It made me sick at heart to see, and my hand recoils from writing it.
‘Come, fellow-partner!’ said Uriah, at last, ‘I’ll give you another one, and I umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the divinest of her sex.’
Her father had his empty glass in his hand.
I saw him set it down, look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrink back in his elbow-chair.
‘I’m an umble individual to give you her elth,’ proceeded Uriah, ‘but I admire—adore her.’
No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I think, could have been more terrible to me, than the mental endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands.
‘Agnes,’ said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing what the nature of his action was,
‘Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to say, the divinest of her sex.
May I speak out, among friends?
To be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her usband—’
Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with which her father rose up from the table!
‘What’s the matter?’ said Uriah, turning of a deadly colour. ‘You are not gone mad, after all, Mr. Wickfield, I hope?
If I say I’ve an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to it as another man.
I have a better right to it than any other man!’
I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by everything that I could think of, oftenest of all by his love for Agnes, to calm himself a little.
He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair, beating his head, trying to force me from him, and to force himself from me, not answering a word, not looking at or seeing anyone; blindly striving for he knew not what, his face all staring and distorted—a frightful spectacle.
I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned manner, not to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me. I besought him to think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to recollect how Agnes and I had grown up together, how I honoured her and loved her, how she was his pride and joy.
I tried to bring her idea before him in any form; I even reproached him with not having firmness to spare her the knowledge of such a scene as this.
I may have effected something, or his wildness may have spent itself; but by degrees he struggled less, and began to look at me—strangely at first, then with recognition in his eyes.
At length he said,
‘I know, Trotwood!
My darling child and you—I know!
But look at him!’
He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently very much out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.
‘Look at my torturer,’ he replied.
‘Before him I have step by step abandoned name and reputation, peace and quiet, house and home.’
‘I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and quiet, and your house and home too,’ said Uriah, with a sulky, hurried, defeated air of compromise.
‘Don’t be foolish, Mr. Wickfield.
If I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I suppose?
There’s no harm done.’
‘I looked for single motives in everyone,’ said Mr. Wickfield, ‘and I was satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest.
But see what he is—oh, see what he is!’
‘You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,’ cried Uriah, with his long forefinger pointing towards me.
‘He’ll say something presently—mind you!—he’ll be sorry to have said afterwards, and you’ll be sorry to have heard!’
‘I’ll say anything!’ cried Mr. Wickfield, with a desperate air.
‘Why should I not be in all the world’s power if I am in yours?’
‘Mind! I tell you!’ said Uriah, continuing to warn me. ‘If you don’t stop his mouth, you’re not his friend! Why shouldn’t you be in all the world’s power, Mr. Wickfield?
Because you have got a daughter.
You and me know what we know, don’t we?
Let sleeping dogs lie—who wants to rouse ‘em?
I don’t.
Can’t you see I am as umble as I can be?
I tell you, if I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry.
What would you have, sir?’
‘Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood!’ exclaimed Mr. Wickfield, wringing his hands.
‘What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house!
I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreary road I have traversed since!
Weak indulgence has ruined me.
Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness.
My natural grief for my child’s mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease.