The Charles Dickens Christmas Megapack Page 20

  This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon the very What’s-his-name to play.

  Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in that flash of time, I don’t know. But a live baby there was in Mrs. Peerybingle’s arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she seemed to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a sturdy figure of a man, much taller and much older than herself, who had to stoop a long way down to kiss her. But she was worth the trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have done it.

  “Oh goodness, John!” said Mrs. P. “What a state you’re in with the weather!”

  He was something the worse for it undeniably. The thick mist hung in clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and, between the fog and fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.

  “Why, you see, Dot,” John made answer slowly, as he unrolled a shawl from about his throat, and warmed his hands; “it—it an’t exactly summer weather. So no wonder.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t call me Dot, John. I don’t like it,” said Mrs. Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she did like it very much.

  “Why, what else are you?” returned John, looking down upon her with a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and arm could give. “A dot and”—here he glanced at the baby—“a dot and carry—I won’t say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near a joke. I don’t know as ever I was nearer.”

  He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own account: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy, but so light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the core; so dull without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! Oh, Mother Nature, give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid itself in this poor Carrier’s breast—he was but a Carrier, by the way—and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading lives of prose; and bear to bless thee for their company!

  It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure and her baby in her arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little head just enough on one side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural, half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his tender awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her slight need, and make his burly middle age a leaning-staff not inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head thrust forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable to observe how John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid baby, checked his hand when on the point of touching the infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and, bending down, surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride, such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show if he found himself, one day, the father of a young canary.

  “An’t he beautiful, John? Don’t he look precious in his sleep?”

  “Very precious,” said John. “Very much so. He generally is asleep, an’t he?”

  “Lor, John! Good gracious, no!”

  “Oh!” said John, pondering. “I thought his eyes was generally shut. Halloa!”

  “Goodness, John, how you startle one!”

  “It an’t right for him to turn ‘em up in that way,” said the astonished Carrier, “is it? See how he’s winking with both of ‘em at once! and look at his mouth! Why, he’s gasping like a gold and silver fish!”

  “You don’t deserve to be a father, you don’t,” said Dot, with all the dignity of an experienced matron. “But how should you know what little complaints children are troubled with, John? You wouldn’t so much as know their names, you stupid fellow.” And when she had turned the baby over on her left arm, and had slapped its back as a restorative, she pinched her husband’s ear, laughing.

  “No,” said John, pulling off his outer coat. “It’s very true, Dot. I don’t know much about it. I only know that I’ve been fighting pretty stiffly with the wind to-night. It’s been blowing north-east, straight into the cart, the whole way home.”

  “Poor old man, so it has!” cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly becoming very active. “Here, take the precious darling, Tilly, while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with kissing it, I could! Hie then, good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only let me make the tea first, John; and then I’ll help you with the parcels, like a busy bee. ‘How doth the little’—and all the rest of it, you know, John. Did you ever learn ‘How doth the little,’ when you went to school, John?”

  “Not to quite know it,” John returned. “I was very near it once. But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.”

  “Ha, ha!” laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever heard. “What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be sure!”

  Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that the boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the horse; who was fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in and out with bewildering inconstancy; now describing a circle of short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the stable door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress, and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now eliciting a shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire, by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance; now exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now going round and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established himself for the night; now getting up again, and taking that nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his out into the weather, as if he had just remembered an appointment, and was off at a round trot, to keep it.

  “There! There’s the teapot, ready on the hob!” said Dot; as briskly busy as a child at play at keeping house. “And there’s the cold knuckle of ham; and there’s the butter; and there’s the crusty loaf, and all! Here’s a clothes basket for the small parcels, John, if you’ve got any there. Where are you, John? Don’t let the dear child fall under the grate, Tilly, whatever you do!”

  It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting the caution with some vivacity, that she had a rare and surprising talent for getting this baby into difficulties: and had several times imperilled its short life in a quiet way peculiarly her own. She was of a spare and straight shape, this young lady, insomuch that her garments appeared to be in constant danger of sliding off those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely hung. Her costume was remarkable for the partial development, on all possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of the back, of a corset, or a pair of stays, in colour a dead green. Being always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed, besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress’s perfections and the baby’s, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby’s head, which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy’s constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and installed in such a comfortable home. For the maternal and paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been bred by public charity, a foundli
ng; which word, though only differing from fondling by one vowel’s length, is very different in meaning, and expresses quite another thing.

  To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with her husband, tugging at the clothes basket, and making the most strenuous exertions to do nothing at all (for he carried it), would have amused you almost as much as it amused him. It may have entertained the Cricket, too, for anything I know; but, certainly, it now began to chirp again vehemently.

  “Heyday!” said John in his slow way. “It’s merrier than ever to-night, I think.”

  “And it’s sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has done so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth is the luckiest thing in all the world!”

  John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into his head that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed with her. But it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he said nothing.

  “The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that night when you brought me home—when you brought me to my new home here; its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect, John?”

  Oh, yes! John remembered. I should think so!

  “Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full of promise and encouragement. It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle with me, and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to find an old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife.”

  John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head, as though he would have said No, no; he had had no such expectation; he had been quite content to take them as they were. And really he had reason. They were very comely.

  “It spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say so: for you have ever been, I am sure, the best, the most considerate, the most affectionate of husbands to me. This has been a happy home, John; and I love the Cricket for its sake!”

  “Why, so do I, then,” said the Carrier. “So do I, Dot.”

