The Cricket on the Hearth

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The bed was soon made ready; and the visitor, declining all
refreshment but a cup of tea, retired. Then, Dot - quite well
again, she said, quite well again - arranged the great chair in the
chimney-corner for her husband; filled his pipe and gave it him;
and took her usual little stool beside him on the hearth.

She always WOULD sit on that little stool. I think she must have
had a kind of notion that it was a coaxing, wheedling little stool.

She was, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I should say,
in the four quarters of the globe. To see her put that chubby
little finger in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to clear the
tube, and, when she had done so, affect to think that there was
really something in the tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it
to her eye like a telescope, with a most provoking twist in her
capital little face, as she looked down it, was quite a brilliant
thing. As to the tobacco, she was perfect mistress of the subject;
and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of paper, when the
Carrier had it in his mouth - going so very near his nose, and yet
not scorching it - was Art, high Art.

And the Cricket and the kettle, turning up again, acknowledged it!
The bright fire, blazing up again, acknowledged it! The little
Mower on the clock, in his unheeded work, acknowledged it! The
Carrier, in his smoothing forehead and expanding face, acknowledged
it, the readiest of all.

And as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his old pipe, and as
the Dutch clock ticked, and as the red fire gleamed, and as the
Cricket chirped; that Genius of his Hearth and Home (for such the
Cricket was) came out, in fairy shape, into the room, and summoned
many forms of Home about him. Dots of all ages, and all sizes,
filled the chamber. Dots who were merry children, running on
before him gathering flowers, in the fields; coy Dots, half
shrinking from, half yielding to, the pleading of his own rough
image; newly-married Dots, alighting at the door, and taking
wondering possession of the household keys; motherly little Dots,
attended by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be christened;
matronly Dots, still young and blooming, watching Dots of
daughters, as they danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, encircled and
beset by troops of rosy grandchildren; withered Dots, who leaned on
sticks, and tottered as they crept along. Old Carriers too,
appeared, with blind old Boxers lying at their feet; and newer
carts with younger drivers ('Peerybingle Brothers' on the tilt);
and sick old Carriers, tended by the gentlest hands; and graves of
dead and gone old Carriers, green in the churchyard. And as the
Cricket showed him all these things - he saw them plainly, though
his eyes were fixed upon the fire - the Carrier's heart grew light
and happy, and he thanked his Household Gods with all his might,
and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do.

But, what was that young figure of a man, which the same Fairy
Cricket set so near Her stool, and which remained there, singly and
alone? Why did it linger still, so near her, with its arm upon the
chimney-piece, ever repeating 'Married! and not to me!'

O Dot! O failing Dot! There is no place for it in all your
husband's visions; why has its shadow fallen on his hearth!

CHAPTER II - Chirp The Second

CALEB PLUMMER and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves,
as the Story-books say - and my blessing, with yours to back it I
hope, on the Story-books, for saying anything in this workaday
world! - Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by
themselves, in a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, which
was, in truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick
nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and Tackleton
were the great feature of the street; but you might have knocked
down Caleb Plummer's dwelling with a hammer or two, and carried off
the pieces in a cart.

If any one had done the dwelling-house of Caleb Plummer the honour
to miss it after such an inroad, it would have been, no doubt, to
commend its demolition as a vast improvement. It stuck to the
premises of Gruff and Tackleton, like a barnacle to a ship's keel,
or a snail to a door, or a little bunch of toadstools to the stem
of a tree.

But, it was the germ from which the full-grown trunk of Gruff and
Tackleton had sprung; and, under its crazy roof, the Gruff before
last, had, in a small way, made toys for a generation of old boys
and girls, who had played with them, and found them out, and broken
them, and gone to sleep.

I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter lived here. 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 faintheartedness were in the house; that Caleb's
scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her
sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold,
exacting, and uninterested - never knew that Tackleton was
Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric
humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and 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 human kind.

Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual
working-room, which served them for their ordinary living-room as
well; and a strange place it was. There were houses in it,
finished and unfinished, for Dolls of all stations in life.
Suburban tenements for Dolls of moderate means; kitchens and single
apartments for Dolls of the lower classes; capital town residences
for Dolls of high estate. Some of these establishments were
already furnished according to estimate, with a view to the
convenience of Dolls of limited income; others could be fitted on
the most expensive scale, at a moment's notice, from whole shelves
of chairs and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and upholstery. The
nobility and gentry, and public in general, for whose accommodation
these tenements were designed, lay, here and there, in baskets,
staring straight up at the ceiling; but, in denoting their degrees
in society, and confining them to their respective stations (which
experience shows to be lamentably difficult in real life), the
makers of these Dolls had far improved on Nature, who is often
froward and perverse; for, they, not resting on such arbitrary
marks as satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had superadded
striking personal differences which allowed of no mistake. Thus,
the Doll-lady of distinction had wax limbs of perfect symmetry; but
only she and her compeers. The next grade in the social scale
being made of leather, and the next of coarse linen stuff. As to
the common-people, they had just so many matches out of tinder-
boxes, for their arms and legs, and there they were - established
in their sphere at once, beyond the possibility of getting out of
it.

