Chapter-7
I would have trouble saying whether I was glad or sad when my five years at Canterbury school came to a close. At 17, I was reasonably expected to make some worthwhile place for myself in the world. Such grand and misty ideas I had about the glamour of being a young man abroad in the world, making my own decisions, going my own way, turning society to the better by my presence.
I’d gone home to Dover after graduation, to relax, to enjoy the company of Aunt Betsey and Mr Bick, and to figure out what I was going to do next. After a dozen or more serious conversation about my future, my aunt suggested I might gain some clearer view of what I wanted if I had a temporary change of scene. She thought a trip to the sea at Yarmouth and some time spent with Peggotty and her family might be just the answer.
I went first to Canterbury to say goodbye to Agnes and Mr Wickfield, and to pack the books and clothing still left in my room there. In the last few moments before I boarded the coach for London, while we had some time alone, I told Agnes how strange it felt not to see her every evening, not to have her wise advice on every subject and her gentle sense of fun that kept all of life in a clearer perspective.
“I’m worried about my father, Trotwood, especially now that you’re leaving,” she said. “Have you noticed the change in him, a gradual change over these years? What is it?”
I’d seen that his hands shook and his words were sometimes hard to make out. I believed it was the result of the decanters of red wine he drank, and I told Agnes that.
“What worries me most,” she said, “is that whenever he is in his worst condition, Uriah comes to him for some business matter that has to be worked on right that moment. Knowing he’s performed poorly, he feels that much worse, and so he drinks that much more the next day. And again Uriah comes for him. Father relies on Heep more and more now that you’re not here to keep him company.”
Uriah and Mr Wickfield came to say my trunk had been stashed on the coach and the driver was impatient to leave. Agnes and I hugged farewell. Mr Wickfield told me I would always be welcome in his home, and Uriah slipped the chill-skinned bones of his hand into mine for one last, unpleasant shake. Then I was off to Yarmouth and the sea.
We took the Dover Road to London, the same road I’d walked and slept beside five years before, and arrived at a hotel in Charing Cross in late afternoon. I was resolved to act older and more polished than I really felt, and to do only grown-up things, so I attended a performance of Julius Caesar at the Covent Garden Theatre. When I returned to the hotel, I was still caught up in its excitement, and much too awake for bed. I went instead to the coffee-room and sat watching the fire and recalling the play until long past one a.m.
I don’t know when I first noticed the handsome young man who sat reading on the leather sofa across the room. I passed him with a quick glance, then stopped, and looked back. No, could it be? I stepped across the carpet and stood looking at him.
“Steerforth? James Steerforth, is it you?” I asked in not much more than a whisper.
He looked at me and I could tell he hadn’t a clue who I might be.
“I’m afraid you don’t. It’s little Copperfield, isn’t it?” he suddenly exclaimed and rose to shake my hand.
“I never, never, never was so glad, Steerforth! I’m overjoyed to see you,” I gushed.
Copperfield, old boy, don’t overdo it.” But he seemed pleased to see how meeting him affected me.
I told him quickly why I was in the hotel, and asked what had brought him there.
“Well, I’m at Oxford College now, and I’m going to visit my mother. The roads are in awful condition this time of year and our house in boring, so I stopped here and wasted my evening at a dreadful play at Covent.”
I had no reason to tell him how I’d loved the play—my maturity and, therefore, worth were on the line.
“So, tell me what you’re doing,” he urged me. “Where are you going and what’s in your future?”
When I explained the purpose of my travel to Yarmouth, and the lack of any distinct vision of my future, he suggested I should join him for a day or two at his mother’s house in the London suburb of Highgate.
“She’s a little vain and boring about me, Copperfield, but she’ll like you a lot,” he said, “She likes anyone who likes me.”
It was dusk when the coach left us at an old brick house on the summit of a hill in Highgate. Steerforth’s mother hurried out to met us—to meet Steerforth. We were all well into the front hallway before she even noticed I was there, dragging in his trunks and cases.
