DAVID
COPPERFIELD
PART 12
CHAPTER 12. LIKING LIFE ON MY OWN ACCOUNT NO
BETTER, I FORM A GREAT RESOLUTION
In due
time, Mr. Micawber's petition was ripe for hearing; and that gentleman was
ordered to be discharged under the Act, to my great joy. His creditors were not
implacable; and Mrs. Micawber informed me that even the revengeful boot-maker
had declared in open court that he bore him no malice, but that when money was
owing to him he liked to be paid. He said he thought it was human nature.
Mr.
Micawber returned to the King's Bench when his case was over, as some fees were
to be settled, and some formalities observed, before he could be actually
released. The club received him with transport, and held an harmonic meeting
that evening in his honour; while Mrs. Micawber and I had a lamb's fry in
private, surrounded by the sleeping family.
'On such
an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'in a
little more flip,' for we had been having some already, 'the memory of my papa
and mama.'
'Are they
dead, ma'am?' I inquired, after drinking the toast in a wine-glass.
'My mama
departed this life,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'before Mr. Micawber's difficulties
commenced, or at least before they became pressing. My papa lived to bail Mr.
Micawber several times, and then expired, regretted by a numerous circle.'
Mrs.
Micawber shook her head, and dropped a pious tear upon the twin who happened to
be in hand.
As I
could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a question in
which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs. Micawber:
'May I
ask, ma'am, what you and Mr. Micawber intend to do, now that Mr. Micawber is
out of his difficulties, and at liberty? Have you settled yet?'
'My
family,' said Mrs. Micawber, who always said those two words with an air,
though I never could discover who came under the denomination, 'my family are
of opinion that Mr. Micawber should quit London, and exert his talents in the
country. Mr. Micawber is a man of great talent, Master Copperfield.'
I said I
was sure of that.
'Of great
talent,' repeated Mrs. Micawber. 'My family are of opinion, that, with a little
interest, something might be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House.
The influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr. Micawber
should go down to Plymouth. They think it indispensable that he should be upon
the spot.'
'That he
may be ready?' I suggested.
'Exactly,'
returned Mrs. Micawber. 'That he may be ready—in case of anything turning up.'
'And do
you go too, ma'am?'
The
events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not with the flip, had
made Mrs. Micawber hysterical, and she shed tears as she replied:
'I never
will desert Mr. Micawber. Mr. Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from
me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect
that he would overcome them. The pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited
from mama, have been disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of
coral, which was the wedding gift of my papa, has been actually thrown away for
nothing. But I never will desert Mr. Micawber. No!' cried Mrs. Micawber, more
affected than before, 'I never will do it! It's of no use asking me!'
I felt
quite uncomfortable—as if Mrs. Micawber supposed I had asked her to do anything
of the sort!—and sat looking at her in alarm.
'Mr.
Micawber has his faults. I do not deny that he is improvident. I do not deny
that he has kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities both,'
she went on, looking at the wall; 'but I never will desert Mr. Micawber!'
Mrs.
Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, I was so frightened
that I ran off to the club-room, and disturbed Mr. Micawber in the act of
presiding at a long table, and leading the chorus of
Gee up, Dobbin,
Gee ho, Dobbin,
Gee
up, Dobbin,
Gee up, and gee ho—o—o!
with the
tidings that Mrs. Micawber was in an alarming state, upon which he immediately
burst into tears, and came away with me with his waistcoat full of the heads
and tails of shrimps, of which he had been partaking.
'Emma, my
angel!' cried Mr. Micawber, running into the room; 'what is the matter?'
'I never
will desert you, Micawber!' she exclaimed.
'My
life!' said Mr. Micawber, taking her in his arms. 'I am perfectly aware of it.'
'He is
the parent of my children! He is the father of my twins! He is the husband of
my affections,' cried Mrs. Micawber, struggling; 'and I ne—ver—will—desert Mr.
Micawber!'
Mr.
Micawber was so deeply affected by this proof of her devotion (as to me, I was
dissolved in tears), that he hung over her in a passionate manner, imploring
her to look up, and to be calm. But the more he asked Mrs. Micawber to look up,
the more she fixed her eyes on nothing; and the more he asked her to compose
herself, the more she wouldn't. Consequently Mr. Micawber was soon so overcome,
that he mingled his tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to do him the
favour of taking a chair on the staircase, while he got her into bed. I would
have taken my leave for the night, but he would not hear of my doing that until
the strangers' bell should ring. So I sat at the staircase window, until he
came out with another chair and joined me.
'How is
Mrs. Micawber now, sir?' I said.
'Very
low,' said Mr. Micawber, shaking his head; 'reaction. Ah, this has been a
dreadful day! We stand alone now—everything is gone from us!'
Mr. Micawber
pressed my hand, and groaned, and afterwards shed tears. I was greatly touched,
and disappointed too, for I had expected that we should be quite gay on this
happy and long-looked-for occasion. But Mr. and Mrs. Micawber were so used to
their old difficulties, I think, that they felt quite shipwrecked when they
came to consider that they were released from them. All their elasticity was
departed, and I never saw them half so wretched as on this night; insomuch that
when the bell rang, and Mr. Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted
from me there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he
was so profoundly miserable.
But
through all the confusion and lowness of spirits in which we had been, so
unexpectedly to me, involved, I plainly discerned that Mr. and Mrs. Micawber
and their family were going away from London, and that a parting between us was
near at hand. It was in my walk home that night, and in the sleepless hours
which followed when I lay in bed, that the thought first occurred to me—though
I don't know how it came into my head—which afterwards shaped itself into a
settled resolution.
I had
grown to be so accustomed to the Micawbers, and had been so intimate with them
in their distresses, and was so utterly friendless without them, that the
prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for a lodging, and going once more
among unknown people, was like being that moment turned adrift into my present
life, with such a knowledge of it ready made as experience had given me. All
the sensitive feelings it wounded so cruelly, all the shame and misery it kept
alive within my breast, became more poignant as I thought of this; and I
determined that the life was unendurable.
That
there was no hope of escape from it, unless the escape was my own act, I knew
quite well. I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never from Mr. Murdstone:
but two or three parcels of made or mended clothes had come up for me,
consigned to Mr. Quinion, and in each there was a scrap of paper to the effect
that J. M. trusted D. C. was applying himself to business, and devoting himself
wholly to his duties—not the least hint of my ever being anything else than the
common drudge into which I was fast settling down.
The very
next day showed me, while my mind was in the first agitation of what it had
conceived, that Mrs. Micawber had not spoken of their going away without
warrant. They took a lodging in the house where I lived, for a week; at the
expiration of which time they were to start for Plymouth. Mr. Micawber himself
came down to the counting-house, in the afternoon, to tell Mr. Quinion that he
must relinquish me on the day of his departure, and to give me a high character,
which I am sure I deserved. And Mr. Quinion, calling in Tipp the carman, who
was a married man, and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him—by
our mutual consent, as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing, though
my resolution was now taken.
I passed
my evenings with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber, during the remaining term of our
residence under the same roof; and I think we became fonder of one another as
the time went on. On the last Sunday, they invited me to dinner; and we had a
loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding. I had bought a spotted wooden
horse over-night as a parting gift to little Wilkins Micawber—that was the
boy—and a doll for little Emma. I had also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling,
who was about to be disbanded.
We had a
very pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about our approaching
separation.
'I shall
never, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'revert to the period when Mr.
Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of you. Your conduct has always
been of the most delicate and obliging description. You have never been a
lodger. You have been a friend.'
'My
dear,' said Mr. Micawber; 'Copperfield,' for so he had been accustomed to call
me, of late, 'has a heart to feel for the distresses of his fellow-creatures
when they are behind a cloud, and a head to plan, and a hand to—in short, a
general ability to dispose of such available property as could be made away
with.'
I
expressed my sense of this commendation, and said I was very sorry we were
going to lose one another.
