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would go threading my grandmother’s needle through my unfortunate head,

in at one ear and out at the other! What yawns and dozes I lapsed into,

in spite of all my care; what starts I came out of concealed sleeps

with; what answers I never got, to little observations that I rarely

made; what a blank space I seemed, which everybody overlooked, and

yet was in everybody’s way; what a heavy relief it was to hear Miss

Murdstone hail the first stroke of nine at night, and order me to bed!

Thus the holidays lagged away, until the morning came when Miss

Murdstone said: ‘Here’s the last day off!’ and gave me the closing cup

of tea of the vacation.

I was not sorry to go. I had lapsed into a stupid state; but I was

recovering a little and looking forward to Steerforth, albeit Mr.

Creakle loomed behind him. Again Mr. Barkis appeared at the gate, and

again Miss Murdstone in her warning voice, said: ‘Clara!’ when my mother

bent over me, to bid me farewell.

I kissed her, and my baby brother, and was very sorry then; but not

sorry to go away, for the gulf between us was there, and the parting was

there, every day. And it is not so much the embrace she gave me, that

lives in my mind, though it was as fervent as could be, as what followed

the embrace.

I was in the carrier’s cart when I heard her calling to me. I looked

out, and she stood at the garden-gate alone, holding her baby up in her

arms for me to see. It was cold still weather; and not a hair of her

head, nor a fold of her dress, was stirred, as she looked intently at

me, holding up her child.

So I lost her. So I saw her afterwards, in my sleep at school--a silent

presence near my bed--looking at me with the same intent face--holding

up her baby in her arms.

CHAPTER 9. I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY

I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of my

birthday came round in March. Except that Steerforth was more to be

admired than ever, I remember nothing. He was going away at the end of

the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than

before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging than before; but beyond

this I remember nothing. The great remembrance by which that time is

marked in my mind, seems to have swallowed up all lesser recollections,

and to exist alone.

It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full

two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that

birthday. I can only understand that the fact was so, because I know it

must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that there was no

interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the other’s heels.

How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung

about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my

rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of

the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the

foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the

raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the

floor. It was after breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the

playground, when Mr. Sharp entered and said:

‘David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.’

I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order. Some

of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in the

distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with great

alacrity.

‘Don’t hurry, David,’ said Mr. Sharp. ‘There’s time enough, my boy,

don’t hurry.’

I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke, if I

had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards. I hurried

away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle, sitting at his

breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him, and Mrs. Creakle

with an opened letter in her hand. But no hamper.

‘David Copperfield,’ said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and

sitting down beside me. ‘I want to speak to you very particularly. I

have something to tell you, my child.’

Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without looking

at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of buttered toast.

‘You are too young to know how the world changes every day,’ said Mrs.

Creakle, ‘and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn

it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old,

some of us at all times of our lives.’

I looked at her earnestly.

‘When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,’ said Mrs.

Creakle, after a pause, ‘were they all well?’ After another pause, ‘Was

your mama well?’

I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her

earnestly, making no attempt to answer.

‘Because,’ said she, ‘I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your

mama is very ill.’

A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move

in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down my face,

and it was steady again.

‘She is very dangerously ill,’ she added.

I knew all now.

‘She is dead.’

There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a

desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.

She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me alone

sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke and

cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the

oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull pain that

there was no ease for.

And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that weighed

upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of our house shut

up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs. Creakle said, had

been pining away for some time, and who, they believed, would die too. I

thought of my father’s grave in the churchyard, by our house, and of my

mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well. I stood upon a chair

when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes

were, and how sorrowful my face. I considered, after some hours were

gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be,

what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think

of when I drew near home--for I was going home to the funeral. I am

sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the rest of

the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.

If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I remember

that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in

the playground that afternoon while the boys were in school. When I

saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as they went up to their

classes, I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked

slower. When school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt

it rather good in myself not to be proud to any of them, and to take

exactly the same notice of them all, as before.

I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy

night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used by

country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the road. We

had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me

his pillow. I don’t know what good he thought it would do me, for I

had one of my own: but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, except a

sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons; and that he gave me at parting,

as a soother of my sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.

I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon. I little thought then that

I left it, never to return. We travelled very slowly all night, and

did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o’clock in the morning. I

looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there; and instead of him a

fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty

little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black stockings,

and a broad-brimmed hat, came puffing up to the coach window, and said:

‘Master Copperfield?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,’ he said, opening the

door, ‘and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.’

I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to a

shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR,

HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c. It was a close and stifling little

shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including

one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We went into a little

back-parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work

on a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table,

and little bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor.

There was a good fire in the room, and a breathless smell of warm black

crape--I did not know what the smell was then, but I know now.

The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and

comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on with

their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At the same time there came from

a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a regular sound

of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,

RAT--tat-tat, without any variation.

‘Well,’ said my conductor to one of the three young women. ‘How do you

get on, Minnie?’

‘We shall be ready by the trying-on time,’ she replied gaily, without

looking up. ‘Don’t you be afraid, father.’

Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted. He was

so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could say:

‘That’s right.’

‘Father!’ said Minnie, playfully. ‘What a porpoise you do grow!’

‘Well, I don’t know how it is, my dear,’ he replied, considering about

it. ‘I am rather so.’

‘You are such a comfortable man, you see,’ said Minnie. ‘You take things

so easy.’

‘No use taking ‘em otherwise, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer.

‘No, indeed,’ returned his daughter. ‘We are all pretty gay here, thank

Heaven! Ain’t we, father?’

‘I hope so, my dear,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘As I have got my breath now, I

think I’ll measure this young scholar. Would you walk into the shop,

Master Copperfield?’

I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after showing

me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too good mourning

for anything short of parents, he took my various dimensions, and put

them down in a book. While he was recording them he called my attention

to his stock in trade, and to certain fashions which he said had ‘just

come up’, and to certain other fashions which he said had ‘just gone

out’.

‘And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of money,’

said Mr. Omer. ‘But fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody

knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody knows when, why, or

how. Everything is like life, in my opinion, if you look at it in that

point of view.’

I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly have

been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me back into

the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.

He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a door:

‘Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!’ which, after some time,

during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and listening to the

stitching in the room and the tune that was being hammered across the

yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be for me.

‘I have been acquainted with you,’ said Mr. Omer, after watching me

for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on the

breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, ‘I have been

acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.’

‘Have you, sir?’

‘All your life,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘I may say before it. I knew your

father before you. He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays in

five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.’

‘RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat,’ across the yard.

‘He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a fraction,’

said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. ‘It was either his request or her direction,

I forget which.’

‘Do you know how my little brother is, sir?’ I inquired.

Mr. Omer shook his head.

‘RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat, RAT--tat-tat.’

‘He is in his mother’s arms,’ said he.

‘Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?’

‘Don’t mind it more than you can help,’ said Mr. Omer. ‘Yes. The baby’s

dead.’

My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left the

scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another table,

in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily cleared, lest I

should spot the mourning that was lying there with my tears. She was

a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a

soft, kind touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished

her work and being in good time, and was so different from me!

Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came across

the yard into the room. He had a hammer in his hand, and his mouth was

full of little nails, which he was obliged to take out before he could

speak.

‘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 candle-light 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