David Copperfield
donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding
how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming
that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was
ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all,
I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen,
and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to
comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were of the more
ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon
at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually
starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small
quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she
would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ and go out to
the assault.
The bath was a great comfort. For I began to be sensible of acute pains
in my limbs from lying out in the fields, and was now so tired and low
that I could hardly keep myself awake for five minutes together. When I
had bathed, they (I mean my aunt and Janet) enrobed me in a shirt and a
pair of trousers belonging to Mr. Dick, and tied me up in two or three
great shawls. What sort of bundle I looked like, I don’t know, but I
felt a very hot one. Feeling also very faint and drowsy, I soon lay down
on the sofa again and fell asleep.
It might have been a dream, originating in the fancy which had occupied
my mind so long, but I awoke with the impression that my aunt had come
and bent over me, and had put my hair away from my face, and laid my
head more comfortably, and had then stood looking at me. The words,
‘Pretty fellow,’ or ‘Poor fellow,’ seemed to be in my ears, too; but
certainly there was nothing else, when I awoke, to lead me to believe
that they had been uttered by my aunt, who sat in the bow-window gazing
at the sea from behind the green fan, which was mounted on a kind of
swivel, and turned any way.
We dined soon after I awoke, off a roast fowl and a pudding; I sitting
at table, not unlike a trussed bird myself, and moving my arms with
considerable difficulty. But as my aunt had swathed me up, I made no
complaint of being inconvenienced. All this time I was deeply anxious
to know what she was going to do with me; but she took her dinner in
profound silence, except when she occasionally fixed her eyes on me
sitting opposite, and said, ‘Mercy upon us!’ which did not by any means
relieve my anxiety.
The cloth being drawn, and some sherry put upon the table (of which I
had a glass), my aunt sent up for Mr. Dick again, who joined us, and
looked as wise as he could when she requested him to attend to my story,
which she elicited from me, gradually, by a course of questions. During
my recital, she kept her eyes on Mr. Dick, who I thought would have gone
to sleep but for that, and who, whensoever he lapsed into a smile, was
checked by a frown from my aunt.
‘Whatever possessed that poor unfortunate Baby, that she must go and be
married again,’ said my aunt, when I had finished, ‘I can’t conceive.’
‘Perhaps she fell in love with her second husband,’ Mr. Dick suggested.
‘Fell in love!’ repeated my aunt. ‘What do you mean? What business had
she to do it?’
‘Perhaps,’ Mr. Dick simpered, after thinking a little, ‘she did it for
pleasure.’
‘Pleasure, indeed!’ replied my aunt. ‘A mighty pleasure for the poor
Baby to fix her simple faith upon any dog of a fellow, certain to
ill-use her in some way or other. What did she propose to herself,
I should like to know! She had had one husband. She had seen David
Copperfield out of the world, who was always running after wax dolls
from his cradle. She had got a baby--oh, there were a pair of babies
when she gave birth to this child sitting here, that Friday night!--and
what more did she want?’
Mr. Dick secretly shook his head at me, as if he thought there was no
getting over this.
‘She couldn’t even have a baby like anybody else,’ said my aunt. ‘Where
was this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood? Not forthcoming. Don’t tell
me!’
Mr. Dick seemed quite frightened.
‘That little man of a doctor, with his head on one side,’ said my aunt,
‘Jellips, or whatever his name was, what was he about? All he could do,
was to say to me, like a robin redbreast--as he is--“It’s a boy.” A boy!
Yah, the imbecility of the whole set of ‘em!’
The heartiness of the ejaculation startled Mr. Dick exceedingly; and me,
too, if I am to tell the truth.
‘And then, as if this was not enough, and she had not stood sufficiently
in the light of this child’s sister, Betsey Trotwood,’ said my aunt,
‘she marries a second time--goes and marries a Murderer--or a man with
a name like it--and stands in THIS child’s light! And the natural
consequence is, as anybody but a baby might have foreseen, that he
prowls and wanders. He’s as like Cain before he was grown up, as he can
be.’
Mr. Dick looked hard at me, as if to identify me in this character.
‘And then there’s that woman with the Pagan name,’ said my aunt, ‘that
Peggotty, she goes and gets married next. Because she has not seen
enough of the evil attending such things, she goes and gets married
next, as the child relates. I only hope,’ said my aunt, shaking her
head, ‘that her husband is one of those Poker husbands who abound in the
newspapers, and will beat her well with one.’
I could not bear to hear my old nurse so decried, and made the subject
of such a wish. I told my aunt that indeed she was mistaken. That
Peggotty was the best, the truest, the most faithful, most devoted, and
most self-denying friend and servant in the world; who had ever loved
me dearly, who had ever loved my mother dearly; who had held my mother’s
dying head upon her arm, on whose face my mother had imprinted her last
grateful kiss. And my remembrance of them both, choking me, I broke down
as I was trying to say that her home was my home, and that all she had
was mine, and that I would have gone to her for shelter, but for her
humble station, which made me fear that I might bring some trouble on
her--I broke down, I say, as I was trying to say so, and laid my face in
my hands upon the table.
