CHAPTER 10. 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 said nothing for a little while; and I warmed my hands, as

silent as she.

‘Davy,’ she said at length.

‘Yes, Peggotty?’ ‘I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of--all

the ways there are, and all the ways there ain’t, in short--to get a

suitable service here, in Blunderstone; but there’s no such a thing, my

love.’

‘And what do you mean to do, Peggotty,’ says I, wistfully. ‘Do you mean

to go and seek your fortune?’

‘I expect I shall be forced to go to Yarmouth,’ replied Peggotty, ‘and

live there.’

‘You might have gone farther off,’ I said, brightening a little, ‘and

been as bad as lost. I shall see you sometimes, my dear old Peggotty,

there. You won’t be quite at the other end of the world, will you?’

‘Contrary ways, please God!’ cried Peggotty, with great animation. ‘As

long as you are here, my pet, I shall come over every week of my life to

see you. One day, every week of my life!’

I felt a great weight taken off my mind by this promise: but even this

was not all, for Peggotty went on to say:

‘I’m a-going, Davy, you see, to my brother’s, first, for another

fortnight’s visit--just till I have had time to look about me, and

get to be something like myself again. Now, I have been thinking that

perhaps, as they don’t want you here at present, you might be let to go

along with me.’

If anything, short of being in a different relation to every one about

me, Peggotty excepted, could have given me a sense of pleasure at that

time, it would have been this project of all others. The idea of being

again surrounded by those honest faces, shining welcome on me; of

renewing the peacefulness of the sweet Sunday morning, when the bells

were ringing, the stones dropping in the water, and the shadowy ships

breaking through the mist; of roaming up and down with little Em’ly,

telling her my troubles, and finding charms against them in the shells

and pebbles on the beach; made a calm in my heart. It was ruffled next

moment, to be sure, by a doubt of Miss Murdstone’s giving her consent;

but even that was set at rest soon, for she came out to take an evening

grope in the store-closet while we were yet in conversation, and

Peggotty, with a boldness that amazed me, broached the topic on the

spot.

‘The boy will be idle there,’ said Miss Murdstone, looking into a

pickle-jar, ‘and idleness is the root of all evil. But, to be sure, he

would be idle here--or anywhere, in my opinion.’

Peggotty had an angry answer ready, I could see; but she swallowed it

for my sake, and remained silent.

‘Humph!’ said Miss Murdstone, still keeping her eye on the pickles;

‘it is of more importance than anything else--it is of paramount

importance--that my brother should not be disturbed or made

uncomfortable. I suppose I had better say yes.’

I thanked her, without making any demonstration of joy, lest it should

induce her to withdraw her assent. Nor could I help thinking this a

prudent course, since she looked at me out of the pickle-jar, with

as great an access of sourness as if her black eyes had absorbed its

contents. However, the permission was given, and was never retracted;

for when the month was out, Peggotty and I were ready to depart.

Mr. Barkis came into the house for Peggotty’s boxes. I had never known

him to pass the garden-gate before, but on this occasion he came into

the house. And he gave me a look as he shouldered the largest box and

went out, which I thought had meaning in it, if meaning could ever be

said to find its way into Mr. Barkis’s visage.

Peggotty was naturally in low spirits at leaving what had been her home

so many years, and where the two strong attachments of her life--for

my mother and myself--had been formed. She had been walking in the

churchyard, too, very early; and she got into the cart, and sat in it

with her handkerchief at her eyes.

So long as she remained in this condition, Mr. Barkis gave no sign

of life whatever. He sat in his usual place and attitude like a great

stuffed figure. But when she began to look about her, and to speak to

me, he nodded his head and grinned several times. I have not the least

notion at whom, or what he meant by it.

‘It’s a beautiful day, Mr. Barkis!’ I said, as an act of politeness.

‘It ain’t bad,’ said Mr. Barkis, who generally qualified his speech, and

rarely committed himself.

‘Peggotty is quite comfortable now, Mr. Barkis,’ I remarked, for his

satisfaction.

‘Is she, though?’ said Mr. Barkis.

After reflecting about it, with a sagacious air, Mr. Barkis eyed her,

and said:

‘ARE you pretty comfortable?’

Peggotty laughed, and answered in the affirmative.

‘But really and truly, you know. Are you?’ growled Mr. Barkis, sliding

nearer to her on the seat, and nudging her with his elbow. ‘Are you?

Really and truly pretty comfortable? Are you? Eh?’

At each of these inquiries Mr. Barkis shuffled nearer to her, and gave

her another nudge; so that at last we were all crowded together in the

left-hand corner of the cart, and I was so squeezed that I could hardly

bear it.

