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

to force me from him, and to force himself from me, not answering a word, not looking at or seeing anyone; blindly striving for he knew not what, his face all staring and distorted⁠—a frightful spectacle.

I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned manner, not to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me. I besought him to think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to recollect how Agnes and I had grown up together, how I honoured her and loved her, how she was his pride and joy. I tried to bring her idea before him in any form; I even reproached him with not having firmness to spare her the knowledge of such a scene as this. I may have effected something, or his wildness may have spent itself; but by degrees he struggled less, and began to look at me⁠—strangely at first, then with recognition in his eyes. At length he said, “I know, Trotwood! My darling child and you⁠—I know! But look at him!”

He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very much out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.

“Look at my torturer,” he replied. “Before him I have step by step abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.”

“I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and quiet, and your house and home too,” said Uriah, with a sulky, hurried, defeated air of compromise. “Don’t be foolish, Mr. Wickfield. If I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I suppose? There’s no harm done.”

“I looked for single motives in everyone,” said Mr. Wickfield, “and I was satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest. But see what he is⁠—oh, see what he is!”

“You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,” cried Uriah, with his long forefinger pointing towards me. “He’ll say something presently⁠—mind you!⁠—he’ll be sorry to have said afterwards, and you’ll be sorry to have heard!”

“I’ll say anything!” cried Mr. Wickfield, with a desperate air. “Why should I not be in all the world’s power if I am in yours?”

“Mind! I tell you!” said Uriah, continuing to warn me. “If you don’t stop his mouth, you’re not his friend! Why shouldn’t you be in all the world’s power, Mr. Wickfield? Because you have got a daughter. You and me know what we know, don’t we? Let sleeping dogs lie⁠—who wants to rouse ’em? I don’t. Can’t you see I am as ’umble as I can be? I tell you, if I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. What would you have, sir?”

“Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!”exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands. “What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house! I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road I have traversed since! Weak indulgence has ruined me. Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness. My natural grief for my child’s mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease. I have infected everything I touched. I have brought misery on what I dearly love, I know⁠—You know! I thought it possible that I could truly love one creature in the world, and not love the rest; I thought it possible that I could truly mourn for one creature gone out of the world, and not have some part in the grief of all who mourned. Thus the lessons of my life have been perverted! I have preyed on my own morbid coward heart, and it has preyed on me. Sordid in my grief, sordid in my love, sordid in my miserable escape from the darker side of both, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!”

He dropped into a chair, and weakly sobbed. The excitement into which he had been roused was leaving him. Uriah came out of his corner.

“I don’t know all I have done, in my fatuity,” said Mr. Wickfield, putting out his hands, as if to deprecate my condemnation. “He knows best,” meaning Uriah Heep, “for he has always been at my elbow, whispering me. You see the millstone that he is about my neck. You find him in my house, you find him in my business. You heard him, but a little time ago. What need have I to say more!”

“You haven’t need to say so much, nor half so much, nor anything at all,” observed Uriah, half defiant, and half fawning. “You wouldn’t have took it up so, if it hadn’t been for the wine. You’ll think better of it tomorrow, sir. If I have said too much, or more than I meant, what of it? I haven’t stood by it!”

The door opened, and Agnes, gliding in, without a vestige of colour in her face, put her arm round his neck, and steadily said, “Papa, you are not well. Come with me!”

He laid his head upon her shoulder, as if he were oppressed with heavy shame, and went out with her. Her eyes met mine for but an instant, yet I saw how much she knew of what had passed.

“I didn’t expect he’d cut up so rough, Master Copperfield,” said Uriah. “But it’s nothing. I’ll be friends with him tomorrow. It’s for his good. I’m ’umbly anxious for his good.”

I gave him no answer, and went upstairs into the quiet room where Agnes had so often sat beside me at my books. Nobody came near me until late at night. I took up a book, and tried to read. I heard the clocks strike twelve, and was still reading, without knowing what I read, when Agnes touched me.

“You will be going early in the morning, Trotwood! Let us say goodbye, now!”

She had been weeping, but her face then was so calm and beautiful!

“Heaven bless you!” she said, giving me her hand.

“Dearest Agnes!” I returned, “I see you ask me not to speak of tonight⁠—but is there nothing to be done?”

“There is God to trust in!” she replied.

“Can