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Charles Dickens
Chapter 9
Charles Dickens
 
 
1       I PASS over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of
2  my birthday came round in March. Except that Steerforth was more
3  to be admired than ever, I remember nothing. He was going away at
4  the end of the half-year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and
5  independent than before in my eyes, and therefore more engaging
6  than before; but beyond this I remember nothing. The great
7  remembrance by which that time is marked in my mind, seems to have
8  swallowed up all lesser recollections, and to exist alone.

9       It is even difficult for me to believe that there was a gap of full
10  two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of that
11  birthday. I can only understand that the fact was so, because I
12  know it must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that
13  there was no interval, and that the one occasion trod upon the
14  other's heels.

15       How well I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that
16  hung about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I
17  feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim
18  perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and
19  there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys
20  wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their
21  fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor. It was after
22  breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the playground, when
23  Mr. Sharp entered and said:

24       'David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.'

25       I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order.
26  Some of the boys about me put in their claim not to be forgotten in
27  the distribution of the good things, as I got out of my seat with
28  great alacrity.

29       'Don't hurry, David,' said Mr. Sharp. 'There's time enough, my
30  boy, don't hurry.'

31       I might have been surprised by the feeling tone in which he spoke,
32  if I had given it a thought; but I gave it none until afterwards.
33  I hurried away to the parlour; and there I found Mr. Creakle,
34  sitting at his breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him,
35  and Mrs. Creakle with an opened letter in her hand. But no hamper.

36       'David Copperfield,' said Mrs. Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and
37  sitting down beside me. 'I want to speak to you very particularly.
38  I have something to tell you, my child.'

39       Mr. Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without
40  looking at me, and stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of
41  buttered toast.

42       'You are too young to know how the world changes every day,' said
43  Mrs. Creakle, 'and how the people in it pass away. But we all have
44  to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when
45  we are old, some of us at all times of our lives.'

46       I looked at her earnestly.

47       'When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,' said
48  Mrs. Creakle, after a pause, 'were they all well?' After another
49  pause, 'Was your mama well?'

50       I trembled without distinctly knowing why, and still looked at her
51  earnestly, making no attempt to answer.

52       'Because,' said she, 'I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning
53  your mama is very ill.'

54       A mist rose between Mrs. Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to
55  move in it for an instant. Then I felt the burning tears run down
56  my face, and it was steady again.

57       'She is very dangerously ill,' she added.

58       I knew all now.

59       'She is dead.'

60       There was no need to tell me so. I had already broken out into a
61  desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.

62       She was very kind to me. She kept me there all day, and left me
63  alone sometimes; and I cried, and wore myself to sleep, and awoke
64  and cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and
65  then the oppression on my breast was heaviest, and my grief a dull
66  pain that there was no ease for.

67       And yet my thoughts were idle; not intent on the calamity that
68  weighed upon my heart, but idly loitering near it. I thought of
69  our house shut up and hushed. I thought of the little baby, who,
70  Mrs. Creakle said, had been pining away for some time, and who,
71  they believed, would die too. I thought of my father's grave in
72  the churchyard, by our house, and of my mother lying there beneath
73  the tree I knew so well. I stood upon a chair when I was left
74  alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes were, and
75  how sorrowful my face. I considered, after some hours were gone,
76  if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be,
77  what, in connexion with my loss, it would affect me most to think
78  of when I drew near home - for I was going home to the funeral. I
79  am sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the
80  rest of the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.

81       If ever child were stricken with sincere grief, I was. But I
82  remember that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me,
83  when I walked in the playground that afternoon while the boys were
84  in school. When I saw them glancing at me out of the windows, as
85  they went up to their classes, I felt distinguished, and looked
86  more melancholy, and walked slower. When school was over, and they
87  came out and spoke to me, I felt it rather good in myself not to be
88  proud to any of them, and to take exactly the same notice of them
89  all, as before.

