My aunt mused a little while, and then said:
"Mr. Micawber, I wonder you have never turned your thoughts to emigration."
"Madam," returned Mr. Micawber, "it was the dream of my youth, and the fallacious aspiration of my riper years." I am thoroughly persuaded, by-the-by, that he had never thought of it in his life.
"Aye?" said my aunt, with a glance at me. "Why, what a thing it would be for yourselves and your family, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, if you were to emigrate now."
"Capital, madam, capital," urged Mr. Micawber, gloomily.
"That is the principal, I may say the only difficulty, my dear Mr. Copperfield," assented his wife.
"Capital?" cried my aunt. "But you are doing us a great service--have done us a great service, I may say, for surely much will come out of the fire--and what could we do for you, that would be half so good as to find the capital?"
"I could not receive it as a gift," said Mr. Micawber, full of fire and animation, "but if a sufficient sum could be advanced, say at five per cent interest per annum, upon my personal liability--say my notes of hand, at twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four months, respectively, to allow time for something to turn up--"
"Could be? Can be and shall be, on your own terms," returned my aunt, "if you say the word. Think of this now, both of you. Here are some people David knows, going out to Australia shortly. If you decide to go, why shouldn't you go in the same ship? You may help each other. Think of this now, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber. Take your time, and weigh it well."
"There is but one question, my dear ma'am, I could wish to ask," said Mrs. Micawber. "The climate, I believe, is healthy?"
"Finest in the world!" said my aunt.
"Just so," returned Mrs. Micawber. "Then my question arises. Now, are the circumstances of the country such, that a man of Mr. Micawber's abilities would have a fair chance of rising in the social scale? I will not say, at present, might he aspire to be Governor, or anything of that sort, but would there be a reasonable opening for his talents to develop themselves--that would be amply sufficient--and find their own expansion?"
"No better opening anywhere," said my aunt, "for a man who conducts himself well, and is industrious."
"For a man who conducts himself well," repeated Mrs. Micawber, with her clearest business manner, "and is industrious. Precisely. It is evident to me that Australia is the legitimate sphere of action for Mr. Micawber!"
"I entertain the conviction, my dear madam," said Mr. Micawber, "that it is, under existing circumstances, the land, the only land, for myself and family, and that something of an extraordinary nature will turn up on that shore. It is no distance--comparatively speaking, and though consideration is due to the kindness of your proposal, I assure you that it is a mere matter of form."
Shall I ever forget how, in a moment, he was the most sanguine of men, looking on to fortune, or how Mrs. Micawber presently discoursed about the habits of the kangaroo! Shall I ever recall that street of Canterbury on a market-day, without recalling him, as he walked back with us, expressing, in the hardy roving manner he assumed, the unsettled habits of a temporary sojourner in the land, and looking at the bullocks, as they came by, with the eye of an Australian farmer!
CHAPTER LIII
Another Retrospect
I MUST PAUSE YET ONCE AGAIN. OH, MY CHILD-WIFE, THERE is a figure in the moving crowd before my memory, quiet and still, saying in its innocent love and childish beauty, stop to think of me--turn to look upon the Little Blossom, as it flutters to the ground!
I do. All else grows dim, and fades away. I am again with Dora, in our cottage. I do not know how long she has been ill. I am so used to it in feeling, that I cannot count the time. It is not really long, in weeks or months, but, in my usage and experience, it is a weary, weary while.
They have left off telling me to "wait a few days more." I have begun to fear, remotely, that the day may never shine, when I shall see my child-wife running in the sunlight with her old friend Jip.
He is, as it were suddenly, grown very old. It may be that he misses in his mistress something that enlivened him and made him younger, but he mopes, and his sight is weak, and his limbs are feeble, and my aunt is sorry that he objects to her no more, but creeps near her as he lies on Dora's bed, she sitting at the bedside--and mildly licks her hand.
