No More Learning

We carried her away from the water to where there were some dry stones,
and there laid her down, crying and moaning. In a little while she sat
among the stones, holding her wretched head with both her hands.

'Oh, the river! ' she cried passionately. 'Oh, the river! '

'Hush, hush! ' said I. 'Calm yourself. '

But she still repeated the same words, continually exclaiming, 'Oh, the
river! ' over and over again.

'I know it's like me! ' she exclaimed. 'I know that I belong to it.
I know that it's the natural company of such as I am! It comes from
country places, where there was once no harm in it--and it creeps
through the dismal streets, defiled and miserable--and it goes away,
like my life, to a great sea, that is always troubled--and I feel that
I must go with it! ' I have never known what despair was, except in the
tone of those words.

'I can't keep away from it. I can't forget it. It haunts me day and
night. It's the only thing in all the world that I am fit for, or that's
fit for me. Oh, the dreadful river! '

The thought passed through my mind that in the face of my companion,
as he looked upon her without speech or motion, I might have read his
niece's history, if I had known nothing of it. I never saw, in any
painting or reality, horror and compassion so impressively blended. He
shook as if he would have fallen; and his hand--I touched it with my
own, for his appearance alarmed me--was deadly cold.

'She is in a state of frenzy,' I whispered to him. 'She will speak
differently in a little time. '

I don't know what he would have said in answer. He made some motion with
his mouth, and seemed to think he had spoken; but he had only pointed to
her with his outstretched hand.

A new burst of crying came upon her now, in which she once more hid
her face among the stones, and lay before us, a prostrate image of
humiliation and ruin. Knowing that this state must pass, before we could
speak to her with any hope, I ventured to restrain him when he would
have raised her, and we stood by in silence until she became more
tranquil.

'Martha,' said I then, leaning down, and helping her to rise--she seemed
to want to rise as if with the intention of going away, but she was
weak, and leaned against a boat. 'Do you know who this is, who is with
me? '

She said faintly, 'Yes. '

'Do you know that we have followed you a long way tonight? '

She shook her head. She looked neither at him nor at me, but stood in
a humble attitude, holding her bonnet and shawl in one hand, without
appearing conscious of them, and pressing the other, clenched, against
her forehead.

'Are you composed enough,' said I, 'to speak on the subject which so
interested you--I hope Heaven may remember it! --that snowy night? '

Her sobs broke out afresh, and she murmured some inarticulate thanks to
me for not having driven her away from the door.

'I want to say nothing for myself,' she said, after a few moments. 'I
am bad, I am lost. I have no hope at all. But tell him, sir,' she had
shrunk away from him, 'if you don't feel too hard to me to do it, that
I never was in any way the cause of his misfortune. ' 'It has never been
attributed to you,' I returned, earnestly responding to her earnestness.

'It was you, if I don't deceive myself,' she said, in a broken voice,
'that came into the kitchen, the night she took such pity on me; was so
gentle to me; didn't shrink away from me like all the rest, and gave me
such kind help! Was it you, sir? '

'It was,' said I.

'I should have been in the river long ago,' she said, glancing at it
with a terrible expression, 'if any wrong to her had been upon my mind.
I never could have kept out of it a single winter's night, if I had not
been free of any share in that! '

'The cause of her flight is too well understood,' I said. 'You are
innocent of any part in it, we thoroughly believe,--we know. '

'Oh, I might have been much the better for her, if I had had a better
heart! ' exclaimed the girl, with most forlorn regret; 'for she was
always good to me! She never spoke a word to me but what was pleasant
and right. Is it likely I would try to make her what I am myself,
knowing what I am myself, so well? When I lost everything that makes
life dear, the worst of all my thoughts was that I was parted for ever
from her! '

Mr. Peggotty, standing with one hand on the gunwale of the boat, and his
eyes cast down, put his disengaged hand before his face.

'And when I heard what had happened before that snowy night, from some
belonging to our town,' cried Martha, 'the bitterest thought in all my
mind was, that the people would remember she once kept company with me,
and would say I had corrupted her! When, Heaven knows, I would have died
to have brought back her good name! '

Long unused to any self-control, the piercing agony of her remorse and
grief was terrible.

