The Cricket on the Hearth
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8 The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens
SCanned and David Price ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
The Cricket on the Hearth
CHAPTER I - Chrip the First
THE kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I
know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of
time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say the
kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full
five minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner,
before the Cricket uttered a chirp.
As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little
Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a
scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre
of imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all!
Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. I
wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs.
Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any account whatever.
Nothing should induce me. But, this is a question of act. And the
fact is, that the kettle began it, at least five minutes before the
Cricket gave any sign of being in existence. Contradict me, and
I'll say ten.
Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to
do so in my very first word, but for this plain consideration - if
I am to tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it
possible to begin at the beginning, without beginning at the
kettle?
It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill,
you must understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this
is what led to it, and how it came about.
Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking
over the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable
rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the
yard - Mrs. Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt.
Presently returning, less the pattens (and a good deal less, for
they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she set the
kettle on the fire. In doing which she lost her temper, or mislaid
it for an instant; for, the water being uncomfortably cold, and in
that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it seems to
penetrate through every kind of substance, patten rings included -
had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and even splashed her
legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with reason too) upon
our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat in point of
stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard to bear.
Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't
allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of
accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it WOULD lean
forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle,
on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered
morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs.
Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then,
with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived
sideways in - down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull
of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to
coming out of the water, which the lid of that kettle employed
against Mrs. Peerybingle, before she got it up again.
It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then; carrying its
handle with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and
mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, 'I won't boil.
Nothing shall induce me!'
But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humour, dusted her chubby
little hands against each other, and sat down before the kettle,
laughing. Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and
gleaming on the little Haymaker at the top of the Dutch clock,
until one might have thought he stood stock still before the
Moorish Palace, and nothing was in motion but the flame.
He was on the move, however; and had his spasms, two to the second,
all right and regular. But, his sufferings when the clock was
going to strike, were frightful to behold; and, when a Cuckoo
looked out of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times,
it shook him, each time, like a spectral voice - or like a
something wiry, plucking at his legs.
It was not until a violent commotion and a whirring noise among the
weights and ropes below him had quite subsided, that this terrified
Haymaker became himself again. Nor was he startled without reason;
for these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very disconcerting
in their operation, and I wonder very much how any set of men, but
most of all how Dutchmen, can have had a liking to invent them.
There is a popular belief that Dutchmen love broad cases and much
clothing for their own lower selves; and they might know better
than to leave their clocks so very lank and unprotected, surely.
Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began to spend the
evening. Now it was, that the kettle, growing mellow and musical,
began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge
in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't
quite made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that
after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial
sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst
into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin
nightingale yet formed the least idea of.
So plain too! Bless you, you might have understood it like a book
- better than some books you and I could name, perhaps. With its
warm breath gushing forth in a light cloud which merrily and
gracefully ascended a few feet, then hung about the chimney-corner
as its own domestic Heaven, it trolled its song with that strong
energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon
the fire; and the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid - such is
the influence of a bright example - performed a sort of jig, and
clattered like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known
the use of its twin brother.
That this song of the kettle's was a song of invitation and welcome
to somebody out of doors: to somebody at that moment coming on,
towards the snug small home and the crisp fire: there is no doubt
whatever. Mrs. Peerybingle knew it, perfectly, as she sat musing
before the hearth. It's a dark night, sang the kettle, and the
rotten leaves are lying by the way; and, above, all is mist and
darkness, and, below, all is mire and clay; and there's only one
relief in all the sad and murky air; and I don't know that it is
one, for it's nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where
the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being
guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long dull
streak of black; and there's hoar-frost on the finger-post, and
thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn't water, and the water
isn't free; and you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to
be; but he's coming, coming, coming! -
And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup,
Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice
so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the
kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that if it had then and there
burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on
the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would
have seemed a natural and inevitable consequence, for which it had
expressly laboured.
The kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It persevered
with undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took first fiddle and
kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing
voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the
outer darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little
trill and tremble in it, at its loudest, which suggested its being
carried off its legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense
enthusiasm. Yet they went very well together, the Cricket and the
kettle. The burden of the song was still the same; and louder,
louder, louder still, they sang it in their emulation.
The fair little listener - for fair she was, and young: though
something of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don't myself
object to that - lighted a candle, glanced at the Haymaker on the
top of the clock, who was getting in a pretty average crop of
minutes; and looked out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing
to the darkness, but her own face imaged in the glass. And my
opinion is (and so would yours have been), that she might have
looked a long way, and seen nothing half so agreeable. When she
came back, and sat down in her former seat, the Cricket and the
kettle were still keeping it up, with a perfect fury of
competition. The kettle's weak side clearly being, that he didn't
know when he was beat.
