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

he went on to say, with his eyes cast downward⁠—still scraping, very slowly:

“When I was but an ’umble clerk, she always looked down upon me. She was forever having my Agnes backwards and forwards at her ouse, and she was forever being a friend to you, Master Copperfield; but I was too far beneath her, myself, to be noticed.”

“Well?” said I; “suppose you were!”

“⁠—And beneath him too,” pursued Uriah, very distinctly, and in a meditative tone of voice, as he continued to scrape his chin.

“Don’t you know the Doctor better,” said I, “than to suppose him conscious of your existence, when you were not before him?”

He directed his eyes at me in that sidelong glance again, and he made his face very lantern-jawed, for the greater convenience of scraping, as he answered:

“Oh dear, I am not referring to the Doctor! Oh no, poor man! I mean Mr. Maldon!”

My heart quite died within me. All my old doubts and apprehensions on that subject, all the Doctor’s happiness and peace, all the mingled possibilities of innocence and compromise, that I could not unravel, I saw, in a moment, at the mercy of this fellow’s twisting.

“He never could come into the office, without ordering and shoving me about,” said Uriah. “One of your fine gentlemen he was! I was very meek and ’umble⁠—and I am. But I didn’t like that sort of thing⁠—and I don’t!”

He left off scraping his chin, and sucked in his cheeks until they seemed to meet inside; keeping his sidelong glance upon me all the while.

“She is one of your lovely women, she is,” he pursued, when he had slowly restored his face to its natural form; “and ready to be no friend to such as me, I know. She’s just the person as would put my Agnes up to higher sort of game. Now, I ain’t one of your lady’s men, Master Copperfield; but I’ve had eyes in my ’ed, a pretty long time back. We ’umble ones have got eyes, mostly speaking⁠—and we look out of ’em.”

I endeavoured to appear unconscious and not disquieted, but, I saw in his face, with poor success.

“Now, I’m not a-going to let myself be run down, Copperfield,” he continued, raising that part of his countenance, where his red eyebrows would have been if he had had any, with malignant triumph, “and I shall do what I can to put a stop to this friendship. I don’t approve of it. I don’t mind acknowledging to you that I’ve got rather a grudging disposition, and want to keep off all intruders. I ain’t a-going, if I know it, to run the risk of being plotted against.”

“You are always plotting, and delude yourself into the belief that everybody else is doing the like, I think,” said I.

“Perhaps so, Master Copperfield,” he replied. “But I’ve got a motive, as my fellow-partner used to say; and I go at it tooth and nail. I mustn’t be put upon, as a numble person, too much. I can’t allow people in my way. Really they must come out of the cart, Master Copperfield!”

“I don’t understand you,” said I.

“Don’t you, though?” he returned, with one of his jerks. “I’m astonished at that, Master Copperfield, you being usually so quick! I’ll try to be plainer, another time.⁠—Is that Mr. Maldon a-norseback, ringing at the gate, sir?”

“It looks like him,” I replied, as carelessly as I could.

Uriah stopped short, put his hands between his great knobs of knees, and doubled himself up with laughter. With perfectly silent laughter. Not a sound escaped from him. I was so repelled by his odious behaviour, particularly by this concluding instance, that I turned away without any ceremony; and left him doubled up in the middle of the garden, like a scarecrow in want of support.

It was not on that evening; but, as I well remember, on the next evening but one, which was a Sunday; that I took Agnes to see Dora. I had arranged the visit, beforehand, with Miss Lavinia; and Agnes was expected to tea.

I was in a flutter of pride and anxiety; pride in my dear little betrothed, and anxiety that Agnes should like her. All the way to Putney, Agnes being inside the stagecoach, and I outside, I pictured Dora to myself in every one of the pretty looks I knew so well; now making up my mind that I should like her to look exactly as she looked at such a time, and then doubting whether I should not prefer her looking as she looked at such another time; and almost worrying myself into a fever about it.

I was troubled by no doubt of her being very pretty, in any case; but it fell out that I had never seen her look so well. She was not in the drawing room when I presented Agnes to her little aunts, but was shyly keeping out of the way. I knew where to look for her, now; and sure enough I found her stopping her ears again, behind the same dull old door.

At first she wouldn’t come at all; and then she pleaded for five minutes by my watch. When at length she put her arm through mine, to be taken to the drawing room, her charming little face was flushed, and had never been so pretty. But, when we went into the room, and it turned pale, she was ten thousand times prettier yet.

Dora was afraid of Agnes. She had told me that she knew Agnes was “too clever.” But when she saw her looking at once so cheerful and so earnest, and so thoughtful, and so good, she gave a faint little cry of pleased surprise, and just put her affectionate arms round Agnes’s neck, and laid her innocent cheek against her face.

I never was so happy. I never was so pleased as when I saw those two sit down together, side by side. As when I saw my little darling looking up so naturally to those cordial eyes. As when