"Nothing good is difficult to you," said I.
Her colour came and went once more, and once more, as she bent her head, I saw the same sad smile.
"You will wait and see Papa," said Agnes, cheerfully, "and pass the day with us? Perhaps you will sleep in your own room? We always call it yours."
I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt's, at night, but I would pass the day there, joyfully.
"I must be a prisoner for a little while," said Agnes, "but here are the old books, Trotwood, and the old music."
"Even the old flowers are here," said I, looking round, "or the old kinds."
"I have found a pleasure," returned Agnes, smiling, "while you have been absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we were children. For we were very happy then, I think."
"Heaven knows we were!" said I.
"And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother," said Agnes, with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, "has been a welcome companion. Even this," showing me the basket-trifle, full of keys, still hanging at her side, "seems to jingle a kind of old tune!"
She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.
It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. It was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure. If I once shook the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage, in virtue of which it was given to me, it was lost, and could never be recovered. I set this steadily before myself. The better I loved her, the more it behoved me never to forget it.
I walked through the streets, and, once more seeing my old adversary the butcher--now a constable, with his staff hanging up in the shop--went down to look at the place where I had fought him, and there meditated on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss Larkins, and all the idle loves and likings, and dislikings, of that time. Nothing seemed to have survived that time but Agnes, and she, ever a star above me, was brighter and higher.
When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost every day. I found him as my aunt had described him. We sat down to dinner, with some half-dozen little girls, and he seemed but the shadow of his handsome picture on the wall.
The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no wine, and I desiring none, we went upstairs, where Agnes and her little charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the children left us, and we three sat together, talking of the bygone days.
"My part in them," said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, "has much matter for regret--for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you well know. But I would not cancel if, if it were in my power."
I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.
"I should cancel with it," he pursued, "such patience and devotion, such fidelity, such a child's love, as I must not forget, no! even to forget myself."
"I understand you, sir," I softly said. "I hold it--I have always held it--in veneration."
"But no one knows, not even you," he returned, "how much she has done, how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes!"
She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him, and was very, very pale.
"Well, well!" he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my aunt had told me. "Well! I have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has anyone?"
"Never, sir."
"It's not much--though it was much to suffer. She married me in opposition to her father's wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was a very hard man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed her. He broke her heart."
Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
"She had an affectionate and gentle heart," he said, "and it was broken. I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always labouring, in secret, under this distress, and, being delicate and downcast at the time of his last repulse--for it was not the first, by many--pined away and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old, and the grey hair that you recollect me with, when you first came."
He kissed Agnes on her cheek.
"My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself, Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her. If I give you any clue to what I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it, I know. What Agnes is, I need not say. I have always read something of her poor mother's story, in her character, and so I tell it you tonight, when we three are again together, after such great changes. I have told it all."
His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more pathetic meaning from it than they had had before. If I had wanted anything by which to mark this night of our reunion, I should have found it in this.
Agnes rose up from her father's side, before long, and going softly to her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had often listened in that place.
"Have you any intention of going away again?" Agnes asked me, as I was standing by.
"What does my sister say to that?"
"I hope not."
"Then I have no such intention, Agnes."
"I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me," she said, mildly. "Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power of doing good, and if I could spare my brother," with her eyes upon me, "perhaps the time could not."
"What I am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best."
"I made you, Trotwood?"
"Yes! Agnes, my dear girll" I said, bending over her. "I tried to tell you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts since Dora died. You remember, when you came down to me in our little room--pointing upward, Agnes?"
"Oh, Trotwood!" she returned, her eyes filled with tears. "So loving, so confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget?"
"As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes, ever leading me to something better, ever directing me to higher things!"
She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet smile.
"And I am so grateful to you for it, Agaes, so bound to you, that there is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don't know how to tell you, that all my life long I shall look up to you, and be guided by you, as I have been, through the darkness that is past. Whatever betides, whatever new ties you may form, whatever changes may come between us, I shall always look to you, and love you, as I do now, and have always done. You will always be my solace and resource as you have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always before me, pointing upward!"
She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I said, although I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from me.
"Do you know, what I have heard tonight, Agnes," said I, "strangely seems to be a part of the feeling with which I regarded you when I saw you first--with which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?"
"You knew I had no mother," she replied with a smile, "and felt kindly towards me."
"More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story, that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding you, something that might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can now understand it was), but was not so in you."
