Charles Dickens by The Cricket on the Hearth Page A

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