Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale

by R. D. Blackmore

"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!"