The Personal History of David Copperfield

“Then, Trot,” said my aunt, turning scarlet, “you did wrong, and broke your promise.”

“You are not angry, aunt, I trust? I am sure you won’t be, when you learn that Agnes is not unhappy in any attachment.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said my aunt.

As my aunt appeared to be annoyed, I thought the best way was to cut her annoyance short. I took Agnes in my arm to the back of her chair, and we both leaned over her. My aunt, with one clap of her hands, and one look through her spectacles, immediately went into hysterics, for the first and only time in all my knowledge of her.

The hysterics called up Peggotty. The moment my aunt was restored, she flew at Peggotty, and calling her a silly old creature, hugged her with all her might. After that, she hugged Mr. Dick (who was highly honored, but a good deal surprised); and after that, told them why. Then, we were all happy together.

I could not discover whether my aunt, in her last short conversation with me, had fallen on a pious fraud, or had really mistaken the state of my mind. It was quite enough, she said, that she had told me Agnes was going to be married; and that I now knew better than any one how true it was.

We were married within a fortnight. Traddles and Sophy, and Doctor and Mrs. Strong, were the only guests at our quiet wedding. We left them full of joy; and drove away together. Clasped in my embrace, I held the source of every worthy aspiration I had ever had; the centre of myself, the circle of my life, my own, my wife; my love of whom was founded on a rock!

“Dearest husband!” said Agnes. “Now that I may call you by that name, I have one thing more to tell you.”

“Let me hear it, love.”

“It grows out of the night when Dora died. She sent you for me.”

“She did.”

“She told me that she left me something. Can you think what it was?”

I believed I could. I drew the wife who had so long loved me, closer to my side.

“She told me that she made a last request to me, and left me a last charge.”

“And it was – ”

“That only I would occupy this vacant place.”

And Agnes laid her head upon my breast, and wept; and I wept with her, though we were so happy.

CHAPTER LXIII.

A VISITOR

What I have purposed to record is nearly finished; but there is yet an incident conspicuous in my memory, on which it often rests with delight, and without which one thread in the web I have spun, would have a ravelled end.

I had advanced in fame and fortune, my domestic joy was perfect, I had been married ten happy years. Agnes and I were sitting by the fire, in our house in London, one night in spring, and three of our children were playing in the room, when I was told that a stranger wished to see me.

He had been asked if he came on business, and had answered No; he had come for the pleasure of seeing me, and had come a long way. He was an old man, my servant said, and looked like a farmer.

As this sounded mysterious to the children, and moreover was like the beginning of a favorite story Agnes used to tell them, introductory to the arrival of a wicked old Fairy in a cloak who hated every body, it produced some commotion. One of our boys laid his head in his mother’s lap to be out of harm’s way, and little Agnes (our eldest child) left her doll in a chair to represent her, and thrust out her little heap of golden curls from between the window-curtains, to see what happened next.

“Let him come in here!” said I.

There soon appeared, pausing in the dark doorway as he entered, a hale, grey-haired old man. Little Agnes, attracted by his looks, had run to bring him in, and I had not yet clearly seen his face, when my wife, starting up, cried out to me, in a pleased and agitated voice, that it was Mr. Peggotty!

It was Mr. Peggotty. An old man now, but in a ruddy, hearty, strong old age. When our first emotion was over, and he sat before the fire with the children on his knees, and the blaze shining on his face, he looked, to me, as vigorous and robust, withal as handsome, an old man, as ever I had seen.

“Mas’r Davy,” said he. And the old name in the old tone fell so naturally on my ear! “Mas’r Davy, ’tis a joyful hour as I see you, once more, ’long with your own trew wife!”

“A joyful hour indeed, old friend!” cried I.

“And these heer pretty ones,” said Mr. Peggotty. “To look at these heer flowers! Why, Mas’r Davy, you was but the heighth of the littlest of these, when I first see you! When Em’ly warn’t no bigger, and our poor lad were but a lad!”

“Time has changed me more than it has changed you since then,” said I. “But, let these dear rogues go to bed; and as no house in England but this must hold you, tell me where to send for your luggage (is the old black bag among it, that went so far, I wonder!), and then, over a glass of Yarmouth grog, we will have the tidings of ten years!”

“Are you alone?” asked Agnes.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, kissing her hand, “quite alone.”

