UNPATERNAL.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sharp had his forces ready, and was waiting for Grace
and Christopher. Cinnaminta's good Uncle Kershoe (who spent half of
his useful time in stealing horses, and the other half in disguising
and disposing of them), although he might not have desired to show
himself so long before the moonlight, yet, true to honour, here he
was, blinking beneath a three-cornered hat, like a grandly respectable
coachman. The carriage was drawn up in a shady place, quite out of
sight from the windows; and the horses, having very rare experience of
oats, were embracing a fine opportunity. In picturesque attitudes of
tobacconizing--if the depth of the wood covers barbarism--three fine
fellows might now be seen; to wit, Black George, Joe Smith, and that
substantial householder, Tickuss Cripps. In the chaise sat a lady of
comfortable aspect, though fidgeting now with fat, well-gloved hands.
Mrs. Sharp had begged not to have to stop at home and wonder what
might be doing with her own Kit: and the case being now one of "neck
or nothing," her husband had let her come, foreseeing that she might
be of use with Grace Oglander. For the moment, however, she looked
more likely to need attendance for herself; for she kept glancing
round towards the cottage-door, while her plump and still comely
cheeks were twitching, and tears of deep thought about the merits of
her son held her heart in quick readiness to be up and help them. Once
Mr. Sharp, whose main good point, among several others, was affection
for his wife, rode up, and in a playful manner tickled her nose with
the buckskin loop of his loaded whip, and laughed at her. She felt how
kind it was of him, but her smile was only feeble.
"Now mind, dear," said Mr. Sharp, reining his horse (as strong as an
oak and as bright as a daisy), "feel no anxiety about me. You have
plenty of nourishment in your three bags; keep them all alive with it.
Everything is mapped out perfectly. Near Wycombe, without rousing any
landlord, you have a fresh pair of horses. In a desert place called
the 'New Road,' in London, I meet you and take charge of you."
"May Kit have his pipe on the box? I am sure it will make him go so
much sweeter."
"Fifty, if he likes. You put his sealskin pouch in. You think of every
one before yourself."
"But can I get on with that dreadful woman? Don't you think she will
preach me to death, Luke?"
"Miranda, my dear, you are talking loosely. You forget the great gift
that you possess--the noblest endowment of the nobler sex. You can
sleep whenever you like, and do it without even a suspicion of a
snore. It is the very finest form of listening. Good-bye! You will be
a most happy party. When once I see you packed, I shall spur on in
front."
Mr. Sharp kissed his hand, and rode back to the cottage. Right well he
knew what a time ladies take to put their clothes upon them; and the
more grow the years of their practice in the art, the longer grow the
hours needful. Still he thought Miss Patch had been quite long enough.
But what could he say, when he saw her at her window, with the
looking-glass sternly set back upon the drawers, lifting her hands in
short prayer to the Lord: as genuine a prayer as was ever tried. She
was praying for a blessing on this new adventure, and that all might
lead up to the glory of the Kingdom; she besought to be relieved at
last from her wearying instrumentality. Mr. Sharp still had some
little faith left--for he was a man of much good feeling--and he did
not scoff at his sister's prayer, as a man of low nature might have
done.
Nevertheless he struck up with his whip at the ivy round her bedroom
window, to impress the need of brevity; and the lady, though shocked
at the suggestion of curtailment, did curtail immediately. In less
than five minutes, she was busy at the doorway, seeing to the exit of
everything; and presently, with very pious precision, she gave Mrs.
Margery Daw half a crown, and a tract which some friend should read to
her, after rubbing her glands with a rind of bacon, and a worn-out
pocket-handkerchief, which had belonged to the mighty Rowland Hill,
whose voice went three miles and a half.
Then Miss Patch (with her dress tucked up, and her spectacles at their
brightest) marched, with a copy of the Scriptures borne prominently
forward, and the tags of her cloak doubled up on her arm, towards the
carriage, where Grace must be waiting for her. The sloping of the
sunset threw her shadow, and the ring-doves in the wood were cooing.
The peace and the beauty touched even her heart; and the hushing of
the winds of evening in the nestling of the wood appeased the ruffled
mind to that simplicity of childhood, where God and good are one.
But just as she was shaking hands benevolently with Mrs. Sharp, before
getting into the carriage, back rode Mr. Sharp at full gallop, and
without any ceremony shouted, "Where's the girl?"
