said Miss Murdstone, rising angrily, “you are a positive fool sometimes.”
“My dear Jane,” remonstrated my mother.
“A positive fool,” said Miss Murdstone. “Who else could compare my brother’s baby with your boy? They are not at all alike. They are exactly unlike. They are utterly dissimilar in all respects. I hope they will ever remain so. I will not sit here, and hear such comparisons made.” With that she stalked out, and made the door bang after her.
In short, I was not a favorite with Miss Murdstone. In short, I was not a favorite there with anybody, not even with myself; for those who did like me could not show it, and those who did not, showed it so plainly that I had a sensitive consciousness of always appearing constrained, boorish, and dull.
I felt that I made them as uncomfortable as they made me. If I came into the room where they were, and they were talking together and my mother seemed cheerful, an anxious cloud would steal over her face from the moment of my entrance. If Mr. Murdstone were in his best humor, I checked him. If Miss Murdstone were in her worst, I intensified it. I had perception enough to know that my mother was the victim always; that she was afraid to speak to me or be kind to me, lest she should give them some offence by her manner of doing so, and receive a lecture afterwards; that she was not only ceaselessly afraid of her own offending, but of my offending, and uneasily watched their looks if I only moved. Therefore I resolved to keep myself as much out of their way as I could; and many a wintry hour did I hear the church-clock strike, when I was sitting in my cheerless bedroom, wrapped in my little great-coat, poring over a book.
In the evening, sometimes, I went and sat with Peggotty in the kitchen. There I was comfortable, and not afraid of being myself. But neither of these resources was approved of in the parlor. The tormenting humor which was dominant there stopped them both. I was still held to be necessary to my poor mother’s training, and, as one of her trials, could not be suffered to absent myself.
“David,” said Mr. Murdstone, one day after dinner when I was going to leave the room as usual; “I am sorry to observe that you are of a sullen disposition.”
“As sulky as a bear!” said Miss Murdstone.
I stood still, and hung my head.
“Now, David,” said Mr. Murdstone, “a sullen obdurate disposition is, of all tempers, the worst.”
“And the boy’s is, of all such dispositions that ever I have seen,” remarked his sister, “the most confirmed and stubborn. I think, my dear Clara, even you must observe it?”
“I beg your pardon, my dear Jane,” said my mother, “but are you quite sure – I am certain you’ll excuse me, my dear Jane – that you understand Davy?”
“I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,” returned Miss Murdstone, “if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don’t profess to be profound; but I do lay claim to common sense.”
“No doubt, my dear Jane,” returned my mother, “your understanding is very vigorous – ”
“Oh dear, no! Pray don’t say that, Clara,” interposed Miss Murdstone, angrily.
“But I am sure it is,” resumed my mother; “and everybody knows it is. I profit so much by it myself, in many ways – at least I ought to – that no one can be more convinced of it than myself; and therefore I speak with great diffidence, my dear Jane, I assure you.”
“We’ll say I don’t understand the boy, Clara,” returned Miss Murdstone, arranging the little fetters on her wrists. “We’ll agree, if you please, that I don’t understand him at all. He is much too deep for me. But perhaps my brother’s penetration may enable him to have some insight into his character. And I believe my brother was speaking on the subject when we – not very decently – interrupted him.”
“I think, Clara,” said Mr. Murdstone, in a low, grave voice, “that there may be better and more dispassionate judges of such a question than you.”
“Edward,” replied my mother, timidly, “you are a far better judge of all questions than I pretend to be. Both you and Jane are. I only said – ”
“You only said something weak and inconsiderate,” he replied. “Try not to do it again, my dear Clara, and keep a watch upon yourself.”
My mother’s lips moved, as if she answered “Yes, my dear Edward,” but she said nothing aloud.
“I was sorry, David, I remarked,” said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head and his eyes stiffly towards me, “to observe that you are of a sullen disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop itself beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. You must endeavour, sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” I faltered. “I have never meant to be sullen since I came back.”
“Don’t take refuge in a lie, sir!” he returned so fiercely, that I saw my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose between us. “You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your own room. You have kept your own room when you ought to have been here. You know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not there. Further, that I require you to bring obedience here. You know me, David. I will have it done.”
Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.
“I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing towards myself,” he continued, “and towards Jane Murdstone, and towards your mother. I will not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the pleasure of a child. Sit down.”
He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.
“One thing more,” he said. “I observe that you have an attachment to low and common company. You are not to associate with servants. The kitchen will not improve you, in the many respects in which you need improvement. Of the woman who abets you, I say nothing – since you, Clara,” addressing my mother in a lower voice, “from old associations and long-established fancies, have a weakness respecting her which is not yet overcome.”
“A most unaccountable delusion it is!” cried Miss Murdstone.
“I only say,” he resumed, addressing me, “that I disapprove of your preferring such company as Mistress Peggotty, and that it is to be abandoned. Now, David, you understand me, and you know what will be the consequence if you fail to obey me to the letter.”
I knew well – better perhaps than he thought, as far as my poor mother was concerned – and I obeyed him to the letter. I retreated to my own room no more; I took refuge with Peggotty no more; but sat wearily in the parlor day after day, looking forward to night, and bedtime.
What irksome constraint I underwent, sitting in the same attitude hours upon hours, afraid to move an arm or a leg lest Miss Murdstone should complain (as she did on the least pretence) of my restlessness, and afraid to move an eye lest it should light on some look of dislike or scrutiny that would find new cause for complaint in mine! What intolerable dulness to sit listening to the ticking of the clock; and watching Miss Murdstone’s little shiny steel beads as she strung them; and wondering whether she would ever be married, and if so, to what sort of unhappy man; and counting the divisions in the moulding on the chimney-piece; and wandering away, with my eyes, to the ceiling, among the curls and corkscrews in the paper on the wall!
What walks I took alone, down muddy lanes, in the bad winter weather, carrying that
