DAVID
COPPERFIELD
PART 60
CHAPTER 60. AGNES
My aunt
and I, when we were left alone, talked far into the night. How the emigrants
never wrote home, otherwise than cheerfully and hopefully; how Mr. Micawber had
actually remitted divers small sums of money, on account of those 'pecuniary
liabilities', in reference to which he had been so business-like as between man
and man; how Janet, returning into my aunt's service when she came back to
Dover, had finally carried out her renunciation of mankind by entering into
wedlock with a thriving tavern-keeper; and how my aunt had finally set her seal
on the same great principle, by aiding and abetting the bride, and crowning the
marriage-ceremony with her presence; were among our topics—already more or less
familiar to me through the letters I had had. Mr. Dick, as usual, was not
forgotten. My aunt informed me how he incessantly occupied himself in copying
everything he could lay his hands on, and kept King Charles the First at a
respectful distance by that semblance of employment; how it was one of the main
joys and rewards of her life that he was free and happy, instead of pining in
monotonous restraint; and how (as a novel general conclusion) nobody but she
could ever fully know what he was.
'And
when, Trot,' said my aunt, patting the back of my hand, as we sat in our old
way before the fire, 'when are you going over to Canterbury?'
'I shall
get a horse, and ride over tomorrow morning, aunt, unless you will go with me?'
'No!'
said my aunt, in her short abrupt way. 'I mean to stay where I am.'
Then, I
should ride, I said. I could not have come through Canterbury today without
stopping, if I had been coming to anyone but her.
She was
pleased, but answered, 'Tut, Trot; MY old bones would have kept till tomorrow!'
and softly patted my hand again, as I sat looking thoughtfully at the fire.
Thoughtfully,
for I could not be here once more, and so near Agnes, without the revival of
those regrets with which I had so long been occupied. Softened regrets they
might be, teaching me what I had failed to learn when my younger life was all
before me, but not the less regrets. 'Oh, Trot,' I seemed to hear my aunt say
once more; and I understood her better now—'Blind, blind, blind!'
We both
kept silence for some minutes. When I raised my eyes, I found that she was
steadily observant of me. Perhaps she had followed the current of my mind; for
it seemed to me an easy one to track now, wilful as it had been once.
'You will
find her father a white-haired old man,' said my aunt, 'though a better man in
all other respects—a reclaimed man. Neither will you find him measuring all
human interests, and joys, and sorrows, with his one poor little inch-rule now.
Trust me, child, such things must shrink very much, before they can be measured
off in that way.'
'Indeed
they must,' said I.
'You will
find her,' pursued my aunt, 'as good, as beautiful, as earnest, as
disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew higher praise, Trot, I would
bestow it on her.'
There was
no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me. Oh, how had I strayed so
far away!
'If she
trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be like herself,' said my
aunt, earnest even to the filling of her eyes with tears, 'Heaven knows, her
life will be well employed! Useful and happy, as she said that day! How could
she be otherwise than useful and happy!'
'Has
Agnes any—' I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.
'Well?
Hey? Any what?' said my aunt, sharply.
'Any
lover,' said I.
'A
score,' cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. 'She might have married
twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!'
'No
doubt,' said I. 'No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy of her? Agnes
could care for no other.'
My aunt
sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her hand. Slowly raising her
eyes to mine, she said:
'I
suspect she has an attachment, Trot.'
'A
prosperous one?' said I.
'Trot,'
returned my aunt gravely, 'I can't say. I have no right to tell you even so
much. She has never confided it to me, but I suspect it.'
She
looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her tremble), that I felt
now, more than ever, that she had followed my late thoughts. I summoned all the
resolutions I had made, in all those many days and nights, and all those many
conflicts of my heart.
'If it
should be so,' I began, 'and I hope it is-'
'I don't
know that it is,' said my aunt curtly. 'You must not be ruled by my suspicions.
You must keep them secret. They are very slight, perhaps. I have no right to
speak.'
'If it
should be so,' I repeated, 'Agnes will tell me at her own good time. A sister
to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will not be reluctant to confide in me.'
My aunt
withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned them upon me; and
covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and by she put her other hand on my
shoulder; and so we both sat, looking into the past, without saying another
word, until we parted for the night.
I rode
away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days. I cannot say
that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was gaining a victory over
myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking on her face again.
