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.
And all was Caleb’s doing; all the doing of her simple father! But he
too had a Cricket on his Hearth; and listening sadly to its music when
the motherless Blind Child was very young, that Spirit had inspired him
with the thought that even her great deprivation might be almost changed
into a blessing, and the girl made happy by these little means. For all
the Cricket tribe are potent Spirits, even though the people who hold
converse with them do not know it (which is frequently the case); and
there are not in the unseen world, voices more gentle and more true, that
may be so implicitly relied on, or that are so certain to give none but
tenderest counsel, as the Voices in which the Spirits of the Fireside and
the Hearth address themselves to human kind.
Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual working-room,
which served them for their ordinary living-room as well; and a strange
place it was. There were houses in it, finished and unfinished, for
Dolls of all stations in life. Suburban tenements for Dolls of moderate
means; kitchens and single apartments for Dolls of the lower classes;
capital town residences for Dolls of high estate. Some of these
establishments were already furnished according to estimate, with a view
to the convenience of Dolls of limited income; others could be fitted on
the most expensive scale, at a moment’s notice, from whole shelves of
chairs and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and upholstery. The nobility and
gentry, and public in general, for whose accommodation these tenements
were designed, lay, here and there, in baskets, staring straight up at
the ceiling; but, in denoting their degrees in society, and confining
them to their respective stations (which experience shows to be
lamentably difficult in real life), the makers of these Dolls had far
improved on Nature, who is often froward and perverse; for, they, not
resting on such arbitrary marks as satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag,
had superadded striking personal differences which allowed of no mistake.
Thus, the Doll-lady of distinction had wax limbs of perfect symmetry; but
only she and her compeers. The next grade in the social scale being made
of leather, and the next of coarse linen stuff. As to the common-people,
they had just so many matches out of tinder-boxes, for their arms and
legs, and there they were—established in their sphere at once, beyond the
possibility of getting out of it.
There were various other samples of his handicraft, besides Dolls, in
Caleb Plummer’s room. There were Noah’s Arks, in which the Birds and
Beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure you; though they could be
crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and shaken into the smallest
compass. By a bold poetical licence, most of these Noah’s Arks had
knockers on the doors; inconsistent appendages, perhaps, as suggestive of
morning callers and a Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of
the building. There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when
the wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small fiddles,
drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of cannon, shields,
swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers in red breeches,
incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red-tape, and coming down, head
first, on the other side; and there were innumerable old gentlemen of
respectable, not to say venerable, appearance, insanely flying over
horizontal pegs, inserted, for the purpose, in their own street doors.
There were beasts of all sorts; horses, in particular, of every breed,
from the spotted barrel on four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to
the thoroughbred rocker on his highest mettle. As it would have been
hard to count the dozens upon dozens of grotesque figures that were ever
ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the turning of a handle, so
it would have been no easy task to mention any human folly, vice, or
weakness, that had not its type, immediate or remote, in Caleb Plummer’s
room. And not in an exaggerated form, for very little handles will move
men and women to as strange performances, as any Toy was ever made to
undertake.
In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daughter sat at work.
The Blind Girl busy as a Doll’s dressmaker; Caleb painting and glazing
the four-pair front of a desirable family mansion.
The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb’s face, and his absorbed and
dreamy manner, which would have sat well on some alchemist or abstruse
student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his occupation, and the
trivialities about him. But, trivial things, invented and pursued for
bread, become very serious matters of fact; and, apart from this
consideration, I am not at all prepared to say, myself, that if Caleb had
been a Lord Chamberlain, or a Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even
a great speculator, he would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical,
while I have a very great doubt whether they would have been as harmless.
‘So you were out in the rain last night, father, in your beautiful new
great-coat,’ said Caleb’s daughter.
‘In my beautiful new great-coat,’ answered Caleb, glancing towards a
clothes-line in the room, on which the sack-cloth garment previously
described, was carefully hung up to dry.
‘How glad I am you bought it, father!’
‘And of such a tailor, too,’ said Caleb. ‘Quite a fashionable tailor.
It’s too good for me.’
The Blind Girl rested from her work, and laughed with delight.
‘Too good, father! What can be too good for you?’
‘I’m half-ashamed to wear it though,’ said Caleb, watching the effect of
what he said, upon her brightening face; ‘upon my word! When I hear the
boys and people say behind me, “Hal-loa! Here’s a swell!” I don’t know
which way to look. And when the beggar wouldn’t go away last night; and
when I said I was a very common man, said “No, your Honour! Bless your
Honour, don’t say that!” I was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I
hadn’t a right to wear it.’
