Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale

"Do you not know, will nobody ever know, the difference between small, uneducated cunning and the clear intelligence of a practised mind? To suppose that John Smith would ever give me any trouble! He has been most useful. I directed his inquiries; and exhausted the inquisitive spirit through him."

"But you did not let him know – "

"Miranda, now, I shall go to bed, if I am so very fast asleep. Can no woman ever dream of large utility? I have had no better friend, throughout this long anxiety, than John Smith. And without the expenditure of one farthing, I have guided him into the course that he should take. When he hears of anything, the first thing he asks is – 'Now, what would Lawyer Sharp be inclined to think of this?' Perhaps I have taken more trouble than was needful. But, at any rate, it would be disgraceful indeed if John Smith could cause me uneasiness. The only man I have ever had the smallest fear of has been Russel Overshute. Not that the young fellow is at all acute; but that he cannot be by any means imbued with the proper respect for my character."

"How very shocking of him, my dear Luke, when your character has been so many years established!"

"Miranda, it is indeed shocking! – but what can be expected of a Radical? Ever since that villainous Reform Bill passed, the spirit of true reverence is destroyed. But he must have some respect for me, as soon as he knows all. Although, to confess the pure truth, my dear, things have worked in my favour so, that I scarcely deserve any credit at all, except for the original conception. That, however, was a brave one."

"It was, indeed; and I am scarcely brave enough to be comfortable. There is never any knowing how the world may take things. It is true that old Fermitage was not your client, and you had been very badly treated, and had a right to make the most of any knowledge obtained by accident. But old Mr. Oglander is your client, and has trusted you even in the present matter. I do not think that my father would have considered it quite professional to behave so."

Mrs. Luke Sharp was alarmed at her own boldness in making such a speech as this. She dropped her eyes under her husband's gaze; but he took her remarks quite calmly.

"My dear, we will talk of that another time. The fact that I do a thing – after all my experience – should prove it to be not unprofessional. At the present moment, I want to go to bed; and if you are anxious to begin hair-splitting, bed is my immediate refuge. But if you wish to know about the future of your son, you must listen, and not try to reason."

"I did not mean to vex you, Luke. I might have been certain that you knew best. And you always have so many things behind, that Solomon himself could never judge you. Tell me all about my darling Kit, and I will not even dare to cough or breathe."

"My dear, it would grieve me to hear you cough, and break my heart if you did not breathe. But I fear that your Kit is unworthy of your sighs. He has lost his young heart beyond redemption, without having the manners to tell his mother!"

"They all do it, Luke; of course they do. It is no good to find fault with them. I have been expecting that sort of thing so long. And when he went to Spiers for the melanochaitotrophe, with the yellow stopper to it, I knew as well as possible what he was about. I knew that his precious young heart must be gone; for it cost him seven and sixpence!"

"Yes, my dear; and it went the right way, in the very line I had laid for it. I will tell you another time how I managed that, with Hannah Patch, of course, to help me. The poor boy was conquered at first sight; for the weather was cold, with snow still in the ditches, and I gave him sixpenny-worth of brandy-balls. So Kit went shooting, and got shot, according to my arrangement. Ever since that, the great job has been to temper and guide his rampant energies."

"And of course he knows nothing – oh no, he would be so very unworthy, if he did! Oh, do say that he knows nothing, Luke!"

"My dear, I can give you that pleasing assurance; although it is a puzzling one to me. Christopher Fermitage Sharp knows not Grace Oglander from the young woman in the moon. He believes her to have sailed from a new and better world. Undoubtedly he is my son, Miranda; yet where did he get his thick-headedness?"

"Mr. Sharp!"

"Miranda, make allowance for me. Such things are truly puzzling. However, you perceive the situation. Here is a very fine young fellow – in his mother's opinion and his own – desperately smitten with a girl unknown, and romantically situated in a wood. There is reason to believe that this young lady is not insensible to his merits; he looks very nice in his sporting costume, he has no one to compete with him, he is her only bit of life for the day, he leaves her now and then a romantic rabbit, and he rescues her from a ruffian. But here the true difficulty begins. We cannot well unite them in the holy bonds, without a clear knowledge on the part of either of the true patronymic of the other. The heroine knows that the hero rejoices in the good and useful name of 'Sharp'; but he knows not that his lady-love is one Grace Oglander of Beckley Barton.