The
well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into the quiet streets,
where every stone was a boy's book to me. I went on foot to the old house, and
went away with a heart too full to enter. I returned; and looking, as I passed,
through the low window of the turret-room where first Uriah Heep, and
afterwards Mr. Micawber, had been wont to sit, saw that it was a little parlour
now, and that there was no office. Otherwise the staid old house was, as to its
cleanliness and order, still just as it had been when I first saw it. I
requested the new maid who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield that a gentleman
who waited on her from a friend abroad, was there; and I was shown up the grave
old staircase (cautioned of the steps I knew so well), into the unchanged
drawing-room. The books that Agnes and I had read together, were on their
shelves; and the desk where I had laboured at my lessons, many a night, stood
yet at the same old corner of the table. All the little changes that had crept
in when the Heeps were there, were changed again. Everything was as it used to
be, in the happy time.
I stood
in a window, and looked across the ancient street at the opposite houses,
recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons, when I first came there;
and how I had used to speculate about the people who appeared at any of the
windows, and had followed them with my eyes up and down stairs, while women
went clicking along the pavement in pattens, and the dull rain fell in slanting
lines, and poured out of the water-spout yonder, and flowed into the road. The
feeling with which I used to watch the tramps, as they came into the town on
those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with their bundles drooping over
their shoulders at the ends of sticks, came freshly back to me; fraught, as
then, with the smell of damp earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation
of the very airs that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.
The
opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start and turn. Her
beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards me. She stopped and laid her
hand upon her bosom, and I caught her in my arms.
'Agnes!
my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you.'
'No, no!
I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood!'
'Dear
Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again!'
I folded
her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both silent. Presently we sat
down, side by side; and her angel-face was turned upon me with the welcome I
had dreamed of, waking and sleeping, for whole years.
She was
so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good,—I owed her so much gratitude,
she was so dear to me, that I could find no utterance for what I felt. I tried
to bless her, tried to thank her, tried to tell her (as I had often done in
letters) what an influence she had upon me; but all my efforts were in vain. My
love and joy were dumb.
With her
own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led me back to the time of our
parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she had visited, in secret, many times;
spoke to me tenderly of Dora's grave. With the unerring instinct of her noble
heart, she touched the chords of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that not
one jarred within me; I could listen to the sorrowful, distant music, and
desire to shrink from nothing it awoke. How could I, when, blended with it all,
was her dear self, the better angel of my life?
'And you,
Agnes,' I said, by and by. 'Tell me of yourself. You have hardly ever told me
of your own life, in all this lapse of time!'
'What
should I tell?' she answered, with her radiant smile. 'Papa is well. You see us
here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set at rest, our home restored to
us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood, you know all.'
'All,
Agnes?' said I.
She
looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.
'Is there
nothing else, Sister?' I said.
Her
colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again. She smiled; with a
quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.
I had
sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for, sharply painful to me as
it must be to receive that confidence, I was to discipline my heart, and do my
duty to her. I saw, however, that she was uneasy, and I let it pass.
'You have
much to do, dear Agnes?'
'With my
school?' said she, looking up again, in all her bright composure.
'Yes. It
is laborious, is it not?'
'The
labour is so pleasant,' she returned, 'that it is scarcely grateful in me to
call it by that name.'
'Nothing
good is difficult to you,' said I.
Her colour
came and went once more; and once more, as she bent her head, I saw the same
sad smile.
'You will
wait and see papa,' said Agnes, cheerfully, 'and pass the day with us? Perhaps
you will sleep in your own room? We always call it yours.'
I could
not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt's at night; but I would
pass the day there, joyfully.
'I must
be a prisoner for a little while,' said Agnes, 'but here are the old books,
Trotwood, and the old music.'
'Even the
old flowers are here,' said I, looking round; 'or the old kinds.'
'I have
found a pleasure,' returned Agnes, smiling, 'while you have been absent, in
keeping everything as it used to be when we were children. For we were very
happy then, I think.'
'Heaven
knows we were!' said I.
'And
every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,' said Agnes, with her
cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, 'has been a welcome companion. Even
this,' showing me the basket-trifle, full of keys, still hanging at her side,
'seems to jingle a kind of old tune!'
She
smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.
It was
for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious care. It was all that I
had left myself, and it was a treasure. If I once shook the foundations of the
sacred confidence and usage, in virtue of which it was given to me, it was
lost, and could never be recovered. I set this steadily before myself. The
better I loved her, the more it behoved me never to forget it.
I walked
through the streets; and, once more seeing my old adversary the butcher—now a
constable, with his staff hanging up in the shop—went down to look at the place
where I had fought him; and there meditated on Miss Shepherd and the eldest
Miss Larkins, and all the idle loves and likings, and dislikings, of that time.
Nothing seemed to have survived that time but Agnes; and she, ever a star above
me, was brighter and higher.
When I
returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he had, a couple of miles
or so out of town, where he now employed himself almost every day. I found him
as my aunt had described him. We sat down to dinner, with some half-dozen
little girls; and he seemed but the shadow of his handsome picture on the wall.
