Changes in My World

Chapter-2

My mother was beautiful, with silky, long hair and a youthful shape. Peggotty with no shape at all and eyes so black they seemed to darken her whole face, had such red and firm cheeks and arms that I expected birds to peck at her instead of the apples that lay in the orchard. One of my earliest memories is of the touch of Peggotty’s forefinger, roughened by sewing to feel like a cheese grater, held out for my balance as I tottered back and forth between the two of them.
Our house was two-storey, with the kitchen on the ground floor. There were two main rooms—parlours we called them then—one where Mother and Peggotty and I sat each evening, for we were all a family, and one where we sat less comfortably on Sundays and holidays.
On the night when everything began to change, Peggotty and I sat in the parlour, she sewing and I reading to her about the habits of crocodiles.
The garden bell rang, and we went out the door. My mother, looking unusually pretty, stood speaking to a man with the blackest, shiniest hair and beard—the same man who had walked her home from church on Sunday.
Mother picked me up and the man patted my head, but somehow I didn’t like him of his deep voice, or the way his hand touched my mother’s hand in touching me, and I pushed away from him.
Later, I was wakened from a half-sleep in the parlour by Mother and Peggotty arguing.
“Not someone like him. Mr Copperfield wouldn’t have liked that,” said Peggotty.
“You’ll drive me crazy,” my mother cried, “I don’t care what other people are saying. Nothing is settled between the two of us. And how can you accuse me of not caring for Davy?”
“Am I a bad mother to you, Davy?” she asked, coming to the chair where I lay and putting her cheek against mine. Although I wasn’t certain what caused our teras, we all began crying together, a great flood that lasted all night if the sniffles and quiet sobs that filled our darkened house were any proof.
In the next weeks and months, the black-whiskered man came by after church and at other times. And the more often he appeared, the less Peggotty seemed to spend her evenings with us in the parlour. I came to know him as ‘Mr Murdstone,’ and I liked him no better than at first, having an uneasy jealousy of him in the way he drew my mother’s attention.
One evening when mother was out, Peggotty and I sat in the parlour, with sewing thread and crocodiles to entertain us.
“Davy, how would you like to go along with me to spend a couple of weeks at my brother’s place by the sea?” Peggotty asked, “There are boats and ships, and fishermen, and the beach.”
“It would be wonderful, Peggotty, but what would mother say? And what will she do while we’re away? She can’t stay by herself,” I said.
“She’ll let us go,” Peggotty assured me.
And she did, calling it a wonderful plan. We were to go in a horse-drawn cart after breakfast, and I was almost too excited to sleep.
It touched me to think how eager I was to leave my happy home that morning and to think how I never guessed I was leaving that happiness for-ever.
We were headed to Yarmouth behind the slowest horse in the world. The driver himself mimicked his horse, sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head drooping sleepily forward, his greatest activity a breathy and constant whistle.
Peggotty carried a basket of sandwiches and fruits, and we ate and napped the hours away. She always went to sleep with her chin on the handle of the basket, never letting her grip on it relax, and I was amazed how loudly one woman could snore sitting up.
The flatness and the smells of Yarmouth were amazing. Town and tide seemed to blend so completely it was hard to tell the land from the sea, even in their colours. The streets smelled of fish and tar, and they bustled with sailors on foot and in carts. We walked on solid roads strewn with woodchips and sand, past boatbuilders’ yards, riggers’ lofts, and blacksmiths’ forges, until we reached the liquid stretch of the town.
“There’s the house, Davy,” Peggotty directed my gaze with a nod of her bonnet towards the sea.
I looked in all directions, as far as I could stare, but all I saw was a black barge or some other kind of very old boat, not far off, high and dry on the ground, with an iron funnel sticking out of it for a chimney and smoking very cozily. I certainly saw nothing that would pass for a house in my experience.
“That ship-looking thing? I asked.
“That’s it,” she said and led me towards it, and aboard.
There was a door cut in the side, and it was roofed in, and there were little windows all around, but the wonderful charm of it was that it was a real boat that had surely been upon the water hundreds of times. All inside was beautifully clean and tidy, and my room in the stern was whitewashed and so sunny the patchwork bedspread made my eyes ache with its brightness. Peggotty’s brother, Daniel, dealt in lobster and crabs and crawfish, and their smell was everywhere, even more pervasive than the sunshine.
Daniel, cherry-cheeked like his sister, was a large and friendly man—”good as gold and true as steel” was Peggotty’s description. He welcomed us cheerfully and offered us all that his house contained. Two others lived there with him, Ham and Em’ly, the children of relatives who had died at sea. Ham, his cousin’s son, was huge and strong, a six-foot-tall boy with curly blond hair. Em’ly, his sister’s child, was small, shy and beautiful—and I was immediately certain I was in love.
