Cripps, the carrier : a woodland tale

Front matter

SAMPSON

BY

TWO SHILLINGS|

Contents

Ruts vee

RATS

BooTs ON we

Chapter II. The Swing Of The Pickaxe

Tue baker’s boy felt that his luck was askew upon this day of his existence, for Carrier Cripps was vexed so much at this sudden demand for his sister that he never even thought of asking the boy to have a glass of home-brewed ale.

“Zak, what made you send the boy away?” Esther asked, when she came downstairs, with her bonnet and short cloak on. “Of course, I am very foolish; but he would have been some little company.”

“There, now, I never thought of it! I am doiled,a do believe, sometimes. Tramp with you to the Bar mysell, I wull. Sarve me right for a-doin’ of it.”

“Indeed, then, you won’t,” she answered firmly... “Thereis a hard day’s work for you, Zak, to-morrow, with all the ‘Christmas parcels, and your touch of rheumatics so bad last week.”

‘Why, bless the cheeld, I be as hearty as ever fe

“Of course you are, Zak; of course you are, and think nought of a sack of potatoes. But if you declare to come with me one step, backward is the only step I take.”

“Well, well,” said the Carrier, glad on the whole to escape a long walk and keep conscience clear; “ when you say a thing, Etty, what good is it? Round these here parts none would harm ’ee. And none of they furriners be about just now.”

“Good-night, Zak, good-night, dear,” cried Esther, to

shorten departure, for Cripps was a man of a slow turn of mind, and might go on for an hour or two; “I shall sleep there to-night, of course, and meet you at the Golden Cross to-morrow. When had I best be there?”

“Well, you know better than I do. It might be one o'clock, or it might be two, or it might be half-past three amost. All you have to do is this—to leave word at the bar with Sally Brown.”

“T shall do nothing of the sort,” she answered ; “I don’t like bars, and I don’t like Miss Brown. I shall look in the yard for the cart, brother.”

“You'll do pretty much as you like. That much a may be cock-sure of.” But before he could finish his exposition of his sister’s character, she was out of sight; and he dropped his grumble, and doubted his mind about letting her go. Nor that any one at all of the neighbourhood would hurt her; but that there had been much talk about a camp of dark-skinned people in Cowley Marsh, not long ago. Therefore he laid his palm flat from his eyebrows, to follow the distance further ; and seeing no more than the hedges of the lane (now growing in the cold wind naked) and the track of the lane (from wet mud slaking into light-coloured crustiness), without any figures, or sound, or shadow, or sense of life moving anywhere—he made for the best side of his cottage-door, and brightened up the firelight.

The weather had been for some few weeks in a good constitutional English state; that is to say, it had no settled tendency towards anything. Or at any rate, so it seemed tc people who took little heed of it. There had been a little rain, and then a little snow, and a touch of frost, and then a sample of fog, and so on: trying all varieties, to suit the British public. True Britons, however, had grumbled duly at each successive overture; so that the winter was now resolving henceforth only to please itself, And this determined will was in the wind, the air, and the earth itself, just when night began to fall on this dark day of December.

THE SWING OF THE PICKAXE. 9

As Esther turned the corner from the Beckley lane into the road, the broad coach road to Oxford, she met a wind that knew its mind coming over the crest of Shotover, a stern east wind that whistled sadly over the brown and barren fields, and bitterly piped in the roadway. To the chill of this blast the sere oak-leaves shivered in the dusk and rattled; the grey ash saplings bent their naked length to get away from it ; and the surly stubs of the hedge went to and fro to one another. The slimy dips of the path began to rib themselves, like the fronds of fern, and to shrink into wrinkles and sinewy knobs; while the broader puddles, though skirred by the breeze, found the network of ice veiling over them. This, as it crusted, began to be capable of a consistent quivering, with a frail infinitude of spikelets, crossing and yet carrying into one another. And the cold work (marred every now and then by the hurry of the wind that urged it) in the main was going on so fast, that the face of the water ceased to glisten, and instead of ruffling lifted, and instead of waving wavered. So that, as the surface trembled, any level eye might see little splinters (held as are the ribs and harl of feathers) spreading, and rising like stems of lace, and then with a smooth, crisp jostle sinking, as the wind flew over them, into the quavering consistence of a coverlet of ice.

