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CRIPPS, THE CARRIER.
A WOODLAND TALE.
by
RICHARD DODDRIDGE BLACKMORE,
Author of "Lorna Doone," "Alice Lorraine," etc.
[Greek: ar estin hêmin logidion gnômên echon,
humn men autôn ouchi dexiôteron,
kômpsdias de photikês sophôteron;]
AR. VESP. 64.
New Edition
London:
Sampson Low, Marston & Company, Limited,
St. Dunstan's House,
Fetter Lane, Fleet Street, E.C.
1892.
[All rights reserved.]
* * * * * *
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
LORNA DOONE.
(_Illustrated, édition de luxe, parchment, 35s.; plainer
bindings, 31s. 6d., 21s., and 7s. 6d._)
ALICE LORRAINE.
CLARA VAUGHAN.
CRADOCK NOWELL,
CRIPPS, THE CARRIER.
MARY ANERLEY.
EREMA: or, My Father's Sin.
CHRISTOWELL: A Dartmoor Tale.
TOMMY UPMORE.
SPRINGHAVEN.
KIT AND KITTY.
LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & COMPANY, LIMITED.
FETTER LANE. FLEET STREET, E.C.
* * * * * *
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY 1
II. THE SWING OF THE PICKAXE 7
III. OAKLEAF POTATOES 14
IV. CRIPPS IN A QUANDARY 21
V. A RIDE THROUGH THE SNOW 24
VI. THE PUBLIC OF THE "PUBLIC" 30
VII. THE BEST FOOT FOREMOST 37
VIII. BALDERDASH 43
IX. CRIPPS IN AFFLICTION 50
X. ALL DEAD AGAINST HIM 55
XI. KNOCKER VERSUS BELL-PULL 60
XII. MR. JOHN SMITH 68
XIII. MR. SMITH IS ACTIVE 74
XIV. SO IS MR. SHARP 79
XV. A SPOTTED DOG 85
XVI. A GRAND SMOCK-FROCK 91
XVII. INSTALLED AT BRASENOSE 98
XVIII. A FLASH OF LIGHT 104
XIX. A STORMY NIGHT 110
XX. CRIPPS DRAWS THE CORK 120
XXI. CINNAMINTA 127
XXII. A DELICATE SUBJECT 132
XXIII. QUITE ANOTHER PAIR OF SOCKS! 141
XXIV. SUO SIBI BACULO 149
XXV. MISS PATCH 157
XXVI. RUTS 164
XXVII. RATS 173
XXVIII. BOOTS ON 180
XXIX. A SPIDER'S DINNER-PARTY 190
XXX. THE FIRE-BELL 198
XXXI. THROW PHYSIC TO THE DOGS 206
XXXII. CRIPPS ON CELIBACY 214
XXXIII. KIT 223
XXXIV. A WOOLHOPIAN 230
XXXV. NIGHTINGALES 237
XXXVI. MAY MORN 242
XXXVII. MAY-DAY 248
XXXVIII. THE DIGNITY OF THE FAMILY 259
XXXIX. A TOMBSTONE 267
XL. LET ME OUT 276
XLI. REASON AND UNREASON 284
XLII. MEETING THE COACH 291
XLIII. THE MOTIVE 300
XLIV. THE MANNER 307
XLV. THE POSITION 313
XLVI. IN THE MESHES 324
XLVII. COMBINED WISDOM 335
XLVIII. MASCULINE ERROR 342
XLIX. PROMETHEUS VINCTUS 351
L. FEMININE ERROR 361
LI. UNFILIAL 367
LII. UNPATERNAL 375
LIII. "THIS WILL DO" 386
LIV. CRIPPS BRINGS HOME THE CROWN 391
LV. SMITH TO THE RESCUE 402
LVI. FATAL ACCIDENT TO THE CARRIER 410
CRIPPS, THE CARRIER.
CHAPTER I.
THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY.
The little village of Beckley lies, or rather lay many years ago, in
the quiet embrace of old Stow Wood, well known to every Oxford man who
loves the horn or fusil. This wood or forest (now broken up into many
straggling copses) spread in the olden time across the main breadth of
the highland to the north of Headington, between the valley of the
Cherwell and the bogs of Otmoor. Beckley itself, though once
approached by the Roman road from Alchester, must for many a century
have nursed its rural quietude, withdrawn as it was from the
stage-waggon track from High Wycombe to Chipping Norton, through
Wheatley, Islip, and Bletchingdon, and lying in a tangle of narrow
lanes leading only to one another. So Beckley took that cheerful view
of life which enabled the fox to disdain the blandishments of the
vintage, and prided itself on its happy seclusion and untutored
honesty.
