The woman burst into a fit of laughter, as if she thought this a joke, and tossed it back to me,nodded once, as slightly as before, and made the word ‘Go!’ with her lips. Before I could obey, however,the tinker seized the handkerchief out of my hand with a roughness that threw me away like a feather,and putting it loosely round his own neck, turned upon the woman with an oath,and knocked her down. I never shall forget seeing her fall backward on the hard road,and lie there with her bonnet tumbled off, and her hair all whitened in the dust; nor,when I looked back from a distance, seeing her sitting on the pathway,which was a bank by the roadside, wiping the blood from her face with a corner of her shawl, while he went on ahead.
This adventure frightened me so, that, afterwards, when I saw any of these people coming,I turned back until I could find a hiding-place, where I remained until they had gone out of sight;which happened so often, that I was very seriously delayed. But under this difficulty,as under all the other difficulties of my journey,I seemed to be sustained and led on by my fanciful picture of my mother in her youth,before I came into the world. It always kept me company. It was there, among the hops,when I lay down to sleep; it was with me on my waking in the morning; it went before me all day.I have associated it, ever since, with the sunny street of Canterbury,dozing as it were in the hot light; and with the sight of its old houses and gateways,and the stately, grey Cathedral, with the rooks sailing round the towers. When I came, at last,upon the bare, wide downs near Dover, it relieved the solitary aspect of the scene with hope;and not until I reached that first great aim of my journey,and actually set foot in the town itself, on the sixth day of my flight, did it desert me.But then, strange to say, when I stood with my ragged shoes, and my dusty, sunburnt,half-clothed figure, in the place so long desired, it seemed to vanish like a dream,and to leave me helpless and dispirited.
I inquired about my aunt among the boatmen first, and received various answers.One said she lived in the South Foreland Light, and had singed her whiskers by doing so; another,that she was made fast to the great buoy outside the harbour,and could only be visited at half-tide; a third,that she was locked up in Maidstone jail for child-stealing; a fourth,that she was seen to mount a broom in the last high wind, and make direct for Calais.The fly-drivers, among whom I inquired next, were equally jocose and equally disrespectful;and the shopkeepers, not liking my appearance, generally replied,without hearing what I had to say, that they had got nothing for me.I felt more miserable and destitute than I had done at any period of my running away.My money was all gone, I had nothing left to dispose of; I was hungry, thirsty, and worn out;and seemed as distant from my end as if I had remained in London.
The morning had worn away in these inquiries,and I was sitting on the step of an empty shop at a street corner, near the market-place,deliberating upon wandering towards those other places which had been mentioned, when a fly-driver,coming by with his carriage, dropped a horsecloth. Something good-natured in the man’s face,as I handed it up, encouraged me to ask him if he could tell me where Miss Trotwood lived;though I had asked the question so often, that it almost died upon my lips.
‘Trotwood,’ said he. ‘Let me see. I know the name, too. Old lady?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘rather.’
‘Pretty stiff in the back?’ said he, making himself upright.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I should think it very likely.’
‘Carries a bag?’ said he--‘bag with a good deal of room in it--is gruffish, and comes down upon you, sharp?’
My heart sank within me as I acknowledged the undoubted accuracy of this description.
‘Why then, I tell you what,’ said he. ‘If you go up there,’ pointing with his whip towards the heights,‘and keep right on till you come to some houses facing the sea, I think you’ll hear of her.My opinion is she won’t stand anything, so here’s a penny for you.’
I accepted the gift thankfully, and bought a loaf with it. Dispatching this refreshment by the way,I went in the direction my friend had indicated,and walked on a good distance without coming to the houses he had mentioned.At length I saw some before me; and approaching them,went into a little shop (it was what we used to call a general shop, at home),and inquired if they could have the goodness to tell me where Miss Trotwood lived.I addressed myself to a man behind the counter, who was weighing some rice for a young woman;but the latter, taking the inquiry to herself, turned round quickly.
‘My mistress?’ she said. ‘What do you want with her, boy?’
‘I want,’ I replied, ‘to speak to her, if you please.’
‘To beg of her, you mean,’ retorted the damsel.