90       I was to go home next night; not by the mail, but by the heavy
91  night-coach, which was called the Farmer, and was principally used
92  by country-people travelling short intermediate distances upon the
93  road. We had no story-telling that evening, and Traddles insisted
94  on lending me his pillow. I don't know what good he thought it
95  would do me, for I had one of my own: but it was all he had to
96  lend, poor fellow, except a sheet of letter-paper full of
97  skeletons; and that he gave me at parting, as a soother of my
98  sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.

99       I left Salem House upon the morrow afternoon. I little thought
100  then that I left it, never to return. We travelled very slowly all
101  night, and did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o'clock in
102  the morning. I looked out for Mr. Barkis, but he was not there;
103  and instead of him a fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old
104  man in black, with rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees of
105  his breeches, black stockings, and a broad-brimmed hat, came
106  puffing up to the coach window, and said:

107       'Master Copperfield?'

108       'Yes, sir.'

109       'Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,' he said, opening
110  the door, 'and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.'

111       I put my hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked away to
112  a shop in a narrow street, on which was written OMER, DRAPER,
113  TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER, &c. It was a close and
114  stifling little shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and
115  unmade, including one window full of beaver-hats and bonnets. We
116  went into a little back-parlour behind the shop, where we found
117  three young women at work on a quantity of black materials, which
118  were heaped upon the table, and little bits and cuttings of which
119  were littered all over the floor. There was a good fire in the
120  room, and a breathless smell of warm black crape - I did not know
121  what the smell was then, but I know now.

122       The three young women, who appeared to be very industrious and
123  comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, and then went on
124  with their work. Stitch, stitch, stitch. At the same time there
125  came from a workshop across a little yard outside the window, a
126  regular sound of hammering that kept a kind of tune: RAT - tat-tat,
127  RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, without any variation.

128       'Well,' said my conductor to one of the three young women. 'How do
129  you get on, Minnie?'

130       'We shall be ready by the trying-on time,' she replied gaily,
131  without looking up. 'Don't you be afraid, father.'

132       Mr. Omer took off his broad-brimmed hat, and sat down and panted.
133  He was so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could
134  say:

135       'That's right.'

136       'Father!' said Minnie, playfully. 'What a porpoise you do grow!'

137       'Well, I don't know how it is, my dear,' he replied, considering
138  about it. 'I am rather so.'

139       'You are such a comfortable man, you see,' said Minnie. 'You take
140  things so easy.'

141       'No use taking 'em otherwise, my dear,' said Mr. Omer.

142       'No, indeed,' returned his daughter. 'We are all pretty gay here,
143  thank Heaven! Ain't we, father?'

144       'I hope so, my dear,' said Mr. Omer. 'As I have got my breath now,
145  I think I'll measure this young scholar. Would you walk into the
146  shop, Master Copperfield?'

147       I preceded Mr. Omer, in compliance with his request; and after
148  showing me a roll of cloth which he said was extra super, and too
149  good mourning for anything short of parents, he took my various
150  dimensions, and put them down in a book. While he was recording
151  them he called my attention to his stock in trade, and to certain
152  fashions which he said had 'just come up', and to certain other
153  fashions which he said had 'just gone out'.

154       'And by that sort of thing we very often lose a little mint of
155  money,' said Mr. Omer. 'But fashions are like human beings. They
156  come in, nobody knows when, why, or how; and they go out, nobody
157  knows when, why, or how. Everything is like life, in my opinion,
158  if you look at it in that point of view.'

159       I was too sorrowful to discuss the question, which would possibly
160  have been beyond me under any circumstances; and Mr. Omer took me
161  back into the parlour, breathing with some difficulty on the way.

162       He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a
163  door: 'Bring up that tea and bread-and-butter!' which, after some
164  time, during which I sat looking about me and thinking, and
165  listening to the stitching in the room and the tune that was being
166  hammered across the yard, appeared on a tray, and turned out to be
167  for me.

168       'I have been acquainted with you,' said Mr. Omer, after watching me
169  for some minutes, during which I had not made much impression on
170  the breakfast, for the black things destroyed my appetite, 'I have
171  been acquainted with you a long time, my young friend.'

