Charles Dickens (4 page)

'That's my wedding-day!' said Tackleton, rattling his money.

'Why, it's our wedding-day too,' exclaimed the Carrier.

'Ha ha!' laughed Tackleton. 'Odd! You're just such another
couple. Just!'

The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous assertion is not to be
described. What next? His imagination would compass the
possibility of just such another Baby, perhaps. The man was mad.

'I say! A word with you,' murmured Tackleton, nudging the Carrier
with his elbow, and taking him a little apart. 'You'll come to the
wedding? We're in the same boat, you know.'

'How in the same boat?' inquired the Carrier.

'A little disparity, you know,' said Tackleton, with another nudge.
'Come and spend an evening with us, beforehand.'

'Why?' demanded John, astonished at this pressing hospitality.

'Why?' returned the other. 'That's a new way of receiving an
invitation. Why, for pleasure—sociability, you know, and all
that!'

'I thought you were never sociable,' said John, in his plain way.

'Tchah! It's of no use to be anything but free with you, I see,'
said Tackleton. 'Why, then, the truth is you have a—what tea-
drinking people call a sort of a comfortable appearance together,
you and your wife. We know better, you know, but—'

'No, we don't know better,' interposed John. 'What are you talking
about?'

'Well! We DON'T know better, then,' said Tackleton. 'We'll agree
that we don't. As you like; what does it matter? I was going to
say, as you have that sort of appearance, your company will produce
a favourable effect on Mrs. Tackleton that will be. And, though I
don't think your good lady's very friendly to me, in this matter,
still she can't help herself from falling into my views, for
there's a compactness and cosiness of appearance about her that
always tells, even in an indifferent case. You'll say you'll
come?'

'We have arranged to keep our Wedding-Day (as far as that goes) at
home,' said John. 'We have made the promise to ourselves these six
months. We think, you see, that home—'

'Bah! what's home?' cried Tackleton. 'Four walls and a ceiling!
(why don't you kill that Cricket?
I
would! I always do. I hate
their noise.) There are four walls and a ceiling at my house.
Come to me!'

'You kill your Crickets, eh?' said John.

'Scrunch 'em, sir,' returned the other, setting his heel heavily on
the floor. 'You'll say you'll come? it's as much your interest as
mine, you know, that the women should persuade each other that
they're quiet and contented, and couldn't be better off. I know
their way. Whatever one woman says, another woman is determined to
clinch, always. There's that spirit of emulation among 'em, sir,
that if your wife says to my wife, "I'm the happiest woman in the
world, and mine's the best husband in the world, and I dote on
him," my wife will say the same to yours, or more, and half believe
it.'

'Do you mean to say she don't, then?' asked the Carrier.

'Don't!' cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. 'Don't what?'

The Carrier had some faint idea of adding, 'dote upon you.' But,
happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over
the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking
it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to
be doted on, that he substituted, 'that she don't believe it?'

'Ah you dog! You're joking,' said Tackleton.

But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full drift of his
meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner, that he was obliged to
be a little more explanatory.

'I have the humour,' said Tackleton: holding up the fingers of his
left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to imply 'there I am,
Tackleton to wit:' 'I have the humour, sir, to marry a young wife,
and a pretty wife:' here he rapped his little finger, to express
the Bride; not sparingly, but sharply; with a sense of power. 'I'm
able to gratify that humour and I do. It's my whim. But—now look
there!'

He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully, before the fire;
leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, and watching the bright
blaze. The Carrier looked at her, and then at him, and then at
her, and then at him again.

'She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,' said Tackleton; 'and
that, as I am not a man of sentiment, is quite enough for ME. But
do you think there's anything more in it?'

'I think,' observed the Carrier, 'that I should chuck any man out
of window, who said there wasn't.'

'Exactly so,' returned the other with an unusual alacrity of
assent. 'To be sure! Doubtless you would. Of course. I'm
certain of it. Good night. Pleasant dreams!'

The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable and uncertain, in
spite of himself. He couldn't help showing it, in his manner.

'Good night, my dear friend!' said Tackleton, compassionately.
'I'm off. We're exactly alike, in reality, I see. You won't give
us to-morrow evening? Well! Next day you go out visiting, I know.
I'll meet you there, and bring my wife that is to be. It'll do her
good. You're agreeable? Thank'ee. What's that!'