"Miss Oglander! Why, I thought she was here!" Hannah Patch answered,
with a little gasp.
"And I thought she was coming with you," cried Mrs. Sharp; "as well as
my dear boy, Christopher."
"I let her go to meet him as you arranged," Miss Patch exclaimed
decisively; "I had nothing to do with her after that."
"Is it possible that the boy has rogued me?" As Mr. Sharp said these
few words, his face took a colour never seen before, even by his
loving wife: The colour was, a livid purple, and it made his sparkling
eyes look pale.
"They must be at the cottage," Mrs. Sharp suggested; "let me go to
look for the naughty young couple."
The lawyer had his reasons for preventing this, as well as for keeping
himself where he was; and therefore at a sign from him, Miss Patch
turned back, and set off with all haste for the cottage. No sooner had
she turned the corner, than Joe Smith, the tall gipsy, emerged from
the wood with long strides into the road, and beckoned to Mr. Sharp
urgently. The lawyer was with him in a moment, and almost struck him
in his fury at what he heard.
"How could you allow it? You great tinkering fool! Run to the corner
where the two lanes meet. Take George with you. I will ride straight
down the road. No, stop, cut the traces of those two horses! You jump
on one, and Black George on the other, and off for the Corner full
gallop! You ought to be there before the cart. I will ride straight
for that rotten old jolter! Zounds, is one man to beat five of us?"
Waiting for no answer, he struck spurs into his horse, and, stooping
over the withers, dashed into a tangled alley, which seemed to lead
towards the timber-track.
No wonder Mr. Sharp was in such a rage, for what had happened was
exactly this--only much of it happened with more speed than words:--
Cripps, the Carrier, had been put up by several friends and relations
(especially Numbers, the butcher, who missed the pork trade of
Leviticus) to bring things directly to a point, instead of letting
them go on, in a way which was neither one thing nor the other.
Confessing all the claims of duty, poor Zacchary only asked how he
could discharge them. He had done his very best, and he had found out
nothing. If any one could tell him what more to do, he would wear out
his Sunday shoes to thank them.
"Brother Zak," said Mrs. Numbers, with a feeling which in a less loyal
family would have been contempt, "have you set a woman to work; now,
have you?"
Every Cripps present was struck with this, and most of all the
Carrier. Mrs. Numbers herself was quite ready to go, but a feud had
arisen betwixt her and Susannah, as to whether three-holed or
four-holed buttons cut the cotton faster; and therefore the Carrier
resolved to take his own sister Etty, who never quarrelled. It was
found out that she required change of air, and, indeed, she had been
rather delicate ever since her long sad task at Shotover. Now,
Leviticus durst not refuse to receive her, much as he disliked the
plan. The girl went without any idea of playing spy; all she knew was
that her brother was suspected of falling into low company, and she
was to put him on his mettle, if she could.
Hence it was that Hardenow, gazing betwixt the two feather-edged
boards, beheld--just before he lost his wits--the honoured vehicle of
Cripps, with empty washing baskets standing, on its welcome homeward
road, to discharge the fair Etty at her brother's gate. Tickuss was
away upon Mr. Sharp's business, and Zacchary, through a grand sense of
honour, would not take advantage of the chance by going in. Craft and
wickedness might be in full play with them, but a wife should on no
account be taken unawares, and tempted to speak outside her duty.
Therefore the Carrier kissed his sister in the soft gleam of the
sunset-clouds, and refusing so much as a glass of ale, touched up
Dobbin with a tickle of the whip; and that excellent nag (after
looking round for oats in a dream, which his common sense premised to
be too sanguine) brushed all his latter elegances with his tail, and
fetching round his blinkers a most sad adieu to Esther, gave a little
grunt at fortune and resignedly set off. Alas, when he grunted at a
light day's work, how little did he guess what unparalleled exertions
parted him yet from his stable for the night!
For while Master Cripps, with an equable mind, was jogging it gently
on the silent way, and (thinking how lonely his cottage would be
without Esther) was balancing in his mind the respective charms of his
three admirers, Mary Hookham, Mealy Hiss, and Sally Brown of the
Golden Cross, and sadly concluding that he must make up his mind to
one of the three ere long--suddenly he beheld a thing which frightened
him more than a dozen wives.