Dora lies smiling on us, and is beautiful, and utters no hasty or complaining word. She says that we are very good to her, that her dear old careful boy is tiring himself out, she knows, that my aunt has no sleep, yet is always wakeful, active, and kind. Sometimes, the little bird-like ladies come to see her, and then we talk about our wedding-day, and all that happy time.
What a strange rest and pause in my life there seems to be --and in all life, within doors and without--when I sit in the quiet, shaded, orderly room, with the blue eyes of my child-wife turned towards me, and her little fingers twining round my hand! Many and many an hour I sit thus, but, of all those times, three times come the freshest on my mind.
It is morning, and Dora, made so trim by my aunt's hands, shows me how her pretty hair will curl upon the pillow yet, and how long and bright it is, and how she likes to have it loosely gathered in that net she wears.
"Not that I am vain of it, now, you mocking boy," she says, when I smile, "but because you used to say you thought it so beautiful, and because, when I first began to think about you, I used to peep in the glass, and wonder whether you would like very much to have a lock of it. Oh what a foolish fellow you were, Doady, when I gave you one!"
"That was on the day when you were painting the flowers I had given you, Dora, and when I told you how much in love I was."
"Ah! but I didn't like to tell you," says Dora, "then, how I had cried over them, because I believed you really liked met When I can run about again as I used to do, Doady, let us go and see those places where we were such a silly couple, shall we? And take some of the old walks? And not forget poor Papa?"
"Yes, we will, and have some happy days. So you must make haste to get well, my dear."
"Oh, I shall soon do that! I am so much better, you don't know!"
It is evening, and I sit in the same chair, by the same bed, with the same face turned towards me. We have been silent, and there is a smile upon her face. I have ceased to carry my light burden up and down stairs now. She lies here all the day.
"Doadyl"
"My dear Dora!"
"You won't think what I am going to say unreasonable, after what you told me, such a little while ago, of Mr. Wickfield's not being well? I want to see Agnes. Very much I want to see her."
"I will write to her, my dear."
"Will you?"
"Directly."
"What a good kind boy! Doady, take me on your arm. Indeed, my dear, it's not a whim. It's not a foolish fancy. I want, very much indeed, to see her!"
"I am certain of it. I have only to tell her so, and she is sure to come."
"You are very lonely when you go downstairs, now?" Dora whispers, with her arm about my neck.
"How can I be otherwise, my own love, when I see your empty chair?"
"My empty chairl" She clings to me for a little while, in silence. "And you really miss me, Doady?" looking up, and brightly smiling. "Even poor, giddy, stupid me?"
"My heart, who is there upon earth that I could miss so much?"
"Oh, husband! I am so glad, yet so sorry!" creeping closer to me, and folding me in both her arms. She laughs and sobs, and then is quiet, and quite happy.
"Quite!" she says. "Only give Agnes my dear love, and tell her that I want very, very much to see her, and I have nothing left to wish for."
"Except to get well again, Dora."
"Ah, Doady! Sometimes I think--you know I always was a silly little thing!--that that will never bel"
"Don't say so, Dora! Dearest love, don't think so!"
"I won't, if I can help it, Doady. But I am very. happy, though my dear boy is so lonely by himself, before his child-wife's empty chair!
"
It is night, and I am with her still. Agnes has arrived, has been among us, for a whole day and an evening. She, my aunt, and I, have sat with Dora since the morning, all together. We have not talked much, but Dora has been perfectly contented and cheerful. We are now alone.
Do I know, now, that my child-wife will soon leave me? They have told me so, they have told me nothing new to my thoughts, but I am far from sure that I have taken that truth to heart. I cannot master it. I have withdrawn by myself many times today, to weep. I have remembered Who wept for a parting between the living and the dead. I have bethought me of all that gracious and compassionate history. I have tried to resign myself, and to console myself, and that, I hope, I may have done imperfectly, but what I cannot firmly settle in my mind is, that the end will absolutely come. I hold her hand in mine, I hold her heart in mine, I see her love for me, alive in all its strength. I cannot shut out a pale, lingering shadow of belief that she will be spared.