‘Well, well!’ said my aunt, ‘the child is right to stand by those who
have stood by him--Janet! Donkeys!’
I thoroughly believe that but for those unfortunate donkeys, we should
have come to a good understanding; for my aunt had laid her hand on my
shoulder, and the impulse was upon me, thus emboldened, to embrace her
and beseech her protection. But the interruption, and the disorder she
was thrown into by the struggle outside, put an end to all softer ideas
for the present, and kept my aunt indignantly declaiming to Mr. Dick
about her determination to appeal for redress to the laws of her
country, and to bring actions for trespass against the whole donkey
proprietorship of Dover, until tea-time.
After tea, we sat at the window--on the look-out, as I imagined, from
my aunt’s sharp expression of face, for more invaders--until dusk, when
Janet set candles, and a backgammon-board, on the table, and pulled down
the blinds.
‘Now, Mr. Dick,’ said my aunt, with her grave look, and her forefinger
up as before, ‘I am going to ask you another question. Look at this
child.’
‘David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick, with an attentive, puzzled face.
‘Exactly so,’ returned my aunt. ‘What would you do with him, now?’
‘Do with David’s son?’ said Mr. Dick.
‘Ay,’ replied my aunt, ‘with David’s son.’
‘Oh!’ said Mr. Dick. ‘Yes. Do with--I should put him to bed.’
‘Janet!’ cried my aunt, with the same complacent triumph that I had
remarked before. ‘Mr. Dick sets us all right. If the bed is ready, we’ll
take him up to it.’
Janet reporting it to be quite ready, I was taken up to it; kindly, but
in some sort like a prisoner; my aunt going in front and Janet bringing
up the rear. The only circumstance which gave me any new hope, was my
aunt’s stopping on the stairs to inquire about a smell of fire that was
prevalent there; and janet’s replying that she had been making tinder
down in the kitchen, of my old shirt. But there were no other clothes in
my room than the odd heap of things I wore; and when I was left there,
with a little taper which my aunt forewarned me would burn exactly five
minutes, I heard them lock my door on the outside. Turning these things
over in my mind I deemed it possible that my aunt, who could know
nothing of me, might suspect I had a habit of running away, and took
precautions, on that account, to have me in safe keeping.
The room was a pleasant one, at the top of the house, overlooking the
sea, on which the moon was shining brilliantly. After I had said my
prayers, and the candle had burnt out, I remember how I still sat
looking at the moonlight on the water, as if I could hope to read my
fortune in it, as in a bright book; or to see my mother with her child,
coming from Heaven, along that shining path, to look upon me as she had
looked when I last saw her sweet face. I remember how the solemn feeling
with which at length I turned my eyes away, yielded to the sensation of
gratitude and rest which the sight of the white-curtained bed--and how
much more the lying softly down upon it, nestling in the snow-white
sheets!--inspired. I remember how I thought of all the solitary places
under the night sky where I had slept, and how I prayed that I never
might be houseless any more, and never might forget the houseless. I
remember how I seemed to float, then, down the melancholy glory of that
track upon the sea, away into the world of dreams.
CHAPTER 14. MY AUNT MAKES UP HER MIND ABOUT ME
On going down in the morning, I found my aunt musing so profoundly over
the breakfast table, with her elbow on the tray, that the contents of
the urn had overflowed the teapot and were laying the whole table-cloth
under water, when my entrance put her meditations to flight. I felt sure
that I had been the subject of her reflections, and was more than ever
anxious to know her intentions towards me. Yet I dared not express my
anxiety, lest it should give her offence.
My eyes, however, not being so much under control as my tongue, were
attracted towards my aunt very often during breakfast. I never could
look at her for a few moments together but I found her looking at me--in
an odd thoughtful manner, as if I were an immense way off, instead of
being on the other side of the small round table. When she had finished
her breakfast, my aunt very deliberately leaned back in her chair,
knitted her brows, folded her arms, and contemplated me at her leisure,
with such a fixedness of attention that I was quite overpowered by
embarrassment. Not having as yet finished my own breakfast, I attempted
to hide my confusion by proceeding with it; but my knife tumbled over my
fork, my fork tripped up my knife, I chipped bits of bacon a surprising
height into the air instead of cutting them for my own eating, and
choked myself with my tea, which persisted in going the wrong way
instead of the right one, until I gave in altogether, and sat blushing
under my aunt’s close scrutiny.
‘Hallo!’ said my aunt, after a long time.
I looked up, and met her sharp bright glance respectfully.
‘I have written to him,’ said my aunt.
‘To--?’
‘To your father-in-law,’ said my aunt. ‘I have sent him a letter that
I’ll trouble him to attend to, or he and I will fall out, I can tell
him!’
‘Does he know where I am, aunt?’ I inquired, alarmed.
‘I have told him,’ said my aunt, with a nod.
‘Shall I--be--given up to him?’ I faltered.
‘I don’t know,’ said my aunt. ‘We shall see.’
‘Oh! I can’t think what I shall do,’ I exclaimed, ‘if I have to go back
to Mr. Murdstone!’
‘I don’t know anything about it,’ said my aunt, shaking her head. ‘I