THE DIGNITY OF THE FAMILY.
If Grace had only stayed five minutes longer in the place where she
was when the fat man came in sight, her eyes and heart would have been
delighted by the appearance of a true old friend. But she felt so much
terror of that stout person, who always seemed to be watching her
afar, that in spite of the extraordinary interest aroused by some of
her companion's words, as well as by his manner, she could not help
running away abruptly, and taking shelter in the little bowered
cottage.
Meanwhile, the stout man in the white frock coat slouched along the
furzy valley, with a clownish step. He carried a long pig-whip, and
now and then indulged in a crack or flick at some imaginary pig, while
a crafty grin, or a wink of one little eye, enlivened his heavy
countenance. He was clearly aware of all that had been happening in
the wood above him, for the buds as yet rather served to guide the
lines of sight than to baffle them; but he showed no desire to
interfere, for instead of taking the cross-path, which would have
brought him face to face with Kit, he kept down the glade towards the
timber-track, which led in another direction. By the side of the
little brook he turned the corner of a thick holly-bush, and suddenly
met his brother, Master Zacchary Cripps, the Carrier.
The Carrier was in no pleasant mood; his eyes were stern and
steadfast, and the colour of his healthy cheeks was deepened into
crimson. He bore with a bent arm and set muscle the sceptral whip of
the family, bound with spiral brass, and newly fitted with a heavy
lash. Moreover, he had come with his Sunday hat on, and his air and
walk were menacing. Leviticus started and turned pale, and his cunning
eyes glanced for a chance of escape.
"Thou goest not hence, Brother Tickuss," said Cripps, "until thou hast
answered what I shall ax, and answered with thine eyes on mine."
"Ax away," said the pigman, sprawling out his fat legs, as if he did
not care; "ax away, so long as it be of thy own consarns."
"It is of my own consarns to keep my father's sons from being rogues
and liars, and getting into Oxford jail, and into the hands of the
hangman."
Leviticus trembled, with fear more than anger. "Thou always was
foul-mouthed," he muttered.
"It is a lie!" shouted Zacchary; "as big a lie as ever thou spak'st! I
always were that clean of tongue--no odds for that now. Wilt answer
me, or will not? Thou liedst to me in Oxford streets the last time as
I spake to thee."
"Well, well, maybe a small piece I did; but nothing to lay hold on
much. Brother Zak, thou must not be so hard. What man can be always
arkerate?"
"A man can spake the truth if he goeth to try, or else a must be a
fule. And, Tickuss, thou wast always more rogue than fule. And now
here am I, to ax thee spashal what roguery thou beest up to now? Whom
hast thou got at the cottage in the wood?"
"Thou'd best way go up there, and see for thyzell. A old lady from
Amerikay as wanteth to retaire frout the world. Won't her zend thee
a-running down the hill? Ah, and I'd like to see thee, Zak. Her'd lay
thy own whip about thee; and her tongue be worse nor a dozen whips!"
Really, while Tickuss was telling this lie, he managed to look at his
brother so firmly, in the rally of impudence brought to bay, that Zak
for the moment (in spite of all experience) believed him. And the
Carrier dreaded--as the lord of swine knew well--nothing so much as a
fierce woman's tongue.
"What be the reason, then," he went on, still keeping his eyes on the
face of Tickuss, "that thou hast been keeping thyself and thy pigs out
o' market, and even thy waife and children to home, same as if 'em had
gotten the plague? And what be the reason, Leviticus Cripps, that thou
fearest to go to a wholesome public-house, and have thy pint of ale,
and see thy neighbours, as behooveth a God-fearing man? To my mind,
either thou art gone daft, and the woman should take the lead o' thee,
or else thou art screwed out of honest ways."
The Carrier now looked at his brother, with more of pity than
suspicion. Tickuss had always been regarded as the weak member of the
family, because he laid on more fat than muscle, even in the time of
most active growth. And to keep him regularly straight was more than
all the set efforts of the brotherhood could, even when he was young,
effect. Therefore Zak stood back some little, and the butt of his whip
fell down to earth. Leviticus saw his chance, and seized it.
"Consarning of goin' to public-house, I would never be too particular.
