20.Steerforth’s Home
When the chambermaid tapped at my door at eight o’clock, and informed me that my shaving-water was outside, I felt severely the having no occasion for it, and blushed in my bed. The suspicion that she laughed too, when she said it, preyed upon my mind all the time I was dressing; and gave me, I was conscious, a sneaking and guilty air when I passed her on the staircase, as I was going down to breakfast. I was so sensitively aware, indeed, of being younger than I could have wished, that for some time I could not make up my mind to pass her at all, under the ignoble circumstances of the case; but, hearing her there with a broom, stood peeping out of window at King Charles on horseback, surrounded by a maze of hackney-coaches, and looking anything but regal in a drizzling rain and a dark-brown fog, until I was admonished by the waiter that the gentleman was waiting for me.
It was not in the coffee-room that I found Steerforth expecting me, but in a snug private apartment, red-curtained and Turkey-carpeted, where the fire burnt bright, and a fine hot breakfast was set forth on a table covered with a clean cloth; and a cheerful miniature of the room, the fire, the breakfast, Steerforth, and all, was shining in the little round mirror over the sideboard. I was rather bashful at first, Steerforth being so self-possessed, and elegant, and superior to me in all respects (age included); but his easy patronage soon put that to rights, and made me quite at home. I could not enough admire the change he had wrought in the Golden Cross; or compare the dull forlorn state I had held yesterday, with this morning’s comfort and this morning’s entertainment. As to the waiter’s familiarity, it was quenched as if it had never been. He attended on us, as I may say, in sackcloth and ashes.
‘Now, Copperfield,’ said Steerforth, when we were alone, ‘I should like to hear what you are doing, and where you are going, and all about you. I feel as if you were my property.’ Glowing with pleasure to find that he had still this interest in me, I told him how my aunt had proposed the little expedition that I had before me, and whither it tended.
‘As you are in no hurry, then,’ said Steerforth, ‘come home with me to Highgate, and stay a day or two. You will be pleased with my mother—she is a little vain and prosy about me, but that you can forgive her—and she will be pleased with you.’
‘I should like to be as sure of that, as you are kind enough to say you are,’ I answered, smiling.
‘Oh!’ said Steerforth, ‘everyone who likes me, has a claim on her that is sure to be acknowledged.’
‘Then I think I shall be a favourite,’ said I.
‘Good!’ said Steerforth. ‘Come and prove it. We will go and see the lions for an hour or two—it’s something to have a fresh fellow like you to show them to, Copperfield—and then we’ll journey out to Highgate by the coach.’
I could hardly believe but that I was in a dream, and that I should wake presently in number forty-four, to the solitary box in the coffee-room and the familiar waiter again. After I had written to my aunt and told her of my fortunate meeting with my admired old schoolfellow, and my acceptance of his invitation, we went out in a hackney-chariot, and saw a Panorama and some other sights, and took a walk through the Museum, where I could not help observing how much Steerforth knew, on an infinite variety of subjects, and of how little account he seemed to make his knowledge.
‘You’ll take a high degree at college, Steerforth,’ said I, ‘if you have not done so already; and they will have good reason to be proud of you.’
‘I take a degree!’ cried Steerforth. ‘Not I! my dear Daisy—will you mind my calling you Daisy?’
‘Not at all!’ said I.
‘That’s a good fellow! My dear Daisy,’ said Steerforth, laughing. ‘I have not the least desire or intention to distinguish myself in that way. I have done quite sufficient for my purpose. I find that I am heavy company enough for myself as I am.’
‘But the fame—’ I was beginning.
‘You romantic Daisy!’ said Steerforth, laughing still more heartily: ‘why should I trouble myself, that a parcel of heavy-headed fellows may gape and hold up their hands? Let them do it at some other man. There’s fame for him, and he’s welcome to it.’
I was abashed at having made so great a mistake, and was glad to change the subject. Fortunately it was not difficult to do, for Steerforth could always pass from one subject to another with a carelessness and lightness that were his own.
Lunch succeeded to our sight-seeing, and the short winter day wore away so fast, that it was dusk when the stage-coach stopped with us at an old brick house at Highgate on the summit of the hill. An elderly lady, though not very far advanced in years, with a proud carriage and a handsome face, was in the doorway as we alighted; and greeting Steerforth as ‘My dearest James,’ folded him in her arms. To this lady he presented me as his mother, and she gave me a stately welcome.
It was a genteel old-fashioned house, very quiet and orderly. From the windows of my room I saw all London lying in the distance like a great vapour, with here and there some lights twinkling through it. I had only time, in dressing, to glance at the solid furniture, the framed pieces of work (done, I supposed, by Steerforth’s mother when she was a girl), and some pictures in crayons of ladies with powdered hair and bodices, coming and going on the walls, as the newly-kindled fire crackled and sputtered, when I was called to dinner.
There was a second lady in the dining-room, of a slight short figure, dark, and not agreeable to look at, but with some appearance of good looks too, who attracted my attention: perhaps because I had not expected to see her; perhaps because I found myself sitting opposite to her; perhaps because of something really remarkable in her. She had black hair and eager black eyes, and was thin, and had a scar upon her lip. It was an old scar—I should rather call it seam, for it was not discoloured, and had healed years ago—which had once cut through her mouth, downward towards the chin, but was now barely visible across the table, except above and on her upper lip, the shape of which it had altered. I concluded in my own mind that she was about thirty years of age, and that she wished to be married. She was a little dilapidated—like a house—with having been so long to let; yet had, as I have said, an appearance of good looks. Her thinness seemed to be the effect of some wasting fire within her, which found a vent in her gaunt eyes.
She was introduced as Miss Dartle, and both Steerforth and his mother called her Rosa. I found that she lived there, and had been for a long time Mrs. Steerforth’s companion. It appeared to me that she never said anything she wanted to say, outright; but hinted it, and made a great deal more of it by this practice. For example, when Mrs. Steerforth observed, more in jest than earnest, that she feared her son led but a wild life at college, Miss Dartle put in thus:
‘Oh, really? You know how ignorant I am, and that I only ask for information, but isn’t it always so? I thought that kind of life was on all hands understood to be—eh?’ ‘It is education for a very grave profession, if you mean that, Rosa,’ Mrs. Steerforth answered with some coldness.
‘Oh! Yes! That’s very true,’ returned Miss Dartle. ‘But isn’t it, though?—I want to be put right, if I am wrong—isn’t it, really?’
‘Really what?’ said Mrs. Steerforth.
‘Oh! You mean it’s