Peggotty calling his attention to my sufferings, Mr. Barkis gave me a

little more room at once, and got away by degrees. But I could not help

observing that he seemed to think he had hit upon a wonderful expedient

for expressing himself in a neat, agreeable, and pointed manner, without

the inconvenience of inventing conversation. He manifestly chuckled over

it for some time. By and by he turned to Peggotty again, and repeating,

‘Are you pretty comfortable though?’ bore down upon us as before, until

the breath was nearly edged out of my body. By and by he made another

descent upon us with the same inquiry, and the same result. At length,

I got up whenever I saw him coming, and standing on the foot-board,

pretended to look at the prospect; after which I did very well.

He was so polite as to stop at a public-house, expressly on our account,

and entertain us with broiled mutton and beer. Even when Peggotty was

in the act of drinking, he was seized with one of those approaches, and

almost choked her. But as we drew nearer to the end of our journey, he

had more to do and less time for gallantry; and when we got on Yarmouth

pavement, we were all too much shaken and jolted, I apprehend, to have

any leisure for anything else.

Mr. Peggotty and Ham waited for us at the old place. They received me

and Peggotty in an affectionate manner, and shook hands with Mr. Barkis,

who, with his hat on the very back of his head, and a shame-faced leer

upon his countenance, and pervading his very legs, presented but a

vacant appearance, I thought. They each took one of Peggotty’s trunks,

and we were going away, when Mr. Barkis solemnly made a sign to me with

his forefinger to come under an archway.

‘I say,’ growled Mr. Barkis, ‘it was all right.’

I looked up into his face, and answered, with an attempt to be very

profound: ‘Oh!’

‘It didn’t come to a end there,’ said Mr. Barkis, nodding

confidentially. ‘It was all right.’

Again I answered, ‘Oh!’

‘You know who was willin’,’ said my friend. ‘It was Barkis, and Barkis

only.’

I nodded assent.

‘It’s all right,’ said Mr. Barkis, shaking hands; ‘I’m a friend of

your’n. You made it all right, first. It’s all right.’

In his attempts to be particularly lucid, Mr. Barkis was so extremely

mysterious, that I might have stood looking in his face for an hour, and

most assuredly should have got as much information out of it as out

of the face of a clock that had stopped, but for Peggotty’s calling me

away. As we were going along, she asked me what he had said; and I told

her he had said it was all right.

‘Like his impudence,’ said Peggotty, ‘but I don’t mind that! Davy dear,

what should you think if I was to think of being married?’

‘Why--I suppose you would like me as much then, Peggotty, as you do

now?’ I returned, after a little consideration.

Greatly to the astonishment of the passengers in the street, as well as

of her relations going on before, the good soul was obliged to stop and

embrace me on the spot, with many protestations of her unalterable love.

‘Tell me what should you say, darling?’ she asked again, when this was

over, and we were walking on.

‘If you were thinking of being married--to Mr. Barkis, Peggotty?’

‘Yes,’ said Peggotty.

‘I should think it would be a very good thing. For then you know,

Peggotty, you would always have the horse and cart to bring you over to

see me, and could come for nothing, and be sure of coming.’

‘The sense of the dear!’ cried Peggotty. ‘What I have been thinking

of, this month back! Yes, my precious; and I think I should be more

independent altogether, you see; let alone my working with a better

heart in my own house, than I could in anybody else’s now. I don’t know

what I might be fit for, now, as a servant to a stranger. And I shall be

always near my pretty’s resting-place,’ said Peggotty, musing, ‘and be

able to see it when I like; and when I lie down to rest, I may be laid

not far off from my darling girl!’

We neither of us said anything for a little while.

‘But I wouldn’t so much as give it another thought,’ said Peggotty,

cheerily ‘if my Davy was anyways against it--not if I had been asked in

church thirty times three times over, and was wearing out the ring in my

pocket.’

‘Look at me, Peggotty,’ I replied; ‘and see if I am not really glad, and

don’t truly wish it!’ As indeed I did, with all my heart.

‘Well, my life,’ said Peggotty, giving me a squeeze, ‘I have thought of

it night and day, every way I can, and I hope the right way; but I’ll

think of it again, and speak to my brother about it, and in the meantime

we’ll keep it to ourselves, Davy, you and me. Barkis is a good plain

creature,’ said Peggotty, ‘and if I tried to do my duty by him, I think

it would be my fault if I wasn’t--if I wasn’t pretty comfortable,’

said Peggotty, laughing heartily. This quotation from Mr. Barkis was

so appropriate, and tickled us both so much, that we laughed again and

again, and were quite in a pleasant humour when we came within view of

Mr. Peggotty’s cottage.