Cripps was come to a turn of the track--for it scarcely could be
called a road--and was sadly singing to Dobbin and himself that
exquisite elegiac--
"Needles and pins, needles and pins,
When a man marries, his trouble begins!"
Dobbin also, though he never had been married, was trying to keep time
to this tune, as he always did to sound sentiments; when the two of
them saw a sight that came, like a stroke for profanity, over them.
Directly in front of them, from a thick bush, sprang a beautiful girl
into the middle of the lane, and spread out her hand to stop them. If
the evening light had been a little paler, or even the moon had been
behind her, a ghost she must have been then, and for ever. Cripps
stared as if he would have no eyes any more; but Dobbin had received a
great many comforts from the little hands spread out to him; and he
stopped and sniffed, and lifted up his nose (now growing more
decidedly aquiline) that it might be stroked, and even possibly
regaled with a bunch of white-blossomed clover.
"Oh, Cripps, good Cripps, you dear old Cripps!" Grace Oglander cried
with great tears in her eyes, "you never have forgotten me, Zacchary
Cripps? They say that I am dead and buried. It isn't true, not a word
of it! Dear Cripps, I am as sound alive as you are. Only I have been
shamefully treated! Do let me get up in your cart, good Cripps, and my
father will thank you for ever!"
"But, Missy, poor Missy," Cripps stammered out, drawing on his heart
for every word, "you was buried on the seventh day of January, in the
year of our Lord, 1838; three pickaxes was broken over digging of your
grave, by reason of the frosty weather; and all of us come to your
funeral! Do 'ee go back, miss, that's a dear! The churchyard to
Beckley is a comfortable place, and this here wood no place for a
Christian."
"But, Cripps, dear Cripps, do try to let me speak! They might have
broken thirty pickaxes, but I had nothing at all to do with it. May I
get up? Oh, may I get up? It is the only chance of saving me. I hear a
horse tearing through the wood! Oh, dear, clever Cripps, you will
repent it for the rest of all your life. Even Dobbin is sharper than
you are."
"You blessed old ass!" cried a stern young voice, as Kit Sharp (who
had meant not to show) rushed forward, "there is no time for your
heavy brain to work. You shall have the young lady, dead or alive!
Pardon me, Grace--no help for it. Now, thick-headed bumpkin, put one
arm round her, and off at full gallop with your old screw! If you give
her up I will hang you by the neck to the tail of your broken
rattletrap!"
"Oh, Cripps, dear Cripps, I assure you on my honour," said Grace, as
tossed up by her lover, she sat in the seat of Esther, "I have never
been dead any more than you have. I can't tell you now; oh, drive on,
drive, if you have a spark of manhood in you!"
A horse and horseman came out of the wood, about fifty yards behind
them, and Grace would have fallen headlong, but for the half-reluctant
arm of Cripps, as Dobbin with a jump (quite unknown in his very first
assay of harness) set off full gallop over rut and rock, with a blow
on his back, from the fist of Kit, like the tumble of a chimney-pot.
Then Christopher Sharp, after one sad look at Grace Oglander's flying
figure, turned round to confront his father.
"What means all this?" cried the lawyer fiercely, being obliged to
rein up his horse, unless he would trample Kit underfoot.
"It means this," answered his son, with firm gaze, and strong grasp of
his bridle, "that you have made a great mistake, sir--that you must
give up your plan altogether--that the poor young lady who has been so
deceived----"
"Let go my bridle, will you? Am I to stop here--to be baffled by you?
Idiot, let go my bridle!"
"Father, you shall not--for your own sake, you shall not! I may be an
idiot, but I will not be a blackguard----"
"If by the time I have counted three, your hand is on my bridle, I
will knock you down, and ride over you!"
Their eyes met in furious conflict of will, the elder man's glaring
with the blaze of an opal, the younger one's steady with a deep brown
glow.
"Strike me dead, if you choose!" said Kit, as his father raised his
arm, with the loaded whip swinging, and counted, "One, two,
three!"--then the crashing blow fell on the naked temple; and it was
not needed twice.
Dashing the rowels into his horse (whose knees struck the boy in the
chest as he fell, and hurled him among the bushes), the lawyer,
without even looking round, rode madly after Zacchary. Dobbin had won
a good start by this time, and was round the corner, doing great
wonders for his time of life--tossing the tubs, and the baskets, and
Grace, and even the sturdy Carrier, like fritters in a pan, while the
cart leaped and plunged, and the spokes of the wheels went round too
fast to be counted. Cripps tugged at Dobbin with all his might; but
for the first time in his life, the old horse rebelled, and flung on
at full speed.