But as all sons of Adam must have something or other to say to the
rest, and especially to his daughters, this little village carried on
some commerce with the outer world; and did it through a carrier.
The name of this excellent man was Cripps; and the Carrier's mantle,
or woolsey coat, had descended on this particular Cripps from many
generations. All the Cripps family had a habit of adding largely to
their number in every generation. In this they resembled most other
families which have to fight the world, and therefore recruit their
forces zealously; but in one great point they were very distinct--they
agreed among one another. And ever since roads were made, or rather
lanes began trying to make themselves, one great tradition had
confirmed the dynasty of Crippses.
This was that the eldest son should take the carrying business; the
second son (upon first avoidance) should have the baker's shop in
Oxford over against old Balliol College; the third should have the
queer old swine-farm in the heart of Stow Forest; the fourth should be
the butcher of Beckley, and the fifth its shoemaker. If ever it
pleased the Lord to proceed with the masculine fork of the family (as
had happened several times), the sixth boy and the rest were expected
to start on their travels, when big enough. As for the girls, the
Carrier, being the head of the family, and holding the house and the
stable and cart, was bound to take the maids, one by one, to and fro
under his tilt twice a week, till the public fell in love with them.
Now, so many things come cross and across in the countless ins and
outs of life, that even the laws of the Crippses failed sometimes, in
some jot or tittle. Still there they stuck, and strong cause was
needed ere they could be departed from. Of course the side-shoots of
the family (shoemakers' sons, and so on) were not to be bound by this
great code, however ambitious to be so. To deal with such rovers is
not our duty. Our privilege is to trace the strict succession of the
Crippses, the deeds of the Carrier now on the throne and his second
best brother, the baker, with a little side-peep at the man on the
farm, and a shy desire to be very delicate to the last unmarried
"female."
The present head of the family, Zacchary Cripps, the Beckley carrier,
under the laws of time (which are even stricter than the Cripps'
code), was crossing the ridge of manhood towards the western side of
forty, without providing the due successor to the ancestral
driving-board. Public opinion was already beginning to exclaim at him;
and the man who kept the chandler's shop, with a large small family to
maintain, was threatening to make the most of this, and set up his own
eldest son on the road; though "dot and carry one" was all he knew
about the business. Zacchary was not a likely man to be at all upset
by this; but rather one of a tarrying order, as his name might
indicate.
Truly intelligent families living round about the city of Oxford had,
and even to this day have, a habit of naming their male babies after
the books of the Bible, in their just canonical sequence; while
infants of the better sex are baptized into the Apocrypha, or even the
Epistles. So that Zacchary should have been "Genesis," only his father
had suffered such pangs of mind at being cut down, by the
ever-strengthening curtness of British diction, into "Jenny Cripps,"
that he laid his thumb to the New Testament when his first man-child
was born to him, and finding a father in like case, quite relieved of
responsibility, took it for a good sign, and applied his name
triumphantly.
But though the eldest born was thus transferred into the New
Testament, the second son reverted to the proper dispensation; and the
one who went into the baker's shop was Exodus, as he ought to be. The
children of the former Exodus were turned out testamentarily, save
those who were needed to carry the bread out till their cousin's boys
should be big enough.
All of these doings were right enough, and everybody approved of them.
Leviticus Cripps was the lord of the swine, and Numbers bore the
cleaver, while Deuteronomy stuck to his last, when the public-house
could spare him. There was only one more brother of the dominant
generation, whose name was "Pentachook," for thus they pronounced the
collective eponym, and he had been compendiously kicked abroad, to
seek his own fortune, right early.
But as for the daughters (who took their names from the best women of
the Apocrypha, and sat up successively under the tilt until they were
disposed of), for the moment it is enough to say that all except one
were now forth and settled. Some married farmers, some married
tradesmen, one took a miller's eldest son, one had a gentleman more or
less, but all with expectations. Only the youngest was still in the
tilt, a very pretty girl called Esther.
