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it stood in need. But when Jane Murdstone is kind enough to come to my

assistance in this endeavour, and to assume, for my sake, a condition

something like a housekeeper’s, and when she meets with a base return--’

‘Oh, pray, pray, Edward,’ cried my mother, ‘don’t accuse me of being

ungrateful. I am sure I am not ungrateful. No one ever said I was

before. I have many faults, but not that. Oh, don’t, my dear!’

‘When Jane Murdstone meets, I say,’ he went on, after waiting until my

mother was silent, ‘with a base return, that feeling of mine is chilled

and altered.’

‘Don’t, my love, say that!’ implored my mother very piteously.

‘Oh, don’t, Edward! I can’t bear to hear it. Whatever I am, I am

affectionate. I know I am affectionate. I wouldn’t say it, if I

wasn’t sure that I am. Ask Peggotty. I am sure she’ll tell you I’m

affectionate.’

‘There is no extent of mere weakness, Clara,’ said Mr. Murdstone in

reply, ‘that can have the least weight with me. You lose breath.’

‘Pray let us be friends,’ said my mother, ‘I couldn’t live under

coldness or unkindness. I am so sorry. I have a great many defects, I

know, and it’s very good of you, Edward, with your strength of mind, to

endeavour to correct them for me. Jane, I don’t object to anything. I

should be quite broken-hearted if you thought of leaving--’ My mother

was too much overcome to go on.

‘Jane Murdstone,’ said Mr. Murdstone to his sister, ‘any harsh words

between us are, I hope, uncommon. It is not my fault that so unusual an

occurrence has taken place tonight. I was betrayed into it by another.

Nor is it your fault. You were betrayed into it by another. Let us both

try to forget it. And as this,’ he added, after these magnanimous words,

‘is not a fit scene for the boy--David, go to bed!’

I could hardly find the door, through the tears that stood in my eyes.

I was so sorry for my mother’s distress; but I groped my way out, and

groped my way up to my room in the dark, without even having the heart

to say good night to Peggotty, or to get a candle from her. When her

coming up to look for me, an hour or so afterwards, awoke me, she said

that my mother had gone to bed poorly, and that Mr. and Miss Murdstone

were sitting alone.

Going down next morning rather earlier than usual, I paused outside the

parlour door, on hearing my mother’s voice. She was very earnestly and

humbly entreating Miss Murdstone’s pardon, which that lady granted, and

a perfect reconciliation took place. I never knew my mother afterwards

to give an opinion on any matter, without first appealing to Miss

Murdstone, or without having first ascertained by some sure means, what

Miss Murdstone’s opinion was; and I never saw Miss Murdstone, when out

of temper (she was infirm that way), move her hand towards her bag as

if she were going to take out the keys and offer to resign them to my

mother, without seeing that my mother was in a terrible fright.

The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone

religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since,

that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr.

Murdstone’s firmness, which wouldn’t allow him to let anybody off from

the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any excuse

for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages with

which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place. Again,

the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew first, like

a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again, Miss Murdstone,

in a black velvet gown, that looks as if it had been made out of a pall,

follows close upon me; then my mother; then her husband. There is no

Peggotty now, as in the old time. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone

mumbling the responses, and emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel

relish. Again, I see her dark eyes roll round the church when she says

‘miserable sinners’, as if she were calling all the congregation names.

Again, I catch rare glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly

between the two, with one of them muttering at each ear like low

thunder. Again, I wonder with a sudden fear whether it is likely that

our good old clergyman can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right,

and that all the angels in Heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I

move a finger or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with

her prayer-book, and makes my side ache.

Yes, and again, as we walk home, I note some neighbours looking at my

mother and at me, and whispering. Again, as the three go on arm-in-arm,

and I linger behind alone, I follow some of those looks, and wonder if

my mother’s step be really not so light as I have seen it, and if the

gaiety of her beauty be really almost worried away. Again, I wonder

whether any of the neighbours call to mind, as I do, how we used to

walk home together, she and I; and I wonder stupidly about that, all the

dreary dismal day.

There had been some talk on occasions of my going to boarding-school.

Mr. and Miss Murdstone had originated it, and my mother had of course

agreed with them. Nothing, however, was concluded on the subject yet.

In the meantime, I learnt lessons at home. Shall I ever forget those

lessons! They were presided over nominally by my mother, but really by

Mr. Murdstone and his sister, who were always present, and found them

a favourable occasion for giving my mother lessons in that miscalled

firmness, which was the bane of both our lives. I believe I was kept

at home for that purpose. I had been apt enough to learn, and willing

enough, when my mother and I had lived alone together. I can faintly

remember learning the alphabet at her knee. To this day, when I look

upon the fat black letters in the primer, the puzzling novelty of their

shapes, and the easy good-nature of O and Q and S, seem to present

themselves again before me as they used to do. But they recall no

feeling of disgust or reluctance. On the contrary, I seem to have walked

along a path of flowers as far as the crocodile-book, and to have been

cheered by the gentleness of my mother’s voice and manner all the

way. But these solemn lessons which succeeded those, I remember as the

death-blow of my peace, and a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They

were very long, very numerous, very hard--perfectly unintelligible,

some of them, to me--and I was generally as much bewildered by them as I

believe my poor mother was herself.