When I was introduced, she hugged me, too, and said she’d heard her son speak of the little lad who thought him the bravest and brightest at the school, and she could tell I was a smart boy myself to have recognized her son’s great value.
We all sat together in the afternoon, my friends, his mother, and her companion Rosa Dartle—a sharp-angled woman with a large scar along her upper lip. When I later asked Steerforth about that scar, he said, “I did it.”
“It must have been an unfortunate accident,” I exclaimed.
“Not really. I was a youngster and she did something that made me angry, so I threw a hammer at her. I suppose I wasn’t an angel of a child.”
I found there was no end to Mrs Steerforth’s devotion to her son. She seemed able to think or speak of nothing else, and turned every subject to one angle or another until it somehow focused itself on James. After supper, she showed me pictures of his infancy, and locks of his hair. She brought out grade reports from his years at Salem House. She was about to begin a reading of all the letters he’d ever written her when Steerforth put an end to it.
“Copperfield is going to the sea, Mother. To Yarmouth,” he said.
“I’m going to see a dear old friend who lived with my mother and me in Blunderstone,” I told them, “And to see her brother and his family. Daniel Peggotty, remember, Steerforth? You met him once at school.”
“He had his son with him, right? A big lump of a boy.”
“His nephew,” I corrected, “He also has a niece, Em’ly. Ham and Em’ly aren’t related, except by being orphaned at young ages and both being adopted into Daniel’s big heart. The countryside round Yarmouth is full of people who’ve known his generosity and kindness. He’s a remarkable man. Why don’t you come to Yarmouth with me, and meet him again?”
“What an idea! It would be worth the journey just to see how people like that live,” Steerforth said with a smile.
I was wondering what “people like that” meant when Miss Dartle asked directly, “Are they really animals and clods, those people who live in the country and by the water?”
“There’s a wide separation between them and us, Rosa,” was Steerforth’s indifferent response. “They’re not sensitive like us, not so easily shocked. And like their coarse, rough skins, they’re not readily wounded.”
I believed my friend had said all this as a joke, but no one laughed and none of them disputed his words.
In the week I spent at Highgate, Steerforth’s servant Littimer was often and discreetly present at most of our activities. He got horses for us, and Steerforth, who knew how to do everything, gave me lessons in riding. He brought us slim swords and Steerforth taught me something of fencing. He produced gloves and Steerforth improved my boxing.
At week’s end, Steerforth decided to go to Yarmouth with me, but to leave the always helpful Littimer at Highgate. I wasn’t disappointed that he wouldn’t be going along because I couldn’t shake the feeling that Littimer was not so respectable as he appeared.
Steerforth and I spent the first night of our seaside visit at a local inn because the coach had arrived too late for us to present ourselves to Peggoty and Barkis or to Daniel and his household. In the morning, I led him around the village and pointed out all the important places that I hadn’t visited in six of seven years. I was relieved when he pronounced the place good, if strange and a bit out-of-the way.
“And when are you off to your friend Peggotty’s, Davy?” he asked, when we turned back towards the inn.
“Now, James. I want to surprise her and Barkis. Will you come along?”
“I think I’ll miss the squeals and tears of renewed friendship if you don’t mind, Davy,” my companion laughed, “But I’ll be glad to join you later.”
I drew him a crude map of Peggotty’s house, then waved goodbye and walked to the Barkis cottage.
Although Peggotty and I had kept in touch almost weekly by letter, we hadn’t seen one another in nearly seven years. Those years had brought big changes in my appearance, and when she opened the door to me, I could see no hint of recognition on her face.
“Peggotty!” I cried to her, “You look just the same as ever.”
There was still another moment of uncertainty before she leapt a foot straight up into the air, flinging her arms open and squealing, “Davy, Davy, my darling boy, Davy!” loud enough to be heard several houses downwind.
We hugged and spun around, laughing and crying, and when I lifted her off her sturdy legs high into the air, some of her tears splashed on my nose and the top of my head. Never before and never since have I had such a welcome in any place.