A man may do it, or a man may not, according to manner of his things
at home, or his own little brew, or the temper of his wife. I would
not blame him, nor yet praise him, for things as he knoweth best
about. To make light of a man for not going to public, is the same as
to blame him for stopping from church. A man as careth for good
opinion goeth to both, but a cannot always do it. And I ain't a been
in church now for more nor a week of Sundays."
The force of this reasoning came home to Cripps. If a man was unable
to go to church, there was good room for arguing that his duty towards
the public-house must not be too rigidly exacted. Zacchary therefore
fetched a sigh. None of the race had broken up at so early an age as
that of Tickuss. But still, from his own sad experience, the Carrier
knew what pigs were; and he thought that his brother, though younger
than himself, might be called away before him.
"Tickuss," he said, "I may a' been too hard. Nobody knows but them
that has to do it what the worrit of the roads is. I may a' said a
word here and there too much, and a bit outside the Gospel. According
to they a man must believe a liar, and forgive un, and forgive un over
and over again, the same as I tries to forgive you, Tickuss."
Zacchary offered his hand to his brother, but Leviticus was ashamed to
take it. With the load now weighing upon his mind, and the sense in
his heart of what Zacchary was, Tickuss--whatever his roguery
was--could not make believe to have none of it. So he turned away,
with his feelings hurt too much for the clasp fraternal.
"When a man hath no more respect for hiszell," he muttered over his
puckered shoulder, "and no more respect for his father and mother
avore un, than to call his very next brother but one a rogue and a
liar, and a schemer against publics, to my mind he have gone too far,
and not shown the manners relied upon."
"Very well," replied Cripps; "just as you like, Tickuss; though I
never did hear as I were short of manners; and there's twelve mailes
of road as knows better than that. Now, since you go on like that, and
there seemeth no chance of supper 'long of 'ee, I shall just walk up
to cottage, and ax any orders for the Carrier. Good evening, brother
Tickuss."
With these words Zak set off, and Tickuss repented sadly of the evil
temper which had forbidden him to shake hands. But now to oppose the
Carrier's purpose would be a little too suspicious. He must go his way
and take his chance; he was worse than a pig when his mind was made
up.
"Go thy way, and be danged to thee!" thought Leviticus, looking after
him. "Little thou wilt take, however, but to knock thy thick head
again' a wall. Old lady looketh out too sharp for any of they danged
old Beckley carcases. Come thee down to our ouze," he shouted in irony
after his brother, "and tell us the noos thou hast picked up, and what
'em be doing in Amerikay! A vine time o' life for thee to turn spy!"
It was lucky for him that he made off briskly among thick brushwood
and tangled swamps, for Zacchary Cripps at the last word turned round,
with his face of a fine plum-colour, and a stamp of rage which made
his stiff knees tingle worse than a dozen turnpikes.
"Spy, didst thou say?" he shouted, staring, with his honest, wrathful
eyes, through every glimpse of thicket near the spot where his brother
had disappeared--"Spy! if thou beest a man come out, and say it again
to the face of me! I'll show thee how to spell 'spy' pretty quick.
Leviticus Cripps, thou art a coward, to the back of a thief and a
sneaking skulk, unless thou comest out of they thick places, to stand
to the word thou hast spoken."
Zacchary stood in a wide bay of copse, and he knew that his voice went
through the wood; for he spoke with the whole power of his lungs; and
the tender leaves above him quivered like a little breath of fringe,
and the birds flew out of their ivy castles, and a piece of bare-faced
rock in the distance answered him--but nothing else.
"Thou art a bigger man than I be," shouted the Carrier, being carried
beyond himself by the state of things; "come out if thou art a man,
and hast any blood of Cripps in thee!" But this appeal received no
answer, except from the quiet rock again, and a peaceful thrush
sitting over his nest, and well accustomed to the woodman's call.
Zacchary had always felt scorn of Tickuss, but now he almost disdained
himself for springing of one wedlock with him. He stood in the place
where he must be seen if Tickuss wished to see him, until he was quite
sure that no such longing existed on his brother's part. Then the
family seemed to be lowered so by this behaviour of a leading member,
that when the Carrier moved his legs, he had not the spirit to crack
his whip.
