David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

  Mrs. Gummidge retired with these words, and betook herself to bed. When she was gone, Mr. Peggotty, who had not exhibited a trace of any feeling but the profoundest sympathy, looked around upon us, and nodding his head with a lively expression of that sentiment still animating his face, said in a whisper:

  "She's been thinking of the old 'un!"

  I did not quite understand what old one Mrs. Gummidge was supposed to have fixed her mind upon, until Peggotty, on seeing me to bed, explained that it was the late Mr. Gummidge; and that her brother always took that for a received truth on such occasions, and that it always had a moving effect upon him. Some time after he was in his hammock that night, I heard him myself repeat to Ham, "Poor thing! She's been thinking of the old 'un!" And whenever Mrs. Gummidge was overcome in a similar manner during the remainder of our stay (which happened some few times), he always said the same thing in extenuation of the circumstance, and always with the tenderest commiseration.

  So the fortnight slipped away, varied by nothing but the variation of the tide, which altered Mr. Peggotty's times of going out and coming in, and altered Ham's engagements also. When the latter was unemployed, he sometimes walked with us to show us the boats and ships, and once or twice he took us for a row. I don't know why one slight set of impressions should be more particularly associated with a place than another, though I believe this obtains with most people, in reference especially to the associations of their childhood. I never hear the name, or read the name, of Yarmouth, but I am reminded of a certain Sunday morning on the beach, the bells ringing for church, little Em'ly leaning on my shoulder, Ham lazily dropping stones into the water, and the sun, away at sea, just breaking through the heavy mist, and showing us the ships, like their own shadows.

  At last the day came for going home. I bore up against the separation from Mr. Peggotty and Mrs. Gummidge, but my agony of mind at leaving little Em'ly was piercing. We went arm-in-arm to the public-house where the carrier put up, and I promised, on the road, to write to her. (I redeemed that promise afterwards, in characters larger than those in which apartments are usually announced in manuscript, as being to let.) We were greatly overcome at parting, and if ever, in my life, I have had a void made in my heart, I had one made that day.

  Now, all the time I had been on my visit, I had been ungrateful to my home again, and had thought little or nothing about it. But I was no sooner turned towards it, than my reproachful young conscience seemed to point that way with a steady finger, and I felt, all the more for the sinking of my spirits, that it was my nest, and that my mother was my comforter and friend.

  This gained upon me as we went along, so that the nearer we drew, and the more familiar the objects became that we passed, the more excited I was to get there, and to run into her arms. But Peggotty, instead of sharing in these transports, tried to check them (though very kindly), and looked confused and out of sorts.

  Blunderstone Rookery would come, however, in spite of her, when the carrier's horse pleased--and did. How well I recollect it, on a cold grey afternoon, with a dull sky, threatening rain!

  The door opened, and I looked, half laughing and half crying, in my pleasant agitation, for my mother. It was not she, but a strange servant.

  "Why, Peggotty!" I said, ruefully, "isn't she come home?"

  "Yes, yes, Master Davy," said Peggotty. "She's come home. Wait a bit, Master Davy, and I'll--I'll tell you something."

  Between her agitation, and her natural awkwardness in getting out of the cart, Peggotty was making a most extraordinary festoon of herself, but I felt too blank and strange to tell her so. When she had got down, she took me by the hand, led me, wondering, into the kitchen, and shut the door.

  "Peggotty!" said I, quite frightened. "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing's the matter, bless you, Master Davy dear!" she answered, assuming an air of sprightliness.

  "Something's the matter, I'm sure. Where's Mama!"

  "Where's Mama, Master Davy?" repeated Peggotty.

  "Yes. Why hasn't she come out to the gate, and what have we come in here for? Oh, Peggotty!" My eyes were full, and I felt as if I were going to tumble down.

  "Bless the precious boy!" cried Peggotty, taking hold of me. "What is it? Speak, my pet!"

  "Not dead, tool Oh, she's not dead, Peggotty?"

  Peggotty cried out, "No!" with an astonishing volume of voice, and then sat down, and began to pant, and said I had given her a turn.

  I gave her a hug to take away the turn, or to give her another turn in the right direction, and then stood before her, looking at her in anxious inquiry.

  "You see, dear, I should have told you before now," said Peggotty, "but I hadn't an opportunity. I ought to have made it, perhaps, but I couldn't azackly"--that was always the substitute for exactly, in Peggotty's militia of words--"bring my mind to it."

  "Go on, Peggotty," said I, more frightened than before.

  "Master Davy," said Peggotty, untying her bonnet with a shaking hand, and speaking in a breathless sort of way. "What do you think? You have got a Pa!"

  I trembled, and turned white. Something--I don't know what, or how--connected with the grave in the churchyard, and the raising of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unwholesome wind.

  "A new one," said Peggotty.

  "A new one?" I repeated.

  Peggotty gave a gasp, as if she were swallowing something that was very hard, and, putting out her hand, said:

  "Come and see him."

  "I don't want to see him."

  --"And your mama," said Peggotty.

