RATS.
Meanwhile at Shotover Grange, as well as at poor old Beckley Barton,
trouble was prevailing and the usual style of things upset. Russel
Overshute, though not beloved by everybody (because of his strong will
and words), was at any rate thought much of, and would be sadly missed
by all. All the women of the household made an idol of him. He spoke
so kindly, and said "thank you," when many men would have grunted; and
he did not seem to be aware of any padlocked bar of humanity betwixt
him and his "inferiors." At the same time he took no liberty any more
than he invited it; and his fine appearance and strength of readiness
made him look the master.
The men, on the other hand, were not sure of their sorrow to see less
of him. He had always kept a keen eye upon them, as the master of a
large house ought to do; and he always bore in mind the great truth
that men on the whole are much lazier than women. Still even the worst
man about the place, while he freely took advantage of the present
sweet immunity, would have been sorry to hear of a thing which might
drive him to seek for another place.
But what were all these, even all put together, in the weight of their
feelings, to compare with the mother of young Overshute? Many might
cry, but none would mourn; nobody could have any right to mourn,
except herself, his mother. This was her son, and her only hope. If it
pleased the Lord to rob her of him, He might as well take her soon
afterwards, without any more to do.
This middle-aged lady was not pious, and made no pretence to be so.
Her opinion was that the Lord awarded things according to what people
do, and left them at liberty to carry on, without any great
interference. She knew that she always had been superfluously able to
manage her own affairs; and to hear weak ladies going on and on about
the will of the Lord, and so forth, sometimes was a trial to her
manners and hospitality. In this terrible illness of her son, she had
plenty of self-command, but very little resignation. With stern
activity and self-devotion, she watched him by day and by night so
jealously, that the nurses took offence and, fearing contagion, kept
their distance, though they drew their wages.
This was the time to show what stuff both men and women were made of.
Fair-weather visitors, and delightful gossips, and the most devoted
friends, stood far aloof from the tainted gale, and fumigated their
letters. The best of them sent their grooms to the lodge, with orders
to be very careful, and to be sure to use tobacco during the moment of
colloquy. Others had so much faith that everything would be ordered
for the best, that they went to the seaside at once, to be delivered
from presumption. Many saw a visitation for some secret sin, that
otherwise might have festered inwardly and destroyed the immortal
part. Of course they would not even hint that he could have murdered
Grace Oglander; nothing was further from their thoughts; the idea was
much too terrible. Still there were many things that long had called
for explanation--and none had been afforded.
Leaving these to go their way, a few kind souls came fluttering to the
house of pestilence and death. Two housemaids, and the boy who cleaned
the servant's shoes, had been struck down, and never rose again,
except with very cautious liftings into their last narrow cells. The
disease had spread from their master; and their constitutions were not
like his. Also the senior footman and the under-cook, were in their
beds; but the people who had their work to do believed them to be only
shamming.
The master, however, still fought on, without any knowledge of the
conflict. His mind was beyond all the guidance of will, and afar from
its wonted subjects. It roved among clouds that had long blown away;
nebules of logic, dialectic fogs, and thunderstorms of enthymeme, the
pelting of soritic hail, and all the other perturbed condition of
undergraduate weather. In these things, unlike his friend Hardenow, he
had never taken delight, and now they rose up to avenge themselves. At
other times the poor fellow lay in depths of deepest lethargy,
voiceless, motionless, and almost breathless. None but his mother
would believe sometimes that he was not downright dead and gone.
Of course Mrs. Overshute had called in the best advice to be had from
the whole of the great profession of medicine. The roughness of the
Abernethy school was still in vogue with country doctors; as even now
some of it may be found in a craft which ought to be gentle in
proportion to its helplessness. With timid people this roughness goes
a long way towards creating faith, and makes them try to get better
for fear of being insulted about it. In London however this Centauric
school of medicine had not thriven, when the rude Nessus could not
heal himself. A soft and soothing and genial race of Æsculapians
arose; the "vis medicatrix naturæ" was exalted and fed with calves'
feet; and the hand of velvet and the tongue of silver commended and
sweetened the pill of bread.
At the head of this pleasing and amiable band (who seldom either
killed or cured) was the famous Sir Anthony Thistledown. This was the
great physician who had been invoked from London--to the strong
disgust of Splinters, then the foremost light at Oxford--when Squire
Oglander was seized with his very serious illness. And now Sir Anthony
did his best, with the aid of the reconciled Splinters, to soothe away
death from the weary couch of the last of the race of Overshute.
"A pretty story I've aheerd in Oxford to-day; make me shamed, it
doth," said Zacchary Cripps to his sister Etty, while he smoked his
contemplative pipe by the fire of Stow logs, one cold and windy April
evening. "What do you think they've abeen and doed?"
"Who, and where, Zak? How can I tell?" Esther was busy, trimming three
rashers, before she put them into the frying-pan. "I really do believe
you expect me to know everybody that comes to your thoughts, quite as
if it was my own mind."
"Well, so you ought," said the Carrier. "The women nowadays are so
sharp, no man can have his own mind to his self. But anyhow you ought
to know that I mean up to poor Worship Overshute's. Ah, a fine young
gentleman as ever lived. Seemeth to be no more than last night as he
sat in that there chair and said the queerest thing as ever were said
by a Justice of the county bench."
"What do you mean, Zak? I never heard him say anything but was kind
and proper, and a credit to him."
