Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale

Sadly reflecting, the Carrier stopped his pipe with a twig from the fireplace, and gazed at the soot, because his eyes were bright.

"But what were you going to tell me?" asked Etty, bringing her brother back to his subject, as she often was obliged to do.

"Railly, I be almost ashamed to tell 'ee. For such a thing to come to pass in our own county, and a'most the same parish, and only two turnpike gates atween. What do 'ee think of every soul in that there house running right away, wi'out no notice, nor so much as 'good-bye!' One and all on 'em, one and all; so I were told by a truthful man. And the poor old leddy with her dying son, and not a single blessed woman for to make the pap!"

"I never can believe that they would be such cowards," Esther answered as she left her work and came to look at Zacchary. "Men might, but women never, I should hope. And such a kind good house it is! Oh, Zak, it must be a wicked story!"

"It is true enough, Etty, and too true. As I was a-coming home I seed five on 'em standing all together under the elms by Magdalen College. Their friends would not take them in, I was told, and nobody wouldn't go nigh 'em. Perhaps they were sorry they had doed it then."

"The wretches! They ought to sleep out in the rain, without even a pigsty for shelter! Now, Zak, I never do anything without you; but to Shotover Grange I go to-night, unless you bar the door on me; and if you do I will get out of window!"

"Esther, I never heerd tell of such a thing. If you was under a duty, well and good; but to fly into the face of the Lord like that, without no call upon you – "

"There is a call upon me!" she answered, flushing with calm resolution; "it is the Lord that calls me, Zak, and He will send me back again. Now you shall have your supper, while you think it over quietly. I will not go without your leave, brother; but I am sure you will give it when you come to think."

The Carrier, while he munched his bacon, and drank his quart of home-brewed ale, was, in his quiet mind, more troubled than he had ever been before, or, at any rate, since he used to pass the tent of young Cinnaminta. That was the one great romance of his life, and since he had quelled it with his sturdy strength, and looked round the world as usual, scarcely any trouble worse than pence and halfpence had been on him. From week to week, and year to year, he had worked a cheerful road of life, breathing the fine air, looking at the sights, feeling as little as need be felt the influence of nature, making new friends all along his beat, even quicker than the old ones went their way, carrying on a very decent trade, highly respecting the powers that be, and highly respected by them. But now he found suddenly brought before him a matter for consideration, which, in his ordinary state of mind, would have circulated for a fortnight. Precipitance of mind to him was worse than driving down a quarry; his practice had always been, and now it was become his habit, to turn every question inside out and upside down, and across and across, and finger every seam of it (as if he were buying a secondhand sack) ere ever he began to trust his weight to any side of it. To do all this required some hours with a mind so unelectric, and even after that he liked to have a good night's sleep, and find the core of his resolve set hard in the morning.

For this due process there was now no time. He dared not even to begin it, knowing that it could not be wrought out; therefore he betook himself to a plan which once before had served him well. After groping in the bottom of a sacred pocket (where sample-beans and scarlet runners got into the loops of keys, and bits of whipcord were wound tightly round old turnpike tickets, and a little shoemaker's awl in a cork kept company with a shoe-pick), Master Cripps with his blunt-headed fingers got hold of a crooked sixpence. The bend alone would have only conferred a simple charm upon it, but when to the bend there was added a hole, that sixpence became Delphic. Cripps had consulted it once before when a quick-tempered farmer hurried him concerning the purchase of a rick of hay. The Carrier had no superstition, but he greatly abounded with gratitude; and, having made a great hit about that rick, the least he could do to the sixpence was to consult it again under similar hurry.

He said to himself, "Now the Lord send me right. If you comes out heads, little Etty shall go; if you comes out tails, I shall take it for a sign that we ought to turn tails in this here job."

He said no more, but with great extrication worked his oracular sixpence up through a rattle of obstructions. Like the lots cast in a steep-headed man's helmet, up came the sixpence reluctantly.

