Charles Dickens (3 page)

The Cricket, too, had stopped. Somehow the room was not so
cheerful as it had been. Nothing like it.

'So, these are all the parcels, are they, John?' she said, breaking
a long silence, which the honest Carrier had devoted to the
practical illustration of one part of his favourite sentiment—
certainly enjoying what he ate, if it couldn't be admitted that he
ate but little. 'So, these are all the parcels; are they, John?'

'That's all,' said John. 'Why—no—I—' laying down his knife and
fork, and taking a long breath. 'I declare—I've clean forgotten
the old gentleman!'

'The old gentleman?'

'In the cart,' said John. 'He was asleep, among the straw, the
last time I saw him. I've very nearly remembered him, twice, since
I came in; but he went out of my head again. Holloa! Yahip there!
Rouse up! That's my hearty!'

John said these latter words outside the door, whither he had
hurried with the candle in his hand.

Miss Slowboy, conscious of some mysterious reference to The Old
Gentleman, and connecting in her mystified imagination certain
associations of a religious nature with the phrase, was so
disturbed, that hastily rising from the low chair by the fire to
seek protection near the skirts of her mistress, and coming into
contact as she crossed the doorway with an ancient Stranger, she
instinctively made a charge or butt at him with the only offensive
instrument within her reach. This instrument happening to be the
baby, great commotion and alarm ensued, which the sagacity of Boxer
rather tended to increase; for, that good dog, more thoughtful than
its master, had, it seemed, been watching the old gentleman in his
sleep, lest he should walk off with a few young poplar trees that
were tied up behind the cart; and he still attended on him very
closely, worrying his gaiters in fact, and making dead sets at the
buttons.

'You're such an undeniable good sleeper, sir,' said John, when
tranquillity was restored; in the mean time the old gentleman had
stood, bareheaded and motionless, in the centre of the room; 'that
I have half a mind to ask you where the other six are—only that
would be a joke, and I know I should spoil it. Very near though,'
murmured the Carrier, with a chuckle; 'very near!'

The Stranger, who had long white hair, good features, singularly
bold and well defined for an old man, and dark, bright, penetrating
eyes, looked round with a smile, and saluted the Carrier's wife by
gravely inclining his head.

His garb was very quaint and odd—a long, long way behind the time.
Its hue was brown, all over. In his hand he held a great brown
club or walking-stick; and striking this upon the floor, it fell
asunder, and became a chair. On which he sat down, quite
composedly.

'There!' said the Carrier, turning to his wife. 'That's the way I
found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as a milestone. And
almost as deaf.'

'Sitting in the open air, John!'

'In the open air,' replied the Carrier, 'just at dusk. "Carriage
Paid," he said; and gave me eighteenpence. Then he got in. And
there he is.'

'He's going, John, I think!'

Not at all. He was only going to speak.

'If you please, I was to be left till called for,' said the
Stranger, mildly. 'Don't mind me.'

With that, he took a pair of spectacles from one of his large
pockets, and a book from another, and leisurely began to read.
Making no more of Boxer than if he had been a house lamb!

The Carrier and his wife exchanged a look of perplexity. The
Stranger raised his head; and glancing from the latter to the
former, said,

'Your daughter, my good friend?'

'Wife,' returned John.

'Niece?' said the Stranger.

'Wife,' roared John.

'Indeed?' observed the Stranger. 'Surely? Very young!'

He quietly turned over, and resumed his reading. But, before he
could have read two lines, he again interrupted himself to say:

'Baby, yours?'

John gave him a gigantic nod; equivalent to an answer in the
affirmative, delivered through a speaking trumpet.

'Girl?'

'Bo-o-oy!' roared John.

'Also very young, eh?'

Mrs. Peerybingle instantly struck in. 'Two months and three da-
ays! Vaccinated just six weeks ago-o! Took very fine-ly!
Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably beautiful chi-ild! Equal
to the general run of children at five months o-old! Takes notice,
in a way quite wonderful! May seem impossible to you, but feels
his legs al-ready!'

