David Copperfield

by Charles Dickens

  We went to an hotel by the sea, where two gentlemen were smoking cigars in a room by themselves. Each of them was lying on at least four chairs, and had a large rough jacket on. In a corner was a heap of coats and boat-cloaks and a flag, all bundled up together.

  They both rolled onto their feet, in an untidy sort of manner, when we came in, and said, "Halloa, Murdstone! We thought you were dead!"

  "Not yet," said Mr. Murdstone.

  "And who's this shaver?" said one of the gentlemen, taking hold of me.

  "That's Davy," returned Mr. Murdstone.

  "Davy who?" said the gentleman. "Jones?"

  "Copperfield," said Mr. Murdstone.

  "What! Betwitching Mrs. Copperfield's incumbrance?" cried the gentleman. "The pretty little widow?"

  "Quinion," said Mr. Murdstone, "take care, if you please. Somebody's sharp."

  "Who is?" asked the gentleman, laughing.

  I looked up quickly, being curious to know.

  "Only Brooks of Sheffield," said Mr. Murdstone.

  I was quite relieved to find that it was only Brooks of Sheffield, for, at first, I really thought it was L

  There seemed to be something very comical in the reputation of Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, for both the gentlemen laughed heartily when he was mentioned, and Mr. Murdstone was a good deal amused also. After some laughing, the gentleman whom he had called Quinion said:

  "And what is the opinion of Brooks of Sheffield, in reference to the projected business?"

  "Why, I don't know that Brooks understands much about it at present," replied Mr. Murdstone, "but he is not generally favourable, I believe."

  There was more laughter at this, and Mr. Quinion said he would ring the bell for some sherry in which to drink to Brooks. This he did, and, when the wine came, he made me have a little, with a biscuit, and, before I drank it, stand up and say, "Confusion to Brooks of Sheffield!" The toast was received with great applause, and such hearty laughter that it made me laugh too, at which they laughed the more. In short, we quite enjoyed ourselves.

  We walked about on the cliff after that, and sat on the grass, and looked at things through a telescope--I could make out nothing myself when it was put to my eye, but I pretended I could--and then we came back to the hotel to an early dinner. All the time we were out, the two gentlemen smoked incessantly--which, I thought, if I might judge from the smell of their rough coats, they must have been doing ever since the coats had first come home from the tailor's. I must not forget that we went on board the yacht, where they all three descended into the cabin, and were busy with some papers. I saw them quite hard at work, when I looked down through the open skylight. They left me, during this time, with a very nice man, with a very large head of red hair and a very small shiny hat upon it, who had got a cross-barred shirt or waistcoat on, with "Skylark" in capital letters across the chest. I thought it was his name, and that, as he lived on board ship and hadn't a street-door to put his name on, he put it there instead, but when I called him Mr. Skylark, he said it meant the vessel.

  I observed all day that Mr. Murdstone was graver and steadier than the two gentlemen. They were very gay and careless. They joked freely with one another, but seldom with him. It appeared to me that he was more clever and cold than they were, and that they regarded him with something of my own feeling. I remarked that, once or twice, when Mr. Quinion was talking, he looked at Mr. Murdstone sideways, as if to make sure of his not being displeased, and that once when Mr. Passnidge (the other gentleman) was in high spirits, he trod upon his foot, and gave him a secret caution with his eyes, to observe Mr. Murdstone, who was sitting stem and silent. Nor do I recollect that Mr. Murdstone laughed at all that day, except at the Sheffield joke--and that, by-the-by, was his own.

  We went home early in the evening. It was a very fine evening, and my mother and he had another stroll by the sweetbrier, while I was sent in to get my tea. When he was gone, my mother asked me all about the day I had had, and what they had said and done. I mentioned what they had said about her, and she laughed and told me they were impudent fellows who talked nonsense--but I knew it pleased her. I knew it quite as well as I know it now. I took the opportunity of asking if she was at all acquainted with Mr. Brooks of Sheffield, but she answered No, only she supposed he must be a manufacturer in the knife-and-fork way.