  “I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me. Sometimes, in the twilight, when I have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John—before baby was here, to keep me company and make the house gay—when I have thought how lonely you would be if I should die; how lonely I should be, if I could know that you had lost me, dear; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp upon the hearth has seemed to tell me of another little voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before whose coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream. And when I used to fear—I did fear once, John; I was very young, you know—that ours might prove to be an ill-assorted marriage, I being such a child, and you more like my guardian than my husband; and that you might not, however hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as you hoped and prayed you might; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp has cheered me up again, and filled me with new trust and confidence. I was thinking of these things to-night, dear, when I sat expecting you; and I love the Cricket for their sake!”

  “And so do I,” repeated John. “But, Dot! I hope and pray that I might learn to love you? How you talk! I had learnt that long before I brought you here, to be the Cricket’s little mistress, Dot!”

  She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up at him with an agitated face, as if she would have told him something. Next moment, she was down upon her knees before the basket; speaking in a sprightly voice, and busy with the parcels.

  “There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods behind the cart just now; and though they give more trouble, perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble, have we? Besides, you have been delivering, I dare say, as you came along?”

  “Oh, yes!” John said. “A good many.”

  “Why, what’s this round box? Heart alive, John, it’s a wedding-cake!”

  “Leave a woman alone to find out that,” said John admiringly. “Now, a man would never have thought of it! Whereas, it’s my belief that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a turn-up bedstead, or a pickled-salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it at the pastrycook’s.”

  “And it weighs I don’t know what—whole hundredweights!” cried Dot, making a great demonstration of trying to lift it. “Whose is it, John? Where is it going?”

  “Read the writing on the other side,” said John.

  “Why, John! My Goodness, John!”

  “Ah! who’d have thought it?” John returned.

  “You never mean to say,” pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and shaking her head at him, “that it’s Gruff and Tackleton the toymaker!”

  John nodded.

  Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent—in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips, the while, with all their little force (they were never made for screwing up; I am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the meantime, who had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural number, inquired aloud of that young creature, Was it Gruffs and Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would it call at Pastrycooks for wedding-cakes, and Did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them home; and so on.

  “And that is really to come about!” said Dot. “Why, she and I were girls at school together, John.”

  He might have been thinking of her, or nearly thinking of her, perhaps, as she was in that same school-time. He looked upon her with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer.

  “And he’s as old! As unlike her!—Why, how many years older than you is Gruff and Tackleton, John?”

  “How many more cups of tea shall I drink to-night, at one sitting, than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, I wonder?” replied John good-humouredly, as he drew a chair to the round table, and began at the cold ham. “As to eating, I eat but little; but that little I enjoy, Dot.”

  Even this, his usual sentiment at meal-times, one of his innocent delusions (for his appetite was always obstinate, and flatly contradicted him), awoke no smile in the face of his little wife, who stood among the parcels, pushing the cake-box slowly from her with her foot, and never once looked, though her eyes were cast down too, upon the dainty shoe she generally was so mindful of. Absorbed in thought, she stood there, heedless alike of the tea and John (although he called to her and rapped the table with his knife to startle her), until he rose and touched her on the arm; when she looked at him for a moment, and hurried to her place behind the tea-board, laughing at her negligence. But not as she had laughed before. The manner and the music were quite changed.

  The Cricket, too, had stopped. Somehow, the room was not so cheerful as it had been. Nothing like it.

  “So, these are all the parcels, are they, John?” she said, breaking a long silence, which the honest Carrier had devoted to the practical illustration of one part of his favourite sentiment—certainly enjoying what he ate, if it couldn’t be admitted that he ate but little. “So these are all the parcels, are they, John?”

  “That’s all,” said John. “Why—no—I”—laying down his knife and fork, and taking a long breath—“I declare—I’ve clean forgotten the old gentleman!”

  “The old gentleman?”

  “In the cart,” said John. “He was asleep among the straw, the last time I saw him. I’ve very nearly remembered him, twice, since I came in; but he went out of my head again. Halloa! Yahip there! Rouse up! That’s my hearty!”

  John said these latter words outside the door, whither he had hurried with the candle in his hand.

  Miss Slowboy, conscious of some mysterious reference to The Old Gentleman, and connecting, in her mystified imagination, certain associations of a religious nature with the phrase, was so disturbed, that hastily rising from the low chair by the fire to seek protection near the skirt of her mistress, and coming into contact, as she crossed the doorway, with an ancient Stranger, she instinctiv
ely made a charge or butt at him with the only offensive instrument within her reach. This instrument happening to be the baby, great commotion and alarm ensued, which the sagacity of Boxer rather tended to increase; for that good dog, more thoughtful than his master, had, it seemed, been watching the old gentleman in his sleep, lest he should walk off with a few young poplar-trees that were tied up behind the cart; and he still attended on him very closely, worrying his gaiters, in fact, and making dead sets at the buttons.

  “You’re such an undeniably good sleeper, sir,” said John, when tranquillity was restored (in the meantime the old gentleman had stood, bareheaded and motionless, in the centre of the room), “that I have half a mind to ask you where the other six are—only that would be a joke, and I know I should spoil it. Very near, though,” murmured the Carrier with a chuckle; “very near!”

  The Stranger, who had long white hair, good features, singularly bold and well defined for an old man, and dark, bright, penetrating eyes, looked round with a smile, and saluted the Carrier’s wife by gravely inclining his head.