"Here, again, you perceive a fine stroke of justice. If Squire Oglander had only extended his hospitalities to us, Christopher must have known Grace quite well, and I could not have brought them together so. At present he believes her to be a Miss Holland, from the United States of America; and as she has promised Miss Patch not to speak of her own affairs to anybody (according to her father's wish, in one of the Demerara letters), that idea of his might still continue; although she has begun to ask him questions, which are not at all convenient. But things must be brought to a point as soon as possible. Having the advantage of directing the inquiries, or at any rate being consulted about them, I see no great element of danger yet; and of course I launched all the first expeditions in every direction but the right one. That setting up of the tombstone by poor old Joan was a very heavy blow to the inquisitive."

"But, my dear, that did not make the poor girl dead a bit more than she was dead before."

"Miranda, you do not understand the world. The evidence of a tombstone is the strongest there can be, and beats that of fifty living witnesses. I won a most difficult case for our firm when I was an ardent youth, and the victory enabled me to aspire to your hand, by taking a mallet and a chisel, and a little nitric acid, and converting a 'Francis,' by moonlight, into a 'Frances.' I kept the matter to myself, of course; for your good father was a squeamish hand. But you have heard me speak of it."

"Yes, but I thought it so wrong, my dear, even though, as you said, truth required it."

"Truth did require it. The old stonemason had not known how to spell the word. I corrected his heterography; and we confounded the tricks of the evil ones. All is fair in love and law, so long as violence is done to neither. And now I wish Kit's unsophisticated mind to be led to the perception of that great truth. It is needful for him to be delicately admitted to a knowledge of my intentions. There is nobody who can do this as you can. He takes rather clumsy and obstinate views of things he is too young to understand. The main point of all, with a mind like his, is to dwell upon the justice of our case and the depth of our affection, which has led to such a sacrifice of the common conventional view of things."

"My dear, but I have had nothing to do with it. Conception, plan, and execution are all your own, and no other person's. Why, I had not even dreamed – "

"Still, you must put it to him, Miranda, as if it was your doing more than mine. He has more faith in your – well, what shall I call it? I would not for a moment wrong him by supposing that he doubts his own father's integrity – in your practical judgment, let us say, and perception of the nicest principles. It is absolutely necessary that you should appear to have acted throughout in close unison with me. In fact, it would be better to let the boy perceive that the whole idea from the very first was yours; as in simple fact it must have been, if circumstances had permitted me to tell you all that I desired. To any idea of yours he takes more kindly perhaps than to those which are mine. This is not quite correct, some would say; but I am above jealousy. I always desire that he should love his mother, and make a pattern of her. His poor father gets knocked about here and there, and cannot halt to keep himself rigidly upright, though it always is his ambition. But women are so different, and so much better. Even Kit perceives that truth. Let him know, my darling, that your peace of mind is entirely staked upon his following out the plan which you mean to propose to him."

"But, my dear Luke, I have not the least notion of any plan of any sort."

"Never mind, Miranda; make him promise. I will tell you all about it afterwards. It is better not to let him know too much. Knowledge should come in small doses always, otherwise it puffs up young people. Alas! now I feel that I am not as I was! Twenty years ago I could have sat up all night talking, and not shown a sign of it next day. I have not had any sleep for the last twelve nights. Do you see any rays in my eyes, dear wife? They are sure indications of heart disease. When I am tired they always come."

"Oh, Luke, Luke, you will break my heart! You shall not say another word. Have some more negus – I insist upon it! It is no good to put your hand over the glass – and then come to bed immediately. You are working too hard for your family, my pet."

CHAPTER XLVI.

IN THE MESHES

Now being newly inspired by that warm theologian – as Miss Patch really believed him to be – Luke Sharp, the lady felt capable of a bold stroke, which her conscience had seemed to cry out against, till loftier thoughts enlarged it. She delivered to her dear niece a letter, written in pale ink and upon strange paper, which she drew from a thicker one addressed to herself, and received "through their butcher" from a post-office. Wondering who their butcher was, but delighted to get her dear father's letter, Grace ran away to devour it.