"I have a got 'ee. Now, what dost thou say?" cried Cripps, with the triumph of an obstinate man. "Never a lie hast thou told me yet. Spake up, little fellow." Being thus adjured, the crooked sixpence, in gratitude for much friction, gleamed softly in the firelight; but even the Carrier, keen as his eyes were, could not make out head or tail. "Vetch me a can'le and the looking-glass," he called out to Esther; the looking-glass being a large old lens, which had been left behind by Hardenow. Esther brought both in about half a minute; and Cripps, with the little coin sternly sitting as flatly in his palm as its form allowed, began to examine it carefully. With one eye shut, as if firing a gun, he tried the lens at every distance from a foot to half an inch, shifting the candle about until some of his frizzly hair took fire, and with this assistance he exclaimed at last, "Heads, child! – heads it is! Thou shalt go; the will of the Lord ordaineth it! Plaize the Lord to send thee back safe and sound as now thou goest! None on us, to my knowledge, has done aught to deserve to be punished for."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BOOTS ON

When a very active man is suddenly "laid by the heels;" sad as the dispensation is, there are sure to be some who rejoice in it. Even if it be only a zealous clerk, sausage-maker, or grave-digger, thus upset in his activities; there are one or two compeers who rejoice in the heart, while they deeply lament with the lip. Not that they have the very smallest atom of ill-will about them. They are thoroughly good-hearted fellows, as are nine men out of every ten; and within, as well as without, they would grieve to hear that their valued friend was dead.

Still, for the moment, and while we believe, as everybody does about everybody else, that he is sure as a top to come round again, it is a relief to have this busy fellow just out of the way a bit; and there is an inward hugging of the lazier spirit at the thought that the restless one will have received a lesson, and be pulled back to a milder state. Be this view of the matter either true or false, in a general way, at least in this particular instance (the illness of Russel Overshute), some of it seemed to apply right well.

There was no one who wished him positive death, not even of those whom he had most justly visited with the treadmill; but there were several who were not sorry to hear of this check to his energies; and foremost among them might be counted Mr. Luke Sharp and the great John Smith.

Mr. John Smith had surprised his friends, and disappointed the entire public, by finding out nothing at all about anything after his one great discovery, made with the help of the British army. For some cause or other, best known to himself, he had dropped his indefatigability and taken to very grave shakes of his head instead of nimble footings. He feigned to be very busy still with this leading case of the neighbourhood; but though his superiors might believe it, his underlings were not to be misled. All of these knew whether Mr. John was launching thunderbolts or throwing dust, and were well aware that he had quite taken up with the latter process in the Beckley case.

Why, or even exactly when, this change had occurred, they did not know, only they were sure that the reason lay deep in the pocket of Mr. Smith; which conclusion, as we shall see, did no more honour to their heads than to their hearts.

But still, whatever his feelings were, or his desires in the matter, the resolute face and active step of this intelligent officer were often to be seen and heard at Beckley; and to several persons in the village they were becoming welcome. Numbers Cripps, the butcher, was moved with gentle goodwill towards him, having heard what a fine knife and fork he played, and finding it true in the Squire's bill. Also Phil Hiss of the Dusty Anvil found the fame of this gentleman telling on his average receipts; and several old women, who had some time back made up their accounts for a better world, and were taking the interest in scandal, hailed with delight this unexpected bonus and true premium. To mention young spinsters would be immoral, for none of them had any certainty whether there was, or was not, any Mrs. John Smith. Rustic modesty forbade that the Carrier should be asked to settle this great point directly. Still there were methods of letting him know how desirable any information was.

At all these symptoms of renown, when brought to his knowledge, Mr. Smith only smiled and shook his head. He had several good reasons of his own for haunting the village as he did; one of them being that he thus obeyed the general orders he had received. Also he really liked the Squire, his victuals, and his domestics. Among these latter he had quite outlived any little prejudice created by his early manner; and even Mary Hookham was now inclined to use him as an irritant, or stimulant, for the lukewarm Cripps. But being a sharp and quick young woman, Mary took care not to go too far.

"How is the fine old gentleman now? Mary, my love, how is he?" Mr. Smith asked, as he pulled off his cloak in the lobby, just after church-time, and just before early dinner-time, on the morrow of that Saturday night when Esther set off for Shotover. Although it was spring, she had not gone alone, but had taken a son of the butcher with her; the effect of that quarry-scene on her nerves would last as long as she did.

