Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale

by R. D. Blackmore

"Ah yes, I remember; and so they were. I thought that the crest of the hedge would fall over, and bury the whole of us out of the way. And when the poor boy had kicked out his convulsions, and fallen into a senseless sleep, the rough man turned on me savagely, as if I could have prevented it. 'A pretty doctor you be!' he exclaimed. But I took the upper hand of him. 'Stand back there!' I said; and I lifted the child (expecting him to strike me all the while), and placed the poor little fellow on my horse, and managed to get up into my saddle before the wind blew him off again. 'Now lead the way to your home,' I said. And muttering something, he set off.

"He strode along at such a pace that, having to manage both child and horse, it was all I could do to keep up with him. But I kept him in sight till he came to a common, and there he struck sharply away to the right. By the light of the wind and the rain, and a star that twinkled where the storm was lifting, I followed him, perhaps for half a mile, through a narrow track, in and out furze and bramble. At last he turned suddenly round a corner, and a shadow fell behind him—his own shadow thrown by a gusty gleam of fire. Cantelupe—that is my horse, Miss Esther—has not learned to stand fire yet, and he shied at the light, and set off through the furze, as if with the hounds in full cry before him. We were very lucky not to break our necks, going headlong in the dark among rabbit-holes. I thought that I must have dropped the child, as the best thing to be done for him; but the shaking revived him, and he clung to me.

"I got my horse under command at last; but we must have gone half a mile anywhere, and to find the way back seemed a hopeless task. But the quick-witted people (who knew what had happened, and what was likely to come of it) saved me miles of roundabout by a very simple expedient. They hoisted from time to time a torch of dry furze blazing upon a pole; and though the light flared and went out on the wind, by the quick repetition they guided me. In the cold and the wet, it rejoiced my heart to think of a good fire somewhere."

"Etty, stir the fire up," the hospitable Cripps interrupted. "His Worship hath shivers, to think of it. When a man, or, beg pardon, a gentleman, feeleth the small of his back go creeping, he needeth good fire to come up his legs, and a hot summat to go down him. Etty, be quick with the water now."

"Cripps, Cripps, Carrier Cripps! do you want to have me spilled on the road to-night? I am trying to tell things in proper order. But how can I do it, if you go on so? However, as I was beginning to say, Cantelupe, and the child, and I, fetched back to the place at last, where the flash of light had started us. And we saw, not a flash, but a glow this time, a steadfast body of cheerful fire, with pots and cauldrons over it. So well had the spot been chosen, in the lee of ground and growth, that the ash of the fire lay round the embers, as still as the beard of an oyster; while thicket and tree but a few yards off were threshing in the wind and wailing. Behind this fire, and under a rick-cloth sloping from a sandstone crest, women and children, and one or two men, sat as happy and snug as could be: dry, and warm, and ready for supper, and pleased with the wind and the rain outside, which improved their comfort and appetite. And now and then the children seemed to be pulling at an important woman, to hurry her, perhaps, in her cookery.

"But while I was watching them, keeping my horse on the verge of light and shadow, a woman, quite different from the rest, came out of the darkness after me. Heedless of weather, and reckless of self, she had been seeking for me, or rather for my little burden. Her hair was steeped with the drenching rain, for she wore no hat or bonnet; and her dark clothes hung on the lines of her figure, as women hate to let them do. Her eyes and face I could not see because of the way the light fell; but I seemed to know her none the less.

"While I gazed in doubt, my little fellow slipped like an eel from my clasp and the saddle; and almost before I could tell where he was—there he was in the arms of his mother! Wonders of love now began to go on; and it struck me that I was one too many in a scene of that sort; and I turned my good horse, to be off and away. But the woman called out, and a man laid hold of my bridle, and took his hat off, when, with the usual impulse of a stopped Briton, I was going to strike at him. I saw that it was my good friend of the ditch, and I came to parley with him.

"What with his scarcity of manners, and of polished language, and worst of all his want of palate, I found it hard, with so much wind blowing out here all around us, to understand his meaning. This was rude of me to the last degree, for the queerly-voiced man was doing no less than inviting me, with all his heart, to an uncommonly good dinner!"

CHAPTER XXI.
CINNAMINTA.

"Now that," said Cripps, "is what I call the proper way of doing things. Arter all, they hathens knows a dale more than we credit 'em."