XXXV
CHIRP THE SECOND
Bertha, the Blind Girl, and Her Father
CALEB PLUMMER, the toy-maker, and his blind daughter lived all alone by themselves, as the Story Books say, in a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, close to the big establishment of Gruff and Tackleton, the toy merchants.
I have said that Caleb and his poor blind daughter lived here. I should have said that Caleb lived here, and his poor blind daughter lived somewhere else—in a sort of enchanted fairyland, where no shabbiness or poverty or trouble ever entered; for Caleb, in the magic of his devoted, deathless love for his daughter, played a little game of “Pretend” which made the blind girl think their home beautiful, her father rich and handsome, and that nothing was lacking which they needed.
The blind girl never knew that the ceilings were broken and the walls blotched, and bare of plaster here and there, the beams warped and bending because of age. The blind girl never knew that the woodwork was rotting and the paper peeling off the walls, and the little building withering away.
The blind girl never knew that the dishes were ugly and cracked, and the carpets threadbare; that sorrow and faint-heartedness were in the house; that Caleb’s scanty hairs were turning grayer, and more gray, before her sightless face.
The blind girl never knew that they had a master, cold, exacting, and not caring how they got along—never knew that Tackleton was Tackleton, in fact. For Caleb led her to think his rough words were meant for jokes; that he was very good to them, and had a peculiarity in that he could not bear to be thanked for any favor he had done.
You know why he did this. It was because he felt so sorry for poor blind Bertha that he deceived her into thinking everything lovely and fair in order that she might be happier. He, too, had had a cricket singing on the hearth when his motherless girl was very young, and when he listened to its music, he made up his mind to cheer the little one’s dark way by every means he could devise.
Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual working room, which served them for their ordinary living room as well; and a strange place it was.