The Adelphi: Fifteen: Uriah Heep

The business in the Commons had been sliding since the death of Mr Spenlow.  Mr Jorkins was not popular among the clients.  The firm was compelled to spend more on hangers-on and outsiders to bring business. Marriage licenses and small probates the firm looked for, and the competition for these ran high.

Miss Betsey wanted her nephew to go to Dover, to see that all was well with the cottage and to conclude a new agreement with the same tenant for a further period. She had in her mind to get him occupied with something to divert his attention on Dora.

Janet, her maid was now in the service of Mrs Strong.  Thus she had escaped the compulsion of her lover to enter into an early marriage.

Trotwood found everything satisfactory at the cottage in Dover.  The tenant, like Miss Betsey had been waging incessant war against donkeys. Trotwood got her sign the new agreement and returned to Canterbury.

It was now winter; the fresh cold windy day, sweeping downland brightened his hopes.  He loitered through the old streets of Canterbury.  There were the old signs, the old shops and old people serving in them.  He thought of his school days there, and then of Agnes, who had been there with him, guiding him in his lessons, serving him with food, taunting him in his love for Miss Sharp and Miss Larkins.  He found that she was inseparable in his life in Canterbury and she had a control on him in his dealings with Uriah Heep.  Then he thought of his poor mother, Peggotty and his aunt.  And for the first time he was beginning to see his life in an altered perspective.

At Wickfield's house, Trotwood found Mr Micawber in the room where Uriah Heep used to sit previously.  He was dressed in his legal looking suit of black, and loomed burly and large, in that small office.

He told Trotwood that he had become a tenant of Uriah Heep's old house. 

'Are you satisfied with Uriah Heep?' asked Trotwood.

He got up to ascertain whether the doors were shut up, before he replied in a low voice.

'My dear Copperfield, a man labour under the pressure of pecuniary embarassments.'

'I don't suppose him to be very free with his money,' said Trotwood.

'Pardon me!' said Mr Micawber, with an air of constraint, 'I speak of my friend Heep as I have experience.'

'I am glad your experience is so favourable,' returned Trotwood.

'You are very obliging, my dear Copperfield,' said Mr Micawber, humming a tune.

'Do you see much of Mr Wickfield?' asked Trotwood to change the subject.

'Not so much,' said Mr Micawber, 'Mr Wickfield is, I dare say, a man of very excellent intentions.  But he is very obsolete.' 

'I am afraid, his partner seeks to make him so.'

'My dear Copperfield!' returned Mr Micawber, after some uneasy evolutions on his stool, 'allow me to offer a remark! I am here in a capacity of confidence. I am here, in a position of trust. The discussion of some topics, even with Mrs Micawber is, I am led to consider, is incompatible with the functions now devolving on me. I would therefore take the liberty of drawing a line, between me and the affairs of Messers Wickfield and Heep. I trust I give no offence to the companion of my youth.' 

Trotwood found an uneasy change in Micawber, which sat tightly on him, as if his duties were a misfit. 

'But I have no right to be offended,' said Trotwood lightly, and Mr Micawber appeared relieved and shook hands with him.

'I am charmed, Copperfield,' said Mr Micawber, 'let me assure you, with Miss Wickfield.  She is a superior young lady, of remarkable attraction, grace, and virtue.  My homage to her,' said Mr Micawber, kissing his hand bowing with genteel air.

'I am glad of that,' said Trotwood.

'If you had not told us, my dear Copperfield, when we were passing with you in that afternoon that D was your favourite letter,' said Mr Micawber, I should have supposed that A had been so.'

Trotwood took leave of Mr Micawber, but something interposed between them since the latter took charge of his new function.  But his interplay of D and A had reverberated in Trotwood's ears.

Agnes was sitting by the fire, at the old-fashioned desk she had, writting.

The fall of foot-steps as he entered the room made her look up, and a pleasant smile lighted her face.

'Ah, Agnes!' said Trotwood, as he sat by her side, 'I have missed you so much, lately.'

'Indeed!' she replied. 'Again! And so soon?'