Here the breathless little mother, who had been shrieking these
short sentences into the old man's ear, until her pretty face was
crimsoned, held up the Baby before him as a stubborn and triumphant
fact; while Tilly Slowboy, with a melodious cry of 'Ketcher,
Ketcher'—which sounded like some unknown words, adapted to a
popular Sneeze—performed some cow-like gambols round that all
unconscious Innocent.

'Hark! He's called for, sure enough,' said John. 'There's
somebody at the door. Open it, Tilly.'

Before she could reach it, however, it was opened from without;
being a primitive sort of door, with a latch, that any one could
lift if he chose—and a good many people did choose, for all kinds
of neighbours liked to have a cheerful word or two with the
Carrier, though he was no great talker himself. Being opened, it
gave admission to a little, meagre, thoughtful, dingy-faced man,
who seemed to have made himself a great-coat from the sack-cloth
covering of some old box; for, when he turned to shut the door, and
keep the weather out, he disclosed upon the back of that garment,
the inscription G & T in large black capitals. Also the word GLASS
in bold characters.

'Good evening, John!' said the little man. 'Good evening, Mum.
Good evening, Tilly. Good evening, Unbeknown! How's Baby, Mum?
Boxer's pretty well I hope?'

'All thriving, Caleb,' replied Dot. 'I am sure you need only look
at the dear child, for one, to know that.'

'And I'm sure I need only look at you for another,' said Caleb.

He didn't look at her though; he had a wandering and thoughtful eye
which seemed to be always projecting itself into some other time
and place, no matter what he said; a description which will equally
apply to his voice.

'Or at John for another,' said Caleb. 'Or at Tilly, as far as that
goes. Or certainly at Boxer.'

'Busy just now, Caleb?' asked the Carrier.

'Why, pretty well, John,' he returned, with the distraught air of a
man who was casting about for the Philosopher's stone, at least.
'Pretty much so. There's rather a run on Noah's Arks at present.
I could have wished to improve upon the Family, but I don't see how
it's to be done at the price. It would be a satisfaction to one's
mind, to make it clearer which was Shems and Hams, and which was
Wives. Flies an't on that scale neither, as compared with
elephants you know! Ah! well! Have you got anything in the parcel
line for me, John?'

The Carrier put his hand into a pocket of the coat he had taken
off; and brought out, carefully preserved in moss and paper, a tiny
flower-pot.

'There it is!' he said, adjusting it with great care. 'Not so much
as a leaf damaged. Full of buds!'

Caleb's dull eye brightened, as he took it, and thanked him.

'Dear, Caleb,' said the Carrier. 'Very dear at this season.'

'Never mind that. It would be cheap to me, whatever it cost,'
returned the little man. 'Anything else, John?'

'A small box,' replied the Carrier. 'Here you are!'

'"For Caleb Plummer,"' said the little man, spelling out the
direction. '"With Cash." With Cash, John? I don't think it's for
me.'

'With Care,' returned the Carrier, looking over his shoulder.
'Where do you make out cash?'

'Oh! To be sure!' said Caleb. 'It's all right. With care! Yes,
yes; that's mine. It might have been with cash, indeed, if my dear
Boy in the Golden South Americas had lived, John. You loved him
like a son; didn't you? You needn't say you did.
I
know, of
course. "Caleb Plummer. With care." Yes, yes, it's all right.
It's a box of dolls' eyes for my daughter's work. I wish it was
her own sight in a box, John.'

'I wish it was, or could be!' cried the Carrier.

'Thank'ee,' said the little man. 'You speak very hearty. To think
that she should never see the Dolls—and them a-staring at her, so
bold, all day long! That's where it cuts. What's the damage,
John?'

'I'll damage you,' said John, 'if you inquire. Dot! Very near?'

'Well! it's like you to say so,' observed the little man. 'It's
your kind way. Let me see. I think that's all.'

'I think not,' said the Carrier. 'Try again.'

'Something for our Governor, eh?' said Caleb, after pondering a
little while. 'To be sure. That's what I came for; but my head's
so running on them Arks and things! He hasn't been here, has he?'