We spent the days out on the beach picking up stones and shells, Em’ly and I, telling the stories of our young lives and sharing our dreams about the future. Most of all, she wanted to live an educated and cultured life in a great city like London or Paris. She feared the sea because of what she had seen it do to boats and people, and was terribly frightened of the storms that rose on the water and tossed even the largest craft around like pieces of a puzzle.
The vacation passed too quickly. I knew that I would miss Daniel and Ham, and the sounds and smells of Yarmouth, but most I dreaded leaving Em’ly. We promised to write, and we did for a while thereafter. Our futures were destined to be loosely tied to one another for some years—but never in the same carefree and sunny way as those two weeks spent seaside.
The matched set of carthorse and driver came to take us back to Blunderstone Rookery, and as much as I mourned the passing of my time at the shore, I looked forward to returning home to my own nest and to the comfort and company of my mother. Peggotty, on the other hand, seemed worried and nervous.
It was gloomy when we pulled up outside the Rookery. And when the door opened, it was not my mother but a woman. I didn’t know at all—cook, from her appearance.
“Peggotty, where’s mother? Shouldn’t she be at home?” I cried.
“Yes, yes, Davy. I’m sure she’s here. But wait a moment, and I’ll tell you something.” Peggotty took me by the hand and led me into the kitchen. She shut the door.
“What’s the matter?” I said, frightened and certain that something awful had happened to my mother, “Why hasn’t mama come out to the gate and why have we come in here?”
“I should have told you before, child but couldn’t find a way to do it,” Peggotty said.
“Tell me now, Peggotty. Tell me now.”
“Davy, you’ve got father.”
I trembled and turned white. Something—I don’t know what—connected with the grave in the churchyard next door and the raising of the dead, seemed to strike me like an unhealthy wind.
“A new one, I mean,” said Peggotty.
“A new one?” I repeated.
“Come and see him.”
“I don’t want to see him. I don’t want a father.” I backed away towards the kitchen table.
“Then come and see your mother, Davy. You want to see your mother, don’t you?” Peggotty asked, holding out her hand and nodding at me.

She led me to the Sunday parlour and left me there. On one side of the fire sat my mother; on the other, Mr Murdstone of the night-black beard and hair. My mother dropped her embroidery and rose hurriedly but, I thought, timidly.
“Control yourself, Clara, always control yourself,” said Mr Murdstone, “Davy, my boy, how do you do?” He put out a cold hand and I took it for a short shake; then I turned to my mother.
She kissed me and patted my shoulder, but said nothing and seemed unable to meet my gaze. For my part, I couldn’t look at her either, or at him. We stood silently and awkwardly for a few moments until they both sat down, and I went to the window to stare out at some shrubs that drooped in the cold.
After some time I left the room and went upstairs. My old bedroom was moved—at least the things in it—to a room farther down the hall from my mother’s room. Nothing about my house was the same.
But these were just the first of the changes. I went alone to my room and sat with my small hands crossed over my knees, staring at the wall. I felt cold and dejected, missing the seashore and Em’ly and Daniel, missing the robust activity of Yarmouth, missing the feeling of being a wanted member of a family—missing my life as I had known it to this minute. And when the weight of this unhappiness became too much, I wrapped up in the bedspread and fell asleep in as tight a knot as I could make of myself.
The tug of covers being taken from my head awakened me. Peggotty and mother had come to look for me, and it was one of them who unwrapped me.
“Davy,” said my mother, “what’s wrong? Why are you up here like this away from everyone?”
I turned over on my stomach to hide the way my lips were trembling. “Nothing’s wrong,” I whispered. And I began to cry in earnest, shaking and sobbing at the furthest edge of my bed away from mother and Peggotty.
“Davy, you naughty boy!” cried my mother angrily, “When I should most expect to have some happiness, so soon after my new marriage, you behave like this. Oh, dear me!”
I felt the touch of a hand that I knew was neither hers nor Peggotty’s, and I slipped to my feet at the far side of the bed. Mr Murdstone kept his hand on my arm and tightened his grip.
“What’s this, Clara, my dear? Have you forgotten? Be firm,” he said in his low and rumbling voice.
“I am very sorry, Edward,” said my mother turning away from all of us and looking instead at the carpet.
“Go downstairs, Clara. You too go, Peggotty. David and I will be down shortly,” said Mr Murdstone.
The women left the room, Peggotty giving me several worried glances. When we two were left alone, he shut the door and sat on a chair, standing me before him. We looked steadily into each other’s eyes, and I seemed to hear my heart beat fast and hard.
“David,” he said, making his lips thin by pressing them together, “if I have a difficult horse to deal with, what do you think I do?”
“I don’t know.”
“I beat him.”
I had answered in a sort of breathless whisper, but I felt in the silence after his cold words that my breath grew even shorter.
“I make him hurt. I say to myself. ‘I’ll conquer that fellow,’ and if it costs him all the life he has, I do it.” He looked hard at me for several minutes. “You’re an intelligent boy, and I know you understand what I am saying to you. Now wash your face and come downstairs with me.”