Mary was bound not to answer Mr. Smith whenever he spoke in that festive way. That much had been settled betwixt her and her mother, remembering what a place Beckley was. But she did all her duty, as a good maid should, in the way of receiving a visitor. She took his cloak from him, and she hung it on a hook – most men wore a cloak just then for walking, whether it were wet or dry, and part of the coming "Tractarian movement" was to cast away that cloak – and then Mary saw on the feathery collar a leaf-bud that threatened to become a moth, according to her entomology. This she picked out, with a "shoo" and a "shish" as she trod it underfoot; and Mr. John Smith, having terror of insects, and being a very clean man, recoiled, just when he was thinking of stealing a kiss. This little piece of business placed them on their proper terms again.

"How is your master, Miss Hookham? I hope you find him getting better. Everything now is looking up again!"

"No, Mr. Smith; he is very sadly. Thanking you, sir, for inquiring of him. He do seem a little better one day, and we all begins to hope and hope, and then there come something all over him again, the same as might be this here cloak, sir, thrown on the head of that there stick. But come in and see him, Mr. Smith, if you please. I thought it was the rector when you rang. But master will be glad to see you every bit the same as if you was, no doubt."

John Smith, who was never to be put down by any small comparisons, followed quick Mary with a stedfast march over the quiet matting. Potters, with their broken shards, had not yet made it a trial to walk, and a still greater trial to look downward, on the road to dinner. In the long, old-fashioned dining-room sat the Squire at the head of his table. For many years it had been his wont to have an early dinner on Sunday, with a knife and fork always ready for the clergyman, who was a bachelor of middle age. The clergyman came, or did not come, according to his own convenience, without ceremony or apology.

"I beg you to excuse," said the Squire rising, as Smith was shown into the room, "my absence from church this morning, Mr. Warbelow. I had quite made up my mind to go, and everything was quite ready, when I did not feel quite so well as usual, and was ordered to stay at home."

Squire Oglander made his fine old-fashioned bow when he had spoken, and held out his hand for the parson to take it, as the parson always did, with eyes that gave a look of grief and then fell, and kind lips that murmured that all things were ordered for the best. But instead of the parson's gentle clasp, the Squire, whose sight was beginning to fail together with his other faculties, was saluted with a strong rough grasp, and a gaze from entirely unclerical eyes.

"How is your Worship? Well, nicely, I hope. Charming you look, sir, as ever I see."

"Sir, I thank you. I am in good health. But I have not the honour of remembering your name."

"Smith, your Worship – John Smith, at your service; as he was the day before yesterday. 'Out of sight out of mind,' the old saying is. I suppose you find it so, sir!"

With this home-thrust, delivered quite unwittingly, Mr. Smith sat down; his opinion was that Her Majesty's service levelled all distinctions. Mr. Oglander gave him one glance, like the keen look of his better days, and then turned away and gazed round the room for something out of sight, but never likely to be out of mind. The old man was weak, and knew his weakness. In the presence of a gentleman he might have broken down and wept, and been much better for it; but before a man of this sort, not a sign would he let out of the sorrow that was killing him.

It had been settled by all doctors, when the Squire was in his first illness, that nothing should be said by Smith, or any one else (without great cause), about the trouble which was ever in the heart of all the house. Nothing, at least to the Squire himself, for fear of exciting him fatally. Little rumours might be filtered through the servants towards him; especially through Mother Hookham, who put hopeful grains of Paradise into the heavy beer of fact. Such things did the old man good. His faith in the Lord, when beginning to flag, was renewed by fibs of this good old woman; and each confirmed the other.

In former days he would have resented and nipped in the bud – kind-hearted as he was – John Smith's familiarity. But now he had no heart to care about any of such trifles. He begged Mr. Smith to take a chair, quite as if he were waiting to be invited; then, weak as he was, he tottered to the bell-pull, rather than ask his guest to ring. John Smith jumped up to help, but felt uncertain what good manners were.

"Mary," said the Squire, when Mary came; "you always look out of the window, I think, to see the people come out of church."

"Never, sir, never! Except whenever I feels wicked not to a' been there myself. Such time it seemeth to do me good; like smelling of the good words over there."

"Yes, that is very right. All I want to know is whether Mr. Warbelow is coming up here."