‘No,’ I said, ‘indeed.’ But suddenly remembering that in truth I came for no other purpose,I held my peace in confusion, and felt my face burn.
My aunt’s handmaid, as I supposed she was from what she had said,put her rice in a little basket and walked out of the shop; telling me that I could follow her,if I wanted to know where Miss Trotwood lived. I needed no second permission;though I was by this time in such a state of consternation and agitation,that my legs shook under me. I followed the young woman,and we soon came to a very neat little cottage with cheerful bow-windows: in front of it,a small square gravelled court or garden full of flowers, carefully tended, and smelling deliciously.
‘This is Miss Trotwood’s,’ said the young woman. ‘Now you know; and that’s all I have got to say.’ With which words she hurried into the house,as if to shake off the responsibility of my appearance; and left me standing at the garden-gate,looking disconsolately over the top of it towards the parlour window,where a muslin curtain partly undrawn in the middle,a large round green screen or fan fastened on to the windowsill, a small table, and a great chair,suggested to me that my aunt might be at that moment seated in awful state.
My shoes were by this time in a woeful condition. The soles had shed themselves bit by bit,and the upper leathers had broken and burst until the very shape and form of shoes had departed from them.My hat (which had served me for a night-cap, too) was so crushed and bent,that no old battered handleless saucepan on a dunghill need have been ashamed to vie with it.My shirt and trousers, stained with heat, dew, grass,and the Kentish soil on which I had slept--and torn besides--might have frightened the birds from my aunt’s garden,as I stood at the gate. My hair had known no comb or brush since I left London. My face, neck,and hands, from unaccustomed exposure to the air and sun, were burnt to a berry-brown.From head to foot I was powdered almost as white with chalk and dust,as if I had come out of a lime-kiln. In this plight, and with a strong consciousness of it,I waited to introduce myself to, and make my first impression on, my formidable aunt.
The unbroken stillness of the parlour window leading me to infer, after a while,that she was not there, I lifted up my eyes to the window above it, where I saw a florid,pleasant-looking gentleman, with a grey head, who shut up one eye in a grotesque manner,nodded his head at me several times, shook it at me as often, laughed, and went away.
I had been discomposed enough before; but I was so much the more discomposed by this unexpected behaviour,that I was on the point of slinking off, to think how I had best proceed,when there came out of the house a lady with her handkerchief tied over her cap,and a pair of gardening gloves on her hands, wearing a gardening pocket like a toll-man’s apron,and carrying a great knife. I knew her immediately to be Miss Betsey,for she came stalking out of the house exactly as my poor mother had so often described her stalking up our garden at Blunderstone Rookery.
‘Go away!’ said Miss Betsey, shaking her head, and making a distant chop in the air with her knife. ‘Go along!No boys here!’
I watched her, with my heart at my lips, as she marched to a corner of her garden,and stooped to dig up some little root there. Then, without a scrap of courage,but with a great deal of desperation, I went softly in and stood beside her, touching her with my finger.
‘If you please, ma’am,’ I began.
She started and looked up.
‘If you please, aunt.’
‘EH?’ exclaimed Miss Betsey, in a tone of amazement I have never heard approached.
‘If you please, aunt, I am your nephew.’
‘Oh, Lord!’ said my aunt. And sat flat down in the garden-path.
‘I am David Copperfield, of Blunderstone, in Suffolk--where you came, on the night when I was born,and saw my dear mama. I have been very unhappy since she died. I have been slighted,and taught nothing, and thrown upon myself, and put to work not fit for me.It made me run away to you. I was robbed at first setting out, and have walked all the way,and have never slept in a bed since I began the journey.’ Here my self-support gave way all at once; and with a movement of my hands,intended to show her my ragged state, and call it to witness that I had suffered something,I broke into a passion of crying, which I suppose had been pent up within me all the week.