172       'Have you, sir?'

173       'All your life,' said Mr. Omer. 'I may say before it. I knew your
174  father before you. He was five foot nine and a half, and he lays
175  in five-and-twen-ty foot of ground.'

176       'RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat,' across the yard.

177       'He lays in five and twen-ty foot of ground, if he lays in a
178  fraction,' said Mr. Omer, pleasantly. 'It was either his request
179  or her direction, I forget which.'

180       'Do you know how my little brother is, sir?' I inquired.

181       Mr. Omer shook his head.

182       'RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat, RAT - tat-tat.'

183       'He is in his mother's arms,' said he.

184       'Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?'

185       'Don't mind it more than you can help,' said Mr. Omer. 'Yes. The
186  baby's dead.'

187       My wounds broke out afresh at this intelligence. I left the
188  scarcely-tasted breakfast, and went and rested my head on another
189  table, in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily
190  cleared, lest I should spot the mourning that was lying there with
191  my tears. She was a pretty, good-natured girl, and put my hair
192  away from my eyes with a soft, kind touch; but she was very
193  cheerful at having nearly finished her work and being in good time,
194  and was so different from me!

195       Presently the tune left off, and a good-looking young fellow came
196  across the yard into the room. He had a hammer in his hand, and
197  his mouth was full of little nails, which he was obliged to take
198  out before he could speak.

199       'Well, Joram!' said Mr. Omer. 'How do you get on?'

200       'All right,' said Joram. 'Done, sir.'

201       Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls smiled at one
202  another.

203       'What! you were at it by candle-light last night, when I was at the
204  club, then? Were you?' said Mr. Omer, shutting up one eye.

205       'Yes,' said Joram. 'As you said we could make a little trip of it,
206  and go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me - and you.'

207       'Oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,' said
208  Mr. Omer, laughing till he coughed.

209       '- As you was so good as to say that,' resumed the young man, 'why
210  I turned to with a will, you see. Will you give me your opinion of
211  it?'

212       'I will,' said Mr. Omer, rising. 'My dear'; and he stopped and
213  turned to me: 'would you like to see your -'

214       'No, father,' Minnie interposed.

215       'I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,' said Mr. Omer. 'But
216  perhaps you're right.'

217       I can't say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother's coffin that
218  they went to look at. I had never heard one making; I had never
219  seen one that I know of.- but it came into my mind what the noise
220  was, while it was going on; and when the young man entered, I am
221  sure I knew what he had been doing.

222       The work being now finished, the two girls, whose names I had not
223  heard, brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, and went
224  into the shop to put that to rights, and wait for customers.
225  Minnie stayed behind to fold up what they had made, and pack it in
226  two baskets. This she did upon her knees, humming a lively little
227  tune the while. Joram, who I had no doubt was her lover, came in
228  and stole a kiss from her while she was busy (he didn't appear to
229  mind me, at all), and said her father was gone for the chaise, and
230  he must make haste and get himself ready. Then he went out again;
231  and then she put her thimble and scissors in her pocket, and stuck
232  a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her
233  gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at a little glass
234  behind the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face.

235       All this I observed, sitting at the table in the corner with my
236  head leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on very different
237  things. The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and
238  the baskets being put in first, I was put in next, and those three
239  followed. I remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half
240  pianoforte-van, painted of a sombre colour, and drawn by a black
241  horse with a long tail. There was plenty of room for us all.

242       I do not think I have ever experienced so strange a feeling in my
243  life (I am wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them,
244  remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the
245  ride. I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if
246  I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of
247  nature. They were very cheerful. The old man sat in front to
248  drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he
249  spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby
250  face and the other on the other, and made a great deal of him.
251  They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my
252  corner; scared by their love-making and hilarity, though it was far
253  from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon
254  them for their hardness of heart.