Let me remember how it used to be, and bring one morning back again.

I come into the second-best parlour after breakfast, with my books,

and an exercise-book, and a slate. My mother is ready for me at her

writing-desk, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone in his easy-chair

by the window (though he pretends to be reading a book), or as Miss

Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very sight

of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel the

words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head, all sliding

away, and going I don’t know where. I wonder where they do go, by the

by?

I hand the first book to my mother. Perhaps it is a grammar, perhaps a

history, or geography. I take a last drowning look at the page as I give

it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing pace while I have

got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone looks up. I trip

over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden, tumble over

half-a-dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show me the book

if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:

‘Oh, Davy, Davy!’

‘Now, Clara,’ says Mr. Murdstone, ‘be firm with the boy. Don’t say, “Oh,

Davy, Davy!” That’s childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not know

it.’

‘He does NOT know it,’ Miss Murdstone interposes awfully.

‘I am really afraid he does not,’ says my mother.

‘Then, you see, Clara,’ returns Miss Murdstone, ‘you should just give

him the book back, and make him know it.’

‘Yes, certainly,’ says my mother; ‘that is what I intend to do, my dear

Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don’t be stupid.’

I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am

not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down

before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right before,

and stop to think. But I can’t think about the lesson. I think of the

number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone’s cap, or of the price of Mr.

Murdstone’s dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that I have

no business with, and don’t want to have anything at all to do with. Mr.

Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been expecting

for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother glances

submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an arrear to be

worked out when my other tasks are done.

There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a rolling

snowball. The bigger it gets, the more stupid I get. The case is so

hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of nonsense, that

I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself to my fate. The

despairing way in which my mother and I look at each other, as I blunder

on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect in these miserable

lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is observing her) tries

to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At that instant, Miss

Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing else all along, says

in a deep warning voice:

‘Clara!’

My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out

of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with it,

and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.

Even when the lessons are done, the worst is yet to happen, in the shape

of an appalling sum. This is invented for me, and delivered to me orally

by Mr. Murdstone, and begins, ‘If I go into a cheesemonger’s shop, and

buy five thousand double-Gloucester cheeses at fourpence-halfpenny each,

present payment’--at which I see Miss Murdstone secretly overjoyed.

I pore over these cheeses without any result or enlightenment until

dinner-time, when, having made a Mulatto of myself by getting the dirt

of the slate into the pores of my skin, I have a slice of bread to help

me out with the cheeses, and am considered in disgrace for the rest of

the evening.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies

generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been

without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me was

like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even when

I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was not

much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to see me

untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed, called her

brother’s attention to me by saying, ‘Clara, my dear, there’s nothing

like work--give your boy an exercise’; which caused me to be clapped

down to some new labour, there and then. As to any recreation with other

children of my age, I had very little of that; for the gloomy theology

of the Murdstones made all children out to be a swarm of little vipers

(though there WAS a child once set in the midst of the Disciples), and

held that they contaminated one another.

The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six

months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not

made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and

alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied

but for one circumstance.

It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little

room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which

nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room,

Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, the

Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came

out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and

my hope of something beyond that place and time,--they, and the Arabian

Nights, and the Tales of the Genii,--and did me no harm; for whatever

harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It

is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings

and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did. It

is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my

small troubles (which were great troubles to me), by impersonating my

favourite characters in them--as I did--and by putting Mr. and Miss

Murdstone into all the bad ones--which I did too. I have been Tom Jones

(a child’s Tom Jones, a harmless creature) for a week together. I have

sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I

verily believe. I had a greedy relish for a few volumes of Voyages and

Travels--I forget what, now--that were on those shelves; and for days

and days I can remember to have gone about my region of our house,

armed with the centre-piece out of an old set of boot-trees--the perfect

realization of Captain Somebody, of the Royal British Navy, in danger of

being beset by savages, and resolved to sell his life at a great price.

The Captain never lost dignity, from having his ears boxed with the

Latin Grammar. I did; but the Captain was a Captain and a hero, in

despite of all the grammars of all the languages in the world, dead or

alive.

This was my only and my constant comfort. When I think of it, the

picture always rises in my mind, of a summer evening, the boys at play

in the churchyard, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if for life.

Every barn in the neighbourhood, every stone in the church, and every

foot of the churchyard, had some association of its own, in my mind,

connected with these books, and stood for some locality made famous in

them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the church-steeple; I have

watched Strap, with the knapsack on his back, stopping to rest himself

upon the wicket-gate; and I know that Commodore Trunnion held that club

with Mr. Pickle, in the parlour of our little village alehouse.