第 8 页

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 corner of the counterpane, and cried

myself to sleep.

I was awoke 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 bed-side. 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 which 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.

‘Clara!’ said Mr. Murdstone sternly. ‘Clara! I wonder at you.’

‘Oh, it’s very well to say you wonder, Edward!’ cried my mother, ‘and

it’s very well for you to talk about firmness, but you wouldn’t like it

yourself.’

Firmness, I may observe, was the grand quality on which both Mr. and

Miss Murdstone took their stand. However I might have expressed

my comprehension of it at that time, if I had been called upon, I

nevertheless did clearly comprehend in my own way, that it was another

name for tyranny; and for a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil’s humour,

that was in them both. The creed, as I should state it now, was this.

Mr. Murdstone was firm; nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr.

Murdstone; nobody else in his world was to be firm at all, for everybody

was to be bent to his firmness. Miss Murdstone was an exception.

She might be firm, but only by relationship, and in an inferior and

tributary degree. My mother was another exception. She might be firm,

and must be; but only in bearing their firmness, and firmly believing

there was no other firmness upon earth.

‘It’s very hard,’ said my mother, ‘that in my own house--’

‘My own house?’ repeated Mr. Murdstone. ‘Clara!’

‘OUR own house, I mean,’ faltered my mother, evidently frightened--‘I

hope you must know what I mean, Edward--it’s very hard that in YOUR own

house I may not have a word to say about domestic matters. I am sure

I managed very well before we were married. There’s evidence,’ said my

mother, sobbing; ‘ask Peggotty if I didn’t do very well when I wasn’t

interfered with!’

‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, ‘let there be an end of this. I go

tomorrow.’

‘Jane Murdstone,’ said her brother, ‘be silent! How dare you to

insinuate that you don’t know my character better than your words

imply?’

‘I am sure,’ my poor mother went on, at a grievous disadvantage, and

with many tears, ‘I don’t want anybody to go. I should be very

miserable and unhappy if anybody was to go. I don’t ask much. I am not

unreasonable. I only want to be consulted sometimes. I am very much

obliged to anybody who assists me, and I only want to be consulted as a

mere form, sometimes. I thought you were pleased, once, with my being a

little inexperienced and girlish, Edward--I am sure you said so--but you

seem to hate me for it now, you are so severe.’

‘Edward,’ said Miss Murdstone, again, ‘let there be an end of this. I go

tomorrow.’

‘Jane Murdstone,’ thundered Mr. Murdstone. ‘Will you be silent? How dare

you?’

Miss Murdstone made a jail-delivery of her pocket-handkerchief, and held

it before her eyes.

‘Clara,’ he continued, looking at my mother, ‘you surprise me! You

astound me! Yes, I had a satisfaction in the thought of marrying

an inexperienced and artless person, and forming her character, and

infusing into it some amount of that firmness and decision of which