THE LAST DAY ON STORY ISLANDThe Cricket on the Hearth
W
WHEN the Story People were all assembled, the Story Lady began:
“To-day we have only one story, ‘The Cricket on the Hearth,’ which was first told by one of our greatest story-tellers, Charles Dickens, who wrote ‘The Christmas Carol’ and many other stories that children love to hear.”
“Heyday! The cricket’s merrier than ever to-night, I think,” said John, stopping, in his slow way, to listen to its musical chirp, chirp, chirp!
“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 the world!”
That is what John Peerybingle’s little wife Dot said one stormy night after John had come in from delivering packages and boxes, and she had given him his tea and had put the baby to sleep. For John Peerybingle was a local expressman; or, as they say in England, a carrier.
“The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John,” Dot continued, “was the night you brought me home—when you brought me to my new home here; its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect, John?”
Oh, yes. John remembered. I should think so!
“Its chirp was such a welcome to me. It seemed so full ofpromise and encouragement. It seemed to say you would be kind and gentle with me, and would not expect to find an old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife. I had a fear of that, John, then.”
John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head of his little wife, as though to say, “No, no; he had no such expectation; he had been quite content to take them as they were.”
“The cricket spoke the truth, John, for you have been, I am sure, the most considerate, the most affectionate of husbands. 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,” Dot went on musing, “and the many thoughts its harmless music has given me. Sometimes, in the twilight, when I have felt a little down-hearted, John—before the precious baby came to keep me company and make the house gay—when I have thought how lonely you would be if I should die, or I should be if you should die, its chirp, chirp, chirp, upon the hearth has filled me with new trust and confidence. For you see, John, I was afraid, being so much younger than you, that you might not find me at all suitable as a wife, and that you might find it hard to learn to love me as you would if I were older and had had more experience. I was thinking just before you came in to-night, dear, how the cricket has cheered me at such times; and I love it for their sake.”
“And so do I,” repeated John. “But, Dot! How you talk! I learn to love you? I had learned 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 as if she would have told him something. Next moment, she was down upon her knees before the basket of packages which John had brought in from his cart. Perhaps some of them would be called for; the others he would deliver in the morning.
“There are not many of them to-night, John. Why, what’s this round box? Heart alive, John, it’s a wedding-cake!”
“Leave a woman to find that out,” said John admiringly. “Now, a man would never have thought of it! But it’s my belief that if you packed a wedding cake in a tea-chest, or in a feather bed, or in salmon-keg, 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 hundred weights!” cried Dot, making a great show 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!” exclaimed Dot.
“Ah! Who’d have thought it!” John returned.
“You never mean to say,” asked Dot, sitting on the floor and shaking her head at him, “that it’s for Gruff and Tackleton, the toy-maker!”
John nodded. Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least—in dumb and pitying amazement.
And Tilly Slowboy, the nurse-maid, and helper of all work, began to talk in an undertone to the baby, who had awakened, as she walked to and fro with him in her arms: “Was it for Gruffs and Tackletons, then, and would it call at the pastry-cooks’ for wedding cakes, and did its mothers know the boxes when its fathers brought them home;” and so on.
“And that marriage is really to come about!” said Dot, after seeing that the baby was all right. “Why, she and I were girls at school together, John.”
John might have been thinking of how Dot looked then, but he made no answer.
“And he’s as old! As unlike May! Why, how many years older than you is Gruff and Tackleton, John?”
“How many more cups of tea shall I drink at one sitting than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four sittings, I wonder!” replied John good-humoredly.
But even this brought no smile to the face of his little wife. 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 asked, after a little while; “so these are all the parcels, John?”
“That’s all,” said John. “Why—no—I—I declare—I’ve clean forgotten the old gentleman!”
“The old gentleman?”
“In the cart,” said John. “He was asleep, down in 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.”
John hastily rose and lighting a candle went out the door. “Halloa! Yahip there! Rouse up! That’s my hearty!” he called as he made his way to the wagon-shed.
Soon the Stranger stood, bareheaded and motionless in the middle of the room. He had long white hair, good features, singularly bold and well-defined for an old man. His eyes were dark and bright and smiling. He saluted the carrier’s wife by gravely bowing.
His clothes were very quaint and old-fashioned, a long, long way behind the time. Their color was brown, all over. In his hand he carried a great brown club or walking-stick. He struck this upon the floor and it fell open 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 as one!”
“Sitting in the open air, John!”
“In the open air,” replied the carrier, “just at dusk. ‘Will you take me along?’ he asked, and gave me eighteen pence. Then he got into the cart. And here he is.”
“He’s going, John, I think!”
“If You Please, I was to be Left till Called For”
“If You Please, I was to be Left till Called For”
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. Boxer, the carrier’s big dog, came sniffing at his legs, but he took no more notice of Boxer than if he had been a lamb.
The carrier and his wife glanced at each other in perplexity. The Stranger raised his head; and looking from Dot toward John, said:
“Your daughter, my good friend?”
