The Personal History of David Copperfield

“You are thoughtful to-day, Trotwood!”

“Agnes, shall I tell you what about? I came to tell you.”

She put aside her work, as she was used to do when we were seriously discussing anything; and gave me her whole attention.

“My dear Agnes, do you doubt my being true to you?”

“No!” she answered, with a look of astonishment.

“Do you doubt my being what I always have been to you?”

“No!” she answered, as before.

“Do you remember that I tried to tell you, when I came home, what a debt of gratitude I owed you, dearest Agnes, and how fervently I felt towards you?”

“I remember it,” she said, gently, “very well.”

“You have a secret,” said I. “Let me share it, Agnes.”

She cast down her eyes, and trembled.

“I could hardly fail to know, even if I had not heard – but from other lips than yours, Agnes, which seems strange – that there is some one upon whom you have bestowed the treasure of your love. Do not shut me out of what concerns your happiness so nearly! If you can trust me, as you say you can, and as I know you may, let me be your friend, your brother, in this matter, of all others!”

With an appealing, almost a reproachful, glance, she rose from the window; and hurrying across the room as if without knowing where, put her hands before her face, and burst into such tears as smote me to the heart.

And yet they awakened something in me, bringing promise to my heart. Without my knowing why, these tears allied themselves with the quietly sad smile which was so fixed in my remembrance, and shook me more with hope than fear or sorrow.

“Agnes! Sister! Dearest! What have I done!”

“Let me go away, Trotwood. I am not well. I am not myself. I will speak to you by and by – another time. I will write to you. Don’t speak to me now. Don’t! don’t!”

I sought to recollect what she had said, when I had spoken to her on that former night, of her affection needing no return. It seemed a very world that I must search through in a moment.

“Agnes, I cannot bear to see you so, and think that I have been the cause. My dearest girl, dearer to me than anything in life, if you are unhappy, let me share your unhappiness. If you are in need of help or counsel, let me try to give it to you. If you have indeed a burden on your heart, let me try to lighten it. For whom do I live now, Agnes, if it is not for you!”

“Oh, spare me! I am not myself! Another time!” was all I could distinguish.

Was it a selfish error that was leading me away? Or, having once a clue to hope, was there something opening to me that I had not dared to think of?

“I must say more. I cannot let you leave me so! For Heaven’s sake, Agnes, let us not mistake each other after all these years, and all that has come and gone with them! I must speak plainly. If you have any lingering thought that I could envy the happiness you will confer; that I could not resign you to a dearer protector, of your own choosing; that I could not, from my removed place, be a contented witness of your joy; dismiss it, for I don’t deserve it! I have not suffered quite in vain. You have not taught me quite in vain. There is no alloy of self in what I feel for you.”

She was quiet now. In a little time, she turned her pale face towards me, and said in a low voice, broken here and there, but very clear,

“I owe it to your pure friendship for me, Trotwood – which, indeed, I do not doubt – to tell you, you are mistaken. I can do no more. If I have sometimes, in the course of years, wanted help and counsel, they have come to me. If I have sometimes been unhappy, the feeling has passed away. If I have ever had a burden on my heart, it has been lightened for me. If I have any secret, it is – no new one; and is – not what you suppose. I cannot reveal it, or divide it. It has long been mine, and must remain mine.”

“Agnes! Stay! A moment!”

She was going away, but I detained her. I clasped my arm about her waist. “In the course of years!” “It is not a new one!” New thoughts and hopes were whirling through my mind, and all the colors of my life were changing.

“Dearest Agnes! Whom I so respect and honor – whom I so devotedly love! When I came here to-day, I thought that nothing could have wrested this confession from me. I thought I could have kept it in my bosom all our lives, till we were old. But, Agnes, if I have indeed any new-born hope that I may ever call you something more than Sister, widely different from Sister! – ”

Her tears fell fast; but they were not like those she had lately shed, and I saw my hope brighten in them.

“Agnes! Ever my guide, and best support! If you had been more mindful of yourself, and less of me, when we grew up here together, I think my heedless fancy never would have wandered from you. But you were so much better than I, so necessary to me in every boyish hope and disappointment, that to have you to confide in, and rely upon in everything, became a second nature, supplanting for the time the first and greater one of loving you as I do!”

Still weeping, but not sadly – joyfully! And clasped in my arms as she had never been, as I had thought she never was to be!

“When I loved Dora – fondly, Agnes, as you know” —

“Yes!” she cried, earnestly. “I am glad to know it!”

“When I loved her – even then, my love would have been incomplete, without your sympathy. I had it, and it was perfected. And when I lost her, Agnes, what should I have been without you, still!”

Closer in my arms, nearer to my heart, her trembling hand upon my shoulder, her sweet eyes shining through her tears, on mine!

“I went away, dear Agnes, loving you. I stayed away, loving you. I returned home, loving you!”

And now, I tried to tell her of the struggle I had had, and the conclusion I had come to. I tried to lay my mind before her, truly, and entirely. I tried to show her, how I had hoped I had come into the better knowledge of myself and of her; how I had resigned myself to what that better knowledge brought; and how I had come there, even that day, in my fidelity to this. If she did so love me (I said) that she could take me for her husband, she could do so, on no deserving of mine, except upon the truth of my love for her, and the trouble in which it had ripened to be what it was; and hence it was that I revealed it. And O, Agnes, even out of thy true eyes, in that same time, the spirit of my child-wife looked upon me, saying it was well; and winning me, through thee, to tenderest recollections of the Blossom that had withered in its bloom!

“I am so blest, Trotwood – my heart is so overcharged – but there is one thing I must say.”

“Dearest, what?”

She laid her gentle hands upon my shoulders, and looked calmly in my face.

“Do you know, yet, what it is?”

“I am afraid to speculate on what it is. Tell me, my dear.”

“I have loved you all my life!”

O, we were happy, we were happy! Our tears were not for the trials (hers so much the greater), through which we had come to be thus, but for the rapture of being thus, never to be divided more!

We walked, that winter evening, in the fields together; and the blessed calm within us seemed to be partaken by the frosty air. The early stars began to shine while we were lingering on, and looking up to them we thanked our God for having guided us to this tranquillity.

We stood together in the same old-fashioned window at night, when the moon was shining; Agnes with her quiet eyes raised up to it; I following her glance. Long miles of road then opened out before my mind; and, toiling on, I saw a ragged way-worn boy, forsaken and neglected, who should come to call even the heart now beating against mine, his own.

It was nearly dinner-time next day when we appeared before my aunt. She was up in my study, Peggotty said: which it was her pride to keep in readiness and order for me. We found her, in her spectacles, sitting by the fire.

“Goodness me!” said my aunt, peering through the dusk, “who’s this you’re bringing home?”

“Agnes,” said I.

As we had arranged to say nothing at first, my aunt was not a little discomfited. She darted a hopeful glance at me, when I said “Agnes;” but seeing that I looked as usual, she took off her spectacles in despair, and rubbed her nose with them.

She greeted Agnes heartily, nevertheless; and we were soon in the lighted parlor down stairs, at dinner. My aunt put on her spectacles twice or thrice, to take another look at me, but as often took them off again, disappointed, and rubbed her nose with them. Much to the discomfiture of Mr. Dick, who knew this to be a bad symptom.

“By the by, aunt,” said I, after dinner; “I have been speaking to Agnes about what you told me.”