'To have died, would not have been much--what can I say? ---I would
have lived! ' she cried. 'I would have lived to be old, in the wretched
streets--and to wander about, avoided, in the dark--and to see the day
break on the ghastly line of houses, and remember how the same sun used
to shine into my room, and wake me once--I would have done even that, to
save her! '

Sinking on the stones, she took some in each hand, and clenched them
up, as if she would have ground them. She writhed into some new posture
constantly: stiffening her arms, twisting them before her face, as
though to shut out from her eyes the little light there was, and
drooping her head, as if it were heavy with insupportable recollections.

'What shall I ever do! ' she said, fighting thus with her despair. 'How
can I go on as I am, a solitary curse to myself, a living disgrace to
everyone I come near! ' Suddenly she turned to my companion. 'Stamp upon
me, kill me! When she was your pride, you would have thought I had
done her harm if I had brushed against her in the street. You can't
believe--why should you? ---a syllable that comes out of my lips. It
would be a burning shame upon you, even now, if she and I exchanged a
word. I don't complain. I don't say she and I are alike--I know there
is a long, long way between us. I only say, with all my guilt and
wretchedness upon my head, that I am grateful to her from my soul, and
love her. Oh, don't think that all the power I had of loving anything is
quite worn out! Throw me away, as all the world does. Kill me for being
what I am, and having ever known her; but don't think that of me! '

He looked upon her, while she made this supplication, in a wild
distracted manner; and, when she was silent, gently raised her.

'Martha,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'God forbid as I should judge you. Forbid
as I, of all men, should do that, my girl! You doen't know half the
change that's come, in course of time, upon me, when you think it
likely. Well! ' he paused a moment, then went on. 'You doen't understand
how 'tis that this here gentleman and me has wished to speak to you. You
doen't understand what 'tis we has afore us. Listen now! '

His influence upon her was complete. She stood, shrinkingly, before him,
as if she were afraid to meet his eyes; but her passionate sorrow was
quite hushed and mute.

'If you heerd,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'owt of what passed between Mas'r
Davy and me, th' night when it snew so hard, you know as I have
been--wheer not--fur to seek my dear niece. My dear niece,' he repeated
steadily. 'Fur she's more dear to me now, Martha, than she was dear
afore. '

She put her hands before her face; but otherwise remained quiet.

'I have heerd her tell,' said Mr. Peggotty, 'as you was early left
fatherless and motherless, with no friend fur to take, in a rough
seafaring-way, their place. Maybe you can guess that if you'd had such
a friend, you'd have got into a way of being fond of him in course of
time, and that my niece was kiender daughter-like to me. '

As she was silently trembling, he put her shawl carefully about her,
taking it up from the ground for that purpose.

'Whereby,' said he, 'I know, both as she would go to the wureld's
furdest end with me, if she could once see me again; and that she would
fly to the wureld's furdest end to keep off seeing me. For though she
ain't no call to doubt my love, and doen't--and doen't,' he repeated,
with a quiet assurance of the truth of what he said, 'there's shame
steps in, and keeps betwixt us. '

I read, in every word of his plain impressive way of delivering himself,
new evidence of his having thought of this one topic, in every feature
it presented.

'According to our reckoning,' he proceeded, 'Mas'r Davy's here, and
mine, she is like, one day, to make her own poor solitary course to
London. We believe--Mas'r Davy, me, and all of us--that you are as
innocent of everything that has befell her, as the unborn child. You've
spoke of her being pleasant, kind, and gentle to you. Bless her, I knew
she was! I knew she always was, to all. You're thankful to her, and you
love her. Help us all you can to find her, and may Heaven reward you! '

She looked at him hastily, and for the first time, as if she were
doubtful of what he had said.

'Will you trust me? ' she asked, in a low voice of astonishment.

'Full and free! ' said Mr. Peggotty.

'To speak to her, if I should ever find her; shelter her, if I have any
shelter to divide with her; and then, without her knowledge, come to
you, and bring you to her? ' she asked hurriedly.

We both replied together, 'Yes! '

She lifted up her eyes, and solemnly declared that she would devote
herself to this task, fervently and faithfully. That she would never
waver in it, never be diverted from it, never relinquish it, while there
was any chance of hope. If she were not true to it, might the object
she now had in life, which bound her to something devoid of evil, in its
passing away from her, leave her more forlorn and more despairing, if
that were possible, than she had been upon the river's brink that night;
and then might all help, human and Divine, renounce her evermore!