"What shall us do? Whatever shall us do?" he said to himself more
reasonably, with the anger dying out of his kind blue eyes. "A hath
insulted of me, but a hath a big family of little uns to kape up. I
harn't had no knowledge how that zort o' thing may drive a man out of
his proper ways. Like enough it maketh them careful to tell lies, and
shun the thrashing."
Taking this view of the case, Master Cripps turned away from the path
towards his brother's house, to which, in the flush of first anger, he
meant to go, and there to wait for him; and being rather slow of
resolution, he naturally set forth again on the track of the one last
interrupted. He would go to this cottage in the wood of which he had
heard through one of his washerwomen--though none of them had any
washing thence--and then he would satisfy his own mind concerning an
ugly rumour, which had unsettled that mind since Tuesday. For in his
own hearing it had been said--by a woman, it is true, but still a
woman who came of a truthful family, and was married now into the
like--that Master Leviticus Cripps was harbouring pirates and
conspirators, believed to have come from America, in a little place
out of the way of all honest people, where the deaf old woman was.
Nobody ever had leave to the house; never a butcher, nor baker, nor
tea-grocer, nor a milkman, nor even a respectable washerwoman--there
was nothing except a great dog to rush out and bite without even
barking.
Zacchary had no easy task to find the little cottage of which he had
heard, for it lay well back from all thoroughfares, and so embedded
among ivied trees, that he passed and re-passed several times before
he descried it; and even then he would not have done so if it had not
chanced that Miss Patch, who loved good things when she could get
them, was about to dine on a juicy roaster, supplied by the wary
Leviticus. Grace herself had prepared the currant sauce, before she
went forth for her daily walk, and deaf old Margery Daw was stooping
over the fierce wood fire on the ground, and basting with a short iron
spoon. The double result was a wreath of blue smoke rising from the
crooked chimney, and a very rich odour streaming forth from door and
window on the vernal air. The eyes and the nose of the Carrier at once
presented him with clear impressions.
"Amerikayans understands good living." Giving utterance to this
profound and incontrovertible reflection, Cripps came to a halt and
sagely considered the situation. The first thing he asked, as usual,
was--"How would the law of the land lie?" Here was a lonely,
unprotected cottage, inhabited by an elderly foreign lady, who
especially sought retirement. Had he any legal right to insist on
knowing who she was, and all about her? Would he not rather be a
trespasser, and liable to a fine, and perhaps the jail, if he forced
himself in, without invitation and wilfully, against the inhabitants'
wish? And even if that came to nothing--as it might--could he say that
it was a manly and straightforward action on his part? He had no enemy
that he knew of, unless it was Black George, the poacher; but there
were always plenty of people ready to say ill-natured things about a
prosperous neighbour; and like enough they would set it afoot that he
had gone spying on a helpless lady, because she had never employed
him. And then his brother's reproach, which had so fiercely aroused
him, came back to his mind.
Neither was it wholly absent from his thoughts, that a great dog was
said to reside on these premises, whose manner was the peculiarly
unattractive one of rushing out to bite without a bark. The Carrier
had suffered in his time from dogs, as was natural to his calling; and
although his flesh was so wholesome that the result had never been
serious, he was conscious of a definite desire to defer all increase
of experience in that line.
"Spy!" he exclaimed, as he sat down rather to rest his stiff knee than
to watch the hut. "That never hath been said of me, and never shall
without a lie. But one on 'em might come out, mayhap, and give me some
zatisfaction."
Before his words were cool, Miss Patch herself appeared in the
doorway. She saw not Cripps, who had happened to put himself in a
knowing corner; and being in a quietly savage mood (from desire of
pig, and dread that stupid old Margery was murdering pig, by revolving
him too near the fire), she cast such a glance at the young leaves
around her, as seemed enough to nip them in the bud. Then she threw
away something with a scornful sweep, and Cripps believed almost every
word his brother had been saying.
"I'll be blessed if I don't scuttle off," he said to himself and the
moss he was sitting on. "In my time I have a seen all zorts of womans,
but none to come nigh this sample as be come over from Amerikay!
Sarveth me right for cooriosity. Amend me if ever I come anigh of any
Amerikayans again!"