She softly played on, looking at me still.
"Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?"
"No!"
"Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease to be so, until you ceased to live?--Will you laugh at such a dream?"
>
"Oh, no! Oh, no!"
For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face, but, even in the start it gave me, it was gone, and she was playing on, and looking at me with her own calm smile.
As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not happy, but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her as pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.
CHAPTER LXI
I Am Shown Two Interesting Penitents
FOR A TIME--AT ALL EVENTS UNTIL MY BOOK SHOULD BE completed, which would be the work of several months--I took up my abode in my aunt's house at Dover, and there, sitting in the window from which I had looked out at the moon upon the sea, when that roof first gave me shelter, I quietly pursued my task.
In pursuance of my intention of referring to my own fictions only when their course should incidentally connect itself with the progress of my story, I do not enter on the aspirations, the delights, anxieties, and triumphs of my art. That I truly devoted myself to it with my strongest earnestness, and bestowed upon it every energy of my soul, I have already said. If the books I have written be of any worth, they will supply the rest. I shall otherwise have written to poor purpose, and the rest will be of interest to no one.
Occasionally I went to London, to lose myself in the swarm of life there, or to consult with Traddles on some business point. He had managed for me, in my absence, with the soundest judgment, and my worldly affairs were prospering. As my notoriety began to bring upon me an enormous quantity of letters from people of whom I had no knowledge--chiefly about nothing, and extremely difficult to answer--I agreed with Traddles to have my name painted up on his door. There, the devoted postman on that beat delivered bushels of letters for me, and there, at intervals, I laboured through them, like a Home Secretary of State without the salary.
Among this correspondence, there dropped in, every now and then, an obliging proposal from one of the numerous outsiders always lurking about the Commons, to practise under cover of my name (if I would take the necessary steps remaining to make a proctor of myself), and pay me a percentage on the profits. But I declined these offers, being already aware that there were plenty of such covert practitioners in existence, and considering the Commons quite bad enough without my doing anything to make it worse.
The girls had gone home, when my name burst into bloom on Traddles's door, and the sharp boy looked, all day, as if he had never heard of Sophy, shut up in a back room, glancing down from her work into a sooty little strip of garden with a pump in it. But, there I always found her, the same bright housewife, often humming her Devonshire ballads when no strange foot was coming up the stairs, and blunting the sharp boy in his official closet with melody.
I wondered, at first, why I so often found Sophy writing in a copy-book, and why she always shut it up when I appeared, and hurried it into the table-drawer. But the secret soon came out. One day, Traddles (who had just come home through the drizzling sleet from Court) took a paper out of his desk, and asked me what I thought of that handwriting?
"Oh, don't, Tom!" cried Sophy, who was warming his slippers before the fire.
"My dear," returned Tom, in a delighted state, "why not? What do you say to that writing, Copperfield?"
"It's extraordinarily legal and formal," said I. "I don't think I ever saw such a stiff hand."
"Not like a lady's hand, is it?" said Traddles.
"A lady's!" I repeated. "Bricks and mortar are more like a lady's hand!"
Traddles broke into a rapturous laugh, and informed me that it was Sophy's writing, that Sophy had vowed and declared he would need a copying-clerk soon, and she would be that clerk, that she had acquired this hand from a pattern, and that she could throw off--I forget how many folios an hour. Sophy was very much confused by my being told all this, and said that when "Tom" was made a judge he wouldn't be so ready to proclaim it. Which "Tom" denied, averring that he should always be equally proud of it, under all circumstances.
"What a thoroughly good and charming wife she is, my dear Traddles!" said I, when she had gone away, laughing.
"My dear Copperfield," returned Traddles, "she is, without any exception, the dearest girl! The way she manages this place, her punctuality, domestic knowledge, economy, and order, her cheerfulness, Copperfield!"
"Indeed, you have reason to commend her!" I returned. "You are a happy fellow. I believe you make yourselves, and each other, two of the happiest people in the world."
"I am sure we are two of the happiest people," returned Traddles. "I admit that, at all events. Bless my soul, when I see her getting up by candlelight on these dark mornings, busying herself in the day's arrangements, going out to market before the clerks come into the Inn, caring for no weather, devising the most capital little dinners out of the plainest materials, making puddings and pies, keeping everything in its right place, always so neat and ornamental herself, sitting up at night with me if it's ever so late, sweet-tempered and encouraging always, and all for me, I positively sometimes can't believe it, Copperfield!"
