Cripps, the Carrier: A Woodland Tale. Blackmore Richard Doddridge

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СКАЧАТЬ a grand effect; and so he did, but not the right one.

      "You threaten me, do you?" said Mr. Sharp. "I think that you make a mistake, young man. Violence is objectionable in every way, though natural with fools, who believe they are the stronger. I am sorry to have spoiled your whip; but you will acknowledge that the fault was yours. Now, I am ready for reason – if you are."

      With a grave bow, Luke Sharp offered Russel the fragments of his pet hunting-crop, which he had caught from his hand, and snapped like a stick of peppermint, as he spoke. Overshute thought himself a fine, strong fellow, and with very good reason; but the quickness of his antagonist left him gasping.

      "I want no apologies," Mr. Sharp continued, going to his desk; while the young man looked sadly at his brazen-knockered butt, for he had been at that admirable college, and cherished his chief reminiscence of it thus. "Apologies are always waste of time. You have threatened me, and you have found your mistake. Such a formidable antagonist makes one's hand shake. Still, I think that I can hit my key-hole."

      "You can always make your keys fit, I dare say. But you never could do that to me again."

      "Very likely not. I shall never care to try it. Physical force is always low. But, as a gentleman, you must own that you first offered violence."

      "Mr. Sharp, I confess that I did. Not in word, or deed; but still my manner fairly imported it. And the first respect I ever felt for you, I feel now, for your quickness and pluck."

      "I am pleased with any respect from you; because you have little for anything. Now, repeat your question, moderately."

      "Where have you put Grace Oglander?"

      "Let me offer you a chair again. Striding about with frozen feet is almost the worst thing a man can do. However, you seem to be a little excited. Have you brought me a letter from my client, to authorize this inquiry?"

      "From Mr. Oglander? Oh no! He has no idea of my being here."

      "We will get over that. You are a friend of his, and a neighbour. He has asked you, in a general way, to help him in this sad great trouble."

      "Not at all. He would rather not have my interference. He does not like its motive."

      "And the motive is, that like many other people, you were attached to this young lady?"

      "Certainly, I am. I would give my life at any moment for her."

      "Well, well; I will not speak quite so strongly as you do. Life grows dearer as it gets more short. But still, I would give my best year remaining to get to the bottom of this problem."

      "You would?" cried young Overshute, looking at him, with admiration of his strength and truth. "Give me your hand, sir? I have wronged you! I see that I am but a hasty fool!"

      "You should never own that," said the lawyer.

      CHAPTER XII.

      MR. JOHN SMITH

      Meanwhile all Beckley and villages around were seething with a ferment of excitement and contradiction. Esther Cripps had been strictly ordered by the authorities to hold her tongue; and so far as in her lay she did so. But there were others – the Squire's three men, and even the Carrier himself, who had so many things to think, that they were pretty sure to say some of them. One or two of them had wives; and though these women could not be called by their very worst friends "inquisitive," it was not right and lawful that they should be debarred of everything. They did all they could not to know any more than they were really bound to know; and whatever was forced upon them had no chance of going any further.

      This made several women look at one another slyly, each knowing more than the other, and nodding while sounding the other's ignorance. Until, with one accord they grew provoked at being treated so; and truth being multiplied to its cube became, of course, infinite error.

      Now, Mrs. Fermitage having been obliged to return to Cowley, Mary Hookham's mother had established her power by this time; and being, as her daughter had pronounced, a conspicuous member of the females, she exerted herself about all that was said, and saw the other side of everything. She never went to no public-house – nobody could say that of her; but perhaps she could put two and two together every bit as well as them that did. It had been her fortune to acquire exceptional experience – or, as she put it more plainly, "she had a seed a many things;" and the impressions left thereby upon her idiosyncrasy (or, in her own words, "what she come to think") was and were that nothing could be true that she had not known the like of. This was the secret of her success in life – which, however, as yet bore no proportion to her merits. She frankly scouted as "a pack of stuff" everything to which her history afforded no vivid parallel. In a word, she believed only what she had seen.

      Now, incredulity is a grand power. To be able to say, "Oh, don't tell me," or "None of your stuff!" when the rest of the audience, stricken with awe, is gaping, confers at once the esteem of superior intellect and vigour. And when there are good high people, who derive comfort from the denial, the chances are that the active sceptic does not get the worst of it.

      Mrs. Hookham plainly declared that Esther's tale was neither more nor less than a trumpery cock-and-bull story. She would not call it a parcel of lies, because the poor girl might have dreamed it. Walking in the snow was no more than walking in one's sleep; she knew that, from her own experience; and if there had been no snow as yet, that made her all the more sure to be right; the air was full of it, and of course it would have more power overhead. Depend upon it, she had seen a bush, if indeed she did see anything, and being so dazed by the weather, she had gone and dreamed the rest of it.

      Beckley, on the other hand, having known Esther ever since she toddled out of her cradle, and knowing her brothers, the carrier, the baker, and the butcher, and having no experience yet of Mother Hookham's wisdom, as good as told the latter lady not to be "so bounceable." She must not come into this parish, and pretend to know more about things that belonged to it than those who were bred and born there.

      But Mrs. Hookham's opinion was, in one way, very important, however little weight it carried at the Dusty Anvil. Mr. Oglander himself had to depend for his food entirely on Mrs. Hookham's efforts; for Betty, the cook, went purely off her head, after all she had gone through; and they put her in bed with a little barley-water, and much malt liquor in a nobler form. And though Mrs. Hookham at her time of life was reluctant so to demean herself, she found all the rest such a "Noah's compass," that she roused up the fires of departed youth, and flourished with the basting-ladle. A clever well-conditioned dame, with a will of her own, is somebody.

      "Now, sir," she cried, rushing in to the Squire, with a basin of first-rate ox-tail soup, upon that melancholy New Year's Day, "you have been out in the snow again! No use denying of it, sir; I can see it by the chattering of your teeth. I call it a bad, wicked thing to go on so. Flying in the face of the Lord like that!"

      "You are a most kind and good soul, Mrs. Hookham. But surely you would not have me sit with my hands crossed, doing nothing."

      "No, no; surely not. Take the spoon in one hand, and the basin in the other. You owe it to yourself to keep up your strength, and to some one else as well, good sir."

      "I have no one else now to owe it to," the old man answered, sadly tucking his napkin into his waistcoat pockets.

      "Yes, you have. You have your Miss Gracie, alive and kicking, as sure as I be; and with a deal more of life in front of her; though scarce a week passes but what I takes my regular dose of calumny. Ah, if it had not been for that, I never could have been twenty year a widow."

      "Don't cry, Mrs. Hookham. I beg you not to cry. СКАЧАТЬ