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 fire. 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 a
man 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, Sir.
And the Cricket and the Kettle, tuning 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.
[Illustration]
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 grand-children; 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!"
Oh Dot! Oh failing Dot! There is no place for it in all your husband's
visions; why has its shadow fallen on his hearth!
[Illustration: 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; but 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 very 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 faint-heartedness 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 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 license, 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, upon 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; and Caleb painting and
glazing the four-pair front of a desirable family mansion.
[Illustration]
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 sackcloth 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 Honor! Bless
your Honor 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.
"Yes! 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 never once had 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; and 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. "Oh, my gracious!"
"Always merry and light-hearted with us!" cried the smiling Bertha.
"Oh! 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 ecstacy.
"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 your's 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 colors 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."