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 work-a-day 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 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 humorist, 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 humankind.
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 thorough-bred 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 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, 'Halloa! 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.
"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 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. "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 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
Picnic 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'm 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, bridecake, favours, marrow-bones,
cleavers, and all the rest of the tomfoolery. 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 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 meantime 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 way 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 tiptop 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 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 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 Picnic 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. 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
elsewhere; 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 hope.
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 Fairyrings in the fields, and for the patches of hoar
frost still lingering in the shade, near hedges and by trees, was a
pleasant occupation, to make no mention of the unexpected shapes in
which the trees themselves came starting out of the mist, and glided
into it again. The hedges were tangled and bare, and waved a multitude
of blighted garlands in the wind; but there was no discouragement in
this. It was agreeable to contemplate; for it made the fireside warmer
in possession, and the summer greener in expectancy. The river looked
chilly; but it was in motion, and moving at a good pace--which was a
great point. The canal was rather slow and torpid; that must be
admitted. Never mind. It would freeze the sooner when the frost set
fairly in, and then there would be skating and sliding; and the heavy
old barges, frozen up somewhere near a wharf, would smoke their rusty
iron chimney-pipes all day, and have a lazy time of it.
In one place there was a great mound of weeds or stubble burning; and
they watched the fire, so white in the daytime, flaring through the fog,
with only here and there a dash of red in it, until, in consequence, as
she observed, of the smoke "getting up her nose," Miss Slowboy
choked--she could do anything of that sort, on the smallest
provocation--and woke the Baby, who wouldn't go to sleep again. But
Boxer, who was in advance some quarter of a mile or so, had already
passed the outposts of the town, and gained the corner of the street
where Caleb and his daughter lived; and, long before they had reached
the door, he and the Blind Girl were on the pavement waiting to receive
them.
Boxer, by the way, made certain delicate distinctions of his own, in his
communication with Bertha, which persuade me fully that he knew her to
be blind. He never sought to attract her attention by looking at her, as
he often did with other people, but touched her invariably. What
experience he could ever have had of blind people or blind dogs I don't
know. He had never lived with a blind master; nor had Mr. Boxer the
elder, nor Mrs. Boxer, nor any of his respectable family on either side,
ever been visited with blindness, that I am aware of. He may have found
it out for himself, perhaps, but he had got hold of it somehow; and
therefore he had hold of Bertha too, by the skirt, and kept hold, until
Mrs. Peerybingle and the Baby, and Miss Slowboy and the basket, were all
got safely within doors.
May Fielding was already come; and so was her mother--a little querulous
chip of an old lady with a peevish face, who, in right of having
preserved a waist like a bedpost, was supposed to be a most transcendent
figure; and who, in consequence of having once been better off, or of
labouring under an impression that she might have been, if something had
happened which never did happen, and seemed to have never been
particularly likely to come to pass--but it's all the same--was very
genteel and patronising indeed. Gruff and Tackleton was also there,
doing the agreeable, with the evident sensation of being as perfectly at
home, and as unquestionably in his own element, as a fresh young salmon
on the top of the Great Pyramid.
"May! My dear old friend!" cried Dot, running up to meet her. "What a
happiness to see you!"
Her old friend was, to the full, as hearty and as glad as she; and it
really was, if you'll believe me, quite a pleasant sight to see them
embrace. Tackleton was a man of taste, beyond all question. May was very
pretty.
You know sometimes, when you are used to a pretty face, how, when it
comes into contact and comparison with another pretty face, it seems for
the moment to be homely and faded, and hardly to deserve the high
opinion you have had of it. Now, this was not at all the case, either
with Dot or May; for May's face set off Dot's, and Dot's face set off
May's, so naturally and agreeably, that, as John Peerybingle was very
near saying when he came into the room, they ought to have been born
sisters--which was the only improvement you could have suggested.
Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, wonderful to relate, a
tart besides--but we don't mind a little dissipation when our brides are
in the case; we don't get married every day--and, in addition to these
dainties, there were the Veal and Ham Pie, and "things," as Mrs.
Peerybingle called them; which were chiefly nuts and oranges, and cakes,
and such small deer. When the repast was set forth on the board, flanked
by Caleb's contribution, which was a great wooden bowl of smoking
potatoes (he was prohibited, by solemn compact, from producing any other
viands), Tackleton led his intended mother-in-law to the post of honour.
For the better gracing of this place at the high festival, the majestic
old soul had adorned herself with a cap, calculated to inspire the
thoughtless with sentiments of awe. She also wore her gloves. But let us
be genteel, or die!