It was dated from George-town, English Guayana, and though full of affection, showed touching traces of delicate health and despondency. The poor girl wiped her eyes at her father's tender longing to see her once more, and his earnest prayers for every blessing upon their invaluable friend, Miss Patch. Then he spoke of himself in a manner which made it impossible for her to keep her eyes wiped, so deep was his sadness, and yet so heroically did he attempt to conceal it from her; and then came a few lines, which surprised her greatly. He said that a little bird had told him that during her strict retirement from the world in accordance with his wishes, she had learned to esteem a most worthy young man, for whom he had always felt warm regard, and, he might even say, affection. He doubted whether, at his own time of life, and with this strange languor creeping over him, he could ever bear the voyage to England, unless his little darling would come over to fetch him, or at least to behold him once more alive; and if she would do so, she must indeed be quick. He need not say that to dream of her travelling so far all alone was impossible; but if, for the sake of her father, she could dispense with some old formalities, and speedily carry out their mutual choice, he might with his whole heart appeal to her husband to bring her out by the next packet.

He said little more, except that he had learned by the bitter teaching of adversity who were his true friends, and who were false. No one had shown any truth and reality except Mr. Sharp of Oxford; but he never could have dreamed, till it came to the test, that even the lowest of the low would treat him as young Mr. Overshute had done. That subject was too painful, so he ended with another adjuration to his daughter.

"Aunty, I have had the most extraordinary letter," cried Grace, coming in with her eyes quite dreadful; "it astonishes me beyond everything. May I see the postmark of yours which it came in? I shall think I am dreaming till I see the postmark."

"The stamp of the office, do you mean, my dear? Oh yes, you are welcome to see, Grace. Here it is, 'George-town, Demerara.' The date is not quite clear without my spectacles. Those foreign dies are always cut so badly."

"Never mind the date, aunt. I have the date inside, in my dear father's writing. But I am quite astonished how my father can have heard – "

"Something about you, sly little puss! You need not blush so, for I long have guessed it."

"But indeed it is not true – indeed it is not. I may have been amused, but I never, never – and oh, what he says then of somebody else – such a thing I should have thought impossible! How can one have any faith in any one?"

"My dear child, what you mean is this: How can one have any faith in worldly and ungodly people? With their mouths they speak deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips – "

"Oh no, he never was ungodly; to see him walk would show you that; and if being good to the poor sick people, and dashing into the middle of the whooping-cough – "

"How am I to know of whom you speak? You appear to have acted in a very forward way with some one your father disapproves of."

"I assure you, I never did anything of the kind. It is not at all my manner. I thought you considered it wrong to make unfounded accusations."

"Grace, what a most un-Christian temper you still continue to display at times! Your cheeks are quite red, and your eyes excited, in a way very sad to witness. The trouble I have taken is beyond all knowledge. If you do not value it, your father does."

"Aunty Patch, may I see exactly what my daddy says to you? I will show you mine if you will show me yours."

"My dear, you seem to forget continually. You treat me as if I were of your own age, and had never been through the very first alarm which comes for our salvation. It has not come to you, or you could not be so frivolous and worldly as you are. When first it rang, even for myself – "

"How many times does it ring, Aunt? I mean for every individual sinner, as you always call us."

"My dear, it rings three times, as has been proved by the most inspired of all modern preachers, the Rev. Wm. Romaine, while amplifying the blessed words of the pious Joseph Alleine. He begins his discourse upon it thus – "

"Aunty, you have told me that so many times that I could go up into his desk and do it. It is all so very good and superior; but there are times when it will not come. You, or at any rate I, for certain, may go down on our knees and pray, and nothing ever comes of it. I have been at it every night and morning, really quite letting go whatever I was thinking of – and what is there to come of it, except this letter? And it doesn't sound as if my father ever wrote a word of it."

"Grace, what do you mean, if you please?"

