(9) CHARLES DICKENS: DAVID COPPERFIELD: CHAPTER 9: I HAVE A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY

I pass over all that happened at school, until the anniversary of my birthday came round in March.  Except that Steerforth was more to be admired than ever, I remember nothing.  He was going away at the end of the half year, if not sooner, and was more spirited and independent than before, more engaging than before, but beyond this I remember nothing.  The great remembrance by which that time is marked in my mind seems to have erased all lesser recollections, and exist alone.

There was a gap of two months between my return to Salem House and the arrival of my birthday.  I can only understand that the fact was so, because I know it must have been so; otherwise I should feel convinced that there was no interval, and the one occasion trod upon the other's heel.

How well I recollect the kind of day it was!  I smell the fog that hung about the place.  I see the hoar frost, ghostly through it.  I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek.  I look along the dim perspective of the school room, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor.  It was after the breakfast, and we had been summoned in from the playground, when Mr Sharp entered and said:

'David Copperfield is to go into the parlour.'

I expected a hamper from Peggotty, and brightened at the order.  Some of the boys about me put in the claim not to be forgotten in the distribution of the good things, as I got out of the seat with great alacrity.

'Don't hurry, David,' said Mr Sharp.  'There is time enough,  my boy, don't hurry.'

I might have been surprised by the feeling tone, in which he spoke, if I had given it a thought; but I have it none until afterwards.  I hurried away to the parlour; and there I found Mr Creakle, sitting at the breakfast with the cane and a newspaper before him, and Mrs Creakle with an opened letter in her hand.  But no hamper.

'David Copperfield,' said Mrs Creakle, leading me to a sofa, and sitting down beside me.  'I want to speak to you very particularly.  I have something to tell you, my child.'

Mr Creakle, at whom of course I looked, shook his head without looking at me, stopped up a sigh with a very large piece of butter toast.

'You are too young to know how the world changes every day,' said Mrs Creakle, 'and how people in it pass away.  But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are so young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times of our lives.'

I looked at her earnestly.

'When you came away from home at the end of the vacation,' said Mrs Creakle, after a pause, 'Were they all well? After another pause, 'was your mama well?

I trembled without strictly knowing why, and still looked at her earnestly, making no attempt to answer. 

'Because,' said she, 'I grieve to tell you that I hear this morning your mama is ver ill.' 

A mist rose between Mrs Creakle and me, and her figure seemed to move in it for an instant.  Then I felt the burning tears run down my face, and it was steady again.

'She is very dangerously ill.' 

I knew all now.

'She is dead'.

There was no need to tell me.  I had already broken out into a desolate cry, and felt an orphan in the wide world.

She was very kind to me.  She kept me there all day, and left me alone sometimes; and I cried and wore myself to sleep, and woke and cried again. When I could cry no more, I began to think; and then the oppression of my breast was heaviest; and my grief a dull pain that there was no ease for.

And yet my thoughts were idle; not intend on the calamity that weighed upon my heart, but idly loitering near it.  I thought of our house shut up and hushed up.  I thought of the little baby, who, Mrs Creakle said, had been pining away for sometime, and who, they believed, would die too.  I thought of my father's grave in the church yard, by our house, and my mother lying there beneath the tree I knew so well.  I stood upon the chair when I was left alone, and looked into the glass to see how red my eyes were, and how sorrowful my face.  I considered, after some hours were gone, if my tears were really hard to flow now, as they seemed to be, what, in connection with my loss, it would affect me most to think of when I drew near home- for I was going home to the funeral.  I am sensible of having felt that a dignity attached to me among the rest of the boys, and that I was important in my affliction.

If ever a child were stricken with grief, I was.  But I remember that this importance was a kind of satisfaction to me, when I walked in the playground that afternoon while the boys were in the school.  When I saw them glancing at me out of the windows as they went up to their classes.  I felt distinguished, and looked more melancholy, and walked slower.  When the school was over, and they came out and spoke to me, I felt it rather good in myself, not to be proud to any of them, and to take exactly the same notice of them all, as before.

I was to go home next night; not by mail, but by the heavy night coach, which was called farmer, and was principally used by the country people travelling short intermediate distances.  We had no story telling that evening, and Traddles insisted on lending me his pillow.  I don't know what good he thought it would do me, for I had one of my own: but it was all he had to lend, poor fellow, except a sheet of letter-paper full of skeletons, that he gave me at parting, as a soother of my sorrows and a contribution to my peace of mind.

I left Salem House next afternoon.  I little thought  then, that I left it never to return.  We travelled very slowly all night, and did not get into Yarmouth before nine or ten o'clock in the morning.  I looked out for Mr Barkis, but he was not there; and instead of him a fat, short-winded, merry-looking, little old man in black, with rusty little bunches of ribbons at the knees of his breeches, black stockings, and a broad brimmed hat, came puffing upto the coach window, and said, 'Master Copperfield?' 

