Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale

by R. D. Blackmore

The men, on the other hand, were not sure of their sorrow to see less of him. He had always kept a keen eye upon them, as the master of a large house ought to do; and he always bore in mind the great truth that men on the whole are much lazier than women. Still even the worst man about the place, while he freely took advantage of the present sweet immunity, would have been sorry to hear of a thing which might drive him to seek for another place.

But what were all these, even all put together, in the weight of their feelings, to compare with the mother of young Overshute? Many might cry, but none would mourn; nobody could have any right to mourn, except herself, his mother. This was her son, and her only hope. If it pleased the Lord to rob her of him, He might as well take her soon afterwards, without any more to do.

This middle-aged lady was not pious, and made no pretence to be so. Her opinion was that the Lord awarded things according to what people do, and left them at liberty to carry on, without any great interference. She knew that she always had been superfluously able to manage her own affairs; and to hear weak ladies going on and on about the will of the Lord, and so forth, sometimes was a trial to her manners and hospitality. In this terrible illness of her son, she had plenty of self-command, but very little resignation. With stern activity and self-devotion, she watched him by day and by night so jealously, that the nurses took offence and, fearing contagion, kept their distance, though they drew their wages.

This was the time to show what stuff both men and women were made of. Fair-weather visitors, and delightful gossips, and the most devoted friends, stood far aloof from the tainted gale, and fumigated their letters. The best of them sent their grooms to the lodge, with orders to be very careful, and to be sure to use tobacco during the moment of colloquy. Others had so much faith that everything would be ordered for the best, that they went to the seaside at once, to be delivered from presumption. Many saw a visitation for some secret sin, that otherwise might have festered inwardly and destroyed the immortal part. Of course they would not even hint that he could have murdered Grace Oglander; nothing was further from their thoughts; the idea was much too terrible. Still there were many things that long had called for explanation—and none had been afforded.

Leaving these to go their way, a few kind souls came fluttering to the house of pestilence and death. Two housemaids, and the boy who cleaned the servant's shoes, had been struck down, and never rose again, except with very cautious liftings into their last narrow cells. The disease had spread from their master; and their constitutions were not like his. Also the senior footman and the under-cook, were in their beds; but the people who had their work to do believed them to be only shamming.

The master, however, still fought on, without any knowledge of the conflict. His mind was beyond all the guidance of will, and afar from its wonted subjects. It roved among clouds that had long blown away; nebules of logic, dialectic fogs, and thunderstorms of enthymeme, the pelting of soritic hail, and all the other perturbed condition of undergraduate weather. In these things, unlike his friend Hardenow, he had never taken delight, and now they rose up to avenge themselves. At other times the poor fellow lay in depths of deepest lethargy, voiceless, motionless, and almost breathless. None but his mother would believe sometimes that he was not downright dead and gone.

Of course Mrs. Overshute had called in the best advice to be had from the whole of the great profession of medicine. The roughness of the Abernethy school was still in vogue with country doctors; as even now some of it may be found in a craft which ought to be gentle in proportion to its helplessness. With timid people this roughness goes a long way towards creating faith, and makes them try to get better for fear of being insulted about it. In London however this Centauric school of medicine had not thriven, when the rude Nessus could not heal himself. A soft and soothing and genial race of Æsculapians arose; the "vis medicatrix naturæ" was exalted and fed with calves' feet; and the hand of velvet and the tongue of silver commended and sweetened the pill of bread.

At the head of this pleasing and amiable band (who seldom either killed or cured) was the famous Sir Anthony Thistledown. This was the great physician who had been invoked from London—to the strong disgust of Splinters, then the foremost light at Oxford—when Squire Oglander was seized with his very serious illness. And now Sir Anthony did his best, with the aid of the reconciled Splinters, to soothe away death from the weary couch of the last of the race of Overshute.

"A pretty story I've aheerd in Oxford to-day; make me shamed, it doth," said Zacchary Cripps to his sister Etty, while he smoked his contemplative pipe by the fire of Stow logs, one cold and windy April evening. "What do you think they've abeen and doed?"

"Who, and where, Zak? How can I tell?" Esther was busy, trimming three rashers, before she put them into the frying-pan. "I really do believe you expect me to know everybody that comes to your thoughts, quite as if it was my own mind."