It looked just the same, except that it may, perhaps, have shrunk a

little in my eyes; and Mrs. Gummidge was waiting at the door as if she

had stood there ever since. All within was the same, down to the seaweed

in the blue mug in my bedroom. I went into the out-house to look about

me; and the very same lobsters, crabs, and crawfish possessed by the

same desire to pinch the world in general, appeared to be in the same

state of conglomeration in the same old corner.

But there was no little Em’ly to be seen, so I asked Mr. Peggotty where

she was.

‘She’s at school, sir,’ said Mr. Peggotty, wiping the heat consequent

on the porterage of Peggotty’s box from his forehead; ‘she’ll be home,’

looking at the Dutch clock, ‘in from twenty minutes to half-an-hour’s

time. We all on us feel the loss of her, bless ye!’

Mrs. Gummidge moaned.

‘Cheer up, Mawther!’ cried Mr. Peggotty.

‘I feel it more than anybody else,’ said Mrs. Gummidge; ‘I’m a lone

lorn creetur’, and she used to be a’most the only thing that didn’t go

contrary with me.’

Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head, applied herself to

blowing the fire. Mr. Peggotty, looking round upon us while she was so

engaged, said in a low voice, which he shaded with his hand: ‘The old

‘un!’ From this I rightly conjectured that no improvement had taken

place since my last visit in the state of Mrs. Gummidge’s spirits.

Now, the whole place was, or it should have been, quite as delightful

a place as ever; and yet it did not impress me in the same way. I felt

rather disappointed with it. Perhaps it was because little Em’ly was

not at home. I knew the way by which she would come, and presently found

myself strolling along the path to meet her.

A figure appeared in the distance before long, and I soon knew it to be

Em’ly, who was a little creature still in stature, though she was grown.

But when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her

dimpled face looking brighter, and her whole self prettier and gayer, a

curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her, and

pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done

such a thing since in later life, or I am mistaken.

Little Em’ly didn’t care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of

turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing. This obliged me

to run after her, and she ran so fast that we were very near the cottage

before I caught her.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said little Em’ly.

‘Why, you knew who it was, Em’ly,’ said I.

‘And didn’t YOU know who it was?’ said Em’ly. I was going to kiss her,

but she covered her cherry lips with her hands, and said she wasn’t a

baby now, and ran away, laughing more than ever, into the house.

She seemed to delight in teasing me, which was a change in her I

wondered at very much. The tea table was ready, and our little locker

was put out in its old place, but instead of coming to sit by me, she

went and bestowed her company upon that grumbling Mrs. Gummidge: and on

Mr. Peggotty’s inquiring why, rumpled her hair all over her face to hide

it, and could do nothing but laugh.

‘A little puss, it is!’ said Mr. Peggotty, patting her with his great

hand.

‘So sh’ is! so sh’ is!’ cried Ham. ‘Mas’r Davy bor’, so sh’ is!’ and he

sat and chuckled at her for some time, in a state of mingled admiration

and delight, that made his face a burning red.

Little Em’ly was spoiled by them all, in fact; and by no one more than

Mr. Peggotty himself, whom she could have coaxed into anything, by

only going and laying her cheek against his rough whisker. That was my

opinion, at least, when I saw her do it; and I held Mr. Peggotty to be

thoroughly in the right. But she was so affectionate and sweet-natured,

and had such a pleasant manner of being both sly and shy at once, that

she captivated me more than ever.

She was tender-hearted, too; for when, as we sat round the fire after

tea, an allusion was made by Mr. Peggotty over his pipe to the loss

I had sustained, the tears stood in her eyes, and she looked at me so

kindly across the table, that I felt quite thankful to her.

‘Ah!’ said Mr. Peggotty, taking up her curls, and running them over his

hand like water, ‘here’s another orphan, you see, sir. And here,’ said

Mr. Peggotty, giving Ham a backhanded knock in the chest, ‘is another of

‘em, though he don’t look much like it.’

‘If I had you for my guardian, Mr. Peggotty,’ said I, shaking my head,

‘I don’t think I should FEEL much like it.’

‘Well said, Mas’r Davy bor’!’ cried Ham, in an ecstasy. ‘Hoorah! Well

said! Nor more you wouldn’t! Hor! Hor!’--Here he returned Mr. Peggotty’s

back-hander, and little Em’ly got up and kissed Mr. Peggotty. ‘And how’s

your friend, sir?’ said Mr. Peggotty to me.

