CRIPPS IN AFFLICTION.
"Confound that Cripps!" young Overshute cried, with irritation getting
the better of his larger elements; while the Squire slowly awoke and
stared, and rubbed his gray eyelashes, and said that he really was
almost falling off, and he ought to be quite ashamed of himself. Then
he begged his visitor's pardon for bad manners, and asked what the
matter was. "Sir, it is only that fool Cripps," said the young man,
still in vexation, and signing to Mary to go, and to shut the door.
"Some trumpery parcel, of course. They might have let you rest for a
minute or two."
"No, sir, no; if you plaize, sir, no!" cried Mary, advancing with her
hands up. "Maister Cripps have seen something terrible, and he hath
come straight to his Worship. He be that out of breath that he was
aforced to lay hold of me, before he could stand a'most! He must have
met them sheep-stealers!"
"Sheep-stealing again!" said Mr. Oglander, who was an active
magistrate. "Well, let him come in. I have troubles of my own; but I
must attend to my duty."
"Let me attend to it," interposed the other, being also one of the
"great unpaid." "You must not be pestered with such things now. Try to
get some little rest while I attend to this Cripps affair."
"I am much obliged to you," answered the Squire, rising, and looking
wide-awake; "but I will hear what he has to say myself. Of course, I
shall be too glad of your aid if you are not in a hurry."
Mr. Overshute knew that this fine old Justice, although so good in the
main, was not entirely free from foibles, of which there was none more
conspicuous than a keen and resolute jealousy if any brother
magistrate dared to meddle with Beckley matters. Therefore Russel for
the time withdrew, but promised to return in half an hour, not only
for the sake of consulting with the Squire, but also because he
suspected that Cripps might be come on an errand different from what
Mary had imagined.
Meanwhile, the Carrier could hardly be kept from bursting in
head-foremost. Betty, the cook, laid hold of him in the passage, while
he was short of breath; but he pushed at even her, although he ought
to have known better manners. Betty was also in a state of mind at
having cooked no dinner worth speaking of since Tuesday; and Cripps,
if his wits had been about him, must have yielded space and bowed.
Betty, however, was nearly as wide, and a great deal thicker than he
was; and she spread forth two great arms that might have stopped even
Dobbin with a load downhill.
At last the signal was passed that Cripps might now come on, and tell
his tale; and he felt as if he should have served them right by
refusing to say anything. But when he saw the Squire's jovial face
drawn thin with misery, and his sturdy form unlike itself, and the
soft puzzled manner in lieu of the old distinct demand to know
everything, Zacchary Cripps came forward gently, and thought of what
he had to tell, with fear.
"What is it, my good fellow?" asked the Squire, perceiving his
hesitation. "Nothing amiss with your household, I sincerely hope, my
friend? You are a fortunate man in one thing--you have had no children
yet."
"Ay, ay; your Worship is right enough there. The Lord lends they, and
He takes them away. And the taking be worse than the giving was good."
"Now, Master Cripps, we must not talk so. All is meant for the best, I
doubt."
"Her may be. Her may be," Cripps replied. "The Lord is the one to
pronounce upon that, knowing His own maning best. But He do give very
hard measure some time to them as have never desarved it. Now, there
be your poor Miss Grace, for instance. As nice a young lady as ever
lived; the purtiest ever come out of a bed; that humble, too, and
gracious always, that 'Cripps,' she would say--nay 'Master
Cripps'--she always give me my proper title, even on a dirty linen
day--'Master Cripps,' her always said, 'let me mark it off, in your
hat, for you'--no matter whether it was my best hat, or the one with
the grease come through--'Master Cripps,' she always say, 'let me mark
it out for you.'"
"Very well, Cripps. I know all that. It is nothing to what my Grace
was. And I hope, with God's blessing, she will do it again. But what
is it you are so full of, Cripps?"
The Carrier felt in the crown of his hat, and then inside the lining;
as if he had something entered there, to help him in this predicament.
And then he turned away, to wipe--as if the weather was very wet--the
drops of the hedge from the daze of his eyes; and after that he could
not help himself, but out with everything.
"I knows where Miss Gracie be," he began with a little defiance, as
if, after all, it was nothing to him, but a thing that he might have a
bet about. "I knows where our Miss Gracie lies--dead and cold--dead
and cold--without no coffin, nor a winding-sheet--the purty crature,
the purty crature--there, what a fool I be, good Lord!"
Master Cripps, at the picture himself had drawn, was taken with a
short fit of sobs, and turned away, partly to hunt for his "kercher,"
and partly to shun the poor Squire's eyes. Mr. Oglander slowly laid
down the pen, which he had taken for notes of a case, and standing as
firm as his own great oak-tree (famous in that neighbourhood), gave no
sign of the shock, except in the colour of his face, and the
brightness of his gaze.
"Go on, Cripps, as soon as you can," he said in a calm and gentle
voice. "Try not to keep me waiting, Cripps."
"I be trying; I be trying all I knows. The blessed angel be dead and
buried, close to Tickuss's tatie crop, in the corner of bramble
quarry. At least, I mean Tickuss's taties was there; but he dug them a
fortnight, come Monday, he did."
"The corner of the 'Gipsy's Grave,' as they call it. Who found it? How
do you know it?"
"Esther was there. She seed the whole of it. Before the snow
come--last Tuesday night."
"Tuesday night! Ah, Tuesday night!"--for the moment, the old man had
lost his clearness. "It can't have been Tuesday night--it was
Wednesday when I rode down to my sister's. Cripps, your sister must
have dreamed it. My darling was then at her aunt's, quite safe. You
have frightened me for nothing, Cripps."
"I am glad with all my heart," cried Zacchary; "I am quite sure it
were Tuesday night, because of Mrs. Exie. And your Worship knows best
of the days, no doubt. Thank the Lord for all His mercies! Well,
seeing now it were somebody else, in no ways particular, and perhaps
one of them gipsy girls as took the fever to Cowley, if your Worship
will take your pen again, I will tell you all as Esther seed:--Two men
with a pickaxe working, where the stone overhangeth so, and the corpse
of a nice young woman laid for the stone to bury it natural. No harm
at all in the world, when you come to think, being nought of a
Christian body. And they let go the rock, and it come down over, to
save all infection. Lord, what a turn that Etty gived me, all about a
trifle!" The Carrier wiped his forehead, and smiled. "And won't I give
it well to her?"
"Poor girl! It is no trifle, Cripps, whoever it may have been. But
stop--I am all abroad. It was Tuesday afternoon when my poor darling
left Mrs. Fermitage. And to the quarry, across the fields, from the
way she would come, is not half a mile--half a mile of fields and
hedgerows---- Oh, Cripps, it was my daughter!"
"Her maight a' been, sure enough," said Cripps, in whom the reflective
vein, for the moment, had crossed the sentimental--"sure enough, her
maight a' been. A pasture meadow, and a field of rape, and Gibbs's
turnips, and then a fallow, and then into Tickuss's taties--half an
hour maight a' done the carrying--and consarning of the rest--your
Worship, now when did she leave the lady? Can you count the time of
it?"
"Zacchary now, the will of the Lord be done, without calculation! My
grave is all I care to count on, if my Grace lies buried so. But
before I go to it, please God, I will find out who has done it!"