One of our first feats in the housekeeping way was a little dinner to Traddles. I met him in town, and asked him to walk out with me that afternoon. He readily consenting, I wrote to Dora, saying I would bring him home. It was pleasant weather, and on the road we made my domestic happiness the theme of conversation. Traddles was very full of it, and said that, picturing himself with such a home, and Sophy waiting and preparing for him, he could think of nothing wanting to complete his bliss.
I could not have wished for a prettier little wife at the opposite end of the table, but I certainly could have wished, when we sat down, for a little more room. I did not know how it was, but though there were only two of us, we were at once always cramped for room, and yet had always room enough to lose everything in. I suspect it may have been because nothing had a place of its own, except Jip's pagoda, which invariably blocked up the main-thoroughfare. On the present occasion, Traddles was so hemmed in by the pagoda and the guitar-case, and Dora's flower-painting, and my writing-table, that I had serious doubts of the possibility of his using his knife and fork, but he protested, with his own good-humour, "Oceans of room, Copperfield! I assure you, Oceans!"
There was another thing I could have wished, namely, that Jip had never been encouraged to walk about the table-cloth during dinner. I began to think there was something disorderly in his being there at all, even if he had not been in the habit of putting his foot in the salt or the melted-butter. On this occasion he seemed to think he was introduced expressly to keep Traddles at bay, and he barked at my old friend, and made short runs at his plate, with such undaunted pertinacity, that he may be said to have engrossed the conversation.
However, as I knew how tender-hearted my dear Dora was, and how sensitive she would be to any slight upon her favourite, I hinted no objection. For similar reasons I made no allusion to the skirmishing plates upon the floor, or to the disreputable appearance of the castors, which were all at sixes and sevens, and looked drunk, or to the further blockade of Traddles by wandering vegetable dishes and jugs. I could not help wondering in my own mind, as I contemplated the boiled leg of mutton before me, previous to carving it, how it came to pass that our joints of meat were of such extraordinary shapes--and whether our butcher contracted for all the deformed sheep that came into the world, but I kept my reflections to myself.
"My love," said I to Dora, "what have you got in that dish?"
I could not imagine why Dora had been making tempting little faces at me, as if she wanted to kiss me.
"Oysters, dear," said Dora, timidly.
"Was that your thought?" said I, delighted.
"Ye-yes, Doady," said Dora.
"There never was a happier one!" I exclaimed, laying down the carving-knife and fork. "There is nothing Traddles likes so much!"
"Ye-yes, Doady," said Dora, "and so I bought a beautiful little barrel of them, and the man said they were very good. But I--I am afraid there's something the matter with them. They don't seem right." Here Dora shook her head, and diamonds twinkled in her eyes.
"They are only opened in both shells," said I. "Take the top one off, my love."
"But it won't come off," said Dora, trying very hard, and looking very much distressed.
"Do you know, Copperfield," said Traddles, cheerfully examining the dish, "I think it is in consequence--they are capital oysters, but I think it is in consequence--of their never having been opened."
They never had been opened, and we had no oyster-knives --and couldn't have used them if we had, so we looked at the oysters and ate the mutton. As least we ate as much of it as was done, and made up with capers. If I had permitted him, I am satisfied that Traddles would have made a perfect savage of himself, and eaten a plateful of raw meat, to express enjoyment of the repast, but I would hear of no such immolation on the altar of friendship, and we had a course of bacon instead, there happening, by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder.
My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be annoyed, and in such a state of joy when she found I was not, that the discomfiture I had subdued very soon vanished, and we passed a happy evening, Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By-and-by she made tea for us, which it was so pretty to see her do, as if she was busying herself with a set of doll's tea-things, that I was not particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage, and, Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet over.
When Traddles went away, and I came back into the parlour from seeing him out, my wife planted her chair close to mine, and sat down by my side.
"I am very sorry," she said. "Will you try to teach me, Doady?"
"I must teach myself, first, Dora," said I. "I am as bad as you, love."
"Ahl But you can learn," she returned, "and you are a clever, clever man!"
"Nonsense, Mouse!" said I.
"I wish," resumed my wife, after a long silence, "that I could have gone down into the country for a whole year, and lived with Agnes!"
Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder, and her chin rested on them, and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.
"Why so?" I asked.
"I think she might have improved me, and I think I might have learned from her," said Dora.
"All in good time, my love. Agnes has had her father to take care of for these many years, you should remember. Even when she was quite a child, she was the Agnes whom we know," said I.