‘Steerforth?’ said I.

‘That’s the name!’ cried Mr. Peggotty, turning to Ham. ‘I knowed it was

something in our way.’

‘You said it was Rudderford,’ observed Ham, laughing.

‘Well!’ retorted Mr. Peggotty. ‘And ye steer with a rudder, don’t ye? It

ain’t fur off. How is he, sir?’

‘He was very well indeed when I came away, Mr. Peggotty.’

‘There’s a friend!’ said Mr. Peggotty, stretching out his pipe. ‘There’s

a friend, if you talk of friends! Why, Lord love my heart alive, if it

ain’t a treat to look at him!’

‘He is very handsome, is he not?’ said I, my heart warming with this

praise.

‘Handsome!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘He stands up to you like--like a--why I

don’t know what he don’t stand up to you like. He’s so bold!’

‘Yes! That’s just his character,’ said I. ‘He’s as brave as a lion, and

you can’t think how frank he is, Mr. Peggotty.’

‘And I do suppose, now,’ said Mr. Peggotty, looking at me through the

smoke of his pipe, ‘that in the way of book-larning he’d take the wind

out of a’most anything.’

‘Yes,’ said I, delighted; ‘he knows everything. He is astonishingly

clever.’

‘There’s a friend!’ murmured Mr. Peggotty, with a grave toss of his

head.

‘Nothing seems to cost him any trouble,’ said I. ‘He knows a task if he

only looks at it. He is the best cricketer you ever saw. He will give

you almost as many men as you like at draughts, and beat you easily.’

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘Of course

he will.’

‘He is such a speaker,’ I pursued, ‘that he can win anybody over; and I

don’t know what you’d say if you were to hear him sing, Mr. Peggotty.’

Mr. Peggotty gave his head another toss, as much as to say: ‘I have no

doubt of it.’

‘Then, he’s such a generous, fine, noble fellow,’ said I, quite carried

away by my favourite theme, ‘that it’s hardly possible to give him as

much praise as he deserves. I am sure I can never feel thankful enough

for the generosity with which he has protected me, so much younger and

lower in the school than himself.’

I was running on, very fast indeed, when my eyes rested on little

Em’ly’s face, which was bent forward over the table, listening with the

deepest attention, her breath held, her blue eyes sparkling like jewels,

and the colour mantling in her cheeks. She looked so extraordinarily

earnest and pretty, that I stopped in a sort of wonder; and they all

observed her at the same time, for as I stopped, they laughed and looked

at her.

‘Em’ly is like me,’ said Peggotty, ‘and would like to see him.’

Em’ly was confused by our all observing her, and hung down her head,

and her face was covered with blushes. Glancing up presently through her

stray curls, and seeing that we were all looking at her still (I am sure

I, for one, could have looked at her for hours), she ran away, and kept

away till it was nearly bedtime.

I lay down in the old little bed in the stern of the boat, and the wind

came moaning on across the flat as it had done before. But I could not

help fancying, now, that it moaned of those who were gone; and instead

of thinking that the sea might rise in the night and float the boat

away, I thought of the sea that had risen, since I last heard those

sounds, and drowned my happy home. I recollect, as the wind and water

began to sound fainter in my ears, putting a short clause into my

prayers, petitioning that I might grow up to marry little Em’ly, and so

dropping lovingly asleep.

The days passed pretty much as they had passed before, except--it was

a great exception--that little Em’ly and I seldom wandered on the beach

now. She had tasks to learn, and needle-work to do; and was absent

during a great part of each day. But I felt that we should not have had

those old wanderings, even if it had been otherwise. Wild and full of

childish whims as Em’ly was, she was more of a little woman than I

had supposed. She seemed to have got a great distance away from me,

in little more than a year. She liked me, but she laughed at me, and

tormented me; and when I went to meet her, stole home another way, and

was laughing at the door when I came back, disappointed. The best times

were when she sat quietly at work in the doorway, and I sat on the

wooden step at her feet, reading to her. It seems to me, at this

hour, that I have never seen such sunlight as on those bright April

afternoons; that I have never seen such a sunny little figure as I used

to see, sitting in the doorway of the old boat; that I have never beheld

such sky, such water, such glorified ships sailing away into golden air.

