‘A charming woman indeed, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘as amiable, I am sure, as it was possible to be!
Mrs. Chillip’s opinion is, that her spirit has been entirely broken since her marriage, and that she is all but melancholy mad.
And the ladies,’ observed Mr. Chillip, timorously, ‘are great observers, sir.’
‘I suppose she was to be subdued and broken to their detestable mould, Heaven help her!’ said I. ‘And she has been.’
‘Well, sir, there were violent quarrels at first, I assure you,’ said Mr. Chillip; ‘but she is quite a shadow now.
Would it be considered forward if I was to say to you, sir, in confidence, that since the sister came to help, the brother and sister between them have nearly reduced her to a state of imbecility?’
I told him I could easily believe it.
I found it not difficult, in the excitement of Mr. Chillip’s own brain, under his potations of negus, to divert his attention from this topic to his own affairs, on which, for the next half-hour, he was quite loquacious; giving me to understand, among other pieces of information, that he was then at the Gray’s Inn Coffee-house to lay his professional evidence before a Commission of Lunacy, touching the state of mind of a patient who had become deranged from excessive drinking.
Do you know it was some time before I recovered the conduct of that alarming lady, on the night of your birth, Mr. Copperfield?’
I told him that I was going down to my aunt, the Dragon of that night, early in the morning; and that she was one of the most tender-hearted and excellent of women, as he would know full well if he knew her better.
The mere notion of the possibility of his ever seeing her again, appeared to terrify him.
He replied with a small pale smile,
‘Is she so, indeed, sir?
Really?’ and almost immediately called for a candle, and went to bed, as if he were not quite safe anywhere else. He did not actually stagger under the negus; but I should think his placid little pulse must have made two or three more beats in a minute, than it had done since the great night of my aunt’s disappointment, when she struck at him with her bonnet.
Thoroughly tired, I went to bed too, at midnight; passed the next day on the Dover coach; burst safe and sound into my aunt’s old parlour while she was at tea (she wore spectacles now); and was received by her, and Mr. Dick, and dear old Peggotty, who acted as housekeeper, with open arms and tears of joy. My aunt was mightily amused, when we began to talk composedly, by my account of my meeting with Mr. Chillip, and of his holding her in such dread remembrance; and both she and Peggotty had a great deal to say about my poor mother’s second husband, and ‘that murdering woman of a sister’,—on whom I think no pain or penalty would have induced my aunt to bestow any Christian or Proper Name, or any other designation.
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.