She did not raise her voice above her breath, or address us, but said
this to the night sky; then stood profoundly quiet, looking at the
gloomy water.

We judged it expedient, now, to tell her all we knew; which I recounted
at length. She listened with great attention, and with a face that often
changed, but had the same purpose in all its varying expressions. Her
eyes occasionally filled with tears, but those she repressed. It seemed
as if her spirit were quite altered, and she could not be too quiet.

She asked, when all was told, where we were to be communicated with, if
occasion should arise. Under a dull lamp in the road, I wrote our two
addresses on a leaf of my pocket-book, which I tore out and gave to
her, and which she put in her poor bosom. I asked her where she lived
herself. She said, after a pause, in no place long. It were better not
to know.

Mr. Peggotty suggesting to me, in a whisper, what had already occurred
to myself, I took out my purse; but I could not prevail upon her to
accept any money, nor could I exact any promise from her that she would
do so at another time. I represented to her that Mr. Peggotty could
not be called, for one in his condition, poor; and that the idea of her
engaging in this search, while depending on her own resources, shocked
us both. She continued steadfast. In this particular, his influence
upon her was equally powerless with mine. She gratefully thanked him but
remained inexorable.

'There may be work to be got,' she said. 'I'll try. '

'At least take some assistance,' I returned, 'until you have tried. '

'I could not do what I have promised, for money,' she replied. 'I could
not take it, if I was starving. To give me money would be to take away
your trust, to take away the object that you have given me, to take away
the only certain thing that saves me from the river. '

'In the name of the great judge,' said I, 'before whom you and all of us
must stand at His dread time, dismiss that terrible idea! We can all do
some good, if we will. '

She trembled, and her lip shook, and her face was paler, as she
answered:

'It has been put into your hearts, perhaps, to save a wretched creature
for repentance. I am afraid to think so; it seems too bold. If any good
should come of me, I might begin to hope; for nothing but harm has ever
come of my deeds yet. I am to be trusted, for the first time in a long
while, with my miserable life, on account of what you have given me to
try for. I know no more, and I can say no more. '

Again she repressed the tears that had begun to flow; and, putting out
her trembling hand, and touching Mr. Peggotty, as if there was some
healing virtue in him, went away along the desolate road. She had been
ill, probably for a long time. I observed, upon that closer opportunity
of observation, that she was worn and haggard, and that her sunken eyes
expressed privation and endurance.

We followed her at a short distance, our way lying in the same
direction, until we came back into the lighted and populous streets. I
had such implicit confidence in her declaration, that I then put it to
Mr. Peggotty, whether it would not seem, in the onset, like distrusting
her, to follow her any farther. He being of the same mind, and equally
reliant on her, we suffered her to take her own road, and took ours,
which was towards Highgate. He accompanied me a good part of the way;
and when we parted, with a prayer for the success of this fresh effort,
there was a new and thoughtful compassion in him that I was at no loss
to interpret.

It was midnight when I arrived at home. I had reached my own gate, and
was standing listening for the deep bell of St. Paul's, the sound
of which I thought had been borne towards me among the multitude of
striking clocks, when I was rather surprised to see that the door of my
aunt's cottage was open, and that a faint light in the entry was shining
out across the road.

Thinking that my aunt might have relapsed into one of her old alarms,
and might be watching the progress of some imaginary conflagration in
the distance, I went to speak to her. It was with very great surprise
that I saw a man standing in her little garden.

He had a glass and bottle in his hand, and was in the act of drinking. I
stopped short, among the thick foliage outside, for the moon was up now,
though obscured; and I recognized the man whom I had once supposed to be
a delusion of Mr. Dick's, and had once encountered with my aunt in the
streets of the city.

He was eating as well as drinking, and seemed to eat with a hungry
appetite. He seemed curious regarding the cottage, too, as if it were
the first time he had seen it. After stooping to put the bottle on the
ground, he looked up at the windows, and looked about; though with a
covert and impatient air, as if he was anxious to be gone.

The light in the passage was obscured for a moment, and my aunt came
out. She was agitated, and told some money into his hand. I heard it
chink.