'Yes,sir.'

'Will you come with me, young sir, if you please,' he said opening the door, 'and I shall have the pleasure of taking you home.' 

I put the hand in his, wondering who he was, and we walked along a narrow street and reached a shop on which was written OMER, DRAPER, TAILOR, HABERDASHER, FUNERAL FURNISHER &c.  It was a close stifling little shop; full of all sorts of clothing, made and unmade, including one window full of beaver hats and bonnets.  We went into the little back parlour behind the shop, where we found three young women at work on a quantity of black materials, which were heaped upon the table, and little bits and cuttings of which were littered all over the floor.  There was a good fire in the room, and the smell of warm black crape- I did not know what the smell was then, but now I know.

The three young women, who appeared very industrious and comfortable, raised their heads to look at me, then went on with their work.  Stitch, stitch, stitch.  At the same time there came from a workshop across a little yard outside the widow, a regular sound of hammering that kept a kind of tune: Rat- tat-tat, Rat-tat-tat, Rat-tat-tat, without any variation.

'Well,' said my conductor to one of the three young women, 'How do you get on, Minnie?'

'We shall be ready by trying-on time,' she replied gaily, without looking up.  'Don't you be afraid father, father.'

Mr Omer took off his broad brimmed hat, and sat down and panted.  He was so fat that he was obliged to pant some time before he could say 'That's right.'

'Father!' said Minnie playfully, 'what a porpoise you do grow!'

'Well, I don't know how it is, my dear,' he replied, considering about it, 'I am rather so.'

'You are such a comfortable man, you see,' said Minnie, 'you take things so easy.'

'No use taking them otherwise, my dear,' said Mr Omer.

'No, indeed,' returned his daughter, 'we are all pretty gay here, thank Heaven. Ain't we father?'

'I hope so, dear,' said Mr Omer.  'As I have got my breath now, I think I will measure this scholar. Would you walk into the shop, Mr Copperfield?'

I followed Mr Omer.  After showing me a roll of cloth, which, he claimed extra super, he took my various dimensions, and put them down in a book.  While he was doing these, he told me of his stock-in-trade, of the new fashions, and the fashions just went out.

'And by that sort of thing we very often loose a little mint of money,' said Omer.  'But fashions are like human beings.  They come in, nobody knows when, why or how, and they go out as such. Every thing is like life.'

I was too sorrowful to discuss, and Omer took me back into the parlour, breathing with difficulty on the way.

He then called down a little break-neck range of steps behind a door: 'Bring up that tea and bread and butter!'  After sometime, during which I sat looking about me, and thinking, and listening to the stitching in the room and the tune that was being hammered accross the yard, appeared a tray that turned out for me.

'I have been acquainted with you', said Mr Omer, after watching me for some minutes, 'a long time, my friend.'

'Have you sir?' 

The breakfast made no impression on me.  The black things on the tray destroyed my appetite.

'All your life,' said Mr Omer.  'I may say before it. I knew your father before you.  He was five foot nine and half, and he lays in five and twenty foot ground.'

Rat-tat-tat, Rat-tat-tat, Rat-tat-tat accross the yard. He lays in five and twenty foot ground, if he lays in a fraction,' said Mr Omer, pleasantly.  It was either his request or her direction, I forgot which.'

'Do you know how my little brother is, sir?' I asked.

Omer shook his head.

Rat-tat-tat, Rat-tat-tat, Rat-tat-tat accross the yard 

'He is in his mother's arms,' said he 

'Oh, poor little fellow! Is he dead?' 

'Don't mind it more than you can help,' said Mr Omer, 'yes the baby is dead' 

My wounds broke out at this intelligence.  I left the scarcely tasted breakfast, and went and rested on another table, in a corner of the little room, which Minnie hastily cleared, lest I should spot the mourning that I was lying there, with my tears.  She was a pretty good natured girl, and put my hair away from my eyes with a soft, kind touch; but she was very cheerful at having nearly finished her work and being in good time, and was so different from me!

Soon the tune let off, and a good looking fellow came across the yard into the room.  He had a hammer in his hand, and his mouth was full of nails, which he was obliged to take out of before he could speak.

'Well, Joram!' said Omer, 'How would you get on? 

'Alright,' said Joram. Done sir.'

Minnie coloured a little, and the other two girls  smiled at one another.

'What! You were at it by candle light last night, when I was at the club, then? Were you? said Mr Omer shutting up one eye.

'Yes,' said Joram, 'as you said we could make a little trip of it, and go over together, if it was done, Minnie and me- and you.'

'oh! I thought you were going to leave me out altogether,' said Omer, laughing till he coughed.