My aunt, with every sort of expression but wonder discharged from her countenance,sat on the gravel, staring at me, until I began to cry; when she got up in a great hurry,collared me, and took me into the parlour. Her first proceeding there was to unlock a tall press,bring out several bottles, and pour some of the contents of each into my mouth.I think they must have been taken out at random, for I am sure I tasted aniseed water,anchovy sauce, and salad dressing. When she had administered these restoratives,as I was still quite hysterical, and unable to control my sobs, she put me on the sofa,with a shawl under my head, and the handkerchief from her own head under my feet,lest I should sully the cover; and then,sitting herself down behind the green fan or screen I have already mentioned,so that I could not see her face, ejaculated at intervals, ‘Mercy on us!’ letting those exclamations off like minute guns.
After a time she rang the bell. ‘Janet,’ said my aunt, when her servant came in. ‘Go upstairs,give my compliments to Mr. Dick, and say I wish to speak to him.’
Janet looked a little surprised to see me lying stiffly on the sofa (I was afraid to move lest it should be displeasing to my aunt),but went on her errand. My aunt, with her hands behind her, walked up and down the room,until the gentleman who had squinted at me from the upper window came in laughing.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘don’t be a fool, because nobody can be more discreet than you can,when you choose. We all know that. So don’t be a fool, whatever you are.’
The gentleman was serious immediately, and looked at me, I thought,as if he would entreat me to say nothing about the window.
‘Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, ‘you have heard me mention David Copperfield?Now don’t pretend not to have a memory, because you and I know better.’
‘David Copperfield?’ said Mr. Dick, who did not appear to me to remember much about it. ‘David Copperfield?Oh yes, to be sure. David, certainly.’
‘Well,’ said my aunt, ‘this is his boy--his son.He would be as like his father as it’s possible to be, if he was not so like his mother, too.’
‘His son?’ said Mr. Dick. ‘David’s son?Indeed!’
‘Yes,’ pursued my aunt, ‘and he has done a pretty piece of business. He has run away. Ah!His sister, Betsey Trotwood, never would have run away.’ My aunt shook her head firmly,confident in the character and behaviour of the girl who never was born.
‘Oh!you think she wouldn’t have run away?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Bless and save the man,’ exclaimed my aunt, sharply, ‘how he talks!Don’t I know she wouldn’t?She would have lived with her god-mother, and we should have been devoted to one another. Where,in the name of wonder, should his sister, Betsey Trotwood, have run from, or to?’
‘Nowhere,’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Well then,’ returned my aunt, softened by the reply, ‘how can you pretend to be wool-gathering,Dick, when you are as sharp as a surgeon’s lancet?Now, here you see young David Copperfield, and the question I put to you is, what shall I do with him?’
‘What shall you do with him?’ said Mr. Dick, feebly, scratching his head. ‘Oh!do with him?’
‘Yes,’ said my aunt, with a grave look, and her forefinger held up. ‘Come!I want some very sound advice.’
‘Why, if I was you,’ said Mr. Dick, considering, and looking vacantly at me,‘I should--’ The contemplation of me seemed to inspire him with a sudden idea, and he added, briskly, ‘I should wash him!’
‘Janet,’ said my aunt, turning round with a quiet triumph, which I did not then understand, ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. Heat the bath!’
Although I was deeply interested in this dialogue, I could not help observing my aunt, Mr. Dick,and Janet, while it was in progress, and completing a survey I had already been engaged in making of the room.
My aunt was a tall, hard-featured lady, but by no means ill-looking.There was an inflexibility in her face, in her voice, in her gait and carriage,amply sufficient to account for the effect she had made upon a gentle creature like my mother;but her features were rather handsome than otherwise, though unbending and austere.I particularly noticed that she had a very quick, bright eye. Her hair, which was grey,was arranged in two plain divisions, under what I believe would be called a mob-cap; I mean a cap,much more common then than now, with side-pieces fastening under the chin.Her dress was of a lavender colour, and perfectly neat; but scantily made,as if she desired to be as little encumbered as possible. I remember that I thought it, in form,more like a riding-habit with the superfluous skirt cut off, than anything else.She wore at her side a gentleman’s gold watch, if I might judge from its size and make,with an appropriate chain and seals; she had some linen at her throat not unlike a shirt-collar,and things at her wrists like little shirt-wristbands.