There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp,
chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum - m - m! Kettle
making play in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp,
chirp! Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum - m - m! Kettle
sticking to him in his own way; no idea of giving in. Chirp,
chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum - m - m!
Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to
finish him. Hum, hum, hum - m - m! Kettle not to be finished.
Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry,
helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and
the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed,
or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer
head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like
certainty. But, of this, there is no doubt: that, the kettle and
the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of
amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, each, his fireside
song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out
through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light,
bursting on a certain person who, on the instant, approached
towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him,
literally in a twinkling, and cried, 'Welcome home, old fellow!
Welcome home, my boy!'
This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and
was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the
door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse,
the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and
the surprising and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon
the very What's-his-name to pay.
Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in
that flash of time, I don't know. But a live baby there was, in
Mrs. Peerybingle's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she
seemed to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a
sturdy figure of a man, much taller and much older than herself,
who had to stoop a long way down, to kiss her. But she was worth
the trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have done it.
'Oh goodness, John!' said Mrs. P. 'What a state you are in with
the weather!'
He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick mist hung
in clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and between the fog
and fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.
'Why, you see, Dot,' John made answer, slowly, as he unrolled a
shawl from about his throat; and warmed his hands; 'it - it an't
exactly summer weather. So, no wonder.'
'I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John. I don't like it,' said
Mrs. Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she DID
like it, very much.
'Why what else are you?' returned John, looking down upon her with
a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand
and arm could give. 'A dot and' - here he glanced at the baby - 'a
dot and carry - I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I
was very near a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer.'
He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own
account: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy,
but so light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at
the core; so dull without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good!
Oh Mother Nature, give thy children the true poetry of heart that
hid itself in this poor Carrier's breast - he was but a Carrier by
the way - and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading
lives of prose; and bear to bless thee for their company!
It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure, and her baby in
her arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish
thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little head
just enough on one side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural,
half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great
rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his
tender awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her
slight need, and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff not
inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe
how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took
special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping;
and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head thrust
forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable
to observe how John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the
aforesaid baby, checked his hand when on the point of touching the
infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and bending down,
surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride,
such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show, if he found
himself, one day, the father of a young canary.
'An't he beautiful, John? Don't he look precious in his sleep?'
'Very precious,' said John. 'Very much so. He generally IS
asleep, an't he?'
'Lor, John! Good gracious no!'
'Oh,' said John, pondering. 'I thought his eyes was generally
shut. Halloa!'
'Goodness, John, how you startle one!'
'It an't right for him to turn 'em up in that way!' said the
astonished Carrier, 'is it? See how he's winking with both of 'em
at once! And look at his mouth! Why he's gasping like a gold and
silver fish!'
'You don't deserve to be a father, you don't,' said Dot, with all
the dignity of an experienced matron. 'But how should you know
what little complaints children are troubled with, John! You
wouldn't so much as know their names, you stupid fellow.' And when
she had turned the baby over on her left arm, and had slapped its
back as a restorative, she pinched her husband's ear, laughing.
'No,' said John, pulling off his outer coat. 'It's very true, Dot.
I don't know much about it. I only know that I've been fighting
pretty stiffly with the wind to-night. It's been blowing north-
east, straight into the cart, the whole way home.'
'Poor old man, so it has!' cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly
becoming very active. 'Here! Take the precious darling, Tilly,
while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with
kissing it, I could! Hie then, good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only
let me make the tea first, John; and then I'll help you with the
parcels, like a busy bee. "How doth the little" - and all the rest
of it, you know, John. Did you ever learn "how doth the little,"
when you went to school, John?'
'Not to quite know it,' John returned. 'I was very near it once.
But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.'
'Ha ha,' laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever
heard. 'What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be
sure!'
Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that the
boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the
door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the
horse; who was fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you
his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of
antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the
family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in
and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of
short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the
stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress,
and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a
shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire,
by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance;
now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round
and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established
himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that
nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if
he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round
trot, to keep it.
'There! There's the teapot, ready on the hob!' said Dot; as
briskly busy as a child at play at keeping house. 'And there's the
old knuckle of ham; and there's the butter; and there's the crusty
loaf, and all! Here's the clothes-basket for the small parcels,
John, if you've got any there - where are you, John?'
'Don't let the dear child fall under the grate, Tilly, whatever you
do!'
