DAVY LIDGITT, THE CARRIER;
OR,
THE MAN WHO BROUGHT HIS NINEPENCE TO NOUGHT.
Louth, sixty years ago, as now, was the handsomest as well as the largest town in the north of Lincolnshire, though you would not then have seen in it, as you may now, if you go that way, a dashing mail-coach, with a dashing red-coated and gold-laced guard, dash off and dash in daily to and from Rasen, and Gainsborough, and Sheffield. "Long" Ludforth, too—(they spell it "Ludford" on the maps; but, doubtless, they who live there know better the name of the place than your mere map-makers!)—Long Ludforth, too, was nearly as deserving of its name, then, as now. And, in default of all other means of conveyance for goods and passengers, Davy Lidgitt, the carrier, traversed the ten miles of distance between the village and market-town "every Wednesday and Saturday—twice a week, regular," as the inscription read on the front of his neat tilted cart; for your new-fangled way of sticking the carrier's name on one side of his vehicle had not then been invented by the tax-making gentry at head-quarters.
Davy Lidgitt was excelled in diligence and punctuality by never a carrier, even in those diligent and punctual times, and gained the universal respect of his employers, and, what was of more solid value, a neat little independence, to boot, as the reward of his life of industry and uprightness. Davy,—it should be "Old Davy;" for that was the name by which he was known for the greater part of his public life,—Old Davy would have felt himself to be a happy man could he have regarded young Davy, his son, as one who was likely to tread, morally as well as physically, in his steps. But Old Davy Lidgitt, like all other mortals, lacked the single ingredient in his cup which could give it the power of making his bliss complete on this side the grave.
Not that young Davy was idle, or profligate, or devoid of wit, according to some people's acceptation of the term. In fact, the majority of the plain villagers of Long Ludforth agreed that, "if aught, young Davy Lidgitt had ower much wit for one of his calling." And, for activity, few could match young Davy. From a mere child he aspired to wield his father's long whip, and at ten years old could manage the brown mare and the black horse that composed the carrier's team as well as Old Davy himself could manage them. Moreover, he was always to be found about the cart or the stable, at the market-town, when the goods were delivered, and could never be tempted to spend either his time, health, or money at the ale-tap. Up to the age of five-and-twenty,—when Old Davy, at sixty, fully retired to enjoy the brief remnant of life in the snug but small cottage he had purchased,—young Davy had not failed to accompany his father as regularly as Wednesday and Saturday returned in each week to Louth and back, attending so rigidly and cleverly to every item of parcel and package, letter and message, that the villagers would one and all declare "young Davy Lidgitt had a head like an almanack!"
"Why, what in the world, then, could it be," you will ask, "that caused old Davy to look upon a lad, with his son's commendations, in the light of disparagement?" If the truth must be told, we must begin at the beginning. Young Davy showed sundry symptoms of a disposition that his father did not like, even when a child: he would hook the gears one day in one mode and another day in another, often to the provocation of some such harsh exclamation on the part of the senior Lidgitt, as—"'Od rabbet thee! thou'st been at thy kickshaw tricks again, with the old mare's belly-band: she'll be kicking thy busy brains out some of these days!" And many a kick, to say troth, young Davy received for these "kickshaw" tricks: but he persevered, with the belief that the way of harnessing a cart-horse might be improved. Yet his father could never discern that either in this or any other of his displays of genius, such as clipping or tying the manes of the horses in whimsical forms, or hanging their collars, and halters, and so forth, in "apple-pie order," as the old man called it, in the home stable—I say, old Davy could never arrive at the conclusion that young Davy, in any of these intended "improvements" ever effected a real one.
"But, Lord love thee, Davy!" Betty Lidgitt would usually say, when her spouse had been relating his boy's latest whim, in her ears, at supper-time,—"Lord love thee, Davy, he's only a child; and thou knaws childer will be childer: one can't set old heads upo' young shouthers: he'll give over with his meagrims when he grows older: thou wants patientness, Davy,—patientness! Thou knaws I tell'd thee so, before we were married!"
These pleasant motherly excuses for the lad quieted the father for some years; but, one day, when the young "Reformer" had proceeded so far as to take away the horse-shoe from the door-jamb,—that mystic surety of good luck to the cottage by the opinions of every inhabitant of Long Ludforth, and which the parson had never said was wrong,—old Davy could forbear no longer to put into execution a resolve that had been for some months forming in his mind.
"Betty! I'll take him to Wise Tom, and have his planet ruled!" said he, "for I feel sartain and sewer some'at isn't right about the lad: he's the very devil for mischief! Lord ha' marcy on us, if the young varment hasn't tucken the horse-shoe away now! some'at will be happening us I'm sewer!"
And, on the following Monday morning, when his team had rested a day after their usual Saturday's travel, old Davy Lidgitt arose betimes, and, calling up his son, set forth with him on the way to Welton, to visit the astrologer.
It will be long before the memory of old Tom Cussitt, "the wise man of Welton," will be forgot in Lindsey. "Cusworth" was his proper name, but old Lindsey folk made it a rule to shorten folks' names when they had to use them often, and there were few names more frequently in a peasant's mouth, at that time of the day, for twenty miles round Louth, than that of "Tom Cussitt." Good Lord! if one were to tell all the stories one has heard of his discoveries of stolen goods by the stars; of the marks he was wont to put on the thieves, that the owners of the goods might know the rogues when they saw 'em; of the wondrous way in which he could show a love-sick maiden her future husband in the old-fashioned witch-looking mirror that hung in his darkened room; and of the strange facts he foretold to some people, when he "cast their nativities,"—that mystic process in which he never erred a hair's breadth,—why, it would take a twelvemonth to go through the labour! But, to attend to old and young Davy. It was but half-a-dozen miles from Long Ludforth to Welton, and so they and their little team were soon there.