The Cricket on the Hearth c-3 Page 3

  What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in other things. You may easily suppose, therefore, that within the great green cape, which reached down to the calves of his legs, there was buttoned up to the chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow; and that he was about as choice a spirit, and as agreeable a companion, as ever stood in a pair of bull–headed–looking boots with mahogany–coloured tops.

  Still, Tackleton, the toy–merchant, was going to be married. In spite of all this, he was going to be married. And to a young wife too, a beautiful young wife.

  He didn’t look much like a bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier’s kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw in his body, and his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked down into the bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill–conditioned self peering out of one little corner of one little eye, like the concentrated essence of any number of ravens. But, a Bridegroom he designed to be.

  ‘In three days’ time. Next Thursday. The last day of the first month in the year. That’s my wedding–day,’ said Tackleton.

  Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, and one eye nearly shut; and that the one eye nearly shut, was always the expressive eye? I don’t think I did.

  ‘That’s my wedding–day!’ said Tackleton, rattling his money.

  ‘Why, it’s our wedding–day too,’ exclaimed the Carrier.

  ‘Ha ha!’ laughed Tackleton. ‘Odd! You’re just such another couple. Just!’

  The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous assertion is not to be described. What next? His imagination would compass the possibility of just such another Baby, perhaps. The man was mad.

  ‘I say! A word with you,’ murmured Tackleton, nudging the Carrier with his elbow, and taking him a little apart. ‘You’ll come to the wedding? We’re in the same boat, you know.’

  ‘How in the same boat?’ inquired the Carrier.

  ‘A little disparity, you know,’ said Tackleton, with another nudge. ‘Come and spend an evening with us, beforehand.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded John, astonished at this pressing hospitality.

  ‘Why?’ returned the other. ‘That’s a new way of receiving an invitation. Why, for pleasure—sociability, you know, and all that!’

  ‘I thought you were never sociable,’ said John, in his plain way.

  ‘Tchah! It’s of no use to be anything but free with you, I see,’ said Tackleton. ‘Why, then, the truth is you have a—what tea–drinking people call a sort of a comfortable appearance together, you and your wife. We know better, you know, but—’

  ‘No, we don’t know better,’ interposed John. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Well! We don’t know better, then,’ said Tackleton. ‘We’ll agree that we don’t. As you like; what does it matter? I was going to say, as you have that sort of appearance, your company will produce a favourable effect on Mrs. Tackleton that will be. And, though I don’t think your good lady’s very friendly to me, in this matter, still she can’t help herself from falling into my views, for there’s a compactness and cosiness of appearance about her that always tells, even in an indifferent case. You’ll say you’ll come?’

  ‘We have arranged to keep our Wedding–Day (as far as that goes) at home,’ said John. ‘We have made the promise to ourselves these six months. We think, you see, that home—’

  ‘Bah! what’s home?’ cried Tackleton. ‘Four walls and a ceiling! (why don’t you kill that Cricket? I would! I always do. I hate their noise.) There are four walls and a ceiling at my house. Come to me!’

  ‘You kill your Crickets, eh?’ said John.

  ‘Scrunch ’em, sir,’ returned the other, setting his heel heavily on the floor. ‘You’ll say you’ll come? It’s as much your interest as mine, you know, that the women should persuade each other that they’re quiet and contented, and couldn’t be better off. I know their way. Whatever one woman says, another woman is determined to clinch, always. There’s that spirit of emulation among ’em, sir, that if your wife says to my wife, “I’m the happiest woman in the world, and mine’s the best husband in the world, and I dote on him,” my wife will say the same to yours, or more, and half believe it.’

  ‘Do you mean to say she don’t, then?’ asked the Carrier.

  ‘Don’t!’ cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. ‘Don’t what?’

  The Carrier had some faint idea of adding, ‘dote upon you.’ But, happening to meet the half–closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over the turned–up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to be doted on, that he substituted, ‘that she don’t believe it?’

  ‘Ah you dog! You’re joking,’ said Tackleton.

  But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full drift of his meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner, that he was obliged to be a little more explanatory.

  ‘I have the humour,’ said Tackleton: holding up the fingers of his left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to imply ‘there I am, Tackleton to wit:’ ‘I have the humour, sir, to marry a young wife, and a pretty wife:’ here he rapped his little finger, to express the Bride; not sparingly, but sharply; with a sense of power. ‘I’m able to gratify that humour and I do. It’s my whim. But—now look there!’

  He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully, before the fire; leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, and watching the bright blaze. The Carrier looked at her, and then at him, and then at her, and then at him again.

  ‘She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,’ said Tackleton; ‘and that, as I am not a man of sentiment, is quite enough for me. But do you think there’s anything more in it?’

