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

say to Doctor Strong upon his word and honour, whether he’d ever been of this opinion long ago, or not. Come, Mr. Wickfield, sir! Would you be so good as tell us? Yes or no, sir? Come, partner!”

“For God’s sake, my dear Doctor,” said Mr. Wickfield again laying his irresolute hand upon the Doctor’s arm, “don’t attach too much weight to any suspicions I may have entertained.”

“There!” cried Uriah, shaking his head. “What a melancholy confirmation: ain’t it? Him! Such an old friend! Bless your soul, when I was nothing but a clerk in his office, Copperfield, I’ve seen him twenty times, if I’ve seen him once, quite in a taking about it⁠—quite put out, you know (and very proper in him as a father; I’m sure I can’t blame him), to think that Miss Agnes was mixing herself up with what oughtn’t to be.”

“My dear Strong,” said Mr. Wickfield in a tremulous voice, “my good friend, I needn’t tell you that it has been my vice to look for some one master motive in everybody, and to try all actions by one narrow test. I may have fallen into such doubts as I have had, through this mistake.”

“You have had doubts, Wickfield,” said the Doctor, without lifting up his head. “You have had doubts.”

“Speak up, fellow-partner,” urged Uriah.

“I had, at one time, certainly,” said Mr. Wickfield. “I⁠—God forgive me⁠—I thought you had.”

“No, no, no!” returned the Doctor, in a tone of most pathetic grief. “I thought, at one time,” said Mr. Wickfield, “that you wished to send Maldon abroad to effect a desirable separation.”

“No, no, no!” returned the Doctor. “To give Annie pleasure, by making some provision for the companion of her childhood. Nothing else.”

“So I found,” said Mr. Wickfield. “I couldn’t doubt it, when you told me so. But I thought⁠—I implore you to remember the narrow construction which has been my besetting sin⁠—that, in a case where there was so much disparity in point of years⁠—”

“That’s the way to put it, you see, Master Copperfield!” observed Uriah, with fawning and offensive pity.

“⁠—a lady of such youth, and such attractions, however real her respect for you, might have been influenced in marrying, by worldly considerations only. I make no allowance for innumerable feelings and circumstances that may have all tended to good. For Heaven’s sake remember that!”

“How kind he puts it!” said Uriah, shaking his head.

“Always observing her from one point of view,” said Mr. Wickfield; “but by all that is dear to you, my old friend, I entreat you to consider what it was; I am forced to confess now, having no escape⁠—”

“No! There’s no way out of it, Mr. Wickfield, sir,” observed Uriah, “when it’s got to this.”

“⁠—that I did,” said Mr. Wickfield, glancing helplessly and distractedly at his partner, “that I did doubt her, and think her wanting in her duty to you; and that I did sometimes, if I must say all, feel averse to Agnes being in such a familiar relation towards her, as to see what I saw, or in my diseased theory fancied that I saw. I never mentioned this to anyone. I never meant it to be known to anyone. And though it is terrible to you to hear,” said Mr. Wickfield, quite subdued, “if you knew how terrible it is for me to tell, you would feel compassion for me!”

The Doctor, in the perfect goodness of his nature, put out his hand. Mr. Wickfield held it for a little while in his, with his head bowed down.

“I am sure,” said Uriah, writhing himself into the silence like a conger-eel, “that this is a subject full of unpleasantness to everybody. But since we have got so far, I ought to take the liberty of mentioning that Copperfield has noticed it too.”

I turned upon him, and asked him how he dared refer to me!

“Oh! it’s very kind of you, Copperfield,” returned Uriah, undulating all over, “and we all know what an amiable character yours is; but you know that the moment I spoke to you the other night, you knew what I meant. You know you knew what I meant, Copperfield. Don’t deny it! You deny it with the best intentions; but don’t do it, Copperfield.”

I saw the mild eye of the good old Doctor turned upon me for a moment, and I felt that the confession of my old misgivings and remembrances was too plainly written in my face to be overlooked. It was of no use raging. I could not undo that. Say what I would, I could not unsay it.

We were silent again, and remained so, until the Doctor rose and walked twice or thrice across the room. Presently he returned to where his chair stood; and, leaning on the back of it, and occasionally putting his handkerchief to his eyes, with a simple honesty that did him more honour, to my thinking, than any disguise he could have effected, said:

“I have been much to blame. I believe I have been very much to blame. I have exposed one whom I hold in my heart, to trials and aspersions⁠—I call them aspersions, even to have been conceived in anybody’s inmost mind⁠—of which she never, but for me, could have been the object.”

Uriah Heep gave a kind of snivel. I think to express sympathy.

“Of which my Annie,” said the Doctor, “never, but for me, could have been the object. Gentlemen, I am old now, as you know; I do not feel, tonight, that I have much to live for. But my life⁠—my life⁠—upon the truth and honour of the dear lady who has been the subject of this conversation!”

I do not think that the best embodiment of chivalry, the realization of the handsomest and most romantic figure ever imagined by painter, could have said this, with a more impressive and affecting dignity than the plain old Doctor did.

“But I am not prepared,” he went on, “to deny⁠—perhaps I may have been, without knowing it, in some degree prepared to admit⁠—that I may have unwittingly ensnared that lady into an unhappy