Caleb sat next his daughter; Dot and her old schoolfellow were side by
side; the good Carrier took care of the bottom of the table. Miss
Slowboy was isolated, for the time being, from every article of
furniture but the chair she sat on, that she might have nothing else to
knock the Baby's head against.
As Tilly stared about her at the dolls and toys, they stared at her and
at the company. The venerable old gentlemen at the street-doors (who
were all in full action) showed especial interest in the party, pausing
occasionally before leaping, as if they were listening to the
conversation, and then plunging wildly over and over, a great many
times, without halting for breath--as in a frantic state of delight with
the whole proceedings.
Certainly, if these old gentlemen were inclined to have a fiendish joy
in the contemplation of Tackleton's discomfiture, they had good reason
to be satisfied. Tackleton couldn't get on at all; and the more cheerful
his intended bride became in Dot's society, the less he liked it, though
he had brought them together for that purpose. For he was a regular dog
in the manger, was Tackleton; and, when they laughed and he couldn't, he
took it into his head, immediately, that they must be laughing at him.
"Ah, May!" said Dot. "Dear, dear, what changes! To talk of those merry
school days makes one young again."
"Why, you an't particularly old at any time, are you?" said Tackleton.
"Look at my sober, plodding husband there," returned Dot. "He adds
twenty years to my age at least. Don't you, John?"
"Forty," John replied.
"How many _you_'ll add to Mary's, I am sure I don't know," said Dot,
laughing. "But she can't be much less than a hundred years of age on her
next birthday."
"Ha, ha!" laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum that laugh, though. And he
looked as if he could have twisted Dot's neck comfortably.
"Dear, dear!" said Dot. "Only to remember how we used to talk, at
school, about the husbands we would choose. I don't know how young, and
how handsome, and how gay, and how lively mine was not to be! And as to
May's!--Ah dear! I don't know whether to laugh or cry, when I think what
silly girls we were."
May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flashed into her face,
and tears stood in her eyes.
"Even the very persons themselves--real live young men--we fixed on
sometimes," said Dot. "We little thought how things would come about. I
never fixed on John, I'm sure; I never so much as thought of him. And,
if I had told you you were ever to be married to Mr. Tackleton, why,
you'd have slapped me. Wouldn't you, May?"
Though May didn't say yes, she certainly didn't say no, or express no,
by any means.
Tackleton laughed--quite shouted, he laughed so loud. John Peerybingle
laughed too, in his ordinary good-natured and contented manner; but his
was a mere whisper of a laugh to Tackleton's.
"You couldn't help yourselves, for all that. You couldn't resist us, you
see," said Tackleton. "Here we are! Here we are! Where are your gay
young bridegrooms now?"
"Some of them are dead," said Dot; "and some of them forgotten. Some of
them, if they could stand among us at this moment, would not believe we
were the same creatures; would not believe that what they saw and heard
was real, and we _could_ forget them so. No! they would not believe one
word of it!"
"Why, Dot!" exclaimed the Carrier. "Little woman!"
She had spoken with such earnestness and fire, that she stood in need of
some recalling to herself, without doubt. Her husband's check was very
gentle, for he merely interfered, as he supposed, to shield old
Tackleton; but it proved effectual, for she stopped, and said no more.
There was an uncommon agitation, even in her silence, which the wary
Tackleton, who had brought his half-shut eye to bear upon her, noted
closely, and remembered to some purpose too.
May uttered no word, good or bad, but sat quite still, with her eyes
cast down, and made no sign of interest in what had passed. The good
lady her mother now interposed, observing, in the first instance, that
girls were girls, and bygones bygones, and that, so long as young people
were young and thoughtless, they would probably conduct themselves like
young and thoughtless persons: with two or three other positions of a no
less sound and incontrovertible character. She then remarked, in a
devout spirit, that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her
daughter May a dutiful and obedient child: for which she took no credit
to herself, though she had every reason to believe it was entirely owing
to herself. With regard to Mr. Tackleton, she said, That he was in a
moral point of view an undeniable individual, and That he was in an
eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one in their
senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With regard to the
family into which he was so soon about, after some solicitation, to be
admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that, although reduced in
purse, it had some pretensions to gentility; and that if certain
circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go so far as to say,
with the Indigo Trade, but to which she would not more particularly
refer, had happened differently, it might perhaps have been in
possession of wealth. She then remarked that she would not allude to the
past, and would not mention that her daughter had for some time rejected
the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and that she would not say a great many other
things which she did say at great length. Finally, she delivered it as
the general result of her observation and experience, that those
marriages in which there was least of what was romantically and sillily
called love, were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the
greatest possible amount of bliss--not rapturous bliss; but the solid,
steady-going article--from the approaching nuptials. She concluded by
informing the company that to-morrow was the day she had lived for
expressly; and that, when it was over, she would desire nothing better
than to be packed up and disposed of in any genteel place of burial.
