第 21 页

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 judgement 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.’

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.

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.

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 here, 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 bareheaded, 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 and 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 bed-side, 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 10. 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