'-as you were so good as to say that,' resumed the young man,'why I turned to you with a will, you see.  Will you give me your opinion of it.' 

'I will,' said Mr Omer, rising.  'My dear,' and he stopped and turned to me: 'Would you like to see your-' 

'No, father,' Minnie interposed.

'I thought it might be agreeable, my dear,' said Mr Omer.  'But perhaps you are right.'

I can't say how I knew it was my dear, dear mother's coffin that they went to look at.  I had never heard one making; I had never seen one I know of- but it came into my mind what the noise was, while it was going on; and when the young man entered, I was sure what he had been doing.

The work being now finished, two girls whose name I had not heard, brushed the shreds and threads from their dresses, went into the shop, to wait for customers.

Minnie stayed behind to fold up what they had made, and pack it in two baskets.  This she did upon her knees, humming a lively little tune to herself.  Joram, no doubt, her lover, came in and stole a kiss from her while she was busy (he didn't appear to mind me, at all) and said her father was gone for the chaise and he must make haste and get himself ready.  Then he went out again; then he put her thimble and scissors in her pocket and stuck a needle threaded with black thread neatly in the bosom of her gown, and put on her outer clothing smartly, at little glass behind the door, in which I saw the reflection of her pleased face. 

I was sitting at the table in the corner with my head leaning on my hand, and my thoughts running on different things.  The chaise soon came round to the front of the shop, and the baskets being put in first, I was put in next, and those three followed.  I remember it as a kind of half chaise-cart, half pinafore-van, painted of sombre colour, and drawn by a black horse with long tail.  There was plenty of room for us all.

I never experienced so strange a feeling in my life ( I am  wiser now, perhaps) as that of being with them, remembering how they had been employed, and seeing them enjoy the ride.  I was not angry with them; I was more afraid of them, as if I were cast away among creatures with whom I had no community of nature.  They were very cheerful.  The old man sat in front to drive, and the two young people sat behind him, and whenever he spoke to them leaned forward, the one on one side of his chubby face and other on the other, and made a great deal of him.  They would have talked to me too, but I held back, and moped in my corner, scarred by their love making and hilarity, though it was from boisterous, and almost wondering that no judgement came upon them for their hardness of heart.

So, when they stopped to bait the horse, and ate and drank, and enjoyed themselves, I could touch nothing that they touched, but kept my fast unbroken.  So, when we reached home, I dropped out of the chaise behind, as quickly as possible, that I might not be in their company before those solemn windows, looking blindly on me like closed eyes once bright.  And oh, how little need I had had to think what would move me to tears when I came back- seeing the window of my mother's room, and the next to which, in better times, that was mine!

I was in Peggotty's arms before I got to the door, and she took me into the house.  Her grief burst out she first saw me; but she controlled it soon, and spoke in whispers, and walked softly, as if the dead could be disturbed.  She had not been in bed, I found, for a long time.  She sat up at night still, and watched.  As long as her poor dear pretty was above the ground, she said, she would never desert her.

Mr Murdstone took no heed of me when I went into the parlour where he was, but sat by the fireside, weeping silently and pondering in his elbow chair.  Miss Murdstone, who was busy at her writing desk, which was covered with letters and papers, gave me her cold finger nails, and asked me in an iron whisper, if I had been measured for mourning.  I said, 'Yes.'

'And your shirts,' said Miss Murdstone, have you brought them home?'

'Yes ma'am I have brought all my clothes.'

This was all the consolation her firmness administered to me.  I do not doubt that she had a choice pleasure in exhibiting what she called her self command and her firmness, and her strength of mind, and her common sense, and the whole diabolical catalogue of her unfriendly qualities on such an occasion.  She was particularly proud of her turn of business, and she showed it now in reducing everything into pen and ink, and being moved by nothing.  All the rest of that day, and from morning to night afterwards, she sat at that desk, scratching composed with a hard pen, speaking in the same imperturbable whisper to everybody; never relaxing a muscle of her face, or softening a tone of her voice, or appearing an atom of her dress astray.

Her brother took a book sometimes, but never read it.  He would open it and look at it as if he were reading, but would remain for a whole hour without turning the leaf, and then put it down and walk to and fro in the room.  I used to sit with folded hands watching him, and counting his footsteps, hour after hour.  He seldom spoke to her, and never to me.  He seemed to be the only restless thing, except the clocks in the whole motionless house.

In these days before the funeral, I saw but little of Peggotty, except that, in passing up or down stairs.  I always found her close to the room where my mother and her baby lay, and except that she came to me every night, and sat by my bed's head while I went to sleep.  A day or two before the burial- I think it was a day or two before, but I am conscious of confusion in my mind about that heavy time, with nothing to mark its progress- she took me into the room.  I only recollect that underneath some white covering on the bed with a beautiful cleanliness and freshness all round it, there seemed to me to lie embodied the solemn stillness that was in the house; and that when she would have turned the cover gently back, I cried,'Oh, no! oh no!'and held her hand.