Esther Cripps took little heed of these things, or of any other in the matter of weather, except to say to herself now and then how bitter cold the wind was, and that she feared it would turn to snow, and how she longed to be sitting with a cup of “ Aunt Exie’s” caudle in the snug room next to the bakehouse, or how glad she would be to get only as far as the first house of St. Clement’s, to see the lamps and the lights in the shops, and be quit of this dreary loneliness. For now it must be three market days since fearful rumours began to stir in several neighbouring villages, which made even strong men discontent with solitude towards nightfall ; and as for the women—just now poor Esther would rather not think of what they declared. It was all very well to pretend to doubt it while hanging the clothes out, or turning the mangle ; but as for laughing out here in the dark, and a mile away from the nearest house—Good Lord! How that white owl frightened her !

Being a sensible and brave girl, she forced her mind as

_well as she could into another channel, and lifted the cover of the basket in which she had some nice things for “ Aunt Exie,” and then she set off for a bold little run, until she was out of breath, and trembling at the sound of her own light feet. For though all the Crippses were known to be of a firm and resolute fibre, who could expect a young maid like this to tramp on like a Roman sentinel ?

And a lucky thing for her it was that she tried nothing of the sort, but glided along with her heart in her mouth, and her short skirt tucked up round her. Lucky also for her that the ground (which she so little heeded, and so wanted to get over) was in that early stage of freezing, or of drying to forestall frost, in which it deadens sound as much as the later stage enlivens it, otherwise it is doubtful whether she would have seen the Christmas-dressing of the shops in Oxford.

For, a little further on, she came, without so much as a cow in the road or a sheep in a field for company, te a dark narrow place, where the way hung over the verge of a stony hollow, an ancient pit which had once been worked as part of the quarries of Headington. This had long been of bad repute as a haunted and ill-omened place ; and even the Carrier himself, strong and resolute as he was, felt no shame in whispering when he passed by in the moonlight. And the name of the place was the “ Gipsy’s Grave.” Therefore, as Esther Cripps approached it, she was half inclined to wait and hide herself in a bush or gap until a cart or waggon should come down the hill behind her, or an honest dairyman whistling softly to reassure his shadow, or even a woman no braver than herself.

THE SWING OF THE PICKAXE. It

But neither any cart came near, nor any other kind of company, only the violence of the wind, and the keen increase of the frost-bite. So that the girl made up her mind to put the best foot foremost, and run through her terrors at such a pace that none of them could lay hold of her.

Through yards of darkness she skimmed the ground, in haste only to be rid of it, without looking forward, or over her shoulders, or anywhere, when she could help it. And now she was ready to laugh at herself and her stupid fears, as she caught through the trees a glimpse of the lights of Oxford, down in the low land, scarcely more than a mile and a half away from her. In the joy of relief she was ready to jump and pant without fear of the echoes, when suddenly something caught her ears.

This was not a thing at first to be at all afraid of, but only just enough to rouse a little curiosity. It seemed to be nothing more nor less than the steady stroke of a pickaxe. The sound came from the further corner of the deserted quarry, where a crest of soft and shingly rock overhung a briary thicket. Any person working there would be quite out of sight from the road, by reason of the bend of the holiow.

The blow of the tool came dull and heavy on the dark and frosty wind; and Esther almost made up her mind to run on, and take no heed of it. And so she would have done, no doubt, if she had not been a Cripps girl. But in this family firm and settled opinions had been handed down concerning the rights of property—the rights that overcome all wrongs, and outlive death. The brother Leviticus of Stow Wood had sown a piece of waste at the corner of the clevice with winter carrots for his herd of swine. The land being none of his thus far, his right sa to treat it was not established, and therefore likely to be attacked by any rapacious encroacher. Esther felt all such things keenly, and resolved to find out what was going on,

To this intent she gathered in the skirt of her frock and the fulling of her cloak, and fending the twigs from her eyes and bonnet, quietly slipped through a gap in the hedge. For she knew that a steep track, trodden by children in the blackberry season, led from this gap to the deep and tangled bottom of the quarry. With care and fear she went softly down, and followed the curve of the hollow.

The heavy sound of the pickaxe ceased, as she came near and nearer, and the muttering of rough voices made her shrink into a nook and listen.

“Tell ’ee, I did see zummat moving,” said a man, whom she could dimly make out on the beetling ridge above her, by the light of the clearing eastern sky ; “a zummat moving down yonner, I tell ’ee.”

“No patience, I han’t no patience with ’ee,” answered a taller man coming forward, and speaking with a guttural twang, as if the roof of his mouth were imperfect. “ Skeary Jem is your name and nature. Give me the pick if thee beest aveared. Is this job to be finished to-night, or not?”

The answer was only a growl or an oath, and the swing of the tool began again, while Esther's fright grew hot, and thumped in her heart, and made her throat swell. It was all she could do to keep quiet breath, and prevent herself from screaming; for something told her that she was watching a darker crime than theft of roots or robbery of a sheepfold.

