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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.
'You will find her father a white-haired old man,' said my aunt,
'though a better man in all other respects - a reclaimed man. Neither
will you find him measuring all human interests, and joys, and sorrows,
with his one poor little inch-rule now. Trust me, child, such things
must shrink very much, before they can be measured off in that way.'
'Indeed they must,' said I.
'You will find her,' pursued my aunt, 'as good, as beautiful,
as earnest, as disinterested, as she has always been. If I knew
higher praise, Trot, I would bestow it on her.'
There was no higher praise for her; no higher reproach for me.
Oh, how had I strayed so far away!
'If she trains the young girls whom she has about her, to be
like herself,' said my aunt, earnest even to the filling of her
eyes with tears, 'Heaven knows, her life will be well employed!
Useful and happy, as she said that day! How could she be otherwise
than useful and happy!'
'Has Agnes any -' I was thinking aloud, rather than speaking.
'Well? Hey? Any what?' said my aunt, sharply.
'Any lover,' said I.
'A score,' cried my aunt, with a kind of indignant pride. 'She
might have married twenty times, my dear, since you have been gone!'
'No doubt,' said I. 'No doubt. But has she any lover who is worthy
of her? Agnes could care for no other.'
My aunt sat musing for a little while, with her chin upon her
hand. Slowly raising her eyes to mine, she said:
'I suspect she has an attachment, Trot.'
'A prosperous one?' said I.
'Trot,' returned my aunt gravely, 'I can't say. I have no right
to tell you even so much. She has never confided it to me, but I
suspect it.'
She looked so attentively and anxiously at me (I even saw her
tremble), that I felt now, more than ever, that she had followed
my late thoughts. I summoned all the resolutions I had made, in
all those many days and nights, and all those many conflicts of
my heart.
'If it should be so,' I began, 'and I hope it is-'
'I don't know that it is,' said my aunt curtly. 'You must not
be ruled by my suspicions. You must keep them secret. They are very
slight, perhaps. I have no right to speak.'
'If it should be so,' I repeated, 'Agnes will tell me at her
own good time. A sister to whom I have confided so much, aunt, will
not be reluctant to confide in me.'
My aunt withdrew her eyes from mine, as slowly as she had turned
them upon me; and covered them thoughtfully with her hand. By and
by she put her other hand on my shoulder; and so we both sat, looking
into the past, without saying another word, until we parted for
the night.
I rode away, early in the morning, for the scene of my old school-days.
I cannot say that I was yet quite happy, in the hope that I was
gaining a victory over myself; even in the prospect of so soon looking
on her face again.
The well-remembered ground was soon traversed, and I came into
the quiet streets, where every stone was a boy's book to me. I went
on foot to the old house, and went away with a heart too full to
enter. I returned; and looking, as I passed, through the low window
of the turret-room where first Uriah Heep, and afterwards Mr. Micawber,
had been wont to sit, saw that it was a little parlour now, and
that there was no office. Otherwise the staid old house was, as
to its cleanliness and order, still just as it had been when I first
saw it. I requested the new maid who admitted me, to tell Miss Wickfield
that a gentleman who waited on her from a friend abroad, was there;
and I was shown up the grave old staircase (cautioned of the steps
I knew so well), into the unchanged drawing-room. The books that
Agnes and I had read together, were on their shelves; and the desk
where I had laboured at my lessons, many a night, stood yet at the
same old corner of the table. All the little changes that had crept
in when the Heeps were there, were changed again. Everything was
as it used to be, in the happy time.
I stood in a window, and looked across the ancient street at
the opposite houses, recalling how I had watched them on wet afternoons,
when I first came there; and how I had used to speculate about the
people who appeared at any of the windows, and had followed them
with my eyes up and down stairs, while women went clicking along
the pavement in pattens, and the dull rain fell in slanting lines,
and poured out of the water-spout yonder, and flowed into the road.
The feeling with which I used to watch the tramps, as they came
into the town on those wet evenings, at dusk, and limped past, with
their bundles drooping over their shoulders at the ends of sticks,
came freshly back to me; fraught, as then, with the smell of damp
earth, and wet leaves and briar, and the sensation of the very airs
that blew upon me in my own toilsome journey.
The opening of the little door in the panelled wall made me start
and turn. Her beautiful serene eyes met mine as she came towards
me. She stopped and laid her hand upon her bosom, and I caught her
in my arms.
'Agnes! my dear girl! I have come too suddenly upon you.'
'No, no! I am so rejoiced to see you, Trotwood!'
'Dear Agnes, the happiness it is to me, to see you once again!'
I folded her to my heart, and, for a little while, we were both
silent. Presently we sat down, side by side; and her angel-face
was turned upon me with the welcome I had dreamed of, waking and
sleeping, for whole years.
