"Well, Joram!" said Mr. Omer. "How do you get on?"
"All right," said Joram. "Done, sir."
Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one another.
"What! you were at it by candlelight last night, when I was at the club, then? Were you?" said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.
"Yes," said Joram. "As you said we could make a little trip of it, and go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me--and you."
"Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether," said Mr. Omer, laughing till he coughed.
"As you was so good as to say that," resumed the young man, "why I turned to with a will, you see. Will you give me your opinion of it?"
"I will," said Mr. Omer, rising. "My dear," and he stopped and turned to me, "would you like to see your--"
"No, Father," Minnie interposed.
"I thought it might be agreeable, my dear," said Mr. Omer. "But perhaps you're right."
I can't say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother's coffin that they went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never seen one that I know of, but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was going on, and when the young man entered, I am sure I knew what he had been doing.
The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not heard, brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went into the shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers. Minnie stayed behind to fold up what they had made, and pack it in two baskets. This she did upon her knees, humming a lively little tune the while. Joram, who I had no doubt was her lover, came in and stole a kiss from her while she was busy (he didn't appear to mind me, at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he went out again, and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket, and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass behind the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.
All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my head leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different things. The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and the baskets being put in first, I was put in next, and those three followed. I remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half pianoforte van, painted of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black horse with a long tail. There was plenty of room for us all.
I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride. I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of nature. They were very cheerful. The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him. They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner, scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgment came upon them for their hardness of heart.
So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and enjoyed themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but kept my fast unbroken. So, when we reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind as quickly as possible, that I might not be in their company before those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes once bright. And oh, how little need I had had to think what would move me to tears when I came back--seeing the window of my mother's room, and next it that which, in the better time, was mine!
I was in Peggotty's arms before I got to the door, and she took me into the house. Her grief burst out when she first saw me, but she controlled it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if the dead could be disturbed. She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time. She sat up at night still, and watched. As long as her poor dear pretty was above the ground, she said, she would never desert her.
Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me, when I went into the parlour, where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in his elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk, which was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold finger-nails, and asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for my mourning.
I said: "Yes."
"And your shirts," said Miss Murdstone, "have you brought 'em home?"
"Yes, ma'am. I have brought home all my clothes."
["Mind you are very careful of them," she returned. "Let what has happened be a warning to you in every way. If such an occurrence will not make a boy turn over a new leaf, nothing will."]
This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me. I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly proud of her turn for business, and she showed it now in reducing everything to pen and ink, and being moved by nothing. All the rest of that day and from morning to night afterwards, she sat at that desk, scratching composedly with a hard pen, speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to everybody, never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening a tone of her voice, or appearing with an atom of her dress astray.
Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw. He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and counting his footsteps, hour after hour. He very seldom spoke to her, and never to me. He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the clocks, in the whole motionless house.
[When I went to bed, I left him walking to and fro. When I entered in the morning, I found him walking to and fro. Of a sudden he would break off in the middle of the room, go back to his chair, and ponder until his restlessness came on again.]
In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty, except that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close to the room where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she came to me every night, and sat by my bed's head while I went to sleep. A day or two before the burial--I think it was a day or two before, but I am conscious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with nothing to mark its progress--she took me into the room. I only recollect that underneath some white covering on the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all around it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that was in the house, and that when she would have turned the cover gently back, I cried: "Oh no! oh no!" and held her hand.
[When the day came, I remember being awakened in the morning by the sharp strokes of a spade, and that I looked out of the window, and saw men working in the churchyard, underneath the tree, and went to bed and wept. I remember that I lay there sobbing, until Peggotty came up to help me dress myself, and that being in her black dress for the first time, she wrung her hands--a thing it turned my very blood to see her do--and gave away to her sorrow before me, for the only time in all my knowledge.]
If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better. The very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the decanters, the patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the odour of Miss Murdstone's dress, and our black clothes. Mr. Chillip is in the room, and comes to speak to me.
"And how is Master David?" he says, kindly.
I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in his.
"Dear me!" says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining in his eye. "Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out of our knowledge, ma'am?"
This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no reply.
"There is a great improvement he
re, ma'am?" says Mr. Chillip.
Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend; Mr. Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and opens his mouth no more.
I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not because I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to the same grave were made ready in the same room.
There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip, and I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are in the garden, and they move before us down the path, and past the elms, and through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have so often heard the birds sing on a summer morning.