“Wife,” said John.
“Niece?” asked the Stranger.
“Wife,” roared John.
“Indeed?” observed the Stranger. “Surely—very young!”
Dot took the baby from the couch where Tilly Slowboy had laid him. The Stranger quietly resumed his reading; but before he had read two lines, he interrupted his reading to say to John:
“Baby yours?”
John gave a gigantic nod, equal to an answer given through a speaking trumpet.
“Girl?” asked the Stranger.
“Bo-o-oy!” roared John.
“Also very young, eh?”
Mrs. Peerybingle instantly spoke. “Two months and three da-ays. Vaccinated just six weeks ago-o! Took very fine-ly! Considered by the doctors a remarkably beautiful chi-ild! Equal to the general run of children at five months o-ld! Takes notice of everything. May seem impossible to you, but true.”
Here the breathless little mother, who had been shrieking these short sentences into the old man’s ear until her face was crimson, held the baby up before him to prove her words, while Tilly Slowboy sprang around in cow-like gambols to amuse the infant, uttering words which sounded like “Ketcher! Ketcher!”
“Hark!” said John. “He’s called for, sure enough. There’s some one at the door. Open it, Tilly.”
Before she could reach it, however, it was opened from the outside, for it was a primitive sort of door with a latch that any one could lift if he chose. In came a little, meager, thoughtful, dingy-faced man.
He seemed to have made himself a great-coat from the burlap covering of some old box; for, when he turned to shut the door, and keep the weather out, one could read upon the back of the garment the letters “G & T” in large black capitals; also the word “GLASS” in smaller capitals.
“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 well and 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 only need look at you for another,” said Caleb; “or at John for another; or Tilly, as far as that goes; or certainly at Boxer.”
“Busy just now, Caleb?” asked the carrier.
“Why, pretty busy, John,” he returned. “Pretty much so. There’s a lot of demand for Noah’s Arks at present. I’d like to be able to take more pains in making the families, but I can’t do it at the price. It would be a satisfaction, though, to one’s mind, to make it plain which was Shems and Hams, and which was wives. Ah, well! Have you got anything in the parcel line for me, John?”
The carrier put his hand into the pocket of the coat he had taken off, and brought out a tiny flower-pot, carefully wrapped in moss and tissue paper.
“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.
“It was expensive, 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,’” read the old man, spelling out the directions. “‘With Cash!’ With cash, John? I don’t think it’s for me!”
“‘With Care,’” corrected 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,’ if my dear boy in South America had lived, John. You loved him like a son; didn’t you? You needn’t say you did. I know, of course.”
He read again, “‘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.
“Thankee,” 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 cost, John,—what’s the damage?”
“I’ll damage you,” said John, “if you ask.”
“Well, it’s like you to say that,” 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?” asked Caleb after thinking a little while. “To be sure. That’s what I came for; but my head’s so full of them Noah’s Arks and things! He hasn’t been here, has he?”
“Not he,” returned the carrier. “He’s too busy, courting.”
“He’s coming, though,” said Caleb; “for he told me to keepon the near side of the road going home, and it was ten to one he’d take me up. I’d better go, by-the-way.”
He turned to Dot. “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 come in for toys—dogs that will bark; and I wish to go as close to nature as possible for a sixpence. That’s all. Never mind, mum.”
It happened that Boxer just at that moment began to bark with zeal. But, as this bark meant the approach of some new visitor, Caleb, postponing his study of dogs’ barks, shouldered the big round box of wedding cake and said good-by. He might have spared himself the trouble, however, for he met his employer upon the threshold.
“Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I’ll take you home!”
He turned to John. “John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my service to your pretty wife. Handsomer every day—and younger!”
“I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. Tackleton,” said Dot, not altogether pleasantly, “but for what I have just heard about you—being engaged to be married.”
“You know all about it, then?”
“I have gotten myself to believe it somehow,” said Dot.
“After a hard struggle, I suppose?”
“Very.”
Tackleton, the toy merchant, was well known in the neighborhood. Many people called him Gruff and Tackleton, the name of the firm when Gruff was Tackleton’s partner. Although Tackleton had bought out Gruff’s interest years before, the name still remained.
It was odd that such a man should have been a toy-maker, for he had no interest in toys whatever. He despised them, and wouldn’t have bought one for the world. The only toys in his shop which he could abide were the ugly ones. Hideous, red-eyed Jacks-in-Boxes, vampire kites, and fiery dragons really did give him some pleasure, for he saw that they scared little children. A very pleasant person, Tackleton! Not the kind of person you would think 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 bottom 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 was designed to be.
“In three days’ time—next Thursday—the last day of the first month of the year—is my wedding day,” said Tackleton.
Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open and one eye nearly shut; and the eye nearly shut was always the expressive eye? I don’t think I did.
“That’s my wedding-day!” said Tackleton, rattling his money in his pocket.
