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

“Yes!” replied the immovable Mr. Micawber.

“Then why do you wait?” said Uriah.

“Because I⁠—in short, choose,” replied Mr. Micawber, with a burst.

Uriah’s cheeks lost colour, and an unwholesome paleness, still faintly tinged by his pervading red, overspread them. He looked at Mr. Micawber attentively, with his whole face breathing short and quick in every feature.

“You are a dissipated fellow, as all the world knows,” he said, with an effort at a smile, “and I am afraid you’ll oblige me to get rid of you. Go along! I’ll talk to you presently.”

“If there is a scoundrel on this earth,” said Mr. Micawber, suddenly breaking out again with the utmost vehemence, “with whom I have already talked too much, that scoundrel’s name is⁠—Heep!”

Uriah fell back, as if he had been struck or stung. Looking slowly round upon us with the darkest and wickedest expression that his face could wear, he said, in a lower voice:

“Oho! This is a conspiracy! You have met here by appointment! You are playing Booty with my clerk, are you, Copperfield? Now, take care. You’ll make nothing of this. We understand each other, you and me. There’s no love between us. You were always a puppy with a proud stomach, from your first coming here; and you envy me my rise, do you? None of your plots against me; I’ll counterplot you! Micawber, you be off. I’ll talk to you presently.”

“Mr. Micawber,” said I, “there is a sudden change in this fellow, in more respects than the extraordinary one of his speaking the truth in one particular, which assures me that he is brought to bay. Deal with him as he deserves!”

“You are a precious set of people, ain’t you?” said Uriah, in the same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his forehead, with his long lean hand, “to buy over my clerk, who is the very scum of society⁠—as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you⁠—to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I’ll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I won’t know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! Miss Wickfield, if you have any love for your father, you had better not join that gang. I’ll ruin him, if you do. Now, come! I have got some of you under the harrow. Think twice, before it goes over you. Think twice, you, Micawber, if you don’t want to be crushed. I recommend you to take yourself off, and be talked to presently, you fool! while there’s time to retreat. Where’s mother?” he said, suddenly appearing to notice, with alarm, the absence of Traddles, and pulling down the bell-rope. “Fine doings in a person’s own house!”

“Mrs. Heep is here, sir,” said Traddles, returning with that worthy mother of a worthy son. “I have taken the liberty of making myself known to her.”

“Who are you to make yourself known?” retorted Uriah. “And what do you want here?”

“I am the agent and friend of Mr. Wickfield, sir,” said Traddles, in a composed and businesslike way. “And I have a power of attorney from him in my pocket, to act for him in all matters.”

“The old ass has drunk himself into a state of dotage,” said Uriah, turning uglier than before, “and it has been got from him by fraud!”

“Something has been got from him by fraud, I know,” returned Traddles quietly; “and so do you, Mr. Heep. We will refer that question, if you please, to Mr. Micawber.”

“Ury⁠—!” Mrs. Heep began, with an anxious gesture.

“You hold your tongue, mother,” he returned; “least said, soonest mended.”

“But, my Ury⁠—”

“Will you hold your tongue, mother, and leave it to me?”

Though I had long known that his servility was false, and all his pretences knavish and hollow, I had had no adequate conception of the extent of his hypocrisy, until I now saw him with his mask off. The suddenness with which he dropped it, when he perceived that it was useless to him; the malice, insolence, and hatred, he revealed; the leer with which he exulted, even at this moment, in the evil he had done⁠—all this time being desperate too, and at his wits’ end for the means of getting the better of us⁠—though perfectly consistent with the experience I had of him, at first took even me by surprise, who had known him so long, and disliked him so heartily.

I say nothing of the look he conferred on me, as he stood eyeing us, one after another; for I had always understood that he hated me, and I remembered the marks of my hand upon his cheek. But when his eyes passed on to Agnes, and I saw the rage with which he felt his power over her slipping away, and the exhibition, in their disappointment, of the odious passions that had led him to aspire to one whose virtues he could never appreciate or care for, I was shocked by the mere thought of her having lived, an hour, within sight of such a man.

After some rubbing of the lower part of his face, and some looking at us with those bad eyes, over his grisly fingers, he made one more address to me, half whining, and half abusive.

“You think it justifiable, do you, Copperfield, you who pride yourself so much on your honour and all the rest of it, to sneak about my place, eavesdropping with my clerk? If it had been me, I shouldn’t have wondered; for I don’t make myself out a gentleman (though I never was in the streets either, as you were, according to Micawber), but being you!⁠—And you’re not afraid of doing this, either? You don’t think at all of what I shall do, in return; or of getting yourself into trouble for conspiracy and so forth? Very well. We shall see! Mr. What’s-your-name, you were going to refer some question to Micawber. There’s your referee. Why don’t you make him speak? He has learnt his lesson, I see.”

Seeing