This Christmas-time being come, and Agnes having reposed no new confidence in me, a doubt that had several times arisen in my mind--whether she could have that perception of the true state of my breast, which restrained her with the apprehension of giving me pain--began to oppress me heavily. If that were so, my sacrifice was nothing, my plainest obligation to her unfulfilled, and every poor action I had shrunk from, I was hourly doing. I resolved to set this right beyond all doubt--if such a barrier were between us, to break it down at once with a determined hand.
It was--what lasting reason have I to remember it!--a cold, harsh, winter day. There had been snow some hours before, and it lay, not deep, but hard-frozen on the ground. Out at sea, beyond my window, the wind blew ruggedly from the north. I had been thinking of it, sweeping over those mountain wastes of snow in Switzerland, then inaccessible to any human foot, and had been speculating which was the lonelier, those solitary regions, or a deserted ocean.
"Riding today, Trot?" said my aunt, putting her head in at the door.
"Yes," said I, "I am going over to Canterbury. It's a good day for a ride."
"I hope your horse may think so, too," said my aunt, "but at present he is holding down his head and his ears, standing before the door there, as if he thought his stable preferable."
My aunt, I may observe, allowed my horse on the forbidden ground, but had not at all relented toward the donkeys.
"He will be fresh enough, presently!" said I.
"The ride will do his master good, at all events," observed my aunt, glancing at the papers on my table. "Ah, child, you pass a good many hours here ! I never thought, when I used to read books, what work it was to write them."
"It's work enough to read them, sometimes," I returned. "As to the writing, it has its own charms, Aunt."
"Ah! I see!" said my aunt. "Ambition, love of approbation, sympathy, and much more, I suppose? Well, go along with you!"
"Do you know anything more," said I, standing composedly before her--she had patted me on the shoulder, and sat down in my chair--"of that attachment of Agnes?"
She looked up in my face a little while, before replying:
"I think I do, Trot."
"Are you confirmed in your impression?" I inquired.
"I think I am, Trot."
She looked so steadfastly at me, with a kind of doubt, or a pity, or suspense in her affection, that I summoned the stronger determination to show her a perfectly cheerful face.
"And what is more, Trot"--said my aunt.
"Yes!"
"I think Agnes is going to be married."
"God bless her!" said I, cheerfully.
"God bless her!" said my aunt, "and her husband too!"
I echoed it, parted from my aunt, went lightly downstairs, mounted, and rode away. There was greater reason than before to do what I had resolved to do.
How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice, brushed from the blades of grass by the wind, and borne across my face, the hard clatter of the horse's hoofs, beating a tune upon the ground, the stiff-tilled soil, the snow-drift, lightly eddying in the chalk-pit as the breeze ruffled it, the smoking team with the waggon of old hay, stopping to breathe on the hill-top, and shaking their bells musically, the whitened slopes and sweeps of Down-land lying against the dark sky, as if they were drawn on a huge slate!
I found Agnes alone. The little girls had gone to their own homes now, and she was alone by the fire, reading. She put down her book on seeing me come in, and, having welcomed me as usual, took her work-basket and sat in one of the old-fashioned windows.
I sat beside her on the window-seat, and we talked of what I was doing, and when it would be done, and of the progress I had made since my last visit. Agnes was very cheerful, and laughingly predicted that I should soon become too famous to be talked to, on such subjects.
"So I make the most of the present time, you see," said Agnes, "and talk to you while I may."
As I looked at her beautiful face, observant of her work, she raised her mild clear eyes, and saw that I was looking at her.
"You are thoughtful today, Trotwood!"
"Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you."
She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously discussing anything, and gave me her whole attention.
"My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?"
"No!" she answered, with a look of astonishment.
"Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?"
"No!" she answered, as before.
"Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards you?"
"I remember it," she said, gently, "very well."
"You have a secret," said I. "Let me share it, Agnes."
She cast down her eyes, and trembled.
"I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard--but from other lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange--that there is someone upon whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me as you say you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in this matter, of all others!"
With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the window, and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the heart.
And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart. Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with hope than fear or sorrow.
"Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done?"
"Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak to you by-and-by--another time. I will write to you. Don't speak to me now. Don't! don't!"
I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very world that I must search through in a moment.
"Agnes, I cannot bear to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl, dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you?"
"Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!" was all I could distinguish.
Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think of?
"I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven's sake, Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer, that I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing, that I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy, dismiss it, for I don't deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain, You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what I feel for you."
She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear:
"I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood--which, indeed, I do not doubt--to tell you you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed away. If I, have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened for me. If I have any secret, it is--no new one, and is--not what you suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and must remain mine."
"Agnes! Stay! A moment!"
She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her waist. "In the course of years!" "It is not a new one!" New thoughts and hopes
were whirling through my mind, and all the colours of my life were changing.
"Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honour--whom I so devotedly love! When I came here today, I thought that nothing could have wrested this confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different from Sister!--"
Her tears fell fast, but they were not like those she had lately shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.
"Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!"
Still weeping, but not sadly--joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!
"When I loved Dora--fondly, Agnes, as you know--"
"Yes!" she cried earnestly. "I am glad to know it!"
"When I loved her--even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!"
Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!
"I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!"
And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, -truly, and entirely. I tried to show her how I had hoped I had come into the better knowledge of myself and of her, how I had resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought, and how I had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she could do so on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it was, and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife looked upon me, saying it was well, and winning me, through thee, to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!
"I am so blest, Trotwood--my heart is so overcharged--but there is one thing I must say."
"Dearest, what?"
She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my face.
"Do you know, yet, what it is?"
"I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear."
"I have loved you all my life!"
Oh, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers so much the greater) through which we had come to be thus, but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!
We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together, and the blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them, we thanked our GOD for having guided us to this tranquillity.
We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the moon was shining, Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it, I following her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind, and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy forsaken and neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.
It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She was up in my study, Peggotty said, which it was her pride to keep in readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by the fire.
"Goodness me!" said my aunt, peering through the dusk, "who's this you're bringing home?"
"Agnes," said I.
As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said "Agnes," but seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair, and rubbed her nose with them.
She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless, and we were soon in the lighted parlour downstairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them, much to the discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.
"By-the-by, Aunt," said I, after dinner, "I have been speaking to Agnes about what you told me."
"Then, Trot," said my aunt, turning scarlet, "you did wrong, and broke your promise."
"You are not angry, Aunt, I trust? I am sure you won't be, when you learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said my aunt.
As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we both leaned over her. My aunt with one clap of her hands, and one look through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first and only time in all my knowledge of her.
The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honoured, but a good deal surprised), and after that, told them why. Then we were all happy together.
I could not. discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes was going to be married, and that I now knew better than anyone how true it was.
We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them full of joy, and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had, the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own, my wife, my love of whom was founded on a rock!
"Dearest husband!" said Agnes. "Now that I may call you by that name, I have one thing more to tell you."
"Let me hear it, love."
"It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me."
"She did."
"She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?"
I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me closer to my side.
"She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last charge."
"And it was--"
"That only I would occupy this vacant place."
And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept, and I wept with her, though we were so happy.
CHAPTER LXIII
A Visitor
WHAT I HAVE PURPOSED TO RECORD IS NEARLY FINISHED, but there is yet an incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with delight, and, without which, one thread in the web I have spun would have a ravelled end.
I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had been married ten happy years. Agnes and I were sitting by the fire, in our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our children were playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.
He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered no, he had come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. He was an old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.
As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like the beginning of a favourite story Agnes used to tell them, introductory to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who hated everybody, it produced some commotion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother's lap to be out of harm's way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left her doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap of golden curls from between the window-curtains, to see what happened next.
"Let him come in here!" said I.
There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway
as he entered, a hale, grey-haired old man. Little Agnes, attracted by his looks, had run to bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face, when my wife, starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and agitated voice, that it was Mr. Peggotty!
It was Mr. Peggotty. An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty, strong old age. When our first emotion was over, and he sat before the fire with the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on his face, he looked, to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as handsome, an old man, as ever I had seen.
"Mas'r Davy," said he. And the old name in the old tone fell so naturally on my earl "Mas'r Davy, 'tis a joyful hour as I see you, once more, 'long with your own trew wife!"
"A joyful hour indeed, old friend!" cried I.
"And these heer pretty ones," said Mr. Peggotty. "To look at these heer flowers! Why Mas'r Davy, you was but the heighth of the littlest of these, when I first see you! When Em'ly warn't no bigger, and our poor lad were but a lad!"
"Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then," said I. "But let these dear rogues go to bed, and, as no house in England but this must hold you, tell me where to send for your luggage (is the old black bag among it, that went so far, I wonder!), and then, over a glass of Yarmouth grog, we will have the tidings of ten years!"
"Are you alone?" asked Agnes.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, kissing her hand, "quite alone."
We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough, and as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have fancied he was still pursuing, his long journey in search of his darling niece.
"It's a mort of water," said Mr. Peggotty, "fur to come across, and on'y stay a matter of fower weeks. But water ('specially when 'tis salt) comes nat'ral to me, and friends is dear, and I am heer.--Which is verse," said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out, "though I hadn't such intentions."
"Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?" asked Agnes.
"Yes, ma'am," he returned. "I giv the promise to Em'ly, afore I come away. You see, I doen't grow younger as the years comes round, and if I hadn't sailed as 'twas, most like I shouldn't never have done't. And it's allus been on my mind, as I must come and see Mas'r Davy and your own sweet blooming self, in your wedded happiness, afore I got to be too old."