As these remarks were quite unanswerable--which is the happy property of
all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose--they changed the
current of the conversation, and diverted the general attention to the
Veal and Ham Pie, the cold mutton, the potatoes, and the tart. In order
that the bottled beer might not be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed
To-morrow: the Wedding-day; and called upon them to drink a bumper to
it, before he proceeded on his journey.
For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old horse
a bait. He had to go some four or five miles farther on; and, when he
returned in the evening, he called for Dot, and took another rest on his
way home. This was the order of the day on all the Picnic occasions, and
had been ever since their institution.
There were two persons present, besides the bride and bridegroom elect,
who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One of these was Dot, too
flushed and discomposed to adapt herself to any small occurrence of the
moment; the other, Bertha, who rose up hurriedly before the rest, and
left the table.
"Good-bye!" said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his dreadnought
coat. "I shall be back at the old time. Good-bye all!"
"Good-bye, John," returned Caleb.
He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same
unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious
wondering face, that never altered its expression.
"Good-bye, young shaver!" said the jolly Carrier, bending down to kiss
the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon her knife and fork, had
deposited asleep (and, strange to say, without damage) in a little cot
of Bertha's furnishing; "good-bye! Time will come, I suppose, when
_you_'ll turn out into the cold, my little friend, and leave your old
father to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the chimney-corner; eh?
Where's Dot?"
"I'm here, John!" she said, starting.
"Come, come!" returned the Carrier, clapping his sounding hands.
"Where's the pipe?"
"I quite forgot the pipe, John."
Forgot the pipe! Was such a wonder ever heard of? She! Forgot the pipe!
"I'll--I'll fill it directly. It's soon done."
But it was not so soon done, either. It lay in the usual place--the
Carrier's dreadnought pocket--with the little pouch, her own work, from
which she was used to fill it; but her hand shook so, that she entangled
it (and yet her hand was small enough to have come out easily, I am
sure), and bungled terribly. The filling of the pipe and lighting it,
those little offices in which I have commended her discretion, were
vilely done from first to last. During the whole process, Tackleton
stood looking on maliciously with the half-closed eye; which, whenever
it met hers--or caught it, for it can hardly be said to have ever met
another eye: rather being a kind of trap to snatch it up--augmented her
confusion in a most remarkable degree.
"Why, what a clumsy Dot you are this afternoon!" said John. "I could
have done it better myself, I verily believe!"
With these good-natured words, he strode away, and presently was heard,
in company with Boxer, and the old horse, and the cart, making lively
music down the road. What time the dreamy Caleb still stood, watching
his blind daughter, with the same expression on his face.
"Bertha!" said Caleb, softly. "What has happened? How changed you are,
my darling, in a few hours--since this morning! _You_ silent and dull
all day! What is it? Tell me!"
"Oh, father, father!" cried the Blind Girl, bursting into tears. "Oh, my
hard, hard fate!"
Caleb drew his hand across his eyes before he answered her.
"But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, Bertha! How good,
and how much loved, by many people."
"That strikes me to the heart, dear father! Always so mindful of me!
Always so kind to me!"
Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her.
"To be--to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear," he faltered, "is a great
affliction; but----"
"I have never felt it!" cried the Blind Girl. "I have never felt it in
its fulness. Never! I have sometimes wished that I could see you, or
could see him--only once, dear father, only for one little minute--that
I might know what it is I treasure up," she laid her hands upon her
breast, "and hold here! That I might be sure I have it right! And
sometimes (but then I was a child) I have wept in my prayers at night,
to think that, when your images ascended from my heart to Heaven, they
might not be the true resemblance of yourselves. But I have never had
these feelings long. They have passed away, and left me tranquil and
contented."
"And they will again," said Caleb.
"But, father! Oh, my good gentle father, bear with me, if I am wicked!"
said the Blind Girl. "This is not the sorrow that so weighs me down!"
Her father could not choose but let his moist eyes overflow; she was so
earnest and pathetic. But he did not understand her yet.
"Bring her to me," said Bertha. "I cannot hold it closed and shut within
myself. Bring her to me, father!"