(12) CHARLES DICKENS: DAVID COPPERFIELD:CHAPTER 12: I RESOLVE TO CHANGE MY LIFE

Micawber's petition was ripe for hearing. He was ordered to be discharged.  His creditors were not implacable.  Mrs Micawber informed me that even the revengeful boot-maker had declared in open court that he bore him no malice. But when money was owing to him he liked it get paid.  I think it was quite human.

Mr Micawber returned to King's Bench when his case was over.  Some fees were to be settled, and some formalities to be observed, before he could be actually released.  The club received him with great joy, and held a harmonic meeting that evening in his honour.  Mrs Micawber and I had a lamb's fry in private, among sleeping children.

'On such an occasion I will give you, Master Copperfield,' said Mrs Micawber, in a little more flip, for we had been having some already, 'in memory of my papa and mama.'

'Are they, dead mam? I enquired after drinking the toast in a wine-glass.

'My mama departed this life,' said Mrs Micawber, 'before Mr Micawber's difficulties commenced, or at least before they became pressing.  My papa lived to bail Mr Micawber several times, and expired, regretted but numerous circle.'  

Mrs Micawber shook her head and dropped her pious tear on the twin who happened to be in her hand.

As I could hardly hope for a more favourable opportunity of putting a question in which I had a near interest, I said to Mrs Micawber: 

'May I ask, ma'am, what you and Mr Micawber intend to do, now that Mr Micawber is out of difficulties, and at liberty? Have you settled yet?

'My family,' said Mrs Micawber, who always said those two words with an air, though I never could discover, who came under the denomination, 'my family are of opinion that Mr Micawber should quit London, and exert his talents in the country. Mr Micawber is a man of great talents, Mr Copperfield.'

I said I was sure of that.

'Of great talent,' repeated Mrs Micawber. 'My family are of opinion, that, with a little interest, something might be done for a man of his ability in the Custom House.  The influence of my family being local, it is their wish that Mr Micawber should go down to Plymouth.  They think it is indispensable that he should be upon the spot.'

'That he may be ready?' I suggested.

'Exactly,' returned Mrs Micawber.  'That he may be ready- in case of anything turning up.'

'And do you go too, ma'am?

The events of the day, in combination with the twins, if not the flip, had made Mrs Micawber hysterical and she shed tears as she replied:

'I never will desert Mr Micawber.  Mr Micawber may have concealed his difficulties from me in the first instance, but his sanguine temper may have led him to expect tha he would overcome them.  The pearl necklace and bracelets which I inherited from my mama have been disposed of for less than half their value; and the set of coral, which was the wedding gift of my papa,  has been actually thrown off for nothing.  But I never will desert Mr Micawber.  No!' cried Mrs Micawber, more effected than before, 'I never will do it! It's of no use asking me!'

I felt quite uncomfortable- as if Mrs Micawber supposed I had asked her to do anything of the sort- and sat looking at her in alarm.

'Mr Micawber had his faults.  I do not deny that he is improvident.  I do not deny that he had kept me in the dark as to his resources and his liabilities,' she went on, looking at the wall, 'but I never will desert Mr Micawber!'

Mrs Micawber having now raised her voice into a perfect scream, was so frightened that I ran off to the club room, and disturbed Mr Micawber in the act of presiding a long table, and leading the chorus of 

Gee up, Dobbin 

Gee ha, Dobbin 

Gee up, Dobbin 

Gee up and gee ho-o-o!

With the tidings that Mrs Micawber was in an alarming state, upon which he immediately burst into tears, and came away with me with his waistcoat full of heads and tails of shrimps, of which he had been partaking.

'Emma, my angel!' cried Mr Micawber, running into the room; 'What's the matter?'

'I never will desert you, Mr Micawber! she exclaimed. 

'My life!' said Mr Micawber taking her into his arms, 'I am perfectly aware of it.'

'He is the parent of my children!  He is the father of my twins!  He is the husband of my affections,' cried Mrs Micawber, struggling, 'and I ne-ver-will- desert Mr Micawber!'