"No, sir; not this time, I believe. He seemed to have got a young lady with un, as wore a blue cloak with three slashes to the sleeve, and a bonnet with yellow French roses in it, and a striped skirt, made of the very same stuff as I seed in to Cavell's – no, not Cavell's – t'other shop over the way, round the corner; likewise her had – "

"Then, Mary, bring in the dinner, if you please. This gentleman will dine with me, instead of Mr. Warbelow."

"Well now, if I ever did!" Miss Hookham exclaimed to herself in the passage. "Why, a must be a sort of a gentleman! Master wouldn't dine along of Master Cripps; but to my mind Zak be the gentleman afore he!"

The Squire's oblique little sarcasm – if sarcasm at all it were – failed to hit Mr. Smith altogether; he cordially accepted plate and spoon, and fell to at the soup, which was excellent. The soup was followed by a fine sirloin; whereupon Mr. Oglander, through some association of ideas, could not suppress a little sigh.

"Never sigh at your meat, sir," cried Mr. Smith; "give me the carving-knife, sir, if you are unequal to the situation. To sigh at such a sirloin – oh fie, oh fie!"

"I was thinking of some one who always used to like the brown," the old man said, in the simplest manner, as if an apology were needed.

"Well, sir, I like the brown very much! I will put it by for myself, sir, and help you to an inner slice. Here, Mary, a plate for your master! Quick! Everything will be cold, my goodness! And who sliced this horse-radish, pray? for slicing it is, not scraping."

Mary was obliged to bite her tongue to keep it in any way mannersome; when the door was thrown open, and in came her mother, with her face quite white, and both hands stretched on high.

"Oh my! oh my! a sin I call it – a wicked, cruel, sinful sin!" Widow Hookham exclaimed as soon as she could speak. "All over the village, all over the parish, in two days' time at the latest it will be. Oh, how could your Worship allow of it?"

"Give your mamma a glass of wine, my dear," said Mr. John Smith, as the widow fell back, with violent menace of fainting, or worse; while the poor Squire, expecting some new blow, folded his tremulous hands to receive it. "Take a good drink, ma'am, and then relieve your system."

"That Cripps! oh, that Cripps!" exclaimed Mrs. Hookham, as soon as the wine, which first "went the wrong way," had taken the right direction; "if ever a darter of mine hath Cripps, in spite of two stockings of money, they say – "

"What is it about Cripps?" asked the Squire, in a voice that required an immediate answer. The first news of his trouble had come through Cripps; and now, in his helpless condition, he always connected the name of the Carrier with the solution, if one there should be.

"He hath done a thing he ought to be ashamed on!" screamed Mrs. Hookham, with such excitement, that they were forced to give her another glass of wine; "he hath brought into this parish, and the buzzum of his family, pestilence and death, he hath! And who be he to do such a thing, a road-faring, twopenny carrier?"

"Cripps charges a good deal more than twopence," said Mr. Oglander quietly; for his hopes and fears were once more postponed.

"He hath brought the worst load ever were brought!" cried the widow, growing eloquent. "Black death, and the plague, and the murrain of Egypt hath come in through Cripps the Carrier! How much will he charge Beckley, your Worship? How much shall Beckley pay him, when she mourneth for her children? when she spreadeth forth her hands and seeketh north and south, and cannot find them, because they are not?"

"What is it, good woman?" cried Smith, impatiently, "what is all this uproar? do tell us, and have done with it?"

"Good man," replied Widow Hookham tartly, "my words are addressed to your betters, sir. Your Worship knoweth well that Master Kale hath leave and license for his Sunday dinner; ever since his poor wife died, he sitteth with a knife and fork to the right side of our cook-maid. He were that genteel, I do assure you, although his appearance bespeaketh it not, and city gents may look down on him; he had such a sense of propriety, not a word did he say all the time of dinner to raise an objection to the weakest stomach. But as soon as he see that all were done, and the parlour dinner forward, he layeth his finger on his lips, and looketh to me as the prime authority; and when I ask him to speak out, no secrets being among good friends, what he said were a deal too much for me, or any other Christian person."

"Well, well, ma'am, if your own dinner was respected, you might have showed some respect for ours," Mr. Smith exclaimed very sadly, beholding the gravy in the channelled dish margined with grease, and the noble sirloin weeping with lost opportunity. But Mr. Oglander took no notice. To such things he was indifferent now.