Happy Blind Girl! How merry she was, in her exultation!
‘I see you, father,’ she said, clasping her hands, ‘as plainly, as if I
had the eyes I never want when you are with me. A blue coat—’
‘Bright blue,’ said Caleb.
‘Yes, yes! Bright blue!’ exclaimed the girl, turning up her radiant
face; ‘the colour I can just remember in the blessed sky! You told me it
was blue before! A bright blue coat—’
‘Made loose to the figure,’ suggested Caleb.
‘Made loose to the figure!’ cried the Blind Girl, laughing heartily; ‘and
in it, you, dear father, with your merry eye, your smiling face, your
free step, and your dark hair—looking so young and handsome!’
‘Halloa! Halloa!’ said Caleb. ‘I shall be vain, presently!’
‘I think you are, already,’ cried the Blind Girl, pointing at him, in her
glee. ‘I know you, father! Ha, ha, ha! I’ve found you out, you see!’
How different the picture in her mind, from Caleb, as he sat observing
her! She had spoken of his free step. She was right in that. For years
and years, he had never once crossed that threshold at his own slow pace,
but with a footfall counterfeited for her ear; and never had he, when his
heart was heaviest, forgotten the light tread that was to render hers so
cheerful and courageous!
Heaven knows! But I think Caleb’s vague bewilderment of manner may have
half originated in his having confused himself about himself and
everything around him, for the love of his Blind Daughter. How could the
little man be otherwise than bewildered, after labouring for so many
years to destroy his own identity, and that of all the objects that had
any bearing on it!
‘There we are,’ said Caleb, falling back a pace or two to form the better
judgment of his work; ‘as near the real thing as sixpenn’orth of
halfpence is to sixpence. What a pity that the whole front of the house
opens at once! If there was only a staircase in it, now, and regular
doors to the rooms to go in at! But that’s the worst of my calling, I’m
always deluding myself, and swindling myself.’
‘You are speaking quite softly. You are not tired, father?’
‘Tired!’ echoed Caleb, with a great burst of animation, ‘what should tire
me, Bertha? _I_ was never tired. What does it mean?’
To give the greater force to his words, he checked himself in an
involuntary imitation of two half-length stretching and yawning figures
on the mantel-shelf, who were represented as in one eternal state of
weariness from the waist upwards; and hummed a fragment of a song. It
was a Bacchanalian song, something about a Sparkling Bowl. He sang it
with an assumption of a Devil-may-care voice, that made his face a
thousand times more meagre and more thoughtful than ever.
‘What! You’re singing, are you?’ said Tackleton, putting his head in at
the door. ‘Go it! _I_ can’t sing.’
Nobody would have suspected him of it. He hadn’t what is generally
termed a singing face, by any means.
‘I can’t afford to sing,’ said Tackleton. ‘I’m glad _you can_. I hope
you can afford to work too. Hardly time for both, I should think?’
‘If you could only see him, Bertha, how he’s winking at me!’ whispered
Caleb. ‘Such a man to joke! you’d think, if you didn’t know him, he was
in earnest—wouldn’t you now?’
The Blind Girl smiled and nodded.
‘The bird that can sing and won’t sing, must be made to sing, they say,’
grumbled Tackleton. ‘What about the owl that can’t sing, and oughtn’t to
sing, and will sing; is there anything that _he_ should be made to do?’
‘The extent to which he’s winking at this moment!’ whispered Caleb to his
daughter. ‘O, my gracious!’
‘Always merry and light-hearted with us!’ cried the smiling Bertha.
‘O, you’re there, are you?’ answered Tackleton. ‘Poor Idiot!’
He really did believe she was an Idiot; and he founded the belief, I
can’t say whether consciously or not, upon her being fond of him.
‘Well! and being there,—how are you?’ said Tackleton, in his grudging
way.
‘Oh! well; quite well. And as happy as even you can wish me to be. As
happy as you would make the whole world, if you could!’
‘Poor Idiot!’ muttered Tackleton. ‘No gleam of reason. Not a gleam!’
The Blind Girl took his hand and kissed it; held it for a moment in her
own two hands; and laid her cheek against it tenderly, before releasing
it. There was such unspeakable affection and such fervent gratitude in
the act, that Tackleton himself was moved to say, in a milder growl than
usual:
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘I stood it close beside my pillow when I went to sleep last night, and
remembered it in my dreams. And when the day broke, and the glorious red
sun—the _red_ sun, father?’
