RUTS.
There are few things more interesting than ruts; regarded at the
proper time, and in the proper manner. The artists, who show us so
many things unheeded by our duller selves, have dwelled on this
subject minutely, and shown their appreciation of a few good ruts. But
they are a little inclined sometimes to mark them too distinctly,
scarcely making due allowance for the vast diversity of wheels, as
well as their many caprices of wagging, according to the state of
their washers, the tug of the horse, and their own wearing, and a host
of other things. Each rut moreover has a voice of its own; not only in
its first formation, but at every period of depression in the muggy
weather, or rough rebellion in a fine black frost, and above all other
times in the loose insurrection of a thaw. There always is a bit of
something hard and something soft in it; jags that contradict all
things with a jerk; and deep subsidence, soft as flattery.
There scarcely could be a finer sample of ruts than was afforded by a
narrow lane, or timber-track, at the extreme north-western outskirt of
Stow Forest. Everything here was favourable to the very finest growth
of ruts. The road had once been made, which is a necessary foundation
for any masterpiece of rut-work; it then had been left to maintain
itself, which encourages wholesome development. Another great
advantage was that the hard uniformity of straight lines had no chance
here of prevailing. For though the course was not so crooked, as in
some lanes it may have been, neither was there hedge, or rail, or
other mean constriction; yet some fine old trees insisted now and
then, from either side, upon their own grand right of way, and
stretched great arms that would sweep any driver, or horseman,
backward from his seat, unless he steered so as to double them.
Now therefore to one of these corners came, from out the thicket of
underwood, a stout man with a crafty slouch, and a wary and suspicious
glance. He had thrown a sack over his long white smock, whether to
save it from brambles, or to cover its glare in the shady wood; for
his general aspect was that of a man who likes to see all things, but
not to be seen. And now as he stooped to examine the ruts at a point
where they clearly defined themselves, either from habit, or for
special reason, he kept as far back by the briary ditch as he could
without loss of near insight.
This man, being a member of the great Cripps race--whether worthy, or
not, of that staunch lineal excellence--had an hereditary perception
of the right way to examine a rut. It would have been easy enough,
perhaps, in a lane of little traffic, to judge whether anything lately
had passed, with the weather and ground as usual. But to-day--the day
after what has been told of--both weather and ground had just taken a
turn, as abrupt as if both were feminine. The smile of soft spring was
changed into a frown, and the glad young buoyancy of the earth into a
stiff sort of feeling, not frozen or crisp, but as happens to a man
when a shiver of ague vibrates through a genial perspiration. To put
it more clearly, the wind had chopped round to the east, and was
blowing keenly--a masterful, strongly pronounced, and busily energetic
east wind, as superior to hypocrisy as it was to all claims of mercy.
At the sound and the feel of its vehement sweep, surprise and alarm
ran through the wood; and the nestling-places of the sun ruffled up
like a hen that calls her chicks to her. The foremost of the buds of
the tall trees shook; not as they shake to a west wind, but with a
sense of standing naked; the twigs that carried them flattened
upwards, having lost all pleasure; the branches, instead of bowing
kindly (as they do to any other wind), also went upward, with a stiff
cold back, and a hatred at being treated so. Many and many a little
leaf, still snug in its own overcoat, shrunk back, and preferred to
defer all the joys of the sky, if this were a sample of them. And many
and many a big leaf (thrust, without any voice of its own, on the
world) had no chance of sighing yet, but whistled on the wind, and
felt it piping through its fluted heart; and knowing what a
liver-coloured selvage must come round its green, bewailed the hour
that coaxed it forth from the notched, and tattered, and cast-off
frizzle, dancing by this time the wind knows where.
Because the east wind does what no other wind of the welkin ever does.
It does not come from the good sky downward, bringing higher breath to
us; nor even on the level of the ancient things, spreading average
movement. This alone of all winds strikes from the face of the good
earth upward, sweeping the blush from the skin of the land, and
wrinkling all who live thereon. That is the time when the very best
man finds little to rejoice in; unless it be a fire of seasoned logs,
or his own contrariety; the fur of all animals (being their temper)
moves away and crawls on them; and even bland dogs and sweet horses
feel each several hair at issue with their well-brushed conscience.
All of that may be true; and yet there may be so many exceptions. At
any rate, Master Leviticus Cripps looked none the worse for the whole
of it. His cheeks were of richly varied fibre, like a new-shelled
kidney-bean; his mouth (of a very considerable size) looked
comfortable and not hungry; and all around him there was an influence
tending to intimate that he had dined.
For that he did not care as he should. He was not a man who allowed
his dinner to modify his character. The best streaky bacon and three
new-laid eggs had nurtured and manured his outer man, but failed to
improve him inwardly. Even the expression of his face was very
slightly mollified by a first-rate meal; though some of the corners
looked lubricated.
