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.
