Charles Dickens (9 page)

His challenge was addressed to the old lady, who accepting it with
gracious readiness, they were soon engaged upon the game. At
first, the Carrier looked about him sometimes, with a smile, or now
and then called Dot to peep over his shoulder at his hand, and
advise him on some knotty point. But his adversary being a rigid
disciplinarian, and subject to an occasional weakness in respect of
pegging more than she was entitled to, required such vigilance on
his part, as left him neither eyes nor ears to spare. Thus, his
whole attention gradually became absorbed upon the cards; and he
thought of nothing else, until a hand upon his shoulder restored
him to a consciousness of Tackleton.

'I am sorry to disturb you—but a word, directly.'

'I'm going to deal,' returned the Carrier. 'It's a crisis.'

'It is,' said Tackleton. 'Come here, man!'

There was that in his pale face which made the other rise
immediately, and ask him, in a hurry, what the matter was.

'Hush! John Peerybingle,' said Tackleton. 'I am sorry for this.
I am indeed. I have been afraid of it. I have suspected it from
the first.'

'What is it?' asked the Carrier, with a frightened aspect.

'Hush! I'll show you, if you'll come with me.'

The Carrier accompanied him, without another word. They went
across a yard, where the stars were shining, and by a little side-
door, into Tackleton's own counting-house, where there was a glass
window, commanding the ware-room, which was closed for the night.
There was no light in the counting-house itself, but there were
lamps in the long narrow ware-room; and consequently the window was
bright.

'A moment!' said Tackleton. 'Can you bear to look through that
window, do you think?'

'Why not?' returned the Carrier.

'A moment more,' said Tackleton. 'Don't commit any violence. It's
of no use. It's dangerous too. You're a strong-made man; and you
might do murder before you know it.'

The Carrier looked him in the face, and recoiled a step as if he
had been struck. In one stride he was at the window, and he saw -

Oh Shadow on the Hearth! Oh truthful Cricket! Oh perfidious Wife!

He saw her, with the old man—old no longer, but erect and gallant-
-bearing in his hand the false white hair that had won his way into
their desolate and miserable home. He saw her listening to him, as
he bent his head to whisper in her ear; and suffering him to clasp
her round the waist, as they moved slowly down the dim wooden
gallery towards the door by which they had entered it. He saw them
stop, and saw her turn—to have the face, the face he loved so, so
presented to his view!—and saw her, with her own hands, adjust the
lie upon his head, laughing, as she did it, at his unsuspicious
nature!

He clenched his strong right hand at first, as if it would have
beaten down a lion. But opening it immediately again, he spread it
out before the eyes of Tackleton (for he was tender of her, even
then), and so, as they passed out, fell down upon a desk, and was
as weak as any infant.

He was wrapped up to the chin, and busy with his horse and parcels,
when she came into the room, prepared for going home.

'Now, John, dear! Good night, May! Good night, Bertha!'

Could she kiss them? Could she be blithe and cheerful in her
parting? Could she venture to reveal her face to them without a
blush? Yes. Tackleton observed her closely, and she did all this.

Tilly was hushing the Baby, and she crossed and re-crossed
Tackleton, a dozen times, repeating drowsily:

'Did the knowledge that it was to be its wifes, then, wring its
hearts almost to breaking; and did its fathers deceive it from its
cradles but to break its hearts at last!'

'Now, Tilly, give me the Baby! Good night, Mr. Tackleton. Where's
John, for goodness' sake?'

'He's going to walk beside the horse's head,' said Tackleton; who
helped her to her seat.

'My dear John. Walk? To-night?'

The muffled figure of her husband made a hasty sign in the
affirmative; and the false stranger and the little nurse being in
their places, the old horse moved off. Boxer, the unconscious
Boxer, running on before, running back, running round and round the
cart, and barking as triumphantly and merrily as ever.

When Tackleton had gone off likewise, escorting May and her mother
home, poor Caleb sat down by the fire beside his daughter; anxious
and remorseful at the core; and still saying in his wistful
contemplation of her, 'Have I deceived her from her cradle, but to
break her heart at last!'

The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby, had all stopped,
and run down, long ago. In the faint light and silence, the
imperturbably calm dolls, the agitated rocking-horses with
distended eyes and nostrils, the old gentlemen at the street-doors,
standing half doubled up upon their failing knees and ankles, the
wry-faced nut-crackers, the very Beasts upon their way into the
Ark, in twos, like a Boarding School out walking, might have been
imagined to be stricken motionless with fantastic wonder, at Dot
being false, or Tackleton beloved, under any combination of
circumstances.

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 Haymaker 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. O 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.

The more he felt this, and the more he knew he could have better
borne to see her lying prematurely dead before him with their
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 finger to the
trigger; and cried 'Kill him! In his bed!'

He reversed the gun to beat the stock up 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 illumined 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—O 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.

The Voice, correcting him, said 'do.'

The Carrier repeated 'as I did.' But not firmly. His faltering
tongue resisted his control, and would speak in its own way, for
itself and him.

The Figure, in an attitude of invocation, raised its hand and said:

'Upon your own hearth—'

'The hearth she has blighted,' interposed the Carrier.

'The hearth she has—how often!—blessed and brightened,' said the
Cricket; 'the hearth which, but for her, were only a few stones and
bricks and rusty bars, but which has been, through her, the Altar
of your Home; on which you have nightly sacrificed some petty
passion, selfishness, or care, and offered up the homage of a
tranquil mind, a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that
the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better
fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest
shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world!—Upon your own
hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences
and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear everything that speaks
the language of your hearth and home!'

'And pleads for her?' inquired the Carrier.

'All things that speak the language of your hearth and home, must
plead for her!' returned the Cricket. 'For they speak the truth.'

And while the Carrier, with his head upon his hands, continued to
sit meditating in his chair, the Presence stood beside him,
suggesting his reflections by its power, and presenting them before
him, as in a glass or picture. It was not a solitary Presence.
From the hearthstone, from the chimney, from the clock, the pipe,
the kettle, and the cradle; from the floor, the walls, the ceiling,
and the stairs; from the cart without, and the cupboard within, and
the household implements; from every thing and every place with
which she had ever been familiar, and with which she had ever
entwined one recollection of herself in her unhappy husband's mind;
Fairies came trooping forth. Not to stand beside him as the
Cricket did, but to busy and bestir themselves. To do all honour
to her image. To pull him by the skirts, and point to it when it
appeared. To cluster round it, and embrace it, and strew flowers
for it to tread on. To try to crown its fair head with their tiny
hands. To show that they were fond of it and loved it; and that
there was not one ugly, wicked or accusatory creature to claim
knowledge of it—none but their playful and approving selves.