‘You are a precious set of people, ain’t you?’ said Uriah, in the same low voice,and breaking out into a clammy heat,which he wiped from his forehead,with his long lean hand, ‘to buy over my clerk,who is the very scum of society,--as you yourself were,Copperfield, you know it,before anyone had charity on you,--to defame me with his lies?Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this;or I’ll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you.I won’t know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady!Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your father,you had better not join that gang. I’ll ruin him,if you do. Now, come!I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice,before it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber,if you don’t want to be crushed.I recommend you to take yourself off,and be talked to presently, you fool!while there’s time to retreat. Where’s mother?’ he said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm,the absence of Traddles,and pulling down the bell-rope.‘Fine doings in a person’s own house!’
‘Mrs. Heep is here, sir,’ said Traddles,returning with that worthy mother of a worthy son.‘I have taken the liberty of making myself known to her. ’
‘Who are you to make yourself known?’ retorted Uriah. ‘And what do you want here?’
‘I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,’ said Traddles, in a composed and business-like way.‘And I have a power of attorney from him in my pocket,to act for him in all matters.’
‘The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,’ said Uriah, turning uglier than before,‘and it has been got from him by fraud!’
‘Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,’ returned Traddles quietly; ‘and so do you, Mr. Heep.We will refer that question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.’
‘Ury--!’ Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.
‘YOU hold your tongue, mother,’ he returned;‘least said, soonest mended.’
‘But, my Ury--’
‘Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?’
Though I had long known that his servility was false,and all his pretences knavish and hollow,I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy,until I now saw him with his mask off.The suddenness with which he dropped it,when he perceived that it was useless to him;the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed;the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment,in the evil he had done--all this time being desperate too,and at his wits’ end for the means of getting the better of us--though perfectly consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.
I say nothing of the look he conferred on me,as he stood eyeing us, one after another;for I had always understood that he hated me,and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek.But when his eyes passed on to Agnes,and I saw the rage with which he felt his power over her slipping away,and the exhibition, in their disappointment,of the odious passions that had led him to aspire to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within sight of such a man.
After some rubbing of the lower part of his face,and some looking at us with those bad eyes,over his grisly fingers,he made one more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.
‘You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield,you who pride yourself so much on your honour and all the rest of it,to sneak about my place, eaves-dropping with my clerk?If it had been ME, I shouldn’t have wondered;for I don’t make myself out a gentleman (though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according to Micawber), but being you!--And you’re not afraid of doing this, either?You don’t think at all of what I shall do, in return;or of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth?Very well. We shall see!Mr. What’s-your-name,you were going to refer some question to Micawber.There’s your referee. Why don’t you make him speak?He has learnt his lesson, I see.’
Seeing that what he said had no effect on me or any of us,he sat on the edge of his table with his hands in his pockets,and one of his splay feet twisted round the other leg,waiting doggedly for what might follow.
Mr. Micawber, whose impetuosity I had restrained thus far with the greatest difficulty, and who had repeatedly interposed with the first syllable of SCOUN-drel!without getting to the second, now burst forward,drew the ruler from his breast (apparently as a defensive weapon),and produced from his pocket a foolscap document,folded in the form of a large letter.Opening this packet, with his old flourish,and glancing at the contents,as if he cherished an artistic admiration of their style of composition,he began to read as follows:
‘“Dear Miss Trotwood and gentlemen--“’
‘Bless and save the man!’ exclaimed my aunt in a low voice.‘He’d write letters by the ream,if it was a capital offence!’
Mr. Micawber, without hearing her, went on.
‘“In appearing before you to denounce probably the most consummate Villain that has ever existed,”’ Mr. Micawber, without looking off the letter, pointed the ruler, like a ghostly truncheon, at Uriah Heep, ‘“I ask no consideration for myself. The victim, from my cradle, of pecuniary liabilities to which I have been unable to respond, I have ever been the sport and toy of debasing circumstances. Ignominy, Want, Despair, and Madness, have, collectively or separately, been the attendants of my career.”’
The relish with which Mr.Micawber described himself as a prey to these dismal calamities,was only to be equalled by the emphasis with which he read his letter;and the kind of homage he rendered to it with a roll of his head,when he thought he had hit a sentence very hard indeed.
‘“In an accumulation of Ignominy, Want, Despair,and Madness, I entered the office--or,as our lively neighbour the Gaul would term it,the Bureau--of the Firm,nominally conducted under the appellation of Wickfield and--HEEP,but in reality, wielded by--HEEP alone. HEEP,and only HEEP, is the mainspring of that machine. HEEP,and only HEEP, is the Forger and the Cheat.”’
Uriah, more blue than white at these words,made a dart at the letter, as if to tear it in pieces.Mr. Micawber, with a perfect miracle of dexterity or luck,caught his advancing knuckles with the ruler,and disabled his right hand. It dropped at the wrist,as if it were broken.The blow sounded as if it had fallen on wood.
‘The Devil take you!’ said Uriah, writhing in a new way with pain.‘I’ll be even with you.’
‘Approach me again, you--you--you HEEP of infamy,’ gasped Mr. Micawber, ‘and if your head is human,I’ll break it. Come on, come on!’
I think I never saw anything more ridiculous--I was sensible of it,even at the time--than Mr.Micawber making broad-sword guards with the ruler,and crying, ‘Come on!’ while Traddles and I pushed him back into a corner,from which, as often as we got him into it,he persisted in emerging again.
His enemy, muttering to himself,after wringing his wounded hand for sometime,slowly drew off his neck-kerchief and bound it up;then held it in his other hand,and sat upon his table with his sullen face looking down.
Mr. Micawber, when he was sufficiently cool,proceeded with his letter.