‘Was it in that year that the man appeared, sir?’ I asked.
‘Why, really’ said Mr. Dick, ‘I don’t see how it can have been in
that year, Trotwood. Did you get that date out of history?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I suppose history never lies, does it?’ said Mr. Dick, with a
gleam of hope.
‘Oh dear, no, sir!’ I replied, most decisively. I was ingenuous
and young, and I thought so.
‘I can’t make it out,’ said Mr. Dick, shaking his head. ‘There’s
something wrong, somewhere. However, it was very soon after the
mistake was made of putting some of the trouble out of King
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David Copperfield
Charles’s head into my head, that the man first came. I was
walking out with Miss Trotwood after tea, just at dark, and there
he was, close to our house.’
‘Walking about?’ I inquired.
‘Walking about?’ repeated Mr. Dick. ‘Let me see, I must
recollect a bit. N-no, no; he was not walking about.’
I asked, as the shortest way to get at it, what he WAS doing.
‘Well, he wasn’t there at all,’ said Mr. Dick, ‘until he came up
behind her, and whispered. Then she turned round and fainted,
and I stood still and looked at him, and he walked away; but that
he should have been hiding ever since (in the ground or
somewhere), is the most extraordinary thing!’
‘Has he been hiding ever since?’ I asked.
‘To be sure he has,’ retorted Mr. Dick, nodding his head
gravely. ‘Never came out, till last night! We were walking last
night, and he came up behind her again, and I knew him again.’
‘And did he frighten my aunt again?’
‘All of a shiver,’ said Mr. Dick, counterfeiting that affection and
making his teeth chatter. ‘Held by the palings. Cried. But,
Trotwood, come here,’ getting me close to him, that he might
whisper very softly; ‘why did she give him money, boy, in the
moonlight?’
‘He was a beggar, perhaps.’
Mr. Dick shook his head, as utterly renouncing the suggestion;
and having replied a great many times, and with great confidence,
‘No beggar, no beggar, no beggar, sir!’ went on to say, that from
his window he had afterwards, and late at night, seen my aunt give
this person money outside the garden rails in the moonlight, who
then slunk away—into the ground again, as he thought probable—
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David Copperfield
and was seen no more: while my aunt came hurriedly and secretly
back into the house, and had, even that morning, been quite
different from her usual self; which preyed on Mr. Dick’s mind.
I had not the least belief, in the outset of this story, that the
unknown was anything but a delusion of Mr. Dick’s, and one of the
line of that ill-fated Prince who occasioned him so much difficulty;
but after some reflection I began to entertain the question whether
an attempt, or threat of an attempt, might have been twice made
to take poor Mr. Dick himself from under my aunt’s protection,
and whether my aunt, the strength of whose kind feeling towards
him I knew from herself, might have been induced to pay a price
for his peace and quiet. As I was already much attached to Mr.
Dick, and very solicitous for his welfare, my fears favoured this
supposition; and for a long time his Wednesday hardly ever came
round, without my entertaining a misgiving that he would not be
on the coach-box as usual. There he always appeared, however,
grey-headed, laughing, and happy; and he never had anything
more to tell of the man who could frighten my aunt.
These Wednesdays were the happiest days of Mr. Dick’s life;
they were far from being the least happy of mine. He soon became
known to every boy in the school; and though he never took an
active part in any game but kite-flying, was as deeply interested in
all our sports as anyone among us. How often have I seen him,
inten