'What's the use of this? ' he demanded.

'I can spare no more,' returned my aunt.

'Then I can't go,' said he. 'Here! You may take it back! '

'You bad man,' returned my aunt, with great emotion; 'how can you use me
so? But why do I ask? It is because you know how weak I am! What have
I to do, to free myself for ever of your visits, but to abandon you to
your deserts? '

'And why don't you abandon me to my deserts? ' said he.

'You ask me why! ' returned my aunt. 'What a heart you must have! '

He stood moodily rattling the money, and shaking his head, until at
length he said:

'Is this all you mean to give me, then? '

'It is all I CAN give you,' said my aunt. 'You know I have had losses,
and am poorer than I used to be. I have told you so. Having got it, why
do you give me the pain of looking at you for another moment, and seeing
what you have become? '

'I have become shabby enough, if you mean that,' he said. 'I lead the
life of an owl.
'

'You stripped me of the greater part of all I ever had,' said my aunt.
'You closed my heart against the whole world, years and years. You
treated me falsely, ungratefully, and cruelly. Go, and repent of it.
Don't add new injuries to the long, long list of injuries you have done
me! '

'Aye! ' he returned. 'It's all very fine--Well! I must do the best I can,
for the present, I suppose. '

In spite of himself, he appeared abashed by my aunt's indignant tears,
and came slouching out of the garden. Taking two or three quick steps,
as if I had just come up, I met him at the gate, and went in as he came
out. We eyed one another narrowly in passing, and with no favour.

'Aunt,' said I, hurriedly. 'This man alarming you again! Let me speak to
him. Who is he? '

'Child,' returned my aunt, taking my arm, 'come in, and don't speak to
me for ten minutes. '

We sat down in her little parlour. My aunt retired behind the round
green fan of former days, which was screwed on the back of a chair, and
occasionally wiped her eyes, for about a quarter of an hour. Then she
came out, and took a seat beside me.

'Trot,' said my aunt, calmly, 'it's my husband. '

'Your husband, aunt? I thought he had been dead! '

'Dead to me,' returned my aunt, 'but living. '

I sat in silent amazement.

'Betsey Trotwood don't look a likely subject for the tender passion,'
said my aunt, composedly, 'but the time was, Trot, when she believed in
that man most entirely. When she loved him, Trot, right well. When there
was no proof of attachment and affection that she would not have given
him. He repaid her by breaking her fortune, and nearly breaking her
heart. So she put all that sort of sentiment, once and for ever, in a
grave, and filled it up, and flattened it down. '

'My dear, good aunt! '

'I left him,' my aunt proceeded, laying her hand as usual on the back of
mine, 'generously. I may say at this distance of time, Trot, that I left
him generously. He had been so cruel to me, that I might have effected
a separation on easy terms for myself; but I did not. He soon made ducks
and drakes of what I gave him, sank lower and lower, married another
woman, I believe, became an adventurer, a gambler, and a cheat. What he
is now, you see. But he was a fine-looking man when I married him,' said
my aunt, with an echo of her old pride and admiration in her tone; 'and
I believed him--I was a fool! --to be the soul of honour! '

She gave my hand a squeeze, and shook her head.

'He is nothing to me now, Trot--less than nothing. But, sooner than have
him punished for his offences (as he would be if he prowled about in
this country), I give him more money than I can afford, at intervals
when he reappears, to go away. I was a fool when I married him; and I am
so far an incurable fool on that subject, that, for the sake of what
I once believed him to be, I wouldn't have even this shadow of my idle
fancy hardly dealt with. For I was in earnest, Trot, if ever a woman
was. '

My aunt dismissed the matter with a heavy sigh, and smoothed her dress.

'There, my dear! ' she said. 'Now you know the beginning, middle, and
end, and all about it. We won't mention the subject to one another any
more; neither, of course, will you mention it to anybody else. This is
my grumpy, frumpy story, and we'll keep it to ourselves, Trot! '



CHAPTER 48. DOMESTIC


I laboured hard at my book, without allowing it to interfere with the
punctual discharge of my newspaper duties; and it came out and was very
successful. I was not stunned by the praise which sounded in my ears,
notwithstanding that I was keenly alive to it, and thought better of
my own performance, I have little doubt, than anybody else did. It has
always been in my observation of human nature, that a man who has any
good reason to believe in himself never flourishes himself before the
faces of other people in order that they may believe in him. For this
reason, I retained my modesty in very self-respect; and the more praise
I got, the more I tried to deserve.