We sat him between us, not knowing how to give him welcome enough; and as I began to listen to his old familiar voice, I could have fancied he was still pursuing his long journey in search of his darling niece.

“It’s a mort of water,” said Mr. Peggotty, “fur to come across, and on’y stay a matter of fower weeks. But water (’specially when ’tis salt) comes nat’ral to me; and friends is dear, and I am heer. – Which is verse,” said Mr. Peggotty, surprised to find it out, “though I hadn’t such intentions.”

“Are you going back those many thousand miles, so soon?” asked Agnes.

“Yes, ma’am,” he returned. “I giv the promise to Em’ly, afore I come away. You see, I doen’t grow younger as the years comes round, and if I hadn’t sailed as ’twas, most like I shouldn’t never have done ’t. And it’s allus been on my mind, as I must come and see Mas’r Davy and your own sweet blooming self, in your wedded happiness, afore I got to be too old.”

He looked at us, as if he could never feast his eyes on us sufficiently. Agnes laughingly put back some scattered locks of his grey hair, that he might see us better.

“And now tell us,” said I, “everything relating to your fortunes.”

“Our fortuns, Mas’r Davy,” he rejoined, “is soon told. We haven’t fared nohows, but fared to thrive. We’ve allus thrived. We’ve worked as we ought to ’t, and maybe we lived a leetle hard at first or so, but we have allus thrived. What with sheep-farming, and what with stock-farming, and what with one thing and what with t’other, we are as well to do, as well could be. Theer’s been kiender a blessing fell upon us,” said Mr. Peggotty, reverentially inclining his head, “and we’ve done nowt but prosper. That is, in the long run. If not yesterday, why then to-day. If not to-day, why then to-morrow.”

“And Emily?” said Agnes and I, both together.

“Em’ly,” said he, “arter you left her, ma’am – and I never heerd her saying of her prayers at night, t’other side the canvas screen, when we was settled in the Bush, but what I heerd your name – and arter she and me lost sight of Mas’r Davy, that theer shining sundown – was that low, at first, that, if she had know’d then what Mas’r Davy kep from us so kind and thowtful, ’tis my opinion she’d have drooped away. But theer was some poor folks aboard as had illness among ’em, and she took care of them; and theer was the children in our company, and she took care of them; and so she got to be busy, and to be doing good, and that helped her.”

“When did she first hear of it?” I asked.

“I kep it from her arter I heerd on’t,” said Mr. Peggotty, “going on nigh a year. We was living then in a solitary place, but among the beautifullest trees, and with the roses a covering our Beein to the roof. Theer come along one day, when I was out a working on the land, a traveller from our own Norfolk or Suffolk in England (I doen’t rightly mind which), and of course we took him in, and giv him to eat and drink, and made him welcome. We all do that, all the colony over. He’d got an old newspaper with him, and some other account in print of the storm. That’s how she know’d it. When I come home at night, I found she know’d it.”

He dropped his voice as he said these words, and the gravity I so well remembered overspread his face.

“Did it change her much?” we asked.

“Aye, for a good long time,” he said, shaking his head; “if not to this present hour. But I think the solitoode done her good. And she had a deal to mind in the way of poultry and the like, and minded of it, and come through. I wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “if you could see my Em’ly now, Mas’r Davy, whether you’d know her!”

“Is she so altered?” I inquired.

“I doen’t know. I see her ev’ry day, and doen’t know; but, odd-times, I have thowt so. A slight figure,” said Mr. Peggotty, looking at the fire, “kiender worn; soft, sorrowful, blue eyes; a delicate face; a pritty head, leaning a little down; a quiet voice and way – timid a’most. That’s Em’ly!”

We silently observed him as he sat, still looking at the fire.

“Some thinks,” he said, “as her affection was ill-bestowed; some, as her marriage was broke off by death. No one knows how ’tis. She might have married well, a mort of times, ‘but, uncle,’ she says to me, ‘that’s gone for ever.’ Cheerful along with me; retired when others is by; fond of going any distance fur to teach a child, or fur to tend a sick person, or fur to do some kindness tow’rds a young girl’s wedding (and she’s done a many, but has never seen one); fondly loving of her uncle; patient; liked by young and old; sowt out by all that has any trouble. That’s Em’ly!”