He was tender of the very slippers she had been warming, as he put them on, and stretched his feet enjoyingly upon the fender.
"I positively sometimes can't believe it," said Traddles. "Then, our pleasures! Dear me, they are inexpensive, but they are quite wonderful! When we are at home here, of an evening, and shut the outer door, and draw those curtains--which she made--where could we be more snug? When it's fine, and we go out for a walk in the evening, the streets abound in enjoyment for us. We look into the glittering windows of the jewellers' shops, and I show Sophy which of the diamond-eyed serpents, coiled up on white satin rising grounds, I would give her if I could afford it, and Sophy shows me which of the gold watches that are capped and jewelled and engine-turned, and possessed of the horizontal lever-escape-movement, and all sorts of things, she would buy for me if she could afford it, and we pick out the spoons and forks, fish-slices, butter-knives, and sugar-tongs, we should both prefer if we could both afford it, and really we go away as if we had got them! Then, when we stroll into the squares, and great streets, and see a house to let, sometimes we look up at it, and say, how would that do, if I was made a judge? And we parcel it out--such a room for us, such rooms for the girls, and so forth, until we settle to our satisfaction that it would do, or it wouldn't do, as the case may be. Sometimes, we go at half-price to the pit of the theatre--the very smell of which is cheap, in my opinion, at the money--and there we thoroughly enjoy the play, which Sophy believes every word of, and so do I. In walking home, perhaps we buy a little bit of something at a cook's-shop, or a little lobster at the fishmonger's, and bring it here, and make a splendid supper, chatting about what we have seen. Now, you know, Copperfield, if I was Lord Chancellor, we couldn't do this!"
"You would do something, whatever you were, my dear Traddles," thought I, "that would be pleasant and amiable! And by the way," I said aloud, "I suppose you never draw any skeletons now?"
"Really," replied Traddles, laughing, and reddening, "I can't wholly deny that I do, my dear Copperfield. For, being in one of the back rows of the King's Bench, the other day, with a pen in my hand, the fancy came into my head to try how I had preserved that accomplishment. And I am afraid there's a skeleton--in a wig--on the ledge of the desk."
After we had both laughed heartily, Traddles wound up by looking with a smile at the fire, and saying, in his forgiving way, "Old Creakle!"
"I have a letter from that old--Rascal here," said I. For I never was less disposed to forgive him the way he used to batter Traddles, then when I saw Traddles so ready to forgive him himself.
"From Creakle the schoolmaster?" exclaimed Traddles. "No!"
"Among the persons who are attracted to me in my rising fame and fortune," sai
d I, looking over my letters, "and who discover that they were always much attached to me, is the self-same Creakle. He is not a schoolmaster now, Traddles. He is retired. He is a Middlesex Magistrate."
I thought Traddles might be surprised to hear it, but he was not so at all.
"How do you suppose he comes to be a Middlesex Magistrate?" said I.
"Oh dear me!" replied Traddles, "it would be very difficult to answer that question. Perhaps he voted for somebody, or lent money to somebody, or bought something of somebody, or otherwise obliged somebody, or jobbed for somebody, who knew somebody who got the lieutenant of the county to nominate him for the commission."
"On the commission he is, at any rate," said I. "And he writes to me, here, that he will be glad to show me, in operation, the only true system of prison discipline, the only unchallengeable way of making sincere and lasting converts and penitents--which, you know, is by solitary confinement. What do you say?"
"To the system?" inquired Traddles, looking grave.
"No. To my accepting the offer, and your going with me?"
"I don't object," said Traddles.
"Then I'll write to say so. You remember (to say nothing of our treatment) this same Creakle turning his son out of doors, I suppose, and the life he used to lead his wife and daughter?"
"Perfectly," said Traddles.
"Yet, if you'll read his letter, you'll find he is the tenderest of men to prisoners convicted of the whole calendar of felonies," said I, "though I can't find that his tenderness extends to any other class of created beings."
Traddles shrugged his shoulders, and was not at all surprised. I had not expected him to be, and was not surprised myself, or my observation of similar practical satires would have been but scanty. We arranged the time of our visit, and I write accordingly to Mr. Creakle that evening.
On the appointed day--I think it was the next day, but no matter--Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast expence. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country, if any deluded man had proposed to spend one-half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.