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

outward stiffness and composure. I began to reflect whether I had done anything to offend her; and my conscience whispered me that I had not yet told her about Dora. Could it by any means be that, I wondered!

As I knew she would only speak in her own good time, I sat down near her, and spoke to the birds, and played with the cat, and was as easy as I could be. But I was very far from being really easy; and I should still have been so, even if Mr. Dick, leaning over the great kite behind my aunt, had not taken every secret opportunity of shaking his head darkly at me, and pointing at her.

“Trot,” said my aunt at last, when she had finished her tea, and carefully smoothed down her dress, and wiped her lips⁠—“you needn’t go, Barkis!⁠—Trot, have you got to be firm and self-reliant?”

“I hope so, aunt.”

“What do you think?” inquired Miss Betsey.

“I think so, aunt.”

“Then why, my love,” said my aunt, looking earnestly at me, “why do you think I prefer to sit upon this property of mine tonight?”

I shook my head, unable to guess.

“Because,” said my aunt, “it’s all I have. Because I’m ruined, my dear!”

If the house, and every one of us, had tumbled out into the river together, I could hardly have received a greater shock.

“Dick knows it,” said my aunt, laying her hand calmly on my shoulder. “I am ruined, my dear Trot! All I have in the world is in this room, except the cottage; and that I have left Janet to let. Barkis, I want to get a bed for this gentleman tonight. To save expense, perhaps you can make up something here for myself. Anything will do. It’s only for tonight. We’ll talk about this, more, tomorrow.”

I was roused from my amazement, and concern for her⁠—I am sure, for her⁠—by her falling on my neck, for a moment, and crying that she only grieved for me. In another moment she suppressed this emotion; and said with an aspect more triumphant than dejected:

“We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!”

XXXV Depression

As soon as I could recover my presence of mind, which quite deserted me in the first overpowering shock of my aunt’s intelligence, I proposed to Mr. Dick to come round to the chandler’s shop, and take possession of the bed which Mr. Peggotty had lately vacated. The chandler’s shop being in Hungerford Market, and Hungerford Market being a very different place in those days, there was a low wooden colonnade before the door (not very unlike that before the house where the little man and woman used to live, in the old weatherglass), which pleased Mr. Dick mightily. The glory of lodging over this structure would have compensated him, I dare say, for many inconveniences; but, as there were really few to bear, beyond the compound of flavours I have already mentioned, and perhaps the want of a little more elbow room, he was perfectly charmed with his accommodation. Mrs. Crupp had indignantly assured him that there wasn’t room to swing a cat there; but, as Mr. Dick justly observed to me, sitting down on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, “You know, Trotwood, I don’t want to swing a cat. I never do swing a cat. Therefore, what does that signify to me!”

I tried to ascertain whether Mr. Dick had any understanding of the causes of this sudden and great change in my aunt’s affairs. As I might have expected, he had none at all. The only account he could give of it was, that my aunt had said to him, the day before yesterday, “Now, Dick, are you really and truly the philosopher I take you for?” That then he had said, Yes, he hoped so. That then my aunt had said, “Dick, I am ruined.” That then he had said, “Oh, indeed!” That then my aunt had praised him highly, which he was glad of. And that then they had come to me, and had had bottled porter and sandwiches on the road.

Mr. Dick was so very complacent, sitting on the foot of the bed, nursing his leg, and telling me this, with his eyes wide open and a surprised smile, that I am sorry to say I was provoked into explaining to him that ruin meant distress, want, and starvation; but I was soon bitterly reproved for this harshness, by seeing his face turn pale, and tears course down his lengthened cheeks, while he fixed upon me a look of such unutterable woe, that it might have softened a far harder heart than mine. I took infinitely greater pains to cheer him up again than I had taken to depress him; and I soon understood (as I ought to have known at first) that he had been so confident, merely because of his faith in the wisest and most wonderful of women, and his unbounded reliance on my intellectual resources. The latter, I believe, he considered a match for any kind of disaster not absolutely mortal.

“What can we do, Trotwood?” said Mr. Dick. “There’s the Memorial⁠—”

“To be sure there is,” said I. “But all we can do just now, Mr. Dick, is to keep a cheerful countenance, and not let my aunt see that we are thinking about it.”

He assented to this in the most earnest manner; and implored me, if I should see him wandering an inch out of the right course, to recall him by some of those superior methods which were always at my command. But I regret to state that the fright I had given him proved too much for his best attempts at concealment. All the evening his eyes wandered to my aunt’s face, with an expression of the most dismal apprehension, as if he saw her growing thin on the spot. He was conscious of this, and