She was so true, she was so beautiful, she was so good, - I owed
her so much gratitude, she was so dear to me, that I could find
no utterance for what I felt. I tried to bless her, tried to thank
her, tried to tell her (as I had often done in letters) what an
influence she had upon me; but all my efforts were in vain. My love
and joy were dumb.
With her own sweet tranquillity, she calmed my agitation; led
me back to the time of our parting; spoke to me of Emily, whom she
had visited, in secret, many times; spoke to me tenderly of Dora's
grave. With the unerring instinct of her noble heart, she touched
the chords of my memory so softly and harmoniously, that not one
jarred within me; I could listen to the sorrowful, distant music,
and desire to shrink from nothing it awoke. How could I, when, blended
with it all, was her dear self, the better angel of my life?
'And you, Agnes,' I said, by and by. 'Tell me of yourself. You
have hardly ever told me of your own life, in all this lapse of
time!'
'What should I tell?' she answered, with her radiant smile. 'Papa
is well. You see us here, quiet in our own home; our anxieties set
at rest, our home restored to us; and knowing that, dear Trotwood,
you know all.'
'All, Agnes?' said I.
She looked at me, with some fluttering wonder in her face.
'Is there nothing else, Sister?' I said.
Her colour, which had just now faded, returned, and faded again.
She smiled; with a quiet sadness, I thought; and shook her head.
I had sought to lead her to what my aunt had hinted at; for,
sharply painful to me as it must be to receive that confidence,
I was to discipline my heart, and do my duty to her. I saw, however,
that she was uneasy, and I let it pass.
'You have much to do, dear Agnes?'
'With my school?' said she, looking up again, in all her bright
composure.
'Yes. It is laborious, is it not?'
'The labour is so pleasant,' she returned, 'that it is scarcely
grateful in me to call it by that name.'
'Nothing good is difficult to you,' said I.
Her colour came and went once more; and once more, as she bent
her head, I saw the same sad smile.
'You will wait and see papa,' said Agnes, cheerfully, 'and pass
the day with us? Perhaps you will sleep in your own room? We always
call it yours.'
I could not do that, having promised to ride back to my aunt's
at night; but I would pass the day there, joyfully.
'I must be a prisoner for a little while,' said Agnes, 'but here
are the old books, Trotwood, and the old music.'
'Even the old flowers are here,' said I, looking round; 'or the
old kinds.'
'I have found a pleasure,' returned Agnes, smiling, 'while you
have been absent, in keeping everything as it used to be when we
were children. For we were very happy then, I think.'
'Heaven knows we were!' said I.
'And every little thing that has reminded me of my brother,'
said Agnes, with her cordial eyes turned cheerfully upon me, 'has
been a welcome companion. Even this,' showing me the basket-trifle,
full of keys, still hanging at her side, 'seems to jingle a kind
of old tune!'
She smiled again, and went out at the door by which she had come.
It was for me to guard this sisterly affection with religious
care. It was all that I had left myself, and it was a treasure.
If I once shook the foundations of the sacred confidence and usage,
in virtue of which it was given to me, it was lost, and could never
be recovered. I set this steadily before myself. The better I loved
her, the more it behoved me never to forget it.
I walked through the streets; and, once more seeing my old adversary
the butcher - now a constable, with his staff hanging up in the
shop - went down to look at the place where I had fought him; and
there meditated on Miss Shepherd and the eldest Miss Larkins, and
all the idle loves and likings, and dislikings, of that time. Nothing
seemed to have survived that time but Agnes; and she, ever a star
above me, was brighter and higher.
When I returned, Mr. Wickfield had come home, from a garden he
had, a couple of miles or so out of town, where he now employed
himself almost every day. I found him as my aunt had described him.
We sat down to dinner, with some half-dozen little girls; and he
seemed but the shadow of his handsome picture on the wall.
The tranquillity and peace belonging, of old, to that quiet ground
in my memory, pervaded it again. When dinner was done, Mr. Wickfield
taking no wine, and I desiring none, we went up-stairs; where Agnes
and her little charges sang and played, and worked. After tea the
children left us; and we three sat together, talking of the bygone
days.
'My part in them,' said Mr. Wickfield, shaking his white head,
'has much matter for regret - for deep regret, and deep contrition,
Trotwood, you well know. But I would not cancel it, if it were in
my power.'
I could readily believe that, looking at the face beside him.
'I should cancel with it,' he pursued, 'such patience and devotion,
such fidelity, such a child's love, as I must not forget, no! even
to forget myself.'
'I understand you, sir,' I softly said. 'I hold it - I have always
held it - in veneration.'
'But no one knows, not even you,' he returned, 'how much she
has done, how much she has undergone, how hard she has striven.
Dear Agnes!'
