The Charles Dickens Christmas Megapack Page 24

  You couldn’t see very far in the fog, of course; but you could see a great deal! It’s astonishing how much you may see in a thicker fog than that, if you will only take the trouble to look for it. Why, even to sit watching for the Fairyrings in the fields, and for the patches of hoar frost still lingering in the shade, near hedges and by trees, was a pleasant occupation, to make no mention of the unexpected shapes in which the trees themselves came starting out of the mist, and glided into it again. The hedges were tangled and bare, and waved a multitude of blighted garlands in the wind; but there was no discouragement in this. It was agreeable to contemplate; for it made the fireside warmer in possession, and the summer greener in expectancy. The river looked chilly; but it was in motion, and moving at a good pace—which was a great point. The canal was rather slow and torpid; that must be admitted. Never mind. It would freeze the sooner when the frost set fairly in, and then there would be skating and sliding; and the heavy old barges, frozen up somewhere near a wharf, would smoke their rusty iron chimney-pipes all day, and have a lazy time of it.

  In one place there was a great mound of weeds or stubble burning; and they watched the fire, so white in the daytime, flaring through the fog, with only here and there a dash of red in it, until, in consequence, as she observed, of the smoke “getting up her nose,” Miss Slowboy choked—she could do anything of that sort, on the smallest provocation—and woke the Baby, who wouldn’t go to sleep again. But Boxer, who was in advance some quarter of a mile or so, had already passed the outposts of the town, and gained the corner of the street where Caleb and his daughter lived; and, long before they had reached the door, he and the Blind Girl were on the pavement waiting to receive them.

  Boxer, by the way, made certain delicate distinctions of his own, in his communication with Bertha, which persuade me fully that he knew her to be blind. He never sought to attract her attention by looking at her, as he often did with other people, but touched her invariably. What experience he could ever have had of blind people or blind dogs I don’t know. He had never lived with a blind master; nor had Mr. Boxer the elder, nor Mrs. Boxer, nor any of his respectable family on either side, ever been visited with blindness, that I am aware of. He may have found it out for himself, perhaps, but he had got hold of it somehow; and therefore he had hold of Bertha too, by the skirt, and kept hold, until Mrs. Peerybingle and the Baby, and Miss Slowboy and the basket, were all got safely within doors.

  May Fielding was already come; and so was her mother—a little querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face, who, in right of having preserved a waist like a bedpost, was supposed to be a most transcendent figure; and who, in consequence of having once been better off, or of labouring under an impression that she might have been, if something had happened which never did happen, and seemed to have never been particularly likely to come to pass—but it’s all the same—was very genteel and patronising indeed. Gruff and Tackleton was also there, doing the agreeable, with the evident sensation of being as perfectly at home, and as unquestionably in his own element, as a fresh young salmon on the top of the Great Pyramid.

  “May! My dear old friend!” cried Dot, running up to meet her. “What a happiness to see you!”

  Her old friend was, to the full, as hearty and as glad as she; and it really was, if you’ll believe me, quite a pleasant sight to see them embrace. Tackleton was a man of taste, beyond all question. May was very pretty.

  You know sometimes, when you are used to a pretty face, how, when it comes into contact and comparison with another pretty face, it seems for the moment to be homely and faded, and hardly to deserve the high opinion you have had of it. Now, this was not at all the case, either with Dot or May; for May’s face set off Dot’s, and Dot’s face set off May’s, so naturally and agreeably, that, as John Peerybingle was very near saying when he came into the room, they ought to have been born sisters—which was the only improvement you could have suggested.

  Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, wonderful to relate, a tart besides—but we don’t mind a little dissipation when our brides are in the case; we don’t get married every day—and, in addition to these dainties, there were the Veal and Ham Pie, and “things,” as Mrs. Peerybingle called them; which were chiefly nuts and oranges, and cakes, and such small deer. When the repast was set forth on the board, flanked by Caleb’s contribution, which was a great wooden bowl of smoking potatoes (he was prohibited, by solemn compact, from producing any other viands), Tackleton led his intended mother-in-law to the post of honour. For the better gracing of this place at the high festival, the majestic old soul had adorned herself with a cap, calculated to inspire the thoughtless with sentiments of awe. She also wore her gloves. But let us be genteel, or die!

  Caleb sat next his daughter; Dot and her old schoolfellow were side by side; the good Carrier took care of the bottom of the table. Miss Slowboy was isolated, for the time being, from every article of furniture but the chair she sat on, that she might have nothing else to knock the Baby’s head against.

  As Tilly stared about her at the dolls and toys, they stared at her and at the company. The venerable old gentlemen at the street-doors (who were all in full action) showed especial interest in the party, pausing occasionally before leaping, as if they were listening to the conversation, and then plunging wildly over and over, a great many times, without halting for breath—as in a frantic state of delight with the whole proceedings.