On the very first evening after our arrival, Mr. Barkis appeared in an

exceedingly vacant and awkward condition, and with a bundle of oranges

tied up in a handkerchief. As he made no allusion of any kind to this

property, he was supposed to have left it behind him by accident when

he went away; until Ham, running after him to restore it, came back with

the information that it was intended for Peggotty. After that occasion

he appeared every evening at exactly the same hour, and always with a

little bundle, to which he never alluded, and which he regularly put

behind the door and left there. These offerings of affection were of a

most various and eccentric description. Among them I remember a double

set of pigs’ trotters, a huge pin-cushion, half a bushel or so of

apples, a pair of jet earrings, some Spanish onions, a box of dominoes,

a canary bird and cage, and a leg of pickled pork.

Mr. Barkis’s wooing, as I remember it, was altogether of a peculiar

kind. He very seldom said anything; but would sit by the fire in much

the same attitude as he sat in his cart, and stare heavily at Peggotty,

who was opposite. One night, being, as I suppose, inspired by love, he

made a dart at the bit of wax-candle she kept for her thread, and put

it in his waistcoat-pocket and carried it off. After that, his great

delight was to produce it when it was wanted, sticking to the lining of

his pocket, in a partially melted state, and pocket it again when it was

done with. He seemed to enjoy himself very much, and not to feel at all

called upon to talk. Even when he took Peggotty out for a walk on the

flats, he had no uneasiness on that head, I believe; contenting himself

with now and then asking her if she was pretty comfortable; and I

remember that sometimes, after he was gone, Peggotty would throw her

apron over her face, and laugh for half-an-hour. Indeed, we were

all more or less amused, except that miserable Mrs. Gummidge, whose

courtship would appear to have been of an exactly parallel nature, she

was so continually reminded by these transactions of the old one.

At length, when the term of my visit was nearly expired, it was given

out that Peggotty and Mr. Barkis were going to make a day’s holiday

together, and that little Em’ly and I were to accompany them. I had but

a broken sleep the night before, in anticipation of the pleasure of

a whole day with Em’ly. We were all astir betimes in the morning; and

while we were yet at breakfast, Mr. Barkis appeared in the distance,

driving a chaise-cart towards the object of his affections.

Peggotty was dressed as usual, in her neat and quiet mourning; but Mr.

Barkis bloomed in a new blue coat, of which the tailor had given him

such good measure, that the cuffs would have rendered gloves unnecessary

in the coldest weather, while the collar was so high that it pushed his

hair up on end on the top of his head. His bright buttons, too, were

of the largest size. Rendered complete by drab pantaloons and a buff

waistcoat, I thought Mr. Barkis a phenomenon of respectability.

When we were all in a bustle outside the door, I found that Mr. Peggotty

was prepared with an old shoe, which was to be thrown after us for luck,

and which he offered to Mrs. Gummidge for that purpose.

‘No. It had better be done by somebody else, Dan’l,’ said Mrs. Gummidge.

‘I’m a lone lorn creetur’ myself, and everythink that reminds me of

creetur’s that ain’t lone and lorn, goes contrary with me.’

‘Come, old gal!’ cried Mr. Peggotty. ‘Take and heave it.’

‘No, Dan’l,’ returned Mrs. Gummidge, whimpering and shaking her head.

‘If I felt less, I could do more. You don’t feel like me, Dan’l; thinks

don’t go contrary with you, nor you with them; you had better do it

yourself.’

But here Peggotty, who had been going about from one to another in a

hurried way, kissing everybody, called out from the cart, in which we

all were by this time (Em’ly and I on two little chairs, side by side),

that Mrs. Gummidge must do it. So Mrs. Gummidge did it; and, I am sorry

to relate, cast a damp upon the festive character of our departure, by

immediately bursting into tears, and sinking subdued into the arms of

Ham, with the declaration that she knowed she was a burden, and had

better be carried to the House at once. Which I really thought was a

sensible idea, that Ham might have acted on.

Away we went, however, on our holiday excursion; and the first thing

we did was to stop at a church, where Mr. Barkis tied the horse to some

rails, and went in with Peggotty, leaving little Em’ly and me alone in

the chaise. I took that occasion to put my arm round Em’ly’s waist, and

propose that as I was going away so very soon now, we should determine

to be very affectionate to one another, and very happy, all day. Little

Em’ly consenting, and allowing me to kiss her, I became desperate;

informing her, I recollect, that I never could love another, and that

I was prepared to shed the blood of anybody who should aspire to her

affections.

How merry little Em’ly made herself about it! With what a demure

assumption of being immensely older and wiser than I, the fairy little

woman said I was ‘a silly boy’; and then laughed so charmingly that

I forgot the pain of being called by that disparaging name, in the

pleasure of looking at her.