  I ceased to draw back, and we went straight to the best parlour, where she left me. On one side of the fire, sat my mother; on the other, Mr. Murdstone. My mother dropped her work, and arose hurriedly, but timidly I thought.

  "Now, Clara, my dear," said Mr. Murdstone. "Recollect! Control yourself, always control yourself! Davy boy, how do you do?"

  I gave him my hand. After a moment of suspense, I went and kissed my mother; she kissed me, patted me gently on the shoulder, and sat down again to her work. I could not look at her, I could not look at him, I knew quite well that he was looking at us both, and I turned to the window and looked out there at some shrubs that were drooping their heads in the cold.

  As soon as I could creep away, I crept upstairs. My old dear bedroom was changed, and I was to lie a long way off. I rambled downstairs to find anything that was like itself, so altered it all seemed, and roamed into the yard. I very soon started back from there, for the empty dog-kennel was filled up with a great dog--deep-mouthed and black-haired like Him--and he was very angry at the sight of me, and sprang out to get at me.

  CHAPTER IV

  I Fall into Disgrace

  IF THE ROOM TO WHICH MY BED WAS REMOVED WERE A sentient thing that could give evidence, I might appeal to it at this day--who sleeps there now, I wonder!--to bear witness for me what a heavy heart I carried to it. I went up there, hearing the dog in the yard bark after me all the way while I climbed the stairs, and, looking as blank and strange upon the room as the room looked upon me, sat down with my small hands crossed, and thought.

  I thought of the oddest things. Of the shape of the room, of the cracks in the ceiling, of the paper on the wall, of the flaws in the window-glass making ripples and dimples on the prospect, of the washing-stand being rickety on its three legs, and having a discontented something about it, which reminded me of Mrs. Gummidge under the influence of the old one. I was crying all the time, but, except that I was conscious of being cold and dejected, I am sure I never thought why I cried. At last in my desolation I began to consider that I was dreadfully in love with little Em'ly, and had been torn away from her to come here where no one seemed to want me, or to care about me, half as much as she did. This made such a very miserable piece of business of it, that I rolled myself up in a comer of the counterpane, and cried myself to sleep.

  I was awakened by somebody saying "Here he is!" and uncovering my hot head. My mother and Peggotty had come
to look for me, and it was one of them who had done it.

  "Davy," said my mother. "What's the matter?"

  I thought it was very strange that she should ask me, and answered, "Nothing." I turned over on my face, I recollect, to hide my trembling lip, which answered her with greater truth.

  "Davy," said my mother. "Davy, my child!"

  I dare say no words she could have uttered would have affected me so much, then, as her calling me her child. I hid my tears in the bedclothes, and pressed her from me with my hand, when she would have raised me up.

  "This is your doing, Peggotty, you cruel thing!" said my mother. "I have no doubt at all about it. How can you reconcile it to your conscience, I wonder, to prejudice my own boy against me, or against anybody who is dear to me? What do you mean by it, Peggotty?"

  Poor Peggotty lifted up her hands and eyes, and only answered, in a sort of paraphrase of the grace I usually repeated after dinner, "Lord forgive you, Mrs. Copperfield, and for what you have said this minute, may you never be truly sorry!"

  "It's enough to distract me," cried my mother. "In my honeymoon, too, when my most inveterate enemy might relent, one would think, and not envy me a little peace of mind and happiness. Davy, you naughty boy! Peggotty, you savage creature! Oh, dear me!" cried my mother, turning from one of us to the other, in her pettish, wilful manner. "What a * troublesome world this is, when one has the most right to expect it to be as agreeable as possible!"

  I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor Peggotty's, and slipped to my feet at the bedside. It was Mr. Murdstone's hand, and he kept it on my arm as he said:

  "What's this! Clara, my love, have you forgotten? Firmness, my dear!"

  "I am very sorry, Edward," said my mother. "I meant to be very good, but I am so uncomfortable."

  "Indeed!" he answered. "That's a bad hearing, so soon, Clara."

  "I say it's very hard I should be made so now," returned my mother, pouting; "and it is--very hard--isn't it?"

  He drew her to him, whispered in her ear, and kissed her. I knew as well, when I saw my mother's head lean down upon his shoulder, and her arm touch his neck--I knew as well that he could mould her pliant nature into any form he chose, as I know, now, that he did it.

  "Go you below, my love," said Mr. Murdstone. "David and I will come down, together. My friend," turning a darkening face on Peggotty, when he had watched my mother out, and dismissed her with a nod and a smile: "do you know your mistress's name?"

  "She has been my mistress a long time, sir," answered Peggotty. "I ought to know it."

  "That's true," he answered. "But I thought I heard you, as I came upstairs, address her by a name that is not hers. She has taken mine, you know. Will you remember that?"

  Peggotty, with some uneasy glances at me, curtseyed herself out of the room without replying, seeing, I suppose, that she was expected to go, and had no excuse for remaining. When we two were left alone, he shut the door, and, sitting on a chair, and holding me standing before him, looked steadily into my eyes. I felt my own attracted, no less steadily, to his. As I recall our being opposed thus, face to face, I seem again to hear my heart beat fast and high.

