Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale. Blackmore Richard Doddridge
bring home their joint pet Gracie in time for the dinner at five o'clock that very day, and to dine there with them; so that it was needful to look alive, and to make quick step of everything. Moreover, this good Squire had some little insight (as behoves a farmer and a sportsman) into the ways and meaning of the weather of the neighbourhood. He knew as well as a short-tailed field-mouse that a long frost was coming. The sharp dry rustle of the upturned leaves of holly and of ivy, the heavy stoop of the sullen sky, the patches of spaded mould already browning with powdery crispness, the upward shivering look of the grass, and the loss of all gloss upon everything, and the shuddering rattle in the teeth of a man who opened his mouth to the wind at all – many other things than these, as well as all of them, were here; that any man (not blind, or deaf, or choked in citied ignorance) might fall to at once, and dig every root of his potatoes.
But the strange thing, in this present matter, was that Squire Oglander was bent not only on digging potatoes, but also on planting them, this very day. Forsooth it was one of his fixed dates in the chronicles of the garden, that happen what might, or be the season whatsoever it chose to be, new potatoes and peas he would have by the last day of May, at the latest. And this without any ignoble resort to forcing-pit, hot-bed, or even cold frame; under the pure gaze of the sky, by that time they must be ready. Now, this may be easy at Ventnor, or Penzance, or even Bournemouth; but in the highlands of Oxfordshire it requires some skill and management. In the first place, both pea and potato must be of a kind that is ready to awake right early; and then they must be humoured with a very choice place; and after that they must be shielded from the winter's rages. If all these "musts" can be complied with, and several "ifs" are solved aright, the gardener (eager as well as patient) may hope to get pleasure from his early work.
Of all men there was none perhaps more capable of hoping than this good Squire Oglander. In his garden and his household, or among his friends and neighbours, or the world at large, he not only tried to see, but saw, the very best side of everything. When things fell out amiss, he always looked very wise, and shook his head, and declared that he had predicted them; and before very long he began to find out that they were not so bad as they might have been. His ruddy face, and blue eyes, and sometimes decidedly waggish nose, as well as his crisp white hair, and way of standing to be looked at, let everybody know that here was a man of no great pretension, yet true, and of kind and happy heart, and fit to be relied upon. Ten thousand such may be found in England; and they cannot be too many.
"Inside and outside, all look alive!" cried this gentleman, running to and fro: "Gracie will be home; Miss Grace, I mean; and not a bit of fire in the drawing-room grate! No Christmas-boxes for any of you sluts! Now, I did not mean that, Mary, as you might know. Inside the women, and outside the men – now, what is this paper for, my dear?"
"That there Cripps, sir, have a sent 'un in. He be gettin' so pertikular!"
"Quite right. Quite right. Business is business. No man can be too particular. Let him sit down and have a pint of ale. He wants me to sign this paper, does he? Very well; tell him to come next week. My fingers are cramped with the wind. Tell Cripps – now, don't you be in such a hurry, Mary; Cripps is not a marrying man."
"As if I would touch him with a pair of tongs, sir! A Hookham to have a Cripps, sir! – a man who always smells as if he had been a-combing of a horse!"
"Ah, poor Mary, the grapes are sour. Tell bachelor Cripps to send in the bag. And bring me the little truck-basket, Mary; I dare say that will hold them. Just in time, they are only just in time. To-morrow would have been a day too late."
The Squire was to pay a guinea for this bushel of early oakleaf potatoes, a sort that was warranted to beat the ashleaf by a fortnight, and to crop tenfold as much. The bag had been sent by the Henley coach from a nursery near Maidenhead, and left at the Black Horse in St. Clement's, to be called for by the Beckley carrier.
"Stay now," cried the Squire; "now I think of it we will unpack the bag in the brewery, Mary. They have had a fire there all the morning. And it will save making any mess in here. Miss Grace is coming, bless her heart! And she'll give it to me, if she finds any dirt."
"But, sir, if you please, Master Cripps now just is beginning of his pint of ale. And he never hurrieth over that – "
"Well, we don't want Cripps. We only want the bag. Jem will bring it into the brewery, if you want to sit with Cripps. Cripps is tired, I dare say. These young men's legs are not fit for much. Stop – call old Thomas; he's the best, after all. If I want a thing done, I come back to the old folk, after all."
"Well, sir, I don't think you have any reason to say that. Howsomever, here cometh Mr. Kale. Mr. Kale, if you please, you be wanted."
Presently Thomas Kale, the man who had worked so long in the garden there, followed his master across the court, with the bag of potatoes on his back. The weight was a trifle, of course, being scarcely over half a hundredweight; but Thomas was too old a hand to make too light of anything.
"I've knowed the time," he said, setting down the sack on the head of an empty barrel, "when that there weight would have failed, you might say, to crook my little finger. Now, make so bold – do you know the raison?"
"Why, Thomas, we cannot expect to be always so young as we were once, you know."
"Nout to do wi' it – less nor nout. The raison lie all in the vittels, maister; the vittels is fallen from what they was."
"Thomas, you give me no peace with your victuals. You must groan to the cook, not to me, about them. Now, cut the cord. Why, what has Cripps been about?"
The bag was made of a stout grey canvas, not so thick as sacking, and as the creases of the neck began to open, under the slackening cord, three or four red stripes were shown, such as are sometimes to be found in the neck of a leather mail-bag, when the postmaster has been in a hurry, and dropped his wax too plenteously. But the stripes in these creases were not dry and brittle, as of run sealing-wax, but clammy and damp, as if some thick fluid had oozed from dripping fingers.
"I don't like the look of it," cried the old Squire. "Cripps should be more careful. He has left the bag down at his brother the butcher's. I am sure they never sent it out like this. Not that I am of a squeamish order, but still – good God! What is this that I see?"
With scarcely time for his cheeks to blanch, or his firm old hands to tremble, Squire Oglander took from the mouth of the sack a coil of long bright golden hair. The brown shade of the potatoes beneath it set off its glistening beauty. He knew it at a glance; there was no such hair in all Oxfordshire but his Gracie's. A piece of paper was roughly twisted in and out the shining wreath. This he spread in the hollow of his palm, and then put on his spectacles, and read by the waning light these words, "All you will ever see of her."
CHAPTER IV.
CRIPPS IN A QUANDARY
Worth Oglander, now in his seventieth year, although he might be a trifle fat, was a truly hale and active man. His limbs were as sound as his conscience; and he was well content with his life and age. He had seen a good deal of the world and of enemies, in the stirring times of war. But no wrong lay in the bottom of his heart, no harm ever done to any one, except that he had killed a few Frenchmen, perhaps, as all Englishmen used to be forced to do.
Moreover, he had what most folk now, of the very best kind, have almost outlived, a staunch and steadfast faith in the management of the world by its Maker. We are too clever now for all this, of course. But it must be allowed that this fine old faith bred courage, truth, and comfort.
"Whoever has played this trick with me," said the Squire, as soon as he recovered himself, "is, to say the least of it, a blackguard. Even for a Christmas joke, it is carrying things a great deal too far. I have played, and been played, many practical jokes, when there was nothing else to do; in winter-quarters, and such like. But this is beyond – Thomas, run and fetch Cripps. I will get to the bottom of this, I am resolved."
In a minute or two Master Cripps came in. His face was a little flushed, from the power of the compliments paid to Mary, but his eyes were quite firm, and his breeches and gaiters strictly under discipline of the legs inside them.
"Servant, sir," he said, touching his forelock, nearly of the colour of clover hay; "all correct, I hope, Squire,