When we’d got some control of ourselves and gone into her kitchen, Peggotty told me Barkis was seldom out of bed, his health being so poor, but that he’d be cheered by the sight of me—and so he was, for we sat with him at least an hour and we talked about those early trips from the Rookery to Yarmouth.
It wasn’t long until Steerforth popped up at the door. His easy-spirited good humour and handsome looks won Peggotty completely. We stayed on for dinner and Steerforth was the star, charming our hosts with stories of their wonderful Davy at Salem House.
We left the cottage in the early evening and walked over the dark, wintry sands to Daniel’s boat-house. The wind wailed around us more mournfully than I had ever heard.
“This is a wild kind of place, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Dismal enough in the dark,” he said, “and the sea roars like it is hungry for us.”
Daniel and his family were not expecting us.
“Mas’r Davy! It’s Mas’r Davy!” Ham and Daniel shouted to Em’ly and several neighbour women who looked at us in astonishment. The men bounded across the floor to clap me on the back and tug me into the room.
“Why, if this isn’t the brightest night of my life,” cried Daniel, “I’m a boiled shellfish.”
Everyone spoke at once, me introducing Steerforth, them introducing the neighbours, me explaining we’d just been to see Peggotty, them saying they were toasting the coming wedding of Ham and Em’ly.
Again my capacity for surprise was tested. Ham and Em’ly—why, I’d never imagined such a pairing. But when Ham took the floor to say to all of us just how much the darling girl meant to him and how strongly he pledged to protect and love her all his life, they seemed the ideal couple.
Into all of this merriment, Steerforth fit perfectly. He joined in the toasting and the well wishing as if these folks were lifelong friends, listening with quiet respect to Daniel’s ramblings about his dreams for his adopted children’s futures, and charming the neighbour ladies with somewhat naughty tales of life in London.
Em’ly, shy and untravelled and yearning to be more than all she saw around her, sat by the fire fascinated by Steerforth, the handsome visitor she’d never go. She smiled at him when he smiled at her, and laughed at his stories, and watched him intensely with a look I might then have taken for wonder but that now I knew was the first step towards despair.
We stayed on in Yarmouth for two weeks. I spent much of my time with Peggotty and Barkis, returning each night to the room they kept for me. Steerforth went boating with Daniel most days. I’d stop at Daniel’s each evening to share the news of the day with him and Em’ly and Ham, and then Steerforth and I would walk into town for dinner and conversation at the local pub.
One windy night I found Steerforth alone in Daniel’s boat-house, sitting so lost in his thoughts before the fire that my greeting all but knocked him off his chair.
“Have I called you down from the stars?” I asked him.
“No,” he answered, “nowhere so lofty as that. I was looking at the pictures in the fire.” He took a piece of burning wood and quickly stirred the flames, as if the act could remove the faces he saw there and keep me from seeing those same things.
We said nothing for several minutes.
“Copperfield,” he said quietly, “a loving mother is a gift, but I could have used a father to guide me better into manhood. And I wish for all the world that I could do a better job of guiding myself through it now. It would be better to be poor Daniel or big, lumpy Ham than to be James Steerforth, twenty times richer and twenty times smarter. I’m a torment to myself, and I’m a torment to others.”
There was nothing I could say, so deep was his unhappiness.
“I’m heavy company for myself sometimes,” he mused, “What old women call ‘the horrors’ have been creeping over me this evening. I’ve become afraid of myself.” He straightened and gave a little laugh. “But, enough of this gloom! Must we abandon this buccanner life tomorrow, Davy? I wish there was nothing to do but toss about on the sea.”
“You’d only wish that until the novelty wore off, James,” I said, teasing.
“You’re right I tire quickly of just about everything,” he agreed, “Did I tell you I’ve bought a boat? It was an impulse, perhaps, but when I’m not here Daniel will keep it and use it in place of that rotted tub of his. She’s being repainted and made ship-shape now. And she’ll be renamed ‘The Little Em’ly.”