She had put her hand entreatingly on his arm, to stop him; and
was very, very pale.
'Well, well!' he said with a sigh, dismissing, as I then saw,
some trial she had borne, or was yet to bear, in connexion with
what my aunt had told me. 'Well! I have never told you, Trotwood,
of her mother. Has anyone?'
'Never, sir.'
'It's not much - though it was much to suffer. She married me
in opposition to her father's wish, and he renounced her. She prayed
him to forgive her, before my Agnes came into this world. He was
a very hard man, and her mother had long been dead. He repulsed
her. He broke her heart.'
Agnes leaned upon his shoulder, and stole her arm about his neck.
'She had an affectionate and gentle heart,' he said; 'and it
was broken. I knew its tender nature very well. No one could, if
I did not. She loved me dearly, but was never happy. She was always
labouring, in secret, under this distress; and being delicate and
downcast at the time of his last repulse - for it was not the first,
by many - pined away and died. She left me Agnes, two weeks old;
and the grey hair that you recollect me with, when you first came.'
He kissed Agnes on her cheek.
'My love for my dear child was a diseased love, but my mind was
all unhealthy then. I say no more of that. I am not speaking of
myself, Trotwood, but of her mother, and of her. If I give you any
clue to what I am, or to what I have been, you will unravel it,
I know. What Agnes is, I need not say. I have always read something
of her poor mother's story, in her character; and so I tell it you
tonight, when we three are again together, after such great changes.
I have told it all.'
His bowed head, and her angel-face and filial duty, derived a
more pathetic meaning from it than they had had before. If I had
wanted anything by which to mark this night of our re-union, I should
have found it in this.
Agnes rose up from her father's side, before long; and going
softly to her piano, played some of the old airs to which we had
often listened in that place.
'Have you any intention of going away again?' Agnes asked me,
as I was standing by.
'What does my sister say to that?'
'I hope not.'
'Then I have no such intention, Agnes.'
'I think you ought not, Trotwood, since you ask me,' she said,
mildly. 'Your growing reputation and success enlarge your power
of doing good; and if I could spare my brother,' with her eyes upon
me, 'perhaps the time could not.'
'What I am, you have made me, Agnes. You should know best.'
'I made you, Trotwood?'
'Yes! Agnes, my dear girl!' I said, bending over her. 'I tried
to tell you, when we met today, something that has been in my thoughts
since Dora died. You remember, when you came down to me in our little
room - pointing upward, Agnes?'
'Oh, Trotwood!' she returned, her eyes filled with tears. 'So
loving, so confiding, and so young! Can I ever forget?'
'As you were then, my sister, I have often thought since, you
have ever been to me. Ever pointing upward, Agnes; ever leading
me to something better; ever directing me to higher things!'
She only shook her head; through her tears I saw the same sad
quiet smile.
'And I am so grateful to you for it, Agnes, so bound to you,
that there is no name for the affection of my heart. I want you
to know, yet don't know how to tell you, that all my life long I
shall look up to you, and be guided by you, as I have been through
the darkness that is past. Whatever betides, whatever new ties you
may form, whatever changes may come between us, I shall always look
to you, and love you, as I do now, and have always done. You will
always be my solace and resource, as you have always been. Until
I die, my dearest sister, I shall see you always before me, pointing
upward!'
She put her hand in mine, and told me she was proud of me, and
of what I said; although I praised her very far beyond her worth.
Then she went on softly playing, but without removing her eyes from
me. 'Do you know, what I have heard tonight, Agnes,' said I, strangely
seems to be a part of the feeling with which I regarded you when
I saw you first - with which I sat beside you in my rough school-days?'
'You knew I had no mother,' she replied with a smile, 'and felt
kindly towards me.'
'More than that, Agnes, I knew, almost as if I had known this
story, that there was something inexplicably gentle and softened,
surrounding you; something that might have been sorrowful in someone
else (as I can now understand it was), but was not so in you.'
She softly played on, looking at me still.
'Will you laugh at my cherishing such fancies, Agnes?'
'No!'
'Or at my saying that I really believe I felt, even then, that
you could be faithfully affectionate against all discouragement,
and never cease to be so, until you ceased to live? - Will you laugh
at such a dream?'
'Oh, no! Oh, no!'
For an instant, a distressful shadow crossed her face; but, even
in the start it gave me, it was gone; and she was playing on, and
looking at me with her own calm smile.
As I rode back in the lonely night, the wind going by me like
a restless memory, I thought of this, and feared she was not happy.
I was not happy; but, thus far, I had faithfully set the seal upon
the Past, and, thinking of her, pointing upward, thought of her
as pointing to that sky above me, where, in the mystery to come,
I might yet love her with a love unknown on earth, and tell her
what the strife had been within me when I loved her here.
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