CRIPPS DRAWS THE CORK.
Any kind good-natured person, loving bright simplicity, would have
thought it a little treat to look round the Carrier's dwelling-room,
upon that Saturday evening, when he expected Mr. Overshute. Not that
Cripps himself was over-tidy, or too particular. He was so kindly
familiar now with hay, and straw, and bits of string, and chaff, and
chips, and promiscuous parcels, that on the whole he preferred a
litter to any exertions of broom or brush. But Esther, who ruled the
house at home, was the essence of quick neatness, and scorned all
comfort, unless it looked--as well as was--right comfortable. And now,
expecting so grand a guest, she had tucked up her sleeves, and stirred
her pretty arms to no small purpose.
The room was still a kitchen, and she had made no attempt to disguise
that much. But what can look better than a kitchen, clean, and bright,
and well supplied with the cheery tools of appetite. It was a
good-sized room, and very picturesque with snugness. Little corners,
in and out, gave play for light and shadow; the fireplace retired far
enough to well express itself; and the dresser had brass-handled
drawers, that seemed quietly nursing table-cloths. Well, above these,
upon lofty hooks, the chronicles of the present generation might be
read on cups. Zacchary headed the line, of course; and then--as
Genesis is ignored by grander generations--Exodus, and Leviticus (the
fount of much fine movement), and Numbers, and a great many more,
showed that the Carrier's father and mother had gladly baptized every
one.
In front of the fire sat the Carrier, with nearly all of his best
clothes on, and gazing at a warming-pan. He had been forbidden to eat
his supper, for fear of making a smell of it; and he had a great mind
to go to bed, and have some hot coals under him. For nearly five miles
of uphill work and laying his shoulder against the spokes, he had been
promising himself a rare good supper, and a pipe to follow; and now
where were they? In the far background. He had no idea of rebellion;
still that saucepan on the simmer made the most provoking movements.
Therefore he put up his feet upon a stump of oak (which had for
generations cooled down pots), and he turned with a shake of his head
toward the fire, and sniffed the sniff of Tantalus, and muttered--"Ah,
well! the Lord knoweth best!" and thought to himself that if ever
again he invited the quality to his house, he would wait till he had
his own quantity first.
Esther was quite in a flutter; although she was ready to deny it
stoutly, and to blush a bright red in doing so. To her, of course,
Justice Overshute was simply a great man, who must have the chair of
state, and the talk of restraint, and a clean dry hearth, and the
curtsy, and the best white apron of deference. To her it could make
not one jot of difference, that Mr. Overshute happened to be the most
intimate friend of some other gentleman, who never came near her,
except in dreams. Tush, she had the very greatest mind, when the house
was clean and tidy, to go and spend the evening with her dear friend
Mealy at the Anvil. But Zacchary would not hear of this; and how could
she go against Zacchary?
So she brought the grand chair, the arm-chair of yew-tree--the tree
that used to shade the graves of unrecorded Crippses--a chair of
deepest red complexion, countenanced with a cushion. The cushion was
but a little pad in the dark capacious hollow; suggesting to an
innocent mind, that a lean man had left his hat there, and a fat man
had sat down on it. But the mind of every Cripps yet known was
strictly reverential; and this was the curule chair, and even the
Olympian throne of Crippses.
Russel Overshute knocked at the door, in his usual quick and impetuous
way. In the main he was a gentleman; and he would have knocked at a
nobleman's door exactly as he did at the Carrier's. But all radical
theories, fine as they are, detract from gentle practice; and the
too-large-minded man, while young, takes a flying leap over small
niceties. He does not remember that poor men need more deference than
rich men, because they are not used to it. To put it more
plainly--Overshute knocked hard, and meant no harm by it.
"Come in, sir, and kindly welcome!" Cripps began, as he showed him in;
"plaize to take this chair, your Worship. Never mind your boots; Lor'
bless us! the mud of three counties cometh here."
"Then it goes away again very quickly! Miss Cripps, how are you? May I
shake hands?"
Esther, who had been shrinking into the shade of the clock and the
dresser, came forward with a brave bright blush, and offered her hand,
as a lady might. Russel Overshute took it kindly, and bowed to her
curtsy, and smiled at her. In an honest manly way, he admired pretty
Esther.
"Master Cripps, you are too bad; and your sister in the conspiracy
too! I do believe that your mind is set to make me as tipsy as a king
to-night!"
"They little things!" said the Carrier, pointing to the old oak table,
where a bottle of grand old whiskey shone with the reflected gleam of
lemons, and glasses danced in the firelight--"they little things, sir,
was never set for so good a gentleman afore, nor a one to do such
honour to un. But they might be worse, sir, they might be worse, to
spake their simple due of un. And how is poor Squire to-night, your
Worship?"
"Well, he is about as usual. Nothing seems to move him much. He sits
in his old chair, and listens for a step that never comes. But his
patience is wonderful. It ought to be a lesson to us; and I hope it
has been one to me. He trusts in the Lord, Cripps, as strongly as
ever. I fear I should have given up that long ago, if I were laid on
my back as he is."
"Young folk," answered Cripps, as he drew the cork--"meaning no
disrespect to you, sir--when they encounters trouble, is like a young
horse a-coming to the foot of a hill for the fust time wi' a heavy
load. He feeleth the collar beginning to press, and he tosseth his
head, and that maketh un worse. He beginneth to get into fret and
fume, and he shaketh his legs with anger, and he turneth his head and
foameth a bit, and champeth, to ax the maning o' it. And then you can
judge what the stuff of him is. If he be bad stuff, he throweth them
back, and tilteth up his loins, and spraddleth. But if he hath good
stuff, he throweth out his chest, and putteth the fire into his eyes,
and closeth his nostrils, and gathereth his legs, and straineth his
muscles like a bowstring. But be he as good as a wool, he longeth to
see over the top of that there hill, afore he be half-way up it."