"Will you call me a name I want you to call me?" inquired Dora, without moving.
"What is it?" I asked with a smile.
"It's a stupid name," she said, shaking her curls for a moment. "Child-wife."
I laughingly asked my child-wife what her fancy was in desiring to be so called. She answered without moving, otherwise than as the arm I twined about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:
"I don't mean, you silly fellow, that you should use the name instead of Dora. I only mean that you should think of me that way. When you are going to be angry with me, say to yourself, 'it's only my child-wife!' When I am very disappointing, say, 'I knew, a long time ago, that she would make but a child-wife!' When you miss what I should like to be, and I think I can never be, say, 'still my foolish child-wife loves me!' For indeed I do."
I had not been serious with her, having no idea, until now, that she was serious herself. But her affectionate nature was so happy in what I now said to her with my whole heart, that her face became a laughing one before her glittering eyes were dry. She was soon my child-wife indeed, sitting down on the floor outside the Chinese House, ringing all the little bells one after another, to punish Jip for his recent bad behaviour, while Jip lay blinking in the doorway with his head out, even too lazy to be teased.
This appeal of Dora's made a strong impression on me. I look back on the time I write of, I invoke the innocent figure that I dearly loved, to come out from the mists and shadows of the past, and turn its gentle head towards me once again, and I can still declare that this one little speech was constantly in my memory. I may not have used it to the best account, I was young and inexperienced, but I never turned a deaf ear to its artless pleading.
Dora told me, shortly afterwards, that she was going to be a wonderful housekeeper. Accordingly, she polished the tablets, pointed the pencil, bought an immense account-book, carefully stitched up with a needle and thread all the leaves of the cookery book which Jip had torn, and made quite a desperate little attempt "to be good," as she called it. But the figures had the old obstinate propensity--they would not add up. When she had entered two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip would walk over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out. Her own little right-hand middle finger got steeped to the very b
one in ink, and I think that was the only decided result obtained.
Sometimes, of an evening, when I was at home and at work --for I wrote a good deal now, and was beginning in a small way to be known as a writer--I would lay down my pen, and watch my child-wife trying to be good. First of all, she would bring out the immense account-book, and lay it down upon the table, with a deep sigh. Then she would open it at the place where Jip had made it illegible last night, and call Jip up to look at his misdeeds. This would occasion a diversion in Jip's favour, and some inking of his nose, perhaps, as a penalty. Then she would tell Jip to lie down on the table instantly, "like a lion"--which was one of his tricks, though I cannot say the likeness was striking--and, if he were in an obedient humour, he would obey. Then she would take up a pen, and begin to write, and find a hair in it. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and find that it spluttered. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and say in a low voice, "Oh, it's a talking pen, and will disturb Doady!" And then she would give it up as a bad job, and put the account-book away, after pretending to crush the lion with it.
Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind, she would sit down with the tablets, and a little basket of bills and other documents, which looked more like curl-papers than anything else, and endeavour to get some result out of them. After severely comparing one with another, and making entries on the tablets, and blotting them out, and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again, backwards and forwards, she would be so vexed and discouraged, and would look so unhappy, that it gave me pain to see her bright face clouded--and for me!--and I would go softly to her, and say:
"What's the matter, Dora?"
Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply, "They won't come right. They make my head ache so. And they won't do anything I want!"
Then I would say, "Now let us try together. Let me show you, Dora."
Then I would commence a practical demonstration, to which Dora would pay profound attention, perhaps for five minutes, when she would begin to be dreadfully tired, and would lighten the subject by curling my hair, or trying the effect of my face with my shirt-collar turned down. If I tacitly checked this playfulness, and persisted, she would look so scared and disconsolate, as she became more and more bewildered, that the remembrance of her natural gaiety when I first strayed into her path, and of her being my child-wife, would come reproachfully upon me, and I would lay the pencil down, and call for the guitar.
I had a great deal of work to do, and had many anxieties, but the same considerations made me keep them to myself. I am far from sure, now, that it was right to do this, but I did it for my child-wife's sake. I search my breast, and I commit its secrets, if I know them, without any reservation to this paper. The old unhappy loss or want of something had, I am conscious, some place in my heart, but not to the embitterment of my life. When I walked alone in the fine weather, and thought of the summer days when all the air had been filled with my boyish enchantment, I did miss something of the realization of my dreams, but I thought it was a softened glory of the Past, which nothing could have thrown upon the present time. I did feel, sometimes, for a little while, that I could have wished my wife had been my counsellor, had had more character and purpose, to sustain me, and improve me by, had been endowed with power to fill up the void which somewhere seemed to be about me, but I felt as if this were an unearthly consummation of my happiness, that never had been meant to be, and never could have been.