  ‘I think,’ observed the Carrier, ‘that I should chuck any man out of window, who said there wasn’t.’

  ‘Exactly so,’ returned the other with an unusual alacrity of assent. ‘To be sure! Doubtless you would. Of course. I’m certain of it. Good night. Pleasant dreams!’

  The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable and uncertain, in spite of himself. He couldn’t help showing it, in his manner.

  ‘Good night, my dear friend!’ said Tackleton, compassionately. ‘I’m off. We’re exactly alike, in reality, I see. You won’t give us to–morrow evening? Well! Next day you go out visiting, I know. I’ll meet you there, and bring my wife that is to be. It’ll do her good. You’re agreeable? Thank’ee. What’s that!’

  It was a loud cry from the Carrier’s wife: a loud, sharp, sudden cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. She had risen from her seat, and stood like one transfixed by terror and surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards the fire to warm himself, and stood within a short stride of her chair. But quite still.

  ‘Dot!’ cried the Carrier. ‘Mary! Darling! What’s the matter?’

  They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had been dozing on the cake–box, in the first imperfect recovery of his suspended presence of mind, seized Miss Slowboy by the hair of her head, but immediately apologised.

  ‘Mary!’ exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms. ‘Are you ill! What is it? Tell me, dear!’

  She only answered by beating her hands together, and falling into a wild fit of laughter. Then, sinking from his grasp upon the ground, she covered her face with her apron, and wept bitterly. And then she laughed again, and then she cried again, and then she said how cold it was, and suffered him to lead her to the fire, where she sat down as before. The old man standing, as before, quite still.

  ‘I’m better, John,’ she said. ‘I’m quite well now—I—’

  ‘John!’ But John was on the other side of her. Why turn her face towards the strange old gentleman, as if addressing him! Was her brain wandering?

  ‘Only a fancy, John dear—a kind of shock—a something coming suddenly before my eyes—I don’t know what it was. It’s quite gone, quite gone.’

  ‘I’m glad it’s gone,’ muttered Tackleton, turning the expressive eye all round the room
. ‘I wonder where it’s gone, and what it was. Humph! Caleb, come here! Who’s that with the grey hair?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir,’ returned Caleb in a whisper. ‘Never see him before, in all my life. A beautiful figure for a nut–cracker; quite a new model. With a screw–jaw opening down into his waistcoat, he’d be lovely.’

  ‘Not ugly enough,’ said Tackleton.

  ‘Or for a firebox, either,’ observed Caleb, in deep contemplation, ‘what a model! Unscrew his head to put the matches in; turn him heels up’ards for the light; and what a firebox for a gentleman’s mantel–shelf, just as he stands!’

  ‘Not half ugly enough,’ said Tackleton. ‘Nothing in him at all! Come! Bring that box! All right now, I hope?’

  ‘Quite gone!’ said the little woman, waving him hurriedly away. ‘Good night!’

  ‘Good night,’ said Tackleton. ‘Good night, John Peerybingle! Take care how you carry that box, Caleb. Let it fall, and I’ll murder you! Dark as pitch, and weather worse than ever, eh? Good night!’

  So, with another sharp look round the room, he went out at the door; followed by Caleb with the wedding–cake on his head.

  The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little wife, and so busily engaged in soothing and tending her, that he had scarcely been conscious of the Stranger’s presence, until now, when he again stood there, their only guest.

  ‘He don’t belong to them, you see,’ said John. ‘I must give him a hint to go.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, friend,’ said the old gentleman, advancing to him; ‘the more so, as I fear your wife has not been well; but the Attendant whom my infirmity,’ he touched his ears and shook his head, ‘renders almost indispensable, not having arrived, I fear there must be some mistake. The bad night which made the shelter of your comfortable cart (may I never have a worse!) so acceptable, is still as bad as ever. Would you, in your kindness, suffer me to rent a bed here?’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ cried Dot. ‘Yes! Certainly!’

  ‘Oh!’ said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of this consent.

  ‘Well! I don’t object; but, still I’m not quite sure that—’

  ‘Hush!’ she interrupted. ‘Dear John!’

  ‘Why, he’s stone deaf,’ urged John.

  ‘I know he is, but—Yes, sir, certainly. Yes! certainly! I’ll make him up a bed, directly, John.’

  As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the agitation of her manner, were so strange that the Carrier stood looking after her, quite confounded.

  ‘Did its mothers make it up a Beds then!’ cried Miss Slowboy to the Baby; ‘and did its hair grow brown and curly, when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a–sitting by the fires!’

  With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier as he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even these absurd words, many times. So many times that he got them by heart, and was still conning them over and over, like a lesson, when Tilly, after administering as much friction to the little bald head with her hand as she thought wholesome (according to the practice of nurses), had once more tied the Baby’s cap on.