"Might be proper, or might not. But anyhow 'twere impossible. Did a
tell me, or did a not, he would try to go a-poaching? When folk begins
to talk like that, 'tis a sign of the ill come over them. Ah's me,
'tis little he'll ever do of poaching, or shutting, or riding to
hounds, or tasting again of my best bottle! Bad enough job it be about
old Squire, but he be an old man in a way of speaking. Well, the Lord
He knoweth best, and us be all in the hollow of His hand. But he were
a fine young fellow, as fine a young fellow as ever I see; and not a
bit of pride about un!"
Sadly reflecting, the Carrier stopped his pipe with a twig from the
fireplace, and gazed at the soot, because his eyes were bright.
"But what were you going to tell me?" asked Etty, bringing her brother
back to his subject, as she often was obliged to do.
"Railly, I be almost ashamed to tell 'ee. For such a thing to come to
pass in our own county, and a'most the same parish, and only two
turnpike gates atween. What do 'ee think of every soul in that there
house running right away, wi'out no notice, nor so much as 'good-bye!'
One and all on 'em, one and all; so I were told by a truthful man. And
the poor old leddy with her dying son, and not a single blessed woman
for to make the pap!"
"I never can believe that they would be such cowards," Esther answered
as she left her work and came to look at Zacchary. "Men might, but
women never, I should hope. And such a kind good house it is! Oh, Zak,
it must be a wicked story!"
"It is true enough, Etty, and too true. As I was a-coming home I seed
five on 'em standing all together under the elms by Magdalen College.
Their friends would not take them in, I was told, and nobody wouldn't
go nigh 'em. Perhaps they were sorry they had doed it then."
"The wretches! They ought to sleep out in the rain, without even a
pigsty for shelter! Now, Zak, I never do anything without you; but to
Shotover Grange I go to-night, unless you bar the door on me; and if
you do I will get out of window!"
"Esther, I never heerd tell of such a thing. If you was under a duty,
well and good; but to fly into the face of the Lord like that, without
no call upon you----"
"There is a call upon me!" she answered, flushing with calm
resolution; "it is the Lord that calls me, Zak, and He will send me
back again. Now you shall have your supper, while you think it over
quietly. I will not go without your leave, brother; but I am sure you
will give it when you come to think."
The Carrier, while he munched his bacon, and drank his quart of
home-brewed ale, was, in his quiet mind, more troubled than he had
ever been before, or, at any rate, since he used to pass the tent of
young Cinnaminta. That was the one great romance of his life, and
since he had quelled it with his sturdy strength, and looked round the
world as usual, scarcely any trouble worse than pence and halfpence
had been on him. From week to week, and year to year, he had worked a
cheerful road of life, breathing the fine air, looking at the sights,
feeling as little as need be felt the influence of nature, making new
friends all along his beat, even quicker than the old ones went their
way, carrying on a very decent trade, highly respecting the powers
that be, and highly respected by them. But now he found suddenly
brought before him a matter for consideration, which, in his ordinary
state of mind, would have circulated for a fortnight. Precipitance of
mind to him was worse than driving down a quarry; his practice had
always been, and now it was become his habit, to turn every question
inside out and upside down, and across and across, and finger every
seam of it (as if he were buying a secondhand sack) ere ever he began
to trust his weight to any side of it. To do all this required some
hours with a mind so unelectric, and even after that he liked to have
a good night's sleep, and find the core of his resolve set hard in the
morning.
For this due process there was now no time. He dared not even to begin
it, knowing that it could not be wrought out; therefore he betook
himself to a plan which once before had served him well. After groping
in the bottom of a sacred pocket (where sample-beans and scarlet
runners got into the loops of keys, and bits of whipcord were wound
tightly round old turnpike tickets, and a little shoemaker's awl in a
cork kept company with a shoe-pick), Master Cripps with his
blunt-headed fingers got hold of a crooked sixpence. The bend alone
would have only conferred a simple charm upon it, but when to the bend
there was added a hole, that sixpence became Delphic. Cripps had
consulted it once before when a quick-tempered farmer hurried him
concerning the purchase of a rick of hay. The Carrier had no
superstition, but he greatly abounded with gratitude; and, having made
a great hit about that rick, the least he could do to the sixpence was
to consult it again under similar hurry.
He said to himself, "Now the Lord send me right. If you comes out
heads, little Etty shall go; if you comes out tails, I shall take it
for a sign that we ought to turn tails in this here job."
He said no more, but with great extrication worked his oracular
sixpence up through a rattle of obstructions. Like the lots cast in a
steep-headed man's helmet, up came the sixpence reluctantly.
"I have a got 'ee. Now, what dost thou say?" cried Cripps, with the
triumph of an obstinate man. "Never a lie hast thou told me yet. Spake
up, little fellow." Being thus adjured, the crooked sixpence, in
gratitude for much friction, gleamed softly in the firelight; but even
the Carrier, keen as his eyes were, could not make out head or tail.
"Vetch me a can'le and the looking-glass," he called out to Esther;
the looking-glass being a large old lens, which had been left behind
by Hardenow. Esther brought both in about half a minute; and Cripps,
with the little coin sternly sitting as flatly in his palm as its form
allowed, began to examine it carefully. With one eye shut, as if
firing a gun, he tried the lens at every distance from a foot to half
an inch, shifting the candle about until some of his frizzly hair took
fire, and with this assistance he exclaimed at last, "Heads,
child!--heads it is! Thou shalt go; the will of the Lord ordaineth it!
Plaize the Lord to send thee back safe and sound as now thou goest!
None on us, to my knowledge, has done aught to deserve to be punished
for."