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

‘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 forever on her bosom.

X 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 month’s warning too. I mustered courage once, to ask Miss Murdstone when I was going back to school; and she answered dryly, she believed I was not going back at all. I was told nothing more. I was very anxious to know what was going to be done with me, and so was Peggotty; but neither she nor I could pick up any information on the subject.

There was one change in my condition, which, while it relieved me of a great deal of present uneasiness, might have made me, if I had been capable of considering it closely, yet more uncomfortable about the future. It was this. The constraint that had been put upon me, was quite abandoned. I was so far from being required to keep my dull post in the parlour, that on several occasions, when I took my seat there, Miss Murdstone frowned to me to go away. I was so far from being warned off from Peggotty’s society, that, provided I was not in Mr. Murdstone’s, I was never sought out or inquired for. At first I was in daily dread of his taking my education in hand again, or of Miss Murdstone’s devoting herself to it; but I soon began to think that such fears were groundless, and that all I had to anticipate was neglect.

I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was still giddy with the shock of my mother’s death, and in a kind of stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or cared for any more; and growing up to be a shabby, moody man, lounging an idle life away, about the village; as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune: but these were transient visions, daydreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted away, left the wall blank again.

“Peggotty,” I said in a thoughtful whisper, one evening, when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, “Mr. Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not even see me now, if he can help it.”

“Perhaps it’s his sorrow,” said Peggotty, stroking my hair.

“I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it’s not that; oh, no, it’s not that.”

“How do you know it’s not that?” said Peggotty, after a silence.

“Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.”

“What would he be?” said Peggotty.

“Angry,” I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown. “If he was only sorry, he wouldn’t look at me as he does. I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.”

Peggotty