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 drily, 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 all I had to anticipate was neglect.
I do not conceive that this discovery gave me much pain then. I was still giddy with the shock of my mother’s death, and in a kind of stunned state as to all tributary things. I can recollect, indeed, to have speculated, at odd times, on the possibility of my not being taught any more, or cared for any more, and growing up to be a shabby, moody man, lounging an idle life away about the village; as well as on the feasibility of my getting rid of this picture by going away somewhere, like the hero in a story, to seek my fortune; but these were transient visions—day-dreams I sat looking at sometimes, as if they were faintly painted or written on the wall of my room, and which, as they melted away, left the wall blank again.
“Peggotty,” I said, in a thoughtful whisper, one evening when I was warming my hands at the kitchen fire, “Mr. Murdstone likes me less than he used to. He never liked me much, Peggotty; but he would rather not even see me now, if he can help it.”
“Perhaps it’s his sorrow,” said Peggotty, stroking my hair.
“I am sure, Peggotty, I am sorry too. If I believed it was his sorrow, I should not think of it at all. But it’s not that; oh no, it’s not that.”
“How do you know it’s not that?” said Peggotty, after a silence.
“Oh, his sorrow is another and quite a different thing. He is sorry at this moment, sitting by the fireside with Miss Murdstone; but if I was to go in, Peggotty, he would be something besides.”
“What would he be?” said Peggotty.
“Angry,” I answered, with an involuntary imitation of his dark frown. “If he was only sorry, he wouldn’t look at me as he does. I am only sorry, and it makes me feel kinder.”
Peggotty said nothing for a little while, and I warmed my hands, as silent as she.
“Davy,” she said at length.
“Yes, Peggotty?”
“I have tried, my dear, all ways I could think of—all the ways there are, and all the ways there ain’t, in short—to get a suitable service here in Blunderstone, but there’s no such a thing, my love.”