  "David," he said, making his lips thin by pressing them together, "if I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I do?"

  "I don't know."

  "I beat him."

  I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my silence, that my breath was shorter now.

  "I make him wince and smart. I say to myself, 'I'll conquer that fellow,' and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do it. What is that upon your face?"

  "Dirt," I said.

  He knew it was the mark of tears as well as I. But if he had asked the question twenty times, each time with twenty blows, I believe my baby heart would have burst before I would have told him so..

  "You have a good deal of intelligence for a little fellow," he said, with a grave smile that belonged to him, "and you understood me very well, I see. Wash that face, sir, and come down with me."

  He pointed to the washing-stand, which I had made out to be like Mrs. Gummidge, and motioned me with his head to obey him directly. I had little doubt then, and I have less doubt now, that he would have knocked me down without the least compunction, if I had hesitated.

  "Clara, my dear," he said, when I had done his bidding, and he walked me into the parlour, with his hand still on my arm, "you will not be made uncomfortable any more, I hope. We shall soon improve our youthful humours."

  God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have been made another creature perhaps for life, by a kind word at that season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate him. I thought my mother was sorry to see me standing in the room so scared and strange, and that, presently, when I stole to a chair, she followed me with her eyes more sorrowfully still--missing, perhaps, some freedom in my childish tread--but the word was not spoken, and the time for it was gone.

  We dined alone, we three together. He seemed to be very fond of my mother--I am afraid I liked him none the better for that--and she was very fond of him. I gathered from what they said that an elder sister of his was coming to stay with them, and that she was expected that evening. I am not certain whether I found out then or afterwards that, without being actively concerned in any business, he had some share in, or some annual charge upon the profits of, a wine-merchant's house in London, with which his family had been connected from his great-grandfather's time, and in which his sister had a similar interest, but I may mention it in this place, whether or no.

  After dinner, when we were sitting by the fire, and I was meditating an escape to Peggotty without having the hardihood to slip away, lest it should offend the master of the house, a coach drove up to the garden-gate, and he went out to receive the visitor. My mother followed him. I was timidly following her, when she turned round at the parlour-door, in the dusk, and taking me in her embrace as she had been used to do, whispered me to love my new father and be obedient to him. She did this hurriedly and secretly, as if it were wrong, but tenderly, and, putting out her hand behind her, held mine in it, until we came near to where he was standing in the garden, where she let mine go, and drew hers through his arm.

  It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was: dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice, and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was.

  She was brought into the parlour with many tokens of welcome, and there formally recognized my mother as a new and near relation. Then she looked at me, and said:

  "Is that your boy, sister-in-law?"

  My mother acknowledged me.

  "Generally speaking," said Miss Murdstone, "I don't like boys. How d'ye do, boy?"

  Under these encouraging circumstances, I replied that I was very well, and that I hoped she was the same, with such an indifferent grace, that Miss Murdstone disposed of me in two words:

  "Wants manner!"

  Having uttered which with great distinctness, she begged the favour of being shown to her room, which became to me from that time forth a place of awe and dread, wherein the two black boxes were never seen open or known to be left unlocked, and where (for I peeped in once or twice when she was out) numerous little steel fetters and rivets, with wh
ich Miss Murdstone embellished herself when she was dressed, generally hung upon the looking-glass in formidable array.

  As well as I could make out, she had come for good, and had no intention of ever going again. She began to "help" my mother next morning, and was in and out of the store-closet all day, putting things to rights, and making havoc in the old arrangements. Almost the first remarkable thing I observed in Miss Murdstone was her being constantly haunted by a suspicion that the servants had a man secreted somewhere on the premises. Under the influence of this delusion, she dived into the coal-cellar at the most untimely hours, and scarcely ever opened the door of a dark cupboard without clapping it to again, in the belief that she had got him.

  Though there was nothing very airy about Miss Murdstone, she was a perfect Lark in point of getting up. She was up (and, as I believe to this hour, looking for that man) before anybody in the house was stirring. Peggotty gave it as her opinion that she even slept with one eye open, but I could not concur in this idea, for I tried it myself after hearing the suggestion thrown out, and found it couldn't be done.

  On the very first morning after her arrival she was up and ringing her bell at cock-crow. When my mother came down to breakfast and was going to make the tea, Miss Murdstone gave her a kind of peck on the cheek, which was her nearest approach to a kiss, and said:

  "Now, Clara, my dear, I am come here, you know, to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You're much too pretty and thoughtless"--my mother blushed but laughed, and seemed not to dislike this character--"to have any duties imposed upon you that can be undertaken by me. If you'll be so good as give me your keys, my dear, I'll attend to all this sort of thing in future."

  From that time, Miss Murdstone kept the keys in her own little jail all day, and under her pillow all night, and my mother had no more to do with them than I had.

  My mother did not suffer her authority to pass from her without a shadow of protest. One night when Miss Murdstone had. been developing certain household plans to her brother, of which he signified his approbation, my mother suddenly began to cry, and said she thought she might have been consulted.