David Copperfield, Charles Dickens [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

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 bedside. 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,