah’s arks,--crept, at last,upon a sort of grass-grown battery overhanging a lane, where a sentry was walking to and fro.Here I lay down, near a cannon; and, happy in the society of the sentry’s footsteps,though he knew no more of my being above him than the boys at Salem House had known of my lying by the wall, slept soundly until morning.
Very stiff and sore of foot I was in the morning,and quite dazed by the beating of drums and marching of troops,which seemed to hem me in on every side when I went down towards the long narrow street.Feeling that I could go but a very little way that day,if I were to reserve any strength for getting to my journey’s end,I resolved to make the sale of my jacket its principal business. Accordingly,I took the jacket off, that I might learn to do without it; and carrying it under my arm,began a tour of inspection of the various slop-shops.
It was a likely place to sell a jacket in; for the dealers in second-hand clothes were numerous,and were, generally speaking, on the look-out for customers at their shop doors.But as most of them had, hanging up among their stock, an officer’s coat or two,epaulettes and all, I was rendered timid by the costly nature of their dealings,and walked about for a long time without offering my merchandise to anyone.
This modesty of mine directed my attention to the marine-store shops, and such shops as Mr.Dolloby’s, in preference to the regular dealers.At last I found one that I thought looked promising, at the corner of a dirty lane,ending in an enclosure full of stinging-nettles,against the palings of which some second-hand sailors’ clothes,that seemed to have overflowed the shop, were fluttering among some cots, and rusty guns,and oilskin hats, and certain trays full of so many old rusty keys of so many sizes that they seemed various enough to open all the doors in the world.
Into this shop, which was low and small,and which was darkened rather than lighted by a little window, overhung with clothes,and was descended into by some steps, I went with a palpitating heart;which was not relieved when an ugly old man,with the lower part of his face all covered with a stubbly grey beard,rushed out of a dirty den behind it, and seized me by the hair of my head.He was a dreadful old man to look at, in a filthy flannel waistcoat, and smelling terribly of rum.His bedstead, covered with a tumbled and ragged piece of patchwork,was in the den he had come from, where another little window showed a prospect of more stinging-nettles, and a lame donkey.
‘Oh, what do you want?’ grinned this old man, in a fierce, monotonous whine. ‘Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want?Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want?Oh, goroo, goroo!’
I was so much dismayed by these words, and particularly by the repetition of the last unknown one,which was a kind of rattle in his throat, that I could make no answer; hereupon the old man, still holding me by the hair, repeated:
‘Oh, what do you want?Oh, my eyes and limbs, what do you want?Oh, my lungs and liver, what do you want?Oh, goroo!’--which he screwed out of himself, with an energy that made his eyes start in his head.
‘I wanted to know,’ I said, trembling, ‘if you would buy a jacket.’
‘Oh, let’s see the jacket!’ cried the old man. ‘Oh, my heart on fire, show the jacket to us!Oh, my eyes and limbs, bring the jacket out!’
With that he took his trembling hands, which were like the claws of a great bird, out of my hair;and put on a pair of spectacles, not at all ornamental to his inflamed eyes.
‘Oh, how much for the jacket?’ cried the old man, after examining it. ‘Oh--goroo!--how much for the jacket?’
‘Half-a-crown,’ I answered, recovering myself.
‘Oh, my lungs and liver,’ cried the old man, ‘no!Oh, my eyes, no!Oh, my limbs, no!Eighteenpence. Goroo!’
Every time he uttered this ejaculation, his eyes seemed to be in danger of starting out;and every sentence he spoke, he delivered in a sort of tune, always exactly the same,and more like a gust of wind, which begins low, mounts up high, and falls again,than any other comparison I can find for it.
‘Well,’ said I, glad to have closed the bargain, ‘I’ll take eighteenpence.’
‘Oh, my liver!’ cried the old man, throwing the jacket on a shelf. ‘Get out of the shop!Oh, my lungs, get out of the shop!Oh, my eyes and limbs--goroo!--don’t ask for money; make it an exchange.’ I never was so frightened in my life, before or since;but I told him humbly that I wanted money, and that nothing else was of any use to me,but that I would wait for it, as he desired, outside, and had no wish to hurry him.So I went outside, and sat down in the shade in a corner. And I sat there so many hours,that the shade became sunlight, and the sunlight became shade again,and still I sat there waiting for the money.