We ate supper alone, the three of us—Peggotty no longer welcome at the table. I gathered from what was said that Mr Murdstone’s sister was coming to stay with us, arriving later that evening. And when the sound of a coach approaching the gate drew us all to the yard shortly after dessert, I followed my mother out the door. She put her hand behind her and held mine as we walked through the garden, until we came close to where Mr Murdstone stood. Then she took her hand from me and slipped her arm through his.
It was a sour-looking woman who emerged from the carriage. She was dark like her brother, with bushy black eyebrows and a large nose. They were clearly related. She brought with her two rigid black boxes, with her initials on the lids in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her coins from small steel purse, and she kept the purse in jail of a bag that hung from her arm by a heavy chain and shut like a bite. I had never seen such a metallic woman as this Miss Murdstone and I stared in dread.
The very next morning, long before day-light, Miss Murdstone was up and ringing her bell to wake the household. When mother came down to prepare tea for breakfast, our houseguest shooed her aside. “Now, Clara, my dear, I am here to relieve you of all the trouble I can. You’ re much too pretty and thoughtless to have any duties that I can’t undertake. Just give me your keys and I’ll take care of everything from now on.”
From that moment, my mother was a furnishing in her own house. Miss Murdstone kept the keys on her belt or under her pillow at all times. And at those rare moments when the loss of all authority disturbed my mother enough to make her cry in frustration, her husband counselled her to control herself and be firm.
Firmness seemed the grand quality on which both Mr Murdstone and his sister took their stand. But in fact, it was only another name for tyranny and for a certain gloomy and arrogant evil in both of them.
There began to be talk of my going to boarding school. The Murdstones proposed the idea and my mother, of course, agreed, but nothing was done about it. For about six months, I took my lessons at home. These were conducted by my mother, but Mr Murdstone and his sister were always present and their presence was always felt.
During that time I saw no other children of my age because the Murdstones believed all children to be small vipers. And each day I felt more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I grew more lonely every day.
All that gave me any comfort was a small collection of my father’s books in an upstairs room. Robinson Crusoe, Don Quixote, the Vicar of Wakefield kept alive my imagination and my hope of something beyond that sad existence. Reading was my only pleasure, and when I recall that time the picture always comes to mind of a summer evening, with the sound of boys at play in the churchyard next door, and I sitting on my bed, reading as if my life depended on it.
On what was to be the last day of my lessons at home—and an unusually unhappy day—I found Mr Murdstone making a whip out of strips of cane when I entered the parlour. My mother and Miss Murdstone sat waiting. “Now, David, you must be far more careful in your studies today than usual,” he said as he slapped the cane across his palm and took a seat.
I was so frightened by the threat that the lessons went badly. At last, even my mother broke under the tension in the room and began to cry.
“David, your stupidity is too much for your poor mother,” the man said, “Go upstairs, boy.”
He walked me to my room slowly and gravely—I am certain he was delighted by that formal parade towards the execution of justice—and when we got there he suddenly twisted my head beneath his arm.
“Mr Murdstone! please don’t beat me,” I cried. “I have tried to learn, but I can’t while you’re so close by. I can’t.”
“Can’t? Or won’t, boy?” he said.
He had my head in a vice-grip, but I pulled around somehow and stopped him for a moment, once again pleading with him not to beat me. It slowed him little, and I felt the cane crack against me heavily an instant later, and in that same instant I caught his hand in my teeth and bit down into it. He beat me terribly then, as if he would beat me to death. Over the noise of the cane and his grunts and my sobs, I heard running on the stairs. Mother and Peggotty were crying out to stop the torture. Then he was gone, and the door to the room was locked from the outside.
I lay on the floor, hurting and furious, listening to the sudden unnatural silence. Hours passed. It grew dark. I was sitting at the window when Miss Murdstone brought me supper, saying not a word and locking the door on her way out. No one else came to see about me.
I remember waking the next morning, feeling cheerful and fresh for the first moment and then being weighed down by the memory of where I was and what had happened the day before. Miss Murdstone and the food she brought me were the only contacts I had with the rest of the house, until the fifth night when I heard Peggotty’s whisper at the key hole.
“Be as quiet as a mouse, Davy,” Peggotty warned me when I answered her call, and I knew she meant Miss Murdstone might appear at any moment from her room close down the hall.
“How’s mama, Peggotty? Is she very angry with me for biting Mr Murdstone?” I asked.
“No, dear. But you are going away. To school tomorrow near London.” I could hear her crying softly on the outside of my jail door.
“Won’t I see mama again?”
“Yes, in the morning. Davy, I just came to say that you must never forget me and I’ll never forget you. And I’ll take care of your mother and never leave her.”
“I won’t forget, Peggotty.”
In the morning, my bags were by the door when I was brought downstairs to the parlour. My mother was red-eyed and pale as she explained that I was going to school for my own good, and that I could come home for the holidays.
Then I was taken through the door to the sluggish horse and driver that had taken me once to Yarmouth, placed aboard, and sent away.

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