Mr. Barkis and Peggotty were a good while in the church, but came out at

last, and then we drove away into the country. As we were going along,

Mr. Barkis turned to me, and said, with a wink,--by the by, I should

hardly have thought, before, that he could wink:

‘What name was it as I wrote up in the cart?’

‘Clara Peggotty,’ I answered.

‘What name would it be as I should write up now, if there was a tilt

here?’

‘Clara Peggotty, again?’ I suggested.

‘Clara Peggotty BARKIS!’ he returned, and burst into a roar of laughter

that shook the chaise.

In a word, they were married, and had gone into the church for no other

purpose. Peggotty was resolved that it should be quietly done; and

the clerk had given her away, and there had been no witnesses of the

ceremony. She was a little confused when Mr. Barkis made this abrupt

announcement of their union, and could not hug me enough in token of her

unimpaired affection; but she soon became herself again, and said she

was very glad it was over.

We drove to a little inn in a by-road, where we were expected, and

where we had a very comfortable dinner, and passed the day with great

satisfaction. If Peggotty had been married every day for the last ten

years, she could hardly have been more at her ease about it; it made no

sort of difference in her: she was just the same as ever, and went

out for a stroll with little Em’ly and me before tea, while Mr. Barkis

philosophically smoked his pipe, and enjoyed himself, I suppose, with

the contemplation of his happiness. If so, it sharpened his appetite;

for I distinctly call to mind that, although he had eaten a good deal of

pork and greens at dinner, and had finished off with a fowl or two, he

was obliged to have cold boiled bacon for tea, and disposed of a large

quantity without any emotion.

I have often thought, since, what an odd, innocent, out-of-the-way kind

of wedding it must have been! We got into the chaise again soon after

dark, and drove cosily back, looking up at the stars, and talking about

them. I was their chief exponent, and opened Mr. Barkis’s mind to

an amazing extent. I told him all I knew, but he would have believed

anything I might have taken it into my head to impart to him; for he

had a profound veneration for my abilities, and informed his wife in my

hearing, on that very occasion, that I was ‘a young Roeshus’--by which I

think he meant prodigy.

When we had exhausted the subject of the stars, or rather when I had

exhausted the mental faculties of Mr. Barkis, little Em’ly and I made a

cloak of an old wrapper, and sat under it for the rest of the journey.

Ah, how I loved her! What happiness (I thought) if we were married,

and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields,

never growing older, never growing wiser, children ever, rambling hand

in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our

heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried

by the birds when we were dead! Some such picture, with no real world in

it, bright with the light of our innocence, and vague as the stars afar

off, was in my mind all the way. I am glad to think there were two such

guileless hearts at Peggotty’s marriage as little Em’ly’s and mine. I

am glad to think the Loves and Graces took such airy forms in its homely

procession.

Well, we came to the old boat again in good time at night; and there

Mr. and Mrs. Barkis bade us good-bye, and drove away snugly to their

own home. I felt then, for the first time, that I had lost Peggotty. I

should have gone to bed with a sore heart indeed under any other roof

but that which sheltered little Em’ly’s head.

Mr. Peggotty and Ham knew what was in my thoughts as well as I did, and

were ready with some supper and their hospitable faces to drive it away.

Little Em’ly came and sat beside me on the locker for the only time in

all that visit; and it was altogether a wonderful close to a wonderful

day.

It was a night tide; and soon after we went to bed, Mr. Peggotty and Ham

went out to fish. I felt very brave at being left alone in the solitary

house, the protector of Em’ly and Mrs. Gummidge, and only wished that

a lion or a serpent, or any ill-disposed monster, would make an attack

upon us, that I might destroy him, and cover myself with glory. But as

nothing of the sort happened to be walking about on Yarmouth flats that

night, I provided the best substitute I could by dreaming of dragons

until morning.

With morning came Peggotty; who called to me, as usual, under my window

as if Mr. Barkis the carrier had been from first to last a dream too.

After breakfast she took me to her own home, and a beautiful little

home it was. Of all the moveables in it, I must have been impressed by

a certain old bureau of some dark wood in the parlour (the tile-floored

kitchen was the general sitting-room), with a retreating top which

opened, let down, and became a desk, within which was a large quarto

edition of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. This precious volume, of which I do

not recollect one word, I immediately discovered and immediately applied

myself to; and I never visited the house afterwards, but I kneeled on

a chair, opened the casket where this gem was enshrined, spread my arms

over the desk, and fell to devouring the book afresh. I was chiefly

edified, I am afraid, by the pictures, which were numerous, and

represented all kinds of dismal horrors; but the Martyrs and Peggotty’s

house have been inseparable in my mind ever since, and are now.