At once I marvelled at my friend and at the natural generosity that had prompted a purchase that would be such a help to Daniel. What kind of monsters hid in his heart to frighten him of himself?
When I returned to Peggotty’s house later that evening, Ham was sitting on the front steps.
“Anything wrong, Ham? Is it Barkis?” I asked.
“It’s Em’ly. She’s talking to someone inside.”
“Who is it?”
“A young woman she knew from school, Martha. Pretty pitiful creature she is, too. We, Em’ly and I, were out walking this evening just before the wind came up so wild, and we heard a woman’s voice calling out to Em’ly for help. ‘Have a woman’s heart to help me,’ she cried, over and over. Clear she’s been living a hard time at the waterside, with the sailors and the boatboys., one eye’s been blackened and there are bruises old and new on her arms. Em’ly couldn’t take her to Daniel’s place—it would have upset him too much to see her with his beloved Em’ly—so we brought her here.”
Just then Peggotty opened the cottage door to call Ham inside, and motioned me along, too. Em’ly spoke first: “Martha wants to go to London.”
“Why to London?” asked Ham.
“Because she knows no one there,” Em’ly said.
“If you’ll help me get there, I’ll try to make a better go of it than I have here. Please help me get off these streets.”
Em’ly rose and went to Ham. “Can we help her?” she asked in a whisper.
Ham took a little canvas bag from his jacket pocket and poured its few silver coins into her hand. “It’s yours, Em’ly, to use as you want. Everything I have on earth is yours,” he said.
Em’ly returned to Martha and sat beside her, talking softly for some minutes. Then the women stood and walked to the door. Martha gripped Em’ly’s hand. “God bless the goodness of you and your fine people,” she said, looking at each of us in turn, then closed the door behind her.
At once, Em’ly began to cry, deep and clawing sobs shaking her so that Ham picked her up and placed her on the cushioned sofa.
“Don’t cry, my Em’ly,” he soothed, “Don’t cry so, darling.”
“Ham!” she exclaimed, still crying pitifully, “I’m not so good a person as I should be.”
I’m not so thankful as I have every reason to be.”
“I’m mean to you, Ham. I know it. And I’m moody and cross and ungrateful for your love, when others have not a moment of love in their lives or any strong arm to help them stand.”
“Em’ly,” Ham exclaimed, “I’m happy every day just to think of you, just to see you.”
“That’s because you’re good, not because I am. It would have been wiser for you to have fallen in love with someone better than I, Ham, someone not vain, someone as bound to you as you are to me.”
All of Em’ly’s suffering was too much for Peggotty. “Wisdom has not much to do with love, Em’ly,” she said, sitting down beside her and gathering her into a hug. “We love whom we love, and we do the best we can at it. None of us is ever as good as we could be, or should be. We give and take our love as a kind of grace.”
Peggotty’s embrace calmed Em’ly’s sobs, and we all took our turn at coaxing her, by degrees, back into a lighter mood. When she was at last able to smile and then to laugh, Ham led her to the door and I watched them walk down the path, Em’ly with both hands holding Ham’s large arm and leaning in close against the wind.
We left the seaside next morning. We departed to the regret of a good many friends, old and new, making promises to return soon with every backward wave.
For some time we didn’t talk. I sat wondering how long it would be until I would see those dear faces again, and Steerforth engaged in his own musings.
“So, Davy, at breakfast you mentioned a letter from your aunt,” Steerforth broke through my thoughts. “Not bad news, I hope.”
“She reminds me that I came out on this expedition to take a look around and think about what I’m going to do with my life.”
“Have you done so?” he asked.
“Not at all! To tell the truth, I’d forgotten all about it.”
“Well, took about you now and decide,” he laughed as he stuck his head out the carriage windows, first left and then right. “Bad news, my friend. There’s nothing much out there but flat meadow beside boggy swamp.”
“Not very promising unless I’m meant to be a wildflower or a crocodile,” I said, “Aunt Betsey has suggested a career as a civil attorney.”