255       So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank and
256  enjoyed themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but
257  kept my fast unbroken. So, when we reached home, I dropped out of
258  the chaise behind, as quickly as possible, that I might not be in
259  their company before those solemn windows, looking blindly on me
260  like closed eyes once bright. And oh, how little need I had had to
261  think what would move me to tears when I came back - seeing the
262  window of my mother's room, and next it that which, in the better
263  time, was mine!

264       I was in Peggotty's arms before I got to the door, and she took me
265  into the house. Her grief burst out when she first saw me; but she
266  controlled it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if
267  the dead could be disturbed. She had not been in bed, I found, for
268  a long time. She sat up at night still, and watched. As long as
269  her poor dear pretty was above the ground, she said, she would
270  never desert her.

271       Mr. Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where
272  he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently, and pondering in
273  his elbow-chair. Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing-desk,
274  which was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold
275  finger-nails, and asked me, in an iron whisper, if I had been
276  measured for my mourning.

277       I said: 'Yes.'

278       'And your shirts,' said Miss Murdstone; 'have you brought 'em
279  home?'

280       'Yes, ma'am. I have brought home all my clothes.'

281       This was all the consolation that her firmness administered to me.
282  I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what
283  she called her self-command, and her firmness, and her strength of
284  mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of
285  her unamiable qualities, on such an occasion. She was particularly
286  proud of her turn for business; and she showed it now in reducing
287  everything to pen and ink, and being moved by nothing. All the
288  rest of that day, and from morning to night afterwards, she sat at
289  that desk, scratching composedly with a hard pen, speaking in the
290  same imperturbable whisper to everybody; never relaxing a muscle of
291  her face, or softening a tone of her voice, or appearing with an
292  atom of her dress astray.

293       Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it that I saw.
294  He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would
295  remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it
296  down and walk to and fro in the room. I used to sit with folded
297  hands watching him, and counting his footsteps, hour after hour.
298  He very seldom spoke to her, and never to me. He seemed to be the
299  only restless thing, except the clocks, in the whole motionless
300  house.

301       In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty,
302  except that, in passing up or down stairs, I always found her close
303  to the room where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she
304  came to me every night, and sat by my bed's head while I went to
305  sleep. A day or two before the burial - I think it was a day or
306  two before, but I am conscious of confusion in my mind about that
307  heavy time, with nothing to mark its progress - she took me into
308  the room. I only recollect that underneath some white covering on
309  the bed, with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all around it,
310  there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that was in
311  the house; and that when she would have turned the cover gently
312  back, I cried: 'Oh no! oh no!' and held her hand.

313       If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better.
314  The very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the
315  bright condition of the fire, the shining of the wine in the
316  decanters, the patterns of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet
317  smell of cake, the odour of Miss Murdstone's dress, and our black
318  clothes. Mr. Chillip is in the room, and comes to speak to me.

319       'And how is Master David?' he says, kindly.

320       I cannot tell him very well. I give him my hand, which he holds in
321  his.

322       'Dear me!' says Mr. Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining
323  in his eye. 'Our little friends grow up around us. They grow out
324  of our knowledge, ma'am?' This is to Miss Murdstone, who makes no
325  reply.

326       'There is a great improvement here, ma'am?' says Mr. Chillip.

327       Miss Murdstone merely answers with a frown and a formal bend: Mr.
328  Chillip, discomfited, goes into a corner, keeping me with him, and
329  opens his mouth no more.

330       I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not
331  because I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And
332  now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make
333  us ready. As Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers
334  of my father to the same grave were made ready in the same room.

335       There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip,
336  and I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are
337  in the garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the
338  elms, and through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have
339  so often heard the birds sing on a summer morning.

340       We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from
341  every other day, and the light not of the same colour - of a sadder
342  colour. Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from
343  home with what is resting in the mould; and while we stand
344  bareheaded, I hear the voice of the clergyman, sounding remote in
345  the open air, and yet distinct and plain, saying: 'I am the
346  Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!' Then I hear sobs; and,
347  standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful
348  servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the best, and
349  unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day
350  say: 'Well done.'