‘Red in the mornings and the evenings, Bertha,’ said poor Caleb, with a
woeful glance at his employer.
‘When it rose, and the bright light I almost fear to strike myself
against in walking, came into the room, I turned the little tree towards
it, and blessed Heaven for making things so precious, and blessed you for
sending them to cheer me!’
‘Bedlam broke loose!’ said Tackleton under his breath. ‘We shall arrive
at the strait-waistcoat and mufflers soon. We’re getting on!’
Caleb, with his hands hooked loosely in each other, stared vacantly
before him while his daughter spoke, as if he really were uncertain (I
believe he was) whether Tackleton had done anything to deserve her
thanks, or not. If he could have been a perfectly free agent, at that
moment, required, on pain of death, to kick the Toy-merchant, or fall at
his feet, according to his merits, I believe it would have been an even
chance which course he would have taken. Yet, Caleb knew that with his
own hands he had brought the little rose-tree home for her, so carefully,
and that with his own lips he had forged the innocent deception which
should help to keep her from suspecting how much, how very much, he every
day, denied himself, that she might be the happier.
‘Bertha!’ said Tackleton, assuming, for the nonce, a little cordiality.
‘Come here.’
‘Oh! I can come straight to you! You needn’t guide me!’ she rejoined.
‘Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?’
‘If you will!’ she answered, eagerly.
How bright the darkened face! How adorned with light, the listening
head!
‘This is the day on which little what’s-her-name, the spoilt child,
Peerybingle’s wife, pays her regular visit to you—makes her fantastic
Pic-Nic here; an’t it?’ said Tackleton, with a strong expression of
distaste for the whole concern.
‘Yes,’ replied Bertha. ‘This is the day.’
‘I thought so,’ said Tackleton. ‘I should like to join the party.’
‘Do you hear that, father!’ cried the Blind Girl in an ecstasy.
‘Yes, yes, I hear it,’ murmured Caleb, with the fixed look of a
sleep-walker; ‘but I don’t believe it. It’s one of my lies, I’ve no
doubt.’
‘You see I—I want to bring the Peerybingles a little more into company
with May Fielding,’ said Tackleton. ‘I am going to be married to May.’
‘Married!’ cried the Blind Girl, starting from him.
‘She’s such a con-founded Idiot,’ muttered Tackleton, ‘that I was afraid
she’d never comprehend me. Ah, Bertha! Married! Church, parson, clerk,
beadle, glass-coach, bells, breakfast, bride-cake, favours, marrow-bones,
cleavers, and all the rest of the tom-foolery. A wedding, you know; a
wedding. Don’t you know what a wedding is?’
‘I know,’ replied the Blind Girl, in a gentle tone. ‘I understand!’
‘Do you?’ muttered Tackleton. ‘It’s more than I expected. Well! On
that account I want to join the party, and to bring May and her mother.
I’ll send in a little something or other, before the afternoon. A cold
leg of mutton, or some comfortable trifle of that sort. You’ll expect
me?’
‘Yes,’ she answered.
She had drooped her head, and turned away; and so stood, with her hands
crossed, musing.
‘I don’t think you will,’ muttered Tackleton, looking at her; ‘for you
seem to have forgotten all about it, already. Caleb!’
‘I may venture to say I’m here, I suppose,’ thought Caleb. ‘Sir!’
‘Take care she don’t forget what I’ve been saying to her.’
‘_She_ never forgets,’ returned Caleb. ‘It’s one of the few things she
an’t clever in.’
‘Every man thinks his own geese swans,’ observed the Toy-merchant, with a
shrug. ‘Poor devil!’
Having delivered himself of which remark, with infinite contempt, old
Gruff and Tackleton withdrew.
Bertha remained where he had left her, lost in meditation. The gaiety
had vanished from her downcast face, and it was very sad. Three or four
times she shook her head, as if bewailing some remembrance or some loss;
but her sorrowful reflections found no vent in words.
It was not until Caleb had been occupied, some time, in yoking a team of
horses to a waggon by the summary process of nailing the harness to the
vital parts of their bodies, that she drew near to his working-stool, and
sitting down beside him, said:
‘Father, I am lonely in the dark. I want my eyes, my patient, willing
eyes.’
‘Here they are,’ said Caleb. ‘Always ready. They are more yours than
mine, Bertha, any hour in the four-and-twenty. What shall your eyes do
for you, dear?’
‘Look round the room, father.’
