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 her 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, I flatter myself, 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 wouldn't 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 saved me such a turn! I declare 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 good 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."
"Oh! 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; and 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 honor 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!"
[Illustration]
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, I
promise you. 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, oh 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 day time, 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 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 transcendant
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.
[Illustration]
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 color flashed into her face, and
tears stood in her eyes.
"Even the very persons themselves--real live young men--we fixed on
sometimes," said Dot. "We little thought how things would come about. I
never fixed on John I'm sure; I never so much as thought of him. And if
I had told you, you were ever to be married to Mr. Tackleton, why you'd
have slapped me. Wouldn't you, May?"
Though May didn't say yes, she certainly didn't say no, or express no,
by any means.
Tackleton laughed--quite shouted, he laughed so loud. John Peerybingle
laughed too, in his ordinary good-natured and contented manner; but his
was a mere whisper of a laugh, to Tackleton's.
"You couldn't help yourselves, for all that. You couldn't resist us, you
see," said Tackleton. "Here we are! Here we are! Where are your gay
young bridegrooms now!"
"Some of them are dead," said Dot; "and some of them forgotten. Some of
them, if they could stand among us at this moment, would not believe we
were the same creatures; would not believe that what they saw and heard
was real, and we _could_ forget them so. No! they would not believe one
word of it!"
"Why, Dot!" exclaimed the Carrier. "Little woman!"
She had spoken with such earnestness and fire, that she stood in need of
some recalling to herself, without doubt. Her husband's check was very
gentle, for he merely interfered, as he supposed, to shield old
Tackleton; but it proved effectual, for she stopped, and said no more.
There was an uncommon agitation, even in her silence, which the wary
Tackleton, who had brought his half-shut eye to bear upon her, noted
closely; and remembered to some purpose too, as you will see.
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 that if certain
circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go so far as to say,
with the Indigo Trade, but to which she would not more particularly
refer, had happened differently, it might perhaps have been in
possession of Wealth. She then remarked that she would not allude to the
past, and would not mention that her daughter had for some time rejected
the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would not say a great many other
things which she did say, at great length. Finally, she delivered it as
the general result of her observation and experience, that those
marriages in which there was least of what was romantically and sillily
called love, were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the
greatest possible amount of bliss--not rapturous bliss; but the solid,
steady-going article--from the approaching nuptials. She concluded by
informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had lived for,
expressly; and that when it was over, she would desire nothing better
than to be packed up and disposed of, in any genteel place of burial.
As these remarks were quite unanswerable: which is the happy property of
all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose: they changed the
current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the
Veal and Ham-Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order
that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed
To-morrow: the Wedding-Day: and called upon them to drink a bumper to
it, before he proceeded on his journey.
For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old horse
a bait. He had to go some four or five miles farther on; and when he
returned in the evening, he called for Dot, and took another rest on his
way home. This was the order of the day on all the Pic-Nic occasions,
and had been ever since their institution.
There were two persons present, besides the bride and bridegroom elect,
who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One of these was Dot, too
flushed and discomposed to adapt herself to any small occurrence of the
moment; the other Bertha, who rose up hurriedly, before the rest, and
left the table.
"Good bye!" said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his dreadnought
coat. "I shall be back at the old time. Good bye all!"
"Good bye John," returned Caleb.
He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same
unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious
wondering face, that never altered its expression.
"Good bye young shaver!" said the jolly Carrier, bending down to kiss
the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon her knife and fork, had
deposited asleep (and strange to say, without damage) in a little cot of
Bertha's furnishing; "good bye! Time will come, I suppose, when _you_'ll
turn out into the cold, my little friend, and leave your old father to
enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney-corner; eh? Where's
Dot?"
"I'm here John!" she said, starting.
"Come, come!" returned the Carrier, clapping his sounding hands.
"Where's the Pipe?"
"I quite forgot the pipe, John."
Forgot the Pipe! Was such a wonder ever heard of! She! Forgot the Pipe!
"I'll--I'll fill it directly. It's soon done."