"He knoweth best, miss; he knoweth best," cried Zacchary, while Grace
clung to him; "he hath a divination of his own, if he dothn't kick the
cart to tatters. But never would I turn tail on a single man--who is
yon chap riding after us?"
"Oh, Cripps, it is that dreadful man," whispered Grace, with her teeth
jerking into her tongue; "who has kept me in prison, and perhaps
killed my father! Oh, Dobbin, sweet Dobbin, try one more gallop, and
you shall have clover for ever!"
Poor Dobbin responded with his best endeavour; but, alas! his old
feet, and his legs, and his breath were not as in the palmy days; and
a long shambling trot, with a canter for a change, were the utmost he
could compass. He wagged his grey tail, in brief expostulation,
conveying that he could go no faster.
"Now for it," said Cripps, as the foe overhauled them. "I never was
afeard of one man yet! and I don't mane to begin at this time of life.
Missy, go down into the body of the cart. Her rideth aisily enough by
now; and cover thee up with the bucking-baskets. Cripps will take thee
to thy father, little un. Never fear, my deary!"
She obeyed him by jumping back into the cart--but as for hiding in a
basket, Grace had a little too much of her father's spirit. The
weather was so fine that no tilt was on; she sat on the rail there,
and faced her bitter foe.
"That child is my ward!" shouted Mr. Sharp, riding up to the side of
Cripps; while his eyes passed on from Grace's; "give her up to me this
moment, fellow! I can take her by law of the land; and I will!"
"Liar Sharp," answered Master Cripps, desiring to address him
professionally, "this here young lady belongeth to her father; and no
man else shall have her. Any reasoning thou hast to come down with, us
will hearken, as we goes along; if so be that thou keepest to a civil
tongue. But high words never bate me down one penny; and never shall
do so, while the Lord is with me."
"Hark you, Cripps," replied Mr. Sharp, putting his lips to the
Carrier's ear; and whispering so that Grace could only guess at
enormous sums of money (which sums began doubling at every
breath)--"down on the nail, and no man the wiser!"
"But the devil a great deal the wiser," said the Carrier, grinning
gently, as if he saw the power of evil fleeing away in discomfiture.
"Now Liar Sharp hath outwitted hisself. What Liar would offer such a
sight of money for what were his own by the lai of the land?"
"You cursed fool, will you die?" cried Sharp, drawing and cocking a
great horse-pistol; "your blood be on your head--then yield!"
Cripps, with great presence of mind, made believe for a moment to
surrender, till Mr. Sharp lowered his weapon, and came up to stop the
cart, and to take out Grace. In a moment, the Carrier, with a
wonderful stroke, learned from long whip-wielding, fetched down his
new lash on the eyeball of the young and ticklish horse of the lawyer.
Mad with pain and rage, the horse stood up as straight as a soldier
drilling, and balanced on the turn to fall back, break his spine, and
crush his rider. Luke Sharp in his peril slipped off, and the
cart-wheel comfortably crunched over his left foot. His pistol-bullet
whizzed through a tall old tree. He stood on one foot, and swore
horribly.
"Gee wugg, Dobbin," said Cripps, in a cheerful, but not by any means
excited, vein; "us needn't gallop any more now, I reckon. The Liar
hath put his foot in it. Plaize now, Miss Grace, come and sit to front
again."
"We shall have you yet, you d----d old clod!" Mr. Sharp in his rage
yelled after him; "oh, I'll pay you out for this devil's own trick!
You aren't come to the Corner yet."
"Ho, ho!" shouted Cripps; "Liar Sharp, my duty to you! You don't catch
me goin' to the Corner, sir, if some of the firm be awaitin' for me
there."
With these words he gaily struck off to the right, through a by-lane,
unknown, but just passable, where the sound of his wheels was no
longer heard, and the mossy boughs closed over him. Grace clung to his
arm; and glory and gladness filled the simple heart of Cripps.
Meanwhile Mr. Sharp, who had stuck to his bridle, limped to his horse,
but could not mount. Then he drew forth the other pistol from the near
holster, and cocked it and levelled it at Cripps; but thanks to brave
Dobbin, now the distance was too great; and he kept the charge for
nobler use.