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

of their exactions, all the sisters had a great tenderness and respect both for Sophy and Traddles. I am sure, when I took my leave, and Traddles was coming out to walk with me to the coffeehouse, I thought I had never seen an obstinate head of hair, or any other head of hair, rolling about in such a shower of kisses.

Altogether, it was a scene I could not help dwelling on with pleasure, for a long time after I got back and had wished Traddles good night. If I had beheld a thousand roses blowing in a top set of chambers, in that withered Gray’s Inn, they could not have brightened it half so much. The idea of those Devonshire girls, among the dry law-stationers and the attorneys’ offices; and of the tea and toast, and children’s songs, in that grim atmosphere of pounce and parchment, red-tape, dusty wafers, ink-jars, brief and draft paper, law reports, writs, declarations, and bills of costs; seemed almost as pleasantly fanciful as if I had dreamed that the Sultan’s famous family had been admitted on the roll of attorneys, and had brought the talking bird, the singing tree, and the golden water into Gray’s Inn Hall. Somehow, I found that I had taken leave of Traddles for the night, and come back to the coffeehouse, with a great change in my despondency about him. I began to think he would get on, in spite of all the many orders of chief waiters in England.

Drawing a chair before one of the coffee room fires to think about him at my leisure, I gradually fell from the consideration of his happiness to tracing prospects in the live-coals, and to thinking, as they broke and changed, of the principal vicissitudes and separations that had marked my life. I had not seen a coal fire, since I had left England three years ago: though many a wood fire had I watched, as it crumbled into hoary ashes, and mingled with the feathery heap upon the hearth, which not inaptly figured to me, in my despondency, my own dead hopes.

I could think of the past now, gravely, but not bitterly; and could contemplate the future in a brave spirit. Home, in its best sense, was for me no more. She in whom I might have inspired a dearer love, I had taught to be my sister. She would marry, and would have new claimants on her tenderness; and in doing it, would never know the love for her that had grown up in my heart. It was right that I should pay the forfeit of my headlong passion. What I reaped, I had sown.

I was thinking. And had I truly disciplined my heart to this, and could I resolutely bear it, and calmly hold the place in her home which she had calmly held in mine⁠—when I found my eyes resting on a countenance that might have arisen out of the fire, in its association with my early remembrances.

Little Mr. Chillip the Doctor, to whose good offices I was indebted in the very first chapter of this history, sat reading a newspaper in the shadow of an opposite corner. He was tolerably stricken in years by this time; but, being a mild, meek, calm little man, had worn so easily, that I thought he looked at that moment just as he might have looked when he sat in our parlour, waiting for me to be born.

Mr. Chillip had left Blunderstone six or seven years ago, and I had never seen him since. He sat placidly perusing the newspaper, with his little head on one side, and a glass of warm sherry negus at his elbow. He was so extremely conciliatory in his manner that he seemed to apologize to the very newspaper for taking the liberty of reading it.

I walked up to where he was sitting, and said, “How do you do, Mr. Chillip?”

He was greatly fluttered by this unexpected address from a stranger, and replied, in his slow way, “I thank you, sir, you are very good. Thank you, sir. I hope you are well.”

“You don’t remember me?” said I.

“Well, sir,” returned Mr. Chillip, smiling very meekly, and shaking his head as he surveyed me, “I have a kind of an impression that something in your countenance is familiar to me, sir; but I couldn’t lay my hand upon your name, really.”

“And yet you knew it, long before I knew it myself,” I returned.

“Did I indeed, sir?” said Mr. Chillip. “Is it possible that I had the honour, sir, of officiating when⁠—?”

“Yes,” said I.

“Dear me!” cried Mr. Chillip. “But no doubt you are a good deal changed since then, sir?”

“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,