I was a boyish husband as to years. I had known the softening influence of no other sorrows or experiences than those recorded in these leaves. If I did any wrong, as I may have done much, I did it in mistaken love, and in my want of wisdom. I write the exact truth. It would avail me nothing to extenuate it now.
Thus it was that I took upon myself the toils and cares of our life, and had no partner in them. We lived much as before, in reference to our scrambling household arrangements, but I had got used to those, and Dora, I was pleased to see, was seldom vexed now. She was bright and cheerful in the old childish way, loved me dearly, and was happy with her old trifles.
When the debates were heavy--I mean as to length, not quality, for in the last respect they were not often otherwise --and I went home late, Dora would never rest when she heard my footsteps, but would always come downstairs to meet me. When my evenings were unoccupied by the pursuit for which I had qualified myself with so much pains, and I was engaged in writing at home, she would sit quietly near me, however late the hour, and be so mute, that I would often think she had dropped asleep. But, generally, when I raised my head, I saw her blue eyes looking at me with the quiet attention of which I have already spoken.
"Oh, what a weary boy!" said Dora one night, when I met her eyes as I was shutting up my desk.
"What a weary girll" said I. "That's more to the purpose. You must go to bed another time, my love. It's far too late for you."
"No, don't send me to bed!" pleaded Dora, coming to my side. "Pray, don't do that!"
"Dora!"
To my amazement she was sobbing on my neck.
"Not well, my dear! not happy!"
"Yes! quite well, and very happy!" said Dora. "But say you'll let me stop, and see you write."
"Why, what a sight for such bright eyes at midnight!" I replied.
"Are they bright, though?" returned Dora, laughing. "rm so glad they're bright."
"Little Vanity!" said L
But it was not vanity, it was only harmless delight in my admiration. I knew that very well, before she told me so.
"If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you write!" said Dora. "Do you think them pretty?"
"Very pretty."
"Then let me always stop and see you write."
"I am afraid that won't improve their brightness, Dora."
"Yes it will! Because, you clever boy, you'll not forget me then, while you are full of silent fancies. Will you mind it, if I say something very, very silly?--more than usual?" inquired Dora, peeping over my shoulder into my face.
"What wonderful thing is that?" said I.
"Please let me hold the pens," said Dora. "I want to have something to do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the pens?"
The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her triumph in this connexion with my work, and her delight when I wanted a new pen--which I very often feigned to do--suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretence of wanting a page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear to other men.
She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling about the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to her slender waist. I seldom found that the places to which they belonged were locked, or that they were of any use except as a plaything for Jip--but Dora was pleased, and that pleased me. She was quite satisfied that a good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke.
So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me, and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was "a cross old thing." I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone. She courted Jip, though Jip never responded, listened, day after day, to the guitar, though I am afraid she had no taste for music, never attacked the Incapables, though the temptation must have b
een severe, went wonderful distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that she found out Dora wanted, and never came in by the garden, and missed her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the stairs, in a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:
"Where's Little Blossom?"
CHAPTER XLV
Mr. Dick Julfils My Aunt's Predictions
IT WAS SOME TIME NOW, SINCE I HAD LEFT THE DOCTOR. Living in his neighbourhood, I saw him frequently, and we all went to his house on two or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent quarters under the Doctor's roof. She was exactly the same as ever, and the same immortal butterflies hovered over her cap.
Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my life, Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her daughter was. She required a great deal of amusement, and, like a deep old soldier, pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to be devoting herself to her child. The Doctor's desire that Annie should be entertained, was therefore particularly acceptable to this excellent parent, who expressed unqualified approval of his discretion.
I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor's wound without knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so strongly commending his design of lightening the load of her life.
"My dear soul," she said to him one day when I was present, "you know there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be always shut up here."
The Doctor nodded his benevolent head.
"When she comes to her mother's age," said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan, "then it'll be another thing. You might put ME into a Jail, with genteel society and a rubber, and I should never care to come out. But I am not Annie, you know, and Annie is not her mother."
"Surely, surely," said the Doctor.
"You are the best of creatures--no, I beg your pardon!" for the Doctor made a gesture of deprecation, "I must say before your face, as I always say behind your back, you are the best of creatures, but of course you don't--now do you? --enter into the same pursuits and fancies as Annie."