‘Come, fellow-partner,’ said Uriah, ‘if I may take the liberty,—
now, suppose you give us something or another appropriate to
Copperfield!’
I pass over Mr. Wickfield’s proposing my aunt, his proposing
Mr. Dick, his proposing Doctors’ Commons, his proposing Uriah,
his drinking everything twice; his consciousness of his own
weakness, the ineffectual effort that he made against it; the
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David Copperfield
struggle between his shame in Uriah’s deportment, and his desire
to conciliate him; the manifest exultation with which Uriah twisted
and turned, and held him up before me. It made me sick at heart
to see, and my hand recoils from writing it.
‘Come, fellow-partner!’ said Uriah, at last, ‘I’ll give you another
one, and I umbly ask for bumpers, seeing I intend to make it the
divinest of her sex.’
Her father had his empty glass in his hand. I saw him set it
down, look at the picture she was so like, put his hand to his
forehead, and shrink back in his elbow-chair.
‘I’m an umble individual to give you her elth,’ proceeded Uriah,
‘but I admire—adore her.’
No physical pain that her father’s grey head could have borne, I
think, could have been more terrible to me, than the mental
endurance I saw compressed now within both his hands.
‘Agnes,’ said Uriah, either not regarding him, or not knowing
what the nature of his action was, ‘Agnes Wickfield is, I am safe to
say, the divinest of her sex. May I speak out, among friends? To be
her father is a proud distinction, but to be her usband—’
Spare me from ever again hearing such a cry, as that with
which her father rose up from the table! ‘What’s the matter?’ said
Uriah, turning of a deadly colour. ‘You are not gone mad, after all,
Mr. Wickfield, I hope? If I say I’ve 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!’
I had my arms round Mr. Wickfield, imploring him by
everything that I could think of, oftenest of all by his love for
Agnes, to calm himself a little. He was mad for the moment;
tearing out his hair, beating his head, trying to force me from him,
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David Copperfield
and to force himself from me, not answering a word, not looking at
or seeing anyone; blindly striving for he knew not what, his face all
staring and distorted—a frightful spectacle.
I conjured him, incoherently, but in the most impassioned
manner, not to abandon himself to this wildness, but to hear me. I
besought him to think of Agnes, to connect me with Agnes, to
recollect how Agnes and I had grown up together, how I honoured
her and loved her, how she was his pride and joy. I tried to bring
her idea before him in any form; I even reproached him with not
having firmness to spare her the knowledge of such a scene as
this. I may have effected something, or his wildness may have
spent itself; but by degrees he struggled less, and began to look at
me—strangely at first, then with recognition in his eyes. At length
he said, ‘I know, Trotwood! My darling child and you—I know!
But look at him!’
He pointed to Uriah, pale and glowering in a corner, evidently
very much out in his calculations, and taken by surprise.
‘Look at my torturer,’ he replied. ‘Bef