'I don't know how it is, Agnes; I seem to want some faculty of mind that I ought to have. You were in the habit of thinking for me, in the happy old days, and I came naturally for counsel and support, that I think I have missed.'

'And what is it? Agnes said cheerfully.

'I don't know what to call it,' replied Trotwood. 'I think I am earnest and persevering?'

'I am sure of it,' said Agnes.

'And patient, Agnes?' Trotwood inquired with a little hesitation.

'Yes,' returned Agnes, laughing. 'Pretty well.'

'And yet,' said Trotwood, 'I get so miserable and worried, and so unsteady and irresolute in my power of assuring myself, that I know I must want - shall I call it - reliance?'

'Call it so, if you will,' said Agnes.

'Well!' he returned.  'See here! You come to London, and I have a course and object at once.  The circumstances that distressed me are not changed.  But I feel much better here. What is it?  What is your secret, Agnes?

Head bent, she was looking at the fire.

'My old troubles were nonsense, now they are serious.  But whenever I have gone away from you-'

Agnes looked up and gave her hand to him, which he kissed.

'Whenever I have not had you, to advise me, I have seemd to go wild, and get into difficulties.  I have come to you to peace and happiness.  I come home like a tired traveller.'

He found that he felt the rest and peace of having Agnes near him. And he opened his heart and told her all that had happened since their last meeting.

'And there is not another word to tell, Agnes,' said Trotwood.  'Now my reliance is on you.'

'But it must not be on me, Trotwood,' returned Agnes with a smile.  'It must be on someone else.'

'On Dora?'

'Surely.'

'Dora is rather difficult, a timid little thing, easily disturbed and frightened.' He then explained about his declaration of poverty, the house-keeping account and so on.

'Oh Trotwood!' remonstrated Agnes, with a smile.  'Just your old headlong way!  With a timid inexperienced girl.  Poor Dora!'

Her earnest heart was compassionate towards Dora.

'What I ought to do then, Agnes?'

'I think, it is better you would write to those two ladies, the Putney sisters.'

'Yes. If you think so.'  Agnes wondered why Trotwood did not take that natural course. But she replied, 'I am not qualified to judge of such matters.  Your being secret and clandestine, is not being like yourself.'

'No, nothing of that. But if they were to frighten Dora? And if Dora were to cry, and say nothing about me?'

'Is that likely?' inquired Agnes with the same sweet consideration.

'God bless her, she is as easily scared as a bird,' said Trotwood.

'I don't think, Trotwood,' returned Agnes, raising her soft eyes.

'Perhaps it would be better on to consider whether it is right to do this, she continued.

Trotwood had no longer any doubt on the subject, and he decided to devote the whole afternoon to write a letter to Putney sisters.  Agnes had agreed to relinquish her desk to him in the afternoon.

Downstairs, Trotwood found Uriah in the plaster-smelling new office built out in the garden in the midst of books and papers.  He received Trotwood in his usual obsequious way.  Uriah ushered him to Mr Wickfield's room which was the shadow of its former self.  Divested of a variety of conveniences for the accommodation of the new partner, Mr Wickfield stood before the fire, warming his back and shaving his chin.  They exchanged greetings between themselves.

'You stay with us, Trotwood, while you remain in Canterbury,' said Mr Wickfield. 

Leaving the firm until dinner,  Trotwood went upstairs again, to see Agnes. 

Mrs Heep was in the room, knitting near the fire, on the pretence that the wind in the drawing room or dining parlour was not suitable to her rheumatics.

'I am umbly thankful to you, sir,' said she in response to Trotwood's pleasantaries, 'but I am only pretty well.  I haven't much to boast of.  If I could see my Uriah well settled in life.  How do you think my Ury looking, sir?'

Trotwood thought him looking as villainous as ever, but said that he saw no change in him.

'Don't you see him thinner?' said Mrs Heep.

'Not more than usual,' returned Trotwood.

'Don't you though!' said Mrs Heep.  'But you don't take notice of him with a mother's eye!'

His mother's eye was an evil eye to the rest of the world, thought Trotwood.  She and her son were devoted to each other and her eyes passed on to Agnes.

'Don't you see a wasting and wearing in him, Miss Wickfield?' inquired Mrs Heep.