  Certainly, if these old gentlemen were inclined to have a fiendish joy in the contemplation of Tackleton’s discomfiture, they had good reason to be satisfied. Tackleton couldn’t get on at all; and the more cheerful his intended bride became in Dot’s society, the less he liked it, though he had brought them together for that purpose. For he was a regular dog in the manger, was Tackleton; and, when they laughed and he couldn’t, he took it into his head, immediately, that they must be laughing at him.

  “Ah, May!” said Dot. “Dear, dear, what changes! To talk of those merry school days makes one young again.”

  “Why, you an’t particularly old at any time, are you?” said Tackleton.

  “Look at my sober, plodding husband there,” returned Dot. “He adds twenty years to my age at least. Don’t you, John?”

  “Forty,” John replied.

  “How many you’ll add to Mary’s, I am sure I don’t know,” said Dot, laughing. “But she can’t be much less than a hundred years of age on her next birthday.”

  “Ha, ha!” laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum that laugh, though. And he looked as if he could have twisted Dot’s neck comfortably.

  “Dear, dear!” said Dot. “Only to remember how we used to talk, at school, about the husbands we would choose. I don’t know how young, and how handsome, and how gay, and how lively mine was not to be! And as to May’s!—Ah dear! I don’t know whether to laugh or cry, when I think what silly girls we were.”

  May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flashed into her face, and tears stood in her eyes.

  “Even the very persons themselves—real live young men—we fixed on sometimes,” said Dot. “We little thought how things would come about. I never fixed on John, I’m sure; I never so much as thought of him. And, if I had told you you were ever to be married to Mr. Tackleton, why, you’d have slapped me. Wouldn’t you, May?”

  Though May didn’t say yes, she certainly didn’t say no, or express no, by any means.

  Tackleton laughed—quite shouted, he laughed so loud. John Peerybingle laughed too, in his ordinary good-natured and contented manner; but his was a mere whisper of a laugh to Tackleton’s.

  “You couldn’t help yourselves, for all that. You couldn’t resist us, you see,” said Tackleton. “Here we are! Here we are! Where are your gay young bridegrooms now?”

  “Some of them are dead,” said Dot; “and some of them forgotten. Some of them, if they could stand among us at this moment, would not believe we were the same creatures; would not believe that what they saw and heard was real,
and we could forget them so. No! they would not believe one word of it!”

  “Why, Dot!” exclaimed the Carrier. “Little woman!”

  She had spoken with such earnestness and fire, that she stood in need of some recalling to herself, without doubt. Her husband’s check was very gentle, for he merely interfered, as he supposed, to shield old Tackleton; but it proved effectual, for she stopped, and said no more. There was an uncommon agitation, even in her silence, which the wary Tackleton, who had brought his half-shut eye to bear upon her, noted closely, and remembered to some purpose too.

  May uttered no word, good or bad, but sat quite still, with her eyes cast down, and made no sign of interest in what had passed. The good lady her mother now interposed, observing, in the first instance, that girls were girls, and bygones bygones, and that, so long as young people were young and thoughtless, they would probably conduct themselves like young and thoughtless persons: with two or three other positions of a no less sound and incontrovertible character. She then remarked, in a devout spirit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her daughter May a dutiful and obedient child: for which she took no credit to herself, though she had every reason to believe it was entirely owing to herself. With regard to Mr. Tackleton, she said, That he was in a moral point of view an undeniable individual, and That he was in an eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one in their senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With regard to the family into which he was so soon about, after some solicitation, to be admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that, although reduced in purse, it had some pretensions to gentility; and that if certain circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go so far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to which she would not more particularly refer, had happened differently, it might perhaps have been in possession of wealth. She then remarked that she would not allude to the past, and would not mention that her daughter had for some time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would not say a great many other things which she did say at great length. Finally, she delivered it as the general result of her observation and experience, that those marriages in which there was least of what was romantically and sillily called love, were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the greatest possible amount of bliss—not rapturous bliss; but the solid, steady-going article—from the approaching nuptials. She concluded by informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had lived for expressly; and that, when it was over, she would desire nothing better than to be packed up and disposed of in any genteel place of burial.

  As these remarks were quite unanswerable—which is the happy property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose—they changed the current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the Veal and Ham Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed To-morrow: the Wedding-day; and called upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he proceeded on his journey.

  For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old horse a bait. He had to go some four or five miles farther on; and, when he returned in the evening, he called for Dot, and took another rest on his way home. This was the order of the day on all the Picnic occasions, and had been ever since their institution.

  There were two persons present, besides the bride and bridegroom elect, who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One of these was Dot, too flushed and discomposed to adapt herself to any small occurrence of the moment; the other, Bertha, who rose up hurriedly before the rest, and left the table.

  “Good-bye!” said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his dreadnought coat. “I shall be back at the old time. Good-bye all!”

  “Good-bye, John,” returned Caleb.

  He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious wondering face, that never altered its expression.