We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from every other day, and the light not of the same colour --of a sadder colour. Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from home with what is resting in the mould, and while we stand bare-headed, I hear the voice of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and plain, saying: "I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!" Then I hear sobs, and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day say: "Well done."
There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd, faces that I knew in church, when mine was always wondering there, faces that first saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do not mind them--I mind nothing but my grief--and yet I see and know them all, and even in the background, far away, see Minnie looking on, and her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is near me.
It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on, and Mr. Chillip talks to me, and when we get home, puts some water to my lips, and when I ask his leave to go up to my room, dismisses me with the gentleness of a woman.
All this, I say, is yesterday's event. Events of later date have floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this stands like a high rock in the ocean.
I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath stillness of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have forgotten that) was suited to us both. She sat down by my side upon my little bed, and, holding my hand, and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes smoothing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little brother, told me, in her way, all that she had to tell concerning what had happened.
"She was never well," said Peggotty, "for a long time. She was uncertain in her mind, and not happy. When her baby was born, I thought at first she would get better, but she was more delicate, and sunk a little every day. She used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she cried, but afterwards she used to sing to it, so soft that I once thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the air, that was rising away.
"I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of late, and that a hard word was like a blow to her. But she was always the same to me. She never changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn't my sweet girl."
Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.
"The last time that I saw her like her own old self was the night when you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me, 'I never shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me so, that tells the truth, I know.'
"She tried to hold up after that, and many a time, when they told her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so, but it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me--she was afraid of saying it to anybody else--till one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she said to him: 'My dear, I think I am dying.'
" 'It's off my mind now, Peggotty,' she told me, when I laid her in her bed that night. 'He will believe it more add more, poor fellow, every day for a few days to come, and then it will be past. I am very tired. If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep; don't leave me. God bless both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy!"
"I never left her afterwards," said Peggotty. "She often talked to them two downstairs--for she loved them; she couldn't bear not to love anyone who was about her--but when they went away from her bedside, she always turned to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never fell asleep in any other way.
"On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: 'If my baby should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms, and bury us together.' (It was done, for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond her.) 'Let my dearest boy go with us to our resting-place,' she said, 'and tell him that his mother, when she lay here, blessed him not once, but a thousand times.' "
Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my hand.
"It was pretty far in the night," said Peggotty, "when she asked me for some drink, and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the dear!--so beautiful!
"Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy man in hers. 'Peggotty, my dear,' she said then, 'put me nearer to you,' for she was very weak. 'Lay your good arm underneath my neck,' she said, 'and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it to be near.' I put it as she asked, and oh Davy! the time had come when my first parting words to you were true--when she was glad to lay her poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty's arm--and she died like a child that had gone to sleep!"
Thus ended Peggotty's narration. From the moment of my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the parlour. What Peggotty had told me now was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.
The mother who lay in the grave was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.
CHAPTER X
I Become neglected, and Am Provided For
THE FIRST ACT OF BUSINESS MISS MURDSTONE PERFORMED when the day of the solemnity was over, and light was freely admitted into the house, was to give Peggotty a month's warning. Much as Peggotty would have disliked such a service, I believe she would have retained it, for my sake, in preference to the best upon earth. She told me we must part, and told me why, and we condoled with one another, in all sincerity.
As to me or my future, not a word was said, or a step taken. Happy they would have been, I dare say, if they could have dismissed me at a month's warning too. I mustered courage, once, to ask Miss Murdstone when I was going back to school, and she answered drily, she believed I was not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty, but neither she nor I could pick up any information on the subject.
There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me was quite abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in the parlour that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off from Peggotty's society t
hat, provided that I was not in Mr. Murdstone's, I was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone's devoting herself to it, but I soon began to think that such fears were groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect.
I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was still giddy with the shock of my mother's death, and in a kind of stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or cared for any more, and growing up to be a shabby moody man, lounging an idle life away, about the village, as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune, but these were transient visions, day-dreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted away, left the wall blank again.
"Peggotty," I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, "Mr. Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty, but he would rather not even see me now, if he can help it."
"Perhaps it's his sorrow," said Peggotty, stroking my hair.
"I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it's not that, oh no, it's not that."
"How do you know it's not that?" said Peggotty, after a silence.
"Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone, but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides."
"What would he be?" said Peggotty.
"Angry," I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown. "If he was only sorry, he wouldn't look at me as he does. I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder."
Peggotty said nothing for a little while, and I warmed my hands, as silent as she.
"Davy," she said at length.
"Yes, Peggotty?"