Mr Micawber was deeply affected by this proof of devotion ( as to me, I was dissolved in tears) that he hung over her in a passionate manner, imploring her to look up, and to be calm.  But the more he asked Mrs Micawber to look up, the more she fixed her eyes on nothing; and the more he asked her to compose herself, the more she wouldn't.  Consequently Mr Micawber was so soon overcome, that he mingled his tears with hers and mine; until he begged me to do him a favour by taking the chair on the staircase, while he got her into bed.  I would have taken my leave for the night, but he would not hear of my doing that until the stranger's bell should ring.  So I sat at the staircase window, until he came out with another chair and joined me.

'How is Mrs Micawber now, sir?' I asked 

'Very low,' said Mr Micawber, shaking his head, 'reaction. Ah, this has been a dreadful day!  We stand alone now- everything is gone from us!' 

Mr Micawber pressed my hand and groaned, and afterwards shed tears.  I was greatly touched, and disappointed too, for I had expected that we should be quite happy on this long looked for occasion.  But Mr and Mrs Micawber had so used to their old difficulties, I think, they felt quite shipwrecked when they came to consider that they were released from them.  All their elasticity disappeared, and I never saw them half so wretched as on this night; in so much that when the bell rang, and Mr Micawber walked with me to the lodge, and parted from me there with a blessing, I felt quite afraid to leave him by himself, he was so profoundly miserable.

But through all this confusion and misery, I discerned that Mr and Mrs Micawber were planning to leave London, together with the family.  It was in my walk home that night, and the sleepless hours, which followed as I lay in my bed, the thought first occurred to me- though I don't know how it came into my head- which afterwards shaped itself into a settled resolution.

I had grown accustomed to Mr and Mrs Micawber, and had been so intimate with them in their distress, and so utterly friendless without them, that the prospect of being thrown upon some new shift for lodging, and going once more among unknown people, with such a knowledge of it ready made as experience had given me, the thought of shame and misery it would bring me, all these took me to the determination that the present situation was not durable.

There was no escape from it, unless I escaped myself.  I rarely heard from Miss Murdstone, and never heard from Mr Murdstone.  Two or three parcels of made or mended clothes came to me, consigned to Mr Quinon, and in each, there was a scrap of paper to the effect that J.M. trusted D.C., was applying himself to business, and devoting himself wholly to his duties- not the least hint of my ever being anything else than the common drudge into which I was fast settling down.

Mr and Mrs Micawber had taken lodging, for a week, in the house where I lived. At the expiration of that period they were to leave for Plymouth.  Mr Micawber himself came to the counting house, in the afternoon to tell Mr Quinon, that he must relinquish me on the day of his departure.  Mr Quinon calling Tipp, the carman, who was a married man, and had a room to let, quartered me prospectively on him- by our mutual consent, as he had every reason to think; for I said nothing, though my resolution was now taken.

I passed my evenings with Mr and Mrs Micawber, during the remaining term of our residence under the same roof, and we became fonder of one another as the time went on.  On the last Sunday they invited me to dinner; and we had a loin of pork and apple sauce, and a pudding.  I had bought a spotted wooden horse overnight as a parting gift to little Wilkins Micawber, and a doll for little Emma.  I had also bestowed a shilling on the Orfling, who was about to be disbanded.

We had a pleasant day, though we were all in a tender state about our approaching separation.

'I shall never, master Copperfield,' said Mrs Micawber, 'revert to the period when Mr Micawber was in difficulties, without thinking of you.  Your conduct has always been of most delicate obliging description.  You have never been a lodger, you have been a friend.'

'My dear,' said Mr Micawber, 'Copperfield,' for so he had been accustomed to call me, of late 'has a heart to feel the distress of his fellow creatures when they are behind a cloud, and a head to plan, and a hand to- in short a general ability to dispose of such available property as could be made away with.'   I expressed my sense of commendation, and said I was very sorry we are going to lose one another.

'My dear young friend,' said Mr Micawber, 'I am older than you; a man of some experience in life, and, and of some experience, in short, difficulties generally speaking.  At present and until something turns up, I have nothing to bestow, but best advice, but I have never taken it myself, the miserable and wretched you see, I am.'