  Can I say of her face--altered as I have reason to remember it, perished as I know it is--that it is gone, when here it comes before me at this instant, as distinct as any face that I may choose to look on in a crowded street? Can I say of her innocent and girlish beauty, that it faded and was no more, when its breath falls on my cheek now, as it fell that night? Can I say she ever changed, when my remembrance brings her back to life, thus only, and, truer to its loving youth than I have been, or man ever is, still holds fast what it cherished then?

  I write of her just as she was when I had gone to bed after this talk, and she came to bid me good night. She kneeled down playfully by the side of the bed, and, laying her chin upon her hands and laughing, said:

  "What was it they said, Davy? Tell me again. I can't believe it."

  " 'Bewitching--' " I began.

  My mother put her hands upon my lips to stop me.

  "It was never bewitching," she said laughing. "It never could have been bewitching, Davy. Now I know it wasn't!"

  "Yes it was. 'Bewitching Mrs. Copperfield.' " I repeated stoutly. "And 'pretty.' "

  "No, no, it was never pretty. Not pretty," interposed my mother, laying her fingers on my lips again.

  "Yes it was. 'Pretty little widow.' "

  "What foolish, impudent creatures!" cried my mother, laughing and covering her face. "What ridiculous men! An't they? Davy dear--"

  "Well, Ma."

  "Don't tell Peggotty; she might be angry with them. I am dreadfully angry with them myself, but I would rather Peggotty didn't know."

  I promised, of course, and we kissed one another over and over again, and I soon fell fast asleep.

  It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if it were the next day when Peggotty broached the striking and adventurous proposition I am about to mention, but it was probably about two months afterwards.

  We were sitting, as before, one evening (when my mother was out as before), in company with the stocking and the yard measure and the bit of wax, and the box with Saint Paul's on the lid, and the crocodile book, when Peggotty, after looking at me several times, and opening her mouth as if she were going to speak, without doing it--which I thought was merely gaping, or I should have been rather alarmed--said coaxingly:

  "Master Davy, how should you like to go along with me and spend a fortnight at my brother's at Yarmouth? Wouldn't that be a treat?"

  "Is your brother an agreeable man, Peggotty?" I inquired provisionally.

  "Oh, what an agreeable man he is!" cried Peggotty, holding up her hands. "Then there's the sea, and the boats and ships, and the fishermen, and the beach, and Am to play with--"

  Peggotty meant her nephew Ham, mentioned in my first chapter, but she spoke of him as a morsel of English Grammar.

  I was flushed by her summary of delights, and replied that it would indeed be a treat, but what would my mother say?

  "Why then, I'll as good as bet a guinea," said Peggotty, intent upon my face, "that she'll let us go. I'll ask her, if you like, as soon as ever she comes home. There now!"

  "But what's she to do while we are away?" said I, putting my small elbows on the table to argue the point. "She can't live by herself."

  If Peggotty were looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth darning.

  "I say! Peggotty! She can't live by herself, you know."

  "Oh bless you!" said Peggotty, looking at me again at last. "Don't you know? She's going to stay for a fortnight with Mrs. Grayper. Mrs. Grayper's going to have a lot of company."

  Oh! If that was it, I was quite ready to go. I waited, in the utmost impatience,
until my mother came home from Mrs. Grayper's (for it was that identical neighbour), to ascertain if we could get leave to carry out this great idea. Without being nearly so much surprised as I expected, my mother entered into it readily, and it was all arranged that night, and my board and lodging during the visit were to be paid for.

  The day soon came for our going. It was such an early day that it came soon, even to me, who was in a fever of expectation, and half afraid that an earthquake or a fiery mountain, or some other great convulsion of nature, might interpose to stop the expedition. We were to go in a carrier's cart, which departed in the morning after breakfast. I would have given any money to have been allowed to wrap myself up overnight, and sleep in my hat and boots.

  It touches me nearly now, although I tell it lightly, to recollect how eager I was to leave my happy home--to think how little I suspected what I did leave for ever.