"I am going to speak to you, Doady. I am going to say something I have often thought of saying, lately. You won't mind?" with a gentle look.
"Mind, my darling?"
"Because I don't know what you will think, or what you may have thought sometimes. Perhaps you have often thought the same. Doady, dear, I am afraid I was too young."
I lay my face upon the pillow by her, and she looks into my eyes, and speaks very softly. Gradually, as she goes on, I feel, with a stricken heart, that she is speaking of herself as past.
"I am afraid, dear, I was too young. I don't mean in years only, but in experience, and thoughts, and everything. I was such a silly little creature! I am afraid it would have been better if we had only loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it. I have begun to think I was not fit to be a wife."
I try to stay my tears, and to reply, "Oh, Dora, love, as fit as I to be a husband!"
"I don't know," with the old shake of her curls. "Perhaps! But, if I had been more fit to be married, I might have made you more so, too. Besides, you are very clever, and I never was.
"We have been very happy, my sweet Dora."
"I was very happy, very. But, as years went on, my dear boy would have wearied of his child-wife. She would have been less and less a companion for him. He would have been more and more sensible of what was wanting in his home. She wouldn't have improved. It is better as it is."
"Oh, Dora, dearest, dearest, do not speak to me so. Every word seems a reproach!"
"No, not a syllable!" she answers, kissing me. "Oh, my dear, you never deserved it, and I loved you far too well to say a reproachful word to you, in earnest--it was all the merit I had, except being pretty--or you thought me so. Is it lonely, downstairs, Doady?"
"Very! Very!"
"Don't cry! Is my chair there?"
"In its old place."
"Oh, how my poor boy cries! Hush, hush! Now, make me one promise. I want to speak to Agnes. When you go downstairs, tell Agnes so, and send her up to me, and while I speak to her, let no one come--not even aunt. I want to speak to Agnes by herself. I want to speak to Agnes, quite alone."
I promise that she shall, immediately, but I cannot leave her, for my grief.
"I said that it was better as it is!" she whispers, as she holds me in her arms. "Oh, Doady, after more years, you never could have loved your child-wife better than you do, and, after more years, she would so have tried and disappointed you, that you might not have been able to love her half so well! I know I was too young and foolish. It is much better as it isl"
Agnes is downstairs, when I go into the parlour, and I give her the message. She disappears, leaving me alone with Jip.
His Chinese house is by the fire, and he lies within it, on his bed of flannel, querulously trying to sleep. The bright moon is high and clear. As I look out on the night, my tears fall fast, and my undisciplined heart is chastened heavily--heavily.
I sit down by the fire, thinking with a blind remorse of all those secret feelings I have nourished since my marriage. I think of every little trifle between me and Dora, and feel the truth, that trifles make the sum of life. Ever rising from the sea of my remembrance, is the image of the dear child as I knew her first, graced by my young love, and by her own, with every fascination wherein such love is rich. Would it, indeed, have been better if we had loved each other as a boy and girl, and forgotten it? Undisciplined heart, reply!
How the time wears, I know not, until I am recalled by my child-wife's old companion. More restless than he was, he crawls out of his house, and looks at me, and wanders to the door, and whines to go upstairs.
"Not tonight, Jip! Not tonight!"
He comes very slowly back to me, licks my hand, and lifts his dim eyes to my face.
"Oh, Jip! It may be, never again!"
He lies down at my feet, stretches out as if to sleep, and with a plaintive cry, is dead.
"Oh, Agnes! Look, look, here!"
--That face, so full of pity, and of grief, that rain of tears, that awful mute appeal to me, that solemn hand upraised towards Heaven!
"Agnes?"
It is over. Darkness comes before my eyes, and, for a time, all things are blotted out of my remembrance.