It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting the
caution with some vivacity, that she had a rare and surprising
talent for getting this baby into difficulties and had several
times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own.
She was of a spare and straight shape, this young lady, insomuch
that her garments appeared to be in constant danger of sliding off
those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely hung.
Her costume was remarkable for the partial development, on all
possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular
structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of the back,
of a corset, or pair of stays, in colour a dead-green. Being
always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed,
besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's
perfections and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of
judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to
her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby's head,
which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with
deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign
substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy's
constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and
installed in such a comfortable home. For, the maternal and
paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been
bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only
differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in
meaning, and expresses quite another thing.
To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with her husband,
tugging at the clothes-basket, and making the most strenuous
exertions to do nothing at all (for he carried it), would have
amused you almost as much as it amused him. It may have
entertained the Cricket too, for anything I know; but, certainly,
it now began to chirp again, vehemently.
'Heyday!' said John, in his slow way. 'It's merrier than ever, to-
night, I think.'
'And it's sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has done
so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all
the world!'
John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into
his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed
with her. But, it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he
said nothing.
'The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that
night when you brought me home - when you brought me to my new home
here; its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect,
John?'
O yes. John remembered. I should think so!
'Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full of promise
and encouragement. It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle
with me, and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to
find an old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife.'
John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head,
as though he would have said No, no; he had had no such
expectation; he had been quite content to take them as they were.
And really he had reason. They were very comely.
'It spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say so; for you have
ever been, I am sure, the best, the most considerate, the most
affectionate of husbands to me. This has been a happy home, John;
and I love the Cricket for its sake!'
'Why so do I then,' said the Carrier. 'So do I, Dot.'
'I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the many
thoughts its harmless music has given me. Sometimes, in the
twilight, when I have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John
- before baby was here to keep me company and make the house gay -
when I have thought how lonely you would be if I should die; how
lonely I should be if I could know that you had lost me, dear; its
Chirp, Chirp, Chirp upon the hearth, has seemed to tell me of
another little voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before whose
coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream. And when I used to
fear - I did fear once, John, I was very young you know - that ours
might prove to be an ill-assorted marriage, I being such a child,
and you more like my guardian than my husband; and that you might
not, however hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as you
hoped and prayed you might; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp has cheered me
up again, and filled me with new trust and confidence. I was
thinking of these things to-night, dear, when I sat expecting you;
and I love the Cricket for their sake!'
'And so do I,' repeated John. 'But, Dot? I hope and pray that I
might learn to love you? How you talk! I had learnt that, long
before I brought you here, to be the Cricket's little mistress,
Dot!'
She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up at him
with an agitated face, as if she would have told him something.
Next moment she was down upon her knees before the basket, speaking
in a sprightly voice, and busy with the parcels.
'There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods
behind the cart, just now; and though they give more trouble,
perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble,
have we? Besides, you have been delivering, I dare say, as you
came along?'
'Oh yes,' John said. 'A good many.'
'Why what's this round box? Heart alive, John, it's a wedding-
cake!'
'Leave a woman alone to find out that,' said John, admiringly.
'Now a man would never have thought of it. Whereas, it's my belief
that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a
turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a
woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it
at the pastry-cook's.'
'And it weighs I don't know what - whole hundredweights!' cried
Dot, making a great demonstration of trying to lift it.
'Whose is it, John? Where is it going?'
'Read the writing on the other side,' said John.
'Why, John! My Goodness, John!'
'Ah! who'd have thought it!' John returned.
'You never mean to say,' pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and
shaking her head at him, 'that it's Gruff and Tackleton the
toymaker!'
John nodded.
Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent
- in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips the while
with all their little force (they were never made for screwing up;
I am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and
through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the mean time, who
had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current
conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense
struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural
number, inquired aloud of that young creature, Was it Gruffs and
Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would it call at Pastry-cooks
for wedding-cakes, and Did its mothers know the boxes when its
fathers brought them homes; and so on.
'And that is really to come about!' said Dot. 'Why, she and I were
girls at school together, John.'
He might have been thinking of her, or nearly thinking of her,
perhaps, as she was in that same school time. He looked upon her
with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer.
'And he's as old! As unlike her! - Why, how many years older than
you, is Gruff and Tackleton, John?'
'How many more cups of tea shall I drink to-night at one sitting,
than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, I wonder!' replied
John, good-humouredly, as he drew a chair to the round table, and
began at the cold ham. 'As to eating, I eat but little; but that
little I enjoy, Dot.'
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