'No,' said Agnes, pursuing with her work.  'You are too solicitous about him.  He is very well.'

Mrs Heep, with a prodigious sniff, resumed her knitting.  And she remained there throughout, pondering over the letter Trotwood had been writing, and her evil eyes passed him, and Agnes and then to her knitting.

At dinner she maintained her watch, with the same unwinking eyes.  After dinner his son took his turn; and when Mr Wickfield came he leered at Agnes.  While Agnes sang and played, Mrs Heep sat at the piano.  Once she asked for a particular ballad, which she said her Ury doted on; and at intervals she looked round and reported to Agnes that her son was in raptures with the music.

This lasted until the bed time.  It continued to the next day.

Trotwood had not an opportunity of speaking to Agnes.  He could barely show her his letter. When he proposed to Agnes to walk out, Mrs Heep repeatedly complained that she was worse, and Agnes remained within, to keep her company.

Towards the Twilight Trotwood went out alone, musing on what to do.   He knew the real intention of Uriah Heep, but he never revealed it to Agnes.  Upon the Ramsgate road, he saw Uriah Heep, who came up.

'Well,' said Trotwood.

'How fast you walk!' said Uriah Heep. 'My legs are pretty long, but you have given 'em quite a good job.'

'Where are you going?'

'I am going with you, Master Copperfield, if you'll allow me the pleasure of walk with an old acquaintance.'  Saying this with a jerk of his body, he fell into step beside Trotwood.

'To tell you the truth,' Trotwood began, 'I came out to walk alone. I have had so much company.' 

Uriah Heep looked sideways, and said with a grin, 'You mean mother?'

'Why yes, I do,' said Trotwood.

'Ah! But you know we are very umble,' he returned.  'And having such a knowledge of our umbleness, we must really take care that we are not pushed to the wall.  All strategems are fair in love.' 

He rubbed his chin with his long bony hand, and chuckled softly.

'You see,' he said, shaking his head, 'You're quite a dangerous rival, Master Copperfield.  You always was, you know.' 

'Do you set a watch upon Miss Wickfield, and make her home no home, because of me?'

'Oh! Master Copperfield!  Those are very harsh words,' he replied.

'Put my words to any shade you like,' said Trotwood.  'You know what it is, as well as I do.'

'Oh no! You must put it into words,' he said.  'Oh really! I couldn't myself.'

'Do you suppose,' said Trotwood, constraining to be very moderate, on account of Agnes, 'that I regard Miss Wickfield otherwise than a sister?'

'Well, Master Copperfield,' he replied, 'I cannot answer that question. 'You may not or you may!'

His low cunning visage, and his shadowless eyes without the ghost of eye lashes, thought Trotwood.

'Come then, for the sake of Miss Wickfield-'

'My Agnes!' he exclaimed, with a sickly contortation, 'would you be so good as call her Agnes, Master Copperfield!'

'For the sake of Agnes Wickfield - Heaven bless her!' said Trotwood.

'Thank you, for that blessing, Master Copperfield!' he interposed.

'I will tell you what I should, I am engaged to another lady.  I hope you are content.'

'Upon your soul,' said Uriah, 'Oh Master Copperfield!  If you only had returned my confidence when I poured out my heart, the night I slept before your sitting-room fire, I never should have doubted you.  As it is, I am sure I will take off mother directly.  I know you'll excuse the precautions of affection, won't you?  What a pity, Master Copperfield, you didn't return my confidence!  I am sure I gave you every opportunity.  But you never liked me, as I have liked you!' 

All this time Uriah had been squeezing the other's hand with his damp fingers.  Trotwood's decent efforts to get it released was unsuccessful.  He drew it under his mulberry-coloured great-coat and they walked arm-in-arm.

The early moon was shining on the town, brightening the distant windows.

'Shall we return?' said Uriah.

'Before we leave,' said Trotwood, 'you ought to understand that Agnes Wickfield is far above you, as that moon in the sky.'