All Beckley declared that Esther's heart had been touched by a College
lad, who came some five years since to lodge with Zacchary for the
long vacation, and was waited on by this young girl, supposed to be
then unripe for dreaming of the tender sentiment. That a girl of only
fifteen summers should allow her thoughts to stray, contrary to all
common sense and her duty to her betters, for no other reason (to
anybody's knowledge) than that a young man ate and drank with less
noise than the Crippses, and went on about the moonlight and the
stars, and the rubbishy things in the hedges--that a child like that
should know no better than to mix what a gentleman said with his inner
meaning--put it right or left, it showed that something was amiss with
her. However, the women would say no more until it was pulled out of
them. To mix or meddle with the Crippses was like putting one's
fingers into a steel trap.
With female opinion in this condition, and eager to catch at anything,
Mrs. Exodus Cripps, in Oxford, was confined rather suddenly. She had
kneaded a batch of two sacks of flour, to put it to rise for the
morning, and her husband (who should not have let her do it) was
smoking a pipe, and exciting her. Nevertheless, it would not have
harmed her (as both the doctor and the midwife said) if only she had
kept herself from arguing while about it. But, somehow or other, her
husband said a thing she could not agree with, and the strength of her
reason went the other way, and it served him right that he had to rush
off in his slippers to the night-bell.
On the next day, although things were quite brought round, and the
world was the richer by the addition of another rational animal, Mr.
Exodus sent up the crumpet-boy all the way from Broad Street in Oxford
to Beckley, to beg and implore Miss Esther Cripps to come down and
attend to the caudle. And the crumpet-boy, being short of breath,
became so full of power that the Carrier scarcely knew what to do in
the teeth of so urgent a message. For he had made quite a pet of his
youngest sister, and the twenty years of age betwixt them stopped the
gap of rivalry. It was getting quite late in the afternoon when the
crumpet-boy knocked at the Carrier's door, because he had met upon
Magdalen Bridge a boy who owed him twopence; and eager as he was to
fulfil his duty, a sense of justice to himself compelled him to do his
best to get it. His knowledge of the world was increased by the
failure of this Utopian vision, for the other boy offered to toss him
"double or quits," and having no specie, borrowed poor Crumpy's last
penny to do it; then, being defeated in the issue, he cast the young
baker's cap over the bridge, and made off at fine speed with his coin
of the realm. What other thing could Crumpy do than attempt to outvie
his activity? In a word, he chased him as far as Carfax, with
well-winged feet and sad labour of lungs, but Mercury laughed at
Astræa, and Crumpy had a very distant view of fivepence. Recording a
highly vindictive vow, he scratched his bare head, and set forth
again, being further from Beckley than at his first start.
It certainly was an unlucky thing that the day of the week should be
Tuesday--Tuesday, the 19th of December, 1837. For Zacchary always had
to make his rounds on a Wednesday and a Saturday, and if he were to
drive his poor old Dobbin into Oxford on a Tuesday evening, how could
he get through his business to-morrow? For Dobbin insisted on a day in
stable whenever he had been in Oxford. He was full of the air of the
laziest place, and perhaps the most delightful, in the world. He
despised all the horses of low agriculture after that inspiration, and
he sighed out sweet grunts at the colour of his straw, instead of
getting up the next morning.
Zacchary Cripps was a thoughtful man, as well as a very kind-hearted
one. In the crown of his hat he always carried a monthly calendar
gummed on cardboard, and opposite almost every day he had dots, or
round O's, or crosses. Each of these to his very steady mind meant
something not to be neglected; and being (as time went) a pretty fair
scholar--ere School Boards destroyed true scholarship--with the help
of his horse he could make out nearly every place he had to call at.
So now he looked at the crumpet-boy, to receive and absorb his
excitement, and then he turned to young Esther, and let her speak
first, as she always liked to do.
"Oh, please to go back quite as fast as you can," said Esther to the
Crumpy, "and say that I shall be there before you; or, at any rate, as
soon as you are. And, Crumpy, there ought to be something for you.
Dear Zak, have you got twopence?"
"Not I," said the Carrier, "and if I had, it would do him a deal more
harm than good. Run away down the hill, my lad, and you come to me at
the Golden Cross, perhaps as soon as Saturday, and I'll look in my bag
for a halfpenny. Run away, boy; run away, or the bogies will be after
you."