Mr. Dick, as I have already said, was grey-headed, and florid: I should have said all about him,in saying so, had not his head been curiously bowed--not by age; it reminded me of one of Mr.Creakle’s boys’ heads after a beating--and his grey eyes prominent and large,with a strange kind of watery brightness in them that made me,in combination with his vacant manner, his submission to my aunt,and his childish delight when she praised him, suspect him of being a little mad; though,if he were mad, how he came to be there puzzled me extremely.He was dressed like any other ordinary gentleman, in a loose grey morning coat and waistcoat,and white trousers; and had his watch in his fob, and his money in his pockets:which he rattled as if he were very proud of it.
Janet was a pretty blooming girl, of about nineteen or twenty, and a perfect picture of neatness.Though I made no further observation of her at the moment,I may mention here what I did not discover until afterwards, namely,that she was one of a series of protegees whom my aunt had taken into her service expressly to educate in a renouncement of mankind,and who had generally completed their abjuration by marrying the baker.
The room was as neat as Janet or my aunt. As I laid down my pen, a moment since, to think of it,the air from the sea came blowing in again, mixed with the perfume of the flowers;and I saw the old-fashioned furniture brightly rubbed and polished,my aunt’s inviolable chair and table by the round green fan in the bow-window,the drugget-covered carpet, the cat, the kettle-holder, the two canaries, the old china,the punchbowl full of dried rose-leaves, the tall press guarding all sorts of bottles and pots,and, wonderfully out of keeping with the rest, my dusty self upon the sofa, taking note of everything.
Janet had gone away to get the bath ready, when my aunt, to my great alarm,became in one moment rigid with indignation, and had hardly voice to cry out, ‘Janet!Donkeys!’
Upon which, Janet came running up the stairs as if the house were in flames,darted out on a little piece of green in front, and warned off two saddle-donkeys, lady-ridden,that had presumed to set hoof upon it; while my aunt, rushing out of the house,seized the bridle of a third animal laden with a bestriding child, turned him,led him forth from those sacred precincts,and boxed the ears of the unlucky urchin in attendance who had dared to profane that hallowed ground.
To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green;but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her.The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged,was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged,however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part,a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water,and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys;sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours;and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys;or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood,delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way.I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready;and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage,single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate,before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter.These interruptions were of the more ridiculous to me,because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving,and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and,while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet!Donkeys!’ and go out to the assault.
The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible of acute pains in my limbs from lying out in the fields,and was now so tired and low that I could hardly keep myself awake for five minutes together.When I had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a pair of trousers belonging to Mr.Dick, and tied me up in two or three great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, I don’t know,but I felt a very hot one. Feeling also very faint and drowsy,I soon lay down on the sofa again and fell asleep.
It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied my mind so long,but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come and bent over me,and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my head more comfortably,and had then stood looking at me. The words, ‘Pretty fellow,’ or ‘Poor fellow,’ seemed to be in my ears, too; but certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke,to lead me to believe that they had been uttered by my aunt,who sat in the bow-window gazing at the sea from behind the green fan,which was mounted on a kind of swivel, and turned any way.
We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I sitting at table,not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with considerable difficulty.But as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no complaint of being inconvenienced.All this time I was deeply anxious to know what she was going to do with me;but she took her dinner in profound silence,except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me sitting opposite, and said, ‘Mercy upon us!’ which did not by any means relieve my anxiety.
The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I had a glass),my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us,and looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story,which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During my recital,she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought would have gone to sleep but for that, and who,whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was checked by a frown from my aunt.
‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go and be married again,’ said my aunt, when I had finished, ‘I can’t conceive.’
‘Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’ Mr. Dick suggested.
‘Fell in love!’ repeated my aunt. ‘What do you mean?What business had she to do it?’
‘Perhaps,’ Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, ‘she did it for pleasure.’
‘Pleasure, indeed!’ replied my aunt. ‘A mighty pleasure for the poor Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow,certain to ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself, I should like to know!She had had one husband. She had seen David Copperfield out of the world,who was always running after wax dolls from his cradle. She had got a baby--oh,there were a pair of babies when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night!--and what more did she want?’
Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no getting over this.
‘She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,’ said my aunt. ‘Where was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood?Not forthcoming. Don’t tell me!’
Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.
‘That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,’ said my aunt, ‘Jellips,or whatever his name was, what was he about?All he could do, was to say to me, like a robin redbreast--as he is--“It’s a boy.” A boy!Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of ‘em!’
The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly; and me, too, if I am to tell the truth.
‘And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently in the light of this child’s sister,Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt, ‘she marries a second time--goes and marries a Murderer--or a man with a name like it--and stands in THIS child’s light!And the natural consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen,that he prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can be.’
Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.
‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,’ said my aunt, ‘that Peggotty,she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen enough of the evil attending such things,she goes and gets married next, as the child relates. I only hope,’ said my aunt, shaking her head,‘that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the newspapers, and will beat her well with one.’
I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject of such a wish.I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That Peggotty was the best, the truest,the most faithful, most devoted, and most self-denying friend and servant in the world;who had ever loved me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly;who had held my mother’s dying head upon her arm,on whose face my mother had imprinted her last grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both,choking me, I broke down as I was trying to say that her home was my home,and that all she had was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter,but for her humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on her--I broke down,I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in my hands upon the table.
‘Well, well!’ said my aunt, ‘the child is right to stand by those who have stood by him--Janet!Donkeys!’
I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkeys,we should have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her hand on my shoulder,and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her and beseech her protection.But the interruption, and the disorder she was thrown into by the struggle outside,put an end to all softer ideas for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr.Dick about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her country,and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.
After tea, we sat at the window--on the look-out, as I imagined,from my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for more invaders--until dusk, when Janet set candles,and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down the blinds.
‘Now, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger up as before,‘I am going to ask you another question. Look at this child.’
‘David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.
‘Exactly so,’ returned my aunt. ‘What would you do with him, now?’
‘Do with David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Ay,’ replied my aunt, ‘with David’s son.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Yes. Do with--I should put him to bed.’
‘Janet!’ cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had remarked before. ‘Mr.Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we’ll take him up to it.’
Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly,but in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing up the rear.The only circumstance which gave me any new hope,was my aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was prevalent there;and janet’s replying that she had been making tinder down in the kitchen, of my old shirt.But there were no other clothes in my room than the odd heap of things I wore;and when I was left there, with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five minutes,I heard them lock my door on the outside.Turning these things over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt,who could know nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took precautions,on that account, to have me in safe keeping.
The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the sea,on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my prayers,and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat looking at the moonlight on the water,as if I could hope to read my fortune in it, as in a bright book;or to see my mother with her child, coming from Heaven, along that shining path,to look upon me as she had looked when I last saw her sweet face.I remember how the solemn feeling with which at length I turned my eyes away,yielded to the sensation of gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed--and how much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white sheets!--inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places under the night sky where I had slept,and how I prayed that I never might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless.I remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.
CHAPTER 14. MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME
On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly over the breakfast table,with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth under water,when my entrance put her meditations to flight.I felt sure that I had been the subject of her reflections,and was more than ever anxious to know her intentions towards me.Yet I dared not express my anxiety, lest it should give her offence.
My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue,were attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast.I never could look at her for a few moments together but I found her looking at me--in an odd thoughtful manner,as if I were an immense way off, instead of being on the other side of the small round table.When she had finished her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair,knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure,with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by embarrassment.Not having as yet finished my own breakfast,I attempted to hide my confusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my fork,my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating,and choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way instead of the right one,until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing under my aunt’s close scrutiny.
‘Hallo!’ said my aunt, after a long time.
I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.
‘I have written to him,’ said my aunt.
‘To--?’
‘To your father-in-law,’ said my aunt. ‘I have sent him a letter that I’ll trouble him to attend to,or he and I will fall out, I can tell him!’
‘Does he know where I am, aunt?’ I inquired, alarmed.
‘I have told him,’ said my aunt, with a nod.
‘Shall I--be--given up to him?’ I faltered.
‘I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We shall see.’
‘Oh!I can’t think what I shall do,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I have to go back to Mr. Murdstone!’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said my aunt, shaking her head. ‘I can’t say, I am sure. We shall see.’