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

that very well, before she told me so.

“If you think them pretty, say I may always stop, and see you write!” said Dora. “Do you think them pretty?”

“Very pretty.”

“Then let me always stop and see you write.”

“I am afraid that won’t improve their brightness, Dora.”

“Yes, it will! Because, you clever boy, you’ll not forget me then, while you are full of silent fancies. Will you mind it, if I say something very, very silly?⁠—more than usual?” inquired Dora, peeping over my shoulder into my face.

“What wonderful thing is that?” said I.

“Please let me hold the pens,” said Dora. “I want to have something to do with all those many hours when you are so industrious. May I hold the pens?”

The remembrance of her pretty joy when I said yes, brings tears into my eyes. The next time I sat down to write, and regularly afterwards, she sat in her old place, with a spare bundle of pens at her side. Her triumph in this connection with my work, and her delight when I wanted a new pen⁠—which I very often feigned to do⁠—suggested to me a new way of pleasing my child-wife. I occasionally made a pretence of wanting a page or two of manuscript copied. Then Dora was in her glory. The preparations she made for this great work, the aprons she put on, the bibs she borrowed from the kitchen to keep off the ink, the time she took, the innumerable stoppages she made to have a laugh with Jip as if he understood it all, her conviction that her work was incomplete unless she signed her name at the end, and the way in which she would bring it to me, like a school-copy, and then, when I praised it, clasp me round the neck, are touching recollections to me, simple as they might appear to other men.

She took possession of the keys soon after this, and went jingling about the house with the whole bunch in a little basket, tied to her slender waist. I seldom found that the places to which they belonged were locked, or that they were of any use except as a plaything for Jip⁠—but Dora was pleased, and that pleased me. She was quite satisfied that a good deal was effected by this make-belief of housekeeping; and was as merry as if we had been keeping a baby-house, for a joke.

So we went on. Dora was hardly less affectionate to my aunt than to me, and often told her of the time when she was afraid she was “a cross old thing.” I never saw my aunt unbend more systematically to anyone. She courted Jip, though Jip never responded; listened, day after day, to the guitar, though I am afraid she had no taste for music; never attacked the Incapables, though the temptation must have been severe; went wonderful distances on foot to purchase, as surprises, any trifles that she found out Dora wanted; and never came in by the garden, and missed her from the room, but she would call out, at the foot of the stairs, in a voice that sounded cheerfully all over the house:

“Where’s Little Blossom?”

XLV Mr. Dick Fulfils My Aunt’s Predictions

It was some time now, since I had left the Doctor. Living in his neighbourhood, I saw him frequently; and we all went to his house on two or three occasions to dinner or tea. The Old Soldier was in permanent quarters under the Doctor’s roof. She was exactly the same as ever, and the same immortal butterflies hovered over her cap.

Like some other mothers, whom I have known in the course of my life, Mrs. Markleham was far more fond of pleasure than her daughter was. She required a great deal of amusement, and, like a deep old soldier, pretended, in consulting her own inclinations, to be devoting herself to her child. The Doctor’s desire that Annie should be entertained, was therefore particularly acceptable to this excellent parent; who expressed unqualified approval of his discretion.

I have no doubt, indeed, that she probed the Doctor’s wound without knowing it. Meaning nothing but a certain matured frivolity and selfishness, not always inseparable from full-blown years, I think she confirmed him in his fear that he was a constraint upon his young wife, and that there was no congeniality of feeling between them, by so strongly commending his design of lightening the load of her life.

“My dear soul,” she said to him one day when I was present, “you know there is no doubt it would be a little pokey for Annie to be always shut up here.”

The Doctor nodded his benevolent head. “When she comes to her mother’s age,” said Mrs. Markleham, with a flourish of her fan, “then it’ll be another thing. You might put me into a jail, with genteel society and a rubber, and I should never care to come out. But I am not Annie, you know; and Annie is not her mother.”

“Surely, surely,” said the Doctor.

“You are the best of creatures⁠—no, I beg your pardon!” for the Doctor made a gesture of deprecation, “I must say before your face, as I always say behind your back, you are the best of creatures; but of course you don’t⁠—now do you?⁠—enter into the same pursuits and fancies as Annie?”

“No,” said the Doctor, in a sorrowful tone.

“No, of course not,” retorted the Old Soldier. “Take your Dictionary, for example. What a useful work a Dictionary is! What a necessary work! The meanings of words! Without Doctor Johnson, or somebody of that sort, we might have been at this present moment calling an Italian-iron, a bedstead. But we can’t expect a Dictionary⁠—especially when it’s making⁠—to interest Annie, can we?”

The Doctor shook his head.

“And that’s why I so much approve,” said Mrs. Markleham, tapping him on the shoulder with her shut-up fan, “of your thoughtfulness. It shows that you don’t expect, as many elderly people do expect, old heads on young shoulders. You have studied