I took leave of Mr. Peggotty, and Ham, and Mrs. Gummidge, and little

Em’ly, that day; and passed the night at Peggotty’s, in a little room

in the roof (with the Crocodile Book on a shelf by the bed’s head) which

was to be always mine, Peggotty said, and should always be kept for me

in exactly the same state.

‘Young or old, Davy dear, as long as I am alive and have this house over

my head,’ said Peggotty, ‘you shall find it as if I expected you here

directly minute. I shall keep it every day, as I used to keep your old

little room, my darling; and if you was to go to China, you might think

of it as being kept just the same, all the time you were away.’

I felt the truth and constancy of my dear old nurse, with all my heart,

and thanked her as well as I could. That was not very well, for she

spoke to me thus, with her arms round my neck, in the morning, and I was

going home in the morning, and I went home in the morning, with herself

and Mr. Barkis in the cart. They left me at the gate, not easily or

lightly; and it was a strange sight to me to see the cart go on, taking

Peggotty away, and leaving me under the old elm-trees looking at the

house, in which there was no face to look on mine with love or liking

any more.

And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I cannot look back upon

without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition,--apart

from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of

my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless

thoughts,--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.

What would I have given, to have been sent to the hardest school that

ever was kept!--to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No

such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me; and they sullenly, sternly,

steadily, overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone’s means were straitened

at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear

me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the

notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded.

I was not actively ill-used. I was not beaten, or starved; but the wrong

that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a

systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month

after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think

of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness;

whether I should have lain down in my lonely room, and languished

through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have

helped me out.

When Mr. and Miss Murdstone were at home, I took my meals with them; in

their absence, I ate and drank by myself. At all times I lounged about

the house and neighbourhood quite disregarded, except that they were

jealous of my making any friends: thinking, perhaps, that if I did, I

might complain to someone. For this reason, though Mr. Chillip often

asked me to go and see him (he was a widower, having, some years before

that, lost a little small light-haired wife, whom I can just remember

connecting in my own thoughts with a pale tortoise-shell cat), it was

but seldom that I enjoyed the happiness of passing an afternoon in his

closet of a surgery; reading some book that was new to me, with

the smell of the whole Pharmacopoeia coming up my nose, or pounding

something in a mortar under his mild directions.

For the same reason, added no doubt to the old dislike of her, I was

seldom allowed to visit Peggotty. Faithful to her promise, she either

came to see me, or met me somewhere near, once every week, and never

empty-handed; but many and bitter were the disappointments I had, in

being refused permission to pay a visit to her at her house. Some few

times, however, at long intervals, I was allowed to go there; and then

I found out that Mr. Barkis was something of a miser, or as Peggotty

dutifully expressed it, was ‘a little near’, and kept a heap of money

in a box under his bed, which he pretended was only full of coats

and trousers. In this coffer, his riches hid themselves with such a

tenacious modesty, that the smallest instalments could only be tempted

out by artifice; so that Peggotty had to prepare a long and elaborate

scheme, a very Gunpowder Plot, for every Saturday’s expenses.

All this time I was so conscious of the waste of any promise I had

given, and of my being utterly neglected, that I should have been

perfectly miserable, I have no doubt, but for the old books. They were

my only comfort; and I was as true to them as they were to me, and read

them over and over I don’t know how many times more.

I now approach a period of my life, which I can never lose the

remembrance of, while I remember anything: and the recollection of

which has often, without my invocation, come before me like a ghost, and

haunted happier times.

I had been out, one day, loitering somewhere, in the listless,

meditative manner that my way of life engendered, when, turning the

corner of a lane near our house, I came upon Mr. Murdstone walking with

a gentleman. I was confused, and was going by them, when the gentleman

cried:

‘What! Brooks!’

‘No, sir, David Copperfield,’ I said.

‘Don’t tell me. You are Brooks,’ said the gentleman. ‘You are Brooks of

Sheffield. That’s your name.’

At these words, I observed the gentleman more attentively. His laugh

coming to my remembrance too, I knew him to be Mr. Quinion, whom I

had gone over to Lowestoft with Mr. Murdstone to see, before--it is no

matter--I need not recall when.

‘And how do you get on, and where are you being educated, Brooks?’ said

Mr. Quinion.

He had put his hand upon my shoulder, and turned me about, to walk

with them. I did not know what to reply, and glanced dubiously at Mr.

Murdstone.