The
tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground in my memory,
pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield taking no wine, and I
desiring none, we went up-stairs; where Agnes and her little charges sang and
played, and worked. After tea the children left us; and we three sat together,
talking of the bygone days.
'My part
in them,' said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head, 'has much matter for
regret—for deep regret, and deep contrition, Trotwood, you well know. But I
would not cancel it, if it were in my power.'
I could
readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.
'I should
cancel with it,' he pursued, 'such patience and devotion, such fidelity, such a
child's love, as I must not forget, no! even to forget myself.'
'I
understand you, sir,' I softly said. 'I hold it—I have always held it—in
veneration.'
'But no
one knows, not even you,' he returned, 'how much she has done, how much she has
undergone, how hard she has striven. Dear Agnes!'
She had
put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and was very, very pale.
'Well,
well!' he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw, some trial she had
borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with what my aunt had told me. 'Well! I
have never told you, Trotwood, of her mother. Has anyone?'
'Never,
sir.'
'It's not
much—though it was much to suffer. She married me in opposition to her father's
wish, and he renounced her. She prayed him to forgive her, before my Agnes came
into this world. He was a very hard man, and her mother had long been dead. He
repulsed her. He broke her heart.'
Agnes
leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
'She had
an affectionate and gentle heart,' he said; 'and it was broken. I knew its
tender nature very well. No one could, if I did not. She loved me dearly, but
was never happy. She was always labouring, in secret, under this distress; and
being delicate and downcast at the time of his last repulse—for it was not the
first, by many—pined away and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old; and the
grey hair that you recollect me with, when you first came.' He kissed Agnes on
her cheek.
'My love
for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was all unhealthy then. I
say no more of that. I am not speaking of myself, Trotwood, but of her mother,
and of her. If I give you any clue to what I am, or to what I have been, you
will unravel it, I know. What Agnes is, I need not say. I have always read
something of her poor mother's story, in her character; and so I tell it you
tonight, when we three are again together, after such great changes. I have
told it all.'
His bowed
head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a more pathetic meaning from
it than they had had before. If I had wanted anything by which to mark this
night of our re-union, I should have found it in this.
Agnes
rose up from her father's side, before long; and going softly to her piano,
played some of the old airs to which we had often listened in that place.
'Have you
any intention of going away again?' Agnes asked me, as I was standing by.
'What
does my sister say to that?'
'I hope not.'
'Then I
have no such intention, Agnes.'
'I think
you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,' she said, mildly. 'Your growing
reputation and success enlarge your power of doing good; and if I could spare
my brother,' with her eyes upon me, 'perhaps the time could not.'
'What I
am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best.'
'I made
you, Trotwood?'
'Yes!
Agnes, my dear girl!' I said, bending over her. 'I tried to tell you, when we
met today, something that has been in my thoughts since Dora died. You
remember, when you came down to me in our little room—pointing upward, Agnes?'
'Oh,
Trotwood!' she returned, her eyes filled with tears. 'So loving, so confiding,
and so young! Can I ever forget?'
'As you
were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you have ever been to me.
Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading me to something better; ever
directing me to higher things!'
She only
shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad quiet smile.
'And I am
so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you, that there is no name for
the affection of my heart. I want you to know, yet don't know how to tell you,
that all my life long I shall look up to you, and be guided by you, as I have
been through the darkness that is past. Whatever betides, whatever new ties you
may form, whatever changes may come between us, I shall always look to you, and
love you, as I do now, and have always done. You will always be my solace and
resource, as you have always been. Until I die, my dearest sister, I shall see
you always before me, pointing upward!'
She put
her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and of what I said; although
I praised her very far beyond her worth. Then she went on softly playing, but
without removing her eyes from me. 'Do you know, what I have heard tonight,
Agnes,' said I, strangely seems to be a part of the feeling with which I
regarded you when I saw you first—with which I sat beside you in my rough
school-days?'
'You knew
I had no mother,' she replied with a smile, 'and felt kindly towards me.'
'More
than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this story, that there was
something inexplicably gentle and softened, surrounding you; something that
might have been sorrowful in someone else (as I can now understand it was), but
was not so in you.'
She
softly played on, looking at me still.
'Will you
laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?'
'No!'
'Or at my
saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that you could be faithfully
affectionate against all discouragement, and never cease to be so, until you
ceased to live?—-Will you laugh at such a dream?'
'Oh, no!
Oh, no!'
For an
instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even in the start it gave
me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and looking at me with her own calm
smile.
As I rode
back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like a restless memory, I
thought of this, and feared she was not happy. I was not happy; but, thus far,
I had faithfully set the seal upon the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing
upward, thought of her as pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery
to come, I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her what
the strife had been within me when I loved her here.
To be continued