"Hath a been by again, or hath a not?" whispered Tickuss to himself,
as he stared at a tangled web of ruts, and blessed the east wind for
confounding of them, so that a wheel could not swear to its own. The
east wind answered with a scolding dash, that cast his sack over his
head, and shook out his white smock, scattering over the view, like a
jack-towel on the washing-line. Acknowledging this salutation with a
curse, Leviticus gathered his sack more tightly, and bending one long
leg before him, stealthily peered awry at the wheel-tracks. This was
the way to discover whatever had happened last among them, instead of
looking across or along them, where the nicer shades would fail.
At first he could make but little of it. The east wind, whirling last
year's leaves from the couches where the west had piled them, and
parching the flakes of the mud (as if exposed upon a scraper), had
made it a hard thing to settle the date of the transit even of a
timber dray. One of these had passed not long ago, with a great trunk
swinging and swagging on the road, and slurring the scollops of the
horse-track.
Therefore Tickuss, for some time, looked less wise than usual, and
scratched his head. The brain replied, as it generally does, to this
soft local stimulant, so briskly in fact that the master soon was able
to clap both his hands into their natural home--the pockets of his
breeches--and thus to survey the scene, and grin.
"Did 'ee think to do me, then, old brother Zak? Now did 'ee, did 'ee,
did 'ee? Ah, I were aborn afore you, Zak; or if I were not, it were
mother's mistake. Go along wi 'ee, Zak, go along wi' 'ee! Go home to
thy cat, and thy little kitten, Etty."
He knew, by the track, that his brother had passed a good while ago,
or he would not have dared to speak in this rebellious vein. And what
he said next was even more disloyal.
"Danged if I ain't a gude mind to hornstring that old hosebird of a
Dobbin; ay, and I wull too, if Zak cometh prowling round my place,
like this. If a didn't mane no trachery, why dothn't a come in, and
call for a horn of ale and a bite of cold bakkon. Ho, ho, we've a
pretty well stopped him of that, though. No Master Zak now; go thine
own ways. Keep thyzell to thyzell's the law of the land, to my
thinking."
Now a year, or even six months ago, Leviticus Cripps would sooner have
lost a score of pigs than make such a speech, inhospitable, unnatural,
unbrotherly, and violently un-Crippsian. Nothing but his own bad
conscience (as he fell more and more away from honour and due esteem
for Beckley) could have suggested to him such a low and crooked view
of Zacchary. The Carrier was not, in any measure, spying or prowling,
or even watching. Such courses were out of his track altogether.
Rather would he have come with a fist, if the family honour demanded
it; and therewith have converted his brother's olfactory organ into
something loftier, as the medium of a sense of honesty.
In bare point of fact the family honour demanded this vindication. But
the need had not as yet been conveyed to the knowledge of the
executive power. Zacchary had no suspicion at present of his brother's
fearful lapse. And the only thing that brought him down that lane, was
another stroke of business in the washing line. Squire Corser had
married a new sort of wife with a tendency towards the nobility;
wherefore a monthly wash was out of keeping with her loftier views,
though she had a fine kitchen-garden; and she cried, till the Squire
put the whole of it out, and sent it every week to Beckley. Hence a
new duty for Dobbin arose, which he faced with his usual patience,
simply reserving his right to travel at the pace he considered
expedient, and to have a stronger and deeper bottom stitched to his
old nose-bag.
The first time the Carrier traversed that road, fraternal duty
impelled him to make all proper inquiries concerning the health of his
brother, and the character of his tap. But though the reply upon both
these points was favourable and pleasing, Zacchary met with so queer a
reception, that dignity and self-respect compelled him to vow that for
many a journey he would pass with a dry mouth, rather than turn in. Of
all the nephews and nieces, who loved to make him their own carrier,
by sitting astride perhaps two on each leg, and one on each oölitic
vamp, and shouting "Gee, gee," till he panted worse than Dobbin obese
with young saintfoin--likewise who always jumped up in his cart, and
laid hold of the reins and the whip even, and wore out the patience of
any other horse except the horse before them--of all these delightful
young pests, not one was now permitted to come near him. And not only
that, which alone was very strange, but even Susannah, the wife of
Leviticus, and sister-in-law of Zacchary, evidently had upon her
tongue laid a dumb weight of responsibility. Quite as if Zak were an
interloper, or an inquisitive stranger, thrusting a keen but
unjustified nose into things that were better without it. Susannah was
always a very good woman, and used to look up to Zacchary, because her
father was a basket-maker; and even now she said no harm; but still
there was something about her, when she muttered that she must go and
wash the potatoes, timid, and cold, and unhearty-like.