351       There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces
352  that I knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces
353  that first saw my mother, when she came to the village in her
354  youthful bloom. I do not mind them - I mind nothing but my grief
355  - and yet I see and know them all; and even in the background, far
356  away, see Minnie looking on, and her eye glancing on her
357  sweetheart, who is near me.

358       It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away.
359  Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in
360  my mind with the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has
361  been nothing to the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on;
362  and Mr. Chillip talks to me; and when we get home, puts some water
363  to my lips; and when I ask his leave to go up to my room, dismisses
364  me with the gentleness of a woman.

365       All this, I say, is yesterday's event. Events of later date have
366  floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will
367  reappear, but this stands like a high rock in the ocean.

368       I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room. The Sabbath
369  stillness of the time (the day was so like Sunday! I have
370  forgotten that) was suited to us both. She sat down by my side
371  upon my little bed; and holding my hand, and sometimes putting it
372  to her lips, and sometimes smoothing it with hers, as she might
373  have comforted my little brother, told me, in her way, all that she
374  had to tell concerning what had happened.

375       'She was never well,' said Peggotty, 'for a long time. She was
376  uncertain in her mind, and not happy. When her baby was born, I
377  thought at first she would get better, but she was more delicate,
378  and sunk a little every day. She used to like to sit alone before
379  her baby came, and then she cried; but afterwards she used to sing
380  to it - so soft, that I once thought, when I heard her, it was like
381  a voice up in the air, that was rising away.

382       'I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened-like, of
383  late; and that a hard word was like a blow to her. But she was
384  always the same to me. She never changed to her foolish Peggotty,
385  didn't my sweet girl.'

386       Here Peggotty stopped, and softly beat upon my hand a little while.

387       'The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night
388  when you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to
389  me, "I never shall see my pretty darling again. Something tells me
390  so, that tells the truth, I know."

391       'She tried to hold up after that; and many a time, when they told
392  her she was thoughtless and light-hearted, made believe to be so;
393  but it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she
394  had told me - she was afraid of saying it to anybody else - till
395  one night, a little more than a week before it happened, when she
396  said to him: "My dear, I think I am dying."

397       '"It's off my mind now, Peggotty," she told me, when I laid her in
398  her bed that night. "He will believe it more and more, poor
399  fellow, every day for a few days to come; and then it will be past.
400  I am very tired. If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don't
401  leave me. God bless both my children! God protect and keep my
402  fatherless boy!"

403       'I never left her afterwards,' said Peggotty. 'She often talked to
404  them two downstairs - for she loved them; she couldn't bear not to
405  love anyone who was about her - but when they went away from her
406  bed-side, she always turned to me, as if there was rest where
407  Peggotty was, and never fell asleep in any other way.

408       'On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: "If my
409  baby should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay him in my arms,
410  and bury us together." (It was done; for the poor lamb lived but
411  a day beyond her.) "Let my dearest boy go with us to our
412  resting-place," she said, "and tell him that his mother, when she
413  lay here, blessed him not once, but a thousand times."'

414       Another silence followed this, and another gentle beating on my
415  hand.

416       'It was pretty far in the night,' said Peggotty, 'when she asked me
417  for some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient
418  smile, the dear! - so beautiful!

419       'Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me,
420  how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her,
421  and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted
422  herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom,
423  and that he was a happy man in hers. "Peggotty, my dear," she said
424  then, "put me nearer to you," for she was very weak. "Lay your
425  good arm underneath my neck," she said, "and turn me to you, for
426  your face is going far off, and I want it to be near." I put it as
427  she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when my first parting
428  words to you were true - when she was glad to lay her poor head on
429  her stupid cross old Peggotty's arm - and she died like a child
430  that had gone to sleep!'

431       Thus ended Peggotty's narration. From the moment of my knowing of
432  the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had
433  vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the
434  young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind
435  her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me
436  at twilight in the parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so
437  far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the
438  earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true. In
439  her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and
440  cancelled all the rest.

441       The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the
442  little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed
443  for ever on her bosom.

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