David Copperfield, Charles Dickens [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

dress-boxes, where the ladies were. A gentleman lounging, full dressed, on a sofa, with an opera-glass in his hand, passed before my view, and also my own figure at full length in a glass. Then I was being ushered into one of these boxes, and found myself saying something as I sat down, and people about me crying “Silence!” to somebody, and ladies casting indignant glances at me, and⁠—what! yes!⁠—Agnes, sitting on the seat before me, in the same box, with a lady and gentleman beside her, whom I didn’t know. I see her face now, better than I did then, I dare say, with its indelible look of regret and wonder turned upon me.

“Agnes!” I said, thickly, “Lorblessmer! Agnes!”

“Hush! Pray!” she answered, I could not conceive why. “You disturb the company. Look at the stage!”

I tried, on her injunction, to fix it, and to hear something of what was going on there, but quite in vain. I looked at her again by and by, and saw her shrink into her corner, and put her gloved hand to her forehead.

“Agnes!” I said. “I’mafraidyou’renorwell.”

“Yes, yes. Do not mind me, Trotwood,” she returned. “Listen! Are you going away soon?”

“Amigoarawaysoo?” I repeated.

“Yes.”

I had a stupid intention of replying that I was going to wait, to hand her downstairs. I suppose I expressed it, somehow; for after she had looked at me attentively for a little while, she appeared to understand, and replied in a low tone:

“I know you will do as I ask you, if I tell you I am very earnest in it. Go away now, Trotwood, for my sake, and ask your friends to take you home.”

She had so far improved me, for the time, that though I was angry with her, I felt ashamed, and with a short “Goori!” (which I intended for “Good night!”) got up and went away. They followed, and I stepped at once out of the box-door into my bedroom, where only Steerforth was with me, helping me to undress, and where I was by turns telling him that Agnes was my sister, and adjuring him to bring the corkscrew, that I might open another bottle of wine.

How somebody, lying in my bed, lay saying and doing all this over again, at cross purposes, in a feverish dream all night⁠—the bed a rocking sea that was never still! How, as that somebody slowly settled down into myself, did I begin to parch, and feel as if my outer covering of skin were a hard board; my tongue the bottom of an empty kettle, furred with long service, and burning up over a slow fire; the palms of my hands, hot plates of metal which no ice could cool!

But the agony of mind, the remorse, and shame I felt when I became conscious next day! My horror of having committed a thousand offences I had forgotten, and which nothing could ever expiate⁠—my recollection of that indelible look which Agnes had given me⁠—the torturing impossibility of communicating with her, not knowing, beast that I was, how she came to be in London, or where she stayed⁠—my disgust of the very sight of the room where the revel had been held⁠—my racking head⁠—the smell of smoke, the sight of glasses, the impossibility of going out, or even getting up! Oh, what a day it was!

Oh, what an evening, when I sat down by my fire to a basin of mutton broth, dimpled all over with fat, and thought I was going the way of my predecessor, and should succeed to his dismal story as well as to his chambers, and had half a mind to rush express to Dover and reveal all! What an evening, when Mrs. Crupp, coming in to take away the broth-basin, produced one kidney on a cheese-plate as the entire remains of yesterday’s feast, and I was really inclined to fall upon her nankeen breast and say, in heartfelt penitence, “Oh, Mrs. Crupp, Mrs. Crupp, never mind the broken meats! I am very miserable!”⁠—only that I doubted, even at that pass, if Mrs. Crupp were quite the sort of woman to confide in!

XXV Good and Bad Angels

I was going out at my door on the morning after that deplorable day of headache, sickness, and repentance, with an odd confusion in my mind relative to the date of my dinner-party, as if a body of Titans had taken an enormous lever and pushed the day before yesterday some months back, when I saw a ticket-porter coming upstairs, with a letter in his hand. He was taking his time about his errand, then; but when he saw me on the top of the staircase, looking at him over the banisters, he swung into a trot, and came up panting as if he had run himself into a state of exhaustion.

“T. Copperfield, Esquire,” said the ticket-porter, touching his hat with his little cane.

I could scarcely lay claim to the name: I was so disturbed by the conviction that the letter came from Agnes. However, I told him I was T. Copperfield, Esquire, and he believed it, and gave me the letter, which he said required an answer. I shut him out on the landing to wait for the answer, and went into my chambers again, in such a nervous state that I was fain to lay the letter down on my breakfast table, and familiarize myself with the outside of it a little, before I could resolve to break the seal.

I found, when I did open it, that it was a very kind note, containing no reference to my condition at the theatre. All it said was, “My dear Trotwood. I am staying at the house of papa’s agent, Mr. Waterbrook, in Ely Place, Holborn. Will you come and see me today, at any time you like to appoint? Ever yours affectionately, Agnes.”

It took me such a long time to write an answer at all to my satisfaction, that I don’t know what