"I mean what I do not please. I mean that I have been here at least five months, as long as any fifty, and have put up with the miserablest things – now, never mind about my English, if you please, it is quite good enough for such a place as this – and have done my very best to put up with you, who are enough to take fifty people's lives away, with perpetual propriety – and have hoped and hoped, and prayed and prayed, till my knees are not fit to be looked at – and now, after all, what has come of it? That I am to marry a boy with a red cord down his legs, and a crystal in his whip, and a pretty face that seems to come from his mamma's watch-pocket, and a very nice and gentle way of looking at a lady, as if he were quite capable, if he had the opportunity, of saying 'bo' to any goose on the other side of the river!"

"My dear, do you prefer bold ruffians, then, like the vagabond you were rescued from?"

"I don't know at all what I do prefer, Aunt Patch, unless it is just to be left to myself, and have nothing to say to any one."

"Why, Grace, that is the very thing you complained of in your sinful and ungrateful speech, just now! But do not disturb me with any more temper. I must take the opportunity, before the mail goes out, to tell your poor sick father how you have received his letter."

"Oh no, if you please not. You are quite mistaken, if you think that I thought of myself first. My dear father knows that I never would do that; and it would be quite vain to tell him so. Oh, my darling, darling father! – where are you now, and whatever are you doing?"

"Grace, you are becoming outrageous quite. You know quite well where your father is; and as to what he is doing, you know from his own letter that he is lying ill, and longing for you to attend upon him. And this is the way that you qualify yourself!"

"Somehow or other now – I do not mean to be wicked, aunt – but I don't think my father ever wrote that letter – I mean, at any rate, of his own free will. Somebody must have stood over him – I feel as if I really saw them – and made him say this, and that, and things that he never used to think of saying. Why, he never would have dreamed, when he was well, of telling me I was to marry anybody. He was so jealous of me, he could hardly bear any gentleman to dare to smile; and he used to make me promise to begin to let him know, five years before I thought of any one. And now for him to tell me to marry in a week – just as if he was putting down a silver-side to salt – and to marry a boy that he scarcely ever heard of, and never even introduced to me – he must have been, he cannot but have been, either wonderfully affected by the climate, or shackled down in a slave-driver's dungeon, until he had no idea what he was about."

"Have you finished, Grace, now? Is your violence over?"

"No; I have no violence; and it is not half over. But still, if you wish to say anything, I will do all I can to listen to it."

"You are most obliging. One would really think that I were seventeen, and you nearly seventy."

"Aunt Patch, you know that I am as good as nineteen; and instead of being seventy you are scarcely fifty-five."

"Grace, your memory is better about ages than about what you do not wish to hear of. And you do not wish to hear, with the common selfishness of the period, of the duty which is the most sacred of all, and at the same time the noblest privilege – the duty of self-sacrifice. What are your own little inclinations, petty conceits, and miserable jokes – jokes that are ever at deadly enmity with all deep religion – ah, what are they – you selfish and frivolous girl! – when set in the balance with a parent's life – and a parent whose life would have been in no danger but for his perfect devotion to you?"

"Aunt Patch, I never heard you speak of my father at all in that sort of way before. You generally talk of him as if he were careless, and worldly, and heterodox, most frivolous, and quite unregenerate. And now quite suddenly you find out all his value. What do you want me to do so much, Aunt Patch?"

"Don't look at me like that, child; you quite insult me. As if it could matter to me what you do – except for your own eternal welfare. If you think it the right thing to let your father die in a savage land, calling vainly for you, and buried among land-crabs without a drop of water – that is a matter for you hereafter to render your own account of. You have tired me, Grace. I am not so young as you are; and I have more feeling. I must lie down a little; you have so upset me. When you have recovered your proper frame of mind, perhaps you will kindly see that Margery has washed out the little brown teapot."

"To be sure, aunty, I am up to all her tricks. And I will just toast you a water-biscuit, and put a morsel of salt butter on it, scarcely so large as a little French bean. Go to sleep, aunty, for about an hour. I am getting into a very proper frame of mind; I can never stay very long out of it. May I go into the wood, just to think a little of my darling father's letter?"