'Peaceful! Ain't she?' said Uriah.  'I know, Master Copperfield, you haven't liked me quite as I have liked you.  I have to say something about my umbleness.  My father and me were brought up at a foundation schools for boys. And mother, likewise was brought up in public charitable establishment.  We all were taught a deal of umbleness, from morning to night. We were to be umble to this person, to that person, pull of our caps here, and to make bows there, and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters.  And we had such a lot of betters!  Father got the monitor-medal being umble.  So got I.  Father got made a Saxton by being umble.  He had the character, among gentle folks, of being such a well behaved man.  It was what was always being dinned to you and me at school. It's what goes down best. "Be umble" says my father, "and you'll do!" And really it ain't done bad.' 

The seed of the false humility lay in the foundation, thought Trotwood.

'When I was a young boy,' continued Uriah, 'I knew what umbleness did, and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite.  I stopped at the umble point of my learning, and say, "hold hard!"  When you offered to teach me Latin I knew better. ''People like to be above you" says father, "keep yourself down."  I am very umble to the present moment, Master Copperfield, but I have got a little power!' 

Behind his meanness, craft and malice lay the resentment against the long suppression, thought Trotwood.

He released his hand to rub his chin. Once apart, Trotwood determined to keep apart, and they walked in silence, side by side.  He talked more at dinner, and asked his mother whether he was not growing too old for a bachelor, and looked at Agnes.

The male members were left alone after dinner.  Uriah was excited.  He had taken little or no wine, but he tried to entice Mr Wickfield to drink. The look which Agnes had given while leaving the room was a warning.  As of the previous day, Trotwood wanted to leave the house and go for a walk. But Uriah was too quick and said:

'We seldom see our present visitor, sir,' addressing Mr Wickfield, sitting at the end of the table, 'and I should propose to give him welcome in another glass or two of wine, if you have no objections Mr Copperfield, your health and happiness!'

Trotwood was obliged to take the show of taking his hand, and then with different emotions, the hand of the broken gentleman, his partner.

'Come, fellow partner,' said Uriah, 'If I may take the liberty, - now, suppose you give us something or other appropriate to Copperfield.'

Mr Wickfield proposed the health of Miss Betsey Trotwood, Mr Dick, Doctor Commons, Uriah Heep and then, pondered over his drinking everything twice, his consciousness of his weakness, his failed attempts to resist it, the struggle between his shame and the demeanor of Uriah, and his efforts to concialite him.  Uriah was very much exultant and held Mr Wickfield up before Trotwood. 

'Come fellow partner,' said Uriah, 'I will give you another one, and ask for bumpers, seeing I intent to make it the divinest of her sex.'

Her father had his empty glass in his hand.  He set it down and looked at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his forehead, and shrank back in his elbow chair.

'I am an umble individual to give you her health,' proceeded Uriah, 'but I admire - adore her.'

No physical pain that her father's grey head could have borne than the mental endurance compressed now within both his hands.

'Agnes,' said Uriah, not regarding him, 'Agnes Wickfield is the divinest of her sex.  To be her father is a proud distinction, but to be her husband -'

Her father rose up from the table with such a cry!

'What's the matter?' said Uriah turning a deadly colour.  'You are not gone mad, after all, Mr Wickfield, I hope? If I say I have an ambition to make your Agnes my Agnes, I have as good a right to it as another man.  I have a better right to it than any other man!'

Trotwood had his arms round Mr Wickfield, imploring him to calm himself.  He was mad for the moment; tearing out his hair, beating his head, forcing Trotwood to release his hold, not looking at or seeing anyone, blindly striving - a frightful spectacle.  Trotwood tried to pacify him in the name of Agnes. At last he came to his senses, and looked at Trotwood, and said, 'I know Trotwood! My darling child and you - I know!  But look at him!'

He pointed to Uriah, pale in a corner, and taken by surprise at the flare up of this passion.

'Look my torturer,' said Mr Wickfield, Before him I have step by step abandoned my name and reputation, my peace and quiet, my house and home.'

'I have kept your name and reputation for you, and your peace and quiet, and your house and home too,' said Uriah, with a sulkey defeated air of compromise.

'Don't be foolish, Mr Wickfield, I have gone a little beyond what you were prepared for, I can go back, I suppose?'  There's no harm done.'

