The Dutch clock in the corner struck Ten when the Carrier sat down by
his fireside. So troubled and grief-worn that he seemed to scare the
Cuckoo, who, having cut his ten melodious announcements as short as
possible, plunged back into the Moorish Palace again, and clapped his
little door behind him, as if the unwonted spectacle were too much for
his feelings.
If the little Hay-maker had been armed with the sharpest of scythes, and
had cut at every stroke into the Carrier's heart, he never could have
gashed and wounded it as Dot had done.
It was a heart so full of love for her; so bound up and held together by
innumerable threads of winning remembrance, spun from the daily working
of her many qualities of endearment; it was a heart in which she had
enshrined herself so gently and so closely; a heart so single and so
earnest in its Truth, so strong in right, so weak in wrong,--that it
could cherish neither passion nor revenge at first, and had only room to
hold the broken image of its Idol.
But, slowly, slowly, as the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth, now cold
and dark, other and fiercer thoughts began to rise within him, as an
angry wind comes rising in the night. The Stranger was beneath his
outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his chamber door. One blow
would beat it in. "You might do murder before you know it," Tackleton
had said. How could it be murder, if he gave the villain time to grapple
with him hand to hand? He was the younger man.
It was an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his mind. It was
an angry thought, goading him to some avenging act, that should change
the cheerful house into a haunted place which lonely travellers would
dread to pass by night; and where the timid would see shadows struggling
in the ruined windows when the moon was dim, and hear wild noises in the
stormy weather.
He was the younger man! Yes, yes; some lover who had won the heart that
_he_ had never touched. Some lover of her early choice, of whom she had
thought and dreamed, for whom she had pined and pined, when he had
fancied her so happy by his side. Oh, agony to think of it!
She had been above-stairs with the Baby; getting it to bed. As he sat
brooding on the hearth, she came close beside him, without his
knowledge--in the turning of the rack of his great misery, he lost all
other sounds--and put her little stool at his feet. He only knew it when
he felt her hand upon his own, and saw her looking up into his face.
With wonder? No. It was his first impression, and he was fain to look at
her again, to set it right. No, not with wonder. With an eager and
inquiring look; but not with wonder. At first it was alarmed and
serious; then, it changed into a strange, wild, dreadful smile of
recognition of his thoughts; then, there was nothing but her clasped
hands on her brow, and her bent head, and falling hair.
Though the power of Omnipotence had been his to wield at that moment, he
had too much of its diviner property of Mercy in his breast, to have
turned one feather's weight of it against her. But he could not bear to
see her crouching down upon the little seat where he had often looked on
her, with love and pride, so innocent and gay; and, when she rose and
left him, sobbing as she went, he felt it a relief to have the vacant
place beside him rather than her so long-cherished presence. This in
itself was anguish keener than all, reminding him how desolate he was
become, and how the great bond of his life was rent asunder.
[Illustration: _When suddenly, the struggling fire illuminated the whole
chimney with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began to
Chirp!_]
The more he felt this, and the more he knew he could have better borne
to see her lying prematurely dead before him with her little child upon
her breast, the higher and the stronger rose his wrath against his
enemy. He looked about him for a weapon.
There was a gun hanging on the wall. He took it down, and moved a pace
or two towards the door of the perfidious Stranger's room. He knew the
gun was loaded. Some shadowy idea that it was just to shoot this man
like a wild beast seized him, and dilated in his mind until it grew into
a monstrous demon in complete possession of him, casting out all milder
thoughts, and setting up its undivided empire.
That phrase is wrong. Not casting out his milder thoughts, but artfully
transforming them. Changing them into scourges to drive him on. Turning
water into blood, love into hate, gentleness into blind ferocity. Her
image, sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading to his tenderness and
mercy with resistless power, never left his mind; but, staying there, it
urged him to the door; raised the weapon to his shoulder; fitted and
nerved his fingers to the trigger; and cried "Kill him! In his bed!"
He reversed the gun to beat the stock upon the door; he already held it
lifted in the air; some indistinct design was in his thoughts of calling
out to him to fly, for God's sake, by the window----
When suddenly, the struggling fire illuminated the whole chimney with a
glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began to Chirp!
No sound he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could so
have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had told him
of her love for this same Cricket were once more freshly spoken; her
trembling, earnest manner at the moment was again before him; her
pleasant voice--oh, what a voice it was for making household music at
the fireside of an honest man!--thrilled through and through his better
nature, and awoke it into life and action.
He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep, awakened
from a frightful dream; and put the gun aside. Clasping his hands before
his face, he then sat down again beside the fire, and found relief in
tears.
The Cricket on the Hearth came out into the room, and stood in Fairy
shape before him.
"'I love it,'" said the Fairy Voice, repeating what he well remembered,
"'for the many times I have heard it, and the many thoughts its harmless
music has given me.'"
"She said so!" cried the Carrier. "True!"
"'This has been a happy home, John! and I love the Cricket for its
sake!'"
"It has been, Heaven knows," returned the Carrier. "She made it happy,
always,--until now."
"So gracefully sweet-tempered; so domestic, joyful, busy, and
light-hearted!" said the Voice.
"Otherwise I never could have loved her as I did," returned the Carrier.