In a short or a long time—she knew not which—as she still lay hid and dared not show her face above the gorsetuft, a sound of sliding and falling shale heavily shook her refuge. She drew herself closer, and prayed to the Lord, and clasped her hands before her eyes, and cowered, expecting to be killed at least. And then she peeped forth, to know what it was about. She never had harmed any mortal body ; why should she be frightened so?

In the catch of the breath which comes when sudden courage makes gulp at uncertainty, she lifted herself by

THE SWING OF THE PICKAXE. 13 a stiff old root, to know the very worst of it. Better almost to be killed and be done with, than bear the heart-pang of this terrible fear. And there she saw a thing that struck her so aback with amazement, that every timid sense was mute.

Whether the sky began to shed a hovering light, or the girl’s own eyes spread and bred a power of vision from their nervous dilation—at any rate, she saw in the darkness what she had not seen till now. It was the body of a young woman (such a body as herself might be), lying, only with white things round it, in the black corner, with gravel and earth and pieces of rock rolling down on it. There was nothing to frighten a sensible person now that the worst was known perhaps. Everybody must be buried at some time. Why should she be frightened so ?

However, Esther Cripps fell faint, and lay in that state long enough for tons of burying rock to fall, and secret buryers to depart,

Chapter III. Oakleaf Potatoes

“Or all slow people in this slow place, I am quite certain that there is none so slow as Cripps, the Carrier.”

This “hot spachs,” as the patient Zacchary would perhaps have called it, passed the lips of no less a person than old Squire Oglander. He, on the 2oth day of December (the day after that we began with), was hurrying up and down the long straight walk of his kitchen garden, and running every now and then to a post of vantage, from which he could look over the top of his beloved holly hedge, and make out some of the zigzags of the narrow lane from Beckley. A bitter black frost had now set in, and the Squire knew that if he wanted anything more fetched out of his ground, or anything new put into it, it might be weeks before he got another chance of doing it. So he made a good bustle, and stamped, and ran, and did all he could to arouse his men, who knew him too well to concern themselves about any of his menaces.

“T tell you we are all caught napping, Thomas. I tell you we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. The frost is an inch in the ground already. Artichokes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, even horse-radish for our Christmas beef—and upon my soul, a row of potatoes never even dug yet! Unless I am after you at every corner—well, I am blessed if I don’t see our keeping onions !”

OAKLEAF POTATOES. 15

“Now, measter, ’ee no call to be so grum! None of they things ’ll be a haporth the worse. The frost ’Il ony swaten ’em.”

“You zany, I know all your talk. Hold your tongue. Not a glass of beer will I send out, if this is all I get for it, Sweeten them, indeed! And when we want them, are we to dig them with mattocks, pray? Or do you thick-heads expect it to thaw to order, when the pot is bubbling? Stir your lazy legs, or I’ll throw every one of you on the workhouse the moment the first snow falls.”

The three men grinned at one another, and proceeded leisurely. They knew much better than the Squire himself what his gentle nature was, and that he always expiated a scolding with a jug of beer.

“Man and boy,” said the eldest of them, speaking below his breath, as if this tyranny had extinguished him > “in this here gearden have I worked, man and boy, for threescore year, and always gi’en satisfaction. Workuss! What would his father a’ said, to hear tell in this gearden of workuss? Workuss! Well, let un coom, if a will! Can’t be harder work, God knoweth.”

“Tummuss, Tummuss, you may say that,” said another lazy rascal, shaking his head, with his heel on his spade, and then wiping his forehead laboriously. “’Tis the sweat of our brow, Tummuss, none of ’em thinks on—but there, they was born to be driving of us!”

Squire Oglander made as if he heard them not; and then he hurried to the hedge again, and stood on the wall of the leaf-mould pit, and peered over the beard of hollies. And this time he spied in the distance Cripps, or at any rate the tilt of the Crippsian cart, jogging sedately to the rhythm of the feet of Dobbin.

“Hurrah !” cried the Squire, who was still as young in mind as if he had no body. “By George, we shall be just in time. Never mind what I said, my lads. I was a little bit cross, I know. Take out the crumbs from the bottom of

16 CRIES, LHL ACARI:

your trenches, and go two inches deeper. Our new potatoes are come at last! Mary, come out with a gallon of ale.”