‘All right,’ said Caleb. ‘No sooner said than done, Bertha.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘It’s much the same as usual,’ said Caleb. ‘Homely, but very snug. The
gay colours on the walls; the bright flowers on the plates and dishes;
the shining wood, where there are beams or panels; the general
cheerfulness and neatness of the building; make it very pretty.’
Cheerful and neat it was wherever Bertha’s hands could busy themselves.
But nowhere else, were cheerfulness and neatness possible, in the old
crazy shed which Caleb’s fancy so transformed.
‘You have your working dress on, and are not so gallant as when you wear
the handsome coat?’ said Bertha, touching him.
‘Not quite so gallant,’ answered Caleb. ‘Pretty brisk though.’
‘Father,’ said the Blind Girl, drawing close to his side, and stealing
one arm round his neck, ‘tell me something about May. She is very fair?’
‘She is indeed,’ said Caleb. And she was indeed. It was quite a rare
thing to Caleb, not to have to draw on his invention.
‘Her hair is dark,’ said Bertha, pensively, ‘darker than mine. Her voice
is sweet and musical, I know. I have often loved to hear it. Her
shape—’
‘There’s not a Doll’s in all the room to equal it,’ said Caleb. ‘And her
eyes!—’
He stopped; for Bertha had drawn closer round his neck, and from the arm
that clung about him, came a warning pressure which he understood too
well.
He coughed a moment, hammered for a moment, and then fell back upon the
song about the sparkling bowl; his infallible resource in all such
difficulties.
‘Our friend, father, our benefactor. I am never tired, you know, of
hearing about him.—Now, was I ever?’ she said, hastily.
‘Of course not,’ answered Caleb, ‘and with reason.’
‘Ah! With how much reason!’ cried the Blind Girl. With such fervency,
that Caleb, though his motives were so pure, could not endure to meet her
face; but dropped his eyes, as if she could have read in them his
innocent deceit.
‘Then, tell me again about him, dear father,’ said Bertha. ‘Many times
again! His face is benevolent, kind, and tender. Honest and true, I am
sure it is. The manly heart that tries to cloak all favours with a show
of roughness and unwillingness, beats in its every look and glance.’
‘And makes it noble!’ added Caleb, in his quiet desperation.
‘And makes it noble!’ cried the Blind Girl. ‘He is older than May,
father.’
‘Ye-es,’ said Caleb, reluctantly. ‘He’s a little older than May. But
that don’t signify.’
‘Oh father, yes! To be his patient companion in infirmity and age; to be
his gentle nurse in sickness, and his constant friend in suffering and
sorrow; to know no weariness in working for his sake; to watch him, tend
him, sit beside his bed and talk to him awake, and pray for him asleep;
what privileges these would be! What opportunities for proving all her
truth and devotion to him! Would she do all this, dear father?
‘No doubt of it,’ said Caleb.
‘I love her, father; I can love her from my soul!’ exclaimed the Blind
Girl. And saying so, she laid her poor blind face on Caleb’s shoulder,
and so wept and wept, that he was almost sorry to have brought that
tearful happiness upon her.
In the mean time, there had been a pretty sharp commotion at John
Peerybingle’s, for little Mrs. Peerybingle naturally couldn’t think of
going anywhere without the Baby; and to get the Baby under weigh took
time. Not that there was much of the Baby, speaking of it as a thing of
weight and measure, but there was a vast deal to do about and about it,
and it all had to be done by easy stages. For instance, when the Baby
was got, by hook and by crook, to a certain point of dressing, and you
might have rationally supposed that another touch or two would finish him
off, and turn him out a tip-top Baby challenging the world, he was
unexpectedly extinguished in a flannel cap, and hustled off to bed; where
he simmered (so to speak) between two blankets for the best part of an
hour. From this state of inaction he was then recalled, shining very
much and roaring violently, to partake of—well? I would rather say, if
you’ll permit me to speak generally—of a slight repast. After which, he
went to sleep again. Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of this interval,
to make herself as smart in a small way as ever you saw anybody in all
your life; and, during the same short truce, Miss Slowboy insinuated
herself into a spencer of a fashion so surprising and ingenious, that it
had no connection with herself, or anything else in the universe, but was
a shrunken, dog’s-eared, independent fact, pursuing its lonely course
without the least regard to anybody. By this time, the Baby, being all
alive again, was invested, by the united efforts of Mrs. Peerybingle and
Miss Slowboy, with a cream-coloured mantle for its body, and a sort of
nankeen raised-pie for its head; and so in course of time they all three
got down to the door, where the old horse had already taken more than the
full value of his day’s toll out of the Turnpike Trust, by tearing up the
road with his impatient autographs; and whence Boxer might be dimly seen
in the remote perspective, standing looking back, and tempting him to
come on without orders.
