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The Cricket on the Hearth
THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH
CHAPTER I--Chirp the First
The kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I
know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of
time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say the
kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full five
minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner, before the
Cricket uttered a chirp.
As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little
Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a scythe
in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre of
imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all!
Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. I wouldn't
set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs. Peerybingle, unless I
were quite sure, on any account whatever. Nothing should induce me.
But, this is a question of act. And the fact is, that the kettle
began it, at least five minutes before the Cricket gave any sign of
being in existence. Contradict me, and I'll say ten.
Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to do
so in my very first word, but for this plain consideration--if I am to
tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it possible to
begin at the beginning, without beginning at the kettle?
It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill, you
must understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this is what
led to it, and how it came about.
Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking over
the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable rough
impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the
yard--Mrs. Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt. Presently
returning, less the pattens (and a good deal less, for they were tall
and Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she set the kettle on the fire.
In doing which she lost her temper, or mislaid it for an instant; for,
the water being uncomfortably cold, and in that slippy, slushy, sleety
sort of state wherein it seems to penetrate through every kind of
substance, patten rings included-- had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's
toes, and even splashed her legs. And when we rather plume ourselves
(with reason too) upon our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat
in point of stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard to bear.
Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't allow
itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of
accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it WOULD lean
forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle, on
the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered morosely at
the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs. Peerybingle's
fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then, with an ingenious
pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived sideways in--down to
the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull of the Royal George has
never made half the monstrous resistance to coming out of the water,
which the lid of that kettle employed against Mrs. Peerybingle, before
she got it up again.
It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then; carrying its handle
with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and mockingly at
Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, 'I won't boil. Nothing shall induce
me!'
But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humour, dusted her chubby
little hands against each other, and sat down before the kettle,
laughing. Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and
gleaming on the little Haymaker at the top of the Dutch clock, until
one might have thought he stood stock still before the Moorish Palace,
and nothing was in motion but the flame.
He was on the move, however; and had his spasms, two to the second,
all right and regular. But, his sufferings when the clock was going
to strike, were frightful to behold; and, when a Cuckoo looked out of
a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times, it shook him, each
time, like a spectral voice--or like a something wiry, plucking at his
legs.
It was not until a violent commotion and a whirring noise among the
weights and ropes below him had quite subsided, that this terrified
Haymaker became himself again. Nor was he startled without reason;
for these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very disconcerting in
their operation, and I wonder very much how any set of men, but most
of all how Dutchmen, can have had a liking to invent them. There is a
popular belief that Dutchmen love broad cases and much clothing for
their own lower selves; and they might know better than to leave their
clocks so very lank and unprotected, surely.
Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began to spend the evening.
Now it was, that the kettle, growing mellow and musical, began to have
irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge in short vocal
snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't quite made up its
mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that after two or three
such vain attempts to stifle its convivial sentiments, it threw off
all moroseness, all reserve, and burst into a stream of song so cosy
and hilarious, as never maudlin nightingale yet formed the least idea
of.
So plain too! Bless you, you might have understood it like a book-
-better than some books you and I could name, perhaps. With its warm
breath gushing forth in a light cloud which merrily and gracefully
ascended a few feet, then hung about the chimney-corner as its own
domestic Heaven, it trolled its song with that strong energy of
cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon the fire; and
the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid--such is the influence of
a bright example--performed a sort of jig, and clattered like a deaf
and dumb young cymbal that had never known the use of its twin
brother.
That this song of the kettle's was a song of invitation and welcome to
somebody out of doors: to somebody at that moment coming on, towards
the snug small home and the crisp fire: there is no doubt whatever.
Mrs. Peerybingle knew it, perfectly, as she sat musing before the
hearth. It's a dark night, sang the kettle, and the rotten leaves are
lying by the way; and, above, all is mist and darkness, and, below,
all is mire and clay; and there's only one relief in all the sad and
murky air; and I don't know that it is one, for it's nothing but a
glare; of deep and angry crimson, where the sun and wind together; set
a brand upon the clouds for being guilty of such weather; and the
widest open country is a long dull streak of black; and there's
hoar-frost on the finger-post, and thaw upon the track; and the ice it
isn't water, and the water isn't free; and you couldn't say that
anything is what it ought to be; but he's coming, coming, coming! -
And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup,
Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice so
astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the
kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that if it had then and there
burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on the
spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would have
seemed a natural and inevitable consequence, for which it had
expressly laboured.
The kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It persevered
with undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took first fiddle and kept
it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing voice
resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the outer
darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little trill and
tremble in it, at its loudest, which suggested its being carried off
its legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense enthusiasm. Yet
they went very well together, the Cricket and the kettle. The burden
of the song was still the same; and louder, louder, louder still, they
sang it in their emulation.
The fair little listener--for fair she was, and young: though
something of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don't myself
object to that--lighted a candle, glanced at the Haymaker on the top
of the clock, who was getting in a pretty average crop of minutes; and
looked out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing to the
darkness, but her own face imaged in the glass. And my opinion is
(and so would yours have been), that she might have looked a long way,
and seen nothing half so agreeable. When she came back, and sat down
in her former seat, the Cricket and the kettle were still keeping it
up, with a perfect fury of competition. The kettle's weak side
clearly being, that he didn't know when he was beat.
There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp, chirp!
Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle making play in the
distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket round the
corner. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle sticking to him in his own way;
no idea of giving in. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever.
Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp!
Cricket going in to finish him. Hum, hum, hum--m--m! Kettle not to be
finished. Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the
hurry-skurry, helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle
chirped and the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle
hummed, or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a
clearer head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like
certainty. But, of this, there is no doubt: that, the kettle and the
Cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of amalgamation
best known to themselves, sent, each, his fireside song of comfort
streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out through the window,
and a long way down the lane. And this light, bursting on a certain
person who, on the instant, approached towards it through the gloom,
expressed the whole thing to him, literally in a twinkling, and cried,
'Welcome home, old fellow! Welcome home, my boy!'
This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and was
taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the door,
where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse, the voice
of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and the surprising
and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon the very
What's-his-name to pay.
Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in
that flash of time, _I_ don't know. But a live baby there was, in
Mrs. Peerybingle's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she
seemed to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a
sturdy figure of a man, much taller and much older than herself, who
had to stoop a long way down, to kiss her. But she was worth the
trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have done it.
'Oh goodness, John!' said Mrs. P. 'What a state you are in with the
weather!'
He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick mist hung in
clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and between the fog and
fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.
'Why, you see, Dot,' John made answer, slowly, as he unrolled a shawl
from about his throat; and warmed his hands; 'it--it an't exactly
summer weather. So, no wonder.'
'I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John. I don't like it,' said Mrs.
Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she DID like it,
very much.
'Why what else are you?' returned John, looking down upon her with a
smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand and
arm could give. 'A dot and'--here he glanced at the baby--'a dot and
carry--I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I was very near
a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer.'
He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own
account: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy, but
so light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at the
core; so dull without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good! Oh
Mother Nature, give thy children the true poetry of heart that hid
itself in this poor Carrier's breast--he was but a Carrier by the
way--and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading lives of
prose; and bear to bless thee for their company!
It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure, and her baby in
her arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish
thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little head
just enough on one side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural,
half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great
rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his
tender awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her
slight need, and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff not
inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe how
Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took special
cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping; and stood
with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head thrust forward, taking
it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable to observe how
John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the aforesaid baby,
checked his hand when on the point of touching the infant, as if he
thought he might crack it; and bending down, surveyed it from a safe
distance, with a kind of puzzled pride, such as an amiable mastiff
might be supposed to show, if he found himself, one day, the father of
a young canary.
'An't he beautiful, John? Don't he look precious in his sleep?'
'Very precious,' said John. 'Very much so. He generally IS asleep,
an't he?'
'Lor, John! Good gracious no!'
'Oh,' said John, pondering. 'I thought his eyes was generally shut.
Halloa!'
'Goodness, John, how you startle one!'
'It an't right for him to turn 'em up in that way!' said the
astonished Carrier, 'is it? See how he's winking with both of 'em at
once! And look at his mouth! Why he's gasping like a gold and silver
fish!'
'You don't deserve to be a father, you don't,' said Dot, with all the
dignity of an experienced matron. 'But how should you know what
little complaints children are troubled with, John! You wouldn't so
much as know their names, you stupid fellow.' And when she had turned
the baby over on her left arm, and had slapped its back as a
restorative, she pinched her husband's ear, laughing.
'No,' said John, pulling off his outer coat. 'It's very true, Dot. I
don't know much about it. I only know that I've been fighting pretty
stiffly with the wind to-night. It's been blowing north- east,
straight into the cart, the whole way home.'