  I am glad to recollect that when the carrier's cart was at the gate, and my mother stood there kissing me, a grateful fondness for her and for the old place I had never turned my back upon before, made my cry. I am glad to know that my mother cried too, and that I felt her heart beat against mine.

  I am glad to recollect that when the carrier began to move, my mother ran out at the gate and called to him to stop, that she might kiss me once more. I am glad to dwell upon the earnestness and love with which she lifted up her face to mine, end did so.

  As we left her standing in the road, Mr. Murdstone came up to where she was, and seemed to expostulate with her for being so moved. I was looking back round the awning of the cart, and wondered what business it was of his. Peggotty, who was also looking back on the other side, seemed anything but satisfied, as the face she brought back in the cart denoted.

  I sat looking at Peggotty for some time, in a reverie on this supposititious case: whether, if she were employed to lose me like the boy in the fairy tale, I should be able to track my way home again by the buttons she would shed.

  CHAPTER III

  I Have a Change

  THE CARRIER'S HORSE WAS THE LAZIEST HORSE IN THE world, I should hope, and shuffled along with his head down, as if he liked to keep people waiting to whom the packages were directed. I fancied, indeed, that he sometimes chuckled audibly over this reflection, but the carrier said he was only troubled with a cough.

  The carrier had a way of keeping his head down like his horse, and of drooping sleepily forward as he drove, with one of his arms on each of his knees. I say "drove," but it struck me that the cart would have gone to Yarmouth quite as well without him, for the horse did all that, and as to conversation, he had no idea of it but whistling.

  Peggotty had a basket of refreshments on her knee, which would have lasted us out handsomely if we had been going to London by the same conveyance. We ate a good deal, and slept a good deal. Peggotty always went to sleep with her chin upon the handle of the basket, her hold of which never relaxed, and I could not have believed, unless I had heard her do it, that one defenceless woman could have snored so much.

  We made so many deviations up and down lanes, and were such a long time delivering a bedstead at a public-house, and calling at other places, that I was quite tired, and very glad, when we saw Yarmouth. It looked rather spongy and soppy, I thought, as I carried my eye over the great dull waste that lay across the river, and I could not help wondering, if the world were really as round as my geography book said, how any part of it came to be so flat. But I reflected that Yarmouth might be situated at one of the poles, which would account for it.

  As we drew a little nearer, and saw the whole adjacent prospect lying a straight low line under the sky, I hinted to Peggotty that a mound or so might have improved it, and also that, if the land had been a little more separated from the sea, and the town and the tide had not been quite so much mixed up, like toast and water, it would have been nicer. But Peggotty said, with greater emphasis than usual, that we must take things as we found them, and that, for her part, she was proud to call herself a Yarmouth Bloater.

  When we got into the street (which was strange enough to me), and smelt the fish, and pitch, and oakum, and tar, and saw the sailors walking about, and the carts jingling up and down over the stones, I felt that I had done so busy a place an injustice, and said as much to Peggotty, who heard my expressions of delight with great complacency, and told me it was well known (I suppose to those who had the good fortune to be born Bloaters) that Yarmouth was, upon the whole, the finest place in the universe.

  "Here's my Am!" screamed Peggotty, "growed out of knowledge!"

  He was waiting for us, in fact, at the public-house, and asked me how I found myself, like an old acquaintance. I did not feel, at first, that I knew him as well as he knew me, because he had never come to our house since the night I was born, and naturally he had the advantage of me. But our intimacy was much advanced by his taking me on his back to carry me home. He was now a huge, strong fellow of six feet high, broad in proportion, and round-shouldered, but with a simpering boy's face and curly light hair that gave him quite a sheepish look. He was dressed in a canvas jacket, and a pair of such very stiff trousers that they would have stood quite as well alone, without any legs in them. And you couldn't so properly have said he wore a hat, as that he was covered in a-top, like an old building, with something pitchy.