The Carrier made up his mind that they all were in trouble about their
mortgage again; just as they were about six months back, when the land
was likely to be lost to them. And finding it not a desirable thing to
be called upon to contribute, he jogged well away from all such
tactics, with his pockets buttoned. Not that he would have grudged any
good turn to any one of his family; but that his strong common sense
allowed him no faith in a liar. And for many years he had known that
Tickuss was the liar of the family.
Leviticus took quite a different view of the whole of this proceeding.
He was under no terror about his mortgage, for reasons as yet quite
private; and his thick shallow cunning, like an underground gutter,
was full of its own rats only. He was certain that Zak had suspected
him, in spite of the care he had taken to keep his wife and children
away from him; and believing this, he was certain also that Zak was
playing the spy on him.
While he was meditating thus in his slow and turbid mind, and turning
away from the corner of the road towards his beloved pig-lairs, the
rattle of the sharp east wind was laden with a softer and heavier
sound--the hoofs of a horse upon sod and mud. Tickuss, with two or
three long strides, got behind a crooked tree, so as to hide or
exhibit himself, according to what should come to pass.
What came to pass was a horse in the first place, of good family and
good feed; and on his back a man who shared in at least the latter
excellence. These two were not coming by the forest lane, but along a
quiet narrow track, which cut off many of its corners. To judge of the
two which looked the more honest, would have required another horse in
council with another man. At sight of this arrival Tickuss came forth,
and scraped humbly.
"Don't stand there, like a monkey at a fair!" cried Mr. Sharp--for he
it was, and no mistake about him. "Am I to come through the brambles
to you? Can't you come up, like a man with his wits, where this
beastly wind doesn't blow so hard? Who can hear chaw-bacon talk off
there?"
Leviticus Cripps made a vast lot of gestures, commending the value of
caution, and pointing to the lane half a hundred yards off, as if it
contained a whole band of brigands. Mr. Sharp was not a patient man,
and he knew that there was no danger. Therefore he swore pretty
freely, until the abject lord of swine restored him to a pleasant
humour by a pitiful tale of Black George's trouble on the previous
afternoon.
"Catching it? Ay, and no mistake!" Tickuss Cripps repeated; "the dust
from his jacket--oh Lor', oh Lor! I had followed on softly to see the
fun, without Missy knowing I were near, of course; and may I never--if
I didn't think a would a'most have killed un! Ho, ho! it'll be a good
round week, I reckon, afore Jarge stitcheth up a ferret's mouth again.
He took me in terrible, that very morning; he were worse took in
hiszell afore the arternoon was out. Praise the Lard for all his
goodness, sir."
"Well, well. It shall be made up to him. But of course you did not let
him, or any one else, get any idea who the lady is."
"Governor, no man hath any sense of that," Leviticus answered, with
one finger on his nose; "save and excep' the old lady to the cottage,
and you and I, and you knows whether there be any other."
"Leviticus Cripps, no lies to me! Of course your own wife has got the
whole thing out of you."
"Her!" replied Tickuss, with a high contempt, for which he should have
had his ears boxed. "No, no, master, a would have been all over
Hoxford months ago, if her had knowed ort of it. Her knoweth of course
there be zumbody up to cottage with old lady; but her hath zucked in
the American story, the same as everybody else have. Who would ever
drame of our old Squire's daughter, when the whole world hath killed
and buried her? But none the less for that I kep her, and the
children, out of the way of our Zak, I did. Um might go talking on the
volk up to cottage; and Zak would be for goin' up with one of his
cards parraventur. Lor', how old Zak's eyes would come out of his
head! The old bat-fowl!--a would crack my zides to see un!"
"You had better keep your fat sides sound and quiet," Mr. Sharp
answered sternly; for the slow wits of Tickuss, being tickled by that
rare thing, an imagination, the result was of course a guffaw whose
breadth was exceeded only by its length.
"Oh Lor', oh Lor'--to see the old bat-fowl with the eyes comin' out of
the head of un! I'll be danged if I shouldn't choke!--oh Lor'!"
Mr. Sharp saw that Tickuss, being once set off, might be trusted to go
on for at least half an hour, with minute-guns of cackling, loutish,
self-glorifying cachinnation, as amenable to reason as a hiccough is.
The lawyer's time was too precious to waste thus, so having learned
all that he cared to learn, and hearing wheels in the forest lane, he
turned back along the narrow covert-ride; and he thought within
himself, for he never mused aloud--"My bold stroke bids fair to be a
great success. Nobody dreams that the girl is here. She herself
believes every word that she is told. Kit is over head and ears; and
she will be the same with him, after that fine rescue. Our only
marplot has been laid by the heels at the very nick of time. We have
only to manage Kit himself--who is a most confounded sort. The luck is
with me, the luck is with me; and none shall be the wiser, Only give
me one month more."