David Copperfield

‘Probably,’ said I.

‘Well, sir,’ observed Mr. Chillip, ‘I hope you’ll excuse me, if I am compelled to ask the favour of your name?’

On my telling him my name, he was really moved. He quite shook hands with me – which was a violent proceeding for him, his usual course being to slide a tepid little fish-slice, an inch or two in advance of his hip, and evince the greatest discomposure when anybody grappled with it. Even now, he put his hand in his coat-pocket as soon as he could disengage it, and seemed relieved when he had got it safe back.

‘Dear me, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip, surveying me with his head on one side. ‘And it’s Mr. Copperfield, is it? Well, sir, I think I should have known you, if I had taken the liberty of looking more closely at you. There’s a strong resemblance between you and your poor father, sir.’

‘I never had the happiness of seeing my father,’ I observed.

‘Very true, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, in a soothing tone. ‘And very much to be deplored it was, on all accounts! We are not ignorant, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, slowly shaking his little head again, ‘down in our part of the country, of your fame. There must be great excitement here, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, tapping himself on the forehead with his forefinger. ‘You must find it a trying occupation, sir!’

‘What is your part of the country now?’ I asked, seating myself near him.

‘I am established within a few miles of Bury St. Edmund’s, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Mrs. Chillip, coming into a little property in that neighbourhood, under her father’s will, I bought a practice down there, in which you will be glad to hear I am doing well. My daughter is growing quite a tall lass now, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, giving his little head another little shake. ‘Her mother let down two tucks in her frocks only last week. Such is time, you see, sir!’

As the little man put his now empty glass to his lips, when he made this reflection, I proposed to him to have it refilled, and I would keep him company with another. ‘Well, sir,’ he returned, in his slow way, ‘it’s more than I am accustomed to; but I can’t deny myself the pleasure of your conversation. It seems but yesterday that I had the honour of attending you in the measles. You came through them charmingly, sir!’

I acknowledged this compliment, and ordered the negus, which was soon produced. ‘Quite an uncommon dissipation!’ said Mr. Chillip, stirring it, ‘but I can’t resist so extraordinary an occasion. You have no family, sir?’

I shook my head.

‘I was aware that you sustained a bereavement, sir, some time ago,’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘I heard it from your father-in-law’s sister. Very decided character there, sir?’

‘Why, yes,’ said I, ‘decided enough. Where did you see her, Mr. Chillip?’

‘Are you not aware, sir,’ returned Mr. Chillip, with his placidest smile, ‘that your father-in-law is again a neighbour of mine?’

‘No,’ said I.

‘He is indeed, sir!’ said Mr. Chillip. ‘Married a young lady of that part, with a very good little property, poor thing. – And this action of the brain now, sir? Don’t you find it fatigue you?’ said Mr. Chillip, looking at me like an admiring Robin.

I waived that question, and returned to the Murdstones. ‘I was aware of his being married again. Do you attend the family?’ I asked.

‘Not regularly. I have been called in,’ he replied. ‘Strong phrenological developments of the organ of firmness, in Mr. Murdstone and his sister, sir.’

I replied with such an expressive look, that Mr. Chillip was emboldened by that, and the negus together, to give his head several short shakes, and thoughtfully exclaim, ‘Ah, dear me! We remember old times, Mr. Copperfield!’

‘And the brother and sister are pursuing their old course, are they?’ said I.

‘Well, sir,’ replied Mr. Chillip, ‘a medical man, being so much in families, ought to have neither eyes nor ears for anything but his profession. Still, I must say, they are very severe, sir: both as to this life and the next.’

‘The next will be regulated without much reference to them, I dare say,’ I returned: ‘what are they doing as to this?’

Mr. Chillip shook his head, stirred his negus, and sipped it.

‘She was a charming woman, sir!’ he observed in a plaintive manner.

‘The present Mrs. Murdstone?’

‘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 have no hesitation in saying,’ said Mr. Chillip, fortifying himself with another sip of negus, ‘between you and me, sir, that her mother died of it – or that tyranny, gloom, and worry have made Mrs. Murdstone nearly imbecile. She was a lively young woman, sir, before marriage, and their gloom and austerity destroyed her. They go about with her, now, more like her keepers than her husband and sister-in-law. That was Mrs. Chillip’s remark to me, only last week. And I assure you, sir, the ladies are great observers. Mrs. Chillip herself is a great observer!’

‘Does he gloomily profess to be (I am ashamed to use the word in such association) religious still?’ I inquired.

‘You anticipate, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, his eyelids getting quite red with the unwonted stimulus in which he was indulging. ‘One of Mrs. Chillip’s most impressive remarks. Mrs. Chillip,’ he proceeded, in the calmest and slowest manner, ‘quite electrified me, by pointing out that Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself, and calls it the Divine Nature. You might have knocked me down on the flat of my back, sir, with the feather of a pen, I assure you, when Mrs. Chillip said so. The ladies are great observers, sir?’

‘Intuitively,’ said I, to his extreme delight.

‘I am very happy to receive such support in my opinion, sir,’ he rejoined. ‘It is not often that I venture to give a non-medical opinion, I assure you. Mr. Murdstone delivers public addresses sometimes, and it is said, – in short, sir, it is said by Mrs. Chillip, – that the darker tyrant he has lately been, the more ferocious is his doctrine.’

‘I believe Mrs. Chillip to be perfectly right,’ said I.

‘Mrs. Chillip does go so far as to say,’ pursued the meekest of little men, much encouraged, ‘that what such people miscall their religion, is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance. And do you know I must say, sir,’ he continued, mildly laying his head on one side, ‘that I DON’T find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament?’

‘I never found it either!’ said I.

‘In the meantime, sir,’ said Mr. Chillip, ‘they are much disliked; and as they are very free in consigning everybody who dislikes them to perdition, we really have a good deal of perdition going on in our neighbourhood! However, as Mrs. Chillip says, sir, they undergo a continual punishment; for they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. Now, sir, about that brain of yours, if you’ll excuse my returning to it. Don’t you expose it to a good deal of excitement, sir?’

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. ‘And I assure you, sir,’ he said, ‘I am extremely nervous on such occasions. I could not support being what is called Bullied, sir. It would quite unman me. 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.