  “Good-bye, young shaver!” said the jolly Carrier, bending down to kiss the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon her knife and fork, had deposited asleep (and, strange to say, without damage) in a little cot of Bertha’s furnishing; “good-bye! Time will come, I suppose, when you’ll turn out into the cold, my little friend, and leave your old father to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney-corner; eh? Where’s Dot?”

  “I’m here, John!” she said, starting.

  “Come, come!” returned the Carrier, clapping his sounding hands. “Where’s the pipe?”

  “I quite forgot the pipe, John.”

  Forgot the pipe! Was such a wonder ever heard of? She! Forgot the pipe!

  “I’ll—I’ll fill it directly. It’s soon done.”

  But it was not so soon done, either. It lay in the usual place—the Carrier’s dreadnought pocket—with the little pouch, her own work, from which she was used to fill it; but her hand shook so, that she entangled it (and yet her hand was small enough to have come out easily, I am sure), and bungled terribly. The filling of the pipe and lighting it, those little offices in which I have commended her discretion, were vilely done from first to last. During the whole process, Tackleton stood looking on maliciously with the half-closed eye; which, whenever it met hers—or caught it, for it can hardly be said to have ever met another eye: rather being a kind of trap to snatch it up—augmented her confusion in a most remarkable degree.

  “Why, what a clumsy Dot you are this afternoon!” said John. “I could have done it better myself, I verily believe!”

  With these good-natured words, he strode away, and presently was heard, in company with Boxer, and the old horse, and the cart, making lively music down the road. What time the dreamy Caleb still stood, watching his blind daughter, with the same expression on his face.

  “Bertha!” said Caleb, softly. “What has happened? How changed you are, my darling, in a few hours—since this morning! You silent and dull all day! What is it? Tell me!”

  “Oh, father, father!” cried the Blind Girl, bursting into tears. “Oh, my hard, hard fate!”

  Caleb drew his hand across his eyes before he answered her.

  “But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, Bertha! How good, and how much loved, by many people.”

  “That strikes me to the heart, dear father! Always so mindful of me! Always so kind to me!”

  Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her.

  “To be—to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear,” he faltered, “is a great affliction; but—”

  “I have never felt it!” cried the Blind Girl. “I have never felt it in its fulness. Never! I have sometimes wished that I could see you, or could see him—only once, dear father, only for one little minute—that I might know what it is I treasure up,” she laid her hands upon her breast, “and hold here! That I might be sure I have it right! And sometimes (but then I was a child) I have wept in my prayers at night, to think that, when your images ascended from my heart to Heaven, they might not be the true resemblance of yourselves. But I have never had these feelings long. They have passed away, and left me tranquil and contented.”

  “And they will again,” said Caleb.

  “But, father! Oh, my good gentle father, bear with me, if I am wicked!” said the Blind Girl. “This is not the sorrow that so weighs me down!”

  Her father could not choose but let his moist eyes overflow; she was so earnest and pathetic. But he did not understand her yet.

  “Bring her to me,” said Bertha. “I cannot hold it closed and shut within myself. Bring her to me, father!”

  She knew he hesitated, and said, “May. Bring May!”

  May heard the mention of her name, and, coming quietly towards her, touched her on the arm. The Blind Girl turned immediately, and held her by both hands.

  “Look into my face, Dear heart, Sweet heart!” said Bertha. “Read it with your beautiful eyes, and tell me if the truth is written on it.”

  “Dear Bertha, yes!”

  The Blind
Girl, still upturning the blank sightless face, down which the tears were coursing fast, addressed her in these words:

  “There is not, in my soul, a wish or thought that is not for your good, bright May! There is not, in my soul, a grateful recollection stronger than the deep remembrance which is stored there of the many many times when, in the full pride of sight and beauty, you have had consideration for Blind Bertha, even when we two were children, or when Bertha was as much a child as ever blindness can be! Every blessing on your head! Light upon your happy course! Not the less, my dear May,”—and she drew towards her in a closer grasp,—“not the less, my bird, because, to-day, the knowledge that you are to be His wife has wrung my heart almost to breaking! Father, May, Mary! Oh, forgive me that it is so, for the sake of all he has done to relieve the weariness of my dark life: and for the sake of the belief you have in me, when I call Heaven to witness that I could not wish him married to a wife more worthy of his goodness!”

  While speaking, she had released May Fielding’s hands, and clasped her garments in an attitude of mingled supplication and love. Sinking lower and lower down, as she proceeded in her strange confession, she dropped at last at the feet of her friend, and hid her blind face in the folds of her dress.

  “Great Power!” exclaimed her father, smitten at one blow with the truth, “have I deceived her from her cradle, but to break her heart at last?”

  It was well for all of them that Dot, that beaming, useful, busy little Dot—for such she was, whatever faults she had, and however you may learn to hate her, in good time—it was well for all of them, I say, that she was there, or where this would have ended, it were hard to tell. But Dot, recovering her self-possession, interposed, before May could reply, or Caleb say another word.