'My dear
young friend,' said Mr. Micawber, 'I am older than you; a man of some
experience in life, and—and of some experience, in short, in difficulties,
generally speaking. At present, and until something turns up (which I am, I may
say, hourly expecting), I have nothing to bestow but advice. Still my advice is
so far worth taking, that—in short, that I have never taken it myself, and am
the'—here Mr. Micawber, who had been beaming and smiling, all over his head and
face, up to the present moment, checked himself and frowned—'the miserable
wretch you behold.'
'My dear
Micawber!' urged his wife.
'I say,'
returned Mr. Micawber, quite forgetting himself, and smiling again, 'the
miserable wretch you behold. My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do
today. Procrastination is the thief of time. Collar him!'
'My poor
papa's maxim,' Mrs. Micawber observed.
'My
dear,' said Mr. Micawber, 'your papa was very well in his way, and Heaven
forbid that I should disparage him. Take him for all in all, we ne'er shall—in
short, make the acquaintance, probably, of anybody else possessing, at his time
of life, the same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of
print, without spectacles. But he applied that maxim to our marriage, my dear;
and that was so far prematurely entered into, in consequence, that I never
recovered the expense.' Mr. Micawber looked aside at Mrs. Micawber, and added:
'Not that I am sorry for it. Quite the contrary, my love.' After which, he was
grave for a minute or so.
'My other
piece of advice, Copperfield,' said Mr. Micawber, 'you know. Annual income
twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness.
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six,
result misery. The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the god of day
goes down upon the dreary scene, and—and in short you are for ever floored. As
I am!'
To make
his example the more impressive, Mr. Micawber drank a glass of punch with an
air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe.
I did not
fail to assure him that I would store these precepts in my mind, though indeed
I had no need to do so, for, at the time, they affected me visibly. Next
morning I met the whole family at the coach office, and saw them, with a
desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back.
'Master
Copperfield,' said Mrs. Micawber, 'God bless you! I never can forget all that,
you know, and I never would if I could.'
'Copperfield,'
said Mr. Micawber, 'farewell! Every happiness and prosperity! If, in the
progress of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny
had been a warning to you, I should feel that I had not occupied another man's
place in existence altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which
I am rather confident), I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power
to improve your prospects.'
I think,
as Mrs. Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the children, and I stood
in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, and she
saw what a little creature I really was. I think so, because she beckoned to me
to climb up, with quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her
arm round my neck, and gave me just such a kiss as she might have given to her
own boy. I had barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I
could hardly see the family for the handkerchiefs they waved. It was gone in a
minute. The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of
the road, and then shook hands and said good-bye; she going back, I suppose, to
St. Luke's workhouse, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and
Grinby's.
But with
no intention of passing many more weary days there. No. I had resolved to run
away.—-To go, by some means or other, down into the country, to the only
relation I had in the world, and tell my story to my aunt, Miss Betsey. I have
already observed that I don't know how this desperate idea came into my brain.
But, once there, it remained there; and hardened into a purpose than which I
have never entertained a more determined purpose in my life. I am far from sure
that I believed there was anything hopeful in it, but my mind was thoroughly
made up that it must be carried into execution.
Again,
and again, and a hundred times again, since the night when the thought had
first occurred to me and banished sleep, I had gone over that old story of my
poor mother's about my birth, which it had been one of my great delights in the
old time to hear her tell, and which I knew by heart. My aunt walked into that
story, and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one
little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some
faint shadow of encouragement. I could not forget how my mother had thought
that she felt her touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and though it
might have been altogether my mother's fancy, and might have had no foundation
whatever in fact, I made a little picture, out of it, of my terrible aunt
relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected so well and loved so
much, which softened the whole narrative. It is very possible that it had been
in my mind a long time, and had gradually engendered my determination.
As I did
not even know where Miss Betsey lived, I wrote a long letter to Peggotty, and
asked her, incidentally, if she remembered; pretending that I had heard of such
a lady living at a certain place I named at random, and had a curiosity to know
if it were the same. In the course of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a
particular occasion for half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum
until I could repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell
her afterwards what I had wanted it for.
