I replied, ‘I, Miss Mills!I have done it!Behold the destroyer!’--or words to that effect--and hid my face from the light,in the sofa cushion.
At first Miss Mills thought it was a quarrel,and that we were verging on the Desert of Sahara;but she soon found out how matters stood,for my dear affectionate little Dora, embracing her,began exclaiming that I was ‘a poor labourer’;and then cried for me, and embraced me,and asked me would I let her give me all her money to keep,and then fell on Miss Mills’s neck,sobbing as if her tender heart were broken.
Miss Mills must have been born to be a blessing to us.She ascertained from me in a few words what it was all about,comforted Dora, and gradually convinced her that I was not a labourer--from my manner of stating the case I believe Dora concluded that I was a navigator, and went balancing myself up and down a plank all day with a wheelbarrow--and so brought us together in peace. When we were quite composed, and Dora had gone up-stairs to put some rose-water to her eyes, Miss Mills rang for tea. In the ensuing interval, I told Miss Mills that she was evermore my friend, and that my heart must cease to vibrate ere I could forget her sympathy.
I then expounded to Miss Mills what I had endeavoured,so very unsuccessfully, to expound to Dora.Miss Mills replied, on general principles,that the Cottage of content was better than the Palace of cold splendour,and that where love was, all was.
I said to Miss Mills that this was very true,and who should know it better than I,who loved Dora with a love that never mortal had experienced yet?But on Miss Mills observing, with despondency,that it were well indeed for some hearts if this were so,I explained that I begged leave to restrict the observation to mortals of the masculine gender.
I then put it to Miss Mills,to say whether she considered that there was or was not any practical merit in the suggestion I had been anxious to make, concerning the accounts, the housekeeping, and the Cookery Book?
Miss Mills, after some consideration, thus replied:
‘Mr. Copperfield, I will be plain with you.Mental suffering and trial supply, in some natures,the place of years,and I will be as plain with you as if I were a Lady Abbess.No. The suggestion is not appropriate to our Dora.Our dearest Dora is a favourite child of nature.She is a thing of light, and airiness, and joy.I am free to confess that if it could be done,it might be well, but--’ And Miss Mills shook her head.
I was encouraged by this closing admission on the part of Miss Mills to ask her,whether, for Dora’s sake,if she had any opportunity of luring her attention to such preparations for an earnest life, she would avail herself of it?Miss Mills replied in the affirmative so readily,that I further asked her if she would take charge of the Cookery Book;and, if she ever could insinuate it upon Dora’s acceptance,without frightening her,undertake to do me that crowning service.Miss Mills accepted this trust, too;but was not sanguine.
And Dora returned, looking such a lovely little creature,that I really doubted whether she ought to be troubled with anything so ordinary. And she loved me so much, and was so captivating (particularly when she made Jip stand on his hind legs for toast, and when she pretended to hold that nose of his against the hot teapot for punishment because he wouldn’t), that I felt like a sort of Monster who had got into a Fairy’s bower, when I thought of having frightened her, and made her cry.
After tea we had the guitar;and Dora sang those same dear old French songs about the impossibility of ever on any account leaving off dancing, La ra la, La ra la, until I felt a much greater Monster than before.
We had only one check to our pleasure,and that happened a little while before I took my leave,when, Miss Mills chancing to make some allusion to tomorrow morning,I unluckily let out that,being obliged to exert myself now,I got up at five o’clock.Whether Dora had any idea that I was a Private Watchman,I am unable to say;but it made a great impression on her,and she neither played nor sang any more.
It was still on her mind when I bade her adieu;and she said to me,in her pretty coaxing way--as if I were a doll, I used to think:
‘Now don’t get up at five o’clock, you naughty boy.It’s so nonsensical!’
‘My love,’ said I, ‘I have work to do.’
‘But don’t do it!’ returned Dora. ‘Why should you?’
It was impossible to say to that sweet little surprised face,otherwise than lightly and playfully,that we must work to live.
‘Oh!How ridiculous!’ cried Dora.
‘How shall we live without, Dora?’ said I.
‘How?Any how!’ said Dora.
She seemed to think she had quite settled the question,and gave me such a triumphant little kiss,direct from her innocent heart,that I would hardly have put her out of conceit with her answer, for a fortune.
Well!I loved her, and I went on loving her, most absorbingly,entirely, and completely. But going on, too,working pretty hard,and busily keeping red-hot all the irons I now had in the fire,I would sit sometimes of a night, opposite my aunt,thinking how I had frightened Dora that time,and how I could best make my way with a guitar-case through the forest of difficulty, until I used to fancy that my head was turning quite grey.
CHAPTER 38. A DISSOLUTION OF PARTNERSHIP
I did not allow my resolution,with respect to the Parliamentary Debates, to cool.It was one of the irons I began to heat immediately,and one of the irons I kept hot, and hammered at,with a perseverance I may honestly admire.I bought an approved scheme of the noble art and mystery of stenography (which cost me ten and sixpence); and plunged into a sea of perplexity that brought me, in a few weeks, to the confines of distraction. The changes that were rung upon dots, which in such a position meant such a thing, and in such another position something else, entirely different; the wonderful vagaries that were played by circles; the unaccountable consequences that resulted from marks like flies’ legs; the tremendous effects of a curve in a wrong place; not only troubled my waking hours, but reappeared before me in my sleep. When I had groped my way, blindly, through these difficulties, and had mastered the alphabet, which was an Egyptian Temple in itself, there then appeared a procession of new horrors, called arbitrary characters; the most despotic characters I have ever known; who insisted, for instance, that a thing like the beginning of a cobweb, meant expectation, and that a pen-and-ink sky-rocket, stood for disadvantageous. When I had fixed these wretches in my mind, I found that they had driven everything else out of it; then, beginning again, I forgot them; while I was picking them up, I dropped the other fragments of the system; in short, it was almost heart-breaking.
It might have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora,who was the stay and anchor of my tempest-driven bark.Every scratch in the scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of difficulty,and I went on cutting them down, one after another,with such vigour, that in three or four months I was in a condition to make an experiment on one of our crack speakers in the Commons. Shall I ever forget how the crack speaker walked off from me before I began, and left my imbecile pencil staggering about the paper as if it were in a fit!
This would not do, it was quite clear.I was flying too high, and should never get on, so.I resorted to Traddles for advice;who suggested that he should dictate speeches to me,at a pace, and with occasional stoppages,adapted to my weakness.Very grateful for this friendly aid,I accepted the proposal; and night after night,almost every night, for a long time,we had a sort of Private Parliament in Buckingham Street,after I came home from the Doctor’s.