'I looked for single motives in every one,' said Mr Wickfield, and I was satisfied I had bound him to me by motives of interest.  But see, what he is - oh, see what he is!'

'You had better stop him, Copperfield, if you can,' cried Uriah, pointing his long fingers towards Trotwood.  'He'll say something soon - mind you! - he'll be sorry to say afterwards, and you'll be sorry to have heard.'

'I'll say anything!' cried Mr Wickfield, with a desparate air. 'Why should I not be in all the world's power if I am in yours?'

'Mind! I tell you!' said Uriah, 'If you don't Stop his mouth, you are not his friend!  Why shouldn't you be in all world's power Mr Wickfield? Because you have got a daughter.  You and me know what we know, don't we? Let sleeping dogs lie - who wants to rouse them? I don't.  Can't you see I am as umble as I can be? I tell you if I've gone too far, I am sorry.  What would you have, sir?'

'Oh, Trotwood, Trotwood,' exclaimed Mr Wickfield wringing his hands.  'What I have come down to be, since I first saw you in this house! I was on my downward way then, but the dreary, dreay road I have traversed since!  Weak indulgence has ruined me.  Indulgence in remembrance, and indulgence in forgetfulness.  My natural grief for my child's mother turned to disease; my natural love for my child turned to disease.  I have infected everything I touched.  I have brought misery on what I dearly love, I know - you know!  Thus the lessons of my life have been perverted!  Sordid in my grief, Sordid in my love, sordid in my escape, oh see the ruin I am, and hate me, shun me!

He dropped into a chair, and sobbed weakly. The excitement into which he had been roused was leaving him.  Uriah came out of his corner.

'I don't know all I have done in my stupidity,' said Mr Wickfield, putting out his hands towards Uriah Heep, 'he knows best for he has always been at my elbow, whispering me.  You see the millstone that he is about my neck.  You find him in my house, you find him in my business.  You heard him what he is.  What need have I to say more?'

'You needn't say much,' said Uriah, half defiant, and half fawning, 'you wouldn't have took it up so, if it hadn't for wine.  You will think better of it tomorrow, sir.'

The door opened and Agnes gliding in, without a vestige of colour in her face, put her arm round his neck, said steadily, 'Papa, you are not well. Come with me!'

He laid his head upon her shoulder, as if he were oppressed with heavy shame, and went out.  Her eyes met Trotwood's for an instant, and he could read that she knew what had happened.

'I didn't expect he'd cut up so rough, Master Copperfield,' said Uriah.  'But it's nothing.  I'll be friends with him tomorrow.'

Trotwood went upstairs into the quiet room where Agnes had often sat with him by his books.  He took up a book and tried to read.  The clock struck twelve, and he was still reading, when Agnes came and touched him.

'You will be going early in the morning, Trotwood!  Let us say goodbye, now!'

She had been weeping, but her face was so calm and beautiful!

'Heaven bless you!' she said giving her hand.

'Dear Agnes!' returned Trotwood, 'I see you ask me not to speak of tonight - but is there anything to be done?'

'There is God!' she replied.

'Can I do nothing? I came to you with my poor sorrows.'

'And make mine so much lighter,' she replied. 'Dear Trotwood, no!'

'Dear Agnes,' said Trotwood,' it is presumptuous for me to doubt or direct you; but you know how much I love you, and how much I owe you.  You will never sacrifice yourself to a mistaken sense of duty?'

Agitated for a moment, she took her hands, moved a step back, and said smilingly, 'I have no such fear of myself, Trot.' And she was gone.

The day was breaking when the coach was ready at the inn door.  Trotwood got up and was about to sit.  Uriah came struggling up the coach side, and said in a cracking voice, 'Copperfield! I have been into his room and we have made it all smooth.' 

'Glad that you have patched up,' replied Trotwood to Uriah, who by now was hung by the iron bar of the coach.

'When a person is umble, what's an apology? So easy, I suppose,' with a jerk he continued, 'I have plucked a pear before it was ripe, Master Copperfield?' 

'I suppose you have.'

'But it will ripen yet! It only wants attending to.  I can wait!'

He got down as the coach began to move. He was eating something to keep the raw morning air out.

____________________________________