It was a loud cry from the Carrier's wife: a loud, sharp, sudden
cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. She had risen
from her seat, and stood like one transfixed by terror and
surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards the fire to warm
himself, and stood within a short stride of her chair. But quite
still.

'Dot!' cried the Carrier. 'Mary! Darling! What's the matter?'

They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had been dozing on
the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery of his suspended
presence of mind, seized Miss Slowboy by the hair of her head, but
immediately apologised.

'Mary!' exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms. 'Are
you ill! What is it? Tell me, dear!'

She only answered by beating her hands together, and falling into a
wild fit of laughter. Then, sinking from his grasp upon the
ground, she covered her face with her apron, and wept bitterly.
And then she laughed again, and then she cried again, and then she
said how cold it was, and suffered him to lead her to the fire,
where she sat down as before. The old man standing, as before,
quite still.

'I'm better, John,' she said. 'I'm quite well now—I -'

'John!' But John was on the other side of her. Why turn her face
towards the strange old gentleman, as if addressing him! Was her
brain wandering?

'Only a fancy, John dear—a kind of shock—a something coming
suddenly before my eyes—I don't know what it was. It's quite
gone, quite gone.'

'I'm glad it's gone,' muttered Tackleton, turning the expressive
eye all round the room. 'I wonder where it's gone, and what it
was. Humph! Caleb, come here! Who's that with the grey hair?'

'I don't know, sir,' returned Caleb in a whisper. 'Never see him
before, in all my life. A beautiful figure for a nut-cracker;
quite a new model. With a screw-jaw opening down into his
waistcoat, he'd be lovely.'

'Not ugly enough,' said Tackleton.

'Or for a firebox, either,' observed Caleb, in deep contemplation,
'what a model! Unscrew his head to put the matches in; turn him
heels up'ards for the light; and what a firebox for a gentleman's
mantel-shelf, just as he stands!'

'Not half ugly enough,' said Tackleton. 'Nothing in him at all!
Come! Bring that box! All right now, I hope?'

'Quite gone!' said the little woman, waving him hurriedly away.
'Good night!'

'Good night,' said Tackleton. 'Good night, John Peerybingle! Take
care how you carry that box, Caleb. Let it fall, and I'll murder
you! Dark as pitch, and weather worse than ever, eh? Good night!'

So, with another sharp look round the room, he went out at the
door; followed by Caleb with the wedding-cake on his head.

The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little wife, and so
busily engaged in soothing and tending her, that he had scarcely
been conscious of the Stranger's presence, until now, when he again
stood there, their only guest.

'He don't belong to them, you see,' said John. 'I must give him a
hint to go.'

'I beg your pardon, friend,' said the old gentleman, advancing to
him; 'the more so, as I fear your wife has not been well; but the
Attendant whom my infirmity,' he touched his ears and shook his
head, 'renders almost indispensable, not having arrived, I fear
there must be some mistake. The bad night which made the shelter
of your comfortable cart (may I never have a worse!) so acceptable,
is still as bad as ever. Would you, in your kindness, suffer me to
rent a bed here?'

'Yes, yes,' cried Dot. 'Yes! Certainly!'

'Oh!' said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of this consent.

'Well! I don't object; but, still I'm not quite sure that—'

'Hush!' she interrupted. 'Dear John!'

'Why, he's stone deaf,' urged John.

'I know he is, but—Yes, sir, certainly. Yes! certainly! I'll
make him up a bed, directly, John.'

As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the
agitation of her manner, were so strange that the Carrier stood
looking after her, quite confounded.

'Did its mothers make it up a Beds then!' cried Miss Slowboy to the
Baby; 'and did its hair grow brown and curly, when its caps was
lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the
fires!'

With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is
often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier as
he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even
these absurd words, many times. So many times that he got them by
heart, and was still conning them over and over, like a lesson,
when Tilly, after administering as much friction to the little bald
head with her hand as she thought wholesome (according to the
practice of nurses), had once more tied the Baby's cap on.

'And frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the fires. What
frightened Dot, I wonder!' mused the Carrier, pacing to and fro.

He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the Toy-merchant,
and yet they filled him with a vague, indefinite uneasiness. For,
Tackleton was quick and sly; and he had that painful sense,
himself, of being of slow perception, that a broken hint was always
worrying to him. He certainly had no intention in his mind of
linking anything that Tackleton had said, with the unusual conduct
of his wife, but the two subjects of reflection came into his mind
together, and he could not keep them asunder.

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!