It is not my purpose, in this record, though in all other essentials
it is my written memory, to pursue the history of my own fictions. They
express themselves, and I leave them to themselves. When I refer to
them, incidentally, it is only as a part of my progress.

Having some foundation for believing, by this time, that nature and
accident had made me an author, I pursued my vocation with confidence.
Without such assurance I should certainly have left it alone, and
bestowed my energy on some other endeavour. I should have tried to find
out what nature and accident really had made me, and to be that, and
nothing else. I had been writing, in the newspaper and elsewhere, so
prosperously, that when my new success was achieved, I considered myself
reasonably entitled to escape from the dreary debates. One joyful night,
therefore, I noted down the music of the parliamentary bagpipes for the
last time, and I have never heard it since; though I still recognize the
old drone in the newspapers, without any substantial variation (except,
perhaps, that there is more of it), all the livelong session.

I now write of the time when I had been married, I suppose, about a year
and a half. After several varieties of experiment, we had given up the
housekeeping as a bad job. The house kept itself, and we kept a page.
The principal function of this retainer was to quarrel with the cook;
in which respect he was a perfect Whittington, without his cat, or the
remotest chance of being made Lord Mayor.

He appears to me to have lived in a hail of saucepan-lids. His whole
existence was a scuffle. He would shriek for help on the most improper
occasions,--as when we had a little dinner-party, or a few friends in
the evening,--and would come tumbling out of the kitchen, with iron
missiles flying after him. We wanted to get rid of him, but he was very
much attached to us, and wouldn't go. He was a tearful boy, and broke
into such deplorable lamentations, when a cessation of our connexion
was hinted at, that we were obliged to keep him. He had no mother--no
anything in the way of a relative, that I could discover, except a
sister, who fled to America the moment we had taken him off her hands;
and he became quartered on us like a horrible young changeling. He had
a lively perception of his own unfortunate state, and was always rubbing
his eyes with the sleeve of his jacket, or stooping to blow his nose on
the extreme corner of a little pocket-handkerchief, which he never would
take completely out of his pocket, but always economized and secreted.

This unlucky page, engaged in an evil hour at six pounds ten per annum,
was a source of continual trouble to me. I watched him as he grew--and
he grew like scarlet beans--with painful apprehensions of the time when
he would begin to shave; even of the days when he would be bald or grey.
I saw no prospect of ever getting rid of him; and, projecting myself
into the future, used to think what an inconvenience he would be when he
was an old man.

I never expected anything less, than this unfortunate's manner of
getting me out of my difficulty. He stole Dora's watch, which, like
everything else belonging to us, had no particular place of its own;
and, converting it into money, spent the produce (he was always a
weak-minded boy) in incessantly riding up and down between London and
Uxbridge outside the coach. He was taken to Bow Street, as well as
I remember, on the completion of his fifteenth journey; when
four-and-sixpence, and a second-hand fife which he couldn't play, were
found upon his person.

The surprise and its consequences would have been much less disagreeable
to me if he had not been penitent. But he was very penitent indeed, and
in a peculiar way--not in the lump, but by instalments. For example:
the day after that on which I was obliged to appear against him, he made
certain revelations touching a hamper in the cellar, which we believed
to be full of wine, but which had nothing in it except bottles and
corks. We supposed he had now eased his mind, and told the worst he knew
of the cook; but, a day or two afterwards, his conscience sustained a
new twinge, and he disclosed how she had a little girl, who, early every
morning, took away our bread; and also how he himself had been suborned
to maintain the milkman in coals. In two or three days more, I was
informed by the authorities of his having led to the discovery of
sirloins of beef among the kitchen-stuff, and sheets in the rag-bag. A
little while afterwards, he broke out in an entirely new direction, and
confessed to a knowledge of burglarious intentions as to our premises,
on the part of the pot-boy, who was immediately taken up. I got to be so
ashamed of being such a victim, that I would have given him any money
to hold his tongue, or would have offered a round bribe for his being
permitted to run away. It was an aggravating circumstance in the case
that he had no idea of this, but conceived that he was making me amends
in every new discovery: not to say, heaping obligations on my head.

