I remark this, because I remark everything that happens, not because I care about myself, or have done since I came home. And now the bell begins to sound, and Mr. Omer and another come to make us ready. As Peggotty was wont to tell me, long ago, the followers of my father to the same grave were made ready in the same room.
There are Mr. Murdstone, our neighbour Mr. Grayper, Mr. Chillip, and I. When we go out to the door, the Bearers and their load are in the garden; and they move before us down the path, and past the elms, and through the gate, and into the churchyard, where I have so often heard the birds sing on a summer morning.
We stand around the grave. The day seems different to me from every other day, and the light not of the same colour – of a sadder colour. Now there is a solemn hush, which we have brought from home with what is resting in the mould; and while we stand bareheaded, I hear the voice of the clergyman, sounding remote in the open air, and yet distinct and plain, saying: ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord!’ Then I hear sobs; and, standing apart among the lookers-on, I see that good and faithful servant, whom of all the people upon earth I love the best, and unto whom my childish heart is certain that the Lord will one day say: ‘Well done.’
There are many faces that I know, among the little crowd; faces that I knew in church, when mine was always wondering there; faces that first saw my mother, when she came to the village in her youthful bloom. I do not mind them – I mind nothing but my grief – and yet I see and know them all; and even in the background, far away, see Minnie looking on, and her eye glancing on her sweetheart, who is near me.
It is over, and the earth is filled in, and we turn to come away. Before us stands our house, so pretty and unchanged, so linked in my mind with the young idea of what is gone, that all my sorrow has been nothing to the sorrow it calls forth. But they take me on; and Mr. Chillip talks to me; and when we get home, puts some water to my lips; and when I ask his leave to go up to my room, dismisses me with the gentleness of a woman.
All this, I say, is yesterday’s event. Events of later date have floated from me to the shore where all forgotten things will reappear, but this stands 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! I have forgotten that) 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 concerning 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 that 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 softly 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 light-hearted, made believe to be so; but it was all a bygone then. She never told her husband what she had told me – she was afraid of saying it to anybody else – till one night, a little more than a week before it 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 a 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 two downstairs – for she loved them; she couldn’t bear not to love anyone who was about her – but when they went away from her bed-side, 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 him 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 me for some drink; and when she had taken it, gave me such a patient smile, the dear! – so beautiful!
‘Daybreak had come, and the sun was rising, when she said to me, how kind and considerate Mr. Copperfield had always been to her, and how he had borne with her, and told her, when she doubted herself, that a loving heart was better and stronger than wisdom, and that he was a happy man in hers. “Peggotty, my dear,” she said then, “put me nearer to you,” for she was very weak. “Lay your good arm underneath my neck,” she said, “and turn me to you, for your face is going far off, and I want it to be near.” I put it as she asked; and oh Davy! the time had come when my first parting words to you were true – when she was glad to lay her poor head on her stupid cross old Peggotty’s arm – and she died like a child that had gone to sleep!’
Thus ended Peggotty’s narration. From the moment of my knowing of the death of my mother, the idea of her as she had been of late had vanished from me. I remembered her, from that instant, only as the young mother of my earliest impressions, who had been used to wind her bright curls round and round her finger, and to dance with me at twilight in the parlour. What Peggotty had told me now, was so far from bringing me back to the later period, that it rooted the earlier image in my mind. It may be curious, but it is true. In her death she winged her way back to her calm untroubled youth, and cancelled all the rest.
The mother who lay in the grave, was the mother of my infancy; the little creature in her arms, was myself, as I had once been, hushed for ever on her bosom.
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