As to a chair, or anything of that kind for helping Mrs. Peerybingle into
the cart, you know very little of John, if you think _that_ was
necessary. Before you could have seen him lift her from the ground,
there she was in her place, fresh and rosy, saying, ‘John! How _can_
you! Think of Tilly!’
If I might be allowed to mention a young lady’s legs, on any terms, I
would observe of Miss Slowboy’s that there was a fatality about them
which rendered them singularly liable to be grazed; and that she never
effected the smallest ascent or descent, without recording the
circumstance upon them with a notch, as Robinson Crusoe marked the days
upon his wooden calendar. But as this might be considered ungenteel,
I’ll think of it.
‘John? You’ve got the Basket with the Veal and Ham-Pie and things, and
the bottles of Beer?’ said Dot. ‘If you haven’t, you must turn round
again, this very minute.’
‘You’re a nice little article,’ returned the Carrier, ‘to be talking
about turning round, after keeping me a full quarter of an hour behind my
time.’
‘I am sorry for it, John,’ said Dot in a great bustle, ‘but I really
could not think of going to Bertha’s—I would not do it, John, on any
account—without the Veal and Ham-Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer.
Way!’
This monosyllable was addressed to the horse, who didn’t mind it at all.
‘Oh _do_ way, John!’ said Mrs. Peerybingle. ‘Please!’
‘It’ll be time enough to do that,’ returned John, ‘when I begin to leave
things behind me. The basket’s here, safe enough.’
‘What a hard-hearted monster you must be, John, not to have said so, at
once, and save me such a turn! I declared I wouldn’t go to Bertha’s
without the Veal and Ham-Pie and things, and the bottles of Beer, for any
money. Regularly once a fortnight ever since we have been married, John,
have we made our little Pic-Nic there. If anything was to go wrong with
it, I should almost think we were never to be lucky again.’
‘It was a kind thought in the first instance,’ said the Carrier: ‘and I
honour you for it, little woman.’
‘My dear John,’ replied Dot, turning very red, ‘don’t talk about
honouring _me_. Good Gracious!’
‘By the bye—’ observed the Carrier. ‘That old gentleman—’
Again so visibly, and instantly embarrassed!
‘He’s an odd fish,’ said the Carrier, looking straight along the road
before them. ‘I can’t make him out. I don’t believe there’s any harm in
him.’
‘None at all. I’m—I’m sure there’s none at all.’
‘Yes,’ said the Carrier, with his eyes attracted to her face by the great
earnestness of her manner. ‘I am glad you feel so certain of it, because
it’s a confirmation to me. It’s curious that he should have taken it
into his head to ask leave to go on lodging with us; an’t it? Things
come about so strangely.’
‘So very strangely,’ she rejoined in a low voice, scarcely audible.
‘However, he’s a good-natured old gentleman,’ said John, ‘and pays as a
gentleman, and I think his word is to be relied upon, like a gentleman’s.
I had quite a long talk with him this morning: he can hear me better
already, he says, as he gets more used to my voice. He told me a great
deal about himself, and I told him a great deal about myself, and a rare
lot of questions he asked me. I gave him information about my having two
beats, you know, in my business; one day to the right from our house and
back again; another day to the left from our house and back again (for
he’s a stranger and don’t know the names of places about here); and he
seemed quite pleased. “Why, then I shall be returning home to-night your
way,” he says, “when I thought you’d be coming in an exactly opposite
direction. That’s capital! I may trouble you for another lift perhaps,
but I’ll engage not to fall so sound asleep again.” He _was_ sound
asleep, sure-ly!—Dot! what are you thinking of?’
‘Thinking of, John? I—I was listening to you.’
‘O! That’s all right!’ said the honest Carrier. ‘I was afraid, from the
look of your face, that I had gone rambling on so long, as to set you
thinking about something else. I was very near it, I’ll be bound.’
Dot making no reply, they jogged on, for some little time, in silence.