"Well, Cripps, I have done that, I confess. I have longed to see over
the top of the hill; and Heaven only knows where that top is! But as
sure as we sit here and drink this glass of punch to your sister's
health, and to yours, good Carrier, so surely shall our dear old
friend receive the reward of his faith and courage; whether in this
world or the next!"
"Thank 'ee kindly, sir. Etty, is that the best sort of curtsy they
teaches now? Now, don't blush, child, but make a betterer. But as to
what your Worship was a-saying of, I virtually hopes a may come to
pass in this world we be living in. Otherwise, maybe, us never may
know on it, the kingdom of Heaven being such a size."
"Cripps, I believe it will be in this world. And I hope that I am on
the straight road now towards making out some part of it. You have
told your sister all I told you at Brasenose this morning according to
my directions? Very well, then; I may begin again at the point where I
left off with you. Where did I break it? I almost forget."
"With the man's big thumb in the mouth of the cheeld, while you was
a-looking at him, sir; and the wind and the rain blowing furious."
"Ah yes, I remember; and so they were. I thought that the crest of the
hedge would fall over, and bury the whole of us out of the way. And
when the poor boy had kicked out his convulsions, and fallen into a
senseless sleep, the rough man turned on me savagely, as if I could
have prevented it. 'A pretty doctor you be!' he exclaimed. But I took
the upper hand of him. 'Stand back there!' I said; and I lifted the
child (expecting him to strike me all the while), and placed the poor
little fellow on my horse, and managed to get up into my saddle before
the wind blew him off again. 'Now lead the way to your home,' I said.
And muttering something, he set off.
"He strode along at such a pace that, having to manage both child and
horse, it was all I could do to keep up with him. But I kept him in
sight till he came to a common, and there he struck sharply away to
the right. By the light of the wind and the rain, and a star that
twinkled where the storm was lifting, I followed him, perhaps for half
a mile, through a narrow track, in and out furze and bramble. At last
he turned suddenly round a corner, and a shadow fell behind him--his
own shadow thrown by a gusty gleam of fire. Cantelupe--that is my
horse, Miss Esther--has not learned to stand fire yet, and he shied at
the light, and set off through the furze, as if with the hounds in
full cry before him. We were very lucky not to break our necks, going
headlong in the dark among rabbit-holes. I thought that I must have
dropped the child, as the best thing to be done for him; but the
shaking revived him, and he clung to me.
"I got my horse under command at last; but we must have gone half a
mile anywhere, and to find the way back seemed a hopeless task. But
the quick-witted people (who knew what had happened, and what was
likely to come of it) saved me miles of roundabout by a very simple
expedient. They hoisted from time to time a torch of dry furze blazing
upon a pole; and though the light flared and went out on the wind, by
the quick repetition they guided me. In the cold and the wet, it
rejoiced my heart to think of a good fire somewhere."
"Etty, stir the fire up," the hospitable Cripps interrupted. "His
Worship hath shivers, to think of it. When a man, or, beg pardon, a
gentleman, feeleth the small of his back go creeping, he needeth good
fire to come up his legs, and a hot summat to go down him. Etty, be
quick with the water now."
"Cripps, Cripps, Carrier Cripps! do you want to have me spilled on the
road to-night? I am trying to tell things in proper order. But how can
I do it, if you go on so? However, as I was beginning to say,
Cantelupe, and the child, and I, fetched back to the place at last,
where the flash of light had started us. And we saw, not a flash, but
a glow this time, a steadfast body of cheerful fire, with pots and
cauldrons over it. So well had the spot been chosen, in the lee of
ground and growth, that the ash of the fire lay round the embers, as
still as the beard of an oyster; while thicket and tree but a few
yards off were threshing in the wind and wailing. Behind this fire,
and under a rick-cloth sloping from a sandstone crest, women and
children, and one or two men, sat as happy and snug as could be: dry,
and warm, and ready for supper, and pleased with the wind and the rain
outside, which improved their comfort and appetite. And now and then
the children seemed to be pulling at an important woman, to hurry her,
perhaps, in her cookery.
"But while I was watching them, keeping my horse on the verge of light
and shadow, a woman, quite different from the rest, came out of the
darkness after me. Heedless of weather, and reckless of self, she had
been seeking for me, or rather for my little burden. Her hair was
steeped with the drenching rain, for she wore no hat or bonnet; and
her dark clothes hung on the lines of her figure, as women hate to let
them do. Her eyes and face I could not see because of the way the
light fell; but I seemed to know her none the less.
"While I gazed in doubt, my little fellow slipped like an eel from my
clasp and the saddle; and almost before I could tell where he
was--there he was in the arms of his mother! Wonders of love now began
to go on; and it struck me that I was one too many in a scene of that
sort; and I turned my good horse, to be off and away. But the woman
called out, and a man laid hold of my bridle, and took his hat off,
when, with the usual impulse of a stopped Briton, I was going to
strike at him. I saw that it was my good friend of the ditch, and I
came to parley with him.
"What with his scarcity of manners, and of polished language, and
worst of all his want of palate, I found it hard, with so much wind
blowing out here all around us, to understand his meaning. This was
rude of me to the last degree, for the queerly-voiced man was doing no
less than inviting me, with all his heart, to an uncommonly good
dinner!"