  Ham carrying me on his back and a small box of ours under his arm, and Peggotty carrying another small box of ours, we turned down lanes bestrewn with bits of chips and little hillocks of sand, and went past gas-works, rope-walks, boat-builders' yards, ship-wrights' yards, ship-breakers' yards, caulkers' yards, riggers' lofts, smiths' forges, and a great litter of such places, until we came out upon the dull waste I had already seen at a distance, when Ham said,

  "Yon's our house, Mas'r Davy!"

  I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare over the wilderness, and away at the sea, and away at the river, but no house could I make out. There was a black barge, or some other kind of superannuated boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cosily, but nothing else in the way of a habitation that was visible to me.

  "That's not it?" said I. "That ship-looking thing?"

  "That's it, Mas'r Davy," returned Ham.

  If it had been Aladdin's palace, roc's egg and all, I suppose I could not have been more charmed with the romantic idea of living in it. There was a delightful door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows in it, but the wonderful charm of it was that it was a real boat, which had no doubt been upon the water hundreds of times, and which had never been intended to be lived in, on dry land. That was the captivation of it to me. If it had ever been meant to be lived in, I might have thought it small, or inconvenient, or lonely, but never having been designed for any such use, it became a perfect abode.

  It was beautifully clean inside, and as tidy as possible. There was a table, and a Dutch clock, and a chest of drawers, and on the chest of drawers there was a tea-tray with a painting on it of a lady with a parasol, taking a walk with a military-looking child who was trundling a hoop. The tray was kept from tumbling down by a bible, and the tray, if it had tumbled down, would have smashed a quantity of cups and saucers and a teapot that were grouped around the book. On the walls there were some common coloured pictures, framed and glazed, of scripture subjects, such as I have never seen since, in the hands of pedlars, without seeing the whole interior of Peggotty's brother's house again, at one view. Abra ham in red going to sacrifice Isaac in blue, and Daniel in yellow cast into a den of green lions, were the most prominent of these. Over the little mantel-shelf, was a picture of the Sarah Jane lugger, built at Sunderland, with a real little wooden stern stuck onto it--a work of art, combining composition with carpentry, which I considered to be one of the most enviable possessions that the world could afford. There were some hooks in the beams of the ceiling, the use of which I did not divine then, and some lockers and boxes and conve
niences of that sort, which served for seats and eked out the chairs.

  All this I saw in the first glance after I crossed the threshold--child-like, according to my theory--and then Peggotty opened a little door and showed me my bedroom. It was the completest and most desirable bedroom ever seen--in the stern of the vessel, with a little window where the rudder used to go through, a little looking-glass, just the right height for me, nailed against the wall and framed with oyster-shells, a little bed, which there was just room enough to get into, and a nosegay of seaweed in a blue mug on the table. The walls were whitewashed as white as milk, and the patchwork counterpane made my eyes quite ache with its brightness. One thing I particularly noticed in this delightful house was the smell of fish, which was so searching that, when I took out my pocket-handkerchief to wipe my nose, I found it smelt exactly as if it had wrapped up a lobster. On my imparting this discovery in confidence to Peggotty, she informed me that her brother dealt in lobsters, crabs, and crawfish, and I afterwards found that a heap of these creatures, in a state of wonderful conglomeration with another, and never leaving off pinching whatever they laid hold of, were usually to be found in a little wooder outhouse where the pots and kettles were kept.

  We were welcomed by a very civil woman in a white apron, whom I had seen curtseying at the door when I was on Ham's back, about a quarter of a mile off. Likewise by a most beautiful little girl (or I thought her so), with a necklace of blue beads on, who wouldn't let me kiss her when I offered to, but ran away and hid herself. By and by, when we had dined in a sumptuous manner off boiled dabs, melted butter, and potatoes, with a chop for me, a hairy man with a very good-natured face came home. As he called Peggotty "Lass," and gave her a hearty smack on the cheek, I had no doubt, from the general propriety of her conduct, that he was her brother, and so he turned out--being presently introduced to me as Mr. Peggotty, the master of the house.