But, it was not easy to remain silent very long in John Peerybingle’s
cart, for everybody on the road had something to say. Though it might
only be ‘How are you!’ and indeed it was very often nothing else, still,
to give that back again in the right spirit of cordiality, required, not
merely a nod and a smile, but as wholesome an action of the lungs withal,
as a long-winded Parliamentary speech. Sometimes, passengers on foot, or
horseback, plodded on a little way beside the cart, for the express
purpose of having a chat; and then there was a great deal to be said, on
both sides.
Then, Boxer gave occasion to more good-natured recognitions of, and by,
the Carrier, than half-a-dozen Christians could have done! Everybody
knew him, all along the road—especially the fowls and pigs, who when they
saw him approaching, with his body all on one side, and his ears pricked
up inquisitively, and that knob of a tail making the most of itself in
the air, immediately withdrew into remote back settlements, without
waiting for the honour of a nearer acquaintance. He had business
everywhere; going down all the turnings, looking into all the wells,
bolting in and out of all the cottages, dashing into the midst of all the
Dame-Schools, fluttering all the pigeons, magnifying the tails of all the
cats, and trotting into the public-houses like a regular customer.
Wherever he went, somebody or other might have been heard to cry,
‘Halloa! Here’s Boxer!’ and out came that somebody forthwith,
accompanied by at least two or three other somebodies, to give John
Peerybingle and his pretty wife, Good Day.
The packages and parcels for the errand cart, were numerous; and there
were many stoppages to take them in and give them out, which were not by
any means the worst parts of the journey. Some people were so full of
expectation about their parcels, and other people were so full of wonder
about their parcels, and other people were so full of inexhaustible
directions about their parcels, and John had such a lively interest in
all the parcels, that it was as good as a play. Likewise, there were
articles to carry, which required to be considered and discussed, and in
reference to the adjustment and disposition of which, councils had to be
holden by the Carrier and the senders: at which Boxer usually assisted,
in short fits of the closest attention, and long fits of tearing round
and round the assembled sages and barking himself hoarse. Of all these
little incidents, Dot was the amused and open-eyed spectatress from her
chair in the cart; and as she sat there, looking on—a charming little
portrait framed to admiration by the tilt—there was no lack of nudgings
and glancings and whisperings and envyings among the younger men. And
this delighted John the Carrier, beyond measure; for he was proud to have
his little wife admired, knowing that she didn’t mind it—that, if
anything, she rather liked it perhaps.
The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January weather; and was
raw and cold. But who cared for such trifles? Not Dot, decidedly. Not
Tilly Slowboy, for she deemed sitting in a cart, on any terms, to be the
highest point of human joys; the crowning circumstance of earthly hopes.
Not the Baby, I’ll be sworn; for it’s not in Baby nature to be warmer or
more sound asleep, though its capacity is great in both respects, than
that blessed young Peerybingle was, all the way.
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 Fairy-rings 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 May’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 flushed into her face, and
tears stood in her eyes.
‘Even the very persons themselves—real live young men—were 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 byegones byegones, 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 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 Pic-Nic occasions,
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 and 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.
‘Come, come, dear Bertha! come away with me! Give her your arm, May.
So! How composed she is, you see, already; and how good it is of her to
mind us,’ said the cheery little woman, kissing her upon the forehead.
‘Come away, dear Bertha. Come! and here’s her good father will come with
her; won’t you, Caleb? To—be—sure!’
Well, well! she was a noble little Dot in such things, and it must have
been an obdurate nature that could have withstood her influence. When
she had got poor Caleb and his Bertha away, that they might comfort and
console each other, as she knew they only could, she presently came
bouncing back,—the saying is, as fresh as any daisy; I say fresher—to
mount guard over that bridling little piece of consequence in the cap and
gloves, and prevent the dear old creature from making discoveries.
‘So bring me the precious Baby, Tilly,’ said she, drawing a chair to the
fire; ‘and while I have it in my lap, here’s Mrs. Fielding, Tilly, will
tell me all about the management of Babies, and put me right in twenty
points where I’m as wrong as can be. Won’t you, Mrs. Fielding?’
Not even the Welsh Giant, who, according to the popular expression, was
so ‘slow’ as to perform a fatal surgical operation upon himself, in
emulation of a juggling-trick achieved by his arch-enemy at
breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the snare prepared
for him, as the old lady did into this artful pitfall. The fact of
Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore, of two or three people
having been talking together at a distance, for two minutes, leaving her
to her own resources; was quite enough to have put her on her dignity,
and the bewailment of that mysterious convulsion in the Indigo trade, for
four-and-twenty hours. But this becoming deference to her experience, on
the part of the young mother, was so irresistible, that after a short
affectation of humility, she began to enlighten her with the best grace
in the world; and sitting bolt upright before the wicked Dot, she did, in
half an hour, deliver more infallible domestic recipes and precepts, than
would (if acted on) have utterly destroyed and done up that Young
Peerybingle, though he had been an Infant Samson.