"Yes, Grace; but not for more than half an hour, on condition that you speak to no one. You have made my head ache sadly. Leave your father's letter here."

"Oh no, if you please, let me take it with me. How can I think without it?"

Miss Patch was so sleepy that she said, "Very well; let me see it again when you have made the tea." Whereupon Grace, having beaten up the cushion of the good lady's only luxury, and laid her down softly, and kissed her forehead (for fear of having made it ache), stole her own chance for a little quiet thought, in a shelter of the woods more soft than thought. For the summer was coming with a stride of light; and bashful corners, full of lateness, tried to ease it off with moss.

In a nook of this kind, far from any path, and tenderly withdrawn into its own green rest, the lonely and bewildered girl stopped suddenly, and began to think. She drew forth the letter which had grieved her so; and she wondered that it had not grieved her more. It was not yet clear to her young frank mind that suspicion, like a mole, was at work in it. To get her thoughts better, and to feel some goodness, she sat upon a peaceful turret of new spear-grass, and spread her letter open, and began to cry. She knew that this was not at all the proper way to take things; and yet if any one had come, and preached to her, and proved it all, she could have made no other answer than to cry the more for it.

The beautiful light of the glancing day turned corners, and came round to her; the lovable joy of the many, many things which there is no time to notice, spread itself silently upon the air, or told itself only in fragrance; and the glossy young blades of grass stood up, and complacently measured their shadows.

Here lay Grace for a long sad hour, taking no heed of the things around her, however much they heeded her. The white windflower with its drooping bells, and the bluebell, and the harebell, and the pasque-flower – softest of all soft tints – likewise the delicate stitchwort, and the breath of the lingering primrose, and the white violet that outvies its sister (that sweet usurper of the coloured name) in fragrance and in purity; and hiding for its life, without any one to seek, the sensitive wood-sorrel; and, in and out, and behind them all, the cups, and the sceptres, and the balls of moss, and the shells and the combs of lichen – in the middle of the whole, this foolish maid had not one thought to throw to them. She ought to have sighed at their power of coming one after another for ever, whereas her own life was but a morning dew; but she failed to make any such reflection.

What she was thinking of she never could have told; except that she had a long letter on her lap, and could not bring her mind to it. And here in the hollow, when the warmth came round, of the evening fringed with cloudlets, she was fairer than any of the buds or flowers, and ever so much larger. But she could not be allowed to bloom like them.

"Oh, I beg pardon," cried an unseen stranger in a very clear, keen voice; "I fear I am intruding in some private grounds. I was making a short cut, which generally is a long one. If you will just show me how to get out again, I will get out with all speed, and thank you."

Grace looked around with surprise but no fear. She knew that the voice was a gentleman's; but until she got up, and looked up the little hollow, she could not see any one. "Please not to be frightened," said the gentleman again; "I deserve to be punished, perhaps, but not to that extent. I fancied that I knew every copse in the county. I have proved, and must suffer for, my ignorance."

As he spoke he came forward on a little turfy ledge, about thirty feet above her; and she saw that he looked at her with great surprise. She felt that she had been crying very sadly, and this might have made her eyes look strange. Quite as if by accident, she let her hair drop forward, for she could not bear to be so observed; and at that very moment there flowed a gleam of sunshine through it. She was the very painting of the picture in her father's room.

"Saints in heaven!" cried Hardenow, who never went further than this in amazement, "I have found Grace Oglander! Stop, if you please – I beseech you, stop!"

But Grace was so frightened, and so pledge-bound, that no adjuration stopped her. If Hardenow had only been less eager, there and then he might have made his bow, and introduced himself. But Gracie thought of the rabbit-man, and her promise, and her loneliness, and without looking back, she was round the corner, and not a ribbon left to trace her by. And now again if Hardenow had only been less eager, he might have caught the fair fugitive by following in her footsteps. But for such a simple course as that he was much too clever. Instead of running down at once to the spot where she had vanished, and thence giving chase, he must needs try a cross cut to intercept her. There were trees and bushes in the way, it was true, but he would very soon get through them; and to meet her face to face would be more dignified than to run after her.