CHAPTER LIV
Mr. Micawber's Transactions
THIS IS NOT THE TIME AT WHICH I AM TO ENTER ON THE state of my mind beneath its load of sorrow. I came to think that the Future was walled up before me, that the energy and action of my life were at an end, that I never could find any refuge but in the grave. I came to think so, I say, but not in the first shock of my grief. It slowly grew to that. If the events I go on to relate had not thickened around me, in the beginning to confuse, and in the end to augment, my affliction, it is possible (though I think not probable), that I might have fallen at once into this condition. As it was, an interval occurred before I fully knew my own distress, an interval in which I even supposed that its sharpest pangs were past, and when my mind could soothe itself by resting on all that was most innocent and beautiful, in the tender story that was closed for ever.
When it was first proposed that I should go abroad, or how it came to be agreed among us that I was to seek the restoration of my peace in change and travel, I do not, even now, distinctly know. The spirit of Agnes so pervaded all we thought, and said, and did, in that time of sorrow, that I assume I may refer the project to her influence. But her influence was so quiet that I know no more.
And now, indeed, I began to think that in my old association of her with the stained-glass window in the church, a prophetic foreshadowing of what she would be to me, in the calamity that was to happen in the fullness of time, had found a way into my mind. In all that sorrow, from the moment, never to be forgotten, when she stood before me with her upraised hand, she was like a sacred presence in my lonely house. When the Angel of Death alighted there, my child-wife fell asleep--they told me so when I could bear to hear it--on her bosom, with a smile. From my swoon, I first awoke to a consciousness of her compassionate tears, her words of hope and peace, her gentle face bending down as from a purer region nearer Heaven, over my undisciplined heart, and softening its pain.
Let me go on.
I was to go abroad. That seemed to have been determined among us from the first. The ground now covering all that could perish of my departed wife, I waited only for what Mr. Micawber called the "final pulverization of Heep," and for the departure of the emigrants.
At the request of Traddles, most affectionate and devoted of friends in my trouble, we returned to Canterbury, I mean my aunt, Agnes, and I. We proceeded by appointment straight to Mr. Micawber's house, where, and at Mr. Wickfield's, my friend had been labouring ever since our explosive meeting. When poor Mrs. Micawber saw me come in, in my black clothes, she was sensibly affected. There was a great deal of good in Mrs. Micawber's heart, which had not been dunned out of it in all those many years.
"Well, Mr. and Mrs. Micawber," was my aunt's first salutation after we were seated. "Pray, have you thought about that emigration
proposal of mine?"
"My dear madam," returned Mr. Micawber, "perhaps I cannot better express the conclusion at which Mrs. Micawber, your humble servant, and I may add our children, have jointly and severally arrived, than by borrowing the language of an illustrious poet, to reply that our Boat is on the shore, and our Bark is on the sea."
"'That's right," said my aunt. "I augur all sorts of good from your sensible decision."
"Madam, you do us a great deal of honour," he rejoined. He then referred to a memorandum. "With respect to the pecuniary assistance enabling us to launch our frail canoe on the ocean of enterprise, I have reconsidered that important business point, and would beg to propose my notes of hand--drawn, it is needless to stipulate, on stamps of the amounts respectively required by the various Acts of Parliament applying to such securities--at eighteen, twenty-four, and thirty months. The proposition I originally submitted, was twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four, but I am apprehensive that such an arrangement might not allow sufficient time for the requisite amount of--Something--to turn up. We might not," said Mr. Micawber, looking round the room as if it represented several hundred acres of highly cultivated land, "on the first responsibility becoming due, have been successful in our harvest, or we might not have got our harvest in. Labour, I believe, is sometimes difficult to obtain in that portion of our colonial possessions where it will be our lot to combat with the teeming soil."
"Arrange it in any way you please, sir," said my aunt.
"Madam," he replied, "Mrs. Micawber and myself are deeply sensible of the very considerate kindness of our friends and patrons. What I wish is to be perfectly business ike, and perfectly punctual. Turning over, as we are about to turn over, an entirely new leaf, and falling back, as we are now in the act of falling back, for a Spring of no common nagnitude, it is important to my sense of self-respect, besides being an example to my son, that these arrangements should be concluded as between man and man."