To change the theme, Dot did a little needlework—she carried the contents
of a whole workbox in her pocket; however she contrived it, I don’t
know—then did a little nursing; then a little more needlework; then had a
little whispering chat with May, while the old lady dozed; and so in
little bits of bustle, which was quite her manner always, found it a very
short afternoon. Then, as it grew dark, and as it was a solemn part of
this Institution of the Pic-Nic that she should perform all Bertha’s
household tasks, she trimmed the fire, and swept the hearth, and set the
tea-board out, and drew the curtain, and lighted a candle. Then she
played an air or two on a rude kind of harp, which Caleb had contrived
for Bertha, and played them very well; for Nature had made her delicate
little ear as choice a one for music as it would have been for jewels, if
she had had any to wear. By this time it was the established hour for
having tea; and Tackleton came back again, to share the meal, and spend
the evening.
Caleb and Bertha had returned some time before, and Caleb had sat down to
his afternoon’s work. But he couldn’t settle to it, poor fellow, being
anxious and remorseful for his daughter. It was touching to see him
sitting idle on his working-stool, regarding her so wistfully, and always
saying in his face, ‘Have I deceived her from her cradle, but to break
her heart!’
When it was night, and tea was done, and Dot had nothing more to do in
washing up the cups and saucers; in a word—for I must come to it, and
there is no use in putting it off—when the time drew nigh for expecting
the Carrier’s return in every sound of distant wheels, her manner changed
again, her colour came and went, and she was very restless. Not as good
wives are, when listening for their husbands. No, no, no. It was
another sort of restlessness from that.
Wheels heard. A horse’s feet. The barking of a dog. The gradual
approach of all the sounds. The scratching paw of Boxer at the door!
‘Whose step is that!’ cried Bertha, starting up.
‘Whose step?’ returned the Carrier, standing in the portal, with his
brown face ruddy as a winter berry from the keen night air. ‘Why, mine.’
‘The other step,’ said Bertha. ‘The man’s tread behind you!’
‘She is not to be deceived,’ observed the Carrier, laughing. ‘Come
along, sir. You’ll be welcome, never fear!’
He spoke in a loud tone; and as he spoke, the deaf old gentleman entered.
‘He’s not so much a stranger, that you haven’t seen him once, Caleb,’
said the Carrier. ‘You’ll give him house-room till we go?’
‘Oh surely, John, and take it as an honour.’
‘He’s the best company on earth, to talk secrets in,’ said John. ‘I have
reasonable good lungs, but he tries ’em, I can tell you. Sit down, sir.
All friends here, and glad to see you!’
When he had imparted this assurance, in a voice that amply corroborated
what he had said about his lungs, he added in his natural tone, ‘A chair
in the chimney-corner, and leave to sit quite silent and look pleasantly
about him, is all he cares for. He’s easily pleased.’
Bertha had been listening intently. She called Caleb to her side, when
he had set the chair, and asked him, in a low voice, to describe their
visitor. When he had done so (truly now; with scrupulous fidelity), she
moved, for the first time since he had come in, and sighed, and seemed to
have no further interest concerning him.
The Carrier was in high spirits, good fellow that he was, and fonder of
his little wife than ever.
‘A clumsy Dot she was, this afternoon!’ he said, encircling her with his
rough arm, as she stood, removed from the rest; ‘and yet I like her
somehow. See yonder, Dot!’
He pointed to the old man. She looked down. I think she trembled.
‘He’s—ha ha ha!—he’s full of admiration for you!’ said the Carrier.
‘Talked of nothing else, the whole way here. Why, he’s a brave old boy.
I like him for it!’
‘I wish he had had a better subject, John,’ she said, with an uneasy
glance about the room. At Tackleton especially.
‘A better subject!’ cried the jovial John. ‘There’s no such thing.
Come, off with the great-coat, off with the thick shawl, off with the
heavy wrappers! and a cosy half-hour by the fire! My humble service,
Mistress. A game at cribbage, you and I? That’s hearty. The cards and
board, Dot. And a glass of beer here, if there’s any left, small wife!’
