David Copperfield

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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
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.