“Dry stuff, Davy. Nowhere so interesting as criminal law, but very respectable and well paid. All in all, not a bad idea.”
“My aunt is coming in from Dover to meet me and she has a law firm in mind where I could apprentice. We’ll go and have a look.” I said.
Steerforth and I said our goodbyes at the coach office and I met my aunt for dinner at Lincoln’s Inn.
We were finishing our dessert when she said, “Well, Trot, what you think of the civil attorney plan?”
“I’ve thought of it and talked it over with Steeforth, and I like it.” I exclaimed, “I like it a great deal, in fact. But won’t my apprenticeship cost a great deal of money?”
“It will cost a thousand pounds, Trot.”
“You’ve already spent so much on my education, and everything else I’ve needed you’ve supplied. Are you certain you want to spend another huge sum?”
“If I have any object in my life, Trot,” my aunt said, “it’s to provide for your being a good, sensible, and happy man. And if this career leads to that, no more can I ask.”
“Then let’s go and see the firm you’ve thought of first thing tomorrow, and I can get to work,” I said.
The offices of Spenlow and Jorkins were in Doctors’ Commons, set in such a way under a series of arches and around a few twists of a side road that although it was in the heart of London, the sound of the great city was much muted there.
Mr Spenlow called us into his private room. He was a tiny, white-haired man wearing the stiffest collar I had ever seen. The stiffness seemed to stretch the entire length of his body for he never sat, and when he moved, it was as one piece. When he bent to look at papers on his desk, he seemed to bend from the shoes forward.
“Do you wish a career in civil law, Copperfield?” he asked. “Wills and marriage agreements and Acts of Parliament are the stuff of our days, you know. Not much romance in it.”
I told him I thought it would suit me well, but that I hoped there would be a period during which I could try it and see if I wished to continue.
“Quite so. We always have a month’s initiation. If you don’t want to continue, there is no financial obligation. How does that sound?”
Aunt Betsey and Mr Spenlow concluded the necessary arrangements and we settled on my beginning my month’s probation the following Monday. Then we spent the balance of the afternoon looking for a comfortable boarding house in the neighbourhood where I could be close to the offices. When my aunt shared her worries about how Mr Bick was faring back in Dover, I urged her to go home and look after him as soon as she could, assuring her that I was then much better prepared for life in London than I had been the first time there.
Two days after my aunt had left for Dover, and the day after I had begun to make myself at home in Mrs Crupp’s boarding house near Doctors’ Commons, a messenger brought a note from Agnes. She had written to say she was in London at the home of her father’s friend, Mr Waterbrook, and needed to speak with me as soon as possible. I ran my housekeeping errands and was on her doorstep at four o’ clock.
How good it was to see her! She asked to hear all about my trip to the sea, and she wanted news of my upcoming apprenticeship. When at last she asked if I had seen Uriah Heep since I’d been in London, I knew we had come to the serious reason for her visit.
“Heep?” I asked, “in London?”
“He comes to Mr Waterbrook’s office almost every week—on disagreeable business, Trotwood. I believe he is going to enter into partnership with my father.”
“No Don’t tell me that worm has wiggled himself into such a promotion,” I exclaimed, disgusted and unable to imagine that Mr Wickfield could be such a fool.
“You recall our conversation about the changes in father?” Agnes asked. “It wasn’t more than two or three days after that when Uriah told my father he was going to have to look elsewhere for a better job. He’s convinced father that he’s needed, mostly by setting up business situations when father is not well and then seeming to rescue the dealings after father has bungled things. My father is afraid of losing Uriah’s help and he persuaded him to stay by offering the partnership. Uriah claims to be humble and grateful, but it’s he who has the power over my father, and he makes a hard use of it.”
“Agnes, you can’t permit this. You’ve got to change your father’s mind.”