There never was such another drunken madman in that line of business, I hope.That he was well known in the neighbourhood,and enjoyed the reputation of having sold himself to the devil,I soon understood from the visits he received from the boys,who continually came skirmishing about the shop, shouting that legend,and calling to him to bring out his gold. ‘You ain’t poor, you know, Charley, as you pretend.Bring out your gold. Bring out some of the gold you sold yourself to the devil for. Come!It’s in the lining of the mattress, Charley. Rip it open and let’s have some!’ This, and many offers to lend him a knife for the purpose, exasperated him to such a degree,that the whole day was a succession of rushes on his part, and flights on the part of the boys.Sometimes in his rage he would take me for one of them, and come at me,mouthing as if he were going to tear me in pieces; then, remembering me, just in time,would dive into the shop, and lie upon his bed, as I thought from the sound of his voice,yelling in a frantic way, to his own windy tune, the ‘Death of Nelson’; with an Oh!before every line, and innumerable Goroos interspersed. As if this were not bad enough for me,the boys, connecting me with the establishment,on account of the patience and perseverance with which I sat outside, half-dressed, pelted me, and used me very ill all day.
He made many attempts to induce me to consent to an exchange;at one time coming out with a fishing-rod, at another with a fiddle, at another with a cocked hat,at another with a flute. But I resisted all these overtures, and sat there in desperation;each time asking him, with tears in my eyes, for my money or my jacket.At last he began to pay me in halfpence at a time;and was full two hours getting by easy stages to a shilling.
‘Oh, my eyes and limbs!’ he then cried, peeping hideously out of the shop, after a long pause, ‘will you go for twopence more?’
‘I can’t,’ I said; ‘I shall be starved.’
‘Oh, my lungs and liver, will you go for threepence?’
‘I would go for nothing, if I could,’ I said, ‘but I want the money badly.’
‘Oh, go-roo!’ (it is really impossible to express how he twisted this ejaculation out of himself,as he peeped round the door-post at me, showing nothing but his crafty old head); ‘will you go for fourpence?’
I was so faint and weary that I closed with this offer; and taking the money out of his claw,not without trembling, went away more hungry and thirsty than I had ever been,a little before sunset. But at an expense of threepence I soon refreshed myself completely; and,being in better spirits then, limped seven miles upon my road.
My bed at night was under another haystack, where I rested comfortably,after having washed my blistered feet in a stream, and dressed them as well as I was able,with some cool leaves. When I took the road again next morning,I found that it lay through a succession of hop-grounds and orchards.It was sufficiently late in the year for the orchards to be ruddy with ripe apples;and in a few places the hop-pickers were already at work. I thought it all extremely beautiful,and made up my mind to sleep among the hops that night:imagining some cheerful companionship in the long perspectives of poles,with the graceful leaves twining round them.
The trampers were worse than ever that day,and inspired me with a dread that is yet quite fresh in my mind.Some of them were most ferocious-looking ruffians, who stared at me as I went by; and stopped,perhaps, and called after me to come back and speak to them, and when I took to my heels,stoned me. I recollect one young fellow--a tinker, I suppose,from his wallet and brazier--who had a woman with him, and who faced about and stared at me thus;and then roared to me in such a tremendous voice to come back, that I halted and looked round.
‘Come here, when you’re called,’ said the tinker, ‘or I’ll rip your young body open.’
I thought it best to go back. As I drew nearer to them, trying to propitiate the tinker by my looks,I observed that the woman had a black eye.
‘Where are you going?’ said the tinker, gripping the bosom of my shirt with his blackened hand.
‘I am going to Dover,’ I said.
‘Where do you come from?’ asked the tinker, giving his hand another turn in my shirt, to hold me more securely.
‘I come from London,’ I said.
‘What lay are you upon?’ asked the tinker. ‘Are you a prig?’
‘N-no,’ I said.
‘Ain’t you, by G--?If you make a brag of your honesty to me,’ said the tinker, ‘I’ll knock your brains out.’
With his disengaged hand he made a menace of striking me, and then looked at me from head to foot.
‘Have you got the price of a pint of beer about you?’ said the tinker. ‘If you have, out with it, afore I take it away!’
I should certainly have produced it, but that I met the woman’s look,and saw her very slightly shake her head, and form ‘No!’ with her lips.
‘I am very poor,’ I said, attempting to smile, ‘and have got no money.’
‘Why, what do you mean?’ said the tinker, looking so sternly at me, that I almost feared he saw the money in my pocket.
‘Sir!’ I stammered.
‘What do you mean,’ said the tinker, ‘by wearing my brother’s silk handkerchief!Give it over here!’ And he had mine off my neck in a moment, and tossed it to the woman.