His challenge was addressed to the old lady, who accepting it with
gracious readiness, they were soon engaged upon the game. At first, the
Carrier looked about him sometimes, with a smile, or now and then called
Dot to peep over his shoulder at his hand, and advise him on some knotty
point. But his adversary being a rigid disciplinarian, and subject to an
occasional weakness in respect of pegging more than she was entitled to,
required such vigilance on his part, as left him neither eyes nor ears to
spare. Thus, his whole attention gradually became absorbed upon the
cards; and he thought of nothing else, until a hand upon his shoulder
restored him to a consciousness of Tackleton.
‘I am sorry to disturb you—but a word, directly.’
‘I’m going to deal,’ returned the Carrier. ‘It’s a crisis.’
‘It is,’ said Tackleton. ‘Come here, man!’
There was that in his pale face which made the other rise immediately,
and ask him, in a hurry, what the matter was.
‘Hush! John Peerybingle,’ said Tackleton. ‘I am sorry for this. I am
indeed. I have been afraid of it. I have suspected it from the first.’
‘What is it?’ asked the Carrier, with a frightened aspect.
‘Hush! I’ll show you, if you’ll come with me.’
The Carrier accompanied him, without another word. They went across a
yard, where the stars were shining, and by a little side-door, into
Tackleton’s own counting-house, where there was a glass window,
commanding the ware-room, which was closed for the night. There was no
light in the counting-house itself, but there were lamps in the long
narrow ware-room; and consequently the window was bright.
‘A moment!’ said Tackleton. ‘Can you bear to look through that window,
do you think?’
‘Why not?’ returned the Carrier.
‘A moment more,’ said Tackleton. ‘Don’t commit any violence. It’s of no
use. It’s dangerous too. You’re a strong-made man; and you might do
murder before you know it.’
The Carrier looked him in the face, and recoiled a step as if he had been
struck. In one stride he was at the window, and he saw—
Oh Shadow on the Hearth! Oh truthful Cricket! Oh perfidious Wife!
He saw her, with the old man—old no longer, but erect and gallant—bearing
in his hand the false white hair that had won his way into their desolate
and miserable home. He saw her listening to him, as he bent his head to
whisper in her ear; and suffering him to clasp her round the waist, as
they moved slowly down the dim wooden gallery towards the door by which
they had entered it. He saw them stop, and saw her turn—to have the
face, the face he loved so, so presented to his view!—and saw her, with
her own hands, adjust the lie upon his head, laughing, as she did it, at
his unsuspicious nature!
He clenched his strong right hand at first, as if it would have beaten
down a lion. But opening it immediately again, he spread it out before
the eyes of Tackleton (for he was tender of her, even then), and so, as
they passed out, fell down upon a desk, and was as weak as any infant.
He was wrapped up to the chin, and busy with his horse and parcels, when
she came into the room, prepared for going home.
‘Now, John, dear! Good night, May! Good night, Bertha!’
Could she kiss them? Could she be blithe and cheerful in her parting?
Could she venture to reveal her face to them without a blush? Yes.
Tackleton observed her closely, and she did all this.
Tilly was hushing the Baby, and she crossed and re-crossed Tackleton, a
dozen times, repeating drowsily:
‘Did the knowledge that it was to be its wifes, then, wring its hearts
almost to breaking; and did its fathers deceive it from its cradles but
to break its hearts at last!’
‘Now, Tilly, give me the Baby! Good night, Mr. Tackleton. Where’s John,
for goodness’ sake?’
‘He’s going to walk beside the horse’s head,’ said Tackleton; who helped
her to her seat.
‘My dear John. Walk? To-night?’
The muffled figure of her husband made a hasty sign in the affirmative;
and the false stranger and the little nurse being in their places, the
old horse moved off. Boxer, the unconscious Boxer, running on before,
running back, running round and round the cart, and barking as
triumphantly and merrily as ever.
When Tackleton had gone off likewise, escorting May and her mother home,
poor Caleb sat down by the fire beside his daughter; anxious and
remorseful at the core; and still saying in his wistful contemplation of
her, ‘Have I deceived her from her cradle, but to break her heart at
last!’
The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby, had all stopped, and
run down, long ago. In the faint light and silence, the imperturbably
calm dolls, the agitated rocking-horses with distended eyes and nostrils,
the old gentlemen at the street-doors, standing half doubled up upon
their failing knees and ankles, the wry-faced nut-crackers, the very
Beasts upon their way into the Ark, in twos, like a Boarding School out
walking, might have been imagined to be stricken motionless with
fantastic wonder, at Dot being false, or Tackleton beloved, under any
combination of circumstances.