  ‘And frighten it, a precious Pets, a–sitting by the fires. What frightened Dot, I wonder!’ mused the Carrier, pacing to and fro.

  He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the Toy–merchant, and yet they filled him with a vague, indefinite uneasiness. For, Tackleton was quick and sly; and he had that painful sense, himself, of being of slow perception, that a broken hint was always worrying to him. He certainly had no intention in his mind of linking anything that Tackleton had said, with the unusual conduct of his wife, but the two subjects of reflection came into his mind together, and he could not keep them asunder.

  The bed was soon made ready; and the visitor, declining all refreshment but a cup of tea, retired. Then, Dot—quite well again, she said, quite well again—arranged the great chair in the chimney–corner for her husband; filled his pipe and gave it him; and took her usual little stool beside him on the hearth.

  She always would sit on that little stool. I think she must have had a kind of notion that it was a coaxing, wheedling little stool.

  She was, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I should say, in the four quarters of the globe. To see her put that chubby little finger in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to clear the tube, and, when she had done so, affect to think that there was really something in the tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it to her eye like a telescope, with a most provoking twist in her capital little face, as she looked down it, was quite a brilliant thing. As to the tobacco, she was perfect mistress of the subject; and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of paper, when the Carrier had it in his mouth—going so very near his nose, and yet not scorching it—was Art, high Art.

  And the Cricket and the kettle, turning up again, acknowledged it! The bright fire, blazing up again, acknowledged it! The little Mower on the clock, in his unheeded work, acknowledged it! The Carrier, in his smoothing forehead and expanding face, acknowledged it, the readiest of all.

  And as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his old pipe, and as the Dutch clock ticked, and as the red fire gleamed, and as the Cricket chirped; that Genius of his Hearth and Home (for such the Cricket was) came out, in fairy shape, into the room, and summoned many forms of Home about him. Dots of all ages, and all sizes, filled the chamber. Dots who were merry children, running on before him gathering flowers, in the fields; coy Dots, half shrinking from, half yielding to, the pleading of his own rough image; newly–married Dots, alighting at the door, and taking wondering possession of the household keys; motherly little Dots, attended by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be christened; matronly Dots, still young and blooming, watching Dots of daughters, as they danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, encircled and beset by troops of rosy grandchildren; withered Dots, who leaned on sticks, and tottered as they crept along. Old Carriers too, appeared, with blind old Boxers lying at their feet; and newer carts with younger drivers (‘Peerybingle Brothers’ on the tilt); and sick old Carriers, tended by the gentlest hands; and graves of dead and gone old Carriers, green in the churchyard. And as the Cricket showed him all these things—he saw them plainly, though his eyes were fixed upon the fire—the Carrier’s heart grew light and happy, and he thanked his Household Gods with all his might, and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do.

  But, what was that young figure of a man, which the same Fairy Cricket set so near Her stool, and which remained there, singly and alone? Why did it linger still, so near her, with its arm upon the chimney–piece, ever repeating ‘Married! and not to me!’

  O Dot! O failing Dot! There is no place for it in all your husband’s visions; why has its shadow fallen on his hearth!

  Chapter 2

  Chirp the Second

  CALEB PLUMMER and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves, as the Story–books say—and my blessing, with yours to back it I hope, on the Story–books, for saying anything in this workaday world!—Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves, in a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, which was, in truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red–brick nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and Tackleton were the great feature of the street; but you might have knocked down Caleb Plummer’s dwelling with a hammer or two, and carried off the pieces in a cart.

  If any one had done the dwelling–house of Caleb Plummer the honour to miss it after such an inroad, it would have been, no doubt, to commend its demolition as a vast improvement. It stuck to the premises of Gruff and Tackleton, like a barnacle to a ship’s keel, or a snail to a door, or a little bunch of toadstools to the stem of a tree.

  But, it was the germ from which the full–grown trunk of Gruff and Tackleton had sprung; and, under its crazy roof, the Gruff before last, had, in a small way, made toys for a generation of old boys and
girls, who had played with them, and found them out, and broken them, and gone to sleep.

  I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter lived here. I should have said that Caleb lived here, and his poor Blind Daughter somewhere else—in an enchanted home of Caleb’s furnishing, where scarcity and shabbiness were not, and trouble never entered. Caleb was no sorcerer, but in the only magic art that still remains to us, the magic of devoted, deathless love, Nature had been the mistress of his study; and from her teaching, all the wonder came.

  The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured, walls blotched and bare of plaster here and there, high crevices unstopped and widening every day, beams mouldering and tending downward. The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood rotting, paper peeling off; the size, and shape, and true proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board; that sorrow and faintheartedness were in the house; that Caleb’s scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold, exacting, and uninterested—never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he was the Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word of thankfulness.