There were various other samples of his handicraft, besides Dolls,
in Caleb Plummer's room. There were Noah's Arks, in which the
Birds and Beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure you; though
they could be crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and
shaken into the smallest compass. By a bold poetical 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
thoroughbred rocker on his highest mettle. As it would have been
hard to count the dozens upon dozens of grotesque figures that were
ever ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the turning of a
handle, so it would have been no easy task to mention any human
folly, vice, or weakness, that had not its type, immediate or
remote, in Caleb Plummer's room. And not in an exaggerated form,
for very little handles will move men and women to as strange
performances, as any Toy was ever made to undertake.

In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daughter sat at
work. The Blind Girl busy as a Doll's dressmaker; 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 sack-cloth garment
previously described, was carefully hung up to dry.

'How glad I am you bought it, father!'

'And of such a tailor, too,' said Caleb. 'Quite a fashionable
tailor. It's too good for me.'

The Blind Girl rested from her work, and laughed with delight.

'Too good, father! What can be too good for you?'

'I'm half-ashamed to wear it though,' said Caleb, watching the
effect of what he said, upon her brightening face; 'upon my word!
When I hear the boys and people say behind me, "Hal-loa! Here's a
swell!" I don't know which way to look. And when the beggar
wouldn't go away last night; and when I said I was a very common
man, said "No, your 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.

'Made 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. 'O, my gracious!'

'Always merry and light-hearted with us!' cried the smiling Bertha.

'O, you're there, are you?' answered Tackleton. 'Poor Idiot!'

He really did believe she was an Idiot; and he founded the belief,
I can't say whether consciously or not, upon her being fond of him.

'Well! and being there, - how are you?' said Tackleton, in his
grudging way.

'Oh! well; quite well. And as happy as even you can wish me to be.
As happy as you would make the whole world, if you could!'

'Poor Idiot!' muttered Tackleton. 'No gleam of reason. Not a
gleam!'

The Blind Girl took his hand and kissed it; held it for a moment in
her own two hands; and laid her cheek against it tenderly, before
releasing it. There was such unspeakable affection and such
fervent gratitude in the act, that Tackleton himself was moved to
say, in a milder growl than usual:

'What's the matter now?'

'I stood it close beside my pillow when I went to sleep last night,
and remembered it in my dreams. And when the day broke, and the
glorious red sun - the RED sun, father?'

'Red in the mornings and the evenings, Bertha,' said poor Caleb,
with a woeful glance at his employer.

'When it rose, and the bright light I almost fear to strike myself
against in walking, came into the room, I turned the little tree
towards it, and blessed Heaven for making things so precious, and
blessed you for sending them to cheer me!'

'Bedlam broke loose!' said Tackleton under his breath. 'We shall
arrive at the strait-waistcoat and mufflers soon. We're getting
on!'

Caleb, with his hands hooked loosely in each other, stared vacantly
before him while his daughter spoke, as if he really were uncertain
(I believe he was) whether Tackleton had done anything to deserve
her thanks, or not. If he could have been a perfectly free agent,
at that moment, required, on pain of death, to kick the Toy-
merchant, or fall at his feet, according to his merits, I believe
it would have been an even chance which course he would have taken.
Yet, Caleb knew that with his own hands he had brought the little
rose-tree home for her, so carefully, and that with his own lips he
had forged the innocent deception which should help to keep her
from suspecting how much, how very much, he every day, denied
himself, that she might be the happier.

'Bertha!' said Tackleton, assuming, for the nonce, a little
cordiality. 'Come here.'

'Oh! I can come straight to you! You needn't guide me!' she
rejoined.

'Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?'

'If you will!' she answered, eagerly.

How bright the darkened face! How adorned with light, the
listening head!

'This is the day on which little what's-her-name, the spoilt child,
Peerybingle's wife, pays her regular visit to you - makes her
fantastic Pic-Nic here; an't it?' said Tackleton, with a strong
expression of distaste for the whole concern.

'Yes,' replied Bertha. 'This is the day.'

'I thought so,' said Tackleton. 'I should like to join the party.'

'Do you hear that, father!' cried the Blind Girl in an 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 am going to be
married to May.'

'Married!' cried the Blind Girl, starting from him.

'She's such a con-founded Idiot,' muttered Tackleton, 'that I was
afraid she'd never comprehend me. Ah, Bertha! Married! Church,
parson, clerk, beadle, glass-coach, bells, breakfast, bride-cake,
favours, marrow-bones, cleavers, and all the rest of the
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 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.

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