‘He is at home at present,’ said the latter. ‘He is not being educated

anywhere. I don’t know what to do with him. He is a difficult subject.’

That old, double look was on me for a moment; and then his eyes darkened

with a frown, as it turned, in its aversion, elsewhere.

‘Humph!’ said Mr. Quinion, looking at us both, I thought. ‘Fine

weather!’

Silence ensued, and I was considering how I could best disengage my

shoulder from his hand, and go away, when he said:

‘I suppose you are a pretty sharp fellow still? Eh, Brooks?’

‘Aye! He is sharp enough,’ said Mr. Murdstone, impatiently. ‘You had

better let him go. He will not thank you for troubling him.’

On this hint, Mr. Quinion released me, and I made the best of my

way home. Looking back as I turned into the front garden, I saw Mr.

Murdstone leaning against the wicket of the churchyard, and Mr. Quinion

talking to him. They were both looking after me, and I felt that they

were speaking of me.

Mr. Quinion lay at our house that night. After breakfast, the next

morning, I had put my chair away, and was going out of the room, when

Mr. Murdstone called me back. He then gravely repaired to another table,

where his sister sat herself at her desk. Mr. Quinion, with his hands

in his pockets, stood looking out of window; and I stood looking at them

all.

‘David,’ said Mr. Murdstone, ‘to the young this is a world for action;

not for moping and droning in.’ --‘As you do,’ added his sister.

‘Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the

young this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in. It

is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which requires a

great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service can be done

than to force it to conform to the ways of the working world, and to

bend it and break it.’

‘For stubbornness won’t do here,’ said his sister ‘What it wants is, to

be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!’

He gave her a look, half in remonstrance, half in approval, and went on:

‘I suppose you know, David, that I am not rich. At any rate, you know it

now. You have received some considerable education already. Education is

costly; and even if it were not, and I could afford it, I am of opinion

that it would not be at all advantageous to you to be kept at school.

What is before you, is a fight with the world; and the sooner you begin

it, the better.’

I think it occurred to me that I had already begun it, in my poor way:

but it occurs to me now, whether or no.

‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned sometimes,’ said Mr.

Murdstone.

‘The counting-house, sir?’ I repeated. ‘Of Murdstone and Grinby, in the

wine trade,’ he replied.

I suppose I looked uncertain, for he went on hastily:

‘You have heard the “counting-house” mentioned, or the business, or the

cellars, or the wharf, or something about it.’

‘I think I have heard the business mentioned, sir,’ I said, remembering

what I vaguely knew of his and his sister’s resources. ‘But I don’t know

when.’

‘It does not matter when,’ he returned. ‘Mr. Quinion manages that

business.’

I glanced at the latter deferentially as he stood looking out of window.

‘Mr. Quinion suggests that it gives employment to some other boys,

and that he sees no reason why it shouldn’t, on the same terms, give

employment to you.’

‘He having,’ Mr. Quinion observed in a low voice, and half turning

round, ‘no other prospect, Murdstone.’

Mr. Murdstone, with an impatient, even an angry gesture, resumed,

without noticing what he had said:

‘Those terms are, that you will earn enough for yourself to provide for

your eating and drinking, and pocket-money. Your lodging (which I have

arranged for) will be paid by me. So will your washing--’

‘--Which will be kept down to my estimate,’ said his sister.

‘Your clothes will be looked after for you, too,’ said Mr. Murdstone;

‘as you will not be able, yet awhile, to get them for yourself. So you

are now going to London, David, with Mr. Quinion, to begin the world on

your own account.’

‘In short, you are provided for,’ observed his sister; ‘and will please

to do your duty.’

Though I quite understood that the purpose of this announcement was

to get rid of me, I have no distinct remembrance whether it pleased

or frightened me. My impression is, that I was in a state of confusion

about it, and, oscillating between the two points, touched neither. Nor

had I much time for the clearing of my thoughts, as Mr. Quinion was to

go upon the morrow.

Behold me, on the morrow, in a much-worn little white hat, with a black

crape round it for my mother, a black jacket, and a pair of hard, stiff

corduroy trousers--which Miss Murdstone considered the best armour for

the legs in that fight with the world which was now to come off. Behold

me so attired, and with my little worldly all before me in a small

trunk, sitting, a lone lorn child (as Mrs. Gummidge might have said),

in the post-chaise that was carrying Mr. Quinion to the London coach at

Yarmouth! See, how our house and church are lessening in the distance;

how the grave beneath the tree is blotted out by intervening objects;

how the spire points upwards from my old playground no more, and the sky

is empty!