If the funeral had been yesterday, I could not recollect it better.  The very air of the best parlour, when I went in at the door, the bright condition of the fire, the shining of wine in decanters, the pattern of the glasses and plates, the faint sweet smell of cake, the odour of Miss Murdstone's dress, and our black clothes.  Mr Chillip was in the room, and came to speak to me.

'And how is Master David?' he said kindly.

I could not tell him very well.  I gave him my hand which he held in his.

'Dear me!,' said Mr Chillip, meekly smiling, with something shining in his eyes. 'Our little friends grow up around us.  They grow out of our knowledge ma'am?'  This was to Miss Murdstone, who made no reply.

'This is a great improvement, here ma'am?' said Mr Chillip.

Miss Murdstone merely answered with a frown and a formal bend.  Mr Chillip, confused, went into a corner, keeping me with him, and opened his mouth no more.

And now the bell began to sound, and Mr Omer and others came to make us ready.  As Peggotty used to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to the same grave were made ready in the same room.

There were Mr Murdstone, our neighbour Mr Grayper, Mr Chillip and I.  When we went out to the door, the Bearers and their load were in the garden, and they moved before us down the path, and past the elms, and through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I had so often heard birds sing on a summer morning.

We stand around the grave.  The day seemed different to me from every other day, and the light not of the same colour- of a sadder colour.  Now, there was solemn hush, which we had brought from home with what was resting in the mould; and while we stood bare-headed, I heard the voice of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and plain saying 'I am the resurrection and the Life, said the lord!'  Then I hear sobs; and standing apart among the lookers-on, I saw that good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon the earth I loved best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day say: 'well done.'

There were many faces that I knew, among the little crowd; faces that I knew in the church, faces that first saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom.  I did not mind them- I mind nothing but my grief- and yet I saw and knew them all; and even in the background, far away, Minnie looking on, and her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who was near me.

It was over and the earth was filled in, and we turned to come away.  Before us, stood our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with the young idea of what was gone, that all my sorrow had been nothing to the sorrow it called forth.  But they take me on; and Mr Chillip talked to me; and when we get home, put some water to my lips, and when I asked his leave to go upto my room, dismissed me with the gentleness of a woman.

All this was, yesterday's event.  Events of later date had floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things would reappear, but this stood like a high rock in the ocean.

I knew that Peggotty would come to me in my room.  The Sabbath stillness of the time ( the day was so like Sunday!) was suited to us both.  She sat down by my side upon my little bed; and holding my hand, and sometimes putting it to her lips, and sometimes smoothing it with hers, as she might have comforted my little brother, told me, in her way, all that she had to tell about what had happened.

'She was never well,' said Peggotty, 'for a long time.  She was uncertain in her mind, and not happy.  When her baby was born, I thought at first she would get better, but she was more delicate, and sunk a little every day.  She used to like to sit alone before her baby came, and then she cried; but afterwards she used to sing to it- so soft, that I once thought, when I heard her, it was like a voice up in the air, that was rising away.

'I think she got to be more timid, and more frightened like, of late; and a hard word was like a blow to her.  But she was always the same to me.  She never changed to her foolish Peggotty, didn't my sweet girl.'

Here Peggotty stopped, and suddenly beat upon my hand a little while.

'The last time that I saw her like her own old self, was the night when you came home, my dear. The day you went away, she said to me,"I never shall see my pretty darling again.  Something tells me so, that tells the truth, I know."

'She tried to hold up after that; and many a time when they told her she was thoughtless and lighthearted, made believe to be so, but it was all a bygone by then.  She never told her husband what she had told me- she was afraid of saying to anybody else- till one night,  little more than a week before it had happened when she said to him:"My dear, I think I am dying."

"It's off my mind now, Peggotty," she told me when I laid her in her bed that night.  'He will believe it more and more, poor fellow, every day for few days to come; and then it will be past.  I am very tired. If this is sleep, sit by me while I sleep: don't leave me.  God bless both my children! God protect and keep my fatherless boy."

'I never left her afterwards,' said Peggotty.  'She often talked to them downstairs- for she loved them; she couldn't bear not to love anyone who was about her- but when they went away from her bedside, she always turned to me, as if there was rest where Peggotty was, and never fell asleep in any other way.

On the last night, in the evening, she kissed me, and said: "If my baby should die too, Peggotty, please let them lay in my arms, and bury us together."( It was done; for the poor lamb lived but a day beyond her) "Let my dearest boy go with us to our resting place," she said "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 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 he was a happy man in hers.  "Peggotty my dear," she said then "put me near 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 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 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 to the later period, that it rooted 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 for ever, on her bosom.

THE END OF THE CHAPTER 9