affected almost to tears. I returned thanks, and hoped the present
company would dine with me tomorrow, and the day after—each
day at five o’clock, that we might enjoy the pleasures of
conversation and society through a long evening. I felt called upon
to propose an individual. I would give them my aunt. Miss Betsey
Trotwood, the best of her sex!
Somebody was leaning out of my bedroom window, refreshing
his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the
air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as
‘Copperfield’, and saying, ‘Why did you try to smoke? You might
have known you couldn’t do it.’ Now, somebody was unsteadily
contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I
was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant
appearance; and my hair—only my hair, nothing else—looked
drunk.
Somebody said to me, ‘Let us go to the theatre, Copperfield!’
There was no bedroom before me, but again the jingling table
covered with glasses; the lamp; Grainger on my right hand,
Markham on my left, and Steerforth opposite—all sitting in a mist,
and a long way off. The theatre? To be sure. The very thing. Come
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David Copperfield
along! But they must excuse me if I saw everybody out first, and
turned the lamp off—in case of fire.
Owing to some confusion in the dark, the door was gone. I was
feeling for it in the window-curtains, when Steerforth, laughing,
took me by the arm and led me out. We went downstairs, one
behind another. Near the bottom, somebody fell, and rolled down.
Somebody else said it was Copperfield. I was angry at that false
report, until, finding myself on my back in the passage, I began to
think there might be some foundation for it.
A very foggy night, with great rings round the lamps in the
streets! There was an indistinct talk of its being wet. I considered
it frosty. Steerforth dusted me under a lamp-post, and put my hat
into shape, which somebody produced from somewhere in a most
extraordinary manner, for I hadn’t had it on before. Steerforth
then said, ‘You are all right, Copperfield, are you not?’ and I told
him, ‘Neverberrer.’
A man, sitting in a pigeon-hole-place, looked out of the fog, and
took money from somebody, inquiring if I was one of the
gentlemen paid for, and appearing rather doubtful (as I remember
in the glimpse I had of him) whether to take the money for me or
not. Shortly afterwards, we were very high up in a very hot
theatre, looking down into a large pit, that seemed to me to smoke;
the people with whom it was crammed were so indistinct. There
was a great stage, too, looking very clean and smooth after the
streets; and there were people upon it, talking about something or
other, but not at all intelligibly. There was an abundance of bright
lights, and there was music, and there were ladies down in the
boxes, and I don’t know what more. The whole building looked to
me as if it were learning to swim; it conducted itself in such an
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David Copperfield
unaccountable manner, when I tried to steady it.
On somebody’