Squire Oglander, having retired now from the army and all warfare, was warmly devoted to the arts of peace. Farming, planting, gardening, breeding, training of dogs, and so on— all of these quiet delights fell softly on a very active mind, when the vigour of the body began to fail. He loved his farm, and he loved his garden, and all his attempts at improvement, and nothing better than to point out his own mistakes to rash admirers. But where is the pleasure of showing things to strangers who know nothing? The old man’s grand delight of all was to astonish his own daughter, his only child, Grace Oglander.

This it was that made him work so hard at the present moment. He was determined to have his kitchen garden in first-rate winter order by the time his daughter should come home from a visit to her aunt at Cowley. Now this sister, Mrs. Fermitage, had promised to bring home their joint pet Gracie in time for the dinner at five o’clock that very day, and to dine there with them; so that it was needful to look alive, and to make quick step of everything. Moreover, this good Squire had some little insight (as behoves a farmer and a sportsman) into the ways and meaning of the weather of the neighbourhood. He knew as well as a short-tailed fieldmouse that a long frost was coming. ‘The sharp dry rustle of the upturned leaves of holly and of ivy, the heavy stoop of the sullen sky, the patches of spaded mould already browning with powdery crispness, the upward shivering look of the grass, and the loss of all gloss upon everything, and the shuddering rattle in the teeth of a man who opened his mouth to the wind at all—many other things than these, as well as all of them, were here; that any man (not blind, or deaf, or choked in citied ignorance) might fall to at once, and dig every root of his potatoes.

But the strange thing, in this present matter, was that Squire Oglander was bent not only on digging potatoes, but

OAKLEAF POTATOES. 17 also on planting them, this very day. Forsooth it was one of his fixed dates in the chronicles of the garden, that happen what might, or be the season whatsoever it chose to be, new potatoes and peas he would have by the last day of May, at the latest. And this without any ignoble resort to forcing-pit, hot-bed, or even cold frame; under the pure gaze of the sky, by that time they must be ready. Now, this may be easy at Ventnor, or Penzance, or even Bournemouth; but in the highlands of Oxfordshire it requires some skill and management. In the first place, both pea and potato must be of a kind that is ready to awake right early ; and then they must be humoured with a very choice place; and after that they must be shielded from the winter’s rages. If all these “musts” can be complied with, and several “ifs” are solved aright, the gardener (eager as well as patient) may hope to get pleasure from his early work.

Of all men there was none perhaps more capable of hoping than this good Squire Oglander. In his garden and his household, or among his friends and neighbours, or the world at large, he not only tried to see, but saw, the very best side of everything. When things fell out amiss, he always looked very wise, and shook nis head, and declared that he had predicted them ; and before very long he began to find out that they were not so bad as they might have been. His ruddy face, and blue eyes, and sometimes decidedly waggish nose, as well as his crisp white hair, and way of standing to be looked at, let everybody know that here was aman of no great pretension, yet true, and of kind and happy heart, and fit to be relied upon. Ten thousand such may be found in England; and they cannot be too many.

“Tnside and outside, all look alive !” cried this gentleman, running to and fro: “Gracie will be home; Miss Grace, I mean ; and not a bit of fire in the drawing-room grate! No Christmas-boxes for any of you sluts! Now, I did not mean that, Mary, as you might know. Inside the women, and outside the men—now, what is this paper for, my dear?”

Cc

“That there Cripps, sir, have a sent ’un in. He be gettin’ so pertikular !”

“Quite right. Quite right. Business is business. No man can be too particular. Let him sit down and have a pint of ale. He wants me to sign this paper, does he? Very well; tell him to come next week. My fingers are cramped with the wind. Tell Cripps—now, don’t you be in such a hurry, Mary; Cripps is not a marrying man.”

“As if I would touch him with a pair of tongs, sir! A Hookham to have a.Cripps, sir +a man who always smells as if he had been a-combing of a horse !”

“Ah, poor Mary, the grapes are sour. Tell bachelor Cripps to send in the bag. And bring me the little truckbasket, Mary; I dare say that will hold them. Just in time, they are only just in time. To-morrow would have been a day too late.”

The Squire was to pay a guinea for this bushel of early oakleaf potatoes, a sort that was warranted to beat the ashleaf by a fortnight, and to crop tenfold as much, The bag had been sent by the Henley coach from a nursery near Maidenhead, and left at the Black Horse in St. Clement’s, to be called for by the Beckley carrier.

“Stay now,” cried the Squire; “now I think of it we will unpack the bag in the brewery, Mary. They have had a fire there all the morning. And it will save making any mess in here. Miss Grace is coming, bless her heart! And she'll give it to me, if she finds any dirt.”

