David Copperfield Charles Dickens (100 best novels of all time .TXT) 📖

the corner of the garden wall. His room was shut up close. The conservatory doors were standing open, and Rosa Dartle was walking, bareheaded, with a quick, impetuous step, up and down a gravel walk on one side of the lawn. She gave me the idea of some fierce thing, that was dragging the length of its chain to and fro upon a beaten track, and wearing its heart out.

I came softly away from my place of observation, and avoiding that part of the neighbourhood, and wishing I had not gone near it, strolled about until it was ten o’clock. The church with the slender spire, that stands on the top of the hill now, was not there then to tell me the time. An old redbrick mansion, used as a school, was in its place; and a fine old house it must have been to go to school at, as I recollect it.

When I approached the Doctor’s cottage⁠—a pretty old place, on which he seemed to have expended some money, if I might judge from the embellishments and repairs that had the look of being just completed⁠—I saw him walking in the garden at the side, gaiters and all, as if he had never left off walking since the days of my pupilage. He had his old companions about him, too; for there were plenty of high trees in the neighbourhood, and two or three rooks were on the grass, looking after him, as if they had been written to about him by the Canterbury rooks, and were observing him closely in consequence.

Knowing the utter hopelessness of attracting his attention from that distance, I made bold to open the gate, and walk after him, so as to meet him when he should turn round. When he did, and came towards me, he looked at me thoughtfully for a few moments, evidently without thinking about me at all; and then his benevolent face expressed extraordinary pleasure, and he took me by both hands.

“Why, my dear Copperfield,” said the Doctor, “you are a man! How do you do? I am delighted to see you. My dear Copperfield, how very much you have improved! You are quite⁠—yes⁠—dear me!”

I hoped he was well, and Mrs. Strong too.

“Oh dear, yes!” said the Doctor; “Annie’s quite well, and she’ll be delighted to see you. You were always her favourite. She said so, last night, when I showed her your letter. And⁠—yes, to be sure⁠—you recollect Mr. Jack Maldon, Copperfield?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

“Of course,” said the Doctor. “To be sure. He’s pretty well, too.”

“Has he come home, sir?” I inquired.

“From India?” said the Doctor. “Yes. Mr. Jack Maldon couldn’t bear the climate, my dear. Mrs. Markleham⁠—you have not forgotten Mrs. Markleham?”

Forgotten the Old Soldier! And in that short time!

“Mrs. Markleham,” said the Doctor, “was quite vexed about him, poor thing; so we have got him at home again; and we have bought him a little Patent place, which agrees with him much better.” I knew enough of Mr. Jack Maldon to suspect from this account that it was a place where there was not much to do, and which was pretty well paid. The Doctor, walking up and down with his hand on my shoulder, and his kind face turned encouragingly to mine, went on:

“Now, my dear Copperfield, in reference to this proposal of yours. It’s very gratifying and agreeable to me, I am sure; but don’t you think you could do better? You achieved distinction, you know, when you were with us. You are qualified for many good things. You have laid a foundation that any edifice may be raised upon; and is it not a pity that you should devote the springtime of your life to such a poor pursuit as I can offer?”

I became very glowing again, and, expressing myself in a rhapsodical style, I am afraid, urged my request strongly; reminding the Doctor that I had already a profession.

“Well, well,” said the Doctor, “that’s true. Certainly, your having a profession, and being actually engaged in studying it, makes a difference. But, my good young friend, what’s seventy pounds a year?”

“It doubles our income, Doctor Strong,” said I.

“Dear me!” replied the Doctor. “To think of that! Not that I mean to say it’s rigidly limited to seventy pounds a-year, because I have always contemplated making any young friend I might thus employ, a present too. Undoubtedly,” said the Doctor, still walking me up and down with his hand on my shoulder. “I have always taken an annual present into account.”

“My dear tutor,” said I (now, really, without any nonsense), “to whom I owe more obligations already than I ever can acknowledge⁠—”

“No, no,” interposed the Doctor. “Pardon me!”

“If you will take such time as I have, and that is my mornings and evenings, and can think it worth seventy pounds a year, you will do me such a service as I cannot express.”

“Dear me!” said the Doctor, innocently. “To think that so little should go for so much! Dear, dear! And when you can do better, you will? On your word, now?” said the Doctor⁠—which he had always made a very grave appeal to the honour of us boys.

“On my word, sir!” I returned, answering in our old school manner.

“Then be it so,” said the Doctor, clapping me on the shoulder, and still keeping his hand there, as we still walked up and down.

“And I shall be twenty times happier, sir,” said I, with a little⁠—I hope innocent⁠—flattery, “if my employment is to be on the Dictionary.”

The Doctor stopped, smilingly clapped me on the shoulder again, and exclaimed, with a triumph most delightful to behold, as if I had penetrated to the profoundest depths of mortal sagacity, “My dear young friend, you have hit it. It is the Dictionary!”

How could it be anything else! His pockets were as full of it as his head. It was sticking out of him in all directions. He told me that since his retirement from scholastic life, he had been advancing with it wonderfully; and that nothing