'My dear Micawber,' urged his wife.

'I say,' returned Mr Micawber, 'Never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.'

'My poor Papa's maxim.' Mrs Micawber observed.

'My dear,' said Mr Micawber, 'your papa was well in his way.  And Heaven forbid that I should disparage him.  Take him for all in all, we ne'er shall. In short, make the acquaintance, probably anybody else possessing, at this time of life, same legs for gaiters, and able to read the same description of print, without spectacles.  But he applied the maxim to our marriage, and that was so prematurely entered into, in consequence that I never recovered expense.'  Mr Micawber looked aside at Mrs Micawber and added, 'I am sorry for it. Quite contrary My love.' after which he was grave for a minute or so.

'My other piece of advice  Copperfield', said Mr Micawber, 'you know.  Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen thousand nineteen and six, result happiness.  Annual income twenty thousand pounds, annual expenditure twenty thousand ought and six, result misery.  The blossom is blighted and the leaf withered.  The god of day goes down upon the dreary scene, and- in short you are for ever floored as I am.'

To make his example more expressive Mr Micawber drank a glass of punch with an air of great enjoyment and satisfaction, and whistled the College Hornpipe.

I did not fail to assure him that I would store these percepts in my mind, though indeed I had no need to do so, for, at the time they affected me visibly.  Next morning I met the whole family at the coach office, and saw them with a desolate heart, take their places outside, at the back.

'Master Copperfield,' said Mrs Micawber, 'God bless  you. I never can forget all that, you know, and I never could, if I could.'

'Copperfield,' said Mr Micawber, 'Farewell! Every happiness and prosperity!  If in the process of revolving years, I could persuade myself that my blighted destiny had been a warning to you I should feel that I had not occupied another man's place in existence altogether in vain. In case of anything turning up (of which I am rather confident) I shall be extremely happy it should be in my power to improve your prospects.'

I think, as Mrs Micawber sat at the back of the coach, with the other children, and I stood in the road looking wistfully at them, a mist cleared from her eyes, what a little creature I really was. I think so, because she beckoned to me to climb up with quite a new and motherly expression in her face, and put her arm round my neck, and gave me such a kiss which she might have given to her own boy.  I had barely time to get down again before the coach started, and I could hardly see the family for the hand-kerchief they waved.  It was gone in a minute.  The Orfling and I stood looking vacantly at each other in the middle of the road, and then shook hands and said goodbye; she going back to St Luke's House, as I went to begin my weary day at Murdstone and Grinby's.

But with no intention of passing many more weary days there.  No. I had resolved to run away. To go- by some means or other,down into the country, to the only relation I had in the world and to tell my story to my aunt, Miss Betsy. I don't know how this desperate idea came into my head. But once there, it remained there; and hardened into a purpose.  I was not sure that I believed that there was anything hopeful in it.  But my mind was thoroughly made up that it must be carried into execution.

Again, and again and a hundred times again, since the thought first occured to me and banished my sleep, I had gone over that old story of my poor mother's about my birth, which had been one of my greatest delights to hear her tell, and which I knew by heart.  My aunt walked into the story and walked out of it, a dread and awful personage; but there was one little trait in her behaviour which I liked to dwell on, and which gave me some faint shadow of encouragement.  I could not forget how my mother had thought that she felt Miss Betsy touch her pretty hair with no ungentle hand; and it have been my mother's fancy and might have no foundation in fact, I made a little picture out of it, of my terrible aunt relenting towards the girlish beauty that I recollected well and loved so much which softened the whole narrative.  It is possible that it had been in my mind a long time, and had gradually engendered my determination.

As I did not know where Miss Betsy lived, I wrote a long letter to Peggotty, and asked her, incidentally, if she remembered, pretending that I had heard of such a lady living at a certain place I named at random, and had a curiosity to know if it were the same.  In the course of that letter, I told Peggotty that I had a particular occasion for half a guinea; and that if she could lend me that sum until I could repay it, I should be very much obliged to her, and would tell her afterwards what I had wanted it for.