At last I ran away myself, whenever I saw an emissary of the police
approaching with some new intelligence; and lived a stealthy life until
he was tried and ordered to be transported. Even then he couldn't be
quiet, but was always writing us letters; and wanted so much to see Dora
before he went away, that Dora went to visit him, and fainted when she
found herself inside the iron bars. In short, I had no peace of my life
until he was expatriated, and made (as I afterwards heard) a shepherd
of, 'up the country' somewhere; I have no geographical idea where.

All this led me into some serious reflections, and presented our
mistakes in a new aspect; as I could not help communicating to Dora one
evening, in spite of my tenderness for her.

'My love,' said I, 'it is very painful to me to think that our want of
system and management, involves not only ourselves (which we have got
used to), but other people. '

'You have been silent for a long time, and now you are going to be
cross! ' said Dora.

'No, my dear, indeed! Let me explain to you what I mean. '

'I think I don't want to know,' said Dora.

'But I want you to know, my love. Put Jip down. '

Dora put his nose to mine, and said 'Boh! ' to drive my seriousness away;
but, not succeeding, ordered him into his Pagoda, and sat looking at
me, with her hands folded, and a most resigned little expression of
countenance.

'The fact is, my dear,' I began, 'there is contagion in us. We infect
everyone about us. '

I might have gone on in this figurative manner, if Dora's face had not
admonished me that she was wondering with all her might whether I was
going to propose any new kind of vaccination, or other medical remedy,
for this unwholesome state of ours. Therefore I checked myself, and made
my meaning plainer.

'It is not merely, my pet,' said I, 'that we lose money and comfort, and
even temper sometimes, by not learning to be more careful; but that we
incur the serious responsibility of spoiling everyone who comes into
our service, or has any dealings with us. I begin to be afraid that the
fault is not entirely on one side, but that these people all turn out
ill because we don't turn out very well ourselves. '

'Oh, what an accusation,' exclaimed Dora, opening her eyes wide; 'to say
that you ever saw me take gold watches! Oh! '

'My dearest,' I remonstrated, 'don't talk preposterous nonsense! Who has
made the least allusion to gold watches? '

'You did,' returned Dora. 'You know you did. You said I hadn't turned
out well, and compared me to him. '

'To whom? ' I asked.

'To the page,' sobbed Dora. 'Oh, you cruel fellow, to compare your
affectionate wife to a transported page! Why didn't you tell me
your opinion of me before we were married? Why didn't you say,
you hard-hearted thing, that you were convinced I was worse than a
transported page? Oh, what a dreadful opinion to have of me! Oh, my
goodness! '

'Now, Dora, my love,' I returned, gently trying to remove the
handkerchief she pressed to her eyes, 'this is not only very ridiculous
of you, but very wrong. In the first place, it's not true. '

'You always said he was a story-teller,' sobbed Dora. 'And now you say
the same of me! Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do! '

'My darling girl,' I retorted, 'I really must entreat you to be
reasonable, and listen to what I did say, and do say. My dear Dora,
unless we learn to do our duty to those whom we employ, they will never
learn to do their duty to us. I am afraid we present opportunities to
people to do wrong, that never ought to be presented. Even if we were
as lax as we are, in all our arrangements, by choice--which we are
not--even if we liked it, and found it agreeable to be so--which we
don't--I am persuaded we should have no right to go on in this way. We
are positively corrupting people. We are bound to think of that. I can't
help thinking of it, Dora. It is a reflection I am unable to dismiss,
and it sometimes makes me very uneasy. There, dear, that's all. Come
now. Don't be foolish! '

Dora would not allow me, for a long time, to remove the handkerchief.
She sat sobbing and murmuring behind it, that, if I was uneasy, why had
I ever been married? Why hadn't I said, even the day before we went to
church, that I knew I should be uneasy, and I would rather not? If I
couldn't bear her, why didn't I send her away to her aunts at Putney, or
to Julia Mills in India? Julia would be glad to see her, and would not
call her a transported page; Julia never had called her anything of the
sort. In short, Dora was so afflicted, and so afflicted me by being
in that condition, that I felt it was of no use repeating this kind of
effort, though never so mildly, and I must take some other course.