“Why, that’s the anniversary of our wedding, too!” exclaimed the carrier.
“Ha, ha!” laughed Tackleton. “Odd! You’re just such another couple as we will be! Just!”
At this speech, Dot was most indignant. What next would the man say? As though her John resembled Tackleton in any particular!
“I say! A word with you,” murmured Tackleton, nudging the carrier with his elbow, and taking him off a little way. “You’ll come to the wedding, won’t you? We’re in the same boat, you know.”
“How in the same boat?” asked John.
“Why, you’re not so youthful as your wife, yourself,” said Tackleton, with another nudge. “Come and spend an evening with us beforehand.”
“Why?” demanded John, astonished at this hospitality.
“Why?” returned the other. “That’s a new way to receive an invitation. Why—for pleasure—to be sociable, you know, and all that.”
“I thought you were never sociable,” said John, in his plain way.
“As you like; what does it matter? Your company will produce a favorable impression on Mrs. Tackleton that-will-be. You’ll say you’ll come?”
“We have arranged to keep our wedding day at home,” said John. “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! You’ll say you’ll come, to-morrow evening?”
“You kill the crickets, eh?” said John.
“Scrunch ’em, sir,” returned the other, setting his heel heavily on the floor. “Then 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? Thankee. 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 bell that was struck. She had risen from her seat and stood like one transfixed by terror and surprise. The Stranger had gone toward the fire to warm himself, but he was quite still.
“Dot!” cried the carrier, “Darling Dot! What’s the matter?”
They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had beendozing on the cake-box, in the first start, seized Tilly Slowboy by the hair, but immediately apologized.
“Mary!” exclaimed the carrier, for Dot’s real name was Mary, Dot being only a pet name of her husband’s. “Mary dear, are you ill? What is it? Tell me, dear.”
But at first she could not answer. She wept bitterly, and covered her face with her apron; then burst into a wild fit of laughter, and then started crying again. At length she let John lead her to the fire, where she sat down. The old man was standing there as before.
“I’m better, John,” she said. “I’m quite well. It was only a fancy, something coming before my eyes. It’s gone, quite gone now.”
“But why did she look at the old gentleman, as if addressing him?” thought John. “Was her mind wandering?”
“I’m glad it’s gone,” muttered Tackleton, turning the expressive eye around the room. “I wonder where it’s gone, and what it was. Humph, Caleb, come here! Who’s that man with the gray hair?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Caleb answered in a whisper. “Never saw him before in all my life. He’d make a beautiful figure for a nut-cracker; quite a new model.”
“Not ugly enough!” said Tackleton.
“Or a match-safe,” Caleb continued. “What a model! Unscrew his head to put the matches in. Let them fall down to his neck, and take out.”
“Not half ugly enough,” said Tackleton. “Nothing in him at all. Come! Bring that box! All right now, I hope, Mrs. Peerybingle?”
“Oh, quite right! Quite right!” 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 the door, followed by Caleb with the wedding cake on his head.
The carrier had been so much astonished by his little wife, and so busily trying to sooth her that he had scarcely been conscious of the Stranger’s presence until now, when he looked up and saw him standing there, their only guest!
“He don’t belong to them, you see,” said John. “I must give him a hint to go.”
Just at that moment the old gentleman came toward him, saying, “I beg your pardon, friend, but since my attendant has not come and the weather is so bad, can you, in your kindness, let me rent a bed here?”
“Yes, yes!” cried Dot. “Yes! Certainly!”
“Oh!” exclaimed the carrier, surprised by the quickness of her consent. “Well, I don’t object; still I’m not quite sure—”
“Hush!” she interrupted. “Dear John, please.”
“Why, he’s stone deaf,” urged John.
“I know, but—” She turned to the Stranger. “Yes, sir, certainly. Yes! Certainly!” Then to John. “I’ll make him up a bed directly, John.”
As she hurried off to do it, the fluttering way she did it was so strange that the carrier looked after her, quite dumfounded.
“Did its mothers make up a beds then?” cried Tilly Slowboy to the baby; “and did its hair grow brown and curly when its caps was lifted off, and frighten it, as precious pets, a-sitting by the fire?”
“What frightened Dot, I wonder?” thought the carrier, pacing to and fro, and half listening to Tilly’s silly chatter.
The bed was soon made ready, and the Stranger, who would not take anything but a cup of tea, retired.
After Dot put the baby to bed, she arranged the great comfortable fireside chair for the carrier, and filled his pipe for him. Then she brought her little stool and, placing it beside his knee, sat down for a cozy chat.
But the carrier fell to dreaming, and Boxer, who was stretched at his feet, I am quite ashamed to say, snored aloud. Just then the cricket began its song, and Dot, too, fell a-dreaming.
But what was that young figure of a man which remained there, singly and alone? Why did it linger still, so near her with its arm upon the chimney-piece, ever repeating in a whisper, “Married! and not to me!”