“It’s no use, Trotwood. Father loves me dearly, but he fears himself and he fears Uriah—and in this case that fear is stronger than love. And I must ask you, Trotwood, to be friendly with Uriah, for our sake. Don’t repel him for he may take it out on father, and mistreat him even more severely.”
I was invited to a dinner party the next evening at the Waterbrook’s home. Among the guests was Uriah Heep, dressed in a black suit and a maddening air of deep humility. He stood close to me all evening, and whenever I spoke to Agnes his shadowless eyes followed us and he leaned in slightly to hear our words.
Balancing the irritation I felt from Heep’s presence was my joy in another unexpected guest—Tommy Traddles! I heard him loudly introduced to an old couple at the far end of the dining table and asked my host if that could be the same Traddles I’d known at Salem House, the honourable but unlucky little fidget who drew page after page of skeletons and frequently ran sadly against Mr Creakle’s whip.
“Could surely be the one,” Waterbrook laughed. “He’s a good fellow. Nobody’s enemy but his own. He’s studying law at present.”
Traddles and I met a bit later on the stairway, both of us marvelling at the timing that would put us at one man’s table on the same night. Heep, of course, stood near and I had no choice but to introduce him to my old friend. He wiggled with such excitement and declared his humbleness so strongly that I wanted to throw him over the railing.
When very few guests remained, I said goodnight to my hosts. There were footsteps behind me on the porch and I turned to find Heep wrapping a woollen scarf around his long neck as he followed me into the street. I was in no mood for his company but, mindful of Agnes’ request that I treat him well, I invited him home for coffee.
“Don’t feel you have to open your home to someone as humble as me, Mister Copperfield,” was his only response as he hung close beside me to my boarding house.
There were no lights on in the house and I took his hand to lead him up the dark stairs so he wouldn’t trip or knock his head against anything. His damp, cold hand was like a fistful of frog and I was tempted to drop it and run.
When I’d poured his coffee and he’d protested my serving him in the face of his being much too humble for such service, he said slyly, “I suppose you’ve heard of the change in my position with Mr Wickfield.”
I said I had.
“You’re a prophet, Copperfield. Do you remember telling me once I might become a partner in Mr Wickfield’s business? Wickfield and Heep, you said then.”
He sat with the jack-o-lantern grin carved into his face, looking at the fire as I looked at him.
“I recall mentioning it, Heep, but I never thought it would happen,” I said.
“Nor I, sir, nor I! But even the humblest person can be of help to another. And that has truly been the case for me. Mr Wickfield is a fine man, but he’s not been in good control of the business lately.”
“And you are only stepping forward to assist him, to see that his interests are protected, is that it, Heep?” I struggled to keep the disbelief out of my voice. What a job it was for Agnes’ sake!
“If anyone else had been in my place during the last few years, he could easily have had Mr Wickfield under his thumb. There would have been loss, disgrace and more. But I’ve helped to keep all of that away and he wished to reward me beyond anything I could have dreamed.”
“You must be very proud of the honour, Heep,” I said.
“I’ve risen from my humble station, sir, but I am humble still. And I hope never to be anything but humble. May I tell you something and know that you will keep it just between us, Mister Copperfield?” He took out a handkerchief and wiped his palms slowly. “Humble as I am, humble as my mother is, Miss Agnes has been in my heart for years. I love the ground she walks on.”
I had a crazy notion of seizing the red-hot fireplace poker and putting an end to him the minute Agnes’ name was out of his mouth. How could someone so slimy, so false, lay any claim to love? How could he imagine such a match?
“Have you told Agnes how you feel, Heep?” I clung to some small control of myself.
“Oh no, indeed! I’m in no hurry. Agnes is young. I think I have time to let her see how useful I am to her father, and how I care for his interests. She’ll become familiar with my hopes and, in time, I believe she’ll see me as the right partner for her, too.”
Neither of us spoke for quite some time. When finally Heep rose and begged my pardon for keeping me up so late, I was more than glad to see him go. And although the night was bitterly cold, I opened the windows in the room where we had sat to freshen the air and rid me of his presence.