"To keep the mind dwelling upon earthly victuals," the widow replied severely, "on the Lord's Day, and with the Day of the Lord a-hanging special over us – such things is beyond me to deal with, and calls for Mr. Warbelow. Carrier Cripps hath sent his sister over to nurse Squire Overshute!"

John Smith pretended to be busy with his beef, but Mary, who made a point of watching whatever he did (without well knowing why), startled as she was by her mother's words, this girl had her quick eyes upon his face, and was sure that it lost colour, as the carved sirloin of beef had done from the trickling of the gravy.

"Overshute! nurse Mr. Overshute?" cried the Squire with great astonishment. "Why, what ails Mr. Overshute? It is a long time since I have seen him, and I thought that he had perhaps forgotten me. He used to come very often, when – but who am I to tempt him? When my darling was here, in the time of my darling, everybody came to visit me; now nobody comes, and of course it is right. There is nobody for them to look at now, and no one to make them laugh a little. Ah, she used to make them laugh, till I was quite jealous, I do believe; not of myself, bless your heart! but of her, because I never liked her to have too much to say to anybody, unless it was one who could understand her. And nobody ever turned up that was able, in any way, to understand her, except her poor old father, sir."

The Squire, at the end of this long speech (which had been a great deal too much for him) stood up, and flourished his fork, which should have been better employed in feeding him, and looked from face to face, in fear that he had made himself ridiculous. Nobody laughed at him, or even smiled; and he was pleased with this, and resolved never to give such occasion again; because it would have shamed him so. And after all it was his own business. None of these people could have any idea, and he hoped they never might have. By this time his mind was dropping softly into some confusion, and feeling it so, he sat down again, and drank the glass of wine which Mary Hookham kindly held for him.

For a few minutes Mr. John Smith had his flourish (to let both the women be sure who he was) all about the Queen, and the law of the land, and the jurisdiction of the Bench, and he threatened the absent Cripps with three months' imprisonment, and perhaps the treadmill. He knew that he was talking unswept rubbish, but his audience was female. They listened to him without leaving off their work; and their courage increased as his did.

But presently Mr. Oglander, who had seemed to be taking a nap, arose, and said, as clearly as ever he had said anything in his clearest days —

"Mary, go and tell Charles to put the saddle on the mare at once."

"Oh Lor', sir! whatever are you thinking of? Lor' a massy, sir, I couldn't do it, I couldn't! You ain't abeen a-horseback for nigh four months, and your orders is to keep quiet in your chair, and not even look out o' winder, sir. Do 'ee plaize to go into your slippers, sir?"

"I will not go into my slippers, Mary. I will go into my boots. I hear that Mr. Overshute is ill, and I gather from what you have all been saying that his illness is of such a kind that nobody will go near him. I have wronged the young gentleman bitterly, and I will do my best to right myself. If I never do another thing, I will ride to Shotover this day. Order the mare, as I tell you, and the air will do me good, please God!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

A SPIDER'S DINNER-PARTY

Now was the happy time when Oxford, ever old, yet ever fresh with the gay triennial crown of youth, was preparing itself for that sweet leisure for which it is seldom ill prepared. Being the paramount castle and strongest feudal hold of stout "idlesse," this fair city has not much to do to get itself into prime condition for the noblest efforts and most arduous feats of invincible laziness. The first and most essential step is to summon all her students, and send them to chapel to pay their vows. After this there need be no misgiving or fear of industry. With one accord they issue forth, all pledged to do nothing for the day, week, or month; each intellectual brow is stamped with the strongest resolve not to open a book; and

"Games are the spur which the clear spirit doth raise,

To scorn the Dons, and live luxurious days."

This being so, whether winter shatters the Isid wave against Folly bridge, or spring's arrival rustles in the wavering leaves of Magdalen, or autumn strews the chastened fragrance of many brewers on ripe air – how much more when beauteous summer fosters the coy down on the lip of the junior sophist like thistle-seed, and casts the freshman's shadow hotly on the flags of High Street – now or never is the proper period not to overwork one's self, and the hour for taking it easy.