What other course was left to take? To 'form her mind'? This was a
common phrase of words which had a fair and promising sound, and I
resolved to form Dora's mind.

I began immediately. When Dora was very childish, and I would
have infinitely preferred to humour her, I tried to be grave--and
disconcerted her, and myself too. I talked to her on the subjects which
occupied my thoughts; and I read Shakespeare to her--and fatigued her
to the last degree. I accustomed myself to giving her, as it were quite
casually, little scraps of useful information, or sound opinion--and she
started from them when I let them off, as if they had been crackers.
No matter how incidentally or naturally I endeavoured to form my little
wife's mind, I could not help seeing that she always had an instinctive
perception of what I was about, and became a prey to the keenest
apprehensions. In particular, it was clear to me, that she thought
Shakespeare a terrible fellow. The formation went on very slowly.

I pressed Traddles into the service without his knowledge; and whenever
he came to see us, exploded my mines upon him for the edification of
Dora at second hand. The amount of practical wisdom I bestowed upon
Traddles in this manner was immense, and of the best quality; but it
had no other effect upon Dora than to depress her spirits, and make her
always nervous with the dread that it would be her turn next. I found
myself in the condition of a schoolmaster, a trap, a pitfall; of always
playing spider to Dora's fly, and always pouncing out of my hole to her
infinite disturbance.

Still, looking forward through this intermediate stage, to the time
when there should be a perfect sympathy between Dora and me, and when I
should have 'formed her mind' to my entire satisfaction, I persevered,
even for months. Finding at last, however, that, although I had been
all this time a very porcupine or hedgehog, bristling all over with
determination, I had effected nothing, it began to occur to me that
perhaps Dora's mind was already formed.

On further consideration this appeared so likely, that I abandoned
my scheme, which had had a more promising appearance in words than in
action; resolving henceforth to be satisfied with my child-wife, and to
try to change her into nothing else by any process. I was heartily tired
of being sagacious and prudent by myself, and of seeing my darling under
restraint; so I bought a pretty pair of ear-rings for her, and a collar
for Jip, and went home one day to make myself agreeable.

Dora was delighted with the little presents, and kissed me joyfully; but
there was a shadow between us, however slight, and I had made up my mind
that it should not be there. If there must be such a shadow anywhere, I
would keep it for the future in my own breast.

I sat down by my wife on the sofa, and put the ear-rings in her ears;
and then I told her that I feared we had not been quite as good company
lately, as we used to be, and that the fault was mine. Which I sincerely
felt, and which indeed it was.

'The truth is, Dora, my life,' I said; 'I have been trying to be wise. '

'And to make me wise too,' said Dora, timidly. 'Haven't you, Doady? '

I nodded assent to the pretty inquiry of the raised eyebrows, and kissed
the parted lips.

'It's of not a bit of use,' said Dora, shaking her head, until the
ear-rings rang again. 'You know what a little thing I am, and what I
wanted you to call me from the first. If you can't do so, I am afraid
you'll never like me. Are you sure you don't think, sometimes, it would
have been better to have--'

'Done what, my dear? ' For she made no effort to proceed.

'Nothing! ' said Dora.

'Nothing? ' I repeated.

She put her arms round my neck, and laughed, and called herself by her
favourite name of a goose, and hid her face on my shoulder in such a
profusion of curls that it was quite a task to clear them away and see
it.

'Don't I think it would have been better to have done nothing, than to
have tried to form my little wife's mind? ' said I, laughing at myself.
'Is that the question? Yes, indeed, I do. '

'Is that what you have been trying? ' cried Dora. 'Oh what a shocking
boy! '

'But I shall never try any more,' said I. 'For I love her dearly as she
is. '

'Without a story--really? ' inquired Dora, creeping closer to me.

'Why should I seek to change,' said I, 'what has been so precious to me
for so long! You never can show better than as your own natural self, my
sweet Dora; and we'll try no conceited experiments, but go back to our
old way, and be happy. '

'And be happy! ' returned Dora. 'Yes! All day! And you won't mind things
going a tiny morsel wrong, sometimes? '

'No, no,' said I. 'We must do the best we can. '

'And you won't tell me, any more, that we make other people bad,' coaxed
Dora; 'will you?