“ But, sir, if you please, Master Cripps now just is beginning of his pint of ale. And he never hurrieth over that x

“Well, we don’t want Cripps. We only want the bag. Jem will bring it into the brewery, if you want to sit with Cripps. Cripps is tired, I dare say. These young men’s legs are not fit for much. Stop—call old Thomas ; he’s the best, after all. If I want a thing done, I come back to the old folk, after all.”

“Well, sir, I don’t think you have any reason to say that.

OAKLEAF POTATOES. 19

Howsomever, here cometh Mr. Kale. Mr. Kale, if you please, you be wanted.”

Presently Thomas Kale, the man who had worked so long in the garden there, followed his master across the court, with the bag of potatoes on his back. The weight was a trifle, of course, being scarcely over half a hundredweight ;_ but Thomas was too old a hand to make too light of anything.

“T’ve knowed the time,” he said, setting down the sack on the head of an empty barrel, “when that there weight would have failed, you might say, to crook my little finger. Now, make so bold—do you know the raison?”

“Why, Thomas, we cannot expect to be always so young as we were once, you know.”

“Nout to do wi it—less nor nout. The raison lie all in the vittels, maister; the vittels is fallen from what they was.”

“Thomas, you give me no peace with your victuals. You must groan to the cook, not to me, about them. Now, cut the cord. Why, what has Cripps been about?”

The bag was made of a stout grey canvas, not so thick as sacking, and as the creases of the neck began to open, under the slackening cord, three or four red stripes were shown, such as are sometimes to be found in the neck of a leather mail-bag, when the postmaster has been in a hurry, and dropped his wax too plenteously. But the stripes in these creases were not dry and brittle, as of run sealing-wax, but clammy and damp, as if some thick fluid had oozed from dripping fingers.

“T don’t like the look of it,” cried the old Squire. “Cripps should be more careful. He has left the bag down at his brother the butcher’s. I am sure they never sent it out like this. Not that I am of a squeamish order, but still—good God! What is this that I see?”

With scarcely time for his cheeks to blanch, or his firm old hands to tremble, Squire Oglander took from the mouth ot the sack a coil of long bright golden hair. The brown shade of the potatoes beneath it set off its glistening beauty. He knew it at a glance; there was no such hair in all Oxfordshire but his Gracie’s. A piece of paper was roughly twisted in and out the shining wreath. This he spread in the hollow of his palm, and then put on his spectacles, and read by the waning light these words, “All you will ever see of her.”

Chapter IV. Cripps In A Quandary

WoRTH OGLANDER, now in his seventieth year, although he might be a trifle fat, was a truly hale and active man. His limbs were as sound as his conscience; and he was well contept with his life and age. He had seen a good deal of the world and of enemies, in the stirring times of war. But no wrong lay in the bottom of his heart, no harm ever done to any one, except that he had killed a few Frenchmen, perhaps, as all Englishmen used to be forced to do.

Moreover, he had what most folk now, of the very best kind, have almost outlived, a staunch and steadfast faith in the management of the world by its Maker. We are too clever now for all this, of course. But it must be allowed that this fine old faith bred courage, truth, and comfort.

“Whoever has played this trick with me,” said the Squire, as soon as he recovered himself, ‘is, to say the least of it, a blackguard. Even for a Christmas joke, it is carrying things a great deal too far. I have played, and been played, many practical jokes, when there was nothing else to do; in winterquarters, and such like. But this is beyond Thomas, ~run and fetch Cripps. I will get to the bottom of this, I am resolved.”

In a minute or two Master Cripps came in. His face was a little flushed, from the power of the compliments paid to Mary, but his eyes were quite firm, and his breeches and gaiters strictly under discipline of the legs inside them.

“Servant, sir,” he said, touching his forelock, nearly of the colour of clover hay; “all correct, I hope, Squire, safe and sound and in good condition. That’s how I deliver all goods, barring the will of the A’m eA he

“Tell me the meaning of this.” As he spoke Mr. Oglander held up the bright wreath of hair, and pointed to the red stains on the sack. Cripps, as behoved a slowminded man, stared at the hair, and the bag, and the Squire, the roof of the brewery, and all the tubs; ene then began feeling in his hat for orders.

“Cripps, are you dumb ; are you tipsy ; or what? Or are you too much ashamed of oarrsel Pe

“JT ain't done nort for to be ashamed of—me, nor my father avoore me.”

“Then will you tell me what this means? Are you going to keep me all night, for God’s sake?”

“ Squire, I never, I never see’d ’un. I know no more than a sto-un. I know no more than the dead, I do.”

“Where did you get the bag? Was it like this? Who gave it to you? Have you let it out of sight? Did you see anybody come near it?”