Peggotty's
answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate devotion. She
enclosed the half guinea (I was afraid she must have had a world of trouble to
get it out of Mr. Barkis's box), and told me that Miss Betsey lived near Dover,
but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone, she could not
say. One of our men, however, informing me on my asking him about these places,
that they were all close together, I deemed this enough for my object, and
resolved to set out at the end of that week.
Being a
very honest little creature, and unwilling to disgrace the memory I was going
to leave behind me at Murdstone and Grinby's, I considered myself bound to
remain until Saturday night; and, as I had been paid a week's wages in advance
when I first came there, not to present myself in the counting-house at the
usual hour, to receive my stipend. For this express reason, I had borrowed the
half-guinea, that I might not be without a fund for my travelling-expenses.
Accordingly, when the Saturday night came, and we were all waiting in the
warehouse to be paid, and Tipp the carman, who always took precedence, went in
first to draw his money, I shook Mick Walker by the hand; asked him, when it
came to his turn to be paid, to say to Mr. Quinion that I had gone to move my
box to Tipp's; and, bidding a last good night to Mealy Potatoes, ran away.
My box
was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a direction for it on
the back of one of our address cards that we nailed on the casks: 'Master
David, to be left till called for, at the Coach Office, Dover.' This I had in
my pocket ready to put on the box, after I should have got it out of the house;
and as I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help
me to carry it to the booking-office.
There was
a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey-cart, standing near the
Obelisk, in the Blackfriars Road, whose eye I caught as I was going by, and
who, addressing me as 'Sixpenn'orth of bad ha'pence,' hoped 'I should know him
agin to swear to'—in allusion, I have no doubt, to my staring at him. I stopped
to assure him that I had not done so in bad manners, but uncertain whether he
might or might not like a job.
'Wot
job?' said the long-legged young man.
'To move
a box,' I answered.
'Wot
box?' said the long-legged young man.
I told
him mine, which was down that street there, and which I wanted him to take to
the Dover coach office for sixpence.
'Done
with you for a tanner!' said the long-legged young man, and directly got upon
his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on wheels, and rattled away
at such a rate, that it was as much as I could do to keep pace with the donkey.
There was
a defiant manner about this young man, and particularly about the way in which
he chewed straw as he spoke to me, that I did not much like; as the bargain was
made, however, I took him upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought
the box down, and put it on his cart. Now, I was unwilling to put the
direction-card on there, lest any of my landlord's family should fathom what I
was doing, and detain me; so I said to the young man that I would be glad if he
would stop for a minute, when he came to the dead-wall of the King's Bench
prison. The words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if
he, my box, the cart, and the donkey, were all equally mad; and I was quite out
of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the place
appointed.
Being
much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half-guinea out of my pocket in pulling
the card out. I put it in my mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a
good deal, had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction, when I felt
myself violently chucked under the chin by the long-legged young man, and saw
my half-guinea fly out of my mouth into his hand.
'Wot!'
said the young man, seizing me by my jacket collar, with a frightful grin.
'This is a pollis case, is it? You're a-going to bolt, are you? Come to the
pollis, you young warmin, come to the pollis!'
'You give
me my money back, if you please,' said I, very much frightened; 'and leave me
alone.'
'Come to
the pollis!' said the young man. 'You shall prove it yourn to the pollis.'
'Give me
my box and money, will you,' I cried, bursting into tears.
The young
man still replied: 'Come to the pollis!' and was dragging me against the donkey
in a violent manner, as if there were any affinity between that animal and a
magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box,
and, exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, rattled away harder
than ever.
I ran
after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out with, and should
not have dared to call out, now, if I had. I narrowly escaped being run over,
twenty times at least, in half a mile. Now I lost him, now I saw him, now I
lost him, now I was cut at with a whip, now shouted at, now down in the mud,
now up again, now running into somebody's arms, now running headlong at a post.
At length, confused by fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might
not by this time be turning out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go
where he would with my box and money; and, panting and crying, but never
stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover
Road: taking very little more out of the world, towards the retreat of my aunt,
Miss Betsey, than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her
so much umbrage.
To be continued