'Not he,' returned the Carrier. 'He's too busy, courting.'

'He's coming round though,' said Caleb; 'for he told me to keep on
the near side of the road going home, and it was ten to one he'd
take me up. I had better go, by the bye.—You couldn't have the
goodness to let me pinch Boxer's tail, Mum, for half a moment,
could you?'

'Why, Caleb! what a question!'

'Oh never mind, Mum,' said the little man. 'He mightn't like it
perhaps. There's a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and
I should wish to go as close to Natur' as I could, for sixpence.
That's all. Never mind, Mum.'

It happened opportunely, that Boxer, without receiving the proposed
stimulus, began to bark with great zeal. But, as this implied the
approach of some new visitor, Caleb, postponing his study from the
life to a more convenient season, shouldered the round box, and
took a hurried leave. He might have spared himself the trouble,
for he met the visitor upon the threshold.

'Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I'll take you home.
John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my service to your
pretty wife. Handsomer every day! Better too, if possible! And
younger,' mused the speaker, in a low voice; 'that's the Devil of
it!'

'I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. Tackleton,'
said Dot, not with the best grace in the world; 'but for your
condition.'

'You know all about it then?'

'I have got myself to believe it, somehow,' said Dot.

'After a hard struggle, I suppose?'

'Very.'

Tackleton the Toy-merchant, pretty generally known as Gruff and
Tackleton—for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out
long ago; only leaving his name, and as some said his nature,
according to its Dictionary meaning, in the business—Tackleton the
Toy-merchant, was a man whose vocation had been quite misunderstood
by his Parents and Guardians. If they had made him a Money Lender,
or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer, or a Broker, he might
have sown his discontented oats in his youth, and, after having had
the full run of himself in ill-natured transactions, might have
turned out amiable, at last, for the sake of a little freshness and
novelty. But, cramped and chafing in the peaceable pursuit of toy-
making, he was a domestic Ogre, who had been living on children all
his life, and was their implacable enemy. He despised all toys;
wouldn't have bought one for the world; delighted, in his malice,
to insinuate grim expressions into the faces of brown-paper farmers
who drove pigs to market, bellmen who advertised lost lawyers'
consciences, movable old ladies who darned stockings or carved
pies; and other like samples of his stock in trade. In appalling
masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks in Boxes; Vampire Kites;
demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn't lie down, and were perpetually
flying forward, to stare infants out of countenance; his soul
perfectly revelled. They were his only relief, and safety-valve.
He was great in such inventions. Anything suggestive of a Pony-
nightmare was delicious to him. He had even lost money (and he
took to that toy very kindly) by getting up Goblin slides for
magic-lanterns, whereon the Powers of Darkness were depicted as a
sort of supernatural shell-fish, with human faces. In intensifying
the portraiture of Giants, he had sunk quite a little capital; and,
though no painter himself, he could indicate, for the instruction
of his artists, with a piece of chalk, a certain furtive leer for
the countenances of those monsters, which was safe to destroy the
peace of mind of any young gentleman between the ages of six and
eleven, for the whole Christmas or Midsummer Vacation.

What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in other things. You
may easily suppose, therefore, that within the great green cape,
which reached down to the calves of his legs, there was buttoned up
to the chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow; and that he was about as
choice a spirit, and as agreeable a companion, as ever stood in a
pair of bull-headed-looking boots with mahogany-coloured tops.

Still, Tackleton, the toy-merchant, was going to be married. In
spite of all this, he was going to be married. And to a young wife
too, a beautiful young wife.

He didn't look much like a bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier's
kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw in his body, and
his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked
down into the bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill-
conditioned self peering out of one little corner of one little
eye, like the concentrated essence of any number of ravens. But, a
Bridegroom he designed to be.

'In three days' time. Next Thursday. The last day of the first
month in the year. That's my wedding-day,' said Tackleton.

Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, and one eye
nearly shut; and that the one eye nearly shut, was always the
expressive eye? I don't think I did.