Peggotty's answer soon arrived, and was, as usual, full of affectionate devotion.  She enclosed the half a guinea (I was afraid she must have had the world of trouble to get it out Mr Barkis's Box), and told me that Miss Betsy lived near Dover, but whether at Dover itself, at Hythe, Sandgate, or Folkestone she could not say.  One of our men, however, informed me that they were all close together.  I deemed this enough for my object, and resolved to set out at the end of the week.

Being very honest and little, and unwilling to disgrace the memory I was going to leave behind at Murdstone and Grinby's, I bound myself to remain until Saturday night, and as I had been paid a week's wages in advance when I first came there, not to present myself in the counting house at the usual hour, to receive my stipend.  For this reason I have borrowed the half guinea, that I might not be without a fund for my travelling expenses.  Accordingly when the Saturday night came, and we were all in the warehouse to be paid, and Tipp the carman who always took precedence, went in first to draw his money, I shook Mick walker by the hand, and asked him, when it came his turn to be paid, to say to Mr Quinon that I had gone to Tipps to move my box, and bidding a last goodnight to Mealy Potatoes, ran away.

My box was at my old lodging, over the water, and I had written a direction for it on the back of one of our address cards that we nailed on the casks, "Master David, to be left till called for, at the coach office, Dover." This I had in my pocket to put on the box, after I should have got it out of the house, and as I went towards my lodging, I looked about me for someone who would help me to carry it to the booking-office.

There was a long-legged young man with a very little empty donkey cart, standing near the Obelisk, near the Blackfriars Road whose eye I caught as I was going by, and settled after a bargain for six pence, to take my box from the lodging to Dover coach booking-office.

The long legged man got upon his cart, which was nothing but a large wooden tray on wheels, and rattled away slowly, so that I could keep pace with the donkey.  There was a defiant manner about this young man, particularly the way in which he chewed something as he spoke to me, that I did not like much; as the bargain was made, how ever I took him upstairs to the room I was leaving, and we brought the box down and put it on his cart.  Now I was unwilling to put the direction card there on,  lest any of my landlord's family should fathom what I was doing and detain me; so I said to the young man that I would be glad if he would stop for a minute, when he came to the dead wall of King's Bench prison.  The words were no sooner out of my mouth, than he rattled away as if he, my box, the cart, and the donkey were all equally mad; and I was quite out of breath with running and calling after him, when I caught him at the place appointed.

Being much flushed and excited, I tumbled my half guinea out of my pocket in pulling the card out.  I put it in my mouth for safety, and though my hands trembled a good deal, had just tied the card on very much to my satisfaction, when I felt myself violently chucked under the chin by long legged young man, and saw my half guinea fly out from my mouth into his hands.

'What,' said the young man seizing me by my jacket collar, with a frightful grin, ''This is a police case, is it? You are going to bolt, are you? Come to the pollis you young warmin, come to the pollis!'

'You give me my money back, if you please,' said I very much frightened, 'and leave me alone.'

'Come to the pollis!' said the young man, 'you shall prove it your to pollis.'

'Give me my box and money, will you,' I cried, bursting into tears.

The young man still replied, 'Come to the pollis,' and was dragging me against the donkey in violent manner as if there were any affinity between the animal and the magistrate, when he changed his mind, jumped into the cart, sat upon my box, and, exclaiming that he would drive to the pollis straight, and rattled away harder than ever.

I ran after him as fast as I could, but I had no breath to call out with, and should not have dared to call out, now, if I had.  I narrowly escaped being run over, twenty times at least in half a mile.  Now I lost him.  Now I saw him.  Now I was cut at with a whip, now I shouted at, now down in the mud, now up again, now running into somebody's arm, now running headlong at a post.  At length, confused by the fright and heat, and doubting whether half London might not by this time, running out for my apprehension, I left the young man to go where he would with my box and money; and panting and crying, but never stopping, faced about for Greenwich, which I had understood was on the Dover Road: taking very little more out the world, towards the retreat of my aunt, Miss Betsy, than I had brought into it, on the night when my arrival gave her great umbrage.

END OF THE CHAPTER